by Brindi Quinn
“On a scale from 1 to 10, how well do you work with your peers?”
This time, I touched the 6 and felt a minute pang of worry over whether or not Theo was dead.
It is important to forget those we have lost.
Was that really okay?
“Thank you.” The screen flashed several times. “Now, Zillow Stone, please affirm whether or not you agree with the following statements: 1. During my time in the outlands, I have constructed a shelter.”
The screen didn’t give me an option to press.
“No?” I said uncertainly.
The screen flashed.
“2. During my time in the outlands, I have engineered something of worth.”
Again, I answered no, and the screen flashed.
“3. During my time in the outlands, I have made a discovery.”
Had I made a discovery? I needed more elaboration. Did the prag markings outside of Eastern City count? What about the golden Director’s plaque? Half-heartedly, I answered with a ‘yes.’
The screen flashed more rapidly than any of the other times.
“Thank you, Zillow Stone. That is all for now. Remember to check in often and as always, follow your dreams.”
The screen went blank, and though I prodded at it, it refused to wake up. This whole thing was puzzling. What kind of questions were those? I didn’t have time to worry about it now. As I started for the door, I heard a ca-ching! sound, and turned to see the monitor spit out a slip of paper.
Good for 1 meal from any of the outland wagons.
It was a meal ticket.
On the backside, in tiny letters, there was more:
Grade: F
Whatever the purpose of that questionnaire, apparently I had failed.
I let out a sigh. I was wasting time. I only had two hours in total to find a weapon and return to Crash, and with all of the abnormal events that had happened within the walls of Paradise, it was getting harder and harder to gage how long I’d been here.
I exited the cottage and scanned the area for any signs of human life.
That was when my mark began to flicker blue.
It was a warning. My time was up, and true to his threat, Crash was about to use one of a stack of unpleasant gambits on me. Had it really been two hours? It felt way briefer. I needed to explore Paradise further, but I couldn’t do that if I was being electrocuted every time I moved faster than a walk. I would have to think of something else. With a grimace, I began a sprint through the grass, up the ravine, and towards the elaborate gates of Paradise.
As I went, I noted that although I had seen turrets from the outside, I didn’t see any now.
The thought faded just as quickly as it had come, and before I knew it, I was running down the ombré path to my Marker, weaponless and no better off than when I’d left.
Chapter 15: Run, Zillow Stone
In the near distance, a boy in a black jumpsuit was waiting for me, hands in his pockets, head tossed lazily to the side. His mouth was flat, his posture hunched. He looked particularly grouchy.
“What was it like?”
It took me a moment to register what he was saying.
“Paradise?” I asked, somewhat dazed.
“What else would I be referring to?” he seethed.
“Right . . .”
I didn’t answer straightaway.
Well . . . it had been . . . like . . .
What had it been like?
Now that I was outside the prag fortress, I couldn’t clearly remember my time spent inside. I also couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why I’d left empty-handed, or why I hadn’t fought harder to find another living person within the walls. There were people in there, I was sure, but for whatever reason I hadn’t encountered any. It made my head fuzzy to think about – too fuzzy, in fact, that I had to keep checking over my shoulder to make sure that the great stone wall surrounding Paradise was even still there. The meal ticket in my pocket was proof that I had actually entered it. Beyond that, though . . .
From outside, the place still appeared a fortress, but inside had been something else altogether. Some manner of technology was concealing its true self – holoprojection?
“What happened to your glove?” was the second thing my Marker asked.
“My glove?” I looked down to my marked hand to see that indeed one of my gloves had been removed. Funny, I didn’t remember taking it off. “It must have fallen off at some point . . .”
But I was convincing neither Crash nor myself.
“And what happened to your finger?” He indicated to a spot of dried blood.
“A bee . . . I think.”
“A bee?” Darkness looming around his face, Crash peered over the top of my head to the prag bastion.
“Yeah, it seems bizarre now.” Again, I squinted at the fortress. Still there. Though I almost expected it to disappear at any moment.
“So you saw a bee,” said Crash. “What else?”
“I don’t . . .”
I wasn’t inclined to answer. I was still attempting to collect my thoughts and catch hold of the hazy memory. A bee . . . a monitor . . . a lake? Yes, that all sounded right. But it was hard to explain.
Something was wrong with me.
Crash grew impatient. He grabbed my chin and steered it to face him. “Answer me, Zillow Stone. What else did you see? I command it.”
Now I was getting annoyed. I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
I all just felt so . . .
I couldn’t quite . . .
And why did he care so badly what was behind the bastion’s gate, anyway? Markers supposedly didn’t bother with the prags of others. But I had come to find that there were exceptions to most rules. He was probably attempting some sort of mass slaughter. Maybe killing me wasn’t enough for this particular Marker. Maybe he also needed to kill the others to feel fully satisfied.
And all of that aside, he ‘commanded it’?
In a burst of strength, I took Crash’s arm and threw him to the ground – which welcomed him with a loud fwomp!
I gloated, but not for long, because before I knew it, I was also on the ground. He had seized me around the waist and taken me down with him. Whatever satisfaction I felt over knocking him down transformed quickly into defeat.
Now I was even more vulnerable than I’d been before.
“I suggest you tell me what you saw in there, prag,” he jeered.
My expression narrowed into something sour. “Why do you even care? Don’t you have your own Marker fortress somewhere out there? And why haven’t you killed me yet?” Partially due to frustration over my fuzzy memory and partially due to irritation over the unholy one’s demands, my words became infused with shaking fury: “You aren’t supposed to lead your prag around like a pet.”
But my venomousness only made his mouth kick up in the corner. Amused, he neared his face to mine, close enough that I could feel it when he exhaled. “A pet, hm?” he said. He mulled it over and then let off a light laugh. “I will kill you, Zillow Stone. But first, you are going to help me find something.” He brought his face even nearer to mine, so that I could smell him. He smelled like sand, mixed with a scent I had no name for – one that wasn’t necessarily unpleasant.
His scarlet hair fell around his face, creating a fiery frame for a cold, cruel stare. His pupils were isolated in a sea of iciest blue. I stared right back, determined that my gaze combat him, even though the rest of me had been bested. I yet had resolve left in me, and I would exert it until my body wore thin and my mind went vacant.
“I’m the strongest,” he said after a moment, “but that means you’re second strongest. I’m the fastest, so you must be too. They pair us according to compatibility, or so I’ve heard. That means you, out of all the prags, are my best bet. NOW, tell me what you see when you look at that place.”
Even my stare gave in, for his was too intense to keep up.
Still on the ground,
I craned my neck to get a better view. “I see a great wall, an elaborate gate, and stone turrets, capped with flags marked by the Director’s seal.”
“And inside?”
Half-begrudged, I relayed as much as I could make out from the drifting parts of memory. I remembered that questionnaire and the bee, and . . . the sun? But how, when the sky was now overcast?
When I was finished, my Marker considered all that I had said. Very gradually, he released his grip on my wrists and sat up, allowing me to become unpinned. Afterwards, he stared across the field shrewdly. “You asked why I care.”
He chewed at his thumbnail thoughtfully before continuing,
“I care because what you see isn’t what I see, Zillow Stone.”
This piqued my interest, enough to make me sit up and study the wall with even more scrutiny. “What do you mean?”
Lost in calculation, he played with the side of his hair. He spoke absentmindedly: “I don’t know how to make you see . . . I’m guessing it is this.” He intrusively poked the mark he’d given me. I curled it to myself, and he let out a deep, tired sigh. “Believe what you want, but what I see is a building made of concrete. That’s all.”
Liar.
Crash read my expression and rolled his eyes.
But what did he expect? There was clearly a wall and a gate and all the rest. He was trying to trick me. For what reason, I had yet to deduce.
“How long do you suppose you were gone?” he asked.
I contemplated it. “It didn’t feel like very long. Did you call me back early?”
Crash let out a sneer. “Early? Try hours late. When you didn’t come back after the first few, I assumed you were doing something useful – for example, gaining intelligence, scoping out the place – you know, anything.” His expression fell. “That clearly wasn’t the case, as you appear to have spent the majority of your time with an imaginary bee.”
My fists balled.
Crash kept on, “The only reason I called you back is because your tracker is going to run out in a few hours and I couldn’t afford to lose sight of you.” He smiled wickedly. “Not that it would take me very long to find you.”
“Want to try m–”
He cut me off. “Look at the sky.”
I folded my arms.
“Look at it.”
I gave in, and what I saw took me by surprise. I had only been gone a very short while, but the grayness of the sky and the lowness of the sun begged to differ. Judging by the position of the heavens, I had been gone for much, much longer than a few hours.
I had been gone all day.
At the realization, my heartbeat picked up. That place . . . the whole thing had been off. Now that I was out, I understood it, and something about Crash’s assertion was sinking in. I’d seen flashes of people while in Paradise, hadn’t I? I’d heard them, too, but my vision had been of a different world, one where no one else existed.
Which was the truth? And what technology was misconstruing everything?
I squinted at the wall before us, trying to see it as anything other than a wall, and for a diminutive piece of time, it almost looked like something else – though it was just a trick of the mind. The wall remained.
All over my body, my hairs pricked up, as a shiver passed down my neck. Completely forgoing formalities, Crash drew a finger along my raised skin. “I’m right, kitten,” he said smugly. “And you know it.”
From deep down inside, I felt a kick in my chest. Kitten. I’d been called that before, but never while awake, and the sound of it brought about a whir of emotions: annoyance, alarm, and something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I was about to offer him a piece of rebuttal, as well as to inquire why he’d suddenly chosen to call me that of all things, when from overhead, I heard a familiar buzzing.
It was another drone.
No, that was a wild underestimation.
It was many drones, a dozen or more.
“Shit.” Crash swore under his breath, just before making a lunge at me. “Quick! Fight!” He caught my arm and twisted it around my back.
Gladly.
I came at him without reserve. To me it wasn’t mock fighting anymore. It was practice for the day I would end him – and he was giving me more and more reason to want to end him.
We fought until we drew sweat, but this time the drones didn’t pass over us as the last one had. Instead, they fell. They descended all around us like a miniature army, each one’s egg-shaped body marked with the seal of the ones who’d given us this fate, each one buzzing from within.
In silence, we nodded to one another. Without other options, we would continue fighting until they left; we would make them believe we were adhering to the rules of the game; we would–
“ZILLOW STONE AND CRASSTOFER RADE.” From one of the drones, a woman’s voice came echoing through the wilderness.
Again, my Marker swore under his breath, and this time I joined him. We had heard that voice before, and the last time had not ended well.
“YOU ARE WANTED FOR QUESTIONING. REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. WE WILL COME TO COLLECT YOU SHORTLY. DO NOT ATTEMPT RESISTANCE. THOSE WHO RESIST WILL BE TREATED WITHOUT MERCY.”
Immediately, our battle halted.
This was dangerous. I could feel it deep inside, in a place that always warned me when it was better to flee than to fight. Nothing good had come of Chloe and Theo, and now Crash and I were in a similar situation. My Marker knew it, too. I expected he felt it in the same place I did, for just as he had on the day of my marking, he came right up next to me, pressed his lips to my ear, and whispered:
“Run.”
Thank you for reading Act 2 of THE ONGOING PURSUIT OF ZILLOW STONE!
If you like this series, please write a review and tell a friend!
Find out what comes next!
Act 3 will soon be available in paperback and for e-readers:
~ ZILLOW STONE MUST DIE ~
If you enjoy the style of this series, you may also enjoy THE WORLD REMAINS or SECONDS: THE SHARED SOUL CHRONICLES, also by Brindi Quinn!
More Info
About the Author:
Zillow Stone in Paradise is MN author Brindi Quinn’s twelfth published work.
Shortly after finishing college in 2010, Brindi began her mad dash into authordom. The Heart of Farellah Trilogy was first to hit shelves in 2011, and she hasn’t stopped since. In addition to her debut trilogy, Brindi’s publications include: Seconds: The Shared Soul Chronicles, a third person sci-fi romance; Sil in a Dark World: A Paranormal Love-Hate Story; The World Remains, a dystopian adventure; Atto’s Tale, the miniseries spinoff to Heart of Farellah; The Eternity Duet, a two-part fantasy romance; and The Death and Romancing of Marley Craw, a sexy supernatural tale.
Brindi considers herself a nerd, indulging heavily (when she can) in video games, anime, manga, horror flicks and good sci-fi TV.
Follow Brindi on Twitter:
@Brindiful
AND connect with her on Facebook:
Facebook.com/Brindiful
About the Artist:
Ene Karels is a young artist working from her home studio in Minnesota. She creates both digital and traditional art using watercolors, acrylics and pencils. Her works are in styles ranging from anime, to cartoon, to realistic. From people, to animals.
She has done several book covers and countless character portraits.
Follow Ene on Tumblr:
http://angeleneart.tumblr.com/
