I slammed my fist down against the control that closed the red zone door, sealing Rainsford on one side and Avery on the other. I’d been underground for 240 minutes; four hours in a room all alone watching the world come unglued. My mind was spinning with thoughts as I stared at Avery and her at me, neither of us speaking. Even as I encountered this altered version of the girl I’d once known, the forefront of my mind was still flooded with thoughts of Marisa. Her monitor was a black eye staring back at me, like a deep tomb she’d fallen into and could never get out of. But there were other thoughts, too, and those began to surface more prominently as I continued staring at Avery Varone. She’d stopped looking at me and began wandering toward the red zone door, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be back.
Rainsford had obviously taken Ben somewhere, most likely to the same room Rainsford had been trapped in himself. He was amassing quite a collection of people in there.
And then there was Amy. I hoped against all hope that she’d listened to me and gone to the pond. If she could confirm that the door wasn’t locked, maybe I could convince her to open the hatch. Everyone but Marisa and Kate were trapped behind one door or another, including me. Incredibly unfortunate that I held the only key card for the observation room and I was on the wrong side of the door. Marisa and Kate, if they were alive, were the only ones besides Avery in a position to make it to the exit.
And the last thought, which was brought on by all the others: I have to kill Rainsford. I have to find a way. Even if I have to die down here with him to make it happen.
“Avery,” I said. I could see she had made it to the red zone door and tried to open it up, even pounded on it a few times, thinking Rainsford might come back and get her.
“You’re not going anywhere, not unless I open that door. And I don’t plan on doing it anytime soon.”
“He’ll come and get me,” Avery said, her voice echoing phantomlike against the ribbed metal walls of the tunnel. “He always does.”
As she started walking toward me, I looked at two monitors, ones that had, as of yet, been dark and motionless. I’d tried to make out what was in them, but the rooms hadn’t had enough light. To my left, one monitor was marked S3. It was the one I hoped would turn on if Kate and Marisa made it into the silo room and cranked on the lights. It drew my eye relentlessly, the darkness like a cloud I wished would part and reveal Marisa on the other side. And to my right, on the opposite wall, the S5 monitor, the most mysterious of them all. It was the one behind the circle and the square room on the map, also a dark feed that offered nothing but shadows and stillness. I had a guess about that room. It was there, I was sure, that the vials of fear blood were hidden.
And Rainsford was a lot closer to that room than I was.
“She’s a monster,” said Avery. She’d made her way back to the monitor and stared vacantly at me.
“Avery, listen to me. What do you remember about the cure?”
She didn’t answer, so I went in a different direction.
“Davis isn’t who you think he is.”
She looked up at me and smiled sadly.
“He’s Rainsford. I know, he told me.”
She really did know, really understood.
“So then you know he’s, like, pushing eighty years old.”
“No, that’s not right. He’s a lot older than that.”
“He told you?”
“Sure he did. He loves me. We talk about everything.”
I glanced at the S3 monitor again, wishing it would come on and I’d see Marisa’s face, know she was okay.
“You don’t know him,” I said, maybe a little too harshly, but thinking of Marisa and the ailments we had and everything we’d been through, I was angry. “He’s using you. When you get old he’ll leave you behind, just like he did Mrs. Goring.”
“He never loved her!” Avery shouted. She may have looked pale and emotionless, but Avery had plenty of energy when it came to defending Rainsford. “She was always mean to him. Did she tell you she tried to kill him? More than once.”
“I have a feeling someday you’ll want to do the same.”
“She’s just jealous because he chose me. She’s bitter, Will. Mean and bitter and terrible.”
“And old, which is what you’re going to be someday.”
“And he will be, too. He’s not doing it again. That was the last time. He promised me.”
If it weren’t for how I felt about Marisa, I would have said Avery was insane. But love could make people believe things that weren’t true. I knew how she felt.
“Here’s a news flash for you, Avery—he’s said that to people before, including Eve Goring. He’s lying to you.”
“Shut up, Will. And open that door.”
“Sorry, not going to happen. Consider yourself trapped until you come to your senses.”
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at me as if she were capable of keeping her mouth shut for a thousand years. She had a lot of resolve, I remembered that about her. And I had to remember that in some twisted way she was under Rainsford’s spell. She wasn’t seeing the world clearly, the way it really was.
“How did you end up down here?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
I was about to start guessing when the main monitor flashed on and off several times and then settled on a face. Someone was back.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said to Avery, and then I turned her monitor off and cranked the volume on the main feed.
“Who was that you were talking to?”
Amy was back, looking a little tired and concerned.
“One of the many people Mrs. Goring has trapped down here.”
“Down where?” Amy asked.
“Under Fort Eden.”
It was time to really start spilling the truth if I ever hoped to get this girl to let us out.
“You’re serious? Like, how many of you are down there?”
“Every single person who went through the procedure last year that you’re about to go through. We’re all down here, and someday I’m thinking maybe you will be, too.”
“Me? Why would I end up down there?”
“Because you’re tangled up in this thing now, and it seems like people who get caught in Mrs. Goring’s web have a way of circling back and getting into even more trouble.”
There was a quick but meaningful silence as Amy weighed what I’d said, and in the space of seconds, I could see she was afraid.
“Amy, listen to me,” I said. “You don’t have much time. If you and the other six people there with you are going to get cured, it will happen fast. Once the first one goes, the rest only take a few days. And there’s something you need to know, Amy. I’ve been cured. Everyone down here has been cured. And it’s not what you think. It’s bad, is what I’m saying. You shouldn’t go through with it.”
Amy looked at the door, darting to the right and off camera.
“Hold on, Will,” she said, but I couldn’t see her. She was gone for maybe ten seconds, in which I practically crawled out of my skin wondering if she’d been caught by Mrs. Goring and the whole thing was blown. Without Amy, I had absolutely no chance of getting Marisa and the rest free of the underground missile silo. She was my only hope.
“I’ve gotta go.” She was back, looking nervous and agitated. “She’s around more now, talking to us about tonight. I can’t come see you anymore.”
“Wait—did you visit the pond?”
She hesitated, like she wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I’m sorry, Will. I don’t think I believe you anymore. About the cures, I mean. I’m first and I’m doing it. I just have to get better.”
It struck me then that I hadn’t ever asked her what her fear was. Also, that I was losing her and had to switch strategies fast.
“Look Amy, I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but I’m sure it’s something that’s really hard to deal with.”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, I kinda do actually. My fear was terrible, too. And you know what? It’s gone. So maybe you’re right. In fact, you are right. You should get cured. It’s weird, but it does work.”
“You mean it?”
“Totally, yeah. But I want to talk to you about it when you’re done, okay? I think you’ll have questions and I can answer them. I mean, I’ve been there, right?”
“Yeah, you have. I’d like that. Sort of like an after-cure date.”
Whoa. This was bad. Or was it?
“A weird cure date,” I repeated. “You know what? I think that sounds pretty good.”
“We could do it by the pond,” she said.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Only, I’m kind of stuck under the pond.”
“Not for long. I went down there. It’s latched shut, but there’s no lock.”
“That’s great! So you opened it?”
She reacted to my overexcitement by putting her finger to her lips.
“Not so loud, silly!” she whispered. “I didn’t unlatch it, but I will. Mrs. Goring is bringing us dinner in about an hour, then we have an hour break. After that she wants me to go into this other room and see my shrink. Then I get cured.”
“So during that one hour after dinner, you guys are left alone?”
“We’re left alone all the time, Will. She’s either at the Bunker or down under the fort somewhere we’re not allowed to go. There’s this long, winding staircase she uses. And it’s only like five minutes to the pond.”
“There should be a latch you turn, no lock on the door going down.”
“It’s perfect! I’ll get cured, then come back to the pond after. Can you get rid of your friends?”
She was immediately embarrassed by what she’d said and started backpedaling.
“I didn’t mean that—it would just be nice to maybe take a walk at first. Without them.”
“I’m sure we can make that work. It’ll be great.”
Two things struck me about this conversation as she signed off and left me standing alone in the surveillance room. One, Amy was obviously under at least a minor form of mind control. Mrs. Goring had figured out how to use whatever system it was that made people forget and, in the lead-up to a cure, a little goofy in the head. Did Amy really think I was going on a date with her? We’d been held hostage underground all day. It’s not like it would be business as usual if we got out. And second, she was kind of into me, and pretty, and I hadn’t expected anything like that to happen when I showed up at Fort Eden for the second time.
I took out my Recorder and started taking more screws off the back. I always thought better when my hands were taking things apart or putting something together. It took less than thirty seconds for me to remove a second section of the back cover and start digging around inside the Recorder. I found what I was looking for—a tiny glass fuse—and popped it out, nearly dropping it on the concrete floor as it sprang free of the circuit board.
I spent the next few minutes trying to jerry-rig the fuse into the busted card reader near the door. It was the wrong amperage and the wrong size—too small on both counts—and I knew I’d be lucky if I got one shot at sliding a card through. I reworked a few dangling wires, completely removed the casing, pried the fuse holding closer together, and tried to pop the broken circuit board back into one continuous piece. Then I reattached the main wires from the wall.
“That’s about all I got,” I said to myself, and it didn’t give me much hope. I could scan the card once and there was maybe a 50 percent chance it would actually do anything at all, a sliver of a chance it would open the door, and a 100 percent certainty that it would blow the tiny fuse. One shot, and not a very good one.
I went to the map, searching the space once more, trying to figure out where I’d go if I could get out. Was there any sort of plan to the maze of tunnels that could work in our favor? I got lost in that idea in a matter of seconds, scanning the rooms and corridors for answers, trying not to think about the world outside the door for just a few more seconds.
And then I heard a voice.
Will. Over here.
My first thought was a bad one. It was happening all over again. When my little brother died it created such a ferocious void in my life, such a brutal sadness, I couldn’t bring myself to let him go. I pretended he was still around. All this time later, and even after the cure, sometimes I still do.
Over here. Turn around! I’m not dead.
I did turn around, convinced I would find nothing but an empty room and I would know that I was, again, going a little bit crazy. Marisa was dead like my little brother was dead, and I was hearing her voice in my head. I would hear it forever. I would never let her go. It would break my heart into tiny pieces.
“I swear he’s dumber than a box of rocks.”
There was nothing quite like Kate Hollander’s voice to bring a person back to reality. I swung around, ran to the S3 monitor, which had never shown me anything. And there she was. Marisa was there. She was smiling, her coal black hair falling in waves around her face. I put my hand on the screen and she did the same on her end.
“What I wouldn’t give to hold your hand right now,” I said.
“You guys need some time alone? Because I can just go back out into the orange room of death if you do. Not a big deal, really.”
“I love you,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”
“Oh god, I’m leaving,” Kate complained. She walked straight back, away from the camera, and Marisa leaned in close.
“Ditto on the I love you part,” she said. “I’m still working on ‘you’re forgiven.’ But we’re okay. Kate wrecked the camera, but she saved the day.”
I looked at her curiously, wondering what had happened, and she took the cue.
“She made a lasso out of the cord and looped it around my legs. Then she just hauled me up onto the catwalk. Kind of amazing, but there is a down side—I owe her my life.”
“You could do worse!” Kate yelled from ten or so feet away.
“I have to tell you something,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” said Kate, who was back in a flash, eyeing me like I was about to reveal information that might ruin her life.
I was determined to stop withholding things unless I absolutely had to, but what to say, exactly, I hadn’t quite figured out even as I started spilling the first part of what they didn’t know.
“Rainsford is down here with us. He’s Davis—you know, younger—but it’s him. It’s Rainsford.”
Neither girl said anything for a few seconds. They stood there, stewing on this piece of information, while I prayed for Mrs. Goring not to show up on the main monitor and cut things short. I had to remember they were still getting used to the idea that Davis and Rainsford were the same person. It was fairly new information for them. Marisa was the first to speak, and her response surprised me.
“Has he got Avery with him?”
“Um, yeah. But she’s . . . different.”
There’s a lot of talk about how girls are so competitive and catty with each other, but when push comes to shove and a bad dude is involved, never underestimate the power of girls to defend their kind.
“We have to get her away from that creep,” Marisa said. “What’s he done to her?”
“I think he’s got her under some sort of mind control, but she’s kind of listening to me, or trying to. And she looks kind of, I don’t know, ghostly and more hollowed out.”
“That guy is dead,” said Kate, and the look on her face made me glad the two of us were on the same team.
“Wishing he was dead and getting Avery away from him are two things I’m not sure how we’re going to accomplish.” I was being as honest with them as I could be, but also realistic. “The guy is a lot stronger than all of us but Connor, and you know Connor is hit and miss with the dizzy spells. Rainsford’s had a thousand years to learn stuff we probably don’t have a clue about, like ninja skills.”
“You’re a geek,” Kate said.
“Maybe so, but I’m serious. He’s managed to lock Connor and Alex in a room and move Ben Dugan without much trouble. Maybe he’s using mind tricks, but I wouldn’t put hand-to-hand fighting skills out of his reach. At least there are no weapons down here.”
“No one is impossible to kill,” Kate said. “Not even this guy. There has to be a way to get rid of him for good.”
“There is.” Marisa seemed to wake up all at once from a long moment of internal thinking. “It’s the vials. Mrs. Goring might be crazy, but what if she’s right? What if mixing them together could erase Rainsford from the planet? We could get Avery away from him.”
“And maybe get cured in the process,” said Kate, which was the biggest thing she cared about. I couldn’t blame her. Splitting headaches 24–7? It could make a person crazy for a cure.
“There’s something else,” I continued, preparing to tell them about Amy and a possible way out, at least for them. I got as far as there’s someone else . . .
And then Mrs. Goring appeared on the central monitor, watching like she was hoping to catch me plotting something that wasn’t on the approved Goring list of things to do.
“Who are you talking to?” she shouted. Wow, Bad Mood Goring was in the house. “Answer me!”
I moved close to the camera that fed the signal into the bomb shelter and leaned in so my face would fill her monitor on the other side.
“I’m talking to Kate and Marisa, who, no thanks to you, have arrived safely in the silo room. You’re welcome.”
Mrs. Goring’s mood softened, and I realized she was probably nervous about Rainsford escaping.
“Hey, Mrs. Goring,” Kate added. “Destroy any lives since we last talked?”
“Kate Hollander saves the day, how charming. I have to say though, I wasn’t too concerned. I’ve come to expect big things from you.”
Kate wasn’t exactly taken aback, but her expression lightened. A compliment was a powerful weapon, even from someone who didn’t care about anyone but themselves. I wanted to remind Kate that Mrs. Goring had locked us underground, put us all in extreme danger, and probably would have shrugged it off if she’d discovered that Kate and Marisa were both lying facedown in a pile of radioactive sludge.
“Can we get on with this?” I asked impatiently. “I don’t want those two in there any longer than they have to be. What’s the plan?”
“Look at you, getting all tough on me,” Mrs. Goring said. “There may be hope for you yet, Will Besting.”
A silence fell over the proceedings and I wondered what everyone else was thinking. My thoughts were split between many competing things: Rainsford, Avery, the guys all locked in a room, Amy, getting Marisa above-ground. And there was some self-pity going on, too: Even if everyone else gets out, I’ll die in this room alone. It will be lonely at the very end.
“Both of you,” said Mrs. Goring. She was straining to catch a side glimpse of Kate and Marisa in the S3 monitor, which sat against the wall to my right. “Listen very carefully. How long have you been inside that room?”
The camera was on Marisa, so I saw as she pulled out her cell phone and looked at the time. “I don’t know for sure, maybe half an hour?” she said.
“It’s not safe to stay in there much longer. You’ll need to be clear of the area in another twenty.”
“Wait, I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous as long as we didn’t walk on the floor?” Kate protested.
“I never said that. And even if I did, now I’m changing my mind. Deal with it.”
“Just tell us what to do, you nasty old bag.”
“Warning,” replied Mrs. Goring. “Objects in the S3 monitor are dumber than they appear.”
“Shut up, you two!” I yelled. If I’d let them, Kate and Mrs. Goring would trade insults for half the time they had left in there without batting an eye.
“Please, Mrs. Goring, what’s the plan here? Why do they need to be in there and how do I get them out?”
Mrs. Goring explained a few things about the room and the underground missile silo that we didn’t previously know about. The room they were in was in fact one of the places where bombs had been stored—in the silos—and there were controls in that room for preparing them for launch. But this room wasn’t where the real whopper was kept, the bomb that was big enough to fly all the way to Europe on its own power. That one had been stored in a third silo, which I was guessing was the circle on the map with the square right behind it. The other two silos, where Marisa and Kate were, contained shorter-range missiles created for strategic defense in the event of an attack.
“There were no bombs that could go that far in the 1950s,” said Marisa. “I know, I sat through a cold war history semester last year.”
“Don’t believe everything you read, it makes you look even more foolish than you actually are.”
“Okay fine, so let’s assume that sixty-plus years ago we cared,” Kate blasted into the conversation. “All we need to know right now is why we’re in here and how to get out.”
Mrs. Goring was losing patience. I knew something the girls didn’t, namely that Mrs. Goring was also single-handedly preparing for a cycle of cures that would, at least she thought, make her young again. That was set to begin in a few hours. She had to be feeling the pressure.
“On the side of each silo you’ll find a pair of large, round buttons. They’re red, so you can’t miss them. To open the door that leads inside the third silo, all four of those buttons have to be depressed at one time. I know what you’re thinking—why not use duct tape, you could have done this yourself—it’s not that easy.”
“Why not?” I asked, thinking of the O2 marker I’d seen on the map and understanding now why I couldn’t open it from inside the observation room. O2 was O zone 2, the door that would let them out.
“Because those buttons have to be pushed in a certain order, over a certain amount of time. It was designed to make sure three people would have to work together in order to give the president the ability to launch an attack.”
Mrs. Goring explained that the first two buttons needed to be depressed in order, and we’d know the order because they were marked alphabetically. The A button was to be pushed in and held. After ten full seconds, within the next ten-second window, the second button was to be pushed in and held as well.
“The other two buttons are marked C and D. They’re on the side of the other silo, so it needs to be a different person. When both A and B are held down, someone needs to depress the C button at the second silo sometime during the minute that follows. Once C is pressed and held, the final button should not—must not—be pushed for a full five minutes.”
“It sounds to me like you could have done this with duct tape. You’re just not very smart.”
Kate wouldn’t let up, but Mrs. Goring ignored her. She was acting like she had business of her own to attend to upstairs and was running out of patience. There was an X marker on the map at the last door, near the S4 monitor, I’d seen it. It was the door that led into the circle and the square directly behind.
“The X door will only stay unlocked for thirty seconds after D is pressed. So unless you can run back to the roof, across the catwalk, out the door, down the tunnel, and push the X door open in half a minute, I’d shut your pie hole.”
Kate didn’t answer, unless silently fuming as if smoke might start pouring out of her ears counted as a comeback.
“After you’ve pushed the last button, use the escape route I just outlined.”
Mrs. Goring switched her line of sight, staring directly at me.
“Will, this is where you need to coordinate everything. Your big moment, don’t screw it up.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“Once that X door opens, you need to get Connor and Alex through. I have a feeling it will take both of them to finish the job.”
Mrs. Goring explained that there were no cameras directly on the other side of the door, and that she wished she didn’t have to send two Neanderthals with less than half a brain between them.
“That silo is flooded with water, so they’ll need to swim across. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s okay. It’s clear of any electrical charge, I guarantee it. Once you get them that far, we’ll have contact again.”
A Goring guarantee, how comforting. But it rang true—she wouldn’t put us through all these hoops just to fry us in the end.
I was turned around, looking at the map on the wall, and understood right away what she was talking about.
“The S5 station, inside the room behind the circle.”
“You guessed it.”
“So that’s where the vials are kept?” Marisa asked as she, too, strained to see the map from where she stood.
“Yes, that’s where the vials are kept,” said Mrs. Goring.
“It’s a three-person job. How’d our vials get in there to begin with?”
It was a reasonable question to ask, no doubt.
“Rainsford, that little ogre Avery, and your doctor.”
“Wait, you mean Dr. Stevens helped lock this stuff away, even after she knew what really went on here?”
“Stupid boy. What makes you think she didn’t always know? Rainsford has a way with his offspring that is quite, shall we say, persuasive. Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“You live in a twisted family, mommy dearest,” Kate said.
Kate’s comment seemed to dig at the core of who Mrs. Goring was, a mother who’d badly failed her child. She started to fume, like she was going to say something, but she seemed to think better of it. Maybe she was harnessing that particular kind of anger so she could use it against Rainsford instead. She reached up and turned her monitor off.
“Now you’ve gone and chased her away,” Marisa said with a slight smile on her face.
“Yeah, big bummer. Will? Have you thought about how Rainsford and Avery might complicate this little plan?”
“And how we can’t be in here for more than about fifteen more minutes?” Marisa asked.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about both of those things. You guys figure out where the knobs are, I’ll get to work. I’ll be back in ten minutes or less.”
“You better be,” Kate said.
“And Will? Go easy on Avery. She’s one of us. Let’s get her back.”
That last part was less a plea than a challenge from Marisa. She, more than anyone else, was concerned about Avery and the mess she’d gotten herself into. I appreciated this about Marisa, the way she zeroed in on what really mattered. This was about us, all of us, getting out alive. Oddly enough, it was Avery I would need to lean on if I had any chance of getting the X door open and the right people on the other side.
And I needed her for something even bigger, something no one else had thought about, or so it seemed. It was funny how Mrs. Goring dropped small clues in the things she said. She must have known I’d think of it eventually.
Mrs. Goring was a seventh. She carried her vial with her. And we needed all seven of our vials in order for the mixture to work.
That seventh vial wouldn’t be in the room behind the door marked with an X.
No, the seventh vial was carried by the seventh person cured.
Avery was turning out to be more important than I’d imagined she could be. Without her there was no cure for us and no poison for Rainsford.
Without Avery there was nothing.