He didn’t even seem to be scared by the prospect of travelling under the ocean, which surprised Brynn. She could remember when simply standing on the beach made him nervous.
“Right there,” Rusty said, the misty beam of her flashlight cutting through the darkness to what looked like a rusty metal bowl resting above the calm water.
Though Brynn couldn’t quite put her finger on it, something about the whole scene made her very nervous. Rusty pushed a button on the wall and the dark water was soon illuminated by bright underwater lights, showing her exactly what was going to carry her from Halcyon to Panurgic.
In the ghostly green water sat something that very much resembled a metal egg, though the front curve of the machine was all glass. A hatch sat above the water level and Brynn couldn’t help but feel that there was nothing Rusty could say to assure her that the hatch was water tight.
“It’s really…” Brynn began, though her words trailed off into the silence of the cavern. She had meant to say scary, or big, or something equally disbelieving but Ty quickly finished her sentence for her.
“Amazing,” he breathed, his brown eyes wide as he took in the scene before him.
“I made it out of some scrap metal and spare parts from the old train station,” Rusty said proudly, the ever present red dust on her face becoming runny from the mist that hung thickly in the cavern air.
“Why is it all covered in rust?” Amber asked skeptically, voicing Brynn’s concern.
The device didn’t look stable at all.
“Everything in Panurgic is rusty,” she said. “Everything worth keeping at least. It’s really wet there so the metal goes rusty quickly. Then they throw it out and I take it.”
“Is that why you’re always covered in that dust?” Ty asked, brushing a finger across her cheek to gather some of the red powder there and instantly causing a fire to burn in Brynn’s stomach that she tried to ignore.
“That’s why they call me Rusty,” she explained with a grin. “I’m always building things like this so I’m constantly covered in rust dust.”
“How do we get in?” Brynn asked, afraid of the answer that she felt she already knew.
“That’s the unfortunate part,” Rusty said with a slight grimace. “The Bucket is too big to get it really close to the walls of the cavern so we have to… swim.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Amber said from behind the group, sounding like she’d reached her breaking point. “You can build that thing but you couldn’t build a little vessel to get us over there? That’s ocean water,” she pointed out.
“It is,” Rusty agreed sagely.
“It leads out to the ocean,” Amber tried again, attempting to get a point across that Rusty wasn’t picking up on. “What if the tide goes out and we get sucked under the cave wall and into the ocean?”
“That doesn’t really happen,” Rusty laughed, shaking her head and grinning. “I’ve done it hundreds of times and nothing’s ever happened to me.”
“Brynn, I’m not doing this,” Amber whispered to her friend, slight panic in her voice.
“If she says it’s safe I’m sure it is,” Brynn attempted weakly.
“You’re scared too,” Bennett pointed out.
“Yeah but we can overcome our fear right? That’s always a good thing to do,” Brynn said, trying to sound motivational but failing miserably.
“I’ll go first you bunch of babies,” Rusty said with a long suffering sigh.
Pulling her backpack off and lifting it above her head with one hand, she gingerly lowered herself into the seemingly serene water. The lights she had somehow installed around the cavern lake caused the pool to look a luminescent green; the same color as her eyes. As she swam silently through the large lake to the eerily quiet machine, her eyes almost appeared to glow.
“Almost there,” she called back to the frightened group of people who could easily tell she was almost there.
When she reached the machine she threw her bag up to the hatch and Brynn couldn’t help but be impressed that she hadn’t overshot it. She quickly reminded herself, however, that Rusty had been doing this for a long time.
“Just have to open it up,” she yelled to the group as she used the tarnished makeshift ladder on the side of the machine to hoist herself out of the water.
Her dripping clothes cast a chorus of noise through the deathly quiet space and as she reached the top of the machine, it let out a loud, low, metallic creek that resonated through the water, sending chills down Brynn’s spine.
“Hatch is a bit rusty,” she called with a laugh, proud of her own play on words.
She threw her weight into the metallic wheel and it began to turn slowly, emitting a screeching sound and causing the group on the land to cover their ears.
“Got it,” she told them as the hatch popped open in a puff of condensation.
She threw her bag into the expanse below and Brynn could see the shadow of the bag falling on the cave wall underwater as it reflected through the glass front of the machine.
“Who’s next?” she asked, her voice echoing eerily in the cavern as the bobbing of The Bucket cast shadows skittering around the room.
Brynn looked over the edge of the ground and balked at the blackness of the water below them. The lights turned the surface of the pool light green but about ten feet below that, the light faded to a deep black abyss.
“How deep is this water?” Brynn asked, finding that for the girl who was supposed to be fearless, she had suddenly become quite the coward.
“Oh right,” Rusty said finally. “You guys are all scared of water, right?” she asked.
No one answered her but she nodded slowly as she remembered.
“They gave you an irrational fear of water to keep you trapped on your continent,” she explained, though Brynn didn’t need to be told something she was already painfully aware of.
Because she was made from Rachel’s DNA, Eris hadn’t been able to plant the fear of water in her system. That, however, did not stop her from being logical; and jumping into a black bottomless pit of cold ocean water did not sound logical to her.
“Not sure why they bothered. It’s not like you were inventive enough to find your way off the continent anyway.”
“Why didn’t they program you guys to be scared of water?” Brynn asked.
She had thought all of the test subjects had been given a fear of water and had their curiosity suppressed.
“No need. Instead they gave us a desire to work, so that doesn’t leave much time for exploring.”
“What happened to you then?” Jonah asked reasonably.
“A desire to work isn’t specific enough, apparently. It very easily turns into a desire to work towards destroying a tyrannical psychopath,” Rusty said matter-of-factly. “So who’s next?” she repeated in a chipper voice.
“I’ll go,” Ty volunteered, swallowing hard and trying to look tough.
Brynn could see right through his façade and walked over to him, taking his hand in hers.
“Can I come with you?” she asked, finding that she didn’t want to brave the eerie water alone.
“Yeah,” he said automatically in a relieved voice.
Apparently he hadn’t wanted to go alone either.
“I’ll go first,” Brynn said as she held her backpack above her head the way Rusty had.
She sat on the ledge of the rock and gently dipped her toes into the water. It didn’t immediately seep into her boots and for a moment she had been lulled into a false sense of security. As she lowered herself completely into the icy water, however, the frigid salty liquid instantly poured into her boots, freezing her toes within seconds. Goosebumps sprang up over her arms and she tried to keep her teeth from chattering.
“Whoa,” Brynn said, letting out a loud breath at the shock of the temperature.
“Cold?” Ty asked with a look of concern on his face as he followed Brynn’s lead. “Oh yeah,” he breathed the second he got into the water.
>
His default outfit was much less substantial than Brynn’s and his brown pants, tennis shoes, and cream T-shirt were doing nothing to keep him warm, instantly clinging to his body.
“Let’s go,” he said, anxious to get out of the water.
As they swam slowly through the silent cavern, Brynn tried not to look at the unknown expanse of black water below her feet. It didn’t take much to imagine some terrible creature swimming up out of the depths and dragging her down into an icy grave.
As they approached The Bucket, however, she wasn’t sure which was more terrifying; the deep water underneath them, or the large metallic machine in front of them.
“You go first,” Ty said through chattering teeth, allowing Brynn to climb up the rusty ladder ahead of him.
Her frozen hands barely worked as she climbed slowly up the ladder, causing the machine to let out its deep metallic groan once more.
“That sound is terrifying,” Brynn told Rusty as the girl offered her hand to help her up.
“I think it’s soothing,” Rusty said with a shrug. “Just climb down the hatch and hope your cowardly friends make it as far as you.”
Chapter 12: Bucket
Brynn entered the underwater machine as she was told and was instantly surprised by how warm the interior of The Bucket was. Warm orange lights cast a welcoming glow over the large oval room. There were no private rooms in The Bucket except for one small sectioned off place that Brynn assumed was the bathroom.
A few red velvet couches dotted the interior and Brynn had to wonder if Rusty had stolen them from some coffee shop in Eastern Metropolis. They looked far too luxurious to be anything from Panurgic, and the more Brynn inspected her surroundings, the more she realized how nice all of the furnishings were inside of the terrifying metal egg.
Intricately woven rugs covered the metal floors, stained glass lamps rested on fancy wooden end tables, and big fluffy down blankets seemed to be draped over every available piece of furniture. Brynn had to half wonder if Rusty had volunteered to take her trips to Halcyon in order to get away from the dreary existence of living on Panurgic.
“Much nicer than I expected,” Ty said directly behind Brynn, making her jump when she felt his breath on her neck. “I can’t believe she built this.”
His voice held an awe that Brynn had never heard before, and for reasons she couldn’t understand, she hated it.
“You realize we’re probably going to die in here right?” Brynn asked, looking around the cozy interior of the water machine with less pleasure now.
“When did you and I switch places?” Ty asked with a laugh, walking to the glass covered front of The Bucket and inspecting dozens of blinking lights, knobs, and other things Brynn didn’t understand.
Things that made perfect sense to people like Rusty and Ty.
“I never thought I’d see a scenario where I was excited for an adventure and you were terrified. It’s kind of nice being the reckless one,” he said with a playful smirk in her direction as Jonah jumped into The Bucket without a sound, not even bothering to use the ladder as he fell gracefully from the open hatch.
“Not bad,” he said with a whistle, raising an eyebrow and joining Ty at the front of the room. “Not bad at all.”
Brynn looked out the glass front of the water machine but didn’t dare walk to the front of the room with the boys.
She didn’t think having everyone’s weight in one part of the room was a very good idea. Plus she really didn’t want to look out the window to see the ghostly green water that currently surrounded them.
“I’m getting the feeling Amber and Bennett won’t be joining us,” Jonah remarked to Ty.
He leaned up against the walls of The Bucket with his arms folded easily over his chest, his ever present smirk challenging Brynn to be the adventurous girl he had met in the library not so long ago.
“Although I thought the same thing about Brynn when we first got into the cavern.”
“I was the first one to get into this death trap,” Brynn countered, determined to prove to Jonah just how adventurous she was. “You forget so soon.”
“Fair enough,” he replied just as a high pitched scream rang through the silence of the cavern, followed by a splash. “Looks like they’re coming after all.”
“How long will it take us to get to Panurgic?” Brynn asked a distracted Rusty hours later.
Brynn’s knuckles were white as she clutched the arm of one of the overstuffed red velvet sofas. Her eyes were closed and she attempted to refrain from looking out of the glass window at the front of the room that revealed a much too dark, swirling mass of water in front of them.
It had never occurred to her just how much water was in the ocean until she was travelling through it in an unstable rusty old machine, built by a girl her age, out of spare parts from a condemned train. When she thought of it that way, it made it pretty obvious to her why she was feeling so panicked.
The only problem was, everyone else seemed to be taking the whole thing very well. Even Amber and Bennett who were terrified of the ocean (and had a fear of water medically planted into their psyche by Eris) were chatting with Rusty at the front of the machine like they were shopping in Seaside rather than who knew how far under the water with death possible at every turn.
Brynn felt an arm encircle her shoulders as Ty gave her a squeeze, leaving the front of the vessel for the first time since they’d descended into the ocean. He had been like a kid ever since Rusty started explaining what everything was and how it worked.
“You doing okay?” he asked her in a voice so calm she shot him an annoyed look.
“How are you okay?” she asked incredulously. “You of all people!”
“Ouch,” he said as he pulled his arm away from her and instead rested his hands awkwardly in his lap.
She didn’t feel great about lashing out at her best friend, but ever since they’d left A1, she’d been on edge. Now, finding herself in a situation as the only scared person in a group full of notoriously cowardly friends, she was even more off balance.
Brynn tried to ignore the headache and blurred vision that was trying to overpower her at the moment, not wanting another reason to appear weak in front of her suddenly strong friends.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, meaning it even though it had sounded like the least sincere apology ever spoken.
“Your head?” Ty guessed.
“No,” she lied, slightly annoyed that he knew her so well.
“I know it’s kind of scary being underwater but you were the one who wanted answers,” Ty reasoned. “Just think of how simple our lives would have been if you’d never set foot in that library.”
Brynn glanced over at Jonah as he slept on one of the couches in the oval room. His arm rested lightly over his eyes and Brynn was instantly reminded of the time the three of them had stayed in their tent in the barren wasteland between Seaside and A1.
At the time, Brynn had been sure she and her friends were about to die from heat stroke. Now something more sinister than heat stroke was tracking them across the planet and the mere thought made her instantly exhausted.
“You really should try to rest,” Ty suggested, the old familiar concern back in his voice. “You look like crap,” he added with a grin in her direction.
“I hate you sometimes,” she joked as she let herself sink into the comfort of the sofa.
Ty draped a blanket over her gently as she began to instantly sink into a deep sleep.
“You love me,” he corrected her. “You just aren’t ready to admit it yet.”
And with that, he kissed her forehead and she drifted off to the place where her nightmares lived.
Her nightmares, at that particular moment, apparently lived in the only dark room she’d ever seen in A1. The facility was notoriously immaculate and blindingly bright, but her current circumstances found her in a more subdued part of the sprawling city-like base. While the room she had awoken in was still perfectly clean with a disinfected smel
l wafting around her, the dim lighting and silence scared her more than anything else.
Brynn had long since given up trying to figure out the chronological order of her dreams. Ever since she’d escaped from A1, her mental trips into the facility every night had been unstable, fuzzy, and totally out of order. Glad that she had at least found herself out of Eris’s company tonight, she scanned her surroundings, wondering what Rachel had in store for her this time.
The room seemed to be a lab of some sort, with metal tables situated every foot or so. White sheets covered whatever experiments lay on the tables and Brynn had to wonder why this memory in particular would be important enough for her to dream about it.
In her experience, she had never had an insignificant dream. It was as if Rachel had somehow ensured that every time Brynn slept, she’d receive a clue from some monumental event in her past life.
Today, however, she stood alone in an empty room surrounded by tables and an odd smell she hadn’t ever encountered before. She walked between rows of tables and didn’t notice until she began the movement, that she could see her breath in front of her. The room felt like a freezer and the more closely she observed it, she realized she could hear the gentle mechanical whir of a cooling implement.
She was in a freezer.
“What would Rachel be doing in a freezer?” she asked herself.
As soon as the words escaped her lips, (an occurrence that shouldn’t have been possible in her current dream state) the walls began to shift out of focus. The lights flickered out for a moment before coming back to life, blindingly bright as they had been in her previous dream, before coming to rest on the dim setting she had started the memory out with.
Trying to ignore the many reasons why her dreams might suddenly be falling apart since leaving A1, and hoping it had nothing to do with her encounter with Eris, she resumed her walk around the strange room. As much as it didn’t make sense for Rachel to be in a freezer, it made even less sense to her why hundreds of tables with sheets would be there.
Compelled by one sheet in particular, Brynn walked deliberately over to a lone table near the wall. She felt a sense of dread creep through her body, though she had no idea what had invoked the emotion. All she knew was that Rachel didn’t want to look under the sheet but felt that she had to.