Will and Elise gripped each other’s hand, walked in after him, and were instantly enveloped in the cool, cocooning mist. They took one careful step forward at a time. Will couldn’t see his feet or their hands.
They bumped into Ajay two steps later, without even seeing him, and stopped.
“Ah, holding hands again,” Ajay said just ahead. “Any excuse at all, I see. Honestly, people are going to start to gossip—”
“Shut up,” said Elise.
“Let me try something,” said Will.
He blinked on his Grid: Everything looked as vague and milky as what he could see with the naked eye. No heat signatures or other signs of life in range. Useless. He blinked it off.
“Can’t see a blinking thing,” he said.
“What now?” asked Ajay.
“There’s a cliff with a steep drop to the right,” said Will. “Let’s find the wall that we know is on the left and stick to it. Elise, grab on to my backpack. We’ll go single file.”
Elise stepped behind him and took hold of his pack. Will put both hands on Ajay’s shoulder as he turned, leading them, and inched in that direction, stretching out his hands.
“I don’t feel it yet,” said Ajay.
“Wait, I think I can tell you where it is,” said Elise.
They halted. Elise stepped out from behind Will and issued a series of small, incredibly fast clicks and whirrs; then she took Will’s hand and strode ahead a few paces until she stopped them both abruptly.
“If I’m right, the wall should be six inches in front of us,” she said.
Will moved next to her, put both hands up in front of him, then moved them slowly forward…and about half a foot later made contact with the rocky wall.
“Ah, echolocation,” said Ajay admiringly.
“A useful new tool,” said Elise.
“And of course the one time we really need it, my one puny power proves absolutely useless,” said Ajay.
“It’s not useless,” said Will. “And it’s not the only time we’ve needed it.”
“And it’s not puny,” said Elise. “And it’s not the only power you have either, Brainiac.”
“Okay, so maybe I was fishing for compliments a tiny bit,” said Ajay with a lopsided grin. “Why don’t you take the lead, my dear?”
“No, you two should both go first, together,” said Will. “Elise on the left, keeping your left hand on the wall. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Will grabbed both of their backpacks and reconfigured them into the right positions.
“I hope you won’t object if we hold hands,” said Ajay.
“Not unless you do,” said Elise, grabbing his left hand with her right.
“At least she can’t see you blushing,” said Will. “Let’s move.”
They started forward, one step at a time. Will held on to their packs and found it a little easier to stay centered if he closed his eyes.
“This is deeply weird,” said Elise. “Moving around like you’re in the dark with so much light around.”
“It’s the absence of any variety or texture,” said Ajay. “Our eyes can’t function properly with the mind unless they perceive some contrast….Hold on, just a suggestion now—do you suppose you could move the fog around at all with sound? Just enough to vary it?”
Will heard Elise send out a variety of sounds as they inched along. Nothing seemed to make an impact on the cloud until she sent out one that sounded like a soft, oscillating war whoop.
“That one,” said Ajay. “It’s creating ripples out ahead of us, and I can definitely detect a pattern.”
Will opened his eyes and looked up. He still couldn’t see a thing. He blinked on the Grid again. The faintest vibrating lines showed up in the fog ahead of them, almost forming a path.
“Good work, you two,” he said.
They continued on that way for a while, in grim, silent concentration, with Will looking up and using his Grid every hundred paces.
“How far do you think it is to the floor of the valley?” asked Ajay.
“From where the fog started? I’d guess about half a mile,” said Will.
“Good,” said Ajay, raising something to his face that gave off the faintest red glow. “I started a pedometer at the edge of the cloud, and it looks as if we’ve traveled about half that distance already.”
“Is it just me, or does it seem like the fog’s a little bit thinner here?” asked Elise.
“You’re correct,” said Ajay. “We may be moving toward the bottom of the cloud bank.”
“Shouldn’t it be thicker at the bottom?” asked Elise.
“Yes, the denser vapor should settle lower down,” said Ajay. “But not even the molecules here seem to be performing according to form.”
It took a little while longer for Will to notice any difference, but eventually he was able to see his own feet, then the path a few steps in front of them. Something about the appearance of the ground troubled him, but before he could formulate a reaction, both Ajay and Elise slipped, their feet flying out from under them. They fell back on their packs, and because Will was still holding on to them, he slipped, too. The path had turned as slick as the blasted ground they’d encountered in the canyon—and before they knew it, they were sliding down and around as if they were on a well-oiled chute.
“Hold on to each other!” shouted Will. “Stay away from the edge, and try to grab on to the wall!”
But there was nothing to hold on to, except each other. Even as the fog thinned around them, they could see that the entire path had turned to the same glassy texture. The path continued to turn to the left, but the force of their mass was carrying them to the right, toward the edge of the cliff. Will reached down for the knife strapped to his calf and dragged the blade behind him, trying to use it as a rudder to steer them back to the left, but the ground was so hard it didn’t even leave a scratch.
Elise quickly twisted her body to the right and sent out a thick stream of sound beyond their hearing. The beam of the sound seared into the path, sending up sparks; she was trying to use it as a friction brake to slow them down, which worked momentarily, but the angle of the path steepened and they continued to accelerate, sliding closer and closer to the cliff edge. Will could see branches and leaves, a dense wall of green vegetation just beyond the edge, but for all he knew they could be the tops of the trees, in which case…bad.
Ajay went over the edge first. Will secured his grip on the back of Ajay’s pack with his left hand, and as he slipped over after him, Will reached back, turned, and slammed his knife into the ground just under the lip of the cliff. The knife penetrated and stuck and he held on and braced himself, as a moment later Ajay’s mass loaded down onto his right hand and arm. Feeling the strain with every muscle, Will held on to him with a death grip.
“I’ve got you!”
“I don’t think you—”
“No, I’ve got you!”
Then Elise slid by right next to him, but she reached up and grabbed on to the edge of the cliff with both hands, dangling just beside him, eyes shut.
“Hold on!” he yelled to her.
“Will, you don’t need to—”
“Yes, I do, Ajay. I’m not letting you fall!”
“Look down,” said Ajay.
Will chanced his first look down. He saw Ajay hanging just below him, and then, through the thinning fog, he saw what was below him.
Ajay’s feet were about three feet off the ground. “You’re really starting to crush my fingers.”
“Oh,” said Will.
He let go of Ajay’s pack, and he dropped down onto the forest floor.
“Oh my God, you let go of him?” Elise opened her eyes, looked down, and saw Ajay waving and smiling.
Will held out his right hand. She took it, swung down, and then dropped to the ground next to Ajay. Will found a foothold on the cliff wall, pulled out his knife, and a moment later joined them.
The fog had thinned here to a spectral mist that hung unifo
rmly through the trees, allowing them to see roughly fifty feet in every direction. Ajay scanned the forest all around them.
“Yes. Very much like a rain forest. High canopy. Little vegetation underfoot, a layer of mulch covering the ground, although the air isn’t as pungent with the smell of decaying compost as you might expect. Otherwise, textbook rain forest biosphere.”
Will blinked on the Grid. No heat signatures showed up anywhere in the landscape around them.
“Except no living creatures,” said Will.
“What about the moving trees bit?” asked Elise.
“I don’t see anything moving at the moment,” said Ajay. “Maybe they were just swaying in the breeze.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve run into ‘moving trees,’ ” said Will, thinking back to the treelike guardian beasts they’d encountered in the underground ruins.
“Which way?” asked Elise.
They both looked at Will. He pointed straight ahead, decisively—for no reason other than that it seemed they expected him to make a decision—and started walking, moving vines and underbrush out of the way, picking out a path between the massive tree trunks.
“I may have to break out my hatchet,” said Ajay as he tried his walkie-talkie again: still no signal.
“As long as you don’t keep talking about it,” said Elise.
Will blinked on the Grid again, and this time he picked up some faint flickering heat signatures in the distance. Maybe he had chosen the right direction after all: He might have to start trusting this “intuition.”
But suddenly the heat readings appeared closer, and not just straight ahead but to either side of them, and now there were clusters of them. Some up in the trees and an equal number at ground level. They were small and mobile, moving or crawling, but when he blinked off and looked around, he saw no animals that matched the profile.
“Are you seeing anything?” he asked Ajay.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Just flowers. Lots of very pretty flowers. And they’re giving off a very pleasant scent. Can either of you smell that?”
“Like gardenias,” said Elise.
“My mother often wears a perfume reminiscent of this,” said Ajay, sniffing again. “You know that familiar aromas activate an extremely powerful section of the brain strongly associated with memory—”
“Stand still for a second,” said Will.
Will blinked the Grid back on, looking up and around, trying not to alarm his friends. There were many more of the heat signals now, and the small shapes were still moving when he saw them from the corner of his eye, but when he looked directly at them, they stopped. He picked out a spot on an overhead branch with a dozen of the shapes on it, waited until they stopped moving, and then blinked off.
Flowers. Small, delicate red and white buds, on a short green symmetrical stalk. Common specimens from a million suburban gardens. Harmless and benign.
“Ajay.”
“Yes, Will.”
“A while back you told me you were working on a freeze-ray-type thingy.”
“Oh, yes. A liquid nitrogen dispenser. Very effective, if I do say so myself.”
“Did you by any chance bring it with you?”
“Of course I did, Will.”
Get ready to run, he sent to Elise.
She glanced over at him calmly and nodded, then tilted her head toward Ajay.
What about him?
Take him with you. I’ll follow.
Say when.
“Could I have it now, please?” asked Will.
Will blinked and turned slowly around. Viewed through the Grid, the shapes were moving again. There were hundreds of them now, massing, crowding in from every direction, above, below, and behind, into his field of vision.
But there was still a clear path straight ahead, through a gap between two huge trees.
Ajay rummaged in his pack for a few moments, then emerged with a short, thick stainless-steel canister that looked like a small fire extinguisher.
“Here you are,” said Ajay, handing it to him. “Just switch off the safety—here—point the nozzle, pull the trigger, and it should be good to go. I’m quite pleased with it. What do you intend to use it for?”
Go.
Elise grabbed Ajay’s hand and yanked him with her, dashing toward the trees.
“What are you doing, woman?!”
Will switched off the canister’s safety and blinked on the Grid again. As one, the massed flowers reacted to their movement and swarmed toward him. A packed wave of the things wriggled rapidly toward him over the ground on stalklike roots, while what looked like a curtain of them swept down from the branches above.
Will realized they’d hooked themselves together using rows of small thorns on their stalks. As they swung toward him, he also noticed their petals hinging back uniformly to reveal a round jagged mouth in the center of each blossom, filled with a circular row of sharp white fangs.
Will quickly pivoted around, pointed the nozzle, and pulled the trigger, shooting a freezing mist into the heart of the descending creatures. When the spray made contact with the flowers, a cloud of vapor erupted and they froze instantly, and when the center of their solidified mass struck his shoulder a moment later, it fractured into a thousand icy shards.
He lowered the nozzle and sprayed all around him as he spun around in a tight circle, freezing the flowers on the ground as they neared him, leaving a ring of tiny statues frozen on the verge of taking a bite out of him.
He felt a bunch of the things scampering along his arms and shoulders, survivors of the curtain that hadn’t been hit by the spray, so he shook himself like a wet dog—a hundred times more rapidly—and they flew off him in every direction.
And more kept coming, pouring out of the trees, dropping from the branches, blanketing the forest floor, mindless and hungry. He felt teeth nipping at the cuffs of his pants and shoes. He hit the nozzle again and then took off running after the others, pointing it behind him as he went, trailing the freezing spray behind him.
He blinked on the Grid and spotted Elise and Ajay through the mist, about fifty yards ahead. No sign of more flowers in that direction: They seemed to have all massed back where they’d attacked. Glancing behind him, he saw a large, amorphous red blob of the things still moving after him but slowed by the frozen path he’d left behind.
Will took his finger off the trigger and brought up the canister, much lighter in his hands; he’d used more than half of its contents by now and decided to hold the rest in reserve. He picked up his pace, dodging through the underbrush, and quickly closed in on the others.
I’m behind you, he sent to Elise.
What else is behind us?
Nothing you want to stop and smell. Keep going.
A few moments later he was beside them.
“Oh, Will, there you are,” said Ajay, slightly panting for breath. “What seems to be the trouble back there?”
“Carnivorous pansies.”
“WHAT! Oh dear God, man—there’s one on your shoulder!”
Will looked to his right; one surviving flower had clung to him and, using its thorns like Velcro, had crawled up near his neck, teeth exposed, reared back, poised to strike. Before Will could react, Elise shot out a knifed hand and lopped off its head. Will quickly brushed its body to the ground.
“Looks more like a snapdragon,” she said. “Crossed with a crocodile.”
“We’ll be okay. We can outrun them—but don’t look back and keep moving.”
“Issues I did not expect to face upon waking this morning: being chased by a rabid pack of carnivorous delphiniums.”
“What do you see in front of us?” asked Will.
Ajay peered ahead, trying to hold his eyes steady as they trotted along.
“I think we may be approaching a river, or some kind of moving water.”
“I hear it,” said Elise.
“By the way, your freeze spray? Aces.”
Ajay couldn’t suppress
a smile. “Oh. Thank you very much.”
Thirty seconds later, they broke into a clearing by the sandy banks of a flowing river, about forty feet across to the opposite bank, where the edge of an even thicker forest awaited. Will scanned left and right; there was no obviously easier place to make a crossing, before the river curved around a slow bend in either direction. He glanced behind them again using the Grid; the large red blob of flowers was still at least a hundred yards back in the forest but gaining steadily.
“How do you feel about a swim?” asked Elise.
“To be honest, I’m carrying a large assortment of equipment indispensable to our mission that would not necessarily benefit from complete and extended immersion in any form of—”
“Let me put it a different way,” said Will. “Can you swim?”
Ajay shifted uncomfortably. “For short periods. In still water. Preferably a swimming pool. With the assistance of a generously sized flotation device, of course, should I require it. Fortunately, I’ve brought one with me—” He reached back toward his pack.
“Never mind about that,” said Elise, dragging him toward the water’s edge. “We’ll hang on to you.”
“Hold on a second,” said Will.
He looked out at the river. The current was visibly flowing from right to left, but not dangerously so. But something was nagging at him—intuition—to take a closer look. He blinked on the Grid.
He detected a lot of movement in the water, although he couldn’t make out many heat signatures—whatever was down there was most likely cold-blooded, schools of small fish, maybe, or whatever passed for fish here. But he quickly zeroed in on three larger stationary heat signatures lurking near the river bottom.
Not cold-blooded. Each one about the size of a car.
“Both of you take a look down there and tell me what you see,” he said.
Ajay opened his eyes wide, then squinted, then opened them wide again and glanced up at the misty sky. “I’m afraid the perpetual glare on the water makes it difficult for me to see anything below the surface.”
Elise immediately got down on her hands and knees, tied her hair back, and stuck her face into the water. They heard her send out a series of the pulsating echolocation sounds. A moment later she pulled rapidly out of the water, stood up, and backed away, then turned to them, pale and alarmed.