Under Zenith (13 page)

I wasn’t sure I really wanted to investigate something that sounded actively sinister si
nce my last few tasks had proven difficult enough without the added pressure of some deadly machine. I could only imagine what that sound meant for me.

“Isla? You’d better not be sleeping still,” Hayden called through the door, not even bothering to knock before he opened it.

I would have been more offended, but I guessed there wasn’t much for him to walk in on. It wasn’t like I needed to change my clothes every morning, or even bathe. The perks of being dead definitely included clean clothes, a clean start every morning, and no need to eat or drink. It was kind of like being indestructible, though the bump on the back of my head did quite a bit to overturn that comparison.

Still, it was nice going through a task where you had to scale the side of a floating island when you didn’t have to worry about taking a bathroom break halfway through.

Talk about added pressure.

“Morning,” I said, trying to look over Hayden’s shoulder to see what might be in store for me.

“Are you ready to begin the task?” he asked, sounding like any progress I might have made the night before in getting through his tough exterior, was wasted. He was all business again, as usual.

“You know, just because I’m technically sleeping in between tasks doesn’t mean I get much of a mental break from all of this. It isn’t really fair that I get just a few minutes at the end of every task to unwind. It’s exhausting,” I told him.

“You were just sleeping. You’re fine,” he answered simply, not having any sympathy for me apparently.

“Not physically
, Hayden,” I said with a sigh. “It’s mentally exhausting. It’s like I do a task, blink my eyes, and suddenly it’s time for the next task with no cool down time in between.”

“I’m glad we’ve started today off with you whining already. I was worried we wouldn’t have time to fit that into this task.”

“You try constantly performing without any rest,” I mumbled, mad that he wasn’t giving me the sympathy I wanted.

“Trust me, what I do is worse,” he replied, making me wonder, not for the first time, what he did when I was ‘sleeping’.

Of course I didn’t bother asking him since I knew it was completely useless to try to get any information out of him that didn’t have to do with whatever task I’d be performing that day.

“Let’s go then,” I said, lifting my shoulder then dropping it heavily in defeat.

“You’re chipper.”

I didn’t say anything to his remark, knowing he was just trying to get under my skin. Instead, I left the cabin to survey the surroundings of my next task. I could only hope it would be as pretty as the ones before it since the scenery was a small compensation for how awful each task turned out to be.

If I was expecting tulip fields and beautiful floating islands I was sorely disappointed when I walked straight into a pile of trash and scrap metal.

The metallic screeching grew louder though I still couldn’t locate its source.

“What is this place?” I asked in disgust.

Hayden smiled over at me.

“Don’t look at me, you’re the one with the dirty mind,” he answered with a laugh, apparently very proud of his joke.

I guessed when you made one joke
every year or two you’d have to really enjoy it.

I rolled my eyes at his attempted humor and picked my way through the endless piles of garbage. It didn’t seem possible that it could keep going
, but from what I could tell, the refuse went on forever.

It piled up high above me and sprawled out endlessly. More than anything it resembled a big city full of sky scrapers that all happened to be made from discarded car parts and
old toasters. The foggy air looked brown and dirty, and there wasn’t one spec of greenery to be found.

“I can’t believe this really came out of my mind,” I said, curling my lip up at the rust that surrounded me.
Already, my white lace dress had a few crimson rust streaks along the sides where I’d brushed against piles of scrap.

“Not one of your best inventions,” Hay
den agreed. “Which reminds me, Task four: Ingenuity.”

“Ingenuity?” I repeated, looking at my surroundings and feeling like I understood where this was going. “So I need to build something?”

“Two somethings,” Hayden corrected. “One something to get you to the safe house up there,” he began, pointing to a little office building at the top of one of the trash piles.

“And the other?” I asked, thinking I probably didn’t want the answer to this inquiry.

“The other is up to you. But you’ll probably want to make sure it can stop that,” he said with a nod over my shoulder.

I didn’t really want to turn around to see what he was talking about. I was sure it was the source of the screeching noise and probably something I’d have to face. Instead I continued to look at Hayden.

“And I suppose you won’t be helping me at all?”

“Have I helped you in any of the other tasks?” he asked rhetorically.

“Point taken.”

“Well then, if you don’t have any questions I’ll just leave you to it then.”

And with that, I blinked my eyes and he was gone.

I wasn’t quite sure where he’d gone or how he’d left
, but I supposed it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I was alone and there was something behind me that I’d need to defeat.

Mustering what little courage I had, I turned around to properly survey my task.

A ways away was something that looked like a large metallic spider. Its long spindly legs bent in odd places that made it walk with a bit of a limp, but it still moved quickly, looking lethal. Its body looked like a rusty yellow bumper car from a carnival I had visited when I was little, and I had to wonder if this was a mix of different memories all merging together into one big, rusty mess.

Though this creature was troubling, the most alarming thing about it was the two ‘pi
nchers’ it held in front of its body. Like its legs, they were made from long metal pieces, but on the end of both poles rested two circular saws, whirring quickly and cutting through the piles of metal that blocked the spider’s path with a loud screech.

At least that explained the noise.

“Fantastic,” I breathed sarcastically.

I guess compared to zombies, death by saw would be a lot quicker and less painful
, right? Like I said, I could be logical.

“Okay Tuck, what would you do?” I asked, wishing my big brother was there to help me out.

He was nothing if not an inventor and I was sure he’d be able to look around and create something amazing in a matter of minutes. As it was, I was on my own and completely hopeless as the spider came close
r and closer to me.

I wasn’t really sure if it had seen me yet, but since its sole purpose in life was to motivate me to build something so that it
couldn’t kill me, I didn’t doubt it knew I was there. Maybe it was biding its time to give me a fair start.

“The only way to get rid of it would be to smash it,” I reasoned
, acting like it was a real spider and not a huge metallic death machine. “But anything heavy enough to smash it would be too heavy for me to pick up, so that doesn’t really work.”

I twirled my white-
blonde hair around my finger absent-mindedly, actually being very calm in the face of almost certain second death. Panicking wouldn’t really get me anywhere; I knew that, and so I kept my breathing even as I surveyed the area for any possible parts I could use to kill the machine.

A few trash piles
away I could see a car suspended in midair by some sort of giant magnet. If I could somehow manage to cut the chain holding the car while the spider was underneath it, I could easily destroy it. Cutting through a thick chain didn’t really seem possible though, and I wouldn’t really have to invent anything to do it.

I thought back on Hayden’s instructions and wondered if it was really necessary to
invent
something, or if simply being innovative with the materials around me would be enough to show my ingenuity. I didn’t want to risk failing the task just because I’d bent the rules a bit, but at the same time, I wasn’t an inventor. My brother, Tuck had always been good with building things and creating new machines out of parts from old ones, but that was a talent I sadly hadn’t inherited.

“Are you trying to fail on purpose or do you just want to bug me?” Hayden asked, right next to my ear, causing me to jump about a
mile in the air.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, slightly breathless from his unexpected ambush.

He smirked at me, his full lips tugging up in one corner.

“I g
ot bored,” was his simple reply. “Plus you were just standing here and I thought maybe you’d been scared stiff.”

“Oddly enough, I’m very calm right now,” I told him smugly.

Of course I didn’t bring up the fact that I was slightly resigned to my death at this point since I couldn’t think of a single way to stop the spider from cutting me in half.

“So brave,” he mocked playfully.

It was odd to hear him joking around with me rather than berating me for being weak or slow. Maybe I had broken down his walls at least a little. Fat lot of good it did me though since I was about to die again.

“Let’s say I don’t invent something
, per se,” I began tentatively, watching his reaction. “What if I just utilize what I have around me…but in a clever way?”

“I don’t think I’d be relying on your cleverness or cunning if I were you,” he said, sound
ing like the Hayden I knew and…not loved…maybe tolerated.

“Did you come here to make my job more difficult?” I asked.

“I came down here to ensure that
you
didn’t fail and give me a losing track record.”

“But you can’t help me,” I pointed out.

“Glad you listened to at least one thing I’ve told you,” he said sounding very put out. “And no, I can’t help you. But I can offer some moral support and very subtly inform you that the crane holding up that car you were eyeing, is still in working order.”

“Well, Hayden Smith,” I said in surprise, making up a last name for him. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were offering your help.”

“Temple,” he said.

“What?”

“Hayden Temple.”

“And you’re giving out personal information. I never thought I’d see the day.”

I smiled too sweetly over at him, being overly dramatic in my praise.

“
Do you want my help, or do you want to die again?” he asked, obviously fed up with my little act.

“I’d rather not die again,” I said. “If it’s not too inconvenient for you.”

“Oh trust me; it’s monumentally inconvenient for me. But I’m your Guide so I’m forced to do what I can for you.”

“Except help me.”

“Except that,” he agreed, closing his eyes and nodding.

We were both startled out of our little exchange by the sound of the machine looming ever closer, effectively cutting a VW B
us in half as it crawled toward us.

“
Now, I don’t mean to judge your method when I’m trying to be supportive,” Hayden began.

“But.”

“But, shouldn’t you actually be doing something?”

“Oh fine, you kill joy,” I said with a laugh.

I wasn’t sure what I found so funny about the whole situation. In all honestly, it was more likely that I’d fail this task than succeed, but having someone there to talk to and joke around with made the experience infinitely better. It must have been all of the horrible things Hayden had said to me during the other tasks that now made me so easy to please. He didn’t even have to be nice to me anymore. If he just refrained from saying something jerky I was beyond happy with him.

“I need to get the machine under that car so I can smash him,” I explained, picking m
y way through the rubble toward the vehicle, suspended in midair.

“Smash him? You make it sound like you’re figuring out how to kill a bug in your shower,” Hayden answered.

“Trust me, if I found a bug in my shower, that thing would be dead before it knew what hit it.”

“Besides that, I’m not sure how much ‘luring’ you’ll need to do since the monster is obviously after you,” he added, completely ignoring my statement.

“But how do I get it to stay under the car if I’m up in the cab of the…what would you call it? A crane?”

“Sure.”

“I can’t operate the crane or it’ll come up there after me. And
you
certainly can’t operate it because that would count as helping me,” I reasoned.

It didn’t look like I’d be finding a way around this task any time soon. I could only be grateful the spider had
started off so far away from me, that way I had time to think things through as it approached.

“That is a problem,” Hayden agreed.