Strange Exit

by Parker Peevyhouse

  Willow, trapped on the ice cap at the far edge of the ocean.

  Could it be?

  Lake stumbled forward, gasping in shock when her boots plunged into freezing water.

  How do I get to her?

  Before her, the dark ocean was full of life. Small flecks of yellow flitted at the surface of the dark water. Strange webs of red veins winked in and out of existence, rising in the water and sinking again. Lake trudged through the freezing water, drawing in great shuddering breaths while her muscles threatened to lock. A red web flexed before her, and now she could make out the dim outline of a massive shell.

  She didn’t think, just clambered onto the shell, out of the terrible water. Her fingers found the horned edge at the front of the sea creature’s shell, and she willed her numb hands to hold on.

  In the water before her, more spots of yellow flicked this way and that. The shelled creature surged after them, chasing its prey.

  “No,” Lake said, “go to the ice.”

  She’d kept her tar-covered arm held out, away from the sea creature, but now she saw how it glowed in the same way that the tiny fish in the water did. She held her hand out before the sea creature like a lure. Its head rose in the water, a yellowish shape through Lake’s goggles. She held her hand out before it, steering it toward where the figure still called from the ice.

  The yellow silhouette in the distance grew larger as Lake drew closer to the shelf of ice. Lake shivered and groaned in the cold. She tried to make herself warmer just by willing it. She kept her eyes glued to Willow’s form as the sea creature ferried her closer. Strange, though, how different Willow looked through the goggles. Not so wiry.

  In fact, not very small at all.

  And if Lake gave in to the uneasy feeling that had been growing inside her, she would have to turn the creature, to stop it from taking her ever closer to the shelf of ice.

  Because the person in the distance was not Willow.

  It was a boy, or a man—tall, with broad shoulders.

  Lake felt as though she had slid into the black sea and frozen in its depths. Willow was not out on that ice. The man was alone.

  Lake hesitated, her arm held high above the water. Out on the ice shelf, the figure stood just as still.

  Ice formed at the back of her throat, at the edges of her heart.

  What do I do?

  The figure called to her. But the wind pulled at the sound so that Lake couldn’t make it out. Was he calling her name? Calling for help?

  Or was his call a warning?

  She started to shake so hard she had to crouch lower on the sea creature’s shell to keep from falling into the water.

  Why would someone be out here on the ice, all alone?

  The only person who had been to the dark half of the lost world was Taren.

  Taren—and his figments.

  The sea creature bumped against something in the dark: the shelf of ice. Lake watched the figure in the distance. It could be a figment. But what if it was a sleeper, trapped with no way out?

  Lake climbed off the sea creature and onto the ice. She opened her mouth to call to the person not twenty feet away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was trembling all over, cold and afraid. The tar that coated her arm and her side had traveled down her back now, and she felt it drawing tight like a second skin. The sim had lured her out here, into darkness, and now she was trapped. She should have walked through that door with the others, to the ship and safety.

  Why couldn’t it have been Willow out here on the ice?

  She had left Willow behind. Now it was only her and a stranger.

  A sleeper or a figment. Wanting rescue—or violence.

  She crept toward the figure, her steps heavy with dread. “Hello?” she said, but her voice died on the wind.

  It’s a figment, a trap.

  She’d left Taren in the dark once, trapped and alone. She’d had to—to keep herself safe. Was this person like him, seething and dangerous?

  Or was he like the boy she’d found alone in a tiger yard, waiting for rescue?

  The figure was hunched, shivering, its arms wrapped around itself. A sleeper, cold and miserable. Lake was close enough now that she could almost reach out and touch it. “Hello?” she said again, and this time the figure heard her. It lurched back, afraid. The movement sent lightning through Lake. She held out her arm, the tar like a glove of fire in her vision.

  The figure was breathing as hard as she was, its chest heaving. It inched toward her, blinded by darkness. Lake kept her arm out like a shield. Cold and fear were jaws locking around her heart. She was afraid to speak again, afraid the figure would know where she was. Any moment it would pounce, but she was too frightened to move.

  The tar tightened around her arm, moved along her shoulders, sizzled on her back.

  How can it hurt me? I’m nearly dead.

  She lowered her arm as the figure moved closer. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, and didn’t know if she said it to the figure or to herself.

  “Lake.” The figure lurched forward, but this time, Lake wasn’t afraid—she knew that voice.

  “Ransom.”

  He fell toward her, and she had to brace him with her unmarked arm. His skin was ice. “I made a door. It took me here.” His teeth chattered so that he could hardly speak. “I couldn’t get back. I don’t know how long I’ve been out here—a long time, I think.”

  She looked over his shoulder and saw it in the distance: the faint outline of a doorway carved with tar. Through her goggles, the tar showed red. But to Ransom, it would be invisible in the dark.

  “Come on,” she said, gripping his arm with her good hand. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  They struggled over the ice, Ransom stumbling and silent, Lake doing her best to move even as the tar gripped tighter over her skin, numbed her muscles. They somehow made it to the door, and then could only collapse together onto a bench-seat, weak from cold.

  “I was calling so long,” Ransom said. “I didn’t think anyone would come for me.”

  “I didn’t know it was you calling out,” Lake said. “I thought it was…” Lake closed her eyes. Her relief at bringing Ransom to safety was quickly fading, giving way to something heavier. “I left Willow. I didn’t say goodbye.”

  Why did I think it was her on the ice?

  I was so desperate to save her.

  “I’m sorry,” Ransom said.

  She could go and find Willow now and say goodbye—Willow’s figment, all Lake had of her sister. But was there time? The tar was seeping through her shirt. She could hear it eating the wall behind her. If she didn’t leave the sim, it would soon swallow her.

  The only thing that kept her here was her fear that the tar wouldn’t leave her when she went back to the ship. She’d seen the mark it had left last time. Would she recover from that?

  She turned to look at Ransom and was relieved to find he was already warming, like she was. Coming back to life now that he was back in his pub. She traced her thumb over his jaw, trying to memorize the lines of his face. And asking herself a question at the same time …

  “Did you know about the planet?”

  The pained look in his eye sent a dagger through her heart. “Every time I tried to tell you, you’d bury yourself deeper in the sim. I was afraid you’d never come out.”

  She moved her hand down to grip his. “Maybe it would have been too much for me, to find out we’d left Earth.”

  “The sim was supposed to help all the sleepers get ready to go to the planet. But something happened…” He dropped his head. “With the tar.”

  “I know.”

  He shook his head, as if he thought she didn’t understand.

  “Everyone left, ran away,” Lake said. “They pushed themselves into their own pockets of the sim. They forgot about everything except their nightmares of what we left behind on Earth.”

  “What we left behind,” Ransom echoed dully. “Did we leave it behind? Terrible t
hings happened in the lost world.”

  She let go of his hand. “I remember.”

  He looked up, alarm in his eyes.

  “I know what you did,” Lake told him. “A long time ago. When we all lived together in the lost world.”

  He dropped his head again. His arm trembled against hers.

  “You aren’t a figment, are you?” Lake said. She was shaking now too, overwhelmed by the pain showing on his downturned face, at the grief bruising her heart. “I thought that was why you would never tell me anything about yourself. I thought that was why you never left the sim. But I was wrong.”

  His shadowed gaze, in his dark moods—they weren’t evidence of frustration.

  They were proof of his shame.

  “You’re just another sleeper,” Lake said. “You lived in the lost world with us. Until…”

  “The tar.” He leaned away from her. “I was trying to defend myself. But it doesn’t matter—I’ll never get free of what I did.”

  Lake’s arm throbbed under the thin layer of tar. Her heart felt just as sore.

  She’d never used tar on anyone—but she’d used it to defend herself. She’d used it to taint the river and keep Taren trapped for a while. So she could understand, at least a little, why Ransom had used it.

  And she could see his regret mapped on his face.

  She touched his bowed back. “I have to go. Come with me?”

  He turned at her touch, but his gaze was still heavy. “I don’t deserve to go.”

  An old longing surprised Lake: she wished for the sight she’d seen through the view-screen windows of the eatery, the blue curve of Earth. She wished she could give Ransom that sight, to remind him of what they’d once had, a home they hadn’t earned and could never reclaim.

  “None of us does,” she said.

  Who could deserve something as vast and beautiful as a planet, or even a tree, or a single blade of grass?

  “Give me one last chance at giving you a gift?” she asked.

  Ransom looked around the empty pub at the scarred wood of the bar, the carpet of broken glass. Lake turned his face with her good hand, leaned in carefully, conscious of the pain crackling over her poisoned skin. Kissed him like she had the first time, like she was sure she’d know him forever, and he still tasted like salt water.

  She pressed into Ransom’s hand the coin she had taken from his pocket, the one with the tree from the lost world.

  “This was already mine,” he told her with a weak smile.

  “You lost it,” she reminded him. “Now I’m giving it back to you.”

  The hardness in his eyes melted. He closed his fingers around the coin. “Is it as simple as that?”

  Lake swallowed against the pain in her arm and all down her back. “I’m afraid,” she admitted. “We left one war behind, and we started another in the sim. I wish I had one reason to believe we won’t do the same thing on the planet.”

  Ransom squeezed the coin in his fist. “What about this: I was trapped on the ice, and you were scared. But you saved me anyway.”

  Lake’s heart flooded with warmth. She pressed her hand against Ransom’s cheek.

  “You’ve been so afraid,” Ransom went on. “That’s what’s been keeping you trapped here.”

  Lake shook her head. “Trapped?”

  “In the sim.”

  He was confused. He was losing his sense of reality. “I’m not the one who’s been trapped in the sim, Ransom. You are.”

  “Only because I don’t want to leave you,” he said.

  She studied his earnest expression and could find no trace of confusion there. And yet, what he was saying made no sense.

  “You told me once that Willow likes to bury things,” he went on. “I don’t think she’s the only one.”

  “What are you talking about?” He means me. He thinks I buried something. “What is it you think I buried?”

  A voice called from the distance, muffled by the pub’s door. Lake’s head snapped up. “Willow?”

  Ransom looked between Lake and the door.

  “Did you hear that?” Lake asked him. Or am I imagining it?

  Ransom’s gaze turned hopeful. “You’re starting to remember, aren’t you?”

  Again, the voice came from behind the door. Calling to her as it had on the ice. Laaaake.

  This isn’t real. It’s the sim.

  But the echo of that voice pulled her up from the bench, away from Ransom, toward the door.

  Someone had already marked it with an X. Had it been her? She couldn’t remember. If she opened the door, would she find Willow on the other side, or only the ship?

  Laaaaaake, came the voice.

  Lake opened the door and hurtled through.

  32

  LAKE

  Hum of machines. Roar of her own breath. And the ritual she knew well: confusion, dread, the sinking realization that she was alone.

  She pushed herself out of the stasis bed. Stumbled out of the chamber.

  Why is it so dark?

  Voices in the dark warehouse, the whispers and groans of sleepers newly awakened. Shouldn’t some strain have been lifted from the ship’s systems? But the lights were still off, the air still thin.

  She found her way out of the warehouse, fumbling along with hands outstretched. A single electric flare lit the hallway.

  A voice called to her. Lake.

  Lake lurched toward the door the voice had come through, a door she must have tried a hundred times before. Locked. Always locked. Like so many other doors on this ship.

  But Willow was in there. She was calling …

  Lake.

  This couldn’t be happening. She had left the sim. Her mind was cracking under the strain of being under so long.

  In the light from the flare, the skin along her arm showed ashy gray. Lake lost her breath. She could feel the same deadened skin all down her side, over her back, across her shoulders. The tar hadn’t left her.

  “Lake.” The voice was close now, just on the other side of the door she had her back pressed against.

  Stop, don’t listen.

  It’s not Willow. She can’t be here.

  She looked down at the thread on her wrist, the one that never changed, inside the sim or out. The sight of it made her shake all over, and she tried to understand why.

  “Willow likes to bury things. I don’t think she’s the only one.”

  Lake pictured Willow kneeling in the grass of their yard at home, spreading dirt over buried treasure. The same thing she did every time Lake found her in that corner of the sim. What had she buried?

  She tried to remember that day—the real day on Earth. A long time ago. Willow had showed her the treasure, hadn’t she?

  She’d held out her palm to Lake, and there lay two bracelets of knotted blue thread. “They’re for us,” she told Lake. But when Lake had reached to take one, Willow pulled her hand away. She wanted to bury them, like she did with all her special treasures. “I like knowing there’s a secret under the dirt,” she’d said. “I like that there’s something in the world that only I know about.”

  Lake had smiled as Willow had dropped them into a tin. And then she’d watched Willow kneel in the grass and bury the tin.

  She buried them. So how am I wearing one on my wrist?

  Lake turned to the door. She touched the handle. Pushed.

  The door opened.

  All this time …

  She trembled. All this time, I’ve been in the sim. Even here on the ship.

  Only ever in the sim.

  And is it possible …

  Has Willow been here in the sim-ship, waiting for me?

  She stepped through the door.

  Beyond lay a room like so many on the ship: metal walls gleaming dully in the low light, cool metal floor. But here was a bed with a green bedspread, and grass-green rug to match. A small table, a single chair.

  And sitting in the chair—

  Willow.

  For a moment, La
ke could only stare, stunned. Could it really be her? Was it Willow, or only a figment?

  Willow’s face was lined with uncertainty. “You said to hide. You said it wasn’t safe, and I should hide here until you came for me.”

  Lake stepped closer, peered down into Willow’s upturned face. “I said that?”

  Willow nodded.

  “But how can you be here?” Lake asked. “You never even got on the ship.”

  “I did. They let younger siblings come along.”

  “They said they would but—”

  Lake touched Willow’s cheek, her pointed chin. She smoothed her messy hair back from her face. Is she real?

  She remembered the shelter under the trees where Willow had slept in the bed beside hers. Where they’d eaten fruit at a little table, and Willow had made a game with the pits. She remembered hiding with Willow under soft bark blankets when the sharp sounds of arguments came from outside. And running with her, when the shouting turned to violence.

  She remembered bringing Willow here, to their pocket in the sim. A pocket that looked just like the ship, but never came any closer to bringing them home.

  “You left me here,” Willow said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Lake dropped to her knees. “I was afraid. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Then why didn’t we ever leave the sim? Why didn’t we go back to the real ship?”

  Because I’m still afraid.

  I’m afraid because if we leave the ship, there will be no going back.

  I’m afraid that what happened in the sim will happen on the planet.

  She must not have known, when she’d first come to this corner of the sim, that it wasn’t really the ship. She must have thought she had escaped the sim, when in fact, she’d only made it larger.

  All those sleepers I thought I’d wakened—I only brought them here, to another pocket in the sim.

  And if I wake now?

  They would wake too. Every last one.

  Even Willow would wake.

  If Willow is real.

  Lake wanted to throw her arms around Willow, carry her through the door, take her back to the real ship that had been waiting for them so long. She wanted so much for Willow to be real.

  “I want to go,” Willow said.

  Lake pulled Willow’s jacket onto her shoulder. “I know, Will.”