In the candlelight I can make out a dark material beneath our feet, even and smooth.
After we take a few steps forward, there’s a rapid flashing, like lightning, followed by a clicking sound. The space fills with harsh blue light, almost as though our very presence caused it to appear. I throw my hands up, cower.
There is no viselike grip on my neck.
No booming voices of the gods.
Just a faint, steady hum.
I look up. Sheets of scrap metal glow overhead with blue-white light, illuminating what is easily the largest room I have ever stood in. The walls are curved. The floor is slick and shiny. An emblem marks the center, some type of winged creature that is vaguely familiar. I’ve seen it in the General’s library, I realize. It marked some of the Old World tech he’d hoarded.
Areas to rest—seats and benches, tables and chairs—are spread throughout the room. “What is this place?” Reed asks behind me. I shake my head, uncertain, and we move forward, crossing the emblem on the floor and entering a hallway.
The first doorway we come to has Old World symbols—CENTRAL COMMAND—above the frame. Inside, there are rows of tables and chairs. Hundreds of small squares line the tables, each one marked with an Old World symbol. There are levers too, knobs. A strange silver thing shaped like a curved squash with a cord coming off one end. And standing at eye-level on the table, across from each chair, is a dark window. When I brush away the dust that has gathered on one of the surfaces, I can see my reflection in the frame.
There are more rooms off the main hall. A storage hold, stocked with boxes and labels I can’t read. A kitchen, though I can only reason this from the few plates and bowls left on the table. An outhouse that was certainly referred to as something else by the people who lived here, seeing as it’s very much inside. Bathing rooms, with a tub five times the size of the bucket I wash in at Dead River. Then bedrooms.
The first few we pass have just one bed per room, but the last one holds hundreds. Maybe thousands. They are stacked on top of one another, three high, with ladders to reach the upper mattresses. The air in the room is stagnant. It reminds me of being under the deck on Zuly’s tanker, only worse.
“Oh,” Harlie says.
I turn toward her and gasp, clamping a hand over my mouth.
There’s a body on the bed, swimming in clothes that are now too big for the bones that remain. Asher turns away from the sight, only to inhale sharply. There’s another pair of skeletons in the bed behind us. They are curled together, as if they died in an embrace.
“What is this place?” Reed asks again.
I glance at Asher. He looks as shocked as I feel. “Where’s the Verdant?” he asks.
“Here,” I murmur, turning in circles. “It was supposed to be here.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
We split up to search more thoroughly. Maybe this isn’t the Verdant, just a place on the way to it. Maybe there’s a map somewhere.
After Harlie and I search the massive sleeping room to no avail, she mentions needing a rest. I head to the first room alone—the one with the dark, dusty windows and strange tabletops. I can hear Asher and Reed across the hall, rummaging through gear in the storeroom, but I’m starting to fear that we might not find anything.
Don’t think it, not even for a second, I snap at myself. There has to be a map somewhere.
There has to, because if it’s not, we’re all dead.
We have maybe three days of water left, if we really try to stretch it. Our limited supplies weren’t going to be an issue because this was supposed to be the Verdant.
I collapse at one of the tables, exhausted. The seat is the softest thing I have ever sat in, plush, contoured to hold me. I nearly moan. If I’m going to die stranded here, at least I have this chair.
I hang my head forward, eyelids heavy. I’m thinking of Bay in the General’s nursery, and the rest of my pack, and how I’ve failed them all, when I suddenly doze off. My head lurches forward, hits the table. I shoot upright, rubbing my brow, and freeze.
The black window above the table now has white Old World symbols on it. I brush dust from the frame with my palm and stare at the strange shapes.
Code Red Protocol Enacted 127,385 days ago.
Touch any key to play back recorded logs.
I don’t have a clue what any of it means. I’m not even sure why it appeared. Maybe when my head hit the strange toggle on the table. I reach out and touch the one closest to me—a long, narrow one without markings.
The window flashes, and the symbols are gone, replaced with a view of exactly where I’m sitting, yet it’s not me in the chair, but a man with dark skin and haunted eyes. I yelp and jump to my feet. Twist around. It’s just me in the room.
I turn back toward the window, and he’s still there, rubbing the thick beard that covers his jaw. “I’m not really sure where to start,” he says, “so I’m just gonna come out with it: I’m stranded here.”
I must be dehydrated, on the verge of sun sickness. I grab my waterskin from my side, guzzle some down, splash a bit more on my face.
The man remains. “Hello?” I wave a hand at him, but his eyes never connect with mine. He’s looking toward me, but not at me. I take in the brilliance of the deep blue clothes he wears, tailored tighter than what makes sense for the wastes. There are decorative gold lines across his arms and a leather patch on his chest that holds more Old World symbols: GENERAL. It’s oddly familiar. It . . .
I lower myself into the chair, feeling sick.
The General at Bedrock had a patch like this, aged and worn, stitched into his floor-length robe. It looked just like this man’s.
“Asher!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “Reed! Get in here!”
“Things were fine at first,” the man says as their boots come pounding up the hall. “Eden was built with no issue. Mining and harvesting got under way. For fifteen months, things went smoothly. This rock was rich with harvestable fuel, just as our research said, and without a native species, we were taking all we could.”
Asher sinks into a chair beside me and shoots me a stricken look. Reed waves at the man like I did, dumbfounded at his lack of response.
“Then the geomagnetic storm hit. Scouting reports had claimed that the sun’s next active phase wouldn’t be for several hundred years. Our math was wrong, or the active cycle kicked off early. Whatever the case, we weren’t prepared. All our tech malfunctioned: GPS failed, radios went down, satellites began to drop out of orbit. Not a single compass worked, and the mag-rifles were completely worthless what with magnets powering the barrel rail.”
I glance at the boys. They look as confused as I am. I have no clue what this man is talking about.
“But the worst of it,” the man goes on, “were the workers. Their cerebral chips malfunctioned, and they snapped free. I don’t know if they could suddenly see all the ways they’d been mistreated and used, or if they simply saw a rock that they could colonize and make their own. Perhaps it was a little of both. But when they revolted . . .” The man blows out a breath. “Workers outnumber Federation guards a hundred to one on these ops—it’s not like brainwashed and chip-controlled workers typically need much oversight—and it was a massacre. They overran us at drill sites and water harvest points. Killed every Federal foreperson they could get their hands on, and used anything they could get their hands on to do it: wrenches, hammers, drill gear. It was brutal. They used the mag-rifles as clubs, and once they got to our rovers and the semi-autos stored in the trunks, well . . . Then it was easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel.