Revelations (The Elysium Chronicles)

by Souders, J. A.

  I don’t want to be alone either, but … “What about Gavin?”

  He frowns. “What about him?”

  I make a disgusted sound in my throat. “What if he comes while we’re inside? How will he know where we are?”

  He rolls his head on his shoulders and rubs his eyes. “Evie…”

  I know what he’s going to say, but I don’t care. I cross my arms over my chest. “Look, I don’t care what you think. He got away from the birds. All right? He got away and you’re not going to convince me any different. Now how is he going to know we’re inside?” Even I can hear the desperation in my voice, but I ignore it.

  His eyebrows have winged up under his hair and he just stares at me. Finally, he sighs. “Starshine. She’ll wait here until we get back.”

  “Wait.” I glance over at her and see her staring at us with sad eyes. “We just can’t leave her out here.”

  He mutters something under his breath, but says aloud, “We won’t. We’re just going to check this place out and make sure it’s safe. We’ll come back out for her in a few minutes. I’m sure no one’s around here to care whether we bring her in the building to stay warm. And by that time,” he continues when I open my mouth, “I’ll have figured out a way to mark that we’re here.”

  Uncomfortable with leaving her out here and still doubtful Gavin will find us, I don’t immediately follow when Asher disappears through the open door.

  Only when he pokes his head back out and asks “Coming?” do I make up my mind and follow him in. It’s only for a few minutes. We’ll be right back out.

  Inside, our flashlight reveals glimpses of the place. It’s a strange mishmash of a house and some type of military outpost. As if someone lived here until the very moment the army took over. I wonder if that happened before or after the bomb drop. If it was before, that would explain a lot—the calcified statue people, and how they were just left. They were probably used as a deterrent to keep people away from this area. The statues certainly gave the abandoned city a creepy feeling and if I could have avoided it, I would have.

  I follow Asher as he wanders around the tiny building until we locate a steel door set into the wall of a long hallway.

  He hands me the flashlight and forces the door open. Surprisingly it opens without so much as a squeak or squeal. I hand him back the flashlight, then follow closely behind him as he walks through the door.

  It’s nothing but a pitch-black corridor. No light reaches in here, and my nerve endings go into overdrive. I try to focus on the area illuminated by the flashlight, but a memory is tugging at my mind.

  Without warning, the lights flicker and go out throughout the complex. The red emergency lights stay lit, but ahead the hallway is dark. I reach into my pack and pull out my flashlight pin.

  When I click it on, the light cuts through the darkness. It’s actually brighter than the lights that would have lit the hallway, but it isn’t big enough to dispel all of the gloom.

  We keep our guard up, sticking close together. Our arms brush together, and at first I have to fight the urge to jerk my arm away. I bite my tongue, hoping the pain will be enough to distract me from my homicidal thoughts, but it isn’t until he squeezes my hand—a simple gesture of his promise to protect me—that I’m able to push the thoughts to the side.

  I can’t fight this much longer. I hope we reach the submersibles soon.

  After a few minutes, he releases my hand and I have to resist the urge to grab out for him again. It’s the only thing grounding me from going crazy, but we can’t take the chance of holding hands. We don’t know what’s ahead.

  Suddenly my foot slides in something wet and I almost fall to the ground. I throw my hands out to the side to catch myself with the walls.

  When I lift my foot, my shoe makes a sucking sound. I tap Gavin on the shoulder, then point to the floor. “There’s something here,” I say.

  He nods and stands watch over me, while I kneel to shine the small light onto the floor, careful not to let my knee dip into whatever the sticky mess is. It’s a puddle of something dark red, almost purple. I tilt my head, then stick my finger in it and bring it nearer to me to study. It’s slightly tacky, like wet glue or drying paint.

  Bringing it to my nose, I sniff at it. It has a metallic scent, like rust. Then it hits me. I know exactly what this is. It bothers me that it took me that long to figure it out.

  When I turn to show Gavin, he’s already staring at the puddle with a look of horror on his face. “Blood?” he asks.

  “Oh, Mother,” I whisper, staring at my hands. They’re covered in blood. “No. No. It’s not real. Not again.”

  “Evie?” Asher asks, turning toward me. When he does, he illuminates the walls, revealing a patchwork of gory handprints.

  I shake my head. “No. No.”

  I stare, unable to blink while a rivulet of blood escapes and trickles down from the tip of one print’s thumb. They’re fresh. Whoever made these isn’t far away.

  A sound comes from behind me and I spin around, finding more prints. Some of these are near the floor and aimed upward, as if someone had crawled up from the ground. I press my hands to my eyes. This can’t be real. Not again. My hands are wet—tacky—and I remember the blood on them. I yank them away with a whimper.

  “Evie?” Someone touches my arm. It must be Asher, but the voice warps like a record slowing down. “What’s wrong?”

  It isn’t Asher. It’s Gavin, and he’s smiling at me. His chin is already red, and more blood oozes from the space between his teeth. It’s not a smile. Not at all.

  “Gavin!” I can only whisper because fear has robbed me of my voice. I can’t breathe. My chest feels like a horse is sitting on it.

  His jaw drops, almost as if he means to speak, but instead blood spills out to patter wetly into the congealing puddles at my feet. He raises one hand to me, stretching his fingers like he can’t decide if he wants to caress my cheek or grab my face. The action splits white cracks into the blood coating his palm. I want to run, but all I can do is lean away from him, my muscles tight and protesting.

  “You must be starving,” he says with that same strange smile. When he lifts his other hand into view, he’s holding a severed arm.

  Finally, my body frees me from its paralysis. I spin around and try to race away, but I find myself looking into the face of a girl about my age. Her blond hair is stained pink and red, matted to her head. There’s something gray clinging to her temple that for some reason I’m certain came from inside her head. Her scalp is split open there, showing a glint of bone, but she doesn’t seem to care. She stares at me, unaware of the trickle of blood running into her right eye. I have the strange thought that her eyes are a lovely sapphire color, but it’s obscured by the hate in them as they bore into mine.

  Macie! my mind whispers. And for a second, I’m overjoyed, but— “You’re dead,” I say.

  “You left me,” she says. “You left me to die. You didn’t even try to help me. You’re selfish, Evie. How could you?”

  “I tried. I wanted to. But … you—you were already gone,” I say, fighting the urge to cough. I can’t seem to catch my breath and every time I inhale I hear a high-pitched wheezing sound. “I—I avenged you.”

  “You took my life, then you took my love.” Her eyes roll back up into her head so only the white shows, yet she still walks toward me. “I trusted you. I helped you. And you left me to die, then killed the only man I ever really cared about. You’re a murderer, Evelyn. A cold-blooded murderer.”

  “No, no,” I whisper and back up, right into someone. I whirl and see Gavin again.

  Up close, I see deep gouges in his cheeks and forehead. The birds. Blood runs freely from his injuries, making his face a mask of blood.

  “You left me, too. You said you loved me, but it was a lie. You’ve done nothing but want to go back home since you got here. Then you ran away with Asher when I needed you the most.”

  “No, no! That’s not true. I—I wanted t
o help you, Gavin, but I couldn’t get down. It’s Asher’s fault! He wouldn’t let me down. I tried! Really I did.”

  “Liar,” he and Macie yell, both of them stepping forward and trying to pin me between them. “You didn’t care. You never cared.”

  Shaking my head, I try to slip out from between them. Their voices grow louder and louder, until it’s just one horrifying scream. I slap my hands to my ears and run as fast as I can away from them. The walls are just a blur of black and red.

  I run as fast and as far as I can, but they’re chasing me, the sound of their footsteps echoing behind me.

  “Evie!” they call after me. “Wait!”

  But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. No matter what, I can’t stop.

  I can’t breathe. My lungs are on fire and my legs are shaking from exhaustion. I don’t know how much longer I can run. I don’t even know where I’m going.

  “Evie! Stop! Please!” a familiar voice calls after me.

  White lights bob ahead of me. The ghosts of the people I killed. I’m a murderer. A killer. I turn down a corridor, and for a minute they’re gone, but that relief is short-lived. They spring back up in front of me. Taunting me.

  “There’s a poor wee little lamby…”

  They want me to follow them to my own grave.

  “The bees and the butterflies pickin’ at its eyes…”

  Screaming, I take another turn, desperate to get away, but the voices echo off the rusting walls. “The poor wee thing cried for her mammy.”

  “No!” Without warning, my legs give out on me and I crash onto the ground. The skin on the palms of my hands and knees tear, causing tears to prick at my eyes. The floor is wet, sticky, and the stink of iron clogs my nose. My lungs heave, pulling the metallic smell—fresh and old mingled—deep into my body. I can smell it, taste it, feel it inside me like a sickness.

  I try to push myself up, but I can’t. My legs and arms are shaking too much. So I just lie there, coughing and wheezing, tears pouring from my eyes.

  A hand touches my back and I jerk up, trying to force it away. Again, it’s no use—I don’t even budge it. “Evie. It’s okay. I’m here,” the voice says. “It’s not real. Whatever it is you’re seeing, it isn’t real, but I am. And I’m going to help you. I just need you to trust me.”

  The voice is familiar, so I turn slowly to see who it is. The person is kneeling over me, the light in his hand facing down into the pool of water I’m lying in and reflecting up enough that I can see his face clearly.

  “Asher?” I ask, feeling a huge amount of relief. There’s no blood on him. His eyes are clear, if a little worried, but he’s normal. Normal! And I can’t hear the voices anymore.

  He nods. “I’m right here. Don’t worry.”

  Forcing myself to muster all the energy I have, I throw myself at him, burying my face into his shoulder. He falls back onto his butt, but holds me to him, his arms tight around my back. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Nothing is going to hurt you,” he repeats over and over again, patting my back as if I were a fussy baby.

  I can only sob and gasp into his shirt as the terror fades away and I remember where I am.

  After a long while, I pull away and wipe my face on my sleeve, embarrassed by my behavior. Tears are a weakness.

  He watches me for a moment, then says, “Are you okay?”

  I nod and refuse to look at him. “Yes. I am. Now. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I saw … Gavin and a girl—Macie, I think…” I trail off when I realize he will have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t even really know what I’m talking about; how can I expect him to?

  “It’s okay. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you in here.”

  We sit quietly for a few minutes before he stands. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so.” Despite the fact that my legs still shake and burn as if they’re on fire, I push myself up. No more tears. No more weakness, I promise myself.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll figure a way out of here.”

  We try to retrace our steps, but I don’t remember how I got to where I was, and Asher was too busy trying to keep up with me to pay attention. So we find ourselves exhausted, in pain, and thoroughly lost.

  We eventually find a large supply room and Asher shines his light around it. One of the walls is stacked to the ceiling with boxes, but is otherwise empty. He shuts the door and shoves some of the bigger boxes in front of it, preventing anyone from entering without our knowledge.

  “We should try to get some sleep,” he says, and I nod. I’m absolutely exhausted. My head is foggy with it.

  He goes through a couple of the easily reachable boxes, and dumps their contents onto the floor. It’s nothing useful, of course. I don’t even know what any of it is. However, he takes the now empty box and starts tearing it apart.

  When he’s finished doing whatever it is he’s doing to it, he lays it down on the dusty floor, and gestures for me to lie on it. Exhausted, I curl up in the middle of it, surprised by how comfortable it actually is. It isn’t exactly a feather bed, but it’s a hundred times better than the cold, hard floor. However, even though it’s not as cold in here as it was outside, I continue to shiver—huge shudders that wrack my body. It’s in that moment that I really, really miss Gavin. My throat is thick with unshed tears.

  He’s never going to find us. When he finds the city, he’s not going to find us and he’ll think we left him and it’s my fault again. A tiny voice in my head whispers that it doesn’t matter because he’s dead anyway, and that is my fault, too.

  I curl tighter into a ball. No. He’s not dead. I refuse to believe it.

  Asher shuffles closer, looks down at me for a moment, then seems to make up his mind about something and crawls next to me, lying on his back and obviously taking care not to touch me. Instantly, I feel warmer with his body heat licking at my skin and I crave more of it. And even though a voice yells at me in my head not to, that skin-to-skin contact is punishable by death, I roll over and curl into his side, resting my head on his chest. He tenses immediately, but doesn’t push me away. After some hesitation, his arms come around me, holding me to him.

  Soon, our combined body heat makes sleeping bearable and I fall asleep, soothed by the sound of his heartbeat.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Due to possible biohazard or nanobot contamination, all personnel must exit through the decontamination stations and submit to a full body scan.

  —SIGN BOLTED TO WALL IN UNDERGROUND FACILITY

  Evie

  I wake when Asher gets up. Although it’s still as dark as before, my eyes are already adjusted and I can see fairly clearly now. It’s obvious he’s trying to be as quiet as possible, and if I hadn’t noticed the drop in temperature between us, I probably wouldn’t have awakened.

  “Where are you going?” I sit up and rub at my scratchy eyes.

  He starts, then turns around. “Sorry to wake you, Princess. I was going to try and find a way out of here.”

  “Without me?” That stings. That he’d just leave me all alone here. Especially after what I went through last night. I draw my knees up to my chest and hug them to me.

  “Only temporarily. As soon as I found the exit, I would have come back for you.”

  I can’t help but glare at him. “And if you ended up more lost? Then what?”

  From the way his face twists up I can tell that wasn’t something he’d considered. He confirms it when he doesn’t say anything. It worries—terrifies—me that he’d leave me like that, but then again, I guess I can’t really blame him either. I suppose after what happened last night, if I’d been in his position, the thought of trying to find the exit alone would have crossed my mind as well.

  I push myself shakily to my feet and sway for a second when my head spins. It’s not long, but obviously long enough to scare Asher as he rushes to me and slips an arm around my waist. I push him away.

  “I’m not helpless. I can walk by myself. I just got up too fast. And I�
��m tired.”

  He removes his arm, but narrows his eyes at me, then turns back to the door. He moves the boxes out of the way, then flicks the flashlight back on. We try retracing the steps we took the night before, but it’s hard. All of the corridors look the same, especially in the dark, and with all its corners and twists and turns it feels like a gigantic maze. I almost expect to wind up face to face with a sphinx, with a riddle to figure out.

  We take our time, trying to remember each hallway we go through and create a map inside our heads. Asher keeps mumbling “Left, right, left, left” under his breath every time we turn a corridor or go down a set of stairs, and I’m tempted to be perverse and ask him which way to go. Left? Or right? Just to see him get flustered when he forgets the pattern. But I don’t because I’ve lost track of the pattern myself and if he remembers it, it may be the only way we get out.

  There’s still a chill in the air, and it causes goose pimples to rise on my skin. The scent of mildew and something worse—something that I can’t place—is thick and causes my already sore lungs to fight each and every breath. The light from Asher’s flashlight is dim, and only reveals meters and meters of gray walls. The lack of color makes me feel like my eyes aren’t focusing, and I find myself blinking too often. Sound travels strangely as we walk, sometimes echoing, sometimes seeming to swallow even the soft sounds of Asher’s mumbles, my wheezing, and our shoes scraping against the debris on the floor. It has me on edge, but I don’t say anything to Asher, just stay close to him. The only other sound is the occasional plop of water as it drips onto the floor, startling me every time.

  In the back of my mind, I hear the echoes of memories trying to force their way up to the front, but I shove them back every time.

  I won’t have another attack. Not if I can help it.

  As we walk, curiosity causes us to push open some of the doors. We use the flashlight to illuminate as much of the rooms as it can, which isn’t much. Each one shows us something new. Some look like some sort of lab. Others are obviously sleeping quarters. And others are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Even Asher has no clue what they could be. One of these rooms has odd machines set in a half circle around a strange bed. The machines look to be made of plastic and are really tall. At least as tall as Asher. All sorts of tubes and wires are hanging off each one and there’s an accordioned attachment on the side of the machine. Silver metal boxes rest on top with the words “Halothane,” “Isoflurane,” and “Desflurane” on the side of them.