A Ruined Land Page 3

  He doesn’t need to finish his sentence. Owen will kill anyone who stands between him and his goal, and if Pia happens to be in the wrong place when Owen is around, she will die.

  I swallow my jealousy and nod. “We will. We’ll find the dome and get her out when we get Hudson and Taylor out.”

  And we’ll find a way to stop Owen, I think. We could free him and then . . . what? Kill him? Am I a killer?

  “We have to, Edie,” Cole says. “If something happens to her, after everything she’s been through . . . She shouldn’t even be in there. Why is she even in there?”

  I grab his arm and pull him back, away from her glass pod. “Nothing will happen to her. We’ll save them all.” I put as much confidence into my voice as possible. But there’s nothing we can do from here. Our only hope for our friends, for Pia, is to find the dome and release them.

  He balls up his fists. “If Owen touches her, I will destroy him.”

  Of this I have no doubt.

  I gently pull on his arm. “We can’t help them from here.”

  Cole is reluctant to leave Pia, but we can’t stay here. Staying here won’t help anyone. Instead, we retrace our steps back to the compass rose. Each of the remaining paths could have another simulation. Ours may have only been one of many. Maybe that’s why the power isn’t working like we were promised.

  The power is a lie.

  I suck in a quick breath.

  “What?” Cole says.

  “Back in that zone with the spider,” I say. “Did you see what was written on the wall?”

  He shakes his head, his dark hair falling over his scar. “She attacked me too quickly.”

  “‘The power was a lie’ was written on the wall,” I say. “It must have been a warning for us. A hint of truth put there by someone.” Like Zachary Gomez, I think. He could have known from the start. Known that there was way more to this game than we’d been told.

  “So it means nothing?” Cole says.

  I lean forward and kiss him again, just a small kiss, but enough to confirm that there is a spark.

  “Not nothing,” I say. “But not everything either.”

  The next symbol we choose from the center of the compass rose is a circuit. Simple and functional. We hurry down the branch of the compass rose, and when we reach the end, it spits us out into a white room with racks and racks of circuit boards stacked inside, like offsite data storage banks. A walkway runs down the middle. We start down it. The circuit boards hum, and cool air blasts through the room, keeping them at an optimum temperature. My gut twists looking at them. Circuit boards, maybe storage, containing . . . what? The simulation we just came from? The virtual world? It’s like Taylor and Hudson could be bytes of information stored in these computers, zipping around. So real, and maybe not real at all.

  I look for controls but don’t see any. Only the circuit boards with no way to interface to them, I don’t touch anything, because I don’t want to mess anything up. But halfway down the walkway, Cole and I stop.

  To our right, an entire rack of boards has been yanked from their slots and smashed on the ground. Electronic components litter the white floor as if a giant came through here with a sledgehammer.

  “What do you think happened?” he asks.

  “Owen?” I whisper. Someone intentionally destroyed this area, and he’s my best guess as to who.

  “I don’t see how,” Cole says. “Not if he’s back there.”

  “Then who?” As far as I know, we’re the only two free.

  Cole grits his teeth. “Somebody had to transport Owen and Abigail to the other simulation, and they did it for some reason.”

  And that somebody could be around even now, watching us.

  As we approach the end of the walkway, a blast of heat hits my face. Heat. The volcano. The way out. It gets stronger as we leave the circuit boards far behind, and soon, the heat is nearly unbearable. But when we reach the end of the walkway, there is only a solid white wall.

  “You see that, Edie?” Cole says, tracing his finger over the symbol that appears there. It’s a circle with four points extending outward. Four sets of wavy lines also extend away from the center point.

  “Do you know what it means?” he asks.

  Memories of my mom’s drawings come back to me. This was a symbol she drew all the time. Something she searched for her entire life. A garden with four rivers flowing away from it, and four different paths leading away as well.

  “It’s the way out,” I say, and I press my hand to the symbol.

  A small spark of energy connects between my palm and the symbol, and the white wall splits in half, opening. Wind hits my face, and along with it comes the infernal heat. Heat from lava that lights up the world in front of us.

  We step forward, onto a rock ledge, out of the virtual reality arena. We are back where we started. Three giant antennae extend from the side of the volcano, like the ones I’d seen in my vision on top of the dome. Relief flows through me as this bit of logic falls into place. Antennae mean there is communication going on. Now we need to find the other side of that communication.

  The stairs extend downward before us, partially blocked by the flows of lava. But we have to go down them. It’s our only option if we want to get out of here.

  “You ready?” Cole says.

  I am more than ready.

  “Definitely,” I say, and I take the first step.

  V

  We pick our way down the rocky staircase. It’s covered in flows of lava so close together, at times the soles of my boots feel like they’re going to melt off. I step as quickly as I dare. There’s no railing, nowhere else to go if I fall. Even if we’re pretending that this is real, it’s also not the world I started it. It’s some layer of virtual reality.

  “If we die out here—” I start.

  “Yeah, I know,” Cole says. His face is tight with concern. His missing leg actually makes the downward trek easier. The metal prosthetic has a much smaller footprint than our boots, and he’s able to use it to steady himself.

  I bite my lip and focus on what I’m doing. I don’t think about Pia, inside the stasis pod. Once we free her, then I can figure it out. Until then, Cole is . . .

  What? I thought Cole and I were together, but after seeing her, I can’t help but feel like everything has changed. Still, that’s not what matters. What matters is getting out of here. Freeing our friends. And stopping Owen from getting the key even if it means we have to shut the entire simulation down. Because whatever Owen wants it for, whoever he wants it for, it won’t end well.

  I push thoughts of Owen away and focus until the lava slows, pooling off into one of the four rivers that meet at the base of the volcano, forming a mountain of black that grows with every second. We’ve descended to the bottom of the stairway. We’re back in the garden.

  I listen for the music of the sirens, prepared to stuff leaves in my ears to block it if I have to. There is no music. There is only silence and the smell of death mixed with the scent of fruit.

  Mom’s voice sounds in my head. Don’t eat the fruit. I hadn’t, and that’s the only thing that saved me. Just thinking about her makes my heart ache. I’d been so close. Our fingers had touched. Except it wasn’t really her.

  But what if it was her, and she’s trapped in that moment of time? Or trapped in the place beneath the barrier?

  “I have to find my parents,” I say.

  “We will,” Cole says, and he reaches over and squeezes my hand. I don’t let go, and together we set off into the garden, looking for the way out.

  The smell of death gets stronger the deeper into the garden we go. When we cut around the trunk of a giant tree, I see why.

  Three barren fruit trees stand in the center of a clearing. Every other tree around them has been ripped away, like a giant came in and snapped the trunks in half, leaving them scattered on the ground. Their branches have been broken off. Staked to each of the trees are the three sirens, reformed and dead. Branches pin them to the trees, and the rot that leaves their bodies has killed the trees. It seeps to the ground below. Rotten fruit rests on the ground. Black birds swarm around, picking at the fruit and the bodies of the sirens.

  “Who did this?” I ask. The gods? The world? Or is it like the circuit boards pulled from their racks and smashed on the ground? Destruction. Or faulty programming. Or the world dying.

  “This isn’t good, Edie,” Cole says, kicking at a rotten pomegranate with his prosthetic. “How long have we been gone? These bodies aren’t fresh.”

  It feels like so long ago, and yet it was only a few days? A week?

  No, longer. It had felt much longer. Without knowing the rules of the virtual world, anything could be possible.

  “I have no idea.” I back away from the clearing. I can’t be here. Can’t see this reminder that things are dying and we need to do something to stop it. This could be only a hint of what’s going on in the world.

  We skirt around the deathly clearing and keep moving. Mist floats in the air, filling the spaces between the trees. Away from the dead sirens, life begins to return to the garden. Lush pomegranates drip from the branches of one tree. Plums brush my shoulders as I walk by another. Vines covered in grapes line the path and crawl up brushy greenery. But the death is growing and it will soon reach all of this.

  We pass the fruit trees, and even without the musical lure of the sirens, each step we take it gets harder as the scents assault my nose.

  Don’t eat the fruit.

  I press my lips closed, but it’s not enough. Soon I have to plug my nose. It’s the only way I can resist
. And when we round a tree, the scent of fresh water fills the air. I gasp, sucking in the fragrance-free goodness of the water, but as soon as relief fills me, I’m filled with a thirst so strong I want nothing more than to rush over to the babbling brook and drink until I can’t stomach any more.

  Cole grabs my arm. My first reaction is to tear it away, but then my eyes meet his. His are filled with the same thirst, and yet I know if we quench that thirst here, with this water, it will be our end, one way or another. This garden is filled with nothing but temptation.

  “It’s like the Garden of Eden,” I say as it all crystalizes in my mind. Mom always wanted to find the Garden of Eden. She believed it existed, always. And sure enough, this is it. Whether in the virtual world or the real world, it is here, designed by the gods. The fruit and water are only here to tempt us.

  The mist is thicker here because of the water, but we push past it, and the wrought-iron gates come into view.

  “Finally,” Cole says.

  I nod and am about to say something when the sky darkens, almost like night is falling. In this place, anything is possible, but it’s so sudden, and the darkness fills me with a horrible dread.

  Cole looks up and says, “Oh, that’s not good, Edie.”

  No part of me wants to look up. I know I’ll see something horrible. But the darkness grows. I jolt my head upward. Darkness fills the sky. Darkness that is moving and twisting and spinning closer and closer to us. Whereas there was silence before, now the harsh caws of grackles fills the air. They circle and spin and get closer with every second.

  They’re coming right for us. Our only hope is to get out the gate. Away from them. The mist is thick, but it’s not enough to hide us.

  The first grackle flies down, brushing against my arm. My jacket protects me, but not Cole. One hits up against him, pecking at him with its beak. Immediately blood pops to the surface of his skin.

  At the blood, the rest of the grackles descend.

  “We need to hide,” I yell over the sound of their horrible caws.

  But Cole raises his hand and closes his eyes even as the birds peck at him and tear his skin. Around his hand, the mist separates, and the birds are pushed away, almost like a giant hurricane wind has thrown them backward. They fight against the wind, but Cole holds his hand there, keeping them away, until finally they turn and fly back to wherever they came from.

  “What did you do?” I ask. There’s now a clear path between us and the gates.

  Cole looks like he’s just as surprised as I am. He studies his hands.

  “It seems like I made them go away,” he says.

  “But how?” I ask, taking his hand and flipping it over. Small electrical pulses seem to crackle off it.

  His voice is filled with confusion. “The power, I think.”

  “You used it?” If he really did use it, then it is absolute evidence that something changed, at least in him. Maybe the power isn’t a lie, at least not completely.

  “Pretty sure,” he says, lifting the right side of his lips into a full-on smile. “I changed the air. I saw it and made it different. I don’t know how. But that’s the only way I can think to describe it.”

  I lift my hand and feel for something in myself that is different, but nothing happens. I focus on the mist, on moving it. I focus on the fruit, hanging from the branches. Sweat drips down my forehead, but nothing happens.

  “That’s pretty awesome,” I say.

  “Not if I can’t control it,” Cole says. Still, he’s proven the power is real.

  “Where do you think they came from?” I ask. It can’t be a coincidence that the birds came here, now, just as we were getting ready to leave.

  “I don’t know,” Cole says.

  Assume everything you see is trying to kill you. Iva’s words return to me. That same rule needs to apply out here, too, not just in the labyrinth.

  We run toward the gates and shove them open when we reach them. The second we’re outside, everything is different. These aren’t the same gates. Instead of a compass rose, like there was when we came here, we’re now in a garden of rocks. I spin around, but the rocks are everywhere, replacing everything. The wrought-iron gates have vanished. The trees and the fruit-filled garden are gone. There is no sign of the volcano. We could be anywhere. The dome could be anywhere. Somehow we need to find it.

  HARD RESET

  VI

  Ahead of us is a huge red rock with golden channels running through it. It’s so large it blocks everything behind it. High above it, in the sky, rests the full moon directly above the peak. Moonlight falls over the rock, casting a shadow on the ground that reaches us. We make our way over to the rock and Cole places his hand on it. The ground is covered in dirt so dehydrated, it’s like it hasn’t rained in months. Years. I pull my compass from my jacket pocket and press the button, flipping open the cover with the giant owl. I wish my owl were here now, but she’s nowhere to be found.

  I hold the compass out and spin around slowly, waiting for the needle to settle. It points first to one of the rocks, then another. Then it spins wildly, like it had at the center of the compass rose. Whichever direction we’re supposed to go, my compass is not going to show me. I close it and open it again, hoping to get a different result, but wherever we need to go, the compass is not going to help.

  “I’ve seen this place,” Cole says, reaching out to another rock, not nearly as tall as the giant one. He runs his hand over the smooth stone and inhales the air. The mist that hung over the garden is long gone, and even the air is so dry, it’s like all the water has been sucked out of it. The moonlight is bright enough to light everything around us.

  “Where?” I ask. It’s like a sculpture garden created by the earth. The rocks are all sizes and shapes.

  “I can’t remember,” Cole says. He begins to weave through the rocks, like he knows which direction to go. I hurry to catch up.

  “So you haven’t been here?”

  “No,” he says. But he doesn’t sound entirely convinced, almost like he can’t remember.

  We move between the rocks, Cole leading the way. There is nothing else around. At least I don’t think there is until we come to the top of a hill and I look down at a dome. A sign out front reads: Garden of the Gods, Control Substation.

  This is it. What we’re looking for. Maybe not the main control station, but I’m hoping a substation will be good enough. I run down the hill without thinking and trip, nearly hitting my head on a huge rock.

  “Slow down,” Cole says, hurrying to catch up to me, helping me to my feet. In the vision, I was sure my parents had been inside the dome. Now, I’m not so sure about that. They may not actually be here. But the answer as to how to find them should be. As should be the way to release Hudson and Taylor. And Pia.

  My head spins when I stand, but I rush the rest of the way down the hill.

  Three thick antennae snake up the sides and reach high up into the sky above. I point at them. “There. That’s how they communicate with the simulations,” I say. “They use that to broadcast and receive signals.” This place is following rules, just like it should. The sheer fact that there is logic behind this assumption makes my brain happy.

  Where the lined dirt path ends, a ramp begins, leading up to the dome. No, not dome. It’s a sphere, like Epcot Center at Disney World. It’s suspended above the ground on huge metal supports. I run up the ramp with Cole right behind me. There’s no door. No entrance. Only the sphere, pure white.

  Cole runs his hand over it, across the seams of the triangles that form together to make it. I do the same. It’s smooth, like metal, and formed into triangles, perfectly joined. There is no way in.

  Cole slowly shakes his head. “No door, but this ramp is here for a reason.”

  It is here for a reason. Logic says that it has to be. There has to be an entrance. Think computer game. Or simulation. It wouldn’t be like a magic word or anything like that. I press my hand to the metal, wondering if maybe that will unlock a panel. Nothing happens. I trace along the edges of the triangles, looking for a weakness in the seams. Each weld feels as solid as the next.