Mine (28 page)

S
EVENTY-FIVE

Joel

W
HEN LEAH SAID
she could no longer sense the Doer, they decided it was time to go. Joel wondered if Mike would once more try to keep them from leaving, but when they pulled on his hands, he stood and followed without resistance.

The moment they stepped into the meadow, Joel felt intensely vulnerable. If the Doer had stopped just inside the building, all it would have to do was look through the hole to see them. With every forward step, Joel was sure that was exactly what would happen. So he was both surprised and relieved when they made it all the way to the broken wall without incident.

I remember this
, he thought as he and Leah looked through the jagged rip at the dim, moldy walled room.

Leah went inside first, and then helped Joel maneuver Mike through the break. Upon joining them, Joel was hit with a foul musty odor that couldn’t be explained by the mold alone.

Leah held a hand over her nose and mouth. “It didn’t smell like this last time.”

Joel scanned the room. The only other thing besides three rusting metal desks and some rotted chairs was a deteriorating mess of plastic and wires pushed against one wall. A phone, he recalled. Leah had picked it up back then. So had someone else. Dooley? Maybe. Though Joel’s memories were coming back, there were still holes.

Leah, with Mike in tow, crossed to the door at the back wall. It was partially open but the space beyond was dark. As Joel headed over to join them, Leah pulled out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and shined it inside.

“Yeah, we went in here, too,” she said.

When they entered the new space, Joel spotted tables and chairs he was pretty sure had been there last time, though now they were in much worse shape.

Another door was on the opposite wall, half open.

“Dooley,” Joel said, staring at it.

“Bloody nose,” Leah said, nodding.

Dooley had tried to get through that door and had slammed his face into it. It had taken Joel and Antonio working together to get it open. This time, no extra effort would be necessary.

“So, who goes first?” he asked.

Leah, her eyes not leaving the door, said, “We go together.”

S
EVENTY-SIX

Leah

T
HOUGH THE BOOKCASE
that had held the door in place on their first visit was still there, someone—or some
thing—
had moved it to the side, allowing the door to swing open all the way when Leah pushed on it.

There was another difference, too. She sensed it as they moved inside, but she couldn’t put her finger on it until Mike said, “Cold, cold.”

The temperature.

The room was cold but not as cold as last time. And hadn’t there been something else that was odd back then? Something like—

She stepped over to the center of the room and placed her hand in the space where the shaft of wind had been.

“The air’s not moving,” she said.

Joel joined her as she moved her hand around, thinking she might have misremembered the spot.

“It was moving,” she said. “I’m not making that up, am I?”

“You’re not,” he assured her.

They worked their way to the wall where the air had disappeared last time. She half expected the opening at the bottom to be missing, too, but it was there. She and Joel slipped their fingers into the space and pulled.

As the wall swung into the room, the rest came back.

The door to the elevator.

The stairs she and Joel had taken down when they’d heard the scream.

The wind nudging them forward at first, and then all but carrying them to the bottom.

A dark, seemingly endless tunnel.

Oh, God! Help me!

Courtney hanging on to a light on the ceiling, the wind thrashing her as it worked to pull her free.

Please, help me!

And then she was gone.

Leah took a startled breath. The wind would’ve also taken her if it hadn’t been for Joel.

She looked over at him and saw it had all come back to him, too.

She took his hand. “The Reclaimer’s down there.”

“I know.”

“If we leave, she’ll just keep using Mike and me. She’ll probably use you again, too.”

“I know.”

“We need to stop her.”

“I know.”

“We need to go down.”

Silence.

“Joel?”

“I know.”

S
EVENTY-SEVEN

Joel

J
OEL HAD DREAMT
of this, of the stairs and the wind and the spinning flashlight and the screams for help. He had woken so many times in a sweat not knowing what the dream meant, what it represented.

But it wasn’t a dream at all. It was a memory.

And it represented nothing because it had been real.

He looked at Leah and then did what he should have done in Colorado Springs. What he should have done way back on the night hike when they were thirteen.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Because he had always wanted to.

Because he didn’t want to die without his lips ever touching hers.

Because he wanted a reason to live through whatever they were about to face.

S
EVENTY-EIGHT

The Reclaimer

T
HE DIAGNOSTIC HAD
reach 97.83% when the Reclaimer received another alarm. So far, the test had uncovered only a few minor faults, none of which would account for a false reading. Since the chances were infinitesimally small that the final 2.17% would uncover any major issues, she canceled the rest of the diagnostic and initiated power up.

As each system was reactivated, her processing strength and access to her databases increased. Four hundred and thirty-seven milliseconds after the alarm was received, she had enough resources online to analyze the data. She learned that the alert had been triggered by the creatures entering the structure in the land above.

Programmed to experience certain emotions, she was perplexed as to why her sensors had yet to categorize the trespassers’ biological type. Stranger still, the sensors had sent her contradictory data about how many there were. Two of her sensors even reported that everything was normal.

She accessed the data from her servant. It had located nothing that would have triggered the initial alarm. There was, however, one point of conflict in the raw data. The servant had made a detour on its return to the Reclaimer, venturing for several seconds toward the edge of the clearing, where it paused before returning to its original course.

She connected to the servant.

::EXPLAIN.

Task complete, complete
, the servant replied.
No biologicals detected.

The Reclaimer presented the data of the servant’s detour.

::EXPLAIN.

The servant was silent for a moment, then,
I have no information about this. No biologicals detected. No biologicals, no biologicals.

The Reclaimer knew the servant was nearing the end of its usefulness, and that its failing condition could have caused it to go off course before correcting its path. But based on the new sensor readings from the structure in the land above, she concluded there was a 66.71% chance the detour had not been a glitch, and had, in fact, occurred in response to the biological or biologicals that had entered the building. Why her servant had no information about this was troubling, but she could look into that after the current situation was resolved.

She activated the next most viable servant. Mechanically it was in worse operational condition, but it could ride the electric powered car to the top, where it should have no trouble rooting out what was going on. To ensure no missed data, the Reclaimer would monitor its sensor and see everything for herself.

“Task received,” servant number two said, and then began crawling on its three still working limbs toward the access to the above.

S
EVENTY-NINE

Mike

M
IKE HAD ALMOST
screwed up everything when the Doer crossed the meadow. He’d been splitting his attention between keeping the Doer in the dark about their presence and monitoring the Reclaimer in case she suddenly woke.

When the Doer started back toward the building, Mike was sure the danger it represented had passed, so he’d begun shifting his full focus back to the Reclaimer. He didn’t realize the mistake until it was almost too late. Free of his attention, the Doer had detected Joel’s voice and turned to investigate.

In a panic, Mike concentrated on the Doer, leaving the Reclaimer momentarily unwatched. Though he was able to stop the Doer, his work wasn’t done. The thing would be returning to the Reclaimer with the knowledge it had sensed something, so he accessed its memory and dug out the data that would have betrayed them. It was easier to do than he’d expected. The Doer’s storage system was very familiar. His years of sending data packets to the Reclaimer must have helped him know what to do and where to look.

Even then, he wasn’t a hundred percent successful. Though he erased the reason why the Doer had turned toward the woods, he was unable to eliminate the memory of the course change itself. This was buried deep in a different part of the data. He decided it would be better to let the Doer go than keep it stationary while he rooted around for the rest.

Once their path was clear, his companions led him into the meadow.

He’d always had a special connection to the two of them, and in the time they’d been in one another’s company, that had only grown stronger. Now he could actually see everything they did and could have walked on his own, but he liked the feel of their touch, liked the sense that he was not alone anymore.

When he saw the rip in the side of the building, his heart beat faster. Never in the years he’d shared a room with the Beast had he thought he’d be back here again.

This was the Reclaimer’s home. Sacred ground.

No. I can’t think that way. Not sacred. Never was sacred. Never.

And yet, as he was pulled inside, he couldn’t help but feel like he should drop to his knees and bow in subjugation.

He detected the Reclaimer’s sensors almost immediately. He erased information where he could, and where he couldn’t, he confused the data.

When he’d been here on that momentous night so many years ago, he had only ventured a few feet beyond the hole, so as he was taken deeper into the structure now, the rooms did not elicit any memories. He had no idea why Leah and Joel let go of his hands and began waving their palms through the air. He was surprised when they grabbed the wall and yanked open what turned out to be a hidden door, but then he instantly realized what they’d revealed.

Fear roiled in his chest as they stood on the precipice of the Reclaimer’s warren.

When Leah took his hand and said, “This way,” he considered resisting again, but knew it would serve no purpose. They had to go down. They had to, had to.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll be with you the whole time.”

He wanted to believe her, but he had a strong feeling that would not be the case, and his feelings were never wrong.

Nonetheless, he let her guide him onto the stairs.

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

E
IGHTY

Leah

T
HE MEMORY OF
Joel’s kiss stayed with Leah as they began their descent. She had not expected him to do that, but she was glad he had. There had never been anyone other than him. And given how different they were from everyone else, there would likely be no other in the future.

Initially they took the steps slowly to ensure Mike didn’t fall. But while he was still in his trance, he seemed to intuitively know where each tread was and never lost his balance. Gradually they increased their pace.

They’d been heading down for well over a minute when Leah, through a hand on the rail connected to the inner wall, felt a vibration. Joel must’ve felt it too, because he stopped and put his palm on the cement surface. Leah did the same.

The vibration was strong, steady, and seemed to be moving upward.

“The elevator,” she said.

Joel looked at her, worried.

“We need to keep moving,” she told him.

Her flashlight revealed the bottom as they came around the final turn. Once there, she couldn’t help but point the light at the ceiling where they’d last seen Courtney. The only thing marking the spot was the glass globe of the fixture their camp mate had been hanging on.

Leah aimed the beam down the tunnel.

E
IGHTY-ONE

The Reclaimer

O
NE MOMENT THE
Reclaimer’s consciousness was spread in over a thousand directions—overseeing systems still restarting, analyzing data packets, and monitoring sensors serving a variety of purposes. The next, her collective being was staring through a single sensor at the end of the long hall.

The darkness was not an issue. The sensor was designed to observe via multiple wavelengths, so the heat signatures of the three creatures who had exited the stairs were clearly visible.

There had indeed been trespassers in the land above. Humans, as they called themselves.