by Brindi Quinn
I was wrong.
I was asleep before the flame could flicker twice.
Chapter 12: The Sunken Plant
I woke to the nudging of my bright-eyed partner. Theo stood over me, whispering that the dawn was wasting. For at least two minutes, I wanted to kill him. My body ached from sleeping in one position through the night, and no matter how much I told it to move, it responded with defiance. At some point, Jozy had taken over for Peck as watchman, and now the great man was snoring loudly with his arm tossed over his face. Alaranda, a rather light sleeper, from what I could tell, tossed and turned in her own mess of blankets, as Peck’s humming filled the air.
Theo shared one of his nutrient packs with me and then offered me another pill to chase it down – an offer I not-so-politely declined. I couldn’t wait to have my own store of food. Depending on Theo for sustenance was proving trite.
“Ready, Zill?” came Theo’s voice, hushed.
Because the two I most wanted to speak with were now asleep, I had no choice but to swallow my questions, gather my things and follow him out of the waterwheel.
“Be careful, you dummy,” Jozy whispered as she gave the grungy boy a hug of departing. To me, she offered only a flighty wave. And with that, we were off – off to complete a quest with parameters that had, to me, only been vaguely covered. As we stepped out into the murky light of day, I clutched my backpack strap tighter. Overnight, the whole of the wildlands had become covered in a dense fog, and now it was hard to see much farther than a few feet in any given direction. The world was swallowed by cloud.
“How keen is your sense of direction?” I asked Theo as I pulled out my own compass.
He pushed past me. “I’ll get us there. Stay close.”
Through the fog we swam, tetramark after tetramark, until finally coming again to the ravine where the wreckage of the plant lay. It looked as though the earth there had been sunken in, taking the building down with it. It was all much hazier than it had been the day before. I waved a hand through the air, but though I tried to cut the fog, it lingered heavily.
“It’ll settle before long,” Theo said. Then, he turned to face me. “All righty, Zilldo, there’s no telling what it’s gonna be like down there, but be ready; and if you see something, speak up.”
“See something?” The vagueness of it was too much. “What, exactly, do you need me for?”
“I don’t know yet, but keep your eyeballs peeled. I’m not the best at spotting traps and all that crap, so . . .”
“Traps?”
“Yeeeah, just, you know, do whatever it is you do. Don’t let me fall in a pothole or anything.”
Fall in a pothole? I studied him for signs of humor. No, he was serious. The reason he’d brought me along was simply to make sure he didn’t screw up. Flat-mouthed, I gestured to the slope. “After you.”
Giving one determined nod, Theo hoisted his pack and began to move down the decline. The green of my hand was swallowed by wispy white smog. As I watched it disappear, I came to a realization.
“Theo.”
“Mm?”
“Your tracker didn’t go off yesterday,” I said.
“. . . Nope.”
I couldn’t clearly see his face through the fog, but the tone of his voice wasn’t quite right. Disappointment?
“But they usually go off once a day?” I pressed.
“It depends . . .” His voice trailed. “Hey, is it just me, or is it getting warmer?”
Whether or not an aversion tactic, the heat wasn’t his imagination. The deeper we descended, the warmer the air grew. I placed a hand to the ground. “It’s coming from here,” I noted, before looking up at him sardonically. “Just what IS this place?”
“I told you, a plant,” he said with a shrug. But at my unappreciative silence, he went on, muttering, “Hell if I know.”
Thought so.
As we trekked on, the heat intensified and the fog faded away with the dawn. We shuffled over uneven earth, clinging to the bristly stalks that grew from the warm ground whenever we lost balance. After twenty minutes, I’d done a proper job of keeping Theo from falling into potholes – not that there were any potholes to speak of. There were, however, malicious bits of metal that longed to gouge us as we passed. They scratched at our skin and nipped at our clothing, and would have skewered us through the middle if given the chance. Maneuvering through them was a tiresome task, and one that made the going slow. How wrong I’d been about the nature of living as a marked one. I was fast, maybe even the fastest, and yet ever since meeting Theo, we’d done little more than slug along.
“Don’t worry, Zilluminati,” said Theo, reading the tenseness in the air. “If your tracker goes off, you can use one of my gambits. It’s places like this I’ve been saving them for.”
But my tracker didn’t go off through the morning, and eventually we came safely to the center of the ravine, a place where the majority of the factory rested. Lopsided, the right portion was sunken into the ground and hung over the edge of an even deeper portion of gorge, while the left jutted unevenly into the air. From what I could tell, we’d come to the backside. There were no signs of entryway, at any rate. Up the back, strange metal tubes weaved in and out of the building, large enough for a person to slide through, though many of them were broken and some bent from the building like stiff arms, leaving holes in the wall where they’d once attached. Roughly, the structure was six or seven stories high, and massive enough to cover a wide stretch of ground.
“It’s as large as a hospital,” I observed, though it clearly wasn’t a hospital. Firstly, a giant wheel-like contraption extended out one of the sides. Secondly, a handful of circular stacks were situated on the top, though most of these were crumbled and destroyed. Thirdly, the backside had a noticeable lack of exits and windows. Coupled with the metallic tubes, it was most likely that it had been a plant of some sort.
“What ‘cha thinking?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that while I’d been sizing up the plant, Theo had been watching me.
“What am I supposed to think?” I countered.
Theo squinted at the building with forced interest. “Once we get inside, the retrect will be marked by a red light. The tricky part’s gonna be getting inside. Also, we gotta figure out why everyone else had such a hard time with this mission, and then . . . do the opposite, I guess.” He nodded to himself with a goony look of satisfaction.
He thought he was brilliant for coming up with something so basic?
I exhaled through my nose, but before I could anger too quickly, I was stricken by the former part of his statement.
“A red light?”
Theo nodded.
If that were true, then . . .
Earlier, I’d questioned what we’d do if another prag had already managed to remove the retrect from the premises, but now I doubted that would be the case.
I turned sharply to Theo. “The directors are the ones that put in the bulletin board requests?”
“Yup-yup.”
“They aren’t real requests,” I said flatly.
“Huh?”
“Whatever it is we’re retrieving, they don’t really need it. The missions are there for another reason.” It was obvious. “They’re staged.”
“What to you mean?”
“If a retrect is marked by a red light, obviously someone placed it there, right?”
“Well yeah, but I never really thought about it that much before.”
“And even if a retrect is removed from the site of a failed mission, my guess is it’s returned in time for the mission to be renewed,” I said. “What I mean is, if someone manages to grab the retrect but doesn’t make it back to a waystation within three days, the retrect is probably replaced for the next prag that takes on the mission. That’s why you haven’t had an issue with retrects missing or moved.”
Theo shrugged. “Makes sense, but why does it matter?”
“If they don’t actually need the items we’r
e hunting, then the missions serve a different purpose,” I said.
“To reward SPs?” Theo suggested.
“True, it could be just to maintain the framework of their ‘game.’ Maybe giving us a goal to work towards drags the game out longer and makes it more enjoyable for the unholy ones, but why place the artifacts in intentionally difficult places if there’s no one to see us get them? They could just as easily place things out in the open. It would occupy us just the same.”
Again, Theo shrugged. “To give us a challenge? Who knows what those Western City crazies are thinking.”
“But it’s not just them. It’s our own Director, too,” I said.
Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it, though. Theo was becoming impatient. “Who cares?” he said, antsy. “Look, let’s go over there and see if we can find a door or something.”
Fine, I would allow him to lead the way for now. After all, my purpose here was to help him complete the mission. After that, I’d be free to question him about whatever I wanted.
We made our way down the side of the building and around the corner with the large wheel. On that side, the ground was covered in pieces of torn wreckage, but more remarkable than that, there were clumps of brush, more prosperous than any of the sickly trees we’d passed on the way down.
“I don’t understand what happened here,” I said. “Was the plant swallowed by a sink hole?”
“Could be,” said Theo.
“Then why does it look as though it blew from within?”
“Maybe a combo of the two,” said Theo.
“And why is the ground so warm?”
“Because it’s closer to the earth’s core?”
I shook my head. “No, but I wonder if it has something to do with why the plantlife down here is so much more abundant.”
“Hey, hey, hey, Zillnibago. I get that you’re curious and whatnot, but don’t forget we’ve got a time limit. After we return the retrect, you can come back to this place and analyze the crap out of it. Kapeesh?”
Again, I’d lost myself in scrutiny, and again, Theo was growing impatient.
I moved past him, through the brush and metal, and around the wheel, forcing myself to ignore the mystery of its purpose. Because that side didn’t lend itself to ground-level entry, we moved on to the front of the factory, but luck wasn’t on our side there either. The front was nothing more than a bleak sheet of metal decorated with two large shafts running up the center, both of which were sleek and without plausible means for climbing. The two shafts were comprised of a different material than the rest of the building, and they reflected the light distinctly, looking almost tinny through layers of dust. Stretched horizontally over the two shafts, symbols and characters peeked through the caked-on dirt, though they were in a language neither Theo nor I could understand. It was a shame. Knowing the building’s identity before entering would have been beneficial, undoubtedly.
Other than that, the front was plain and adorned with no more windows than the back. Together we moved up and down the wall, searching for openings, though only a few slatted ones peeked out from the ground, most likely part of some ventilation system. Those had long been filled in with rock and earth, though, and held no discernable cracks large enough for us to squeeze through. If the building had ever had a natural entryway, it was on the side sunken into the gorge – a place unreachable without proper climbing equipment, and thus unreachable by my partner and me.
“Damn,” I muttered.
Theo perked. “You swear?”
“Occasionally.”
“Huh. Anyway, you’re right. This is lame.” Theo kicked at one of the plugged up slats. “Maybe this is why no one’s been able to finish the mission. No one can figure out how to get inside the freaking building.” His large eyes tossed me a look reeking of desperation. “Come on, Zill, tell me you’ve got something.”
“I actually don’t think getting in will be a problem,” I said bluntly.
Theo shot a bit of precious water from his mouth. “What?! You been holding out on me, Zillmeister?!”
“Not really. My thought is to scale the wall and enter through one of those ducts on the backside.”
Theo tilted his head to the side. “Ducts?”
I nodded. “You can see from the ones that are no longer attached that there are holes where they used to meet the wall. Using that logic, the ends that are still attached should also have openings where they meet the wall. All we have to do is reach the end of one of the detached tubes and crawl in through it.”
“Ah, okay . . .” Theo seemed to visualize the plan in his head. “You think there’s even enough foothold to scale the wall and reach them, though?” he concluded, uncertain.
“Maybe not, but that wheel contraption has small hooks on it that would be easy enough to climb. If we can at least make it up that side, we could walk across the roof and drop down on the backside. From the roof, we should be able to see if any of the tubes are reachable.”
Theo responded to the idea with gusto. “Yeah. Yeeeeeah. Okay!” He hooked his arm around my neck and let out a calculating laugh. “Zill, Zill, Zill, you had me worried there a minute. Why didn’t you say so sooner, eh?”
I shook my head. “The problem is getting back out. I’d prefer to have an exit plan before entering.”
“Out-shmout.” Theo waved my opinion away as though it were nothing more than a silly notion. “I say we get in while the getting in’s good and figure out the rest later. It’ll be easier to see openings from inside, anyway, because the light will shine in. I mean, that makes sense, right?”
“I suppose that’s true . . .” It wasn’t ideal, but Theo was right. We were under a time constraint and entering while it was still light was our best bet for finding a way out later. As I weighed the options in my head, it was almost as though could hear the tick tick ticking of the clock on my classroom wall so very far away. Only it dared to speak of time’s passing. But whether or not I wished to admit it, time would continue to pass, in the way it always had, and sooner or later, it would take me to a moment when I’d again come face-to-face with the scarlet-haired, icy-eyed stranger that was after me.
“Very well.” I shook Theo’s arm from my shoulder and gave the plant one determined nod. “Let’s go while we still can.”
Chapter 13: One Eeeensy Little Thing
Climbing the wheel proved to be as easy as I’d anticipated. I was strong, after all, and Theo was too. Though soft in nature, his body was hardened from his months in the outlands, and his arms flexed and pulled him upwards with each movement. Our only trouble came when coming to a portion of the wheel where the dangling hooks had rusted away. For those, we used the available handles to swing to an inner portion of the wheel where a second track of hooks dangled. In this way, we swiftly made it to the warm top of the sunken building. Once there, however, we were forced to take greater caution. The slanted roof was made of metal, like the rest of the building, and because of its angle, one wrong move meant sliding down the surface and into the deeper reaches of the ravine.
Theo’s balance was surprisingly steady. He moved ahead of me, planting his feet firmly after each inch forward. I made small steps, concentrating my weight on the balls of my feet and glancing every so often at the green mark on my hand.
Once at the other side, Theo put out his hand to hold me back as he leaned over the edge of the roof. Immediately, he snapped upward and let out a “Phooo!”
“What is it?” I pushed his hand away and leaned over to see for myself.
“It’s high!” he said, and his voice echoed through the ravine.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Of course it’s high. Here, let me see.” I positioned my hands on his shoulders and leaned around him to get a better look at the tubes. But in response to having the extra weight on him, my burdensome partner grabbed onto the thighs of my pants and pushed himself away from the edge with a,
“Watch it, Zill!”
Thanks to the rashness of the mo
tion, we both teetered.
I did my best to regain balance, completely releasing the fool and crouching to the slanted ground. Meanwhile, Theo staggered backwards several seconds before straightening out. In the aftermath, he reeled around, reprimanding, “What the heck are you trying to do, push me off?!”
I placed a hand to my temple and gave a great sigh.
Only a little while longer, Zillow, and then you’ll be free of him.
Swallowing my pride, I implored the fuming boy, “Hold me back. Make sure I don’t fall,” and offered him my elbow. He took it with begrudging, as again, I leaned over the edge of the building. One of the tubes was not so far down, and its end spouted upwards. Running and jumping for it would be too much of a risk, but if we hitched a rope and released ourselves down the side of the building . . .
“That one,” I told Theo. “You have rope, don’t you?”
“I have some rope,” he answered.
“Enough for yourself?”
He nodded.
“That’s fine. I have some too. Follow my lead.” I removed a stretch of rope from my pack and tied one end beneath myself, so that I was sitting into it. Then, I tossed the other end around a small smokestack sticking from the top of the plant and gathered up the slack. “I’ll go down first,” I told Theo. “Once I’m down, bring the line over the top of this smokestack and throw me my excess before hooking up your rope and coming down after me.”
Theo looked from the stack to me and again to the stack. “You’re, what, repelling down the side of this deathtrap?”
“Exactly.”
His face went white, but I didn’t give him time to protest further. With one concentrated exhale, I released myself over the side of the roof. For whatever reason, my hands were shaking. My knees were, too. Calm down, Zillow. Breathe. I regained myself, planted my feet against the dirt-crusted wall, and then released a bit of slack. My body dropped. Along with it, my stomach dropped, too. I gripped the rope tighter. Breathe.
