The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (14 page)

As they rapidly approached the
building, Colton saw that it was constructed in the shape of a
giant black cube. Its outside walls were covered with hundreds of
tinted black windows, from the ground floor to the roof.

The Jeep shot between two large,
clay-colored boulders and bounced over a small rise in the
sand.

Shelly reached forward and pressed a
small button built into the dashboard. The ground instantly fell
away beneath them, dropping down sharply to become a descending
ramp. The Jeep shot underground, instantly passing from sunlight to
darkness.

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.”

19

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.”