Read Sink: The Lost World Online
Authors: Perrin Briar
Sink: The Lost World (25 page)
The air
rushed around her, forcing her up like a cork out of a bottle. The journey was straight and direct. She imagined herself flying out of Old Faithful, a hundred feet into the air, watched by a handful of tourists. She tried not to think of the landing.
She struck something soft and spongy. She reached up to touch it and found it was mud. She lifted her face out of it, but the wind howled and forced her deeper into it.
I’m going to suffocate.
She turned her face to the side and took a deep breath. The mud covered her head, shoulders, and then her arms, hips, legs and toes. She tried to move her arms, but it was like moving through treacle.
So this is how it ends, after everything we’ve been through.
Was this how George went? The reason he hadn’t returned to them? And yet Zoe held onto her breath, making every last molecule of oxygen count, clinging to hope like a drowning man to a life preserver.
Then her head burst through the top. She instantly felt cold as she was ejected from the mud and into a more viscous solution. Some of the liquid slipped between her lips, and she realized it was water. Salt water. She opened her eyes. She was floating in darkness. Her legs were still coming out of the mud, slowly.
She kicked her feet before they were even fully out, and headed toward what she assumed was the surface. She kicked and dug at the water, the pressure relieving itself the higher she went. Life bubbled from her lips as she dug deep and produced the final burst of speed she was capable of. Her lungs burnt, and she had to breathe. She had to open her mouth and…
Breathe.
She burst through the water’s surface and gasped a deep mouthful of air. She tossed her head around until she found one of the figures she was looking for.
“The coast!” Bryan said. “Zoe! Swim toward the coast!”
Aaron and Cassie were already emerging, crawling out of the sea on their hands and knees. They were on the fringe of visibility, partly concealed by a shroud of thick fog. Bryan and Zoe pulled up alongside them, collapsing on their fronts, letting the water lap against their feet.
It was a good ten minutes before they rolled onto their backs, muscles aching and sore. Bryan began to laugh, a deep throaty infectious thing. It made Zoe chuckle, and then roar loudly. The kids followed suit. They were looking up into the thick mists above them. It was over. They made it home.
“Now what do we do?” Cassie said.
“We need to get to the mainland and find an embassy,” Bryan said. “Once we’ve proven our identity we’ll be on the first plane back home.”
They laughed again, relief washing over them.
A stiff breeze blew a window through the cloud, the mist beginning to clear.
Their laughter slowed, and then died on their lips. Cassie looked like she was about to cry.
“No,” she said. “No. It can’t be.”
“But it is,” Zoe said.
“But… we came through the Passage,” Aaron said. “Where are we?”
“As Cawing Crow said,” Bryan said. “The next world.”
Another stiff breeze blew a hole in the mist. A murder of ravens took flight, spiraling up and cawing into the steep sky, a sky shaped like a dome.
The digging equipment
had been packed away and the diggers had returned to their homes. Bryan and Cassie Angelo, and Zoe and Aaron Tate were lost. There was still the hope they might turn up somewhere, the items they found buried here red herrings, but Rosetta didn’t think so.
Bryan wasn’t just a boss, he was her friend. She had failed him. Now she was all alone in the world.
She took her phone out of her pocket. The number of hours she had spent using it for work, chatting to Bryan, carrying out his orders, were beyond counting. Now it was just a lump with no purpose. Like her. She sighed and let her robot arm fall to her side.
She felt a longing to make one final phone call, to leave a message on Bryan’s answering machine, to give him a final farewell and apologize for not being able to do for him what he had done for her. She could not rescue him. Bryan would never hear it, but it would at least put her mind to rest.
She dialed his number – she always made it a point to remember numbers – and listened to the ringtone.
And then something strange happened.
She heard a phone ringing, from somewhere in the sinkhole.
It was Bryan’s ringtone.
She followed the sound. It appeared to be coming from the center of the pit. She descended the ramps they’d had installed and found a square of bright light buzzing from beneath a pile of dirt. She bent down to pick it up. It was Bryan’s phone all right. She saw her own number calling. But what was it doing here? Had he dropped it? Surely he would have sent her an email from his laptop letting her know?
She hung up. Tears sprung in her eyes and she felt weak to her knees. Was this the last place he was before disappearing? Right here? Her nose was blocked with mucous and she let herself cry. Bryan was gone. She would never see him again. She felt like the earth was falling beneath her feet.
When she looked down, she saw her feet
had
fallen into the Earth. Just an inch, but it was noticeable. She picked up her feet, and stepped aside. The earth sank again, this time to her knees. Suddenly the earth felt fragile.
The tingling sensation ran up and down her robot arm, almost painful in its intensity. And she realized for the first time that the prickling she’d felt had nothing to do with Bryan or his situation, but her own. It was a warning, and she had once again failed to heed it.
“Oh no,” she said.
The ground fell away, and she sank.
The Earth spat her out
onto a clear flat grass glade. The sun was shining. Except it wasn’t the sun. Its rays didn’t warm her skin.
There was a large jungle with a wall around it, stretching as far as the eye could see. The wall behind her had a series of holes. Shadows emerged out of them, looking at Rosetta with fear.
The figures stepped out of their caves. They were not human. They were short and squat, covered head to foot in thick black hair, more apelike than man. She got to her feet and prepared to fight, knowing it would be the last fight she would ever have. These creatures were stocky and strong. No way she was going to be able to overpower them, even with her robot arm. But the creatures didn’t show any outward aggression. In fact, they only seemed interested in her, curious.
Their eyes were wide at the sight of her robotic arm. The fake flesh that had been painstakingly grown and applied had been torn off by the dirt, mud and rocks she slid past on the way down to this place.
The apemen dropped to their knees. Others touched the metal of her arm with something approaching awe, transfixed. More of the figures emerged from the jungle, surrounding her on every side. An army of small furry creatures. Some of them were wounded. She felt like C3PO from Star Wars, elevated to God-like status by the Ewoks.
“Uh, hello,” Rosetta said. “Have any of you heard of Bryan Angelo, by any chance?”
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