AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, ALMOST TWILIGHT
I fought the urge to look back.
To turn back.
Rivessss … whispered the wind.
Mine … Look …
I didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t respond. I just ran.
Get. Out.
Those two words were mine. My plea, my thoughts. My head.
Mine.
I cut around Mount Nil’s base and approached the southern cliff edge just as the SOS signal blasted again. I signaled back: heard and acknowledged.
Someone repeated my signal from below. A shout mixed with the crash of waves, thunder booming on water, and my gut twisted. No one should be down there, on this side of Mount Nil. Here, lava dripped close enough to scald; the water burned like acid.
I peered over the edge and cursed.
Lava dripped just to the north, a river of oozing black sludge bursting with steaming red cracks as it flowed south, like hell had broken open and spilled out. Lana, Zane, and Thad sat huddled on a rock surrounded by hissing water. Zane had a bloody gash on his temple, big enough for me to see from here.
“Rives!” Thad waved. His arm was bloody too. “Down here!”
Look around, pay attention.
I needed to get them out of harm’s way, and get them up. I almost yelled Sit tight, but it wasn’t like they had another option.
I headed south until I found a cliff angle that looked slightly less likely to result in instant death. Slipping and sliding, I managed to get down in one piece.
Pressing my back to the cliff, I worked my way back along the water’s edge until I reached the trio. They sat on a rock, trapped by the tide, but they were close enough that they could hop across the water. Maybe a two-meter clearance, at most.
“You’re going to have to jump!” I said. “No way around it.”
“Can’t.” Thad grimaced. “Zane busted his ankle. Plus, I think he’s got a concussion.”
“I’m fine!” Zane raised his hand and tapped his bloody forehead. “A mere flesh wound.”
“Right.” Lana rolled her eyes as she pointed to his ankle. “Because we’re supposed to see bone poking out of your skin.” Despite her normal edge, Lana sounded worried.
“I can swing him across,” Thad said. “But I need you to catch him.”
Getting Zane across was brutal. Keeping his ankle out of the water, trying to keep him upright. But after repeated efforts and a few near-epic fails, Thad, Lana, and I succeeded in getting him across the water. Zane didn’t even pass out, which was impressive, because his ankle looked like it’d been smashed between two boulders, which essentially, Thad told me, it had.
Half dragging, half pushing, the three of us even managed to get Zane back up the cliff. We eased him to the ground, then we collapsed, catching our breath. Nothing and no one was around. Just us, panting, and Nil, listening.
My mouth was dry. From thirst, from dread.
“What happened?” I asked Thad quietly. Lana and Zane lay just to our left. “Why were you guys so far south?”
“Zane thought he heard someone. It started at South Beach on our first day out, and we ended up following the voice all the way back to the City. No one was there. Then we turned around, now a full day behind. This morning, Zane started hearing a voice again. A different one, but still. I couldn’t convince him it wasn’t real.”
“Sounds familiar. Calvin heard voices too. But we never found anyone.”
Thad hesitated. “We didn’t either. At first I wasn’t sure, because I thought I heard it too. But then—” He glanced at Zane. “He wouldn’t listen. He was frantic. We could barely keep up with him. We were at the base of this cliff when that tremor hit, and we were trapped. I don’t remember that much lava being here before, but man, there’s a river of it now. The rocks shifted so fast, some slid down. Zane slipped, he went flying. When he fell, he messed up his ankle and knocked himself out.” Thad shook his head. “On the upside, he’s not hearing the voice anymore.” He shrugged. “Maybe he knocked Nil out of his head, eh?”
“Maybe.” Concussions as a Nil antidote? More like a Nil side effect, I thought.
I knelt beside Zane. “You hanging in there, Z?”
“You know it, Chief.” He smiled, then winced. “Sorry I screwed this up. But I really thought I heard him.” Pain rippled across his face like a shadow. “And I couldn’t have left him hanging if it was him.”
“Who?”
“Sy.” Zane gave a pained laugh. “But it wasn’t him. And I almost walked straight into lava thinking I was seeing Sy. That he was calling for me, for help. Seriously, I nearly barbecued myself. The quake actually saved me. Talk about screwed up.” He sighed, his eyes wide open. “Now Garrett doesn’t seem so crazy.”
“Where is Garrett?” I glanced around. I’d forgotten all about the rookie.
“He died,” Lana whispered. “It was awful.”
“What?” I stared at her.
“Rives.” Thad looked incredibly uncomfortable. “It’s not good. He walked off the cliff. He was talking to someone, and he literally just stepped off the edge, into thin air.”
“Nil made him do it,” Lana said with finality. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. I think he saw something, but whatever he saw wasn’t real.”
Like Talla in the gate, leading us here.
Nil’s head games had turned deadlier than ever.
Lana rubbed her arms; I realized she was shivering. The breeze blew cool against our damp skin. Daylight was fading fast.
This world tasted stale, the air bitter on my tongue.
Skye.
I jumped to my feet, feeling the pressure of dwindling time, like I was trapped at the bottom of an hourglass and all the grains of sand were pouring down on me, weighty and suffocating.
“We need to go.” I quickly slid an arm under Zane’s shoulder as I spoke. “Zane, Thad and I will support you, but we have to hurry. We only have a little bit of daylight left. We should light a torch just to be safe. It’ll be dark fast.”
“I don’t think we’ll need a torch,” Lana said. She pointed east. “The island’s already burning.”