The Forgotten Shrine Read online

  It turns out ditching Bad Breath was far easier than expected. He essentially ditched himself with the help of Steve stroking his ego. Maybe we should be worried about that, but for now I’m just happy not to have Bad Breath around.

  Steve leads us into one of the long, clear connecting tubes we saw from the craft. The floor, walls, and ceiling join in a perfect circle. It makes walking a bit of a challenge. I suppose it doesn’t matter for the Alks, since they don’t walk.

  The ocean is everywhere I look. Above, beside, below. My head throbs. I keep my eyes on my shoes. I don’t want to trip on the curved floor, and I can’t bear to look out at all that water. I can’t believe we’re staying in an underwater city.

  Why do we have to be in the ocean? First Gulaga with its subterranean metropolis and now this? Can’t we just be stationed on a planet with a nice surface city for once?

  Outside the tube, some of the sea structures bob in the current, and others are anchored to the ocean floor. Large domes and cylinders are connected by tubes like the one we’re in. The whole complex looks to be a bit larger than the space station. So while it’s not small, it doesn’t look like much of an alien civilization, either.

  “Is all of Alkalinia underwater?” Lucy asks.

  “It is now,” Steve replies.

  What does he mean, “it is now”? What was it like before?

  “I’m sss-sure you’ll find the Alkalinian Sss-seat to be very comfortable,” he continues.

  We wind from one clear tube, through a domed structure, into another clear tube, seeing no one. The place is basically the opposite of the bustling metropolis of Gulagaven. It kind of gives me the creeps.

  Eventually we enter a huge domed structure and make our way to a long interior hall with rows of doors on either side. We follow Steve to the last door on the left.

  “Thessse are your quartersss,” Steve says, inserting his cyborg arm into a slot on the frame. The door slides open. “I am sss-sure you will be quite comfortable. Sss-see you in the morning.”

  Steve waves us in. The door slides closed and clicks.

  Marco tries the handle and shakes his head.

  “Did Steve just leave us here?” Lucy asks. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re locked in, that’s what,” I say.

  “Check this out,” Cole says.

  Mira touches my arm.

  I turn around and take in my surroundings. We’re standing in an empty room with squishy orange floors, orange walls, and an orange ceiling. The air has the faint smell of cantaloupe.

  “This place reminds me of—” Lucy starts.

  “The Youli ship!” I shout. “It was made of this squishy orange stuff, too!”

  “I don’t get it,” she says. “Nothing else on Alkalinia looks like this.”

  “Nor does it meet the minimum requirements for guest quarters,” Cole says.

  A buzzer sounds, followed by hisses and clicks, then there’s a translation: “Presss organic material againssst the wall to activate.”

  Lucy lifts her eyebrows in a quizzical fashion. I shrug.

  “Organic material?” Marco asks. He raises his hand, looking at it for a second before saying, “Here goes nothing,” and pressing his palm against the wall.

  Instantly the room transforms. We’re no longer standing in a room filled with orange mush; we’re in a lounge filled with recliners and big screens blaring reruns of classic futbol matches from across Earth.

  “What just happened?” I ask.

  “This is awesome!” Marco shouts.

  “Yeah, it’s like we bounded directly to Marco’s man cave,” Lucy says.

  “You betcha, sister.”

  “Don’t you ‘sister’ me,” she says, slamming her hand against the wall.

  The room shifts. Not all the Marco macho evaporates, but it definitely tones down. Half the screens are playing classic films. And it’s hard to miss the fancy pink pouf chair in the corner.

  “That has my name on it!” Lucy says.

  Mira places her hand on the wall, and a gorgeous Steinway piano materializes in a corner of the room. Once Cole and I add our bio signatures, there’s a whole corner dedicated to Evolution of Combat with special gaming chairs and an extra-large sync-up module.

  “This is awesome!” I wave Cole over and initiate a joust match.

  “I am never leaving,” Marco says, leaning back in his recliner and flipping through channels.

  Mira plays a familiar chord on the piano, and then her fingers are running across the keys. She plays at just the right volume to entertain but not overpower the Evolution sound system.

  “If only I had some good game grub, this would be perfect,” Marco says.

  As if on cue, a small tub rises up from the ground next to Marco’s recliner. It’s filled with sodas and juices. Beneath the row of mounted screens, a counter extends from the wall, topped with serving dishes. The familiar smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies reaches my nose and lures me over.

  I chase the smell to the counter and discover the oddest assortment of amazing foods. There’s a huge bowl of spaghetti and a basket of garlic bread. Next to those are a platter of buffalo wings and a tall glass cylinder filled with gummy bears. A bowl of strawberries sits next to a large ham-and-pineapple pizza. A tray of tacos rests behind a carving board topped with a thick steak. At the end of the counter is an enormous chocolate cake and a plate of fresh-from-the-oven cookies.

  Marco grabs one of the wings and takes a bite. “It’s good. Different. Something tastes a tiny bit off, but it sure beats anything they serve at the mess hall.” He tosses a handful of gummy bears into his mouth before grabbing another wing.

  I snag a cookie. It’s still warm. I break it in half, watching the chocolate chips slink apart in their meltiness. I take a giant bite, and my whole body tingles.

  If this isn’t heaven, it’s close. Maybe Alkalinia won’t be half as bad as I imagined.

  Cole carves a piece of steak and slips it onto his plate next to a slice of pizza.

  “Hold on just a minute,” Lucy says, with her hands on her hips. “Doesn’t anyone notice anything weird about this?”

  Mira gestures to the plate of cookies, then to my mouth.

  “Go ahead, have one!” I say to her in between bites.

  It’s what you wanted!

  “Of course it’s what I wanted!”

  “I hate it when you two use your brain patches,” Lucy says, “but that’s exactly it! These are the foods we told Steve about! Every last one of them!”

  Cole, Marco, and I take a step back and assess the spread. There’s no way around it. Lucy is right.

  “So?” Marco asks. “They want us to feel at home. Guess what? I do! At least, this is the closest to home I’ve felt since leaving Earth.” He fills a plate with wings, gummy bears, a taco, and one of my cookies, then returns to his recliner. As soon as he gets settled, he takes a big, crunchy bite of the taco. “I forget who said they like these, but excellent choice.”

  Lucy looks at me.

  “What’s the harm, Lucy? We need to eat, right?”

  I pile a plate with spaghetti and garlic bread. At the other end of the counter, Mira slices a piece of chocolate cake. She licks some extra frosting from her finger.

  Good? I ask.

  Amazing.

  I think I’ll leave room for a piece myself.

  9

  I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG we spend eating (all of us, but especially me and Marco), playing Evolution (me and Cole), painting our nails (Lucy and then Mira, although I think Lucy kind of strong-armed her into it), watching web shows (all of us), and playing piano (Mira), but I’m in a half-food, half-video-game coma when the lights darken.

  “Ummm . . . why are the lights going out?” Lucy asks. “Wait a second, were those doors always there?”

  I pause the aerial-combat obstacle course, happy to have an excuse not to lose to Cole for the thirteenth consecutive time. The perimeter of the room now has five doors,
each with one of our names on it.

  “Cool!” Marco shouts, running to his door. “Private bedrooms? I thought we were going to be couching it.”

  As the rest of us get up to check out our rooms, the lights continue to fade.

  “Something tells me it’s bedtime for Bounders,” Lucy says.

  “Come to think of it,” I say, swallowing a yawn, “I’m exhausted.”

  Mira touches my arm as we step to our side-by-side doors. Good night.

  The lights in my bedroom are dim, almost as dim as the lights in the common room, so it’s hard for me to see much of my surroundings. I stumble to the bed in the corner and pull back the covers. Almost asleep on my feet, I shrug off my shirt, step out of my uniform, and slide beneath the sheets in my underclothes.

  I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever been in a bed quite as comfortable as this. These sheets are so soft. This pillow cradles my head like it was made for me. This . . .

  Something clicks in the wall, and my eyes blink open. The room is dark. I’m fading. Hisses. I swear I hear Steve. Steve? I try to say his name out loud, but I can’t. Clicks. That’s a robot arm. Or is it? It’s too dark. It’s too bright. Something’s not right. No, it’s only a dream.

  It must be a dream.

  Sunlight drifts in from the window and tickles the backs of my eyelids.

  Sunlight? I thought we were underwater.

  I shoot up in bed. My head spins. I must have moved too fast.

  This whole place has got to be virtual. The bed, the video games, the food. The sun is definitely virtual. Even if we weren’t underwater, there’s no way the star in this system gets that kind of light through the cloud layer. Sure enough, out the window a fake sun shines over a fake ocean in a fake sky without a cloud in sight.

  I pull back the blanket and grab my clothes from the pile on the floor. They smell like they need to be washed—which they obviously do, since I wore them for the trip from Earth to space and then from the space station to Alkalinia. I wish I’d asked Steve about our duffels. I could really use some clean clothes. Our blast packs were the only things we carried off the craft yesterday.

  As I pull on my pants, I look around the room. They really spared no details in creating this virtual haven. On the shelf beside my bed, all my favorite books are neatly stacked, including some I didn’t mention to Steve. Pennants from my favorite sports teams cover the walls. There are even some action figures from Stellar Rangers, a show I sometimes watch on the webs. I pick up Galaxo, my favorite Ranger, and swipe his cosmic sword through the air, taking out the other Rangers at the knees.

  Right beside my door is my duffel bag. How did that get here? Did the Alks drop them off? How did I forget that?

  I’m not sure what to expect when I pull the door handle, but the common room is the same as we left it last night. The only thing missing is the counter piled with food.

  Except that it’s not. Almost as soon as I have the thought, the counter reappears from the wall. This time it’s piled high with breakfast favorites: waffles and syrup, scrambled eggs and a plate of extra-crispy bacon, a mountain of pastries oozing with sweet fruit centers or warm sugar or chocolate. The smell alone nearly sends me into sensory overload.

  “What’s cooking?” Marco yawns as he stumbles out of his room. He drags himself over to the table and claps his hands. “Ace! We’ve hit the jackpot! I don’t know why we ever doubted our slithering friends. This isn’t training. It’s vacation! Dig in!”

  Why not? I grab a plate of waffles and bacon and one of those flaky pastries topped with icing and cherries. Marco and I plop down in the twin recliners and turn on the screens. One of the best futbol games of all time—Amazonas versus Real Europa for the Clasico Cup—is on.

  I go back for seconds, then thirds. At some point I realize Cole is awake, too. He’s sitting in the gaming corner playing Evolution and eating pancakes.

  Then Mira is next to me, napping on a beanbag on the floor, an empty plate by her side. She looks so peaceful, but she must be exhausted. Dark circles rim the bottoms of her eyes. Lucy is reading a magazine on the pink pouf with a half-eaten pastry on a plate in her lap. Did they just wake up? Or have they been here for a while? The game’s still on. Maybe if I close my eyes for a minute . . .

  A noise jerks me awake. The counter retracts into the wall. I close my eyes and drift back off. When I open my eyes next, the counter is back, piled with food, and Cole is filling a plate.

  Next to me, Marco shifts in his seat. “Chow time already?” He pushes himself up with a groan and drags himself to the table.

  I force myself out of the recliner and grab a plate. This spread rivals last night’s. There are deep dishes of chicken Parmesan, platters of mozzarella sticks, mashed potatoes, onion rings, pork lo mein, cupcakes, and pumpkin pie.

  This place really is a dream come true, especially for space, which has been nothing but one bad food event after another. Okay, so I have this gnawing feeling in the back of my brain that something’s not quite right, but things could be much worse. I mean, we could be sitting on the frozen tundra eating BERF.

  I fill my plate and climb into the recliner. I eat. We watch futbol. Maybe I take a nap. I eat some more. I think. I’m not sure. Yeah, I definitely went back for another cupcake.

  The lights dim.

  “Time for bed,” Lucy says.

  “Already?” I ask. “But we just got up.” Didn’t we?

  “I wonder where Bad Breath is?” Cole says.

  Marco yawns. “Off somewhere being a jerk. I’m going to sleep.” He hauls himself out of his recliner and lumbers across the common room to his door.

  I follow him. My feet feel like lead, and I can barely make it. Geez. This is the worst sugar crash ever.

  As I twist the door handle, Mira touches my brain. Something isn’t right.

  For the tiniest of seconds, her words jar me, and I almost stop. But then the curtain falls, and I fear I’ll fall asleep standing up if I don’t lie down.

  Tomorrow, Mira.

  The next morning the sunlight streams in. I wake with a major headache, like I fell off the bed in the middle of the night, crashed my skull against the wall, and somehow managed to crawl back into bed. I rub my hand across the base of my neck to check for signs of a bruise.

  Nothing.

  Well, nothing except the slight bump on my skin where the Youli patch is implanted. I used to run my fingers against it every day, especially when Waters shaved my skin and placed it there, and then every day after, I could feel my hair grow back a little more, just as I learned how to reach Mira more and more.

  Mira. One thing I haven’t tried since arriving on Alkalinia is brain-talk from a distance. I close my eyes and reach out with my mind.

  Mira?

  Can you hear me? Mira?

  Nothing.

  Then my skin prickles at the back of my neck, and from far away I hear a call.

  Mira!

  Her calls grow louder, more urgent. She needs help.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and focus all my energy on our brain connection. My headache shifts and crystallizes as a sharp pain around my patch. I break the connection and press my palm against the back of my head, half convinced my hand will come away covered in blood.

  That’s not going to work.

  We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. I push myself out of bed, squinting through the fake sunlight, which makes my headache ten times worse, and pull on my pants. I stumble to the door, tumble out, and ignore calls of “Chow time, Ace!” and “Good morning, sleepyhead” as I stagger to Mira’s room.

  I try the door handle. It’s locked. I start pounding. “Mira! Get up!”

  “Let her sleep, Jasper!” Lucy shouts.

  I ignore her and keep knocking.

  I try the door again, worried I’ll have to force it open. Shows of brute strength are not my specialty.

  But this time the door opens so easily I pour into the room and fall to my knees on her floor. Mira
is lying in bed. When I hit the ground, she sits up, alarmed. As soon as she moves, her face twists in pain. She reaches a hand to the back of her neck.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  Mira squeezes her eyes shut and rubs her head. I think so?

  Her words reach me without setting off a wave of pain like before.

  “You were calling for me in your sleep! At least, I think so.” I sit down on the edge of her bed, very aware that she’s wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, which is basically what I wear every day at home, but I’m used to seeing Mira in uniform. I scoot to the very edge, as far from her as I can get while still sitting on her bed. “I’m not sure what to believe anymore. This place is getting to me. I mean, the food is great, but I kind of think they’re messing with us.”

  Mira still has her hand on her head.

  “Yeah, there’s that, too. My head is killing me.”

  Mira takes a deep breath and drops her hand to her lap. When she opens her eyes, I know she’s pulled upon her inner strength to push the pain aside.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  Leave this room.

  “I know. Marco said that breakfast is here.”

  No. Leave this room. The orange room.

  And then it really hits me. No matter what we see or taste or feel, none of it is real. We are standing in a mushy orange room in the middle of an ocean on Alkalinia. And we haven’t left in almost two days.

  “We need to talk to the others,” I say.

  Mira presses a finger to her lips, then circles it around the room.

  Quiet. They’re listening.

  So it turns out that trying to talk to your pod mates about your suspicions about the Alks is a challenge when you’re 99 percent sure the Alks are listening. It’s even harder when you’re competing for attention with futbol games, fashion magazines, and Evolution. With the smell of fresh Belgian waffles and real maple syrup threatening to take me on the fast track to a food coma, I’m almost too distracted to do anything other than sit and eat all day. Just like I’ve done since we got here.

  Mira shakes her head at my failed attempt to get everyone’s attention, and takes matters into her own hands. She turns off all the screens and video game consoles and snatches the magazine from Lucy’s hands.