False Sight (7 page)

No time for them to argue. Peter and Rhys sprint after me—I’m accelerating quicker than I expected—and I pull them up and over the back end.

Within seconds we’re traveling too fast to jump off. The wind buffets us and we sit down, heads just above the sides of the cart, barreling into darkness. The wheels howl and screech on the track, vibrating the cart’s frame, making my teeth buzz. The ground is still flat; the cart is definitely moving under its own power.

“We didn’t think this one through,” Peter shouts. “Did you want to walk the rest of the way?” I shout back, hoping this was the right decision. I try to relax the tension in my muscles, but with only darkness ahead it feels like we could drop off the rails and into an underground cavern at any second.

Rhys says, “If Nina made this trip, we’re in the right place. Soon we’ll find out why. Or maybe the cart will come off the rails and dash our heads against the walls.” He laughs, but we don’t. His face grows serious as he aims the flashlight under his chin.
Supposed to laugh in times like these,
he says, too quiet to hear over the noise, but I read his lips.

The cart screams, the wind tears at my hair. Portions of the tunnel are lighted now. I see them in the distance as glowing yellow specks, and the next second we’re there, and the next they’re behind us, dwindling to darkness. I can’t even guess how fast we move. For a while I kneel at the front, hands grip- ping the front wall, staring forward into the black. The wail of metal on metal knocks any thoughts out of my head before they can fully form.

I lean back against the cart and settle down. It’s almost comfortable, minus the hair lashing my eyes. To my left, Peter strobes with light every ten seconds. His face is hard and determined, watching the way ahead of us.

The cart vibrates under me, rocking. A hundred miles an hour, at least. More. And it doesn’t end. We don’t drop off into a cavern, and I stop expecting us to. We’re going somewhere, that much is clear.

I stay awake for what feels like an hour, but nothing changes. We keep flying on the rails, but the route has become smooth. No curves to press us into the walls of the cart. Just a steady hum, a subtle tremor I feel with my entire body. The cart is doing its best to lull me to sleep.

Peter touches my arm lightly, startling me. “Rest,” he says. “I’ll let you know if something changes.”
I nod, grateful, because I don’t know when I’ll get to close my eyes again. Somehow I drift into something half-aware and half-asleep.

I’m outside a log cabin nestled against the sheer face of a cliff. I remember this place. We were doing a training exercise in the national park and came across this cabin. Noah convinced me to go inside, because we were both stiff with the freezing winds. Inside there was a fire going, but no one around. We shared our first kiss next to the flames, one side of my face bak- ing in the heat, the other stinging with the chill. I was fifteen.

Now the trees around me are green and alive with bird - song. I walk to the cabin and push through the door. Across the room, an unnecessary fire roars in the hearth. A knotty wood tablesits in themiddlewithtwocups onit.Icanseefromhere the cups are filled with cocoa and mini marshmallows. Noah sits at the table, smiling. I sit down across from him, smiling back. I warm my hands on my mug, and he takes a sip.

“Let me out,” he says. “Let me help you. I promise I can.” I want him to help. “Okay,” I say.
“It might hurt. There isn’t much room in here.” “I’m ready,” I say.
He licks his lips and takes another sip. I raise my own

mug and tilt some of the cocoa into my mouth. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. Then it’s not—it’s a thousand degrees and my insides bake and turn to ash and I open my mouth to scream—

I wake up to Peter’s lips against my ear.
No, it’s Rhys.
“Wake up, we’re slowing.”
I move to the front of the cart as the dream disperses. I

try to catch it, but it’d be easier to catch smoke. The cart is no longer moving under its own power; it coasts. The tunnel is lit more frequently now, equal pools of black and light.

“How long was I out?”
“I don’t know,” Rhys says. “I lost track of time.” The pitch of the screeching wheels drops as we slow, as

“Really, how long?” I say.
Rhys shrugs. “No idea. Definitely hours.”
I can’t believe it; the news stuns me enough that I have

to just sit here and think about the magnitude of the tunnel. Where are we? We could be anywhere. The amount of work to build this place...It had to take forever to hew the tunnel from rock, to install the lights and beams. All so something could travel underground—but for what purpose, I have no idea. Nina might not have come this way at all, but the length of the trip makes me feel confident we’re on the right path. After all, the magical cart just waiting for us couldn’t be a coincidence. The amount of unknowns makes me want to turn around, but it’s obviously too late for that. My skin prickles with the feel- ing that whatever lies ahead is big. If only because the tunnel should be impossible. And all the while my heart rate climbs as I anticipate/dread what comes next. Nina might be right around the corner.

It takes another full minute to slow enough for the wheels to quiet. A bright light shines down the tunnel, the size of a penny held at arm’s length. Peter tenses beside me. I fight the same reaction and try to stay loose.

The cart rolls to a final stop.
I jump off the front of the cart, pull Beacon off my back, and use my left hand to snatch the revolver off my thigh. I hear the boys hop down, several muted metallic scrapes as they pull their weapons too.
Behind me, the wheels groan against the track.
I spin around to see the cart reversing. Like it was pro- grammed to return the second it delivered us.
Rhys takes a few running steps after it, then skids to a stop, shaking his head.
“That’s not good,” he says.
They look at me like I knew it was going to happen.
“Not my fault,” I say, though it kind of is, since I got into the cart first.
“We keep moving,” Peter says.
“Well we can’t exactly go back,” Rhys replies. “I don’t like it.”
“Me neither,” Peter says.
I let my weapons dangle at my sides. “We’re close. Rhys is right, there’s nowhere else to go.”
We stand there for a moment, in the near-dark and silence. I think we’re waiting for one of us to come up with a better idea. Finally I turn away and walk deeper into the tunnel, toward the bright light.
“Technically, we
could
go back,” Rhys calls after me. Then he mutters, “There’s nothing good about this place.” Almost like a plea. Rhys is unnerved, which unnerves me. If Noah were here, he’d call Rhys something derogatory, even though he’d be feeling the same sense of wrongness we all do. Call it our training keeping us on edge, but I know it’s just regular old human fear, the darker kind that comes when you don’t understand.
Two seconds later, their footsteps start after me.
We walk for ten minutes, and the light gets brighter and brighter.
“Be ready,” Rhys whispers beside me. I hear Peter pull the hammer back on his revolver.
We spread out over the last fifty feet, then leave the tunnel behind for a huge underground chamber.
Huge doesn’t begin to describe it. Think stadium-size, complete with an enormous dome roof you can’t see with just one glance. Lights dot the ceiling in a grid pattern too bright to look at. Tunnels like the one we came through are built around the circumference, right into the rock, like the tunnels people use to get to their seats in a stadium. Only triple the amount. At first glance, there seems to be a hundred, some of them stacked three high, a grid of openings that now remind me less of stadium tunnels and more of drawers in a morgue.
Each tunnel has a label that sends a chill from the base of my spine to the top of my head. They say things like
ChiCago

Cities. All the cities in America I could name, and some I couldn’t, like
twin falls
.
None of this is the weird part.
In the center of the cavern is a flat black circle the size of a small lake. I walk toward it slowly. The black surface reflects no light, so I can’t tell what it is. It seems to be
something
, not a hole in the ground. But not liquid, either. Just...
black
.
I step closer.
“Let me go first,” Peter says behind me.
My mind shows me Noah charging into the darkness of the lab. I am done letting anyone else go first. “No, wait.”
My eyes go to the tunnels again. So many paths, all stemming from this central hub like spokes on a wheel. I slide Beacon onto my back, feel the click as it adheres to my armor, but keep the silver revolver in my grasp.
“Anyone have a good feeling about this?” Rhys says.
It’s so quiet I can hear the blood in my ears. I can’t take my eyes off the lake. I am staring into the abyss, literally. Instinct is screaming at me to run, but I press on. Noah would have, and I’m sure Nina did.
I approach the lake slowly, waiting for a change or a ripple, a reflection, but it doesn’t alter. Soon I’m kneeling at the edge. My eyes begin to ache, but I don’t look away.
“What are you doing?” Peter says. He grabs my arm, but I reach forward with the other one and touch the black.
Nothing happens. My hand disappears to the wrist, but I feel nothing, literally nothing, like my hand has been discon- nected. The black isn’t a liquid; it’s not anything. I pull my handout andfeeling returns as I do, first mywrist,then palm, then fingers, then fingertips.
“Not a dead end,” Rhys says. He’s staring into the lake with unfocused eyes, like it has him caught in a trance.
“Might as well be,” Peter says. “It’s not like we’re going to jumpin.”He pullsmeup andI lethim,thinking,
We
’
re probably going to jump in, and you know that. We came all this way.
He grabs my hand and inspects it—the armor is fine. The smaller scales on my fingers are intact and flawless.
Rhys kneels for a closer look. “We can’t make it back on foot. No food or water.”
“Are there any carts in the tunnels?” Peter says, casting his gaze over the floor-level openings. Some of the tunnel entrances are lit and smooth and feel finished, while some are shadowed and craggy, like open mouths waiting to chew us up.
“It would take hours to search each one,” I say, flexing my hand. It felt odd in the black, but not wrong. Just...missing. “This is our path. Nina came here, I know it.”
“You can’t be sure,” Rhys says.
“Nina was supposed to gather something called the eyeless,” I go on, ignoring him. “Sequel told me. If Nina came here, I don’t see where else she could go.”
“Down one of the tunnels, maybe,” Peter says. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“You’ll be able to track me,” I say, tapping the small pack lashed to my waist.
“Track you when you fall to your death? We don’t know what’s down there.”
“I’m going to jump in,” I say.
He’s eyeing me now, and I can guess why. “Do you really want to, or is something else telling you to do that?”
Rhys squints at Peter, not sure exactly what he means, but I am. “Wait,” Rhys says, looking at the ground now. “There.” I follow his gaze five feet to the left, to a collection of small footprints in the light dust. The scaled bottoms of Nina’s feet are clear. She was here, at this very spot.
“What do you think now?” I ask Peter.
“That she definitely came here. But is that proof she jumped in? Not exactly. And answer my question. Why do you want to jump so badly?”
“I don’t, but why would all these tunnels connect to here?” I admit my desire to go through might seem a bit suspicious, but I believe it’s the right direction, and I think deep down he does too.
All I know for certain is that the lake is something we don’t understand. It’s not natural. And I prefer my enemies of the flesh and blood variety.
“Are you really willing to risk the jump?” Rhys says. “I am if you are.”
I nod. “It’s that or we take a chance down a tunnel. We’re wasting time.” I turn to Peter. “Make a decision. Please.”
Peter shakes his head. “I don’t know. None of this seems real.”
So I settle it. I do what Noah did for me.
I bend my knees and leap into the black.