Vicious Memories

Chapter 84

My flight across the island was the begging of the end.

It took me over two hours to reach the cliffs. That was one of the beauties of the marriage between panic and adrenaline - together, they helped you accomplish feats that would otherwise have been impossible. They sewed tiny wings to your shoes, put a mask of pure oxygen over your mouth, blasted your favorite kind of music in your ears.

All the varied hells of the island passed by in a blur. I sprinted through the small clearing where we'd found Sirus's body. The farm lay beyond the clearing, that lovely expanse of flat land where I'd spent the day after my awakening, the place where Neema had given me my first course on how the villagers lived. Thirty minutes later I passed Atlantis. The rush of the river fork was a marching band whose lone instrument was the cymbal. My movement kicked up mud near the wet bank and dust between the broken wood buildings.

It took an eternity to reach the waterfall, my memory of this stretch so blurred it almost ceased to exist. Here my lungs put up their first real protest. They wined with fiery determination that they were being overworked, that they couldn't possibly keep up with the pace of my heart.

The blue lake begged me to stay and forget the mess we were in. The water rippled in the midday sun and threw up reflections that were almost tangible, like the folds of a luminous blanket draped over the world to keep it warm. Just take a swim, it whispered. Get in and keep swimming forever. Forget all your worries. You've done it before, right?

The words rang in my ears long after I left the waterfall behind, following the path of the hunt for Shana's murderer. Back then we had so ignorantly thought the murderer was somewhere out in the wild, rather than back behind us.

I felt numb by the time I reached the tiered rocks in the foothills of Mount Home. I wondered what the villagers would be doing right now. Sharpening spears? Taking lessons in self-defense from Arun? Reviewing plans and escape routes should everything go wrong?

The cave above me was just a round shadow set deep in the cliffs, a path back to a moment in time when it had been just me and Alice and the crackling fire beside us. The inscription would still be on the wall in there, its message reverberating through space and time. Whispers from the trees mocked me with each tentative step.

As it had before, the land opened up beyond a line of stinging branches and leaves onto a village so like our own. This was where a group of people just like us had made their homes before some horrible event had claimed many of their lives. I jogged through the wood huts and collapsed tents, past the place where we'd found the black briefcase and Gabriel's file, and stopped at the path leading into the cliff towering overhead. The face of it seemed to stare back down at me, tauntingly challenging whether I was brave enough to see what waited for me at the top.

My legs burned more fiercely than ever as I made my way up the switchback path knifed into the rock. Cresting the cliff was like emerging from a dark dream to find dawn sunlight streaming through the window. I didn't spare a single glance down at the snarl of jungle I'd left behind.

The land at the northern edge of the island was lighter, devoid of the larger plants that dominated the terrain below. Long grasses swayed in the wind, their razor edged stalks reaching my knees. Wildflowers dotted the green sea and the plain was flat but for a few stands of scraggly trees. It ran left to right for what seemed an eternity, and ended just a mile to the north before plunging sharply into churning white waters.

I kept my gaze rooted firmly on the ground so I didn't twist an ankle on a hidden root or rock. The sun burned hot and strong up here. The dark clouds to the southwest grew larger. I could smell the salt of the crashing waves and hear their distant war cry as they broke against the rocks.

I was still a quarter of a mile from the edge when I saw it.

It started as a black speck on the horizon, near a small copse of stunted trees. The muscles in my stomach clenched painfully and I grimaced.

A minute later I spotted Alice, my entire body shaking as I ran faster.

She knelt in the grass, her hands laced across the back of her head. Closer now, I could see a bloody gash on her forehead that had been quickly cleaned. More red dripped from one corner of her mouth, and her eyes glittered defiantly as she observed my approach.

I wanted to pull her into my arms, to apologize and tell her that she was safe now. I wanted to kiss her and tell her everything would be okay. A huge obstruction blocked my throat.

I couldn't do any of it.

I slowed my pace to a walk. My eyes flicked over Alice's face one more time and I prayed she would still be alive at the end of everything.

Then my gaze moved up and to the left, fixing on the person behind it all.