Ignis

by Tracy Korn

  “Before you get any ideas,” she says to him, “remember our plan.”

  He closes his eyes in a long blink, then nods slowly at her.

  “I know.”

  “Your plan for what?” Avis asks, stepping out from behind his console panel. “They’re already tracking us. I didn’t think it would be so fast.”

  “Then we need to get out of here now. We have to go to Phase Three,” Lyden says.

  “What? Why? You just narrowly avoided going there last I checked.” Arco’s eyes flash and blood flushes his cheeks as he takes a step in front of his sister. Arwyn threads her arm through his.

  Mr. Tark shrugs at Lyden when he hesitates in answering.

  “You might as well tell them. They’ll know soon enough anyway—we don’t have a choice.”

  My dad interjects. “I think they’ve all been through enough, don’t you?”

  “I agree,” Azeris says. “We need to wipe their prints from the Grid and erase their location flags, then get them out of here. Who’s working on that?”

  “No, first, what do you mean? What will we know soon enough?” I scan them all for the answers they’re taking turns trying to hide.

  “Jazwyn, it’s better that you don’t—“

  “Azeris, stop trying to protect me!” I shout, and this time I don’t care who hears me or who’s offended. “I’m not blindly following some scripted path ever again. Does everyone understand that?” Blood pounds in my ears and my throat closes again with the threat of ears I refuse to choke on. “We aren’t safe anymore. We never were safe, but the difference is now we know who are enemies are. We are not helpless. Just tell us your plan.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Letting Go

  Arco

  Jack pushes his hands over his face and sighs. “All right, Jazwyn,” he finally says, taking a seat on the console behind him. “We can’t risk the port-cloud getting even more protection and support than it does already, but not for the reasons you may think. It has to be taken out manually because it isn’t just a pollutant—it’s the outer layer of Phase Three.”

  Everyone seems surprised by this answer. Jazz tries to talk a few times before any words finally come out.

  “Outer layer?”

  “It’s not the same size as the port-cloud,” Jack explains. “Phase Three is only about the size of this building, but it’s tethered to the inner layer of the cloud. They’re connected…symbiotic. If we can take down the facility, the cloud will also die.” He pushes off the console and slips his hands into his white jumpsuit pockets.

  “Why hasn’t The Seam already destroyed it then? How have they let it stand if they’ve known about what’s happening to people at Phase Three?” Jazz presses, wide-eyed and shaking her head in amazement.

  “It’s not just a matter of flipping a switch.” Jack straightens, holding up a hand like she’s going to argue with him. “We’ve come at it from all angles over the years—gradual political and social pressure was the option that yielded the least number of casualties, but those seem unavoidable now.” He shakes his head at the floor like it’s somehow all his fault. I’m actually starting to wonder if it is.

  “So, how do we bring down the facility?” I ask, trying to cut through all the guilt and move this forward. Jack’s eyes jerk to mine.

  “We’re not doing anything. You have all been through enough,” he fires, then turns to Jazz when she starts to protest. “Listen, the only people who can get into Phase Three either work there or are being brought there to be worked on.” He looks at Calyx directly. “We are not risking your lives out there.”

  “We made our way out of Gaia Sur, and all the way through the Rush… We can—“ Jazz starts to protest again, but Tark cuts her off this time, suddenly impatient with everything.

  “Before anything else, you need to understand something. Phase Three is different from Gaia Sur, and even from the Phase Two facility at the end of those biomes,” he says. “It’s connected to the port-cloud by four umbilical columns that pull in the organic matter needed to create the physical structure of the building. We need to get to those and upload the Ignis Archive—“ He stops and blinks a few times when he sees our reactions, then exhales. “It’s the DNA strand you know as Vishan. We need to get that into those columns. Once the atoms are infused, the sun will trigger their disintegration throughout the entire facility, which will cause a chain reaction in the port-cloud itself. But there are a lot of guards and a lot of weapons between here and there.”

  Everyone gapes at Tark, and Jazz shoots her father an incredulous look.

  “Is that really what you’ve all been planning the last few hours? To blow up the whole thing with volatile DNA while the rest of us just stared through the window of The Seam building? How many times are we supposed to go through you being incinerated, Dad!?” Jazz’s voice pitches, then cracks, and I can’t just stand here watching her like this anymore. Her fists clench at her sides. I step between her and Jack and put my arms around her, which only makes her immediately push against my chest, trying to get past…trying to get in front of her father again to make him face her, but I can’t let her go.

  “Take a breath,” I whisper through her hair. “Let him explain.”

  “Jazwyn…” he starts, but can’t get the rest of his words out.

  Calyx finally speaks up for him. “It doesn’t have to be a suicide mission.”

  “No? Then do tell how you get that Ignis whatever you said—the Vishan DNA—into the port-cloud and get out before everything fires? That stuff has an instant reaction to sunlight…trust me.” Zoe narrows her eyes at Calyx. Azeris wraps an arm around Zoe’s shoulders, and I wait for an answer that makes sense. But how could there be one? They want to drop a match in the middle of an oil pit and expect to get out before it all goes up? I start getting pulled into the idiocy of it all until Jazz’s erratic breaths and her heart pounding against my arm chase the thoughts out of my head.

  “Look, they think I’m a mole here at The Seam,” Calyx says after a minute. “There’s a ship that brings port-carnate transfers from Phase Two. They’re picked up at a hub in Admin City and flown in for the next phase of their experimentation. We have a contact who can get us aboard one of those ships. From there, I can pretend I’m delivering Lyden and Arwyn, and Eco can act as a guard escort.”

  I hear this like a balloon popping next to my ear. “You want to use them as bait? Do you know what they’ll do to them there?”

  “I’ll make sure they don’t get trapped in the labs—Arwyn will need to get the test subjects stabilized for transport while Lyden and I hack into the system to trigger the columns. Right now, they’re embedded, and it will take at least two hours to raise them. Then Jack and the rest of his team can get inside and load the Ignis archive into the columns.”

  “And then how does everyone get out? Let me guess—that ship is just going to wait outside for you to blow everything up?”

  “Our contact will leave the ship with Tark…with you.” Calyx looks at me squarely.

  “Me?” I repeat, nodding my head and trying not to laugh at her. “You really are split.”

  “It’s no joke. We won’t be able to get another team in place with all the security alerts on the Grid now. Monitoring will only get tighter until they catch you all, so we need to move. Your crew is our only chance at finishing this.”

  “Crew?” Eco laughs out loud, raising his eyebrows as high as they’ll go. “What could they possibly do but get in the way?”

  I get two steps toward him before Jack starts again.

  “No way. These kids need asylum. They’ve done their part.”

  Calyx tilts her head. “Your son is an Omnicoder, Jack. More than that, he’s your strand of Omnicoder.”

  “No! I won’t put—“

  “Plus, we’ll need another biodesigner to lace the organics with the archive if Liam is going after his brother,” Calyx adds, nodding to Fraya and Myra. The blood drains from their faces.

>   “Are you hearing me? This was never part of the plan!” Jack shouts.

  “That plan was from when we had time. All their warrant flags are up, Jack, even the ones who never went into the Grid—see?” Calyx points to Avis’s console, which has little red blips at the end of each line of code. “They’re not safe here, and our asylum contacts are probably already compromised. The safest place for them now is in the mouth of the wolf.”

  No one moves at this. The words hang in the air and choke us all. I want to move, to run straight up the walls, but I’m suddenly in one of those dreams where your feet are stuck in the mud. From the bloodless looks on everyone’s faces, they feel the same thing. They really are going to burn it all down, and they want us to light the fire.

  “What about the rest of us?” I finally break my paralysis and look at Jazz one more time, scanning her face for any indication that some logic is getting through to her. Her mouth is still set in that line as she shakes her head and crosses her arms. Crite, why are you so stubborn!? I want to scream at her, but I swallow it and try to be rational. “You just heard her, Jazz. They’ll be looking for you, and they won’t stop until they find you.”

  “That’s a risk I’ll have to take,” she says, and I feel sick at the same time I want to punch something.

  I take a deep breath, trying to beat back the urge to give in…to tell her, Fine, all right, if it means that much to you, I’ll go with you—I’ll keep you safe. I swallow that whole thing like a pile of nails because Jazz doesn’t care about being safe. She only cares about finding Liddick. She just stands there with her eyes on fire. Nothing will change her mind about leaving. Who am I to keep standing in her way?

  Eco breaks the silence, holding up his hands to the group like he’s trying to slow down the whole show. “So let me get this straight. You’re going to storm Phase Three, even though we have nothing ready and no one in place to reprogram it?” The lights in his cheekbones flicker blue and red as he turns to Jazz. “And your plan is to walk right into the Mainframe Building and what, find Liddick just sitting at a console or something? Is that it?”

  Jazz squints at him like he’s the biggest mollusk she’s ever met, and while I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, I bite the inside of my lip to keep the smile off my face.

  “We won’t know until we get in there,” she says, clearly trying to sound calm.

  “We? So you are planning on our help,” Eco adds with a smug smile, then laughs in her face. Jazz sets her mouth in a line just like in the tunnels when she went off, thinking I was doubting her.

  “You know what I’m tired of, Eco?” She squares her stance and tilts her head to the side as he raises his eyebrows, mocking her.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll tell me,” he says, and I stop fighting with my composure. Here it comes.

  “I’m tired of your sneering, Eco, and your better than everyone attitude just because you think you’ve seen more than the rest of us. Newsflash: You haven’t. You’ve just been playing dress-up in a world that can be shut off when it gets to be too much for you,” she says. He gapes at her. “I’m also tired of your overcompensating self-importance all because you didn’t get invited to the information party about this whole stupid mess we’re in. And you know the biggest thing I’m tired of, Eco? Your whining. Your incessant, entitled, no-way-it’s-going-to-work whining. Pay close attention because this is the last time I’m going to say that if I have to find Liddick by myself, I will. That’s my point. I will figure it out, so if you’re not going to help me, then at least have the decency to shut your vent because I don’t need your negativity, all right?”

  Her chest is heaving by the time she’s done with him, and her teeth are locked in place just like when she was kicking and throwing punches at Dell for not telling us about that shuttle-sized alligator back in the swamp. I watch it all unfolding like a flat-cine, resisting the pull to jump in and stop it. I stop myself instead. I’m not getting involved this time. Let her burn him down. Let her burn it all down.

  Eco chuffs like a horse, then tries to laugh.

  “I don’t have to take this,” he says, slashing his holographic keyboard out of the air. It disappears, and he makes a beeline for the corridor. No one stops him, not even Calyx.

  “She’s not wrong,” Avis says to no one in particular once Eco is out of earshot, and Calyx falls into a nearby chair with a heavy sigh.

  “I’ll talk to him. His problem is with me, not any of you,” she says.

  “Don’t bother. We don’t have time for drama.” Tark’s voice is tight and thin when he answers. “You have a team to lead, and the clock is running.” He steps away from Jack with a nod. Jack pulls in a long, slow breath, but then seems resigned. “Ms. Ripley…” Tark continues, clapping his hands together like he’s about to make some kind of announcement. “I applaud your bravery in wanting to find Mr. Wright, but I’m afraid I don’t have any resources I can spare. If you leave this facility now, you’re on your own.”

  Jack starts to say something now, but Vox cuts him off.

  “As long as you spare some of those coats? I’m not going out there in these underpants.” She looks down at her jumpsuit and raises her tattooed arms to her sides. There are a few chuckles here and there, and the break in tension loosens the knot in my chest. At least for a second.

  “We can help you with that, Ms. Dyer,” Tark says with a wide smile as he glances at Jack. “We can definitely help you with that.”

  “Right, so this is just happening?” I ask, shaking my head and staring straight at Jazz. Bile inches up my throat at the thought of how much Liddick Wright has obviously never cared about her safety, and here she is again trying to run interference for him. Crite, wake up, Hart, I think. Just let her go.

  “We need to find out what really happened, Arco,” Jazz says in a soft voice.

  And that’s it. There really isn’t anything else to do. I look from face to face for an answer, but everyone is just looking at the floor or somewhere off to the side.

  “And what if he’s not even in that Mainframe Building anymore?” I blurt out before I realize what I’m saying—a last-ditch effort to show Jazz how split this whole idea is.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Azeris announces from the corner like some kind of giant taxidermy bear come to life. “All things done, he’d try to find me next. I have all his virtuo-cine equipment. He’d try to hack his way back in to the Grid to make things right—to find everyone again.”

  “So you think he’d be at your hab in the Badlands?” Jazz asks, hope spreading over her face, which makes my gut twist. Let her go…

  “I think that would be his endgame,” Azeris says with a decisive nod. “There’s the little matter of getting off this ice cube first, though.”

  Zoe wrinkles her forehead, seeming to decide something. “But we’re not on the Grid, so whoever is coming after you all won’t know about us. We can go back to the Badlands, maybe even figure how to sync up with Cal. He’s got that NET artifact you said you could maybe rig to?” She looks at her dad. Azeris nods. “There are still people in that Phase Two lab, and if this is all going down, we need to get them out before things get locked up tight.”

  “Wait…are we splitting up? Is that what’s happening?” Myra asks as Fraya hooks her arm with hers. Jazz takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. She pushes her hands over her face, then moves them to her hips, looking at us all.

  I catch her eyes and nod. “Yeah. We’re splitting up.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Open Doors

  Jazz

  Arco looks through me more than at me, and I feel hollow. There’s a whole conversation hanging in the air between us, and neither of us are going to touch it. Maybe that’s how it should be. I need to stop living my life around everyone else…making decisions based on the least number of people I’ll make uncomfortable, or on what their expectations are of me. It’s exhausting. Arco looks exhausted too, and I know it’s my fault. He’s really
not coming with me this time.

  “You’ll go in with Skull,” Calyx says, turning to Arco. “Avis and Ellis will run your systems once our contact releases the ship.”

  “You can’t be serious, Calyx. You want to throw a handful of cadets into Phase Three and expect them to execute a military grade operation? Have you lost your mind?” My dad grips the sides of the console he’s standing behind and leans over the hovering hologram screen. How is my own father doubting us now?

  I scowl at him and start to protest, but then I remember I’m not even going with them to Phase Three. I’m going to find Liddick.

  “You know as well as anyone that if we’re going to strike, it has to be now,” Calyx adds. “Are their location signatures erased?”

  “Ma’am, the coordinates were locked when we were kicked off the Grid. I can’t edit them,” a woman at a console says.

  “Can you delete them?”

  “No, I can’t access them at all.”

  Tark growls low in his chest, then turns abruptly to Calyx. “Get them out of here while they can still leave…they need food and rest. Get some rest, but stay off the shifts. I’ll be in touch with a rally point,” he adds, but he doesn’t look like he’s totally confident in what he’s saying. A wild panic suddenly pushes through me as it hits me…we’re going out there. I’m going out there, but the people I love are not going with me.

  “Wait—“ I protest as all these pieces start taking shape. “When are we meeting back up and how?”

  Everyone in the room just looks at me like I’m supposed to have that answer. I meet my dad’s eyes, but the feeling that hits me isn’t one of security like it always is when I look at him. This time, it’s…fear?