Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (40 page)

I stand, lurch forward, grab a handful of the criminal’s hair, yank back his head, and draw the blade of the nail file across his throat, tearing open the skin. Blood gushes from the wound, pooling around my feet. The criminal gags and collapses to his knees.

“Good Lord,” I gasp, bringing a hand to my mouth, watching the life drain from his eyes. “What have I done?”

“What you had to.” Urlick draws in a badly needed breath. “Now come on,” Urlick crawls to me, clawing his way to a stand. “Let’s get out of here before the one you stuck with the dart comes back.” He scoops up a journal that’s fallen from his pack. His face morphs into a blur.

“Eyelet?” He looks at me. “What is it?”

The forest floor spins. Trees turn themselves on end. I reach up to swipe my brow and my arm falls away.

“Eyelet!”

I melt backward into Urlick’s arms. “I can’t move,” I say.

Grass prickles against my cheeks, replacing the warmth of his skin. Treetops swim above me. Perhaps the silver is rising again, or perhaps it’s already risen. I’m shaking so badly it’s hard to tell. My head feels stuffed with cotton and it hurts to breathe. Yet I smell no burning bread.

The Vapours. It must be the Vapours. The silver doesn’t sting.

“Eyelet!” Urlick falls to his knees beside me. “Eyelet, can you hear me?” He presses his mouth to my lips. “Breathe!” he shouts. His voice sounds muffled, distant. His face is a whirlwind of spiraling features funneling away from me.

I gasp and my lungs seize, stilled by the sharp, breath-stealing stench.

“Come on, Eyelet, breathe for me,
please.
” Urlick presses his cool lips to mine again and again. Something canvas falls over my face. “Breathe!
Blast it!
Breathe!” I hear him say.

I’m trying, Urlick. Honest, I’m trying.

“Again!” he shouts. “And again!” He pounds my chest. I wince under the pain.

“Concentrate!” he shouts.

I suck in a breath. It burns. I suck in another. Slowly the black veil begins to lift from my eyes, the stinging pressure lifts from my chest—until at last Urlick’s face appears again before me, that glorious chalky white skin of his, those sweet mulberry lips. He stares at me through eyes as pink as cotton candy.

“Hi,” I say, pushing the mask from my face.

“Hi, yourself.” He grins, brushing a dead leaf from my cheek. “You just scared the
shite
out of me. You know that, right?”

“Good. You’ll be lighter to travel then.”

He grins. He whisks me up into his arms and tosses me over his back. “I wish I could say the same for you.”

I slap him, and break out into another coughing fit. Urlick glances back at me, worried. “Come on,” he launches forward, adjusting me on his shoulder. ”Best get you to the Core, before anything else happens.”

F
orty six

Urlick

I race toward the Core—or at least where I think the Core is supposed to be—carrying Eyelet on my back, weaving through heavy, rolling fog and a forest of half-dead trees. I stop only to buddy-breathe air from the gasmask from time to time. Eyelet is fading fast.

I’m frantic to find the pathway leading to the door. It’s made of white stones, I remember, white stones. It doesn’t seem to be here anywhere. I circle around then double back. Nothing seems to be here.

I stop, heave in a breath, and lay Eyelet gently in the soft grasses at the edge of the path, up against the side of the rock for cover. I pull out the gasmask and secure it over her face, rummaging desperately through Eyelet’s pack for the second.

It’s gone.

The criminal must have made off with it before Eyelet could stop him. We’ve only this one left to share. I tap the gauge. It’s running low. In fact, it’s almost out. We can’t stay out here too much longer in the Vapours without oxygen. We won’t last.

I roll a hand through my hair, feeling the pressure of the Vapours in my own head—a sharp, gnawing pinch above my temples. I yank a handkerchief from my pocket, and tie it around my mouth to breathe through. It’s not oxygen, but it’ll filter some of the toxins away.

Where is the path?

I check on Eyelet to see if she’s all right. She isn’t. I can tell. Her breathing is irregular. I remove the mask and am stunned to see her lips are blue. Her skin is turning grey. The Vapours are getting the best of her, despite the oxygen. If I don’t get her to the Core soon, I’m afraid I’m going to lose her.

I drop my head.
Please Eyelet, don’t leave me.

I stand and suck in an icy breath. It shivers through me like a storm. What have I done? What’s wrong with me? Leading us all the way out here on a whim? So far away from the Compound, so far away from everything, without even being sure the Core still exists. It could have perished the Night of the Great Illumination for all I know. In the explosion that destroyed so much of our landscape—creating crevasses where there were none, toppling trees, burning forests. Leaving us teetering on the brink of an ominous, frothing, pit dividing our world from all others.

What made me think anything out here could have survived that? I drop my face in my hands. How could I have believed the Core could withstand such a thing? How could I have been so stupid?

Eyelet gasps and I drop to my knees, brushing the hair from her face and replacing the gasmask. Please don’t let me have dragged us all this way just to surrender us to the Vapours.

I look up into the coiling mist. “The Core has to be here somewhere,” I gasp. The bitter tinge of Vapours blisters in the back of my throat.

I launch to my feet and pace the pathway, squinting through the fog, looking for any kind of sign. The building was white, that much I remember, made of white stone—alabaster. The curtain of fog parts for a second and across a clearing I see the crevasse. Black mist rises from its belly. I had no idea we were wandering blindly so close to the brink of Embers. I swallow, imagining our fate if I’d taken one misstep. I draw in another uneasy breath. Desperation rattles my bones. Something flickers to the far left of me, high on the ridge, glowing alabaster through a charred stand of trees.

Backlit by the roiling smoke of Embers…

...stand the cornerstones of a building.

Abandoning Eyelet, I race up the hill, galloping the final few strides, falling to my knees on the overgrown stone path that had eluded me—

“It’s gone,” I gasp, shuddering. “My father’s lab is gone.”

Only the front pillars and the cornerstones remain. The rest of the building lies scattered about the ground, like the ruins of Stonehenge. To the rear, Embers froths, its black guts belching sour smoke into the air. A vile combination of pungent Vapours, crisped earth, charred wood and scorched stone.

“No!” I slam my fists to the dirt. “This can’t be happening! It can’t be true!
Please!”
I shout to the sky. “
Something
has to be here! Something
has
to be left!”

I launch forward, stumbling through the brush, my knees weak, my muscles quivering, searching the site for something,
anything,
any form of shelter, any protection from the Vapours. “
Please,
let there be something left.”

Using all my strength, I shoulder aside the slabs of broken alabaster wall, searching the ground beneath them for a tunnel, a hole, a hidden hatch maybe. And then it hits me…

My father’s constructions always included an underground bunker. Built to soothe his irrational fears of toxic war. Always kept stocked and readied to support life within them for up to ten years should his worst nightmare materialize. Surely he would have built one here as well.

Eyelet coughs and my head swings around. A shadow sifts through the trees. One at first, and then several. I swallow. Gooseflesh prickles my neck.

I turn and race to Eyelet, gathering her up in my arms. “Hold on,” I whisper, travelling the same path back to the Core, laying her down on the soft ground beside me. I lean, pressing my lips to her cheek. “Hold on, Eyelet,
please.
”

Covering her with my coat, I scan the grounds for any indication of the bunker’s lid, clawing at the dirt, rolling aside the larger rubble, and digging beneath it. A dark mass of cloud cover closes in on me from behind.

I swing around, catching it out of the corner of my eye. “Blast it!” I gasp.

The Turned.

They waft in and out of the shadows of the rubble, so close I taste their sour stench. They must have followed us, tracked us somehow through the woods. Something howls, and I crank my head around. More waft toward me through the trees on the opposite side. We’re surrounded.

My gaze drops to Eyelet, lying lifeless on the ground. I’ve got to get her out of here before they take her from me.

I lean over, scooping her up into my arms, folding her close to my chest as I paw at the dirt.
“Please!”
I beg. “Please help me find a way in.”

The Turned swoop, dragging their atrophied fingers over Eyelet’s cheeks, knocking me in the back.

“No!” I swing at them, whirling around, curling Eyelet under me. “You will not take her from me! I will not let you!”

Laughter, chatters through the trees. Fingers comb through Eyelet’s hair.

“It’s over,” one whispers in my ear. “She’s ours now.”

“NO!” I swing. The spirits bend in the air.

“It’s no use! You’re surrounded! We’ve won!”

They cackle.

“No you haven’t! You never will!”

They laugh again and it rolls down my spine. I lower my head and claw at the earth, fingers bleeding. “Come on, come on.”

The Turned swirl closer, their voices worming like a disease into my head. I close my eyes, trying to shut them out.

“She’s ours!”
They hiss.
“
You’re
ours. Give her to us!”

“NEVER!” I twist, shielding Eyelet.

Their ghoulish eyes sear through the mist. They twist and curl, their spiny fingers pulling at her shoulders.

It has to be here! I cradle Eyelet in one arm and dig with the other. Somewhere! Let it be here!
Please!

The face of a spirit appears at the back of Eyelet’s head, shimmering silver through the dark cloud. Its jaws stretched wide, teeth gleaming.

“No!” I backhand the spirit into ash, and yank Eyelet to the other side, groping at every dent and pebble in the earth until—at last—my fingers catch on something solid, something gold in a sea of beige earth.

A ring, glinting in the darkness. I clear the dirt and find a solid brass ring, big enough to fit the nose of a bull. I pry it upward and yank it back hard, finding it attached to a latch. Another tug engages the lever beneath. The ground beneath us shudders.

Spirits swoop and scream overhead as the earth begins to shake. Gears creak and turbines tumble, giving way to a trap door buried just below the ground’s surface. A siren screeches, driving back the Turned, as the long, thin door rumbles open. Launching to my feet, I throw Eyelet over my shoulder and stumble down a set of stairs through a blinding waft of steam. The hammered fingers of the Turned claw at my arms, my face, her clothes, as we descend.

Sweaty and breathless, I roll the door closed over our heads and fall to the stairs, shaken and gasping, the bitter voices of the Turned still screeching overhead.

“We’re safe, Eyelet. At last, we’re safe.“

I drop Eyelet softly down on a bed and run to the storage room in search of oxygen, feeding it to her straight from a tank I find among my father’s stash, hoping the supply is still good.

“Please,” I whisper, rocking her. “Please, Eyelet,” I stroke her forehead, and press my lips to her brow, over and over again. “Please come back to me. Don’t leave me now,
please
, Eyelet.” I lift the mask and kiss her lips. “I can’t go on without you
…
”

I replace the mask, stroking her hands. Her nail beds are blue. Her skin is the color of stone. I’m losing her. I weep inside, adjusting the flow on the pump to pour a steadier stream, unable to breathe myself.