Savage Run (26 page)

“
Is your balance good?” he
asks.

“
I’ve been known to walk on
fences, but nothing like this. You?”

“
Not even
close.”

Johnny speeds past me, shoving me off
balance, and hops onto the first disk, crouching as he lands. “See
you guys later…maybe.”

“
You mean you don’t think
you’re going to make it?” I yell at him.

Johnny stands up and turns around, his feet
firmly planted on the disk. “Oh, I’ll make it all right, but I
doubt that you two will.”

Arthor looks at me and says loudly, “You’re
going to make it, right?”

I nod. “You?”

Arthor nods and looks at Johnny. “There you
have it. See you across the gorge. Or maybe we’ll be looking down
on you as we pass.”

Johnny gives us a dagger glare and keeps
going, hopping from one disk to the next. I don’t want to admit it,
but by the way he moves, I can tell he’s an exceptional athlete.
Danny, Abe and Fletcher follow Johnny.

“
Good luck, you two,” Abe
yells.

“
You too,” I
say.

Another capsule zooms in behind us, and the
young man with the huge red birthmark on the side of his face gets
out with four others. They fly by us, and start leaping from disk
to disk, landing effortlessly, like dancers. I wonder how the boy
with the birthmark managed to control his fear, remembering how he
was freaking out back at the UVC station. It doesn’t seem like
balance is an issue for him at all, so why was he so nervous? On
the tenth leap, however, the disk wobbles a little more than the
other, and that causes him to lose his footing and slide off the
disk.

I bring my hand to my forehead and gasp. I
don’t want to watch this, but I’m unable to tear my eyes away. At
the last second, his fingers clamp onto the edge and his legs
dangle beneath him. Then the inescapable happens: his hands slip
and he plummets toward the ground, shrieking.

“
No!” My voice echoes
across the chasm. His body shrinks the farther he falls, far beyond
what I thought he would, still not hitting the ground. Still
screaming. Still dropping. When his body crashes into the rocks,
the gorge is instantly quiet, like a prayer. I look up to see that
many participants have frozen where they stand and are peering down
at the fresh corpse. My eyes connect with a young man a few disks
ahead of the tenth. For a moment, his face twists in pain, and then
he pulls at his neckline and screams.

A friend? A brother?

This is not how I wanted to start this
phase—my heart pounding so hard I think it might burst. I need to
calm myself before I continue. Trying to balance with shaky hands
and knees will get me killed quicker than the boy with the
birthmark on his face.

Arthor takes my hand. It’s cold and clammy,
yet comforting beyond words. “We’ll be more careful.”

“
Any clue as to what the
shortcut might be?”

He shakes his head.

“
Did you see how that disk
seemed looser than the others?” I say.

He nods. “I think they’re all coiled
differently. Just in case we needed a little more challenge.” He
produces a noise that I think is supposed to be an attempted
laugh.

I have to get the falling boy’s screams out
of my head before I can start. I close my eyes to try and think of
something that might calm me and Gemma’s face appears. I hear her
laughter and before I know it, my cheeks are wet and warm. I
shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have! And where is she now?
Did Master Douglas throw her remains into the lake? Or maybe the
mass grave right outside of Culmination made for Laborers? I hear
her yelling for me to win this for her. Somehow her words give me
the strength I need. I open my wet eyes and press the heels of my
hands against them, catching my tears.

“
Ready?” Arthor
asks.

“
Yes. Let me go first.” I
force myself to focus on the disk in front of me instead of on the
plunging ravine below. The disk’s diameter is about the length of
my height—small, but not impossibly so. “I can do this.” Squeezing
my hands into fists, I bend my knees, push off the platform, and
thrust my legs forward. When I land, the disk wobbles, and knots
tie in my stomach. I crouch down quickly, pressing my hands onto
the glassy surface, so the swaying ceases. One down—how many to go?
Looking ahead, I can’t even see the end of the disks. Slow and
steady, I tell myself.

I bend my knees again and leap to the next
disk; it barely moves. I keep pressing forward, and by the eighth
disk, I feel like I have the hang of it. But before I hop onto the
tenth disk, I remember how it wobbled much more. I jump as lightly
as I can and when I land, the disk plunges a few feet down and
rebounds so quickly that I become airborne. Coming back down, I
crouch close to the disk. My palms are sweaty. Not good. The disks
are slippery enough as it is. I peer back and see Arthor jumping
from one to the next.

“
This one’s temperamental,”
I say.

He nods and gives me thumbs up.

I wish there was someone directly in front
of me so I could watch him, but the others are so far ahead I can’t
remember which ones drop and which ones don’t. I’m growing
concerned I won’t be in the top fifty, but I’m afraid that if I
speed up, I’ll get sloppy and lose my balance.

I continue on, and once in a while there are
a few more touchy disks like the tenth, but soon I pick up on the
best way to land whether the disk is firm or wobbly. As the day
progresses, it becomes increasingly hotter, and my thighs and the
bottoms of my feet start to burn. Yet the end is still nowhere in
sight.

“
Do the disks seem to be
farther apart?” Arthor yells to me.

“
Maybe a little.” I pause
to wipe the sweat off my brow, and automatically my gaze wanders
toward the bodies at the bottom. It’s too far to make out their
faces, but I hope it’s no one from Culmination. Suddenly, I hear a
clap of thunder. I look up, and in the distance I see dark clouds
that are headed in our direction.

“
We have to move faster,”
Arthor says.

“
We’re not going to make it
before the rain comes.”

I pick up my pace, even though I would
rather still go slow and steady. My legs are trembling now. Not
from being afraid, but because they’re tired from all the squatting
and stabilizing, and my mouth is dry. On the next disk I slip a
little and I let out a yelp.

“
You okay?” Arthor
asks.

“
Yes.” But I know I can’t
afford to make these kinds of mistakes.

After moving slowly again for some time, the
first raindrop taps my forehead. And then, another. And then, as if
by the push of a button, the heavens open. The rain soaks me in
just a few seconds. I slide my shoe across the surface of the disk.
It’s slippery—dangerously so. What do I do? Try one more disk and
see if I can manage to land without falling? If I wait too long,
I’ll never be in the top fifty percent, and though I don’t know
exactly for how long we’ve been going, I would estimate that we
have about half our time left.

I have to chance it.

“
I’m going to try,” I tell
Arthor who is one disk behind me.

“
No!”

“
If we wait, we’ll never
make it!” I yell.

“
Hold on.” His hands hit
his temples and rain drips off his short, red hair. “Let me jump to
you and if I slip, you can catch me.”

If he jumps to my disk and he slips, either
we will both fall together, or we can hold onto each other,
preventing us from falling. If I jump to the next disk and slip,
I’ll have no one to catch me. Arthor’s suggestion it better.
“Okay.”

“
Catch me if I
fall?”

“
If you fall, I fall,” I
say, reaching my fatigued arms out, ready to catch him.

“
On three,” he
says.

“
One…two…” He bends his
knees.” “Three!” He flings his arms and legs in front of him, but
just as he lands right next to me, not only does he slip, the disk
plummets toward the ground. My heart leaps into my throat. I grab
Arthor’s arms and open my mouth to scream, but not a single sound
comes out. Just when I think I’m going to pass out, the disk stops
mid-air, and Arthor goes skidding down the side of it. Still
cleaving onto him, I fall flat on my abdomen across the rounded
surface, and we end up hanging on either side of the disk—my nails
digging into his wet skin and his in mine.

“
I’m okay, you okay?” He’s
panting.

I manage to belt out a yes, but I’m losing
my grasp fast—the rain making his skin smooth and slick.

“
We have to climb up
symmetrically. Together. Balance it out.” His face contorts into a
pained expression. “I’ll swing my right leg up onto the top. You do
the same. On the count of three.”

On three, I kick my leg up—digging my heel
into it like I did on Devil’s Cliff. The disk wobbles a little.
“Pull my arms,” I say, and we come closer. From there we’re able to
drag ourselves up to a standing position. We cling onto each other
for a moment, afraid if we move, we’ll slip back off the disk. The
raindrops fall heavily on the top of my head.

“
We’re going to be
okay.”

I look at my hands and notice that my
fingers are still digging into his flesh, his blood beneath my
nails.

“
Sorry.” I slowly unclamp
my cold, cramped fingers, and any resolve I had to survive this
course feels like it’s being crushed in my chest.

“
Heidi, we’re fine.” He
touches my hair, but I slap it away.

I almost wish we had fallen so there would
be an end to this. “How can you say that? It’s still raining and we
don’t know how much further the disks go on!” I pause to sob,
knowing I’m not angry at him, only at my own fear. “And we’ll never
get back up to the disks now! We’ll stay here and then…”

He grabs my shoulders and shakes me gently.
“Heidi! Heidi! Just turn around.”

“
What?”

“
Turn around.” I look up at
him for a moment, his pale green eyes beaming, and glance in the
direction he’s pointing. There, right in front of us is a path. The
four-foot wide alleyway looks like it’s made of glass or
plastic—some type of transparent material. But with the rain
pummeling down over us, I can see the water pool around the edges.
Hadn’t we both gotten on the disk, we never would have seen it. Had
we not thought to work as a team, we would have struggled our way
forward until nightfall. And never made it. I remember Nicholas
talking about plateaus, and I’m curious if he actually knew about
this or if it was just a lucky guess.

“
The only problem is, that
the path is about five feet away,” I say.

“
And it could be a trap.”
Arthor rubs his palms to his face, removing the
raindrops.

It could be. “But how would it hold water if
it couldn’t hold us?”

“
True.”

“
We can jump together,” I
suggest.

His eyes grow determined. “Let’s do it.”

I instinctively take his hand and he
squeezes mine. I notice how remarkably safe I feel with him; he
doesn’t expect anything from me other than friendship. “On three
again?”

“
Yes. One…” Will there be a
firm foundation to land on? “…two.” My knees shake and I’m sucking
wind. “…three!”

With all my might, I push off from the disk.
Mid-air, and about halfway to the path, I don’t know if I’ll make
it. I let go of Arthor’s hand and thrust my legs forward. Landing
with my toes on the edge, I contract my abdomen and throw my arms
out in front of me, hoping that will make me fall forward. And it
does.

Once I find my balance, I squeal in delight
and give Arthor a high five. We embrace briefly, but know we don’t
have any time to waste. We jog down the road, passing participants
who have gotten stuck in the rain. Some of them point and yell at
us. Should I share my secret with them? It would only be fair. But
the instant I see Johnny hovering above, I decide not to tell
anyone how to get down here.

Chapter 20

After we have jogged for about two more
hours—passing all the contestants—the pathway takes us down to a
vast, concrete-paved area. Four long rows of small, white
spacecrafts are situated in front of us, and each ship has a number
on it and Newland’s flag.

“
President Volkov literally
meant out of this world.” Arthor’s mouth drops open.

“
You mean…” For some
reason, it hadn’t yet dawned on me that I would actually be going
into space. I don’t like it one bit.

There’s a sign in front of the spacecrafts
and I read it.

Memorize this password:

@w3v+04$*13nzZjiJ=?.:<6c4eigh802>1

Then get on a spacecraft.

“
This is awesome!” Arthor
says, smiling. “My own spaceship!”

“
Yeah, but did you read
this?” I point to the sign.

The grin on his face melts away as he reads.
Tracing the edges of the sign with his fingers, he says, “I wonder
what this password is for.”

“
I don’t even want to think
what we’ll need it for up there.” I look up into the sky.
“Everything’s life and death in these obstacles, so I hardly think
space will be any different.”

He nods.

I study the password for the next ten
minutes, wracking my brain—cramming—to try and remember the order
of the ridiculous amount of symbols. Being a prescription delivery
driver back home, I had to memorize quite a few codes with both
numbers, letters, and symbols, but nothing as long as this.