She nodded, no doubt letting the zero hope of rescue sink in. “What about you?” she asked quietly. “Where were you when your gate hit?”
Snowboarding, and pissed. “I was on top of a mountain. I’d gone heli-boarding.” I paused, wrenched back to the moment. “There were four of us.” Me, Jonas, Finn, and Carter, my best friend who’d just spilled his guilty guts about sleeping with my girlfriend.
“Everyone else had taken off, I was catching my breath.”And giving Carter some space before I beat the ever-living shit out of him.“The sun was bright. I remember sweating in my gear. Then the snow went liquid, and I was more than sweating; I was burning. I passed out. When I woke up, I was here.”
“I passed out, too. I’d never fainted before in my life. And now I’ve fainted twice in two weeks.” She looked surprised.
Don’t be, I thought. Nil was full of surprises. And to give Charley credit, she didn’t look like the fainting type. She actually looked like she might kick some ass if she got something to eat.
Charley was watching me. “Did you wake up in the red desert, too?”
“Nope. I landed at the base of the mountain.” I pointed.
“So gates can show up anywhere.”
Even though her statement wasn’t a question, I nodded.
“And they only come at noon?” Charley was connecting the dots.It won’t be long, I thought.
“Outbounds only flash at noon,” I said. “But incoming ones flash anytime. Mine dumped me here at night.”
“At night?” She looked horrified. “That’s awful. I can’t imagine waking up here in the dark.”
We walked in silence. I was gearing up to break the ultimate bad news.
“So the outbounds,” she said. “Do they always come in sets like waves?”
I wondered exactly how many gates she’d seen in her twelve days. “No. Singles are the most common, and the fastest. They’re racers, tough to catch because of their speed. Doubles are less frequent, but not by much. They move slower and are easier to catch. Triples are rare, but they happen. They tend to be drifters, even slower than doubles.”
“What about quads?”
“Quads?” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen one.”
“I have.”
“Hey, quick question,” I said. “Do you wear contacts?”
She laughed. “My vision’s fine. Twenty-twenty. And I did see a quad, in the red rock field, the day I arrived. It wasn’t moving that fast, but I didn’t catch it either.” She looked chagrined. “I didn’t think to chase it until the last wave. By then it was too far out.”
“I’m impressed. Most people run from gates at first, not after them.”
“Oh, I did that, too. Don’t forget—it was a quad. I had a few minutes to consider it.”
“Not that many minutes.” I still couldn’t get over the idea of a quad.Giving us more chances, Nil, or are you playing the tease?Now I had the hope of a quad, as well as the knowledge that we’d missed four solid chances to get off this rock. Surely Samuel could have made one of four. Or better yet, Li.
Charley was looking at me, expectantly.
“Since we’re talking about gates, let me give you the scoop on the City. We Search for gates in teams, and the longer you’ve been here, the greater your priority. And someone’s your Spotter.”
“Spotter?”
“Spotter.” I nodded. “We all show up naked, so glasses don’t make it. Or contacts. Some people wouldn’t see a gate five meters away, let alone fifty. You have to see the ground turn liquid in the distance, then watch it rise and roll. And you need to know which direction to run to intercept it. That’s the Spotter’s job—to spot the gate rising and tell you which way to go. All you do is run.” I paused. “Search teams are three or four people, five at the most. It gives the Spotter company on the return trip to the City, plus help carrying the gear.”
Ask it, Charley. Tell me how much you’re ready to swallow.
She frowned. “Why doesn’t the whole team go through the gate?”
Atta girl. One down. Two to go.“Because only one person can take a gate at a time. One person, one gate. Nil’s rules.”
