My teeth clatter together as I hug my body. The wind lashes at my hair like claws and burns my face as the trees bellow and shake around us. Through the canopy, spots of dark grey storm clouds taunt us.
A flash of lightning illuminates the forest and, for a moment, I swear I catch a pair of eyes looking at us. But the forest plunges into darkness all too soon.
"Seems like the universe wants to delay our arrival to the Red Movement as much as possible," Aston says, the first to speak in about an hour.
I snort and pull my sleeves over my almost blue fingers. "Maybe it's an omen."
Thunder shatters the sky and the earth. We keep moving anyway, through the bone-deep cold. My fingers stiffen. I don't even have the strength to grasp my knife.
"This is miserable," Ajax says, squeezing through the tight gap between two trees.
I heave a sigh. "We need to figure out how we will give Edward the Devil's Ivy when we return."
"And we need to figure out our excuse for leaving," Ajax says, pulling the hood of his coat over his head.
"The Red Movement took me," I say, waving my hand dismissively. "I bargained my way. We'll figure out an excuse. Edward is... a little obsessed with me. So, I think I can return to his good side with little effort."
"Do you have to go back to Edward, Elle?" Ajax asks, looking over his shoulder with tight brows.
I press my lips together and step over a thick tree root. "Yes. I made a deal with him. My loyalty in exchange for your lives and safety. But if we can weaken him with the Devil's Ivy, maybe we will have hope."
We continue through the storm and the rain and howling wind until the trees thin. A red light washes the clearing forest like an angry sun. I almost fall over with relief. My muscles certainly beg me to.
But we are so close. Rest will await us when we finish the task. The Red Movement building swallows the clearing before us, surrounded by the forest on all sides. Only a few crimson lights still burn, flickering on their last legs. Rain falls sideways, flecked in red, as the wind pushes it around.
We quicken our pace, hugging the shadows like vampires as we slink into the empty train tunnel that dips underground below the Red Movement complex. The darkness in the tunnel is absolute. We follow the rusted, abandoned train track, walking right through the middle all the way through the tunnel and onto the platform beneath the Red Movement. A single light bulb with the tiniest breath of light pulses in the corner of the ceiling. After climbing onto the platform, we pause.
"I think we should split up," Ajax says. "I'll go with Aston, and we should meet back here in an hour."
"Why can't I go with Aston?" I say with a groan, slumping my shoulders and grimacing when my voice bounces back down the tunnel.
He rolls his eyes. "Because you two need to sort out your differences." His finger flicks between Ruben and me. "Maybe working together will help you out. Besides, Aston and I will check for any of the Red Movement crowd."
I pout as Ajax and Aston disappear into the stairwell, their shadows merging with the darkness.
"Perfect," I say, huffing.
At least, the complex provides us some relief from the raging elements outside. I snatch the knife from my belt and skulk up the winding stairs, ignoring Ruben as he follows me.
"So, we think it's in the prison cell, right?" he says, voice a decibel too loud and I cringe.
I push the door open as we reach the top, watching Ajax and Aston turn a corner at the end of the hall. "Yes."
Thunder rumbles outside, and the building groans as we traipse down the hallway drained of light and life except for the flickering, broken light bulb halfway down.
"The prison is several corridors down," I say. Memories of my time in the Red Movement flash across my mind like a microcosm of hell. The time Edward killed the sick beast in front of me. His experiments. The misery and blood and stench.
I swallow the bile and memories festering in my throat.
"Are you okay?" he says, glancing at me sideways.
"I'm fine."
My pulse thrums in my ears as we move through the all-encompassing silence and darkness. It feels like Edward's Red Movement was a trial run. A make-believe kingdom before the walls of our real kingdom became his to rule. I shudder to think of all the people who once occupied these hallways. The dorms once resembled pre-apocalyptic universities. Only the beds were small, the rooms were lonely, and the doors remained locked.
Finally, we arrive in my hallway. My palms sweat as we move through the crackling darkness. Doors creak as if ghosts inch them backward and forwards on their rusty hinges. Our footsteps boom like the collapse of the kingdom walls, stabbing my eardrums. My senses remain on high alert, like a prey animal, anticipating a half-rotted, abandoned Red Movement prisoner to jump out from the gloom.
"This is it," Ruben says, a haunted look crossing his eyes as we stand outside the room I spent so many days in.
More images and sounds from my memory blur across my vision. Screaming, wailing. "Kill me!" Blood. Hunger. Drowning.
"Do you want me to go?" Ruben says, grabbing his knife and spinning it. "Spare you needing to go in?"
"No. I can do it." I clench my fists and shoulder past him. Cold air and droning silence linger in the room. It's what I imagine death to be like.
We scour the room, pushing the bricks in the wall, jumping on the floor, and pulling the bed from the screws. But the realisation sinks into me like claws.
"It isn't here." That's all I can say, or I will start yelling.
"It must be. It said so in the note."
"No, it didn't, Ruben," I snap, voice strained and laced with frustration. "We just thought it said so."
Irritation feathers in his jaw muscle. "Then where else could it be? We didn't come all this way for us to be wrong."
I shake my head. "It will be here. In the Red Movement, I mean. But somewhere else."
"Like where? His office?"
My eyes widen and my heart clubs against my ribs. "It must be in the Mecuree sanctuary."
"The enclosure for those birds?"
"Yes." I snatch his hand, which is warm in my cold one, and drag him from the cell, leaving the dust and misery behind.
I lead Ruben up the wide staircases to Edward's old lair, which is now a far cry from the place he once roamed. Water drips from the ceiling. Mould and mildew grow in wispy trails across the floorboards, leaving a sickly sweet smell in the air. We move through the office. Many of Edward's belongings haven't been removed. A small drawing of his mother still sits on the desk. Parchments scatter the tabletop and floor. But most haunting of all is the other drawings strewn on his desk. Drawings of his father.... and me.
Ruben grimaces as I snatch them from the table and fold them into my pocket.
"I want to ask him why he has these." My voice drips with disgust. But I pull the drawing of his mother from the frame, too, tucking it into my pocket.
Ruben's dark gaze softens. "I have a feeling he was, and still is, just a lonely boy who wishes for a family." Then he purses his lips. "Funny how he hasn't drawn me though."
"You don't know that," I say. "He might have brought your drawing to the Floodgates."
He smiles and pink splotches his cheeks. "I dread the day if I ever see such a thing."
I roll my eyes as we enter the Mercuree enclosure. My heart drops. The lush, lively jungle that once filled the room is no longer. Plants and trees have long since shriveled up from dehydration and lack of light. A sweet, rotten stench permeates the room, making my eyes water. Mercuee carcasses, in various states of decomposition, scatter the bridge bisecting the enclosure and litter the dead plants. Bugs and maggots swarm some of the bodies as flies dart over our heads as if they're waiting for us to turn into corpses too.
Plugging my nose, we move along the bride. "I'm not sure it's here," I say in a nasally voice.
"Yeah, nothing appears alive here. We should leave."
But then something catches my eye. A violet flowering plant that sprouts with vigor and determination towards the ceiling.
"Ruben, there it is!"
I dash over and crouch before it, eyes widening.
"This is it?" he says. "It's so small. Almost seems too small to take down Edward."
"Let's hope it's mightier than its size." I pull the plant from the soil and stuff it, roots and all, into the small satchel strapped to my back.
As we march back down the hall to the stairwell leading to the platform, a sharp shout spikes my blood with tiny needles. We whirl around.
Barreling footsteps thunder into the hallway, pounding in my ears to the beat of my heart.
Aston and Ajax careen around the corner, shouting and cursing. Their hair flails wildly and their faces are pale and tight with terror.
"What the hell?" I yell, gripping the door to the stairwell.
"Run!" Ajax barks. "Run!"
I hear them before I see them. The shrill, piercing cackle that plucks at my eardrums. A flurry of broken, and battered Red Movement figures scramble into the hallway, chasing the boys.
"Run!" Ajax screams, throwing his arm at the door.
Ruben grabs his quiver and an arrow, firing before I can blink. The arrow skims through the gap between Ajax and Aston, piercing someone's eye socket. Their eyeball explodes and they shriek into the arms of death. Aston and Ajax slam into the doorway, running down the stairway.
"What the hell are you guys doing?" Aston screams, grabbing my wrist, and trying to pull me.
"We can pick them off," I say, grabbing a knife and throwing it. It spirals through the air like the propeller from the pre-apocalypse world I read about as a child. There's a crunch and a squelch as it hits its target.
"No, Elle. You cannot," he says through gritted teeth. "There are more."
"There's only six of them," Ruben says, releasing another arrow.
As it slams into the victim's ribs, we hear them, then see them. A stampede of dozens of Red Movement people.
I curse. "Go, Ruben. Run!"
We jump into the stairwell and flee as the cackles of the sick, feral people echo in our wake.