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I LOST my appetite as soon as I saw Ray. He was curled in a ball, squeezing himself up against the wall. His teeth chattered. He moaned and his eyelids flickered, as if he were being tortured by the most terrifying images.
“Yeah, he’s not doing so well,” said Ivory, following my gaze. “He hasn’t spoken since we got in here, and I don’t know what to make of it.”
“What happened to you guys?” I asked. “Why are you here?” It upset me that Ivory and Ray were also stuck, to wait for death just like me, Valcas and my father. I sighed. Maybe my father had a point.
Ivory blinked and set down her knife. “Just a second. Did you two get makeovers or something? You look amazing!”
Valcas sighed—his version of an eye roll. “The Fire Falls restored our eyes,” he said.
Ivory’s jaw dropped. “This is the craziest mission I’ve been on yet—granted, my first TSTA penalty mission—but, wow.” She slowly shook her head, tilting her chin up toward Valcas, then me. “Do I look any different?”
“Nope, you look great, as always,” I said. In a lower voice, I added, “But Ray looks really, really bad. Is he sick?”
“He was fine on the other side of the Falls. One minute he was right next to me, helping me sense the Uproar, directing me where to build up the fires so it would be surrounded on all sides. But we weren’t fast enough. The flashy beast rose high above the flames and crashed down on our boat. There wasn’t any land for us to walk on, so we had to wade through the flame-waves while trying to keep afloat on pieces of the boat.”
I gasped.
“I know, miserable, right? I didn’t know just how much worse it would get. After about a day of that, the next thing I knew, Ray was yelling for us to run through the Fire Falls. Talk about an experience—I thought I was turning into a vampire or something. But, it was either face the Falls or become Uproar chow.
“When I got to the other side, though, I felt amazing. I came through first, and was all ready to give Ray a high-five, but as soon as he came through he fell to the ground and crawled over to where he is now. He hasn’t moved since.” She shook her head again. “Being curled up like that is going to make it awfully difficult for his clothes to dry out.”
“Well, he has plenty of time,” I said.
Ivory cocked an eyebrow at me.
“We found my father hiding out in one of the caves back there,” I said, pointing. “He’s convinced that there’s no way out.”
Valcas and Ivory exchanged a glance.
“I’d introduce you to Plaka,” he said. “But he’s not in the best of moods today. I suppose centuries of isolation would do that to you.”
I squeezed my head with my hands. Centuries? It figured that, like Valcas, my father was an alien from another world with some crazy timeline rules. I wasn’t even going to try to deal.
Ivory frowned. “You’re kidding, right? He wasn’t happy to meet Calla? How could anyone not be happy to meet Calla?”
I sniffed. “Don’t feel bad for me. I still have hope and I have you guys. That’s more than he has. But Ray...”
I walked over to Ray and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Hey there,” I said softly.
His eyes darted to my hand, and then up to my face. He didn’t seem to know me at first, but then a hint of recognition passed his eyes. He jerked, pressing himself harder against the wall.
“It’s just me. Calla. You should take off your shirt, at least, so we can dry it out.”
Ray still had on the T-shirt and long-sleeve denim shirt he wore when we left the cabin at Ivory’s Nowhere. I tugged at his outer shirt, trying to help him to remove it. From behind me I heard Valcas make an unpleasant grunting sound.
Ray dodged me and slipped both shirts up over his head. He let them drop to the floor and brought his knees to his chest, hugging them tightly. In that brief moment, I noticed something.
Ray had a tattoo, written in plain black ink, just under his left rib: Never Forget Susana.