Ascending the Boneyard (15 page)

Industrial Technical High School.

Verified. But I'm feeling only a little calmer. I won't know for sure until I see the clock.

“We're going in,” I tell Haze.

He motions toward the slick glass-and-steel building next door, whose backlit sign also reads
INDUSTRIAL TECH.

“If you haven't noticed,” he says, “school's in session.”

“In a completely separate building.”

“
This
building is wedged between a fully occupied school and a busy highway, Tosh.”

“Where's your spirit of adventure?” I ask, scanning the perimeter for a point of entry.

“Where's your sense of reason?” he counters.

Haze doesn't seem to understand that sometimes in battle, it's necessary to take the full risk. To go max red, if need be. But why would he? I've never told him how any of this works.

“We need to stop a minute and think this through,” he says.

“C'mon, Haze. When did you turn into a wuss?”

“When did
you
turn into Roundhouse?”

My eyebrows push up over the tops of the yellow goggles. I'd no more expect the word “Roundhouse” to come out of him than words like “links” or “Boneyard.” Besides, Haze doesn't even own a TV. In fact, the only time he ever watches TV is at my house, and then he usually makes me put on the news or, worse yet, the History Channel.

I decide to test him.

“I bet Roundhouse would phone in a bomb threat or something,” I say. “Get the school evacuated, create a massive diversion; and while everyone's attention is focused on protecting their new state-of-the-art investment, we could slip in here completely unnoticed and do what we need to do.”

I fully expect him to ask what it is we need to do. But he doesn't.

Instead his mouth gapes open. “You're not thinking about calling in a bomb threat, are you?”

The panic in his voice wavers in the air between us as alarm bells start going off for real over at the glass-and-steel version of I-Tech.

His head snaps in my direction.

“Phone's totally in my pocket,” I say, lifting up both hands so he can see them.

He stares me down like he doesn't believe me, but really I'm just as surprised as he is.

“Dammit, Tosh—”

“I swear. I had nothing to do with it.”

His eyes narrow at me.

“I swear to
God
,” I add, because it's the only leg I have to stand on. “I didn't do anything.”

Even so, all the little techies start rushing obediently through the glassed-in hallways and bleeding out the see-through doors of the überswanky Industrial Tech High School, and I watch with relief as they're ushered around to the far side of the building.

The other side.
Of course.
Our opening's around the back.

In which case, we don't even need a diversion, I tell myself, as we make our way around the fortress. The doors are bricked up, but I know there's a way in. No chance that raiders have left a place like this alone. Besides, it's too trashed for there not to be a hidden entrance somewhere.

Haze's muffled footsteps fall in behind mine like we're a couple of covert ops.

“You'd better be right about this,” he says.

I'm thinking the same thing, but it would probably freak him out if I said so.

Behind the building, I scout for anything that screams on-ramp: door, window, knocked-out bricks. I finally spot it—there, closer to the end than the middle, is a crawl space barely big enough for either of us to fit through. A metal grate that's meant to cover the opening has been pried away, leaving a gaping hole that's the obvious point of entry.

I swing my bag over my back, wedge through the opening and into a dark crawl space, trying not to think about what else might be lurking down here. This time, unlike in the subway, Haze doesn't bring up ten-pound rodents or foot-long cockroaches.

We reach the end of the crawlway, where the space opens up and light pours in from broken windows. As my eyes adjust, I see that it's high enough for us to stand all the way up.

The alarm bells from the new I-Tech that still pierce through the midday air are now dulled by the layers of brick and concrete surrounding us.

We make our way inside, pick silently through the chaos of dirt, peeling paint, scattered debris, and broken glass. The stench of panic and fear overpowers the cramped area, bleeds into the thick air around us, kicks my pulse into fight-or-flight alert.

Our footsteps echo flat and dull through the long hallways. I stop at each classroom door, scan the walls for the melted clock, continue through the gauntlet of abandoned rooms, overturned desks, charred Bunsen burners sitting out on lab tables, broken pencils, papers plastered to the floor, undisturbed layers of dust and silt covering everything in sight. Someone has scrawled
SAVE I-TECH
in blue spray paint across a row of lockers.

Every now and then, I peer out a window, catch a glimpse of the cc's down below as they scramble around the new school, looking for the source of the alarms. Is this the work of the commandos? Is this their way of making sure I find the clock? Because when I do, I hope they'll solidify the rest of the mission for me.

“So what's your fascination with that clock, anyway?” Haze wheezes behind me as I poke into room after room to quick survey the walls.

I wish I knew what to tell him as I stop in front of a random doorway, stare into the stripped-bare classroom—white paint peeling off the walls, study papers strewn across the floor, a broken fluorescent light dangling from the ceiling by a single wire.

But the desks . . .

The desks are frozen in time, arranged in rows that are precision straight in a space that's eerily tidy. I don't need to look to know it isn't here. Not in this near-perfectly preserved room.

I back away, unable to find the words to explain to Haze what my fascination with the clock is.

That it's because I can still hear it.

Because it hasn't stopped ticking since she left, that's why.

Because my survival bar is flashing “the end is near” in glowing green letters, and I don't know how much time I have or how long I get to make things right this time. To level, to unlock some of those savory weps from the expansion pack so I can do something right for once. To become Worthy.

Because what kind of supreme fail would I be if I couldn't undo what I've done?

The noise from the crowd outside begins its slow ascent, climbing the walls of the fortress, winding through the broken windowpanes until it drowns out even the Motor City pumping into my left ear. I turn, disoriented, dart to a window on the other side of the hallway, only to find myself looking into a courtyard instead of down onto the area between the two schools. The students are streaming over from their designated safe side.

Holy shit.
It's some kind of mob.

I start panic-dodging through one room after another. I don't even care which platoon it is at this point. I just want to find an exit so I can get downstairs and join this raid.

Haze follows close behind me.

“Tosh,” he calls out. “
Tosh.
What are you doing?”

His voice syncs to the lyrics of the Motor City tune pounding in my head as I scramble in and out of doorways, looking for an exit. There must be an exit—this is a school, for Christ's sake. Correction:
was
a school.

You like shows about construction, don'tcha, Dev?
The sound of my own voice reverbs inside my head as the picture flashes between Devin before the accident and Devin after.

Old I-Tech/new I-Tech.

Sometimes they put dynamite inside and blow the buildings up. You like that, right, Devin?

The hallway twists and bucks so violently around me, I have to stop in a doorway to steady myself. I slide my gaze up the far wall, lock sights on the clock.

The clock.

Hanging there, suspended in time at ten minutes to four.

The yellow goggles show in super-high-definition the way the outside casing is in pristine condition while the plate inside with the numbers printed on it has literally melted over the hands.

I tip my head, tighten my red-rimmed gaze.

Fire . . .

My palms smash against the goggle lenses. I clamp my eyes shut, but I can't block out the sight of the tunnel raiders pouring onto the abandoned highway, fully engulfed.

The heat of invisible flames coils around me, crackle-pops against my skin. The stench of burning flesh unbolts me from the spot, and I start shouting at Haze.

“Get 'em out of there! Get 'em out of there!”

But Haze just stands there, frozen in confusion, watching me scramble for an exit.

I don't blame him. He doesn't know the rules of the Boneyard because I never bothered to tell him. And now I don't have time. I need to get down there, join the platoon, save the raiders, reach Turk's lair. I have to fix this.

Haze blocks my path. “Tosh,” he says, his voice the softest, quietest thing in this abandoned building. “This isn't right. You're not right.”

Wisps of charred debris float past me, stick to the sweat film covering my face as I back away from him, as I spin around, try to get some traction down the hallway.

Just as I reach the stairwell, the alarm clock on my phone goes off, even though I don't remember setting it. But I stop anyway, pull up the screen. Neon-green numbers pulse the time at me.

Ten minutes to four.

I stumble down the stairs as a huge disturbance erupts from ground level. The hordes of raiders are swarming toward us, shouting, waving signs and banners with the same two words scrawled across them.

SAVE IT!

“They pulled their own alarm,” Haze says.

UpperWorld operatives,
I tell myself.
Inside job.

“They must've—”

He cuts his thought short.

Everything stops short, in fact: the sign waving, the marching, the cries of protest. Within seconds, the crowded space between both I-Tech schools has gone dead silent as a crane backs its way toward the mob.

A massive wrecking ball dangles from the top.

Seconds of absolute shock pass before the crowd catapults into a deafening shouting match with a handful of balding comb-overs in brown suits planted stalwart next to the crane. The cohorts reek of smugness and apathy, and even though there's only a handful of them, their mere presence incites the mob's rage.

The riled-up crowd pushes forward again, gains momentum as it circles the wrecking-ball crane.

The brown suits are twitchy, nervous, not to mention ridiculously outnumbered and seemingly unprepared for a confrontation of this magnitude. Undaunted, they launch their own attack against the protestors by shouting counterthreats into a megaphone.

“Hey, where's your sign, man?” someone says, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me into the flow of the crowd.

I stammer like an ass-nugget, fully incapable of articulating a single coherent thought. There goes my invitation to join the raid.

“Are you deaf?” the kid says, putting a death squeeze on my scrawny bicep.

I throw a panicked look over my shoulder, spot Haze scrambling to catch up with me.

“I said,
where's your sign?
” The dude is maybe a year older than me, tall and ripped, with buzzed, nearly white hair dyed royal blue. Tenth Warriors often raid in blue battle gear. Is this guy Supershooter? I don't remember him being this much of a dickweed.

“I didn't make one,” I say, trying not to stammer.

“No slackers allowed,” he says. “We all agreed.”

“I know, but dude, I'm here. I mean . . . I'm here, aren't I?”

He stares me down for a few seconds before letting me go with an unnecessary shove. It takes more than a few seconds for the blood flow to return to my arm.

“This is
important
, man,” he says, brandishing his kielbasa-sized finger at me, and before I can respond, he's swept into the crowd again.

I survey the posse, the echo of royal blue in jackets, hair dye, face paint. Even the signs are painted in blue lettering.

I have no idea how many times we've circled the building so far, only that my ears haven't rung this bad since I went to that Metallica concert with Cam Tyler and his wannabe rock-star dad back in eighth grade, and no one said a word about how friggin' loud it was going to be, and I spent the next three days nodding vaguely at people without the slightest clue what they were saying.

The crane inches its way toward the school, and the energy from the crowd is reaching critical mass—any idiot can see that shit's about to get all the way real down here.

“We need to get lost,” Haze hollers. He would think that, of course. He doesn't know. I should have told him how this thing worked a long time ago.

“We can't,” I shout back. “We need to be here.”

“Says who?”

Her note.

turn back time

“C'mon, Tosh. This isn't our fight, man.”

The crowd surges forward, matching the bullhorns volume for volume, pushing closer to the suits and the school and the wrecking ball. We start to clot in the space between the crane and the old building, and before long we're toe-to-toe with the brown-suited comb-overs. The crowd around me is shouting so violently that tiny drops of spit occasionally hit my cheek, and I try to inch closer to the edge just to get out of the line of fire. As I toe the periphery, I see Supershooter standing there, only now the group has fully coagulated and the crush keeps me from moving away from him. My best strategy is to pretend one of us isn't there.

In the midst of all the screaming, a nearby cluster of blue-festooned Tenth Warriors spins a hushed conspiracy to commandeer the bullhorn and take control of the situation. As I spin around to eavesdrop, I'm almost taken out by a protest sign that reads
THIS IS OUR FIGHT!