Page 61 of The Infinite Glade
Sacred Ground
Four soldiers pulled Minho’s limbs in different directions as they descended into the depths of the earth, into what looked like another world. For being underground, everything looked so alive and green. The walls lining the Glade were larger than life, all stone and majesty and vines. Bigger than any wall Minho had ever kept soldier’s watch upon.
The Glade. The Maze. He was actually there.
The greenery confused him. Back in the Remnant Nation, all the underground tunnels and bunkers were cold and lifeless, especially Hell itself, whose dirt floors were pounded in place by each and every soul who’d met their end there. But the site of the Maze gave Minho an overwhelming sense of awe, a sense of beauty, despite the ruined nature of its remains.
He saw the Remnants lining the Glade with small clusters of war prisoners, scattered in between the Orphan soldiers. Some of the prisoners were being beaten while others looked already dead. Had he really ever been a part of such a brutal, ruthless people? Was this who he was?
“Go.” The soldier behind Minho kicked his left calf. “March to your death.”
They pushed him and Orange, paraded them in front of the others. Minho tried to make eye contact with Orange but her eyes were just slits and her body hung limp in the soldier’s grasp. She wasn’t even walking on her own. The soldiers kicked her legs forward like the puppet of a corpse. Minho looked away. He could handle his own death just fine, bravely even, but it was the death of the ones he cared about that felt so impossible to bear.
“More prisoners from Griever Ayers’ command.” A soldier pushed Minho forward once again; he turned just enough to see Roxy and the others behind him. Their faces were full of fear, their lives no longer their own.
An older soldier that Minho recognized as someone whose cliff ceremony had been before his, walked behind him and pulled his combat ties so tight that his shoulder blades touched and his ribs ached. His head flung back in pain but he wouldn’t scream or grimace; instead, he opened his eyes as much as he could to assess the Glade. Pain was always an opportunity to see more, and the Orphan named Minho noticed one thing missing: Grief Bearers.Were they afraid of the sacred site of the Maze?At least Minho wouldn’t have to hear their commands before his death, their voices. He’d die at the hands of his former fellow soldiers.
The older soldier forced Minho stumbling ahead, toward open doors in the distance, impossibly big. “Go. Into the Maze.” He commanded their fate. “Take the others to the Deadheads. We have room for more prisoners there.”
Roxy reached out to Minho. “No! Please, don’t take him. That’s my son!” She pleaded for mercy, but she had no idea how her words would actually make his torture worse.
“Orphans have no mother!” The soldiers pushed and pulled Minho even harder, in the direction of the giant doors. The blood would soon run warm against him, but every extra lashing he got because Roxy had called him her son would be worth it. Because of her, he would die more human than soldier. More than an Orphan. He would die as someone’s child.
“It’s okay.” He mouthed the words, along with his most convincing nod to Roxy before they yanked him by the neck.
“Go on!” The Remnant behind him drove his heel into Minho’s calf. They dragged him and Orange to a makeshift prison that awaited them on the other side of those doors. One by one, the other Remnant soldiers along the way, busy beating and guarding prisoners, looked up at Minho and Orange as they came by. The soldiers stopped whatever they were doing to watch two of their own be dragged to torture and death. And they let it be known that they felt no sympathy.
“Traitors!”
“Death awaits!”
“Kill the Godhead. Kill the traitors!”
“Weakest of the Orphans!”
Walking to certain death, Minho looked at each and every soldier’s face as he passed, just long enough to know that none of them were poor, half-beaten, Kit. That kid had probably died a painful death in the bowels of Hell. Minho’s biggest regret was being too scared to even tell Kit his name at the time. Names had been forbidden, and he’d still been a coward in many ways back then. But he said it in his mind, now, said it with pride.
My name is Minho.
Jackie and Miyoko sat by the bank and wrapped Trish’s body in a black curtain they’d pulled out of the Villa. They tied fresh pine branches around it to give her a proper send off. Isaac felt less and less hopeful about finding Sadina and the others alive, but he tried his best to focus on doing something about the Sequencers. It was the only thing within his control, the only thing that might make Trish’s death—and perhaps the others’—mean something.
But deciphering Kletter’s scribbled handwriting wasn’t easy. Frypan, Ximena, Cian, and Erros all took their own turns flipping through the pages of the captain’s log. The hash marks and scribbles on the first page always grabbed their attention.
Frypan pointed something out. “Those markings. Four lines, up and down, one across—we used a similar method in the Glade to count days.”
Isaac looked closer at the hash marks. “Numbers.” He counted them all. “Thirty-nine . . . does that mean anything to you?” he asked Cian and Erros.
Cian shook his head. Erros shrugged.
“Wait. These are separate. See the dots?” Ximena took the notebook from Isaac. “Six, then four with a dot. Then two, then eight, and two.” She drew the numbers in the snow with her fingers. “One. Seven. Four, dot. Two, five. Two.” They all stood around the sequence carved into the crust of the snow, but it looked like a jumbled mess of nothing. Just like Kletter’s handwriting.
“What if . . .” Erros grabbed Old Man Frypan’s walking stick and with the pointed end drew a line separating the numbers in half. “What if it’s asetof numbers? What if she wrote the coordinates as hash marks? They’ve got to be!”
Ximena flipped back to the first page again. “Why not just write the digits?” She looked up at Isaac and rolled her eyes, “I forgot, it’s Kletter we’re talking about. Nothing she did ever made sense. Okay.”
“Let me see,” Erros asked, and everyone tried to get a look at the page.
“Here . . . this one and this one,” Frypan pointed. “The last two marks, they look different. Not straight up and down, they’re sort of leaning . . . those markings could be arrows.”
