The Princess Trials (The Princess Trials #1)(45)
“Come along.” Byron Blake pats me in the back.
I follow Berta onto the bus, which is blissfully cool and already filled with frightened girls. Only the two rows in front are free, and Berta stretches out in the middle of her double seat, her splayed arms broadcasting her desire to be alone. I take the seat opposite and sit at the window, while Gemini sits at my side.
A cacophony of sounds reaches my ears. They’re mostly complaints about the meager rations, the Amstraadi additions, and not getting a chance to go to the palace. I lean back in my seat, nodding along to the complaints as these changes are endangering my mission.
Rafaela von Eyck and the other girl board the coach. The short-haired Noble takes the seat in front of us, and Rafaela glances at Berta, who shuffles across her seat to the aisle side, further marking her territory. Rafaela glances around for an alternative place, but I’m guessing there are none because her lips tighten, and she sits next to the short-haired girl.
A whistle cuts through the conversation. I raise my head to find Prunella at the front with a small screen dangling from the ceiling on her left. To her right sits Byron Blake at the driver’s seat, wearing a pair of thick goggles I assume will help him see through the blackened window.
Prunella raises both palms and beams. “Alright girls, some of you might think we’re traveling north out of Phangloria, but we’re not.”
Cries of relief fill the stagecoach, and all the tension leaves my body in an outward breath. Gemini collapses forward, resting her head on the seat in front.
Prunella’s grin widens. “We’re taking you to the next best thing.”
I glance at Gemini, whose head remains bowed and resting on the back of the front seat.
“Environmental scientists have studied the Detroit Depression for years to work out a way to neutralize its hostile climate so we can expand the Great Wall to the north.”
The screen beside Prunella shows a map of what’s left of North America after the oceans swallowed up the coast. She explains that the Great Wall of Phangloria stretches two-thousand miles from what used to be the state of New York and crosses west through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where it travels south to Kansas, Oklahoma, and ends at the Texas coast.
I shake my head from side to side, waiting for her to get to the point. If we’re not going to the Detroit Depression, what could possibly be the next best thing? I can’t see through the blacked-out windows, but the vibrations of the coach floor indicate that we’re going fast.
About an hour later, Gemini reaches down to the refrigerator beneath the armrest and pulls out two bottles of water. She offers me one and opens a bag of something she calls trail mix. Inside are almonds, cashews, dried berries, coconut chips, and chunks of dark chocolate.
“Thanks.” I lean forward to find two empty bottles on Berta’s seat, along with four empty bags of trail mix. Now I know why she wanted to sit alone. “Do you have any ideas where we might be going?”
Gemini nods.
I twist around in my seat. “Where?”
“Not the botanical gardens.” She takes a long sip of water. “The Ministry of the Environment experimentation laboratories.”
“What’s that?” I eat a handful of the trail mix and nearly choke on the punch of flavors. Everything is either coated in salt or honey, and the combination is like a jolt to the tongue.
Gemini tilts her head to the side. “An artificial environment that looks and feels like different places on earth.”
“Okay.” I chew on my mouthful of trail mix, making a note never to eat several items at one time. “Is that dangerous?”
She nods and closes her eyes. Maybe she’s meditating, maybe she’s contemplating her fate, but I turn back to the trail mix and pick out a chunk of dark chocolate. If this place isn’t not real, then it can’t be as bad as she’s implying.
The short-haired girl in front, whose name is Ingrid, snipes at Rafaela van Eyck for wasting everyone’s time. I pick out the salted cashew and memorize the salient points of their arguments. Ingrid’s father is someone important and is on good terms with King Arias, while Rafaela’s mother has never been invited to the palace due to having been born an Artisan.
Gemini dozes at my side, oblivious to the revelations, but she has bigger worries than the goings-on of the Royal court.
Eventually, the stagecoach stops, and Prunella Broadleaf claps her hands. “Let’s go, ladies.”
I grab a fresh bottle of water and another pack of trail mix, then follow the two bickering Nobles to the front of the coach.
The scent of rotten eggs fills my nostrils, and an oppressive heat forces every pore in my body to sweat. This isn’t the dry heat of the Harvester Region, but something far worse. Comparing it to a steam room would suggest the existence of water. Whatever moisture is in this atmosphere comes from something distinctly rotten.
Harsh light stings my eyes and makes me squint as I descend the steps. It can’t be sunlight because I’ve seen countless cloudless days, and even they aren’t as bright as what’s outside. The Nobles in front gasp, as does Gemini, who stands at my back.
When my eyes adjust, the hostile landscape stretches out to what looks like infinity. I’m no painter, and my vocabulary doesn’t encompass enough colors to describe the fluorescent yellow salt crystals that form tiny pyramids across the ground. Steam billows off pastel-green puddles, which might be the source of the sulfurous stench.