I felt around my cell until I found the jagged rock I had broken loose the night before. I found the smoothest part of the wall and, using the sharp point of the rock, etched a single line to mark my first day in the Delphinian Dungeons.

  And then I started to dig at the bottom of the bars.

  I had three months to dig a hole to freedom. All I could think about was going home. Maybe for the first time I could understand where Nikki was coming from when she chose going back home over an eternal life with me.

  No. I would never understand the choice she made.

  ELEVEN

  I marked the passage of time, and the erosion of my hope, in weeks.

  Week one: When I actually thought my stay here would be so short, it would be pointless to mark my days.

  Week three: When I had to start reminding myself that the Nikki hallucinations were just that—hallucinations.

  Week six: When I discovered the stone holding the iron bars in place grew back, despite forty days of me scratching away at it.

  Week ten: When the rats had taken off enough skin that I felt my ankle bone sticking out.

  Week twelve: When I started begging for judgment day, and my own death.

  TWELVE

  NOW

  Judgment day.

  I used the sharp rock—the one I’d been so excited about that first night—to scratch another tick on my homemade calendar on the rock wall. The line was jagged. Finding the energy even to hold on to the rock made my hands shake.

  There was no need to add up all the marks. I knew that my fresh line would bring the total to ninety.

  Ninety days in this prison. Ninety hallucinations of Nikki. Ninety midnights with the rats.

  The rock slipped from my fingers, which were slick with fresh blood, and landed in a large pile of similar rocks, each one carved out of the stone by my fingers.

  All those loose stones, and yet the walls were as firm as they ever were. Maybe the stones were hallucinations too. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling.

  Suddenly Nikki was lying beside me. Ninety-one hallucinations. “Starting to doubt your own mind?” she said.

  I knew she wasn’t real. But I still answered her. Every single time.

  “You would too,” I said. She just looked at me in a way I’d imagined the real Nikki would someday look at me. A way that says I’m the one who knows you. “Can I tell you something?” I asked. It hit me that yes, I was asking a hallucination for permission to speak.

  “Yes,” she said, blinking in the dark.

  “I dream of holding your heart in my hand.” Okay, three months in hell had made me a bit cheesy, but there was no avoiding it. I swallowed and breathed in. “And I have a confession. I don’t think I’m here to replace you. I think I’m here because I thought it would somehow lead me to you.”

  Nikki looked up at the ceiling and brought her hand closer to mine, letting her pinkie finger hook around my own. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Why was I telling her this? “Because they’re going to come and get me soon. For my trial. And someone has to know the truth.”

  She grinned. “You realize, don’t you, that you’re leaving your legacy with a ghost.”

  I rolled over onto my side, facing her. She mirrored me. I raised my hand, palm toward her, and she brought her hand to meet mine.

  “Maybe a ghost is the safest person to talk to.”

  From far away I heard a soft clank, notable because the only sounds we usually heard in here were the scurrying of little feet, the useless scratching of stone against stone, and our own voices. This was a new sound. I imagined a stone door opening, miles away—the sound traveling through endless corridors—and cloaked figures coming for me. For justice.

  I could feel my time slipping away from me, draining from me. “They’re coming for me,” I said. “All this sacrifice, all this work, for a one-word answer that doesn’t make any sense. It was all for nothing.”

  “What was the word?” she asked.

  “Morpheus,” I said bitterly.

  She tilted her head. “What does it mean?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What does it matter? In here, what could it possibly matter?”

  She ignored my protests. “Morpheus is not just a word. It’s a name. So who is it?”

  I sighed, not sure I wanted to play along at this point. “Morpheus was the god of dreams.”

  She nodded. “But you know that there are no real gods in the Everneath. So what does Morpheus mean?”

  What does it mean? I picked up one of the rocks and threw it against the wall. Morpheus. God of dreams. What did I know about dreams?

  “Dreams are the closest humans can get to the Everneath without actually going there. They’re a small gateway into our world for a specific moment of time.”

  Nikki frowned thoughtfully. “So it’s almost like a bridge.”

  A bridge. I’d never thought about it before, but Nikki was right. And considering the fact that she was my hallucination, I guess I’d gotten it right. Dream states were all about outer manifestations of inside energy. The Everneath was almost a larger version of a dream state.

  “But what do dreams have to do with how you survived?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t I mention dreams at some point?”

  Yes. She said she had dreamed of Jack all the time. And when he jumped into the Tunnels, he’d begged her to dream of him, like he had dreamed of her. And the last time I’d seen Nikki, in her bedroom, she had been dreaming of Jack.

  What if dreams were a bridge between not only worlds, but people?

  If dreams were a bridge … I curled my fingers around Nikki’s. “I know how you survived.”

  “How?”

  “Jack gave you energy the entire time. He dreamed of you, creating a bridge to you, and fed you. That’s how you survived. He was like …” I searched for the right word. “Your anchor, here on the Surface. Jack kept you alive.” Not only did Jack save her life by taking her place in the Tunnels, but he had kept her alive by supplying energy to her through their dreams.

  Great. There was no scenario in this whole damn thing where Jack didn’t come off looking as awesome as the love child of Thor and Optimus Prime.

  I heard the faraway clank of a heavy key turning in a rusty lock. Not as far away as the first sound I’d heard.

  The three Everneath months I’d been here had felt like a lifetime, and for an Everliving that was saying something. I remembered when I’d tried my stupid escape plan as if it had happened years ago instead of just months.

  Voices echoed down the hallway outside my cell. I couldn’t see any flashlights yet, though, so they were probably still far away.

  Nikki watched me carefully. “Now that you know the answer, you can find your next Forfeit.”

  I shook my head and gave a sad laugh. “I don’t want to find another Forfeit. I don’t want anyone else. I only want you.” I realized the truth of the words only when I had spoken them. This was about Nikki, and Nikki only. How had I ever pretended this quest of mine was about anything else?

  Maybe I should’ve listened to Max from the beginning. Maybe he’d somehow felt where my obsession would ultimately lead me. And it was an obsession. As much as I tried to deny it, I knew that now. I came halfway across the world, faced the most dangerous beings on the Surface, only to reach a conclusion I must’ve known all along.

  I wasn’t ready to give Nikki up. And she would probably be the death of me.

  But I had been the death of her as well. Maybe now, as my death was coming down the hall, I could fully understand what Nikki had felt those last few days before the Tunnels, burdened with the knowledge that the end was near.

  I closed my eyes. Squeezed them shut. Finally I knew exactly what I wanted, but now the Delphinians were coming for me, ready to mete out a punishment that maybe I’d deserved for a long time. Would it be an eternal punishment akin to the eagle eating Prometheus’s liver every day? Or would it be an instant blow, severing my head from my body?

  I hoped it would be the latter.

  I would miss my band … my family. But right now, all I could think about was how I’d never see the real sun shine on the face of the real Nikki again.

  The light outside my cell grew stronger, and a strange smell accompanied it. The glow cast a shadow on the floor, making the vertical bars look as if they were swinging back and forth.

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to bring the light into focus. “I thought the Delphinians didn’t like fire.”

  “They don’t,” Nikki said.

  I stared at the light emanating from down the corridor. It danced along the stone walls.

  “Then why are they carrying torches?”

  “Your eyes are playing tricks on you,” she said. I hadn’t seen anything besides darkness for three months. She was probably right.

  Still, what was that smell? I could’ve sworn it was something burning. Was my nose playing tricks on me too?

  And now the crackle of flames reached my ears. Whatever it was, it had to be coming from something larger than a few torches.

  Nikki stepped through the bars and looked down the hallway. “I thought the Delphinian Dungeons were inflammable.” Her voice exuded fear.

  “Me too,” I said, now mesmerized by the dancing flames along the wall. The fire was still too far away for us to glimpse, but there was no doubt in my mind there was a fire now. “Aren’t they made of stone?”

  As if triggered by the flickering flames, my Nikki hallucination began to sputter and fade.

  “No!” I said. “Don’t go. Please. I just found out that I can’t exist without you, and I don’t know what to do with this. You can’t leave me alone.”

  But she disappeared like a light mist of water on a scorching day.

  “I don’t know what to do with this!” I shouted through the bars.

  I must’ve woken up Devon, because suddenly he was at the bars of his own cell. “Is that fire?”

  Nikki was gone. The damn Delphinians couldn’t even let me keep my hallucination for my last moments. Maybe it was a fire coming for me. But it didn’t matter whether death came by fire or by Delphinian decapitation. Either way, I was dead. And there was no one I wanted by my side more than the girl who had just disappeared.

  For so long, I’d searched for the answer to her survival. Now I had it. But my quest hadn’t led me to my next Forfeit. Instead, it had pointed my heart—if I’d had one—back to Nikki. It had shaped my soul to fit with hers and only hers. It had graced me to see the truth but simultaneously prevented me from doing anything about it. In the moment I faced dying, I finally knew my reason for living.

  It couldn’t be more unfair.

  As the flames grew closer, and hotter, I started to rethink. Death by fire did not sound good. Or quick. My pulse quickened, reflecting my panic. How long would it take? Would I still be alive after all my skin had burned off? Everlivings were hard to kill. I’d probably still be alive when I was just ash and bone.

  “Cole,” Devon said, his voice coming from the other side of the bars. I tore my gaze away from the light, and when I caught sight of his face, I had to work hard not to dry-heave. His cheeks looked like raw hamburger meat, as did the skin on his arms. I couldn’t see the rest of him hidden in the shadows. “I know I’m a sight.”

  I nodded. “The rats?”

  “Their bites don’t heal very well. This is over eighty years’ worth.”

  I was surprised he could speak at all, with lips that looked as if they could fall apart at any moment.

  “I just wanted to meet you face-to-face.”

  “Devon,” I said. I searched for words, but there weren’t any. What do you say to someone as death is raging toward you both? Our eyes met, and something deeper than words passed between us.

  I pressed my face against the bars of my cell, and even then I could only glimpse the flames as they danced in and out of my vision. They were strange flames. Some the typical orange and yellow colors, but some more a green or blue hue.

  Just as I was thinking I’d seen flames similar to this before, I saw a figure, clad in some sort of stiff dark material, emerge from the thick of it. In his right hand he held a canister, which he used to spray a powdery substance on his footpath.

  His head was covered in what looked like a welder’s mask, only it went all the way down to where it connected to his strange suit.

  The man sprinted down the hallway, barely staying ahead of the flames. When he was a few yards away, he slid toward my cell like a baseball player sliding for home.

  I backed away.

  The figure threw a square packet into my cell.

  “Put it on!”

  Even though his voice was masked, I recognized it. “Max?”

  “No time! Put it on!”

  Worried it was another hallucination, I glanced at Devon, who was staring at Max too. He was real. I ripped open the package and found a suit like Max’s. With shaking fingers, I pulled the suit over my legs while Max’s gloved fingers fumbled with a key chain that held at least a dozen keys. I zipped up the suit just as I realized my lungs were tightening up.

  “What’s happening?” Devon said, panting.

  Shit. Devon. I was sure Max’s plan didn’t involve two passengers.

  I started to cough. Whatever was burning, it felt more vicious than mere smoke. It felt like acid. I scrambled over to Devon’s cell.

  “Dev, I think I’m getting out. I’m sorry.”

  His answer got caught in a string of hacking coughs. When he finally had it under control, he said, “Don’t be sorry. Go live. Find your girl. Take over the throne.”

  The sound of the right key catching in the lock made me turn toward Max.

  “Is there anyone you want me to find for you? Any messages to deliver?”

  The bars opened wide with a loud creak, and Max tossed me another helmet like his—a plastic gas mask—and what looked like a mini fire extinguisher. “Put it on, mask first!” He had to yell because of his own mask. “Use the canister to douse the flames. Let’s move!”

  I turned toward Devon. “Anything?”

  He looked hesitant, and then his words came out in one big wave. “Listen. There’s a train station along the Cinque Terre on the Italian coast. At Riomaggiore. Say it.”

  There was no time to ask questions. “Riomaggiore.”

  “Good. There’s a locker room there. Locker two twenty-five. Riomaggiore. Two twenty-five. Combination all fives. That’s where the relic is. Get it, don’t get it. It’s up to you. I just couldn’t die without someone knowing.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Go!” Max said.

  As I put on the mask, Devon slunk back away from the bars, still afraid of showing his face even as he confronted his own death.

  I caught sight of his festering hand resting in my cell, between the bars. I knew that image would haunt me for a long time.

  I pulled the mask and helmet over my face, and then Max and I flew out to the corridor and into the oncoming blaze.

  THIRTEEN

  NOW

  Escaping the Dungeons of Suck.

  The flames stuck to the walls in small, circular patterns, as if someone had thrown singular fireballs.

  I followed Max’s lead, spraying any flame sources that came too close to us. The suit didn’t seem to do anything to quell the intense heat, though. I could practically hear my skin sizzling.

  We were running uphill, passing dozens and dozens of cells. Bloodied hands reached out from the bars, some moving, some still. Some on fire. I thought I could hear distant screaming above the intense sound of crackling flames, but maybe it was just my imagination.

  I tried not to think about all of the lives we were ending. They were in the Delphinian Dungeons. We were probably doing them a favor.

  My canister ran out of … whatever it was full of. Max tossed me another one that had been hanging from his utility belt.

  The twists and turns of the halls seemed endless, like the switchback trail up a never-ending mountain; but the farther we got, the more lifeless bodies we had to step over.

  Delphinians were extremely flammable.

  I glanced nervously at Max’s belt. Two more canisters. I wondered if they would be enough.

  I tried to be judicious with my usage, but it was difficult considering my world was on fire and I was nothing more than kindling.

  Finally our pathway leveled out, and we reached a larger room, the same one that Max and I had entered that day, except it was on fire. Every inch of it. Several bodies lay on the floor, giant heads burning in front of my eyes.

  The fire was so intense here, we had to pause as Max sprayed his extinguisher along the center of the floor, dousing stone and Delphinian body alike. His extinguisher ran out before there was a workable trail. He opened the next one and kept working.

  Movement in the far corner of the room caught my eye. A Fate, giant eyes wide, backed up into the corner, his feet on fire. “Help.”

  I tried to ignore him. Max had cleared enough of a path that we could make it halfway across the room, toward the door.

  “Please!” the Fate shouted.

  Max cleared the rest of the way.

  “You can’t leave me here!” it screamed.

  Max was tugging on my arm, but I couldn’t resist facing the oracle. “Have you ever been feasted upon by a thousand rats every night at midnight? Yeah, I can leave you here.”

  I turned and started running with Max, until I heard the oracle again. “If you free me, I will give you your fortune.”

  My feet stopped before its words fully reached my brain. I knew the value of a Delphinian fortune, and if the oracle could give me any guidance as to what I should do next …

  “Cole! We gotta get out of here!” Max shouted over the crack of the flames. He sprayed the flames, the canister sputtering with its last gasps.

  I ignored him and faced the oracle. “Give me my fortune, and I’ll let you live.”

  “Do I have your word?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8