by P. J. Hoover
“One of the old gods,” I say.
“Yep,” Zachary says, confirming my suspicion. “Planted in the simulation, either by Raven or without Raven knowing. And you guys killed him?” He kind of bites his tongue on this last part, like he’s not sure what the answer should be.
“Abigail did,” Hudson says. “She took his lightning and he withered away. Turned to dust.”
“Oh.” Zachary’s response is not what I expect. But then I remember my conversation with Elise. The old god that I’d killed had been her and Iva’s father. And maybe there’s something similar going on here.
“You were related to him?” I ask.
“Unfortunately,” Zachary says. He doesn’t expand and I don’t press. And the problem remains. Abigail has the power of one of the gods.
“He must’ve been the god who was helping her,” I say, and I quickly relay the story Abigail shared with me, leaving out the more personal details, about how she prayed for her father to die. And how she claimed god responded to her. Agreed to help her . . . if she protected Owen. The only good part of this is that if he is dead, he’s no longer helping her . . . aside from her having his power.
“You weren’t the only one with help, Edie,” Zachary says. “Remember?”
I know Zachary’s talking about himself and Elise helping me. But my mind immediately goes to the giant snake. Without his help, I’d still be trapped back in the other simulation. And he’d been the one who’d given me the power to kill the old god. I could be dead in the labyrinth right now if not for him.
“Wait, you helped Edie?” Hudson says. “Aren’t you just one of us?”
By us, he means the kids in the simulation. I let out a laugh. Cole shifts his weight to his crutch but doesn’t smile. And Taylor says, “Oh, you haven’t met god boy.”
“Didn’t we agree to not call me god boy?” Zachary says.
“I never agreed to that,” Taylor says.
“Wait. You’re a god?” Hudson says.
Zachary stands tall, and this time, instead of acting shy about it, he crosses his arms. “Yep. I am.” He offers no more explanation.
“He’s a minor god,” Taylor says in a loud whisper intended for everyone to hear.
“The key word being god,” Zachary says.
“Don’t get touchy,” Taylor says, but there’s a hint of softness in her voice. If I didn’t know better, I would swear she’s actually coming to accept Zachary.
“Are there more old gods left?” I ask Zachary, part to change the subject, but also to know what we’re up against. Chaos is behind this simulation, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any other gods hidden inside.
“Chaos is the only one,” he says. “As far as I know. But I’m obviously not told everything.”
“So you didn’t know about the warehouse?” Cole says. “You didn’t know I was being held there?”
It’s almost a challenge.
Disbelief crosses Zachary’s face. “No way. If I’d known, I would have . . .”
“What? Freed me?”
“Yeah, I would have freed you.” His voice is solid and without question.
Cole gives a small nod, and some sort of unspoken truce seems to pass between them. One more truce that can only help us succeed.
The symbols on my heads-up display stop scrolling and vanish. Replacing them is a single command.
Resume Simulation?
Yes
No
I can tell that everyone else has seen the same thing as me.
“Does this mean that we’re not in the simulation right now?” I say, trying to work through the pieces of logic. With the gray barriers around us, there is nowhere else to go.
“We must’ve gotten kicked out,” Zachary says. “Like really out.”
“So we can leave?” Taylor says.
I glare at her.
“Just kidding,” she says, putting her hands up. “I am ready to kick some serious Chaos ass.”
“Ditto,” Hudson says.
“And me,” Cole says.
Relief flows through me. Our group. Our truce. Back together and solid.
“Not me,” Zachary says.
“But—” I start.
He shakes his head. “This is my chance. I need to figure out what’s going on with that warehouse. With the destroyers. Because if they get loose . . . well, we don’t want that to happen.”
I know he’s right, but I also don’t want him to leave.
“Will we see you again?” I say. I hold my voice even, trying to keep my emotions in check. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve gotten kind of used to him being around.
Then he steps toward me, and I think for a second he’s going to kiss me. Instead his eyes meet mine, not blinking.
“You’re meeting us at the end, right?” Taylor says, stopping whatever else he was planning on doing. “We have a deal.”
Zachary smiles. “I’m good for my word,” he says. Then he vanishes, his god powers working here outside of the simulation.
“I don’t trust him,” Cole says.
Taylor actually reaches over and musses Cole’s brown hair. “Oh, don’t get all worried. Just ‘cause he likes your girlfriend doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy.”
Cole actually blushes. “It’s not that.”
It’s totally that. Even an idiot could tell. And I can’t help but be a little bit flattered.
“And what deal do you have with him?” Cole asks.
She looks away. “None of your business.”
She must know I’ll tell Cole later. There’s no reason not to.
“You do realize that every second we wait, Owen and Abigail are getting ahead of us, right?” Hudson says.
I kind of love how everything is back to normal. Pia is gone. Hudson is in a hurry. Taylor’s determined. It’s comforting in its own special way.
“Yeah, Hudson’s right,” I say. “You guys ready?”
Cole, Taylor, and Hudson all nod. Then I select Yes from the choices on the heads-up display. Instantly the world shifts away from the gray void. The wall of moving silver appears.
“See you guys on the other side,” I say, and I press my hand on the flowing silver.
XXVIII
The silver slides around me, making everything else vanish. Are Cole, Taylor, and Hudson right there near me? In a physical world, they would be, but this is a simulation. They are nothing but a programmed representation of themselves as am I.
My heads-up display comes to life, and the silhouette of Chaos appears.
“Congratulations,” he says. “You completed Zone Gamma. Interesting how you managed to recover your memory without Memory as your selected item.”
“Yeah, interesting,” I say, holding my voice steady. Hudson had stolen Memory from Owen and given it to me, at the request of the ancient snake god. Simulation or not, Chaos cannot know about this.
“Of course, by doing so, you have allowed all those trapped in Simulation Gamma to also proceed.”
I knew this was the cost. There was nothing that could be done about it. My and Cole’s power helped everyone. Now everyone I saw in there is moving on to the next zone. And it’s not that I don’t want to help them—well, except for Owen and Abigail. I would happily have them plucked from the simulation.
They’re necessary. Iva’s voice echoes in my mind. It’s not real. It’s a figment of my imagination. And also wrong. Owen and Abigail can’t be necessary.
“I’m ready for the next zone,” I say, blocking out thoughts of Owen. My best option is to keep moving forward.
“Zone Delta,” Chaos says. “The hardest yet. Thus far none have survived.” His final words of discouragement, not that I would expect anything less.
The silhouette of Chaos disappears and the image of the concentric circles appears. Thre
e of them are colored in green. Three remain, including the center. We’re halfway there. We can do this.
I select the fourth circle. The silver fluid around me pulls away from me, dumping me out into the world, leaving me behind. It forms a wall behind me. No turning back. No leaving.
Cole is already there, leaning on his crutch. I hurry over to him and grab him in a hug.
“I really missed you,” I say. With no one else around and no threat imminent, it’s what I’ve been waiting to tell him. “I couldn’t stand it when I thought—”
He puts a finger to my lips. “I can’t think about it, Edie,” he says. “I had to do it, but it almost killed me leaving you like that. But she left me no choice.”
She has no place in this conversation.
I answer by leaning in and pressing my lips to his. All it takes is one kiss and then every barrier is broken. I run my fingers through his hair. I explore his face. His back. Cole holds my face and he’s so warm. So perfect. My heart had broken when I’d thought he’d gone off with her. And sure, maybe I’m risking it breaking again, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
“Can you guys stop that?” Taylor says, walking up to join us.
I let the kiss linger for another moment then pull back. When this is all over . . . Well, there are lots of things that are going to happen. But until then, I need to focus on getting to the end.
“Sorry,” Cole says.
“Yeah, no one likes PDAs.” Then she hollers, “Hey Hudson, over here.”
Sure enough, Hudson is only about twenty yards away. He turns at the sound of her voice and sprints over to join us.
“What did I miss?” he says.
“Nothing you wanted to see,” Taylor says. “Now how are we going to get through this shit?”
By shit, she’s talking about what lies ahead of us. We’re under a roof that extends about thirty feet out, but after that, it’s raining. Water droplets seem to hang in the air, thick and slow moving, and so close together.
“That’s a lot of rain,” Cole says.
“That’s more than rain,” Hudson says, and I notice that he’s soaking as if he’s already been out in it. He shakes his head, water slinging off his blond hair. “It’s like being underwater. There’s no air.”
Instead of a river of lightning or dust or fog, we’re in a literal river of water, in this case thick rain.
“How long can you hold your breath?” Hudson asks.
“Long enough,” Taylor says. “But don’t go running off ahead of us.”
He puts a hand to his chest. “I would never. Now are you guys ready?”
I grab his arm. “Wait. You took the Memory from Owen. You stole it from him.”
He shrugs. No big deal. “The snake told me to do it. Right after we got into the first zone. Owen and Abigail knew I was following them, so I joined up with them even though they didn’t want me to. They didn’t have much choice. We all wanted to survive. Then I had this vision. Talked to the snake. He told me what to do. When Owen opened up his heads-up display to interact with the first part of the key after that stupid colosseum, I activated the option to transfer the item. He never even knew.”
But the snake had known that if I remembered, I’d be able to use the power to open up everyone else’s memories also.
“Thanks,” I say. “You saved us all.”
Hudson cocks his head and smiles. “Only partly. You’re the one who remembered.”
“Yeah, and good thing,” Taylor says. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on looking at the world through the Oculus back there. It was like a million visions and no idea what they were supposed to mean.”
Seeing futures and not understanding why had to be confusing.
“And now?” I say. “What are our odds of success?”
I hold my breath, hoping the number will be in our favor.
Taylor smirks. “Thirteen outcomes I see from this point,” she says. “And of those four succeed.”
Four in thirteen. It’s not good, but it’s better.
“If we don’t get going, we’ll never find Owen,” Cole says.
“Cole’s right,” Hudson says. “I spotted him and Abigail earlier.”
Shit. We need to go. We need to face whatever is ahead.
I glance out at the river of water drops ahead of us. Off in the distance, purple lightning crackles. An added complication. Lightning will make the water electric, increasing our chances of death.
“I’m ready.” I take a deep breath, drawing in as much air as I can, and we run into the river ahead of us.
What I’m not expecting is the temperature. Each drop of water is like ice, and without thinking, I blow out the breath in a gasp. When I suck in, I get a mouthful of freezing water.
I gag on it and cough. Cole looks to me, and I convey that I’m okay . . . for now. Then he motions with his head the direction we need to keep going. I nod, and we continue forward.
The lightning gets stronger the farther we go. It’s steady, flickering in a rhythmic pattern. The water gets thicker and colder the closer in we get. I can barely see Taylor and Hudson off to our right, just ahead of us. But then we step forward and there’s a break in the water that extends far ahead.
The water is like a sheet behind us. But it’s not what I’m worried about. We stand at the edge of a giant circular chasm. Lightning flickers over the center of the chasm, crackling purple and blue and red in a pattern that goes round and round like the water that fills the chasm.
I blow out the breath I’ve tried to hold, and I suck in fresh air but almost gag. It’s fetid, like rot fills everything.
“It’s a whirlpool,” Cole says. Except for the swirling motion, the water is almost calm, going round and round in a perfect pattern. The lightning is silent, as if the world has been muted.
We join Taylor and Hudson there at the edge of the chasm, but we’re not the only ones here. Abigail and Owen stand not fifty feet away, staring out at the swirling water and electric sky. They aren’t alone. Other kids stand along the edge, too, all around. Kids I’ve never seen before but who have apparently made it this far in the simulation. Other competitors. Others who might get to the end before us. There must be at least twenty others, standing alone or in groups of two or three, scattered about. Even as I watch, five more hurry up from the sheet of rain that lies behind them as if the entire zone is a circle with this as its end point.
Then the swirling picks up and the water begins to suck down more rapidly. The lightning flashes and changes from purple and blue to orange and yellow. Sound fills the air like wood being thrown against a rock wall. The water climbs higher as the center of the water dips deeper.
“Do you see that?” Hudson says.
I do see it. See it but don’t want to believe it, because inside the whirlpool something is forming. Something with teeth large enough to swallow an entire ship. Then the teeth open into a gaping mouth, and the head of a monster lifts from the whirlpool and darts out, grabbing one of the kids who stands on the edge of the chasm.
There isn’t even enough time for the kid to scream. He’s pulled under. The mouth again disappears below the surface of the whirlpool, and it calms down. The lightning changes back to purple and blue. There’s a monster inside the chasm. Somehow we need to get past it.
XXIX
Abigail shrieks and breaks into sobs that easily carry across the silence to us. I can’t even pretend to muster up the effort to feel sorry for her. She has sided with a monster from the very start of this entire thing. From even before she met Owen, she knew the only reason she was in the simulation was to help him. Not to mention she’s tried to kill us on multiple occasions. I have better uses for my energy than to feel sorry for her.
“There’s nowhere else to go,” Hudson asks. “Look at this point. It’s a giant circle.”
I am not one to give up before trying, but Hudson is only voicing what every single one of us thinks. If we skirt around the edge, we’ll only be back where we started. Entry points from all sides but no exit. It’s us against a giant chasm with a monster inside. No bridge. No trees or buildings or boats. Even if we had a boat, the whirlpool would suck us down. And the sky is nothing but a crackling mass of lightning emanating from a black starless night.
I glance back to Abigail and Owen. It looks like they’re arguing, no doubt about the same thing we are. Then Owen presses a finger to either of his eyebrows.
“That’s how he talks to his dad,” Hudson says. “He’s done it the entire simulation. It’s how he defeated the monsters back at the colosseum.”
“Then maybe he knows how to get across,” Cole says, watching Owen.
IF-THEN. The logic immediately moves through my mind and calms me. If Owen is cheating, then we can use it to our advantage.
We watch, and Owen and Abigail don’t move. They stay on the side of the chasm like everyone else. Then the lightning picks up and changes color and the whirlpool begins to swirl faster.
“Back up!” I shout.
We back up, against the river of water we came through, but it won’t allow us to reenter. Then the teeth form in the center of the whirlpool and the head appears and lashes out of the water. It snaps its mouth for a kid on the edge of the chasm, but somehow the kid manages to get out of the way, scrambling and falling backward.
The monster is not satisfied. It snaps its jaw again. Owen says something to Abigail, something she must not like because her eyes go wide and she shakes her head and backs up. Owen scowls and pushes her away. Then he runs for the monster, getting directly in the path of the gaping mouth. Its teeth close over Owen, swallowing him whole. I don’t breathe. He’s there and then he’s gone, disappearing in the monster’s mouth and under the whirlpool.
Abigail screams and runs directly for us. She’s wearing the same flowing white dress like she had on in Simulation Avine. Its billowing skirt flows out behind her like an apparition.