The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [45]
He’s completely right but still I say nothing.
He shrugs. “If I were you I’d be doing the same thing.” Abruptly he stands back up, straightens his black Recruiter uniform.
“See, this is what you need to understand,” he says, stepping closer, using his bulk to intimidate me. “I know how you think because I’m just like you: a fighter and a survivor. This is why you need to understand something: this is your last chance at safety.”
As if to punctuate what he’s saying, he places a heavy hand on my shoulder, and I jerk back, brushing his touch away. “I’m just letting you know where reality stands so you can make the right decision.”
“You don’t scare me,” I lie to him.
He smiles, even chuckles, and considers me a moment before saying, “There’s something you should see.”
Warily, wishing the Recruiters hadn’t stripped us of our weapons when we landed, I allow Ox to steer me through cold gray corridors that twist and turn, taking us farther into the core of the mazelike structure. He never hesitates, just weaves around corners and down steep stairwells with me following and trying to memorize the pattern of turns.
He pauses in front of a plain door that looks no different from any of the others and pushes it open, stepping back for me to go in first.
The room’s pitch-black, no windows or light source of any kind that I can tell, and I hesitate in the entrance. Ox slides past me, letting the door slowly swing shut until it falls against my back, only a narrow sliver of illumination from the hall penetrating the darkness.
I swallow and try to breathe evenly, not wanting him to notice my fear that maybe I’ve gotten myself into worse trouble than I realize.
Next to me I hear him fumble, see the sparks from a flint and then a tiny warm glow. “Shut the door,” he says, cupping the flame in his hand. I hesitate, staring back into the empty hallway, watching my breath frost in the flat light. Wondering if I should make a run for it after all.
But then I glance around me at the room and my heart stills. Slowly, carefully, I reach out my fingers and nudge the door closed with a click.
Ox moves farther inside, lighting more lanterns scattered along tables of varying size as he goes. The flames fight against the dark, the room growing brighter, and as it does, what covers the walls becomes clearer: maps.
Maps of cities and countries—of the whole world. Maps of everywhere, and they all sparkle under the growing light as if live stars reside within. Mesmerized by the gleam, I walk over to the closest wall and find that the maps are peppered with pins, their metallic shafts glittering.
It’s amazing and beautiful and overwhelming all at once.
Ox stays on the other side of the room, far away from me, and I take his distance as permission to explore. I run my fingers over the pins, entirely fascinated by what I’m looking at. There are countries I’ve never heard of, with lines crisscrossing and scratched out to show new borders.
“What is this place?” I ask, moving to the next map, inspecting the curve of a shore along some ocean, the pins sticking out like tiny metal trees.
“War room,” he says. “The Protectorate controlled it. Recruiters didn’t even know about it until we took the Sanctuary.” He leans against a table, his hands curled around the edge of it, one foot crossed over the other. He looks relaxed but I can tell by the way he holds himself, the tension in his shoulders, that he’s just trying to pretend he’s calm. To pretend that me being here doesn’t bother him.
I make a full circle, staring at each wall—the world spread flat for my eyes to travel. I end up in front of a magnified section of the map that shows the Dark City, the rivers surrounding it and the land stretching beyond that. To the west and south on the mainland there’s a huge barren section bordered by a thick black line. I trace my finger along it.
“That’s the edge of the Forest,