The In Between

Chapter 31

Justin

At dawn, I get up and follow Anton's instructions. There are two black screws holding the locker to the wall like he said. I carefully loosen the left one just enough to tip it down an eighth of an inch. I sit back on my bed and roll down my sock. Bits of gravel still cling to my legs. I brush them away until only one tiny spot the size of a pinhead remains above my left ankle. I dig into my skin with my fingernail until I can pull it out. The skin closes up before my eyes.

I put the chip on my pillow and then I sit completely still, paralyzed. Anton's words-'Don't trust anyone here'-ring in my ears. What if this is a trap? What if I get caught? What are the consequences of something like this? Hell? I shudder. There are so many unknowns here. It's hard to know where you stand.

But I push all of that stuff out of my mind for the moment. Before I can process what I'm doing here, what my future is in this afterlife, I need to see Tara.

I can't stop thinking about Heaven. Imaging what it could be like for Tara and me there. I want to know what she thinks. How she feels. Tara is so good at figuring things out, at asking the right questions to get the right answers. I don't even know what to ask. I'm too used to taking orders-from my coach, from my dad, and now from Zerachiel. Tara's the only thing I've ever been compelled to go after on my own. She's the only thing I'm sure of.

* * *

Anton is waiting for me at the north gate.

"You made it," he says. "I was just about to leave without you. Thought you might have had a change of heart."

"Sorry."

"No worries. Let's go. We don't have that much time."

We turn away from the Registry as a faceless stream of workers in identical slate robes, heads bowed and keys swaying on their belts, begins to file silently by in the distance.

"This way," Anton instructs.

He leads me away from the main road to a narrow curving footpath. Before long, we are back in the petrified forest where I first met Damaris. Drifts of white pine needles line the way and wispy trees with pale bark sway overhead. I struggle to keep up as Anton scurries around fallen trunks and bushwhacks through choking white weeds as tall as our foreheads.

Finally, we come to a ten-foot high stone wall.

"You okay?" Anton asks, coming to a stop. "You seem a little breathless."

"I'm good." He's not the type of guy I want to admit a bad case of the nerves to.

He nods. "Alright, then give me a hand."

Together, we pry three large stones aside.

"Do other people know about this place?" I ask as we work.

"I doubt it, but you can't be too sure of anything here. Most of the others believe everything they're told. They don't question. Same as back there. Half the limitations are in your head."

I help Anton move a few more boulders until there is a narrow crawl space leading through the wall. Through it, all I can see through it is absolute blackness.

"How far is it?" I ask.

"Much closer than you think," Anton answers. "There's always been a lot more overlap than people on either side want to admit."

"Damaris said that, too."

Anton crouches and sticks his legs through the crawl space so that he is sitting in it, gripping onto the edges of the wall. "Okay, I'll go first. You follow as soon as I'm out of sight. It's straight down, pretty steep, but survivable. Give yourself the strongest push you can and then let go."