by P. J. Hoover
I look to Zachary.
“You should get it,” he says.
I slowly lift the receiver and put the phone to my ear. Before I say a word, Iva speaks to me.
“I have something I need you to do,” Iva says. Her voice is high and cute, almost happy. Like the entire world is a game and she’s one of the players.
“Are you a god?” I ask her. Iva had told us all that she was the power, but if Elise can be believed, then Iva is so much more.
“Of course,” Iva says. “How else do you think I have so much power?”
Power. “But you said . . . ,” I start.
Iva cuts me off. “I said what I had to say in order to get you to play the game.”
Anger brims below the surface of my skin. People are dying, and she acts like it’s no big deal. Like maybe she and the other gods can just get some replacements. That’s not good enough for me. I want my old world back, flawed though it may be. I want it back, and I plan to get it back. But I also know that in order to do that, I have to get into the simulation. I have to find the key and get control of everything.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask Iva. Zachary and Taylor watch me, but neither says a word. Zachary, for being a minor god, looks as clueless as Taylor and I. But that could be an act. Nothing the gods do can be trusted.
Iva giggles into the phone. “I knew you’d see things my way, Eden,” she says. “You were my favorite, you know that, right?”
I glance to Zachary. He’s watching me, and he smiles when our eyes meet. Was I his favorite, too? And what about Elise? Had I had an advantage all along?
“Hmm . . .” It’s the best thing I can say to acknowledge her words.
“I need you to recover something for me,” Iva says.
Immediately my mind goes to the Oculus, and like always, it’s as if she can read my mind.
“Not that,” Iva says, giggling. “We don’t all want that. Elise said you let her try it out. I can’t believe she didn’t keep it.”
After seeing how much Raven wanted it, I can’t believe it either.
“Anyway, the Oculus wouldn’t work for me,” Iva says. “Remember? I don’t have eyes.”
Taylor lost an eye and it still worked for her, so I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. But I decide to drop it. The Oculus is not something anyone can have at this point besides Taylor.
“What do you need?” I ask.
“I like you, Eden,” Iva says.
I don’t respond. I only wait.
“The simulation is locked to you,” Iva says. “You won’t be able to get in.”
I open my mouth, about to explain that Zachary is going to get us in.
“He can’t,” Iva says. “Chaos has it locked. He’s scared of you.”
“Because of the prophecy?” I say aloud before I can stop myself.
“That’s right,” Iva says. “You have the power. If he lets you into his simulation, you’ll defeat him.”
“But Cole has the power,” I say. “And he’s in the simulation.”
“He’s not in the simulation,” Iva says. “He never made it in.”
Never made it in. My stomach tenses at the words. Taylor saw him alone. He betrayed me. I shouldn’t care what happened to him. And yet I can’t help but hope, deep inside, that maybe there is more to the story.
“I have to get in,” I say, putting Cole out of my head. “Zachary knows how to do it.”
I glance over to Zachary who actually beams at my words. But I’m not just saying them to flatter him. He’s one of the designers. He has to be able to figure this out.
“He can only do it with my help,” Iva says. “Elise and I found a backdoor in. And I’m willing to share it with you if you do something for me. So here’s where we get to make a deal. You recover a small item for me, and I create a crack in the simulation, allowing you to sneak inside.”
I cover the receiver with my hand and tell Zachary and Taylor what Iva just said.
“I can hear you,” Iva says in my earpiece. “And are you seriously doubting me? I already told you that you’re my favorite.”
“I told you I can get you in,” Zachary says. “Iva has to be wrong.”
“Tell him I’m not wrong,” Iva says. “And tell him that we all know he likes you. It’s so obvious.” Then she giggles.
My face gets really hot and I look away from Zachary.
“Here’s what you need to do,” Iva says. “There’s a place in New Orleans, in a cemetery.”
Like the cemetery from Cole’s vision. He’d seen all our parents there on a tour. They’d come to a crypt, and when it had opened, Iva had been there. I hadn’t seen the vision, but that’s what Cole had told me.
“Right,” Iva says, again, like she can read my mind. It makes me wish for a way to shield it. Pia had been able to read my mind. Read all our minds. An image of the crypt appears in my heads-up display. “Go to the crypt. You have to go first, Eden. I unlocked it for you. Step through the root of the largest. When the flower is red, look for the yellow umbrella. It’s the fourteenth monument. There you’ll find the symbol that I made for you.”
“What?” None of her words make sense.
“You open the crypt, Eden,” Iva continues, as if I haven’t said a word. “And inside you’re going to find something. It looks a lot like a black pearl. I need you to get it for me and give it to me. It’s hidden, so it won’t be easy to find, but if you follow the pattern, you’ll find it.”
“What pattern?” I ask.
“You’ll figure it out,” Iva says. “Bring it to me. I’ll be waiting at the gaming company. I’ll get you into the simulation.”
“But New Orleans is really far away,” I say. Even to my own ears it sounds like I’m complaining. But come on.
Iva giggles again. “Not if you know how to get there, Eden.”
Then before I can ask anything else, the calls goes dead. There is an impossible dial tone that shouldn’t be. I unplugged the phone. This world is no more real than the labyrinth or Simulation Avine. But it’s also the world where I belong. It’s the world I need to save.
“What’d she say?” Taylor asks.
I relay as much as I can remember. Aside from the crypt, Iva’s words had only confused me more.
Zachary shakes his head. “She’s wrong. If she and Elise found a backdoor, I can find it, too.”
He believes his words, but I also wonder if Chaos and his programming skills could be a match for Zachary.
“We need to go to New Orleans,” I say though it’s the last thing I want to do.
“We don’t have time,” Taylor says.
I motion outside the window at the destroyed world. “We have time. The world is already being destroyed. How much worse is it going to get? We can’t just move on from here. We need to fix this.”
Taylor clenches her teeth. “Edie, sometimes you just need to move on. You can’t fix everything.”
I don’t want to listen to her words. They try to worm their way inside my head, but I push them away.
“I’m going to New Orleans,” I say, starting for the front door. “Are you guys coming with me?”
Zachary immediately follows. “I really think I can get you guys into the simulation.”
The story of the crypt from Cole’s vision won’t leave my mind. There was a reason Iva was there. A reason all our parents went there before we were born. Somehow it all ties together.
“Even if you can, I’m still going.” The front door has closed most of the way, but I pull it open and walk outside. The sky, previously blue, is now solid gray. A layer of clouds sits in front of the sun. It’s like a warning of the storm that lies ahead.
“Then I’m going,” Taylor says and turns to Zachary. “What about you, god boy? You coming?”
He rolls his eyes
. “Of course I’m coming.”
It’s settled . . . except that the only way we have to get there is by walking.
Not if you know how to get there, Iva’s voice echoes in my mind.
How to get there.
I’ve never been there. But Cole’s been there. Lived there. And Iva had shown me the image.
No, not shown me the image. Given me the image. It’s there in my heads-up display, stored away with the pieces of other data I’ve collected. I zoom in on the image of the crypt. When I select it, iron gates appear and block the entrance, but we’ll worry about that once we get there.
A menu pops up.
Crypt 505
Interact
Transport
Destroy
Relocate
The last two options are grayed out. I can’t relocate the crypt here, but I can transport us to it.
“Hold on,” I say, and both Taylor and Zachary grab one of my arms.
For effect, I look to Zachary, smile, and snap at the same time I select Transport.
XI
"You did that how?" Zachary asks. His voice is filled with awe.
I shrug. “Guess I’m not the only one that can transport around from place to place.” I act like I’m not as surprised as him. Like I’ve expected it all along. But if this really is something I can do . . . well, once I’m back in the real world permanently, it’s going to come in amazingly handy.
New Orleans looks like someone has come along with a giant pick and dragged it through the entire city. We stand at the edge of a crevasse so deep I can’t see the bottom. The sides are muddy and brown and covered in trash and debris. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst part are the things crawling from that pit. Coming for us. I’ve seen them before, with Cole. Dead things.
As soon as we appear, the dead spot us. Their heads, barely hanging on, swivel in our direction. Their rotting fingers claw at the mud, trying to find a grip. They want to reach us. And if they reach us . . .
No. We can’t wait around to find out.
“We need to get out of here,” Taylor says.
We back up and run far from the edge of the crevasse. This is not what we came for. Once we’re out of reach of the creatures in the pit, I scan the area, looking for the crypt. The iron gates of the cemetery are easy to find. The only problem is that they’re across the giant ditch.
I point across the way. “We need to get over there.” The Transport command had brought us maybe as close to the crypt as it could. But the ditch is keeping us from getting any closer. I’m sure it’s intentional. Someone trying to keep us out. Someone trying to keep Iva from getting what she needs.
This has to be why she sent me. She must have tried to get here and been unable to. I’m not sure our luck will be any better.
The dead moan as they claw at the earth. Some of them reach the top of the crevasse. Their decaying fingers grasp the edge and they pull themselves out. They stumble as they walk, but there is no denying it. They are coming for us.
I look around for anything that will help. Something we can use as a bridge. The gap is at least twenty feet across. It’s too far. One misstep and we’re doomed.
Then Zachary steps forward. I pull on his arm, trying to get him to stay back. But instead, he holds his hand up, palm out. A breeze blows out of nowhere, whipping his already messy hair around in every direction. He closes his eyes and mutters something under his breath.
The dead stop moving.
I have no idea how he’s doing it, but he’s able to control them. He puts up his other hand, palm out, and almost like there is invisible power coming from it, the dead begin to back up. They scramble over each other in their efforts to get back into the pit from where they came. And only when the last one is finally over the edge and deep inside does Zachary turn around.
He grins, like he’s half embarrassed that he’s just saved our asses.
“How’d you do that?” Taylor asks. Her hands are clenched into fists like she was ready to tear them limb from limb if she needed to.
Zachary lowers his hands. The wind dies down. “I’m a god,” he says. “Remember?”
God doesn’t explain it. There has to be more of a reason.
He shrugs. “All the minor gods have different abilities. Power over the dead happens to be one of mine.”
The image of him standing with the dead at the edge of the compass rose comes back to me. The dead had chased us. They’d forced us forward, toward the garden and the volcano. Toward the labyrinth. And when we’d finally reached where we’d needed to go, Zachary had stood there among them, watching. Almost like he’d been the one controlling them, pushing us forward, making sure we got to the labyrinth.
I don’t know why this surprises me. Of course he’d been involved. He was one of the programmers. And also maybe one of the architects behind the entire game.
“Yeah, well, let’s not give them time to come at us again,” Taylor says. “I don’t want to see what happens if your power fails.”
Zachary pretends to look hurt. “It never fails.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Taylor says.
Without the threat of being pulled apart by zombies, getting across the crevasse seems a lot less treacherous. We search around and find a telephone pole that’s fallen over. The thing weighs a ton, but Taylor’s strength seems to have doubled. We roll it and push it. Zachary and I help, but she does the bulk of the work. When it’s close enough, we’re able to raise it up, turn it, and then let it fall across the ditch.
I go first, picking my steps carefully because the last thing I want is to slip. Zachary may have sent the dead people back into the ditch, but they’re still down there. If I fall, I’m sure they’ll feast on my body.
I shudder as my feet touch the solid ground once again. Taylor and Zachary are right behind me. Then we cover the distance to the iron gates.
I tug on one, but they’re closed tight. It doesn’t want to open. Rust covers the latch. Two years of the elements have secured it in place.
“I got it,” Taylor says, and she grabs hold of one of the gates and yanks hard. It makes a sound like a cat dying, but then it snaps and screeches open.
“Nice work,” I say, again impressed with her strength.
She smirks. “Don’t thank me. Now we have to go inside.”
“You’re scared?” Zachary says to Taylor. “I didn’t think you got scared.”
“Not scared,” Taylor says. “And also not stupid.” Parts of the gate have broken off, and Taylor reaches down and picks up a bar of rusty metal. She clenches it in her fist. “Now where’s this crypt?”
I pull up the image of it on my heads-up display. Light pulses from it, like it’s alive. Like it’s the heart of the place.
“The center,” I say, setting out down the path ahead. Bricks have lifted from the path, making each step a challenge. Around us, graves, mostly above-ground crypts that look like coffins, have shifted, in some cases knocking the lids aside. I don’t look in any of them. I can’t be distracted, and I also don’t want to see more of the dead, even if Zachary does have some sort of power over them. Whereas in Florida, the world was silent, moans fill the air around us here. New Orleans is an ancient place filled with dark mystery, much of it buried beneath this soft ground.
“Cole grew up here?” Taylor asks.
I nod. “His dad gave cemetery tours.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t get that fascination with dead people. Why do people want to see where they’re buried?”
“It’s a human thing,” Zachary says, like that’s some normal kind of response. “Humans want to know what happens after death.”
“And gods don’t?” I ask.
He stops walking and looks me directly in the eye. And in that moment, I know exactly what he’s thinking ab
out. It’s like we’re back in the throne room, reliving the moment before I killed the old god. And even though he was a horrible god and was destroying the world, before now, I’ve never really thought about the fact that I ended his life.
“Gods think about it all the time,” Zachary says.
I open my mouth, trying to come up with something to say. But Taylor saves me from needing to.
“I think I found it,” she says.
I spin around, back the way we were heading. And there, at the end of the path is the crypt Iva had shown me.
I take a step toward it. I don’t want to be here. I want to be in the simulation, finding the key, finding Thomas. But I have to be here. This is part of my journey. Taylor and Zachary flank me as I walk forward, and soon we stand in front of it.
It’s made entirely of stone, with four columns out front, like a miniature Greek temple. It’s not tall. Maybe five feet at the most, but it’s bigger than any of the other monuments around it.
As we stand there, the sky darkens, turning from gray into a blue the color of dusk. Stars twinkle in the sky above, and a crescent moon shines down on us, casting light directly on the crypt. It almost glows, eerie purple, as if it’s alive.
A solid stone door seals it away from the rest of the world. We need to get inside. I cover the remaining distance to the door and pull on the handle that’s been bolted in place. No sooner do my fingers touch the handle, it lights up, glowing like an ember in a fire though not any warmer to the touch than normal. I release the handle and the light goes out.
“Open it,” Taylor says.
I shake my head and step back. “You try.” I need to know if it will act that way for any of us.
Taylor places her hand on the handle, and but it doesn’t light up. She pulls hard, but the door doesn’t open. So she pulls again. It still doesn’t budge, not even with all her strength.
“It’s stuck,” she says, letting go.
I grab hold of the handle once more. It glows again, and I pull gently. The door swings open.
Taylor scowls. “I loosened it for you.”
