Cole was looking at me with a curious expression.
“What?” I said.
He shook his head. “I just . . . you and Jack. How long have you been together?”
“Years. But it’s felt like an eternity.” I used my hands to shoo him forward. “Why?”
“Because I don’t see it. The two of you.”
I sighed, remembering when he’d said nearly the same thing that day we silk-screened Dead Elvises T-shirts in the GraphX Shop. And now we were being digested by an oily tunnel, and we were still talking about it.
“What?” he said. As he inched farther down the tunnel, he resorted to army crawling after a few yards. I followed suit.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” I said. “When we first met. Right before you . . .” My voice faded away.
“Before I what?”
I looked away. “Let’s get going.”
“No. Finish what you were saying.” He stopped moving, and I knew he wouldn’t start again until I talked.
So I blurted out the answer. “Right before I went to the Feed with you.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Why did you go to the Feed with me?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. We have to go.”
“Yes, it does,” he said, his voice a whisper. “It matters to me.”
I sighed and then looked beyond him to where the tunnel disappeared in darkness. “We don’t have time.”
“In a hundred words or less.”
A hundred words to explain how my mother had died, how her murderer had gotten off on a technicality, and then how I thought Jack had cheated on me. And Cole was there for me. “I made a series of bad decisions. I thought nothing could be worse than feeling so much pain. But I was wrong.”
I finally glanced up at him. He frowned. “And coming with me ended up being worse than the worst pain you could bear.”
I nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry.” The words hung in the cramped air of that tiny hole for a long time. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Cole had never been apologetic for anything that he had ever done. In fact, he’d always believed that being an Everliving, and sucking the life out of someone, was morally defensible. Because it was the Forfeit’s choice. Because it was about life triumphing over the absence of life.
I couldn’t believe he was apologizing now. And suddenly, knowing that he held my heart, knowing that he had tricked me into giving it up, knowing that he had betrayed me . . . now that he was apologizing, I was furious.
“You took everything from me,” I said, my voice shaking. “You tricked me into becoming an Everliving. You did this to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He put his hand over his heart as if he needed to keep it from spilling out. But he had no heart.
“Stop apologizing!” The words were loud, but they were digested quickly in the pulsating walls. “There are some things that you just can’t apologize for. Some things are too big for an apology. Some things . . .” My voice trailed off as I remembered saying something similar to Jack when I’d first Returned.
Sometimes, when someone keeps forgiving someone else, it becomes too much.
“Look, this is not going anywhere,” I said. “Let’s just go.”
Cole nodded as if there were nothing in the world he wanted more at that moment than to get out of the current conversation.
He pointed ahead of him. “Do you want to go first or last?”
I thought about it. If I went last, all I would be thinking about was that if someone was chasing us, they’d get me first. Maybe the same was true if I was in front, but at least in front I knew I was facing the danger.
“First,” I said.
He moved to the side and then held his arms out in an “after you” kind of way. I scooted past him and started to crawl.
SEVENTEEN
NOW
The Everneath. The crawlway to the Shade network.
The only illumination came intermittently from Cole’s lighter behind me. And even when it was lit, I was blocking most of it.
“Just keep it off,” I said. “It doesn’t help.”
Cole clicked it off. I could see, far up in the distance, a spot of light moving up and down. But the more I focused on it, the more I realized that it wasn’t the light moving. It was the wave of the tunnel moving me up and down.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” I said.
Cole grunted as he navigated through a particularly narrow part of the passageway. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the moment I thought about spilling the beans about our plan to Ashe, I assumed that getting him to believe us would take longer than it did. It wasn’t part of the plan for Ashe to actually take the bait so quickly.”
“So, what, your plan was to, A, get Ashe to take the bait, and then there was no B?”
“Basically.”
“Suddenly I don’t want to be first in the tunnel.”
We kept crawling. The waves started to take a toll on my stomach, and pretty soon my goal was not only to emerge at the end, but also not to puke along the way. It didn’t help that I kept picturing digestive juices along the walls and floor. Juices that were slowly disintegrating my skin.
But the light got closer. And the air in the tunnel became colder.
“When we get there,” Cole said, “don’t do anything. We’re just going to get a glimpse of where their headquarters is located and see if we can see anything that will help. Don’t take any chances.”
I rolled my eyes, even though Cole couldn’t see me. “What did you think I was going to do? Announce our arrival?”
As we approached the opening, I could see that the light wasn’t coming from outside. Instead, it was coming from a giant, glowing ball shaped like an egg. Shadows danced back and forth in front of it. Shades. Gathering around the ball as humans would gather around a campfire.
The walls of the room were round and pulsating. If the tunnel had been the esophagus of the snake, this was the stomach.
“What do you see?” Cole asked.
“A glowing ball. In the center of . . . a cavernous . . . stomach.”
“What?”
I focused on describing the scene. “It’s as large as the Feed caverns. The Shades are gathered around the ball, touching it. And where they touch it, the light from the ball condenses against their fingers. It’s like they’re drawing power from the ball.”
Suddenly a denser figure approached the ball and placed a more defined hand on its surface. Instead of drawing the light toward his hand, the contact thrust the light farther away.
“It’s Ashe,” I said. “He’s touching the ball. But the light is going away from his touch.”
Ripples of light emanated from the point of contact, and suddenly, above the ball, an image appeared. Three dimensional, like a hologram.
At the sight, every Shade in the place froze. They turned toward the hologram expectantly, as if whatever was about to appear would be big news.
Inside the image a face began to take shape. Someone with short hair. Blond.
It was Cole’s face. Then my face. Then Jack’s face. There for every Shade to see.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”
I started to crawl backward, my feet smushing into Cole’s face.
“Watch it, Nik!”
“Move, move!”
We crawled backward until we reached a place that was large enough for us to turn around. Maybe it was because I was so much smaller, but I was moving faster than Cole could. I pushed against his feet, trying to give him extra leverage to springboard from.
The light from behind us grew faint, as if someone were blocking the exit point.
“Faster!” I said. “I think someone’s coming.”
That lit a fire under Cole. He scrambled onward. Since the entrance at the other end was closed, we couldn’t tell how close we were until Cole actually fell into the dirt anteroom.
He threw his shoulder upward against the door, and we fell in a heap outside on the ground. Jack wasn’t there, but I didn’t have time to wonder where he was. Whoever was behind us was right on our tails. Dark tendrils of oil-like fluid reached around the edge of the door.
Shades. I desperately wanted a railroad tie or something to throw across the entrance, to lock them inside.
The second I thought of it, a stream of mist emanated from my chest, forming a large, rectangular object. It floated toward the entrance, and as it solidified, I could see it became a railroad tie. It lay across the entrance in slots on either side, bolting it shut.
Cole staggered to his feet, looked at the railroad tie, and then helped me up. We both started running.
“How did you do that?” he said.
I shook my head. “Keep running!”
The signs around the streets changed to show both Cole’s face and my own, and underneath the image were the words Traitors to the nation.
Cole grabbed my hand roughly and closed his eyes, and it took me a split second when my feet lifted from the ground to realize what he was doing.
“No!” I yanked my hand away. “We’re not leaving Jack.”
He looked as if he might try to grab my hand again, but then he closed his eyes and nodded quickly.
We bounded down the street. A couple of Everlivings saw us coming and jumped out of the way. I took my first right and then a left and then another right, trying to make our movements as random as possible. Why hadn’t we discussed another meeting place?
I concentrated on Jack. His face. His cheekbones. His shaggy brown hair. The lines of his body. The way he moved. The way he flicked his ring finger. The divot on his forehead.
A small rod appeared at my feet, exactly like the tether that had led me to Jack when he was stuck in the Tunnels.
“This way!” I shouted to Cole.
We darted around corners, going whichever way the tether pointed us. Brushing past Everlivings, most of whom gave us strange looks. Obviously, the change on the posters hadn’t quite sunk in, because no one tackled us.
At one point we saw a couple of Shades blocking our path, so we cut through a dark alley. But when we reached the end, there was no way out. We turned around and nearly ran smack into Ashe.
He had us trapped. There was nowhere to go and no way we could outrun him. Panicked, I turned to Cole.
“Ashe,” Cole said, a pleading tone to his voice.
Ashe reached for a door in the building on the right wall. He shoved it open. Was he going to lock us inside?
“Follow the hallway, then take a right,” he said. “You can get past the Shades that way.”
I stared at him, suspicious.
Ashe noted my expression. “If I wanted to turn you in right now, I would. And there’s something else,” Ashe said. “When I shared your intentions with the network, that was before I thought of something that could help you. If you get your hands on—” His voice cut off, and he froze midsentence. His mouth hung open as if he were in pain. I almost looked behind him to make sure someone hadn’t stabbed him or something.
“Ashe?” I said.
He shook his head and started again. “Find the—” Again he stopped. Closed his eyes. “I can’t say it.”
Cole stepped forward. “Because it would betray the Everneath?”
Ashe lowered his head, took a deep breath, raised it again, and said, “Cronus.” He gritted his black teeth, and the next word came out as an almost indistinguishable grunt. “Tantalus.” The moment the word left his lips, he collapsed onto the ground.
Cole grabbed my hand. “We’re out of time!” He pulled me into the building. We followed Ashe’s instructions and stumbled out into an empty street, at the end of which was Jack, tearing down one of the thousands of posters of Cole’s face.
“Jack!” I said.
He saw us barreling toward him, and he held out his hands. Cole grabbed one and I grabbed the other, and we froze, waiting to leave the ground.
And nothing happened.
“Cole,” I said, staring at the way we’d come. “Do something.”
“I know,” Cole said. “I’m trying to concentrate. I’m thinking upward.”
He raised himself up on his tiptoes.
Tentacles of black oil appeared around the edge of the building that stood on the corner we’d just come from.
“They’re here!” I said. Jack tried to let go of my hand, and I knew he was going to charge them. “No!” I said, grabbing him even tighter. “You won’t be able to touch them. Stay still.”
The Shades moved like a cloud, or more like a tornado, coming down the road.
“Cole!” I dug my nails into his hand.
“I’m trying!”
“Think of a place. A calm place. If you can picture it, then I’d bet it’s a real place you’ve been. Think of it. Put yourself there.”