Ignis

by Tracy Korn

You came after me? Even after… He trails off.

  I know you didn’t betray us. But I don’t know how long this connection will last, so just tell me how to get to you, I think, trying to look around for anything that might give away his location. It’s just carved earth as far as I can see.

  It’s not safe. Dez’s father has me in lockstep with these government apes. We’ve tried to lose them twice already.

  We?

  Finn…a friend from the Badlands. It’s a long story.

  What’s close? Where are you going?

  Spaulding sent me to find Tieg.

  Tieg is with us! That’s what I started to say. He was bitten by one of the antlions. We’re taking him to Vita.

  Rip! Liddick nearly shouts, then looks over his shoulder. He’s rolling his eyes when he looks back at me. Sorry…this is all split—anyway. I have an idea. How many are with you?

  Cal, Dell, Tieg—though he’s tied up—Liam, and Vox.

  Liam is with you!? All right. Tell Cal we are at…Liddick thinks, then looks at some kind of panel strapped to his arm. Crite, I can’t see the numbers. Listen, there’s a waterfall about half a mile back. We dropped about a mile from the hub out there at the base of Skyboard. It’s—

  Yes, with Ensign? That’s where we came through too.

  Yes! We dropped about a mile east of there, heading toward the ocean, and we’ve been descending for a few hours. I’m going to tell these mollusks I know where Tieg is. Can you get to those falls?

  Dell and Cal must know where that is, and if not, with Vox, we should be able to find it.

  All right. Tell the others there are four Special Blacks with us, and they’re outfitted. Liam will know what that means. They’re armed, too, and to them, everyone is expendable except Tieg, OK? We’ll need to give him up and move.

  Liddick, he’s really sick.

  The Blacks will take him to his father, and he’ll be good as new. Trust me. Spaulding is one of the high rollers for all these genetic mutations, Rip. He’s been funding Gaia for years, Liddick explains, then starts walking toward me. I feel the pressure of each step on the bottom of my feet and instinctively look down. They haven’t moved, and when I look up again, Liddick is just inches from me. He looks down and takes my hand, but I don’t feel it.

  You can’t feel me because I’m not really holding your hand…just the air in front of me, he thinks, reading my feelings. But I can hear every echo in your head right now, he adds, then meets my eyes. He moves his hand to my cheek, but then stops abruptly. His dark eyebrows dart together for a second, and he takes a step back.

  What’s wrong? I think, confused. He shakes his head.

  Nothing. Finn is calling me. It doesn’t take this long to take a leak. He smirks, then shrugs one shoulder. They’re coming. Head to the waterfall. Be ready for four outfitted Special Blacks, he adds with a nod.

  “Liddick, wait!” I say out loud this time, but before I can even finish the sentence, he’s gone, and my vision is hazy again.

  ***

  When I open my eyes, I’m sitting on the ground leaning against the wall. Liam is crouched in front of me and Vox is at my side.

  “You went into his channel?” Vox asks, knocking on something hard in my lap. I look down and see the smooth, metal NET device, the two forks of the Y-shape pointing away from me. I nod.

  “It was just like with you, but nothing went abstract. Nothing stretched out like a funhouse.”

  “You’re closer…” Cal says, and I shoot him a look, which makes my head spin for a second.

  “What?” I ask, surprised.

  “Vox was in Admin City when you tapped into her channel,” Liam explains. “Liddick is in these tunnels somewhere.”

  “That too,” Cal says. Vox smirks at me and pulls me to my feet.

  “So? What happened?”

  “We need to find a waterfall. He’s not alone. There are four Outfitted Special Blacks. He said Liam would know what that meant?”

  “Crite…” Liam says, then blows out a breath. “We’re going to need help then.

  “What are they?” I ask.

  “Genetically modified soldiers. They’re enhanced—night vision, heat resistant—and they’re fast. We don’t have anything they can’t manage.”

  “Liddick just told me they’re working for Tieg’s dad. Their mission is to find Tieg and bring him back,” I answer, then look back to find Tieg leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, the black lines seeming to thicken and darken down his throat.

  “So…we trade?” Dell asks, holding one of Tieg’s arms.

  “He’s not going to make it to Admin City like this…” Liam says. “Not at this rate.”

  “Liddick said Tieg’s father could help him. He’s been funding Gaia’s research,” I explain, then look at Tieg again to see if he understood me, but he’s still nearly unconscious against the wall. “I don’t like the idea of just handing him over like this, but it sounds like our only chance to get Liddick away from these people.”

  “Can’t say Vita would be able to reverse the spread of this by the time we could even get him to her, if it’s any consolation,” Cal says, eyeing Tieg. “Going on day four at least of the infection…”

  “Then we need to get to the waterfall Liddick was talking about. He said they’d been descending for a few hours, and they went down about a mile toward the sea from the hub we came through at the base of Skyboard mountain,” I add, then glance at Vox. She looks behind us in the direction of the trap we fell into, then anglers her head to Cal.

  “Do the tunnels all connect?” she asks.

  Cal nods. “And there’s a waterfall about halfway to the Vishan cavern,” he says, but narrows his eyes. “But you need to be sure those people will take him back to where they came from.”

  I look up at Liam. “We can’t let them know about the Vishan down here.”

  “We won’t. When the time comes, we’ll create a diversion. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll—“

  “Hell, if a diversion is all you need,” Dell says, then looks past us at the two tall Vishan boys standing several feet in front of us. “Run back and fetch me Calliope’s whizzer, and don’t let her catch you, wise?”

  Knowing smiles spread over the boys’ faces, and it’s all they can do to keep their composure. They nod just before bolting into the depths of the tunnel. Everything dims as they get farther and farther away until Cal pulls up another flame in his hand, restoring the light.

  “What’s a whizzer?” Vox asks.

  “A drill that’s also about the worst sound in the history of mankind, next to hearing the sound of your own bones crunching.” Dell nods. “Reckon we can label that particular noise any creature we want and make them boys take their prize here and run.”

  “And they’ll think whatever is making that sound will just take care of us…eat us or something, so they won’t have to account for us,” I say. “That could work.”

  Liam nods. “Aren’t those two going to pass the waterfall? They’ll be caught?”

  “They’ll pass on by, but they won’t be caught,” Cal says.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because they’ll be going the same way we will: over it.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Round Two

  Arco

  It’s dark and cold, but there’s a red light in the distance. I hear voices going in and out that I recognize but can’t place…except one.

  “…our only chance…Liddick…away from these people…”

  “Jazz?” I hear myself whisper, then see her face in the glow of the red light. I press my teeth together and narrow my eyes, but I can’t focus on it long enough to make the image stay.

  The words TRACKERS DISABLED suddenly flash in green at the bottom of my vision, which startles me enough that I shake off the rest of the fog clouding my brain. The images from my dream fade into the light of the room around me—metallic and bright.

  “No, it’s Myra. I had to shut down your t
racker system because you kept looking for Jazz. You were calling out for her. It was making your blood pressure spike,” Myra says, her eyes red and glassy. She presses her thumbs into my forearm. Ice pushes through my veins a second later, and I jump in surprise.

  “What did you do to me? What is that?” I fire at her. She just smiles at me quietly and blinks back tears.

  “Morphine and dopamine,” she says, nodding to my hand, which is every shade of red and purple wrapped in a clear pack of gel.

  “What—?”

  “Dr. Denison patched you up…your new nanites are working on the rest.”

  I barely process what she’s saying in the scramble of everything in my head. I try to sit up on the metal table I’m lying on and nearly hit my head on one of the floating lights a few feet above me.

  “Med bay…” I say to myself in confirmation.

  “Yes. Because of your hand. You fell on it and passed out when the others…” She trails off, choking on a sob.

  “Where—crite…” I say, remembering what happened in Phase Three now. “We need to go back for them. Where’s Denison?”

  “We wouldn’t get very far right now,” Ms. Reynolt says as she enters the room in a hurry, then starts rifling through the cabinets. The sight of her red uniform and reddish hair cause another surge of adrenaline in me because all I can see is Rheen.

  “We need to get back in that building,” I insist, trying to get off the table, but stop abruptly when pain shoots through my arm from an IV I’ve just snagged. “Get this tube out of me. We have to—“

  “You need at least ten more minutes right there unless you want those fingers to come off entirely,” Denison says, crossing the threshold of the med bay a few minutes after Ms. Reynolt. He pinches a holographic image of what I assume is my hand x-ray floating in front of him, enlarging the center two bones at the knuckle. I lean forward a little to get a better look and see that both bones are detached, bending up and away from the knuckles. I wince, then hesitantly look back at my hand, a little amazed that aside from the discoloration, it looks normal.

  “Just don’t try to move yet,” Myra says, quietly again. “You severed a tendon and broke two bones in your hand, but everything is repairing since Dr. Denison rebooted your baseline nanites. Your body just needs a little help for ten more minutes. That’s what this tube is doing.”

  “All this just from punching that little skod a few times?” I ask, still in disbelief at all the garbage I’m hooked up to and the apparently wrecked state of my hand through the gel packing.

  “Eco has a titanium sinus membrane, and those lights you put out were laced on fiber optic neural wire,” Denison says, flashing a pen light in my eyes. I squint and turn away. “But falling forward on that hand is what put you out.”

  “Let me up.” I say, but he flattens his hand on my shoulder and puts me right back down.

  “Not to mention when you cracked his connection relay, wave fluid contaminated your blood, which is worse than mercury poisoning. We finally got it flushed from your system.”

  I shake my head. “Eco is an alpha channel tester. Why would he be loaded with all that?”

  “His physical body isn’t in the cines, remember?” Denison says mechanically as he flips through pane after pane on his display. “He would only be exposed to trauma via port-cloud holographic overlay. Getting hit in the face would only feel like getting hit in the face while he was nice and comfy in his virtuo-cine station,” he adds, ending the last sentence with a renewed bite in his voice. And now I remember why…Tark.

  Denison clicks his pen light off and shoves it in the chest pocket of his red uniform. I let my head fall back on the now inclined table and just let it all come. Eco betrayed us. Tark is dead because of him—because of me? I should have shot when I had the chance…when the path was clear. I should have just shot Styx, and maybe Tark never would have jumped in. I should have—

  “This isn’t your fault,” Ms. Reynolt says from across the room. I’m confused for a second until I realize that she’s just doing what Jazz does—reading me, or whatever it’s called. I press my teeth together like that will somehow keep her out of my head. “We’ll find a way to get them all back. We’ll find a way to finish this,” she adds, reading a bottle and then placing it in the bag slung over her shoulder.

  “How? Tark is gone, and they have everyone else. They know about us now, and there’s no way we can get back in there. I wasn’t fast enough. If I just would have taken the shot—“

  A beeping sound cuts me off, and Myra crosses over to me quickly.

  “I can take this out now; hold still,” she says, disconnecting the tube from my arm. “Just get up slowly, OK?”

  I swing my legs over the edge of the table and instantly feel dizzy. My hand starts throbbing in the gel pack, but it doesn’t feel like there’s ice in my veins anymore.

  “Now what?” Avis says, now standing next to Ellis at the threshold of the med bay. Panic hits my blood and I have to take a second to keep from barking at him.

  “Is autopilot really the best idea, considering what just happened in that lab? Someone is going to be coming for us, no?” I ask in a level voice.

  “We’re masked. At least for now” Ms. Reynolt says. “We’re waiting to hear back from our State contact to see if any of Calyx’s message got through.”

  “And if it didn’t?” I ask. Ms. Reynolt just shakes her head and looks at Denison, who’s studying the floor. “Nobody has an answer? There’s no other plan?” I press.

  “The dust is still settling.” Denison’s eyes flash to me. He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “All right, we need to regroup. We need to figure out how outnumbered we are.”

  “What do you mean how outnumbered? There are six of us left!” I shout, then try to swallow the violence I feel everywhere in me. I push off the table to my feet, and my head spins. “We can’t just leave them there. We have to find a way back in.”

  “I won’t be able to go back to Gaia Sur now, and neither will Luz,” Denison adds, nodding at Ms. Reynolt. “We won’t be able to use those facilities or the transfer routes—we’re on the outside now.”

  “We need to deliver the test subjects before anything else. We don’t have the facilities needed to treat their mutations here,” Ms. Reynolt says, all the blood draining from her face. She gathers several thin blanket rolls from a cabinet and a few different small machines that she adds to her bag, which doesn’t look like it could hold another thing. “I counted twenty-two, and they’re in pain, Briggs.”

  “How many at the atmospheric stage?”

  “Five. Four boys and one girl.”

  “All right—Reese will have to take them until we hear back from our State contact. If he doesn’t have room, the rest can be treated at The Seam.”

  “Why are you still hiding? Get The State officials involved—you have evidence of Gaia’s experimentations now.” I interrupt.

  “It’s not enough. There are too many safeguards in place protecting the people responsible. The test subjects would just…disappear if we exposed them.” Denison shakes his head.

  “Fine. Then we need to finish this,” I say. Ms. Reynolt thins her lips in a weak smile before she leaves the med bay with the bag of materials. Myra follows her, throwing more supplies into a bag of her own on her way out the door.

  “We’re going to need some help getting back in there,” Ellis says. “What are our options?”

  “Clones? At least port-call holograms?” Avis’s voice pitches with hope. “I mean, we are inside the port-cloud.”

  “Like I said, we don’t have access to those resources anymore—not with being locked out of the virtuo-cine network, and not without being able to go back to Gaia Sur,” Denison says. I blink, but when I open my eyes I just see the image of that ice man coming for Jax…Tark rushing over, and then…falling.

  “What about the Organics—the frozen people out there?” I grip the med-bay table, immediately seeing the image of th
ose ice-skinned people pounding on the hull of our ship, and have to shake my head to get it to clear. “We’ll lure them to the piranha wind door. If there’s any humanity left in them, they’ll remember those labs.”

  “No, the piranha wind will have been neutralized by now. That’s no longer a viable entrance.” Denison shakes his head, and Ellis snorts.

  “Too bad. That would have been quite the distraction.”

  “A distraction…that’s it!” I say.

  “Hart, Dr. Denison just said the wind is kaput. We can’t make another doorway with it.”

  “We won’t have to. They’re going to open one for us.” The thoughts coming so fast, I can barely put words to them. I turn to Denison. “If there’s no port-carnate transfer available in or out of Phase Three—the only way is to go through the front door—we just need to get a few important people pounding on it.”

  Avis sighs at me. “Who? The State is in their pocket. We just covered this.”

  “Well, who is Reese?” I ask Denison. “A doctor? Biodesigner?”

  “Both. He’s an ally.”

  “How many more like him do you know who will help us—how many with a medical practice who know the truth?”

  “Two, possibly three, why?” Denison asks.

  “Will they make a statement about the Organics? Would they get on the neural feeds and stir the pot if we put one on a burner?”

  “It would depend—what would…” Denison trails off as realization dawns on him. “We would cause a panic.” He nods, meeting my eyes again.

  “We can’t just lead these ice people to Admin City,” Ellis protests. “They are clearly dangerous.”

  “We don’t have to do that,” I say. “Look, we believed everything was fine when we were escaping Gaia because Rheen and Styx knew exactly what we were going to do. They counted on it, and we played right into their hands. Right now, they know we have the test subjects, so they’ll be preparing for some kind of backlash…but only from the people who know what they’re doing. The public doesn’t know about Phase Three. Hell, I’m sure once the public finds out, the buffers at The State won’t risk being affiliated.”