“Once they took her away, I had nothing left to lose. The fact that I still haven’t given up the location is the only reason I’m alive.”

  Absentmindedly, I reached up and felt the ceiling, half listening to Devon, half plotting my escape. Something at my fingertips came loose, and I only had a moment of relief thinking maybe not all of the cell was indestructible before the thing that came loose fell into my eye … and scurried across my face.

  It felt as big as a mouse, but there were definitely more than four legs.

  “Shit!” I brushed roughly at my face and heard something that sounded like a walnut hitting a rock wall. I scrubbed my arms and legs with my fingertips, suddenly feeling prickles everywhere. “What the hell was that?”

  “What kind of noise did it make?”

  “Does it matter?!” But as I thought about it, I realized it did make a clicking noise as it moved. “It clicked.”

  “Probably a cockroach.”

  “It was the size of a Mack truck.”

  “Yeah, they grow them big down here. You do realize our prison hovers on the outskirts of the Everneath? The critters here aren’t exactly the kind you’d find on the Surface. But they’re attracted to noise, so if you stop moving around so much, they’ll leave you alone.”

  I froze. Great. Not only was I stuck inside a cell the size of a large coffin, now I couldn’t move without attracting an insectosaurus. I might as well have been buried alive in the Tunnels.

  I closed my eyes. Or maybe I didn’t close them. It was hard to tell in here. Either way, I pictured Nikki’s face.

  “I wish I’d never met you,” I whispered. I should’ve given up on her when I had the chance. And I did have the chance.

  LAST YEAR

  I should’ve stayed home.

  Gavin was off on the drums. Or maybe Oliver was coming in too early on bass. Or maybe it was because Max wasn’t there. Or maybe it was because the Feed was fast approaching and I wasn’t any closer to Nikki.

  Whatever the reason, our jam session felt about as natural as a fish living in a tree.

  Gavin struck the loudest, largest cymbal, his stick coming down on it with a crack. “Cole! Where’s your head?”

  I looked up. “What?”

  “You’re not even paying attention to the bridge. Do you need me to send you a memo instead of … say … beating the rhythm? Would that work? How about some flashing lights and Morse code?”

  Gavin was not the most vocal in the band—there was a reason he preferred to stay in the back, behind his drums—so his outburst surprised me.

  “The problem is your sticks,” I said.

  Oliver piped up. “No, the problem is your timing. Gav’s right. It’s been off all day.”

  “You’ve got your bass up your ass,” I said diplomatically.

  Oliver stepped forward. “You’ve got your head up yours!”

  The door to the studio swung open, and Max strolled in, obviously aware of the heated exchange since the microphones relayed what was going on inside the studio to the small control room just outside.

  I cricked my head from side to side, my neck making a series of popping noises. I did that when I wanted to piss people off. “Where’ve you been?”

  Max sank into the chair in the corner of the soundproof room and plopped a newspaper down in front of me. “Keeping up on current events.”

  I glanced at the headline. KEVIN REID CASE DISMISSED.

  Kevin Reid. The man who was driving the car that killed Nikki’s mom. His case was supposed to be a slam-dunk. And now he was going free. Nikki would be devastated, and I would be there. I unplugged my guitar and tossed the cord by the amp.

  “I had a feeling our practice would be cut short,” Max said. “But you remember that you have a ready Forfeit who requires no pursuit at all, don’t you?”

  I smacked the back of his head as I strode out the door.

  NOW

  The Delphinian Dungeons of Suck.

  “Who?” Devon said.

  I jumped at the sound of his voice. It’d been a few hours since he’d spoken. Since the whole Jurassic bug incident. “Who what?” I said.

  “Who do you wish you’d never met?”

  I grimaced. It felt as if I’d whispered that hours ago.

  “Told you,” Devon said. “Ears like a bat.”

  I took in a deep breath of stale air. “I think bats use sonar, so it’s not really a matter of good hearing.”

  “Wow. Whoever it was must’ve messed you up. Who was it?”

  I ran my finger over the wall, coating it in a slimy, greasy film. With the mention of bats, all I could think about was bat droppings, and I was in no mood to spill my guts to some stranger.

  “Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. Let’s focus on the things that matter,” I said. “Namely, how do we get out of here?”

  “I asked myself that same question. Eighty-four years ago.”

  “Eight-four years ago?” I moaned. “But you used words that weren’t around then. Like suck.”

  “I told you. We’re in the Everneath. I’ve been here eighty-four Everneath years.”

  “How are you still sane?”

  “Who says I am? I only stopped asking myself the escape question when the walls started to answer me.”

  Shit. I knocked my head against the stone floor a couple of times. Maybe if I knocked it hard enough, I could sleep through the first decade.

  I didn’t think Devon was kidding about the walls talking to him. I scraped my fingers across the nearest wall again, and more of the slime came loose. I dug a bit harder, and a little more broke free.

  There was something symbolic about it, something maybe to do with Nikki. If I dug a little harder, pushed a little deeper, then, piece by piece, I could claim her soul.

  TEN

  NOW

  After I loosened a piece of the “impenetrable” Delphinian Dungeons.

  “Devon?” There was no answer. “Devon?” I said a little bit louder. “I got a piece of the wall loose.”

  I held the jagged stone in my hand, weighing it.

  “It’s midnight,” Devon whispered.

  “How do you know?” And why do you care?

  “Because I can hear their feet.”

  Oh man. This guy had lost his last firing neuron. I brought the rock to the base of the bars and started scraping, already feeling one step closer to finding a replacement for Nikki. A new Forfeit. Then I thought about what Devon had just said. “Whose feet?”

  “The rats,” he said in a voice that was half wonder, half dread. “They release them at midnight. Every night. Do you remember the tale of Prometheus?”

  Okay, he had jumped ship for a little while. But he didn’t stop talking. I let him continue as I scraped away more of the wall.

  “Prometheus defied the gods and gave fire to humans, and as punishment the gods bound him to a rock and sent an eagle to eat his liver. The liver would grow back each day, and the whole thing would repeat itself.”

  “What’s your point?” I said, feeling the new divot I’d made in the cement. I was trying not to let Devon’s words make me nervous.

  “My point is, the Everliving love their eternal punishments, don’t they?”

  I started to answer with something along the lines of What the hell are you talking about? but I’d only gotten to the what when my voice was drowned out by a faint scratching sound. I had to hold my breath to hear it clearly at first; but then it grew louder, and soon enough I didn’t have to work to hear it. I dropped my rock.

  It sounded like thousands of tiny fingernails scratching the stone floor. Not long drawn-out scratches but short little bursts. Chicken scratches.

  “Cover your face,” Devon said. “You’ll have the urge to try to swipe them away, but it won’t work; and once you expose your face … well … just don’t do it. Keep your hands on your face. You’re probably wearing clothes. The first few nights won’t be so bad.”

  I had no chance to respond. The scratching sound was now joined by a screeching noise that bounced off the walls, reverberating down the corridors, or halls, or whatever was outside our cells.

  I sucked in a deep breath, as if I were getting ready to go underwater or something, and covered my face with my hands just as the sounds of tiny, scurrying feet and screeching mouths blew through the bars of my cell.

  Scrambling backward, I hit my head on the wall farthest from the bars.

  Maybe that’s why they went for my legs first.

  Devon was right. Every instinct inside me was screaming for me to swipe at the creatures, but there were too many. They covered every inch of me. Two or three deep, it felt like. Fighting one another to get closer to me. Screeching sounds like I’d never heard from another animal before. The few on my face found the small spaces between my fingers. Teeth darted between my knuckles, trying to reach my face. I rubbed my hands back and forth all over my face and ears and neck, just so none of them could get hold of too much skin.

  Devon said this happened every night.

  They had to leave at some point. This couldn’t go on forever.

  They had to stop.

  As the torture continued, I couldn’t help but think this wasn’t only punishment for stealing my payment back from the Delphinians. This was punishment for what I’d done to Nikki, and even for what I’d done to the people who loved her.

  And I knew exactly what I’d done to them. I’d seen it.

  LAST YEAR

  My stealthy prep work for the Feed.

  Nikki had come to me in tears after she’d made the trip to Jack’s dorm at football camp. I still didn’t know exactly what had happened there, but whatever it was, it had thrown Nikki into my arms and made her willing to go to the Feed with me.

  I left Nikki on my bed in an Everliving coma, sleeping peacefully. Of course, after all the negative energy I’d drained off her, she had no choice but to sleep peacefully. I didn’t want to leave her, but there was something I had to do.

  The condo was silent. The other Everliving had already left for the Feed, but since I was taking a regular human and not a Daughter of Persephone, I needed a little extra time to clean up my tracks, starting with Nikki’s house and her father. The last thing I needed was a small-town mayor starting an all-out search for a kidnapped daughter.

  I folded Nikki’s note to her father and put it in my jacket pocket. It hadn’t taken much to get her to write it. Just a matter of stealing her worst feelings, except for her guilt. If I wanted to, I could’ve had her write a letter to the EPA, apologizing for the extra air she was breathing just by being alive.

  As I made the turn onto Nikki’s street, I saw a figure sitting on the curb outside her house, his head in his hands.

  Epic Loverboy was epically sad.

  I pulled my motorcycle over to the side of the road a few houses down from Nikki’s house and just watched Jack for a few minutes. He wasn’t crying or anything, but he sat as still as a statue. At one point he looked up. If it was possible for a human to lose ten pounds overnight, I would’ve believed it had happened to him. He stared intently ahead at … nothing. If I had walked right past him, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Dark-purple bruises painted the area under bloodshot eyes.

  He shivered once, then put his head in his hands again.

  I needed him to move so I could get into the house and leave the note in Nikki’s bedroom where her father could find it.

  But the way Jack was acting, he would be planted there until he grew roots.

  I started toward the side of the house, checking to see if I could possibly get into the backyard and find a way in there, but then I heard the front door open.

  Mayor Beckett stood silhouetted against the light coming from the house.

  “Jack? Is that you?”

  Jack popped up from his step and wiped under his eyes, though he hadn’t been crying. “Yes, sir.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at football camp?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I was waiting for Nikki.”

  “She’s not home, son. In fact, I’m not sure where she is.” He didn’t sound as if he was too concerned. Yes, he didn’t know where she was, but he wasn’t too worried yet.

  “She has to come home,” Jack said, his voice breaking.

  Nikki’s dad walked across the lawn and sat by Jack, keeping about a foot of space between them. He looked straight ahead.

  “We got some bad news yesterday about the Reid trial, and Nikki didn’t take it too well.” He sighed. “I don’t know if you remember, but when Nikki found out about her mother’s death, she took off for a while. Wanted to be alone. I hadn’t seen her so angry before or since … until yesterday.”

  “I know. I heard about Reid. I’m sorry.” Jack’s mouth hung open for a moment, and he took in a deep breath. “Nikki must’ve been devastated last night.”

  Nikki’s dad shrugged. “She definitely wasn’t happy. I thought she would’ve come to you, but obviously that didn’t happen.”

  Jack’s shoulders sagged, and he hung his head low. “She did come to me. But we had a miscommunication, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.” He heaved a shaky breath. “It’s all my fault.”

  Nikki’s dad put his hand on Jack’s back. “Don’t say that. I’m sure everything will work out. Why don’t you go home, and as soon as she gets here, I’ll have her call you?”

  Jack raised his head and stared at the mayor with the most helpless expression I’d ever seen. I could interpret that lost look, even though Mayor Beckett obviously couldn’t. Maybe all the memories I’d gotten from Nikki through all the times I’d fed on her so far helped me read his face. Or maybe it was because I’d always been good at reading faces.

  But right now, Jack’s face looked despondent. As if he knew she was never coming back.

  Maybe this guy was smarter than I’d given him credit for.

  Knowing that this was my best chance, with Mayor Beckett outside, I crept through the trees that framed the side of the Beckett house and went around to the back. The grill on the patio was lit, with hamburgers cooking.

  Excellent. The patio door had to be unlocked.

  I went inside and down the hall, which had four doors. One I could see, though—it was the master suite. One was a bathroom. The other two were closed. I mentally flipped a coin and chose the door on the left.

  The bed was neatly made. A history book lay open on a desk in the corner. Framed pictures lined up along the bottom shelf of a bookcase, showing Nikki and various friends. Several of Jack.

  But the most telling sign that this was Nikki’s room was the newly splashed Dead Elvises T-shirt draped over the chair at the desk.

  I ran my fingers over the image, smiling at the care that she took to iron it.

  “Oh, Nik,” I whispered. “We’re going to have so much fun.”

  I tucked the note underneath her pillow so that only the corner showed, and then I left her house.

  Somehow, seeing where Nikki lived made me all the more anxious to get back to her again.

  NOW

  After the Rats of NIMH bugged out.

  “They do that every night?” I said, my voice hoarse. I guess I’d been screaming the entire time the rats were nipping at me.

  I heard Devon rustle the straw beneath him. “If it helps, the rats make it easier to mark the passage of days.”

  My chest constricted. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I can’t do this. I can’t be stuck here forever.” I started punching the ceiling, over and over, until I heard a horrific snap. “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttt!”

  I cradled my crushed hand, the silence following my outburst intermittently broken by my own gasping breath.

  “Maybe you won’t be here forever. You only have three months until your trial.”

  I shook out my hand and then froze as the words sank in. “Trial?”

  “Yes,” Devon said hesitantly. “Didn’t they tell you when they brought you here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they were explaining the finer points of the incarceration while they were bashing my brains to a pulp. What about a trial?”

  “Delphinian trials begin three months after detention. They decide if you are to be imprisoned for eternity. Or … not.”

  “Not? You mean they might set me free?”

  “If by ‘set you free’ you mean they kill you, yes.”

  I closed my eyes. “So my options are an eternity of rats feeding on me, or death.”

  “Yep. Makes you wish you could choose, doesn’t it. I would rather be dead, but the only way they’ll kill me is if they find the relic, and I don’t want to die knowing it’s in their hands.”

  “That’s the only reason you’re staying alive?”

  Devon sighed. “Brother, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you’ll come to discover there are only one or two essential things worth living for. Unique to you and you alone. My honor is one of them for me. I keep my honor by keeping the relic out of their hands.”

  I closed my eyes. What was the essential thing I was living for? Honor, like Devon? I could hear Nikki inside my head snorting at that one. Music? The search for the next Forfeit? Eternal life? That one made no sense. Eternal life, by very definition, couldn’t be the thing worth living for.

  If I had to choose one, I would choose the search for the next Forfeit. That’s what I was living for right now. The chance for another Forfeit who could survive the Feed.

  I rubbed my eyes. What was the point of finding something worth living for if my life was no longer in my own hands?

  Devon still had something the Delphinians wanted, so there was no way they would kill him. But me … I had nothing they wanted. “Why don’t you make the decision for them?”

  “What, kill myself? This close to the Everneath, any scratch I get heals too fast. Except the scratches from the Ever-rats. You know how it is.”

  Somehow knowing that I wouldn’t be able to off myself made me feel even worse. You never realize how much you rely on the option of suicide until the option is removed. I’m not saying that sentence would make a good bumper sticker, but it was the truth.

 

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