Omega City (12 page)

“I think it's the last thing you
should
worry about.” I shrugged. “There's water everywhere here.”

“Not potable.”

“What's potable mean?”

“
Drinkable
. And you aren't keeping up your end of the deal. What did I say on the drive out here?”

I hung my head. “When you say go, we go.” But things had gotten . . . well, really weird since then. How could Nate keep playing camp counselor when we were stuck in a secret underground city with Fiona and her friends?

Nate shoved a bunch of first aid supplies in his pockets and we all picked up flashlights. They were perfectly normal little mini lights, about the size of candy bars and made of metal in primary colors. There wasn't even an Omega symbol on them, like the suits. I scanned the shelves for anything that looked like Underberg's work. Nothing, except the ice cream. Normal first aid kits, normal flashlights, cool suits that were made by some other company. . . . No giant hundred-year batteries or unimaginably awesome lost pieces of tech like Dad used to tell me about. Maybe all those naysayers had been correct—maybe Underberg was a fraud, and his marvelous inventions weren't all that
marvelous. Maybe this city didn't even belong to him.

After all, could any man build a city—even a small, secret city—all by himself? This was probably a government installation of some kind. Or maybe it did belong to whoever Fiona was working for. Maybe the only part Underberg had played in all of this was building his own secret entrance near his cabin. Maybe that's the bit Fiona had been looking for.

Then again, it had been easy to find Underberg's entrance from the inside: it looked like a giant elevator shaft. It was only from the outside that it had been disguised.
My last and lasting gift to mankind
. One that would only be useful if mankind itself were on the brink of destruction.

Dr. Underberg had a hand in creating so many things to help us survive, but this city was proof that someone, at least, was sure we would fail.

Armed with water, flashlights, and the last of the astronaut ice cream, we headed off toward the nearest exit. The path led out of the mess hall building and onto another raised metal walkway. This one was a lot more rickety and sagging, and in some places we had to wade through knee-deep water and across rusted-out sections. The eerie blue glow cast an endless twilight around us, enough to see by, but I still clutched my flashlight. We skirted another building marked
Ω2
—showers and sleeping quarters, according to the map—and headed toward one of the
chamber's side walls. As the stone started arching over my head, I got that weird topsy-turvy sensation again. I knew I was on solid ground, but I felt like an ant crawling up a wall. I had no idea which way was which and I was afraid I was going to slide right off the edge.

I forced my attention onto the map in my hands until the dizziness faded. “It should be right here.”

Only a few more minutes and we'd be safely above ground. The city, and everything inside it, would be nothing but a memory.

“It is,” Nate said. His voice sounded odd. “But . . .”

I looked up. In front of us stood an elevator shaft. The doors at its base were broken open, and the elevator itself lay smashed to smithereens inside.

AT THE SIGHT OF THE WRECKED ELEVATOR, THE BOTTOM DROPPED OUT of my stomach. Forget an ant crawling up a wall. I was an ant in a snow globe, and some cruel giant was shaking me. I grabbed on to Eric's silver sleeve as if I was going to fall.

“Gills?” He steadied me. “Are you okay?”

“She's claustrophobic,” Nate growled. “Perfect.”

I wasn't claustrophobic. That was about being afraid of closed spaces. I wasn't afraid. I was dizzy. There was a difference. I shook my head.
Stop it, Gillian. The ground is beneath your feet
. “I'm fine.”

“Now what?” Savannah asked, looking at the wreckage of the elevator. “Is there another exit?”

“Five more,” said Howard, sneaking a peek at my map. His flashlight roamed the page, the grimy metal walkway, the dark water surrounding us on all sides. The walkway seemed to sway like a rope bridge in high wind.

Nate kicked at the broken elevator doors. “What are the chances those are a bust, too?”

“Gillian?” Savannah touched my shoulder. “You look kind of green.”

“We shouldn't have eaten those ice creams,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “I told you guys.” The ground. Was beneath. My feet.

“There have to be stairs, right?” Eric asked. “There are always stairs. In case of emergency power failures . . . and . . . stuff.”

“Oh, sure, because this place was obviously built to some kind of code.” Nate rustled his hand through his hair. “Okay, what are our options? Gillian? You still good with the map?”

I gave a firm nod. The map might be the only thing I was good with right now. Every time I looked at its neatly drawn, flat black lines, the flipping feeling stopped. “There are other exits, but I'm not sure how easy they are to get to. Like this one—” I pointed at another red mark on the diagram. “That may be underwater. Maybe it would be better to try to get to the Comm station.” I pointed at the room marked Comm on the map, which was on an upper level,
set not in the cavern but somewhere within the rock wall to our left.

“Deeper into the city?” Nate asked, annoyed.

“We have to go deeper in either way,” I said. “And look—the Comm room is on the way to the next exit.” All the other elevator shafts marked on the map were set farther into the rocks, rather than in this big cavern.

Nate sighed. “I swear . . . I should have turned around when I realized you were lying about the whole school project thing. I never should have let you guys come this far.”

“You were the one who shoved us all inside that boulder,” Savannah pointed out.

I stared at her. Savannah was actually disagreeing with Nate?

“What?” She shrugged. “It's true.”

“Well, I didn't expect it to deposit us in some inescapable underground doomsday deathtrap.”

“Trust me, Nate,” said Eric. “No one did. Not even Gills, and she believes everything.”

“Not the thing about the honey,” Howard piped up.

Nate swiped his hand across his body in a cut-it-out motion. “Okay. Enough. No more arguments, no more finger-pointing. We're getting out of here. Shut your mouths and follow me.”

He took off toward the Comm room and we fell into line behind him.

“I think I'm officially over my crush,” said Savannah, trudging along behind me.

“Sure,” said Eric, who was bringing up the rear. “No one's as cute not holding a pizza.”

Nate yanked open the door of the next building and marched inside. Dutifully, we all followed. Whatever had happened to Omega City to cause all this damage, this building seemed even harder hit than the one containing the mess hall. The lights in this building were out, except for an occasional ceiling emergency light that cast the entire space in a dim red glow. The beams of our flashlights bounced off cracked walls and collapsed doorways. The hallways sloped at slight angles, and the carpets squished beneath our feet as we walked. Everything smelled like mold. We passed dark doorway after dark doorway.

Oddly enough, I felt better. See? It wasn't claustrophobia, no matter what Nate said. Claustrophobia was fear of tight spaces. Everyone knew that. And this little trailer building—well, it was much smaller than that enormous cavern. I took a deep breath and shook off my unease. We'd just . . . get to the exit. Get home. No more problems.

“Gills . . . ,” Eric whispered, his voice shaky. He crowded up close behind Savannah and me. “Why am I in the back? It's always the slow gazelle that gets eaten by the lion.”

Savannah elbowed him until he stopped stepping on
her heels. “It won't be a lion here, Eric. It'll be a giant earthworm.”

“Gills!” my brother cried, reaching for me.

I stopped short. “Worms, Sav? Really? You had to bring up worms?”

“It's not my fault he reads too much sci-fi.”

I pushed them both ahead of me. “Here, Eric. I'll take the back.”

I was used to Eric's overactive imagination. When we were camping, he'd gotten his hands on some stupid horror novel and wouldn't go to the bathroom alone for a week. You haven't had fun until you've been forced to listen to your brother pee on a tree from a foot away.

Besides, back here no one could see me consulting the map for every room we passed. C15 was a broom closet, C17 was a bathroom, and C23 looked like a classroom, with wooden desks bolted to the floor and a cracked chalkboard hanging at a crazy angle. I almost stopped the others, thinking they'd enjoy a glimpse at a trashed schoolroom.

C27 was marked M.B. on the map, and when I flashed my light into the room, I saw bunk beds and footlockers. Men's Bedroom, maybe? I ran the beam of the flashlight over the walls and caught sight of an empty gun rack. Military Bedroom? Of course, that made sense. They'd need to have some sort of protection in the city. But once I started thinking about guns, the image of Clint dangling from the
sky and threatening to shoot us filled my mind. Where were they now? Were they still chasing us? Inside like this, we had no way of knowing how close they might be.

Now I was the one running to catch up to the others.

At the end of the next hallway, we hit a dead end. The floor tilted sharply downward here, and the rest of the hall was above our head, revealing sheer blasted rock edges and busted wiring. Nate didn't even seem fazed. He simply boosted Howard up, then turned to help Savannah. Eric came next and then it was my turn.

“This takes us back out of this chamber,” I said to him as he held out his hands for me to step into.

“I'm hoping it takes us out of the ground.”

“You know I didn't plan on this,” I said by way of apology. “Fiona, or the elevator, or . . . I don't know. I thought it was just a little cabin or something.” He lifted me up. I grabbed Eric's hand and stepped onto the higher level, and Nate hefted himself up behind me.

“I know. But here we are,” he replied flatly.

Yeah. Here we were. In Dr. Underberg's greatest creation—well, what was left of it, anyway. Dad wouldn't be rushing us through this thing as quickly as Nate was. Dad would want to stop and enjoy every part.

Well, unless Fiona decided to chase Dad around with goons and guns, too.

I consulted the map again. “The Comm room is over
there, but this looks like a flight of stairs.” I pointed to a series of hash marks on the diagram.

“What's this thing over by the stairs?” Howard asked. The beam of his flashlight circled around a large fan-shaped room marked M.T. After what I'd seen in the C-block with the gun rack, I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

“Military Training?” I suggested, a little nervous.

“Like maybe a gun range?” Nate asked.

I hoped it wasn't a gun range. There was an outside and two inside ones in our town, and they were always packed. Only one pizza-slash-Chinese delivery place, but three gun ranges. People around here liked shooting more than eating.

“Maybe we should check it out,” he suggested. “If there are any guns in there, we can at least put ourselves on equal footing with those guys.”

“I don't know how to use a gun!”

“I do,” Nate replied. “Howard does.”

“That doesn't comfort me,” Savannah said.

“If I had a gun,” he said, “I could protect us.”

“If you had a gun,” I replied, “you could hurt someone.”

“I'm a really good shot!”

“In the dark?” Eric asked. “In a hallway?” My brother had a point. I'd seen the movies. Bullets bounced off rock walls. We'd all end up shot.

Nate was breathing hard. I could hear him panting. I pointed my flashlight down at his hands, which were clenched into fists. He saw the beam of my light and quickly crossed his arms over his chest. I lowered my flashlight as all that astronaut ice cream turned into a leaden lump in my stomach. He wasn't supposed to be scared, too.

Then again, we'd left all our “supposed tos” up on the surface. Down here, there were entirely different rules. Nate had helped us escape Fiona. He'd saved Savannah's life. If he was being a little grumpy right now, there was a good reason.

But that didn't mean we should arm ourselves.

“No guns,” I said to Nate. “You're not the only one who gets to make rules.”

“You gonna tell that Clint guy to follow your rules?”

“No. Guns,” I repeated. “All in favor?”

Eric and Howard raised their hands. Savannah sighed and followed suit. I turned my flashlight back on Nate.

He rolled his eyes. “This is not a democracy.”

“Why not?” Howard asked. “Dr. Underberg didn't die and make you King of Omega City.”

Nate turned toward his brother. “Did you just make a joke?”

Howard looked at his feet and mumbled something I couldn't quite make out.

Something changed in Nate's face, and when he spoke
after another minute, his tone was completely different. “Okay. You guys win . . . no guns.”

I was going to say something, but he kept going.

“Now let's get to that communications room before we wish we needed them.”

I could live with that.

We started off again, though this time, the mood was a little lighter. The rooms off this hallway were way larger, and the doors were, too. Through one, I saw giant glass-walled refrigerators and wire shelves that made me wonder if it was another grocery store, or maybe a medical storage facility. I'd pause outside every doorway for long enough for Nate to growl something about “staying close” or “keeping together.” If only we had a chance to explore. Inside one of these rooms could be the prototype for the battery. I couldn't imagine what Dad would say if I brought it home to him.

But we didn't pass anything that looked like someplace a world-changing battery prototype might be stored. In another room we saw barbells, rings hanging from the ceiling, even a pommel horse. It was eerie to look at the benches and weights in these dark rooms: neatly stacked, totally unused, and covered with a layer of dust and grime.

“Weird,” Eric said as his flashlight bounced off the wall. “No treadmills or stair machines.”

“Dr. Underberg must have been old school when it
came to training,” Nate suggested.

“Dr. Underberg built this thing decades ago,” I said. Or at least someone did.

The beam of Eric's flashlight traveled over rows of free weights and moldering wrestling mats, then bounced off the figure of a man.

I gasped. Savannah clapped a hand over her mouth. Eric dropped his flashlight, which promptly turned off. I heard him gulp and scramble for it.

“It's just a wall poster,” Howard said. “Look.” He aimed his light. Half of the man's body was translucent, showing muscles and joints and bones. The paper was yellowed with age, and its edges were torn.

Nate clapped Savannah on the shoulder. “Don't worry about it. I keep waiting for a dead body to show up, too.”

“Waiting?” She shuddered.

“Okay.
Dreading
.”

“Can we please stop talking about dead bodies and guns and underground monsters?” Eric said. He was swinging his flashlight at every shadow in the room. “Just in general?”

“So it's fine for a video game but not real life?” Savannah asked.

“Yes!” Eric shook his head at her, incredulous. “In real life you don't get to press reset.”

At last we arrived at the door to the fan-shaped M.T.
room. The door to our left was shut and marked with the word
Balcony
.

Nate paused. “Can we at least check out what's inside?” I wasn't going to argue after we'd explored all the other rooms. Nate opened the door and we all stepped into the darkness.

It wasn't a gun range.

A slightly sloped floor covered by row after row of plush red seats overlooked a wrought-iron balcony. Beyond it, I caught a glimpse of a high, arched opening and long red curtains. We all knew instantly what we were looking at, because we were used to seeing this in the dark.

“M.T.,” I said softly. “Movie Theater.”

We went down the aisle to the edge of the balcony and looked out over the auditorium. It was a giant black lake, its surface as still as glass. If there were seats on the lower level of the theater, they had to be underwater.

“Cool,” Eric said. He dropped something over the side and ripples spread out over the space, as the plop echoed from drowned velvet curtain to drowned velvet curtain.

“It's just a movie theater,” said Howard. “We have those on the surface, too.”

“How would you feel about a movie theater in a spaceship?” Savannah asked.

“Don't be silly!” he scoffed. “That's not remotely practical.”

Neither was this. I gripped the elaborate wrought-iron curlicues of the balcony. Luxurious red velvet seats in the end-of-the-world-shelter movie theater? And here I'd been dreading a gun range. I thought back to those military barracks I'd seen in the C-block. How small they were compared to the classrooms and the gyms and this enormous theater. I thought back to that recording we'd heard in the elevator.
Firearms not permitted
.