Elusion(84)

Then he looks away from me, pressing a button on his wristband. And just like that he’s gone, vanishing into a large blast of radiant white light.

The quakes from below are becoming more frequent and intense. “We need to get to the firewall,” I say, glancing at my wristband. My heart stops when I see that the dial is flashing a red warning that I’ve never seen before.

TIME EXPIRED

“Something’s wrong. My wristband is saying that our time expired.”

Josh shoves up his sleeve, looking at his wristband. His jaw drops. “Mine says the same thing,” he says.

“This can’t be right.” I give the face of my wristband a little tap, as if that might help reset it. “We haven’t been here longer than an hour—have we?”

“Press your emergency escape, Regan. Now!”

I press the button. Nothing happens.

Josh presses the button on his own wristband.

Once.

Twice.

Nothing.

“This Escape is under construction,” I say, trying to keep calm. “Maybe the emergency button isn’t connected—”

“Or maybe he disabled it,” Josh interjects. His voice shakes a little, but I can’t tell if he’s frightened or furious. I can see sweat glistening on his forehead.

“No, he wouldn’t, would he?”

“Could he have done something to your wristband when he grabbed you?”

“If you’re right, then maybe the fight with you was just a ruse so he could get to your wristband too. Or maybe he did it by remote, disabling our wristbands somehow?”

But when?

The earth beneath us shifts again, sending us tumbling onto our backs. As I look up, I see that the crimson clouds have all but vanished, but the numbers in the night sky are brighter than when I first got here. They begin to flicker erratically, and then one by one grow crazy bright, each one popping like a lightbulb when it receives too much current.

“What’s happening?” I can’t hide how freaked out I sound.

Josh swallows, and I can see the fear on his face. “Those numbers look like source codes. I think we’re reading what the programmer is logging in.”

Right now.

Someone in the real world is typing in a code.

Someone who wants to hurt us.

Someone who wants to cause us pain.

The speed of the exploding numbers gets faster and faster until there are none left and the whole sky goes from ink black to angel white. When Josh and I come up to our knees, there’s just a hazy afterglow as all the light fades. For a second, the world around us is cast into total blackness. It’s as if I’m suddenly blind, as if Patrick has buried us alive. And then suddenly a sequence of white letters appears in the dark sky above us.

ADMINISTRATOR LOCKOUT.

The letters stay frozen in place, our only source of light.

“This was all a trap,” Josh says. “I think he planned this from the start!”

I don’t want to believe it, but as I stare at those words, I’m chilled to the core by the truth. I want to scream at the sky, cursing Patrick’s name, but suddenly the earth shifts so violently Josh and I are torn apart from each other, flying through the air. I land on my side, my leg scraping against a sharp rock. I feel a stab of pain as deep magenta-colored blood oozes out of a nasty-looking gash.

The pain only gets worse when I remember what my dad assured me, You can’t get hurt in Elusion.

“Regan!” Josh yells. He’s been thrown hundreds of feet away, but he’s already picked himself up and is running back toward me.

“You’re bleeding,” he says.

I push myself up, wiping away the blood that is trickling down my leg. It feels wet against my hand, dripping down onto my arm.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s just a scratch,” I say. I attempt to stand, but my leg folds in pain.

Josh grabs me by the waist, steadying me as he eases us back to the ground, his eyes focused on my wounded leg. “It’s more than a scratch.”

He slips his shirt off over his head. His bare torso is muscular like an athlete’s. He holds either side of the shoulder seam and tears, ripping off one sleeve and then the other.

He kneels beside me, wrapping the sleeves of his shirt tightly around my leg. “This should stop the bleeding.” He puts what remains of his shirt back on and reaches underneath me as if he’s about to carry me.

“I can walk,” I insist, pushing him away.

My guilt won’t allow me to accept his kindness. I’m the reason Josh is stuck here—I agreed to meet Patrick, and it looks like it was all a big setup.

I was an idiot to have ever believed in him.

There’s a loud roar and the ground in front of us explodes as if a bomb has dropped. Clumps of dirt fly through the air, covering us in soot. I gag and attempt to yank the neck of my shirt up to screen my nose and mouth. But it’s useless. Dust is everywhere.

A stone’s throw away from us, a gigantic mound of gray rock and soil begins to rise up out of the middle of the crater, moving upward. Josh takes my hand and together we scoot backward, faster and faster, watching in awe as the earth continues to shake and reconfigure itself. In only seconds, the rock is looming over us, growing taller and taller as its base continues to spread.

Twenty feet, thirty feet, forty . . . it continues to grow as we move, the hole in the earth widening to accommodate it.