The Network ( Book One of the Grounders Series )

31

Dedicated to so1tgoes.

We don't even make it back into the live forest before we find a way of of this godforsaken jungle. There is a tiny outcropping with a slit leading into blackness.

"It's out best chance," Cicada says. "Who knows what else lives here."

"I think we should rest before charging into the unknown again?" Joss says.

"We can't sleep in a pile of ash," I say, looking around at the flaky black stuff covering the jungle floor for about a fifty foot radius.

"I vote we go in there and see if it's safe to camp in there before moving on," Cicada says. We all agree.

"We need to wash up too," I add, glancing a Joss's back, covered in dried blood and torn fabric.

I am the first to slip through the little crack. I click my tongue as the others slide into the cave after me.

"It's a tunnel." I look down the tunnel. The end disappearing around a bend.

I close my eyes a remember the sturdy wooden doors leading into the tunnels beneath the palace in Arocule. I image that door blocking the tunnel, creating a cave. I also imagine the slit in the rock closing, making the rock look like a whole outcropping on the jungle floor above.

"Now we are safe," I say, then add, "hopefully."

Since no one will have to scout, we all lay our sleeping bags out next to each other.

Cicada and I share again. We lay facing each other for a while.

"Do you think we'll ever find Arosi?" She asks.

I think back to my dream and the way Arosi was able to communicate to me through it. I also think of when I was imagining that baboon that attacked me. How my brain went against my will and imagined things I didn't want it to. That had to have something to do with my closeness to Arosi.

"I sure we are near him," I say, sounding more confident than I feel. What happens when we find Arosi? What will happen to all of us in the next seven days?

Images flash through my mind's eye. Feathers, flowing lava, falling rock.

Five began the quest, four remain, two will be left at the end of the campaign. Three will fall to the almighty bane.

Fear blossomed in my heart. That sounded ominous.

"What did you just say?" Cicada demands.

"What?"

"You said something," she says, "it sounded like a prophecy."

I'd said it aloud?

"I don't know," I say, although the words are fairly clear. Two of us will die before this quest is over.
•••
We wake a few hours later rested and ready to continue the quest.

"We need to tell them," Cicada says.

"We can't," I reply, "they'll give up on us."

"Fine," she says.

Her and I have been debating whether to tell Jonah and Joss about the mini-prophecy I spit out last night. We'd both agreed to neglect to tell them because odds are they'd quit coming with us and be stuck down here forever.

"Are you guys ready to go?" Joss asks when we are finally done setting up camp.

"Yeah," we say in unison.