Full Tilt Part 11

"No-I mean in the real world. The place that matters."

Quinn looked around furtively, then leaned in close, so that no one else could hear. "Don't ruin this for me!" he said. And I saw, behind all the glitz and dazzle Quinn had surrounded himself with, that hollow desperation that was always there. "You have your life," he whispered, "your grades, your scholars.h.i.+p. Let me have this."

How could I argue against that craving in him, that bottomless need for something more? "Quinn . . . whatever you think is happening here, you're wrong. No matter how empty you feel inside, this place won't fill you. It's like . . . cotton candy, and in the end it'll destroy you."

Quinn looked around at his court, where dozens of subjects filled the great hall, ready to bow to his every whim. "If I have to spend my life trapped on a ride, then I'm fine with this one." He leaned back on his settee and motioned to one of the slave girls, who fed him more candied dates. "The mighty Tutankhamen moves for no man," he said, loud enough for his subjects to hear.

"The mighty Tutankhamen was killed by his adviser!"

"That's never been proven," said a familiar voice. I turned to see Ca.s.sandra step out from behind a pillar.

"Meet my adviser," said Quinn.

She looked beautiful, with her painted eyes and gilded robe, exotic and invincible. But I had seen the fear in her. No amount of glamour could hide it now.

"If you're going to crash our party, at least have something to eat." She waved her hand at the elaborate spread of sumptuous dishes and the courtiers who had filled their plates with food-although none of them were actually eating. They were all watching us.

"Why don't you tell him how the ride ends?" I said. I had a pretty good idea how it did.

"Gloriously!" She winked at me. "An interment in the Valley of the Kings."

Quinn beamed. "See? And you were worried."

"That's a funeral!" I informed him.

At that moment one of the courtiers near the throne collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. No one seemed to care.

"Who was that?" I asked.

Now Quinn looked a bit concerned. "Uh . . . the food taster."

I looked around at the courtiers in attendance, who were still not eating from their plates.

Quinn brought his hand to his stomach. "I don't feel so good." He stumbled back onto his settee. A girl tried to feed him another date, but he pushed her hand away. "Why do I feel so dizzy?"

"The nature of the ride," answered Ca.s.sandra.

I tried not to sound as desperate as I felt. "I'll make you a deal: Let my brother go, and I'll stop right here, on the sixth ride."

A chorus of murmurs broke out behind me.

"Sixth ride, sixth ride, sixth ride, sixth ride . . ."

The crowd's whispers dropped into silence, and courtiers were even more attentive than they had been before. They were clearly impressed by how far I'd gotten, and that fact was not lost on Ca.s.sandra.

"Self-sacrifice . . . I like it! But why should I bargain now, when I already have you both?"

Quinn fell to his knees, gripping his stomach. "Blake . . . help me."

I lunged toward him, but the guards held me back. Even if I broke free, what could I do?

"You can't save him," Ca.s.sandra said. "You couldn't save anyone ten years ago, and you can't save your brother now."

Ten years ago? My anger flared. "You caused that accident, not me!"

"But you were the one who let them die!"

"That's not true!" It was as if I were shrinking down to be that child again, smas.h.i.+ng, smas.h.i.+ng, smas.h.i.+ng against her accusations, like I smashed against the unyielding emergency exit door. . . .

The angrier I got, the calmer she became. "They died because you didn't try hard enough to open that door."

"I was seven years old!"

Quinn fell over groaning and curled up like a baby. Ca.s.sandra was right; I couldn't save Quinn. Maybe I never could. But was it too late for him to save himself?

"There's a way out of every ride, Quinn," I shouted to him, hoping he was still conscious enough to hear me. "There's a way out of every ride!"

But as the guards dragged me out Ca.s.sandra shook her head and said, "Not for the king."

The Egyptians did not have dungeons-at least not in the medieval sense-but they did have plenty of tombs. The place they dumped me was every bit as nasty as one of those medieval dungeons where people got tossed in the Dark Ages and were left there to rot. An oubliette, that's the word. It sounds French, but five'll get you ten it was invented by ancient Egyptians.

The guards said nothing as they threw me in. They merely ripped my watch from my wrist, figuring I'd have no further use for it. It was the one thing that had stayed with me from ride to ride, an ever present reminder of the pa.s.sing night. Then they heaved a heavy stone over the opening, which sealed me in with an echoing boom. It didn't seem like Ca.s.sandra to leave me here to die; but perhaps I had her so scared, she just wanted to be rid of me.

I heard something move in the cell just a few feet away from me, and I froze. Instantly my mind ran through all the things it could possibly be. Rats. Cobras. Scorpions.

There was a narrow slit in the roof, not wide enough to climb through but wide enough to bring in a small shaft of light from high above. My eyes adjusted to the light, and I strained to see what nature of creature I'd been entombed with.

It wasn't a creature, but a person. Another prisoner. He was chained to the tomb wall and looked weak, as if he had been in this place for a very long time. Yet he didn't seem surprised to see me.

"h.e.l.lo, Blake," he said. "d.a.m.n, you've grown."

It was like being smashed in the head with a pole again.

"Dad?"

"So here we are," he said. "At least you didn't get chained to the wall."

I closed my eyes. This was not possible. It was just another trick of the ride. It had to be. "You're not really here!" I said through gritted teeth. "You're a fake. My real father is somewhere in Oregon with his new family."

"Idaho."

"Shut up!" I opened my eyes again, trying to will the vision away, but it didn't work. If there was anyone in this world I didn't want to see-let alone ride with, it would be him. This man whom I locked out of my mind so long ago. This man whom I barely remembered.

"Are you real?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know?"

A whole host of unwanted, unhelpful emotions began to cloud my focus and reasoning. I didn't need this. I had enough to face without facing him.

"Too bad. You've got me, whether you want me or not," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

"Didn't you?"

And that told me all I needed to know. He had read my thoughts, which meant he wasn't real. It was just the park, reading my mind again, throwing out yet another stumbling block to slow me down and keep me distracted until my time ran out. That explained why his face was hidden in shadow. It was because I couldn't really remember his face, and the ride couldn't spit back what my mind couldn't feed it. I knew all this in my head, and yet I also knew it didn't matter that he wasn't real, because there's a part of you that your mind can't reach. It's the part of you that jumps when the monster pops out of the darkness on a movie screen. It's the part that's endlessly amazed by magicians, even though you know their tricks are just sleight of hand. It believes what it sees, and right now it saw my father.

"If you think I'm gonna fight with you or forgive you for abandoning us, forget it. You're not sucking me into some big emotional thing."

"Who says I want to?"

I paced the tomb, stumbling over chunks of stone that littered the ground, angry at myself for feeling angry at all. Someday there'd be a time and place to face my father in the real world. But not here. Not now. I forced myself to stop pacing. I had to bring clarity to my thoughts. "I'm getting out of here."

"This is a tomb," my phantom father said. "It can only be opened from the outside."

I concentrated on the ma.s.sive sealing stone. My strength comes from my will. I hurled myself at the stone and pushed on it with every ounce of determination I had. I pushed and pressed and rammed against it, bruising my shoulders and sc.r.a.ping my hands. The stone didn't budge.

"You never did have much willpower."

"Don't talk to me!" I fell to the ground, crouching in the corner that was farthest away from him.

Time ticked by in silence. All I could hear was my own breathing, then eventually my own heartbeat and the occasional rattle of chains across the tomb as my fellow prisoner s.h.i.+fted positions. Was this eternity for me, then? A cold, claustrophobic h.e.l.l, with a living reminder of why my life got so screwed up?

A few minutes more, then a sound grated against the silence. The grinding of stone on stone, followed by a sliver of light cutting across the chamber. The heavy stone door opened, and a burly, menacing figure entered with a torch. It only took a moment for me to recognize him. It was the linebacker guard from the hilltop temple-the one whose life I'd spared. The mark from the whip was still there around his oversized neck.

I stood up as he approached. "Is it true what they say?" he asked. "You've really made it through six rides?"

"This is my sixth," I told him.

He smiled like a little kid. "I've never met anyone who's made it that far. There are rumors about you spreading through all the rides." The guard looked up at the small slit in the roof and the distant sliver of blue sky beyond. "Is it still out there?"

"What do you mean?"

"The real world. I keep trying to remember what it was like. Sometimes I can't."

I took a step closer to him. He was real-a rider who got caught in the park at dawn, like the bartender in that tavern. "How long have you been here?"

"I've lost track. There are no days here. The sun never moves in the sky. The clouds never change."

A faint rattle from the corner reminded me that my "father" was still there. I turned, and although I looked directly at him, the glare from the torch had left a dark spot on my retina. I couldn't see his face, and I knew that no matter how hard I tried to see it, I never would. The park couldn't show me what it didn't know. Even so, this phantom father could help me.

"You're not real. You're just another false face of this park, but that means you know things about this place that I don't. So you're going to tell me what I want to know."

He s.h.i.+fted his arms, rattling his chains. "Why would I do that?"

My hands balled into fists, but I crossed my arms to keep myself from using them. "Because somehow you're also my father, and you owe me and Quinn more than you could possibly imagine."

He said nothing to that.

"So you're going to tell me what I want to know," I repeated.

The guard looked from me to him to me again.

"What do you want to know?" my father whispered.

"I want to know about Ca.s.sandra. Who is she? What is she?"

He sighed and looked down. "She's the tidal wave that wiped out the Minoans. She's the eruption that leveled Pompeii. Whenever something horrible happens in the world-something senseless-whenever there are no survivors, Ca.s.sandra is there."

The magnitude of what he was telling me was as heavy a weight as a pyramid cornerstone, but it was lightened by what I now came to realize.

"What if there was one survivor?" I asked.

He said nothing more.

The guard stepped between us. "What are you saying?"

My brain was whirling, but I did my best to explain. "There was an accident a long time ago, and she was there. A school bus spun out of control on an icy road and fell into a deep ravine. I was the only one who survived."

I could feel the guard's excitement build as he considered it. "So then, you were supposed to die?"

"But I didn't."

He looked at my "father," who turned his shadowy face toward the stone.

"If no one survives Ca.s.sandra, and you did," said the guard, "then you could be the only one who's ever beaten her!"

I shook my head. "I didn't beat her, I just survived."

"So survive again! How did you survive the first time?"

"I don't remember."

"Try! You must remember something."

I turned away in frustration. "I've been through it a thousand times! The bus was spinning out of control. We crashed through the guardrail, and I couldn't open the back door."

"And then?"

"And then nothing!" I paced away, but there was nowhere to go in the small chamber. "There was nothing else! One moment I was there at the back of the bus, and the next thing I remember, I was home, and no one was talking about it, and no one has since." I felt like pounding my head against the wall to shake loose the memory. There was a gap in there. I always knew it was there, but since no one ever discussed the crash, it was easy to ignore. The crash had knocked me unconscious. The concussion erased my memory of the trauma, and that was that. Why did it matter? Why should anyone care?

"If you're going to be the one to make it out," said the guard, "you're going to have to remember what you did."

He looked at me for a moment more, then motioned to the open door. "Come on. I can lead you to the seventh ride."

But getting out wasn't enough. "What about my brother?"

"Who?"