The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

              Ahead of me, Rigel was crawling slowly and steadily along the cable, looking like a large housecat stalking a bird. I did my best to mimic his movements, and tried everything I could to block out the thunderous crowd behind me.
              “Come on,” I said to myself, trying to draw a steady breath. “Little more. Don’t lose it. Do not…lose it.”
            Placing one trembling hand in front of the other, I wrapped my legs around the thin metal beneath me and pushed myself with them, inching forward little by little. Rather than a lithe feline, though, I felt more like a decrepit caterpillar, fidgeting its way toward a leaf. But, as long as I wasn’t falling to my death, I didn’t really care how goofy I looked.
              After what seemed like an hour, I had finally made it to the center of the cable, which was much more unsteady. It swayed a good two feet from side to side, threatening to throw me off of it. As it was, my arm muscles were burning badly from the effort, and my abdomen was threatening to seize up like an old engine. Every tiny movement was enough to make me worry about falling. Looking down into nothing was beginning to make my head spin. As I pilot, I thought I would be immune to such things, but I had always had an aircraft attached to me, even if I was flying it from the outside. Here, I had no control, no ship to depend on.
              As Rigel approached me, I focused on his face. It felt like ages since I had seen him, and I would much rather look into his hazel eyes than into the dark grey of the Veil.
              “Hey, Ellie,” he huffed, somehow managing a crooked smile as he laid flat on the cable. I slowly mimicked him, giving my arm muscles a much needed break.
              “Hey,” I said back to him. “Thanks for the horn.”
              He nodded, smiling again. “Any time. Thanks for the clue.”
              “My pleasure.”
            “I, uh…I stole some hazelnuts,” he said, adding a mischievous giggle.
            Amazingly, I let out a laugh. I don’t know how he did it, but he could always manage to make me feel a little better, no matter what situation I was in. A familiar warmth began to slide over me, despite the chilly air that blew across my skin. With Rigel here, I felt okay. I wasn’t nearly as afraid anymore.
              “I knew you would,” I told him.
              He sighed. “So what are we supposed to write?”
              I looked over at the box that marked the center of the cable. Contrary to what I had initially believed, it wasn’t a box at all. It was a thick, brass plaque that had been welded to the cable. It bore a long series of numbers etched across the face of it.
              Hooking one arm around the cable for safety, Rigel reached into his pocket and retrieved a crumpled paper and a wedge of charcoal. “You read, I’ll write.”
              I nodded. “Copy.”
              Looking down at the plaque, I saw that the numbers were in groups of three. Other than that, though, I saw nothing that linked them, no common theme. Despite my confusion, I read them off to Rigel, who hastily scribbled them at the top of his paper. As we collected the numbers, I watched Killian as he finished writing and began shimmying back the way he had come. Also on his cable, coming from the opposite direction, was John Deseo. On the third cable, I could make out the spiky blonde hair of Grace Buchannon as she approached her center plaque. Everyone was catching up to us.
              As fast as I could, I rattled off the last few sets of numbers, waiting for Rigel to list the entire series back to me before we were satisfied. Behind me, another male was approaching, crawling upside down toward the plaque. I decided I’d follow Rigel back to where he started from. I expected to see Darby there, waiting patiently on the docks as we returned, but she was nowhere to be seen. Immediately, part of me began to worry that she had gone on ahead, leaving me to tag along with someone else.
             
No
, I thought.
She wouldn’t do that.
             
I had to put the thought out of my mind as I clumsily maneuvered my way over the giant plaque. Rigel had returned the paper to his pocket, and was attempting to turn himself around on the cable. Straddling the steel line, he reached behind him with one arm and grabbed ahold. He then repositioned his legs, somehow swinging one over to have them both hanging on the same side. Then, he flattened himself out on the cable and put one leg back over it, straddling it once again. I was impressed. After this, I knew I would never be able to say anything against his coordination skills.
              I, on the other hand, was the total opposite. Trying to crawl over the flat metal plaque was not my best idea. As I began to work my way across it, I wasn’t able to grip it very well with my knees, and I felt my balance shifting to the left.
              “Rigel,” I said as I began to tilt. My muscles were too exhausted for me to right myself on the cable. “
Rigel
!”
              I slipped.
              “No!” I heard Rigel shout.
              I felt my fingers vibrated as they slid off of the cable. I felt weightless for a split second. I was falling. I felt my torso jerk, however, and my upper body swung backwards. By some miracle, my legs had remained wrapped around the steel cable, and I was hanging upside down over several thousand feet of empty air.
              Suddenly, Rigel’s boot was in front of my face. “Use my leg to pull yourself up!” he shouted.
              Immediately, I clawed for the leg of his thick trousers. My fingers, fueled by the threat of death, found the strength to grip his pants and drag the upper half of my body back up to the cable, which I practically bear-hugged.
              “Are you okay?” Rigel asked, his voice high with concern.
              I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
              I heard him let out a small sigh of relief. “Come on. The sooner we’re back on solid ground, the better. Think you can crawl like that?”
              Despite my intense desire to not move at all, and simply have someone air-lift me back to safety, I nodded again, taking several deep breaths.
              “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s go,” I said, feigning confidence.
              I knew Rigel wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t question me. He began to squirm quickly back toward the docks. Behind him, I clutched the cable as hard as I could and crawled upside down, hoping that my arms and legs could handle the trip. It took forever, but we eventually did make it back to the edge of the dock. The cable led up over the side, but I wasn’t going to be able to climb up. Not at this level of exhaustion.
              Ahead of me - and also above me, as it were - Rigel clamored up onto the docks and turned around. “Grab my hand!” he said, crouching down.
              Taking a few deep breaths, I pulled myself up as far as I could and reached up toward him, wrapping my fingers around his forearm. I watched his face as he strained to pull me up. I knew Rigel was strong, but I had never asked him to lift me by one arm before. I moved upward a bit, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t get me past the cable.
              “Okay,” Rigel said, panting for breath. “You’re gonna have to let go of the line.”
              “What!?” I shouted.
              “You need to get free of the cable,” he told me. “Hurry, I can’t hold you much longer!”
              I had to loosen my legs. I had to trust Rigel to hold me, single-handedly, above nothing. I had to literally put my life in his hands. He had saved me before, in the Veil, and now I was trusting him to keep me alive once again. He was my best friend, but I couldn’t deny the fear that I was feeling.
              I looked up, locking eyes with him. “Rigel-”
              “I know. Just let go!” he bellowed.
              And so I did. I released the grip that my legs had on the cable, and I was falling again. Instantly, the strain on my shoulder told me that Rigel had me. I felt my back and heels swing forward and smack hard into the wall of the dock, which sent jolts of pain through my already aching body. Above me, Rigel was grunting loudly, and I could feel his hand crushing my arm like a vice. After a moment, though, I began to rise. With my feet dangling over open air, he gave one last growl and pulled me up and over the side before collapsing with my head and shoulders across his legs.
              “Good work,” I said after a moment, relishing the feel of solid ground beneath me.
              He took a few deep breaths before I felt him sit up. “Come on!” he said urgently. “They’re getting ahead of us!”
              Groaning with dread, I rolled onto my hands and knees and pushed myself to my feet, feeling all of my limbs trying to function normally. Sadly, it wasn’t working very well, but I did my best to keep up with Rigel. His eyes were locked onto the backs of Grace, John, and Killian, all of whom were dashing away from the docks and into the city.
              As we were turning to follow them, I saw a figure in the crowd waving wildly from my peripheral vision. Turning my head to the right, I saw Darby, hopping up and down and flailing her arms at me to get my attention. I could also see her mouth moving like she was calling me, but I couldn’t hear her over the crowd noise.
              “Rigel!” I called, hoping to stop him with me.
              At the sound of his name, he skidded to a stop and looked back at me, his eyes wide with adrenaline. He glanced over to Darby, but as he looked back at me, his eyebrows pulled in, twisting his face into an expression of regret. I figured out why as soon as he turned and broke into a run, following Grace, John, and Killian…and leaving me staring after him in utter disbelief.
            “Rigel!” I screeched. He didn’t stop. He just lowered his head and sprinted after the others.
              Did he really just run away and leave me here? Did he really just steal the clue that he and I had worked together to collect? I wanted to dash right after him, to tackle him to the ground and maybe punch him a few good times. I turned back to Darby, wondering what she was doing. Whatever she wanted must have been important.
           
Or at least it better
be, I thought. As much as I wanted to follow behind the new group of leaders, I knew she would never leave me in the same way. Cursing at the top of my lungs - and vowing a painful revenge against Rigel - I spurred my rubbery legs into action, hustling back over to the spoke I had started from.
              As I passed by the sea of excited faces, I did my best to humor them by waving and giving weak smiles. Unfortunately, this didn’t really do much to placate them. If anything, it made them more ravenous, it made them cheer louder. If the Dominion’s rules weren’t so strict, I had no doubt that they’d all be clawing for a piece of me right now. Thankfully, none of them were willing to chance it, and I skirted by them untouched, reaching Darby in just under a minute.
              “What’s going on?” I wheezed, doubling over with my hands on my knees.
              She was standing right in front of the Mother Stone, her hands resting on the words that were carved into its smooth surface. “Some of the people were pointing to this,” she said, practically shouting in my ear. “I think it’s important.”
              I wanted to yell at her for wasting my time, for stopping me when I could have been right with the leaders, but the citizens had been the ones to point out the cable to me. Not that it would have been hard to figure out, but still…they knew much more about what was happening in their city than I did. If they were pointing to the Mother Stone, then I needed to at least take a look.
              Quickly, I scanned over the text. It was familiar, of course, but I hadn’t read it in three years, and I had never committed it to memory. “Shiloh ascended in the year 2119, blah blah blah,” I muttered to myself, still breathing heavily as I scanned the long inscription. “Carrying the Dominion on its back…beacon of excellence…holds the Wall of the Fallen…hope for humanity’s future…blah blah.”
              “The Wall of the Fallen,” Darby said. “That must be where they’re all going!”
              I nodded. “Yeah, but…I mean, why were these people telling you to look at this thing?” I asked, pointing down to the stone.
              Darby shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s something there that we’ll need to remember?”
              “I think it was probably just to clue us in about the Wall of the Fallen,” I said. “Come on, we can still catch Rigel!”
              At once, the two of us took off at a run just as two more ships were approaching the docks. I didn’t bother to look and see who it was, though. I probably wouldn’t have even known. Instead, I used their arrival to fuel my burning legs, to push them as fast as they would carry me. I had to catch Rigel. He had the piece of the clue that I needed. If I reached the Wall and he was already gone, Darby and I would both be in serious trouble.
              I had been to the memorial wall before. Twice, to be exact. I knew where it was, located in the middle of one of Shiloh’s small parks. There were four nature parks in this city, all of them designed to give the citizens the illusion of walking on the planet’s surface…or how the surface used to be, anyway. But, since the Wall was sort of a tourist destination, it was in the park nearest to the docks. Sadly, it was still about ten minutes away, strategically positioned so that a trip there would lead visitors past all the shops and boutiques that were built to grab their tokens.
              Darby and I weaved through the wide, cobblestone streets, alternating between jogging and walking, and avoiding as many people as we could. The buildings here were so pleasant to look at. Many of them were made of brick and stone, which was almost mystifying to me. Rainier had a few buildings made of stone, but these were carved so perfectly, so intricately, and they looked nothing like what I was used to. In Adams, if it wasn’t made of rusted metal, then it was definitely from out of town. Here, the skyscrapers were very modern and very classy-looking, which the residents loved, I’m sure. But there were also buildings, like the shops we were currently passing, that were carved to look ancient. Residents of Shiloh could get the best of both worlds. Despite how much I wanted to feel indifferent, I resented them for this, and had to remind myself that none of them would last a day in the Gap. Not without the luxuries that they were all used to having.