The Lofties (The Echelon Book 2)

by Ramona Finn

  “We need to go.” Lock fumbled at my wrist and snapped my phone free. He thumbed on the flashlight, and I saw we were in a tunnel, somewhere deep underground. “There should be a ladder,” said Lock. “Up ahead, for the maintenance crews.”

  “We never even found those nanobots.” I trailed after him, palm to the wall. “Or your cure, or much of anything.”

  “We found those guns. And the maps.” Lock found the ladder and jammed my phone in his pocket. “We know we’re not alone now. If we can get to those other Domes, warn ‘em what’s coming—”

  “If they’ll even listen. If they understand us. I know I don’t read so well, but those signs weren’t English.”

  “Maybe Ben’ll know something, or Jetha, or Starkey.” Lock started up the ladder, boots clanging on the rungs. “We’ll get to them first, then we’ll take it from there.”

  I glanced back at the still water, aching to my marrow. Ona was trapped in there, and Reyland, Mom and Dad.

  “Don’t think about it.” Lock held out his hand. “Mission mode, remember? We gotta go.”

  My eyes pricked with tears, but I blinked them back. I crammed everything down inside of me, all my anger and hate, all my terror, my pain. I swallowed it all and climbed up toward the moon.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I jogged up next to Lock as the lights of Echelon dimmed behind us.

  “Give me my phone.”

  “What?”

  I slapped at his pocket. “You’ve got my phone.”

  “Oh.” He fished it out and forked it over, brows knit in a frown. “You should ditch that, though. They might be able to track it, or—”

  “That’s why I’m turning it off.” I pressed the power button, holding it for a five-count so it switched all the way off. “I can’t just get rid of it. Ona might try to call me, or Reyland, or—”

  “I get it.” Lock slowed to a brisk walk, scowling at my feet. “Where are your shoes?”

  “I don’t know. They came off somewhere. Turn around.”

  Lock did, and I shimmied out of my pantyhose, leaving them crumpled in the dirt. My dress was a mess, crusted with red rust and plastered to my skin. I ripped out the petticoats and tossed those as well.

  “Ona should be okay,” said Lock. “She wasn’t part of our plan, so they won’t hold it against her. And they’ll want her as a hostage, in case they need—”

  “Don’t.” I swallowed back acid, got my panic under control. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I just don’t—let’s not go there. Once I start speculating, I won’t be able to stop.”

  “I get it.” Lock glanced over his shoulder. “Want my boots? You can have ‘em.”

  “What, those boats?” I snorted. “They’d just slow me down.”

  Lock shrugged, loose and dopey, and we struck out across the exper. We stuck to the rough, avoiding the tracks, but still the searchlights came for us, sending us diving for cover again and again. One buggy swung close enough to spray us with dirt. Another stopped nearly on top of us. We braced for a fight, certain we’d been spotted, only to choke on horrified laughter at the splash of urine in the sand.

  “If that comes down here—”

  I elbowed Lock hard. He nudged me back.

  “Pssss.”

  I buried my face in my sleeve, shaking with a mix of hysteria and mirth. Time stretched like taffy, and still it went on, Lock snuffling into my back as I gasped for breath. At last, I heard a deep sigh, and the sound of pants being zipped. Boots crunched on gravel, and the Decemites peeled out, highbeams jouncing through the night.

  “He got my leg,” groaned Lock. I rolled my eyes.

  “You’re just wet from the reservoir. Quit your whining.”

  “Easy for you to say. That reservoir wasn’t warm.”

  I ignored him and jogged on. I could see the gorge up ahead, a black slash across the exper. Just east of there, we’d find help, Lita and Derrick, maybe Ben. He’d know what to do, or Jetha would. I pushed myself faster, scrambling down the slope. Lock kept pace with me, then overtook me, nimble as a goat. He raced to the bottom and I slid down, and we streaked across the riverbed, splashing through the thin fall trickle.

  “Never thought I’d be back this way.” Lock reached down to help me up the far side. “I swear, a hundred baths later, I still get paranoid. Like I’ll lift up my arms and still smell like trash.”

  “Right now, you smell like duckweed.”

  “So do you.” He found a root hanging down and heaved himself up the cliff face, smirking down as I struggled to follow. “There used to be a bridge here, till Samson cut it down.”

  “Why’d he go and do that?”

  “To keep the Outsiders on their side.” Lock laughed without humor. “‘Course, they come across anyway. They just take the long road.”

  I lowered my head, panting, and scrabbled up a crumbling scree. Dirt streamed between my toes, and I kicked for purchase, pedaling at the cliffside till I belly-flopped over the top. Lock had found a steep path and was nearly out of sight. I set out in pursuit and caught him at the top.

  “I don’t see their dome,” he said. “Could be they’ve moved on.”

  “We have to check anyway. It’s hours to the base.”

  Lock nodded, but I could see the doubt in his eyes. I could feel it as well, churning in my guts. Maybe they had moved on, found themselves a better spot. Somewhere past the gorge, closer to the vents. Or they could’ve packed up for winter, headed wherever they went for the dry season. Upriver, Ben had said, wherever that was.

  “Myla.” Lock stopped dead, and I stopped with him.

  “What?”

  “Right there.” He pointed down the incline, past a black fall of rocks. At first, I saw nothing. Then the clouds parted, and I saw moonlight on glass, glittering daggers of it twinkling in the sand.

  “The projector.” I took a reluctant step forward. They hadn’t moved on, at least not by choice. The camp lay in ruins, trampled to dust. A half-buried tent flapped listlessly in the breeze. I found their generator gutted in a spill of copper wire. A pot stood, cold and empty, in a circle of ash. I’d dined from that pot the night I’d met Ben.

  Lock bent and plucked something from the dirt, something black and formless that seemed to drip between his fingers. He stared at it briefly, then dropped it in the sand. “What... what’d they do?”

  I came up behind him, and my heart plunged like a stone. Lock had found a mask, melted to drippings. A pile of them lay at his feet, all cracked and formless and stinking of lighter fluid.

  “Wait here,” said Lock. I trailed after him anyway, past the scattered firepit, out toward the latrines. A thick stench hung in the air, garbage and bleach, and something rotten underneath. My eyes stung and watered, and I shielded them with my sleeve. I didn’t see Lock when he dropped to one knee. I nearly tripped over him, and at first I thought I’d hurt him, as he loosed a broken sound.

  “Sorry. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t look.” He waved me back, but I’d seen it, the crumpled bundle at my feet. I reeled back, gutpunched, Ben’s name on my lips. I bit it back, swallowed it, as though speaking it would make it true.

  “Who—?”

  Lock touched the corpse between the shoulder blades and pulled back fingers flaked with brown.

  “He was running away,” he said. “They shot him in the back.”

  “Who is he?”

  Lock turned him over, and it was Derrick, eyes wide in death, fixed blankly on the moon. Lock thumbed them closed, but they cracked right back open, shrunken dry. I looked away, fighting sickness and a deep, clawing rage.

  “Should we bury him?” The words quavered out of me in a voice not my own.

  Lock made a rasping sound. “We have nothing to dig with, so...” His shoulders hitched once and were still. “We’ll take him home, at least. We can do that much.”

  I watched as Lock shucked his fine coat and shook out the sand. He laid Derrick out on it and crossed his arms over
his chest. He combed the dirt from his hair and wiped his face with his sleeve. Then, he buttoned his coat over him, folding him into it like a shroud.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d never have wished this on you.” He knelt there a moment, then he squeezed Derrick’s shoulder and gathered him to his chest. I hovered over him, at a loss.

  “Can you carry him on your own?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Lock struggled upright and set out for the Spire. I followed him at a distance, to give him space to breathe. We trudged through the night, a grim procession, into the graying dawn. Sand gave way to gravel, and then to yellow grass. The mountains towered over us, their peaks cloaked in snow. I scanned the floodplain for movement, searching for any sign of life, but only the grass stirred, rippling in the breeze. Lock stopped at the creek bed and waited for me to catch up.

  “No barrier here, either.” He nodded at the fissure leading into the caves. Sure enough, it stood empty, no flicker of purple to suggest a gretha shield.

  “They could be in the Haven,” I said. “Maybe the Decemites came back. Maybe they took cover.”

  “Maybe.” Lock settled Derrick more securely against his shoulder. I licked my lips and tasted sulfur. My legs had turned to lead.

  “Some of them made it,” said Lock. “From the camp, I mean. I saw footprints past where Derrick was. Big steps, running steps. Not a lot, but some.”

  “And the rest of them?”

  He pinched his lips together and said nothing. I fell in behind him as he picked his way across the creek bed. The silence pressed in on us, and I felt myself crushed by it, an unbearable weight anchoring me to the moment. No voice rose in challenge as we closed in on the base, no sound but the warm wind soughing through the grass. I called out anyway, at the top of my voice, so loud Lock stumbled, boots scuffing in the dirt. I called out the challenge the gate guard had once issued Ben, called out and waited, and the mountains called back—when do we rest, when do we rest, when do we rest…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Haven stood open, yawning black and cold. Its great doors lay twisted, blown from their frame or melted from it. I smelled death beyond them, and I lowered my lantern to my side. I’d snagged it off the wall heading into the caverns, but the state of the base had me wishing I hadn’t—the empty rooms, the scattered trash. Something had happened here, something bad.

  “Let’s check the mines,” said Lock.

  “What for?”

  “Signs of Lazrad. Signs she’s mining. Don’t you want to know why?”

  I shouted, half-laugh, half outrage. Why? For rigur, for spite, what difference did it make? The Decemites had left nothing to salvage. The village was ash, the school blown to dust. Ben’s room of stars, they’d turned into a furnace, filled it with wreckage and set it ablaze. Ben’s stars were dead now, blacked out with soot. And Ben—

  “You’ve got the light,” said Lock. “Please. We’ll be quick.”

  I led the way to the elevator, and Lock laid Derrick on the platform. I hung my lantern on a peg, and we worked the pulley together, rattling down in fits and starts. The shaft was colder than I remembered, the chill turning our breath to vapor. My eyes stung with sweat, and I blinked it away. By the time we hit bottom, we were both soaked and shivering, grimacing to keep our teeth from chattering.

  “It was warm before,” I said. “Stuffy, even.”

  Lock scooped up Derrick and shuffled past me. “What’s that down there?”

  I raised my lantern and grunted in surprise. The shaft was black and burnt, half-collapsed down one fork, jammed with debris down the other. I saw one of the furnaces toppled on its side, its innards blown out, its door embedded in the wall. Lock’s boot crunched on something—a shattered pressure gauge. I did a slow turn, taking in battered mine carts on tracks hacked to bits, helmets cracked open, sniffers smashed against walls.

  “All this, just to wreck it? Just to spoil it for everyone, so no one can use it?”

  Lock shook his head slowly. I could see the whites of his eyes, lurid in the gloom.

  “We should go back,” I said. “No point hanging around.”

  “Not yet.” He picked his way onward, past the blasted furnace and down a crumbling shaft.

  “Where are you going?”

  Lock splashed through a puddle into a cramped alcove. A shelf hung off one wall, cracked down the middle. Underneath lay a bedroll, covered in dust. Lock knelt down next to it and laid Derrick on the mat.

  “This is the closest we’ll get to a proper burial,” he said. I shivered so violently my stomach lurched.

  “But it’s so cold.”

  “I don’t suppose he’ll mind. Besides, he has my coat.” Lock unbuttoned and rearranged it, threading Derrick’s arms into the sleeves. He smoothed the lapels over his chest and turned down the collar. I found a pillow in the corner, and Lock tucked it under Derrick’s head. His eyes were still open, clouded yellow in death. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look anything, and maybe that was for the best.

  “We should say something, I guess.” I hugged myself to get warm but shivered again anyway. Lock got to his feet and wrapped an arm around me, nestling me to his side.

  “He was good to me,” he said. “We were enemies—they made us enemies—but he was always decent. He’d come keep me company—”

  I felt, more than heard, Lock’s breath catch. He swallowed audibly and kept going, dry throat scraping.

  “It’s not me who should be saying this. He had folks waiting—still does, maybe. He was a husband, a father. A friend. I knew him a few weeks, enough to know that, but I don’t have those stories, the ones you’re supposed to tell. Good-time stories, ‘remember when.’ I don’t—I don’t—”

  “It’s okay.” I fumbled for his hand and found his wrist instead. I grabbed on awkwardly and gave it a squeeze. “He, uh... He stole your buggy that first night, then got mad when you got sick in it.”

  Lock snorted wetly. “I didn’t even throw up.”

  “I think he still had fun, though. Lita never let him drive.”

  “I remember that,” said Lock. “He told me, in the pit. Said his kid was the same, always taking charge. He was learning to read, and he’d take over story time, grab the book and just go for it, like...” He leaned down and touched Derrick’s face. “We’ll find your folks, if they’re out there. Let them know where you are. Give ‘em some peace, maybe.”

  Derrick lay staring, resplendent in Lock’s coat. It was big on him, soft and heavy. His hands lay cold on his chest, lined brown with dirt. It didn’t seem fair, gold at his wrists and the desert under his nails—such a fine garment, come too late to warm him. Too late to comfort him after all his hard scrabble. I turned my face to Lock’s chest and tried to remember how to breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lock, whether to me or to Derrick, I couldn’t be sure. He wrapped his arms around me and we stood in the cold, stood till our lantern guttered and our shadows danced on the walls.

  “We should go,” I said. “It’s scary down here in the dark.”

  Lock nodded, and we left Derrick to his rest. We trudged back to the elevator and sweated our way to the top. I didn’t think we’d speak again, not in this dead place, but Lock stopped me in the main hall, his hand on my arm.

  “I think they’re alive,” he said.

  “Who, Lita and—”

  “Most of them.” He gestured back the way we’d come. “Lazrad didn’t do that, back at the mine. At least, I don’t think she did. I think they did it themselves, to block her from the rigur.”

  I frowned. I had no room for hope, no room to see it shattered. “What makes you say that?”

  “Look around. There’s nothing here.” He nodded at the fissure, at the thin light from outside. “They took the projectors. Decemites wouldn’t do that. And over there, where the village was, I’m not seeing dead sheep. Someone took those, and no way it was anyone from Echelon.”

  I stood chewing that over. It made sense,
on the face of it. What would Lazrad want with sheep, or a mine blown to rubble?

  “We should look for a radio,” I said. “If they’re out there, we need to find them, tell them what we found. They need to know there’s more Domes. Ones that might sell them gretha.”

  “Yeah.” Lock perked up slightly. “Where’s that one you used, with the fancy name?”

  “What, the Carillon?” I chuckled. “If you’re right, and they did get out, Jasper definitely took that with him. But his lab was full of old junk. Could be worth checking there.”

  We refueled our lantern from one we found on the wall and made our way to the lab. I breathed a sigh of relief, finding the Carillon gone. Jasper’s computer was also gone, and most of his books. He’d left his flasks and his bottles, and they lay shattered on the floor. Lock glanced at my bare feet and waved me back from the mess. I watched as he dug through the wreckage, upending boxes and shaking out drawers.

  “This was a radio once.” He held up a bundle of wires that were knotted up at one end and hooked to a plastic shell. “Now, if I could just find the rest of it...”

  I picked my way past the glass and crouched down beside him, raking through chips and batteries, old keypads, broken tools. “Why would anyone keep all this?”

  “Here’s why.” Lock plucked a melted something, trailing a speaker from one end. His grin seemed almost genuine, barely frayed at the seams. “This should do. Let’s get it outside, and we’ll see who’s listening.”

  I tried not to get my hopes up as we sat in the sun, Lock tinkering with his radio while I kept watch. Still, my pulse picked up at the first burst of static. Lock connected the dial, and I found myself holding my breath. A burst of music came through, and we grabbed hands and cheered.

  “Someone’s alive out there. They’re—”

  “We can’t talk on this channel. We still need to—”

  “It’s working. You got it working.” I grabbed him and hugged him, breathing his warm scent. Lock laughed and hugged back, rocking me in his arms.