Etherworld (29 page)

As we close in on level ground, my gaze shifts from Josh's happy face to something in the distance. I can't quite make it out, but from here it looks like a giant man with his arms sticking up, surrounded by smaller men in the same position. I tug hard on Josh's shirt, hoping he'll want to investigate.

“I think I see something. Over there,” I say, pointing to the left.

Josh squints, looking in that direction. “Yeah, I see it too. Let's check it out.”

The ATV charges ahead about 150 yards before it hits a divot in the sand and begins to spin out of control, but Josh keeps his cool and recovers quickly. Within a few seconds, we reach a large field of cacti, staggered in about five or six rows. Most of them are about fifteen to twenty feet high, their spines slightly curved, sharp needles covering thick branches. But toward the end of the field is one cactus that towers above them all, with huge, crooked branches spurting from the base all the way up to the top. It looks like some kind of monster, ready to bend over and crush us all.

“That has to be the trigger, right, Dad?”

“There's only one way to find out,” he says.

We cruise around the field for another minute or two before we spot Patrick's ATV barreling toward us off the other side of the dune. Josh slows down a little as the three ATVs line up, all circling the giant plants. As Zared navigates his ATV, Nora stands up, holding on to the hand strap with one arm, the other poised over her head with her bomb in hand, ready to launch it at the largest cactus.

Just then, the sky blazes with light, as a barrage of stars begins to fall toward the earth, like a meteor shower. They crash into the ground around us, sending dust everywhere and shaking the earth below us.

Zared screams, “Look!” and all the euphoria I felt the second I stepped foot into this silver desert drains from my body, like all the oxygen is being sucked out of my blood.

Some of the cacti burst into inferno-like flames, the fire quickly spreading, leaping from one to the other and heading toward the trigger at a rapid pace.

This has to be the antiviral program at work. These stars are weapons that are trying to exterminate the triggers and prevent us from destroying this Escape. There are too many enemies: the cacti, the stars. It's like the whole world is out to get us.

“Now, Nora! Now!” my dad shouts, as another flurry of stars begins to rain down upon us.

My jaw clenches as Nora leans back and gets in position. But Zared swerves to avoid being hit by the cascading stars, so when Nora finally launches the sphere, it goes wide and misses.

“Shit!” she yells out. “Sorry!”

How can we possibly get at the trigger through this mess of destruction?

Josh keeps driving, doing another lap around the field, but visibility is now becoming a real problem. The burning cacti have created a thick plume of black smoke encircling the entire area. It's almost impossible to see.

“Get us a little closer if you can!” my dad shouts at Josh, as the ATV narrowly misses a crater left behind by a star bomb.

We speed through the smoke, all of us choking. I can't see the others. Where are they? Are they okay?

Josh steers the ATV around raging plant fires and toward the enormous cactus. Another ripple of exploding stars streaks toward us, pummeling the two cacti next to the target and nearly hitting the trigger.

We're running out of time.

My father stands up and holds on to the hand strap of the ATV. He pulls out both his bombs and heaves them at the cactus. One of them misses the stem by a foot or two, but the other slams into one of the lower branches. Another bomb hits the top of the cactus, but the smoke makes it impossible to see who threw it.

“Let's get out of here!” my dad says.

As Josh diverts the ATV away from the cactus field, a seismic tremor tears through the ground, and it once again sounds like the sky is about to split in half. The gigantic cactus explodes, and now everyone is driving as fast as they can, trying to avoid the sharp fragments of plant tumbling down around us.

We're not going to make it out of here. We have to get to the mirage, and only Patrick knows where it is.

“Patrick!” I scream.

An ATV comes roaring out of the dust. Patrick pulls up beside us just as we hear another loud rumbling and the sand below us turns from silver to a dark, putrid green. “Follow me—I don't think the mirage is far.” But before he can lead the way, more debris from the cactus pelts the ground around us, and I hear Wyatt shrieking. A huge cactus needle has impaled his thigh, and magenta-colored ooze is gushing down his leg. He falls out of the side of the ATV, and Patrick slams on the brakes and scrambles out to help him.

Both Josh and Zared circle back toward them, but by the time we reach them, we're already too late. Wyatt's leg has disappeared into the same yellow light that consumed Claire in the rapids.

Patrick is holding on to Wyatt tightly, trying to ease his suffering, but we all know there's nothing we can to do to save him. I'm just about to get out and help him when another strike is unleashed from the sky.

“Take cover!” my dad shouts.

But there's nowhere to go, at least not for Zared and his crew. The star strikes his ATV, and it explodes on impact, creating a fireball so huge it takes Patrick's ATV with it.

Josh throws his body on top of me as a star explodes in front of us. There's the sound of twisting metal, and when we look beside us, we can make out the smoldering ruins of an ATV. Patrick is running toward it, weaving through the clouds of billowing smoke.

Josh navigates our ATV toward the wreck, but we're too late. All that's left is a huge, gaping hole in the olive-colored sand.

No, no, no . . .

Nora, Zared, and Malik are gone.

We stop, staring at the spot where Nora's vehicle was hit. Giant cracks begin to form in the ground, and sand spills down into the crevices, as if falling into an old hourglass timer.

Patrick jogs over to our ATV, streaks of soot all over his face. “The mirage! I think it's just over the next dune!”

“Get in the back!” my dad says.

He hops in next to my dad, his body shaking. Josh's eyes are still fixated on the spot where Nora's ATV was blown up, paralyzed with shock.

“We have to hurry,” I say. “We have to get to the next Escape, before the trapdoor closes.”

No reaction at all. And the cracks in the sand are becoming bigger, the particles quickly drifting into them.

“If we finish this, she'll be okay,” Patrick reassures him. “Please, Josh.”

Stars explode around us—one comes so close it almost grazes the front fender, shaking the front of the vehicle really hard. It's enough to break Josh out of his trance, and he throws the ATV in gear.

“Where to?” he asks Patrick, his voice weak.

“The second dune to your right,” Patrick replies, “I think.”

The Escape seems to be worsening with each quarter mile we travel—the sky bleached of all its color, the stars spiraling down in corkscrew-shaped motions, gusts of wind nearly blowing our vehicle over, the sand collapsing and forming massive sinkholes.

But we reach the top somehow, and Josh stops the ATV. We wait a moment, looking around, and it's not long before the entire back side of the dune begins to sink behind us. Below are the remnants of a large lake, the muddy water that's left draining rapidly.

“That's it,” Patrick says. “The trapdoor!”

“What do we do now?” I ask.

No one says anything, but it doesn't matter. I know what's about to happen.

Josh hits the accelerator and drives straight off the top of the dune. As the ATV flies into the air, I grab Josh's hand and he lets go of the controls, holding on tightly as the vehicle arcs and then plummets into a shallow pool of darkness.

But it isn't.

We've made it to the last core Escape, our bodies materializing on top of a hill as if by magic. We're high above a thick rain forest, surrounded by a canopy of leafy green flora brimming with bright, vivid colors. Patches of light mist form below us, and although the air should be pretty thin at this altitude, oxygen pours into my lungs with each inhalation.

I feel amazing—as if losing Nora and everyone else were just a bad dream. I'm buzzing with positive energy. I know I'll see them all again back home, as soon as we're finished.

My dad is outfitted the same way as the rest of us, with a cargo vest that has metal latches attached to it and a pair of gray cross-trainers. And there's Josh, who no longer seems upset, his amber eyes as dazzling as ever. He looks back at me and I grin, sure we're unstoppable.

“Wow,” Josh says, leaning over the ledge a little. “It's a long way down.”

Unlike the previous Escape, here it's daytime, and even though the rain forest is overcast, a shadowed sun illuminates our view. “It's all relative,” I say with a laugh. The height doesn't scare me. Why would it? We just drove into an abyss and here we are, totally fine.

“This Escape was one of the most difficult to design,” my dad says.

“And the most difficult to change,” Patrick says. “I tried to alter some of the colors, but they kept self-correcting. It took forever to fix.”

“Are there any gliders or bikes we can use?” I ask.

“No, the only thing here is a zip line,” my dad answers.

“A state-of-the-art system, naturally,” Patrick chimes in.

I hold up the bomb that's sitting in my right palm, not wanting another second to tick by. In spite of the endorphins flooding my system, I'm still aware of the importance of our mission.

This is our last hope for survival.

“Look for the cable and harnesses,” my dad says. “They have to be around here somewhere.”

A low rumbling noise thunders, the sound of an oncoming storm. As one of the puffy gold clouds turns black, Patrick and my dad exchange a look. I'm sure they're wondering if these clouds could be signs of the inoculation at work, and since there aren't any other Escapes left, I don't see how it could be anything else.

“We need to hurry, kids,” my dad says calmly.

We back away from the ledge and branch off in different directions, ducking behind candy-colored trees and stepping over fluorescent buttress roots. I look up, to see if there's any kind of wiring popping out above us, and notice the dark clouds multiplying on the horizon.

“See anything?” Patrick calls out from a few yards away.

“No, nothing,” Josh calls back.

“Found them!” my father bellows, and we all scramble toward the sound of his voice. With each step my mood darkens, the elation of trypnosis wearing off. Images of stars blasting through the atmosphere flash through my mind: Wyatt, Nora, Zared, and Malik—all of them taken down by Elusion.

“You okay?” Josh is beside me, reaching out to hold my hand.

“Fine,” I say. He still seems high on trypnosis, a hopeful smile on his face. It's as if he doesn't have any recollection of what happened in the desert, or concerns about the antiviral threat or an attack that might occur any moment. I look around for anything unusual. But I've never been in this Escape before and everything seems different and weird: the flora, the clouds, even the zip-line equipment.

When we find my dad, he's standing at the base of the tree, in front of a ladder that leads up to what looks like a man-made wooden platform. Directly above him are two parallel cables that stretch out for what seems like the length of four football fields, dangling over the rain forest beneath us, hundreds of feet above ground. My stomach tightens—and I lunge toward the pile of harnesses at the bottom of the enormous tree connected to the launch deck.

“Everybody suit up, quickly,” my father orders, with an eye on the sky. “There are pouches that you can attach to your vest. You can fit your bomb inside.” Josh helps me on with my equipment and I help him, while Patrick and my father assist each other. Once we have all our gear in place, we scale the ladder that leads up to the wooden platform, where we'll jump off and careen down with the help of a pulley.

“Looks like we'll have to go in pairs,” Patrick says. “Regan and Josh, you go first. David and I will launch as soon as you get to the next platform.”

“What are we looking for?” I ask my dad.

“A rare plant. It's called a corpse flower,” my dad says. “It's blood red, and one of the world's largest. The bloom can reach a total width of almost four feet.”

A corpse flower? My father's design can't get any more literal than that.

I think about the beautiful flowers in the Thai Beach Escape—each one the size of a human head. To think I considered those big.

“Should be easy to see from the zip line,” adds Josh.

“And to hit from the air,” I say.

“The problem is going to be the speed,” Patrick explains, as the thunder grows louder. “If we're tearing through the rain forest on the cable, it will be hard to brake.”

The wind picks up, as warm drops of water begin to fall. They sizzle a little bit as they touch the ground.

“We need to go!” my dad says.

“Josh and Regan first,” Patrick adds.

I hesitate. I've never been zip-lining before.

“You can do this,” my dad encourages me. I see pride in his eyes.

I jump off the platform, and as my body begins to soar, I instinctively work the brake, balancing my weight in the harness. The pulley rattles down the cable at what seems like a hundred miles an hour. Everything is a blur of color, like I'm sliding through a rainbow. I'm whipping past gigantic dew-covered leaves, trying to keep my eyes focused and my hand ready to grab the bomb from the pouch on my vest. The cable drops precipitously as branches slap at my legs. I look toward Josh, whose cable is starting to drift away from me.

“Slow down!” Josh yells, his voice echoing above all the trees. The rain is picking up now, and I wipe the wetness away from my eyes as I pump the brakes.