“Mmmm-mmm!”
It takes me a few seconds to realize he can’t talk and hand me the label at the same time. I grab the label.
“Not going to ask. Why you don’t know what we’re doing here is none of my concern. How you got on the transport without knowing about the things ain’t my trouble.” He looks around. “But you better learn fast. There ain’t no return trips. At the end of this, either you’ll get out or you’ll die.”
I can tell by the hard edges of his words that he meant to scare. Instead I’m thrilled. Could this finally be the end?
“You need three things. Three. You got them?”
I began to feel around my body, awkwardly learning how to use my rotated arms.
“Pocket the label.”
“What?”
The guy’s eyes roll up like I’m useless. “Pocket the label, it’s your pass.”
I look at the label. It’s grimy and stiff. Though it’s ripped I can read something on it: “Regiment Green: Disrespect on a cellular level.” Reaching around my hip, feeling for my back pocket, my hand catches on an opening in my clothes. It’s a pocket. I drop the label in and feel around the rest of my clothes. I’ve got pockets all over.
I poke around in the pockets, unsure of what I’m looking for. My fingers happen upon something stiff in the fourth pocket. I pull it out—a shiny black feather. The man makes a weird fluttering sound with his mouth. I imagine that wet hand flapping against his moist jaws.
“Don’t show me. Don’t show anybody except Him when you get there. Got it?”
I nod and keep feeling around, but the rest of the pockets are empty. After I check all my pockets twice, I realize that my fingers are covered with grime. I put my hand back in a pocket and pinch at the bottom. When I draw my hand out, there’s something grainy sticking to my fingertips. I hold my hand up to my face—desert sand. I start grabbing pinches of sand wherever I can find it.
“Tighten!” the guy yells.
I grab on with two hands. The transport dips, then turns sharply. My feet fly off the platform, and a burning flares across my palms where they rub against the overhead pipe.
I hear a yell, then two bodies drop down from above. The yelling fades and is replaced by a sinister hissing. The air fills with smoke, and a high-pitched wailing rings out.
“Don’t lose your grip,” the guy mutters.
“What’s down there?”
“Engine.”
Fear bubbles up in my throat, but I choke it back down. I focus on the impossible task of filling one of my pockets with sand. When I’ve piled all the sand I can grab into one pocket, I let out a relieved exhalation.
But the guy breaks into my relief. “You need three things. Two’s no good. He won’t send you if you don’t have three.”
My thoughts run around my mind in panicked loops.
Suddenly I know what my third thing will be.
“What if I want to bring liquid? What can I hold it in?”
The guy doesn’t answer. He throws his head back, barks something guttural and fast. One of the children wedged in overhead shimmies forward on the pole. He almost cracks my knuckles in the process, but I don’t cry out. He reaches up, grabs something white and cup-shaped from the ceiling. He brings it to his mouth quickly, gulping something down. Finds another cup-shaped thing from the ceiling and grabs it. He passes them down to the guy, whose head is thrown back, lips spread wide as the wet hand is outstretched waiting for the cups. When he has them, he flicks them at me.
“Won’t last forever. You better hope it holds out till we get to the Man.”
I nod. I see him staring at me curiously. I tilt my head forward, hold the cup underneath the tip of my nose, let my sweat drip into it.
“Tighten!”
I throw my hand over the pole and yank on it with my wrist. We careen backward this time. I lose all my sweat but I hold on to the cup. It takes me three more tries, but I finally fill the cup.
Something like admiration creeps into the guy’s eyes.
“Pass the empty,” he says.
I pass it. With a flick of his wet fingers, he turns it upside down and holds it out to me. I fit the cup filled with sweat to the empty one. He pinches the edges of the two cups with his tiny hand. I take the cups back and drop them into my pocket.
A ghostly sensation washes through my body. At first I think it’s relief, but then I feel it fluttering in my chest. I look at my guide with new eyes, eyes that are probably now as wet as my skin. I haven’t caught a glimpse of the outside, but I know from my brief time in the bowels of this machine, this world isn’t a pretty place. Surrounded by all these damaged cells, in the middle of this ocean of desperation, my guide suddenly seems holy. Before I can hold it back, reverence and gratitude pour out of my face. My emotions register in his eyes, and he turns away.
After my flush of emotion, “Tighten!” is the only word he says to me for the rest of the trip. In the absence of his gaze, the balancing act becomes routine; I find myself oddly acclimated to periodic peril. Soon I’m dozing off between veers and drops as the drone of the engine soaks through me. By the time the engine room shudders and slows, I have become what everyone else is: a jumpy, sweaty fugitive—frightened, yet determined to survive.
A grinding sound parts the damp heat around us. Everyone begins to chatter in different tones and pitches, and the transport jerks to a sudden halt. I look up just in time to see hundreds of thin metal shafts shoot down from the ceiling. The noise is deafening. I feel the whoosh of wind slap my cheek as one of the spinning metal shafts rips through the air next to me. A dizzy panic whirls through my gut. I grip the pole tighter and pray not to faint. When I regain my balance, I look at my guide for reassurance, but his eyes are closed and his mouth is moving steadily. Is he talking to himself?
A thin drizzle wets my cheek. I touch it—it’s not water. It’s thick and green, and it stings my fingertips. The green gel splatters through the room sounding like footsteps or bloodshed. Then a pounding roar drowns out the splattering. My stomach clenches. What is coming for us?
I glance at my guide again—he’s standing stock still, eyes closed. Some of the others have let go of their poles, but not my guide. As the roaring grows louder, I nervously gnaw on my shoulder. All around me people are leaping from perches and diving from ledges, green goo lashing against their bodies as they plunge.
Just when I think I’m going to bite through my skin, my guide opens his eyes. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. His mouth moves again, and he pitches his body forward. It looks like he’s saying “Jump.” My muscles tense as I prepare to leap. My guide opens his mouth and extends that small wet hand. He puts one finger up, and I hear a deafening crack. It sounds like the whole room is going to split in two. My guide nods, we leap.
The freefall makes me feel like vomiting. Instead of crashing on the engine, we land on a wave of green gel. It is washing through the engine room in rivers now. Those who did not leap are engulfed by it. Those who leapt too soon lay broken somewhere on the engine below.
The gel hurries forward, carrying me at a frightening speed straight at a wall. I shut my eyes tight, but I don’t but slam into the wall. With a whir, a circular door opens before me, and I surf through it into darkness. My eyes—useless. The gel bobs gently, misleadingly—as it is rocking me, it is searing my skin. People call out names and numbers. Some voices are frantic, others pleading. A crackle that sounds like electricity silences them all. Light flashes, and I see that everyone is looking up. I look around wildly for an exit or a sign—something that can tell me where to go before we are plunged into darkness again.
When next the light flashes, everyone is still looking up. Probes, shiny and bulbous, start to lower from the ceiling. Darkness comes, forcing me to calculate how long the probes will take to get to me, and how far I need to move away so as not to be crushed. I feel a ripple as the probes slide into the gel. Another flash, and I see bodies scrambling up onto the probes. I feel around blindly until I touch something cool and hard. I grab onto the probe. It
