Sugar Coated (15 page)

“Yeah. Sorry I kept you up so late,” Brynn said, trying to focus her attention on the large dark tunnel in front of her rather than her anger with Ty. “You can head home. I’ve just got to check something out here.”

Ty sighed deeply, looking at the ominous tunnel that stood before them.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re going to get yourself killed if I leave you alone here?” he asked, not sounding quite as angry now that he had to worry about her again.

“Because I’m almost always doing something to get myself killed,” she answered honestly.

“So what is it this time? Are you going to tie yourself to the train tracks to prove you would be a good Worker? Or maybe try to stop an oncoming train to show that the train isn’t real? It’s just a figment of our imaginations?” he asked.

“Don’t make fun of me for having questions, Ty,” she countered shortly, still not quite ready to be teased. “At least someone around here is asking questions.”

With that, she hopped off the platform onto the train tracks and sprinted full speed into the dark tunnel, hoping her sandals would stay on her feet as they crunched against the rocky ground in the pitch black passageway. She didn’t offer an explanation to Ty but heard him following behind her, trying to keep up with her breakneck pace.

“Brynn, what are you doing?” he called from somewhere behind her, his voice echoing off of the curved stone walls.

“Investigating,” she called back, her own voice sounding distorted and off in the strange acoustics of the tunnel.

After a few more steps she slowed her pace, realizing that in the complete blackness she wouldn’t be able to tell where the passageway ended. She could easily run face first into a wall.

Ty’s body slammed into hers from behind as he came to a sudden stop, obviously not hearing Brynn’s halted progression.

“Sorry,” he said in the darkness from somewhere directly behind her.

“How far does the tunnel go?” she asked, though she didn’t think Ty would actually know the answer to that particular question.

“I’m not sure,” he replied vaguely.

“You didn’t learn about that in some sort of lesson when you were little?” she asked with a smile that he couldn’t see.

“Funny,” he replied dryly. “Now can we get out of here? This place gives me the creeps.”

“I just want to get to the end of the tunnel,” she said, beginning to walk forward once more with her hands stretched out in front of her.

“Brynn, normally getting to the end of the tunnel isn’t a good thing. Haven’t I already told you to stop trying to kill yourself?”

“So full of jokes today,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm in the darkness.

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to keep the mood light when you’re on one of your rampages,” he said, walking up next to her and taking one of her hands in his own.

“I feel like we should be getting close, but I don’t see the moonlight up ahead anywhere,” Brynn said just as her hand made contact with a cold metal wall. “What’s that?” she asked suddenly.

She could feel Ty move beside her, hear the sound of his skin rubbing across the metallic surface of the wall. He stepped closer to the wall then stepped back quickly.

“It’s like a seal,” he said quickly. “Like a gate to close off the tunnel when the train isn’t going through.”

Brynn’s eyes widened at this revelation, though it did little to help her see in the darkness.

“So we really are sealed in,” she said absentmindedly, bringing her hand up to the cold damp surface of the metal seal that divided her from the outside world.

“Brynn, I think we need to get out of here,” Ty said nervously.

She could feel him backing away from the wall tentatively, trying to pull her with him, but she broke away from his grasp, walking up to feel the wall with both hands.

“So I was right,” she whispered in the darkness.

“Yes you were right. I was wrong. Good job. Can we please go now?” he asked, sounding more skittish than she had ever heard him sound.

“Ty, do you know what this means?” she asked, an idea rapidly forming in her mind.

“That we’re completely screwed if a train comes through right now?”

“No, it means there is a way out of the city!” she exclaimed, running her hands all over the rusty surface of the metal, trying to find a handle or button. “We can wait until a train is approaching, then when the door opens, slip outside the city!”

Ty’s footsteps crunched through the rocky ground, coming up beside her once more as he took her hand.

“Brynn, we probably wouldn’t have enough time to just slip out. We’d get crushed by the train before we made it out,” he said in the type of voice used to talk people off of the ledge of a building.

“Feel this thing, Ty,” she instructed, pulling his hand up to the metal surface. “It’s huge. And heavy. It probably takes ages to open all the way. We’d have plenty of time to slip out,” she assured him as the ground below their feet began to vibrate gently.

“Okay, we’re definitely not testing that theory right now,” he said, slight panic in his voice now. “I think a train’s coming.”

“Ty, it’s the middle of the night. I don’t think the trains even run at this time,” she said, sounding much more sure of herself than she actually was, as the ground began to shake more violently.

“Brynn, I’m not joking. We need to leave now,” he shouted urgently.

“This is perfect though! If a train is coming we’ll be able to test my theory,” she said, pleading with him to let her stay.

“Do you know what happens if your theory is wrong?” Ty asked, not needing an answer to his question.

“I’m not leaving,” Brynn said stubbornly, firmly planting her feet against the shaking ground, her hand pressed steadily against the metal wall.

“Fine,” he said gruffly, throwing his shoulder into her stomach and lifting her off the ground.

“Ty, stop,” she screamed at him over the rumbling that now surrounded them. “Please!”

“Brynn, you’re going to get yourself killed,” he shouted over his shoulder at her, running full speed toward the moonlit entrance.

It only took him a few long strides to exit the passageway and hop up onto the train platform, still clinging tightly to Brynn as a train suddenly rushed by them, knocking the two
of them over onto the cement ground with the force of its passing.

Brynn rubbed a spot on the back of her head where it had made contact with the hard ground, groaning at the bump she already felt there. She looked up at Ty’s worried face staring down at her.

“I didn’t mean to drop you,” he insisted as his kind face went in and out of focus.

“Thanks,” she said thickly, feeling as though her words only half made sense.

“Brynn, are you okay?” he asked, bringing his hand around to the back of her head and gently roaming over the bump there.

“You were right,” she managed to say, though her lips suddenly felt swollen and difficult to use.

As the lights on the train station platform came in and out of focus Brynn made sure to mentally store away one detail to examine later: Ty had been right. As he carried her out of the tunnel she had caught a glimpse of the metal grate flying up into the ceiling so fast that the train barely had time to make it into the tunnel before it had opened all the way.

Her newest breakthrough had turned, once again, into nothing more than another dead end.

One that had almost killed her.

Chapter 15: Enlisted

The first thing Brynn was made aware of as she slowly came to, was the feeling in her nose. Or the lack of feeling in her nose, as it so happened. The second thing she noticed was the way the air sounded wrong to her. She slowly opened her eyes to find herself in the white room once more, and it was all she could do to suppress a groan.

“Not this,” she said aloud in the room that completely absorbed any echo her words might have created.

Brynn quickly placed a hand over her mouth, surprised by the sound that had escaped from her lips. Normally in these dreams she was unable to talk and completely strapped down. Her speech and ability to move were both new things and she wondered what they meant.

“Maybe it means I won’t be drowned, or poisoned, or suffocated,” she mumbled wearily.

She lay stationary for a moment, trying to decide how to utilize her newfound mobility. Should she go to the Angel and insist she stop haunting her dreams? Or should she use this time to ask the Angel what exactly she was supposed to have done? Or perhaps who Rachel was?

Before actually making up her mind, the Angel appeared beside her. Or at least, someone who looked very much like the Angel. She had her same unnaturally white skin and hair, cut in an asymmetrical bob with blunt bangs. Even the violet eyes were terrifyingly vivid against her stark white complexion. But the lower half of her face was covered with a surgical mask and it made it difficult for Brynn to tell in her groggy state if this was really her Angel or just another Worker with similar attributes.

The Angel stared down at her in a curious way and Brynn suddenly found that even though her voice seemed to be working just fine, she was too mesmerized by this woman’s eyes to say anything. She gazed up at her, thinking of the many questions she had accumulated over the years that she knew the Angel could answer, but found herself at a loss for how to present them.

“Is she okay?” Brynn heard another voice say from behind the Angel, causing the woman to turn and look at Ty.

Ty?

What was he doing in her dream? Ty had never accompanied her into her dreams before. She wondered, vaguely, if this had something to do with her recent midnight stroll with him. It must have been the last thing she’d done before falling asleep that night. That would explain it.

“She’s fine for now,” the woman said with a warning in her voice as she looked at Ty very seriously, as if he had done something wrong.

Brynn felt the color drain from her face as the woman now retreated from the room without a backward glance at Brynn. It had to have been her Angel. She would recognize that smooth voice anywhere. She turned her head to watch the woman walk swiftly away but found the movement only caused a blinding pain to shoot through her vision.

“Ow,” she said, squinting her eyes against the pounding that had just started there.

“Take it easy
, Brynn,” Ty said comfortingly. He sat on the edge of her bed in the bright white room and gently ran his fingers through her hair. “You had a fall,” he explained.

“I had a drop,” she corrected with the smallest of grins, though her mind was preoccupied with the fact that she had just seen her Angel face-to-face. Or at least, the woman who looked like her Angel.

The more Brynn thought about it, however, the less likely it seemed that she had actually seen the woman from her dreams. The way the room was moving back and forth at that particular moment made Brynn wonder exactly what they had given her for the pain in her head. She wouldn’t be surprised if the woman she had just seen looked nothing like her Angel and her mind had just invented the similarities.

“Thank you for reminding me,” Ty said after a moment. “In my defense, I did drop you while saving your life.”

“So they cancel each other out and we’re even,” Brynn told him, slowly sitting herself up in the stiff white bed. “This room is very white,” she pointed out, wondering if she had consciously known that her dream always seemed to take place in a hospital.

“Yeah, it’s even giving me a headache, so I can’t imagine what it’s doing to you,” he said sympathetically. “They said you can go whenever you’d like, so if you’re feeling up to it, I’ll take you home.”

“The sooner I get out of this place the better,” Brynn agreed.

* * *

The dim light streaming in lazy beams through the high library windows was a welcome sight for Brynn’s still aching head. Ty had taken her home the night before and given her a bottle of pills from the nurse who, upon bothering Ty for details, didn’t look anything like her Angel.

“You were pretty out of it in there,” he had said to her as she described the white face and hair that apparently looked nothing like the woman who had come in to take care of Brynn.

Now, as she walked down the familiar steps to the basement of the library to meet the boy she knew would be there, she wondered how much of the hospital had actually looked like the facility from her dreams, and how much she’d manufactured in her mind.

She gingerly brought a hand up to the back of her head where a sizable bump was gradually growing smaller, and wished every lead she found didn’t always end up being a dead end.

“There you are,” Jonah said once Brynn entered his normal wing of the library.

His face lit up with a smile as she walked over to him, plopping down into the dusty armchair next to his.

“Have you been keeping out of trouble since I’ve been gone?” she asked, finding that she had actually missed him more than anticipated on her trip.

“Oh yes. Me and all of my friends have been very subdued since your departure,” he said sarcastically, looking around at the empty library with a cheeky grin.

“Well, I’m glad you had a break from ‘crazy Brynn’ because she’s back in full force,” Brynn informed him, getting right down to business.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he replied, snapping shut the book he held in his hands and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, ready for her instructions.

Brynn proceeded to tell Jonah about her discovery of the wall around the cities and the train tunnels being sealed off, hoping he wouldn’t react as Ty had to all of this information.

“The wall I already knew about,” he said, waving away this information as inconsequential. “But the train tunnels are news. Mostly because I don’t think anyone else would be crazy enough to actually investigate.” He gave her a serious, reprimanding look through his long eyelashes before continuing. “So, if you’re serious about finding this Aywon place, it seems like the only way to do it is…he let his words trail off, not willing to voice thoughts quite that crazy yet.

“Get off the train,” Brynn finished for him. “But I’ve already looked into it. The control room has this electronic lock that I don’t think anyone but Ty could hack, and he won’t do it.”

“Unless you don’t stop the train to get off,” Jonah said quietly, his eyes trained on a spot on the floor.

Brynn looked over at him, confusion lining her features.

“What are you going to do? Blow a hole in the wall and jump?” she asked with a laugh, hoping that wasn’t actually his plan.

“I haven’t really been on many trains,” he admitted after a long pause. “I’d need to see what we’re dealing with in order to help you formulate a plan.”

Brynn looked up at the boy she was beginning to trust more and more, and wondered if she’d seem too forward asking him to come to Central Wildwood with her. She studied his handsome features that she had grown so familiar with recently; his blue eyes, black hair, tan skin, and strong jaw. He was adventurous, that much was certain. And if he was as much like Brynn as she suspected, he’d jump at the opportunity to investigate a way off the train.

“Why don’t I come with you on your next trip?” he suddenly asked before Brynn could summon the courage to ask him herself. “If you don’t think that’s weird,” he quickly amended, seeing the shocked look on Brynn’s face.

“I think it’s brilliant,” she exclaimed, glad that he had been brave enough to bring the subject up so that she wouldn’t have to.

“Great,” he said with a clap of his hands. “We need a map,” he added, jumping up from the dusty old armchair and dragging Bry
nn behind him through the maze of bookshelves in the library without so much as an explanation.

“What’s the map for?” Brynn asked, not quite on the same page as her friend.

“To figure out where Aywon is,” he explained.

“Jonah, we’ve already looked at the maps. It’s not written there,” she said slowly, wondering how he could have forgotten this detail already, while she let herself be pulled through rows of dusty volumes before they came to a sudden stop in front of the maps.

“Halcyon,” he muttered under his breath as his finger flew across the spines of each ledger before coming to rest on the one he wanted. Just as he had the first day they’d met, Jonah opened up the book of maps for Brynn, pointing to Seaside. “We’re here,” he said, though Brynn didn’t need to be told where their city was on a map. “Here’s Central Wildwood,” he continued, moving his long finger gently across the illustrated page to rest on the city Brynn had just visited.

“Yes,” she agreed, raising her eyebrows at the boy who appeared to have lost his mind.

“That means all of this right here,” he said, brushing his finger over the space between the two cities, “could be where Aywon is.”

“Okay,” Brynn said slowly, beginning to follow Jonah’s erratic train of thought.

“How long into your trip did the train stop when you were nine?” he asked, his eyes searching hers for answers.

“Six hours. Halfway through,” she said, glancing down at the blank space on the map between Seaside and Central Wildwood that now held secrets they might actually be able to uncover.

“So if the train traveled in a straight line, we could assume the city is somewhere in here,” he said, pointing to the spot between the two cities.

“But it probably doesn’t travel in a perfectly straight line,” Brynn said with a sigh, wondering how they could possibly figure out the train’s path.

“Which makes it difficult to figure out what kind of terrain we’d be in,” he said under his breath, making Brynn wonder exactly what he was planning. He seemed to be even more excited about the prospect of some adventure than she was. “When is your trip scheduled?”

“In a month,” she sighed, almost wishing it was sooner now that she had someone on her side who was excited to investigate with her.

“Any chance you could rearrange your busy schedule to make it sooner?” he asked, making her wonder if he could somehow read her thoughts.

“You’re really going to do this?” she asked, abandoning the map in front of them and staring up at him “You’re really willing to go on the word of a crazy girl you’ve just barely met and try to break out of a moving train to find a city that probably doesn’t exist, just to be stranded in a wilderness that will most likely kill us?”

He looked at her for a moment, his blue eyes crinkling in the corners as he smiled down at her. “Well, when you say it like that,” he replied with a laugh, filling the empty library with the sound of his voice.

“I’m just saying. I don’t expect you to fully convert to my crazy way of thinking. Right now would be the ideal time for you to gracefully bow out,” she said.

“Well, now that you know where my secret hiding spot is, I couldn’t really avoid you even if I wanted to,” he joked with a shrug. “So I guess you’re stuck with me.”

“Great. Just what I need,” Brynn replied just as Jonah grabbed the edge of the map of Halcyon in the book he held. “What are you doing?” she asked, though before he could offer any explanation a ripping sound permeated the silent basement of the library as he pulled the page from the book. “Are you crazy?” she asked in an urgent whisper, looking over her shoulder for the harsh Worker she was sure would be standing there.

“What?” he asked as he folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “We need a map, don’t we?”

“Not one ripped illegally from a library book,” she replied in hushed tones, still peeking through bookshelves.

“Okay, so maybe it would have been smarter to just pull up a map on your tablet, but this way we can mark it,” he reasoned, shelving the book of maps and walking back to their vacant armchairs. “Besides, I want to figure out where we might be dropped so we can plan accordingly.”

Though she was surprised by how quickly everything was happening, Brynn couldn’t deny that she had been more proactive on her quest for answers ever since she’d met Jonah. It was a relief to feel like she had a partner who had her back and could offer knowledge and skills she didn’t possess. She never would have thought of breaking out of the train somehow in order to get to her destination, and it shocked her how willing Jonah was to listen to and trust everything Brynn said. Wielding that kind of power was frightening.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked again, wondering how someone she barely knew had become such a strong ally based on the ranting of a girl prone to conspiracy theories.

“Would you stop asking me that? I’m sick of sitting in the library by myself. I want to
do
something,” he said, pulling the map from his pocket and examining it. “I’ve always known there’s something off about this city. Being handed everything in life can’t be normal, right?” he asked, looking up at Brynn for confirmation of his suspicions. “It’s like someone’s trying to keep us complacent so we never search for answers.”