Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
With his heart thumping heavily and his knee panging with alarm, Kaleb parts his lips to ask another question. What comes out instead, completely unprompted, is: “My name’s Kaleb.”
987 continues muttering to himself for half a second, stops, turns his head as he belatedly hears the words. For a moment, their plight is entirely forgotten. “Nico,” he then responds, as if just now remembering.
Kaleb smiles. “I took you for more of a Bruce. Or a John. Or maybe even a Chuck.”
Nico chuckles, shakes his head, then gives Kaleb a punch in the shoulder. “You don’t remember? I let it slip one day. You’d think I just crapped my pants, the way everyone went silent.”
“Everyone’s scared to break the rules.”
“And now look at us, breaking all of them. There’s no one else in this place I’d rather break them with than you, 1025—Kaleb, I mean. Yeah, that’ll take some getting used to.”
“You can stick with 1025 for now, if you prefer.”
He considers that. “Yeah, until we get the fuck outta here.”
“Agreed.” Kaleb nods ahead. “Maybe the archway is on the other side of this room.”
Nico squints. “Hmm, yeah, probably.”
“The nurse will be waiting for us, right?”
“Yeah,” decides Nico after a moment, encouraged. “Yeah, she will be, for sure.” Each whisper is a breathy tornado in their ears. “She’s at the other end, waiting for us … they all are.”
The two, now side-by-side, make their way across the large reflective expanse. As they go, the stairs grow smaller at their backs, until the top of them is no longer visible, and in every direction, it’s nothing but a dark blue, dreamlike haze.
They stop abruptly when the air splits apart before their startled faces, light blinding them—a narrow door sitting in the middle of nothing, opening in thin air.
The nurse appears, eclipsing the light, and leans against the frame of the door. “About took you long enough,” she teases.
“Oh, thank god,” mutters Nico, “I thought we’d lost you.”
“The others are ahead,” she tells him. “Be quick. Through here, you’ll find yourself in a bright hallway, then make a left. Don’t make a right—that takes you back into the House. After you go left, you’ll empty into an alleyway near the Bellagio.”
“Bellagio? You mean in Las Vegas? Las-fucking-Vegas?” Nico lets out a warm chuckle that sounds more human than he has in months. “Quite a bit of ways from San Diego, but hey, freedom’s freedom, and I’ve got thumbs ready to hitch my way home. Ready, 1025?” He glances back.
Kaleb stares at his friend. He fights a sudden urge to tell his friend to wait, yet nothing comes. Nico returns a soft smile, winks playfully, then slips through the bright doorway. Kaleb limps up to the brink, right where he resists shielding his eyes.
Then he stops. Breaths pass. Seconds tick away.
Why won’t he step through?
“I understand,” says the nurse. Kaleb squints against the brightness, remaining silent, his heart still slamming away in his ears. “It’s quite a decision, isn’t it? Your next step?”
He doesn’t look her way. Something about her tone brings him pause. “I guess I …” He finds himself choosing every word with caution. “I … never quite shared … the same feeling … as the others do … about the gods.”
“The gods?”
“That’s what some of us call them.” He scrunches up his face, barely turning his head, still not looking the nurse in the eye. “Don’t you?”
The nurse doesn’t breathe, doesn’t stir, doesn’t pull her eyes from the side of Kaleb’s face. She just stands there by the magical door, as if holding it open for him, a doorwoman.
She asks, “Is that why you aren’t following your friend?”
Kaleb lifts his eyes, half-squinted, to the brightness beyond. He can’t see Nico. Can’t hear him, either. The second he went through, he vanished from existence.
“I think I’m … scared,” says Kaleb, inching into the truth.
“Of what?”
Kaleb lifts a hand to the light, as if testing it. It feels cold, not warm. “My friend pictures this life for us … his brother, a bakery in San Diego, but … I don’t think I belong there. This is the only life I know now. My old life burned away in that fire long ago.” It’s now that he brings his heavy gaze to the nurse. “Is it too late? For me to stay? Would I be a total coward if I … if I abandon my friends and … go back?”
The nurse studies him awhile longer before answering, in a tone that sounds as crisp as crystal: “It’s never too late.”
“You wanted to leave, too,” he says. “Are you going to head out with them?”
The nurse smiles, as if finding that funny. “Of course I plan to go. There are so many reasons to leave. My beautiful life is out there, waiting for me. Food of my choosing. Friends. My family. A cushy bed. Warm showers. Are you sure you don’t want to go and see what’s out there for you, too? It’s just a trip down this hall and out a door. Easy.”