by Peter Telep
Wow, I’m smiling because flying down the backside was pretty fun—
Until I hit the bottom of the next one and my front wheel nearly washes out. I get my foot down at the last second and kick back up.
But now I’m slowing at the bottom, and Keane’s barreling toward me.
“Lookout!” he hollers, veering around me.
I seize the handlebars and pedal until my quads burn. At the next crest, I keep pedaling to gain more speed and launch myself down the other side, passing him on the left.
At this point it’s difficult for the driffs to keep the bridge stable and afloat in the valleys between waves. Their shells slip beneath the surface a few inches, and our tires swish and plow through the water, kicking up rooster tails.
Soaked in sweat and breathless, I check on Keane, who’s as stressed and tired as I am.
By the time I face forward, the next wave strikes, only this one’s about twelve feet tall. Serious.
The driffs lift their shells even higher from the water to compensate, decreasing the hill’s elevation so it’s not too steep for us to climb. With another deep breath, I stand on the pedals and fire up the big guns in my legs.
As I reach the crest, I gasp.
Out in the distance, all around us, the water bubbles and foams. At the same time, just below the surface, flashes of red and blue erupt everywhere like the warning lights on a thousand sunken fire trucks.
Before I can see any more, I descend again, feathering the brakes before I splash into the bottom—
And realize the bridge has sunk nearly two feet, and the water’s up to my pedals now.
I curse and make the next pedal stroke, splashing forward, starting to lose my balance.
I’m going down—
But then something bumps my tires, and now I’m rising back up and onto the shells, pedaling clear toward the next wave about twenty feet ahead.
Oh, no. I can see why Joshua’s slowing down.
And so is Meeka.
“Get off your bikes!” Joshua screams. “Stop and hang on!”
There’s a twenty footer plowing toward us now, and the poor driffs are struggling to rebuild the bridge before this wall of death strikes.
Obviously the wave is too tall to ride over, so we’ll just sit this one out and let it pass beneath us—
If the driffs can hold the bridge together.
Me? I’m smiling.
Because this wave’s laughable. I own this wave.
This wave is not in the way. It is the way.
I tap the poet in my pocket—
And the flower reveals what a HUGE liar I am.
But I’m still smiling as I hop off my bike, and Keane does likewise behind me. One look at him makes me even more nervous.
“It could be worse,” he says.
“Really?”
“Yeah, if we weren’t such awesome rock stars, we might be scared right now.”
I laugh. “Yeah, at least you’ll have a good story to tell all the hot girls back on Earth.”
“Nice. Wait. I can’t tell them who I really am.”
“You mean a loser?”
“Loser? I taught you everything you know, so that means you’re one too.”
I chuckle under my breath. “I already knew that.”
We hunker down, still clutching our handlebars.
“Joshua’s not big on weather reports,” Keane says.
“Nope.”
Everyone behind us has dropped to their knees, ready for the big one. Even the grren, who dig their long nails into the seams between personas so they don’t slip off.
Joshua’s persona hunkers down nearby, trying to assure them that yes, kitty cats, you’ll make it, just don’t let go.
“You ready for this?” I ask Keane.
“Bring it.”
The wall of water—sliced neatly in half by a glimmering band of driffs—rushes toward us.
Getting taller.
Unstoppable.
I’m reminded of something Joshua said, and so I touch my poet and tell Keane, “Let’s play a game. Let’s see whose persona can look more calm.”
“Oh, I got this,” he says, reaching under his shirt sleeve.
We stare at the toy-sized versions of ourselves glowing above the patchwork of shells—
Just as the wave hits.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I know something really personal about Keane. It was something that always bothered me, so during that week we hung out at the safe house, just watching movies and playing games, I asked him about it.
He got real quiet. I wasn’t sure he’d tell me, but then he made me promise not to say anything to the girls because they still feel horrible about everything.
It’s the story of how they were selected for the Palladium and why they left the very group of rumms they’d sworn to lead and protect.
Ms. Martha Galloway, the director, was recruiting young people from the outside. She’d bring them in, clean them up, feed them, and train them to become part of a security force to help protect the Palladium from nomad attacks. No one was forced to go. Martha wanted loyal and grateful recruits—not prisoners she needed to brainwash.
One night a group of soldiers drove up to Keane’s caravan. The lead guy, some lieutenant or whatever, was sizing them up, basically playing God with their lives.
A few rumms started begging to go. It was pretty sad, but you have to remember the world they come from. Many kids never reach their sixteenth birthdays. Radiation takes them. Or starvation. Or the nomads kill them for their stuff. For many, getting into the Palladium is their only hope.
And because of that, the selection process is brutal.
You need all your parts. Even one missing finger means you’re out. You need good hearing, vision, and reflexes. No ivies or kids with mental disabilities are ever picked.
Keane said that even after getting selected, many recruits failed the psych test and got dumped back outside anyway.
These kids grew up in the ashes of a harsh and violent world. What did Ms. Martha expect?
Perfect little teenagers ready to attend prep school?
That night, Keane and the girls were selected.
Keane was shocked because he never thought he had a chance. Some people regarded him as awkward and “slow.” He thought Ms. Martha was getting desperate.
The others argued for the soldiers to take little Taggie, the youngest of the group, but she was missing part of her foot.
“So you left them,” I asked. “Just like that?”
Keane looked hurt. “No way. We didn’t go.”
“Then how did you wind up at the Palladium?”
He leaned forward on the sofa and buried his face in his hands. For a moment, I thought he was crying, but no, he just ran fingers across his cheeks, and then he looked at me—
Asking himself, should I tell him?
And then he did.
After the soldiers left, the rumms got together on their own and talked. They felt guilty about the decision Keane and the girls had made. They didn’t want to hold back their friends from having a better life.
And so they called a meeting, and one by one, they got up and pleaded with Keane and the girls to leave. They were letting them off the hook, saying things like, Don’t feel guilty about this. You got your chance, and you need to take it, otherwise it might never come again.
Keane and the girls thanked them but said no. Again.
However, Wexx presented a strong argument:
“Sure, we can stand here and tell you not to worry, we’ll be all right. You guys got your shot, and you should just forget about us. But I know you’ll never do that. You won’t. But I’m thinking you three could help us more on the inside than you do on the outside.”
That’s when Meeka’s eyes lit up.
They’d all heard about the smuggling rings operating in and around the Palladium, guards being bribed with mirage to look the other way so supplies could vanish and reach the c
aravans.
“Worst case is you go there, you don’t like it, you come back,” Wexx said. “But if you get in, and you get in tight, then we’ll run a nice operation. It’d be great to have some decent food and water. You’d be helping us way more than you are right now.”
At that point in the story, Keane’s voice began to falter.
He mumbled something about it taking a few more days to decide, and I should’ve seen the looks on the rumms’ faces when he and the girls said goodbye—
Because there was never any guarantee they could help once they got inside. And everyone knew it. But it was a good excuse to make everyone feel better. And they all tried to believe it because three kids deserved a chance to survive.
“I thought that was the hardest part,” Keane told me. “Saying goodbye that night. But it wasn’t…”
“What do you mean?”
“We were inside the Palladium for over a year. And yeah, we smuggled out some stuff, but not much.”
“But you did help them.”
“Doc, after a while, we realized we weren’t helping at all. And at that point, we should’ve left.” He started crying. “But we didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s okay. Meeka and Steffanie… they felt really horrible, too. But we kept hearing stories about how bad it was getting outside. And we got used to everything being so easy, you know? We were just scared. And selfish.”
“Keane, wanting to live is not selfish.”
He didn’t say anything.
And I was afraid to make him feel even worse, so for once in my life I shut up and did something productive. I went into the kitchen and hooked us up with some mint chip ice cream.
While we ate, I kept thinking of things to cheer him up, but nothing came.
And no, I don’t blame him or the girls for wanting to stay at the Palladium. They weren’t weak. They were just put in a terrible situation that no one should have to deal with.
And they never forgot their friends.
As proof of that, the first thing the girls did when they got banished was return to their caravan.
And after the Palladium was attacked by Solomon’s army, Keane helped us escape—but he didn’t stay with us. He rode straight back to rejoin his people.
It’s true: Keane Centennial Trusand never had it easy.
Even when he finally got his shot at a better life on Earth, I came along and made him feel guilty about it. And then Julie brought him back. Now he’s stuck with me again, out here on the Rosengate Sea—
But at least he’s winning our little contest. His persona looks bored as the wave lifts us into the air, and for just a second, I feel weightless—
And my persona, as projected by the poet, gapes at me like a kid about to be swallowed by a giant wave.
My stomach heaves as the bridge comes back down and, whew, the following waves look much smaller.
Joshua gives us the signal to get moving again.
“Better luck next time,” Keane says. “Or what’s the word? Pawned?
“Shut up, Keane.”
He looks past me and widens his eyes. “What’s happening to the bridge?”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
They’re called “kax” and “skulls.”
At this very moment, they swim beneath the waves, so I have no idea what they look like, but I do know they’re the mortal enemies of the driffs—
The ones Joshua warned us about.
I’m pedaling next to him, and he’s connected to the driffs and saying that even though some of us didn’t do the best job of controlling our fear, our emotions still weren’t strong enough to attract these deadly creatures.
This is not our fault.
“Then who brought them here?” I ask.
His gaze flicks to the clouds—
Where dozens of white figures free-fall from the black clouds, burst into balls of light, and form, one by one, into the Masks of Galleon…
At the same time, the driffs creating our bridge are now under attack by the most vicious sea creatures on the planet.
In fact, all that flashing and bubbling I saw earlier was just them making their final preparations for battle—
Because now the water’s boiling and blinking all different colors. This is what Tommy calls “nervous water” when the bait fish know a predator is near.
We can’t see the attackers just yet… only the effects of their onslaught:
Random shells just wink out within our bridge as the driff who projected that persona is killed.
Cursing, I line up behind Joshua as the pair of shells in front of us becomes one, and the bridge is half as wide now.
We roll another twenty feet, and then jerk our handlebars to avoid another missing puzzle piece.
“They fight in pairs,” Joshua says. “One kax. One skull.”
“I don’t care,” I holler.
“But I thought you wanted information,” he shouts back.
“Not about this! But hey, can you connect with them and call off the attack?”
“I’ve already tried, but they never listen to reason. Never have, never will.”
I shiver as more blank faces take shape in the clouds.
Barely a breath later, a huge burst of the water to our left sends a shower crashing down across the bridge—
And once more I’m nearly knocked off bike.
Behind me, Blink and the girl steering his bike aren’t as lucky. They’ve crashed and now dig themselves out from beneath their ride.
“We need to slow down,” I tell Joshua, gesturing over my shoulder.
Seeing the problem, he jumps into his persona. Now he’s back there with them, helping Blink and his partner onto their bike and getting them rolling again.
I breathe a deep sigh, even as veins of lighting spread across the clouds, backlighting the masks.
I can almost feel those demons probing us, searching for weakness.
Thunder rumbles as a feeding frenzy just a few meters to our right sends waves hammering down across the shells.
Now the path looks even more frightening.
It’s like someone’s been taking pot shots at our bridge of personas, blasting random holes and causing links to float apart and then come together again.
The driffs continue to struggle, paying for the effort with their lives. I wonder why they don’t swim off and try to save themselves.
I ask Joshua about this, and he replies, “They’re too slow. But that doesn’t matter. They’ll fight to the death, and I would do the same for them. We’ve helped each other for many years.”
“But this is terrible,” I say.
“It’s the natural order of things. But I hate it, too.”
I shiver as water erupts in hundreds of individual bursts, and as the showers fall, the sea below turns dark, almost black. Meanwhile, the bridge continues to shrink and fall apart. Unless someone can stop the attack in the next few minutes, we’ll never make it.
I slip behind Joshua and pedal even faster to keep up, my legs growing sore, my spirits plunging.
And then, up ahead, something stands in our path.
Not something.
Someone. A hooded persona. Probably a mask.
I bear my teeth.
Joshua looks back at the group. “Don’t stop!”
We’ll run over that murderer, and that’s fine with me.
I come out of the saddle and jerk my bike forward.
The persona slides back the hood.
It’s Julie!
She’s waving both hands and screaming something, just as the shells beneath me vanish—
And I sink into the waves, the impact blasting me back off my bike.
My heavy backpack drags me down fast.
Only then do I realize I’m underwater.
I snap open my eyes and thumb off the pack’s straps, allowing it to sink away from me.
I
glance up at the broken line of glimmering personas and kick up toward it.
As I draw into their glow, the shadows come alive, dashing and darting, bolting in all directions.
A long, needle-nosed thing that looks part barracuda and part porcupine, blurs by. It could be a kax.
Trailing it is a driff that whirls and swipes the thing with its tail, knocking the creature sideways—
Just as two fiery darts launch from the kax’s snout like torpedoes trailing bubbles.
Both darts strike the driff’s head, and it rolls onto its back, stunned by a web of red energy that wraps tightly around its entire body.
And that’s when the skull moves in.
This thing’s translucent white, hairless, and eerily human, with flippers for hands and feet.
An oversized bobble head looks mismatched on its bony neck, and rows of gills bulge from its broad shoulders.
When it opens its mouth, twin sets of jaws clamp down on the driff and smash it apart.
And did I mention this skull is about five times larger than me? I shriek, blowing bubbles.
The creature wrenches its head around to stare at me with shiny blue eyes. I think it’s smiling.
CHAPTER FIFTY
I stiffen my entire body and try to kick away as the skull lunges forward and sinks its long teeth into—
Wait. I’m not in the water anymore.
Dim lights. I’m staggering backward like I’m drunk, my clothes heavy and soaked, my footsteps echoing—
And then I fall onto my rump with a squish and thud.
I’m panting and touching my neck and head, looking for blood. Nothing. I shiver and glance up, blinking sea water from my eyes.
I’m inside a towering cathedral that stretches so far off that I can’t see the other end.
The arched ceiling is as high as the clouds and reminds me of the Sistine Chapel that I saw in one of Grace’s art books. Vast and familiar designs sweep over me: a paisley pattern of pinks and reds and greens glowing from within, along with golden trusses bigger than those at the Hall of Vines.
Off to my sides, the distant walls look similar, like pieces of art wired with LED lights and flowing seamlessly into the polished black floor. My wet footprints are the only flaw in an otherwise endless mirror that reflects the ceiling.
