Chapter 135

The sweat stung Charley’s eyes.

She ran away from the pursuant sounds. She weaved and bobbed through the maze of the shipping yard, a metal labyrinth she was trapped inside.

She didn’t know where she was going. She just knew what she was running from.

Charley darted around one stack and leaned her back against it. She needed a moment to recover. She had to catch her breath, and try to think.

Her breathing settled and her heart stopped pounding in her ears.

A small rumbling sound came from the container she was leaning against. She leapt forward. She feared she had run into a Nekura trap.

But the rumbling disappeared when she leapt away.

Charley crept toward the container and leaned forward. She put her ear up against the metal frame.

Nothing.

What just happened? Charley wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Maybe she had crossed the Veil to the other side after all. Maybe she was now in a new, sensory-altering mind game.

She pressed her back up to the side of the container as she had done initially. The sound resumed.

She threw her backpack down and ripped it open. The stone was glowing again and vibrating with a faint hum.

She sighed. “Some compass!”

Temperamental stone. Maybe she broke it.

She glanced at her surroundings. No Nekura had found her yet, but she still heard their incessant drone, like an evil cicada-storm swarming around her. She wondered how much longer she had before she was found. The low-pitch groaning of the Bludgeons and the ecstatic chirping of the Gremlins made a terrible combination, a symphony of terror that was—

That’s it!

She jumped up.

Combination. The word rang in her mind like a gong struck by a mallet. She looked at the stone in her hands. The search wasn’t like following a treasure map to an X at the end. It was like opening a combination lock. It required the right sequence of checkpoints, like a tumbler on a vault’s lock required the right sequence of numbers. She had already gone through one checkpoint and that was why the stone had reset—it was leading her to the next entry.

It glowed brighter when she stood back up.

Charley looked at the stack of containers next to her. She had to climb them because the next entry point was up. She stowed the stone in the backpack and scolded herself to be more sensitive to its subtle vibration so she would not have to take it out again. She cinched the backpack down again and began climbing the stack.

The stack was four containers high. The metal rods on the outside of the containers acted like rungs on a ladder. But climbing upward made her more visible.

It didn’t take long until she was seen.

Charley glanced down toward the ground and saw Gremlins scrambling to the base of the stack. They had closed in on her quickly.

The vibrating in her backpack became intense as she neared the top of the stack. She flipped the latch on the highest container and the door swung open. It was empty inside, just like the first one. She pulled herself up and saw light glowing in the container, shining through her backpack.

The Gremlins shook the bottom of the stack with growing agitation. Charley’s foot slipped on the ledge with the sudden bang and she tottered backward.

“Whoa!”

Charley grabbed the sides of the container and pulled herself forward. She nearly fell out. She looked back down.

Two large Bludgeons were running toward the base of the stack in tandem, like massive linebackers.

She only had a moment before the stack would topple.