At length Callie said, “So after that—after they got you back and you recovered from your wounds—that’s when you started sensing the Trogs?”
He didn’t move.
And just when she’d decided he hadn’t heard her, or wasn’t going to answer, he said, “Yeah. And that’s the worst of it. Because it’s not them that scares me so much as me. Something inside me wakes up every time I’m near them. Something that wants to be with them.”
She frowned. “How could you want to be with them, knowing they’d torture you again?”
His gaze moved upward, toward the boiling, flickering clouds. A gust of wind shook the window in the dining nook, spattering it with rain.
“I think,” he said, “they made me pass through one of their fire curtains.”
She felt the blood leave her face and trickle down to an icy pool in her middle.
“It would explain what happened to my thumb,” he went on. “Maybe even why I can’t remember anything.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “If that’s what happened, they weren’t calling me this afternoon because they want to kill me. They want to finish the transformation. It’d be the ultimate revenge for all the trouble I’ve caused them—to make me one of them.” He grimaced at the clouds. “The kicker is, part of me wants to do it.”
Horror gripped her hard, churning acid in her stomach. “Oh, Pierce . . .”
“You forget how long I’ve been here.” He faced her, eyes blazing. “Five years. Five. I’ve been to every gate there is, walked all over the Outlands searching for a way out. I’ve watched my friends die one after the other, yet I’m still here, and I haven’t the vaguest idea why.
“Yes, I’m cynical. Hope is a temptress. And it hurts so much when it dies, after a while you learn not to let it in. At least as a mutant I’d be strong—one of the feared, instead of one of the always fearing.”
He held her gaze defiantly for a heartbeat, then stalked past her to his room, the first one in the hall opposite her own. The door closed behind him with a snick, and she was alone.
After a moment Callie let out her breath and sagged back on the couch.
Callie awoke to her own screams, and she lurched up, gasping in the darkness. It was just a nightmare. There were no mutants. And Pierce . . .
Was not one of them. Yet.
She closed her eyes and clenched her hands in the sheets. “Alex,” she whispered, “if you really meant what you said . . . don’t let that happen to him. If there’s anything,
anything
. . .”
She sighed and the passion waned. “What am I doing? You don’t care.”
Maybe that was their intent—to see what it took to get humans to turn themselves into monsters. The thought made her so uncomfortable she didn’t pursue it. Besides, she was thirsty. Mexican food always did that to her. It had probably brought on the dream as well.
A thin band of blue light ran horizontally along the kitchen walls, providing faint illumination, and when she stepped onto the tiled floor, the main lights kicked on. She keyed in her request and was removing her glass from the dispenser when the screams started in Pierce’s room—no surprise, considering what the day had brought. Sliding onto a stool, she rested her bare feet on the rung and stared at the tiled counter.
How could he want to be a Trog? No matter how frustrated, how dejected, how defeated one might feel, there was no reason to stoop to that. It horrified, perplexed, and frightened her. How many times could they have put him through the curtain in three weeks? How far would he be from transformation? Did it happen slowly, or all at once? If they came tomorrow, could she stop him from going with them?
Mercifully, the tortured cries cut off. Were they worse tonight, or was it her imagination?
The storm had exhausted itself while she slept, and in the silence she heard a thump. Then Pierce’s door opened, and he entered the kitchen. He stopped when he saw her, blinking in the bright light as if trying to remember who she was. He wore only pajama bottoms, his lean, well-muscled torso crisscrossed with shiny white scars.
Callie set down her glass. “Are you all right?”
Her voice jarred him fully awake. Recognition lit his eyes, and the tension bled out of him. Exhaling deeply, he shoved a hand through his tousled hair. “Bad dream.”
He shuffled to the dispenser for his own glass of water, and Callie couldn’t keep her eyes off him. His back was covered with scars, too.
Pierce drank the water in one long gulp, got a refill, and drank some more. Halfway through he stopped, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and met her gaze. “What’s the matter?”
She studied her glass, that inexplicable lump once again pressing against her throat. “Nothing.”
He came around the counter and slid onto the stool beside her. She felt his eyes on her face.
“It’s nothing,” she said again.
Somewhere in the building, something whirred and clicked.
“It’s just—I don’t know.” She forced a laugh. “Just the strain of it all, I guess.” But she couldn’t meet his eyes. She kept seeing the Trog version of him from her dream.
He sighed. “I shouldn’t have told you that stuff. It wasn’t your prob—”
“I’m glad you did. Now I know what you’re going through.” She drew a steadying breath and made herself smile. “Maybe I can help.”
“
No!
Whatever happens, you stay on that road. If I walk off, just let me go.”
“I know I couldn’t stop you. I just mean—” Her voice betrayed her, choking into silence.
He stared at her, his good eye wide, his face pale around the bruises.
Sudden tears blurred her vision. Angrily she wiped them away, seized her glass, and moved around the bar. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everything, I guess. You, Garth, nearly getting killed. I’m probably in dire need of sleep, and here I am wasting the night away.”
Desperate to stem the flow of her babbling, she gulped down the rest of her water, then set the glass on the counter. He watched her soberly. “See you tomorrow,” she said, and fled to her room.
Later, when the edge of her mortification had worn off, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, contemplating what they faced tomorrow. The Trogs would surely come. How could she just let him go to them?
“If we can get to Manderia,” she said to the room. “If we can just make it that far . . .”
When she awoke in the morning, the design by the door had returned. With a yawn, she ignored it and limped into the bathroom, wincing with every step. Her body ached, and her face—scratched, bruised, one cheek dark with scabbing—looked almost as bad as Pierce’s.
As she went about her business, she noticed the crystal stylus on the counter where she’d set it when she put her clothes in the laundry bin. She’d thought once it might be a key. Now as she picked it up, a wave of goose bumps washed over her.
Seconds later she was back in the bedroom, facing the mysterious design. Breath held, she aligned the rod with the dot amidst the circles. The circumferences were a perfect match, and a current leapt through thumb and finger where they held the pad. Gently she pushed. The rod’s end sank into the wall.
She opened the bedroom door and yelled for Pierce, who was in the kitchen conjuring wonderful breakfast smells. He came warily into her room. When half the rod’s length had vanished into the wall, the three circles blazed white.
“Do you have the vaguest idea what you’re doing?” he murmured.
“One of the five rules at the beginning of the manual said that ASBs would supply all our additional needs. Later, I remember reading about Auxiliary Supply Boxes. But since we never came across any boxes in our travels cross-country, I forgot about them. The manual said they were marked with an identifying sign, and you had to have a key to open them.” She pushed the rod all the way home. As the key’s grip pads touched the wall, a glowing rectangle appeared around it.
“Try turning it,” Pierce suggested.
She did, drawing the circles inward. Guessing at the final configuration, she adjusted them until each joined with the other two, the key port at dead center. Nothing happened. Then, just as she’d concluded she was wrong after all, the insignia flared, the front of the box vanished, and the key fell to the floor.
Eagerly they peered into the exposed niche.
“A comb?” Pierce squeaked as Callie pulled it out.
“Well, I did need one.” It was carved of ivory, a tracery of green vines running along the top and handle, the large tines perfect for her fine, thick hair.
“Talk about anticlimactic,” he said, heading back to the kitchen.
She turned the comb in her fingers, not nearly as disappointed as he. This was a little thing, perhaps, yet its very insignificance impressed her, like the small touches of a gracious host—the rose on the nightstand, the chocolate on the pillow.
Alex’s parting words sprang to memory.
“We intend this for your
benefit. Don’t let fear and stubbornness keep you from finding something
better.”
If she had accepted his orientation and stayed on the road, she might have reached a Safehaven that first night. Might have had this comb weeks ago. Might be home now.
As she worked the tines through her hair, she realized the box was still open. Was there more? Yes: a second key. When she removed it, the box disappeared.
The smell of bacon drew her to the kitchen, where Pierce sat at the counter eating eggs, pancakes, and sausage. She laid the extra key beside him. “This was in there, too.”
He picked it up. “It’s just like yours.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you need a second one?” He set it down and resumed eating.
“Maybe it’s for you.” Callie keyed in her breakfast order.
“There wasn’t a box in my room. Nor anywhere else I’ve seen.”
“The boxes seem to come and go. It might be there now.”
“If it is, I’m not playing. I don’t like their little games.”
“Maybe it’s not a game. Maybe they’re just trying to be helpful.”
He snorted and returned to his eggs.
A buzzer announced the arrival of Callie’s Belgian waffles and syrup. She settled at the counter opposite him, and they ate in silence, the tension deepening between them. Every bite brought them closer to leaving, closer to their rendezvous with the Trogs.
Finally Pierce’s stool stuttered across the tile as he got up and took his dishes to the receptacle. “You gonna be ready soon?” he asked.
“I’d like to comb out my hair.”
He hesitated, watching her. She continued to eat in slow, deliberate bites.
“It’s a long walk,” he said. “The earlier we get started, the better.” He went outside.
Too soon her plate was empty, and she retired to her room to work on her hair. Once during that time she heard him come in and go out again, but he didn’t call for her, didn’t say anything at all.
At length she finished, and there was nothing left but to get ready to leave. The wonder kitchen had provided a sack lunch—sandwiches, fruit, Snak-Paks, and pouched juice drinks all packed in a carrying bag and delivered to the service window at the touch of a finger. When Callie set the bag on the counter, she noticed the key she’d left for Pierce was gone. As she keyed in her request for a second lunch, he appeared in the hall leading from the breezeway, his face flushed.
“You won’t
believe
what I just discovered.” His voice was soft, almost reverent.
He led her to the people-sized door in the side of the building they had puzzled over yesterday. Though the door remained closed, the significance of the design gleaming in the wall beside it struck her like a blow. When Pierce inserted his key and aligned the circles, the door slid open, revealing a rectangle of shadow. Uneasily she stepped into the oily scent of machinery and was all but blinded as lights flared on overhead. Then, blinking in the brightness, she gasped. It
was
a garage. And it held ten small bubble-windshielded cars, each accommodating maybe four riders. On the side of the vehicle nearest them, the three-circle design invited her key, which opened the door. A pleasant voice bade her get in.
“We’ll make Manderia by nightfall,” she murmured.
“Yup.”
When she returned with the lunches, Pierce was already in the car. As she climbed in beside him, he slid his key into the dash slot, igniting an array of red lights. Following the voice’s instructions, they fastened their seat belts and closed the doors. Then the car vented itself with a hiss, the red lights vanished, and they jolted forward. As the garage’s rollback door lifted before them, they glided into the courtyard.
“There’s no steering wheel,” Pierce noted as they circled the buildings. “No brake pedal, either.”
“Maybe we don’t need them.”
“I suppose we could always pull out the key.” He peered under the dashboard, then straightened. “You know, I’ve seen cars like this before. I just assumed some benefactor had provided them.”
“Some Benefactor did provide them.”
“I mean a phony one. You’d think there’d be more of them—cars, that is.”
As they turned onto the main road Pierce suddenly twisted around to stare out the back window. And when Callie saw the four figures walking up the road, she almost panicked. Then reason asserted itself. Trogs could not walk on the roads. Besides, this bedraggled foursome had a familiar look about them.
She squinted into the sunlight, wishing for the thousandth time that she had not lost her glasses. “Is that Whit?”
“Yeah.” Pierce pulled the key from its slot. The car slowed and sank to a stop.
They popped open the doors and got out as the foursome—Row-ena, LaTeisha, John and Whit—approached, heads down. Muddy, bruised and blood streaked, they appeared exhausted. Makeshift bandages wrapped Whit’s thigh and LaTeisha’s arm.
Ten yards away John glanced up and stopped, his jaw dropping open. One by one the others followed suit.
John recovered first. “How’d you get out of Hardluck?” he cried, hurrying toward them. “We thought you were dead.”
Pierce and Callie exchanged a glance. “Hardluck?” Callie said.
“Garth told us you were afraid to cross the bridge,” LaTeisha said, staring at Callie. “Said that you’d had a breakdown and were blubbering at the side of the road.”