“Not anymore,” he said with a wide grin.

  “You do realize the ocean is not a toilet?”

  “I’m pretty sure the fish love things like human urine. Adds flavor to stuff.”

  “Wow. I’d forgotten the high intellectual levels of the east-siders’ conversations.”

  Carson said this, having arrived a few minutes earlier with several of their compatriots from the west side. He was a giant of a man, muscles bulging in places where Isaac didn’t know muscles existed. Carson always looked a little out of proportion, as if he worked one part of his body too hard, and then had to spend some time evening things out with different exercises. When the day came that he got everything just right, all of it in perfect harmony, his skin would probably explode from the stress and he’d die in a bloody, meaty mess.

  “We could’ve used those guns of yours”—Sadina pointed at his biceps—“as we dragged these suckers down the cliff.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Lacey, here, had a bit of a stomach issue and we decided to wait for her.”

  Lacey, her spirit about a thousand times larger than her diminutive size, punched Carson right in the stomach. He tried to hide it, but his sheath of muscles didn’t entirely protect him.

  “Am I lying?” he asked, half-groaning and half-laughing. His hand had found its way to the spot where she’d socked him.

  “No, but you didn’t have to tell the whole group. Gunk of klunk in a trunk.”

  The whole group snickered at that. Lacey was famous for her absolute refusal to use any of the traditional swear words because she thought it made people look very uneducated. But her grandpa had passed down some writing he’d made of his time with the Gladers of old, and he’d included a list of slang that had died out over the decades. Lacey was doing everything in her power to bring them back. No one had a clue as to why, but it did provide a lot of entertainment.

  “That hurts, Lacey,” Carson said solemnly, “even more than the right hook to my gut.”

  “Next time, I’ll aim lower.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  Trish clapped her hands once. She had a double-oar in the crook of an elbow and looked ready to go. “Come on, guys. Not sure how it helps talking about Dominic’s and Lacey’s human waste procedures, but how about we get on these damn boats and row out to the Point?”

  The group gave a hearty cheer in response, Isaac included. They had ten people—everyone who’d been invited had shown up. Himself, Sadina, Trish, Dominic, and Miyoko from the east side, Carson, Lacey, Boris, Jackie, and Shen from the west. Isaac didn’t know the west-siders as well as he knew the others, but they all seemed cool enough. Boris was a quiet, deep-thinker type with a buzz cut and giant ears. Jackie had the darkest skin Isaac had ever seen, matched with the longest hair, always tied up into one thick braid. Shen was loud and brash and full of energy, even though he was as skinny as Carson was thick. With nine personalities like what Isaac saw before him, the day’s adventures should never a dull moment find.

  “You’re with me,” Sadina said to Isaac, gesturing toward one of the kayaks, in which she’d already thrown her backpack.

  “You don’t wanna go with Trish?” he asked, the words coming out a little sheepishly. He absolutely wanted to ride with Sadina—for one thing, she seemed the most seaworthy of the bunch.

  Sadina scoffed. “You kidding me? We’ll kill each other if we ride together.”

  Trish gave that comment a shrug but didn’t argue the point.

  “Alright, then,” Dominic said. “Let’s quit pussyfooting around and do this.”

  Isaac slipped into Sadina’s designated kayak, sitting in the front because she’d thrown her stuff toward the back. Just enough water seeped through his shorts that his breath halted mid-throat, his skin burning from the icy cold. How was it that the ocean didn’t warm up with the sun beating on it all day every day? Every last centimeter of him shivered.

  Sadina plopped into her seat and pushed off with the oar. Then she dipped it into the water at her right. “You remember how this works?”

  He wanted to reply that he wasn’t an idiot, but he worried that his words might come out a little mousy. With a nod he dipped his own oar to the left. Then, following her cadence, they slipped out to sea. No one could keep up with them.

  I’m not afraid of the water, he thought. I’m not afraid of the water.

  Stone Point lay at the very tip of a long, craggy peninsula that stretched and curved out from the main body of the island, first heading north then bending toward the west in an arc. Isaac’s and the four other boats had disembarked from the west side of that peninsula, now cutting across the open bay formed by the main island and the long spit of rock itself. Though at the greatest distance they were probably only a couple of kilometers from land, Isaac still felt a rush of danger and adrenaline. As if they’d soon be swallowed by the immensity of the ocean and had roughly a ten-point-three percent chance of dying a horrible death. Yes, he was practically as brave as the Gladers of old.

  “There’s an inlet right before you get to Stone Point,” Sadina called up to him. “We need to bank and tie up the kayaks in there so they won’t get pummeled by the waves. From there we can hike to the cliffs and the caves.”

  “Sounds good,” Isaac replied, consciously keeping his voice steady. He suddenly knew, without the slightest of doubts, that he was the least brave person in this group of ten. Jump off cliffs? No cliff in sight looked like something a human should be jumping from. And there was no telling what the hell lived in those caves. Bats? Sharks? Alligators? He’d never felt so stupid in his life.

  Soon enough they reached the inlet Sadina had spoken of, rough cliffs of black rock towering above them. They and the others ran their kayaks onto a low bank of pebbles and tied them to a massive tree that looked like it’d been dead since Napoleon roamed the earth. There wasn’t another sign of vegetation in sight.

  “Okay,” Trish said once they’d gathered by the entrance to a cave that Isaac never would’ve spotted on his own. An overhang slanted from right to left, and the shadows it created hid a six-foot-tall opening into blackness. “Here’s the plan. We’ll squeeze through this tunnel that leads to the north side. If a wave comes rushing in, don’t panic or you’ll end up sucking down a gallon of salt water. Just brace yourself and wait it out.”

  No one laughed at this, least of all Isaac. Sadina had failed to share the little part about being inside a cave while a wall of water came crashing through.

  Trish continued. “Once we get to the other side, there are a couple of cool cliffs we can jump off, and then a few more caves to explore. Some of those have awesome swimming holes inside. It’ll be fun as long as no one freaks out.”

  Isaac was feeling more encouraged by the second.

  Dominic spoke next. “Will anyone be offended if I swim in the buff?”

  This was answered with a rousing and unanimous affirmative.

  “I figured,” he muttered. Isaac felt a little sorry for him. The guy’s whole life floated or sank on his ability to make people laugh. He tried, bless his heart.

  “I’ll lead,” Trish said, no more amused than the others. “Sadina will take up the rear so we don’t lose anybody.”

  She looked around, eyebrows raised, expecting a question or two. When no one responded, she turned around, ducked her head slightly, and slipped into the darkness of the cave.

  “Catch ya on the other side!” she yelled over her shoulder, the hollow echo of her words swallowed by the rocks.

  Isaac couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this cold. The tunnel that cut through the peninsula couldn’t have been more than a hundred meters long, but it was grueling in the darkness. No one had bothered to bring a torch, and flashlights were a thing that only existed in the old world. How Trish knew her way through the turns and drops and inclines was beyond him. But they stayed close together, each of them doing exactly what the person in front of them did. Truth be told, once his eyes adjusted, just enough light seeped in from both ends of the tunnel to keep him from face-slamming into a rock every ten seconds.

  But the water made Isaac miserable. Every step of the way, at the very least his shoes were completely immersed, and often the freezing liquid came all the way to his shorts. The splish-splash of their ten pairs of legs slogging through the narrow stream made Isaac think of Captain Sparks dunking lengths of hot iron into the cooling buckets. What he wouldn’t give for some of the warmth from the Forge fires. Every centimeter of skin he owned shivered uncontrollably.

  It wasn’t really that much fun learning that he was this big of a wimp when it came to adventuring. It’s just the cold and the wet, he thought. I can handle anything as long as it’s warm. He’d hiked and climbed almost every square meter of this huge island, but usually with the comfort of the sun lighting the way.

  “There’s gotta be some dead bodies decomposing in here,” Carson the giant said. He was two or three people behind Isaac. “Something don’t smell right.”

  Isaac took a big sniff but didn’t notice anything besides the usual strong scent of the sea, which pretty much anyone would agree smelled like rotting fish.

  “Wasn’t me,” Dominic replied, to the surprise of no one.

  Sadina spoke up from her position in the very back. “Over seventy years, I’m sure at least a few poor saps got lost in here. We’re probably stepping on bones and body parts as we speak.”

  “Remind me never to go anywhere with east-siders again,” someone said. Isaac thought it was the girl with the long, braided hair, Jackie.

  “I don’t remember inviting you,” Sadina replied.

  “Ouch,” was her response.

  As for Isaac, he was just glad for human voices, a reminder that he wasn’t alone. On they went, trudging along, splish-splash, splish-splash, smart-ass comments in abundance.

  Soon the darkness abated and the bright entrance to the north side presented itself, Trish a perfect silhouette within its frame. Relief filled Isaac, and he was already trying to think up an excuse to stay on the cliffs when everyone else explored the other caves. He’d heard stories of soldiers in past wars shooting themselves in the foot to get out of battle. Well, maybe he’d take an accidental tumble and sprain an ankle or two.

  Trish hadn’t moved since she’d reached the exit, and the others were grouping around her. All of them stared northward, toward the endless expanse of the ocean. It seemed a little odd that they weren’t spreading out into the warmth of the sunlight. Isaac reached the crowd and felt a sudden desperation to push them out of the way and scramble to fresh air. But something had grabbed their attention, something he couldn’t see yet. No one moved or spoke a word.

  “What’s going on?” Sadina asked, making him jump because she was only inches behind. “What’re you guys looking at?”

  Without responding, Trish finally exited the cave and stepped onto a wide ledge of rock, her movements slow and unsure, her eyes never leaving the distant spot at which she stared. Everyone else ambled along to follow her, and Isaac was finally able to leave the claustrophobic confines of that awful tunnel. But as he emerged, he finally caught sight of what the others had seen.

  Drifting along the surface of the ocean, several hundred meters away, bobbing and dipping with the current and the waves, heading straight toward Isaac and his friends, was something that none of them had ever seen before. And yet they knew exactly what it was.

  A boat. A manufactured boat from the old world.

  A big boat. Bigger than any single building on the entire island.

  A ship.

  As soon as Isaac’s brain registered that he was seeing what he thought he was seeing, the ship blasted its horn—the loudest, deepest, scariest sound he’d ever heard.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Old Names

  Mikhail had always told Alexandra that he had visions. She didn’t like it. Mentions of a lost people sailing the seas, returning to the old, destroyed world. Mentions of orphan armies rising up against the Godhead and the Pilgrims of the Maze. Horrors, all. Gift or lunacy?

  It was the part of their lives that scared her the most. Even after the greatest of her trials and experiments over the decades, the true nature of their disease still eluded her. How can one make a final judgment on a thing that is always changing, always evolving, always unpredictable? Even so, she’d been committed to the impossible since the day of the Evolution. Now, striding through the city with her Evolutionary Guard on all sides, marching, watching, alert for all enemies, she felt no regret. Not even a drop.

  In her mind, everything had a purpose and a plan. All of it, leading to her own vision of the future. But not like Mikhail. When he mentioned visions, he sounded like a crazy person.

  And that was the crux. The root of all her fears.

  Madness.

  Dawn had broken, the clouds above the city glowing from the faint light of the rising sun. That worried her, too, the timing of this. Fanatics of old often used the precise moment of the sun cresting the horizon as a centerpiece for their rituals and ceremonies. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if Mikhail was doing just that. The idea of the Godhead had gone straight to the man’s head, in all too literal a fashion. His lack of control threatened everything she’d worked for.

  And now, this.

  He’d gone to the Glade. At sunrise. A place where the sun had never shone.

  The thought chilled her more than the cool air of Alaska ever could.

  As usual, a crowd of pilgrims had gathered at the fortified entrance to the caverns below. An ominous crowd, to be sure. Some were naked, with slashes upon their backs, wounds they’d received of their own choosing. Others were dressed in the robes of their religion, its coarse wool the color of old mustard. A few even dressed in the false furs of the Grieving, their foreheads surgically adorned with two spikes on either side, slanted toward the sky like the horns of a beast.

  A shudder ran through Alexandra’s body. These people disgusted her, made her feel an illness that her very own disease could never match. And yet, by all accounts, they were free of lower virus strains that took away all rationality. Many, many tests had proven so. They followed their order with mostly normal brain functions, strived to walk the pathway of the Maze by their own free will and choice. She felt that the definition of insanity needed to be updated. Quite literally. She made a mental note to pursue the matter with whomever and wherever dictionaries were maintained. But one thing Alexandra knew for certain:

  She was not insane.

  The Maze pilgrims spotted the Evolutionary Guard well after the guards had spotted the pilgrims. It was always this way, which is why they’d been chosen as her protectors. The Godhead wasn’t any safer from these fanatics than other people, perhaps even less so. By the time the wailing and the singing and the mad rush to touch a member of the Godhead erupted in a chaotic flurry, the guards were in perfect position. As always, their orders were to avoid seriously injuring the people unless no other alternative presented itself.

  The filthy, sweaty, bloody bodies pressed in from all directions, their wild shouts and wails concussing the dawn air until it all blended into one nightmarish shriek. But no one got close. The guards maneuvered perfectly, utilizing their Launch Beams when necessary. The electric buzz of the Beams, the ozone smell, always served as a comfort to Alexandra. She was a member of the Godhead, and no one—friend, foe, or worshipper—could ever bring her harm.

  A path had been cleared to the massive steel door that served as the only entrance to the stairs on the other side, the stairs that led into the depths of the earth. As she made her way between the packed barriers of bodies, many gave up the struggle to rush her and dropped to their knees, falling all over each other, screaming cries of adoration. It was necessary, being their deity, but that didn’t ease the tightness in her belly, or the revulsion at seeing them, writhing, prostrate, causing some of the guards to stumble and step on their heads.

  She reached the steel door, its gray face filthy from the countless hands of the worshippers who’d touched its surface. Only three people in the world could open this door. A technology recovered from the ruins of this sacred place, much like everything that had led to the establishment of the Godhead. There was power in technology, immense power. Others might call it magic. Miracle. Priesthood.

  Alexandra knew the precise places to put her hands, palms flat, fingers outstretched. A thin layer of clouded glass covered the subtle fingerprint scanners so that it appeared more mystical than truth. A series of chirps sounded, a staccato, otherworldly sound to the people collapsed all around her. Then there was a loud clunk, the scream of straining metal, finally followed by the rumble of the giant door sliding to the right. The people oohed and aahed at the sight, even as they felt the thrumming vibration that rattled the ground. A faint glow of red shone from the yawning entrance, barely enough to illuminate the first couple of stairs that spiraled downward into darkness.

  Members of the Guard had collapsed the perimeter into a semicircle around the opening, not a breath of air between them, facing outward. Their Launch Beams ignited in a brilliant blue lattice of bars, deterring even the craziest, bravest of pilgrims from charging. The hum was an awesome thing to hear, somehow overpowering even the clank of the door completing its slide into a hollow compartment of cement.

  “I’ll go alone,” she commanded, and she sensed the guards’ fierce unwillingness to let her do such a thing. But they were wise enough to keep their protests silent. The worshippers would of course be enraptured by her bravery, though needlessly so. She’d know if anyone besides Mikhail had passed through before her, and no one had. Also, she had a virtual armory of weapons hidden throughout the caverns. No, she must go alone. She couldn’t risk a witness to those things about to occur.

  Alexandra stepped across the threshold of the entrance, placing her foot on the tiny bump in the floor that triggered the closing of the door. Again came the rumbling, the vibration, the squeal of moving metal. Looking at the footprints Mikhail had left in the dust, she didn’t move until the door closed with a hard thump.