Etherworld (27 page)

A WHISPER LURES ME AWAY FROM SLEEP.

“Regan? You okay?”

I lift my chin and look up at Josh, his colorless eyes searching mine. We're both lying on the dusty ground in our real-world clothes, my head resting on his shoulder as he gently runs his fingers through my hair.

“Yeah, I think so.”

I pull myself up to a sitting position; a hint of light is visible in the coal-gray sky. The honeycomb-shaped building that the Elusion survivors have been calling home is about a hundred feet away, the fire pit so close I can reach out and touch it.

We made it. We're in Etherworld. Right in the center of the Great Space.

A flicker of hope forms inside me, but it disappears when I realize how quiet and still it is right now. I can't help but feel like something is terribly wrong—a feeling that intensifies when Josh stands up and grips my wrists, yanking me to my feet.

“I think Patrick's hurt,” Josh says.

A couple of yards away, Patrick is lying on the ground, his legs splayed out at strange angles, his translucent eyes open wide. He lets out a groan, and we race over to him and kneel down on either side of his body.

“Regan?” Patrick says, his voice hoarse. “Regan!” He suddenly springs up, his arms thrashing. I duck to avoid a blow as Josh tries to hold Patrick back.

“Take it easy, Pat,” he says, restraining him. “We've got you.”

“I can't see!” Patrick yells. “I can't see
anything
!”

I'm right beside him, but instead of looking at me, he's staring at a vague point in the distance. “Just give yourself a minute,” I say. I squeeze his hand, hoping the pressure will calm him down. “Maybe your senses just need some time to adjust.”

“Are we there?” he asks. “Did we make it into Etherworld?”

“Yep,” I say. “You did it.”

Patrick lets out a deep breath, like he's incredibly relieved, but his eyes are still staring straight ahead. “Did this happen to you? Were you blind the first time you came here?”

“No, but I passed out,” I say, remembering my brain's strong reaction to the increase in delta waves. “Josh and my dad had to carry me from the firewall all the way to the base.”

“Now that you mention it, where is your dad?” Josh asks, looking around.

I stand up and face the building. “Hello!” I call out. “Anyone here?”

When there's no answer, I walk toward the cavern to get a better look. As I get closer, I see that the structure has crumbled: the solid rock that once made up its top floors is lying in chunks on the ground. The arched doorways are dark; the outdoor set of stairs and platforms have collapsed. What was once a tidy set of halls and rooms is now in ruins.

A cool, ashy wind blows through the Great Space, and I look over my shoulder at Josh, who is helping move Patrick to one of the stone benches near the fire pit. Once he gets Patrick set, Josh and I lock eyes. I can tell we're thinking the same thing.

Is there anyone left?

“I'm going to search the building,” I say, as I head toward the cavern.

“Wait!” Josh shouts.

But I don't stop. I run as fast as I can, my jaw clenched as I pump my arms hard. I make my way around the clumps of rock, approaching the archway of my dad's room. I climb over a couple of huge pieces of stone to get to the door, and I slip my body under the caved-in archway. Running through the hall, I'm ducking down to avoid debris and jagged rock as I head toward his room.

The first thing I see is my father's workbench. It's smashed in half, crushed. The air is dusty, the room filled with rubble.

“Regan?”

I spin around toward the opposite side of the room. It's him. He's here, and he's trying to get up—pushing himself off a broken cot, legs shaking as he rises to his feet. I throw my arms around his neck, nearly knocking us both to the floor. He's lost so much weight since I was last here, I can practically feel his bones poking out through his shirt.

But it doesn't matter. I still feel like rejoicing. Even though I kept trying to convince myself that he was still alive and hooked up to Elusion somewhere, I couldn't deny the nagging fear that something much worse had happened.

“You shouldn't have come back here,” he whispers.

“We had to,” I say. “We knew you were in trouble. Elusion was starting to close off all the ping tunnels.”

He takes a step back and locks eyes with me. “You know that Elusion is sentient?”

“Yes,” I say, and he casts his gaze at the ground.

“I understand why you couldn't say anything,” I say. “You were just trying to protect us. And that's why we're here now—to protect you.”

“What do you mean, ‘we'?”

“Josh and Patrick are here, too.”

“Where are they?” His voice is calm, but I can still hear concern weighting every word.

“In the Great Space,” I say. “Patrick was able to find a direct path to Etherworld, so we didn't have to go through Elusion.”

“Are you all okay?”

“Josh and I are fine, but Patrick's not doing so well,” I say, as my father stifles a cough.

“Is he conscious?” he asks,

“Yes, but . . . he's lost his eyesight. I told him it was temporary, because of the lack of stimuli, but he's pretty panicked.”

My dad limps toward the door, tripping as he reaches the broken archway. I grab his arm to steady him, and he pulls away from me, ducking under the fallen stone and moving as quickly as he can out of the cavern. I follow behind him, carefully tracking his every move in case he falters again, but he's found his strength. When he spots Patrick convulsing on the ground, his limping gait turns into an awkward trot.

“I think Patrick's going into shock!” Josh shouts, doing his best to hold Patrick still.

My dad kneels on the ground and takes Patrick's head firmly in his hands, holding it steady. “Regan, take his arms. Josh, get his legs. Don't pin him down, though; just try to keep him from moving around too much.”

I position myself above Patrick and grab hold of his wrists, gently guiding his arms above his head. Josh places his hands on Patrick's ankles to stop his legs from flailing.

My dad presses his fingers against Patrick's temples really firmly—hard enough that I see the skin tighten around Patrick's eyes.

“Pat,” my dad says, “you're fighting too hard to maintain your grip on reality.”

At the sound of my father's voice, Patrick's eyes dart around in every direction, as if searching for a face that he hasn't seen in months.

“David?” he says.

“Yes, I'm here, Patrick. I'm right here with you.”

Patrick closes his eyes, like he's trying to focus and control the tremors, but soon his breathing becomes shallow. I'm scared he's going to hyperventilate.

“She lied to me,” Patrick says. “She told me you were dead, and I believed her.”

We all know who he's referring to. Even as I sit here with her sick son, I still can't believe how much pain Cathryn has inflicted on the people she was supposed to love.

“We can talk about that later. Right now I just need you to breathe,” my dad says to him. “Nice and easy, okay?”

“I'm trying,” Patrick says. “I don't have . . . any control.”

“I know. That's why you have to let go,” my dad says, shifting his hands so that his fingers are positioned on different parts of Patrick's skull. “You need to clear your mind.”

“What are you trying to do?” I whisper to my father as Patrick's hands tremble within my grasp.

“I'm putting pressure on the nerve clusters that control blood circulation to the brain,” he says. “It should help prevent his reaction from worsening.”

Patrick keeps his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling as if his lungs are slowly filling with air. The jerky movements in his arms and legs are becoming less frequent.

My father's right. It's working.

Patrick takes a couple more deep breaths and says, “I never thought I'd hear your voice again. When Regan told me she had seen you, when she tried to tell me that you were still alive, it seemed impossible. I thought she had nanopsychosis.”

“It's okay,” my dad reassures Patrick. “I'm here.” He releases his hands and motions for Josh and me to do the same. Patrick lies still for a second, before pushing himself up into a sitting position. “I should've shared my suspicions about Elusion from the beginning, but I didn't. I'm the one who owes you the apology.”

“What happened to everyone?” Josh asks, interrupting. Now that Patrick's condition seems to be stabilizing, Josh is focusing on other things, like his sister. He crosses his arms over his chest as he stares at the destroyed honeycomb-shaped cavern, his brow furrowed with concern.

I know what he's thinking.
Where the hell is Nora?

“Nora's still here,” my dad reassures him. “But there's only a handful of us left. They're out searching the firewall for a working ping tunnel.”

Josh closes his eyes and lets out a huge sigh of relief, but it only lasts for a moment. “What happened here?”

“The environment in Etherworld is weakening because the Escapes are being eliminated,” my father says. “I'd anticipated that, but I wasn't sure how bad the collateral damage would be.”

I try to ignore my pounding pulse. “It looks pretty bad to me,” I say, my eyes taking in the virtual squalor around us.

“We won't be here for long,” Patrick says, pushing himself off the ground with determination. When he stands, he wobbles a bit and stretches his arms out in front of him, signaling that his sight still hasn't returned. I get up and hover next to him, while Josh helps my father to his feet.

“I don't know. Even if Nora and the others can find an open tunnel, they may all be closed by the time we're finished bombing the next Escape,” my dad says. “We won't be able to find a way back to Etherworld.”

“That's okay. I was able to open up a trapdoor in between the last two Escapes, so we won't have to come back,” Patrick says.

“How did you do that?” my dad asks.

As Patrick explains what he did and how he did it, I feel as if we're all sitting around the dinner table again, the two of them caught up in a conversation I can't understand. But instead of feeling jealous, I'm thankful. There's someone who cares enough about my dad that he's willing to risk his own life to save him.

“What I don't understand,” my dad says, “is how you even found out about what Elusion was doing to the ping tunnels. I mean, without being here to see it for yourself.”

Josh and I tell him what happened at Bryce's house, about all the information he gave us—the truth about Elusion, the optical imaging plate, and other things that allowed us to overcome the huge obstacles that had been in our way. My dad is stunned by what we've gone through to get back here and help him. So much of what he's hearing, though, is simply validation—especially when it comes to Cathryn's powerful antiviral, which Patrick jumps in and explains in detail.

“The past few times we've entered an Escape, we've been under attack from almost the first minute we arrived,” my father says, acknowledging what we feared to be true. “But why would Bryce tell you any of this? Hasn't he been in on this whole thing from the beginning?”

When I give him the rundown on Bryce's firing and his change of heart, I leave out the part about Bryce discovering that my dad was moved from Orexis, at least for now. I don't want to worry him. Then again, he must suspect that something didn't go right with our plan to break into room 5020. Otherwise, why would any of us be here?

“So he got you involved rather than go to the police and risk his own neck?” My dad clenches his fists tight, like he wishes he could wake up from this nightmare and slug Bryce himself.

That's when I know I have to tell him what I still can't bear to admit.

“Bryce was pretty drunk,” I say, hoping to buy myself just a little more time. “The cops never would've believed anything he was saying, even if he did have some tangible proof.”

My father stares at me, his eyes narrowing with skepticism. But before he can call me on my dismissiveness, a familiar voice echoes through the air.

“Josh?”

I turn and see Nora standing in front of the ruins of the cavern, her clothes torn to shreds and her face and arms covered in dirt. Behind her are Malik, Wyatt, and Zared, who look just as weary and spent as she does.

“That's the rest of our crew,” my dad says as Josh runs over to his sister, enveloping her in the same kind of desperate hug my father and I shared in his room moments ago. I'm grateful for the reunion until something clicks inside my mind: Out of the dozen or more survivors that were here a day ago, only five remain?

We still have two Escapes left to destroy, which will be much more difficult to do now that the inoculation is working against us. With fewer of us here to go on the offensive, what are our odds of winning this war?

The group approaches us, with Wyatt in the lead, his hands on his hips. Josh has his arms around Nora, whose body is limp with exhaustion and skin damp with sweat.

“Were you able to find an open tunnel?” I ask them. Even though it's only been a day in real-world time, the survivors have spent what probably feels like weeks working toward this moment.

There's no need for hellos. Not anymore.

“Just one. Along the southern border of the firewall,” Wyatt says, glancing at my father.

“Then we have to get going,” Patrick says, turning toward me.

“How can you go back into Elusion if you're—”

“Don't even think about leaving me behind,” he cuts me off. “My sight is starting to come back. Everything is still hazy, but I'm beginning to make out some shapes.”