Ascending the Boneyard (7 page)

This has got to be some kind of nacho-and-Mountain Dew–induced hallucination.

I hear a muffled commotion coming from down the hall, picture Devin, tipped over in his chair, lying helpless on the floor while I've been dicking around on a pointless mission down at Goofy Golf. I sprint to his room, but it's empty; then head for mine, throw my shoulder into the door.

It's not Devin.

It's the Relic. Turned on, logged in, already in play.

I taste stale air through my open mouth as I approach the desk, as I lower myself one vertebra at a time onto the squeaky chair. My toon is lurking, watching a group of raiders who have found a way UnderGround. I can't tell if it's one of the tunnels they're wandering around in or somewhere else; I'm not even sure if this is a legitimate platoon or some kind of trap. All I know is the subterranean walls are made of opaque bricks—like the interrogation room I was just in.

I square the gaming glasses on my face, promise myself I'll just hang back, that I'm not going to join. Haze thinks I'll lose myself in the game, and I made him a promise to stop; but following a group just to watch what they're up to isn't the same as playing. At least that's how I get it to work out in my head.

The tunnel raiders look a little unsure of themselves, almost like wherever they are, they're surprised to be there. Or scared. They make slow, awkward advances through the maze of tunnels, their hybrid penlight-wands not nearly bright enough for them to see what's coming. Probably why it looks like they're just fumbling around in the dark.

I'd send my toon back to the surface to try to find the rest of my platoon, but I don't exactly know where I am. The mini-map on-screen is oddly pixilated, like the Relic is having an aneurysm or something, so even that's no help.

There's a kind of weight to being isolated and alone. It's starting to crack me a little.

I hop off the chair, poke my head out the bedroom door, hoping to catch the old man coming back from getting fried chicken or whatever else would be enough of an incentive to get him to leave the house with Devin.

Still nothing.

I stand in the doorway of my room like I'm in Boneyard limbo, halfway between the UnderWorld and the UpperWorld—half waiting for the old man and Devin to turn up again and half watching the action on-screen play out like a Three Stooges routine. T-Man is hiding in a little alcove as the raiders start scattering, bumping into each other, darting off in different directions, barking orders on chat with no clear leadership. I wipe my sweaty palms against the grunge-funk of my pant legs just to stop myself from running over and grabbing the mouse.
It's not my platoon,
I remind myself.
It could be a trap.

My gaze clicks back and forth from the living room to the computer screen, watching for movement, for anything that will start making sense either here or in the Boneyard.

And then—

Three guys break loose from the brigade. They're wearing mottled gray-purple-black fatigues, their bowl-cut hair flapping behind them as they dash past me through the opaque tunnel and around a set of turns. Once they've lost the others, one of them takes his penlight-wand device and taps out a pattern on the bricks, and I swear on the Scrolls of Turk that a secret passageway opens up right there. I rush to the computer, grab the mouse, follow as the soldiers hurry down a narrow hidden staircase. The last one turns his head before he disappears into the passageway, shoots a look straight at T-Man, and gives a single nod.

T-Man stays on their heels up the stairway and through a tunnel opening, spilling out onto a completely different highway. A fat yellow car is already running, waiting, puffing exhaust straight at my toon until he's swallowed by dense gray smog. The commandos look around, hop in the car, and take off.

The slam of the front door rocks me like a five-hundred-volt shock.

I dart into the hallway, but it's not the old man and Devin coming toward me.

It's Haze.

My gaze drops to the manila envelope in his hand, the crushed green drink cup, the ziplock bag with the dead bird inside.

“I found this stuff out front,” he says. “Thought you'd want it.”

I don't want it. I wish I'd never seen it. Any of it.

“So what's—” He stops short, locks on to the computer screen. “Tosh.”

“I'm not playing,” I tell him.

“The hell.”

If I weren't so supremely grateful to see another human being at this point, I'd kick his ass for constantly riding mine about the game.

Haze holds the bird carcass out to me.

“What's this about?” he asks.

“Souvenir.”

“What are
you
doing with it?”

“I'm supposed to bury it.”

My insides scream blood and fire, leeching molten sweat out of every inch of my skin.

I wasn't supposed to bury it. I was supposed to save it. That was the mission. I already killed that bird once, on my twelfth birthday, and it was the catalyst, man, the catalyst for everything. And here I am—I mean, I bought the expansion pack and it gave me a second chance to nail the mission, to earn my Ascent Credits by saving the bird, only I'm such an ass-nugget, I blew that, too. What a fail.

Unless . . .

Unless giving it a proper burial is the way in. That's what the commandos told me to do.

The baggie dangles from Haze's fingers as the buzz of an incoming text message derails my train of thought.

“You gonna get that?” he says.

I'm jackhammering. I take out the phone, tap the mysteriously resurrected screen, brace for the cockroach picture I'm sure will be there.

But it's not.

It's a plain text, no image.

You will see things.

“Tosh?”

I follow my own line of vision back to the Relic, to the Boneyard. My toon has hitched a ride with the three commandos who have parked the yellow car in a wooded area and are digging a hole in the ground. One of them throws something into the pit, and even though I can't see what it is, I know.

Okay, so I bury the bird, so what? Do I get my Ascent Credits? Do I level at that point?

Not to mention, the commando who said I could be of service to them did an abrupt about-face two seconds later. So I hope they can understand my skepticism regarding this quasi-message they're showing me from the Boneyard.

You must not question the mission.

“Tosh—”

The catch in Haze's voice grabs me. I turn, see the way he's eyeing me . . . like I'm—

“I don't care what you say, man. I'm not crazy.” I push the goggles up off my face because they're too sweat-fogged to see through.

He makes a face but doesn't answer. In fact, neither of us says anything for a while. He comes over, sits on my bed, starts fiddling with the gizmos on his mask while I fake key the words “save it” over and over again on my phone.

“I never said you were crazy,” he says at last. “It's just—I'm—you know. The game.”

“I already told you, I don't play anymore. I just like to tune in sometimes and see what's going on.”

“I'm not an idiot, Tosh. Just because I don't play doesn't mean I don't know how it works. It doesn't work like that.”

“It helps sometimes, that's all.”

He opens his mouth like he's going to argue the point, but he doesn't. Instead he shuts up again and nods his head, just one time.

I close my eyes for a quick second against a twinge of déjà vu. My mom did that nod thing all the time. The old man would be raging as Dev and I cowered in a corner, terrified, and she'd look at us without saying a word and nod just like that. Just once. Like it would all be okay somehow.

My red-rimmed eyes gravitate back to the Boneyard, to the yellow car with the black-and-white checkerboard around the top, wheezing in front of a row of rangy trees.

“So,” Haze says, holding up the bird. “You want help burying this?”

My attention drifts from the monitor back to Haze.

“You'll do anything to keep me out of the Boneyard, won't you?”

He smiles, adjusts his knit cap, tosses the baggie at me. I catch it in a tight grip so it doesn't slip out of my hands, offer the bird a silent apology in case I hurt it by grabbing too hard.

Out back the old man's got an overgrown junk heap, but I can't find anything useful enough to dig a hole with. Just old tuna cans, a rust-covered slotted spoon—nothing that'll dig deep enough or fast enough to get this over with and make the whole bird thing go away.

I know we have a long-forgotten shovel around here somewhere.

I eventually find it camouflaged in a pile of rotting lumber.

Haze holds the bird while I start digging. I don't talk, just kick out shovelfuls of dirt. It would be accurate to say that Haze is less of a stranger to physical labor than I am, but this one's on me. Still, I'm a panting, sweat-spewing mess before I've managed to dig anything deep enough to bury a bug in, let alone a bird.

I don't understand why it had to go and die. I mean, it must have known that someone was coming to save it; otherwise, why would it have fought so hard? What good does it do to stay alive through all the crap stuff only to give up right at the end, just when things are about to turn around?

The sky will fall and death will beat its wings against the ground.

They called it. Whoever sent me that message totally called it. Was it the commandos? Did they intentionally lure me to Goofy Golf so I'd get back on this map? For all I know, the interrogation they put me through earned me Ascent Credits. It freakin' should have.

“Yo, Tosh,” Haze says. “That's probably deep enough.”

I look down at the two-foot hole I dug without realizing it, pull my arm across my face to wick away the sweat, only to find a big line of snot across my sleeve.

Luckily, Haze doesn't point out that I'm standing here crying over a dead bird in a plastic bag.

“What are you going to bury it in?” he asks instead.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can't just throw it in the ground. That's kind of disrespectful.”

“How is that disrespectful?”

“It was a living thing, Tosh,” he says. Like I need to be reminded. “It deserves a proper burial.”

“It's in a bag,” I say.

“It won't be able to decay like that.”

The word eats through my body—I close my eyes against the unexpected sensation of the ground shifting from solid to semisolid.

“Look,” Haze says, “just bury it in this.”

He hands me the crushed drink cup. As it passes from his hand to mine, I hear the roar of go-karts off in the distance, feel the thrill of freedom as he and I scramble into the bucket seats, hear him slurp the tail end of a soda, watch the cup arc in slow motion onto the track just as we accelerate.

My mom begged the old man not to have my party there. She said she had a bad feeling.

I take the cup, turn it over in my fingers, force my eyes to unblur so I can read the words.

Subway. City Hall Station.

. . . the note. My mom's note.

big city

Yeah. Big city.

Where the City Hall Station's located.

Which is probably a subway entrance.

Subways go underground.

UnderGround. UnderWorld.

The mission starts to come into focus right before my eyes.

This is exactly why I got the expansion pack. Thanks to
ASCEND: Armageddon
, I can go back, fix my biggest mistake. Sure, it'll take me longer to level, but if it keeps me from letting Stan take my mom, it'll be worth it.

I can do that. I can find my way UnderGround, now that I understand how to get there. I've already made it to that map enough times. I can start this rogue mission without my platoon. No doubt they'll join me once they see how close I am to finding Turk, to killing the shit out of him, to becoming Worthy.

The phone buzzes in my pocket. I throw down the shovel, pull up the message.

The world beneath will weep blood.

Whoa . . .

It's all coming together.

The commandos didn't jack that yellow car to flee to the UpperWorld, like I first thought.

They did it to show me how to get UnderGround.

That's where the mission starts. UnderGround, in the big city, like my mom said.

I toss the bird into the hole, cup and all, use my tattered Kmart specials to quick kick the dirt back over it.

“What're you doing?” Haze says. “Tosh. You look deranged.”

“I gotta go.”

“Go?” He steps over the shovel handle, follows me back inside the trailer. “Go where?”

I beeline for my room, grab my messenger bag, stuff it full of socks and underwear, my phone charger, a half-eaten bag of cheesy snack mix. And the gum pack with my mom's note inside.

“Where are you going?”

“UnderGround.”

“What?”

I dash back down the hall, out the door, hop down the steps toward the street.

“What underground?” Haze calls after me.

“New York,” I tell him, because if I say the Boneyard, he'll restrain me to a chair with plastic zip ties until I come to my senses. Besides, it's not a lie to say New York. That's where the entrance to the UnderWorld is. I know that now.

Haze grabs my arm. “Dude, you
are
crazy!” he shouts within an inch of my face. The word swipes at me, stings across my skin. “You've barely even left your house since—”

I shove against him to keep him from finishing the thought, watch through the goggles as he stumbles backward.

He's surprised, I can tell, surprised and maybe a little hurt. But I don't care. He doesn't seem too worried about who
he
hurts by saying stupid shit like that.