“Thank you, Master Crenshaw,” Ryan says with a small smile. He looks so happy. Flattered by the old guy’s admiration and I realize I’m not the only one who grew up without a dad. Who feels that missing piece of me.
“I believe I have the names of each of the tribes correct, but of course I’m unsure as to what the true names of the Colonies are.”
“C-92,” I deadpan, pulling my eyes away from Ryan’s smile. I wipe my sweating palms on my pants before pointing to the football stadium. Next I point to the baseball stadium right next door. “G-11. The one in the southeast is somewhere along the water but I don’t know where. The people I talked to didn’t either. It’s G-35.”
They stare at me in shock. I don’t know if they’re surprised I remembered the names or that I know them at all. I have a brief, paranoid and horrifying thought that they’ll think I’m a spy. That I didn’t ‘escape’ the Colony at all but that I was released to… what? Be socially awkward with a hot guy and help an old lunatic finish his map quest?
“Where were you held?” Ryan asks.
He’s looking at me, I can feel it. I keep my eyes trained on the table.
“The MOHAI,” I reply curtly.
“The what?”
I point to the spot on Cren’s map. The small area tucked in the harbor that felt a million miles away from here but now looks so close. Too close. And too small to house so many people. Too small to house a person like Vin.
“It was here. In the old museum building. I can’t remember what MOHAI stands for, but it was Colony A-36.”
Crenshaw quickly whips out a charcoal pencil from his box of goodies and begins filling in the information I’ve given him.
“Why did they name them like that?” Ryan asks, watching Crenshaw’s simple, slanting handwriting scrawl over the pages. I expected something more somehow. Old English flourishes or Latin. Maybe Aramaic. These chicken scratches annoy me. “It seems so cold compared to what they’re always spouting on the billboards or over their intercoms.”
“Everything about them is a lie,” Crenshaw mutters.
“It’s to confuse people.” I point vaguely to the MOHAI. “The people in the building where I was held are pulled from all of the other Colonies. It’s what I told you about breaking up families. Every one of those people has someone in another Colony somewhere. Someone they care about. They all have something to lose.”
Ryan nods. “Makes sense. It’s a good way to control people. But why did these people get pulled away from their families to go here? Is it a new Colony? I’ve never heard of one up that way.”
“It can’t be new. It’s too well developed. And a girl I talked to said it had been occupied before but there was a problem in the building. They abandoned it for a while.”
“Who was this girl?”
I shrug, sitting back with my arms crossed over my chest. “Just some chick angry at being there.”
“Another friend?” Ryan asks, grinning.
I shake my head. “I punched her in the face.”
“Typical.”
“And the ear. I almost knelt on her throat. Nearly smothered her with a pillow.”
“Now do you see why I have a hard time believing you made friends in there?”
“This young woman,” Crenshaw says suddenly, frowning at his map, “did she know if there were others? Other Colonies?”
“No, just the ones you have marked now.”
He looks up at me, his face drawn. He’s disappointed. “It is a shame you could not gain us more valuable information while you were there.”
“It is. It’s a shame I didn’t do more sleuthing while I was there,” I say, my temper rising. “I should have gone all Sherlock up in that joint, but I was too busy trying not to lose my mind from all of the bright lights and bodies everywhere. Next time, I promise, I’ll do better.”
Ryan isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s watching Crenshaw carefully, probably worried I’ll upset him with my sarcasm. Part of me is worried too, but a bigger part is annoyed. Tired. Angry.
“What is this?” I demand, changing the subject.
I point to a dark area of the map, shaded in shadows with jagged strokes. It’s in the south, just a few blocks from the two stadium Colonies sitting side by side.
“Hmmm,” Crenshaw moans quietly. “That is a portal into Hell.”
“Right.”
“The space between here,” he points to a narrow corridor running between the dark area and the Colonies, “is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. One must never, never pass through it.”
“Of course not.”
“But none of this is important, not right now. What I want to show you is this.”
Crenshaw turns the map toward us. He points decisively to a small area at the very bottom. It’s just the peak of a piece of land, nothing descript or defining about it at all. But written carefully over the top of it is the word Elysium.
“And what is that?”
Crenshaw smiles at me, his eyes wild. “Heaven.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say faintly, squinting at the map. “I can see it now.”
“How is it Heaven, sir?” Ryan asks.
His foot nudges mine gently under the table. I don’t know if it’s on purpose, if it’s a warning or an accident. Either way I don’t like it and I move my feet away from him.
“It is an island in the south. It is completely and utterly wraith free.”
“That’s impossible.”
“My boy, in Heaven nothing is impossible. This is where you will go to look for help.”
“To where?” I ask feeling frustrated. “What is this? Who’s there? I’ve never heard of anywhere being Risen free, nowhere real. It’s all myth.”
“It is a place like no other. One must only believe, to have faith in—“
“Crenshaw, what is it?” I snap, exasperated.
My patience for this conversation has died. I care about this guy, I really do, but I’m already pushed to my limits with everything else going on and now talking about the Colonies, being scolded for not getting better intel while I was in prison… I’m spent. I’m riddled with guilt and this ring pinching at my finger, growing tighter every single day, is dragging me down to the ground. I need answers. Real ones, not fairytales that will send me on adventures or journeys to strange mystical lands where I’m meant to ask for help from the fairies or the centaurs. If this is all the help he has, some slice of land in the south where he thinks he saw an angel once, then I have to get real and go to The Hive.
He looks at me in surprise, his eyes narrowing. “It is rude to interrupt, child. I thought you better than this.”
“Well, I’m not. This has been fun, but I need the real Crenshaw for a minute. Is he in there or am I wasting my time? Cause if he’s not in, that’s fine. I’ll go get my help elsewhere.”
He sits back in his seat, appraising me. “You mean the others.”
“I mean The Hive.”
“Joss,” Ryan says quietly. His tone tells me that, yes, the foot nudge was a warning.
I ignore it and him.
“What’s it going to be, Cren?”
There’s a long tense silence in the small room. The smell of the onions is starting to give me a headache, the low light messing with my eyes and making them burn. As he continues to stare at me, something in his face changes. He’s angry at me but there’s something else too. Something I’m not equipped to read or understand.
“It is an island,” Crenshaw finally says softly, “filled with people. Survivalists like myself. They cleared it of the wraiths, built homes, made it sustainable. They are very reclusive. Very exclusive. Many in my generation know of them but they are heavily guarded and not to be trifled with. You may join by invitation only and they stopped sending out invitations a long time ago.”