by L. B. Carter
“We might be too late. I can’t get him to the surface fast enough. Rena—” Nor broke off, his voice brightening with an idea.
“No,” she said.
“Rena,” he pleaded.
There was a long silence. Henley presumed there was some facial conversation ongoing because Sirena gave a few huffs and negative noises.
“I can’t,” she insisted, a little give squelching around her adamant bravado. “I’ll kill him.”
“You won’t. You didn’t kill me.”
“That was different.” Her voice was rising, losing its edge as panic turned it to pliable jelly. “You were different.”
“So is this. This time you need to do the reverse.”
“The—?” Sirena gasped. “The reverse! I—I don’t know if I can. I’ve never… never done that before. Never saved anyone.”
“It’s now or never, Rena. I believe in you. Believe in yourself.”
Her breath whooshed in and out freely.
Henley was jealous. Each expansion and contraction of her lungs was hell for her ribcage and her airway. She wanted it all to go away. But she was grasping at alertness to hear of Bus’s fate.
“Go,” Nor added. “I’ll be right here waiting for you to get back. Focus on that.”
There was a rustle—Sirena standing since her voice next came from farther away. “You’d better be.” The threat was neither light-hearted nor vicious with her apprehensive warble.
“Or else I get another punch to the nose, I know.”
Sirena let out a soft laugh.
Then there was more silence. Or perhaps Henley had fallen asleep. She was very tired, her body frayed and broken, nerves wrung out, muscles depleted, brain empty. Heavy eyelids dripped down, closing the sky. As painful as the shivers were, which could either be attributed to shock or the dampness of her clothes, as they grated tender areas on chafing gravel and jerked resistant joints that were locked and begging for lubrication, they did nothing to invigorate her consciousness.
“Rena will get him,” Nor promised, bolstering confidence against the anxious wait.
Professor Tate’s biologic creation was never finished undergoing experiments.
Oh, where was Professor Tate? Henley stamped that from her mind, the mere consideration exhausting her depleted reserves.
This was only trial one for Sirena, whatever it was she was doing. Though she might be capable as Nor believed, or at least affirmed, most studies required many repetitions and tweaks to accomplish an intended purpose, especially when it involved fragile human life. Henley wanted to hope, but in her delirium and depression, the statistical side of her mind output the possibility of Buster returning as quite low.
Unable to cope with mourning too, she powered down like one of her own technological creations.
Chapter Fourteen
Ace came to with a punch to the stomach that was familiar. The lips on his weren’t.
He inhaled, startled, and his kissing partner gave a startled squeak… but it was oddly distant like she was far away, yet he felt her right against him, his hands against her back and her legs wrapped around his waist. The shutter in his head lifted as she pressed her mouth tighter to his… blowing.
In response to his reflexes awakening, his throat sealed off and cheeks puffed slightly like accidentally releasing some of a balloon’s air back into your mouth when attempting to blow it up. His eyes opened to see the same weird blue-green that had assessed him thoroughly on the bridge before disappearing into a helicopter.
Ace jerked back, Sirena’s legs ripped from him, and steady bubbles streamed between them before she clamped off the air she’d been releasing.
Sirena. The experiment. Doing… whatever she did to him. Henley. Where was Henley? He somersaulted about, but his vision was already starting to fade on the edges. The experiment had given him some air but it wasn’t enough oxygen to revitalize him entirely.
Sirena swam in front of him and pointed up toward the surface then grabbed one of his hands and spun around, essentially wrapping his hand across her chest from behind.
Instinctively, he pulled back from the intimate touch, but she clamped on to his wrist and lifted her other hand, waiting for him to place the left one across her.
Ace spared another moment to look about, seeing only murky blue. There weren’t even any fish or other strange bodies, and the sea was surprisingly deep here, hiding the seafloor. Had he drifted in his unconsciousness?
Sirena half turned to shove another punch to his abdomen, in slow motion and weak underwater, with his other arm still clamped in her grip. She was stronger than him in his current state. She stabbed a finger upward a few more times, her eyes wide, trying to convey something. If only he could read her like he could Henley. Their minds were almost osmotic.
He presumed that’s who she was referring to. Perhaps she meant only the direction of the surface, thinking him confused.
Either way, he obliged, offering his other arm, which she crossed over the first and then began to kick, shooting them surprisingly fast through the water, given her small size and the extra dead weight she carried. He was also detrimental to her stream-lined physique.
Nevertheless, they breached, both gasping dramatic breaths, and Ace quickly let go lest he drag her under.
He treaded water for a moment, getting his bearings. The shore was a distant horizon to the left, visible as a skyline of towering pines, the right end of which was smoldering, a shadow of dark gray smoke curling lackadaisically into the sky. Below that was the edge of the bridge… or where the bridge should be.
Instead, there was a gaping hole, and several cars were also on fire. He recognized the sound of car alarms and glanced upward, seeing no helicopter. What had he missed?
He looked back to Sirena, but she was gone. She was already swimming toward shore, not waiting to see if he was all right and could keep up.
“Sirena,” he gasped, trying a slow doggy paddle after her ripples. He couldn’t tell if he was actually gaining any ground. “Sirena,” he called louder.
She pulled up and turned, treading water, only her head visible. Her eyes were wide, panicked, and her hair was a darker green now that it was wet, making her look truly mermaid-like.
“I… can’t swim,” he admitted. The functions all made sense to him, the physics, the dynamics. However, his saturated clothing and diminished energy were unsurmountable factors, it seemed. And time was of the essence to get to Henley.
She looked over her shoulder at the shore. “Nor…” She looked back and gave a little growl like a kitten. “Don’t do anything to slow me down.”
“Of course.” They had the same goal.
He resumed his position as backpack, and she started off, slower than before with the heightened friction and lower buoyancy at the surface.
After a while, Sirena began to puff, and her mouth was dropping below the water line, sputtering out seawater with each stroke that lifted her chin above.
“Veer for the bridge,” he instructed into her ear, and she hesitated only a moment, staring longingly at the shoreline where Ace presumed Nor was before adjusting a few degrees to the right.
The segmented bridge no longer permitted access from one side of the seaway to the other, a large section having dropped, sunken in just near where they’d been facing off with Professor Tate. The brittle droop produced two ramps just beyond two sets of supports that extended deep into the sea. The one toward the longer remaining fraction of the bridge was closest to them and, incidentally, less inclined than the other.
They reached the slabs of concrete, and Ace shifted his grip to a thin fracture on the edge of a block. From this view, looking up, it appeared vertical. One car perched precariously on the edge of the far side, teetering on its undercarriage, front wheels unsupported. They would have to stay to the right.
“What now?” Sirena asked, still catching her breath after her exertions, assessing their route with him.
Ace analyzed all th
e cracks like a rock climber planning his next footholds. “Follow me,” he told her. “But wait until I’m situated to advance to the next stopping point that I’ll call out to you, in case I need to backtrack quickly.”
She nodded.
He paused to eye her thin arms gripping the crumbling crack next to him. “I assume you’re not too tired?” he asked.
“I’ve got upper body strength,” she replied, offended. “I box,” she reminded.
Ace doubted very much that any fighting practice she’d done had lent to her strength; Jen could confirm if it was a genetic trait. He decided to go for it. They couldn’t stay where they were. This short climb would be less strenuous for her than carrying his weight the next stretch of sea to the shore.
For the moment, Ace diverted his entire focus to choosing finger holds and pulling his body upwards, the angle just enough that his stomach slid against the rough surface. He pushed with his quads, straightening his legs to reach the next rung in his man-made, destruction-formed ladder.
He paused, his fingertips already hurting, reassessing. He hunted for his next reach, then shifted his foot to the crack he’d been using to stay above the water when they first got there. He shoved up quickly, using momentum to stretch his opposite arm to a small piece that was jutting out. His fingers wrapped around the chalky chunk for a brief second before it popped free, tumbling below. A grunt escaped him as three of his remaining fingers caught the brunt of his weight with an additional tug from the sudden release. He looked down.
Sirena was right below him where he’d left her, gazing up at him. He gave a little hop, digging his fingers and toes in deeper, adding his swinging arm to the little divot on which the other was hooked. Either he fell on the girl or the car did. He couldn’t fall.
He took a deep breath and tried again, taking time to assess more stable options. When he reached another few feet up, he called down.
“Use the same footholds, but check their robustness before leveraging your entire weight onto each one; I might have weakened them.”
“Okay,” she responded. He couldn’t look back to check her progress. She was on her own.
Another few rungs, and Ace’s biceps were shaking, his forearms aching. Climbing certainly was a unique strain on those generally unused muscles. Although, constant typing every day at BSTU probably was a marginal advantage. Not like boxing… or being a superhuman genetic experiment. Or an android.
The next time Ace looked up, he almost allowed himself to feel relief. He was wise enough to keep tension and avoid slipping. He could hear Sirena’s scrapes just below him. He suspected she wasn’t staying the allotted distance behind. He used that knowledge to stay focused and not get ahead of himself.
Looking back at him were the curious faces and several phones of passengers and drivers who were now more long-term stranded on their commute than they had been due simply to the professor’s hold-up. The tipped plane he was scaling was cracking, and he could hear small hunks still breaking off and tumbling with a splash below like a glacier calving. He needed to hurry. The bystanders were just that. They clustered around the precipice, curious about the couple emerging from the sea, murmuring voices assuming that they’d escaped a sunken vehicle. None of them offered a hand to assist him the last foot.
This was why he ignored the rest of the BSTU community. You couldn’t rely on anyone but yourself.
He flung an arm over the edge, hearing a much louder fissure splintering. Scrambling, he braced his forearms on the horizontal road and scuffled his feet up the wall, using what little friction he could to gain purchase rather than any chasm, worried his weight might widen it and it would break entirely off, sucking Sirena down with it.
At last, he got one foot up and rolled the rest of the way onto the edge, immediately scooching his prone body to peer over the cliff.
Sirena was a few feet down, searching for the next hold.
“To your left,” he called, keeping the urgency from his tone so as not to startle or worry her. She needed to remain calm.
“Where, left? There’s frickin’ five lanes spanning this road.”
“Okay, put your hand out. Now shift it left about three inches. Good and up about two,” he directed. “No, too far, down again. Yep, there.”
“You’re calling this a handhold?” she cried incredulously.
“If you move your foot about a foot up, you’ll find another crevice you can use as leverage. That’ll be enough.”
“So says you. I was made for water not… climbing.”
“Are you afraid of heights?”
She didn’t answer for a second, her foot shifting millimeter by millimeter up to the spot he’d told her about by feel. “When they leave me hovering above a water body. Never really tried scaling anything before though, so it’s hard to say if heights is another regular fear.”
“You’re afraid of water?” That was contradictory. This was not the time for psychoanalysis. “You’re almost—”
A cracking, deep grinding cut Ace off.
“Shrimp! Help me!”
Ace slid further off the edge, just enough to keep his center of mass stable, and reached an arm down.
Sirena tried to lift her hand, but immediately dropped it back to the hold again, looking down her front to try to maneuver her foot into the right slot faster.
“No, don’t look down!”
“Too late.” Her voice was more faint, and she looked back up at him, her visage a slightly paler shade than her hair.
“You can do it. Just do a little pull up, and your foot will follow, reaching its mark. You said you’ve got arm strength, right? Let’s see it,” he coaxed.
She stretched her shoulders and tipped her head side to side, determination shuttering the terror in her eyes. She closed them as another groan escaped the bridge, a whimper slipping from faded lips. What would motivate her? She was tired.
“The faster you get up here, the faster we can go find Nor and get you to safety. Jen wouldn’t want all her work wasted if you die here.”
He had no idea if any of his tirade spurred her on, but her eyes snapped open again, boring into Ace’s. He wiggled his fingers enticingly, and she shifted her gaze to them, pursing her mouth. Then her biceps bulged as she strained to lift her weight with only her fingertips. Her back foot slid up, nearing the little opening.
The crowd was chanting now, shouting encouragement, none of their suggestions or praise independently audible, but the vibe was hopeful, supportive.
Almost as if feeding off it, Sirena’s elbows snapped into ninety-degree angles, and her toes made purchase. She slid a smile at Ace, who felt himself return it.
C-c-crack.
An entire section separated right where Sirena’s toes had just pushed in, and she screamed as she slid down the remaining limb of the bridge.
Ace lurched, grabbing onto her wrist just as her fingers uncurled. But Ace had shifted too far, and their joined weight started to pull him over. The roadway hurtled into the water with a walloping sploosh, and the car adjacent to Ace in similarly treacherous balance finally careened over, causing screams among those nearby. Ace and Sirena were going to join it.
Suddenly weight slammed on top of his legs, wrenching his knees backward painfully, but their tumbling movement ceased.
Instead, they hung over the water, Sirena’s fingers now open, gripping nothing, her teeth bared, and his one hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling on his shoulder socket. He let out a half-cry.
Then, whomever had his legs started to pull him back, bit by bit. Sirena slid up the last few feet, and Ace’s chest scraped onto the road-top. He heaved his exhausted biceps, yanking Sirena up beside him where they both lay, panting for a few minutes.
“Never again. God. I think,” Sirena gasped, “that anyone would be afraid of heights after that. Thank you,” she said sincerely.
“I wouldn’t let you fall into the water,” he responded, breathing deeply.
Her laugh huffed out on a
n exhale. “You know, I used to think you would. You didn’t seem like the hero type.”
That pierced Ace and his brows lowered, a pang worming through his chest.
A hand slapped on top of his where it rested on his stomach and patted once, floppily, before slipping off. “Now I know I’m wrong. You’re just like Nor. But—” She caught another breath. “—I’m the wrong damsel.”
“Henley.” Ace bolted upright, sending the public who’d been bent over him scrambling. He shifted to his feet and stood, walking to the precipice, trying to see the shoreline.
Behind him, Sirena mumbled a hurried thanks to their helpers. Henley would have done a much better job.
He squinted as a black silhouette rose from the ground, seeming to elevate right into the air. A drone? He followed its trajectory up to a dark helicopter.
“Salty barnacles!” Sirena exclaimed from beside him.
The human-shaped object reached the metallic bird’s body, and it tilted, turning head on toward them.
“Oh, shrimp,” she added breathlessly, “we have to run!” She clutched his sleeve, pulling him as she started between those in their audience.
“No.” He held resolute, turning to face her.
“What? They’re coming back.”
He shook his head. “We can’t outrun them.”
She looked around wildly, her hair and clothes dripping onto the road. “But we can hide among all the people, disappear into the crowd.” She messed with her beacon-like hair. “I can hide in someone’s car or—”
“No. We can’t hide from them either.” Henley’s tech was too good to rely on visual aid. Ace had no qualms that the professor would be using the highest quality products from BSTU. They were top of the line.
An idea slid to the front of his mind. “How long can you hold your breath?” He asked. Sirena would stand out in a crowd here because she was designed for underwater camouflage.
