She turned toward the rising sun and headed toward it, a determined spring in her step.
* * *
The splinter’s sting ripped through Lincoln’s cheek as he woke with a start. His fingers caught the stout sliver of wood now embedded in his skin, but it was the cold wood underneath his other hand that shocked him fully into consciousness. He squinted in the dim light and shivered.
He sat bolt upright as his eyes scanned the room.
A room?
Torn lace curtains framed the source of the dim light—a window smeared with grime and dust. A solid mahogany desk sat against the wall, behind it an office chair of tubular steel and cracked burgundy leather. Empty shelves laced with cobwebs filled a corner, while a pin board spanned the wall’s length, covered with paper held up by a constellation of gold and silver thumbtacks.
Lincoln rubbed his eyes as he spun full circle.
He was in a room?
He staggered to the window and pressed his face against it, his breath fogging the glass. The ground outside was covered in dark gravel before it ended suddenly. The land beyond was soft pink and red, a country waking and shaking off the night. Between the two extremes of color, a large sign of faded and chipped black letters on rust-spotted white steel proclaimed he was at Curdimurka Crossing. Next to it stood an unblinking red light encircled in black, with steel cables running down the length of its tall post. A railway signal.
Lincoln shook his head as he took in his surroundings. The platform’s dark gravel extended in both directions. Next to the window was a bench, its dark-green paint peeling.
He was at a railway station, but how did he get here? And where was here?
Next to the window, a large door with thick, streaked, dark-green paint led outside. He leaned on the handle, firm and unyielding. He jiggled it—at first gently, then with a frustrated jerk. It wasn’t budging.
The room contained two more doors. The first opened to a tiny room furnished with royal blue-and-white porcelain, a rust-stained washbasin, and a curtainless shower, steel loops hanging from a rusted railing. High above the shower, light streamed in through a tiny window encrusted with red dust.
Lincoln went to the basin and splashed chilled water onto his face, trying to wake up. Trying to force his brain to work. He swilled a mouthful of water and spat it into the sink. Stale. He stood back and stared into his own bloodshot eyes. What was going on?
A slow smile crept across his face. Despite Eddie’s protestations, they were doing this self-discovery thing after all. Eliza had been granted her wish, and they needed to escape this room to prove themselves.
Eliza.
Lincoln gritted his teeth. He would escape from his room before she escaped hers, and he would be waiting casually outside her door while she staggered out. Then they’d resume their conversation from the night before.
He reemerged into the main room—the office of a stationmaster—and he grinned at the cornices at cameras that would surely be capturing his every move and frustration. He bowed theatrically. “Well done, everyone! I’m not sure how you got me here, but kudos on the drama.”
Lincoln cracked his knuckles as he surveyed the room, looking for the easiest route of escape. The second door across the room gave in easily and opened to a waiting room—two rows of cracked, dusty leather seats, the elegant curve of empty mahogany coatracks, and a wooden brochure stand, bereft of paper. To his right a dozen metal lockers revealed part of their secrets, half the doors swung open. It was impressive—they’d really paid attention to detail.
Lincoln stood perfectly still in the center of the room, straining every fiber within him to hear the desperate shushing to keep the secret alive and the game afoot.
Silence.
It was time to shine, and it came with an added point to prove. Lincoln closed his eyes and rolled his neck. He strode back to the office and inspected the keyhole. It took a large key—he imagined it to be brass and with ornate metalwork—and it was in here. Somewhere.
He strode to the desk and pulled out a drawer, which screeched wood-on-wood but revealed nothing. Each drawer remained tight-lipped to a solution, except one unwilling to open. He slid his fingernails along the drawer’s edge, but it was jammed shut. Something to come back to. He spun to the shelves, sweeping away cobwebs but finding nothing.
Lincoln charged into the waiting room, crawling across the wooden floorboards as he checked under the wooden-slatted seats, before he threw open the locker doors.
Nothing.
He raced back to the stationmaster’s office. At the foot of the window sat two brass handles, their centers shiny with wear. He hooked his fingers under both, the brass cold to his touch. He lifted sharply and almost pulled his shoulders from their sockets. The window was unmoved.
Where would they hide the key? None of the floorboards were loose and there were no rugs under which it could hide.
The pin board. The overlapping papers of fading color fluttered at his approach. He moved his way down the wall. Train timetables, Curdimurka Crossing station circled on each of them. He lifted them, looking for a hidden key, but found only cork. Formal government letters and handwritten notes. Detailed props to this theatrical facade, but no key.
Lincoln stroked his chin as he evaluated his options. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Eddie had said that a journey of discovery never was.
He looked back at the desk and its unyielding drawer.
He only needed to find a way to open it. He was sure it held the key.
* * *
The sibilant hiss dipped beneath the surface of Bree’s light sleep and dragged up her consciousness with sharp fingertips. She slow-blinked herself awake. A hissing? What on earth was she dreaming about? The canvas around her feet crinkled, a rustling at the end of her swag, as terror coursed through her veins. The canvas dented above her toes. She wasn’t dreaming.
The sweat beaded and ran down her temples in the dank, claustrophobic air of her sleeping quarters. She reeled in her panicked call to the others that would alarm this . . . She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Snake. That would kill her in an instant if she made the slightest move.
Another soft hiss jerked her reflexes into action and she kicked out. The canvas popped, and the hissing stopped. Adrenaline replaced dread. She had to get out, and she only had a few seconds before the snake returned.
“Eddie! Sloaney!” Bree forced a flatness into her voice that belied her tremoring nerves. “Lincoln!”
No response, not even a whisper of wind.
“Lize?”
Nothing but cold silence.
“Okay, Breezy, you have to do this.” She corralled her shallow breaths into order and forced them to sound off. “One.” She clicked the zipper slowly open, one eye out for danger above. It was darker than the first morning. Colder too.
“Two.” She gripped the zipper tight and pulled the canvas taut.
“Three!” She ripped the zipper open and jumped out of her swag, her ankles twisting on shifting pebbles. She spun full circle, tottering on unsteady feet as they sought purchase in a dry riverbed. In an instant the snake was forgotten. The stony floor was dotted with dry grass and clouds of insects buzzing around them. She was hemmed in by sheer red-and-ochre walls sliced from rock that stretched two hundred feet high, leaving a gap ten feet wide. The wall behind her was smooth, the one in front scored with diagonal scratches that ascended the rock, as if the passing of millennia here had not been gentle.