Nil Unlocked Read online

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  FOR STEPHEN: WITH YOU LIFE IS SO MUCH MORE

  INFORMATION IS NOT KNOWLEDGE.

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  CHAPTER

  1

  RIVES

  DAY 241, JUST AFTER NOON

  The ground shook, like Hades had lost his temper.

  Or his favorite toy. Or both.

  Given the last ten minutes of sheer insanity, I’d pick both.

  Three gates, twin exits, and one massive quake, all packed into today’s manic noon. Aftershocks tore through the black rock field as the island fought to win, and the battle seemed personal with the devil himself.

  Right now I was doing my damnedest not to meet him in person.

  Cracks tore through the rock, ripping the ground into a fresh jigsaw puzzle. One lava field away, red blurred like liquid rust. A buffalo lurched awkwardly in the distance, bracing against the very island that held it hostage. Quakes always scared the animals—me included. I scrambled over the trembling rock, aiming to retrieve Charley’s gear and not kill myself in the process.

  Nil wasn’t happy—that was clear.

  Another aftershock hit. The ground jerked; black rock splintered on my right. I shifted direction with the wind, already calculating a safer route.

  The grizzly roared; I spun to place him. I’d forgotten he was my new sidekick.

  I caught the bear in my line of sight and skidded to a sharp halt; my current vector put me on a crash course with the grizzly. He barreled toward me, erratic and unsteady, pointlessly trying to outrun the quake. It was a toss-up as to who was more terrified: me or the jacked-up bear. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was staying alive, a personal mandate that did not include me playing chicken with the grizzly.

  I backpedaled, unwilling to take my eyes off the bear, and stumbled five steps before I tripped and caught myself one-handed on a large chunk of shifting rock. Three meters out, the ground where I would’ve been standing cracked into a cruel smile—one with teeth. Jagged black rock, dripping decay, lining a wide hole. The grizzly’s eyes were wild, his pace uncontrolled. He hit a patch of gravel and slid—and then he fell. Sideways, into the chasm, a brown blur clawing at empty air. The island jerked, the toothy trap clamped shut. Rock crumbled into the dwindling crack as the island settled, then stilled.

  No shake, no quake.

  Done.

  The only animal left was me.

  The stillness was profound. I gingerly let go of the rock and stood. Alone in the field of black, I marveled at the quiet. At the abrupt calm, which was as remarkable as the preceding fifteen minutes of mayhem.

  Thad’s shocking play.

  Charley’s escape.

  The bear. The quake. Thad leaping toward a gate floating over a deadly black rift, Thad hanging in midair like a crazed long jumper, one heartbeat too long. But he’d made it.

  Nothing like cutting it close, bro, I thought.

  I exhaled a breath I’d been holding for days.

  Days.

  I had 124 left.

  I took a breath, steady and deep, reveling in the feeling of being alive, then I turned in a slow circle, absorbing the look and feel of the island in the wake of today’s noon. The red rock in the distance jutted crisply against the cloudless blue sky, all blurred edges gone. On my right, Mount Nil stretched high like an island sentinel. A near-vertical black rock peak slapped with patches of stubborn green, its tip spearing the only clouds in sight. Wispy steam bleached the sky on the backside, visible if you knew where to look, where hidden vents released deadly pressure. Directly in front of Mount Nil sat the meadow, lush and green and more than a little deadly. I couldn’t see the meadow from where I stood, but I knew it was there, just like the rain forest to the northeast and the City due west. So much of Nil was unseen. I understood that now more than ever.

  As I stood alone in the wake of today’s noon, the island looked exactly the same—and felt completely different. Foreign and new.

  I gave a sharp laugh.

  Of all the people here, you’d think I’d be the most accustomed to change as the constant, but then again, in my pre-Nil life, the places didn’t change; I did. I moved; I traveled; I adjusted to new cities and countries as easily as changing my shirt. Here, I was the constant, forced to continually reassess the island and everything I knew, which made it impossible to get a handle on where I stood. Every time I thought I had something figured out, it changed.

  And with the twin losses of Thad and Charley, things had definitely changed.

  Welcome to Nil, Rives, I thought.

  Again.

  I’d just finished my full rotation when the breeze shifted. Dulled, as if interrupted. Or expectant.

  Incoming, I thought.

  I soundlessly fell to one knee beside the rock.

  A moment later, a gate dropped a few meters away in midair and glittered, a writhing disco ball no one wanted to play anywhere near, especially me.

  Perfectly still, I remained crouched by the boulder, once my anchor, now my shield. And I waited.

  One second.

  Two.

  On three, every speck of the disco ball turned matte black. Deep black, the color of a night with no stars, the color of birth on Nil. This gate was an inbound, and now that it churned black, I knew it had a rider.

  Friend or foe?

  I’d barely finished the thought when the gate coughed out a flash of gold. An animal, with tawny fur the color of the waking sun and a thicker mane of the same, lay motionless on the black rock, his paws facing me.

  Foe, I thought.

  As the lion lifted his head, another gate popped up a meter farther out and dropped. It too shifted into charcoal black, a dangerous aperture primed to open. One tick later, the second gate dumped another golden animal, only this one lacked a mane.

  Lion number two rose to her feet as inbound gate number three appeared and instantly flashed black. Three gates, all inbounds. All with riders.

  This time the newcomer wasn’t a lion; it was a large, scrawny beast covered with dark splotches and a nasty mop of scraggly fur running down its back. It dropped out of the gate, rolled to a stop, and had barely stilled before raising its wobbly head. It sniffed once, swung its head around toward the lions—and me—and bared its teeth.

  I didn’t move.

  With a high-pitched keen, it rose to its feet and took off after the lions at a blistering pace. Hyena, I guessed, although I’d never seen one so large. The trio sprinted away, toward Mount Nil and the meadow, the mangy mutt chasing the lions, an unsettling visual if ever there was one.

  On Nil, even the king of the beasts ran in fear.

  I stood, alone again.

  Assessing again.

  Charley, gone. Thad, gone. The grizzly, trapped in rock, lost for good. Three out, three in, the island’s balance still intact, only today the Nil scales took a hard tip toward the deadly.

  When the trio vanished from sight, I went afte
r Charley’s gear. Her clothes, sandals, and satchel lay in a clean pile. Inside the satchel, Charley’s maps and fire bow waited, intact and undamaged. Thad’s knife glinted like a dull gate, like life and power and something primitively badass. An island offering, just for me.

  Thank you, Nil.

  I took it all and didn’t look back. The City was waiting.

  I hoped it was still standing.

  CHAPTER

  2

  SKYE

  NOVEMBER 16, 9:00 P.M.

  Six weeks ago, my mom gently informed me she’d been chosen to oversee an exciting new dig in Africa, and, oh by the way, I wasn’t invited.

  Two weeks ago, I moved in with my dad.

  Today, he handed me my uncle’s journal.

  Nothing will ever be the same.

  NINE HOURS EARLIER

  My dad’s official title is Daniel J. Bracken, PhD, Professor of Astrophysics and Solar-Terrestrial Physics at the Institute of Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, a Department of the University of New Hampshire. His unofficial titles? Island explorer, NASA consultant, stargazer extraordinaire. And the title that fits best? Forty-four-year-old bachelor obsessed with news of the weird.

  At least he was consistent.

  One step into Dad’s home office on the day I moved in confirmed that his last title was still the most accurate. Three walls were completely plastered with overlapping newspaper clippings of unusual happenings and missing-person reports, Internet printouts of similarly odd stories, and Google Earth snapshots. Paragraphs and headlines were circled in various colors; if there was a rhyme or reason for the rainbow-marker madness, it was lost on me. One wall contained a ginormous map of the South Pacific. Chalk lines marked a grid. White tacks dotted the map like stars.

  Since my visit last summer, the number of white tacks had grown.

  And Dad still insisted I exercise like a fiend. Morning runs, interval workouts, and a ridiculous amount of arm-strength exercises that bordered on fanatic. That’s the other thing about my dad: He’s a cross between the Nutty Professor and Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, only he specializes in Survivorman techniques instead of semiautomatic weapons. Obsessed with fitness, he’s pretty ripped for a dad, possibly because he’s lived the Paleo lifestyle for as long as I can remember. I’ve never eaten anything processed at Dad’s house. Then again, usually when I visit, we go off somewhere remote where sushi is tame.

  I came inside from a run, sweating and tired but feeling pretty good. I’d figured out years ago that my visits with Dad were easier—or at least less painful—if I made a decent effort to stay in shape back home in Gainesville. And by decent I mean sticking to a schedule of regular runs. As a result, I was thin, on the wiry side, but I’d no hope of building big muscles anyway; I had my mom’s small-boned build that topped out at a whopping five feet five. I’d also been cursed with the absolute nightmare that was my mom’s hair: curly blond ringlets that defied any kind of styling. I relied on massive amounts of ponytail holders and gravity to make it behave, with mixed results. At least I’d inherited my dad’s eyes. Neither blue nor green, my eyes were an equal combination of the two, with specks of mica mixed in like salt. My dad said the stars touched my eyes. It’s what makes them shine, he liked to say. If so, I guess the stars touched my dad’s eyes, too. It was the one feature we shared.

  “How was it, Skye?” Dad called from his office. “Did you sprint at the end?”

  I kicked off my shoes. “Yes, Dad, I sprinted at the end. The last fifty yards, as hard as I could.”

  “Good girl. How about push-ups? Did you knock those out yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Make time for them, Skye. A strong body makes for a strong mind,” he continued. “Don’t dismiss skills you may need just because you haven’t been called on to use them. And hopefully you never will, but better to plan for the worst and hope for the best.” His voice lightened. “But if you’re not busy with your push-ups, I’ve got something I want you to see.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, stretching. “Another video on edible plants of the South Pacific? Or a documentary on rudimentary tool making?”

  “At least you remember.” He laughed.

  One thing I’ll give my crazy-sweet dad is that he’s one of the biggest optimists I’ve ever met. He wasn’t faking his delight in my comments. He wasn’t totally balanced, either.

  It’s why my mom left.

  “Seriously, come in here for a sec,” he said.

  “Coming.” I sighed. Nothing in Dad’s office ever took just a “sec.”

  If possible, the walls of Dad’s office seemed more covered than usual. A new folding table hugged the wall under the window. Paper coated the table like frosting: piles of white, with handwritten notes scrawled everywhere. Yellow Post-it notes containing hand-drawn arrows pointing to other notes lurked haphazardly among the mess.

  As I entered, Dad’s eyes lit up like he’d just found leprechauns and their pot of gold.

  “Skye.” He held up a piece of paper and grinned. “I think I’m close.”

  “To what, exactly?” I tried to muster some enthusiasm and failed.

  “To finding the original home of my guide last year. Or rather, his grandmother.” He waved the paper animatedly. “According to his stories, his grandmother was relocated from her island birthplace in the late 1940s—a place of secrets and spirits, he said—and that’s the island I need to find.” Paper in hand, he walked over to the huge wall map of the South Pacific. “I’ve narrowed it down to a small cross-section of islands along the equator. I think I’m finally close.”

  The secret island, I thought, my heart sinking. Of course.

  Crazy-obsession number one, the one that pushed my mom over the edge and out the door.

  “Dad.” I spoke slowly, careful to keep my tone level. “I understand you think you’re close. But I also love you. And I think”—I paused, making sure he was giving me his full attention—“it’s time to stop. You’ve been fantasizing about this secret island for years. You’ve fixated on something that doesn’t exist—or if it does, it’s not part of our life. And you’re missing out on this life.” He’d gone still as he listened. Maybe that was what encouraged the words I’d been dying to say for the last few years.

  “Dad, Mom left because you wouldn’t let this island obsession go. She left, Dad. Four years ago. And you’ve been alone ever since. You don’t date, barely have friends, and every free minute you’re not working at the university or lecturing on solar flares or electromagnetism, you’re researching islands or traveling to one. For what, Dad? Where has it gotten you?” I swept my hand around the cluttered office. “Dad, you need to let it go,” I said softly. “As your daughter, I’m telling you: Let it go.”

  “And as your father, Skye, I’m telling you I can’t.” No judgment, no resignation, just pure astrophysicist matter-of-fact.

  He strode over to his desk and picked up a small, worn black journal. With equal purpose, he handed it to me.

  “This is your uncle Scott’s journal. He wrote it when he was seventeen. Your age. Read it and then we’ll talk.”

  I didn’t move. “I want you to think about what I said. I’m serious, Dad. It’s time to move on.”

  His smile was hard. “I know you’re serious, Skye. So am I. Read.”

  “Did Mom ever read this?” I held up the journal.

  Dad’s voice softened into a pained tone I didn’t recognize. “Yes, she did. But she never looked into his eyes. She never saw the truth.”

  The truth was, I’d never looked into my uncle’s eyes, either. I’d never had the chance. My dad’s twin brother had died in a freak accident at age eighteen.

  I went upstairs, took a quick shower, opened the journal, and began to read.

  CHAPTER

  3

  RIVES

  DAY 241, AFTER NOON

  It was all me, trekking solo.

  The last time I’d been this far inland without backup was the day I’d
arrived. Just like then, I had zero food, but unlike that hellacious first day, now I had supplies and clothes. Nudity didn’t bother me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to walk around with my junk on display either.

  Because of Charley’s escape, I even hauled an extra pair of shorts.

  I’d taken for granted that I’d have Charley beside me on the return trip. Taken for granted that she’d be my Second, maybe even the next Leader. Taken for granted that she’d help me decode the rest of Nil, uncovering the secrets that made Nil tick.

  Because I knew that Nil was holding back.

  Memories flashed, a million fractured mental pixels. Talla laughing, her blue eyes fierce. Talla whispering, “Be fearless, Rives.” Talla silent, lifeless in my arms.

  I needed to stop taking things for granted. Like time, and people.

  Got it, Nil, I thought.

  I guess I was just a slow learner.

  I glanced around, and struck by fierce island déjà vu, I laughed. I was retracing my steps from my Day One. Same solitary hike, right down to the afternoon arrival. I’d woken in this black rock field months ago and made it to the City by nightfall; I’d now spent 241 consecutive days in this deadly arena, more consecutive days than I’d spent in any place ever. Staying in one place so long implied roots, at least to me.

  But I damn sure wouldn’t call Nil home.

  Nil was more like purgatory, a place trapped between Heaven and Hell, with heavy doses of both. Maybe Nil was the devil’s playground, maybe it was Heaven’s testing ground. Maybe it was both. Or neither. Nobody stuck here had a clue.

  But lately I was desperate to find one.

  Surviving wasn’t enough anymore; I had to know why I was here. Why we all were here.

  Focus, Rives.

  Daydreaming was a dangerous pastime on Nil. Then again, daydreaming was risky anywhere. Daydreaming was what landed me here in the first place, that and blowing off my dad’s advice.

  Memories ripped through my head, moments I hadn’t replayed in months.

  Landing in Phuket. My dad laughing, my mom kissing his cheek. The slowing whir of the plane’s engines, the lazy wink of the hot flight attendant. The sleek feel of my sick new Canon with a telephoto lens. The annoying weight of the mandatory books on Thai history and culture.