“Give it to me,” Bryn said.
Rett hesitated. “Are you going to shoot him with a flare for some GPS units?”
“That would be a waste of a flare. I’m just going to point the gun at him.”
“That only gets us the GPS units. How are we going to get out of here? He said something was climbing up the side of the building. We can’t open the skylight.”
“Actually”—Bryn plucked the gun from Rett’s pocket and shoved it into her own—“that’s exactly what we need to do.”
She shrugged off her pack, which was bulging with water bottles, and handed it to him.
Then she grabbed hold of the rope dangling in the center of the room.
“What are you doing?” Rett said.
“Getting us the GPS units and making a way out of here.”
“Bryn.”
She kept climbing.
Behind Rett, boots clattered, and then the man ducked into the main room. He took one look at Bryn and shouted, “You open that skylight and we’re all dead.” He seized Rett’s arm in a viselike grip. “Tell her to get down.”
But Bryn had already reached the shelf near the ceiling and started turning the crank. “If you don’t want to die,” she called down, “I suggest you lock yourself in a room with a working door.”
The man turned and fled back into the supply room.
“Rett!” Bryn called down. “Push the button!”
“What button?” Rett called hoarsely. But then he remembered odd shapes marking a button in the supply room.
He scrambled under the half-lifted wall and slammed his palm over the button. An alarm blared through the depot, and milky water sprayed over the floor.
“What’s happening?” he called, but he heard no reply over the bleating alarm.
A panel overhead banged shut, and Rett realized the man had climbed up into some safer space. Half the GPS units still lay on the cabinet top. If the water that was now over his ankles rose as high as he thought it might, they’d be ruined.
Rett yanked open a cabinet and spotted a plastic sheet. In a minute, he had the devices wrapped and shoved in a nylon backpack. By then, the water had risen over his knees. He shouldered the pack, turned toward the main room—
Bryn screamed.
Water buffeted the stuck wall and surged underneath it. “Bryn!” Rett called. What’s happening?
Before he could think, he dove under the wall.
The water was too milky to let him see anything. He felt his way under the wall …
Only to graze a twitching form.
He scrambled to his feet in waist-high water. A shadow showed beneath the water’s nearly opaque surface: a dark bulb dancing madly in the current. It swung a jagged mandible toward him, and he flung himself back.
What is that thing?
It skittered toward him. Its erratic movements brought to mind a flipbook of scribbled drawings, a flickering of mangled stills.
The shovel. Rett twisted in the water, trying to catch sight of his only weapon under the opaque surface. No good—he couldn’t see a thing through the white churn of minerals. He dove under, scrabbling at the floor for a handle. A hooked foot lashed through the water and drew a juddering path down his arm. Rett jerked back.
The next moment his hand hit metal. He grabbed for the handle. Rose out of the water, shovel ready.
The creature was a tangle of clenched talons and nothing more.
“Rett!”
Bryn still lay on the shelf up near the ceiling, under the open skylight.
“Are you okay?” he called up.
“Are you?”
The mass of talons next to him twitched and then went still again. Dead, Rett thought. Drowned. Isn’t that what the water was for? But he didn’t wait around to see if it would come to life again. He swam toward the rope, trailing the shovel.
“The GPS units?” Bryn called.
“I got them. Three GPS units, four limbs, half my sanity.” He panted. “And a shovel.”
7:03 A.M.
From the outside, the depot was a huge metal canister, scarred by windblown grit. Long scratches showed where the creature had clawed its way up to the skylight.
Rett and Bryn moved around to the front of the depot, rainwater running past their boots in rivulets. The man’s still inside, Rett thought. Here was the spot in the rain-darkened dirt where he had seen the man sprawled half an hour ago. Dead.
No—only unconscious.
So why do I keep seeing him in my mind as a mangled corpse?
“He was dead.” Rett turned to Bryn, who was pulling the packet of plastic-wrapped GPS units out of the backpack.
“No, he’s probably okay if he went up into the upper room. I don’t think the water level went up that high. The other wall was open, remember?” She stuck a GPS unit in each pocket and then dug around in the pack for something else. “He’s probably still sitting up in that room, waiting for the water to drain. We should get out of here before he follows us.”
Rett couldn’t tear his gaze from the wet dirt. A terrible vision kept appearing before him. “But he was dead. Before. Cut in half.” He shuddered.
Bryn stopped digging in the pack. Rett looked up to find that she had gone ghostly white. Rainwater ran down the sides of her face.
“Why do I remember him dead?” Rett asked.
Bryn turned away from the depot. She busied herself with the pack again. “It’d be better to forget,” she said over her shoulder. “We have to head northwest. That’ll take us close to the coordinates of whatever we’re supposed to find.”
Rett tried to push the haunting images out of his head. The man’s okay. He’s alive.
“Nice job finding the shovel, by the way,” Bryn said. “It makes sense now why I didn’t see anything at the coordinates before. Hope you’re up for digging. At least I didn’t cut my hand in the depot this time.”
She turned and handed him a GPS unit and then palmed a compass. “Keep an eye on the GPS. Let me know when it picks up a signal.”
“Why isn’t the signal picking up now?”
“There was an aurora. Or—the guy said a ‘solar storm.’ I think that’s what caused the aurora, and it must also interfere with the satellites. So there’s no way to grab on to a signal.”
A green flame dancing over jagged spires—so easy to envision. An aurora, Rett thought.
“I think that’s what happened to you, too.” Bryn drew her fingers over his scar, setting all his nerves alight. “An aftereffect of the solar storm. It made the mechanism in your head go haywire. It would’ve done the same to me if I hadn’t been inside the depot. The walls acted like a shield.”
“That’s—” Rett tried to ignore the tingling left by her touch. “That’s what made me forget everything?”
“I don’t know, but isn’t that what happens with head trauma sometimes? You forget everything surrounding the event that injured you?”
“Forget whole days? Forget how I got here? I can’t even remember how I left Walling.”
Bryn studied the compass glinting in her palm. “Maybe when we finish this, things will get clearer.”
“When we find what Scatter sent us here to find? And then—how will we get home?”
Bryn shifted her pack. “I’m hoping that’ll be clear after we dig up whatever we’re supposed to dig up. You ready?”
“Wait. Didn’t you hear what he said about the government keeping tabs on this place? How they’ve got it all walled off and they know if you go digging something up?”
Bryn took a moment to read her compass and orient herself. “Yeah. I heard.”
“Aren’t you … worried?”
“If they catch us digging something up, at least they’ll know how to get us out of here. Although … I’m not big on the idea of going straight from one kind of prison to another.”
“How are they even going to know if we dig something up?”
“He said they would. It sounds like whatever Scatter sent us
to find, the government wants to keep buried.”
“He said the government has this whole place walled off.” Rett wiped rainwater from his face and took in the shining walls of the canyon around them. “Who would want to come here in the first place?”
“They’re guarding something. Something they’re so desperate to keep secret that they’d bury it in the middle of a wasteland.”
“And Scatter wants us to dig it up?” Rett shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. No one would send us to do something like that. No one would send—”
“A couple of orphans desperate for a paycheck? Trust me, we’ve been over this. No one cares if you and I never come back.”
Rett started to say something but Bryn interrupted him.
“I know,” she said, her voice softening. “Your mom. You told me.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t help resenting the pity in her eyes.
He shifted away from her. How much did I tell her? “Exactly how long have we…”
“… been stuck here together?” Bryn’s mouth twisted. “That’s something I can’t quite figure out.”
“What do you mean? How did we get here in the first place?”
“We woke up here,” Bryn said. “We keep waking up here. Over and over, I think.” She must have read the bewilderment on his face because she said, “It doesn’t make sense to me, either. But we’ve done this before. We woke up in that depot and went out to find whatever we’re supposed to find. When we got there, we didn’t see anything—we didn’t know it was buried, and we didn’t have shovels anyway. So we … started over.”
“Started over?”
“There are seven pouches of water in your pack. We already drank all that water the last time we went into this wasteland. But when we showed up back at the depot a couple of hours ago, all that water was back. All of our supplies—everything we left in the wasteland. It was all back inside the depot.”
Rett was starting to feel irritated. It didn’t make any sense. “But how did we get back to the depot?”
“I…” Bryn raked her wet hair back from her face. “I shot the gun at you.”
Rett blinked at her. “Sorry?”
“Near you, I mean. To scare you. Every time we get really scared, something strange happens. We wake up back at the depot.”
Rett struggled to absorb all she was saying. “But … how?”
With her hair pushed back, the scar running along the side of Bryn’s head was partly visible. Rett tried not to stare, but Bryn didn’t seem to mind. She touched a finger to it.
“It has something to do with what they put in our heads,” Rett guessed.
“You told me that you felt like the mechanism let you pull yourself back toward the depot, somehow. And you took me with you.”
Rett closed his eyes and saw a starry sky, a flicker of green light—just a memory. But he had been there. Could he get there again? “What if I can’t do that next time we’re in trouble? Or what if something happens to me—would you be able to wake up and start over on your own?” He clutched her arm. “Bryn, I don’t know if I can—”
“We’re going to finish the job this time. We’re going to end it.” Her hazel eyes glowed, full of reassurance.
Rett nodded, released his grasp. Her fingers trailed his palm as he did, leaving him with the dizzying sense that he had felt her gentle touch before, had even held her hand in his. But then she turned and strode ahead, leaving Rett to follow like something tethered by expectation.
7:15 A.M.
Rett’s boots rubbed against his feet while he sweated with the effort of climbing another slope.
Bryn let them stop only briefly to drink water and air out their pruned feet. The GPS unit’s battery was low, so Rett switched it out for another and checked again to make sure it still hadn’t found a signal.
The face of Bryn’s compass flashed in the sun while she checked its reading.
“You sure we’re heading the right way?” Rett asked.
“We’ve going to veer a bit. Avoid getting ourselves up where we can’t get down.” A flicker of doubt passed over her face.
“Is that what happened before?” Rett asked.
Bryn kept her gaze trained on the compass. Fear seeped into Rett’s bones. We’ve done this over and over. We might never get it right.
“Last time I insisted we climb down a slope and then you fell and I think you broke your ankle,” Bryn said.
Rett drank from his water bottle. “And then?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.
“And then we realized we didn’t have a shovel and we started over back at the depot. Got inside, realized someone else was already in there, and … had a bit of an altercation.”
“An altercation?” Rett wrapped his arms around his stomach, as if to hide the blood that no longer stained his clothes. “What did I— What happened?”
“It wasn’t you, actually.”
Rett dropped his arms. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the guy was pointing a gun at you, trying to force you out of the depot and into bug territory, so I came up behind him and…”
“And what?” Why won’t she look me in the eye right now?
“I knocked him out with a fire extinguisher.” Bryn squinted into the distance. “Then you tried to help him. Well, first we dragged him outside and then you tried to get him back to safety when you thought twice about it. And some of his blood got on your clothes.”
So that’s where that stain came from, Rett thought, looking down at the spot where he’d seen the blood earlier that morning. Like something out of a comic book—a stain of guilt, a brand of warning. Except … “I didn’t hurt him?”
“Honestly, I…” Bryn tipped her head forward so her hair hid her face. “I thought you did hurt someone. I found your jumpsuit last time we went through this. I saw that stain. You told me you hadn’t hurt anyone but I didn’t know whether to believe you.”
Which is worse? Rett wondered. Not knowing whether you’ve done something terrible, or not knowing whether the guy you’re trapped in a bunker with did something terrible?
He moved her hair behind her ear so he could see her face. “Hey,” he said softly. “That must have been scary.”
She looked up, surprised.
“For the record,” Rett told her, “I’ve hurt exactly six people in my life. So it’s not like I’m an innocent newborn fawn of a boy.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Tell me six of them had it coming and I’ll restore you to fawn status without further questions.”
He shrugged. “Five, maybe.” He meant it as a joke, but as soon as he said it, his heart turned to lead. Those emails, the terrible things I said. What else could he do but pray his mother didn’t believe them? I’m coming for you. You have to know I’m coming to help you.
“I’ll give you credit for trying to help Mr. Scavenger back there when he was unconscious,” Bryn said. Rett’s heart lifted a little at her smile. “Now, can we please get moving again?”
He caught her wrist. “Wait. You get what I’m saying, right? I don’t blame you for being scared of me. For whatever you did when you thought I could be dangerous. We do all kinds of things to survive.”
A question flashed in her eyes.
“What?” Rett asked.
“I said that same thing to you before.”
Did she? He couldn’t remember. “I’m a good listener. Add that to my credit.”
“But you know that doesn’t mean you get a pass on attacking someone now? That’s not how this credit thing works.”
“Disappointing.”
Bryn smirked down at her compass and oriented them again.
Rett caught her wrist one more time. “And thanks.”
“For what?”
“Sounds like it would have been my own blood on my clothes if you hadn’t beaned that guy.”
“Actually, I think you were willing to go quietly. So he wouldn’t have hurt you at all. You’d just be—�
�� She stopped.
Bug food. Rett shuddered. “Thanks anyway.”
They angled down the far side of the slope they had climbed, sometimes skidding over the rocky ground. Rett had to use the shovel to brace himself against the slope so he wouldn’t slide all the way down, but Bryn proved nimbler. When they made it to the floor of the ravine, she only quickened her pace.
“Wait.” Rett panted.
“It’s just ahead,” Bryn called over her shoulder. “I recognize this spot.”
Rett followed her along the twisting bottom of the ravine, keeping to the shade at the steep wall. Bryn’s gaze kept bouncing from the dirt to the cliff tops. More bugs, Rett thought, straining his ears for the clack of talons. He heard only the scrape of their own boots over dirt.
Soon Bryn veered out to the middle of the ravine and circled the area a few times, head down, eyes trained on the ground.
Finally, she stopped in her tracks, electric with discovery. “I remember these rocks! See how this one is darker than the others? This is the spot.”
Rett knelt to examine the rock. Silver glints showed through its dark surface. Just like the one in my pocket, he marveled.
She jabbed the toe of her boot into the dirt. “Ready to dig?”
“I need some water first.”
Bryn fished a water bottle out of the pack. “We’ll take turns.” She fished the gun out next. “I’ll dig first. You keep watch for bugs.”
9:14 A.M.
The dust from Bryn’s digging hung in the humid air like a thin cloud of smoke. It made Rett’s nausea worse. Just dehydrated, he told himself. Or, you know, could be my steady diet of fear and confusion.
He watched Bryn dig. At least I’m not alone.
“Are we even sure there’s something buried here?” Rett called from where he sat in the shade.
“He said there was.” Bryn’s shovel chucked into the soft dirt.
“He also seemed kind of … high-int, low-sanity.”
“What?”
“He said the U.S. just started a bunch of wars. But I haven’t heard anything about that. And he said the government’s got this whole place walled off. Why would anyone need to wall off a wasteland?”
The Echo Room Page 16
