Chapter Thirty

Can this really be happening? My mind races as I try to put things together. Why would Asher want to help me?

I need to find Darian. If he hasn’t found a way to the mother Syncro-Drifter, then we have to take this chance of escape Asher’s offering.

I poke my head over the back of the Ferris wheel as I soar high into the air, searching for Darian or the crazy clown, but don’t spot either of them. Only the eerie melody plays out, mixed with the swirling scents of rust and cotton candy.

The bucket rounds the top and begins revolving backward. I shift my weight, preparing to jump out when I reach the ground. The seat rocks and creaks in protest. I grip the bar.

The closer I get to the bottom, the faster my heart gallops.

The note, Asher, Darian…the clown.

The bucket reaches the ground and I hop out before it swings upward again.

Before I can make it two steps, something yanks me to the side, pulling me into the shadows behind the Ferris wheel.

“Rae,” Darian whispers.

Relieved, I turn to meet his concern-etched face.

“Is it really you?” I ask, smiling.

“Yes, it’s me,” he says, before lifting my arm and inspecting the cuts the clown inflicted.

I cringe and jerk my arm back. “I’m fine. Did you find the exit to the control room?”

Darian shakes his head, a deep scowl forming on his face. “No, but I will find it. I won’t give up.”

I open my hand just enough to reveal the crumpled note. “Asher sent this in the same way the knives came,” I whisper, handing him the note.

Darian raises his eyebrows and slips his hand over mine. He covertly takes the note and hunches over to read it. After scanning, he rips the paper into a hundred tiny pieces, letting them scatter into the breeze like dandelion fluff. He rubs his forehead while sucking in a mouthful of air and releases a heavy sigh.

When I can’t take his silence any longer, I ask, “You don’t think it’s legit?”

Darian twists his lips, thinking. “Well, Asher saw us together at the lake…and you were promised to him…I’ve got good reason to think this could be a trap—but—” He pauses and kisses the scrapes on my face from the clown’s nails. “I guess it’s worth a shot. I don’t want you in here a minute longer than you have to be.” He gives me a fleeting flicker of a smile and lowers his voice. “Asher must want you to run in different patterns so he can create video footage and run it in a loop—allowing us time to escape. If you run in different patterns and stay quiet, it won’t be obvious to anyone watching that it’s repeated footage.” He grins, hope sparking in his brilliant eyes. “Smart. After that, Asher wants us to sit still for ten minutes. That’ll bring in the fighter bots and make the trap doors automatically unlock.”

A sinking feeling hits me that Darian could be right. “What if Asher just wants revenge for what I did and it’s a trap like you said? I did shame him by running off with you. What if there isn’t a way out and he wants to send in the fighter bots to really kill us?”

Darian groans and I drop my gaze to his clenched fists. “There’s a real chance that’s what he’s up to,” he says. “And there’s also a risk that even if Asher’s being honest, that he could make the mistake of sending us to the same exit the fighter bots come in from. But either way, we should—”

“Desiree…” The clown calls out in a singsong voice somewhere in the distance.

My heart rate spikes. “That clown is crazy scary, Darian, holograph or not.”

“I know, believe me. He’s a freak on legs.” He lets out a breath. “But listen, we need to try this. I know I promised you I’d find a way out, and I will.” His coal-black brows draw together. “But it could take months and this could be our only real shot.” He pauses and sighs. “If this is a trap and the fighter bots come and we don’t find the exit—or Asher’s directed us to the same trap door they’re coming from by accident—then I’ll have to kill the bots before they kill us.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “And just how do you plan on doing that?” I whisper in the tiniest voice. “I mean, I know you’re tough—but fighter bots?”

He shrugs and leans in to whisper. “I’ll do it with my bare hands if I have to,” he says, his lips pressing into a hard line.

I don’t have time to argue. The clown’s unnerving voice edges in close behind us.

“Cards, Desiree…don’tcha wanna see your parents again…?”

At the mention of my parents, my stomach does a nosedive and tears sting my eyes. It’s taking everything in me not to think too much about their murders right now…and the clown knows it.

The music changes to another tune that sounds like it’s coming from one of those old-time music boxes, the kind with the spinning ballerina. Like the other creepy music, it plays at a slow, eerie tempo.

“Come on.” Darian slips his hand into mine and we take off running.

We jet around the carnival through so many twists and turns I get dizzy. The words on Asher’s note, along with what Darian said about the video footage being shown on a loop, run through my mind. I force a neutral expression on my face and stay quiet.

We pass glowing neon signs, a circus tent that reads Jugg U Lar Carnival, and a hall of mirrors that make our images transform from two feet to ten feet in seconds. And, through it all, I don’t react. I keep pace with Darian and swallow the fear that’s squeezing my throat from the inside.

Darian dashes in-between the carnival games. I imagine the clown jumping out at me from behind every ledge and every corner, gripping me with his nails and taunting me with his cards.

Finally Darian runs to the middle of the carnival and drops to his knees. His jaw working, eyes wild.

I hit the dirt and scramble up beside him without a word, panic pricking me like needles.

Darian blinks his eyes at me once. I blink back in acknowledgement.

Now we have to wait ten minutes.

We can’t run.

We can’t hide.

We need the officials to see us refusing to interact with their game of terror.

I count the seconds from one to sixty and start over again, trying desperately not to count too fast. If I do, I’ll move too soon and screw everything up.

“Aha!” The clown hollers. He jumps out from behind one of the gaming stalls just feet away. “There ya are!”

A chill runs through me. My gaze drops to his huge purple clown shoes that thud across the dirt as he makes his way closer. My mouth gapes as I glance back up to his hair that looks like it’s on fire, then I meet his piercing stare.

“Two murderers for the price of one.” He eyeballs Darian, and then cocks his head to one side, glaring at me. “Ain’t that grand, Rae? Maybe I’ll letcha both play cards…hang out a little while with the dead…” He throws his head back and lets out a high-pitched laugh, then snaps his gaze on me again. “You wanna see my cards again?” he rasps. “Ya wanna playyy…Rae?”

I close my eyes. Sixty. One, two, three, I count out the seconds in my head. Four more minutes to go. Ignore, ignore.

A whoosh of movement blows my hair back. I reluctantly pry my eyes open. The clown’s grinning face is inches in front of mine. The white paint on his skin is cracking and peeling—his eyes like dots of coal, shoved deep into dark sockets.

It takes everything in me not to scream. He inclines his head closer until he’s a hair’s breadth away, igniting fresh horror in me, then smiles, exposing rotten teeth.

Everything in me shouts to run away, but I can’t react. I can’t move. If I do, the officials won’t send in the fighter bots. And if they don’t send in the fighter bots, the trap door won’t unlock for our escape.

I keep counting as the clown runs his hand over the side of my hair. Darian stiffens beside me. I give a subtle shake of my head, so afraid Darian’s anger will get the better of him and that he’ll hit the clown, ruining everything.

The clown leans in and exhales rancid breath in my face just as the music box melody gets louder and faster all at once, mimicking my heartbeat. He digs one pointed nail down the trail of scratches he inflicted earlier. “Such a waste of a pretty face, don’tcha know…”

I wince and lock my back teeth together as fresh pain bursts across my skin, but I don’t move or scream.

I feel sick. The whole carnival is a spinning distortion of colors, aromas, and a cacophony of sounds.

We’re not gonna get out. My whole body goes ice cold. I dig my nails into my palms, trying to calm myself.

Fifty-nine, sixty, I finish counting in my head. It’s been ten minutes, I realize with a surge of adrenaline.

I nudge Darian. “Let’s go!”

We jump up, dash around the clown, and begin running. I’m praying I didn’t screw up the timing and that we make it.

A loud horn blares as we race toward the carousel. It sounds like the horn on a transport truck that I’ve seen in the movies from the Manic Age.

I whip my head around, expecting to be smashed by a truck, but there’s not a vehicle anywhere.

“Shit,” Darian yells. “Hurry up!” He grasps my hand and we run faster until we reach the carousel. “That’s the same sound I heard before the fighter bots rushed in the last time.” He jumps onto the spinning merry go round. “Hopefully Asher’s running the video loop now.”

“But wait,” I say, as I rush to the center of the carousel and begin searching for the trap door. “If the officials see us running in that loop now, won’t they stop the fighter bots?”

Darian drops to his knees in the middle of the ride beside me and slides his hands around the steel floor. “Nope,” he says, sounding winded. “That sound means they’ve already programmed the fighter bots to come in. And once that’s set in motion, there’s no stopping it. Besides, they probably figure I’m being my usual defiant self and that now I’m running away from the bots.”

“It’s not here, Darian.” I pound my hand against the floor in frustration. “There’s no trap door—Asher lied!” My words grate against my throat. How could I have believed Asher would help us after my betrayal? I was desperate to even think that was a possibility.

“Wait,” Darian says. His hand forms a curved shape as though it’s cupped around an invisible source.

I gasp. “You found it?”

A clanking of metal sounds in the distance, and I sense the fighter bots moving in.

Darian utters a curse. His arm moves up and down in jerky motions, and I can tell he’s tugging up on something. “I’ve got the handle, but it’s stuck and I hear the fighter bots coming!”

I peek around the rising and falling white legs of the horses on the carousel. Tall, silver bots that have glowing red laser beams for eyes leap out from the Jugg U Lar circus tent. They march in fluid motion one after the other until they form a straight line.

I lick my parched lips and shoot a glance over my shoulder at Darian. He’s still tugging on the handle.

The bots spread out like ants. I cover my mouth to contain my scream, then turn back to Darian.

“Let me help—”

Darian shakes his head, “No, I got this,” he says, calm yet forceful. I’m instantly reminded of how he was as a kid—how he’s always been—the guy who wants to protect me more than anything, like the mythical hero who comes to the rescue. Except Darian isn’t a myth—he’s beauty, strength, courage, and something else that I can’t put into words—something that makes my insides feel differently than ever before.

Darian crouches low and places both of his hands around the handle. He tugs backward with a low growl.

Pop.

Darian stumbles, but doesn’t let go. He shifts his arm up as if he’s pulling open the invisible door. Then he lowers his hand over to the right and all the way down, resting what I figure is the door flap onto the floor of the carousel.

My gaze leaps to the now gaping hole in the ride and the staircase that descends below it.

“Let’s go, sunshine,” Darian says, and grins, extending his hand.

I scrabble down the stairs, ducking my head under the steel floor of the carousel. The reverberation of mechanical machinery-like furnaces and air conditioning units rumble in my ears. A box that looks like it’s filled with tools sits near the bottom of the staircase, but otherwise the basement of the building is empty.

Darian follows, and I turn to wait for him as he stretches up to grab the trap door again. He begins to pull it over us just as a fighter bot jumps onto the edge of the carousel with a loud thump. My stomach flips and I clasp my hand over my mouth to mute my gasp.

The fighter bot, which looks eerily humanoid, stands with its back to us. The curve of its metal is sculpted into a mass of muscles. As it slowly turns its head to the side, searching the area, its laser eyes light up one of the horses in a glow of red.

I want to tell Darian to hurry and close the trap door before it sees us, but if I talk, the bot will hear me, too.

We’re dead, I think. I’m so full of fear that it’s worse than any nightmare I could have ever imagined. It fills me with a nausea that cuts through me like a razor blade.

And just when the bot starts to twist around and I think it’s going to catch us, Darian finally eases the trap door closed with a soft click.

It’s like a tranquilizer has been injected into my veins, removing the buzzing adrenaline coursing through me all at once. I collapse against the stairs, breathless.

Darian sits on the step beside me, runs a hand over the back of my head and down my hair. “Come on, babe,” he whispers. “We’re not free yet. We still have to get out of the building.”

I nod and begin to lift my head, the relief of the moment overshadowed by the escalating need to really escape.

But before I can stand up and face Darian, a familiar voice calls out from the bottom of the staircase.

The voice of the man who murdered both of our parents.

Richards.

“And therein lies the problem, Darian,” Richards says, his voice laced with derision.

I twist around and face Richards’s mocking grin, and notice that he’s holding a black revolver. It’s pointed directly at us.