by A. P. Kensey
Marius was thrown to the side of the road as the truck slammed down into the asphalt and kept on spinning. Chunks of metal ripped off the body and spun away in all directions, peppering the embankments on both sides of the road and spitting up tiny bursts of sand.
The truck stopped spinning and slid on its side with a loud squeal of metal and a burst of sparks. It scraped to a stop on the side of the road.
In the sedan, Corva jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed on the brakes, and shifted the car into reverse. Haven looked back eagerly at where Marius had disappeared. Corva stopped the car next to the wrecked truck and waited.
Someone coughed loudly. Marius stumbled into view over a small rise just off the side of the road, brushing a layer of sand from his arms. His forehead was cut and bleeding, but other than the cut and a slight limp, he appeared to be okay.
Metal scraped against the road and Haven turned to see the crashed truck sway a little on its side. One of the men inside was trying to open the door that wasn’t pinned under the truck. He kicked against it loudly, wrenching it open a few more inches each time.
“Hurry up, Marius!” shouted Corva.
He grumbled to himself but hobbled over to the car and got inside. As soon as his door was closed, Corva slammed on the gas pedal and sped down the road.
“I think it went really well,” he said.
Corva punched him in the shoulder and he laughed loudly. He turned back and looked at Haven. “You doing okay, little one?”
She reached up weakly and pointed at his bleeding forehead. Marius touched the deep cut and frowned as he rubbed the blood between his fingers. “This?” he said. “Is nothing. It takes a lot more to hurt Marius. Don’t you worry.”
Her eyelids fluttered and her vision dimmed.
Marius’s voice drifted far away. “Hurry, Corva, she is not doing well.”
Haven’s head fell back onto the seat and the last thing she saw before passing out was the clear blue sky through the sunroof.
18
Colton stopped screaming when he realized it wasn’t going to save his life.
He had been falling through the sky for what seemed like an eternity. The ground below was quickly rushing up to meet him. He didn’t know if it was Montana or somewhere else. He saw mountains in the distance and the ground directly beneath him was brownish tan—maybe a desert. Colton could barely keep his eyes open against the wind. He flattened out and looked down at the ground, then spread out his arms and legs to try and slow his fall. It worked a little, but there was no way it was enough to make the difference between life and death.
He imagined the battery that Alistair described. It spun through the air, plummeting toward the Earth, just as he was. Only as the battery fell, the small meter on its side slowly filled to the top with kinetic energy—the energy of its own descent. Colton closed his eyes and forced himself to focus.
The wind was too powerful to ignore, but eventually he was able to push it into the background until it lessened to a dull but constant pressure. The fact that he was going to die soon was also too powerful, so he did his best to keep it from getting in the way of the battery.
The battery.
Colton imagined it inside of his own chest, filling up like a fuel cell. He felt warmth—the same warmth he had felt when he took life from the apple.
The warmth grew around his spine, between his shoulder blades. It spread much faster than ever before, traveling throughout his body and making him feel as if he was glowing from the inside. Heat radiated from his skin and Colton began to sweat, even with the frigid air surging past him. In his chest, the imaginary battery swelled to capacity with the collected energy from his fall.
Colton had forgotten to open his eyes.
When he did so, the ground was right in front of him. His mind screamed No! and every muscle in his body tightened. The built-up energy exploded from the center of his chest like a jet fighter breaking the sound barrier.
The sand beneath his body shot up into the air as if a meteor had struck the earth, leaving behind a deep crater that extended twenty feet in all directions. Colton hung in the air for less than a second and had time to register all of those things right before he fell ten feet to the bottom of the sand crater and landed on his stomach.
He rolled onto his back, coughing for air. The sand that had been thrown into the sky drifted down to the ground, sprinkling over him like gritty snow.
Colton heard footsteps approaching. A young woman’s face appeared over the edge of the crater above. A pair of dirty goggles hung loosely around her neck.
“Nice landing,” she said. She looked to be about the same age as Colton.
He spit to get some sand out of his mouth. “Who are you?”
“The girl evaluating your test.” She waved her hand in front of her face to clear away the falling sand. “Congratulations, you passed.”
Colton stood up slowly, testing his limbs for injury. His left wrist hurt to the touch from the impact, but he felt okay otherwise. His vision was a little blurry, and dark shapes swam around in front of him. “What happens if I would have failed?”
The girl held up a plastic bag and smiled.
“Ha,” said Colton. He scrambled up over the edge of the crater—the hole in the ground he was responsible for creating—and sat down. “How many people usually pass and how many, you know…” He made a squishing noise with his mouth.
“Everyone is tested differently.” She sat next to him and stuck her legs out toward the bottom of the crater. She wore tight cargo shorts and a dirty white tank-top. “Bernam must have thought you could do it or he would have tried something else.”
Colton laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he said, still smiling. “I feel really good for some reason. Hey,” he said, “there was a guy that got on the plane with me—”
“Your friend is perfectly safe.”
“Good. Why is my vision all fuzzy?”
“Residual energy takes a while to dissipate. A tiny bit of it is still floating around in there.”
She had bright green eyes and short auburn hair that bobbed over her neck when she talked. Colton stopped himself more than once from staring at her slim figure and tanned legs while she sat next to him. She looked into the crater and banged the heels of her bulky shoes. Sand fell out from the openings near her ankles. The shoes looked like men’s construction boots.
“So,” said Colton, “you’re a…a Conduit?”
“Ha! Bernam and his ridiculous labels. Call me Shelly.” She offered her hand, which Colton shook.
He felt warmth flow through her hand into his, then up his arm. It spread over his body and he instantly felt better. He flexed his wrist; the pain was completely gone.
Shelly winked at him. “It’s from the sun,” she said, glancing up into the sky. “We’re solar-powered. How cool is that?”
“So what now?” asked Colton.
“You ready for something that moves a little bit slower?” Shelly stood and brushed sand from the back of her shorts.
“Gladly.” He stood up next to her slowly since all of the blood in his body seemed to want to be in his head at the same time. “Where to?”
“My car is over there,” she said. She stuck her thumb over her shoulder toward a beat-up Jeep with big off-road tires.
“There’s no roof,” said Colton. “Or doors.”
“Hmm,” she said. “That’s pretty much the most obvious thing you could point out. Maybe the fall affected your brain.”
Colton started walking toward the Jeep. His feet sank down into the hot sand which poured over into his shoes. “So you’re the local comedian.”
“Somebody’s gotta be. It’s a grim bunch, for the most part. Sounds like you’ll be good for a little fun, though, once you get balanced out again.”
“No promises.” He grabbed the roll bar over his seat and lifted himself into the Jeep. Shelly hopped lightly into the driver’s seat an
d fired up the engine.
“Might want to buckle up,” she said. She grabbed the goggles hanging around her neck and pulled them up over her eyes, then shifted the Jeep into gear.
The car jerked to the left and Colton nearly fell out the side. He used both hands to hold onto the roll cage, then quickly buckled his seat belt as soon as the Jeep leveled out.
“Told you!” she said over the roar of the engine.
“I thought you said this was slower!” he shouted.
Shelly laughed as the Jeep crested a sandy hill and flew into the air. It bounced down hard and the back wheels slid across the ground, losing traction. She gently turned the steering wheel to compensate and after a few feet of skidding, the tires caught hold and spit up two streams of sand. Shelly jammed her foot down on the accelerator and picked up speed on a long stretch of flat ground.
Colton wanted to ask her more about where they were going and how she fit into the picture with Bernam, but he had a hard enough time staying in his seat as the Jeep bounced into small holes and veered around jutting boulders. Shelly was enjoying herself immensely, and Colton was soon laughing with her every time the Jeep went up onto two wheels as they took a sharp corner.
They drove over a large hill and a glimmering square structure appeared in the distance. Sunlight glinted off its black mirrored exterior and hurt Colton’s eyes. He squinted and turned to Shelly.
“What’s that?” he shouted.
“Home base! Hang on!”
“Hang on more?!”
As they rapidly approached the building, Colton saw that it was constructed in the shape of a giant black cube. Its outside walls were covered with hundreds of tinted black windows, from the ground floor to the roof.
The Jeep shot between two large, clay-colored boulders and bounced over a small rise in the sand.
Shelly reached forward and pressed a small button built into the dashboard. The ground instantly fell away beneath them, dropping down sharply to become a descending ramp. The Jeep shot underground, instantly passing from sunlight to darkness.
Colton yelled and Shelly squealed with laughter as she flicked on the headlights to illuminate a long, concrete tunnel leading straight toward the base of the black building.
“You should have seen your face!” she shouted. Her voice echoed in the narrow tunnel.
There was an opening ahead. A second later, the Jeep popped out of the tunnel and into a massive underground parking structure. Bright floodlights a hundred feet above illuminated the vast space. There were only a few other vehicles in the entire parking lot, most of them retrofitted with raised chassis and big tires to handle the rough terrain surrounding the building.
Cavernous tunnels lined the walls of the parking structure, cutting straight, concrete-lined tubes of empty space in all directions.
“Where do those go?” shouted Colton.
“Everywhere!”
Shelly screeched the Jeep to a stop across two parking spaces and cut the engine. She pulled her goggles down over her neck to reveal two white circles around her green eyes. The rest of her skin was covered with a fine layer of light brown dust.
“Welp,” she said, “we’re here.”
19
Haven awoke when bright sunlight crept over the bottom edge of her bedroom window and spilled onto her bed. She pulled off the sheets and saw that she was already fully dressed, but could not remember the reason. She walked out into the hallway and looked into Noah’s room, but he wasn’t there. His sheets were on the floor in a pile and his favorite toy car lay broken in pieces on the ground. She heard a noise like crinkling paper coming from the family room and walked to the stairwell that led to the first floor.
Blinding sunlight shot directly into the house through every window she passed, which should have been impossible since the windows were on all four sides of the home and there was no way the sun could be everywhere.
Haven realized she was dreaming.
She walked down the stairs to the family room and saw her parents huddled together on the couch. The crinkling noise Haven heard was fire burning all around the room. Flames crawled up to the ceiling and burned down toward the floor.
Her parents cried and screamed, and somehow Haven knew that Noah was gone. Someone had taken him far away. They were hurting him. For a brief moment, she saw him in a small, dark room. His shirt was covered in blood and he was crying—just like his parents. Long arms reached out of the shadows at the back of the room and pulled him away.
Haven was suddenly back in her home, watching helplessly as flames covered every surface. She walked forward and reached out for her mother and father, but fire burst from the ground near the couch and consumed their bodies. The couch sank into the floor and vanished into a black hole.
She turned to run away, but a dozen burning crossbeams inside the roof collapsed around her. Haven put up her arms to protect her head. She could not feel any pain, only the heavy pressure as one of the crossbeams hit her on the neck and pushed her to the ground.
Her vision filled with fire as she struggled to get out from under the burning piece of wood. She put both hands flat on the ground and was about to push up as hard as she could when the crossbeam was lifted away. Two strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet.
Haven tried to see who it was, but the shape of the person standing next to her in the fire was a shadow. It grabbed her hand and pulled her through the collapsing house. The shadow jumped over mountains of embers and lifted her effortlessly off the ground with every leap.
The front door was right in front of them. Flames crawled over its surface. The black spots in the fire were eyes that watched her as she ran. The shadow that led her through the house picked her up and tossed her toward the door. She screamed as it rushed to meet her face.
Bright light exploded around her as she crashed through the door, splintering it into a thousand pieces. The splinters spun gently away as time slowed. Haven hung in the air, suspended. She thought her eyes were open, but all she could see was piercing white light.
“Can you hear me?” said a distant voice.
Haven floated in a vast white nothingness; an infinite space of uniform light. The voice echoed throughout the empty space.
“Is she breathing?” said another voice, a lot closer than the first.
“Ah, there she is. Good girl, open your eyes now.”
Haven’s eyelids slowly opened. She blinked against the blinding white light that burrowed painfully into her skull.
She was lying on a table in the middle of a room filled with huge, metal tanks. Thick pipes ran between the containers and into the floor. Four people loomed above her, silhouetted by the light in the ceiling.
She recognized Marius and Corva, her alleged rescuers from the medical facility where she had been held captive. An old woman stood near Haven’s head, looking down into her eyes. A boy who wore thick glasses stood back from the table nervously.
The old woman turned to him. “We can’t do it here. Go and fetch Dormer. Tell him to meet us at the Grove.”
The boy nodded eagerly and ran off.
Haven’s eyelids fluttered and closed.
“The drugs will kill her,” said the old woman. “Quickly. Take her before it’s too late.”
Haven was lifted off the table. She managed to open her eyes enough to see that she was being carried on a stretcher that was simply a half-inch thick plastic rectangle with holes cut along the sides for handles.
Marius held one side and Corva the other. They walked out of the room full of tanks and into a larger room with a dome-shaped ceiling. At the apex of the dome was a massive metal fan that spun slowly in its circular setting. Sunlight blinked between the blades as they turned. The light was caught and reflected by mirrors all around the top of the dome, which bounced the light down onto other mirrors that lined the curved walls.
Haven was carried past shelves full of machine parts; she saw things that looked like pieces of a car engine mi
xed in with countless other objects she didn’t recognize. Thin lamps were bolted to sturdy metal tables, illuminating architectural blueprints and a myriad of electronic equipment.
She tried to ask where they had brought her, but she couldn’t open her mouth to get out the words. Her lips parted slightly and she moaned.
“Almost there,” said Corva.
The stretcher rocked up and down as she and Marius pushed open two swinging doors and carried Haven into a bright room. She didn’t notice how stale the air had been in the last room until passing through the doors. She smelled trees and fresh dirt. It might have been her imagination, but Haven was sure she heard a bird singing from somewhere high above. For an instant she was in the meadow of her mind—the place she went to find peace when the world around her didn’t make sense.
She had forgotten about the meadow after the fire.
Haven lifted her head to try and look around but she immediately became dizzy and closed her eyes again. Her head bounced against the stretcher as Marius and Corva set her on the ground.
Haven opened her eyes. She was lying next to a tall tree. The sky above was white, but brighter in some places than in others. She realized it wasn’t the sky at all, but rather a series of intense lights hanging from the ceiling.
One of her hands slipped off the edge of the stretcher and fell onto soft grass. A dead leaf brushed against her pinky finger; she pressed down on its surface and heard the sharp crackle as it broke into smaller flakes. Small blue lights floated through the air, pulsing and swirling like tiny fairies. Occasionally one of them would land on a tree branch and flicker quickly before once again floating into the air.
The old woman appeared above Haven and looked down. She shook her head worriedly.
“Poor girl. Poor, poor girl,” she said. She looked up quickly as a man ran over to the stretcher. “Ah, Dormer. Good.”
The man called Dormer was tall and thin. He reminded Haven of her science teacher at school, on whom she had always had a little bit of a crush. Dormer’s movements were quick, almost bird-like. He sniffed once and looked down at Haven.
