Doomed (22 page)

Not that he looks much like a prep now. I think back to what he looked like yesterday in class, compare it to today. His cheek is still bruised from the crash; the huge gash from the gas-station fight has crusted over but I’m afraid it will also scar. And now all these wounds, all this pain. I bet he wishes he’d never answered his door yesterday. God knows, I would in his place.

“I don’t think this needs stitches,” I tell Theo as I clean his hand, being as gentle as possible. My voice sounds strange, husky, but I can’t do anything about the lump in my throat. I suspect it’s not going away any time soon.

“Good.” This time when our eyes meet, his aren’t cold or distant. I smile a little and he smiles back, at least until I pour peroxide down the long, jagged scratches that run the length of his right side.

“Really?” he demands, his voice hoarse from the pain. “Was that actually necessary?”

“Don’t be a baby.” I want to give him sympathy but know enough not to. Theo isn’t the kind who takes well to people feeling bad for him.

“I’ll remember this the next time you have an open, bleeding wound.”

“Hold on to that thought,” I say as I rub gauze along the edge of the widest scratch, making sure it’s clean. “At the rate we’re going, it’ll probably be tomorrow.”

“No doubt.” He looks less than gleeful at the prospect.

“Are there any more?” I ask, scooting closer to look at his back. His tan, sculpted, beautifully muscled back. As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I have the urge to scrub my brain out with bleach. The last thing I need to be thinking about right now is Theo’s muscles.

“There’s a scratch on my hip,” he says, looking out the window over my shoulder. “And a couple of bites on the back of my thigh. But I can get them.”

“Oh, really? I’d like to see that. Drop your pants, buddy.” I work hard to sound more nonchalant than I feel.

Theo grins. “If you insist.” He fumbles with his belt buckle, the bandage on his right hand making him clumsy where he never has been before. At least I think it’s the bandage, as I’m suddenly feeling a little clumsy myself.

Eli swerves off the highway into a secluded rest stop, brings the van to a screeching halt. A second later he appears between the two front seats, his face twisted into a snarl. “Give me the damn peroxide. I’ll do it while you drive.”

Except I don’t drive anywhere. We’re about an hour away from Endeavor Farms, and if anyone from there was going to catch us, they probably would have already. Besides, driving around out here wasting gas without knowing where we’re going seems like a really crappy idea. So, instead, I sit on the hood of the van, computer on my lap, while Eli takes care of the bites on Theo’s leg.

I’m not sure which one of them is more pissed off and miserable about it. Theo, probably, since Eli seems to be going out of his way to be a little rough with the cleaning.

I lean back against the windshield and look up at the stars in the sky. It’s a clear night and the sky is filled with
the small twinkling lights. I don’t usually get to see them this well because most times when I’m outside in the dark, I make sure I’m surrounded by lamps.

But out here too much light would call attention to us. Plus, there’s something oddly comforting about listening to Eli and Theo bicker in the back of the van. Usually, it’s just exhausting, but tonight the savagery of their relationship has been replaced with a much more mellow vibe. I don’t know why, but I’m grateful for the reprieve.

“You look deep in thought,” Eli says when he climbs out of the van a few minutes later.

“Just stargazing.”

He levers himself onto the hood next to me, settles down to stare up at the sky, too. “What are we looking at?”

“Where’s Theo?” I glance into the van, realize the light went out when Eli closed the door. I wait for the familiar alarm to overtake me, but it doesn’t. With Eli next to me and Theo close by, these moments in the dark don’t seem so bad.

“Taking a much-needed nap. We figured we’d hang here for a while, play the game. Decide what we’re supposed to do next.”

Exactly what I’d been thinking before I was seduced by the constellations. “See that weird-shaped vee up there?” I tell him, pointing at the very top of the sky and tracing the shape.

“Is that Pandora?”

I laugh. “No. My namesake caused entirely too much destruction to have a constellation named after her. That’s Andromeda.”

“Ah, the princess who was to be sacrificed to the Cracken.”

“You really do know your Greek myths.”

“I know
Clash of the Titans
. I must have watched it a million times when I was little.”

“Who hasn’t? The old one, with the terrible special effects and Harry Hamlin as Perseus, right?”

“Is there another one?”

I start to tell him about the remake before I realize he’s joking. “So who was your favorite character in the movie?” I ask instead.

“I don’t know. I’ve never really been a Greek-god kind of person. I was always more about the Titans, which is why my mom gave me the movie to watch in the first place. She didn’t realize it was a loose interpretation of the word ‘Titan.’ ”

“How can you like the Titans? Cronus isn’t exactly a nice guy.”

“Cronus, no. But the rest of them weren’t so bad. Especially Gaia.”

A gust of wind blows by and I shiver—November in North Texas is a lot colder than it is in Austin. Eli scoots closer, puts an arm around me to warm me up. I think about shifting away but don’t. The truth is, I kind of like the way it feels to be held.

“Do you see that constellation up there?” I point to the very bottom of the sky and trace my way up through lots of angles and turns. “That’s my favorite. It’s Eridanus the River. There’s no huge story about it, no major myth, just the belief that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians wouldn’t have
life without it. We can’t actually see the whole thing from where we are—we need to be south of the Equator if we want to see Achernar. It’s the brightest star and also the southernmost tip.”

I wait for Eli to comment, but he doesn’t say anything. When I turn to look at him, I realize it’s because he’s fallen asleep.

I think about waking him, sending him inside the van. But where’s he going to sleep, with Theo already wedged into the only available spaces? The hood of the van is as good as one of the passenger seats, I figure.

Besides, the company’s nice. I’m as exhausted as he is, but my brain is going too fast to even contemplate sleep. Snuggling a little deeper into Eli’s embrace, I flip open my laptop.

If Theo’s Internet bridge has held up, it’s time for level two.

This time, the game drops me in the middle of nowhere. Which isn’t exactly accurate—there are a few gas stations around, a diner, and a couple of stores—but it might as well be nowhere, since I have no idea where I am. I try looking up, like I did back in Austin, but all I see is a wide black sky dotted with stars. A sky that, now that I think about it, looks remarkably like the one I’ve just spent the last hour staring at in real life.

I must still be in Texas, then, or somewhere close, though I don’t know how I got here. Leveled up to it, I guess. Whatever else he’s done, my dad sure has put a lot of time and thought into his version of Pandora’s Box.

I start walking—what else am I supposed to do out here?—but try to keep an eye out for whatever is going to attack me. I know something’s coming, because it always does—fight first, task second. It’s the way the game has always been set up.

It doesn’t take very long for me to realize that other players have beat me here. I don’t know how, since I can’t imagine anyone else managed to guess “pomegranate,” but as I step over a few dead bodies and weave my way through the crowds that have gathered, I realize I’ve seen some of these people before: Lilia628, Violet41, Master97. They were with me in the fields, and with me still when I raced against time and a bunch of vicious dogs in an attempt to make it to this level.

Which means, somehow, I leveled them up with me. Which is weird, but kind of cool. At least I’m not alone, trying to figure this out all on my own. Part of me wonders if that’s what my father intended all along. He set me on this crazy, destructive mission, but at least he hadn’t planned on my going it alone—it’s not like he could have known about Eli and Theo in advance.

But, though I like not being alone, I have to admit, I’m not crazy about the way everyone is crowding around me, jockeying for position. Following me like I’m the leader when I really don’t have a clue what it is I’m supposed to be doing.

IMs keep popping up at the bottom of my screen, though I ignore them as I continue walking. But then I come across a large group of people gathered around a big rock. One is bleeding heavily, and the others are sharpening sticks. Preparing for battle the best way they can—which is extremely limited in this brave new world.

In the old Pandora’s Box I had wealth and weapons and a pretty decent fighting strength. Here, in this version, all I have are the clothes on my back and the people around me.
Though, when I look at my strength in the game, I realize I’ve outstripped everyone else by nearly fifty thousand points. I’m not sure why, but I’d guess it’s because I’m the one who entered the AR gate password.

I decide to IM one of the men sharpening weapons. He’s an older guy, dressed in a suit, and he’s definitely the leader of their little pack. His user name is Roger919.

There’s silence for a couple of minutes, but then he pings me back.

That makes my stomach hurt.

I glance around, looking for the huge creatures that are Gaia’s children. So far, I don’t see anything.

We IM back and forth a little more, him giving me whatever pointers he has—and one of his sharpened sticks. It seems like a pretty pathetic weapon against a couple of giants, but I’ll take what I can get. Besides, I’m just trying to get the lay of the land. I won’t actually do any fighting until Eli or Theo is with me. The last thing I want to do is die because I decided to take the game on without their help. Now is definitely not the time to be overconfident in my gaming skills.

We start walking again. Past the last gas station and out onto the long, lonely stretch of highway that looks remarkably like the one I’m currently parked along. At least until we get to the desert castle. It comes out of nowhere, a huge, towering citadel lit up in all directions by purplish-red lights. Instead of turrets it has pipes that interconnect in fascinating patterns. It’s beautiful and eerie and every instinct I have is screaming that the place is bad news and I need to get the hell away from here.

Of course, that’s why I have to go in. If my dad has the giants hidden anywhere out here, this would be the place. It’s the only structure I’ve seen so far that would be big enough.

Besides, now that I’m seeing the whole thing, I understand one of the pictures my father put on the blog. It was the three of us—my mom, my dad, and me—in front of one of the strange purplish-red lights. I’m in a stroller between them, and my mom is smiling in a way I haven’t seen from her in far too long. My dad, however, looks miserable.

Which could account for the ominous feeling that blankets the entire place and presses down on me as I walk through it. Whatever it is, my dad doesn’t like it.

As I get closer, I see a sign that reads
ANDERSON NATURAL GAS CORPORATION
. Of course. No wonder my mom had been smiling. Working for Anderson was her first big job as a corporate attorney. I can’t help wondering what it says about her—and them—that my dad has programmed the place into the game as a source of danger.

Ignoring the dread that wells up in me, I clutch my stick and look around for possible escape routes. If I end up running into the giants in their den—or their factory, as luck might have it—I need to make sure I can get away quickly until my backup arrives.

The factory is four stories high, with outdoor walkways and railings. If bad comes to worse, I guess I can jump—and hope I don’t break every bone in my body.

Finally, I say to hell with it and start running. If I’m going to get flattened by a huge woman-eating monster, I might as well get it over with.

I make it through the gates and up the main walk before someone falls in beside me. I don’t pay much attention to him at first, but when he bumps against me, I burst out laughing. I’m even less alone than I thought. Theo is with me.

Leaning down to peer in the window of the van, I see him sitting cross-legged, his tablet on his lap as he moves his avatar along with mine. When he catches me looking, he slides open the door.

“I thought you were sleeping.”

“Sleep is overrated,” he says. “Ready to do this thing?”

“Why not? I’m all about kicking some giant ass.”

He laughs, and suddenly I feel a million times better, like I’ve actually got a shot at this.

“I see you’ve picked up some friends.”

I glance back at Roger, who also appears pretty happy to see Theo. “Looks that way.”

A deafening roar rips through the eerie mood music, and we look up to see two giants, complete with bows and arrows, standing on the fourth-story walkway. They’re bellowing for all they’re worth, and I know that this is it, even if the bottom of my stomach has just dropped down to somewhere in South America.

“Want a boost?” Theo asks.

“I got it,” I say, and then I hit Shift+J and jump about ten feet in the air. I catch the edge of the railing, pull myself up, only to find Theo already standing there, waiting for me.