by Tracy Deebs
We cautiously walk up to the first building—the barn—and I know we’re all wondering if there’s anyone here. And if there is, are they as afraid of strangers as everyone else we’ve run across seems to be? We’re standing in front of the door, but none of us wants to be the one to open it—just in case there’s a guy with a gun on the other side. But it’s my dad who created this mess, so after a deep breath for courage, I reach for the door handle.
It’s locked.
Of course it is. I knock a few times, wait. Knock again, wait some more. No one comes. Which is probably a good thing, as I have no idea what I’d say to them if they did.
“Now what?” I ask.
Eli reaches into his pocket, pulls out a Swiss army knife. After a second of fiddling with the tools, he slides one into the lock, jiggles it around. A few seconds later, I hear the lock click.
Theo and I both stare at him in shock, but he just shrugs. “Summer camp.”
He leads us into the barn, which is actually a huge room without windows. The ceiling is lined with recessed lights that cast an eerie yellow glow, and the room is filled with large rectangular tanks with pipes leading into and coming out of them. There are all kinds of gauges on the tanks and a bunch of machinery clustered at the end of each one.
“What is this place?” Eli asks. “And how do they still have electricity?”
“Generator?” I venture.
“More like solar panels,” Theo says, staring at the ceiling.
“Why didn’t an alarm go off when we entered?” I ask, completely uneasy. Something about this doesn’t feel right. Who leaves a place like this unmanned and unguarded, especially in the middle of a crisis?
Eli points to the wall behind me. There’s an alarm panel hanging there. Some of the lights are red, but most are green. “Only a few of the alarms are actually armed,” he tells me.
“Which ones?” I step up to the panel. All the lights marked “doors” are green. Only the ones marked “control systems” are armed. I say as much to Eli and Theo.
“The alarms are probably just to ensure everything works right,” Theo says. “If we don’t mess with any of the equipment we should be fine.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” I’m afraid to breathe in here, let alone touch anything. “But I don’t understand. The sign says it’s a farm, but it looks like a water-treatment plant.”
Just then, we hear a splash, followed by another one and another one. For a second, every horror movie I’ve ever seen flashes through my mind, and I imagine a monster inside the tanks, crawling up the slippery sides in an effort to get out.
“We should go!” I say, starting to back up, but Theo just laughs.
“I know what this is. I’ve read about places like these.”
“A zombie storage unit?” Eli mutters. He obviously has seen the same movies I have.
Theo looks at him like he’s an idiot. “It’s an aquaculture plant.”
I must look as lost as I feel, because Theo shakes his head impatiently. “A self-sustaining fish farm. The greenhouse out back is used to grow organic vegetables using the waste from the tanks.” He points to one of them. “See?”
At first I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at, but then I see a fish jump out of the water and dive back in. It’s followed by a second and a third fish.
The source of the splashing sounds we heard. Not zombies. Fish.
I feel like a total moron.
“That’s cool,” Eli says, climbing up the ladder of the closest tank. “Jesus. There are thousands of them in here.”
“Don’t touch anything!” Theo barks. “You’ll contaminate—”
“I’m not an idiot.” Eli stays up there for a little longer. He pretends he’s fascinated by the fish, but I know he just doesn’t want to look like he’s backing down to his stepbrother.
“So what do we do now?” I ask.
“You need to find the password for the game.” Theo speaks slowly, like I’m stupid.
“I know that. But how?” I throw my arms out, gesture to the room around us. “This place is huge.” I turn and walk away from him, from them, looking over the entire place as I search my brain for memories that I just can’t access.
“Why don’t we look around,” Eli suggests. “See if anything jogs your memory.”
It seems like a better idea than standing here, frustrated, so the three of us go exploring. It turns out this aquaculture thing is really cool—a totally self-sustaining farm on only a few acres of land. It’s fully automated, with machines that fill automatic timed feeders, an elaborate filtration system, and it’s completely climate controlled, independent of weather or drought. It’s—
“That’s it!” I exclaim, rushing past the last tanks toward the door that separates the fish barn from the greenhouse. “We were supposed to grow crops in the game, right? The clue has to be out here somewhere.”
“But where?” Eli demands, following me. “This place is so big I don’t even know where to start looking.”
It really is. Row after row of crops—on tables, in planters, some grown directly in the soil beneath our feet. “It’s here someplace.” I don’t know how I know, but I do. The key to the whole level, to moving on, is right here in this greenhouse.
“Am I the only one who thinks we should grab some of this food for the road?” Eli asks suddenly. “If what happened at that gas station is happening everywhere, who knows when we’ll have another chance to stock up.”
He’s right, but I can’t help hesitating. When I went to bed two nights ago everything was normal, and now it’s like I really have opened a box that I’ll never be able to close.
Theo sees my indecision. “We won’t take a lot. Just what we need to survive for a few days. We can leave some money.”
He’s waiting for me to say it’s okay. They both are. I look around at the plants, the watering systems. And then, before I can say anything, Eli reaches down and pulls a couple of strawberries off a plant, pops one in his mouth, and offers the other to me.
The line from the game pops into my mind again. You’ve reached the point of no return.
I take the strawberry.
The next few minutes pass in a blur as the guys gather up some berries and vegetables for the road, and I search the greenhouse for some clue into my father’s psyche. Some idea of what he wants me to remember.
I find it in a basket of pomegranates resting on the edge of one of the tables, five of the ruby-red fruits just sitting there, ripe for the taking. Beneath the table is a flashlight and an extra pack of batteries. “Don’t pomegranates grow on trees?” I call to Theo.
“Yeah, why?”
I reach for one of the fruits, hold it up for him and Eli to see. There are no trees in this greenhouse, at least none big enough to yield pomegranates this size.
Eli takes it from me, turns it over and over in his hands. “Isn’t there something in the Demeter myth that talks about pomegranates?”
“It’s how Hades bound Persephone to him,” I tell Eli. “He got her to eat a pomegranate. Which is how the Greeks explained the seasons. Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, only allowed things to bloom in the spring and summer, when Persephone was with her.”
“The harvest,” Theo says, but I’m already pulling out my laptop. Waiting impatiently as it asks for my password. Because the myth fits too perfectly into the game to be anything else. And besides, standing here, holding the fruit, reminds me of something. Pomegranates are my father’s favorite food.
The game finally flashes on, and there I am, standing in the middle of the Capitol again. I take off, straight for Zilker Park this time, and as I run, I realize something I’d been too frazzled to notice earlier. The Austin I’m running through, the Austin in the game, is drought ravaged, starving for water. We’ve been in the middle of a drought for a couple of years now, with the lake levels falling and water conservation efforts in effect, but this is the Austin experts warn us to expect in the next eigh
teen months if we don’t get some rain. This is Austin on the brink of dying. Austin with the evil of climate change released from the box.
I finally make it back to a drought-stricken Zilker Park, where hundreds of NPCs stare at me for help. Even worse, we’re not the only ones there. The crowd of players from earlier has grown. There must be seven or eight hundred of them, all looking like they tangled with Campe, standing around or trying to find a way to plant the seeds. There are also dead bodies littering the far reaches of the field.
Every time I take a step, I run into another one. IMs flash across the bottom of my screen from user names I’ve never heard of. And the invisible wall is still there, the one that prevents me from planting any seeds. From bringing in Demeter’s harvest.
I run through the crowds, through the tents, to the AR gate Eli found yesterday when we were playing the game. I plug in the word “pomegranates” and wait, hoping that I’ve found the right code. For long seconds nothing happens, then I’m knocked off my feet. Blown back about twenty feet from the AR gate. And I still can’t plant seeds.
“Wait a minute!” Eli says, dropping the fruit as he crouches down beside me and takes over my computer. “You typed in ‘pomegranates,’ but in the myth it’s only one pomegranate.”
“It couldn’t be that simple,” I whisper as he types in the singular word.
“Why not?” He hits Enter and the whole screen lights up. Then the number 10 flashes across the screen.
“We’re back to ten days?” I ask, confused.
“More like ten minutes.” Theo taps the screen, where seconds have begun to count down: 9:58. 9:57. 9:56 …
“There’s a time limit to complete this task?” I screech, horrified, even as I take the computer back and my avatar reaches for her pocketful of seeds. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”
“We can’t,” Theo tells me grimly. “We left our computers in the van. You’re on your own.”
I barely keep myself from freaking out as my avatar runs back to the center of Zilker Park. “What do I do?”
They both look at me like I’m crazy. “Plant the seeds!” Eli says, trying once again to take my computer from me.
I shrug him off and, because he’s squatting, he loses his balance, slamming against one of the poles that deliver water to the plants. He grabs on to it to steady himself and ends up cracking the bottom half of the pole clean off.
A loud shrieking sound erupts.
18
“Is that an alarm?” I demand as the lights go out, fighting the urge to cover my ears against the loud shrieking sound that suddenly fills the room.
Theo’s too busy hopping to his feet—and pulling me to mine—to answer. “We need to get out of here!”
I know he’s right, but I’m paralyzed with fear. The dark. The alarm. The countdown. It’s too much. My brain’s on overload, and instead of following Theo and Eli down the long center aisle, I just stand there. Quietly freaking out.
I spend my life avoiding the dark and now I’m stuck in it again, for the fourth or fifth time since this nightmare began. I don’t want to do this anymore.
I guess Eli suddenly realizes I’m not with them, because he calls to me from halfway across the greenhouse. “Come on, Pandora. Don’t lose it now. We need to run.”
I still don’t move. The blackness is closing in on me from every side, and my heart is pumping like crazy as adrenaline courses through me. I want to move, want to leave this place, this game, far behind, but my feet are glued to the rich soil.
“What’s wrong?” Theo asks. “Why aren’t you moving?” He sounds impatient and a little vicious. Not that I blame him. I’m being an idiot. I know it—I just can’t do anything about it.
The words come out of their own volition. “I don’t like the dark.”
“Don’t like …” Eli curses, then I hear him making his way back to me as the plants between us start to rustle.
“It’s okay, Pandora. I’m right here.” His hand is on my shoulder, stroking down my arm, warm and soft and comforting. It snaps me out of the stranglehold of terror, has me gasping for air as perspiration pours down my spine.
He pulls me against him, into a full-body hug that buries my face against his chest. He smells like coffee and sandalwood and not unpleasantly of sweat. I stand there for a few seconds, just absorbing the strength and comfort he’s offering me. It feels good.
“Come on.” Theo’s voice is a low, insistent throb in the dark. “They’ll be here any second.”
“Who?” I whisper, but as the blood stops rushing through my ears, I hear the sound that has him so nervous.
Dogs. Barking and growling in the distance. With every second we stand here, it sounds like they’re getting closer. The only thing worse than being trapped in the dark is being trapped here in the dark with vicious, snarling dogs.
I pull away from Eli, grab the flashlight that was resting against the table leg. “Let’s go.”
We have to run back through the huge tank room—if there’s another door in the greenhouse we’re not going to find it in the dark—and that eats up more precious seconds. The barks are a lot closer now.
Even worse, I get a glimpse of my laptop screen as we run. The timer at the top now reads 6:51.
“The game’s still going!” I pant, my lungs nearly bursting with the pace Eli and Theo are setting. “We have less than seven minutes.”
Eli curses and so does Theo, vulgar, vile words that only make me feel more desperate. We’re at the entrance now, and Theo’s hand is on the doorknob. “What should we do?” Eli asks, and for the first time he sounds a little lost.
It steadies me. “Can we stay here for a few minutes, just long enough for me to crack this level?”
At that moment, the door at the opposite end of the room slams open and three snarling dogs burst through it, followed by two men speaking in Spanish.
I’m out the door before I make the conscious decision to move, Eli and Theo at my heels. We’re sprinting full out now, trying to make it back to the van before the dogs get us.
Outside is better. It’s dark now, but there are solar lights set up all along the driveway that guide us back the way we came.
My flip-flops twist and slide with each step that I take. They slow me down, and I expect Eli and Theo to surge ahead, but they stay steady with me, refusing to budge an inch. “Maybe if we just stop and explain,” I gasp, clutching at the stitch in my right side.
“Somehow I don’t think those dogs are going to buy our excuses,” Eli says.
“I’ve got to play the game.” The level clock now reads 4:32.
“Then play it,” Theo snarls, scooping me up and tossing me over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to scream as we go bumping down the lane.
He doesn’t answer, just swerves off the path a ways. Eli follows, sounding as baffled as I am. “Theo, what—”
Theo rips the laptop out of my hands, gives it to Eli. Then lifts me up and away from him. “Grab the branch of that tree and pull yourself up,” he orders.
I do what he says, largely because he doesn’t give me a choice not to. It’s grab the tree branch or go face first over it. As I struggle to pull myself onto it, Theo gives me a final boost. Then he grabs the laptop from Eli and hands it to me.
“This isn’t going to work,” I tell him furiously. “We’re sitting ducks out here.” The dogs are much closer now—they sound like they’re only a few yards away.
“Just play, Pandora.” Theo turns to Eli. “Get behind the tree and watch out for her.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. Just turns away and races back the way we came. Sacrificing himself so that Eli and I will be safe. So that I can play the stupid game.
Which I have to get back to if I have any hope of beating this thing before time runs out in three minutes and eighteen seconds.
In the distance I hear a renewed
frenzy of barking, along with a few shouts from the two dog handlers. The yells are followed by the thud of body hitting body, a high-pitched yelp, and more snarls. It’s proof that Theo’s decoy plan is working. Maybe it should reassure me, but all it does is chill my blood as I think about Theo at their mercy, sacrificing himself to help me and the stepbrother he can barely tolerate.
“Go help him,” I snarl at Eli, panic-stricken at the thought of Theo fighting off dogs and humans alike.
“I’m not leaving you,” Eli snarls back. “So play the damn game already so we can get back to him.”
For the first time since I plugged in the password, I’m paying attention to what’s happening on-screen. And it’s totally bizarre. On-screen, I’m glowing, my entire body lit up a strange, vibrant red that looks wicked crazy even as it frightens me a little.
What’s wrong with my avatar? I wonder as I push buttons randomly. Was Campe radioactive or something? Have I managed to contract some bizarre case of nuclear rabies? I hope not—surely my avatar couldn’t survive that. Damn the ancient Greeks and their screwed-up monsters.
Not willing to go down without a fight, especially since everyone—NPC and player alike—is staring at me, I extend my hands out in front of me, the way Theo did when he shot fire. On-screen, I jump and kick, punch and crouch, but nothing else happens. And the glow doesn’t disappear, either.
“How’s it going?” Eli demands.
“Crappy!” I tell him. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Hit Control+F. That’s how Theo shot fire.”
“Already tried that.” But I do it again, and this time—I don’t know why—rays of light explode from my fingertips. Every character on-screen with me jumps back a good five feet.
In the distance, the dogs growl and snap. A strangled cry of pain drifts through the night air, and I know Theo’s been injured. “Eli!” I shove him with the hand that isn’t holding the laptop. “We have to help him!”
