by Tracy Korn
“They were all heading topside…” he starts, then looks at Tieg. “His sister was wrecked that maybe he’d get swallowed by something, so we went back to hunt him up.”
Popular mollusk, isn’t he? Vox thinks, which only makes me clench my teeth against my growing frustration.
“And this venom has been in his system for days?” Liam says with another nod at Tieg’s black lines.
“Three by my count,” Dell says, catching Tieg when he loses his balance. “We’ve been tracking him up and down these tunnels from the sands to the edge of the Vishan cavern.”
“We need to get him back to Vita,” Cal says, waving the two Vishan boys behind us down the tunnel, the light from their palm fires bouncing red off the dark, root-marred walls.
CHAPTER 22
When One Door Closes…
Arco
The blue, glowing outline starts to take shape in an arc over the white, smooth wall through the window in front of us. I stare at it, still not processing that it’s actually consuming the molecules that make up the wall and then replacing them with something that only looks the same. I shake my head, marveling.
“We have about three minutes until the wall is passable,” Denison’s voice says over the comms. “Then we’ll connect the airlock.”
“Is everyone in position?” I ask. “Ripley…are you, I mean…” I start, but don’t have to finish.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Jax answers, then starts to chuckle. “This archive is purple…purple!” he adds, which makes everything seem less intense. I glance at Tark, who raises an eyebrow and smiles.
“Forty-five seconds to clearance,” Denison says, and Tark nods at me.
“Lock in. We have to be in perfect alignment.”
I nod back without looking at him, without even blinking or breathing as we approach the blue arc outline.
PERIMETER SEALED flashes on the holographic screen in front of me, and I finally exhale.
“Aligned,” I say with the last of a breath.
“Nice work, Mr. Hart,” Tark says. “Aligned, Briggs. Whenever you’re ready…”
“Copy that. Airlock deployed. Delivery in three…two…connected. Sweeps are clean. Deploying…”
“They’re going in there right now? Jax and his dad with the archive?” I ask, and Tark nods again.
“Calyx is waiting to receive them,” he answers. “We’ll start unloading the labs while they upload the DNA archive. Then we’ll get out of here and watch the fireworks.”
“What about the others who work there? They’ll…blow up with the facility.”
“Calyx alerted The State—there will be security ships en route. They’ll have a chance to get aboard and face their crimes, or they’ll die as cowards,” Tark says without an ounce of hesitation or remorse, and I start to realize just how affected he really is by the genetic testing all these years, and on his watch no less. Jazz is right…being helpless has to be the worst feeling there is.
“We’re green—the archives are en route. Are you ready?” Denison says over the comms. Tark gives me a quick glance, then nods once.
“On our way,” he answers. “Let’s go shut this thing down.”
***
The airlock is surreal—perfectly clear like there’s nothing between the abrupt maw of the ship and the outside wall of Phase Three. Tark slips a red flack jacket over his jumpsuit and loads two neural batons in the front. He slings a neural ray over his back, and throws me another. I catch it by the barrel and almost choke on a protest.
“Hey!” I say, despite trying to keep my teeth together.
“Relax, Mr. Hart. You have to enable it before it will neutralize anyone.” He smirks.
“I know,” I lie, watching as he flicks a small lever near his trigger and locks it into place. An electric hum emanates from the ray until I can feel it in my teeth.
I enable my ray, then sling it over my back. I also grab a neural baton and a small toolset from the weapons hold in the ship.
“Ready?” Tark asks. I look out again at the empty space in front of us, a bottomless pit of space between the edge of the ship and the wall of Phase Three.
“It’s just solid all around?” I ask, then feel stupid because of course it is or we’d both be frozen solid right now. Tark just starts walking toward the opening, and I quickly catch up.
“I’ll take the right wall and you take the left. There will be a console in your corner of the room,” he says as we take our first steps onto the ion field. I stop looking down and pull in a breath. “You need to hack into the enclosure controls and remove the barriers—Calyx has the zone channel pulled up already. You’ll just need to override the security clearance. Can you do that?”
“Should be easy enough if I don’t have to dig around for the access port.”
“Good. Then you’re up,” he adds as we approach the wall of Phase Three. Everything in me wants to stop because all I can think about is that we’re walking directly into a zephyr wind. But I press on. If Tark doesn’t think this thing is going to shred us straight to the bone, I just need to put it out of my head too. “Three steps…” Tark continues. “Two steps…one…”
I force myself to keep my eyes open as we walk straight through the wall. Jax and his dad did it, I think, letting out all the air in my lungs. When the haze clears, the interior of Phase Three is nothing like I thought it would be—it’s worse.
Clear cube enclosures line the walls starting about halfway up the room. Everything is dark except for rings of lights along the bottoms of each enclosure. Some are filled with water, and the subjects inside…crite, the people inside. They’re all wearing the same silver jumpsuits, some of them cut into a Y pattern with open sides. Everyone with this kind of suit has three red lines running along their ribs. It looks like everyone is asleep. I stop abruptly when my eyes fall on another enclosure near the center of the room, along the far wall. It’s bigger than the others, and the clear walls are frosted in places. Someone inside is pacing until the man inside stops suddenly and turns to look directly at me. His eyes are milky and his white hair is cropped short. A pair of blue-tinged hands slam against the enclosure wall. He pounds on it again and again, and I start to feel blood pounding in my ears.
“Now! Go!” Tark shouts through his teeth, then runs directly toward the enclosure.
“Wait! I can’t open it with him like that! He’ll kill us!”
“Go now, Mr. Hart! I’ve got it!”
“Crite…” I hiss under my breath and make my way along the wall toward the columns where Tark said the console would be. On the other side, I see it. A blue holographic keypad hovers over the white platform, and the green grid display shows a map of the room. All right, time to work.
I study the layout, then start scrolling through the origin code until I find an automated panel access…if I trip them all at once, this place is going to flood with the water from several of the enclosures. What do I do…? What if they can’t survive outside of that water?”
There’s no other choice—we can’t take the entire enclosure. Denison will know what to do when we get them aboard. He’ll have to know…
Numbers and symbols start to dance in my peripheral vision again.
97A66H Vertical 975-A-17
The code repeats over and over in scrolling text, each time causing a pinch behind my eyes that gets stronger each time. I punch the code into the console, and everything goes silent. Completely silent—I don’t even hear the pounding in my ears anymore.
The man in the larger enclosure pounds on his wall one more time before a hydraulic hum radiates into the air, and all at once, the front panels of the clear enclosures dissipate. I swear, the water seems to hold perfectly still for a fraction of a second before it all spills in a deluge onto the ground, along with the suspended people who were just floating inside. Bodies rush toward me as others step outside of their enclosures, some crying, some shouting. Some still unconscious. Two burst into flame and try to pat each othe
r down.
“Come on! This way!” Denison shouts as he, Avis, Ellis, and Ms. Reynolt start to physically pull people through the opening in the wall and into the emptiness between us and the ship.
“No! No!” one girl starts screaming at the edge of the floor. “I’m on fire! I’m on fire!” she shouts again as flames shoot up her back and down her arms.
“It’s all right. There’s an ion cloud. We’re going to help you!” Denison says in a surprisingly calm voice as he pulls the girl across the threshold, singeing his hands. Ms. Reynolt holds out her arms, and the girl moves toward her.
“Breathe. Just breathe… Concentrate on my voice,” she says, and slowly, the girl’s flames begin to recede.
“Two here!” Ellis says. “We need more room!”
“This is all we have!” Avis responds from inside the Wraith.
I start to head toward his voice but stop when the whole wall behind the large enclosure, which is completely frosted over now, starts to lift. Tark is nowhere when I scan for him, and the nearly foot of water on the floor immediately flows through the new opening. All I see are several pairs of legs that don’t move as the water parts around them, then several more that are stepping wildly. The wall reaches the ceiling to reveal Ms. Rheen and Mr. Styx standing in front of Calyx, Lyden, and my sister, all held in place by metal, faceless riot drones.
“Run!” my sister shouts to me just before one of the drones shoves a neural rod into her ribs. Her shoulders erupt in fire until Mr. Styx grabs her and shoves his thumbs into the inside of her forearm. Her flames instantly disappear, and he pushes her back into the grip of the riot drone.
“There’s nowhere to run, Ms. Hart,” he says. “I thought you knew that by now.”
Tark takes a step toward him. “It’s over, Eros. The State knows everything, and they’re on their way. We’ve sent all the evidence they need to convict all of you for crimes against humanity.”
“Oh, right, that was your job, wasn’t it, Ms. Frome?” Rheen sneers. Calyx’s eyes go wide in confusion. She looks to Jack, who seems equally lost.
“How—?” she starts, but then Rheen steps out of the way to reveal Eco standing behind her, grinning.
“You always did underestimate me, Cally,” he says. Acid fills my veins, and it takes every ounce of my restraint to keep from rushing him and putting out those light-up neural circuits in his cheekbones. “Did you really think I was going to just stand by while these mollusks ruined everything?” he adds, jerking a thumb at Jax, who is held in place by another riot drone. Jax stiffens as his father struggles in place next to him. I have to do something…I think, then remember my neural ray. I slide it around to my front and am about to take aim when Fraya comes running through the ion airlock and into the lab.
“Leave him alone!” she shouts, obstructing my shot of Styx.
“Fraya! No!” I yell to her, but it’s too late. The frozen man inside the larger container jumps down and rushes her, sloshing in the water at our feet. Fraya tries to scream but can’t in the shock of this…mutation running straight for her. Jax rips away from the drone holding him and tries to tackle the frozen man, who stops running and faces him. I take aim at the back of the frozen man, but then Tark jumps between him and Jax, and I’m afraid I’ll hit him if I shoot. The ice man doesn’t fall when Tark makes contact. He just spins around and presses his hands into Tark’s temples, making his hair go white and his skin frost over.
“No!” I shout, firing at the ice man. He drops, along with Tark. Denison and I both rush over to him.
“Skull…Skull, can you hear me?” Denison says, checking for a pulse. Tark’s eyes are closed, and he’s not moving.
“No…no, no…” I hear myself saying over and over again, but the words dry up when I hear Eco’s nasally laughter. He meets my eyes.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for that mountain goat to fall off his cliff already?
Everything goes quiet again, except the blood pounding in my ears. That is loud and clear. I don’t realize I’m walking toward Eco until I’m already almost in front of him—no conscious plan, just movement. I watch the smug look on his face melt when he registers that I’m not stopping…when it dawns on him that he’s going to be hit in the face. I punch him once, then grab his shirt to keep him from falling. I punch him again, and the third time I aim directly for the last of the lights in his cheekbone that are blinking red at me. I hit him, but when I pull back for another punch, arms close around mine and pin them to my ribs, pulling me back. Blood smears Eco’s face as the lights flicker, then stop all together. He spits blood and tries to get to his feet. I struggle to break free of the hold on me until I hear Denison’s voice loud in my ear.
“Stop—be still, son. Your hand…be still…” he says, walking me back at a fast clip, and I nearly trip when I look down and see the white bones of my center two knuckles sticking out from under a flap of skin. For a second I’m not sure it’s even my hand, but everything snaps into focus when I hear Rheen’s cackle several yards in front of me. Denison keeps dragging me backward.
“Take him to the oxygen trials,” Rheen says, gesturing at Eco. Two squat riot drones roll forward and clamp Eco’s arms on each side. Blood runs down his cheek as the wiring unit dangles past his ear, and he’s so preoccupied with touching the blood and looking at his hands in disbelief that it takes him a second to process what Rheen has just said.
“What? No…we had a deal! You told me I’d have my own cine studio!” he starts in a normal voice, ramping up to yelling. “You can’t do this! People will be looking for me!”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Rheen says, suddenly exploding in laughter after a beat. She makes eye contact with Styx, who also starts laughing.
“Oh! Oh, that was a good one…” He stumbles through the words as he chokes on more waves of laughter.
“Seal it! Go!” Denison shouts behind us just as I see another few riot drones grab Jack and Fraya. Jax lunges forward, shouting, then stiffens when the drone holding him jabs a neural rod into his ribs.
“No!” I yell, trying to pull out of Denison’s grip until white hot pain shoots up my arm, making me see stars. I blink furiously, then realize I really am seeing stars as we cross backward over the ion field airlock.
“Seal it!” Denison shouts again. Ellis punches something into the wall console, and I hear the sound of air compressing.
“Retracting!” Avis shouts behind us. I finally pull free of Denison, but only because he lets me go in the same second. I stumble forward and fall on my knees but catch myself with my hands. I feel sick for a second, and everything goes black.
CHAPTER 23
…Another Opens
Jazz
“There has to be a shorter way to the Vishan cavern than going through the Rush,” I protest to Dell and Cal, who seem adamant on going back through these tunnels. “Tieg will never be able to hold out through the biomes like this—especially not through the Sand.”
“She’s right,” Vox says. “We’ll be too slow, and I don’t exactly want to be watching over my shoulder every eight seconds for him to sprout pincers or something.”
“This isn’t a joke,” Liam snarls. “That venom is killing him—do you understand that?”
Vox holds her palms to her sides in surrender and raises her eyebrows. “Zone, Liddick’s brother. We want the same thing.” She cuts a glance at me.
He’s wound because he can’t do anything. He just has to watch Tieg get worse, I think. Vox nods and lowers her arms. She crosses back to Cal, and they start talking in Vishan.
“We need to get him to Azeris’s hab. It’s closer than going six miles into the earth,” Liam says, the red light of the Vishan palm fires flickering on the walls.
“We’re not going back through the Rush,” Cal says. “There’s a shorter way through the supply tunnels. They’re only about a mile out, and then it’s a steady descent.”
“And the pressure? The heat? Will our baseline nanit
es still work without our Gaia jumpsuits?” I ask, holding out my burlap wrap to reveal the now stained white jumpsuit they gave us at The Seam building.
“No. Those will be offline,” Liam says, narrowing his eyes, then sighing. “If I had my equipment, I could put together a synthetic…I just—“
Jazz? I hear in my head. It’s a warbled voice, but it’s…Liddick. My legs nearly give out under me.
“Liddick?” I hear myself say out loud, and Liam stops in the middle of whatever he was saying.
“What did you say?”
“I just heard him…in my head somehow,” I answer, but then my vision starts to get hazy, and a buzz starts in my ears.
Cal moves toward me, and the buzzing gets stronger. My vision flickers, and I push the heels of my hands into them, but it doesn’t help.
“What’s wrong? Can you see?” Liam says, but I almost can’t make out his voice anymore with the growing buzz.
Crite…it’s you. Rip, where are you? Are you OK? I hear Liddick’s voice again, but everything is dark.
Liddick! What’s happening? We’re in the tunnels coming to find you. Where are you? I think, and then I see him standing against a wall made of the same dirt and roots in our tunnels. It’s dark around him with the exception of a glowing light sash across his chest. He’s in red military fatigues, and I can’t tell if he’s really there or if the thinning air is just starting to get to me.
I’m here, he thinks. You’re in my channel or something. Are you with Vox?
Yes, and Cal and Dell…we’re on our way to—
You’re with Cal? He has the NET, Rip! It’s connecting us, Liddick thinks, then puts one hand on the wall and turns toward me. I feel the cool, hard earth on my fingertips and gasp.
I can feel that…it’s just like with Vox when she was hiding at Phase Two. When she touched the cold floor…
Liddick nods, and a smile starts to shake on his lips.
