The Gathering Dark (39 page)

“Walker doesn’t have a way to save himself.” Smith swung into the cave. “Because the Reformers don’t need him anymore. Now they have me.”

The guards appeared in the cave’s entrance. Two of them held Pike, who was hog-tied and disturbingly limp. They bundled his body into a mesh sack while the third guard reached up above the mouth of the cave and pulled down a rope. It dangled in the entry like an enormous leash, and the guard clipped it to the bag that held Pike’s unconscious body. The guard gave the rope a sharp tug and it went taut.

Nausea rocked Keira as she watched Pike’s limp form rise from the guard’s grip, swinging into the open air, held only by
the single thin rope. As he disappeared above the cave, Keira suddenly understood.

The guards hadn’t followed them
up
the mountain at all.

They’d come down
over
it.

And they were taking Keira, Walker, and Pike back with them.

Terror filled her veins and crushed her thoughts and sang to her muscles. Keira struggled into a sitting position. The guards looked at each other. One of them nodded.

“Walker?” Keira gasped.

“Don’t fight them. Don’t ask any questions,” he warned. He lay still, controlled.

The guards approached, pulling small bottles from their pockets. The urge to scream rose in Keira, irresistible and unstoppable.

Her mouth opened of its own accord, but as she drew in a breath, the guards cracked the bottles’ seals with their too-long fingers and something hissed into the air, spraying across Keira’s face. It filled her nose and mouth and she choked as she breathed it in. The earth and metal smell of it gagged her and the edges of her vision grew fuzzy. She closed her eyes against the undulating darkness in front of her.

When she opened them again, she was alone.

In a very tiny room.

With no way out.

Chapter Fifty

O
H, CRAP, IT’S A CELL
.

Keira sat up and the room spun around her. Whatever the guards had drugged her with hadn’t completely worn off. She could still taste it lingering on her tongue. When the walls stopped their crazy dance, she slowly got to her feet. Someone had unbound her hands, but the tips of her fingers tingled numbly. She shook her hands, fighting the effects of the drug. There was no clock in the room. No windows. No way at all to tell what time it was or how long she’d been knocked out.

There was a bench along one wall of the room that was big enough to be a narrow bed. They could have at least left
her there, instead of dumping her on the floor. But the guards had just thrown her on the ground, like a
thing
. Keira shivered. That’s how the Reformers thought of her, as something to be disposed of, like a spoiled apple or a broken cup.

Keira made her way over to the bench and sat down. She set her hands on either side of her, drumming her fingers against the smooth surface. She ran imaginary scales for a moment, driving the last of the Darklings’ drug out of her system. The best option would be to get out of Darkside completely, if she could.

Carefully, slowly, she lowered her guard enough to let the earth she knew slip into view. At first, it seemed out of reach, like it had been when the guards had bound her in the cave. Keira leaned forward, adjusting her focus. She saw something shift and felt an unbearable press of weight against her skin.

The last of the drug’s fog swirled out of her mind as the answer became clear. She couldn’t see anything on the other side because they’d gone over the Darkside mountain. Which meant they were who knew how far out in the Atlantic Ocean, lost in its featureless depths.

It really was the perfect prison. The only certain escape also meant certain death. Keira curled her fingers around the edge of the bench, letting the corners bite into her skin. It kept her grounded. Focused.

The familiar headache took up its pulsing rhythm behind her eyes as she pushed the ocean out of sight. When it was
gone, Keira stared around the tiny room. There was a table in the corner with a square tray on it. On the tray stood a glass filled with a purplish liquid and a bowl of something mushy.

It had been so long since she’d had anything to drink. Her head throbbed.

Can I even eat things here? What if it’s poisoned?

She stood up, relieved to find her legs steady underneath her. Carefully, she made her way over to the tray and lifted the cup. She sniffed it. It smelled like oranges and mint.

The Reformers already had her—why would they be sneaky about poisoning her now? Still, she stood for a long moment with the glass pressed against her bottom lip, deciding.

She was so thirsty.

Slowly, she tipped the glass until the liquid touched her mouth. It was cool and sweet, with a fresh, green edge to the taste. If it was poison, then death was delicious. Keira gulped down the contents of the glass, her head clearing with each swallow.

She set the glass back on the tray and looked at the unappetizingly gray mush. Leaving it where it was, she turned and paced the perimeter of the room, running her fingers over the walls, searching for something—anything—that might be a way out. She drummed her fingers against the strange surface and finally found a section near the corner that sounded more hollow than the rest of the room. She tapped carefully, listening as her knocks outlined an area big enough to be a door.

Hope stirred in her, like the first crocus pushing up through
the long-frozen dirt, but she shoved it back down. It might mean nothing. Still, there was no vent to crawl through, no window to jump from. If she had a chance, this was it. She ran her fingers over and over the expanse of wall, looking for a bump, a ridge, a dip—anything. Up and down, across and back, she searched for a way to open the door.

She found nothing.

The cell was sealed like a tomb.

Is that what this room really is? A tomb? Have they thrown me in here to die?

The idea was terrifying. Keira hammered at the wall as though she could beat it down—as though she could push the lid off her own coffin.

And then, without warning, she was falling.

The sensation was so unexpected that Keira barely managed to brace herself for the impact. Her palms slammed against the ground and she instinctively wrenched her face to one side so that her right cheekbone, rather than her nose, smacked the stone. Pain exploded across her eye, sending a starburst of sparkles across her view of a long, featureless hall.

Get up, get up!
The voice in her head was insistent. Instinctive. But before she could listen to it, a pair of hands curled around her upper arms, yanking her to her feet. Keira whipped her head around to see who held her. The sudden movement sent another flash of pain through her head and she bit down on the inside of her cheek, determined not to cry out.

The guard who held her made a noise like sandpaper scraping against metal. The realization that he was laughing at her only made the noise more awful.

“This way,” he hissed in the same sibilant, heavily accented voice she’d heard the other guard use. Before she could even think to fight back, he was dragging her down the hall. She hung from his grasp, her face and shoulder screaming in pain while the tips of her shoes traced their path. Keira gritted her teeth. She forced back her screams, struggling against the shackle of the guard’s grip, but it made no difference. Desperate, she swung her feet up, meaning to kick him or, better yet, trip him. As soon as she lifted her feet off the ground, though, the wrenching pressure on her shoulder brought her to the very edge of unconsciousness. She dropped her legs, letting herself go limp in his grasp.

She gave up.

The guard grunted in approval. He finally set Keira on her feet in front of a huge pair of ornately carved doors. They looked out of place in the otherwise featureless building. There was something familiar about the pattern on them, the way the circles overlapped and intersected—of course. The door she’d seen in the road, when she was in Walker’s car, back when all of this started. It had been carved in the same style, if a bit less ornately.

Thinking back to those first visions was too much like thinking of home—too much like thinking of the life she was
about to lose. Because if there was one thing she knew, bone-deep and absolutely, it was that the Reformers were on the other side of those doors.

She could feel them there, waiting with her death sentence in their hands. Eager to make her pay not just for her mistakes, but for her existence, too.

It was going to cost Keira her life, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it.

•  •  •

The doors swung inward, revealing a room filled with shadows. A long bench, like a church pew, sat against the back wall, illuminated from above by Darkside lights. Guards ringed the room, as evenly spaced as if they marked a clock face. They each held a staff that looked heavy enough to smash in a skull if need be.

Walker and Pike stood off to one side. Walker’s hair was a tangled mess, but beyond that, he appeared unharmed. The relief of seeing him whole was so sweet it was almost unbearable. Pike stood behind him. His robes were ripped and he winced like something pained him, but if he was injured, she couldn’t see it.

Walker turned and looked at her. His eyes widened at the sight of her cheek. It must’ve looked terrible. She wasn’t surprised—it was throbbing like it had its own heart.

Still, at least it wasn’t her hands. They stung a little, yeah, but as long as they were fine, she was fine. She tried to reassure
him with a smile, but the guard prodded her in the back. Keira stumbled forward.

“With the others,” he hissed.

She scrambled away from him, rushing to Walker’s side.

She clung to him, burying her face in his chest. He stiffened beneath her touch, gently pulling her away from him. His reaction was so cold that she shivered.

She looked up at him and saw that his gaze was focused behind her. The sound of footsteps broke through her confusion and Keira turned to see five robed figures, their features ancient and angular, making their way over to the bench.

“It’s the Tribunal,” Walker whispered. “Half of the Reformers—they’re Darkside’s judges. And juries.”

He didn’t say “and executioners,” but Keira heard it anyway.

She swallowed.

The silence that filled the room was so thick that it seemed to slow time itself. The moment hung there, suspended. It was only the beating of her heart and the pumping of her lungs that kept Keira from believing the universe had stopped entirely.

One of the members of the Tribunal cleared his throat. Keira couldn’t tell which of them it was—they were all as motionless as statues.

“We have in front of us,” the Reformer said, “a trinity of failure.” His voice rose and died oddly in the dark corners of the room.

There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the
Tribunal. The noise passed over Keira, leaving a sick sense of foreboding in its wake.

The voice continued. “And so today marks a chance to wipe out our past mistakes.”

Keira forced herself not to shudder as the center-most member of the Tribunal leaned forward to peer more closely at the three of them.

“Walker Andover.”

Walker nodded.

Keira could hear his breath, fast and shallow. He was scared.

“You were charged with the task of finding the lost Experimental and bringing it back to us.”

It didn’t escape Keira’s notice that they’d referred to her as “it.” She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from protesting.

The Reformer paused. “The fact that you accomplished the first part of your task while abandoning the remainder is more offensive to us than if you’d simply never found the Experimental at all. What you have done is beyond disobedient. It is treason. Moreover, you knew that having more than one Experimental moving back and forth through the barrier would create unsustainable levels of damage to our world, but you wantonly disregarded that danger. You have ruined the Hall of Records in your home province. The information from entire
generations
is lost to us because of your careless actions. That alone would be enough to render you unforgivable.”

Walker gave the smallest possible nod. Keira wanted to say something—defend him somehow—but she didn’t understand the formalities of the situation. Any words she spoke would be as likely to damn him as they would be to save him.

“Walker Andover. As punishment for your transgressions, you are sentenced to die.”

Keira couldn’t breathe. Every detail in the room came into perfect focus. The sagging folds in the Reformers’ robes, the way one of the guards had his head turned ever so slightly to the left—the details etched themselves into her mind. She would never be able to forget anything about this horrible moment. It didn’t matter if they killed her now. Once they’d condemned Walker, she was already lost.

Keira managed to turn her face toward Walker.

Walker’s lips parted as though he were about to say something but he stayed silent, clenching his teeth.

All along, Keira’d known that if the Reformers caught them, they would be facing death. Hearing the words said out loud, though—it was too much. The reality of it had a texture and weight that Keira wasn’t sure she could endure.

Walker couldn’t die. They hadn’t had enough time to kiss yet. She hadn’t told him about the time she’d fallen off her bike when she was five and cut her knee nearly to the bone. She hadn’t played him the Beethoven Allegretto.

A sob rose in her throat, keening through her vocal chords and slipping out into the room.

“Silence!” The roar came from the tallest of the Reformers. “We have not invited you to speak.”

So that was why Walker hadn’t tried to defend himself. They hadn’t invited him to speak. Keira lifted her chin. She was not going to be condemned to die without having a chance to explain herself. And if they decided to kill her—the thought dropped into her arms, too heavy to hold. She locked her knees beneath her and straightened her spine. She forced herself to think it.