The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,13

had been there healing within the pod for at least a day or two.

“We almost didn’t survive,” Faraday told her, giving her the fish, and skewering another. “According to the pod’s record, there was a failure of the parachute – probably hit by a piece of debris, or it took a laser strike. We hit the water hard, and in spite of the foam padding, we both suffered grade-three concussions and multiple rib fractures. You also had a ruptured lung – which is why it took a few more hours for your nanites to heal you than mine.”

The pod, which had a propulsion system for a water landing, had powered them safely to shore and was now half-buried in the sand, having endured two days of rising and falling tides.

Munira glanced around, and Faraday must have read the look on her face, because he said, “Oh, don’t worry; the defensive system apparently only tracks incoming craft. The pod came down close enough to the island not to be noticed.” As for their plane – the one Faraday had promised to return to its owner – it was now in pieces at the bottom of the Pacific.

“We are officially castaways!” Faraday said.

“Then why are you so damn happy?”

“Because we’re here, Munira! We did it! We have achieved something that no one since the birth of the post-mortal age has achieved! We’ve found the Land of Nod!”

The Kwajalein Atoll seemed like a small place from the sky, but now that they were on the ground, it felt massive. The main island wasn’t very wide but seemed to stretch on forever. There was evidence of old infrastructure everywhere – so, hopefully, what they were looking for would be here, and not on one of the outlying islands. The problem was they didn’t know what, exactly, they were looking for.

They explored for days, slowly zigzagging back and forth across the island from dawn until dusk, keeping a record of the relics they found – and there were relics everywhere. The broken pavement of roads that had long since given way to a new-growth forest. Stone foundations that had once supported buildings. Tumbled piles of rusted iron and worn steel.

They dined on fish and wild fowl, which were plentiful on the island, as were whimsically varied fruit trees that were clearly not indigenous. Most likely they had been cultivated in backyards, and were still here long after the homes and yards had gone.

“What if we don’t find anything?” Munira had asked early into their exploration.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.

“There are no bridges,” she reminded him.

For the first few days – aside from the stubby defensive tower, which had sealed itself shut like some vertical sarcophagus – they had found little more than broken porcelain from old sinks and toilets, and plastic containers that would probably remain there unchanged until the sun went nova and devoured the inner planets. This place might be a mecca for archaeologists, but it brought the pair no closer to finding what they had come for.

Then, toward the end of the first week, they crested a berm to find a sand-covered expanse too geometric to be natural. Just a little bit of shallow digging revealed a layer of concrete so thick that barely anything had taken root in it. There was a sense of purpose to the place, although they couldn’t tell what that purpose might have been.

And there against the side of the berm, almost entirely hidden by vines, was a moss-covered doorway. The entrance to a bunker.

As they cleared the vines away, they found a security panel. Anything written or etched into it had been eroded away, but what remained told the only tale it needed to tell. The panel had an indentation that was the exact size and shape as the gem on a scythe ring.

“I’ve seen these before,” said Faraday. “In older scythe buildings, our rings would serve as entry keys. They actually used to have a purpose beyond granting immunity and looking impressive.”

He raised his fist and pressed his ring to the indentation. They could hear the mechanism unlatch, but it took the two of them to force the old doors open.

They had brought flashlights that had been among the scant supplies in the safety pod. Now they shined them into the musty darkness as they entered a corridor that angled downward at a steep slope.

The bunker, unlike the island, was untouched by time, save for a fine layer of