their own.
“Where does your allegiance lie?” The tall one reiterates.
“My allegiance lies with Countenance,” Logan doesn’t hesitate.
I marvel at how easy it came for him.
“Follow me.” The tall one starts to pull Logan away.
I’m not leaving you. He gives a panicked look in my direction and resists walking out the door.
It might be the only way you can save us, I say.
Logan is yanked out violently. The shorter one follows suit, and the door seals into the wall once again.
I’m alone.
I start pounding the walls in a panic. “Marshall?” I scream his name like a chorus as I make my way around the room. Whatever happened to the just say my name and I’ll be there bullshit? Or did he ever even say that?
“Nev?” I continue slapping the walls until my entire body vibrates and ripples, until it feels as though my bones are going to splinter right through my skin from the effort.
A wobble sets in. The walls start to lose shape. My feet fall in and out of the floor as though it were made of marshmallows. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, or if I’m going to land myself in a treble that has me walking with Logan in the forest again, or even one that goes as far back as me plunging the knife into Chloe’s back, but I keep pounding and shouting, and the room keeps melting until I fall right through the floor and land hard on a carpeted surface.
I open one eye with caution. The room is dark and unfamiliar, and yet somehow the lack of white shiny walls brings a strange comfort to me. I bounce up onto my feet and dust off the back of my jeans.
Around the corner a blue glow emits, calling me with its soft expressive tone. I steady myself against the wall as I walk towards the shimmering pale light and poke my head over.
It’s an entire room full of giant tube shaped tanks that run floor to ceiling filled with blue water or goo of some kind.
It’s so still in here—so unearthly quiet, it fills my ears with a pressing silence. I make my way over to the tanks and hold my hand to the glass—warm to the touch. Each one is brightly lit from above. The whole room feels toasty as a bath. I turn around and bump into another row of tubular tanks before a scream gets locked in my throat.
Shit!
Bodies—bodies, floating! They’re freaking human aquariums! Only the bodies aren’t swimming, or evidently breathing, they’re bottled up corpses.
A series of unintelligible noises garble in my throat as I stagger backwards away from the bizarre site.
In the first tank is a boy around my age. He looks familiar, reminds me a little of Drake with the sharp widow’s peak. He’s wearing a bright blue skin suit sort of like the one Gage had me wear the time we went snorkeling. His hair floats up in animated suspension and a light row of bubbles peppers his eyebrows. I wave my hand in front of his face to see if he’ll move, but nothing.
In the next tank is something less than human, something with hair and teeth and flesh—
Crap!
I jump back a good three feet. Whatever it is, it’s decomposing. The remains are twisting in a slow macabre spin, exposing the very fact that one eyeball is missing from the badly misshapen head. I take another step back before taking a quick peek at the last body on the end.
It’s a girl. Long black hair dangles soft like seaweed. I take a step forward as morbid curiosity grips me. She’s wearing the same blue body suit, but it’s her well-manicured fingernails that catch my attention. Bright pink. The color alone disarms me, and I go over without hesitation to observe her. She spins slow and lethargic from the generated whirlpool like a suspended ballerina. Her long hair swirls in a circle as though it were alive, the only part of her to so much as quiver. A silver band near the bottom of the tank catches my attention. I stoop low to read it.
In tiny font etched into the metal reads, Emerson Kragger.
“Emerson,” I whisper.
I look up at the
“Where does your allegiance lie?” The tall one reiterates.
“My allegiance lies with Countenance,” Logan doesn’t hesitate.
I marvel at how easy it came for him.
“Follow me.” The tall one starts to pull Logan away.
I’m not leaving you. He gives a panicked look in my direction and resists walking out the door.
It might be the only way you can save us, I say.
Logan is yanked out violently. The shorter one follows suit, and the door seals into the wall once again.
I’m alone.
I start pounding the walls in a panic. “Marshall?” I scream his name like a chorus as I make my way around the room. Whatever happened to the just say my name and I’ll be there bullshit? Or did he ever even say that?
“Nev?” I continue slapping the walls until my entire body vibrates and ripples, until it feels as though my bones are going to splinter right through my skin from the effort.
A wobble sets in. The walls start to lose shape. My feet fall in and out of the floor as though it were made of marshmallows. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, or if I’m going to land myself in a treble that has me walking with Logan in the forest again, or even one that goes as far back as me plunging the knife into Chloe’s back, but I keep pounding and shouting, and the room keeps melting until I fall right through the floor and land hard on a carpeted surface.
I open one eye with caution. The room is dark and unfamiliar, and yet somehow the lack of white shiny walls brings a strange comfort to me. I bounce up onto my feet and dust off the back of my jeans.
Around the corner a blue glow emits, calling me with its soft expressive tone. I steady myself against the wall as I walk towards the shimmering pale light and poke my head over.
It’s an entire room full of giant tube shaped tanks that run floor to ceiling filled with blue water or goo of some kind.
It’s so still in here—so unearthly quiet, it fills my ears with a pressing silence. I make my way over to the tanks and hold my hand to the glass—warm to the touch. Each one is brightly lit from above. The whole room feels toasty as a bath. I turn around and bump into another row of tubular tanks before a scream gets locked in my throat.
Shit!
Bodies—bodies, floating! They’re freaking human aquariums! Only the bodies aren’t swimming, or evidently breathing, they’re bottled up corpses.
A series of unintelligible noises garble in my throat as I stagger backwards away from the bizarre site.
In the first tank is a boy around my age. He looks familiar, reminds me a little of Drake with the sharp widow’s peak. He’s wearing a bright blue skin suit sort of like the one Gage had me wear the time we went snorkeling. His hair floats up in animated suspension and a light row of bubbles peppers his eyebrows. I wave my hand in front of his face to see if he’ll move, but nothing.
In the next tank is something less than human, something with hair and teeth and flesh—
Crap!
I jump back a good three feet. Whatever it is, it’s decomposing. The remains are twisting in a slow macabre spin, exposing the very fact that one eyeball is missing from the badly misshapen head. I take another step back before taking a quick peek at the last body on the end.
It’s a girl. Long black hair dangles soft like seaweed. I take a step forward as morbid curiosity grips me. She’s wearing the same blue body suit, but it’s her well-manicured fingernails that catch my attention. Bright pink. The color alone disarms me, and I go over without hesitation to observe her. She spins slow and lethargic from the generated whirlpool like a suspended ballerina. Her long hair swirls in a circle as though it were alive, the only part of her to so much as quiver. A silver band near the bottom of the tank catches my attention. I stoop low to read it.
In tiny font etched into the metal reads, Emerson Kragger.
“Emerson,” I whisper.
I look up at the
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