Sub Zero

Chapter Thirty Two

"I'm so warm.... Why do I feel so pleasant? Wait. I'm supposed to be walking! I was walking, and then...." I slowly open my eyes. Where in the world am I? My body sways slightly with the movement of the person carrying me. Carrying me? Why am I being carried?

My breath hitches. I jolt up from Finn's shoulder, ripping my arms from their place around his neck and leaning away from him. "Why are you carrying me like this? Put me down!" I hiss. I try to put distance between our bodies but I lean a little too far back. I shriek like a some deranged animal as we begin to lean in my direction.

The breath is knocked from my lungs as my back hits the sand with a loud thump! Finn unburies his face from my chest and bellows, "What the hell?" out of surprise from my outburst. My face turns red as I unwrap my legs from his waist. "I'm the one that should be saying that!" I sputter as I wriggle underneath him, desperate to escape from the embarrassing position. He sits up and I scoot away from him, the snow soaking my jeans.

"Why were you carrying me?" I huff, eyeing him like a predator. The last thing I remember was tripping and him helping me back up. So why was he carrying me?

"You were the one who asked to be carried!" He splutters, jabbing a finger at me defensively. "You fell asleep at the most random time! Is your brain frozen, Ice Cube?" He shouts, his cheeks as red as his hair.

I open my mouth to spit another witty insult at him, but a voice interrupts me. "That's enough, you idiots!" Hiyori shouts, strutting towards us out of nowhere. My face lights up with a smile. "Hiyori!" I shout, leaping up from my place on the sand and running to her. Although I did supposedly forget about what previously happened I do remember feeling absolutely exhausted. I feel so energized now. It's strange.

"Don't 'Hiyori' me!" The said elderly woman sniffs. "You two have been arguing while I've been waiting at the perfect place for awhile now!" I wrinkle my eyebrows together. "What?" I say dumbly, clearly confused. Wasn't she just a little bit ahead of Finn earlier?

She smirks and crosses her arms. "Finn had to carry you after you fell asleep from magic exhaustion. You were crawling all over him." She says with a wink. My cheeks heat up. "A-as if!" I snort.

I whip my head around to focus my attention on Finn when I hear him laugh. "Hiyori's right." He says, grinning smugly. I shoot a glare in his direction. "I don't remember it at all!" I groan, throwing my hands up in the air out of frustration. He smirks at my reaction. "Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing you for now." He says, his expression morphing from arrogant to humorously mature.

I roll my eyes at him and once agin turn to Hiyori. "Are we almost there?" I ask her eagerly, my new-found strength giving me and optimistic attitude. She smiles. "I guess you could say that dear." I frown. What in the world is she talking about?

She suddenly stretches her arms out and spins in a circle. "Voila!" She shouts enthusiastically, gesturing to the desert around us. I frown. "Is this where we'll create the portal?" I ask. She stops spinning and scoffs at my reaction to her extravagant demonstration. "Yes." She sighs out bitterly,

My gaze sweeps across the expanse of snow-dusted sand. There's a few scraggly looking bushes and rocks jutting out of the sand, along with a few small cacti. I can no longer see the highway, which is good I suppose.

"Hiyori, can you tell me more about where we're going?" I ask, still looking around us. She smiles wryly. "We don't have much time, but you do deserve an answer." She says. She looks at Finn. "In the meantime, can you begin the preparations?" She asks him.

His eyes grow wide. "Hiyori, I know I'm a Runner, but I haven't trained all that much in teleportation. What if I screw up the coordinates?" He asks, his voice desperate. The grey-haired lady only smiles. "You'll do fine, Finn Jackson." She says. Jackson. So that's his last name.

I never thought that Finn Jackson could be afraid of anything, but his terrified expression says it all. Is teleportation really that dangerous? Hiyori suddenly cracks up as his expression. "I'm just kidding Hot-head. You talk to her, I'll make the markings." She says, brushing past him and kneeling by one of the bushes.

She breaks off a branch, stands, and walks over to the middle of the clearing. "What do you want to know?" Finn asks. I frown and turn my attention to him. "Everything." I say matter-of-factly. He chuckles. "Sorry, but Hiyori's been doing this for years. She'll be done soon, so you'll need to make it quick."

I try to bring forth the most important questions I have from the swirling vortex of curiosity (aka my mind), but Finn suddenly snaps his fingers. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Once you enter our world, you have absolutely no connection with this place, or as we call it, There. If you need to make any calls, you should probably do it now." Their world? I thought we were only traveling a day or so away from here (or There, I suppose).

I push my curiosity aside. "Can Quinn keep this call safe? Even from a mobile phone?" I ask, thinking about how I'll get a phone in the first place. He smirks. "Don't worry. Quinn can practically do anything with electronics. She could probably hack into the Hexagon if she needed to." He says.

I nod, still a bit unsure. "Um, is there a phone I can use?" He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a black flip phone. "I use this when I go to There. My actual phone is in our world." I'm not sure why he's telling me this, but I imagine it's because he doesn't want to look lame. He holds the phone out to me. I carefully take it from him, my heart leaping when our fingertips accidentally brush. I murmur a quick thanks before I flip the phone open and dial a number. I'm lucky I remember it after all of this time. Hopefully she hasn't changed it.

The phone rings a few times before the line goes silent. I hold my breath.
"Hello?"

A voice rings out from the other end. A man's voice. This isn't my mom. Tears well up in my eyes, but my voice is somewhat steady. "Oh, um, I'm sorry! I must have the wrong number!" I reply frantically. I've never been good at calling people. It's such a simple task and yet the anxiety that comes with it is very well near crippling.

"Oh, no, it's alright." He says. The line is silent for a moment. I think of bidding him farewell and hanging up, but something stops me. "Excuse me, uh, is Mrs. Smith there?" I say, chewing on the corner of my mouth nervously. What if she is there? What exactly does a psychotic runaway say to her alcoholic mother after all this time?

The line is silent for a moment. I can hear the man rustling around on the other end. "Listen," he says after awhile, "Ellie Smith has been dead for months."