‘Well,’ Cade said, ducking a low branch, ‘we did talk for like five minutes.’
‘Oh, how delightful,’ Amber said. ‘Are you old chums now?’
‘Look, he saved me more than once,’ Cade said. ‘I’d trust him with my life.’
‘And ours, apparently,’ Amber added.
‘The clearing’s that way if you don’t want to come.’
Silence. Finally, she didn’t have a retort for him.
‘As far as you know, he could have sold you to the … armoured guys,’ Amber muttered.
For what felt like the umpteenth time that day, Cade ignored her. She was already getting on his nerves.
‘Maybe you were worth more to him alive,’ Amber went on. ‘And that’s why he saved you. Maybe he’s leading us back to them right now.’
Cade shook his head and pushed on through the jungle, following the sounds of Quintus hacking a path. He left an easy trail to follow, cutting a wide berth with his gladius. Quintus may have been skinny, but there was a wiry strength to him, and he seemed tireless. Progress was still slow, but far more comfortable without the endless leaves slapping against their faces.
He tried not to think about the creatures that might be lurking in the darkness. Nocturnal predators waiting for a snack to stumble past them.
‘Happy thoughts, Cade,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Happy thoughts.’
THIRTY-TWO
Cade wasn’t sure if it was Quintus’s guidance or blind luck that had allowed them to survive the night. Other than some nearby rustling and a fraught hour crouched among the bushes as a dark giant stomped by, they had encountered little of the fauna that populated the caldera.
Even so, it was a relief to stumble into the broad, empty streets of Hueitapalan a few hours later, not least because Cade’s legs felt like leaden weights with the consistency of wet noodles. He couldn’t resist grinning, though, as the girls marvelled at the tall buildings on either side of them. Without the trees surrounding them, the red moon was clearly visible, with its smaller white satellite peeking out from behind it.
‘Well, this isn’t Shropshire,’ Trix announced.
‘No kidding,’ Amber said, turning in a slow circle.
Cade kept quiet. Somehow, he didn’t think an ‘I told you so’ would be helpful at that moment.
He only wished that there were some sauropods present so he could win the dinosaur argument too. Unfortunately, Quintus barely gave them a moment to take it all in before he was loping across the red-moonlit plaza, heading for his temple again. Clearly the area was not as safe as it appeared, and Cade decided he preferred to delay his victory than to win the debate by getting eaten.
Together, the six of them staggered into the entrance and down the corridors, following Quintus’s unerring course. Cade almost held his breath for the last corridor before collapsing with a deep sigh on the makeshift bed of the fur-covered altar.
He caught Quintus eyeing him reproachfully.
‘What? My legs are killing me.’
Quintus raised his eyebrows.
‘Fine,’ Cade moaned, standing as the girls walked in.
He offered them the seat, and they sat down gratefully, groaning as they kicked off their mud-soaked plimsolls.
Quintus busied himself with the fire, using his gladius and a flint to light it. Soon the girls were wiggling their toes by the flames. Cade collapsed to the ground beside it, warming his hands and feet. He took the opportunity to roll up his pant legs, and it was with some surprise that he saw the ant-head stitches had held.
Quintus caught his eye and gave a mock bow, before snatching some of the hanging, gutted compies drying above the fireplace and handing one each to the girls. They stared at the desiccated remains in disgust. Quintus dropped another in Cade’s lap and kept one for himself, settling down beside the fire and tearing a hunk of leathery flesh free with his teeth.
‘What on earth are these?’ Grace whispered. ‘Looks like a lizard had a baby with a chicken.’
Cade bit his tongue at the comment and took a bite of his compy. It tasted like a piece of dry old leather, but he chewed it down anyway.
‘They’re dinosaurs,’ Amber said, winking at Cade. ‘And … I don’t think we’re on Earth either.’
He almost choked on his compy with surprise, and Amber let out a laugh.
Well, at least she’s starting to believe me.
‘So, Cade,’ Grace said, through a mouthful of dry flesh, ‘care to tell us how you found yourself here?’
Cade took his time chewing, something that wasn’t difficult given the consistency. He gathered his thoughts, wondering how to explain it without sounding completely unhinged.
‘I was at reform school,’ Cade said. ‘Then suddenly I was standing on a rock. There was this monster beneath me – one of those piranha-chimps I was telling you about. I fought it off.’
The room was silent except for the crackle of the fire and the sound of Quintus devouring his meal. He was not a quiet eater, and Cade paused as the soldier smacked his lips and began to crack the delicate bones inside to get at the marrow. Quintus caught them staring at him and grinned, a flap of compy skin hanging from his chin. Then he went back to it, unfazed.
‘Um … anyways. After that I ran into a forcefield, before it disappeared.’
‘Seriously?’ Grace asked. This time, it was less a comment of doubt than one of shock.
‘Yeah. It’s all a game. Someone … something … made this place, and put us here. And not just us. Quintus and some other soldiers were left here too, somehow taken out of time, just like the dinosaurs.’
‘And us,’ Trix muttered.
‘I met up with some other guys from my school and we came across a fort that the Romans built,’ Cade continued. ‘And then there was this … thing … there.’
This was the part Cade had been dreading. But he had to do it. Rip it off like a Band-Aid. He needed these girls on his side. Needed them to believe him.
‘What thing?’ Amber asked.
Cade cleared his throat.
‘Codex?’ he said, looking around the room. ‘Can you show yourself?’
Instantly, the Codex flickered into view. The girls gasped, nearly falling over the back of the altar as it floated down to Cade’s level.
02:13:12:51
02:13:12:50
02:13:12:49
Cade gulped at the sight of the timer. He’d lost so much time.
‘What in heaven’s name is that?’ Bea whispered, trying to hide behind her sister.
‘It calls itself a Codex,’ Cade explained. ‘Think of it as Google, but it’ll pretty much only tell us about things that originated on Earth. And sometimes the game, if it feels like it.’
Amber groaned. ‘You’ve lost me.’
Cade thought for a minute.
Oh.
‘Of course,’ Cade sighed. ‘Google isn’t around yet in 1985.’
‘Silly word if I ever heard one,’ Trix muttered.
‘OK, so think of it as an encyclopaedia then,’ Cade said. ‘You point at something, and it tells you what it was, as long as that information is still available on Earth and the thing comes from Earth.’
‘You mean we could have done it to those men?’ Grace asked.
‘Yes,’ Cade said, hearing a hint of regret in his voice, ‘but I didn’t want to reveal it to them, and the damned thing flashes when you ask it a question.’
‘Did you tell it to hide from us?’ Grace asked, reproachful.
‘Was I conscious when they brought me in?’ Cade asked drily. ‘The damned thing has a mind of its own.’
‘Language,’ Trix said, raising her eyebrows at him.
Cade put his head in his hands.
‘We have the next best thing, though,’ Amber said, hefting the axe. ‘Make it point at this!’
Cade lifted his head and flashed her a smile. She was getting the hang of being in this strange place.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Codex, where doe
s this axe come from?’
The Codex flashed, so bright and sudden in the darkened room that even Cade jolted at it.
‘Action prohibited. Object is not a remnant. It does not originate on Earth.’
Cade cursed under his breath and earned a reproachful glare from Trix.
‘What does that mean?’ Amber asked.
‘It means it was made here. Somewhere in this godforsaken world, there may be a blacksmith churning these out. In fact, now that I think about it, I doubt pointing the Codex at those men would have told us much at all.’
‘Why’s that?’ Amber asked.
‘Because I suspect they’re descended from people left here long ago. Unfortunately for us, they’re the kind of people who take captives to use for who knows what purpose.’
‘And those numbers?’ she asked. ‘What are they?’
‘I … it’s hard to explain,’ Cade said.
He waited for Amber’s next question, but none was forthcoming. In fact, as the warmth from the fire seeped into the room, Bea and Grace had already begun to nod off.
‘Let’s get some rest,’ Cade said. ‘We’re safe enough here.’
‘All right,’ Amber said, yawning. ‘Let’s pick this up in the morning.’
As the girls made themselves comfortable around the room, Cade considered whether now was the time to tell them about the qualifying round. Ask them to join the fight.
But it was hard to keep thoughts still in his head, exhaustion settling over him like a heavy cloak.
Tomorrow, then.
THIRTY-THREE
Cade wanted to sleep. Needed to sleep. But that didn’t seem to be on Quintus’s agenda. It felt as if he had only just closed his eyes when the soldier was prodding him awake and tugging at him to follow, even though the sky he saw through the holes in the ceiling was stained with the dim light of dawn.
The girls were sprawled in various positions across the room, with Trix and Bea propped against each other in the corner. The fire had long since burned out, and there was a chill in the room. Amber was shivering in her sleep, so Cade picked up the fur that had fallen from the altar where Grace had been tossing and turning in the night, and laid it over her.
He looked to the Codex, and realised he had slept for under two hours.
02:11:36:11
02:11:36:10
02:11:36:09
It was probably around six in the morning. Or whatever the equivalent of that was on this planet. It seemed a day here could last twenty hours, or thirty. He hadn’t been keeping count. Whatever time it was, Quintus was in a hurry, practically dragging Cade into the darkness of the corridor.
Soon Cade was in pitch black, feeling the cobwebs catch across his face as the legionary led him unerringly from one place to another. To Cade’s surprise, they were not going the usual route, instead turning down a different corridor, where much of the floors above had fallen through.
Sometimes Cade dropped to his knees and crawled, while other times he edged sideways. Here and there, dawn light cut through cracks in the walls, illuminating hallways filled with fallen pillars, rubble and encroaching vegetation.
Lianas criss-crossed wherever he looked, with hanging mosses adorning them like Christmas ornaments. Tiny bones crunched underfoot, and all the while the sound of dripping water echoed around. Twice they went up narrow flights of stairs, so steep that Cade had to stop and rest midway before continuing on. This complex was larger than Cade had realised.
They reached the top floor and, even then, Quintus led him inexorably onwards. There were paintings on this level, murals that had begun to peel but still showed the tanned, elaborately dressed figures of what Cade guessed were Mayan royalty and jaguar-skin-clad warriors, with the blue sky painted vividly above them.
A final staircase was built into the wall, and Quintus scampered up it, quick as a fox. As they emerged at the top, Cade blinked in the sunlight.
Strangely, the cacophony of noise was even louder than the last time, the screeching of the pterosaurs coupled with distant honks and lowing, though his position on the rooftop blocked his view of the plaza.
The stone was slippery underfoot here, and the entire surface seemed to have been decorated in some way, with carved tiles of twisting figures long since worn away by the rain and wind. Large statues lined the edges, reminding Cade of gargoyles on a medieval cathedral.
Here and there, pterosaurs hissed from their nests, though these were no larger than pigeons. Cade was only thankful that the giraffe-sized beasts he had seen before were nowhere to be found, although from the amount of faeces piled on the roof, they might as well have been. By now, the sun was truly beginning to rise, casting the world in a golden light.
He wanted to catch his breath, but Quintus tugged at his hand, muttering in Latin under his breath. There was something he wanted Cade to see, and urgently. So Cade staggered on with a groan, though to his relief his legs ached only from exertion – his wounds well on the way to recovery. Then he saw it, and the discomfort was forgotten.
Three figures were sitting around a campfire in the centre of the city. Quintus was snatching at Cade’s uniform and pointing, and immediately Cade saw they were wearing the same blue clothing as he himself was.
Cade squinted but couldn’t be sure who they were. The fact that there were only three of them was worrying, but he found himself grinning regardless. Especially because of what else he saw down there.
Walking around where the three were sitting … were dinosaurs. The city’s plaza had become a natural thoroughfare for the largest animals, caused by the lack of low branches and vegetation and the natural funnel of the buildings on either side. Some form of migration was in full swing, and Cade marvelled at the magnificent creatures walking below him.
The first that caught his eye was a herd of sauropods, the long-necked quadrupedal beasts that had a giraffe’s neck and head on the ponderous body of an elephant. These were not as large as the plane-sized behemoth he had seen stretching its throat across the river, but they still seemed unperturbed by the trio of humans crouched beneath them, continuing their slow march to the jungle on the other side of the city.
The other boys seemed trapped among the animals, fearful of being trodden on by the great beasts that parted around their small campfire like water flowing around a rock. It seemed they had decided to make camp in the lee of the great central pillar of the plaza, a giant obelisk that stretched higher than the one opposite the White House. The three might have made a run for it, but the sauropods were not the only beasts that blocked their path to the buildings on either side.
Among them were other creatures. Ceratopsians, known for the most famous of them – Triceratops – were also among the crowd. These beaked, horned cows with frilled shields growing from their foreheads lumbered to chew on dandelions emerging from the paving.
Smaller, bipedal lizards skittered back and forth between the falling feet; the compies that Quintus had been living off. And dozens of others, that Cade couldn’t name if he tried, made up of a plethora of shapes, colours and sizes.
All the while the animals vocalised, filling the dawn air with their orchestral sounds. Deep lowing, coupled with hoots, caws, whistles and screeches. They were greeting the morning, it seemed, and it filled Cade with a wistful appreciation. If only his father had been there to see it.
Cade whooped with relief, but Quintus didn’t seem as happy. In fact, now that he saw Cade was pleased to see the others, he began waving his hands and shouting at them. Desperately.
‘What’s happening?’ Cade asked, gripping Quintus’s arm.
The boy seemed to understand him intuitively, and pointed into the jungle on the side of the city where the vegetation was thicker. Dinosaurs did not seem to be coming from there, instead coming in from one end of the city and exiting the opposite. Cade couldn’t see anything, and Quintus yanked his arm away and continued trying to get the attention of the others below.
But as the light of the sun go
t stronger, Cade finally saw what Quintus must have seen earlier.
Predators. A half-dozen of them by the look of it, crouched among the tangled trees, partially obscured by the shadow of a nearby pyramid. These were no carnosaurs nor raptors, but still terrifying in their appearance and size.
They were like crocodiles in many ways, with the same tail, fangs and armoured scales, though with a larger head and shorter snout. But unlike a crocodile, their bodies were made for speed. They were built like wolves, with four muscular limbs. And just like wolves stalking their prey, they seemed to be lying in wait.
Now Quintus took Cade’s arm, pointing at something else. A new herd had entered the clearing. Sauropods again, but smaller ones, no larger than elephants. A family group, it seemed, with only three adults. Ambling among their feet were juveniles, their gait awkward and bumbling.
They might have just been born that week for all Cade knew, but there was something else he did know. Predators hunted the young and vulnerable. If the predators were going to pounce, they would be doing so soon. And the others would be caught in the ensuing stampede.
Despite all this, the group below hadn’t noticed Quintus; the noise of the dinosaurs passing by was drowning out his shouts. They needed to do something else to catch their attention, and quickly.
Cade strode to the edge of the building and saw a crumbling stairway on one side. It was so steep that it almost looked ceremonial, perhaps more for decoration than everyday use. In a pinch he could scramble down, but making it back up would be a problem. They would need to re-enter the building from the ground floor.
He tried shouting, but with his throat hoarse from earlier it sounded weak even to his own ears. Every second the sauropod family trundled nearer.
Luckily, the predators were yet to see them, their view blocked by the pyramid they were hiding behind. Cade followed the family’s trajectory, and saw the point where they would cross the crocodogs’ field of vision.
Slap bang in the middle of where the others were resting. He needed to warn them, but he was too far away.
Contender: The Chosen: Book 1 Page 17
