Survivor (Rewinder Series Book 3)

by Brett Battles

  I run toward the ladder.

  Jovan yells, “Where are you going?”

  This draws Dumont’s attention. She waves at me to come up as fast as possible.

  She still needs me. I am her key. Before I reach the ladder, though, an explosion right outside the compound gates knocks me off my feet.

  Dirt and rocks rain down around me. I roll under a nearby transport and wait until the debris storm subsides. When I extract myself, Dumont is no longer standing at the edge of the roof. No one is, and I wonder if the roof has collapsed and taken them with it. But then I hear a deep humming noise, and a second later an aircraft that looks like none I’ve ever seen lifts from the roof into the sky.

  “No!” I yell as I race to the ladder.

  The explosion has knocked it over, but I quickly get it back against the building and take the rungs two at a time to the top. Running out onto the now empty roof, I wave my hands above my head at the aircraft, but it’s moving west over the ocean and gaining speed with every second.

  While more shells explode behind me, I watch the vehicle travel a mile from shore, then turn south and shrink to a black dot before disappearing altogether.

  “Denny!”

  Jovan’s voice breaks my trance. I turn and see him peeking over the top of the roof from the ladder.

  “We must go,” he says. “Now, or we’ll both die!”

  For a moment, I think maybe that would be better. Maybe it’s my time. Karma will finally extract its revenge for my sins.

  “Denny! Come on!”

  I hesitate a second longer, and then head toward him. Maybe my crimes do need to be atoned for, but my death at this moment would harm more than just me. I need to remember Iffy and Ellie. They don’t deserve to remain erased. Until I’ve exhausted every possible chance of bringing them back, I must not stop in my quest to fix the past.

  I hurry over to the ladder but stop before climbing on. The explosions have ceased. I scan the area beyond the facility’s walls. In the twilight, the fires that dot the land are blazing, their streams of smoke blending into the darkening sky.

  For a moment, I wonder if the attack was called off because Dumont escaped, but then I see a convoy of heavily armed vehicles moving down the road toward Trinity. If those are soldiers aligned with Dumont coming to help us, the professor would have stayed long enough to get me aboard her plane. No, the trucks must contain whoever has been shelling the area. And the fact they’re heading here means Trinity has been the target all along.

  I hop on the ladder and hurry to the bottom where Jovan is waiting. When he starts for the gate, I say, “No. We can’t go that way.”

  “Why not?”

  I tell him what I saw.

  “But there’s no other way out,” he says.

  “There is.”

  I lead him to the building with the catwalk behind it as students and professors rush around us, no one seeming to know where to go. My gaze moves from person to person, checking for access discs attached to their garments, but I don’t see any.

  When we reach the entrance, I try the door, but it’s locked. I look around again, and this time spot Clora from the observatory. She’s standing at the edge of the parking area having an animated conversation with Ravi. Both are wearing their lab coats. They’re not professors, but it’s possible their discs will open the doors.

  I yell their names and wave them over.

  Clora seems hesitant, but Ravi immediately heads our way so she follows. He starts talking before he even reaches us.

  “He says there’s a hidden storage area in the basement of the observatory,” Jovan tells me. “He’s inviting us to go with him. Sounds good to me.”

  “No,” I say. “I have a better idea. Ask them for one of their keys.”

  When Jovan does, Clora pulls her disc out of her pocket a moment before Ravi does the same.

  I hold out my hand to Clora. “May I?”

  “Why?”

  “I know a way out.”

  “We can hide in the basement,” Ravi argues.

  “There are soldiers headed here right now. Not the friendly kind. Do you really think they won’t find us there?”

  As soon as Jovan finishes translating what I said, Clora and Ravi start angrily whispering at each other. They obviously have different ideas about what we should do.

  I’m about to tell them there’s no time to argue when the gate to the compound blows open, making my point for me.

  I yank the disc out of Clora’s hand and wave it next to the access pad of the building’s door. It unlocks.

  “Follow me!” I yell as I pull the handle.

  When I look back to make sure they’re coming, I see soldiers rushing in through the gate in uniforms the same style and shade of dark green as Dux Shim’s.

  Is this a coup? Or an alliance that’s being broken? Whatever’s going on, now is not the time for me to try to figure it out.

  “Stay with me!” I run down the hall.

  As I hoped, the building’s layout is nearly identical to the one I explored earlier. I get thrown off once by a wall that shouldn’t be there, but I figure a way around it and we’re soon standing in front of the door to the room at the back of the building.

  When I press Clora’s disc against the reader, the door doesn’t open. I try again, still nothing. I curse under my breath as I try a third time.

  Behind me, Ravi says something.

  “The disc won’t work,” Jovan says. “He says they’re probably not authorized to get into whatever’s behind there.”

  I look around. “We need to find something to break through.”

  “Why? What’s on the other side?” Clora asks.

  Bursts of gunfire crackle from back in the compound. The shooters aren’t close but they will be before long.

  “Our way out.” Before they can ask any more questions, I say, “Stay here,” and run down the corridor, searching for anything that could break open the door. In an unlocked janitorial closet, I find a metal cylinder, about six inches in diameter and three feet long, that has some weight to it. I have no idea what it’s normally used for but it should be perfect for what I need to do.

  My return to the others is underscored by the sound of more gunfire.

  “Move! Move!” I yell as I run up.

  Whether they understand the words or not, they move away from the door and I smash the cylinder against it. It takes three more hits before the door swings open. I let the others enter before I follow and shut the door again. If someone does a thorough search of the building, the damaged door will be a red flag, but hopefully it will stand up to any quick checks the soldiers might perform.

  The room is wide but not deep. I panic when I don’t see any doors along the back wall. Could I have made a miscalculation and there’s no way to get to the catwalk from inside?

  But then I spot the access panel, low on the back wall at the far corner. It’s painted the same color as the wall. When I yank on the recessed handle, the panel pops open, revealing a three-foot-square opening that goes in about a foot before ending at another panel. When I open this second one, fresh ocean air pushes past me and I can see the catwalk.

  “Whoever comes through last, shut these doors. Understand?” I say.

  Jovan conveys my instructions and they all nod.

  I squeeze through first and shimmy onto the catwalk. It’s just wide enough for me to fit between the wall and the ocean-side railing. When I reach the end, I see the downward-sloping structure is a six-inch pipe that passes up through the catwalk and enters the building one story above me. Attached to the pipe on the catwalk level is a wheeled valve—an emergency shutoff for whatever the pipe carries, I’m guessing.

  A burst of panicked words spills from Clora’s mouth, which Jovan translates as, “What are we doing out here? I thought you said there was a way out!” He adds his own, “There is a way, right?”

  I nod. “The beach.”

  He looks over the railing. “Down the
pipe?”

  I nod again.

  He tells Clora and Ravi, and they both look at him incredulously.

  I gesture back toward the compound. “It’s either get shot out there or climb down here. You can do whatever you want.”

  Without waiting for their response, I climb over the railing and use it like a ladder to move down until I’m hanging off the bottom of the catwalk. I can’t be more than a few drops of sweat away from losing my grip and falling to my death when I make it to the pipe and wrap my arm around it.

  “If you’re coming, let’s go,” I shout, and start my way down.

  The pipe is easy enough to hang on to. The problem is the cliff face, and it takes all my concentration to avoid being knocked loose by one of the many rocky outcroppings.

  After what seems like forever, my feet finally touch bottom. I move to the side and look up for the first time since I started my descent. Two silhouettes are moving down the pipe, with Jovan the closest. The other is much higher on the cliff and hard to identify. I don’t see a third—on the pipe or the catwalk.

  Jovan lets out a triumphant laugh as he reaches the ground and wraps me in a bear hug, lifting me off my feet. After he releases me, he says, “This is a great idea. How did you know?”

  “A prisoner always knows the ways out, right?”

  Jovan grins.

  “Who’s missing?” I look back up at the pipe.

  “I don’t know. They were arguing when I left.”

  It’s not until the silhouette comes much closer that I make out Clora’s shoulder-length hair.

  “What happened to Ravi?” I ask when she’s down.

  “He couldn’t do it. Said it was safer the other way.”

  Ravi has always been friendly to me, and I fear he has chosen the pathway to death. But there’s nothing we can do about it.

  I turn toward the south. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Hold on,” Jovan said. “Where are we going?”

  My choice of direction is based on it being the direction in which Dumont’s aircraft headed, but I’m not sure I want to share that information in front of Clora. “Anywhere but here.”

  “Do you have friends in Saint Jakup?”

  “The only friend I have is you.”

  “Then you’re lucky, because we won’t get far going in that direction.” He points north. “That way’s our only chance.”

  He runs and I follow. But we don’t get far before I realize I don’t hear Clora. Looking back, I see she hasn’t moved.

  “Clora,” I shout.

  She blinks and slow turns toward me.

  “We need to keep moving.”

  For a moment, she doesn’t move, but then she nods and jogs toward me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FOR THE NEXT thirty minutes or so, we hear sporadic gunfire coming from the compound. Finally it either stops or we’ve traveled too far to hear it anymore, and the only sounds are those of the waves crashing on the beach and our feet running across the sand.

  The cliffs have fallen away, and we are walking along a strip of land with ocean on one side and a large lagoon on the other. Beyond the small body of water are city lights, more than there were in Skiron Sum, but nowhere near as many as in the concentrated areas of Saint Jakup.

  Ahead, where the lagoon ends, I see additional lights closer to the ocean. This worries me, and I voice my concern to Jovan.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “No one will see us.”

  The lights turn out to be a series of homes right next to the beach. On the land side of the homes is a field several acres wide that separates the houses from the rest of the—I’m not sure I’d call it a city; it’s more of a town.

  Jovan leads us into this clearing. During the day, we would be exposed to anyone looking out a window, but in the dark of night we are ghosts. The field goes on for a good mile before it ends at a well-lit road connecting the beach homes to the rest of the town. We stop about a hundred feet shy of the street. On the other side is a string of businesses, most of which appear to be still open. Which means we’re now surrounded on three sides by civilization. Unless we go back the way we’ve come, we’ll have to pass through part of it.

  “You have a plan, I hope,” I say.

  “There’s a place I know where we can hide out and no one will find us.”

  “How far?”

  His answer is in the units of distance they use here, a system I have not figured out.

  I ask instead, “How long will it take?”

  “If we don’t run into any problems, we might reach it before the sun rises.”

  That’s still almost half a day away.

  He starts walking again, but before he takes two steps, Clora says something. They talk, their conversation not exactly heated, but not calm, either.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  Jovan says, “She wants to go east. She has family in Setterlund.” At least I think he said Setterlund. “I told her it’s safer if she stays with us, but she doesn’t seem to care.”

  Safer—maybe, maybe not. What’s more important to me is, she’s my last link to Dumont. Though I have never seen them together—maybe they’ve never even spoken to each other—they were both at Trinity. Even if Clora doesn’t know where Dumont went, she might know a way to find out. Without her, I have no chance.

  So it is more for selfish reasons than Clora’s well-being that I say in Latin, “Please. Stay. Better if we are together now. Later can go. I promise. Tonight, not safe.”

  She frowns and looks away as she mulls it over. When she turns back, she nods. “Tonight, yes. Tomorrow I go.”

  The pressure in my chest eases a bit. I’d rather she didn’t add the last part, but I can worry about that in the morning.

  Jovan leads us through the streets, keeping us in the shadows as much as possible. Anytime we see someone, we change direction and find a way around the person. This isn’t as difficult as it might sound. It’s still relatively early in the evening and there aren’t many people about. I don’t know if that’s normal or there’s some reason for it.

  Like the other places I’ve seen in Saint Jakup, there are soldiers here. We see them mainly standing on street corners, in their gray uniforms with bands of gold on their hats. They’re not out in force, though. The action that occurred—maybe is still occurring—back at Trinity doesn’t seem to be a concern here. So we work our way around the soldiers in the same manner we bypassed others. It is a tension-filled hour before we finally reach a darkened stretch of beach again.

  For most of the remaining night, we follow the water as the inland towns become sparser and sparser. Several times Clora asks Jovan a worried-sounding question that he quickly answers. The first few times I ask him what the problem is, but he always says it’s nothing to worry about so I stop pressing him.

  I’m not sure what marker tells him it’s time to turn inland, but that’s what we do a couple of hours before sunrise. I haven’t been paying that much attention to the inland side for a while, so it surprises me there’s only one very small town nearby, straight east of us. To the south I can see the glows of villages we’ve passed, but to the north, the land and the sky are completely dark. It’s as if that portion of the coast has yet to be settled, a situation not shared with my world or Iffy’s.

  We walk through the shrub-covered land for nearly a quarter hour before Jovan stops and looks around as if he’s lost. His face brightens a few moments later, though, as he spots something to the northeast.

  “This way,” he says, and heads in that direction.

  Initially, the only things I see ahead are a few trees clumped together at the top of a small rise. But when we’re about two hundred yards from them, I notice a dark line of something running between us and the base of the hill. At first I think it’s the wall of an old building, but then I see it continues both east and west with no visible end.

  Another fence?

  My guess is confirmed a few minutes later when we get
closer. The fence appears to be made out of tightly woven wire that makes it difficult to see through. It’s tall, too, much taller than the fence that surrounds Skiron Sum, and has seven sharp wires strung along the top.

  The message it conveys could not be clearer: do not pass this point.

  “Another district border?” I ask.

  “Not quite,” Jovan says.

  “Then why’s it here?” I ask.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  I look at the fence again. “We’re never going to be able to climb over it.”

  “We don’t need to.”

  Clora looks at us, confused.

  She asks Jovan a question, but his answer is as short and dismissive as the ones he gave me. He picks up the pace, clearly not wanting to talk anymore.

  We parallel the fence eastward for another few minutes before we turn south again, away from it, and head toward a rock formation about a hundred feet away. Instead of moving around it, Jovan walks up to the base and slips sideways into the narrow gap between two rocks.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “Hold on.”

  I look at Clora, but she seems to be lost in thought and doesn’t return my gaze. It’s maybe half a minute before I hear Jovan working his way back to us. When he reaches the end of the gap, he leans out.

  “It’s tight and it’s dark, so you’ll need to listen to my voice,” he says.

  “You want us to follow you?”

  “Trust me.”

  He has a similar conversation with Clora before he disappears again.

  I wave for Clora to go first. She doesn’t look happy about it but squeezes into the gap anyway. I give her some time to move away from the entrance, and then I too slip inside.

  It’s dark, all right, and tight. The passage goes on for a lot longer than I expected, and I’m getting the sense we’re moving downslope.

  “Slow down,” Jovan says after a couple of minutes. “Feel with your front foot. You’re almost to the steps.”