Rogue (11 page)

“What can you see down there?” Will asked.

Ajay stepped forward and opened his eyes wide. “There's a layer of mist or clouds…it's quite thick…and I believe I can make out a canopy of trees just below it…tall, a variety of species, a mix I would generally associate with a rain forest biosphere.”

“This close to a desert?” asked Elise.

“A very abrupt transition, to be sure,” said Ajay.

“It's not any more unusual than the rest of it,” said Will.

“No, that part isn't,” said Ajay, still staring intently down at the clouds. “What's unusual is that there's absolutely no wind down below and some of those trees appear to be moving.”

WILL'S RULES FOR LIVING #6:

THOSE WHO CAN'T DO, DON'T.

Will was tempted to run ahead and take a look, but staying together won out. He didn't really want to push Ajay too much physically or emotionally—he still seemed too fragile—and he could sense that Elise was even more concerned about him.

The temperature dropped steadily as they continued down the path; by the time they neared the edge of the fog layer, it actually felt chilly. Will stopped just before it. The fog started as abruptly as a curtain ahead of them, motionless, bright white, thick as cotton.

They stared at it apprehensively. “Are you sure this is the way to go?” asked Ajay.

“Something really off about it,” said Elise. “It looks like fog but it doesn't seem like fog.”

“It's more like…an idea of fog,” said Will. “Almost too perfect.”

“Indeed. There's no aspect of randomness or irregularity,” said Ajay. “The signal characteristics of water in its vaporous form.”

“What he said,” said Elise.

Will reached out to touch the edge of the bank. His hand moved into it effortlessly. Cool and wet. Moisture beaded on his skin. He brought his hand back out.

“Feels okay,” he said.

“I already know you're going to ask me to go first, so I may as well save you the trouble,” said Ajay, pulling himself up to his full height.

And he walked right into the cloud. After just a few steps, Ajay completely disappeared.

“Don't go too far!” shouted Elise.

“I'm only five steps in,” he said. “And I've stopped already. Remain calm.”

“Can you see anything?” asked Will.

“I can see the ground at my feet…I can see my hand in front of my face…and that's about the extent of it.”

Will and Elise gripped each other's hand, walked in after him, and were instantly enveloped in the cool, cocooning mist. They took one careful step forward at a time. Will couldn't see his feet
or
their hands.

They bumped into Ajay two steps later, without even seeing him, and stopped.

“Ah, holding hands again,” Ajay said just ahead. “Any excuse at all, I see. Honestly, people are going to start to gossip—”

“Shut
up,
” said Elise.

“Let me try something,” said Will.

He blinked on his Grid: Everything looked as vague and milky as what he could see with the naked eye. No heat signatures or other signs of life in range. Useless. He blinked it off.

“Can't see a blinking thing,” he said.

“What now?” asked Ajay.

“There's a cliff with a steep drop to the right,” said Will. “Let's find the wall that we know is on the left and stick to it. Elise, grab on to my backpack. We'll go single file.”

Elise stepped behind him and took hold of his pack. Will put both hands on Ajay's shoulder as he turned, leading them, and inched in that direction, stretching out his hands.

“I don't feel it yet,” said Ajay.

“Wait, I think I can tell you where it is,” said Elise.

They halted. Elise stepped out from behind Will and issued a series of small, incredibly fast clicks and whirrs; then she took Will's hand and strode ahead a few paces until she stopped them both abruptly.

“If I'm right, the wall should be six inches in front of us,” she said.

Will moved next to her, put both hands up in front of him, then moved them slowly forward…and about half a foot later made contact with the rocky wall.

“Ah, echolocation,” said Ajay admiringly.

“A useful new tool,” said Elise.

“And of course the one time we really need it,
my
one puny power proves
absolutely
useless,” said Ajay.

“It's not useless,” said Will. “And it's not the only time we've needed it.”

“And it's not puny,” said Elise. “And it's not the only power you have either, Brainiac.”

“Okay, so maybe I was fishing for compliments a tiny bit,” said Ajay with a lopsided grin. “Why don't you take the lead, my dear?”

“No, you two should both go first, together,” said Will. “Elise on the left, keeping your left hand on the wall. I'll bring up the rear.”

Will grabbed both of their backpacks and reconfigured them into the right positions.

“I hope you won't object if
we
hold hands,” said Ajay.

“Not unless you do,” said Elise, grabbing his left hand with her right.

“At least she can't see you blushing,” said Will. “Let's move.”

They started forward, one step at a time. Will held on to their packs and found it a little easier to stay centered if he closed his eyes.

“This is deeply weird,” said Elise. “Moving around like you're in the dark with so much light around.”

“It's the absence of any variety or texture,” said Ajay. “Our eyes can't function properly with the mind unless they perceive some contrast….Hold on, just a suggestion now—do you suppose you could move the fog around at all with sound? Just enough to vary it?”

Will heard Elise send out a variety of sounds as they inched along. Nothing seemed to make an impact on the cloud until she sent out one that sounded like a soft, oscillating war whoop.

“That one,” said Ajay. “It's creating ripples out ahead of us, and I can definitely detect a pattern.”

Will opened his eyes and looked up. He still couldn't see a thing. He blinked on the Grid again. The faintest vibrating lines showed up in the fog ahead of them, almost forming a path.

“Good work, you two,” he said.

They continued on that way for a while, in grim, silent concentration, with Will looking up and using his Grid every hundred paces.

“How far do you think it is to the floor of the valley?” asked Ajay.

“From where the fog started? I'd guess about half a mile,” said Will.

“Good,” said Ajay, raising something to his face that gave off the faintest red glow. “I started a pedometer at the edge of the cloud, and it looks as if we've traveled about half that distance already.”

“Is it just me, or does it seem like the fog's a little bit thinner here?” asked Elise.

“You're correct,” said Ajay. “We may be moving toward the bottom of the cloud bank.”

“Shouldn't it be thicker at the bottom?” asked Elise.

“Yes, the denser vapor should settle lower down,” said Ajay. “But not even the molecules here seem to be performing according to form.”

It took a little while longer for Will to notice any difference, but eventually he was able to see his own feet, then the path a few steps in front of them. Something about the appearance of the ground troubled him, but before he could formulate a reaction, both Ajay and Elise slipped, their feet flying out from under them. They fell back on their packs, and because Will was still holding on to them, he slipped, too. The path had turned as slick as the blasted ground they'd encountered in the canyon—and before they knew it, they were sliding down and around as if they were on a well-oiled chute.

“Hold on to each other!” shouted Will. “Stay away from the edge, and try to grab on to the wall!”

But there was nothing to hold on to, except each other. Even as the fog thinned around them, they could see that the entire path had turned to the same glassy texture. The path continued to turn to the left, but the force of their mass was carrying them to the right, toward the edge of the cliff. Will reached down for the knife strapped to his calf and dragged the blade behind him, trying to use it as a rudder to steer them back to the left, but the ground was so hard it didn't even leave a scratch.

Elise quickly twisted her body to the right and sent out a thick stream of sound beyond their hearing. The beam of the sound seared into the path, sending up sparks; she was trying to use it as a friction brake to slow them down, which worked momentarily, but the angle of the path steepened and they continued to accelerate, sliding closer and closer to the cliff edge. Will could see branches and leaves, a dense wall of green vegetation just beyond the edge, but for all he knew they could be the
tops
of the trees, in which case…
bad.

Ajay went over the edge first. Will secured his grip on the back of Ajay's pack with his left hand, and as he slipped over after him, Will reached back, turned, and slammed his knife into the ground just under the lip of the cliff. The knife penetrated and stuck and he held on and braced himself, as a moment later Ajay's mass loaded down onto his right hand and arm. Feeling the strain with every muscle, Will held on to him with a death grip.

“I've got you!”

“I don't think you—”

“No, I've got you!”

Then Elise slid by right next to him, but she reached up and grabbed on to the edge of the cliff with both hands, dangling just beside him, eyes shut.

“Hold on!” he yelled to her.

“Will, you don't need to—”

“Yes, I do, Ajay. I'm not letting you fall!”

“Look down,” said Ajay.

Will chanced his first look down. He saw Ajay hanging just below him, and then, through the thinning fog, he saw what was below him.

Ajay's feet were about three feet off the ground. “You're really starting to crush my fingers.”

“Oh,” said Will.

He let go of Ajay's pack, and he dropped down onto the forest floor.

“Oh my God, you let go of him?” Elise opened her eyes, looked down, and saw Ajay waving and smiling.

Will held out his right hand. She took it, swung down, and then dropped to the ground next to Ajay. Will found a foothold on the cliff wall, pulled out his knife, and a moment later joined them.

The fog had thinned here to a spectral mist that hung uniformly through the trees, allowing them to see roughly fifty feet in every direction. Ajay scanned the forest all around them.

“Yes. Very much like a rain forest. High canopy. Little vegetation underfoot, a layer of mulch covering the ground, although the air isn't as pungent with the smell of decaying compost as you might expect. Otherwise, textbook rain forest biosphere.”

Will blinked on the Grid. No heat signatures showed up anywhere in the landscape around them.

“Except no living creatures,” said Will.

“What about the moving trees bit?” asked Elise.

“I don't see anything moving at the moment,” said Ajay. “Maybe they were just swaying in the breeze.”

“It wouldn't be the first time we've run into ‘moving trees,' ” said Will, thinking back to the treelike guardian beasts they'd encountered in the underground ruins.

“Which way?” asked Elise.

They both looked at Will. He pointed straight ahead, decisively—for no reason other than that it seemed they expected him to make a decision—and started walking, moving vines and underbrush out of the way, picking out a path between the massive tree trunks.

“I may have to break out my hatchet,” said Ajay as he tried his walkie-talkie again: still no signal.

“As long as you don't keep
talking
about it,” said Elise.

Will blinked on the Grid again, and this time he picked up some faint flickering heat signatures in the distance. Maybe he
had
chosen the right direction after all: He might have to start trusting this “intuition.”

But suddenly the heat readings appeared closer, and not just straight ahead but to either side of them, and now there were clusters of them. Some up in the trees and an equal number at ground level. They were small and mobile, moving or crawling, but when he blinked off and looked around, he saw no animals that matched the profile.

“Are you seeing anything?” he asked Ajay.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Just flowers. Lots of very pretty flowers. And they're giving off a very pleasant scent. Can either of you smell that?”

“Like gardenias,” said Elise.