by P. J. Hoover
I reach to pick it up.
“Not bad, Eden Monk,” Zachary says. A small smile creeps onto his face.
I flip it over in my hand. It’s seamless and so perfect that my silhouette reflection shines back at me with the sun behind me.
“You want one?” I ask Zachary. He’s the only one of us with no weapon.
He shakes his head. “I don’t need anything.”
Doesn’t need anything? Or doesn’t want anything?
“Your call,” I say.
We continue up the stairs. They curve around flows of lava. They work their way into the clouds. All the while we follow them. And when they finally come to a stop, we are on a shelf with nowhere else to go. But unlike the first time we’d entered the volcano, there are no symbols noting the home of the gods. No bloody handprints. There is only a control panel.
I tap the panel and a holographic keypad appears.
“What’s the password?” I ask Zachary.
“There is no password,” he says. “Or at least there isn’t supposed to be. We all have access to the volcano. It’s shared ground among the gods.”
I jab my finger at the panel, and it buzzes in response. “Yeah, well someone locked us out.”
We need a password, and we don’t have one.
VIII
My fingers hover over the holographic keypad. A password . . . and one that Zachary doesn’t know about. The last time I’d needed a password was in the control substation back in the Garden of the Gods. I’d hacked into the system, run a subroutine, and gotten it. And though I don’t want to spend the time to do that now, I don’t see much other choice.
“We can figure it out,” Zachary says, and he steps forward, ready to run the same subroutines as me I’m sure.
I almost step to the side. But first, I type the same password from the Garden of the Gods.
pHaSM47$A
The keypad disappears and giant metal doors appear and begin to separate. The sound they make could be heard across the world. I cringe as they grind apart until finally they come to a stop.
“How’d you know what it was?” Zachary asks.
I tell him quickly about hacking the system back at the Garden of the Gods. His eyes widen as I explain.
But when I finish, he says, “There shouldn’t have been a password back there either.”
Not a password here. Not back there. Which means that it is very likely the same person who put them in place. It would have to be a person who’s pretty good with programming. Also someone with a reason to keep me—or others like me—out.
“When we hacked in back at the substation, someone detected us and shut it down,” I say. “I thought it was Iva, because that’s who’s voice it was, but—”
He shakes his head. “Iva wouldn’t bother with that. If she doesn’t want you in somewhere, she keeps you out, no passwords required.”
I hope I never have to get in anywhere Iva doesn’t want me.
“Then who?” I ask.
Taylor holds a finger to her lips, telling us to be quiet, and points ahead. “Someone’s inside,” she whispers.
“Can you see them?” I ask. I strain to hear, but there is only the hum of machines from deep inside the volcano.
“Vaguely. Like a shadow moving around, trying not to be seen.”
Yet the power of the Oculus lets us see them.
We move into the volcano. Before I can think to do anything about it, the metal doors grind shut behind us, making an equally awful racket as when they opened. If someone is inside here with us, then they know we’ve arrived.
The second the door is fully closed, the inside of the volcano is cast into darkness. Slowly green LEDs appear on the floors and ceiling. Unlike the rocky area outside, we’re back in something more like a warehouse, with smooth walls and a hard concrete floor. None of us says a word. We’ve lost the element of surprise, but that doesn’t mean we have to run forward without knowing what’s ahead.
Taylor takes the lead. I’m hoping the Oculus lets her see more than Zachary or I can. Or maybe Zachary can see better than me. He is a minor god after all.
We walk for well over two minutes before we hear the next sound. Like a switch being flipped. If I weren’t listening for something I might have missed it. But it’s definitely there. Taylor stops walking. Listens. Looks back to me and Zachary. Then we continue on.
The hallway widens. This has to be the same path Cole and I took, though we weren’t in the dark. The LEDs only light up enough for me to see five steps ahead. But then, in the distance, white light appears, as if at the end of a tunnel. My stomach clenches. Whoever is responsible is up there. They’re waiting for us.
IX
I press against the smooth wall as we get closer to the light. But when the wall comes to an end, there is no one there. Instead are the rows and rows of data banks that stretch on as far as I can see. It is definitely the same place Cole and I saw. I nod to Taylor and Zachary and motion that we should continue ahead.
Silently we move. I clutch the black knife. The first row of data storage is untouched, as is the second. But at the third, halfway down from the main aisle where we walk, scathes of computer boards have been pulled from the racks. They lay smashed on the ground. I’d seen them before and not thought much about them, but now, all I can see are people. People like Thomas. My best friend Emily. My parents. People that had been stored in memory but are not coming back.
The hum of cooling fans is dull white noise at the edge of my hearing, but it’s disrupted by something smashing to the ground.
“Come on,” Taylor says, and we take off running toward the noise. Staying quiet doesn’t matter any longer. All that matters is stopping more people from being destroyed. Our heavy boots slap on the concrete. Zachary keeps up no problem. My knife is poised. Ready.
Another board smashes on the ground. Then another. We’re getting closer. Finally we reach an aisle and movement registers in my peripheral vision. A person holding a board high over their head.
“Stop!” I shout. But it’s too late.
The man slams the board in the hard concrete ground. Components fly everywhere, ricocheting off the racks of storage. Destroying lives.
Once the damage is done, the man looks at us and smiles. And yes, I’ve seen him before, at games, in the stands. It’s Owen’s dad. He reaches for another board, but Taylor is on him so fast, she’s like a blur across my vision. She tackles him, knocking him off balance. He staggers but doesn’t fall, and he struggles to reach another board.
“What are you doing?” she shouts. But before he can answer, she swings the rock she carries. He moves at the last minute and it clips him in the shoulder rather than hitting him in the head.
He staggers back, out of her reach. “I’m cleaning the world,” Owen’s dad says so calmly, it’s almost like he’s practiced saying it a hundred times. Like he’s been waiting for us to show up.
“You’re killing people,” I shout. I want to lunge at him with the knife, but I need to wait for the right time. I hold it out in front of me and edge forward.
“Hardly,” Owen’s dad says. “These aren’t real people.”
Aren’t real people? He’s insane. Stored in these memory banks are our families, our neighbors, kids that went to school with me and Owen.
“They are, you asshole,” Taylor says.
He waves his hands dismissively. “They aren’t. You aren’t. We cleanse the world, and then we redesign it.”
He must mean Chaos. But I don’t get the chance to ask. Before I can move, he reaches for a board. Taylor swings out again, but Owen’s dad moves out of the way, barely holding onto the board. Still, he gets it, and he slams it down.
I watch pieces of the world being destroyed. How many people are stored on each one? I can’t take anymore. My grip is sweaty from the tight hold I h
ave on the knife, but unless I get close enough to him, all I’ll do is scratch him.
Unless . . .
I throw the knife. I probably do it horribly wrong, but I will it to fly through the air, to spin over and over like I’ve seen in movies. I think of it as an object in a video game, meant to perform how I want it to. The knife is sleek and makes a whooshing sound as it moves. Then it hits Owen’s dad directly in the chest, sinking deep beneath the surface of his skin.
It’s a perfect hit.
“You got him, Edie,” Zachary says.
But instead of Owen’s dad collapsing to the ground, he doesn’t move. His image begins to flicker, like a hologram being disrupted.
Taylor maybe doesn’t get what this means because she takes the distraction of my knife and swipes out again. This time the rock connects where his head is. But he’s flickering and shifting, and the weapon passes right through him.
“Not good,” I say.
“I got this,” Zachary says, and he rushes to the end of the row. A holographic keyboard appears and Zachary begins typing commands into it. Owen’s dad is stabilizing. The obsidian must have interfered with the communication to wherever he physically is. He’s getting it under control.
He spots Zachary working away at the keyboard, and the calculated smile slips from his face. He ignores both me and Taylor and runs for the racks of circuit boards. Ten feet. Five feet. He’s almost there. When he’s less than two feet away, his holographic image begins to flicker, but he’s close enough. He reaches out and yanks a circuit board from the rack, tucking it under his arm.
“I can’t forget the most important one,” he says with a huge grin. It fills me with dread. Why would this board be so important? Then his image freezes and vanishes along with the circuit board.
My knife clatters to the ground.
“Where’d he go?” Taylor asks.
But Zachary doesn’t answer. Instead he keeps typing and programming. I hurry over to him and look over his shoulder.
“You’re blocking him from coming back here, right?” I ask. His fingers are moving fast, and there are symbols and keys I don’t understand, but the universal laws of programming still apply.
He nods and keeps typing. And only when he hits the enter button on the keyboard and steps back does he answer.
“He shouldn’t be able to get in here anymore,” Zachary says.
I glance back at the smashed circuit boards. Tens of thousands of people dead possibly. And even though it is completely selfish of me, I don’t want them to be my parents or Thomas. Not my family. Not after everything I’ve been through to save them.
Taylor comes up next to me. “Doesn’t matter who they are,” she says almost like she can read my mind.
I bite my lip. It does matter, and yet she’s right. It also doesn’t matter. We have to continue on no matter who might have been stored in the memory.
I move to the keyboard and press a few keys, trying to figure out the system. My heads-up display kicks in and overlays images to help me understand.
“I programmed it so he can’t get back in here,” Zachary says.
I tap keys until I stumble upon a menu, and then I test out options until I find security. “We can’t let anyone back in here,” I say. “Not just Owen’s dad. He might not be the only one we need to keep out. There might be others like him working for Chaos. We don’t know.”
With Owen and Abigail out there, he’s definitely not the only person who might cause damage.
“True,” Zachary says. “But the only way to set the security to this place is from here.” He points to the screen to show me what he’s talking about. “So that means if we ever want to get back in here we have to leave open the permissions.”
I shake my head. “Not for everyone. Just for the three of us.”
Taylor laughs, but it’s tinged with sarcasm. “What if all three of us die?”
I shrug. “Then no one ever gets in here again, and all these people are safe.” It’s not my real answer. If we die—which I have no intention of doing—then someone else will eventually find a way in here. People always learn to get past any new security system put up. It just takes creative thinking.
“This is good,” Zachary says. “I like us not dying.”
I stop typing and look to him. “Can you die?”
He looks at me like I’ve forgotten some major details. “Eden Monk, you’ve seen a god die. We die just like anyone else. Not quite as easily as humans. But we aren’t immune to danger.”
Taylor steps to him and holds up the rock. “So if I hit you in the head with this, you’ll die?”
He gently presses it down, out of the way. “Let’s not test it out, okay?”
“Don’t give me a reason to, god boy,” she says. And she lowers it to her side.
He mutters something under his breath about “god boy” but Taylor acts like she doesn’t hear it.
Zachary and I work through the specifics of the security algorithm while Taylor cleans up and patrols the area looking for any more issues. When we’re done, we leave the data storage unit and start back down the long hallway toward the exit. As we leave, we engage the security program. It kicks in as we seal the door. Only the three of us are allowed back in.
We have to survive.
That boat is where we left it, but before it sets out across the water, I ask Taylor, “Can you see anything beneath the surface?” The water is black here by the volcano, and my vision doesn’t go more than a foot or so down.
She angles her head and nods. “The rift is there. Sucking in water.”
“Anything else?” I ask. “Any wreckage? Bodies?” I force the last word out. Rationally I know there wouldn’t be bodies down there under the water. But I have to ask.
She shakes her head. “Just the tear in the world, Edie. It’s hungry. Like a monster.”
A monster we need to stop. And now that we’ve secured the data storage area, we can do that.
X
The boat carries us back to the mainland, and it only takes us about a half hour to get back on track. We walk by my high school. They sky overhead is bright blue. The sun beats down. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, as if they’ve all been ripped away, too. But the school looks like someone has walked on it with giant feet. The bleachers around the football field have been pulled apart and scattered. Every light on the scoreboard blinks slowly, as if in a permanent state of error.
I look away. Everything I see is worse than anything before it. It reminds me of a post-apocalyptic video game, as bad as it can possibly be.
We come to the cul-de-sac where Owen lived. Where my best friend Emily lived. And even though I should keep walking, I stop. I have to see if there is any sign of her.
I walk up the steps to Owen’s door first. There, carved on the wood, is the labyrinth symbol. The same symbol we all had carved into our doors.
“Owen lived here,” Taylor says before I even need to say a word.
I nod, forcing the rage that runs through me to settle down. Owen’s dad had been trying to destroy everyone. If we hadn’t stopped him, he would still be doing it.
“So if that was only a holographic projection of Owen’s dad, do you have any ideas where he actually is?” I ask Zachary.
A small smile crosses his face, like he has some secret he’s keeping to himself. “No chance he’s at the game company. I secured it so only I can get in and out. But there are other programming locations. He could have made his way to one of those. He could be operating from there. If I get to my workstation, I might be able to find him.”
Might is at least a chance. We may have locked him out of the data storage, but he’s still out there. It’s a small amount of justice that he is nothing more than a pawn in this game of the gods, just like the rest of us. The only difference may be that we are now aware of it, and he ma
y not be.
Emily’s house, unlike Owen’s, is almost perfect. The front window is shattered, and the door is ajar, but otherwise, it is untouched.
“Hello?” I call despite myself. I know she’s not home. And even if she were home, I’m not sure she’d be able to see me. That’s how it had been the last time I’d seen her. She’d been unable to see me. I was already in the virtual reality simulation at the time, though that fact was unknown to me.
From deep in her house, a phone rings, a startling sound that makes me jump.
I glance back at Zachary and Taylor. They’ve heard it, too.
I lean forward, unsure whether I should call out once more. The phone rings again, then again, consistent. My feet feel rooted to the ground. Two voices battle inside my head.
Answer the phone.
Don’t answer the phone.
Answer the phone.
Don’t answer the phone.
I have to answer the phone. If I don’t, it will only follow me. It will find me no matter where I am.
I push the green door the rest of the way open. It creaks on the hinges, as if it hasn’t been oiled in years. It confirms Zachary’s assessment of how much time has gone by. I’m trying to be quiet, but the first step I take, I crunch broken glass under my heavy boot.
I stand still, waiting . . . for what? I’m not sure. The phone continues to ring. I’ve been to Emily’s house more times than I can count. I cut through the entryway and into her dad’s office where the ancient green phone is still plugged into a wall jack. I reach down and unplug it.
It continues to ring. Even though I know each ring is coming, I jump every time. The phone has no place in this dead world. It had no place in my world either, after my parents died. And I know with certainty who it is on the other end.
