by Blair Drake
“Graphite? Iron? I’m not sure.”
“You mean like a pencil?”
Raven rubbed her finger, and thumb together and inspected it. “I think so.”
“What the…”
“I thought the entire underground city was made of concrete and stone. Why would there be graphite down here?”
Raven began to breathe hard as she backed up slowly. “Energy. We have to get out of here, Reese. This is the epicenter.”
She grabbed his hand and started pulling him away in the direction they’d just come.
“This? It can’t be.”
Raven lifted her hand to her nose, and then made a face. “Do you smell that?”
“What?”
“Iron creates a smell when contacted with skin.”
“How do you know that?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions. This whole place is iron and graphite. The graphite must be making the walls glow because you—”
“Tried to create energy. Damn!”
She looked around as if something would magically appear in front of them. “I think we’re in trouble, Reese.”
“No, we should keep going. We have enough light. The platform looks solid.”
She shook her head “It’s a trap, Reese. I feel it. Don’t ask me why, but I do.”
The wall to the right of them began to crumble. At first, it was just small cracks and dust that pulled away from the wall, and fell like confetti onto the path in front of them. But then it became faster. More cracks. Light shown through the splits of the cracks. It was as if something was pushing behind the wall, and causing it to swell.
“If we stay here, we will die, Reese!”
Chapter 11
Reese glanced back at the path they were on and how much distance there was to the other side. They needed to get through this cavern or whatever it was. If they had any hope of making it to the end of the city to the portal, they couldn’t keep moving backwards.
Raven was insistent, pulling him, and breathing hard as if her life depended on it. And maybe it did. But Reese couldn’t go back.
He wrapped his fingers around her hand tighter. “I want out of here, Raven. We can make run for it. We can do this! I know we can.”
Raven peered up at him with trust Reese knew he didn’t deserve, and then she nodded. “Okay.”
Still holding her hand, he started to walk quickly over the platform. Now that he could see it better, he realized it was nothing like the bridge they’d gone over when they’d met up with the mechanical creatures. The railing they’d initially seen led them to a wide circled area with the railing swinging around toward the wall and then narrowing back to what looked like a bridge when it got to the other side, which looked to be at least twice the length of the other bridge they’d crossed.
Reese heard gears grinding and metal parts moving. But he couldn’t see them. For a fleeting moment he thought about the scrap yard and wondered if the metal pieces he’d see there were replacement pieces for whatever was hidden inside this space.
The more they walked, the more heat Reese felt rising up from under the platform, making it hard to breathe.
“What is that?” he asked, picking up his step.
Raven didn’t answer. Instead, she kept her gaze straight ahead, and practically ran to keep up with him.
“It’s too far,” she said.
“What is this place?”
“The epicenter. It has to be.”
“How do you know?” he whispered.
“No other place in the underground city has iron or graphite or whatever that mineral is. I’ve been all through the tunnels, and the aqueducts. Endel said the energy source was moved when the city grew. It’s beneath us, Reese. We’re walking over the energy source.”
“That’s why it’s so hot?” Reese asked.
Raven didn’t answer. She was running now, and had sweat beading up on her face as the temperature rose. He felt sweat beneath his blazer, soaking his shirt.
“What’s going on, Reese?” she asked, looking around frantically. “Do you hear it?”
“Ticking.” Yes, it was a clock. At least it sounded that way. Or maybe it was a pendulum. The noise of moving parts and ticks grew louder as they made their way across the platform.
And then the floor moved, making both of them stop dead in their tracks in the center of the platform.
“What happened?” Raven asked, darting her gaze from one side of the cavern to the other.
The floor beneath them changed from a solid form to a grid of some kind. The sound of metal scrapping against metal echoed off the walls and pierced his ears.
And then a blast of heat shot up from the floor and enveloped them to the point where Reese thought his lungs were burning up.
Smoke filled the air around them. No, it was steam. It lifted up through the metal grid beneath their feet and swirled all around them like foggy ghosts on a pond during a warm moonlit night.
Gears groaned beneath his feet and made the floor vibrate as it churned under the weight of something heavy. It built slowly, and then sped up until it formed a rhythm that increased in speed. Reese lost his balance for just a second as the metal platform they were standing on jumped as if the earth moved from an earthquake.
He took in a deep breath of hot air and then coughed from the caustic fuels surrounding him.
“Do you feel it now?” Raven asked. “Can you feel your energy?”
He hadn’t been thinking of it. Reese had only been interested in getting to the other side of the platform.
“Yes. A little.”
“Reese, I think you did this,” Raven said, turning her head from side to side looking for something. “The walls started crumbling when we came inside here, right after we ran through the archway. Look at your hands.”
She was right. He hadn’t been thinking about his energy. He felt it now, hot and strong and flowing. He peered at his hands. At some point Raven had let go of his hand. He could feel the heat flowing through it. The tips of his fingers were red and almost glowing as if he were looking at his skin against a light. But he was the light. He was causing this.
“I don’t know how to stop it,” he said, taking in a deep breath. How had he not noticed this building inside himself?
“Reese! The walls are moving!”
He studied the walls and found that they were shifting.
“No,” he said. “We’re moving…down.”
Raven took a step back, and then another as she looked at the grid. “Oh, God, you’re right! Something is coming up from the floor.”
Hot and heavy liquid covered the floor of the grid beneath their feet.
“What is this?”
“Slime of some kind,” Raven said. “We’re going to die.”
The slime continued to rise until it was an inch or two above the grid, but not high enough to cover their feet.
“We have to get out of here! Run, Raven,” he said.
But she didn’t move. It was as if Raven was frozen in place.
“I can’t.”
“Give me your hand.” He didn’t wait for her to hesitate. Reese grabbed her wrist and yanked her from where she stood frozen with fear. He ran, dragging Raven behind him as best he could. But the muck and slime beneath his feet was thick and slippery, and made it hard to move fast. Raven was having a harder time keeping her balance than he was.
They were about three quarters of the way to an area where they’d be able to grab on to the railing. But when he looked at the ground beyond the platform, he quickly realized they were several feet lower than the ground, and slowly moving lower.
He slipped and fell to his knee, taking Raven with him. She fell flat on her back, splashing into the slime and soaking herself. He helped her to her feet and then tried to get up himself, but he couldn’t stand.
With wide eyes, Raven peered down at him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“I’m stuck. I think my pants are caught on something in th
e gears. I can’t pull it free.”
“Try!”
“I am trying!”
She bent over, and started pulling at the bottom of his pant leg, but had no success in freeing it.
“This slime is getting deeper,” he said, feeling the hot liquid seeping into his shoes and soaking his socks. Fear seized him as the realization of what was happening crashed down around him.
Tears sprang to Reese’s eyes, stinging them. “You have to get out of here, Raven. If this thing gets any worse, you’ll get sucked into it. It’s as thick as molasses! Go! Get out of here!”
“I can’t leave you! Clear your mind before it’s too late, Reese. Make it stop!”
“I don’t know if I can!”
“Try! You’re not even trying!”
Reese closed his eyes and tried to recall all the things Endel had taught him in the energy room back by the shop. He emptied his mind and envisioned releasing the flow of energy in his body.
“It’s working,” she said. “The slime isn’t coming up anymore!”
“Hold on to something.”
“There’s nothing for me to hold onto here,” Raven said.
He didn’t look at her. He needed her to go. He needed to see her get off the platform and see that she was safe. He could feel the tamped down energy inside him as if his eyes were open. But like a cork holding back champagne in a bottle, he could feel the energy being shaken inside him. It was only a matter of time before it would burst free again.
“Go to the railing. Hold on to the railing.”
“What? The railing? But it’s over there.”
“I know. Get over there and hold on,” he said, keeping his voice even.
“What are you doing?”
He opened his eyes slowly and saw the walls crumbling again. It wasn’t working. The energy was building behind the rock walls, shining like molten lava.
“I can’t get out. You need to save yourself, Raven.” He sucked in a deep breath of hot air.
She shook her head wildly. “No. I won’t.” Dropping to her knees, she pulled at his pant leg, and grunted as she pulled.”
“It’s no use. If I know you’re safe, I can try. If I try now, we might plunge lower. I want to know you’re safe before I do it.”
“Reese, no,” she cried. “Don’t be crazy. Take off your pants.”
“Don’t be crazy? I’m not going to take my pants off.”
“If you’re stuck, then just take them off.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not going to look at you. It could save your life!”
“I can’t take them off even if I wanted to. The platform is still shifting, and I can feel the fabric pressing against my ankle as we go lower. It’s getting so tight it’s practically cutting off my circulation. Trust me, I wouldn’t be shy about it if it would save my life. It’s not happening unless I can tear the fabric. But this school uniform is practically indestructible. It may as well be made out of Kevlar the way it holds up to some of the abuse the kids at the Cliffs give it.”
He chuckled with no humor. He was out of ideas.
“Just go, Raven!”
“I won’t watch you die!” she said, not bothering to hide the tears now streaming down her cheeks.
“Go! Please.”
Sniffing, Raven got up and ran awkwardly through the muck to the end of the platform, and then turned to look at him.
“Climb up on the rocks,” he urged. “Don’t stay on the platform in case something happens like on the bridge.”
Watching Raven climb the few feet up the stone to the rocky path they’d walked on showed just how much the platform had dropped. He couldn’t see the gears beneath him and didn’t know exactly what they were for. But whatever engine was turning them was still humming strong. He could feel the vibration beneath his body and see the slime in front of him tremble with impact waves each time the engine hiccupped.
“Hurry, Reese. Clear your mind, and then pull yourself free. I’m safe here.”
Reese was almost too afraid to close his eyes and clear his mind for fear the slime would rise up and choke him. He fought the urge to react. It was only making it worse. He knew he’d done this. It had to have been him. Why else would the platform start to move just when they were walking on it?
“Hurry, Reese!” Raven called out. She’d tried to keep her voice calm, but Reese could hear her fear when she spoke. He didn’t have to see her face to know how terrified she was.
She started pacing back and forth on the path above the platform as he yanked at his pant leg.
“It’s not coming free!” he called out with a grunt. Anger surged through him, and as it did, the light in the room increased as the cracks in the walls blazed with orange light. He yanked at his leg again. And then again. Finally, he felt the fabric tear enough for him to grab a small edge and tear it more.
Adrenaline flowed through him, and he felt his pulse hammering against his ear as he gave it everything he had to break free. He closed his eyes and tried to get a grip on the fabric which was now soaked in whatever muck he was sitting in. The smell was awful. The only thing that came to mind was the smell after the streets had been treated with tar.
“Reese, there are…spikes.”
“Spikes?” he asked as his eyes flew open to look around. Sure enough, the molten muck was hardening and turning into spikes that were lifting from beneath the platform and pushing through the openings in the grate.
Fear seized him for a moment. And then he thought if he could only get one of those spikes to rip the fabric of his pants without cutting him, he could break free and get out of here. If he couldn’t, he’d be impaled by the spikes coming up from beneath him.
Raven jumped down from the rocks to the platform, and his heart sunk.
“No, go back!” he called out to her.
Suddenly, the platform dropped about a foot. The movement of the platform shattered the spikes that had formed through the openings. The sound of gears groaning, and straining bounced off the walls. Then the platform began to turn.
“Raven, get back on the path!”
She glanced around quickly. “I can’t. It’s moving too fast for me to get a footing.”
And it was. But to Reese’s surprise, he was suddenly free. He quickly got to his feet, trying not to lose his balance as the platform turned.
A blast of heat knocked him down on his back. He braced himself as he fell out of fear the spikes would cut his body where he fell. But as his body hit the platform, he was pleasantly surprised to feel no pain at all from the impact. As his hand hit the ground, he felt the hot slime flow around his fingers.
“What happened?” Raven asked, getting up from the ground, holding her arms out to steady herself as the platform continued to move. She was covered in muck from her feet to her hair. And then her face lit up with a smile. “Reese, you’re free!”
“Yeah. I don’t know or care what just happened. I just want to get us out of this before it changes back to something that will cause gushing blood.”
As he got up from the platform, he felt it drop another few feet. The rock ledge above was getting to a point where it might be too high for them to jump onto it if they didn’t move fast. Reese ran toward the edge of the platform where Raven was grabbing onto the rock and trying to climb. But there weren’t any footholds.
“You get up first,” Reese said, placing his hands around her small waist.
But she quickly turned out of his grasp. “No. You can still get up there. Then you can pull me up like you did when we were at the aqueduct.”
He didn’t have time to think about it. The platform dropped another few inches just in the time it took for Raven to finish what she’d said.
“Okay.” He reached for the ledge, and tried to get a secure grip. But the fragments that had fallen from the wall of the cave were scattered all around, and bit into his fingers. Still, he held tight, ignoring the pain as much as he could while fighting t
o get a foothold on something on the wall that the dropping platform had now exposed.
“I can’t get a grip,” he said, fighting with the pain and his own frustration. “The wall is too wet and slippery from that slime.”
He gave it one more time, jumping to see if he could get a better hold on a piece of rock or a divot on the ledge that would give him a better hold. But as he jumped, the platform dropped again. Before he could even process what was happening, he felt hot, thick liquid seeping into his pants, making it difficult to move.
Raven slipped back and felt up to her neck in the muck, gasping as he choked on the hot fumes. “It’s filling!”
Panic consumed Reese as he struggled to jumped up to the rock ledge, which was slowly getting higher by the minute. Panic was replaced with relief as he was able to get a firm hold.
“Reese!”
He glanced over his shoulder and couldn’t see Raven anymore. She’d just called his name and now she was gone! He let go and fell back to the slime.
“Raven! Where are you? Talk to me!”
She emerged from under the muck like a swamp monster. She coughed and wiped the slime from her face as best she could until he got close enough to her to help her.
“I slipped,” she said, coughing and spitting the muck from her mouth.
The platform moved again. They were out of time!
“Okay, let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t. Not until you stop doing this.”
“What…what do you mean?”
“You’re doing this, Reese. I can feel it. Can’t you feel the energy pouring out of you?”
He hadn’t been paying attention to that since the ground shifted.
“It can’t be. I’m not making the platform move.”
“Clear your mind! Do it! We’re going to drown here!”
Reese and Raven huddled against the slimy wall and watched the black muck bubble as if it were boiling. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t hot enough for that. Every once in a while a spikey strand pushed up through the muck and made the slime ripple like a pond after a stone had been thrown into it.
He was doing this. How could that be? This had never happened to him before. Well, not like this. He fought to do what Raven had said. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. But the adrenaline rushing through him was too much for him to hold back.
