Naturally, when we’d first met up, meeting by the main stadium in Nihilism as we’d arranged, this wasn’t the first thing I’d brought up.
We’d held each other tightly in relief that everything had gone to plan so far, that I’d escaped the Rooms of Pleasure, and Joel had also managed to walk away long before my absence had been noted.
But that weird question constantly worming its way through my mind just wouldn’t go away. And so, finally, to explain the distraction that Joel had noted I was suffering as we made our way through Nihilism, I’d decided I’d have to ask him if he knew the story of Jonah, if he knew of any crimson worm appearing within the tale.
Of course, he’d laughed, looking at me as if he couldn't be sure that I was being serious.
‘No, there’s no worm,’ he’d assured me. ‘Unless you think of the whale as a sea serpent; but then again, that’s hardly a worm, is it? Let alone a crimson one!’
I don’t mention the girl I thought I’d seen; he thinks I’m crazy enough, asking questions about a non-existent worm.
From every stadium we pass, there are shrieks of tearing metal, screams of dying droids, the cheers, jeers, and excitable whooping of the crowds.
This is a dreadful place.
‘Let’s get out here,’ I say to Joel, placing my arm though his and hurriedly dragging him along with me.
‘We need to head down towards the exit,’ he tells me, his face almost crumpling in sadness as he adds. ‘We have to leave Nevaeh.’
*
Chapter 21
My life has been short, much shorter than Joel’s; yet, just like him, the only thing I’ve ever known is life aboard Nevaeh.
‘We could hide out…’ I say hesitantly, knowing such an action would be crazy, irresponsible.
We could blend into the thronging crowds while they were still flocking to experience Nevaeh’s many delights, but it had always been planned to be a short stay in this small town; and once the hordes of people have left, we would be eventually hunted down by droids with sensors despite Nevaeh’s vast size.
Yet leaving by the exit would mean we would picked up by the surveillance cameras.
‘We have to leave,’ Joel insists, adding as if reading my mind, ‘But we’ll have to wait a couple of hours until Nevaeh’s rides begin to shut down and everyone starts to leave all at once.’
‘We also need to get you a disguise,’ I point out. ‘And I might as well change my appearance again too.’
*
The crowd is so densely packed we’re almost tripping over the heels of the people just ahead of us, the pace slow and shuffling.
It takes quite a while for such a large throng of people to pass safely through the line of ticket booths, despite all the gates and barriers now being left open.
You have to be patient; even if you’re worried the cameras might spot you at any moment, and a hovering droid could swoop down to stop you exiting.
We hope, of course, that we’ve made ourselves unrecognisable.
Joel had had the foresight to bring as much money with him as he could manage. We’d bought new clothes, the choices I made not only surprising Joel but even myself; I was choosing clothes that were too small even for me, picking up petite sizes that drew raised eyebrows of disbelief from Joel.
Joel had almost completely cropped his hair, such that applying the dye he’d bought hardly seemed necessary. In my case, I’d also gone for a colour that wouldn’t risk drawing any attention to us – an almost mousey brown, which I felt strangely comfortable with. Of course, it would be a while before my hair grew completely back, but I didn’t feel totally at odds with the crop Joel had given me, especially once I’d realised that the longer hair he’d originally made me comb back could be flopped forward and cut into a low hanging, angular fringe.
I was a girl once again; well, a sort of girl, anyway.
And I felt like a girl as, to make sure we weren’t parted in the bustling crowd, we were tightly holding hands.
Joel would squeeze mine every now and again, like he thought that would reassure me that everything was going to be okay.
He also glanced my way every now and again, his eyes sparkling as he smiled.
I smiled back.
I didn’t need reassuring that we were going to be okay.
We were virtually other people, the way we’d managed to change our appearances.
*
‘Iona!’
It was nothing more than a whispering, as if it might even be nothing more than a change in a breeze’s direction: and yet I could still clearly hear it above the noisy chatter of the crowd.
I could even tell where the call was coming from.
I looked to my right, looked away from Joel, who was still patiently standing by my side as we waited to pass through the barriers.
It was the girl; the ghostly girl.
She smiled.
She waved to me.
That wave that said I must follow her.
*
Chapter 22
I clench Joel’s hand tightly, adding a slight pull to draw his attention my way.
‘Can you see that girl over there?’ I ask him, drawing his attention to her with little more than a nod of my head.
He could hardly miss her.
She seems to be standing on top of something hidden amongst the crowd; another stretch of iron barrier, maybe.
She’s also glowing a wonderful, ethereal white, the way brightly lit snow shines and sparkles.
Joel looks the way I’m looking, but screws up his eyes in bafflement.
‘Which one, Iona? There are so many of them amongst the crowd.’
No, he can’t see her.
Which means only I can see her. Or she’s nothing more than a product of my overactive imagination.
Either way, that would explain why no one in the crowd is reacting in any way to her as she stands amongst them.
She smiles sadly.
‘What are you waiting for?’ her smile once again admonishes me.
*
I can’t follow her this time, even if I wanted to.
The crowds are too solid for me to work my way through.
Besides, I don’t want to leave Joel.
And we have to leave Nevaeh.
All she’ll do, anyway, is lead me on another exhausting goose chase.
Leading me to some brightly glowing wasp or some other weird insect that will create some other bizarre question in my mind.
Maybe I’m suffering from more faults that I initially thought I was.
Just ahead of me, the crowd erupts in gasps of surprise and nervous laughter as one of the men amongst them begins to weirdly rise up in the air from amongst them.
No one tries to stop him, despite the crazed, fearful yelping of the man, who quite clearly doesn’t understand how this could be happening.
Everyone else, they just assume its yet one more surprise, one more last and bizarre experience afforded them by Nevaeh.
Just all part of the show; another clownish act, featuring a flying droid disguised as one of the crowd.
Once clear of the heads of the people, the man, his arms flailing uselessly, zooms up into the darkness looming over all of us.
Joel’s hand tightly grips mine.
‘Oh no!’ he wails anxiously. ‘I’d forgotten all about this!’
Before I know what’s happening, he’s just about thrown himself upon me, wrapping his arms about me in a clench I’d say was just about unbreakable.
‘Hold on to me, Iona!’ he cries almost tearfully. ‘Hold on for your life!’
*
Chapter 23
For a brief moment, I’m totally confused; I can’t think what he might be frightened of.
Then it dawns on me.
The droids conscripted into fighting within the stadiums obviously resent being used in such an inhumane way.
There are rumours of droids who have managed to escape Nevaeh: many of the more human-like
ones disguising themselves as just another member of the crowd.
But there are equally strong rumours that no one had ever really successfully escaped, least of all the latter group attempting to pass themselves off as human.
In the shadows of Nevaeh’s huge maw, rising high above the exiting crowd, a droid hovers, passing back and forth, circling; whatever moves it takes, in fact, to draw up the escaping droids from amongst the thronging people.
A huge electromagnet, powerful enough to pull even the heaviest droid up into the gloom of Nevaeh’s soaring mouth.
Such rumours had to be nonsense, of course.
Any magnet that powerful would cause every metal object amongst the crowd to be pulled upwards.
Phones, watches and computers would be bad enough; but what about any one wearing a jacket with too many zips? What about anyone who’s had a bone replaced in an operation with a metallic version?
No, no way could there be an electromagnet hovering away up there.
Besides, I’m not like any regular droid, am I?
‘But I hardly have any metal–’
My attempt to reassure a frightened Joel is cut short as I begin to rise up off the ground, despite the way he clings tightly to me, increasing my weight.
‘It draws on energy fields, not magnetic ones…’ he moans, recognising that I’m still rising, taking him with me.
He can’t stop me being taken up, I realise.
If he doesn’t let go soon, we’ll be too high for him to risk letting go.
‘Joel: you have to let me go,’ I tell him firmly, sadly.
As I speak, I’m prising away his grip on my waist.
He tries to resist, but trying to support his own weight as he holds on to me is rapidly weakening his arms.
His arms slip free.
He falls; dropping away from me.
Thankfully, it isn't too far from him to fall.
He lands safely, back amongst the crowd.
But without his extra weight to hold me back, I suddenly lurch upwards, soaring up into the darkness as the hovering droid continues tearing me farther and farther away from him.
‘Sorry,’ I tearfully yell out back to him, stupidly reaching out, as if hoping we could hold hands one last time, ‘I’m sorry!’
*
In an instant, I’m uncontrollably whirling through the darkness lying below Nevaeh’s gaping mouth.
Far beneath me, however, I can still see the crowd languidly making its way through the barriers.
Joel’s down there somewhere amongst them, maybe still fruitlessly trying to fight his way through them all, which was the last view I’d had of him: but I can no longer make him out.
I’d thought, maybe, that I’d heard him make out a last cry towards me too; but even by then it was all so far away it could have been nothing more than a whisper caught on the breeze.
My soaring ascent comes to a brutally abrupt, incredibly agonising halt as I’m slammed hard against the hovering droid’s flat bottom.
There are other droids already pinioned here, some having struck the surface so violently they’ve suffered smashed or dislocated limbs, even in one case an almost complete severing of the head.
Another droid flies up towards us, arms flailing uselessly. He strikes the base with a heavy clunk and a chorus of painful groans as he collides directly into droids already trapped here.
Once a droid’s caught here, it seems, they’re more or less completely immobilised, a powerful electromagnetic at last coming into play to hold everything fast.
The droid appears to have finished its hovering over the crowd, having collected from amongst the still unsuspecting people the droids who had hoped for a new life outside Nevaeh’s confines.
It begins to rise higher into the darkness, ascending into a gloomily lit, angled and ever narrowing chimney, as if it were a reverse of the descent into the circles of hell. Abruptly, even the tiny guiding lights wink out, plunging us into darkness as the droid lurches into what feels like a perfectly perpendicular ascent.
In the almost complete darkness below, I can make out something else, something white and foaming, rising so incredibly quickly behind us that it’s threatening to catch us up.
Water: a massive, powerful surge of water.
Just as I’m sure the water’s about to completely swap us all, we burst out into the sunlight.
The water continues to hurtle up directly after us: but eventually, unlike us, it reaches a point where it can no longer continue its soaring ascension.
It curls back upon itself. It splays out in all directions.
It falls, sparkling iridescently in the sun.
It’s a huge fountain of gloriously foaming water. Even though they’re now so far away, I can even hear the people below laugh joyfully as the cooling spray blows out across the leaving crowd.
It’s all quite beautiful in its way.
But isn’t that typical of Nevaeh?
Even when she’s rejecting unwanted waste, she manages to make it all look so incredibly wonderful.
*
Chapter 24
No one in the crowd could see us leave.
We’re too high up now; nothing more than the smallest black speck in the sky. Moving swiftly, with no care of how hard the wind tears at and batters exposed skin, hair and eyes.
Many pieces of clothing are simply shredded, whipped away by the shameless gusts.
‘Where’s it taking us?’
Someone speaks at last, their curiosity finally overcoming their mute sense of hopelessness.
‘The sea,’ comes the miserable answer.
‘Once a droid choses to leave,’ another explains, her voice equally dejected, ‘it’s regarded as useless – even dangerous.’
‘Surely there’s something we can do?’
‘Sure; just sit back and enjoy the view. The world’s all so remarkably gorgeous from up here, don’t you think?’
Damn.
Any moment now, this guys gonna insist we all break out into singing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.’
*
From the slow way everyone talks, I think it would be fair to assume that they’re all doing so with some difficulty, the magnetic field being so strong if affects even the most limited of actions.
Being constructed more of bio substances rather than metal, the effect on me is substantially less, yet even I struggle to move even slightly.
It’s a complete shock, then, when I suddenly feel someone tightly grasp my ankle.
Even to lift my head slightly from the surface so I can see what’s happening takes an amazing accumulation of will power, a submerging of surges of pain.
The man grins as he catches me glancing down towards him.
‘You’re the latest model, aren’t you?’ he drawls.
He’s almost ridiculously muscular: muscles that have given him the strength to rise up a little from the surface.
‘Me,’ he continues bitterly, ‘I’m an older version; built for other persuasions, naturally.’
He chuckles harshly.
He drags himself a little higher up my body, griping my legs as if I’m nothing more than a ladder.
Each time he uses my legs in this way, it feels as if they’re close to being torn away from my hip.
I scream in agony. In horror.
What is he planning on doing?
I can’t be sure, I tell myself.
Don’t be a fool, I scream at myself.
You know perfectly well what he’s intending to do!
No one around me is interested in what’s happening to me.
Why should they be bothered?
What can they do about it anyway?
Many, perhaps thankfully for them, can’t see what’s happening anyway, their heads pinioned against the surface, such that they can only endlessly stare the other way.
Suddenly, all I can hope for is that we reach the sea as soon as possible.
*
; Chapter 25
The man has reached up, clamped a hand around my lower arm, gripping so hard he feels like he has to be puncturing my skin, shattering my equivalent of bones.
His weight against me is suffocating. Not because he’s extremely heavy, of course, but because the magnetic field is pulling so hard upon him, pressing him so claustrophobically close against me.
Using his grip on my arm, his grip with his other hand on my thigh, he begins to clamber ever closer to the position he desires.
He’s grinning.
He’s making out this is want I want too.
If only I could bring a knee up hard…
As if the pure thought of that alone has done the trick, the man jerks violently, his face contorted in agony as he shrieks like a baby.
But I’m also wracked with intense pain, stinging shards imbedding themselves everywhere about my body.
Everyone’s affected, shrieking as they suffer the most torturous punishment I could have imagined, their limbs knotted, faces distorted unnaturally.
There’s a crackling of energy, a stench of singed flesh; then in the last blink of an eye, everyone’s still, perfectly quiet, frozen in the throes of death.
*
‘Iona!’
It was nothing more than a whispering, as if it might even be nothing more than a change in a breeze’s direction.
*
Chapter 26
‘Iona!’
I could clearly hear it now.
‘You have to wake up!’ the whispering urges me.
I force my eyes open.
It’s the girl.
The ghostly girl.
She’s lying alongside me, her face close to mine.
She’s smiling, of course.
‘We’re almost there,’ she says.
At least, I presume she’s the one saying this.