The Sky Drifter (27 page)

Muttering something about payback, he ran past me, and we both dashed toward the engine room door to the approaching sounds of frustrated growls. Back into the dimly lit tunnel, we headed out onto the open grassland toward the town only to abruptly stop at the sight that met us.

“What now?” One exhaled in frustration.

A long barricade made up of the residents of the ship stretched left and right as far as I could see, blocking our path.

“They’re here for us,” I uttered.

“What the hell is going on here, Simian?” asked One in frustration.

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking back at the tunnel to see Iris, Pi, and the Morex hastily coming out of the engine room toward us. “It’s us they want.” They’d stopped just inside the mouth of the tunnel, looking all the more ominous and aggressive under the flickering orange light above.

“If I find out this is all because of you, Simian, I’ll kill you.”

“Funny,” I retorted dryly, “I was thinking the same about you, No Face.”

There was nowhere to go. Even if we took on and beat Iris, Pi, and the goons, where would we go then? The tunnel had no exit, so the only place would be the upper deck where we’d be trapped, anyway. The only real way we could escape was the vessels, but they were in the hangar within the academy, and I didn’t fancy our chances of getting past the vast horde that blocked the way to it.

“Well, we can’t just stand here like idiots,” commented One.

“Oh yeah? Got a plan there, do you?” I replied sarcastically as One fell reluctantly silent.

“Seven,” came Iris’ honeyed voice, “everything is okay, but we need you and One to come with us now.”

“I’m not going
anywhere
with you,” cried One. “So, if you’re responsible for this, let me go right now!”

Keeping my gaze on her, I called out, “What’s happening, Iris? Who’s doing this?”

“No one is doing anything, Seven. This is all still in your mind. I need you both to walk toward me so you can get the help you need.”

The sincerity with which Iris spoke made it hard not to believe her. As one of my best friends, it was natural to want to trust her, despite her aggressive change in behaviour. In a way, I almost wanted her to be right. At least she and Pi would still be the best friends I’d always had and loved—at least I’d be getting the help I needed to stop the hallucinations that plagued me.

I wasn’t the only one involved any-more. Delusions couldn’t explain why One and I had the same face, a fact he recognized himself. Whereas there might have been a chance her words could finally have persuaded me, now I’d need some questions answered to my satisfaction.

“Why did you all attack us?” I asked in a raised voice.

“No one attacked you, Seven. We were walking toward you both when you attacked
us
and ran.”

“Like hell you didn’t!” cried One incredulously. “These bruises didn’t just appear on my face and head, did they? Which is something we’re
still
not even for, by the way.” He faced one of the Morex, who watched him impassively.

“Let us help you, Seven,” Iris repeated.

“This has nothing to do with me,” One continued, shouting at Iris. “Take
him
and let me go!”

I knew he was right. What did this have to do with him? If I was having hallucinations, why did she want One to go with them, too?

“Why
do
you want him?” I asked.

After a brief pause, Iris replied, “He’s been affected, too. He just doesn’t realize it. He needs to come with us, too, so he can get the help he needs.” Slowly, she, Pi, and the two Morex edged toward us.

“There is
nothing
wrong with
me
! If you want him, fine—take him—but leave me out of it. I’ve had enough of this!”

Taking no notice of One’s selfish proclamation, I asked, “If this is all in his mind, too, why do we both accept we have the same face? If One has his own delusions, why is he seeing the same thing as I am? Unless we share a single consciousness—which we don’t—such a thing would be improbable, wouldn’t it?”

Iris gazed at me in silence for a moment with the same sweet look fixed on her face, then replied, “You’re both affected, Seven. We don’t exactly know how the virus works, but we know how to cure it. You need to come with us before it’s too late and it can’t be reversed. Trust me, Seven.”

The sincerity in which she spoke, and the imploring, tender look in her almond eyes, made it near impossible to question her.

“Pah, you realize she’s lying, don’t you?”

Like a spell broken, One’s cynicism brought me back to my senses. Iris hadn’t answered my question, had she? “Do you think so?”

“Well, obviously.”

“What do you mean? How can you be so sure?” I turned my head to face One, curious at the certainty with which he’d spoken.

“I know a lie when I hear one, Simian. Not that it’s hard to see through her, anyway. She’s as convincing as your hairy friend is at making people believe he doesn’t have a huge gut.”

As much as I disliked believing One over Iris, he confirmed what I believed. Iris
had
avoided answering my question, and her argument that everything was in my mind would have been more persuasive if One wasn’t there with me, seeing what I saw. As for him being infected by some virus, if he really had been, why would it only have manifested itself then? It was far too convenient.

“I don’t care either way, though,” he continued. “
This
, whatever it is, has nothing to do with me. It’s your problem, and the sooner these idiots realize it, the sooner I can leave.”

“Damn it, One,” I spat in sheer frustration of his stubbornness. “Can’t you see they’re after you, too? Whatever is happening, they want us
both
. Open your eyes!”

One remained silent, and with knitted brow, looked from the barricade of inhabitants to the four we called friends, then asked, “So, what now?”

“I have no idea,” I replied, a feeling of gladness that he’d accepted the situation glimmering inside my spreading fear.

Something began to materialize in the space between us and the barricade. Above the green and purple grassland, outlines of small squares formed and spread, the space inside changing from the view ahead to a faint darkness until it became a hole the size of a door. It looked exactly like the one I’d seen in the alley, only bigger.

All of a sudden, a figure emerged from within. The tall, slender figure of a Simian-like girl stepped out of the dark space. She was unlike anyone I’d ever seen before. Her thick, wavy, dark green hair flowed just past her shoulders and she wore a tight, sleeveless blue suit, which enhanced her yellow skin.

Without uttering a single word, she raised her arm and pointed toward One and me. I heard one loud grunt followed by another. I turned to see both Morex crashing lifelessly to the ground.

“Hurry!” she suddenly cried, looking at us and waving rapidly toward herself.

“Who the hell is
that
?” asked One wonderingly.

“Come on!” she persisted urgently.

It was then that I noticed her eyes. They were the same piercingly blue eyes as the mysterious girl’s. Her face was no longer pale, her hair wasn’t a straight, black bob, nor was she still short with a red coat, but her eyes—her eyes had remained the same.

“
Go,
” I cried at One, and as I dashed toward the mysterious girl, the massive barricade of residents ran, too. I glanced rapidly back to see One right behind me with Iris and Pi closely following.

“Come on, it’s about to close!” frantically cried the mysterious girl.

The barricade of silent residents, like a great herd, thundered toward us at unbelievable speed as the increasingly louder sounds of Pi and Iris echoed violently in my ears the nearer they came.

The dark space ahead gradually became smaller, and the mysterious girl shouted for us to hurry as she stepped back through it. One suddenly dashed past and ahead of me, reaching the hole and diving head first into the darkness beyond.

The sea of residents had almost reached me, their every feature now distinguishable, as with reaching hands they grabbed wildly at the air in front of them. As the hole continued to close with alarming speed, I could no longer see the mysterious girl. With my only chance of escape about to vanish, I dived forward through the small opening that remained.

Just as my body crashed down onto a hot, hard surface, a sudden intense pressure squeezed my ankle. I flipped around just in time to see Pi’s powerful, hairy hand wrapped around my limb, his face so filled with savage hatred and rage he was virtually unrecognisable as he dragged me toward him. Before he’d had a chance to pull me back through the hole, however, it closed, his hand and forearm de-materializing into a spray of small squares that vanished into thin air.

My heart beat wildly and my head spun. Before I could think, the mysterious girl grabbed my arm and effortlessly pulled me to my feet. Something was wrapped tightly around my head at eye level. I quickly reached up to grab it, pulling it first away from my eyes, then over my head and to the ground. Looking instantly at what it was, I saw a pair of thick, wrap-around goggles with a brown strap made of some material I couldn’t identify.

“What
is
that?” I cried.

“They made you see what they wanted you to,” dryly answered the mysterious girl. “We haven’t much time. It won’t take them long to figure out what happened and locate us.” She spoke in a snappy, authoritative tone.

The space I now stood in was enormous. Its curved walls were quite a distance from me in every direction, and seemed to form a dome. The floor, like the walls that encircled me, looked viscous and oily, yet was neither wet nor sticky. Above, a series of platforms, some short and square, others long and rectangular, went up as far as the eye could see, disappearing into pitch darkness. These were linked by what I thought looked like escalator banisters, whose single platforms were flat and rectangular, the bottom one at my left.

I noticed a strange puffing sound coming from all around me. It didn’t take long to find its source, for strewn around the floor, walls, and below most of the platforms above were what I could only describe as small viscous, mossy blobs. Each pulsated, and through various holes and tubes on them puffed out a white mist, which evaporated almost as soon as it’d left them.

“I’m not going
anywhere
until someone tells me what’s going on. Who
you
are and where the hell this is!” One stated angrily, standing ahead of me.

“There isn’t time for your stubborn behaviour. If you co-operate, and we survive long enough,” began the mysterious girl, tightly grabbing my arm as she hastened in the opposite direction to One, “I’ll explain it all to you both, but we must leave
immediately
.”

As I walked clumsily forward, trying to keep up with her, I saw the two Morex lying side by side on the floor ahead, both wearing similar pairs of wrap-around goggles around their heads. They looked dead.

Out of nowhere, a renewed surge of anger flowed through me. It had all been too much. The strange series of events that had led up to that point were as mysterious and perplexing to me as they’d been when they’d first begun, and I was no closer to understanding any of it. In a moment of sheer panic, One and I had placed our lives in the hands of the tall, yellow mysterious girl, who’d hounded me aboard the
Sky Drifter
without a single word of explanation, and even now refused to reveal her secrets, demanding we blindly follow her. My face hurt from the fight with One, my best friends had turned into violent aggressors and the entire residency of the ship had been out to get me. I’d had enough.

I put all my weight into my legs and roughly pulled my arm from the mysterious girl’s grasp, causing her to abruptly stop and look at me with a shocked expression.

“
No
,” I cried, “I’m not moving from here until you tell me what’s happening once and for all!”

Her face became intensely serious. The mysterious girl said gravely, “You don’t understand. If we’re found, we’ll be
killed
.”

I noticed she dropped a rectangular object from her hand, which looked like a type of pistol.

“Well, you’d better make it quick then,” said One wryly, crossing his arms.

“And you can start by telling me what that thing you just dropped is,” I added.

The mysterious girl looked at One, then at me again, let out a cry of frustration and snapped in frustration, “It’s a gun I used to kill those two.” She nodded at the Morex. “It has limited energy, so it’s useless now. Now,
come on
. We need to move! I’ll explain more on the way.”

“DON’T JUST STAND THERE
looking at me. C
ome on
!” cried the mysterious girl as she hurried ahead again.

I quickly glanced at One, who with knitted brow muttered something under his breath and ran after her.

I still felt light-headed as I watched them speed ahead, my mind filled with a thousand questions that screamed to be answered. Everything I’d known was gone, and ahead lay the path to a dark, uncertain future, which I’d walk, not with the friends with whom I’d shared most of my life, but with a tall, yellow girl who remained as mysterious as the first time I’d seen her. And the one whom I’d considered to be my very worst enemy; the person with whom I now shared a face.

Whatever lay ahead, my life would never again be as I’d known it, and as I plunged into a shrouded, uncertain future, the safety and comfort I’d felt would no longer be certain.

Soon, I reached the wall of the dome where One was already standing as he watched the mysterious girl press a series of small squares on a control pad. A large double door hissed noisily open to our right, letting a flickering blue light pour out onto the floor in front of it.

Without a word, the mysterious girl hastily walked through it and out of sight. One and I stood beside each other, staring at the door ahead. He turned to me, and said, “What are you waiting for, Simian?”