Читать книгу The Rift Frequency - Amy Foster S. - Страница 8

Like a dirty shirt inside a washing machine, once again I’m spinning in the Rift’s emerald mouth. The sound is so much louder this time. It burrows into my ears and latches on to my brain. An orchestra, a hundred orchestras, tuning their instruments to a single note. I must figure out a way to combat the disorientation if we’re going to keep doing this.

It’s a struggle, but I manage to focus my eyes. Still, I’ve waited too long in accomplishing this one small thing. The green is almost behind me. I see a slit of light ahead, and then before I can steady or upright myself, Levi and I are pitched forward.

Immediately I know that something is wrong. Not only am I gasping for air, but the sky on this Earth is sickly yellow. My hands and face, the only places where my skin is exposed, are burning. Levi and I scramble. He opens his pack and pulls out his laptop, bubbles of burnt flesh starting to form on his hands. On top of the fact that he’s already been shot, he must be in considerable pain.

While he powers up the program, I reach around and dig into my pack, tears leaking out of my eyes from the pain, and manage to pull out my oxygen mask. It’s agony as the contraption forms around my face, but at least now I can breathe. I scramble around Levi’s pack and find his oxygen mask, too. It’s a Roone-designed device, more advanced than anything humans have developed yet. In its dormant form, it looks a little like a metal beanie. Once I put it on Levi’s head, it clamps to his skull and a hard black shell molds down his cheeks. A clear plastic barrier covers his face and I can hear it seal at his neck with a soft pop. The mask filters our carbon dioxide emission, mixes it with a small amount of water, and converts it into oxygen. To his credit, Levi doesn’t even wince as the helmet covers the melting skin on his face.

Once again I push him off the computer. My hands look like they’ve been in a microwave, too, but at least I don’t have a hole in one of them. The next Rift opens and I can’t believe I’m actually relieved to see it. As Levi puts the laptop away, I do a quick atmospheric reading from yet another Roone device attached to my utility pouch. It may seem ridiculous, as I’m standing there, literally cooking, but we need to catalog and identify as many Earths as we can. If we can get a fix on this location, no other Citadel has to endure this as we have. Ezra once said that mapping the Rifts would be pointless and impossible, but I’m not so sure this assessment is correct. I now know the location of this Earth, or at least the computer does, and I have viable proof that we should stay away.

I pull Levi to his feet and strap on his pack. As I do, a strip of bubbling skin peels from my hand and I let out a small yelp of pain. Putting on my own pack brings me close to retching. Luckily we’re still attached. Not that I think that even matters anymore. Based on our last two trips, I’m beginning to suspect that opening a Rift leads to one distinct Earth and one distinct Earth only. The Rift slingshots us through in a straight trajectory—there are no tunnels or curves to lose one another in. Even if we were disconnected, we would have had to risk it. Levi doesn’t look like he’s doing so great; his eyes are closed behind his helmet, and my hands hurt so badly that I can’t even hold on to him, so I push him through the Rift and jump in behind him.