Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

“He’s messing with you,” said Caryn. “We know you’re not spies.”

“Will you help us?” asked Brady, who continued to stand a slight distance from the others. “We need to get back to the lake.”

“Here we go again,” said Milo, throwing down his cards and going to a small refrigerator for a drink. “We’re not the Otherlander Underground Railroad, buddy. You got yourself over here, get yourself back.”

I tried to stand then, but felt the weakness still lingering in my legs and had to immediately sit back down. Milo’s reference to the Underground Railroad threw me, as it was something that existed in our plane too. I remembered what Sage had told me—the planes split off from each other when a different action occurred, causing different results. So this plane and ours had been the same once, a long time ago. When did they split? And why?

“Sage?” I asked, still unable to leave the cot. “What happened here?”

Sage looked to Milo, who was sulking by the fridge, drinking something out of a dark bottle. “It doesn’t matter,” she began. “We can take you to the lake, if that’s what you want. But it needs to be tonight. If they’ve seen you at the high school, they’ll be looking for you by tomorrow.”

“You all keep saying ‘they,’” I realized out loud. “Do you mean the—the Russian people?”

“What Russian people?” Milo asked. I could tell from his tone he was messing with me.

“Everyone speaks Russian here.”

“They speak English too. What’s the problem?”

I turned to Caryn, realizing I would never get a straight answer out of Milo. “Is this Russia or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” she assured us, shaking her head. “It’s not that bad.”

“We saw a picture of a man,” Brady said. “A man with black hair. It said he was the leader. His portrait was hanging over the door in the hotel.”

“Of course,” said Sage. “You’re required to have at least one hanging in every building. We’ve got one here, don’t we, Milo?”

“Sure do.”

“Where did you put it again?”

“It’s in the john,” he replied, and the others all laughed. “On the back of the toilet lid.” The others erupted with an even louder response, and finally it felt like the tension in the room might be dissipating. “What? Gotta have something to aim for.”

“Who is he?” Brady asked, his voice still tense despite the others’ laughter.

“President Koenig,” Caryn answered.

“Did he do this?”

Caryn turned to Sage, clearly trying to determine how much she should say. “Yes.”

“So vote him out,” Brady continued. “I mean, you have elections here, don’t you?”

“There are elections, yes. But we don’t—they’re not for us,” Caryn continued.

“We have the wrong papers,” Milo chimed in. “It’s not a free-for-all here.”

“Well, what happens when his term is up?” I asked.

Caryn just smiled, like she found me adorable. “What’s a term?”

The room fell silent, everyone turning to their own thoughts.

“Collect yourself for a moment and then we’ll take you,” said Sage. She then went to sit on a small, neatly made bed in another part of the room. It was the first time I realized that this was where she lived, and we were all crashing it in the middle of the night. She looked tired, and I felt terrible for being such a burden.

“I have to ask,” said Brady, his mouth clenching around the question. “Did a girl named Piper come through here? About this tall,” he gestured, “with long brown hair.”

“Jesus, he’s with her,” said Milo. “That figures.”

“She went to the train,” said Caryn. I thought Brady would leap across the room to her on hearing this, but he managed to steady himself. Finally a specific answer, and finally some proof that we were right about Piper. She did come through the lake portal, and she was here.

“The train?”

“Is she your girlfriend?” asked Caryn, who clearly already had a crush on Brady.

“Yes,” he answered, anxious for her to continue. “What train? You mean the train station?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t say any more,” said Sage, sitting up on her cot. “If you want to get back to the lake, we should go in about twenty minutes. They turn the perimeter lights at the hotel off at one, and that’s the best time to sneak in.”

“But wait,” Brady insisted, getting more and more agitated. “I need to know why she went to the train station.”

“She said she wanted to see how far it spread. I assumed she meant the disease. To see if it had gotten to your town, who else was affected. She said she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew. She was supposed to come back in a few days, but she never did.”

I could feel Brady deflating like an old balloon. We were so close, but she was still lost to us. Why hadn’t she come back? What happened to her when she got home? Did she get the disease?

I turned to Sage, who was sitting up on her cot looking somehow defeated and sad. She rubbed her graying hair, shaking her head slightly. “Over and over again,” I heard her mutter.

“Sage?” Brady asked. “Do you know why she wouldn’t come back?”

“How should I know?”

“Can you help us find her?” Brady continued, a pleading aspect to his voice denoting a new kind of fear.

“I didn’t put a GPS in the girl,” Sage spat at nobody in particular. “I offered to take her back to the lake that night, but she insisted on going on this fool’s errand first.”

“There must be someone we can call?” asked Caryn. “Can’t you see how worried he is?”

“I’m not your parents!” shouted Sage. “Start taking responsibility for your own horrible choices.” Her newfound anger was short-lived, burning up inside her for a moment or two, before she too seemed to shrink before our eyes, lying back down and staring at the ceiling above her little cot. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “But I really don’t know.”

“So she’s stuck,” said Brady, almost to himself. “She’s stuck here somewhere in this nightmare