Etherworld

by Claudia Gabel

“Regan?”

  I spin around toward the opposite side of the room. It’s him. He’s here, and he’s trying to get up—pushing himself off a broken cot, legs shaking as he rises to his feet. I throw my arms around his neck, nearly knocking us both to the floor. He’s lost so much weight since I was last here, I can practically feel his bones poking out through his shirt.

  But it doesn’t matter. I still feel like rejoicing. Even though I kept trying to convince myself that he was still alive and hooked up to Elusion somewhere, I couldn’t deny the nagging fear that something much worse had happened.

  “You shouldn’t have come back here,” he whispers.

  “We had to,” I say. “We knew you were in trouble. Elusion was starting to close off all the ping tunnels.”

  He takes a step back. “You know that Elusion is sentient?”

  “Yes,” I say, and he casts his gaze at the ground.

  “I understand why you couldn’t say anything,” I add. “You were just trying to protect us. And that’s why we’re here now— to protect you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

  “Josh and Patrick are here too.”

  “Where are they?” His voice is calm, but I can still hear concern weighting every word.

  “In the Great Space,” I say. “Patrick was able to find a direct path to Etherworld, so we didn’t have to go through Elusion.”

  “Are you all okay?”

  “Josh and I are fine, but Patrick’s not doing so well,” I say, as my father stifles a cough.

  “Is he conscious?” he asks.

  “Yes, but . . . he’s lost his eyesight. I told him it was temporary, because of the lack of stimuli, but he’s pretty panicked.”

  My dad limps toward the door, tripping as he reaches the broken archway. I grab his arm to steady him, and he pulls away from me, ducking under the fallen stone and moving as quickly as he can out of the cavern. I follow behind him, carefully tracking his every move in case he falters again, but he’s found his strength. When he spots Patrick convulsing on the ground, his limping gait turns into an awkward trot.

  “I think Patrick’s going into shock!” Josh shouts, doing his best to hold Patrick still.

  My dad kneels on the ground and takes Patrick’s head firmly in his hands, holding it steady. “Regan, take his arms. Josh, get his legs. Don’t pin him down, though; just try to keep him from moving around too much.”

  I position myself above Patrick and grab hold of his wrists, gently guiding his arms above his head. Josh places his hands on Patrick’s ankles to stop his legs from flailing.

  My dad presses his fingers against Patrick’s temples really firmly—hard enough that I see the skin tighten around Patrick’s eyes.

  “Pat,” my dad says, “you’re fighting too hard to maintain your grip on reality.”

  At the sound of my father’s voice, Patrick’s eyes dart around in every direction, as if searching for a face that he hasn’t seen in months.

  “David?” he says.

  “Yes, I’m here, Patrick. I’m right here with you.”

  Patrick closes his eyes, like he’s trying to focus and control the tremors, but soon his breathing becomes shallow. I’m scared he’s going to hyperventilate.

  “She lied to me,” Patrick says. “She told me you were dead, and I believed her.”

  We all know who he’s referring to. Even as I sit here with her sick son, I still can’t believe how much pain Cathryn has inflicted on the people she was supposed to love.

  “We can talk about that later. Right now I just need you to breathe,” my dad says to him. “Nice and easy, okay?”

  “I’m trying,” Patrick says. “I don’t have . . . any control.”

  “I know. That’s why you have to let go,” my dad says, shifting his hands so that his fingers are positioned on different parts of Patrick’s skull. “You need to clear your mind.”

  “What are you trying to do?” I whisper to my father as Patrick’s hands tremble within my grasp.

  “I’m putting pressure on the nerve clusters that control blood circulation to the brain,” he says. “It should help prevent his reaction from worsening.”

  Patrick keeps his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling as if his lungs are slowly filling with air. The jerky movements in his arms and legs are becoming less frequent.

  My father’s right. It’s working.

  Patrick takes a couple more deep breaths and says, “I never thought I’d hear your voice again. When Regan told me she had seen you, when she tried to tell me that you were still alive, it seemed impossible. I thought she had nanopsychosis.”

  “It’s okay,” my dad says. “I’m here.” He releases his hands and motions for Josh and me to do the same. Patrick lies still for a second, before pushing himself up into a sitting position. “I should’ve shared my suspicions about Elusion from the beginning, but I didn’t. I’m the one who owes you the apology.”

  “Where’s everyone?” Josh asks, interrupting. Now that Patrick’s condition seems to be stabilizing, Josh is focusing on other things, like his sister. He crosses his arms over his chest as he stares at the destroyed honeycomb-shaped cavern, his brow furrowed with concern.

  “Nora’s still here,” my dad reassures him. “But there’s only a handful of us left. They’re out searching the firewall for a working ping tunnel.”

  Josh closes his eyes and lets out a huge sigh of relief, but it only lasts for a moment. “What happened here?”

  “The environment in Etherworld is weakening because the Escapes are being eliminated,” my father says. “I’d anticipated that, but I wasn’t sure how bad the collateral damage would be.”

  “It looks pretty bad to me,” I say, my eyes taking in the virtual squalor around us.

  “We won’t be here for long,” Patrick says, pushing himself off the ground with determination. When he stands, he wobbles a bit and stretches his arms out in front of him, signaling that his sight still hasn’t returned. I get up and hover next to him, while Josh helps my father to his feet.

  “I don’t know. Even if Nora and the others can find an open tunnel, they may all be closed by the time we’re finished bombing the next Escape,” my dad says. “My autotimer isn’t functioning anymore either, so none of us will be able to find a way back to Etherworld.”

  “That’s okay. I was able to open up a trapdoor in between the last two Escapes, so we won’t have to come back,” Patrick says.

  “How did you do that?” my dad asks.

  As Patrick explains what he did and how he did it, I feel as if we’re all sitting around the dinner table again, the two of them caught up in a conversation I can’t understand. But instead of feeling jealous over the reminder that Patrick and my dad have something in common that I’ll never share—an emotion I might have felt long before all of this happened— I’m thankful. There’s someone who cares enough about my dad that he’s willing to risk his own life to save him.

  “What I don’t understand,” my dad says, “is how you even found out about what Elusion was doing to the ping tunnels. I mean, without being here to see it for yourself.”

  Josh and I tell him what happened at Bryce’s house, about all the information he gave us—the truth about Elusion, the optical imaging plate, and other things that allowed us to overcome the huge obstacles that had been in our way. My dad is stunned by what we’ve gone through to get back here and help him. So much of what he’s hearing, though, is simply validation—especially when it comes to Cathryn’s powerful antiviral, which Patrick jumps in and explains in detail.

  “The past few times we’ve entered an Escape, we’ve been under attack from almost the first minute we arrived,” my father says, acknowledging what we feared to be true. “But why would Bryce tell you any of this? Hasn’t he been in on this whole thing from the beginning?”

  When I give him the rundown on Bryce’s firing and his change of heart, I leave out the part about Bryce discovering that my dad was moved from O
rexis, at least for now. I don’t want to worry him. Then again, he must suspect that something didn’t go right with our plan to break into room 5020. Otherwise, why would any of us be here?

  “So he got you involved rather than go to the police and risk his own neck?” My dad clenches his fists tight, like he wishes he could wake up from this nightmare and slug Bryce himself.

  That’s when I know I have to tell him what I still can’t bear to admit.

  “Bryce was pretty drunk,” I say, hoping to buy myself just a little more time. “The cops never would’ve believed anything he was saying, even if he did have some tangible proof.”

  My father stares at me, his eyes narrowing with skepticism. But before he can call me on my dismissiveness, a familiar voice echoes through the air.

  “Josh?”

  I turn and see Nora standing in front of the ruins of the cavern, her clothes torn to shreds and her face and arms covered in dirt. Behind her are Malik, Wyatt, and Zared, who look just as weary and spent as she does.

  “That’s the rest of our crew,” my dad says as Josh runs over to his sister, enveloping her in the same kind of desperate hug my father and I shared in his room moments ago. I’m grateful for the reunion until something clicks inside my mind: out of the dozen or more survivors that were here a day ago, only five remain?

  We still have two Escapes left to destroy, which will be much more difficult to do now that the inoculation is working against us. With fewer of us here to go on the offensive, what are our odds of winning this war?

  The group approaches us, with Wyatt in the lead, his hands on his hips. Josh has his arms around Nora, whose body is limp with exhaustion and skin damp with sweat.

  “Were you able to find an open tunnel?” I ask them. Even though it’s only been a day in real-world time, the survivors have spent what probably feels like weeks working toward this moment.

  There’s no need for hellos. Not anymore.

  “Just one. Along the southern border of the firewall,” Wyatt says, glancing at my father.

  “Then we have to get going,” Patrick says, turning toward me.

  “How can you go back into Elusion if you’re—”

  “Don’t even think about leaving me behind,” he cuts me off. “My sight is starting to come back. Everything is still hazy, but I’m beginning to make out some shapes.”

  My gaze shifts back toward my dad, his arms crossed in front of him as if he’s weighing his options. But I think we all know that there’s only one thing left to do.

  “Let’s finish this,” he says.

  The walk toward the southern part of the firewall feels more like a funeral march than a quest. As we trudge through clouds of ash and mounds of soot, our torches held high above our heads, no one utters a sound. We stop off at the mine to pick up the bombs, and I’m surprised to see that the once-giant piles are almost completely depleted, used up on missions. Since we won’t be able to restock in between the remaining Escapes, we each take as many as we can. I shove mine into the pockets of Zoe’s sweater.

  I wish we were trying to focus on our sense of direction, but without a visible moon or sun to guide our way, it’s difficult. No one is speaking; the survivors are reeling from what Josh just told them: that we found Nora’s body in the Island Sector, and she’s now lying in a hospital bed, still hooked up to her Equip and completely unconscious, unable to be revived.

  Withholding the truth, like we did before with Anthony, wasn’t something we could do anymore. Not under these dire circumstances.

  Even though everyone took the news hard, especially Nora, Josh did the right thing by telling them the truth. I feel guilty for not doing the same with my dad and explaining why his health is failing him like this, and why he’s limping at least twenty paces behind everyone else. I’m so concerned that my dad’s weakened state will make it difficult for him to reach the ping tunnel.

  But not quite guilty enough to come clean.

  “Why don’t you catch up with the others?” my father says, lowering his torch a bit so the white light dances in front of his sallow face.

  “I’m good right here,” I say.

  “I’m slowing you down. Really. Go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re not. It’s these stupid shoes.”

  That’s partly true. The heels of Zoe’s designer boots are continually getting stuck in the soil.

  My dad stops in his tracks and blocks my path. “You don’t have to do this, sweetheart,” he says.

  “Do what?”

  “Remember what I said? It’s my job to take care of you, not the other way around.”

  “Dad,” I protest.

  “Something is bothering you,” he says. “What is it?”

  “Josh already told the group everything they needed to know,” I say defensively.

  “Okay, but he didn’t say what happened to the plan, Regan,” my dad says, coughing into his free hand. “To go to the media and expose Orexis.”

  And find his body inside room 5020.

  “It’s a long story,” I say, stalling.

  “I’ll bet we have enough time for the highlights, don’t you think?”

  Josh, Patrick, and the rest of the crew stalk ahead. “We should hurry,” I say. “We’re falling behind.”

  “We’ll catch up in a minute.”

  “Please,” I murmur, my head bowing down.

  “The plan, Regan. What happened?” he asks, stopping.

  I take a deep breath and look up at him. “I did everything you asked me to do, Dad. I made it inside Orexis. I got into that room. And you weren’t there.”

  He reaches out to me with a trembling hand, and when I take it in mine, something plummets inside of me.

  “I’m not surprised,” he says. “Cathryn knew you were onto her, and she had to get rid of the most damning evidence.”

  “I don’t know where she took you,” I say. “But Bryce gave us a lead and my friends are looking for you right now.”

  “Good thinking,” my dad says, winking. “I’m pretty lucky to have such a smart daughter.”

  I roll my eyes at him, my fingers slipping from his. “Don’t patronize me, okay?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I had one mission on the outside, and it totally failed.”

  As I turn away from my father, I tell him about my stay in the hospital, and the drama with Patrick and Cathryn— how she’s trying to make it seem like he’s mentally ill as well. “No one believed me. No one believed Patrick. Now everyone thinks we’re suffering from nanopsychosis.”

  “None of that means you failed. It actually means that you’re brave,” I hear him say. “You kept going, kept pushing, no matter what got in your way. You never gave up. Not for a second.”

  “Yeah, well. I guess it’s in my genes.”

  I feel his hand on my shoulder, and it’s ice-cold. I spin around to look at him, and there are deep cracks forming on his lips, like he hasn’t had anything to drink in days.

  “What if we get through this—the inoculation, the destruction of Elusion, everything—but we can’t find you when we get home?” I ask him, my throat tightening. “What if, after all this, I can’t save you?”

  “Listen to me, okay? What we’re doing isn’t about saving one person. It’s about saving millions of people,” he says. “Deep down, you already know that, or else you wouldn’t have come back to help us, right?”

  Before I can answer, Josh’s voice roars through a cluster of leafless trees and slams into the stone fortress of the firewall.

  “Regan! David! Come quick!”

  Without another word, my father and I begin running along the rocky path, dust and dirt kicking up behind us. I don’t even look back when I realize he’s lagging behind. I just can’t get the sound of Josh’s urgent call out of my head.

  A million horrific scenarios flood my thoughts, all of them ending with one of my friends either injured or dead. Then the worst thing of all occurs to me: right now, we’re in wor
m country.

  “Hurry, Dad!” I shout, picking up the pace, pushing my legs to move as fast as they can. I skip over the remains of a burned-out tree, not waiting to hear a response from my father. I slow down to a light jog when I see the backs of Josh, Nora, and Wyatt huddled around a giant mound of sizzling flesh.

  What the hell?

  As soon as my father catches up to me, totally out of breath and almost wheezing, Patrick and Malik appear from the other side of this disgusting carcass, holding their shirts over their noses. The skin of this beast looks likes it was burned and charred, so the awful smell is carrying on the wind, and there’s no way to escape it.

  “This is the worm, isn’t it?” Malik asks, grabbing for Nora’s hand.

  Josh walks up to what used to be the head of the hideous slug, and examines the remains of its all-too-familiar jagged teeth. “Looks like it.”

  “I wonder what killed it,” Nora says.

  “We were here a little while ago, so this must have just happened,” Wyatt adds.

  Patrick squints at the decaying creature, looking frustrated that his eyesight hasn’t returned to normal. “So there was a living organism in here?”

  “Yeah,” Zared says. “That thing was scary as hell.”

  “Amazing,” Patrick says. “We tried to develop living organisms for Elusion, but it was too hard. I finally managed to create a butterfly in a Phase Two Escape, but it wasn’t easy. I worked on that thing for months.”

  It’s only been one night since Josh and I saw Patrick’s butterfly, one night since we made our way through the firewall and were reunited with my dad. It feels like weeks.

  “Except I never developed this thing,” my dad says. “That happened all on its own.”

  “It’s a by-product of Elusion becoming a sentient organism, isn’t it?” Patrick asks.

  “I think so,” my dad says. “My guess is the worm was a result of Elusion’s self-defense mechanism. The mines with the bombs weren’t too far away. If Elusion is sentient, perhaps the worm was its way of trying to keep us away from our stockpile.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how this guy got fried,” Zared says, bending down to get a closer look.

  “Maybe it has something to do with the adaptive bombs,” Josh suggests. “Maybe Elusion is growing weaker.”