Taken (9 page)

“Can you believe it?” Emma asks as she spins about the empty foyer. “I wish we could tell them about this. Imagine if we all climbed over the Wall together! We would have running water and magic candles and—”

There’s a deafening crash as the bolted door is kicked in.

Emma sinks into my side. Two figures stand in the entryway, dust settling about them. In their arms they hold metal instruments, long, slender, and narrow, and somehow I know that even if I fired my arrows, I would be no match against these intruders.

“Thank God it didn’t find you yet,” one of them says. He has a scar that stretches from below his left eye down into a thick beard that covers his mouth, and his head is completely free of hair. The man at his side looks younger and is clean shaven. Both men are older than me though, and since I’ve never seen a man over eighteen, they look ancient. They wear matching garb: black pants with black jackets, a red triangle emblazoned with a cursive white
f
upon their chests.

“Are you alone?” the bearded man asks.

Emma and I nod at the same time.

“Something patrols this area. Something dangerous. You’re lucky we found you first.”

“Something?” It’s all I can manage, and my voice is unsteady as I say it.

“It’s not safe here,” he says. “Come with us.”

He walks up to us, grabs Emma at the elbow, and tugs.

“Get your hands off her,” I snap.

He twists around, his face right before mine. The eye above his scar is disconcertingly foggy. “If you know what’s good for you and your girlfriend, you will shut up and follow us to safety. But if you want to burn, by all means, stay here.”

Burn. Are we the first climbers to encounter these black-suited saviors, the first to avoid the death every other met?

The bearded man straightens up. “Well, Romeo?” It takes me a moment to realize he’s addressing me. “What will it be?”

I look at Emma. Her face is nothing but fear and I’m certain mine is the same. She gives a curt nod, takes my palm in hers, and squeezes.

“We’ll come,” I tell the man.

“Good. Let’s move. We don’t have much time.”

Outside, waiting atop the hill before us, are two oddly shaped contraptions on wheels. They are identical in size and color, both large enough to hold several people but not grand enough to be a home, like their windows and doors suggest. The bearded man pulls a small, rectangular box from his jacket pocket. It is not much larger than his palm, but he speaks to it as though it’s a person.

“We’re good,” he says.

A split second later, the device talks back. “We’ll see you back at Union Central then, Marco.” A figure waves from one of the wheeled cages on the hillside and I get the feeling it was his voice I just heard responding to the bearded man.

The cage growls and then springs to life, hurtling toward the woods Emma and I hiked through earlier. It is faster than anything I have ever witnessed. Unnaturally fast. I blink, and it’s gone.

We follow Marco up the hill. “In the car,” he orders, pulling open a rear door.

The idea of being trapped in the thing he called a
car
makes me anxious, and I’m no longer sure I want to follow them. What if it’s all a trick? What if they claim to be helping, but really they plan on delivering us straight to our deaths?

Marco’s partner pushes at my back, but I resist. “Why are you helping us?”

Marco shifts his weight, the door still held open. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you right now. Nor do we have the time. But if you get in the car, I can take you to the man who has answers.”

Wind, followed by the scent of smoke.

“Come on, Marco,” the other man says. “We have to get out of here. I’m not risking my own life just because these two are too stupid to save their own.”

The men climb into the car. Marco lowers the window and stares at me with his one good eye. “Last chance, Romeo.”

Why does he keep calling me that? I want to correct him, but Emma touches my arm. “I think we should get in,” she says.

“I don’t trust them. We don’t know who they are or how they found us. If they can save us, why didn’t they save all the other climbers?”

Emma tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m not sure, but you know what will happen if we stay. I can smell the smoke. We’ve both seen the bodies. And they say they can take us to the man that has answers. What other choice do we have?”

The car growls and Marco urges us again. “I’m not waiting a moment longer. It’s now or never.”

I beat the Heist, and maybe, just maybe, I can beat that smoky scent as well. But Emma can’t. This is her only shot and I know it.

“Let’s go,” I say. I slide into the car and she follows my lead.

Marco says something to his partner, but a clear panel divides the front seats from the rear and his words are muffled and flat. I can hear the car, though, rumbling beneath us. Emma leans into my shoulder, and suddenly we are flying.

TWELVE

WE RATTLE AHEAD, THE CAR
lurching over uneven ground. I put an arm around Emma and let my thoughts drift back to the odd light in Maude’s bedroom. I can’t help but think she knows there’s more beyond the Wall. I try to tell myself that it is not possible. If she knows, if she’s known all along . . . I don’t want to think about what that means.

The car slows and we stop before a stretch of wall. Not our Wall but a second one. Emma and I were trapped all along, both in Claysoot and even when we were beyond it. In the front seat, Marco takes the communication device and again talks into it.

What happens next doesn’t seem possible. A small section of the wall twitches, and then it’s moving, parting like a cloud splitting in two. Not a moment later, a vacant expanse lies before us, a clear passageway right in the center of the structure.

Emma sits upright. “Did you see that?”

I nod, dumbfounded.

“Do you think we could do that? Back in Claysoot? Do you think there’s a section of our Wall that opens and we just never found it?”

But I don’t get a chance to answer her because we are hurtling forward again, the speed so great I grow nauseous.

We emerge onto a frozen black river, so straight and precise that I wonder if it is a river at all. It cuts through the earth. The sky hangs gray. The grass grows dry. There is a whole lot of nothing out here, just land that goes on and on. I wonder how much of it exists, how small Claysoot is in comparison.

At one point, we pass several rickety homes and faltering structures. A town, like Claysoot. The people are holding a funeral, obvious from the downturned eyes and a mound of fresh earth. Farther outside the community I see two young boys carrying buckets of water, their forearms strained. I imagine they will have blisters by the time they get home. That, or they make the trip so often their palms already boast proud calluses.

We drive for a long while without seeing anyone else.

Finally, a forest of tiny tree trunks appears on the horizon, stretching toward the clouds. Above them is a glint of light, shaped like an arched rainbow or overturned bowl. It catches the sunbeams and shoots them into the car. As we get closer, I realize that the shapes within are not trees but buildings—hundreds of buildings of varying heights, all stretching up toward the brilliant arch.

Marco drives the car toward the gleaming barrier at a stunning speed. Again he says something into the handheld device, and again, an entrance reveals itself.

Welcome to Taem
, a sign above us reads,
the first domed city.

Taem is like nothing I have ever seen. I keep thinking that I must be dreaming, that I will wake up in my Claysoot bed to discover that everything from when I first entered Maude’s house to now has been nothing more than the workings of my slumbering imagination. I blink rapidly. I pinch the flesh on my forearm.

I don’t wake up.

The sheer size of Taem makes it hard to breathe. Buildings tower at heights so precarious I am certain they will topple in on us. I realize that the frozen river we travel on is actually a road, dark and solid, so opposite our dirt variety. As we travel through the city, the road splits and forks and multiplies, twisting in intricate patterns as cars fly past. There is a long series of silver buckets that hang from cables and whoosh by overhead, their sides scrawled with letters that read
trolley
. I repeat the odd term in my head, wondering how it’s pronounced. Emma and I don’t exchange a single word; we are too busy gawking.

Things here are made of materials I have never seen. Lights illuminate the city, their brightness trumping every candle and torch in Claysoot combined. Some cast their brilliance along the road we travel. Others fill the sides of buildings, flashing words and symbols in a frantic manner. And the people: There are people everywhere. Walking. Talking. Coming in and out of buildings. They wear odd clothing and some of the women walk in awkward shoes that appear to be raised beneath their heels. Many carry bags that seem impractical, too large or too small. I can’t stop staring.

Beyond all the things I don’t understand—the new shapes, sounds, materials—there is one thing I do: the men. They are abundant. There are as many as the women. Some are young—my age or children—but there are old men, too, middle-aged to ancient. They have creases on their faces and gray hair on their heads. They have skin as dry as parchment and eyes that droop, tired. It makes my stomach uneasy but in an exhilarating way.

We pass more buildings, pausing near an open center where men, dressed in the same black uniform that Marco and his partner wear, stand on a raised platform. There is a golden statue at their backs, shaped like the emblem atop their chests, and an incredibly lengthy line of civilians filling the square before them. Several of the black-suited men hold the same slender objects Marco and his partner carried, only these men point theirs at the crowd. I know the form. They are aiming. At people. The objects they hold are weapons. Behind the statue, a smooth section of an aged building is illuminated with words:
Water distribution today. Segments 13 & 14 only. Must present ration card.

With a lurch, we are moving again and the square slips from view. The next street seems to be the city’s main artery. I have never seen so many people in my life. I think of the struggling community we’d passed earlier and wonder why they couldn’t live here as well, in these immaculate buildings, under this glowing dome. Maybe the city has no more room. Or no more water. The thought is terrifying; Claysoot always seemed to have enough rain, and our lake and rivers never ran dry. Then again, we were only a few hundred people.

The road squeezes between two towering buildings, both of which are plastered with a repeating piece of paper, climbing up, up, up toward the city’s domed ceiling. A man’s face fills each sheet, staring at us. Resting on his ears and the bridge of his nose is some sort of protective eye gear, its frames thick and black. He wears an odd ribbon about his neck that dangles down the front of his shirt. The visuals cut off at midchest, but the man’s shoulders slouch forward within the frame. He looks delicate and brittle, as though his entire body might crumple from even the slightest breeze.

“How do you think someone drew those?” Emma asks, pointing at the man. “They are identical. And they look so real.”

“Maybe it’s not a drawing.”

We both look back at the maybe-drawings. The words
Harvey Maldoon
appear beneath each picture. There are several smaller words beneath those, but I can only make them out when Marco brings the car to a standstill and lets people cross the street. “Wanted alive for crimes against AmEast, including sedition, espionage, and high treason; crimes against humanity, including torture, murder, and unethical practices of a scientific nature.”

Most of the words are foreign to me, but I know enough to be disturbed. We had little crime in Claysoot, thanks to laws set up and enforced by the Council, and our scrolls documented only one attempted murder, a failed one at that.

I look over Harvey again, trying to fathom one person doing all these terrible things and more. At first I thought he looked weak. Now, after reading the description, something in his eyes appears sick and twisted. I don’t like the way they follow me as the car moves down the street. Emma shudders, and I do the same.

When we break free of the crowded corridor, we travel a few more minutes before arriving at a building more grand than the rest. It sits atop a manicured plot of grass, each blade cut with precision so that their tips seem to match up seamlessly in height. The entire place is surrounded by an intricate fence, made of metal and sculpted with such care and embellishment that I know it would have taken Blaine a lifetime to forge in Claysoot. The building itself is immaculate. It bends and sweeps in odd areas, giving way to arched windows and whimsical coves. The roofline varies in height, creating stepping-stones into the sky. The shapes are all wrong and yet mesmerizing. I can make out the words “Union Central” above a massive front doorway.

A man in black nods at Marco as we head through the front gates. Marco takes the car around the side of the building and then we sink underground, moving into a space filled with idle cars. When ours ceases to rumble, Marco climbs out, opens the back door, and squats beside us.

“I’m Marco. This is Pete.” He jerks his head backward to where his partner now stands. “I apologize for not introducing ourselves sooner, but it wasn’t safe.”

“It doesn’t really seem safe here either,” I think aloud, images of a wanted man and rationed water and men pointing weapons at their own people still clear in my mind.

Marco snorts. “Sure, don’t bother thanking us. We only just saved your lives.”

“Thank you,” Emma says. She reaches across me and shakes Marco’s hand. “I’m Emma, and this is Gray. He seems to have forgotten his manners.”

Marco smiles at that, but I don’t like the way his lips look devious or the way his eyes are working over Emma.

“Maybe I’d be more polite if we could get some answers,” I say. “I still don’t know who you are. Or why we were the first climbers to ever be saved.”