1942664419 (S) (14 page)

David pulled me closer, gripping my waist. “Excuse me if I don’t agree.”

He reached out and snatched the mustard cylinder from under Poseidon’s arm, and pulled me back into the closet. The wall oozed shut, encasing us.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold your breath.”

“What?”

“Hold your breath!”

I sucked in a huge gulp of air before our bodies sunk straight down. Frigid, thick water stung from all sides. Loose. Goopy. Nothing like before. I closed my eyes, clinging to David’s chest as a frost dug into my pores, gouging holes in my skin.

We slammed to a sudden stop. David held me steady as my body adjusted from sub-zero to sweltering heat. I stumbled, my sneakers tapping on the floor. My head spun.

“In here.” The wall to our right formed a divot, and he pulled me inside. The opening didn’t close around us. The temperature wavered between the frigid chill of the wall on three sides, to the Sahara heat of the corridor before us.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing if they follow.” He whisked the hair from my eyes. “These aren’t traversable walls. It was way too cold in there. For both of us. I don’t want to go back in unless I have to.”

Thank goodness, since I couldn’t feel my hands or toes anymore.

David glanced at the ceiling as my stomach twisted. Unable to look up, I rested my head against his chest. After what seemed like an eternity, he unzipped my backpack and dropped the mustard cylinder inside.

“What are we going to do with it?” I asked, still clinging to his chest.

“I’m not sure yet.”

I blinked. My eyes barely focused. “Did you really make that powder? Do those things?”

“I was a different person then. All I cared about was proving myself.” David rubbed his eyes. “The ambassador was right about one thing. I’ve changed. Because of you.”

Why didn’t that make me feel better? I guess maybe we all have our demons, but mine didn’t destroy entire planets. I shuddered and rubbed my still numb hands. None of this made sense. David. The powder. Me.

“If the ambassador was plotting all this stuff, why did he invite me on his ship?”

“He didn’t have a choice. The Caretakers ordered him to. General Baker suggested some photographer called Callup, but the ambassador must have considered him a threat.”

“So they decided on me.” A laugh puffed from my lips. “I guess they never counted on me falling through a wall.”

David kissed my forehead. “You did good.”

The feeling returned in my hands and toes. “So are we safe then? We lost them?”

“Hardly.” David drew me from the indentation in the wall. “This ship is his. It won’t take him long to find us.”

“Then what do we do?”

The wall beside me buckled. David grabbed my shoulder, dragging me to the floor as pieces of the wall shot over our heads. My cheek stung against the heated flooring. The hallway blurred.

“We need to go. Now.”

He hauled me to my feet, but my legs wobbled.

“Jess, come on!”

Something flew past my face. I stumbled behind David, closing my eyes against the dizzying blur. The sound of David’s breathing encompassed me until he skidded to a stop. I opened my eyes and gaped at the huge silver wall in front of us. “You ran us into a wall?”

He spun us around. “It wasn’t there a second ago.”

The ceiling opened up. Needle-sized spikes rained down on us.

“Keep your eyes down!”

David pulled me by the arm until we bashed against another partition.

Trapped. The needle storm stopped.

The walls pulsated. David grunted, pressing the solid barriers. Thousands of needles stuck out of his back. I brushed my hands against them, sweeping them to the floor.

“What will these things do to you?”

He continued to run his hands along the walls. “Nothing. They only pierced my human casing.” He spun toward me, his eyes wide. “Jess!”

David started swatting at my back and shoulders. Hundreds of tiny needles fell to the floor and sunk into the liquid surface.

Seizing my cheeks, he searched my eyes. “Are you okay? Do you feel anything?”

Our prison faded to gray before blacking out completely. “Great, now what do we do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean: what do I mean? They turned the lights out.”

The sound of David’s elevated heartbeat filled the darkness. “You can’t see?”

Oh. Crap.

“Please tell me they turned the lights out.”

He ran his fingers along my cheek. I shivered, waiting for his words, knowing he would never lie to me. His silence gave me my answer.

“I’m blind?”

“Don’t panic. The drugs are only meant to disable. The effects are usually temporary.”

“Usually?”

“Yes, at least for Erescopians.”

Why didn’t that make me feel any better? The hum in the air surrounding us changed, filling the room. But my heartbeat outweighed all other sound. “David, what’s happening?”

“Just stay close to me.” His fingers wove through mine.

David’s hands dampened. He twitched, as if twisting and looking over his shoulders, and whispered an Erescopian word under his breath.

“You’re scaring me.” I pulled from his grip and pawed at his chest, squinting, hoping for a blur, a speck of light, anything.

The hum heightened, and something slapped my leg. David pulled me to him.

“Please tell me what’s going on!”

His arms tightened around me. “Jess, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?”

He forced my face into his neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered again.

Something cold bumped my hip. A hint of a whimper escaped David’s lips as another cold, hard surface struck my back.

“What’s going on?”

“The walls are pressing in on us!”

David sucked in a deep breath, his arms tightening around me. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to cry out, to warn him he was crushing me, but only a dry hiss escaped my lips.

The floor disappeared beneath us, and we dropped into a frigid pool. David cried out and released his hold. I sunk beneath the thick, soupy water.

My body spiraled, moving up, then down. I tried to suck in a breath, but choked and sputtered on the new liquid jail we’d fallen into. Thrashing, I swam through the darkness, but couldn’t tell which way was up. My heartbeat banged within my ears. My lungs screamed for air. Giving up, I floated, hoping my body would rise to the surface like in a swimming pool. But I seemed to simply hang within the frigid darkness.

Mom pulled back my blankets. “Are you ever getting out of bed today?”

I rolled over and checked the clock. Eight forty-five a.m. I pulled the covers over my head. “It’s Saturday.”

She ripped the blankets off me. “Yep, come on. Let’s hit some garage sales.”

My body thudded onto a hot surface.

“Jess, breathe!” David screamed.

I choked, rolling on my side. Sudden, unbearable heat singed my cheeks.

“Jess, please say something.”

I rubbed the back of my head, blinking in the utter darkness. “Ow.”

David’s giggle reverberated as if bouncing off the inside of a tin can. He pulled me up into a sitting position and eased me into the warm, familiar sensation of his embrace. “Don’t do that to me again. I thought I lost you.”

I thought I lost me, too. I tried to make sense out of everything, but all I understood was David, his arms, and utter darkness.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Someone saved us.”

“Who?”

I could feel him shift his weight. “I have no idea. The ship is alerted to us, and we were trapped. We shouldn’t have been able to escape.”

His pulse slowed, but I could tell from the tenseness in his chest and shoulders that he was still on high alert. He shifted slightly as if he were looking around. I figured that meant we were not in the dark, which meant I was still blind.

“You know I can’t see, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure it’s not permanent?”

His cheek slid across my forehead. “I have no idea what impedance barbs will do to a human system. They shouldn’t cause blindness. They should only have made us groggy.”

Blind, as in may never see again.

An image of Dad’s face appeared before me. I memorized each line, the square cut of his jaw. What if I never saw him again? Would I forget what he looked like?

I tightened my grip on David. “I’m scared.”

“I know. I’m scared, too.”

No more sunrises. No more driving. No more photography.

No more life.

I clenched my jaw. If we didn’t get away from the psychotic Percy Jackson reject, none of that would matter anyway. “What do we do?”

“We need to get off this ship.”

But how?
“Can Nematali help us?”

“Nematali Carash is my friend. I’m sure they’re watching her already.”

“Who then? Who do you think helped us before?”

Silence lingered. I lifted my head, wishing I could see the expression on his face.

“I have no idea. It would have to be someone intimately involved in the ship’s systems. They maneuvered us through liquidic conduits that shouldn’t be accessible.”

I sat back and stared in his direction. “Is that good or bad?”

“Neither. I can’t imagine who would be able to get us through that kind of heightened security, to here.”

I shifted my weight. “Where exactly is here?”

He released me and stood. Footsteps tapped across the floor. “I think we’re in the
elocusa
, but that makes no sense. We were on a lower deck.”

“What’s an
elocusa
?”

“It’s dead space right above the ship’s spine. It’s one of five sectors not tied into the ship’s liquescent systems. It’s a blind spot. One of the few places on the ship that can’t be seen outside of this room.”

I knocked on the floor. “Does that mean this is regular metal?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because I hate when the floor opens up under me.” Especially now that I couldn’t see.

A sound seeped into the room, pulsing and swirling as if we were listening to a pulmonary system from within a body. I remembered standing at the bottom of the spiral staircase with Nematali and looking up far higher than I could see. Could we be at the top of that corkscrew-thingy? I blinked three times, willing my sight to return. Even if David found a way to escape, how could he get out with a blind girl in tow?

“Don’t even say it.” The anger in David’s voice startled me.

“How’d you know what I was thinking?” The memory of the mind-bending pain that shot through me any time David listened to my thoughts caused a shiver. “If you were reading my mind, I’d know it.”

“The expression on your face speaks for you. We’re getting out of this. Together.” He grabbed my cheeks. “Understand?”

Tears filled my eyes as I nodded. His grip tightened, and his lips covered mine. I tensed, and then relaxed as his warmth coated me.

I allowed him to pull me into a standing position. Eyes closed, I imagined we were in the woods, safe, where nothing could hurt us. His kiss deepened, but his trembling hands told the stories I knew his eyes would betray if I could see them.

He needed me as much as I needed him. A constant. A gentle, loving familiarity to help us forget, for a moment, how lost and alone we were.

David grazed his forehead against mine. I could still taste his kiss, sense his lips hovering close. The air between us tingled. We were truly alone. Poseidon was as blind to us here as I was to everything around me. We could stay here forever. Only us. Together. Just as I’d dreamed of every night since David left.

“Hiding’s not the answer,” he whispered.

I smiled. I must have been completely transparent. “I know we can’t stay here. I’m just afraid … ”
I’ll lose you again
. How stupid was that, being more afraid of losing David than of the guy who probably wanted to kill us.

David took a deep breath. “I’ll figure this out.”

He kissed my forehead and moved about the room. Here I was again, counting on him. I was barely a help even on my own world, and now that I was blind, I was more a hindrance than ever. Unless …

I stood taller and tried to blank out the freight train of David’s resonance swirling about me. There had to be a way out of here—a safe way where Poseidon wouldn’t find us.

Something scraped against the metal beneath me, like a dog scratching at a door to come inside. Whatever it was seemed to move toward my left. I followed the sound until it stopped. “There’s something moving underneath us,” I said.

“Of course there is. We’re right on top of the ship’s nervous system.”

I knelt and ran my palm across the floor until I discovered a deep groove forming an oval-shaped pattern in the decking that shifted when I adjusted my weight. “I think I found a hatch.” I continued to feel around and found a small lip.

“Don’t pull on that,” David said.

Too late. I already had.

16

The hatch vibrated beneath my knees.

“Jess, get away from there!”

I stood, but stumbled as the shaking increased. The air seemed to suck out of the room, leaving an odor of rotten fish behind. David grabbed my arm, but I slipped through his hand as the plate below my feet gave way.

Stifling humidity filled my lungs. I fell in slow motion until a warm grip wrapped around my wrist. I jerked to a halt, and searing pain exploded through my shoulder. My scream vibrated between my ears.

David’s grunt echoed through what sounded like a vast chamber. My heartbeat pulsated in my ears as the height of the swirling black staircase Nematali had shown me flashed through my mind.

“Hold on, Jess!”

His grip slipped. I reached for him, but my other damp palm slid over his trembling fist. David’s voice continued to repeat in the depths surrounding us.

“David!” My cry mixed with David’s fading echo.

How high were we?

His grip tightened, but my hand continued to slip.

“Take my other hand!” David shouted.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. I reached, waving my fingers but only hit my own arm.