The sound is faint down here, but once I hear it, it’s clear. Alarms are going off on the floors above us, warning all the guards that we are missing. I look at Amber as she stands.
“We’re running out of time,” she says. “Let’s go.”
I follow Amber into the second tunnel where the rushing water nearly knocks us off our feet. The ground under the water is slick and it’s difficult to maintain my balance as I try to keep up with her.
It suddenly hits me that I need to know the way out whenever I find myself alone. If I can’t change Amber’s future to where we both make it out alive, then I will still need to know how to escape.
“Where are we headed?” I ask.
“Out of the compound,” she answers.
“I understand that, but what if we get separated, or if something happens to you,” I say. “Wouldn’t it be good for me to have an idea of how you plan to escape beyond the sewers?”
Amber spins on me, her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying? Have you seen something?”
“No, I just…”
“You’ve seen something. Tell me.”
I hesitate a second. I never meant to let her in on the future I saw. I don’t want to tell her the truth because I don’t know how to change it.
“You get shot,” I say. “When we reach the end of the sewers, I see you get shot, though I don’t know if you’re dead or not. But assuming you are, and assuming we can’t change the fact that you get shot, I need to know how to get out of here.”
Amber doesn’t say anything for a long moment. I’m sure she didn’t expect me to tell her the truth, but now that it is staring her in the face, she doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Do you know how to change what you saw?”
I shake my head. “There isn’t a way to know sometimes,” I say. “Not unless the alternative is clear. Is going through the metal bars the only way out?”
“The only way I know, yes,” she says.
I shake my head again. “Then I don’t know what to tell you. We can be as careful as possible and I will do my best to figure out a way to change it, but I can’t promise anything.”
Amber nods, staring at the water below us still seemingly shocked. She blinks and shakes away her thoughts when she looks up at me. “Past the bars is a small creek. We’re going to have to swim through it. If we swim a few hundred yards we will swim past a parking lot with a bunch of vehicles. The plan is to sneak into one of the search and rescue trucks, because that’s what they will use to start looking for us once they realize we’re no longer in the compound. Then, we just ride out with them. Once we’re safely away from Anchorage, we take out the guards driving the truck and go far away from here.” She looks away from me and down the tunnel where we should be running, but she stands still. “Now I’m not so sure about my plan.”
I can’t imagine being in her situation. Knowing that I’m going to be shot if I move forward would make me stall too.
“Is there no other way out that you can think of?” I ask.
“We could explore going that way,” Amber says, nodding in the direction behind me. “But I don’t know where that leads.”
I bite my lip, not knowing what to suggest. I can’t help but feel that any decision made would result in the same outcome. If we decide to go the opposite direction, wouldn’t that mean that she will be shot there? I don’t know where she is supposed to be shot. I’ve never seen the area before. There will be no way to know if the intended future can be altered until we are in the moment. Change can only come in a moment of clarity.
“I’m following you,” I say. “When the time comes, you have my word that I will do everything I can to change what I saw. I just don’t know how to do it yet.”
Amber nods, though I know my words are not enough to make her feel confident.
I’m
not even confident.
We stand just a moment longer when we hear a sound that is both completely new, yet very familiar to both of us. Behind me, I can hear the sound of chomping teeth and sloshing water. Into the red glowing light step in five greyskins. They’ve sensed us.
“Come on!” Amber says, moving now.
I follow closely behind her, doing my best to keep my footing. The greyskins have picked up the pace as well. Amber has the club in her hands, though it doesn’t seem she has any intention of using it.
There are twists and turns along the tunnel, and I find myself falling to my knees more often than not. The greyskins are gaining on us. I can hear them grunting at us, groaning for us, but we somehow keep a small distance from them. With each passing moment, their cries grow more faint, and soon I don’t hear them at all. I know we’ve made it to the end of the tunnel when I hear the sound of rushing water and I feel the air getting colder. Eventually I can see the moonlight shining through the metal bars of a large grate at the end.
Amber slows as we approach. I know we are about to come to the point where she will be shot, possibly killed. And now she knows it too. But with the greyskins coming up on us from the back, there is no other way to go out.
“We might not be able to fit through the bars,” she says nervously. Her voice echoes throughout the tunnel.
I shake my head at her. “We can,” I say.
She reaches her hand out to one of the bars, her fingers trembling. When we look out into the night, we can hear guards shuffling around, some shouting orders, others obeying them. Amber looks back at me.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I don’t know how to change it.” It’s the truth, and she knows it. With the greyskins coming at us, we don’t have the option of turning back and going in a different direction.
Amber looks away and takes a deep breath. “Good luck out there,” she says.
Before I can say anything, she slips through the bars with almost no effort and drops down into the pool of water below. I look behind me one last time and I hear the sound of the greyskins catching back up.
Turning sideways, I’m able to slip through the bars, and I begin my free fall into the cold water below. When I splash through, it’s as if the cacophony around me vanishes. I don’t try to open my eyes—the murkiness and the night won’t let me see anyway. I float for a moment, partly in shock from the cold water, partly out of fear to go back to the surface. I don’t want to see what awaits me. Amber will be shot, but what happens to me is a mystery. Part of me holds out hope that the two of us might have changed something in the past few minutes without even realizing it. If what I see is the
intended
future as Peter once said it was, then perhaps just telling Amber about it was enough to change the outcome.
My limbs finally find the strength to move and I begin my ascent to the surface of the water. My head breaches and the cold air is even harsher than the water that soaks me. I can hear the screams of guards above me, shouting orders.
“There she is! Kill her! Kill her! Shoot her! Shoot her!”
The words push me forward. I don’t see the source of the orders, but they seem to surround me. Then, the gunshots blare out. Yellow flashes of rifle fire spit out above me in all directions, though none of the bullets come near me. When I turn my head to the right, all I see are shrubs and more water. When I turn my head to the left, I see a head bobbing up and down in the water. Splashes of mucky water shoot into the air all around Amber until her head goes back under the surface, never to to come back up.
I try to keep as still as possible as I huddle up next to the shrubs. It would seem that none of the guards actually saw me fall into the water and had been focused solely on Amber. For a second, I think to myself that she might not be dead. The bullets might have just passed her. I could have seen the whole vision wrong. But deep down I know it’s just wishful thinking. There was no way so many soldiers could have missed so many times.
I try to listen to the guards on the bank above me.
“There’s another one somewhere,” one of them shouts.
“She could still be in the tunnel,” another says.
“We’ll have to flush her out.”
When my eyes find the grate I see greyskins trying to get through the bars. Maybe the guards will just think that I got caught up in a group of them and was devoured completely.
The wind starts blowing and it’s everything I can do to keep my teeth from chattering. It’s too late in the fall to be in the water. It’s almost winter. If greyskins and guards won’t be the death of me, the weather is certainly a possibility. But I have to stay. The more I move, the likelier it is a guard will spot me. So, I wait.
Five minutes go by. Ten minutes. Some of the guards decide to blow off the grate with an explosive so they can gain easier access. Eventually, I can hear no commotion above me. The guards are looking everywhere but here.
It’s time to move.
I start swimming slowly next to the bank, my eyes constantly scanning every direction for movement. I finally pull myself through the mud and onto dry ground. My legs and arms are numb. I’m afraid of things that happen to people in these situations. What about hypothermia? Is it cold enough outside to freeze to death?
I think about what Amber told me about the search and rescue vehicles. I can see where they are parked from here. I just have to get to one. Apparently the guards can’t imagine that I’ve gotten this far because there is no one around.
I get to the parking lot full of empty vehicles. Most of them are unmarked, but some are labeled. I find one that says search and rescue on it, having no idea if this particular truck will be used to look for me. The bed has a metal cover on it. I look all around me to see if anyone is watching, and from what I can tell I’m safe. I pull down the tailgate and slip in, cold and wet. When I’m inside, I lift the back window and pull up on the tailgate to shut it as quietly as possible. I have no way of knowing if someone will try to look in the back before they load up. I don’t even know if this is a good plan at all. It was good enough for Amber, but right now that’s not very reassuring. The plan failed her long before she would have gotten to a search and rescue truck.
I lay in the back and shiver, waiting to see if Amber’s plan will work for me.
Derek ran into a nail sticking out of a fencepost. That’s the story that everyone knows, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all anyone needs to know. It’s breakfast, and Ray and Nancy are none the wiser about my actions last night, though Gabe knows something is up. By the end of the interrogation, I was able to persuade Derek and Scott to keep our interaction to ourselves. At first, I didn’t think they would listen to me, but the fact that I knew Jeremiah meant something to them.
“I was with him,” I said to Derek as I lowered my gun. “You and I are on the same side.”
“You sure have a funny way of showing it,” he said.
I shook my head at him. “There were others. Mitch. Ashley. They brought us weapons to defend ourselves. But we were getting overrun by Shadowface’s soldiers.” I took a deep breath. “How do I know I can trust you two?”
“Why don’t you talk to Jeremiah yourself?” Scott said, nodding at the radio on the floor.
I walked over two it and snatched it up. I brought it to Scott and told him to call out.
“Boss, this is Scott.”
“What happened?”
the voice said.
“We ran into a problem here,” Scott said. “We have a very inquisitive girl who took it upon herself to interrogate us. She’s here and wants to speak with you.”
“Put her on,”
he said.
I stepped away from Scott, turning my back to them. I pressed the button on the side. “Is this Jeremiah?” I asked.
There was a long but of silence from the other end. “You aren’t supposed to use his name,” Derek said to me.
I pressed the button again. “Jeremiah, this is Remi. I was with you at Elkhorn. These two have some interesting things to say about you.”
“You don’t know who could be monitoring that signal,” Scott called out. “He’s not going to answer you.”
But just as Scott said the words, Jeremiah’s voice came out clear over the radio.
“It’s good to hear that you’re alive,”
he said.
“I was afraid Paxton might have tried to kill you.”
“A warning you failed to mention,” I said.
“A possibility you should have thought of beforehand,”
he came back.
“Elkhorn is in shambles. Most of the people died.”
His words stung me as he said them.
“But retribution is coming. It would be wonderful to have you on my team. If you could, put Scott back on the radio.”
I walked over to Scott and pressed the button. “Go ahead,” Scott said.
“Bring the girl to the meeting place if she is willing,”
he said.
“Tell her the truth.”
“Understood,” Scott said, glaring at me.
I brought the radio up to my mouth. “I suppose I will see you soon then.” I could feel a lump in my throat beginning to form. Jeremiah said almost everyone had died. Did that mean Waverly too? “Jeremiah,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“Is Waverly with you?”
There was a long silence from the other end. But finally he came back on.
“She is not here. But we haven’t found her body, either. She could still be alive.”
“Ten-four,” I said, swallowing hard. I looked down at Derek and Scott. “Start talking.”
I sat and listened for the next few minutes as they told me about Elkhorn.
The truth,
apparently, was that Elkhorn had not been completely destroyed, and that there were a lot of survivors left. When I tried to ask them about Waverly, neither Scott nor Derek had heard of her. Of course, they hadn’t been there that day.