No matter how centered we were on the pathway, the fine mist still covered my face. I tried to focus on not licking my lips or breathing in any of it, but it was difficult; and any time my mind wandered, I didn’t know if it was normal or if it was the water seeping inside of me.
I thought back to the poster of my face. I turned to Cole. “Why is the queen so curious about me? Is it so weird that a human would come here?”
He kicked the dirt. “Humans only come to the Everneath for three reasons. To Feed an Everliving, to go to the Tunnels …” His voice trailed off.
“What’s the third reason?”
“To become an Everliving. And you weren’t doing any of those things.”
I looked at Cole. “How does one become an Everliving?”
Cole hesitated for a moment. “It involves a series of rituals. It used to be between an Everliving and his human, but now the Shades like to oversee it. It’s very rare.”
“Why?”
“Because of our energy quota. If one of us decides to bring a human over, that Everliving host is then responsible for his own quota, plus the quota of the person brought over. So it’s a big deal when we make the decision. And it doesn’t involve—”
Cole’s voice cut off as shouts from behind us sounded. We turned around just as Max ran into sight.
“Wanderers. Behind us,” Max said.
“How many?” Cole asked.
“Ten, maybe. I only caught a glimpse because they were in another branch of the maze; but if they catch Nikki’s scent—”
“My scent?” I said indignantly.
“He means, if they get a whiff of your energy, they can track you,” Cole explained. “Which means we need to pick up the pace.”
We resumed our original formation, except this time Max didn’t fall as far behind and we walked quicker.
I started to pant a bit at our new pace. “They sound more like zombies than Everlivings,” I said.
“That’s how you should think of them. But zombies with brains,” Cole replied. “Which means they’re starving and cunning.”
“Why are they even in the maze?”
“The queen sentences them to wander here. Another menace to intruders in the labyrinth.”
I’d feel almost sorry for them if I wasn’t so scared of them.
Ashe was waiting for us up ahead, which meant we were facing another fork in the road. By now I had completely lost my bearings in the maze, and I had no idea which way was inward and which way was out. The walls should’ve been convex or concave since the maze was circular; but the running water made it difficult to tell, and they didn’t always curve the right way. Sometimes my tether seemed to lead us in one direction with one turn only to go in the opposite direction with the following three.
When we reached Ashe, I looked down at my tether and for the first time noticed it had faded a little bit.
Cole noticed too. “Keep your token in your hand and try not to worry about the Wanderers.”
“Does my stress level affect it?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“Everything inside you affects it,” Cole said.
I pressed Jack’s note into the palm of my hand, and the tether darkened a little bit. But we only made two more turns before we ran into our first Wanderer.
I knew something was wrong because Cole and I caught up with Ashe, who was backing up slowly. A few yards in front of him was a man whose clothes hung off of his stick-like limbs as if they were three sizes too big. His face glistened with sweat. He seemed just as surprised to see us as we were to see him.
“Hello, travelers,” he said, his eyes suddenly alert.
“Stay calm,” Cole whispered to me.
The man looked at Ashe, then at Cole, and finally at me. Cole pulled me tight against him; but the Wanderer had obviously caught a peek at my tether, because he was staring at where it had just been.
He didn’t take his eyes off me, but he addressed Cole.
“Who are you hiding?”
With his arm across me, Cole gently urged me behind him so he was shielding me completely. “No one,” he said. “We’re just passing through.”
“‘Passing through’? In the labyrinth?” He smiled, giving his sunken face a crazy look. “Like for a summer stroll?” He spoke fast.
Cole took a step forward, and the move seemed offensive to me rather than defensive. “What about you, friend? Are you out here all alone?”
The Wanderer finally looked directly at Cole. “I’m never alone in the maze. And I always have stories in my head to keep me company. Like the one I heard recently about a human girl who showed up at the weekly slaughter in the Ouros square. Have you heard this one?”
Cole tensed. “Rumors.”
I glanced down at his hands. He kept making fists.
The man eyed me carefully. “Whatever you say. I’d be willing to keep my mouth shut. In exchange for something.”
Cole raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Your Surface heart.”
Surface heart? Did he mean Cole’s pick?
I expected Cole to scoff, but he didn’t. He shifted his stance, as if he were considering the offer. He wouldn’t ever give up his heart, would he? And I didn’t even know what this man could do with someone else’s heart.
I kept my focus on the man. He had a desperate look in his eyes.
“Yes or no? Your heart for my silence?”
Cole’s voice was even. “How do I know you’d keep your word?”
Suddenly two more Wanderers showed up, from the same place the first one had come from. One man and one woman. Both dressed in raggedy clothes. The woman’s hair was knotted and sticking up from her head.
Three Wanderers. Three of us. Would they attack now?
Just then shouts came from behind us. Warning shouts. Probably from Max.
Ashe and Cole turned around, following the sound, and for a split second they had their eyes off of me. A split second was all the first Wanderer needed. He lurched forward and dived at me, catching me with his shoulder in my stomach.
I landed with a thud on the wet ground. The Wanderer pounced on top of me, his mouth open and his teeth bared. He used his knees to pin my arms. I struggled, but he was surprisingly strong. He dipped his face so it was within an inch of mine and inhaled deeply.
I felt the breath go out of me, and then I screamed at the sudden pain in my chest. A pain I hadn’t felt since the Feed. That scraping inside of me.
Somebody ripped him off of me, and I caught a glimpse of Cole sailing through the air above me and colliding with the other two Wanderers. In one continuous movement, Max incapacitated the first Wanderer with a blow to the side of his head with his brass knuckles, then grabbed the woman’s arm, wrenched it, and slipped behind her with a knife pointed at her throat.
I couldn’t watch anymore. The pain in my chest made me squeeze my eyes shut. What had the Wanderer done to me? I rolled over onto my side and curled up in a ball, my hands pressing against my chest, trying to blunt the pain.
Everything inside of me was dark. It felt as if every bit of peace inside of me had been ripped out, every moment of light, every glimmer of hope, forced through my chest and away from me. There had to be a gaping hole right above my heart; but when I brought my hands to my face, they were dry. No blood.
Cole’s face was over mine. “It’s okay, Nik. We’re taking care of them.”
“What did he do to me?”
Cole frowned. “He fed on you. All the good stuff.”
I heard a muffled scream, and despite the pain, I sat up. Ashe and Max each had a Wanderer by the neck, and they were holding their heads under the water of the wall. Two of them kicked their legs in protest. The third one—the one who received the blow from Max, I assumed—was still.
“What … what are they doing to them?”
“They’re drowning them.”
I felt weak and started to tip over, but Cole put his arm around me and righted me. “They won’t die, though. Dead bodies will just attract attention. They’ll just be filled to the brim with the water. They’ll forget everything they’ve known and felt.”
“For how long?”
He frowned. “Long enough for us either to finish, or fail.”
Ashe and Max were doing their best to keep their faces turned away from the splashing water. They breathed hard.
A fresh wave of pain hit me in the chest, and I looked up at Cole as I tried to catch my breath and assuage the pain. “Why did he take the good emotions? I thought you said the bad ones always rose to the top.”
“That’s on the Surface. Here, all emotions carry the same weight. The Wanderers can pick and choose, so of course they pick the good ones.”
Hope, joy, love, patience. It was as if the Wanderer had cut them all down to tiny stubs inside of me and replaced them with the black oil of despair, self-loathing. Hatred. The black hole tore through me, snaking through my veins, encasing my heart. I groaned.
“We’re not going to make it,” I said. My face twisted in despair. I could feel it, but I couldn’t help it.
I caught blurry glimpses of the other two Wanderers as they relaxed their frantic kicking, and then they stopped moving altogether.
Ashe and Max pulled them out and laid them faceup on the ground. I rolled away and curved into a ball.
Max came over to us and held out a hand to me. “We have to move. I was on my way to warn you. There are more Wanderers on our trail.”
More Wanderers. We were able to fight off three, but any more?
I didn’t take his hand. I couldn’t move. Without the lighter emotions to counteract the heavy ones, my guilt—at least, I think it was my guilt—had become crippling. It had turned my heart to cement. “I can’t. It’s never going to work. I’m never going to find him. If a Wanderer can take all that from me, what have the Tunnels already done to Jack? Do they take all of his hope first? All of his love?” I put my hand on my chest. “How can anyone live with only what’s left?”
Cole crouched down before me and grabbed my shoulders, shaking them a little. “Nik. Look at me. We did not come this far to have you lose hope now. Wanderers are after us, and we have to move.”
His words made sense, but they weren’t reaching my body. I didn’t respond. Somewhere deep inside my brain I knew I had to get up and get moving. But I couldn’t. Every cell of my body was filled with heavy guilt, and it was weighing me down like a lead balloon.
Cole shoved his hands under my arms. “Get up. We can’t stay in one place. Jack needs you.” He hoisted me up.
“Jack,” I said. It wasn’t that I had forgotten. It was just that I couldn’t do anything.
“Yes, Jack. Of the ever yours Jack. Remember the boy who captured your heart by reading a book under a tree? Jack.”
He put one of my arms around his shoulder and wrapped his own arm around my waist.
When I was upright, Max looked down at my tether. “Um, am I reading that right?”
I followed his gaze. Not one, but two tethers. One pointing to the right and one pointing straight ahead.
Ashe came running up. I guess he had gone back to check on the Wanderers.
“We’re out of time,” he said to Cole.
Cole grunted. “Which one is it, Nik? Which one is your tether to Jack?”
They looked exactly the same to me. I closed my eyes, but that clear connection to Jack had been wiped out. “I don’t know.”
Cole squeezed my arms. “Concentrate! We can’t fight off a dozen Wanderers. Which way do we go?”
I stared at the tethers, looking for any sign that would show me which one led to Jack. The one pointing straight ahead seemed to be darker, or was that just my imagination?
“Which way?!”
“That way,” I said, pointing straight ahead. We took off running, just as the first Wanderer appeared from around the corner behind us. I was still heavy from the attack. Each footstep felt as if I were running through quicksand.
I fought for breath. I knew they would be relentless.
As we ran, I looked down at both of my tethers and wondered if I had made the right decision.
I could feel us getting nearer to something. As if my tether were really an elastic band that was contracting as we went. The pain in my chest, however, was still strong, and tears continually ran down my face. If I didn’t have a purpose, I would’ve probably curled up and cried for days.
I wasn’t getting tired, though. The farther we went, the more the crippling cement in my veins dissipated. My legs felt as strong as when we’d first set foot in the maze. Cole started to fall back, but I kept running as fast as I could.
“Slow down, Nik!” he said in between pants.
“But I’m close to something. I can feel it.” The harder I ran, the better the pain in my chest felt. I realized that maybe I was following that pain.
“Wait! Nik!” Cole called out. I could hear his footsteps behind me, but I was outrunning him. Whatever power it was that beckoned me forward, it was strong.