Nil Unlocked (19 page)

Skye shrugged. “I’d seen the cat follow the boy, and it seemed fine. So I figured I’d be okay, too.”

Balls of steel
, I thought.

I pointed Skye toward the path, keeping my eyes open for leopards, loners, and anything else that might be a foe. I still hadn’t decided which category Maaka fell into.

Or now, Paulo.

“What did Paulo’s tattoos look like? I know you said they were all black. But did you get a good look at them?”

“Not really. It was like one really big tattoo; it wrapped around his upper arm. Part of it looked like waves. I’m not sure about the rest.”

My money’s on interlocking diamonds and moons. Like Maaka’s. Like the carvings in the cavern of the Looking Glass pool and the backside of the Wall.

“I think there was a sun,” she added. “But I could be wrong.”

I doubted that.

“So what else did Paulo say?” I asked. “The second time you spoke?”

She thought for a moment. “He said that there were rules but didn’t tell me what they were; he just said he couldn’t break them. He told me to go west, to find people like me.” She looked sideways at me, humor denting the steel in her eyes. “Which I think means you. I told him he could come with me. He said no. He said he had to do it alone. And he said he couldn’t leave yet.” She paused, and a full smile broke through her calm. “He also said monkeys threw poop at him. He smelled awful.”

Monkeys
, I thought.
As in plural.

Maybe Bart hadn’t lied completely after all. But he was still a heartless coward, and selfish as hell.
It changes nothing.

I ground my teeth.

“My turn,” Skye said. She stared at me intently. “What were you just thinking?”

You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.

“Rives?”

“That monkeys can be dangerous,” I said.

She glanced toward the trees. “Most animals can be,” she said finally.

I studied her, stretching her definition of animals to include us. Humans. “True,” I said.

I glanced back at the trail, in time to see a porcupine waddle across without stopping. Just a Nil drive-by. Not deadly, not benign, somewhere in the middle. Just your average Nil day in a nutshell.

Skye missed it; she was looking at me.

“Who’s Maaka?”

“Good question,” I said. “I think he’s the boy who greeted Paulo. Intense ink, intense personality. And Paulo’s supposed mentor, whatever that means. I’ve run into Maaka a couple times over the past month, and I think he knows a lot more about this place than he’s telling.”

“Same for Paulo,” Skye said. “So I’m assuming Maaka isn’t in the City?”

“Right.” The word
City
rolled off Skye’s tongue like she’d been here three hundred days, not three.

“And this path. It leads to the City, right? After we pass the Crystal Cove?”

“Right again.” I stopped walking and Skye immediately stopped too. I knew she would. “If you listen, we’re close enough to hear the roar of the falls.”

She cocked her head, her halo of wild hair shifting with her. “I don’t hear anything.” She frowned. “Except maybe the leaves rustling.”

“Close your eyes.”

She did.

“Filter the silence. Sift through the silence until you hear what you’re looking for.”

A long moment passed. I watched her, watching a tiny line appear between her brows, the same line that appeared when she paused at length before speaking. A long curl blew across her cheek. Her grip tightened on her spear.

Looks like Nil finally sent a contender after all,
I thought.

She opened her eyes. “Nothing.”

I nodded. “It takes time, but you’ll get it.” I watched her shift her sling higher on her shoulder, a primitive homemade weapon with a one-hundred-meter range if slung well. I’d guess Skye, lean but ripped, could sling it pretty damn well.

“Skye, you’re not the average Nil rookie. We both know that. You didn’t drop in cold and clueless, and you definitely don’t look scared of your own shadow. You know there’s a City and a Cove and animals that fall from the air. Some deadly, some not. You know your time here comes with an expiration date written in blood. You had a full Nil preview thanks to your uncle’s journal. So knowing all that ahead of time,
why
would you come? Why jump through that gate into Hell?”

Skye closed her eyes again, a long blink. This time I knew she wasn’t searching for sounds of the Cove; she was searching for words. I hoped she wasn’t an adrenaline junkie looking for a fresh fix. My patience for Nil’s theatrics had thinned to a razor-sharp edge.

“I don’t know exactly. I didn’t really think. I just acted.” She rubbed the inside of her left wrist with her right thumb. “It was probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done—besides the canoe trip—and my dad would kill me if he knew. Of course, he knows I’m missing by now, and that’s probably killing him as it is.” She swallowed, her face paling under her slight sunburn. “But in hindsight, it was because of Charley.”

“Charley?” I asked.

Skye nodded. “When I met her, pain poured off her in waves. She was grieving and hurting and suffering alone. She’d told everyone she had amnesia. But she remembered everything.
Everything.
And her grief—” Skye’s voice dropped an octave. “It was awful.” Skye lifted her eyes to mine. “It was because of Thad, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Now it was my turn to pause. “They were good together. Intense, kind of over the top at times.” I smiled. “But—” A memory flashed: Thad’s face, his expression fierce, his eyes burning with longing and desperation that I’d known had everything to do with the fact it was his 364th day and that within hours, the island would rip him apart from Charley.
Not my back,
he’d said.
Charley’s. Promise me you’ll have Charley’s back.
Thad’s words, delivered with an ache that had slayed me back then.

His words killed me now.

Because right now I didn’t have her back, or his, because they weren’t here. Unless Thad was here after all, lost to the island forever. And if that was the case, I was the shittiest wingman ever.

He made it
, I repeated. Because if not, Nil fell so deep into the
foe
category that nothing could drag it out.

“But what?” Skye’s words brought me back.

“But they were the real deal.” I glanced at her, wanting to believe her story. “Thad’s not here, but you already knew that, right? So how did Charley make you take that gate?”

“Her pain.” Skye said. “She was suffering, like my uncle had, only differently. And at the same time, my dad had this crazy idea that if he could just find this island, he could save all the kids.”

“Really? How?”

“I’m still working on that,” Skye said. She was completely serious. “But it has something to do with that stationary gate. In the end, it was the gate that made me go for it. The way it rose, the way it stood still, the timing of it. Tell me, Rives, what gate comes at midnight?”

Merde.

I’d totally missed the fact that her gate flashed at night. At twelve o’clock
midnight
, not twelve o’clock noon. The number twelve capping the labyrinth carvings shifted in meaning again.

Are you playing with us, Nil, or leading us to understanding?
All the carvings spun, the labyrinth lines shifting too fast. Like a gate I couldn’t catch.

I relaxed my grip on my knife; I didn’t remember reaching for it.

“Exactly,” Skye said. She’d been watching me like I watched her. “Gates don’t come at midnight. Or at least not the ones my uncle saw.”

Her thoughtful, assessing look was back, like she’d retreated into herself. “I’ve been replaying that night ever since I woke up here. I acted without thinking, jumping into that gate, and I think I know why; it just took me a few days to work it out. That gate was different. It rose in the night, and it didn’t move. It stood there, Rives, waiting. And it took more than one rider.” She paused. “On some level, I think at the moment I chose to take that gate, I already knew: If there’s a stationary gate on that end, wouldn’t there be a stationary outbound on this end, too? And if that gate—the outbound on the Death Twin—can take two people, a chicken, a goat, and a cat, why couldn’t the stationary outbound on this end take a group, too?” Skye’s expression was as fierce as Charley’s on the day Charley had told me about her storm theory.

No, Skye’s was fiercer.

Watch out, Nil. Skye’s coming for you too.

“That gate has a mate,” Skye said quietly. “A bookend. Here, on
this
side. And it could take everyone off Nil.” Her expression dared me to defy her. “We just need to find it.”

Warning bells went off in my head like sirens. “Skye, if a stationary gate on this end exists, where is it? Why hasn’t anyone seen it? Or heard of it? The island’s not that big.”

“You could ask the same thing of Nil back home. Why hadn’t anyone seen it? I think the answer isn’t that it hasn’t been seen; it just hasn’t been seen by the right people.”

Maaka
, I thought.
And Paulo.

She narrowed her lips, a sign I was quickly coming to read as annoyance. “I think the boat captain and our guide knew of this place, and maybe more people than just them. I got the distinct feeling that the locals were stalling my dad, trying to lead him anywhere but here. Paulo definitely knew of it. He was waiting for the gate. Somehow he knew when and where that outbound would show.”

“Just like how Maaka knew where that gate would appear on this end,” I said. “Because from what you said, he was waiting too.”

“Exactly. And I don’t think Paulo would’ve taken that gate if he didn’t know he’d get back. He looked resigned, not brave. Not brave enough to jump into that gate without knowing he could get home.”

“We’ve got to find Paulo or Maaka. Or both.”
And I need to talk to Johan—if he’s still here.

It was a big
if
.

Skye tilted her head. “I hear the falls,” she said. “Finally.” A wry smile broke through her calm veneer.

I gently touched her shoulder to slow her down. She was more dangerous than she knew, or at least her secrets were, and I’d barely scratched the surface.

“Listen, I know this is a lot to ask, but can you keep the details about your inbound gate quiet? Until we figure out where it fits.” I paused. “The thing is, we have a system for Searching for gates. We Search in teams, with time on Nil deciding Priority. The City supports the Search teams, plain and simple. And we’ve gotten a lot better at finding gates in the last few months. Charley figured out a pattern to outbounds while she was here—and we’re seeing more gates than ever because of it. But your gate is different. And I’m afraid that if people start Searching for a stationary gate, the system will fall apart.”
The City will fall apart.

“Without the Search system…” I paused, thinking of the City already on edge. “I don’t know,” I said finally.

“I do,” Skye said quietly. “And it’s not pretty.”

I raised my eyebrows. The silence stretched to an uncomfortable point, making clear it was still Skye’s turn.

“My uncle started the Search system,” she said. “Before then, noon was a free-for-all. Nil was a very different place then. Darker, and cruel.”

“Don’t let the beauty fool you.” My voice was sharp. “Nil can still be cruel.”

“The island or the people?” she asked.

Crosses on the Wall, crosses in the field. Time cut short by fate, by a bad island hand, or by someone else’s.
Memories of Li, Bart, and Talla rolled through my head, a mental mash-up in shades of black after too many nights on watch.

“Both.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

I regarded Skye carefully. “You don’t seem afraid of anything.”

Her expression was unreadable. “Everyone’s afraid of something.”

So says the girl who has Nil by the balls.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked. The island air thickened. Grew weighted, as if Nil hungered for the answer, too, anything to keep the advantage.

Skye shook her head, a slight movement I almost missed.

“I hear voices.” Skye shifted toward the Cove. “Is that Dex? Charley mentioned him.”

“Yup.” I pointed to where Dex stood by the Cove’s edge. “He’s the guy with serious tats and a half-bleached mohawk.”

Dex was deep in conversation with Johan. Selfish relief hit me hard.

As Skye and I walked in silence toward the Cove, I wondered what she was thinking and what she was afraid of.

Because if it scared her, my gut told me we should all be afraid.

CHAPTER

28

SKYE

DAY 3, AFTER NOON

Reading about Nil and actually being on Nil were two very different things. It’s like the difference between seeing a documentary about Antarctica and then feeling the ice and snow for yourself.

Waking up in the dark, completely naked, a stone’s throw (not that I had a stone then) from two strange boys and then running for my life only to come face-to-face with a Bengal tiger, knowing it was his decision whether or not to make me his dinner.

No amount of reading could prepare me for that.

Yet since then, sometimes the Nil I’d read about and the Nil I was living were exactly the same. Waking with the sun to the cleanest air ever, checking my water traps at dawn, strolling through the groves in awe, and studying trees packed with fruit like a slice of Eden. In those moments, I’d relax, walking through the world my uncle described so well, checking off invisible boxes of familiar. At other times, the two Nils felt eerily identical—but not quite, as if something in this Nil had been tweaked, just enough to jar the scene, just enough to rip away the comfort of familiarity.

At moments like these, the two time frames blurred: The past overlapped the present, making me feel like I had one foot in both and was grounded in neither. Like I’d opened the wrong time capsule.

Like now.

Rives and I had rounded the cliff to the Crystal Cove. The waterfall was breathtaking, as was the cliff, the pool, and the sum of all the parts, just as my uncle described. And the diverse group of people gathered was spot-on—and yet different.