Neverfall (10 page)

Nikki watched me carefully. “Now that you know the answer, you can find your next Forfeit.”

I shook my head and gave a sad laugh. “I don’t want to find another Forfeit. I don’t want anyone else. I only want you.” I realized the truth of the words only when I had spoken them. This was about Nikki, and Nikki only. How had I ever pretended this quest of mine was about anything else?

Maybe I should’ve listened to Max from the beginning. Maybe he’d somehow felt where my obsession would ultimately lead me. And it
was
an obsession. As much as I tried to deny it, I knew that now. I came halfway across the world, faced the most dangerous beings on the Surface, only to reach a conclusion I must’ve known all along.

I wasn’t ready to give Nikki up. And she would probably be the death of me.

But I had been the death of her as well. Maybe now, as my death was coming down the hall, I could fully understand what Nikki had felt those last few days before the Tunnels, burdened with the knowledge that the end was near.

I closed my eyes. Squeezed them shut. Finally I knew exactly what I wanted, but now the Delphinians were coming for me, ready to mete out a punishment that maybe I’d deserved for a long time. Would it be an eternal punishment akin to the eagle eating Prometheus’s liver every day? Or would it be an instant blow, severing my head from my body?

I hoped it would be the latter.

I would miss my band … my family. But right now, all I could think about was how I’d never see the real sun shine on the face of the real Nikki again.

The light outside my cell grew stronger, and a strange smell accompanied it. The glow cast a shadow on the floor, making the vertical bars look as if they were swinging back and forth.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to bring the light into focus. “I thought the Delphinians didn’t like fire.”

“They don’t,” Nikki said.

I stared at the light emanating from down the corridor. It danced along the stone walls.

“Then why are they carrying torches?”

“Your eyes are playing tricks on you,” she said. I hadn’t seen anything besides darkness for three months. She was probably right.

Still, what was that smell? I could’ve sworn it was something burning. Was my nose playing tricks on me too?

And now the crackle of flames reached my ears. Whatever it was, it had to be coming from something larger than a few torches.

Nikki stepped through the bars and looked down the hallway. “I thought the Delphinian Dungeons were inflammable.” Her voice exuded fear.

“Me too,” I said, now mesmerized by the dancing flames along the wall. The fire was still too far away for us to glimpse, but there was no doubt in my mind there was a fire now. “Aren’t they made of stone?”

As if triggered by the flickering flames, my Nikki hallucination began to sputter and fade.

“No!” I said. “Don’t go. Please. I just found out that I can’t exist without you, and I don’t know what to do with this. You can’t leave me alone.”

But she disappeared like a light mist of water on a scorching day.

“I don’t know what to do with this!” I shouted through the bars.

I must’ve woken up Devon, because suddenly he was at the bars of his own cell. “Is that fire?”

Nikki was gone. The damn Delphinians couldn’t even let me keep my hallucination for my last moments. Maybe it was a fire coming for me. But it didn’t matter whether death came by fire or by Delphinian decapitation. Either way, I was dead. And there was no one I wanted by my side more than the girl who had just disappeared.

For so long, I’d searched for the answer to her survival. Now I had it. But my quest hadn’t led me to my next Forfeit. Instead, it had pointed my heart—if I’d had one—back to Nikki. It had shaped my soul to fit with hers and only hers. It had graced me to see the truth but simultaneously prevented me from doing anything about it. In the moment I faced dying, I finally knew my reason for living.

It couldn’t be more unfair.

As the flames grew closer, and hotter, I started to rethink. Death by fire did not sound good. Or quick. My pulse quickened, reflecting my panic. How long would it take? Would I still be alive after all my skin had burned off? Everlivings were hard to kill. I’d probably still be alive when I was just ash and bone.

“Cole,” Devon said, his voice coming from the other side of the bars. I tore my gaze away from the light, and when I caught sight of his face, I had to work hard not to dry-heave. His cheeks looked like raw hamburger meat, as did the skin on his arms. I couldn’t see the rest of him hidden in the shadows. “I know I’m a sight.”

I nodded. “The rats?”

“Their bites don’t heal very well. This is over eighty years’ worth.”

I was surprised he could speak at all, with lips that looked as if they could fall apart at any moment.

“I just wanted to meet you face-to-face.”

“Devon,” I said. I searched for words, but there weren’t any. What do you say to someone as death is raging toward you both? Our eyes met, and something deeper than words passed between us.

I pressed my face against the bars of my cell, and even then I could only glimpse the flames as they danced in and out of my vision. They were strange flames. Some the typical orange and yellow colors, but some more a green or blue hue.

Just as I was thinking I’d seen flames similar to this before, I saw a figure, clad in some sort of stiff dark material, emerge from the thick of it. In his right hand he held a canister, which he used to spray a powdery substance on his footpath.

His head was covered in what looked like a welder’s mask, only it went all the way down to where it connected to his strange suit.

The man sprinted down the hallway, barely staying ahead of the flames. When he was a few yards away, he slid toward my cell like a baseball player sliding for home.

I backed away.

The figure threw a square packet into my cell.

“Put it on!”

Even though his voice was masked, I recognized it. “Max?”

“No time! Put it on!”

Worried it was another hallucination, I glanced at Devon, who was staring at Max too. He was real. I ripped open the package and found a suit like Max’s. With shaking fingers, I pulled the suit over my legs while Max’s gloved fingers fumbled with a key chain that held at least a dozen keys. I zipped up the suit just as I realized my lungs were tightening up.

“What’s happening?” Devon said, panting.

Shit. Devon
. I was sure Max’s plan didn’t involve two passengers.

I started to cough. Whatever was burning, it felt more vicious than mere smoke. It felt like acid. I scrambled over to Devon’s cell.

“Dev, I think I’m getting out. I’m sorry.”

His answer got caught in a string of hacking coughs. When he finally had it under control, he said, “Don’t be sorry. Go live. Find your girl. Take over the throne.”

The sound of the right key catching in the lock made me turn toward Max.

“Is there anyone you want me to find for you? Any messages to deliver?”

The bars opened wide with a loud creak, and Max tossed me another helmet like his—a plastic gas mask—and what looked like a mini fire extinguisher. “Put it on, mask first!” He had to yell because of his own mask. “Use the canister to douse the flames. Let’s move!”

I turned toward Devon. “Anything?”

He looked hesitant, and then his words came out in one big wave. “Listen. There’s a train station along the Cinque Terre on the Italian coast. At Riomaggiore. Say it.”

There was no time to ask questions. “Riomaggiore.”

“Good. There’s a locker room there. Locker two twenty-five. Riomaggiore. Two twenty-five. Combination all fives. That’s where the relic is. Get it, don’t get it. It’s up to you. I just couldn’t die without someone knowing.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Go!” Max said.

As I put on the mask, Devon slunk back away from the bars, still afraid of showing his face even as he confronted his own death.

I caught sight of his festering hand resting in my cell, between the bars. I knew that image would haunt me for a long time.

I pulled the mask and helmet over my face, and then Max and I flew out to the corridor and into the oncoming blaze.

Escaping the Dungeons of Suck
.

T
he flames stuck to the walls in small, circular patterns, as if someone had thrown singular fireballs.

I followed Max’s lead, spraying any flame sources that came too close to us. The suit didn’t seem to do anything to quell the intense heat, though. I could practically hear my skin sizzling.

We were running uphill, passing dozens and dozens of cells. Bloodied hands reached out from the bars, some moving, some still. Some on fire. I thought I could hear distant screaming above the intense sound of crackling flames, but maybe it was just my imagination.

I tried not to think about all of the lives we were ending. They were in the Delphinian Dungeons. We were probably doing them a favor.

My canister ran out of … whatever it was full of. Max tossed me another one that had been hanging from his utility belt.

The twists and turns of the halls seemed endless, like the switchback trail up a never-ending mountain; but the farther we got, the more lifeless bodies we had to step over.

Delphinians were extremely flammable.

I glanced nervously at Max’s belt. Two more canisters. I wondered if they would be enough.

I tried to be judicious with my usage, but it was difficult considering my world was on fire and I was nothing more than kindling.

Finally our pathway leveled out, and we reached a larger room, the same one that Max and I had entered that day, except it was on fire. Every inch of it. Several bodies lay on the floor, giant heads burning in front of my eyes.

The fire was so intense here, we had to pause as Max sprayed his extinguisher along the center of the floor, dousing stone and Delphinian body alike. His extinguisher ran out before there was a workable trail. He opened the next one and kept working.

Movement in the far corner of the room caught my eye. A Fate, giant eyes wide, backed up into the corner, his feet on fire. “Help.”

I tried to ignore him. Max had cleared enough of a path that we could make it halfway across the room, toward the door.

“Please!” the Fate shouted.

Max cleared the rest of the way.

“You can’t leave me here!” it screamed.

Max was tugging on my arm, but I couldn’t resist facing the oracle. “Have you ever been feasted upon by a thousand rats every night at midnight? Yeah, I can leave you here.”

I turned and started running with Max, until I heard the oracle again. “If you free me, I will give you your fortune.”

My feet stopped before its words fully reached my brain. I knew the value of a Delphinian fortune, and if the oracle could give me any guidance as to what I should do next …

“Cole! We gotta get out of here!” Max shouted over the crack of the flames. He sprayed the flames, the canister sputtering with its last gasps.

I ignored him and faced the oracle. “Give me my fortune, and I’ll let you live.”

“Do I have your word?”

“What have you got to lose?”

The Fate didn’t have to think about it for too long. He closed his saucer-like eyes and spoke in a low, hushed tone. I leaned closer so I could hear. “There will be no more Forfeits for you. Your last Forfeit will be your beginning … and your end.”

The snaps of the flames died out for a moment while his words sunk in.

He opened his blank eyes, as if he had no idea what he’d just said and he didn’t care. The flames surrounding the oracle sprang higher, licking and snapping at his face.

“Save me,” he said.

“Cole! We’re out of time!!” Max used the last of his canister to clear a path to the door, which he threw open.

“Save me!” the Oracle said. I could barely see him through the flames, holding out his hand.

I tossed him my canister and followed.

The light outside blinded me momentarily, but I could still see Oliver and Gavin in suits like ours, their helmets thrown aside. They were panting.

“Glad you could join us,” Oliver said.

I tore off my helmet, gasped in a few deep breaths of clean air, closed my eyes, and collapsed onto the ground.

Oliver pried my fist open, placed something in the palm of my hand, and closed my fingers around it.

I held the object up to my face. It was the picture of Nikki and Tommy. It was the memento.

Weeks later. Finally home
.

I stared out the window. Park City had never looked so good. Main Street was decorated with banners in the Park City High School colors, preparing for graduation; and even the cheesy show of school pride didn’t bug me. I couldn’t stop staring at the mountains especially. Most Everlivings felt as if the Everneath was their home, but not me. Not anymore. Not after spending months in the Delphinian Dungeons.