His question brings back every detail of the Thai Beach Escape, and how it seemed to self-destruct right after I saw my dad. There is no question about it. Our seething anger was no coincidence. Nor is the melting, quivering green ice cave.
“We need to get out of here,” Josh says, grabbing my hand and pulling me away from the firewall.
But I dig in my heels and wrestle away from Josh’s grasp. “Wait!” I shout.
“Regan, we have to go!” he screams back.
The earth begins to shake again, even harder this time. The giant icicles above us clatter, like a chandelier about to snap from the ceiling, as the pillars of stalagmites begin to shudder around us. Josh covers me with his body, acting like a human shield to protect me. “Press your emergency button!” he urges.
I don’t want to leave. Not yet.
“Do it, Regan! Now!”
As shards of ice begin to drop from above and the towering stalagmites begin to tumble, my eyes dart around the cave in search of more solid ground. That’s when I realize someone else is here, no more than a hundred feet away.
The slim build. The salt-and-pepper hair.
My father.
“Look!” I say, pointing in his direction.
Josh whips his head toward the spot I’m gesturing to. His mouth slips open in astonishment “Is that . . . ?” he whispers.
“Dad, over here!” I wave my arms up in the air, signaling for him.
But instead of coming toward us, he turns and runs in the direction of the cave’s entrance.
“Where is he going?” Josh asks.
Without answering him, I grab Josh’s hand and we race after my father, navigating between the icy stalagmites that continue to fall around us. We turn a corner, and there’s an earth-shattering crash as a giant icicle in the shape of a large spear breaks off from the ceiling, heading directly toward Josh. I charge at him, knocking him flat on his back and onto the ground, out of harm’s way. As the piercing ice fragments continue to fall, Josh flips me around, pinning me underneath him. I attempt to push him off me, but he holds my wrists together with one hand, using his other hand to reach for the emergency button on my wristband.
He’s trying to send me home.
But there’s no way I’m leaving my dad this time.
“No!” I yell, but he doesn’t listen or respond.
I knee him in the inner thigh and he releases me, allowing me to roll out from underneath him. I jump to my feet and Josh follows close behind; we weave around the falling icicles, miraculously making it the remaining hundred feet out of the cave unscathed, and slipping out of the entranceway just as the structure begins to implode. As the earth continues to revolt and shards of ice crystals fly through the air, Josh and I hit the ground, huddling together, waiting for the madness to stop.
Then, all of a sudden, it’s silent. The earth is no longer breaking apart. We appear to be safe, at least momentarily. The crystal cave is nothing more than a shredded pile of dark green ice.
“We need to go back now,” Josh says, his lips taut. “It’s too dangerous here. We have no idea what kind of damage this botched Escape is doing to us in real life.”
“I’m not leaving. Not until we find where my father went.”
I glance up at the night sky. The electric purple stars and the dark red moon are covered with a haze of gray, fuzzy clouds. And that’s not all. The pink snow is gone, replaced by a brown sludge. Not a great sign. We may no longer be in immediate danger, but the Escape still seems like it’s short-circuiting. Josh is right.
We have to hurry.
I glance up the side of the mountain and tilt my head. Over to the right, about half a mile above us, is a plateau. “If we get to that ledge up there, we’ll have a view of the mountainside,” I say. “Maybe we can spot him.”
Before Josh can protest, I grab the backpack I left outside the ice cave and clutch his hand, yanking him along, our feet tramping through the mud and toward a narrow path. The wind begins to pick up again, barreling over the mountaintop and carrying a rank odor.
We stop directly under the plateau. The side of the mountain is craggy rock. I take off my glove and lightly run my hand over the dark stone. It’s wet and slick and covered in some sort of algae-ridden slime. I look at Josh with concern. “You don’t have to do this. I can go alone.”
He takes my backpack and opens it, then tosses me a harness. Next he drops the ice tools by our mud-covered feet. “Shut up and climb.”
Before I finish closing the last snap of my harness, Josh has already dug his pickax into the side of the mountain. I swing, and when my pickax makes contact, brown grime splatters through the air. I dig my boot in, my arms above me, my leather-gloved hands tightly gripping the pickax.
Tier after tier, we scale what seems like miles. Unlike when we cheerfully descended the mountain, there is no happy banter between us as we climb. But there’s no more anger, either. Instead, we are devoid of anything other than determination to track down my father, both of us nervously anticipating the moment when the Escape might morph again. After a few minutes, I hear a grunt and crane my neck and see that Josh has made it to the plateau and is reaching down to help me up over the edge.
Our hands connect and he yanks me toward him, pulling me up and onto the soggy landing. I push to my feet, hands on my knees as I take a moment to catch my breath.
“You okay?” Josh asks.
“Yeah.” I nod, standing up straight as I look around. The plateau is about a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, surrounded by a grouping of dead spruce trees with rotting branches and exposed roots that are covered in dingy, speckled scum. I spot one patch of cranberry-colored needles at the bottom of a nearby trunk. I walk over to it and crouch down to pick it up, but before I can, it fades to black and then disappears.
A sickening feeling rises from my stomach into my throat. I stand and yell through my cupped hands, “Dad!” My voice ricochets off the neighboring mountains and echoes into the cavern below us. “Dad, where are you?”
When there’s no response, I head toward another group of decaying spruces, and just as I’m about to touch a decrepit limb, the entire tree turns to white and dissolves into nothingness. Then something shatters inside me, and I feel like my lungs are being clawed to shreds.
“Josh?” I whisper, my breath barely coming out of my mouth. I can’t leave this Escape before I find my dad. I won’t. “Things are disappearing!”
“I know,” he replies, pointing toward the mountain range in the distance.
The dark horizon is rapidly vanishing before our eyes. It’s as if someone is erasing our entire world, starting at the corners and working their way inward.
“I think our destination is being reset,” Josh says, stunned. “It’s like when you clear any computer program. Unless it’s been saved, everything is destroyed.”
“Impossible.” I’m gasping for air, my heart sputtering and stalling. I turn around and watch with horror as dying trees disintegrate one after another. With each disappearance, it feels like a hole is being carved into my bones. Even the sky is getting eaten away by this vacuum, which engulfs everything in its path, creating a blank canvas all around us.