The faint sound of conversation could be heard inside one building further down the street and Brynn picked up the pace, convinced that there was a perfectly logical explanation for what was happening around her. As she neared the door, the sounds of conversation and clinking glasses grew louder, confirming for her that she was in the right place.
She turned the old brass knob and quickly entered what she hoped would be an answer for her troubling circumstances. Instead, she was met with a long white hallway lined with doors, instantly cuing her in to the fact that she wasn’t where she thought she should be.
“This can’t be good,” she thought aloud, trying to ignore the similarities between this hallway and A1. “Maybe I fell asleep somehow?” she questioned, thinking she must be trapped inside of one of Rachel’s memories.
“Maxwell?” she called, trying to think of any friendly entity from her memories.
If she had to confront someone in her nightmare, she’d rather it be Maxwell and not Eris.
She tried to exit the building once more but found that she was unable to open the front door.
“Typical,” she muttered, not at all surprised that she was finding herself trapped in an all-white building with no hope for escape.
It was the norm for her these days.
“Well I’m not going to sit around here and wait to be caught,” she told the room bravely, walking through the hallway and wondering which door she should pick, assuming they weren’t all locked.
“Rachel?” a voice said above her.
Brynn started, not expecting to actually run into anyone in the odd hallway, and even more surprised by the fact that the voice seemed to be coming from nowhere.
“Hello?” Brynn called, looking for any sign of a speaker in the wall to explain the disembodied voice she heard.
Receiving no response, she continued down the empty hallway, finally picking a door that proved to lead to nothing more than another hallway full of doors. She continued opening doors with the same result every time until she finally concluded that the building she was in was impossible.
One right turn, another right turn, and yet another right should have landed her back in her original hallway, and yet, she found herself in a completely different and impossible space with each door she opened. She may not have been as smart as Ty or Jonah, but she knew that it was impossible for the space she was in to actually exist. The layout didn’t make any sense.
“Should I make this easier for you?” the oddly garbled voice said above Brynn once more, urging her out of her silence.
She had been standing mutely in the hallway for a few minutes, trying to decide what she should do when the voice startled her into action. She went through hallway after hallway trying to find a door that would yield different results until finally, one random door in the middle of one random hallway led to a small white room that she gratefully stepped into.
The room was eerily similar to the hospital room where many of her nightmares with Eris took place and she wondered when the Angel would step out of the metaphorical shadows of the bright white facility to finally finish what she had started.
“Eris?” she managed to say, wondering why in the world she’d summon the psychopath to her when she should be looking for a place to hide.
The more Brynn took in her surroundings, the more she was able to conclude that the room she stood in was identical to the one Eris had almost killed her in, right down to the metal water pitcher, which she promptly grabbed to use as a weapon, should Eris suddenly become dense enough to fall for the same trick twice.
As the doorknob to the white room began to turn Brynn realized how much bravery she lacked when compared to Rachel. She had walked into this room feeling confident in her ability to fight off the Angel if it came right down to it but now, standing against the soft white wall and shaking so much that she could hear the water sloshing around in the metal water pitcher, she realized that she simply wasn’t as brave as her DNA donor.
When the door opened and Brynn was sure she’d collapse into a heap from the terror the anticipation had caused, she was surprised, yet again, by the sight of the red haired girl entering the room with a huge grin on her face.
“Pretty good huh?” she asked in a husky voice, her luminescent green eyes crinkling up at the corners as her already wide grin spread to cover the rest of her pale freckled face.
Brynn couldn’t think of anything to say, still baffled by the entire situation and residual fear still coursing through her body. She wondered how this girl could simply stand there and smile after putting her through a near mental breakdown.
As the red haired girl stared at her unmoving form, her smile faltered for a moment, suddenly realizing that maybe the situation wasn’t as great as she seemed to think it was.
“Was the room too much?” she asked, her smoky voice unlike anything Brynn had ever heard.
The red haired girl let her smile fade completely as she looked around the white room, now chewing nervously on her bottom lip.
“Yeah, I guess it would be a little jarring,” she admitted, pulling an old metal device from the pocket of her tight brown pants and pushing a button.
Suddenly the white room around them faded and was instantly replaced by a rolling green landscape, covered in hills and consumed by fog. Brynn could feel the cold around her and jumped when she saw her breath coming out in small puffs in front of her.
“Weapon?” the girl asked, nodding to the pitcher Brynn still had a white-knuckled grip on.
“Who are you?” Brynn finally managed, her eyes wide as she stared at the lanky stranger in front of her.
“Oh yeah,” she said suddenly, hitting herself on the forehead with a flat palm. “Manners, right?” she asked rhetorically, her face-engulfing smile returning once more. “I’m Rusty,” she explained, though those two words offered little explanation. “I’m kind of a genius,” she added, bringing her finger to her wide mouth in a shushing gesture, indicating that this was some sort of secret.
“Where are we?” Brynn asked, still not sure if she should trust this girl or not.
After all, the only thing she knew about her was her name and the fact that she had been following Brynn around Eastern Metropolis for a few days. That didn’t exactly inspire much confidence.
“My little creation,” Rusty said proudly, wiping a fake tear from her startlingly bright eyes. “Well, one of them. I didn’t really have time to build you a proper maze, I just needed something to keep you occupied long enough to talk to you in private,” she said with a nod as if this were a normal thing to say to a complete stranger. “Sorry about the whole A1 thing by the way. I just needed a quick way to show you that I know about all the secret stuff you know about.”
“How do you know about A1?” Brynn asked, finding that every time Rusty spoke, it only brought up more questions.
“That’s actually a long story and I get the feeling your friends will be finding us soon,” Rusty answered, looking around the foggy green expanse as if Amber and Bennett would suddenly walk over one of the hills. “Honestly I didn’t drop us in the cleanest of places either so I’d like to get out of here ASAP, and I think if you could see where we were, you’d agree.”
“Nothing you’re saying makes any sense to me, I hope you know that,” Brynn informed her, hoping that this woman would stop being so cryptic and would get down to the point.
“Oh! I’m sorry, they told me you would be smart,” she said with so much genuine concern in her voice that Brynn was convinced she didn’t understand how rude she had just been. “I guess I couldn’t expect you to be a genius just because Rachel was. Or just because I am,” she added very seriously, not even a hint of malice or sarcasm in her voice.
“I guess we’ll just start with the basics for now. This is a maze,” Rusty said slowly, gesturing to the field they currently stood in and making Brynn wonder how she could be the unstable one with people like Rusty running around in the world.
??
?It doesn’t look like a maze,” Brynn pointed out. “It looks like a field.”
“That’s what makes it so good,” she replied proudly. “Frankly, I’m the best maze maker in The Alliance. Well, I’m the best at a lot of things with The Alliance but that just sounds like bragging so we won’t go into that,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“Wouldn’t want to brag,” Brynn said sarcastically, though she could instantly tell that it had gone right over Rusty’s head.
Instead of responding to her comment, the red haired girl walked up to Brynn and brought her face so close to hers that it made Brynn want to take a few steps back. Her wide smile was instantly back as she scanned Brynn’s features.
“Wow, you really do look exactly like her,” Rusty said in awe, finally taking a step back and making Brynn feel infinitely more comfortable. “Even with those stupid purple contacts in you look like her.”
“Like who?” Brynn asked, though she was certain she already knew the answer to that particular question.
“Rachel, obviously.”
“And how do you know about Rachel?” Brynn asked.
“I already told you, it’s a long story that I don’t have time for right now,” she said in exasperation as if having to explain this to Brynn once more was the most tedious task in the world. “You aren’t really a great listener, are you?”
“I listen just fine, it’s you who doesn’t explain anything,” Brynn answered, equally exasperated.
“Okay, I’m going to get rid of the maze, which is always a little jarring so brace yourself,” Rusty advised, holding her little handheld button at the ready. “And if your friends get to us before I can talk some sense into you, don’t get on the stupid train. You’ll be dead in two seconds flat and I will have wasted a trip.”
Chapter 9: Rusty
The sensation of falling was the first thing Brynn noticed in her transition from the maze to the real world. Once that passed, however, the immediate pressure of a dingy brick wall against her back brought her quickly to reality. Unfortunately, that reality happened to be in an old alleyway between two brick buildings covered in moss and dirt.
“Yuck,” Brynn said, hastily standing from the ground and instantly regretting the quick movement.
She placed one hand against the cold brick wall to try to steady herself as she came to, her white dress ruined with dirt and mud. Her stomach turned and she took deep breaths to avoid vomiting.
“I told you it was gross here,” Rusty said matter-of-factly, crinkling her freckled nose at the surroundings. “I didn’t really have much of a choice though. You were about to go get yourself killed, which I couldn’t have, so I had to take drastic measures.”
“What kind of drastic measures?” Brynn asked, suddenly wondering what else this bizarre girl had done to her.
“Technically, it’s frowned upon to pull someone into a maze without their knowledge but this was an emergency. I had no choice.”
“How did you pull me into the maze?”
“It was easy. I just slapped a neuro-transmitter onto your forehead and caught you as you fell,” she said enthusiastically.
Brynn brought a hand up to her forehead to feel a sticker there with a metal ball inside of it. She pulled it off and examined the device, wondering how one little ball could give her an entirely real experience inside of the maze.
“I could touch things in there,” Brynn said, forgetting all of the questions she had for Rusty for just one moment of complete awe at the technology this girl had at her fingertips. “This tiny little sticker created a whole new world.”
“Yeah it’s pretty amazing, but focusing on what’s important, if you could just not tell Rift that I pulled you into a maze by force, I’d really appreciate it. I don’t exactly feel like being lectured for doing what’s necessary,” Rusty explained.
“Rift?”
“Long story,” Rusty responded once again, making Brynn roll her eyes.
“Why did you bother pulling me into that maze and following me around for so long if you aren’t going to explain anything to me?” Brynn asked in irritation, rubbing her forehead where a small headache had just begun to form.
“I never said I won’t explain anything to you. I just said it’s a long story that I don’t have time to tell you right now,” she corrected. “And I had to stop you right away so you didn’t get on that train that would get you right back in A1 with a bunch of dead friends and a much worse headache than the one the maze will give you.”
Rusty put the handheld maze device back into her pocket and brushed her clothes off absentmindedly.
Little motes of red dust escaped her brown shirt and, not for the first time, Brynn noticed the slight dusting of red all over Rusty’s face.
“Those Workers from A1 were probably just waiting for you on the train. I’m sure you’ve got a tracker in your head or foot or… something,” she concluded with surety, making Brynn wonder if the headaches she’d had regularly since leaving A1 were actually headaches.
“How do you know so much about everything?” Brynn asked, hoping that she’d finally start getting some answers from this cryptic girl.
“Besides the fact that I’m a genius?”
“Yeah,” Brynn sighed, “Besides that.”
“I belong to a group on Panurgic called The Alliance.”
“Pretty dramatic name,” Brynn remarked.
“Rift is all about the drama,” Rusty agreed. “We’re planning to take down the A.I.s and every once in a while I’ll go to Arcadian and Halcyon to look for new recruits. Though I hardly ever find any on Halcyon since all of the citizens are so stupid and lazy,” she said without any reservations, then, as if realizing that maybe that statement had been rude she shot Brynn an apologetic look. “Sorry,” she said, though Brynn did notice she didn’t take her harsh words back.
“So you’re here to recruit me?” Brynn asked, knowing that even if this girl was a complete nut case she still had answers that Brynn wanted.
“Not exactly. I mean, of course I want to recruit you but I had no idea you existed until this week. Imagine my surprise when I happened to see the leader of our little rebellion standing in that loud night club in a blue wig, looking like she actually had a purpose in life,” Rusty exclaimed excitedly, her deep voice still not quite fitting with her skinny little frame. “Rift had faith that Rachel’s clone would come in our time but I was pretty sure we’d be doing this whole thing on our own.”
“I still don’t understand how you know so much about Rachel and A1. Who told you about everything?”
“Rachel told us,” Rusty said, as if this fact should be quite obvious.
“Wait, you know Rachel? She’s alive?” Brynn asked urgently, even though her very first dream of Rachel had been her death in a gas chamber at the hands of Eris.
She knew better than anyone that Rachel was dead.
Rusty sighed deeply, placing her fingers against her temple theatrically as if her patience were beyond tested by Brynn.
“Her video transmission,” Rusty said slowly. “I’m guessing you know about that?”
“You guys are the ones who found the video?” Brynn asked, ignoring how rude this girl was.
It genuinely seemed like she just didn’t understand how she was coming off.
“We sure did. That’s what sparked this whole rebellion,” Rusty said, then added as an afterthought, “Well, that and the fact that we didn’t happen to land on the pampered little world of Halcyon. Panurgic kind of sucks.”
“What’s so bad about it?”
“There’s this thing called ‘work’. I don’t expect you to know what it is. But it’s not fun,” Rusty said in a serious tone, as if Brynn really hadn’t ever heard that word before. She rubbed at callouses on her hand to emphasize her point.
“I know what work is,” Brynn mumbled defensively.
“So I know you aren’t Rachel, but you must have her knowledge… to some extent,” Rusty said, again calling Brynn’
s intelligence into question. Brynn couldn’t really blame her since she’d been unable to form an intelligent sentence since meeting Rusty. “I need to bring you to Rift right away.”
Rusty looked around the alleyway once more, taking a mental inventory of how long it would take her to somehow get Brynn across an ocean and to a new continent. It was highly unlikely that there was anything in the alley that would prove useful in this task, but Brynn was beginning to think that Rusty really might be a genius; albeit a rude, socially inept genius. It wouldn’t surprise her one bit if Rusty could build a train from the few loose bricks and piles of dirt around them.
“How will you get me to Panurgic? How did you even get to Halcyon in the first place?”
“You ask so many questions,” Rusty said in exasperation, pulling a small device from yet another pocket.
For wearing such tight brown pants, the girl could definitely store a lot of technology on her person. Her belt was loaded with little mechanical objects that Brynn didn’t recognize, and she had about a dozen pockets and straps on the legs of her pants, holding other mechanisms in place.
“What is all of that?” Brynn asked her, pointing to the various devices Rusty toted with her.
“Again, stop with the questions, you’re on a strictly need to know basis and right now, you don’t need to know,” Rusty said, waving the little mechanical device in front of Brynn’s face and slowly trailing it down the length of her body.
“If you want my help you’d better start trusting me. I’m not an idiot all right? I know you expect me to be because I’m from Halcyon, but I can actually hold my own pretty well,” Brynn informed her, straightening her stance and trying to look sure of herself and important like Rachel always did.
“Okay, fine, you aren’t an idiot,” Rusty agreed, though it sounded like she only did it to appease Brynn so she would stop talking. “I built this myself,” she said, indicating the little handheld device she was now pressing against Brynn’s shoulder. “It tracks bugs.”