Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
When I came to, I was sitting on a hard, uncomfortable chair. The room was quiet, and I could hear the soft buzz of an electric light over my head.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. I was sitting on a folding metal chair in front of a table near one end of a small, concrete room whose walls were painted green. A single light flickered overhead, throwing shadows in the dark.
“This place,” I whispered. A heavy metal door that led out of the room was open, and the doorway was dark. From outside, I heard footsteps echo, then disappear. My head hurt and my throat hurt. Every time my heart beat, pain went up the back of my neck.
For a long time, the Green Room was just another nightmare place I ended up in when I blacked out, but now I knew it existed, or would exist, and that I was one of only a few people to ever see it, which meant I was one of the few people who might be around to see it. It was a vision from inside the void, something from the aftermath of the event. I hadn’t seen it in a long time.
I looked at the tabletop and thought it wasn’t the same one as last time, but I wasn’t sure. It was worn, with laminate peeled up in one corner. I thought maybe it was a different shape. Certain things were always the same, like the green paint and the basic layout of the room, but sometimes the details changed. Not enough people had seen it to be sure. No one knew what the room was for.
“It’s almost time,” a voice said.
I turned around and saw the dead woman, the one with the short blond hair and the nice cheekbones, standing next to a silver metal panel that was fixed to the wall. Her skin looked thinner than the last time I’d seen her, with more of those black veins underneath. She stared at me from near the switchbox, her eyes glowing in the dark like moonlight.
“I know who you are,” I said. “Your name is Faye Dasalia.”
She was the one Nico used to be in love with. The one he was still in love with. She tried to kill me once, but instead I almost killed her—almost.
“We will meet one last time,” she said.
“When?”
She reached over to the electrical box and threw the switch. A spark flashed with a loud bang and fell down onto the floor, where it sputtered out. Two of the lights at the end of the room slowly got a little brighter, while the one in the middle stayed out. Another spark spit from the socket there.
As the lights came up, I saw two figures had appeared, one standing under each of them.
The first one was Nico, and when I saw him, I put one hand over my mouth. A few years back he’d ditched me and never tried to contact me again, so I had mixed feelings about him, but even so, he looked horrible. He was wearing slacks and a sleeveless undershirt, and the scar that covered his neck and chest ended on his left side at a neat seam where his whole shoulder and arm had turned pale and gray. Black veins stood out over the bicep and down the forearm. There were big, dark bruises on the right side of his body, especially his face. The eyelid that drooped showed only white underneath. He looked half-dead.
“You can help him,” the dead woman said, “but you can’t save him. He will destroy Fawkes forever.”
“I stop Fawkes.”
She didn’t say anything.
I got up out of the chair, and when I stood, my head pounded. It was all I could do to limp a few steps closer. I couldn’t stop shivering. I was almost sure I hated him for turning his back on me, but still, I could barely stand to see him like that.
“He will need you,” she said.
“I needed him,” I said. My voice was low and hoarse.
The dead woman didn’t answer. She pointed to the other figure, Flax, with her short hair and mean face. I felt my face get hot.
“She will bring about destruction,” the woman said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. She’s a carrier. They’re going to use her as a back door to shut down the rest of them.”
She didn’t say either way. In the quiet, I could hear the low hum from her chest.
“She will take the last thing that is dear to you,” she said.
I clenched my fists, and felt tears well up in my eyes. My hand shook as I pointed one index finger up at her face.
“Enough!” I said. “I’ve had enough! She’s not taking anything else from me! Nothing else! They’re going to kill her, like they should have done a long time ago! The next time I see you, I’ll put you down for good. Do you hear me? If I so much as see you I’ll—”
Faye moved closer to me. I backed away until I bumped against the concrete wall, and her cold hands grabbed my arms. The cool, lifeless skin of her cheek pressed against the hot red of my own, and she spoke into my ear.
“He will call to you one last time,” she said. “If you accept him, you could still—”
“Screw you!” I said, and shoved her back. She staggered into the table and caught herself before she fell, as the chair clattered to the floor. “You’re not real!”
I put my hands over my eyes and pressed. My head throbbed so bad it made me feel sick.
“I’m tired of this! All of this! Get out of my head and just leave me alone!”
I took my hands away and opened my eyes. Dark spots swam in front of me. I was still in the Green Room and the chair was still knocked over, but the dead woman was gone. It got quiet, and I could hear myself panting. I wiped my mouth and looked around. No one else was there.
My heart rate started to slow down as I took a deep breath, like Ai had shown me. There was no reason to get upset. The visions weren’t something to be afraid of; they were glimpses into a possible future. They provided valuable information, and visions that came from the place even Ai couldn’t see into were the most valuable of all. I had to try to calm down and pay attention.
I picked the chair back up and put it in front of the table. I could be pulled back at any time, and with things going the way they were, I might never be back in this place. This might be my last chance to learn something, anything, that could help us. I smoothed down my hair and leaned back against the cool concrete wall, breathing slowly.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay …pull it together …”
As I let my eyes lose focus, the hard lines at the corners of the room seemed to vibrate and hum, like a tuning fork. I forgot about what the dead woman had said and about what was happening back in the real world. I relaxed and let the light get brighter.
