The Shimmers in the Night (14 page)

“Stop it!” cried Cara. “Stop! Let go of her!”

She reached out and clutched at his arms, tried to pry them apart, but they were like concrete. Jaye was turning red and tears were streaming from her eyes. Cara grabbed the man's thick fingers next—grabbed at them and tried to pry them backward and off Jaye's throat. She couldn't budge the fingers, either, couldn't even get a firm hold. She was getting desperate.

“Stop
hurting
her! Take
me
!”

And just like that, he let go of Jaye's throat—Jaye fell to the floor, gasping—and reached out for Cara instead.

The last thing she heard before she left was her mother: her mother calling her name, then the shock of silence.

She didn't leave the usual way; she didn't leave with her body. The big man reached out and in one swift touch made her a hollow. She knew it the moment it happened, knew it with certainty. The way the pen had pricked into Jax's skin, the big man's hand infected her. In that brief touch her mind traveled out of her body.

And just like that she wasn't her whole self: she was a kind of avatar. Unlike Jax she hardly ever played video games, but the few times she'd humored him she'd had a glimpse of something like it—in a flatter and safer version. She was adrift; it was a three-dimensional place, but it didn't seem solid, because she couldn't
feel
it. She saw, but there was no sound or touch or smell or taste, and because this part of her had no lungs or even a heart, there was no rhythm of breathing.

“Jax? Anyone?”

She didn't speak; she only thought of speaking. She had no mouth, after all. It was a shock to realize how hard it was to mark time passing without a heartbeat, the in and out of breath—hard even to
think
right; she had to force herself. It was more like a dream than actual life.

Jax and his friend Kubler liked having avatars because they were little kings in their gaming world, all-powerful—but this was centerless and frightening. She had to make herself remember the people in her life, think
Jax
and think
Kubler
, make herself remember concrete names and things she knew…. It was as though she'd been cut off along her waist, or maybe beneath her neck. She was in a place where no one could find her, where she was utterly alone.

It seemed like a cave, or at least a dark hole shot through with ripples of orange—a formless place whose identity was a mystery. She moved through a tunnel or a liquid; at some remove there were fringes of burning orange and red—tongues of lava pushing through black walls of rock or tar….

For a fleeting second, it occurred to her that if hell were real, a pit of fire like in angry sermons, it might look just like this. And then she recognized something. Out of place in the swirl of darkness with its bright seams, its curves and waves, there was one sharp,
man-made
thing: thin, gray vertical lines or posts: pipes. They were pipes, countless pipes—pipes she'd already seen twice before in visions.

There were pipes rising through the chamber, and as she looked down they disappeared beneath; as she looked up they disappeared above. All she could see was their length and the fact that there were too many of them to count, receding into the distance.

She pushed past them looking for someone—anyone. For information. If only she had a guide, someone to tell her what this was. Did all the hollows experience this? Or was it only another of her visions?

Follow the pipes, she thought.

As she passed them she caught a glimpse of movement up ahead—a white shine in the gloom—and realized it was alive. It was a jellylike, glowing creature that pulsed as it traveled, tentacles rippling. It lit up the dimness, and in its luminescence she saw other creatures, too—creatures she couldn't identify, many of them also giving off light, in various shades and degrees of brightness. Some were crablike, others resembled giant insects, and a few were the red, tube-shaped beings she'd seen in her vision, which looked like a cross between a worm and a tropical flower.

Fear pricked her. She must be in water, because the lit-up creatures moved fluidly. But whether it was a vision or a dream, she wasn't here physically; this wasn't a place where actual people could exist. If it was deep in the sea—assuming this was the place beneath the ocean, the place Jax had talked about, the source—it should be freezing cold, for one thing, or maybe, near the gouts of lava, if that was what they were, boiling hot. But she had a kind of immunity, she told herself: she was only an avatar

She was a figment of her own imagination.

After that she felt less afraid.
Think of it as an adventure.

She wondered what she looked like to these strange luminescent beings, if they could even see. Some might be eyeless, she thought she remembered from biology…. The pipes must be conveying the gas Jax had talked about, the carbon, funneling it up from who knew where—from somewhere even deeper, deep beneath the earth, up through the water and into the air.

If the minds of all the hollows came here, then it wasn't just her and the deep-sea creatures. There could be someone else—even many others. She thought of the hollows she'd seen in pods in the nether space, tried to call up their faces. Maybe the motherly black lady in the yellow pantsuit was here somewhere, disembodied, or the younger, white woman with the braids and blue eyeshadow, or the thin girl…maybe even Jax.

If he was still a hollow.

Yet if they were here she'd never know: like hers, those other people's minds would be invisible, hovering in the dark.

It might have been minutes that went by or it might have been hours or days. Then something new passed before her. It was like a submarine, lit up from beneath by a carpet of the wormlike forms—curved and flowing and monstrous. Only after it faded away in the dark did she figure out what it was. She remembered a drawing from one of Jax's encyclopedic books on ocean life.

A squid. A giant squid.

In the wake of the squid a dimly lit school of tiny creatures appeared that flowed past her like a river of light. Whether they were following the squid or just going the same way, she decided to go with them; she simply thought about staying alongside them and there she was, beside the faintly glowing cloud.

Not only her—other creatures were there too, visible on the floor of the ocean and above it, all moving in one direction. Most she didn't have names for: strange, flat fish the color of mud, spiny, many-legged crawlers that reminded her of centipedes, snaggle-toothed fish with lights dangling in front of their faces.… Some made quick, darting movements; others rippled and undulated. There were fearsome-looking things that went past so fast she barely had time to flinch; eel-like fish snaking and twisting along the bottom; more jellies with their tentacles trailing; and translucent organisms shaped like bells and balloons, which she could only make out when something lit was nearby.

She wondered where they were going. Until she realized they weren't going
toward
anything; they were moving
away
from it. They were fleeing—they were in full flight.

Something was chasing them.

She turned her attention backward, against the oncoming stream of strange, deep-ocean life.

At first there were only more creatures, more and more of them moving past, flowing, scrabbling, tumbling over and over each other. Then after waves of them had passed it loomed up: a dark, hulking shape, the thing that was pushing the multitudes out of its way.

It scraped the bottom as it approached, pushing up clouds of debris—sand, rocks, and probably some of the deep-sea life—she couldn't tell, because it churned up the ocean floor and made the water so murky that nothing could be distinguished in the chaos. It had to be some kind of immense vehicle with a wide base like a fan—as though it
meant
to scrape the bottom, as though it was
scouring
the bottom on purpose. A submarine? But submarines didn't move along the ocean floor, did they?

It rose so high she couldn't see to the top; all she could see from within was a dull reddish light. And it took so long to pass that it reminded her of a train, though it was far larger than that.

When it was gone the ocean floor was dark. Devoid of life. Nothing but swirling particles, slowly settling again.

All the living things gone.

She should follow it. Shouldn't she? She could still see its redness, in the distance.

Then something changed and she
couldn't
follow it; she wasn't free anymore. Around her darkness was giving way to a pale, sickly light. She wanted to shy away from it, but she couldn't resist. She heard the pounding of her own heartbeat, duh-
duh
, duh-
duh
. She felt the thin separations of her fingers at the end of her arms, of her feet at the ends of her legs. Around her was a membrane that prickled and tingled and touched against a cold exterior—her skin. It had to be her skin.

She felt her lungs expanding and contracting, and coursing through her was the warmth of blood.

Eight

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Jax's face.

It was his
own
face: animated and curious, with standard-issue blue eyes. She felt a rush of relief to see him back to himself—she hadn't ruined things when she called out. At the same time she was so jarred by her own return that she could barely take it in: her head spun. Jax was very close to her, and as she blinked in the light she realized his hands were on the sides of her head.

He took them away and straightened.

“She's back!” he crowed, and turned to the other faces coming into focus behind him: Hayley and Jaye.

Cara's body felt heavy as she struggled to sit up, but the moment passed and she was settled in herself again. The palms of her hands still ached faintly; she'd forgotten about that.

She looked around. She was in an armchair in a small room. She could see a row of pods through an open door.

“I did it!” continued Jax.

Her own Jax. She felt like hugging him, but found she was just grinning dumbly.

“You did!” congratulated Jaye, and clapped him on the back. “Cara! How do you
feel?”

Hayley leaned in close.

“You didn't actually look that bad with black eyes,” she mused. “They kind of set off your hair.”

“Hayley!” protested Jaye.

Cara remembered, then, the sight of Jaye being throttled by the big man, and felt a start of fear after the fact.

“Jaye—your throat—are you OK?”

Jaye nodded, pulling down her collar to show a couple of bruises on her neck.

“I
am
OK,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

“That was—that was great what you did, putting out the fire,” said Cara, and smiled at her friend.

“Great,” said Hayley. “Jaye's the hero. And you're the hero. And Jax is the hero, too. I'm the only one who's not. I messed everything up by having that stuff in my backpack.”

“It wasn't your fault, Hay,” said Cara.

“Not at all,” said Jaye.

Hayley nodded slightly, but she looked distant and a little sad.

“Where's—where's Mom?” asked Cara, stretching out her arms and then rising unsteadily to her feet as her friends and her brother stepped back to give her room. She was conflicted. She was hugely relieved by Jax's return and her own, but part of her—once she got used to it—had almost begun to
like
being bodiless in that deep, dark place, seeing the flashes of mysterious life.

Part of her had grown to savor floating there, after the fear had waned. In the abyss near the source—if that was what it was—and in her avatar state there'd been a thrilling sense of freedom.

“She left with Mr. Sabin and the rest of the teachers,” said Jax, his face collapsing into worry. “They—”

“They were fighting the bad guys,” interrupted Hayley. “Your mom was like, the leader. She busted out some total martial-arts moves.”

“Not
martial arts,”
protested Jax.

“It was too,” said Hayley. “Like in those Chinese movies where they fly through the air. Supernatural kung fu.”

“Point being,” said Jaye, “she brought down the hollow who had you—and just in time, because it looked like he was going to take off with you somewhere. I mean your body. But then all hell broke loose….”

Cara walked past them to the doorway.

The row of pods she'd seen from her armchair was more or less orderly—except the pods were empty. They were swaying slightly, but on both sides of that one row of pods, the room had been obliterated.

She stood there speechless, staring at the destruction. It was tornado style.

The others came up beside her.

“The whole—the fight to get him away from you? It hit some of the pods, and then before we knew it there were more Burners, coming out of other hollows,” said Jaye.

“But the teachers had a protocol for that,” said Jax. “These fireproof screens or walls—”

“Cages”
said Jaye.

“—slid down between the pods and sealed them off into compartments. See?”

Cara could see the crumpled remains of some of these, thin sheets of mesh that were twisted and torn, sticking down from the ceiling and lying jagged in the wreckage on the floor.

“So then there were some hollows raging around in there, like trapped animals, and a couple were still on the loose, you know, with Burners coming through, and Mom and the others—”

“While you were lying there—”

“They had to fight the Burners—”

“We had to carry you,” said Hayley. “You were a hollow, too, but Jax was with us by then, he was normal, he climbed out of his pod and the three of us had you and we pulled you in here and Jax did something
amazing
.”

“Mom showed me how, is all,” said Jax modestly. “She showed me how while she was doing it to
me.
She gave me a model so I was able to stop them from using you—the Burners I mean—as a conduit. And then I brought you back, the way she did with me.”

“Your brother,” said Hayley, “has serious mental skills. Dude's like a guru. He could have his own
show.”

“But so we were in
here
by then, see?” said Jaye.

“And by the time we weren't totally focused on you, we realized it had gone quiet out there,” said Hayley.

“And everyone was gone,” said Jaye, and shrugged her shoulders, bewildered. “Just—
gone
.”

Cara took it in. She felt sluggish, still half-captured by the deep place and let down to be back in the world only to find her mother had gone away. Again.

“Jax,” she said. “I have to tell you something. Mom is—see, she can—”

“Turn into things,” finished Jax. “I know.”

“It was wild,” Hayley told him. “I didn't see her when she was, like, a fish, but I did see these big old claws she had on for a while. Instead of feet.”

“Jax,” went on Cara, “did you—do you remember what it was like? While you were a hollow?”

“It was like I was just someplace else,” said Jax.

“Was it—”

“The source,” said Jax. “Or one of them. ‘Cause there are more.”

“Under the ocean, right?”

“Deep,” nodded Jax.

So he had been there, too. She felt a surge of joy: she wasn't alone.

Impulsively she
did
hug him, finally. There would be time later for them to talk about what they'd seen. She looked at him to say so, and he looked back. Even when he wasn't pinging her, they understood each other.

“Aw,” said Hayley. “Group hug! No one's a mindless robot anymore. Score!”

The four of them hugged till it felt weird. Which didn't take long.

Hayley pulled back and ruffled Jax's blond hair.

“But there's something I don't get,” Cara said to him. “Since Roger's a bad guy—who poisoned you—why did he
tell
Dad, back in August, about the break-in with Mom's computer? About her data being stolen? If it was him who did it, or people working with him, why'd he even
tell
Dad in the first place? Because Dad would never have known otherwise, and
we
wouldn't have known. Right?”

Jax shook his head. “Maybe he figured we were going to find out anyway. Maybe he thought there was a possibility that Mom was in closer touch with us, and he wanted to acknowledge it had happened, sort of to take the blame off himself? Like, pin it on someone else?”

“Could be,” said Cara, considering. “I bet he's sneaky enough.”

“So anyway,” said Jaye. “What's next?”

“Dial up the Marriott!” said Hayley. “Remember? The place we're actually
supposed
to be?”

They didn't know where they were in the world; when they tried to pinpoint their location with the GPS on their phones, they got nothing. It was like their GPSs weren't activated. “It must be that nether-space issue,” muttered Jax. “Interesting.”

So the easiest way out would be to use the windowleaf. No one knew where it was, though, so they split up and wandered in the wreckage looking for it.

After ten minutes no one had found it, and Cara started to despair. Mysteriously, the big room didn't seem to have exits. The door to the small room with the armchair was the only way out they could see, and
that
room had no
other
doors. It was a dead end.

You could easily feel trapped, she thought, in a room with no doors. As soon as she noticed there were no doors, she started to feel queasy and her pulse quickened.

“It's almost four a.m.!” said Hayley as she and Cara passed in the search. “Good news is, my mom's probably still asleep. Bad news is, if we don't get back before she wakes up, my young, free life is officially over.”

Jax found his own clothes in a cubby on the wall and switched them out for the hospital gown he'd been wearing in the pod. He still had no coat, though; Cara made a note to lend him a sweater…. She realized she was yawning, as she wandered in the mess, but despite her fatigue she was growing more and more anxious the longer the book didn't make an appearance.

No doors
, she kept thinking.
I'm in a room with no doors.

“Here it is! Here!” called out Jaye.

They ran over, relieved. The book had been hidden by a collapsed pod, which—lying on the floor near a puddle of the blue liquid—looked a lot like a deflated Mylar balloon. The pages were waterlogged at one corner; Cara worried that the book wouldn't work, but she opened it up anyway and bent over the spread white leaves. “You have to hold on to the others,” she told Jax, who'd never seen the windowleaf before. They stayed close, their shoulders touching, while Cara put her finger on the nazar.

Just a few minutes later, thinking back, she would realize she hadn't been focused. She was exhausted, and what she thought of when she touched the ring and looked into the book and formulated the words
take us to them
was not the big, bland hotel, where the bus with the purple stripe was parked in the lake-like parking lot and the rest of the team lay sleeping in their rooms. She'd been thinking of that right before she thought
take us to them.

And then, at precisely the wrong moment, another image flashed into her mind. It was of the hollows from the cooling tower—the one with the face like Zee's, holding the hand of a little girl with red hair.

But one of Cara's friends—she never knew who—was impatient, because before she could even make out the picture that was forming, she was being pulled in. She couldn't let go, because that would be dangerous—if anyone went in without her they could get stranded.

They were going through the opening.

“This is
not
the Marriott,” said Hayley.

“Let's go back!” said Jaye. “This—this can't be right!”

They were sitting on a massive concrete platform—a cross between a building and a ship, it seemed to Cara—surrounded by an endless expanse of black ocean far below, with crashing waves. The four of them were squeezed into a small corner of it, where two rails met, behind a hut or a shed or something. Near the edge. It was cold. Looming overhead was a tower and next to it what looked like a crane; stars twinkled in the sky, more than she'd ever seen.

“Just wait,” said Jax. “The book's still here. Look. See? So we
can
go back. But let's just take a couple seconds first. To figure out what this is.”

“I think it's one of those oil rigs,” said Jaye, standing up. “You know, like the one that exploded and killed some people working on it? And all the sea turtles and fish?”

“Deepwater Horizon,”
said Jax, nodding.

Cara and Hayley scrambled up, too, and looked off the rail. They were up high; the platform was tall and massive.

“What's that?” asked Hayley.

Lights from the rig shone onto the water, which shimmered in patches.

“I think it must be oil,” said Jax. “Little slicks of oil.”

“Spilled oil? Like on that other one?”

“I don't know,” said Jax. “But they say there are small leaks and spills a lot, that never get in the news. So maybe…”

He turned to Cara, and she read his expression and nodded. She was getting better at reading him. He wanted permission to ping her.

What were you thinking of?
came the clear tone of his thought.
What did you think of when you brought us here?

“The hollows,” she said out loud. “And Zee.”

“What did you say?” said Hayley.

“We—we must be here because I—see, I saw a hollow, back at the power plant, who looked exactly—”

She almost didn't want to say it, because Hayley bagged enough on Zee already.

“—well, she looked kind of like Zee. She was holding the hand of this little red-haired girl. And just when I was supposed to think of the hotel, I thought of her instead. Of whether it somehow could have
been
Zee. Of that scene. And those two hollows.”