Omega City (17 page)

BACK WHEN WE LIVED IN THE CITY AND DAD WORKED FOR THE UNIVERSITY, we got to have pool memberships at the university gym, which was really fun because it was indoors and warm all winter long. They also had those huge diving platforms like in the Olympics, and every so often they'd open them up for regular people to jump off. Eric really enjoyed it.

I did it exactly once.

Jumping off high places into the water isn't actually very fun. To start with, it hurts—the soles of my feet were red and stinging for a day after my one experience with the
diving platform. And you shoot down through the water like a knife, so it was good that the university pool had that diving well right below the platform where the water is like twenty feet deep and you never have to worry about cracking your head open on the bottom. It's also really disorienting: you're up high, then falling, then you're shooting through the water, and even though it's this wide open, well lit, extremely clean swimming pool, it's hard to tell which way is up.

In every way possible, falling off that broken ramp was worse.

I plunged deep into the black water, in a jumble of limbs and metal and more. I hit my arm pretty hard against something, then my butt crashed against something else. My feet kicked instinctively, and it felt like they may have met with someone else's head. The explosion still resounded around the cavern, and even underwater, I heard farther low, giant-sounding booms, like bits of the wall and ceiling were falling all around us. I threw my arms over my head to protect myself from falling objects, then realized there was no guarantee I was even facing up.

I spun in the water, hoping to catch sight of bubbles to follow back to the surface, just like they'd taught us in scuba diving class. It's really easy to get disoriented in the water, especially dark water, and so if you just follow the bubbles you'll aways find up.

A few seconds later, I broke the surface, gasping. My head lamp made out the wrecked remains of the ramp, dangling down into the turbulent water. I tried to tread, but my knee and arm hurt a lot.

“Gillian!” Howard waved to me from the top of the grain tank. “Over here!”

I started swimming when Savannah emerged in front of me, coughing and spluttering. “My arm,” she choked out. “Can't move . . .”

I helped her to the tank and let Howard pull her up.

“Where's Nate?” he asked. “Where's Eric?”

“I don't know.” Frantic, I looked around. What if they were trapped under some debris? What if they'd hit their heads and gotten knocked out. . . . “Eric!” I screamed. “Eric!”

“He's here!” I heard Nate cry. “He's helping me!”

I paddled over to where Eric was trying to untangle Nate from some cables. I came over to help, which was when I noticed blood streaming down his chin.

“Eric, what happened to you?” I tried to touch his face but he jerked away and yanked the last cable free. We swam back to the tank, Eric keeping one hand cupped protectively around his cheek.

“What happened?” I grilled him the second we were up on the tank.

“Fewmickme,” he said without opening his mouth.

“What?”

“You kicked him in the face, Gillian,” Nate said. He was digging in his pockets. “Okay, aspirin all around, I think, but mostly for Savvy here and Eric.”

Eric looked at the pills in his hand, then gingerly opened his mouth to place them inside. I must have kicked him really hard.

“Did I get you in the teeth?” I asked, grimacing.

He just glared at me and dry swallowed the pills. Yeah, definitely in the teeth.

“Did you get these from the first aid kit back at the mess hall?” Howard asked.

“Yeah,” Nate said. “Why?”

“They may be expired.”

I didn't care anymore. Expired aspirin was better than none at all. My arm hurt so much, and it was nothing compared to Savannah's and Eric's injuries.

“Let's take a look at your arm, Savvy,” Nate said.

Savannah nodded tearfully, and honestly, it wasn't an act. There was a time, I think, when she would have killed for Private Pizza to give her cute nicknames and run his hands along her arm, but that time was long gone.

“There's no bone coming through the skin,” he said. “But I don't know if it's broken or just a bad sprain. You'll have to have a doctor look at it when we get out.”

When
we get out.

“If you haven't set your suits to warming,” Howard said, fiddling with his controls, “now is the time to start.” It was weird, but ever since we'd entered the dark part of the city, I hadn't noticed his eccentric behavior as much. You don't notice that someone isn't looking you in the eyes when you can't see them. And it was like I could understand him better, too, without seeing his face. I'd have to keep this in mind for when we got back to school.

Except I wasn't sure we'd ever see school again.

I shuddered, looking around at the wreckage where we sat, just a few inches above the rippling waves flooding the chamber. Fiona had done this. There was no doubt in my mind that the explosion we'd just experienced was her fault. She'd sworn she'd seal the entrances if we didn't turn ourselves in, and now she had.

But why would she do it when her men were down here, too? It didn't make sense.

I couldn't see anything but blackness and rock walls. Things had stopped falling into the water now, at least, and sitting here, against the metal, I felt cold in spite of the warm setting of my suit. I'd been wet for too long, tired for too long, without food for too long.

“Hey,” Nate said abruptly. “Everyone eat and drink something. Now.”

“Again?” Savannah whined. “He made us do this while we were waiting for you, too,” she said to me. She
was cradling her arm against her chest. “Something about shock or hypothermia or—ow!”

Howard had jostled her while pulling one of the MREs from his pocket.

“Watch it, will you?” she snapped at him.

“You have low blood sugar,” he replied calmly. “That's why you're cranky.” He opened the package and pulled out a little tin that he filled with water and set flat on the top of the tank before opening an envelope and emptying what looked like a packet of sand into the tin.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It's the heating element,” he said. “Watch.” A minute or so later, I saw the water start to simmer. He placed a foil packet inside and started in on another MRE. I hugged my knees to my chest and watched, fascinated.

“The water and the sand make heat?”

“It's magnesium powder. The water causes rapid oxidation—rust—and that produces heat.” He shrugged. “I read the instructions while you and Eric were scuba diving.”

“You guys really made good use of your time,” I replied, impressed.

“It was listen to Howard read or have an hour-long panic attack,” said Savannah. “Turns out, he comes in handy.”

In more ways than one
, I thought, remembering the
machine oil slick. Sure, Howard had pressed some buttons without thinking things through. He'd also seriously saved our butts more than once. I was really glad he was here. That they were all here.

I looked at my brother, who scooted away, his face stormy.
Come on, Eric. It's not as if I meant to kick your teeth in
.

After another minute or so, Howard handed me one of the packets. “Careful. It's hot.”

It was. I almost dropped it, I was so surprised. He hadn't even started a fire. I tore open the packet and the second the scent of meat and spices hit my nose I realized I was starving. I dug in with my bare hands. Teriyaki chicken—the best teriyaki chicken I think anyone had ever eaten.

Howard repeated the process a couple of times. The packet he handed to my brother read Chicken Noodle Soup on the side.

Eric grimaced, but tore off the top and drank the broth.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Yewohme.”

“Yeah. I owe you big time.” For kicking him in the face, for dragging him down here, for everything.

He hugged one arm around himself and returned to his soup, and when I reached out to him he just shook his head. I didn't blame him. What were a few lost teeth when
you were stuck at the bottom of an underground well? I looked over at the dangling ramp, shooting at a steep angle up into the black beyond. Even if we hadn't been injured, I wasn't sure how we could climb up that thing. Savannah definitely wouldn't be able to do it with a broken arm.

Our bizarre picnic continued in silence. I was pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing.

“Everyone warm?” Nate said at last.

“Warm?” I asked. “Or warmer?”

“I'll accept warmer, at this point.” Nate looked around. “There's got to be a way out of here.”

“Why?” asked Howard.

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why does there have to be a way out?” he said, in the annoyed tone people use when they have to explain their statements often. “Not every room in this city has to have an alternate route. Eventually, we reach the end.” He hesitated. “Eventually, there's got to be a dead end.”

“Don't say that!” Savannah exclaimed. “Nate's right. They got these tanks in here somehow, and it wasn't through that mirror door thing.”

Her words made me think of the parking lot Eric and I had scuba dived through, and how I'd wondered the same thing. But those doors had been bolted shut and deep underwater. I examined the swirling black water underneath us. Maybe there were bolted-shut entrances below
the surface here, too. Either way, it wouldn't help us.

“The map is gone,” Nate said now. “But back when I had it, I saw all we needed to do was go through that door and down a few halls to reach the fourth exit. It was off a room marked S.L.O.”

“No, it was S.I.L.O.,” Howard corrected.

Who cared what it was called? We couldn't get there.

“Plus side,” Eric said, maneuvering his jaw for the first time since the fall. From what I could tell, he'd only broken three or four of his teeth. I mean,
I'd
only broken them. “I vink I feel a little bedder.”

“Really?” asked Howard. “Because you sound like a bad vampire movie.”

“Oh, good,” said Savannah. “Now we can all die down here to a chorus of Eric's smart remarks.”

“Vere are worse ways to go,” said Eric. He tried to smile, but just winced instead.

“We're not dying down here.” Nate pounded his fist against his knee. “We're not.”

But we weren't moving either, just sitting on top of the wet grain tank, our crumpled dinner trash strewn around us, the water lapping insistently at our heels. I was out of ideas. I focused the beam of my head lamp up at the door we were supposed to go through, high, high above us. I didn't see any way for us to get up there. My arm and butt
didn't hurt quite so much anymore, but my toes were starting to go numb inside my sneakers. I was glad our lights were still holding strong. I wondered how long they'd keep shining after we froze to death.

I squeezed my eyes shut. That was probably the wrong thing to think about.

I guess Savannah noticed how upset I was, because she put her hand over mine. She was cold, too. Really cold, and her hands were soaking wet, which I thought was a little weird, since I thought she'd been wearing her suit's gloves. I opened my eyes to check it out.

There was a giant white worm in my lap.

I jumped up, screaming and shaking my hand. The worm went flying and landed with a wet plop several yards down the tank. Oh, and it wasn't a worm, either, because it picked itself up on its little white legs and skittered back over the side.

We were all standing up by this time. Eric was basically trying to climb onto Nate's back. “Vere
are
worms!” he yelled through his clenched jaw. “Vere are!”

And he did mean worms, plural. They were all around us now, climbing up the sides of the tank, gliding toward us through the water. Dozens of them. Hundreds, each one several feet long and white and totally wriggly.

“I think they're salamanders,” Howard said. “They
have legs . . . and look at their faces.”

“No vank you.” Eric shuddered and edged farther away from the creatures.

But I looked. Howard was right; they weren't worms. They were more like long, snakelike lizards with milk-white skin. They had eyelids, but I never saw one with its eyes open, which made me wonder if they had eyes at all. They didn't shy away from our lights when we aimed them at them, and they each had huge ears like scaly fans that waved gently as they breathed.

“I think they're blind,” Howard went on. “Look, they're obviously listening. They must have been drawn by our noise, and the smell of food.”

“Food?” Eric asked in a tone of dread.

I rolled my eyes. “Dinner, Eric. Not us.”

“You don't know vat.”

“If they lived on people, they would have died out a long time ago,” I argued. “Or haven't you noticed that there aren't a lot of people down here?”

“Yeah,” Eric shot back. “
Anymore
. Because ve worms ate vem all!”

“They aren't worms,” Howard said evenly. “They're salamanders.”

“Guys!” That was Savannah. “Who cares? The real question is, where did they come from?”

We all turned to her.

“Maybe they live in this cave,” she said. “Or maybe Gillian's right and they swam in here from somewhere else when they smelled the food.”

“Which means there's somewhere else to swim to!” Nate grinned. “Stay here. I'm going to go check it out.”

“Don't go in vat water!” Eric said, but Nate jumped off the side of the tank anyway. The salamanders scattered in front of him, and he started swimming in the direction they'd come from.