Chapter Twenty-Three
My mind rebels, refuses to compute. Mateo can’t be dead. He cannot be gone. Just this morning, he was talking to me about Lola. Rae just gave him permission to date her. He has to go back to camp. They have to pursue their relationship, see where it leads. He simply can’t be gone.
But nothing stops his fall into the pit. The birds don’t form a flock and shepherd him to the ground, like they did with Sylvie. He doesn’t suddenly sprout wings and fly to safety. Even the shorter arms, which I might or might not have imagined, don’t do a damn thing to help him.
He just falls and falls and falls.
I close my eyes, unable to witness his impact with the ground.
“Mateo,” I whisper, the anguish strangling my voice. I want to yell until my throat is raw. I want to beat my fists against the rocky ground until they bleed. But the shock robs me of any energy, so all I can do is sink listlessly to the ground.
Not so with the others. They scream, babble, and cry so loudly that I can’t make out a single word.
And then, a loud rumbling fills the cave, as though a piece of machinery is coming to life. Right before our very eyes, a metal beam shoots out from the top of the opposite cliff and extends all the way to our side, where it snaps into place.
My mouth parts. Bodin, Sylvie, and Rae fall silent. A bridge across the pit. But only if we’re willing to walk a very narrow beam across a crocodile pit, twenty feet in the air. It might as well be a tightrope.
“Cross the beam if you want answers,” a voice intones, its volume magnified so that it fills every vein and capillary in my body.
A message from God? Surely not. But the voice has the same omniscient vibe, as though it can peer into our brains and see our every thought.
“It’s a loudspeaker,” Bodin says.
The four of us look at each other as the implications sink in.
“What?” Rae explodes. “That’s Xander?”
“If there’s a loudspeaker, there must also be cameras,” Sylvie deduces.
“They’ve been watching us this entire time.” I moan. “We never had a chance of getting away.”
And here I thought I couldn’t feel any worse. Despair washes over me, mixing with the grief and creating an unbearable cocktail of emotions.
I can’t do this. I can’t stand this much pain. I can’t exist any longer—
Clap…clap…clap…
The slow clap disrupts my pattern of thoughts. Across the pit, Xander emerges from the shadows. He appears freshly showered, unlike the rest of us, although he’s wearing the same clothes as before: raggedy jeans and an old Yale sweatshirt. Either our resident evil scientist is extra thrifty, or he’s got multiple versions of the same outfit.
“Really, Xander?” Rae shouts across the cavern, all bravado. “Get a new act. This slow clap and popping out of nowhere is getting boring. You take down the sinister vibe a notch every time you repeat it.”
Um, she can speak for herself. Frankly, the very sight of Xander still terrifies me, no matter what he’s doing.
“Xander.” Bodin gasps. “What are you doing here?”
The fakety-fake captain shrugs, unconcerned. “If you want answers, you know what to do.”
Sylvie snorts. “Um, no thanks. I already survived one near-death experience yesterday. I’m not about to undertake another at the whim of a so-called scientist.”
I look up at her and Rae. They couldn’t be more different in appearance. Rae is a five-foot-two Black woman with bleach-blond hair, tattoos, and multiple piercings. Sylvie is a muscular, long-legged Filipina woman pushing six feet. But they might as well be twins in their strength. They don’t get pushed around by anyone. I kinda want to be either of them when I grow up.
“The beam is solid metal. It won’t break, I promise,” Xander cajoles. “I just want you to come closer, so that I don’t have to yell while we talk.”
“Never,” Rae and Sylvie say as one.
Xander raises an eyebrow, as though amused by their defiance. “What if I offered you and your friends five more days of rations, without any other abilities having to surface? You’ll be heroes. That’s what this little expedition was about, yes? Finding a way to help your families and friends?”
The others shake their heads, even as I consider how a steady supply of food will bolster Mama’s deteriorating health.
“If you want me, you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming across that beam,” Rae says. “I am not voluntarily endangering myself or returning to your control.”
The amusement falls from the captain’s face, so that his normal, resting expression returns: cold, hard cheeks and empty eyes. “That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve been under my control this entire time.”
A chill runs up my spine, down my arms, along my legs. It’s like my body is doing the freaking wave. But the fear finally triggers my fight-or-flight response, and I get shakily to my feet, my muscles bunching.
Before our very eyes, the facade of the friendly captain descends over Xander’s face again. “You.”
“M-me?” I stutter. Shoulda stayed on the ground, out of his notice.
“You want medication for your mother. Pain-relieving pills, so that she doesn’t suffer for the last days of her life. Am I correct?”
All I can do is nod.
Xander bends and sweeps out his arm in a courtly gesture. “Done. Cross the beam and convince your friends to do so, and she’ll have access to any medication she needs.”
“But you need twelve of us, right?” I ask, my mind spinning. “Like the folktale of the twelve blind princesses. So, you have to give us those pills, or Mama will be so hurt that she can’t participate in your challenges and your experiment will be one big failure.”
He gives an amused snort. “You’re a clever one, aren’t you? But alas, you’re wrong here. Whether or not your mother is in pain is of little consequence to me. She’s here, and so that’s enough to fulfill my quota of twelve subjects. Which, by the way, is not necessary. You could say that twelve is simply my lucky number. That’s something you’d be familiar with, wouldn’t you?”
He knows about my OCD.
The thought numbs me, even if it shouldn’t be surprising. No doubt his research on his potential subjects is as thorough as it is in-depth. And yet, the idea that this evil stranger knows such a personal detail about me makes me shake so hard that I want to puke.
“So, what will it be, little girl? Leave your mother in pain—or play my game?”
Pushing aside my nausea, I turn to the others. The beam’s not that narrow. Even Bodin should be able to plant his foot directly onto it. If it were an obstacle at a playground, six inches from the ground, we’d all race across it, no problem. We just need to ignore the twenty-foot drop and the pit of crocodiles waiting underneath. No biggie.
Before I can speak, Sylvie holds up her hand.
“I lost a parent to cancer, too,” she says, “and I’ve never been scared of heights. It’s a yes for me.”
Bodin chimes in, “I hope my vote goes without saying.”
My confidence grows a notch, but I always knew Rae would be the difficult one. I drop to my knees, prepared to beg. “Please, Rae. I’ll do anything—”
She noisily expels air. “Oh, get up. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Our eyes meet, and something passes between us—the first moment of connection since we met.
“It’s a trick,” Rae mutters. “You know that, right? We can’t trust that man or anything he says. His word is meaningless.”
“Please,” I say. “I know we can all cross the beam safely. Even if there’s a small chance that he’ll give Mama her pills, that’s better than nothing.”
Rae sighs. “You don’t have to convince me. I’ll even go first.”
She strips off her shoes and socks, squares her shoulders, and strides to the beam.
Not my enemy, anymore—if she ever was. Rae is my hero through and through.