Evertrue

“But by what?” I said.

We kept going, but with each yard we immersed ourselves farther into pure darkness.

“Shouldn’t we be there?” Cole asked. His voice was too loud for the tube, and I realized that we’d all been basically holding our breaths.

“Shhh,” I said.

Finally, Jack stopped. I knew because I ran into him.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something hard is blocking it,” Jack said through a grunt. “I’ve almost got it. . . . There!” He tumbled through, falling into the cavern that housed the baetylus. I scrambled after him, then Cole and finally Will. A round steel door hung broken at the end of the passageway. Jack had busted his way through it.

When I had righted myself, Jack was already standing, his feet apart in an athletic stance, as if he were about to get hit.

“Jack?” I said, but then I saw what he was looking at, and I froze.

There were ten Shades, at least, surrounding the orb. Swirling around it. Protecting it.

I didn’t have any excess energy to attract the Shades, and Jack had the pendant around his neck, cloaking his own. Cole was an Everliving. Will was the only one of us who had anything that would draw their attention.

Just like a wave, one by one the heads of the Shades turned toward Will.

Will assessed the situation like an army officer who was used to combat strategy. “I’ll divert,” he said.

Before we could stop him, he waved his arms up and down. I almost laughed, because it wasn’t his movements that were attracting the Shades, but it didn’t matter. Will had their full attention.

His eyes shifted toward another crevice-like opening on the opposite side of the cavern. I could see why he picked it. The hole was in the ground, going downward. Gravity would aid him. He feinted left, tricking the Shades into darting that way, and then he sprinted toward the opening. He leaped high in the air and then dropped through the chasm. The Shades hesitated for a moment and then swarmed after him, looking like a tub full of oil swirling down a drain.

“Will!” I screamed. He might be able to beat them simply by using the force of gravity, but where would the passageway deposit him?

“Nikki! Quick!” Jack said, pulling me away from the hole Will had disappeared down.

After a moment of hesitation, I ran to the baetylus, held the sickle high above it with both hands, and plunged. The sickle clashed with the orb, causing so much vibration that I had to drop it.

The orb didn’t even have a dent.

I looked at Jack, alarmed.

“Shit,” he said.

Cole was standing by one of the larger openings in the cavern wall. “Whatever you’re gonna do, make it fast. I see something at the end. There’s something coming!”

I took the sickle and plunged it again, but it was like stabbing a granite boulder with a rubber chicken.

“Jack!” I said.

He came running over.

“Try it,” I said.

He looked as if he didn’t think it could possibly work, but he took the sickle from my hands. He raised it high above his head, and suddenly I flashed to a picture I’d seen in my mythology book: of Hercules holding a knife over something. Maybe this was the reason he’d come back bigger. Maybe his own journey to the Tunnels had led him to this moment. This one chance to destroy something only he and no one else could.

The frozen image gave me the chills.

He brought it down, and upon impact, the orb exploded. Shards of light burst out, implanting themselves in the rock walls.

Jack stood above the carnage, panting. He took the pendant from his neck and placed it at the center of where the orb used to be.

“I hope the pendant holds the energy long enough for us to get out of here,” I said.

He nodded. “It will. If we go now.”

“How do you know?” I said.

He smiled. “Faith.”

Cole motioned us toward one of the crevices, and Jack went in first, followed by me. We started crawling as fast as we could. I turned behind me to make sure Cole was there, but he wasn’t.

“Cole!” I shouted. “Cole!”

Jack stopped in front of me. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Cole!” There was light from the network end of the tunnel, and suddenly shadow overcame the light. I couldn’t tell if it was a human form or a Shade. My blood ran cold with the thought that the Shades had gotten Cole.

“Run!” Jack said.

“We’re not leaving him!”

“He’s right behind us! I’m sure of it!”

We crawled as fast as we could. The swallowing motion of the tunnel seemed to be working against us, as if the passageway itself knew we were fugitives. For every two feet forward, we seemed to move one step back.

I dug my nails in as I went, clawing my way forward. It felt like working against a strong current. Jack reached a hand back and I grasped it. With his help, we finally ended up in a heap outside the entrance.

After a few tense moments, Cole’s tattooed hand appeared. Jack took it and hoisted him out. It had been him behind me the entire time.

I punched him in the arm. “What were you doing?” I said. “I thought the Shades got you!”

He shook his head. “I was just making sure everything was really destroyed.”

I didn’t have time to ask him questions. We had to meet Will at the rendezvous point. “Run!” I said.

We ran. A flat-out sprint. We weren’t as worried this time about drawing too much attention. We were only worried about the speed, because once we found Will, Cole would zap us out of there.

We were so close now. I started to believe we would make it. All we needed was for Will to have eluded the Shades, and when we turned the final corner and I saw Will waiting at the Fountain of Lethe, I knew we were home free. I grabbed Cole’s hand and Jack’s hand; but just as Jack reached out to grab Will, something strange happened, almost in slow motion. The sky above us turned from light blue to a darker blue, and then it transitioned into a deep red. The air around us seemed tinged with the deep red too, as if each air molecule were reflecting the new hue of the sky.

Jack grabbed Will’s hand.

“Go!” he shouted to Cole.

I closed my eyes, waiting for that familiar feeling of being tossed about in a washing machine.

But it never came.

“Go, go!” Jack said again.

I opened my eyes and saw Cole’s face, and instantly my heart sank.

“We’re too late,” he said. “The Everneath is on lockdown.”

THIRTY-ONE

NOW

The Everneath. Streets of Ouros.

Everlivings poured out of buildings. Some pointed at the sky. Others stood there with knees bent and eyes squeezed shut, as if trying to propel themselves to the Surface. But they remained where they were. A few released panicked screams, looking for missing loved ones. The good thing was that with everyone worrying about being on lockdown, nobody would notice us. I wondered how often the Everneath had been on lockdown before, because the Everlivings seemed genuinely panicked.

We fought our way through the throngs of Everlivings and ran to Ashe’s house, scrambling inside and shutting the door and the windows.

“Are you sure it’s a lockdown?” I said.

Cole nodded. “I assume that’s what the change in the sky means. Either way, I tried to jump us, but nothing happened.”

Jack took a few steps closer to Cole so he was in his face. “Maybe you forgot how. Maybe you didn’t try hard enough.” He grabbed Cole’s hand and then mine. I grabbed Will’s. “Try again.”

I closed my eyes once more in the vain hope that this time it would work. But nothing happened.

“I’m telling you, it’s not working,” Cole insisted.

Jack threw our hands down and stormed to the opposite side of the house. He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling out more than a few strands as he did so.

“What do we do now? What do we do?”

I tried to stand next to him, but he wouldn’t stand still. He just kept pacing.

“Where’s Ashe?” he said.

“The Feast, I’m sure,” Cole said.

Thinking of the very few war movies I’d seen, I said, “Okay, let’s take inventory of what we have.”

Will was the only one who responded. He emptied out his pockets. Three quarters, a poker chip, and a ball of lint.

Jack looked at it and paced even faster. I put my hands into my pockets. One cell phone that didn’t work in the Everneath. And nothing else.

Cole saw what we were doing and backed up a step. He almost looked scared. Jack noticed too. He called him on it.

“What do you have, Cole?” he said.

“Nothing,” Cole said.

He wasn’t a very good liar. If there was one change about the new, amnesiac Cole, it was that he couldn’t lie as easily.

Jack was in no mood to play games. He grabbed Cole and dug his hands into the pockets of Cole’s pants. He came up with a metal object.

The pendant.

The Helmet of Hermes was supposed to be our escape plan. It was supposed to be with the destroyed baetylus, masking its energy, allowing us to escape. Instead, it was here.

Jack threw it against the wall so hard that the edge of the pendant embedded itself in the plaster a good inch. I was definitely angry, but I thought Jack’s head was about to explode.

“What the hell?” Jack growled, baring his teeth.

For the first time, I had no desire to hold him back. Cole had betrayed us. Again. I wanted Jack to rip Cole apart.

“Now, settle down,” Cole said, his hands out, palms down. He walked around the table in the room so that he kept it between himself and Jack.

Jack followed around accordingly. “Settle down?” Jack said. “You raised the alarm on us. It’s because of you that we didn’t have time to get out. You betrayed all of us. Again!”

I just shook my head. Before, I’d needed Cole alive because I needed him to feed me, but now? There was no point in feeding on Cole anymore. This was the end. We were through.

Jack went around the table, and Cole moved to position himself the farthest distance from Jack. They went round and round. I did nothing to stop them. If I’d had the strength, I probably would have torn Cole’s head off myself.

Will stepped forward. “Uh, guys?”

Jack spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m going to tear through your chest and grab the nearest thing to a heart you have inside there, and then I’m going to rip it out, and it will make that scene in Alien look like a kid’s movie.”

I almost laughed at how detailed Jack’s threat was.

“Uh, guys, wait,” Will said.

Jack finally spared him a glance. “What?”

“Did you empty all of Cole’s pockets?”

Jack nodded.

“Then we’re missing something,” he said.

I looked at the contents on the table. There was my phone, three quarters, a ball of lint . . . but what was Will’s point? What were we missing?

Cole looked up from the table, realization dawning on his features. “My heart. My Surface heart. My pick.”

“He never goes anywhere without it, right?” Will said. We had learned that lesson when we tried to break Cole’s heart.

I looked back down, trying to figure out what he was thinking. “It’s gone,” I said.

Jack didn’t give up his position of pursuit on the side of the table, but he stopped long enough to say, “What does that mean?”

I rubbed my forehead. “So when the lockdown went into effect, suddenly Cole’s Surface heart disappeared. The Surface heart is the way the Everlivings go between the worlds.” I bit my lip. “What if . . . the only way the Everneath could be fully locked down is if everyone’s Surface heart was somehow confiscated?”

Jack dropped both hands, and his eyes got wide.

“That means . . . ,” Jack said, but he couldn’t finish the sentence.

“That means all the hearts might be in one place,” I said. “That means the thing we thought was impossible . . .”

“Is suddenly possible,” Cole finished.

It was as if we were all so surprised that we’d lost the ability to start and finish a sentence. Will just smiled. Had he figured this all out before any of us?

“Ha-ha!” Cole exclaimed triumphantly. “See? I was following my instincts back there. Something inside me told me to take the pendant. It was a sign. That if the lockdown happened, all the Surface hearts would be stored together. And how could we expect to destroy them all if they were scattered around the universe?”

He looked up at Jack, whose ears were scorching red, as if he still really wanted to be angry with Cole and was disappointed that he wouldn’t have the opportunity to beat him again.

“You’re welcome,” Cole said.

Jack clenched and unclenched his fist. “You forgot one thing in your brilliant plan.”

“What’s that?” Cole said.

“We’re trapped here now. We can’t get back to the Surface either.”