“Becks,” Jack said, his voice calming.
“Don’t pretend you know anything about love,” I said.
Cole’s face cracked and crumpled before me. I could see what my outburst had done to him. I immediately regretted everything I’d said.
“If that’s true,” Cole said, “then why, after I’ve forgotten everything . . . everything . . . why do I still know I love you?”
FIFTEEN
NOW
The Everneath. Ashe’s house.
The air rushed out of my lungs. “What?”
“I love you,” Cole said. “Right now, despite all the things you said I’ve done and all the ways we’ve tried to get my memory back, loving you is still the only thing I know.”
I looked at Jack, who was frowning—but in pity, not anger. I turned back to Cole. “I’m sorry. For what I said.”
Cole frowned with his entire body; then a strange, wild look appeared in his eyes, and suddenly I worried what he would say next. He took a deep breath. “The truth is, Ashe, the entire reason we’re here is because we want to take down the Everneath.”
I froze, my mouth hanging slightly open. Jack sprang up from his chair. The one thing we were supposed to keep secret, and Cole blurts it out. To a part Shade, no less.
Ashe looked from Cole, to me, and back to Cole again. “No way.”
Cole gave him a blank stare. “No. It’s time. Don’t you think? How many centuries have you been alive? Don’t you want to see what’s on the other side?”
“Are you insane?” Ashe looked at me again and then at Jack, desperately searching for someone to validate him. “Is this a joke?”
“No,” Cole said. He motioned with his hand for Jack to sit back down. Jack did, but his expression looked murderous. “Look at the life you’re living right now, if you can call it a life. You have nobody. And literally no body. You lost the love of your life. Both of them. What do you have to live for now? You want to be a Shade? You want your only reason for existing to be to work for the survival of the Everneath?”
Ashe still looked at him as if he weren’t talking normally. I just sat back, worried that our plan was all going up in smoke. Why would Ashe ever be convinced to end his own life? And if he felt as if Cole was telling the truth and his home was in danger, would Ashe’s loyalty to Cole be enough to prevent him from turning us in to the queen?
Cole gave me a look as if to say Trust me. But how could I trust someone who didn’t even know his own name? Who didn’t even really know what it meant to be an Everliving? And now he was talking like everyone would agree with him. It would be like me going to my neighbor and being all Hey, let’s destroy the world! We’ve lived long enough. Are you in?
“Tell me, Ashe. What do you live for?” Cole said.
“Immortality,” Ashe said. “It’s what we all live for. We chose this life because immortality is the only important thing. It’s the everything.”
Cole softened his voice. “Immortality is time. It’s not something you live for. That’s like saying you live for living longer. Don’t you see the fault in that thinking? You just told me when you live for. But I want to know, Ashe, what do you live for?”
Ashe froze for a moment, his eyes on Cole’s face. Maybe he was waiting to see if he would crack a smile. Maybe he was waiting for some Candid Camera crew to come in. Whatever he was waiting for, it didn’t happen. Nobody did anything.
“I don’t know,” Ashe said. “Do I have to have an answer?”
“Yes!” Cole nodded. “Yes, everyone who is alive has to have an answer to that question. What are you living for?”
“I’m living to live.”
“That’s not enough. It’s not enough anymore, is it?”
Jack and I exchanged glances. This didn’t sound like Cole. This sounded like something I would’ve said to Cole while we were trying to find Jack. Could his amnesia have given him a new soul? A new reason for being?
I didn’t know. But it would never work on Ashe. At least, I assumed it wouldn’t. But then Cole said, “What if you could have Sheree back? What if she’s waiting on the other side for you to follow her?”
“What if she’s not?”
“So then she’s not. If there is no afterlife, what will you care? You’ll be dead and gone then. But here’s what I can promise you: You’ll never find her in this world. And you won’t have to miss her for one more day. You won’t have to live with that gaping hole in your chest. You know the one I’m talking about.”
A giant, oily black tear escaped one of Ashe’s eye sockets. Was it working? I couldn’t believe it.
“I think there’s another place for us, and another way.” Cole looked up at the ceiling momentarily, as if he were just figuring something out. “And the only way we can reach it is through a mortal death.”
At this point my mouth dropped open as I stared at Cole.
Ashe stood up. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go for a walk or something.”
Cole reached for his arm, but he couldn’t grab onto anything; Ashe was that close to being a full Shade. “Just promise you’ll ponder it. If you can’t think of a reason to live, will you consider dying with me? Can you promise me you’ll really think about it?”
Ashe nodded. Then he walked out the doorway.
When we were alone, all I could do was just stare at Cole. “What was that?”
Jack picked up his chair and threw it against the wall. It shattered and fell to the floor in pieces.
But Cole ignored both of us. The second the door closed behind Ashe, he got up and went to the window.
“Answer me, Cole!” I said. “You gave away our plan. How could you do that?” I put my hands on my head and pulled at my hair. “I knew it. I knew you weren’t on our side. This whole amnesia thing is bullshit, and I let you trick me again!”
Jack crossed the room and stood in Cole’s face. He clenched his hands into tight fists. “Say something, Cole.”
I shot out of my chair and stood next to them. Cole didn’t even seem to notice Jack. He just stared out the window.
“Cole! What’s going on?” I asked.
Finally, he looked at us. “Ashe turned right at the end of the street. He’s going to turn us in.”
“Of course he is,” I said. “And it’s your fault!”
“Do you want to follow him to see how he communicates with the rest of the Shades?” Cole asked. “Or do you want to sit here yelling at me?”
“Sit here yelling at you,” I said before his words had completely sunken in. “Wait. Did you say follow Ashe?”
Cole nodded.
In the blink of an eye Jack was two steps ahead of us, opening the door and shooing us out into the street.
SIXTEEN
NOW
The Everneath. The streets of Ouros.
We stayed hidden as well as we could as we followed Ashe. I remembered back to the day of the Everneath blackout, right before Cole and I had entered the labyrinth. We’d had to hide in the cellar.
I’d slept that night against Cole. I’d thought he was my friend.
We followed Ashe all the way to the edge of the Common. I wondered why Ashe was walking and not flying like the rest of the Shades would do. Maybe it was because he wasn’t a full Shade yet. Either way, I was grateful we didn’t have to try to follow a flying Shade right now. We headed toward the entrance to the labyrinth, and I thought for a moment, with a sinking feeling, that we would be going inside. I fought to keep my feet going, but suddenly they felt like they were made of cement.
I couldn’t face that three-ring circus of death again.
But he walked past the entrance to the labyrinth. Instead, he went behind a wall; and the moment he entered there, the outline of a door appeared, angled downward. Ashe pushed through it and descended.
“Do we follow?” Jack asked.
“If we don’t, we may never have another chance,” Cole said.
Before the entrance could fade away again, the three of us leaped in.
I landed with a thud on what felt like hard-packed dirt. My spine compressed with the impact.
“Ow!”
Cole and Jack landed in a heap next to me, kicking up a cloud of dust. Jack covered his mouth to try to suppress a coughing attack.
What little light there was quickly vanished as the entrance closed off behind us.
I heard someone brushing off his pants. I thought it came from where Jack had landed. “Where are we?” he said.
“Um . . . Underneath the Everneath?” I said.
“Under where?” Cole said, then snickered.
“Are you twelve?” I asked.
Something clicked near me, and suddenly there was a little circle of light. Cole’s lighter. We were in a dark tunnel—not like the spacious caves of the actual Tunnels; this was more obviously a passageway somewhere.
As my eyes adjusted, an icy chill ran down my back. The walls looked like they were made of strands of oil, and those strands seemed to be moving and churning as if they were alive: contracting and relaxing, creating a wavelike movement.
The effect made it seem as if we were in the belly of a black snake, about to be digested. I felt the waves of movement under my knees. With each wave, the tunnel seemed to get smaller.
I stayed crouched down. There was no way I’d be able to stand up in here. The entrance to the tunnel was maybe five feet high and five feet wide, but farther down it looked more like three by three.
“This must’ve been how Jonah felt in the belly of the whale,” I said.
Cole gave me a blank stare, but Jack started to shake next to me. I could feel it. I put my hand on his arm, but he threw it off immediately. I knew it was just a reflexive move. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
But then I realized I already knew the answer. Jack had spent decades buried alive in the Tunnels. As bad as I thought the Feed was for me, Jack had had it worse. I was merely cocooned with Cole for a hundred years while he stole my energy. Jack had been surrounded by dirt, the earth pressing in on him, stealing his breath. He’d felt as if he was suffocating the entire time. And just when he thought he would die from the lack of oxygen, he somehow kept going.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You should go. Don’t do this.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” he said. Now that he was distressed, he was unable to mask his suspicion of Cole.
“We have no idea how far this tunnel goes,” I said. “You can’t do this. Aside from the fact that you can barely fit . . . no. I won’t let you.”
“You don’t have a choice,” he said. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not. We promised, and I’m not about to break my promise Not for this.”
I sighed. Cole just held his lighter, his face showing he didn’t want to get in the middle of anything.
“Listen. What if something happens to us?” I said. “What if we can’t get back out? Somebody has to be on the outside. We should’ve thought of this before. But somebody has to know where we are.”
Even in the dim glow of the lighter, Jack’s face looked pale and ashen. He would be useless to us in this condition, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“You might be our only chance,” I said. “Go outside. Put your ear to the ground. Try to figure out if anything is going on.”
“What about my leaking energy?” Jack asked.
Cole pointed toward Jack’s feet. “It wasn’t very strong to begin with. Now it’s barely visible. You’ll be okay as long as you stick to the shadows.”
Jack nodded. Thankfully he was agreeing with us, because there was no way he’d survive in a place this small. In fact, just seeing him made me wonder if any of us would survive it. But Cole and I were skinnier than Jack, and we hadn’t been traumatized as he had.
Jack reached up to where the entrance had been. I wondered for a split second if it would really open again or if we were all trapped here, but it opened under the pressure from his hand.
“Okay. How long before I should start to worry?” Jack said.
“Now.” I smiled. Jack looked at my face and instantly relaxed a bit, to the point where he even smiled.
“Okay, I’ll start worrying right now.” He grabbed my shoulders and brought me close and pressed his lips against mine. I threw my arms around his neck and lost myself in the kiss. His lips parted, and mine did too. I felt the kiss everywhere. And suddenly we weren’t in a snake belly anymore. We were on the Surface, and we both had our hearts, and we were standing in real sunlight. And we were whole and together.
It was that kind of kiss.
Cole cleared his throat.
Finally, we pulled apart. “I’ll see you soon,” Jack said.
“So soon,” I said.
Then Jack leaped out of the hole and closed the door behind him, and Cole and I were alone.