WE FIND THE opening we’re looking for on the far back end of the cave, as we hoped, but it is anything but ideal: there’s nothing on the other side of it but a dizzying fifty-foot drop. The outer wall of the cave continues, sheer rock in three directions—left, right, and straight down. I focus on the sky, try not to lose it like I did on our earlier climb.
“Is that a bridge over there?” Phoenix asks.
I don’t see anything, not at first, but it turns out I’m being overly optimistic. “Like . . . way over there?” If I squint, I can just make it out. “Yes, I think that is a bridge.”
“It’s not that far,” Phoenix says.
Alexa shifts beside me. “If it isn’t, we could always swing from the ropes, right?”
“You and ropes,” Cass says, under his breath. I’d almost forgotten they had such a history with each other, but this comment brings back in screaming color everything Alexa told us yesterday, about Zero, how she dragged him to barracks by the neck. I expect her to bite back, but she’s unusually quiet.
“There’s a ledge jutting out of the cliff side,” Hope says, moving to the front of the pack. “See? It goes all the way to the bridge.” She places one narrow foot on the ledge—a ledge so insubstantial it blends in completely with the rest of the cliff wall. I don’t know how she noticed it.
“Wait!” Lonan says, before Hope takes another step and accidentally kills herself. “We’ll need something to hold on to. Phoenix, you’ve still got fishing line in your pack from the ship?”
“You know it.” Phoenix unzips the front pocket of his pack and produces a half-empty roll. “This enough?”
“Better be.” Lonan unsheathes his dagger and begins to wrap the line around the hilt, around and around and around. He ties it off with his teeth. “Eden, hold the roll, will you?”
He plunks the small plastic disk in my hand before I can refuse, begins letting out the entire length of the line. I see where he’s going with this and hope mightily that it’s long enough to stretch all the way to the bridge. Also, that he’s a sure shot when throwing a dagger.
Turns out we’re lucky on both accounts. Either that, or Lonan doesn’t take risks unless he knows he can come out on top. It really isn’t as far to the bridge as I’d first assumed—the empty disk has 48ft printed on it, and it wasn’t full to begin with.
Lonan tugs on the line, hard. It holds.
“How are you going to secure this end?” I ask. There are no branches around that look strong enough to support our weight as we cross.
“You’re looking at it,” he says, biceps flexing. And then, before any of us can protest: “Cass and Hope, cross first. Finnley and Alexa, get ready—when Cass is across, you’ll go with Phoenix.”
“And me?” I ask.
“Help me anchor while they cross,” he says. “Not sure I have it in me to hold it steady for six individual trips—two team trips are manageable, but only if they’re not all on me. That way I’ll still have strength left to hold it when it’s your turn.”
“What will you hold on to, though?” Hope asks.
“I’ll free-scale it,” he says. “I used to free-climb all the time, Before.”
“Both of us did,” Phoenix adds. “We’ll be good. You good?” He glances around, meets everyone’s eyes. None of us look particularly good, but none of us has a better suggestion. “All right. Cass, you’re up. Hope—ready?”
“I’ve got you,” Cass tells Hope. It’s the first time I’ve seen something other than his bitter-with-Alexa facet. While he’s still unapologetically intense, this softness with Hope makes me wonder if he had younger siblings—and, if so, what happened to them in this war.
Determination flashes in Hope’s eyes. “Ready,” she says. “Let’s go.”
Lonan gives me a look, tells me everything I never knew I needed to hear without saying a word: You are strong. You can do this.
“All I need is some counterforce,” he says. He faces the cave wall, pulls the line until it’s tight over his shoulder and starting to dig in. “Just lean as hard as you can against me; like, drive me into the rock wall.”
Oh. Oh.
Well. Looks like we’ll be getting to know each other very well. I press into him, all of my front against all of his back, like we’re . . . like we are much more intimate than we are. He’s respectful about it, which helps. It isn’t as awkward as I expect, and while it’s definitely too much too soon, it isn’t unpleasant. At least, not until Alexa and Finnley pile on behind me and pin us even harder to the wall.
But it works: Cass and Hope make it across with little trouble. And with all the weight on Lonan, he isn’t burned out when it comes time for us to support the other three on our own.
“Listen,” he says, when it’s just us holding the line with everything we have. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I wish I could see his face. “I wasn’t entirely honest before—about why we’re here—and it’s eating at me. The drawings in your book, they threw me off guard. Not even the guys know about them.”
“I mean,” I say, slightly confused, “why would the guys know about them? It was only you who saw them.”
He pauses. Great, now we’re both confused. “You said the book was special,” he says. “You said someone gave it to you—with all of these sketches already inside? Or did you make them?”
I laugh, I can’t help it, and the line slips the tiniest bit. Immediately, I readjust, wrap my arms even tighter around Lonan’s waist. “No, I didn’t make them. I don’t even know exactly what they are.” Lonan isn’t the only one with half-truths. I guess that makes us even.
“You don’t know what they are.”
It isn’t a question—he doesn’t believe me.
“And you do?” I counter.
His silence gives him away. He knows—how does he know? Blueprints for the Atlas Project habitat were never made public, not even when Zhornov leaked all of Envirotech’s secrets that sent the world spinning.
“The Allied Forces approached the Resistance, and the Resistance gave me a mission,” he says, and it is the absolute last thing I expected him to say. “The other guys, I haven’t even told them, that’s how secret it is—they think the only reason we’re here is to find the cure, the HoloWolf cure.”
“And you’re not?”
“No, we are. That’s just not all I’m supposed to find.”
“And the Alliance sent you,” I say. “Like, the Allied Forces—the entire-rest-of-the-world-aligned-to-take-down-the-Wolfpack Allied Forces? They sent you. You? To find what?”
“Same thing you’re here to find, looks like,” he says.
What? “I’m not looking for the habitat,” I say, the word habitat out of my mouth before I can stop it. “I’m looking for Sanctuary—the amnesty island? Refuge from the war, immunity?”
He deflates, tightens up his grip on the line. I risk a quick glance behind me, see Finnley and Alexa and Phoenix making slow, careful progress toward the bridge. They’re over halfway across now.