Glancing around, I decide that I can’t simply leave these people behind either. I’ll have to find a way to free us all. I nearly laugh out loud in a fit as the desperation of my situation sinks in. I’m only one person. Maybe if I’m regrouped with the other Nactue then there’s a chance. I can only pray that this machine takes me to Lilly and Willa.
My chest pangs with a hollow ache, and I wince. Empress Iana is suffering. I can feel her pain. I can feel her life force fading just as I can feel the mercury churning violently in my blood as the Otherworlders steal it from my home. It’s as if something is awakening inside of me. As if Alyah herself is speaking, but the message is garbled.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I try to listen, but am halted to an abrupt stop when the chain snaps tight. My eyes fly open.
The Otherworlder with silver rings above his eyes throws the door on the side of the machine open. It slides wide with a loud whomp. “Inside,” he growls.
The blonde in front of me ducks her head and climbs in. I imagine yanking the chain up and wrapping it around the Otherworlder’s neck as I step up to the open door. Instead, I cut my eyes at him, committing to memory his bony, ashen face. Then I seat myself next to the woman on a long metal bench.
Tinted windows run along the inside of the machine. You can’t see through them from the outside. They appear as if steel or a part of the vehicle, and they’re possibly shatterproof. I stare out them now as the machine rumbles to life, then I watch as Cavan slowly slides away, becoming a speck of light.
I rest my head in my palms and try to swallow. My mouth is so dry it feels as if I’ve been drinking sand. Which, I have, truly. I grind my jaw back and forth, gritting dirt between my teeth. From the front compartment I can hear the Otherworlders guzzling and slurping. If the sound wasn’t so nauseating it might make me ravenous with need for water.
Overhead, a dim, thin and winding ultraviolet light wraps the roof of the hull. It washes the faces around me in a pale, unearthly glow. Prince Caben sits across from me, and the whites of his eyes are illuminated unnaturally. Flecks of white cloth woven through his uniform and cloak stand out in the same strange glow against the dark.
His eyes stay locked on my face, unblinking. And I’m suddenly wary that the Otherworlders’ dark light reveals the mercury beneath my skin. I break his gaze and instead stare at the sooty floor.
Before I can check my hands, Long Dreads stomps to the middle of our compartment and flops on the empty seat. He dips his head forward and pries one eye open, then pinches the clear, gel-like substance between his fingers. He removes the second lens from his other eye and rubs the matter until it’s dissolved. When he looks up, his eyes are two blue-white beams with pinhole pupils. A shiver crawls down my back.
The machine hits a divot and we bounce. The hard metal bench jars my backbone and I wince.
Two women in the middle of the bench opposite me cry out as they cling to each other. Long Dreads snarls at them, but this only makes them hug each other tighter. They share similar features—maybe they’re mother and daughter. The younger one with matted brown hair down her back can’t be much older than me. And the older woman covers her with her arms, trying to shield her, trying to be strong as her daughter cries, tucked against her chest.
My heart aches, and I again pray that my mother made it out of Cavan safely.
“Don’t move, maggots,” Long Dreads orders.
The lights above flicker, and then a beep blares. Metal brackets reach around my feet and waist, locking me into place. Panic swirls in my chest, prickling my senses, but as soon as I attempt to move, the machine grinds to a stop and pitches for
ward.
A high squeal echoes through the hull and I glance out the darkened windows. Ahead of us, a plateau stretches across the horizon, and a void separates the top of the land from the bottom. As if Farrah herself carved out the center, reaching her hand down from the sky and smiting the very earth.
The squealing noise heightens into a shrill ring, then something on the machine clamps down with a thudding boom.
A track.
We’re hooking up to some kind of track these machines were designed for.
Silence pervades the stuffy compartment, and then we’re lifted up and back down again. The prince’s eyes widen, and I’m two seconds from tearing at my restraints when the war machine lurches into motion and we’re hanging sideways, limbs and hair dangling at an angle.
We’re going down.
Outside the window is pitch black, and faint light shining from inside the machine reveals the earth’s crust moving at sonic speed past us. My stomach roils from the free-fall. It feels like we’re descending into hell.
And maybe we are.
The metal brackets gouge into my stomach and ribs as my weight bears down on them. Pain splinters my insides, and I look at the Otherworlder. His gray armor protects him. This is his world.
After countless minutes that feels like an eternity of straight, downward descent, the machine slows. Then it bucks to a creaking halt. The hair that came loose from my bun long ago floats beside my forehead, then we’re moving again. With a pop, the vehicle unhitches from the track and then rights itself.
The windows of the machine shimmer—the black tint peeling away to reveal a new world. A dark world. Towering earth mounds—half mountains, half buildings—rise up from the ground. The same ultraviolet light that hovers above me now illuminates their panes of dirt-caked glass and stone. The dark lights swirl and branch out, covering walkways and wire fences, casting the underground world in hues of glowing blues and neon whites.
And in the center, where we’re rumbling toward, a giant domed cage crackles with violent currents.
Oh, Alyah.
Where am I?