Part One

I’ll never walk again. I knew it the moment I woke with the ambulance lights bleeding over my freshly broken body, Josh’s head skewered on a tree limb next to me in the passenger seat. Mom says I’m the lucky one because I survived, and he didn’t. I’m not so sure about that. Josh doesn’t wake every night caked in sweat thinking his legs still work. Josh doesn’t have to live with the I know what you did looks every time he leaves the house, or the crushing guilt that comes with killing your best friend...

But I’m not going to think about that today. No, today is about Lagoon Island and the twins. They’ve been begging Mom to bring them here all summer, begged and begged.

We’re old enough to go, Mom! We’re seven already.

You promised you would take us this year! You did too, Garret!

And I did. For years. Told them how much fun Devil’s Drop was, bragged about the wave pool, and how I could body surf all that crashing water. They’re out there in it right now with Mom, unleashing bright peals of laughter as she tosses them into the oncoming waves. I used to toss them like that. Make them laugh. That was my thing.

Now, I just sit here and watch.

And watch. And watch.

I groan and look away.

Their day, Garret, I chide myself. Their—

A glimmer of light catches my eye from across the pool, a shimmering distortion about the size of a door, situated next to Colonel Hook’s snack shack. I wheel my way toward it, weaving through packs of screaming children and anxious parents who flow past me like I’m some giant, handicapped stone planted in the middle of a human river—which, of course, I am. Not that it matters. What does matter is that no one else is looking at the bizarre square of light. No one else seems to see it.

Not a single person except me.

I roll through the dense tangle of bodies a little faster, half-expecting the distortion to be gone when I break free from the crowd, but it’s not. It’s only grown stronger, brighter—this kaleidoscope of color that’s so vibrant, so lush, the air is practically dripping with it. Waves of gooseflesh ripple over my arms as I wheel past the snack shack and over a dead patch of grass, the door close now, only a few feet away and—

“You okay, sweetheart?”

I startle and turn toward a woman wearing a floppy floral sunhat. Most of her face is cast in shadow, save for a bright pink ring of lipstick glowing with the force of a cheap neon beer sign.

She raises a hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“It’s okay. I was just looking at...” I wave at the patch of swirling light. “At that.”

She turns and plants a hand on her hip. “At what?”

She doesn’t see it, either.

“Are you here with someone, dear?” she asks, swiveling back to me. “You look a little pale. Can I help you find anyone?”

I don’t answer, just stare at the soapy mix of light and air roiling in front of me…and then I roll straight through.

To a waterslide.

I’m staring at a waterslide.

At least I think that’s what it is—a gleaming crystal tube curling down through a slab of chipped concrete. Water chimes invitingly as it bubbles and rushes forward into the ground. It makes no sense and looks nothing like the other slides at Lagoon Island, with the brightly colored PVC long faded by the sun.

Lagoon Island.

I glance back at it, and a woozy rush of blood nearly tips me from my chair.

The woman in the floppy hat stands with her hands akimbo and her mouth propped open like she’s still talking to me. Beyond her, a boy sprayed in freckles hangs suspended above a diving board like someone tacked him there with a giant hammer. And they’re not alone. The water, the waves, the groups of people trapped in idle conversation—all of it, the entire park, is frozen in a crush of glistening skin.

I blink. Hard.

This can’t be happening.

Maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m stroked out on the concrete somewhere, foaming at the mouth and imagining it all, but I don’t think so. It feels too…real. And this slide with no stairs to climb or handrails to navigate, no signs warning off the disabled—it looks like it was planted here just for me.

There’s no easy way out of the chair. Nothing to grasp. All I can do is get as low to the cement as possible before thrusting forward, which I do without thinking, my legs smacking off the cement like the two numb and lifeless appendages they are. They no longer belong to me. They belong to the boy who came before the wheelchair, the one who thought he was invincible, could drive drunk whenever he wanted. I’m fine, I promise.

I roll over and sit up, then ease over the slide’s lip. I know I should be more worried about this, terrified even, but I’m not. I’m excited, a swarm of butterflies ravaging my stomach, my nerves singing. Since the crash, my life has been a never-ending series of doctor appointments and surgeries interspersed with bouts of shame so sticky-thick it feels like someone bottled it up and then smeared it over my lungs until they could no longer absorb oxygen. For the last eighteen months, I haven’t made a decision of my own. Not one. All I’ve done is rot in my wheelchair and *exist…*and even then, just barely.

And, here, right now, I want to—need to—know where this slide leads.

I thrust my hands into the water...and shove off.

The tube whips left, right, drops, and goes vertical, pulling my broken body into total darkness. Needles of water spray my face, my neck. A scream rips up my throat, only to die on my tongue; I’m moving so fast, I’m afraid the slide will peel the skin from my bones.

I go faster still, losing all sense of direction as I zoom around curve after endless curve, the speed flattening my cheeks and stretching my lips. I’m a human bullet careening through a never-ending chamber of black. I screw my eyes shut and clench my jaw so tight it feels like my molars will crack.

This was a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.

Seams of blinding light cut through my eyelids. I snap them open to blooms of luminescence swirling outside the tube as I rocket lower. Colors streak past me in contrails so intense they sear my retinas. Breathtaking blues and electric greens. Pale, cinnamon reds that sparkle like lazy Fourth of July fireworks. Glittering clouds of dust shimmer brilliantly around me in gem-like bunches that blossom and fade, only to blossom again; entire galaxies born and reborn.

I have no words to describe what I’m seeing. It’s all so...beautiful.

The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

And then it’s gone, snatched away as the slide plunges into a throbbing crimson throat. A series of red lights pulse overhead as I race through another loop and begin to slow—slowing, slowing—until I’m spit into a slice of cold, dead air.

I hurtle from the slide and glimpse a stretch of water rushing upward so fast, I barely manage to take a breath before I slam into it. My chest constricts as the surface darkens above, cold liquid fingers wrapping around my chest and pulling me lower. I’m sinking, working my arms in frantic circles that do little to overcome the pillars of cement that are my legs dragging me down, down, down.

My lungs burn. My vision sparks and flickers. A thought races through my brain: this is how I’m going to die, alone and helpless, a broken, worthless corpse drowned at the bottom of the world with no one to—

My right quad twitches. Contracts.

My left.

I gasp and suck in a mouthful of frigid water as my legs come to life beneath me. My paralyzed, useless legs moving. It’s all I can do to keep from screaming as I surge upward and burst through the surface.

Gulp air and blink.

I’m in a cavern of some sort. It’s beyond immense—illuminated with caldrons of flame that dangle overhead, chained to a smooth granite dome. On either side of me are more slides protruding from the same vertical sheet of rock from which I just emerged. Crystal tubes ejecting body after body, spitting them into the same liquid expanse I’m currently treading with legs that shouldn’t be able to obey my commands to move.

Splash! Splash! Splash!

A scream splits the air, and a girl in a yellow bikini hurtles from the slide to my right. She flops hard into the water and swims toward a long stone bank across from the slides, one I hadn’t noticed until now. I follow suit, pulling myself through the water with jumbled, flopping strokes until I’m kneeling on hard ground.

The girl heaves herself onto the stone and collapses onto her back, flexing her fingers in front of her face like she’s never moved them before, like she’s never once seen her hands. A man with a head full of dreadlocks rolls onto the ledge just beyond her, a look of wonder splashed across his face as he gapes open-mouthed at his legs and his feet. And not just him.

All of them.

Every single person down the line pulling themselves from the water and gawking at some part of their body like it’s the first time they’ve seen it work.

Because it is, I realize. Jesus. They’re broken just like me.

“Welcome!”

The voice booms from above as, twenty yards in front of us, an elaborately wrought iron cage descends from the darkness. And in the cage is this...thing. I have no other word for it. Thick cords of muscle wind over its chest and arms, its skin a pale, mottled white. An angular head rests on its shoulders, split by a mouth jammed with anthracite teeth.

“Welcome, you who are broken. You who are weary and cast out!” A forked tongue darts over its lips as it studies all of us in turn. “Each of you has been chosen. Each of you remade and reborn by the pool of life.” It spreads four sinewed arms. “This is but a taste of the life you once had. A glimmer of renewal. But alas, only one of you may keep the precious gift.” The thing turns a slow circle in the cage. “The champion of the gauntlet!”

A thunderous roar ignites all around me, from every direction. For the first time, I notice the perfect curve of the chamber, the travertine columns, and the elaborate arches supporting rows of stadium seating packed with creatures covered in russet skin and shining scales. Monstrous visages that watch us with looks of hungry anticipation, thousands upon thousands of eyes burning at us through the gloom, all of them blowtorch bright.

“Fifteen of you have earned this honor,” the thing continues. “Kings and queens all.”

A cold line of sweat snakes across my forehead. I glance at the others, their faces smeared with panic, their eyes flicking between the creature and the crowd, wondering the same thing as me: What the hell is happening?

“Legion, I ask you this. Is salvation given?”

“No!” the crowd roars.

“Can it be bought?”

“No!”

“What then, I ask of you?”

“It must be earned!” a lone voice shrieks.

“Louder!”

A roar rises, the voices chanting as one: “Earned! Earned! Earned!

The sound reverberates through the chamber and rattles my ribs.

The creature beats its chest and howls: “Competitors, behold your salvation!”

Four columns of fire ignite on the far side of the cavern, at least a football field’s length away. A crystalline object glitters in response. It’s a slide. A single, solitary slide, exactly like the one that brought me here, nothing between it and where we stand now but a blasted stretch of scorched rock.

The thing in the cage straightens to its full height and retrieves a giant, ornate horn from its belt. “Whoever reaches the slide first shall keep their gift. Fifteen must now become one.” It lifts the horn to its lips. “Let the gauntlet...begin!”

The tone of the horn is unearthly, a terrible pressure that envelopes my head as the other competitors—are they competitors?—cover their ears. No one moves, save a woman in a purple bathing suit, who straightens and dashes forward first.

Go, a voice in my head blares. Run, Garret!

I do, awkwardly and with great effort, my new legs buckling beneath me after several wavering steps.

The fall is all that saves me.

A man barrels past on my left and impales himself on a series of metallic spikes that piston from the stone with a sudden Clack! Black fountains of blood pour from his back and legs. He convulses and slides down the spikes, which are now gleaming wet and red.

Time stops, and I forget to breathe.

I can’t move, can’t think.

An image tickles my brain.

I’ve seen this before: the concentric rings of flagstone and the marble notched with interlacing grooves. The crowd and the traps and the howling bloodlust. In history class, when we studied ancient Rome.

It hits me then, exactly where I am.

I’m in a coliseum and, Jesus, I’m one of the gladiators.

Shit, I've got to go, but I'll get back to you as soon as I can...if I survive.

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