Shutdown (Glitch) (19 page)

He nodded. “I don’t know where it is though. If we find it, then it’s clear we should stay there.” The raindrops fell faster and heavier. He stood up and held out a hand to help me up. “Come on, let’s start looking for it. Maybe it’s nearby.”

“No,” I responded immediately, getting clumsily to my feet.

He scrunched his eyebrows. “Why not?”

“Because if we do, we’re just making the vision come true,” I said. “Both visions start in the cave. If we go there, that means the other vision where I die becomes possible. I’m not walking into a trap like that.” I shook my head. “We should go somewhere else, get out of the mountains. Now we know I can fly faster at night; we could go to one of the cities after I get some sleep, try to track down some Rez operatives. You said yourself it was easy getting into Driwald.”

“Easy for an in-and-out supply run, maybe,” he said. “But just because we don’t go to the cave doesn’t mean the rest of the vision won’t come true. We can’t risk taking you into a city. Besides, we don’t know where any of the Rez operatives are. Half the safe houses have been cracked in the last six months. We’d be in enemy territory without any idea where to go. Our safest bet is out here where no one can find us.”

“I’m not going in a cave!” I said, all but stomping my foot. “I’ve seen people do things because your visions said it would happen. Commander Taylor
died
because of it. You got lobotomized. No, I’m not going anywhere near—”

The rain fell in sheets now and it was harder to hear our voices.

“Fine, but we’ve got to at least get somewhere dry.” Adrien took my hand and led me through the woods. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but I did know that no matter how exhausted I was, I’d rather soak through to the bone than voluntarily go in a cave. But then Adrien stopped at a copse of dense trees near a small lake’s edge, where one huge tree dominated the others. The long leafy green branches hung over one another in layers like a waterfall of leaves, all the way to the ground.

Adrien pushed aside some of the soft branches and ushered me in. The wind from the rainstorm made the branches swing back and forth lightly, but it was completely dry near the fat inner tree trunk. It got dim as soon as Adrien let the branches we’d entered through settle back down, shutting us inside like it was a little room.

“I saw this tree when I hiked back in,” he said. “Sophia and I used to always sleep under weeping willows whenever we traveled and it rained, especially if we found a big old one like this where the branches reach all the way to the ground.”

I leaned against the trunk. It was freezing, but I was still so tired my eyes were already dropping closed.

“We should both get some sleep,” he said, coming over to me. “We’ll be warmer if we sleep close together. You know, just to keep our vital organs warm.”

I nodded and lay down, too tired to even be excited about the thought of him letting me get that close. He lay down too, facing me and settling a blanket from his pack over us. He pulled out the blanket from my pack too, but instead of adding it to the first, he bundled it up and slipped it under my head like a pillow.

My eyes were so heavy I was asleep within seconds, but for a brief fuzzy moment before I lost consciousness, I could have sworn Adrien wrapped one arm around my waist, pulling me close.

I woke to Adrien shaking my shoulder. I blearily opened my eyes, coming out of my deep sleep to find wind wailing around us. The branches of the willow blew and twisted crazily. Several of the long leafy vines snapped loose and flew toward us, smacking Adrien so hard in the chest he winced. I’d been sleeping so heavily, I hadn’t even heard the thunder that was now booming all around us.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Adrien shouted over the wind. “It’s not safe!”

I nodded and let him pull me to my feet. We stumbled out from under the willow. The rain lashed at our faces. Severed tree branches and other debris flew through the air. The sky was a strange sickly green color and the wind, which I’d barely noticed before except for the pleasant noise it made when it blew gently through the tree branches, was now howling like a freight train around us.

Chapter 17

THE THUNDER BOOMED AGAIN,
so loud it seemed to shake the ground beneath us. The wind roared even louder, and the next time it thundered, lightning split the air at almost the same moment.

Adrien grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. “We’ve gotta go,” he shouted. “Now!”

“Where?” I yelled back, but let him drag me forward anyway.

“There’s a clearing just a little farther around the lake,” he called over his shoulder. I could barely make out his words. “There was a ditch there where we might be safe.”

I nodded, abandoning trying to talk anymore.

Thunder boomed overhead, several loud rumbling punches, followed by lightning. The rain was harder after we burst out from under the tree coverage. It pelted us in diagonal sheets. I could barely see a foot in front of me. The only other time I’d seen a storm anything like this was back in the Community when I’d been in one of the few Sublevel 0 rooms that had thick triple-paned windows to the Surface. The growling thunder and splattering rain had given me nightmares for weeks.

Now there was no glass separating me from it, no elevator to take back underground to safety. And that storm hadn’t been nearly as powerful as this.

“Put your arm over your face,” Adrien yelled. I tried, but it barely mattered. The rain and wind blew so hard that I had a hard time staying on my feet. My hair whipped around me until I felt sure it would be yanked out by the roots. Adrien, tall and thin, bent his head into the wind and tried trudging forward, but he was having as much difficulty as I was.

“Shunting hell, it’s a tornado!” he suddenly yelled, looking off to the left. I followed his gaze, my hand cupped above my eyes so I could see.

I’d never heard of a tornado, but I saw what he meant. The sky seemed to drop down until a portion of dark gray-green cloud touched the ground in a wide funnel. The wind around us whipped even harder, and the noise of the storm became a monstrous roar.

Adrien screamed something I couldn’t hear and we ran across the clearing as the storm continued gathering force behind us.

The clearing rose and then dipped, and Adrien dropped down into a natural trench. He pulled me down beside him. I put both hands over my head to keep away the rain and flying debris. Adrien popped his head up to look back, and then before I even knew what was going on, he’d hauled me back to my feet.

“It’s coming this way!” he yelled. I was barely able to make out his voice amid the howling winds.

I clenched his hand as we ran down the field, perpendicular to the path the tornado was heading. Debris flew in the air around us and a quick glance behind me showed the funnel was even closer than before. I saw the truth of the matter. If it turned this direction, there was no way we’d be able to outrun it.

I cast outward with my telek to see if I could sense any kind of shelter. But all I could feel was the massive shape of the funnel and the mounds of debris circling in it. I wrenched my attention away from it and cast out in front of us instead. There were just more and more trees, no protected place.

But then my quick telek survey paused. There! I felt an outcropping of rocks ahead. Adrien was pulling me away from the lake, but I stopped him. “No,” I shouted. “This way!”

I grabbed his hand and headed to the left, running along the edge of the churning lake.

“Zoe, getting in the water won’t make us any safer—”

“Look!” I cut him off, and pointed down a small hill to the edge of the lake where the terrain turned rocky. I sprinted toward it right as the tornado roared closer behind us.

If I was wrong, this would be the end of us.

We jumped down the rocky embankment. I didn’t even pause to breathe out in relief. When I saw some overhanging rock that looked like it would give shelter, I just launched toward it, pulling Adrien after me.

What I’d thought was just a bunch of rocks actually opened inward into a dark open space. We tumbled inside. The sudden dry and quiet was startling. We clambered farther and farther into the narrow opening until the growling wind outside sounded like only a mute whimper. We could still see it through the opening though—the raging twister passed in front of us, flinging debris and tree branches into the first few feet of our safe haven. We huddled behind some natural boulders in the darkness, and waited.

Then, only minutes later, all the noise abated. The rain still spattered gently at the mouth of the opening, but sunlight began filtering down too. We waited, shivering and not speaking for another five minutes, until we were sure that the storm had truly gone.

Then Adrien raised his head and froze. “Zoe, this is the cave from my vision.”

Chapter 18

I SCRAMBLED UP OUT OF
my hiding place and ran for the entrance. But it was too late. I’d already been inside. Coming out now could just be the beginning of Adrien’s second vision. “Shunt!” I shouted in frustration.

The ground was churned up and trees were uprooted for a half-mile stretch where the tornado had landed. But the sky was a ridiculous bright blue with only a tufting of light gray clouds now.

Adrien followed me out and looked around with me.

Across the lake, bright colors lit the sky. Not like sunsets I’d seen before where purples and pinks splashed across the entire horizon. These colors were all lined up together, like someone had taken a paintbrush to put them there. It was absurdly beautiful.

“It’s a rainbow,” Adrien said. He was quiet for a long moment before speaking again. “Sophia read me a story once about a terrible storm that made the earth flood for forty days and nights. And afterward, there was a rainbow—it was their god’s promise that the world would never be destroyed by flood again. She said rainbows have been symbols of hope ever since then.”

“Hope?” I couldn’t help scoffing. “It seems like the god could have just prevented it from raining in the first place.”

He laughed, a deep hearty noise that jolted me out of my frustration. “If I remember right, that’s what I said too.”

I couldn’t help grinning. Then I took a deep breath, feeling calmer finally. “Okay, so what do we do now?”

“First you should probably sleep some more. The epi infusion will keep working for another few hours. Better to get sleep now so we can save the tank for later.”

I nodded, then glared behind me at the cave. “I guess it’s dry in there, at least.”

*   *   *

I blinked my eyes open after several blissful hours of heavy sleep.

There had been no dreams at all—my favorite kind of sleep. When Adrien shook my shoulders to wake me, at first I pushed him off. Sleep was so easy. Empty. Nothing was asked of me there. Waking meant entering back into the world of struggle and strife, and I didn’t want that, not yet.

Finally I gave in to the inevitable and opened my eyes. I sat up, every muscle in my body sore. Adrien had turned on the small portable heat lamp in the center of the chamber where the cave widened out. Our soaked clothing was mostly dry, and in spite of everything, I felt about a thousand times better than I had in days.

Adrien leaned over me, staring at me with his eyebrows knit in concern. The previous day came rushing in. The details about everything that had happened were fuzzy because I’d been so exhausted and half-delirious, but I remembered him leaving.

And him coming back.

I stared up at him in confusion. The way he was looking at me now, as if he was concerned about me, as if he cared—

But, as if he could sense where my thoughts were starting to go, he pulled back and made his face an impassive mask.

I sat up, pushing off the two thermal blankets on top of me. I looked down at them. I’d had only one blanket when I went to sleep.

“I didn’t want you to get cold,” he explained, as if reading the question on my face.

“What about yourself? Aren’t you cold?”

He shook his head. “I stayed by the lamp.”

I blinked again and looked around us. I shivered in spite of the fact that I was warm. We were in the cave from Adrien’s vision. “What time is it?”

“Nine at night.”

That was good. I’d slept almost nine hours altogether today.

I rubbed my eyes and looked around. The cave walls were moist, almost slimy. The ceiling was mostly hidden in shadow. But in the dim light provided by the heat lamp, I could see a bunch of long fingerlike structures dropping down from above. Moisture gathered at the pink-brown tips and occasionally dripped. I watched one drip, drip, drip, and listened for the resounding
plink
on the slick mound that had grown up below it.

“How long till we outwait the other vision?” I asked Adrien. “Four or five days? Then we can get moving again.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot while you were sleeping.” He handed me half a protein bar and then stood up, pacing back and forth on a path between the pinkish mounds lining the ground. “I’m not sure it’ll be safe to leave.”

“Why not?” I took a bite. Even though I’d been eating the same bars for days, this one tasted amazing, probably because I was so starved after all the exertion yesterday.

“I’ve never had visions like this before.” Adrien ran a hand through his hair. “What if I was wrong about the timing? What if they didn’t happen at the same time like I first thought? Maybe I just had two visions together, and the second one could still happen whenever we leave the cave, even if we do wait a few days.”

I choked on the bite of bar I’d swallowed. Adrien quickly handed me the water bottle and I took a long drink before turning back to him. “We can’t just stay here indefinitely. We’ll avoid cities to make sure the other one doesn’t happen.”

He shook his head with his lips pursed. “You know I’ve tried to avoid visions in the past. Whenever I did, I’d just end up causing them instead. We said we wouldn’t look for the cave, but then the storm drove us here. What if the same thing happens with the second vision?”