Page 15 of Minding the Minotaur
One thing I know: that girl will pull me back to Sparkle.
And no green sheriff or house arrest is going to stop me.
CHAPTER 5
SAMMY
I’ve never been anywhere near the Periphery before. I didn’t even know this place had a name. Sure, we all know that products are stored on the edge of Sparkle, brought in on driverless cargo trains, then sprayed to remove contaminants from traveling across the Earth’s surface. But no right-minded Sparkle citizen would go anywhere near pollution treatment zones.
Besides, I always believed everything I could ever want was right here in Sparkle.
Until today.
And now I’m prepared to give it all away, just to meet that sexy, sweet minotaur again.
On the drive here I managed to get some more intel from Clem. She says her knowledge of the Labyrinth is limited, but I also sense that she’s scared to even speak about it out loud. Jax wasn’t supposed to have told her anything. And there’ll be trouble for him if any of this leaks. I get it.
Vaporization. I shiver when Clem whispers that word again. And while it’s supposedly reserved for monsters, a human who blabs about the Labyrinth could potentially be vaporized too. I watch her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel as she speaks, her tone missing its usual upbeat lilt.
It’s horrible to think that this could happen in Sparkle City. That the dark side of our supposedly perfect life has been covered up, like a dirty little secret. Well, not that little, if Clem’s description of tunnels stretching down for thousands of feet can be believed. But why would I doubt her, or the evidence of my own eyes?
As for the “official” portals into the Labyrinth (of which there are hundreds, to transport all the products), they are contained in bunkers on the edge of the Periphery. Clem only knows this because she had to fetch her injured brother from outside one. There were armed guards stationed in towers around the bunkers, but they didn’t help. They just left Jax’s limp and bleeding body out on the road for her to collect.
“One thing I’m sure of though,” she muses. “No monster could get through the official portals without being apprehended.”
Thus, the portal cape remains a complete mystery. As does the hunky minotaur who emerged from it. I wonder if Jax will be able to shed any light on it. More importantly, I wonder if he can get me a job—one that gives me access to the Labyrinth.
I give a little gasp as we suddenly find ourselves driving through dense fog.
“It’s okay, we’re just passing through the Crossroads,” Clem says, and I relax a little.
The Crossroads is the point where the mirage of fertile green hills and blue sky stops abruptly. The road appears to head off into more hills in the distance, but no-one ever goes past here, because we all know that those green hills don’t really exist.
They’re just a mirage.
As the fog dissipates, I see the landscape has changed dramatically. We’re surrounded by industrial lots behind wire fences, warehouses, containers piled one on top of the other.
When she finally pulls up on a grim residential street, Clem turns and gives me a tight smile. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“Yep,” I reply jauntily.
“It’s not like anywhere else in Sparkle.”
“I don’t care.” And I really don’t. The former me, Miss-Goody-Two Shoes who always followed the rules, is gone. Vaporized.
I get out of the car and look around. Yeah, it’s grim. I always thought living in Garnet Gardens was pretty much the lowest rung of the Sparkle ladder, but this is several steps down from that.
A row of ugly apartment blocks with peeling paint butt up to a wall made of what looks like thick black webbing, stretching up and up into the darkness. There are no gardens or fountains here, just uneven concrete pavers, a hopscotch grid marked in chalk, and a few crates that form a makeshift playground next to some overflowing trash cans. The yellow light from the streetlamps illuminates balconies strung with drying clothes. Heavy rock music blasts out of one window, and I hear raised voices coming from another.
“What’s that black screen behind them?” I ask, staring up at the strange, webbed artifice.
“That’s the dome wall,” Clem whispers back.
My eyes widen. You don’t see the inner wall of the dome from Sparkle because of the mirage. At school, we were all told that the wall is a mile wide and made up of multiple layers to keep us safe. I guess from here, there’s no way of telling.
Planted along the wall’s edge are a few straggly trees. They’re barely alive. Maybe due to lack of water or light, butI guess there’s always the chance that even here, a trickle of toxins could filter in from Earth.
It’s a scary thought.
