Ravan grabbed the support above, let her fingers close around it.
She didn’t fry on the spot; nothing happened other than she could feel the vibration from the current running through it.
Emboldened, she grabbed another rung, swung over, careful not to let her dangling feet touch anything. She did it again, climbing, pulling herself through the maze of electricity as the world raced by. She tried not to think about the spinning—it was disorienting, which was clearly the point.
The crowd wailed suddenly.
Ravan looked and saw Masyn, the chain and its hook attached to one of the spinning arms, flinging herself through the air, using the momentum to shoot straight up and through the spinning arms.
The crowd cheered louder. They liked it, and Ravan didn’t blame them. That was definitely not how that item was meant to be used.
Castor reached the apex of the Turret in his harness, and shuddered to a stop where his receptacle and the green flashing light lay. He didn’t waste time, started unbuckling. The strategy had been to get him to the top as quickly as possible, because once the second phase of the Eel started, the entire top part of the Turret became electrified, making it impossible even for a White Helix to reach it after that. It was important Castor be the first to get rid of his item, and it looked like he would.
Nearby, Holt kept climbing, slipping the claws into the slits, one hand at a time. He stuck the right claws into their grooves, shifted his weight …
… and the entire panel came loose and he fell. The crowd whooped loudly.
Holt barely caught himself with his left hand, dangling, trying to find a new panel for his right. Eventually he did, cementing himself in place, holding on.
He stared up at Ravan warily. She shot him back a pointed look.
His path up had fake panels in it, and you had to test them carefully. Hopefully, Holt had learned his lesson.
Ravan grabbed a nonelectrified support, then pressed herself up, wrapped her legs around it, and held on, catching her breath. All around her the electrified poles sparked and fizzled, and her receptacle was still a good twenty feet above, through a tight maze of more supports.
The usual blare of sound filled the arena. A corner of the giant screen shifted to green. Castor had deposited his item. The screen showed 6, they were making good time.
But once the countdown hit 5, the configuration entered its second stage. Which meant …
“Castor!” Holt yelled up at the Helix, who, like Ravan, had found a perch to catch his breath. “Get off!”
Holt was right, he had to get out fast. Even climbing down, he wouldn’t have enough time to get out of the zone that was about to be hot, and he didn’t have the harness anymore.
“Jump!” It was Masyn’s voice, farther up, using the chain and hook to swing through the Turret.
Castor stared down at Masyn, but not with a worried look, rather a mischievous one. He waited another second, watching her swing, timing it … then he dropped into the air and fell like a rock.
There was a gasp from the crowd.
Masyn slammed into him, using the chain to swing her like a pendulum. Castor grabbed on and they soared over to a lower rung like trapeze artists.
The crowd went crazy, and it wasn’t with menace or disappointment. Odd as it was, it seemed like the Menagerie were actually cheering them now.
Ravan didn’t have time to contemplate it. The bar she was wrapped around suddenly began to vibrate. She felt her hair stand up.
The support, and all kinds of other things on the Turret, were about to get hot.
Ravan used the adrenaline to swing herself onto the support, and with her legs, kicked up and off into the air. She grabbed another rung above her, just as the one below electrified.
The Eel’s electricity was no longer static. All around her, she watched it move in patterns, switching from one piece of the Turret to the next, up and down its length. It was now much more dangerous.
Ravan grabbed another bar, pulled herself up. Another, climbing toward the red light. She was almost there. She grabbed another rung … and her leg, just barely, flicked across the top of an electrified support beam.
The pain was intense. Every muscle in her body cramped hard and then she was falling. She got control back in time to grab another bar with a gloved hand, and the impact almost ripped her shoulder out of its socket. She groaned, but held on.
“Rae!” Holt shouted from above.
It took everything she had to just keep her grip on the bar. She could hear the crowd cheer, eager for blood, to see her tumble to the ground, and the sound filled her with more rage. She would not give them the satisfaction.
The screen showed 4 now. They were running out of time.
Ravan gritted her teeth and started climbing, pulling herself up and through the deadly maze. She couldn’t say how she managed it—maybe it was the crowd, or the memory of Holt and her in the cell, or the thought of strangling Tiberius with her bare hands—but she pulled herself through that maze, one bar at a time, keeping away from the supports as the electricity danced along their spines, until she finally reached her receptacle.
It was a faded red box, and there was a single rung that wasn’t hot for her to sit on. She pulled herself up onto it, unstrapped the gloves, and shoved them into the box.
Another blast of sound. A corner turned red on the screen. The wail of the crowd overpowered everything again.
She’d done it, but now she was trapped, surrounded by electrified supports, her only option was to hold on while the Turret spun and hope Masyn and Holt could do their jobs.
One was having better luck than the other. After depositing Castor in a clear zone, Masyn swung back down and through the supports, then flipped upward, grabbed a rung, twirled around it and shot up again, dragging the chain and the grappling hook behind her.
It was a sight to see, especially when contrasted with Holt’s decidedly slower progress.
He was below, the only good thing about his receptacle was that it was the lowest of the four, and she watched him gingerly test one panel, stick in the claw, shift his weight, and pull himself up while avoiding the electricity. It was a painstaking process, and to make it worse, the giant screen now showed 2.
“Maybe we should have given yours to Masyn too!” Ravan yelled at him.
Holt didn’t retort, he was probably too tired. The receptacle was just above him, almost in reach …
Another blaring tone of sound, and a third corner of the screen rotated to orange. Above, Masyn had unlocked her keyhole, she was done.
But if Holt didn’t get those claws to the yellow light, it was all over.
As Ravan watched, Holt froze, his eyes widening. Ravan could guess what was happening. One of the panels his claws were in had started to vibrate, it was powering up. Desperately he tried to remove his right hand, but the claw stuck in place. He tried harder, bracing his feet against the panel itself, pulled.
The whole thing snapped apart, though it didn’t break completely loose. It hung in place by the bottom rungs, but the impact was enough to jar Holt’s hand loose from the claw, still stuck inside the panel, right as it electrified. Sparks flew as the current arced through it.
Holt jerked, lost his grip on the left panel … and fell.
“Holt!” Ravan screamed, watching him plummet. He managed to jam the claw into the slits of a panel, jerking himself to a stop about twenty feet below. His feet dangled wildly as he tried for purchase, supports and panels electrified all around him.
The screen shifted to 1.
Ravan’s gaze moved from Holt to the missing claw, stuck near the receptacle. There was no way he could get there now, even with both claws he couldn’t climb it that fast. It meant they weren’t going to be able to disarm the configuration, which meant they could no longer beat the Nonagon.
The smart thing to do would have been for everyone to just hold on where they were, and survive the round, but Ravan could see the desperation in Holt’
s eyes, could see what this meant to him. It wasn’t just that he would fail, but that he would fail people he’d made promises to. It meant he would never make it to that little girl in San Francisco. Everything he’d struggled for and been through would be for nothing.
It was a fear she knew well. Maybe that was why she made the decision she did. Or because, like she’d told him not that long ago, he was the only person she had ever sacrificed for. What was one more time?
Ravan let go of the railing and fell through the air. She slammed into a support, and it spun her. Another hit sent her reeling the other way. She felt a rib snap, felt the pain, heard the crowd gasp.
She could just make out the big metal box and the flashing yellow light. She slammed into the paneling, slid, grabbed hold of the box with her hands, and barely held on.
The claw was just below her, still stuck where Holt had left it. She kicked it once. Twice. Knocked it loose, reached down, and grabbed it, barely holding on.
The crowd erupted, watching her, and once more it seemed like they were actually cheering for her. She liked it, wondered right then how Tiberius felt.
She shoved the claw into the box. The panels and supports around her arced as electricity flashed through them.
“Ravan!” Holt yelled up at her. There was desperation in his voice, but not for himself. It was for her. “What are you doing?”
“Throw me your claw!” she yelled back down at him.
“Rae—”
“There’s no time, Holt! Throw it!”
Holt hesitated a moment more, then clung onto a support, unhooked the claw from his left wrist, and tossed it up to her. She yanked it from the air … right as her fingers slipped. She fell.
Ravan barely grabbed onto what was left of the panel Holt had pulled loose. It wasn’t electrified right now, and it groaned under her weight, bending, tearing free …
“Ravan!” Holt’s anguished voice yelled below.
“I know you meant what you said,” she yelled down to him, oddly calm. “But this isn’t where you’re supposed to be.”
With the last of her strength, Ravan shoved the second claw into the box … and then the panel burst loose from the supports and she was falling and the world spun and the ground rushed up at her, and strangely, surreally, she smiled, feeling a sense of triumph, not for having beaten the Eel, but for having embraced a part of herself she had always dismissed as weak and fallible. She knew who she was. Finally.
And then the ground was there.
34. THE OTHER SIDE
THE TURRET STOPPED its spinning as the final blaring tone of sound filled the Nonagon, but Holt didn’t notice. He wasn’t even sure how he got to the ground, didn’t remember climbing or jumping, just remembered the need to find her.
The crowd had gone silent. It was eerie, he’d never heard the place not filled with clamoring and furor, especially when someone died, but this wasn’t just another Wind Trader prisoner, this was—
She is not dead, he scorned himself. She can’t be.
He hit the ground running, eyes scanning, trying to find any sign of—
He saw her. Ten feet away.
The shape of her, bent like that, unmoving.
The world was a slow-motion haze now, nothing felt real. Holt’s legs moved without his involvement, propelling him forward, sliding him down next to her.
She lay there, still. There was no real blood that he could see. Her body didn’t move or shake, it looked like a stone. Only her eyes moved, back and forth, finding his.
“Listen to that,” she said, her voice a fractured whisper. “Finally … shut them up.”
“Ravan…”
“It … doesn’t hurt, Holt. Want you to know … doesn’t hurt.”
Holt couldn’t feel any one part of himself, could barely focus, could barely think. “That’s because you’re going to be okay,” he said, his voice just as ragged as hers. He didn’t even recognize it.
“You’re an optimistic idiot. You … always were.”
Holt felt the sting of forming tears, the burning. “You have to hold on, Ravan.”
“Could have used that advice earlier.” She smiled weakly, and it filled him with a desperate anger.
“You hold on!” Holt shouted, and the ferocity shocked him. His hands shook, he felt detached from his body. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t. Ravan was indestructible, she was … This was wrong.
Her eyes peered into his, she didn’t like what she saw. “You’ve lost so many people, haven’t you?”
Holt couldn’t answer. He put his hands on her chest, felt her weak heartbeat.
“You don’t have to go back to who you were, Holt.” Her voice was fading, getting harder to hear, and it terrified him. “It’s a choice.”
“What’s the alternative?” His voice was bitter.
“Inspire them,” she said, barely audible. “Make them believe. It’s … what you were meant to do. You just … never … believed it.”
Her fingers lifted off the ground, just inches, it was all she could manage. They crawled to his hand, found the tattoo there. Holt was ashamed of it now. He hated it. Not because it was there, but because it was unfinished. It deserved to be finished.
“Tell me…” Ravan breathed.
“Tell you what?” He took her hand in his.
“Was there … a time … long ago…” Each word took effort, her gaze was becoming glassy. “When you … loved me…?”
Holt’s eyes shut tight. He felt himself collapse next to her. He almost lost it there, almost just lay down next to her and followed her to wherever she was going. Let the next round start, let it wipe him away. But he didn’t. He made himself speak, if only so that she would hear the truth.
“Look at me,” he told her, gently. “Ravan, look at me.”
Her eyes refocused a little, found his.
“Yes,” he told her. “I still do.”
Her smile, from before, returned, but weaker now. She sighed, seemed to relax, as if the words filled her with some kind of peace that melted away the pain.
“See you … on the other side…” she whispered. Her eyes focused on his one last time. And then she was gone.
As he watched her form sink into the hard metal of the Nonagon floor, Holt felt a stirring of emotion more powerful than anything he’d ever felt. His fists clenched, his head throbbed, his eyes stung. He wanted to scream, but nothing would come. All he could do was look at her, lying there, someone more full of life than anyone he had ever known … and she was absolutely still.
Every memory Holt had ever made with Ravan flashed through his mind—good, bad, painful, tender—merging into one massive stream that flooded his consciousness. That last question had been damning, he still felt the pain of it. Did you love me? She deserved so much more. She deserved not to have had to wonder, she deserved to have known, and it was his fault she never did. Now she was gone, lost to him forever. The shame and the grief he felt grew and morphed, became hot, became a focused rage.
He stared a second more … then pushed to his feet and started moving toward the Dais. He had a dim impression of Castor and Masyn nearby, watching him silently, stunned, unsure, but he didn’t say anything.
Behind and above, the screen began to whir again, and Holt heard it lock into place, showing the next configuration, but he didn’t even look. Whatever the symbol was, the crowd didn’t seem interested. It was still virtually silent, but Holt wouldn’t have heard them even if they weren’t. He just kept moving toward the Dais, each step filled with new purpose. The pain of his injuries was a memory now.
“What are we doing?” It was Castor. His voice had lost all its eagerness. He sounded stunned.
“Finishing it,” Holt said back in a firm voice. “That’s what we’re doing.”
“The … three of us?” Masyn asked back. Her voice was dulled as well. “Isn’t that impossible?”
“Two minutes,” the booming, staticky voice announced. The crowd still had yet to respond
.
Holt reached the Dais, saw it was open, saw the items inside.
A red tire iron.
A strange blue, electronic device, with two handles, a thick, circular piece of grayish metal, and wires running everywhere. It was a handheld electromagnet.
A series of yellow straps, clearly meant to go around a person’s forearm, with a big, actuated, metallic clip at the end.
And a strange, green collection of pieces and parts—rubber, wood, metal—all welded and formed together into a rounded shape. There was a strap for someone to slip their arm through like a shield.
Holt knew the items, had no need to look to see the image of the bird of prey on the screen, streaking down, claws extended, beak parted.
“Harrier,” Holt said, grabbing the shield and slipping his arm through the strap, tightening it in place. “There’s not much to say. See the arms the crew is raising?”
If the two Helix had looked they would have seen shafts of metal lifting from openings in the metallic floor around the Turret, each probably thirty feet tall, the entire length of which were sharpened to a razor’s edge. More arms, on the Turret itself, were being unstrapped too.
But they didn’t look. Masyn and Castor just kept staring at Holt, shocked and unsure.
“Some strike downward, some are going to come at you from the sides,” Holt kept going, his voice a monotone. He felt the same energy from before building, the rage, the focus. “They’re bladed. Castor, take the electromagnet, Masyn, take the clip. Two of the keyholes are on the arms, those items help you get on top and hold on. I’ll take care of the ones on the ground. Just be ready.”
“Holt,” Castor said intently. “This is crazy. We can’t do this with three people.”
Holt grabbed the tire iron and spun to face them. His eyes must have been wild, because the two Helix each took a step back.
“We are going to do this,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was full of energy and anger, and it shook dangerously. He pointed back toward Ravan, to where she lay, cold and still. “Every promise I ever made to her I broke. Well, not this time. I promised her we would beat this thing. I promised her we would get to the other side. So be ready.”
Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) Page 32
