Bloom (12 page)

Colton yelled and Shelly squealed with laughter as she flicked on the headlights to illuminate a long, concrete tunnel leading straight toward the base of the black building.

“You should have seen your face!” she shouted. Her voice echoed in the narrow tunnel.

There was an opening ahead. A second later, the Jeep popped out of the tunnel and into a massive underground parking structure. Bright floodlights a hundred feet above illuminated the vast space. There were only a few other vehicles in the entire parking lot, most of them retrofitted with raised chassis and big tires to handle the rough terrain surrounding the building.

Cavernous tunnels lined the walls of the parking structure, cutting straight, concrete-lined tubes of empty space in all directions.

“Where do those go?” shouted Colton.

“Everywhere!”

Shelly screeched the Jeep to a stop across two parking spaces and cut the engine. She pulled her goggles down over her neck to reveal two white circles around her green eyes. The rest of her skin was covered with a fine layer of light brown dust.

“Welp,” she said, “we’re here.”

12

H
aven awoke when bright sunlight crept over the bottom edge of her bedroom window and spilled onto her bed. She pulled off the sheets and saw that she was already fully dressed, but could not remember the reason. She walked out into the hallway and looked into Noah’s room, but he wasn’t there. His sheets were on the floor in a pile and his favorite toy car lay broken in pieces on the ground. She heard a noise like crinkling paper coming from the family room and walked to the stairwell that led to the first floor.

Blinding sunlight shot directly into the house through every window she passed, which should have been impossible since the windows were on all four sides of the home and there was no way the sun could be everywhere.

Haven realized she was dreaming.

She walked down the stairs to the family room and saw her parents huddled together on the couch. The crinkling noise Haven heard was fire burning all around the room. Flames crawled up to the ceiling and burned down toward the floor.

Her parents cried and screamed, and somehow Haven knew that Noah was gone. Someone had taken him far away. They were hurting him. For a brief moment, she saw him in a small, dark room. His shirt was covered in blood and he was crying—just like his parents. Long arms reached out of the shadows at the back of the room and pulled him away.

Haven was suddenly back in her home, watching helplessly as flames covered every surface. She walked forward and reached out for her mother and father, but fire burst from the ground near the couch and consumed their bodies. The couch sank into the floor and vanished into a black hole.

She turned to run away, but a dozen burning crossbeams inside the roof collapsed around her. Haven put up her arms to protect her head. She could not feel any pain, only the heavy pressure as one of the crossbeams hit her on the neck and pushed her to the ground.

Her vision filled with fire as she struggled to get out from under the burning piece of wood. She put both hands flat on the ground and was about to push up as hard as she could when the crossbeam was lifted away. Two strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet.

Haven tried to see who it was, but the shape of the person standing next to her in the fire was a shadow. It grabbed her hand and pulled her through the collapsing house. The shadow jumped over mountains of embers and lifted her effortlessly off the ground with every leap.

The front door was right in front of them. Flames crawled over its surface. The black spots in the fire were eyes that watched her as she ran. The shadow that led her through the house picked her up and tossed her toward the door. She screamed as it rushed to meet her face.

Bright light exploded around her as she crashed through the door, splintering it into a thousand pieces. The splinters spun gently away as time slowed. Haven hung in the air, suspended. She thought her eyes were open, but all she could see was piercing white light.

“Can you hear me?” said a distant voice.

Haven floated in a vast white nothingness; an infinite space of uniform light. The voice echoed throughout the empty space.

“Is she breathing?” said another voice, a lot closer than the first.

“Ah, there she is. Good girl, open your eyes now.”

Haven’s eyelids slowly opened. She blinked against the blinding white light that burrowed painfully into her skull.

She was lying on a table in the middle of a room filled with huge, metal tanks. Thick pipes ran between the containers and into the floor. Four people loomed above her, silhouetted by the light in the ceiling.

She recognized Marius and Corva, her alleged rescuers from the medical facility where she had been held captive. An old woman stood near Haven’s head, looking down into her eyes. A boy who wore thick glasses stood back from the table nervously.

The old woman turned to him. “We can’t do it here. Go and fetch Dormer. Tell him to meet us at The Grove.”

The boy nodded eagerly and ran off.

Haven’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

“The drugs will kill her,” said the old woman. “Quickly. Take her before it’s too late.”

Haven was lifted off the table. She managed to open her eyes enough to see that she was being carried on a stretcher that was simply a half-inch thick plastic rectangle with holes cut along the sides for handles.

Marius held one side and Corva the other. They walked out of the room full of tanks and into a larger room with a dome-shaped ceiling. At the apex of the dome was a massive metal fan that spun slowly in its circular setting. Sunlight blinked between the blades as they turned. The light was caught and reflected by mirrors all around the top of the dome, which bounced the light down onto other mirrors that lined the curved walls.

Haven was carried past shelves full of machine parts; she saw things that looked like pieces of a car engine mixed in with countless other objects she didn’t recognize. Thin lamps were bolted to sturdy metal tables, illuminating architectural blueprints and a myriad of electronic equipment.

She tried to ask where they had brought her, but she couldn’t open her mouth to get out the words. Her lips parted slightly and she moaned.

“Almost there,” said Corva.

The stretcher rocked up and down as she and Marius pushed open two swinging doors and carried Haven into a bright room. She didn’t notice how stale the air had been in the last room until passing through the doors. She smelled trees and fresh dirt. It might have been her imagination, but Haven was sure she heard a bird singing from somewhere high above. For an instant she was in the meadow of her mind—the place she went to find peace when the world around her didn’t make sense.

She had forgotten about the meadow after the fire.

Haven lifted her head to try and look around but she immediately became dizzy and closed her eyes again. Her head bounced against the stretcher as Marius and Corva set her on the ground.

Haven opened her eyes. She was lying next to a tall tree. The sky above was white, but brighter in some places than in others. She realized it wasn’t the sky at all, but rather a series of intense lights hanging from the ceiling.

One of her hands slipped off the edge of the stretcher and fell onto soft grass. A dead leaf brushed against her pinky finger; she pressed down on its surface and heard the sharp crackle as it broke into smaller flakes. Small blue lights floated through the air, pulsing and swirling like tiny fairies. Occasionally one of them would land on a tree branch and flicker quickly before once again floating into the air.

The old woman appeared above Haven and looked down. She shook her head worriedly.

“Poor girl. Poor, poor girl,” she said. She looked up quickly as a man ran over to the stretcher. “Ah, Dormer. Good.”

The man called Dormer was tall and thin. He reminded Haven of her science teacher at school, on whom she had always had a little bit of a crush. Dormer’s movements were quick, almost bird-like. He sniffed once and looked down at Haven.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

“The girl that Marius and Corva saved from the facility.”

“Ah,” said Dormer. “So you found one worth saving. Was it hard to ignore the screams from the others, Marius, as you ran out with this one tucked under your arm?”

Marius scowled at Dormer.

“We haven’t much time,” said the old woman. “Please, Dormer. Save your judgments for later.”

He sighed and knelt down next to the stretcher. “Fine,” he said, “but we
will
talk.”

Dormer rested his hand on Haven’s neck, just beneath her throat. He pressed his other hand against the trunk of the tree next to her and closed his eyes. His head drooped down slowly and Haven thought he had fallen asleep.

She heard a rustling in the branches above. The leaves shook as if blown by a gentle breeze, except there was no movement in the air. The leaves shriveled and fell from the branches, spinning slowly down to the ground around the stretcher. Dark stains spread across the tree bark as if the tree were bleeding from the inside.

Warmth flowed into Haven’s body from Dormer’s hand.

The heat moved down through her chest as if she had just taken her first sip of hot tea after waking. It spread to her limbs and finally moved up to her head, bringing with it a wave of rejuvenating energy that took away all of her pain.

She watched as the trunk of the tree shrank in diameter until it was no more than half the width it had been. The bark cracked and peeled. All of the leaves fell from the branches, leaving behind a blackened skeleton that reached up toward the ceiling with bony fingers.

Dormer removed his hand from Haven and stood up. He pressed his palms against both sides of his skull and held his head as if it were about to roll off his neck.

“Thank you, Dormer,” said the old woman.

“I guess we’ll see if it makes any difference in the end,” he said, then walked away.

Haven sat up and was able to fully see her surroundings for the first time.

The tree next to her was only one of at least a hundred more. They were planted in a huge, square grid pattern. Haven was sitting somewhere in the very middle of the grid. On one side of the room, closer to the entrance, all of the trees were dead just like the one next to her. The trees on the other side of the room were still alive.

The old woman noticed where Haven was looking.

“This is The Grove,” she said. “And you are not the first person to be healed beneath the branches of these trees.”

Haven coughed. Her throat felt as if it were lined with sandpaper. She pushed herself up and tried to stand, but her vision flipped over and she felt like she was going to throw up. She dropped back down to the ground.

“Easy,” said the old woman.

Marius reached out and held Haven’s shoulders as she laid on the stretcher. As soon as her head touched the plastic, a small line of blue flames ran up Haven’s body, starting at her feet and skittering across her skin to her head before vanishing. Marius quickly pulled his hands away.

The old woman took a step closer and frowned. “Marius, who is this?”

“The one you told me to take from hospital,” he said.

The woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “The one I told you to take is too young to show any signs.”

“She
is
young,” insisted Marius, his thick accent heavier with his conviction. “Look! Maybe this is first time!”

Corva stood next to Marius and looked at the old woman. “Can’t you tell if it’s her? I thought you could sense the one you wanted. Isn’t that the whole reason you sent us to the facility in the first place?”

“Of course it is,” said the old woman. “But the presence faded away shortly after you left. I assumed they had drugged the young one and were suppressing the energy output.”

“I grabbed newest patient,” said Marius. “I read charts, I asked nurse.” He pointed at Haven. “She was newest! Only one day she was there before I saved her.”

Corva placed her hand on Marius’s shoulder and squeezed it gently.

“My brother,” said Haven weakly. “My brother was kidnapped two weeks before they took me…took me to that place.”

The old woman knelt down and laid her hand on Haven’s forehead. “Shhh. You need to rest, now. We wouldn’t want to undo all of Dormer’s hard work. Corva, would you and Marius please take our guest to the dormitories and give her a room? I’m sure she could use some sleep.”

Corva and Marius picked up the stretcher and carried it toward the swinging double doors. Haven looked up at the fake sky and dead trees until exhaustion took over and she passed out.

13

C
olton followed Shelly to a large elevator on one side of the parking garage. She swiped a small black card over an electronic panel on the wall. A second later, there was a
ding
and the elevator doors slid open.

Colton stepped inside and cold air swept over him. He closed his eyes to savor the feeling; the parking garage had been a furnace in comparison. A row of buttons were set into the brushed metal next to the elevator doors, and Shelly pressed the one for the top floor—level twelve. The doors closed silently and the elevator began to ascend.

“What is this place?” asked Colton.

“Mr. Bernam’s main office,” said Shelly. “He runs most of his business from here.”

“What’s he do?”

“He manufactures all sorts of machines for private investors. He talks a lot about optics and generators but nobody really understands any of it. I don’t know how the machines work, but one time I got a quick look at the labs on the seventh level—no one’s supposed to go anywhere near that floor, by the way—and I saw some pretty neat stuff.”

“‘Neat’?” Colton teased. “People still use that word?”

Shelly crossed her arms. “
I
use it.”

Colton shrugged. “I guess that’s good enough, then.”

She dropped her arms to her side and winked at him. The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened. Shelly grabbed Colton’s hand and pulled him down a long hallway lined with several doors. The hall opened onto a large room. The walls were made up of large, black, tinted windows and dimmed the burning midday sun to a tolerable level.