Elusion(48)

“If you recognize this person, please contact the Florida State Bureau of—”

Josh hits the pause button, freezing the photo in front of us before the camera cuts away.

“Notice anything strange about that kid’s face?” he asks me.

I search the picture with a steady gaze, and at first I don’t see anything unusual, but then Josh expands the viewing window on the screen so the image is much larger. There seems to be a deep circular impression near his left temple. It doesn’t appear to be a scar, because it’s too perfectly shaped.

“I saw those marks on Nora’s friends at the factory,” he explains. “I think they’re from the Equip visors.”

As soon as he says that, my body reacts with a systemic tremble, like my blood sugar just dropped a thousand points.

“So you think this kid is in a coma because he’s addicted to Elusion?”

“Only one way to know,” he says. “We have to check out that firewall again. We aren’t making enough headway with the clues we have in reality.”

And in reality, time is running out.

I rise to my feet. “Okay, let’s go.”

Josh stands along with me, casting a tall shadow on the floor of the capsule. “Where to?”

“My house,” I reply. “We should wait until my mom’s an hour or two into her shift, though, so we’re not interrupted like last time.”

“What about when we’re inside Elusion? Should we go back to the beach where your dad—”

“No, I already did that—and he wasn’t there. Patrick told me that the firewalls run through all the Escapes. They’re all connected. I’m not sure what Nora and her friends expect to find on the other side, but if Pat’s right, that means they’d just run into another Escape.”

“So where should we go?”

I smile. I have just the place in mind.


A few hours later, my head buzzes and my palms tingle with thin strips of kinetic energy. I push back the fur-trimmed hood of my white parka so that I can look up at the sky, which is a lemon yellow, lit up by an electric blue sun. Each molecule of tension that lingered in my body is being soaked up by the spongelike hold trypnosis has on my emotions, and I feel absolutely protected here.

Best of all, I have someone by my side. Someone who I really want to trust—and who looks amazing in a thick winter coat.

Josh and I are now inside the Mount Arvon Escape, perched on a narrow plateau off the mountain, towering above patches of fluffy cinnamon clouds. Everything around us is covered in glittering cherry-blossom-pink–colored snow, and the sun is giving off a magnificent spectrum of sheer rainbow-tinted light. Way, way down below are two rippling rivers of grape that wind their way through a valley that appears to be made out of layers of delicate eggshells. In the distance, the rivers fuse together into a glistening purple lake.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I hear Josh say, his voice utterly breathless.

I inhale the cool, crisp air and exhale a turquoise-colored mist. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

Josh smiles as he unzips his black down coat to reveal a red flannel shirt. He stares at the snow-covered trees, the frustration from earlier completely gone from his eyes. “Why’d you pick this Escape again?”

I bend down, running my gloved fingers through the pink, fluffy snow. “There was a reason,” I say. “I just have to think about it for a minute.”

“Take your time,” Josh says, throwing a backpack on the ground. “I have to figure out what this is for.”


As I watch Josh dig through the bag, setting out pieces of climbing gear, I concentrate hard on the sense of purpose that’s niggling at the back of my thoughts, which are still pretty gauzy at best. I try to grasp at my most recent memories, but it feels like the inside of my head is covered in the same layers of soft, delicate fur as the outside.

Josh holds up a large, sharp, J-shaped ice tool and smirks. “Cool, huh?”

Suddenly, a recollection is triggered. I’ve seen that object before, not more than a few months ago.

“Ah, now I get it. I was here with my dad right before he died,” I say, rolling a handful of snow into a big gumdrop-looking ball.

“So are you retracing his steps?” Josh asks.

“That seems like the logical thing to do, right?”

“Logic doesn’t matter here; that’s why everyone loves it.”

I smile at him. “Hey, you should be thanking me for figuring out why we’re in these mountains.”

Josh laughs, playfully throwing some snow in my direction. “Yeah, well, I wish I remembered what we’re supposed to do here. Other than climb something.”

Believe it or not, that particular detail has stayed with me. I don’t know how, but maybe my last visit to Elusion solidified it in a dark corner of my mind.

“That’s a no-brainer. Check out the firewall,” I brag, lightly throwing the ball I made at Josh’s chest.

When it bursts, the snowflakes cling to his coat like a glittering flush-colored badge of honor. Once I realize he isn’t going to brush it away, my heart feels like it’s filling with helium, and for a moment I think I’m going to float away from him.

“Okay, genius. We’ve got five miles to the firewall. Since we can’t really go left or right, would you prefer up or down?” he asks, smiling at me.