“Let’s go.”
She sensed energy shifting in the atmosphere and knew that, like her, he had heightened all of his senses. It brought back more annoying memories of the night they had hiked out of the tunnels. For the past two months, Gabriel had come and gone from her dreams in unpredictable ways. On two memorable occasions, she had awakened from nightmares, certain that he was in grave danger. On other nights, he hovered at the edge of her sleeping senses, whispering to her from the shadows. She wondered if she ever showed up in his dreams.
She led the way along a strip of the cracked pavement that wound through the abandoned Colonial-era buildings.
“Any idea why the founders of Illusion Town tried to establish a community in this zone?” Gabriel said. “It must have been obvious from the start that the energy storms were going to be a major hazard.”
“Initially, the appeal of the Storm Zone was that water was more readily available here,” Lucy explained. “That mattered because Illusion Town is in the middle of a desert.”
Gabriel smiled. “I noticed.”
“The First Generation colonists thought they could handle the energy in this zone with the high-tech construction materials and the technology they imported from Earth. That worked until the Curtain closed, stranding the colonists.”
“At which point all the Earth-based tech started to fail.”
“Yep, including the materials that were used to build the colonies and keep the machines running. The storms proved to be too much for the original community of Illusion Town, so the founders moved to the more hospitable sectors.”
“I noticed the tour bus is armored,” Gabriel said. “I assume that’s because of the storms?”
“Right. The big ones don’t come through often during the daytime, but you never know when you’re going to run into a little one in an alley or backstreet. We have to be prepared. All of the tour vehicles are clad in mag-rez steel, and the glass is double-paned. Steel and glass are strong enough to withstand the average daylight storm here. If the weather looks too violent we have to shut down until it clears.”
Gabriel surveyed structures looming in the yellow fog. “What’s the appeal of these old Colonial-era buildings?”
“History. And the fact that there’s a lot of hot energy in the area. It gives the tourists a thrill. Everyone wants to experience the kind of storm that happens in this zone.”
“And you can make sure that happens.”
“I told you, it’s not that hard to create one, because there’s so much energy in the vicinity.” She cleared her throat. “Nothing very big, of course.”
“But big enough to impress the tourists?”
“It doesn’t take much, because they’re primed to anticipate one. They want to experience a storm, so they get excited with just a small weather event.” She was starting to get nervous. It would not be a good idea to let the new Guild boss know what she could do with her talent. She stopped in front of a jagged opening in the glowing Wall. “Here we go. I went in this way on that night.”
“You’re sure?”
Lucy studied the opening, trying to pull up memories. As usual, all she got were bits and pieces of a puzzle. Scenes flashed and sparked and then vanished. Some she was sure were real. Others she suspected were hallucinations and fragments from a dreamscape. She focused on the ones that felt true.
“I can’t be absolutely certain, but this would have been the logical place for me to go inside.” She turned to look at the mist-bound parking lot. The lights of the limo speared the fog, but she could no longer see the big vehicle. “I remember a dark SUV sitting about where Joe is parked now. When I got out of the cab, I saw figures closing in on me. I started running. I headed straight for the Dead City. This would have been the closest entrance. I must have sensed the energy.”
There was no mistaking the currents of radiation that seeped out of the ruins through the crack in the Wall.
“Sounds logical,” Gabriel said.
They moved through the tear in the thick quartz wall and walked into the heavy paranormal atmosphere of the moonlit ruins. Excited, Otis scampered ahead of them and began investigating.
Lucy stopped, giving her senses a moment to adjust. Gabriel did the same.
Like the great Wall, the broken and shattered towers were luminous after dark. The handful of structures that had not been destroyed by the ancient catastrophe rose into the night, elegant and graceful, but the proportions struck the human eye as oddly distorted and warped, as if they had been designed in a surreal dream.