Liferaft Read online

  “Yeah, but this time let’s stick together,” Javi insisted.

  Molly knew Javi was referring to Yoshi sailing off alone. She didn’t want them separated, either, but she wasn’t in a place to lead the team anymore. A vote had been taken, and Molly was ousted, with Hank taking her place as team captain, at least in theory.

  It was a relief, to be honest. Every moment, Molly found herself slipping more into the strange daydreams that accompanied her transformation. She was too preoccupied to lead, too afraid of her own opinions, even if they weren’t opinions anymore so much as strong feelings that came from her own body. It was as though this place was transmitting messages to some deeper part of her. Sometimes she simply knew certain things and she wasn’t even sure how. And yet, even the knowing hadn’t prevented her from making mistakes. And those mistakes had cost lives. She couldn’t forget that. Or forgive herself for it.

  Still, she was hopeful that they would reunite with Oliver again. It kept her going, the hope of seeing him emerge from a corner somewhere, surprising them with his big goofy smile. Sometimes Molly lost herself in the delight of this daydream; if only she could see him again, hear his voice again, know that he was okay.

  As they wound their way down the glass paths between the spires, Molly had another moment of uncanny understanding. This place was more than just a spaceship. Or at least the ship was only a part of it. Everything had been built in service to something inside, like a nest around an egg. She watched the spires light and dim, light and dim, and Molly’s head swam in music. Whatever this nest contained, it was the whole point of all this.

  She kept her epiphany to herself.

  “The spires.” Anna pointed to another one, which was slowly idling before it turned off. Just then, the one next to it began to glow red, spinning like a motor. “It’s a test sequence. I think they’re all auxiliary engines.”

  More than a sequence, Molly thought with a note of glee that bordered on delirium. A song.

  It was unbearably hot. Every few minutes, they had to duck into the shallow caves that dotted the landscape. The convenient shelters provided shade and gave them an opportunity to rest. It was as though whoever had built the city knew exactly what visitors might require when they passed through it.

  “I don’t know what we’d do if we didn’t have these caves to hide out in.” Hank wiped the sweat from his brow as he spoke.

  Molly squinted her eyes into the horizon. The heat didn’t bother her; her body had adapted to the rift, but she could see it was unbearable for the others. Still, she wasn’t so sure that the caves were just a refuge.

  As she looked out over the landscape of this new world, she felt a strange familiarity with it. It reminded her of a place she’d been reading about on the plane, in one of the travel magazines in the seat pocket: Cappadocia, Turkey. A city of stone caves and spires. In the travel magazine, there were hot-air balloons floating over the surface, like ice cubes in a punch bowl. But there were no balloons here—only blue sky and, in the distance, a large fortification made of pearly ice that glowed pink in the daylight.

  They wound their way through the spire engines and caves for several hours, Kimberly handing out her leaf packets and distributing water for them to drink. Molly wolfed the purple paste down hungrily, immediately feeling a jolt of energy. By nightfall, they were nowhere closer to finding any answers.

  “Systems at negative,” Cal muttered, shaking his head vehemently.

  “The interior of the ship isn’t here.” Molly shook her head. “But we have to keep looking, right?”

  She turned to Hank, their new fearless leader. The boy looked haunted. His eyes were on Cal, who was walking in circles, still shaking his head. When a long beat passed and Hank still hadn’t answered, Molly sighed. Didn’t he want this?

  “We’ll hike to the edge of the valley and find a place to spend the night,” Kimberly said, taking up the baton Hank had fumbled. “In the morning, we’ll start again. No use wearing ourselves out now, when we’re so close.”

  But Molly was unconvinced. Even though this place was reluctant to share its secrets with them, she knew it had secrets to share. And Kimberly was right. They were tantalizingly near.

  Dispirited and exhausted, their weary feet carried them to the edge of the valley as two twin moons rose in the distance. Just below, Molly could see the ice fortification. She and Cal eyed each other.

  “What? What are you two thinking?” Anna asked. By now, exhausted from a day of hiking, they’d found a small cave to huddle up in. It was cramped and a little wet, but at least they had a space to rest in for the night.

  “The life raft is operational,” Cal said.

  “What does that mean?” Javi asked.

  “That wall, the wall of ice …” Molly pointed. “What we’re looking for is on the other side,” she said. And as she did, she knew it was true.

  “But how do we get to the other side?” Yoshi asked. “That wall is huge. It’s got to be at least ten stories. And it circles this entire space.”

  Molly looked around at the sea of discouraged faces around her.

  “I wish we still had the antigravity device,” Javi said, disappointment in his voice.

  “There’s no way we can scale it ourselves,” Kimberly said. “We’d have to be Sir Edmund Hillary to do that.”

  “Who’s that?” Javi said.

  “You don’t know SIR EDMUND HILLARY?!” Kimberly squealed. “He’s more famous than Elvis!”

  “Maybe not more famous than Elvis,” Hank noted. “But definitely close.”

  Molly and Anna eyed each other as Hank went on. “He’s a famous mountain climber who scaled Everest.”

  “We can talk more about it tomorrow.” Anna waved him off.

  Kimberly brought out all the discarded leaves she’d collected during the day and set about making a fire to keep them warm. As the embers began to blaze, the survivors exchanged ideas about how to proceed.

  “We could talk about it for days,” Hank said. “What good is talking if we can’t—” But Hank was interrupted by a collective gasp as Molly pointed to the dark walls of the cave, now glowing in the light of Kimberly’s fire.

  They all stood up, tracing the glyphs that appeared. “Cave drawings,” Yoshi whispered in awe.

  “They tell a story …” Molly gazed at the images of a city of spires, surrounded by a large fortification.

  “Look at this!” Javi said, pointing to figures flying through the air. “They’re people, and they’re flying!”

  “What does that mean?” Crash asked. “Like with that alien donut device?”

  Anna squinted at the drawings. “I don’t think so. They’re not people. They look like birds to me, but weird-looking birds. They’re enormous, even bigger than penguins.” She pressed her hand against the image of one of the birds and then another hand against the image of a cave.

  “If only we could still fly,” Yoshi said, and Molly thought wistfully of their antigravity device, the one they’d lost. The very thing that had allowed them to come this far.

  “Guys? I think I’ve got something that might help us.” Hank pointed to a part of the glyphs that showed a depressed structure. It almost looked like a well. Down below, deep in the structure’s depths, there was a glowing ring. Arrows rose upward from the ring, becoming the lines of a breeze that met the flying figures in the air.

  “This whole cave drawing … it’s a map,” Kimberly said. “It’s a map of this entire area. If we can just find that well—”

  “It’s on the far edge of this city,” Yoshi said. “Close to the ice wall.”

  “Then we’ll head there tomorrow,” Molly said. Once they found the ring, they would be on their way. One step closer to the center of the nest. One step closer to Oliver.

  A few hours later, when everyone was asleep except Molly, she lay on her back, eyes on the sky. She stared up at the twin moons, wondering if they were the satellites of another world. Molly knew that she was still on Ea
rth, but this whole place had been engineered to make her feel as if she wasn’t. So whose nighttime view was this? Whose sky was she glimpsing?

  Yours, the strange understanding seemed to sing to her. And for once, the thought didn’t fill her with dread.

  After all, if this experience had taught her anything about herself, it was that Molly Davis was an explorer. Maybe she hadn’t always been, but the rift had forged her into one. And now there was no turning back.

  It started with an ominous bump that jolted Javi, his heart catching in his throat, and then the plane was ripped open.

  A series of loud bangs sounded as Javi was pushed to the side, the terrifyingly loud whistle of wind in his ears. He was jolted again and again, his hands desperately attempting to get a grip on something—the armrests, the walls—but there was nothing to grab on to. Sweat dripped down his cheeks.

  Then more chaos: Bodies flew in all directions, echoing screams of terror. Above him, the blue sky turned purple as a bolt of electric charge streaked through the broken body of the plane, straight toward—

  Javi shot up with a start, panting heavily. The simple act of getting oxygen into his lungs felt like a Herculean feat. But he was relieved when he looked around him and realized he was alive. He wasn’t on that plane, with the fear of death engulfing him.

  Then he remembered where he was.

  All around the cave, the others were rousing, some jolting awake as he had. Terrifying sounds echoed in the distance, instantly familiar. They were the bangs from Javi’s dream. Something was cracking open, creaking like an old wooden ship, splintering and teetering and moaning in the night.

  “Well, that’s foreboding,” Anna said.

  “No, no!” Kimberly replied soothingly. “It’s nothing. Probably just, you know, thunder.”

  “A thunderstorm? Unlikely.” Anna shook her head. “More likely there’s something approaching to kill us.”

  “It’s coming from the ice wall,” Crash responded nervously. He was standing at the mouth of the cave, his finger pointed toward the sky. Javi saw now that the horizon had turned a menacing green color, in part from the crescent green moon that hung ominously over the wall.

  “Green moon,” Anna said with an air of satisfaction. “See? That means we’re in trouble.”

  “Anna,” Javi muttered. “I think Kimberly was trying to comfort us.”

  Anna turned to him with a quizzical expression. “When we’re in obvious danger? Why?”

  “It’s not coming from the ice wall …” Yoshi was already behind Crash. “It is the ice wall.”

  Soon, they were all clustered at the mouth of the cave, looking out at the massive wall of translucence reflecting back the green light. The wall practically glowed in the dark. In the real world, it might have been the size of a massive building; here, it looked especially large.

  As Javi watched, a horizontal crack crawled across the wall, zigzagging its way from one end to the other.

  Once again, that thunderous sound, followed by the earth beneath them shaking. Javi had experienced an earthquake only once before and it had been terrifying. Plates sliding out of cabinets, ferns leaping out of planters, door frames jumping from one end of the room to the other. This was even worse. They were being jostled by the very earth underneath their feet.

  “It’s breaking,” Molly said, “and the engines are still running.”

  “What does that mean?” Yoshi asked.

  Javi frowned. “If the heat from the engines turned sand into glass, imagine what it’s going to do to ice.”

  Kimberly looked aghast. “So it’ll melt?”

  “And quickly,” Javi confirmed. “Then it’s going to flood the entire area. Anna’s right—we’re in big trouble.”

  At this grim pronouncement, Anna perked up.

  “This is my fault.” Yoshi shook his head. “I’m the one who turned the solar panel on. And the solar panel turned on the engines. I’ve killed us all.”

  “We’re doomed,” Hank whispered softly, his eyes wide.

  “Look, no one has killed anyone, okay?” Kimberly said in a calm voice. “We just have to move fast. We’re all going to be fine.”

  Just then, a large section of the wall slipped into the earth with another thunderous boom. It landed dangerously close to one of the spires. Immediately the chunk of ice splintered into a million pieces, a sunburst of jewels spilling into the air.

  The moment the jewels made contact with the spire, the heat from the engine melted them into water. Javi saw mist and rain showering over the area, some of it boiling off into steam from the heat of the spire.

  “You might be wrong on that one,” Anna said to Kimberly.

  They all braced themselves as the wave made its way across the shallow plain. Luckily, by the time the unwelcome pool splashed at their feet, it was only a few inches of water. They all jumped in terror, but Javi felt a strange calm as he stared at the ice wall.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said. Another crack was already forming across the wall. Even though it would be easier to scale now, it was still too high without the antigravity device. At least five or six stories, Javi estimated.

  “Let’s gather up all our things and head toward that well,” Molly said. “If we can get that antigravity device, we can make it to the other side before there’s another flood.”

  They were like a highly trained division of the army, grabbing up their meager belongings and wiping the night’s grit from their eyes. Exhausted but adrenaline-fueled, they began the long march away from the campsite, carrying a hope for safety in each of their hearts.

  It was midday by the time they arrived at the stone well. It sat apart from the spires, up on a knoll, with a view of the ice wall beyond. Yoshi was the first to make his way to the structure, with Kira close behind him. Anna watched as they stood leaning over the side, as though attempting to coax out its secrets.

  Anna was still worried about Kira. She’d barely said a word in the past couple of days, had barely eaten.

  Not that any of them were especially rested or well fed. Anna hadn’t suffered the trauma that Kira had, but she still felt it every day since she had arrived here: dread. A daily—no, hourly—overwhelming panic seeping into her chest. She’d always been a little anxious. She worried about everything: that she’d say the wrong thing, that people wouldn’t understand her. At home, a lot of the time people didn’t understand her. Sometimes she did say the wrong thing.

  But Yoshi always seemed to understand her. In that way, they weren’t so different from Cal and Molly. Sometimes she felt that Yoshi could read her without a word passing between them. More and more, it seemed the only thing that could quell the panicky feelings in the pit of her stomach was a look from Yoshi. Talking to him, being near him, always made her feel better, like she was home again.

  “I see it!” Yoshi yelled out to the rest of them. “Only thing is … it’s a long way down there.”

  Javi joined Kira and Yoshi, glancing down at the well. “I’d estimate about thirty feet,” Javi said, turning to the rest of them.

  Anna followed and stood next to Yoshi. His arm brushed hers when he turned to look at her. She felt goose bumps on her wrist where they’d touched. She snuck a look into the dark well, and there it was—right at the very bottom—another antigravity ring, no different from the others they’d found and lost.

  The ring was floating on the surface of a green liquid. Anna gathered this was dangerous, since everything green in the rift was dangerous. They would have to get the ring without touching the green liquid. But first, they had a bigger problem. Or a deeper one.

  “How are we supposed to get all the way down there?” Hank asked. “We’re not rock climbers, and we don’t have any tools.”

  “We could try to fish it out.” Kimberly nodded at him.

  “If only we had fishing gear.” Javi rolled his eyes.

  “You got better ideas?” Crash asked.

  “A human chain,” Anna offered up. Th
ey all turned to look at her. “The lightest person at the very bottom of the chain. Probably Kira. We hold her by her ankles and slowly lower her down using our bodies. The heaviest person stays at the top.”

  “That would probably be me,” Crash offered.

  Yoshi turned to Kira and said something to her in Japanese. Anna assumed he was translating for her, but Kira simply shrugged and nodded. She understood English well by now. Anna noticed that Kira was always listening to what was being said around her. She just didn’t speak anymore.

  “Just make sure you don’t touch the green liquid,” Anna told her, and Kira nodded again as though she understood, her eyes still exhausted and somber. “You don’t want to end up like—” But before she could say it, she stopped herself.

  Anna smiled then at the realization that she was getting better at saying the right things, halting when she was on the verge of the wrong ones. Sure, it was true that none of them wanted to end up like Molly and Cal, but she didn’t want to hurt their feelings, either.

  “Yup. Don’t want to end up like me and Cal!” Molly said, making Anna cringe.

  Ah. A bit too late, then. Next time.

  The ground shook again. They all turned to look at the ice wall and Anna swallowed hard when she saw another crack zigzagging across the length of it. The panic sitting in her stomach rose to her chest.

  “We’ve gotta act quickly,” Javi said. “Before another chunk comes down.”

  They threw down their packs and quickly assembled themselves. Anna waited for Kira to climb to the edge of the stone well, her tiny body hovering over the wall. She looked so small and vulnerable perched there. Anna almost regretted her idea.

  But they had no choice. They needed the antigravity device to scale the ice wall.

  Anna looped her arms around Kira’s ankles, and then the others helped her slowly lower her body down. Once Kira was upside down in the well, Anna followed suit. Yoshi waited for her to lie tummy down on the well wall before he and Crash reached for her ankles to steady her. But it was Kimberly who eventually grabbed on to her. And then Anna was upside down, too, holding on to Kira’s ankles, with Kimberly right behind her.