The Annihilation of Foreverland (16 page)

The silence grew heavy, again. It was undercut by growling.

“I hope you learned how to control the pain response, Danny Boy,” he said. “Because when you get inside the needle, I’m going to pull you apart like a bug, son. I’m going to pour acid in your eyeballs and piss in the holes.” Sid laughed, but no one joined him. It was as dark as the room around them. “You think it’s torture in here, wait until I get a hold of you in Foreverland.”

Danny was grateful for the cloak of darkness, but it couldn’t hide the shivers in his voice. “I’m not going inside the needle.”

“Of course not.” And Sid laughed again. It carried down to the floor and faded off. Soon, the entire room no longer moved except for the heavy mouth-breathing. They were all inside the needle.

It was just Danny and Reed.

“Danny Boy?” Zin’s voice was scratchy, just above a whisper. “I’m coming back.”

Danny leaned his head against the bars.

The big fan clicked.

And the breeze came down.

“What are you doing?” Reed had turned around. Danny couldn’t make out his expression in the dark but he could see him latched onto the bars facing him. “This is my fight, not yours.”

“I’m not letting you do this alone.”

“It doesn’t prove anything.”

“Then follow your own advice!” Danny shouted. “You’re not doing anything by staying here.”

Reed remained at the side of his cell. He dropped his hands and went back to the center. Danny could hear his breath fall back into rhythm. He was not going to waste words.

Danny began pacing again. The cold crept into his ankles. The fan was on but not the sprinklers. With the rest of the camp wearing clothes, maybe they didn’t want to keep them soaked. Still, it was plenty uncomfortable, especially since Sid promised something much worse on the inside. Danny wasn’t sure he could control the pain response. He hadn’t even tried.

Zin will protect me.

But would he even remember Danny? Parker didn’t seem to know anything near the end. Perhaps his memory completely evaporated.

An hour elapsed.

Danny was cold but without the mist it was easier to stay in rhythm. If it remained this way, he could tolerate the suffering like Reed. Maybe the hole would even heal. Maybe the others would see the wisdom in fighting the system and they could form a revolt. If everyone refused the needle, they could make a difference.

That’s when the door opened.

He knew it wasn’t Mr. Jones, unless he hurt his knee in the last hour. An old man appeared in the darkened
aisle
dragging a bum leg. Mr. Smith passed Danny’s cell. He was carrying tubes attached by a cord that dangled and swayed between his hands.

“Reed.” The old man stopped at his cell. “I need to see your hands, son.”

Reed took a deep breath and turned.

“What’re you doing?” Danny said. He was ignored.

Mr. Smith held up the tubes. “Put your hands through the bars.”

“Don’t do it, Reed,” Danny said. “They can’t make you.”

But Reed voluntarily went to the front of his cell and offered his hands. Mr. Smith slipped the tubes over his thumbs and adjusted clips on the sides. He stepped back and watched the cell begin to collapse.

“The pressure will increase over time, Reed. Please don’t be stubborn. You’re not accomplishing anything by the needless suffering.”

The cell continued to shrink until it sandwiched Reed, pressing deeply into his chest and back. Mr. Smith stared at Reed. They were unflinching in their hatred. Until the pressure clamped down on his knuckles and pinched the webbing between his thumb and finger, pressing on a nerve that buckled his knees. He would’ve fallen had the bars not held him tightly.

The lucid gear dropped just inches from the top of his head.

“Stop this,” Danny said. “This isn’t fair, he doesn’t want the needle. You can’t do this. YOU CAN’T DO THIS!”

But they could. They did.

Mr. Smith began to take his leave.

“Come back here, you old bastard!” Danny reached through the bars, losing sight of the limping man. “YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!”

Light cut through the Haystack as the door at the end of the
aisle
opened. Danny turned away as it hit him in the face, but for a moment he saw Reed’s quivering hands and the shackles squeezing his thumbs. He didn’t see the expression of agony. But he heard it.

Danny paced back and forth. Reed’s pained breathing was worse than anything inside the Haystack. He’d rather they come put the thumb shackles on him.

There was nothing he could do.

He had to find the girl.

Danny pulled the lucid gear from the top. It whined as the cord unreeled to the floor. He dropped hard on the concrete and pulled it quickly over his head. The needle numbed his forehead, searching for the stent.

Before it jolted inside his brain, before he arched off the pavement, he muttered something to Reed. He doubted he would hear it.

“I’m sorry.”

And then the needle took him.

Danny visualized a spot.

He imagined it was a glowing dot floating in the darkness where he was drifting. He put his breath into it.
One. Two. Three.

It abolished thoughts.

It brought focus. Presence.

And when he felt his body forming near the sundial, he willed it to become numb. There would be no pain when Sid pulled out his intestines. He would melt like water and blow like wind. Nothing would hurt him.

The grass was beneath him. Sunlight and wind. And the screaming of engines.

Danny opened his eyes.

An asphalt racetrack circled the Yard and rocket-shaped cars roared around it, disappearing into the trees. The engines called from the jungle and soon wound around him before reentering the Yard behind him and making another lap.

He was alone. Sid was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he got bored. Or perhaps he was setting a trap. Didn’t matter. Danny needed to get to the business of finding a Christmas present. And it would be much easier if he was invisible when he did it.

He put both hands on the sundial and felt the power vibrate through his arms. He pictured the focal dot and willed transparency to enter his body. What was his body other than data, really? Danny knew how to handle data. It helped to think of it that way, that he was computer code that needed to be manipulated. He breathed in and out, in and out.

Opened his eyes.

He was still there, but he could see the sundial through his hands.

“Translucency. Okay, close enough.”

He wasn’t invisible, but he’d faded enough that no one would notice unless they we
re looking right at him. He crou
ched down and – as the rocket cars came around – leaped into the sky.

Danny hovered just inside a cloud.

The gray haze on the horizon seemed closer than it did the last time. No one would see him, especially being half-faded. As long as no one flew into him, he could stay there all day. Since it seemed everyone was part of the race, he took his time.

The track serpentined around the entire island – through the trees and over the cliffs. The rocket cars even made a loop into the water. Occasionally, one would fire a weapon and there would be an explosion and parts flying.

The only other oddity about the island was tiny lights twinkling on top of random trees. He floated around the cloud and willed his vision to zoom on one of the trees. It appeared to be a star set on top, along with smaller lights strung from the branches.

Christmas trees. They’re all Christmas trees.

It would’ve been an easy clue to follow, but there was easily a hundred of them scattered over the island. Even one that appeared to be floating out at sea. He cloud-hopped around the sky, zooming in on several trees but couldn’t make out any substantial differences.

“I’m going to have to go down,” he muttered to no one. Then said like he was the one answering, “Yep, going to have to go down.”

The sun was already falling toward the horizon. Time in Foreverland went faster than it did in the flesh. He had wasted half of Foreverland’s day in the Haystack. Maybe he already blew it.

He dropped from the sky and hit the ground like a stone. He was able to quell the pain from the impact. He was getting the hang of it. He dusted off the dirt and stared at the twenty foot tall Christmas tree that shaded a dozen red-wrapped gifts. Nothing else was around. There was no time to waste.

Danny began ripping open presents.

He had been to nearly fifty trees. Each one had a pile of gifts that he tore open to find more sand. By the time he got to the tree in front of the Mansion, the sun had dropped below the trees and the sky had turned orange and was quickly dimming. He wasn’t going to get to all the trees, but he couldn’t sit around and think about it.

This tree was near the entrance. A golf cart had been abandoned exactly where Danny and Zin had left one a week earlier. Seemed odd, but Danny was focused on the tree and the dozen gifts beneath it. He tore through them, sifting sand from each one, finding nothing new. He crouched down to bounce back into the sky to find the next one when lights inside the Mansion caught his eye.

One of the double doors was open. An enormous tree glittered inside the dark entrance.

Danny climbed the steps. The doors had been vandalized with spray-painted graffiti and skateboard stickers. The hinges creaked as he pushed the door open. The tree stood beyond the foyer against the far back window with a view to the ocean where lights twinkled. More trees.

He sighed. He’d never get to all of them. She was killing him. And yet he couldn’t forget what Reed must be going through. He opened the dozen presents to find more sand. Danny threw the last one across the room. He grabbed the tree and launched it through the window. Shards of glass exploded.

His curses echoed down the empty halls.

But he was wasting time. Every second that was wasted was a second that Reed endured needless suffering.

He went back to the front doors. There was a narrow closet door on both sides of the foyer, both closed. But the one on the right had a sticker. Danny stopped.

It was a Spitfire sticker; the flaming head smiling at him.

One sticker. The rest of the room was in order, just the one sticker.

Merry Christmas.

Sand.

Christmas on the beach.

Tell me your favorite Christmas.

Reed asked Danny on the beach and Danny remembered the thing he wanted most in the world: the half-pipe covered in stickers. But no one would have known that, he didn’t tell anyone about it. He wasn’t even sure it was his memory. But there it was, a Spitfire sticker in an otherwise pristine Mansion without a half-pipe in sight.

Danny put his hand on the door knob. He turned it slowly and cracked the door open. An odd grainy light spilled out. It crept out in misty tendrils. Danny tried to slam it closed but the foggy light wrapped around him. Liquefied him.

And sucked him inside.

The mist had texture.

Grainy particles, scratching.

Momma?

A boy. He sounded sad, crying for—

First! I’m first!

On the right. Someone excited, someone—

You go first!

Where am I?

How long until we eat? I’m hungry.

The voices bunched together, above and below. They were everywhere, but nothing came out of the gray mist. The bodiless words whizzing by like passing trains.

The mist thickened.

The grains pelted his face like sand. He looked at his hands, saw his feet and realized he was standing on something solid. The wind began pulling away, revealing a white floor.

A spot of color developed ahead of him. It was soft and faded, like a beacon appearing in a blizzard. It was pink.

Then red.

Bright red.

The mist swirled out like an ever-widening hurricane. And then it was gone. He was in a round room, walls white. And she was sitting in the center, hands on her lap. The bright red hair cut below
the shoulders
.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” she said, softly. “But you couldn’t know where you were going. He would’ve known, he would’ve followed… he was watching.”

“Who?”

“Whoever runs… Foreverland.”

“The Director?”

She shrugged.

Her eyes were large, the pupils engorged and the iris’s brilliant green. She was almost cartoonish, the colors saturated.

The room was barren, except for the chair she was sitting on, legs crossed, hands on lap. She stood up, her bare feet touched the floor silently; toenails the same color as her hair.

Olly-olly-oxen-free!
The voices soared through the wall.

“Where are we?” Danny asked.