Page 66 of Last Seen

Chapter Forty-Six

Halley

Halley is startled from her uneasy slumber by a noise.

It is magnified in this soundless space, and she tenses, realizing what’s happening.

He has come back.

She opens her eyes. Blackness parades in, and she closes them again.

She is safer within her own head than she is in this infinite place; she learned that quickly.

Physically, though, she has more challenges.

She is still tied down. Her legs and arms have gone past excruciating pain, cramping, itching, tingling—finally going numb with a burning fire that belies the term.

She knows she is doomed in this position, weakened and trembling, but now she fights back as best she can, rolling her ankles, curling her fingers, willing blood to her limbs.

Ian has done nothing but talk and stroke her hair and intimate what horrors lie ahead for her, but she knows in her soul that won’t last much longer.

He likes to talk. Likes to hear his own voice in this deadened space.

He is a cat with a mouse already caught in the trap, pinioned to the earth by its tail, waiting for whatever horrors will come before its death.

She realizes the door has opened. Light spills in, blinding her with its intensity. She jams her eyes shut tighter. The brightness is too much to take.

Hands on her now. This person does not smell the same as Ian. The hands are softer and smaller. She risks opening one eye. In the darkness, she sees a murky face, one she knows as intimately as her own but still belongs to a stranger.

“Cat?”

“Shhh.” The familiar stranger puts a finger over her lips. “We don’t have much time,” she whispers.

The fingers are nimble, and Halley is soon freed.

“Can you sit up?” Cat asks quietly.

Halley does and swoons immediately. Nothing works. Her limbs are Jell-O. The sliver of light that comes from the penlight in her sister’s lap is excruciating after the days of darkness. A migraine takes hold almost immediately. The world spins.

Cat starts rubbing life into her, and soon enough, the vertigo ceases, and her limbs have feeling again. The pain in her head dulls to a familiar throb.

“How did you know where I was?”

“Later. We have to move. Now.”

The urgency in her tone brings Halley’s painfully ungovernable mind back into focus.

With her sister bolstering her, she manages to stand, then take a few steps.

Her head is splitting, and her legs still feel rubbery but now can hold her weight, and the room isn’t moving like the deck of a ship at sea. “Okay. I’m okay. Let’s go.”

They exit the chamber into a long hallway with greenish sconces lining the walls. They disappear around the corner into darkness.

“Where are we?”

“Under town. Fallout shelters. In case there’s some sort of major disaster. Oak Ridge is to our west—if it was ever hit or melted down, the winds would come directly over us. It’s to save the people of Brockville from the apocalypse.”

“Oak Ridge?”

“The nuclear facility. Halley, please, hurry. We can talk about all this later. We don’t have much time. We’ve created a diversion, but the guards will be back soon enough.”

“Guards?”

“Later. Please.”

She follows her sister into the greenish light, fighting to keep the worst of the headache at bay. “You said we created a diversion. Who is we ?”

“You’ll see.”

The tunnel forks left, then right, then left again.

They walk on for what feels like a mile, moving through this underground warren.

At each junction, Cat moves with assurance.

Halley’s head hurts too much to keep up the line of questioning.

Her sister, alive. Her sister, rescuing her.

Her sister. With her. Me has become we .

They hit a steel door. Cat pulls a set of keys from her pocket and turns the lock.

The door opens into a cafeteria-style room with long tables, at which are seated several women and children.

All heads turn. Everyone is silent. She’s never seen such a somber group.

These children should be laughing and playing; instead they are pale and stricken.

Their mothers—she assumes these are their mothers—rise from the tables.

One, a woman with red hair and a small healing bruise on her left cheekbone, stands. “Is it time?”

Cat nods. “As we planned it. Up and out of the northwest entrance, straight into the labyrinth. Heather is waiting. Hurry now.”

They rise as one and move like zombies, all of a piece, together, toward the door. No one will meet her eyes. Cat is counting under her breath.

“Gray. Where is Gray?” she asks sharply, and one of the women turns.

“He went with Heather.”

Cat curses under her breath. “All right, move, move. Hurry. We’re out of time.”

Time. There is no such thing as time. Time doesn’t exist in the dark.

But they are moving toward the light. The path they follow angles upward, finally stopping at a set of concrete stairs.

The women and children wait, and Cat splits them apart like an arrow as she hurries up the step and unlocks the door.

“Stick together. We’ve marked the path. Look for the small bows in the greenery. Meet me in the graveyard.”

“You must lead us, Catriona,” the last woman says, and Cat smiles.

“You are leading us now, Gretchen. You’re going to be fine. I’m right behind you.”

Halley realizes Cat is tugging on her arm. “Come on. You too.”

“Are they ... okay?” she asks. “God, these people seem like they’ve been brainwashed.”

“Again, later. Go.”

Halley steps into a world of green so dark it’s like midnight.

The air is fresher, no longer the stale notes of earth and must that told her she was underground, but something is burning.

Her eyes adjust quickly, and she realizes they are in some sort of massive labyrinth.

The hedges reach well over her head; the sensation of them touching the night sky is only interrupted by an orangish glow.

The covey of women and children moves quietly.

They are used to silent footfalls. Perhaps every sound under the earth is magnified; perhaps they are all simply shell shocked and desperate not to be heard.

They move as one in a dance that mimics the underground passages.

Left. Right. Left again. Until there is a stoppage. Murmurs.

“Cat,” she says, but realizes her sister is no longer behind her.

The woman called Gretchen returns to her side. “It’s stopped,” she says, panic in her voice. “The hedges. We’re blocked. We’ve taken a wrong turn.”

“How were you navigating?” Halley asks.

“There were bows, the girls’ hair ties. But the labyrinth path is changed regularly. A deterrent.”

Halley has the horrible realization that in addition to being kept locked away underground, this group of women and children is hampered from escaping on foot by this interactive maze. Dear God.

The smell of smoke is getting more acrid and intense. Her headache pulses in response. Not now, she commands, and for once, it dims. She turns to the woman behind her.

“What’s your name?” Halley asks.

“Summer,” the woman supplies.

“I need a few of you to form a pyramid. So I can stand on your backs and see where we are. I might be able to get us back to the right path.”

Summer disappears without a word and returns with four women.

They quickly assemble like a group of former cheerleaders, and Halley awkwardly climbs up on their backs.

The hedges are high, but with this vantage point she can see above them.

She rotates her head. She is staring into darkness, and the fire—there’s no question now, something is burning heavily—is over her left shoulder.

In the distance, behind the billowing smoke and orange glow on the horizon, she can just make out a hill that looks like it is covered in wire.

She climbs down. “The fire is coming from behind us. There’s a hill, with wires. I don’t know what that is.”

“The grapevines,” Summer says. “That’s Glaston. The farm is there. The vineyard. It’s the heart of the community. Without it, Brockville is reliant on the outside world.”

She says this with pride. “Your idea to burn down the farm?” Halley guesses.

Summer smiles. “I’ve always wanted to burn this place to the ground. They put too many of us there when they were finished with us.”

“Okay. Then if you know where the farm is, do you have any idea how to escape the labyrinth?”

“All I know is there are entrances in all four hamlets. We were under the entrance in Glaston, and the exit we are supposed to find is in Avalon. The graveyard is on the hill by the cliff. About a mile from the labyrinth. It’s only one grave, long overgrown.

We don’t know whose it is. But it has to be one of us, from long ago. ”

“The city is set on a grid, yes? North, south, east, west?”

“Sacred-geometry principles. The town looks like a grid, but it is really undulating across the Omega.”

Halley has exactly zero idea what that means. She thinks for a second, then looks up.

Time is running short. Smoke is filling the air. But the stars are just barely still visible. It is a pattern she knows, loves, and is as intimately familiar with as her own body.

Her headache flees as she stares into the night sky, calculating. Arcturus, and Betelgeuse, and Pollux. Sirius, and Canis Major. Hydra. The Big Dipper.

It is divine luck. With a prayer of thanks to her father for his relentless passion and tutoring, she grabs Summer’s hand and turns to the northwest.

“Follow me.”

Cat catches up to them as they’re backtracking, a small boy in her arms. He is too big to carry, but she is managing, lugging him along, sweat breaking on her brow. Another woman is with her. Halley assumes this is the one Cat called Heather.

“What’s wrong? Why are you coming back?”

“Dead end.”