Secret Worlds (550 page)

Someone grabs me and clamps a firm hand over my mouth. Presses down to the point where I choke. “Rggh!” I gargle, dry-mouthed. “Arghh.” I might’ve been dreaming before but this is as real as it gets. Thrashing around, I try to free myself, but whoever it is, has me in a firm wrestler’s hold.

“Get the powder,” a guy’s voice hisses. “Hurry! What’s wrong with you, idiots!”

Just as I start to focus my eyes in the dark, a smaller hand pushes against them, blocking any sight. I gasp for air as the hand widens to cover my nose. My heart is pounding at a breakneck pace.

“Here,” says a girl. “Suck on this!” It’s Vesper’s voice. The fingers over my nose lift as my head is forced upward, and a dry substance is dumped into my nostrils. I choke and struggle for breath. “Sniff it up, Drug Girl, sniff up your red powder. Every last bit.”

Red
powder? That’s not the Oblivion! I’m frantic to tell her she’s got the wrong powder. This is the Fireseed pollen for my project. I haven’t yet tested it, so I have no idea what it does. It could be toxic, even fatal at this dose. I close up my throat, work hard not to inhale. God only knows what the stuff will do to me. I’m familiar enough with herbs and lichen and varieties of shale to know that what’s so-called “natural” when ingested can have very unnatural results. But I need to open my throat to breathe, and my voice is too coated with thick powder to work. I’m choking and gagging and inhaling all at once.

Sparks start to explode in the back of my eyes. A burning sensation hits my throat and spreads wildfire to my lungs and windpipe. Oh, how it stings, it stings!

“Give her more,” Vesper’s saying. “The whole forsaken pouch.”

“No, save some for her brother.” Jan’s voice.

Oh, lord, not my brother! I raise my arms to fight them off and shove their hands from my face, but someone has clamped my arms at my sides. Blane? Bea? My hope sinks as I struggle to breathe.

More sparks play behind my eyes—exploding ones that leap like hot oil in a pan. The hovercraft from my nightmares lowers itself down and down, and a horde of hairy men climb out, their tongues wagging and grinning mouths yelling, “Druggie, get your fix, get it all! High as a hovercraft set for the moon.”

My brain, in a cacophony of popping, crackling bubbles, short-circuits to black.

Flitting open, my eyes cycle in on a wall drawing with purple lines and curves. What is it? It’s hard to focus. My eyes won’t work right. They won’t steady. I try again to center in, study the paper on the wall. Eddies and swirls—in a whirling pattern of purple. Close my lids once more to stabilize myself from the dizzying sensation. Breathe in, breathe out, heavily, with lungs stinging. They sting so badly I need to scream. Instead I fade out.

A warm rag touches my brow, slides across it, back and forth, up and down, over and over. It feels so fresh. It coaxes me back to the living. I try to open my mouth. It willfully disobeys me by staying closed. I will it to open again, and it creaks open in stages, like the ancient roll-top desk at the Fireseed compound, but no noise comes out.

The Fireseed compound, that was years ago, wasn’t it? Whoosh, goes the warm rag, whoosh. With all of my strength I raise my lids to the halfway point, and make out a young man’s deeply tanned face with leaf tattoos on high cheekbones, a resolute chin. Ah, yes! It’s Armonk. And I’m lying in a bed of wrinkled sheets smelling of sour sweat. I start to raise myself on my elbows. God, the deep ache in my throat and lungs!

With a gentle hand, he guides me back down. “Shh, you’ve been sick, take it easy, Ruby.”

My voice creaks out. “Sick? How long have I been out? Tell me … Armonk.”

“A week and a day,” he says, as he sweeps across my brow with the warm, damp rag.

My back prickles with fear. “I was really asleep that long?”

He nods, his dark hair and the leaf on his necklace dangling as he leans over me.

The memory of that night returns in sickening waves: a callused palm squeezing out my oxygen, thick, sticky powder coating my throat and scorching the skin inside my nose, my windpipe, my lungs. The hateful, excited voices too—Vesper’s and Jan’s. “Was I almost dead?” I ask Armonk.

He hesitates, as if he’s not sure I can handle the truth.

“Well?”

“You could say that,” he admits. “Your pulse was so fast it seemed as if you might explode,” he says. “Then it got very slow, and faint and stayed like that almost until today. You only woke enough for us to drip some water down you, but I guess you don’t remember.” He places the rag on a side table. “The others will want to see you. Here, drink this before I get them.” He reaches for a glass and holds it up to my lips.

I take a few tentative sips, and then fat, greedy ones that dribble goop down my chin. It’s a mossy, sour brew, but it tastes like rivers of paradise. “Thanks, Armonk. How’s Thorn, is he okay?”

“Um, he’s fine. Now rest. I’ll be back.” With this, he pads out. I watch him go—his limping walk, his leather quiver, empty of arrows that he stores in his room, his quiet, sure manner.

I gaze around me in the darkened room, the only light coming in from the half-opened door. I’m no longer in Bea’s room. This room is small and windowless, empty except for the bed I’m in, and the side table. And a drawing tacked to the wall by my bed.

I study it. A purple line drawing of the antlered beetle I caught weeks ago! Only this one is made to look like an enchanted queen beetle, with a purple, bejeweled crown and scepter. I giggle. Something like this could look so silly unless it was drawn with grace and spirit, and humor. This is Bea’s fantastic drawing.

“Do you like it?” I turn over to see that she’s standing in the shadow of the doorway.

“Bea!”

“I drew it for you.” She steps closer. “I was worried that you wouldn’t wake up, so I … I wanted something magical to watch over you.”

My eyes blur with tears. “It’s beautiful, Bea! I love it.”

“You’re not mad at me for drawing your secret? I know you wanted to keep it private, but I hoped it would cheer you up like nothing else.”

“It’s absolutely fine, Bea. Thank you.”

She drifts closer, and sits on the edge of the bed. “Sorry I didn’t defend you. It’s unforgivable what Vesper did. And Jan,” she adds under her breath. “It’s just that we’ve all been through such hard times. It drives some people mad, you know?”

“It hardens people,” I say. “But that’s no excuse for hurting someone.”

“No. Nevada punished them,” Bea’s quick to add.

“They’ll really hate me now. They’ll blame me for their punishment.”

Bea shrugs. “Maybe so. Stay away from them. You have every right to be here.”

“I have a mother I could go back to.”

“But you said that you couldn’t. You said that a man assaulted you.”

“What?” Shame rushes through me. “I never told you that!”

“You were talking in your sleep. Saying all kinds of things.”

“Oh, no.” My face heats up, inflaming my lungs and throat all over again. “What else did I say? Did it make any sense?”

“You talked about men in ships. Men that had hair all over them, men stealing people.”

I grimace. “Those were nightmares, that’s all.”

“Nightmares come from something real, don’t they?” Her shrewd eyes stare into mine, willing out truths. This fledgling friendship is so raw. Dare I trust her?

“I guess they do. I don’t know what exactly.”

“Maybe something yet to come?” Something in her surety sets my teeth to grind, my worries to creep in. This place feels as unsafe as the old compound ever did. And yet, here I have a new friend, and actually two, with Armonk.

“How’s Thorn?” I ask her, remembering Armonk’s hesitant tone when I asked him. “Is he really okay?”

Bea’s quiet for a moment, wringing her delicate hands.

“What? Tell me.”

“He’s disobeyed Nevada’s quarantine a couple of times now.”

I hoist myself up higher. “What do you mean? How?”

“He keeps escaping to the field. Armonk and Blane keep finding him curled up under a Fireseed plant.”

“Blane, oh, no. Has Thorn cut any more holes in the tarp?”

“Yes.”

I sink as if I’m in a freefall. This is bad, very bad. We’ll be kicked out now for sure. “What did Nevada say? What did she do?”

“The funny thing is, well … come out and see for yourself.”

Adrenaline pounds into my system, down my spine and into my legs. In one fluid motion that seemed impossible even a half hour ago, I bolt upright, rock my legs over the bed and to the floor and slip on my boots. Holding onto Bea to steady myself, we walk down to tier one and out the garden door.

Even before I’m downstairs a humming starts in my head, like string instruments playing all at once. It’s nothing like the Axiom Stream messages, not at all. Those are loud and intrusive and overly cheery. This is subtle murmuring, inviting and comforting, and it feels as if it’s breathing new life into me. I reach for the door to go out but Bea stops me.

“What’re you doing?” she cautions. “You need your suit.”

“Oh, that,” I say as an afterthought. I shrug myself into it, and with a wave of impatience, reach for my mask. Somehow I don’t feel like I need these things any more. Why, I can’t say.

My energy returns in great bursts as I plunge into the field. I feel as if I could leap over plants and even people. Is it because I haven’t eaten for a week and I’ve lost weight?

“Be careful,” Bea warns, as I falter and catch myself. “Look over here,” she says.

But I’ve already seen it, and I’m halfway over there. Good god! The Fireseed has pushed its way through one of Thorn’s intentional holes. “In one week it’s grown twice as big as any plant in here.”

“See?” Bea states the obvious. “It’s shot up like that old fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk. How did Thorn know to open up the space for it?”

I brush up against the Fireseed’s rustling leaves, as if I’m convinced it will give me the answer. As I do, the droning gets more insistent—a kind of lovely, wild music in my head.
Food
, it sings,
food, food, food.

That’s what Thorn told me! I inspect the leaves. They’re clean and red and smooth. Running to another plant, I finger those leaves. “It’s gone!” I tell Bea.

“What’s gone?” Her brow crosses in confusion.

“The blight Thorn said was on the Fireseed.”

“Thorn
talks
to you?” She crosses her arms and gapes at me. “I thought you said that his words were beaten out of him. Did you lie? Why would you do that?”

“I did say that, Bea. Thorn doesn’t talk
out loud
. He … he talks with his eyes.” Her face is a grimace of disbelief. I don’t care about Jan and Vesper, but it’s important that at least Bea believes me. “Thorn pointed out the whitish puckering on the leaves. You never noticed it?”

“No.” She uncrosses her arms. “What does that have to do with how Thorn knew they’d grow taller if they were exposed to sun? Nevada convinced us they’d burn up and die.”

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. When I say that, the noise in my head swells.
Sun, sun, sun,
it drones and I have an inexplicable drive to escape the confines of the field and run out toward the dunes.

To hold myself back from running to the fence and ducking under is like trying not to scratch a horrid itch. Bea would surely report me as a danger to myself. I’d be quarantined like Thorn. This I know.

“Where is Thorn?” I ask Bea as I look back toward the school. Suddenly I’m exhausted. Even if I forgot, my throbbing back and quaking knees remember that I was basically in a coma for a week.

“Come on.” Bea leads me to the Project Room, where everyone turns to me at once. Blane’s mouth drops open as if he’s looking at a glowing ghoul from Skull’s Wrath. My eyes move to Thorn. He’s moved his equipment to the table that Radius and I share where he’s standing on a box. It looks from the items in his hands that he’s working on a Fireseed project. I run over and hug him. He hugs me back ferociously. Then I hold him at arm’s length to examine how he looks. His skin looks tan, he’s a little thinner, but he looks amazingly fine.

“You were really disintegrated,” Jan blurts out from behind me.

“No thanks to you,” I snort, without turning.

“Whatever that stuff was, it was really powerful,” says Radius. He’s sitting at his end of the long table. “Well, I’m glad you survived.”

“Thanks, Radius.” That’s the first really nice thing any of the guys, aside from Armonk, has said to me. Though I did catch a heartening glimmer of relief in Blane’s eyes.

Vesper narrows her eyes as I march up to her. “Did you give my brother any of that red powder?” I stare into her striking, dark face, set in a jeer. “Did you?”

“Not me.” She wheels away.

I navigate around to her front again, and force her to look at me a second time. “Where’s the rest of it?”

She shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you.”

“Not good enough,” I say, though I’m resigned to not finding out. I’ll have to collect more for the competition. Besides, it nearly killed me, so I’m not sure it’s wise to keep experimenting with it. “Don’t you come near me or my brother again, do you understand?”

“Who would want to?” she answers defiantly.

“Then that’s settled.”

With that, I float downstairs, my brother at my heel. “Did they make you snort up some red powder?” I ask him, when we reach the compound’s front door.

He nods, and smiles.

“What’s so darn funny?” I ask him. “Didn’t it make you sick?”

He shakes his head.

“You must not have taken as much as me then. It made me terribly sick.”

He nods, and gives me another puppy-dog hug, clearly happy that I’m awake now. My heart wrenches.

“Shall we go—?” The whispering inside my head finishes it for me.
Outside, outside, outside.

Thorn answers without speaking,
Outside, outside, outside.

We slip out the door and tread on light feet to sloping dunes. They look like Bea’s drawings of angel wings—curved, graceful, arching over the flatter sands. This is the first time I’ve been out in the open desert since Depot Man dropped us off, and it feels singular, daring, exciting.