Cassandra fiddles with something in the wheel well of the bus and moments later, the door swings open. It’s a step up and my legs are so tired, I’m not even sure I can do it. Cassandra leaps up like it’s not a problem. Corina and I look at each other in the dark. She rolls her eyes. I smile.
There’s another generator humming nearby. I look back at the fires behind us just as another artillery shell lands on the range nearby, lighting us up like a Halloween haunted house.
“C’mon,” Cassandra calls from inside. “You’re letting the cold out.”
I brace myself for the pain from my legs and step up inside. I turn to offer my hand to Corina. She takes it. I pull her up, and when she’s in, I turn around to see where we are.
The driver’s seat is where it’s supposed to be and there’s even a steering wheel and a gearshift, but after that, the whole thing has been hollowed out. Where the seats should be, there’s a stairway that goes down. It’s not fancy or even well-built, but Cassandra is already halfway down and it holds her just fine. There’s light at the bottom, too, bright enough to silhouette Cassandra and cast shadows up at the surface.
Corina and I look at each other again. She shrugs. I shrug. I start down the stairs and she follows me. She’s close enough behind me that I can feel her heat.
The light at the bottom of the stairs is coming from a single bare light bulb hanging from a socket attached to an extension cord. The room is hollowed out of the ground and there are boards holding up the dirt around us like an old-school mineshaft. While I’m studying it, there’s an artillery burst up above. The boards rattle. Dirt and dust fall from the ceiling.
Cassandra ducks down into a tunnel that’s no bigger than the frame of a car door. She crawls on her hands and knees and Corina and I follow suit. My knees are killing me and I’m dragging my backpack behind me like a stuffed toy. I can hear Corina trailing me, struggling and cursing under her breath.
Just when I think we’re never going to stop crawling, the tunnel gets wide again and we’re at the base of another staircase, this one going up. There’s another bare bulb lighting the way. If I wasn’t afraid for my life I think this would probably seem really cool, but right now it just makes me feel like I’m in the hands of amateurs. “Quite a setup,” I mutter.
“You could do better?” Cassandra replies. “The bus is the only way in.” She points up. “This is the safest place on the planet when it comes to keeping out Gentry and their minions.”
“Can’t they find us from underneath? Have some witness glide us?” Corina replies. “How is this”—she gestures at the dirt—“gonna keep them from finding us?”
Just as I’m about to pile on with Corina’s question, I notice the silence. I can only hear Corina, Cassandra, and two others. The rest of the Jungle is silent . . .
“We’re shielded,” I tell her. “The Jungle is blocked here.” I’m already beginning to feel lonely.
Corina nods slowly, still cautious.
“What jungle?” Cassandra asks.
I hate explaining the Jungle. “The noise,” I start. “The loud stuff that comes up from down deep . . .” I’m sounding like a crazy person. “It’s like music.”
But Cassandra nods and continues up the stairs as I’m trailing off. “Oh, the Syllogos,” she replies as she climbs.
“The Silly Juice?” It’s what my Voice said. For the first time in forever it feels like there are answers around me, but I don’t know how to ask the questions.
She stops again, turns around. “Sil-low-joss.” She pronounces it carefully with big wide lip movement.
“What is it, though?”
She shrugs, turns back up the stairs. “It’s like time and choices and stuff—it’s where the Live-Tech gets access to our minds, too. Ask Sybil. She knows. She’s the one who gave us the doohickey that blocks that shit so we can’t be tracked in here.” Then she’s up out of view.
Corina and me stand at the base of the ladder for a moment. I don’t know if I’m more tired from the hike and the heat or wired by the idea that I might get some answers.
I look at Corina. “We have a doohickey,” she mutters. “Blocks that shit.”
“The see-low-joos . . .” I whisper back to her. “Blocked that shit.” For the first time since we got to LA, it feels like we’re in tune.
The stairs come up inside what looks like a trailer. It’s got fake wood paneling and bad carpet. There’s furniture, but it’s ratty and generally makes me not want to sit even though I’m totally wiped from the walk.
At first the windows look blacked out, but then I understand. The trailer’s buried.
We’re still underground.
We’re not alone, either. The two other instruments I sensed from down below are sitting on the couch, and they aren’t making it look any prettier.
They both look like gutter punks. The guy smiles up at me. “Hey,” he says. “You’re the picture guy.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
He laughs and so does the girl. “Weird. I’ve been looking at a picture of you looking pretty much like you do right now for nearly a year.” He looks over my shoulder and his expression changes to a big round O of surprise. “Oh my God.” He jumps up. “Corina?!”
I hear Corina laugh behind me. “You look like hell, boy!” she says as she pushes past me and hugs him in a big dancing lovefest. He swings her around, which is hard because the place is so narrow. They manage not to break anything.
When he puts her down, Corina looks at me, thrilled. “This is Sal! He was with us at the compound.”
“It was before his time,” Sal says. Then he sticks out his hand to me. “Salvador Pena.”
I shake hands with him. “Alex Mata.”
He turns to the girl who’s still sitting on the couch. “This is Erica. Erica, this is Corina, and this is Alex Mata, the guy we’ve all been waiting for.”
“You’ve been waiting for me?”
Sal smiles. “Help us, Alex Mata, you’re our only hope!”
Cassandra rolls her eyes. Corina giggles.
My ears start to burn.
He holds up his hands like he’s surrendering. “I don’t mean anything by it, man—it’s just that you’re supposed to be like our Obi-Wan Kenobi.” He lowers his hands and looks at my eyes. “You’re supposed to be a Jedi of the Syllogos . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
Sal looks confused by my question, which doesn’t help me feel better. He tries again. “Well, it’s kinda like the Force from Star Wars, except it’s real and you can’t use it to move stuff around or make people do things.”
“Except that supposedly you have such amazing access to it that you can do all sorts of stuff that the rest of us can’t even imagine,” Erica adds.
I don’t know these people and I’m not ready to tell them that, as a matter of fact, I can make people do things. “Who says?”
He gestures at Cassandra. “She does.” He shrugs. “But that doesn’t mean as much as the other person who keeps saying it.”
“Who?”
“Sybil,” he says. “She says you’re our best hope to save the planet.”
“Don’t swell his head.” Cassandra ignores my question and so do the others.
I flush.
“You all need some rest,” Sal says. “Erica and me bunk in the back room and Cassandra’s usually on the couch here, but we got some bedrolls we can toss out on the floor for you.”
I nod, not sure what else to do. “Alright . . .”
When we’re settled, the lights go out and the darkness is entirely complete and there’s nothing left between me and the vision of Jordan’s broken body at the foot of the Locust.
Nothing between me and my time in her mind. By the time I was done gliding her, I felt more at home there than I do in my own mind. Jordan wasn’t afraid to let someone know who she was, to show them what she felt.
I spent my life afraid of people seeing who I was, how I feel, and Jordan . . .
Jordan was stronger than me.
Jordan should have been the Jedi.
“Alex?” Corina is pressed up next to me even though it’s hot and stuffy in here—there’s no room to be separated.
“Yeah?” Even though my thoughts are making me miserable, having them interrupted irritates me.
“It really isn’t your fault.”
I don’t respond as fast as I think she wants me to. I can feel her turning around to try and look at me, but it’s too dark for her to see me crying.
She puts her arms around me. She kisses my cheek, then the other one, then my lips. “It’s really not, and Jordan wouldn’t want us to give up. She’d want us to finish the job. We’re gonna get the assholes who’re doing this to us, alright?”
I nod, my face brushing hers as I do.
When I can talk again, I tell her, “Yeah. We will.” When I say it, it feels like a promise.
It takes me a long time to fall asleep because I don’t know how I’m going to keep it.