Something was pulling on my arm with so much strength that, for a second, I was sure my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket. I groaned and tried to push whoever it was away. Every single part of my body hurt: it felt like my skull was going to crack, my whole right side was sore and my toes had undoubtedly been crushed in the chaos of the explosion.
“Leave me alone,” I groaned through the throbbing of blood in my head, trying to pull my arm back. I just wanted to stay on the ground and wait for the pain to disappear.
“Get up,” demanded a voice that I didn’t recognize. To be fair, my ears were ringing so much that I probably wouldn’t even find my own mother’s voice familiar.
I didn't move an inch but I felt myself being lifted up anyway. I struggled to find my feet, my movements sluggish and uncoordinated. The ringing in my ears intensified – I really should have stayed on the ground. Instead, I was being dragged away and I followed as well as I could, my thoughts too cloudy to be able to understand what was happening.
Was I being taken to a medic? That was probably a good idea since I was pretty sure my skull had fractured in the explosion, there was no other possible explanation for how much my head hurt and how hard I was finding it to string my thoughts together. Maybe my thoughts were flying out of my brain because of it. For some reason, the image of little bubbles escaping my skull then being blown away by the wind was all I could see for a couple minutes.
Then something caught my feet and I fell painfully to the ground.
“Shit, move faster,” growled whoever was tugging my arm. I grabbed an extended hand and pushed myself off the uneven terrain. Something caught my eye. Gold, a sea of gold with specs of red and blue, dancing in front of me, beckoning me. I felt my center of gravity shift, as if the world was tilting, the waves of brilliant yellow getting closer.
“I can't swim,” I murmured.
“Oh my God.” The voice was exasperated now. Why though? It wasn't my fault: lots of people didn’t swim. “Just hold on to me and move faster.”
My eyes half closed, I pushed all of my will into my marshmallow legs. An arm circled my back, steadying me. We hobbled on the uneven ground, faster than I'd thought I was capable of in this state.
We stopped twice: once to wait for a bout of nausea to sweep through me, and a second time for me to vomit in a fern.
I looked up at the person helping me, and saw the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, her exquisite dress covered in something like red paint.
“What's going on?” I mumbled, using the back of my hand to wipe my mouth. “Where are you taking me?”
Her perfect brow furrowed. “Do you know who I am?” I shook my head and regretted it immediately: the nausea was back and the need to sit down was stronger than ever. I focused on what the stranger was saying. “I'm taking you to see a friend; he’ll help with the concussion. But we have to move faster, can you do that?”
I swallowed the bile at the back of my throat and, gritting my teeth, forced myself not to sway as I walked. I was so concentrated on the path that I didn't realize we'd reached the great barrier until I heard its strange buzzing. I looked for a door but there was nothing, just a huge wall of metal stretching toward the sky.
“We can't go through here,” I said, resting a palm on the bark of the tree to my left.
My chest was heaving, my stomach churning and my head was ringing harder than ever.
Disappointment seeped through my veins when I thought about how much more walking we'd have to do before finding an entryway into the capital. I already felt like it had been hours – although I could have been wrong, time seemed like a blurry concept right now.
The woman hadn't stopped with me, she'd kept on walking until she was so close to the wall that I feared she'd be zapped by the electricity. I started to yell out a warning, “Be caref–”
“Shh,” she rasped, looking at me with her beautiful deadly eyes. I didn't know whether I should be afraid or drawn in by her, she was the strangest person I'd ever met. “Shut up or we'll be noticed.”
I nodded weakly and, as soon as she'd turned her back on me once more, I pulled on the edge of my shirt. For some reason I felt like I should look more presentable for her, this woman whose name I didn't know but who managed to look like a queen even covered in paint.
I wished my hair were longer so that it could be as soft and pretty as hers was. Instead, all I had was the same buzz cut all of us had in the royal forces. My hand unconsciously came to rest at the back of my head where, instead of feeling the usual light caress of short hair against my palm, I found something wet and warm. When I brought my arm down, my fingers were covered in sticky, red blood.
“I'm bleeding,” I called out to whoever was listening.
“Oh my god,” the woman sighed again, annoyed. “Will you please stop whining and come here?”
I did as I was told, wiping my bloodied hand on my pants. “You're mean,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Yes I am.” She was crouched down at the base of the barrier; her hands tracing the lines where metal met metal as if searching for something. I stayed upright, unsure of whether I'd ever be able to get back up if I sat down next to her.
The buzzing of the electric fence was stronger now that we were at its feet; it made my headache feel a thousand times worse.
“Ah, here it is,” the woman whispered in victory and, before my astounded eyes, she pulled open a panel of metal. There was a dark but unmistakable tunnel behind it, barely large enough for one person to crawl through.
“What is this?” I asked. I had always been told that the barrier was impenetrable, that it was the city's best defense against what lay beyond. And now, to find out that it was this easy to slip through the perimeter? It made my head spin even more.
“Let's go.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “You seriously think that I can crawl in the state I'm in? I can't even stand properly.”
She arched a perfect eyebrow. “Up to you: you either crawl, or I drag you.”
I scoffed but didn't respond. She was so convincing that I was certain she'd really try hauling me along if I refused to cross the barrier on my own.
“Fine.” I dropped with absolutely no grace to the ground and wiggled on all fours to the entrance of the secret tunnel.
We scurried along the dark passageway, and I felt more like an insect than a human being. The floor was apparently made of a million little rocks whose only mission was to dig into my skin as painfully as possible.
My mind was clear enough now that I was starting to question what had happened and who the stranger who was helping me was, if she even was helping me. I couldn't remember anything about the start of day, not even how I'd ended up bloodied and almost certainly concussed. No matter how much I concentrated, I found it impossible to grasp the memories, it was like trying to remember a dream.
This secret tunnel seemed to be the sort of thing that had taken years to be carved into what it was now, the walls had obviously been dug into the hard earth with rudimentary tools. The obvious illicitness of it made me wonder why anyone would show this place to a protector. It wasn't a question of if I'd report it to my superiors, but of when I'd be able to give them that information. It struck me as strange that the woman hadn't realized that: she looked far from stupid, even with her crazy dress and attitude.
Until that time came, though, I was happy to take the shortcut. The quicker I reached the end, the quicker someone would take a look at my throbbing head.
Finally, when my knees were aching to the point of bringing tears to my eyes, the slope inclined slightly and the air became less and less stale. I searched for a trace of light until, finally, the soft gleam of sunlight circled the contour of what I imagined to be another loose pane of metal.
I got closer and tried pushing it, but it didn't budge.
The sound of expensive cloth chafing on the ground told me that my guide was right behind me.
“It won't open,” I told her.
“Yeah, it only opens from the outside.”
My heart sunk. Were we going to be stuck here? “So what do we do?”
“We wait until someone opens the door for us,” she answered as though it was obvious.
I heard her try to find a semi-comfortable way to sit while we waited. I felt the panic rise in my chest. I didn't do well in enclosed spaces. As long as I'd been moving and with a clear objective, I'd been able to ignore that mounting fear. Now that I knew we were at the mercy of whoever the doorkeeper was though, I didn't feel quite as calm.
“How often does someone come to check if there's someone in the tunnel?” I hated my voice for sounding so strangled, so weak. I turned on my side and rested awkwardly on the dirt-covered floor.
“Usually every couple of weeks,” she announced and my stomach clenched at the mental image of my body rotting in this tunnel. “But they will probably check the passage every hour today. Special circumstances and all that.”
I frowned and started gesturing her to explain what these circumstances were before remembering that she couldn't see me in the darkness. “What do you mean?” I said instead.
“There was an attack,” she said in such a small voice that I had trouble recognizing her. “Someone important died and my friends know that in the case of an emergency, I'd show up here.”
This tiny piece of information was the only thing she’d said since I’d known her that seemed to give any indication of who she was and why she was dressed like she was. I wanted to ask her more questions in the hope of understanding her better, but the silence that had fallen in the tunnel was suddenly deafening, like lifting it would require much more strength than I currently had.
I let my head fall softly to the ground. I was almost comfortable. Maybe I’d manage to get some sleep… Resting sounded like heaven right now.
“You have to stay awake,” the stranger instructed just as my eyes were fluttering shut.
I sighed, knowing she was right. With a head injury, it was always better to stay conscious until a doctor could assess the damage. I just hoped that we wouldn’t have to wait for hours before her friends found us because I was starting to wonder how long I’d be able to keep sleep at bay.
“You’re probably going to have to talk to me to make sure I stay awake,” I told her a couple minutes later when my head had started lolling drowsily to the side. “You could start by telling me your name?”
It took a while but she ended up reluctantly answering. “My name is Nyla.”
“I’m Sierra,” I said. I waited for her to tell something else, anything else, but she stayed silent. “So, what’s with the dress Nyla?”
Her voice was barely above a whisper now. “This was my wedding dress.”
As the meaning of this sunk in, I found myself wishing for the tunnel to open so that I wouldn’t have to try to find the right words. It was now clear that what I had mistaken for paint on her dress was anything but. “I’m sor–”
My lame apology was cut short when an earsplitting noise made me jump. My head roughly hit the wall of the passageway, which was all I needed to start seeing stars again. The bile was rising in my throat once more, and I was so concentrated on not vomiting again that I barely registered what happened next.
Nyla climbed over me, flattening me under the weight of her many-layered dress, and knocked three consecutive times on the metal panel locking us in.
A creaking noise filled the tunnel then artificial light streamed in and relief flooded me. Free at last.
I crawled out of the passageway with the frenzy of an animal escaping a death trap. As soon as I was out in the open, I rolled onto my back. “I’m not moving anymore,” I told Nyla. I’d been urging myself to keep going for what felt like hours, but it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to push myself up from the floor this time. The ground was surprisingly comfortable, so much so that staying here felt like the right call.
Letha’s usual bright artificial lights were blinding, but I kept staring up at the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars or the moons. The neon glare overhead compelled my eyes closed and, although I fought against the impulse to let darkness engulf me, I could feel myself slowly slipping away.
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