Nil Unlocked (39 page)

“Skye. Look at me.” Rives cupped his hands around my chin, his voice urgent, his eyes pleading. “We can’t stay. There’s a puma checking us out from the mountain, a few meters to the left of our cave; I think it’s the cat that spooked Nikolai. And in the meadow? An ugly dog duo is on full alert, looking way too interested in us. The lions won’t be far. We have to go.”

“We can’t leave him.” I blinked, seeing Nikolai’s grin as he shared dinner, unable to reconcile that vibrant Nikolai with the one bleeding on the ground. “It’s not right.”

“Skye, he’s gone.” Rives’s voice was grim. He pulled a small bag from somewhere, quickly crafted a small white cross beside Nikolai, and murmured a few words. His bag vanished as swiftly as it appeared. Rives turned back to me and cupped my face again, making me look at him.

“We have to move. If we don’t, we’ll end up like Nikolai. We can’t do anything for him, Skye. But if we get back, we can tell the others about the gate and give everyone a fighting chance to escape. We need to go.
Now
.”

He pulled me to my feet. I glanced at Nikolai. Blood seeped from his back, a ruby trickle against his pale skin. His blood ran down my knee.

In the meadow, two scraggly heads bobbed above the grasses, about thirty yards away. “Hyenas,” I said blankly. “Those are hyenas.”

“I know.” Rives spoke calmly; he didn’t stop pulling. We walked and walked; Rives talked and talked. I said nothing; it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. My mind churned with pictures of Nikolai’s body I could never erase. His dry blood stained my knee.

We walked until the meadow was a speck behind us, and then we walked more. Rives led me through a worn path sloping gently down, a wide slash cutting through black rock, alongside the South Cliffs, moving with island ease. When I stumbled, he picked me up and carried me the last few yards. At the cliff base, there was a small pool of three-foot-deep water set slightly back, ringed by rocks, filled with sea water, and fully protected.

Rives eased me into the pool. Using his hand, he scrubbed the blood off my knee. And then the shakes started. Full bodywide, I shook so violently that my teeth clattered together. Rives scooped me up, carried me over to a wide, sun-warmed rock, and held me tight as my body rebelled against itself. He whispered in my ear.

Soon his words sank in.

“You’re okay,” he repeated. “You’re safe. It’s okay.”

The shakes dulled, tears took their place.

“It’s not,” I told Rives. My words came in jagged spurts. “He’s dead because of me. Because
I
pressed to go on that Search, because
I
told him to come.”
The butterfly effect
, I thought. “He told me about his argument with Alexei, and I thought I was helping by having Nikolai come with us. It’s my fault,” I whispered.

“It’s not,” Rives said quietly. “It’s Nil’s. The island brought him here. The island set things in motion. Not you.”

“But I played a part,” I said. “If he’d stayed in the City, he’d be alive right now.”

“Maybe.” Rives’s voice was soft, but not pitying. “Maybe not. Maybe this is how his fate was meant to play out.”

“How can you say that? How can you dismiss his death so casually?” I shook again, for a different reason.

“I know you’re angry,” Rives said, the muscle in his jaw ticking, “but I’m not the one you’re angry with. I’m not dismissing his death. You have no idea how I feel about his death, or anyone else’s. People die here, Skye. Nikolai wasn’t the first, but God help me, I pray he’s the last. Believe me, if I never see another funeral it won’t be soon enough.”

Beneath Rives’s strong words lay pain. I thought of my uncle.
I fear nothing.

Rives was right; I had no idea how Rives felt about Nikolai’s death. Here I was, falling apart after a measly forty days, and Rives had been here for over three hundred.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my fury ebbing, leaving behind a well of exhaustion. My limbs felt like Jell-O. “You’re right. I’m mad at this place, at fate, and more than anything, at myself. You asked me once what I was afraid of. Now you know. It’s the butterfly effect. Me changing someone’s fate by coming here. Me interfering. And now Nikolai’s dead. And I’m to blame, at least in part.”

“No.” Rives’s tone was fierce. “Don’t own his death. He chose to come with us, and fate chose his end. Not you.”

I closed my eyes, exhausted. For a quiet minute, neither of us spoke. The sea boomed, a soothing distraction. “Want to know something weird?” I said. “My dad asked me to study Russian. I said no. Did you know that Russian is the fifth most spoken language in the world?”

“I didn’t know that.” Rives brushed my hair away from my face.

“It is,” I said. The sun warmed my face; it felt good to leave my eyelids closed. “Mandarin is number one, then English, Hindustani, Spanish, and Russian. Maybe if I’d listened to my dad, maybe I could’ve helped Nikolai somehow.”

“I don’t think so,” Rives whispered. “There wasn’t time to warn him. The cat startled him; it happened the way it happened.” He fell silent.

Maybe,
I thought. But the word was too heavy to pass my lips. The sunlight spread through my body all the way to my toes, or maybe that was the warmth from Rives. His arms still wrapped around me, holding me against his chest.

“Sleep, Skye,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re safe.”

So I did.

CHAPTER

57

RIVES

DAY 317, LATE MORNING

After the shock and the shakes, Skye slept for a good two hours.

In my arms.

Even in sleep, she looked fierce and vulnerable. Nikolai’s blood was gone from her knee, but it would leave a mark. Skye had her first Nil scar.

Please be her last
, I thought.

Now awake, she was exceptionally quiet. I couldn’t read if she was taking it all in or blocking it out.

We were skirting around the Southern Cliffs, toward South Beach. When we passed the southern tip, the rocks gave way to fine sand. I pointed at the wide black beach stretching before us. “If we keep walking, we’ll hit the City by twilight. Faster, if we don’t stop.”

Skye studied the coastline ahead. “I want to go slow,” she said. “I want to see the water tunnels in the rocks just off the beach, and then see the Arches on the way back.” She looked at me. “This is the route my uncle walked on his first days here. Let’s take our time and see what happens.” Her eyes burned with all the colors of the sea. The steel flecks were there. Different, but still fierce. Like sun glinting off water.

She’d been taking it all in.

“Sound okay?” she asked.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

I didn’t move. We stood there on the black sand, cool water wrapping around our feet. Skye’s eyes held mine. I was back on the cliff, teetering.

“Rives, it’s almost noon,” she whispered, her eyes still on mine. “If you left right now, would you have any regrets?”

And with that, my resolve broke.

It shattered into irreparable bits, raining down into the sea as the invisible wall around me disintegrated and I fell. I pulled Skye close, and gently tilting up her chin, I found her lips with mine. Soft, then urgent. My hands cupped her head, my fingers were in her hair; I was drowning in want and need and
Skye
. I didn’t want to pull away.

But I did.

“That,” I said, my voice hoarse, my thumbs tracing her jaw as I watched her open her eyes; she looked just as shattered. “I would’ve regretted missing that. I don’t know what we are, but—” I broke off, unable to put the potent mix in my chest into words.

“We’re more,” she whispered, her eyes full of heat. And then she kissed me.

Later I’d remember I didn’t feel the ocean; I’d only felt Skye.

Less a Nil shift, more a
me
shift.

With Skye, I felt like
more
.

I felt something I’d never felt, something I couldn’t bear to lose. Something that made me hate Nil and thank Nil and want to scream in frustration that my fate was not mine to control.

Now I fully understood Thad’s last slick move. To leave Charley behind would’ve killed him. Not knowing if she was safe, not knowing if she survived. The stationary gate offered us a priceless gift—a chance at dual escape, a shot at a shared future, a gift only Nil could give.

Before I lost my mind completely, I pulled Skye to my chest. I still couldn’t figure out if she was here because of Nil or in spite of Nil.

My gut said the answer was huge, especially given the way this Search had played out.

Our Search began with four, was cut to two, and now Skye and I were one.

If Nil picked a fight with Skye, the island would have to fight me, too. We were a package deal.

I kissed Skye’s head. “Ready to see the tubes?” I whispered.

“Lead on.” She grinned.

Our fingers stayed entwined, two halves of one whole as we walked to the tubes and sat on the edge of the closest one, letting our feet dangle in the water. A web of tunnels cut by ancient lava flows and filled with brackish water, it was Nil’s version of a warm bath.

I wanted time to stop, just for a moment.

For this moment, where we were together, and relatively safe.

But time never stopped on Nil—until you left.

Jason’s escape was a shock, but it was Nikolai’s unexpected death that unsettled me, more than I’d ever admit to Skye. Was it because he took the tusk? Or because he touched the carving? Nikolai was the only one to trace the lines, to disturb the sand. Had he screwed with some invisible balance? Or was it just an accident, a cruel twist of fate?

More like a cruel twist of Nil
, I thought.

Nil was a foe, pulling invisible strings.

Yet without Nil, there would be no Skye. There would be no
us
. And I desperately wanted a chance at
us
.

No matter how hard I pressed, Nil didn’t fit into any column I made.

Skye touched my arm. “Rives,” she said softly. “Where’d you go?”

I pulled her close and kissed her thoroughly.

She blushed. “Okay, I kinda keep going there myself. But back to the gate. Do you think there’s another way to the platform, where the cats don’t roam? A back door?”

“I don’t think so. That sheer black cliff was solid. I think there’s one way in and out.”

“Like the labyrinths,” she mused. She tilted her head to look at me. “We need Paulo to talk. We need to know whether the gate opens at noon or night, because if it’s at night, we need to plan differently. Like more torches—” She broke off, staring at me. “What? Every time I mention the gate’s timing, you get a funny look. Talk.”

CIA Skye was back.

I looked at our fingers, entwined at the edge of the water. “When I showed up three hundred and seventeen days ago, it was in the afternoon. And the equinox? It falls on March twentieth, which by my count is my Day three hundred and sixty-five.” The blood drained from Skye’s face as I spoke. She’d already added up the numbers, coming up short like me. “So that noon is my shot,” I said quietly. “I don’t have until midnight. I have exactly forty-eight days left. Forty-eight noons.”

“You can’t wait.” Her voice was firm. “The risk is too great. You have to go on Search
now
. Dex and Jillian and I will figure out how to get everyone there, but—”

I placed a finger over her lips. “Stop. Let’s talk to Paulo, okay? See what he knows. No one has to decide anything today.” Except my mind was already set.

I’d roll the dice on the equinox. I wouldn’t bail early.

“Let’s go,” Skye said, getting out of the tube. “Tour’s over. Let’s go talk to Paulo. And”—her voice sounded heavy—“we need to tell Miya. That Jason made it.”

I followed. Skye was right. The island time-out was over.

We had a gate to track.

CHAPTER

58

RIVES

DAY 317, LATE MORNING

We headed straight back.

We blew through the Arches without stopping; same for Black Bay. But as we left the Crystal Cavern, Skye yanked me back, pointing down the path.

“Rives! Incoming!”

A gate popped and dropped, ten meters ahead. Without speaking, we both hit the brush. The gate shimmered, then turned reflective, a mirror over the ground. It glittered, then vanished.

Another inbound with no rider.

“That’s the third riderless inbound in three weeks,” I said as I stood. “They used to be rare. Or so I thought.”

Giving us another clue, are you, Nil? What are you trying to say?

“Odd,” Skye said, but she sounded distracted. She tugged my hand and, as we hit the path again, she actually jogged.

“Skye,” I said. “It’s okay. Chill.”

She slowed, barely.

Back in the City, she strode straight into Paulo’s hut.

“Thanks for knocking,” he said sourly.

“Sorry,” Skye said, not sounding sorry at all. “We need answers.” Her voice was flat. If she was fire and ice before, now she was a volcano, ready to blow. “We know where the gate will open in March, but we need to know when. Noon or midnight. And we need to know if you’ve got any secrets on how to get to the heart of the island without attracting all those cats.”

Paulo swallowed. “You found the doorway?”

“The platform. Above the rock steps. It’ll open in March,” she said. “Now tell me when.”

She crossed her arms.

Paulo looked at the ceiling. “If I answer, will you leave? Both of you?” He eyed me sharply.

“Yes,” Skye said. I nodded.

“Fine. It used to open at midnight. Over a century ago, the island spirits grew stronger. The sun burned bright in the day and bright in the night, on a day in September when the night approached the day in strength. And that year, the doorway opened twice here on the island—once at noon, and then again at midnight. And the times reversed.”

The Solar Superstorm
, I thought.
A solar flare impacted the gate.

“Now the first quarter doorway opens at noon,” Paulo continued, “and the third quarter at midnight. So I came in the dark and will leave in the dark.”