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We sleep much longer than anticipated. We were on a high last night, and the pain and weariness of the climb faded away, but they returned as soon as we lay our heads down, and we fell into a deep, reviving sleep. I’m grumpy when Inez wakes me in the afternoon – I could have slept for another eight hours – but she tells me if we don’t leave now, it will be the next day before we can depart.
“Would that be so bad?” I grumble. “I’ve been absent for ages. What difference will one more day make?”
“It’s not just about you,” Inez says. “I’ve a life to resume too.”
“You sound like you can’t wait to get rid of me,” I growl.
“I can’t,” she laughs, then pats my back and tells me to be ready in ten minutes. “If you find an excuse to stay, you’ll keep on finding excuses, but you don’t really want to sever your ties to the Born, do you?”
“No,” I sigh, and force myself to go pick some mushrooms.
We don’t bid the thesps farewell — that isn’t the way in the Merge. Instead we hit the road while the others are snoring.
We say nothing as we wind through the streets of Cornan. It’s much quieter than last night, hardly anyone to be seen, except for groups of SubMerged heading back to Ruby, glum-faced and surly, like supporters of a team who’ve lost a big match.
“Will it take us long to get to the Born?” I ask.
“A day or less,” Inez says. “The way back will be easy, as we don’t have to worry about evading search teams now.”
We slip through a borehole near the edge of the city, into a zone where trees grow upside down overhead, giving the effect of a sky of branches and leaves.
“What do the vines dig into?” I ask as we press on.
“Soil,” she says.
“And what’s holding that up?”
“The soil must be caked across the face of the buffer.” She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Still full of questions?”
“Always,” I laugh, and Inez laughs too.
We cross into another realm, where we hail a ride from a steer down a river of blood. This one isn’t as talkative as Preston and she simply accepts our payment of mushrooms with a curt nod, then guides us through a variety of zones.
At the end of our river journey, we cross a few more zones, then settle down for the night, rising not long after dawn to eat a quick breakfast and make an early start.
We don’t say much over the next few hours, as we cross through several zones on foot, until I spot a familiar series of arches in a field ahead of us.
“That aqueduct is where we first met, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yes,” Inez says.
“You were dangling from a vine,” I recall.
“I was delighted with myself,” she smiles. “I’d escaped from Orlan and Argate, I had a clear plan in mind – find Winston and persuade him to help me – and all seemed well. Then you turned up.”
“You should have sent me back,” I joke.
“Yes,” she says, then winks.
It’s a long climb up the vine through which I first entered the Merge. I think back to that day, how new and strange all of this was, how I had no idea what lay ahead of me when I left the vine behind. It was better that way. If I’d known what was to come, I wouldn’t have had the courage to continue.
Eventually, after much huffing and puffing, we come to the hole in the vine where I opened my first lock. I push up through the gap and stare. I’m on the footbridge where I spotted Inez and the killers who were chasing her. It’s morning, commuters mixed in with the tourists who are always on the bridge taking photos of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament.
Nobody sees me as I peer around, only my upper half showing. They all veer past the hole, subconsciously clocking it and taking care not to fall in.
“I’ll shut the borehole before I leave,” Inez says, getting to her feet next to me. “It’s not a good idea to leave them open.”
She nods at me and ducks.
“Is that it?” I squeak. “You’re just going to leave me?”
“Yes,” she says.
“What if I want to see you again?”
Inez frowns. “You know where this entrance is, so you have access to the Merge whenever you feel like it. And you can visit Winston any time too.”
“Will he be able to help me find you?” I ask.
“Probably,” she says, then pokes me in the ribs. “Climb up. I want to press on.”
I crawl onto the bridge and kneel over the hole, staring down sadly at Inez, who’s pulling faces designed to shut the borehole.
“Wait,” I stop her.
“What now?” she scowls.
“You can’t just dump me like this. We never discussed how I was going to explain my absence.”
She shrugs. “Tell people you bumped your head and can’t remember anything.”
“They won’t buy that,” I cry. “I’ll have to explain where these clothes came from, what happened to my school uniform, how I’ve fed myself, where I’ve slept. It’s not just my foster parents — I’ll have to come up with a story for the police too. What sort of a tale can I cook up that will explain all this?”
I stare at her helplessly, waiting for words of wisdom and sage advice.
Inez thinks about it. She tugs an ear and growls thoughtfully. Then, with a nod, she pulls a few faces, jolting the tumblers of the lock so that it snaps shut and closes the borehole. Just before that happens, she shoots a quick comment my way, the sum fruit of all her brain-crunching, and her parting gift to me.