by Tracy Korn
I shake my head, confused until I start to feel like everything is slowing down again. My breathing, the pounding in my ears. I take a deep breath just as he points me back to the console. Even the code has slowed down, and I start to see a pattern in the symbols. Crite, did he just push me? I think, but I let it go because numbers start to glow, and I know what to enter to kill whatever this is counting down to.
I hammer the glowing number sequence into the keyboard, and the code stops scrolling all together. I scan for the root menu tags and delete the remaining code, which takes me to the main system command portal. I enter a kill command, and the power in the room goes out. The thrum of the hydraulics slows to a whine, then completely stops. When the emergency lights turn on, I rush to the enclosures and push the doors ajar.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Jax shouts, reaching for Fraya. He almost tackles me when his feet hit the floor. He thumbs the strap of my neural ray, then slaps my chest in approval. “Look at you, cinestar! Dice McClain who?”
I laugh and roll my eyes at him as my sister throws her arms around my neck, but looks at me like I’m a ghost when she pulls back.
“What?” I ask. “Did they hurt you?”
“Your nose,” she says. I bring my hand to my face, confused again until I see the blood. My vision starts to blur the second I do, and a wave of nausea hits me hard. I squeeze my eyes closed to get some clarity.
“It’s the fuse,” Jack says. “The Coder and Navigator proclivities are trying to use the same part of his brain. He can’t engage one without the other now,” he adds. “Get him on the table.”
“No, I’m fine,” I say, forcing my eyes open. “They’re coming. We need to find a ship. Where’s Calyx?”
“He’s right. They may have already sent a signal out. We should move. There’s a small med bay aboard their ships,” Calyx says, jumping out of the enclosure and pushing her streaked, white-blonde hair out of her eyes when she lands. “Where’s Briggs?”
“He went to upload the archive,” I say, wiping the last of the blood from my nose as we make our way out of the lab.
“The archive? How? Rheen purged it.”
“Denison got more of the sample. He’s going to meet us at the hangar,” I say, surprised to feel winded when we’ve only run about fifty feet. “But that’s probably still flooded with guards from when we fired on Cole Daniels’s glider.”
Calyx smirks and gives me a sideways look. “Then we’re just going to have to get creative.”
***
Guards are still swarming around the entrance to the hangar when we peer around the corner.
“We won’t be able to take them all down,” I say to Calyx.
“No, and Briggs won’t be able to get through there either. We need a distraction.”
“Do you still have the clearance badge?” Jack asks me. I nod, pulling the lanyard from under my shirt. “If we can get to a console, I can help with that distraction.”
We’re not far from the room Denison and I pushed the doctors into, but we would have to walk right in front of the swarm of guards around the hangar entrance to get there. We’d never make it.
“I know another place. This way,” Calyx says, doubling back until we turn down an offshoot corridor. “Is the badge you have a researcher credential?” she asks, grabbing the lanyard at my chest. She nods a few times, then moves to the door just up the hall. “Open this one. Hurry!”
I jog to her side and press the badge against the reader, which lights up green before the hydraulics engage the door and open it. Inside, amphitheater style seating surrounds the sunken floor just like the Phase Two port-carnate room…just like Tark’s classroom back at Gaia. At the bottom are two more clear holding cubes on a center platform with several consoles wrapping the length of each bench that encircles them.
“Is this some kind of teaching lab? It looks like a stage here,” Jax asks, scanning the room as we rush to the closest console.
“For all intents and purposes, yes,” Calyx answers, waving her hand frantically over the console screen, which does not turn on. She swears, then jerks around to me. “Toss me the lanyard. I’ve already been wiped from the system.”
“I’m amazed you’re not setting off alarms everywhere since Rheen knows you turned on them,” I say.
“Oh, I’m sure she’s convinced they’ve already turned me into a popsicle. But everybody we knocked out will wake up eventually, and then you’ll hear some alarms.” She finishes off typing whatever she’s entering into the broad console keypad. “Jack, can you make a clone without a full DNA workup?”
“On a hybrid console?” Jack asks, looking around the room and up at the ceiling. “I can make it work. I don’t see a dedicated cloning system in here. Everyone give me a hair.”
“You’re going to clone us?” I ask, confused.
“Yes, but the clones won’t have time to map us before Denison will be heading for the hangar,” Calyx says, pulling up a tracking display in the palm of her hand. “We’ll have to send them into the fray empty.”
Lyden must register my confusion, because he starts explaining. “They won’t be able to talk or reflect our personalities, gauge our probable responses or emotions in a situation,” he says. “They’ll just be blank cartridges dressed up like us.”
“That’s all we need—draw the attention away from the hangar door so we can get in, then get out,” Calyx adds.
“Do we at least have time to program them to fight?” I ask.
“The standard program has self-defense built into the baseline code. If someone tries to attack them, they’ll fight back,” Jack says. “Replicating the clothing will be a bit more of a challenge without a dedicated device, though. I’ll have to print them…without any.”
“Wait, what? Naked?” Arwyn asks.
Jack chuckles. “I’m afraid so.”
I glance at my sister, who is beet red standing next to Lyden. He meets my eyes and holds up a hand.
“Don’t worry. I’m a gentleman.” He nods, then winks at Arwyn. She and Fraya start laughing, and Jax snorts from somewhere behind me.
CHAPTER 33
Returning
Jazz
We pass the waterfall my brother fell down the first time we made our way through these tunnels—when we escaped from the Leviathan wreckage.
It’s surreal to see it now, the pool writhing and splashing against the stone perimeter, pushing foam to the edges. I look at the wall where Liddick covered my mouth to keep me from talking and outing us to the Vishan waiting in the wings.
We move quickly and silently to the cave opening behind the falls, and I wonder if the story of the water worm that hunts by sound really was just something they told us to keep us in line. In any case, I’m not willing to find out, so I follow Cal and Veece through the fissure with the others. A chill runs down my back as we make our way down the corridor where Dell and Cal dragged Liddick and me all those months ago. I glance at him, but he just scans the walls. I can’t read him now either, and I know he’s probably blocking me on purpose.
Jove meets us at the opening to the Vishan caverns, pushing aside the tapestry covering the threshold as we approach.
How did he know we were coming right now? I think at random.
Vox hears me and answers. It must be the NET device. Cal said it acts like a beacon—they’ve probably been tracking him.
“You have returned,” Jove says, narrowing his electric blue eyes at us as his deep voice reverberates off the walls. He wears the same beige tunic as I remember, but his tanned, tribal scarred face is terse instead of welcoming. He glances at Liam, who looks like he’s seen a ghost. “And you have brought another.”
“This is my brother,” Liddick speaks up, nodding to Liam. “He was trapped in the mountain—in your Motherland,” he adds, but he doesn’t explain anything else. Jove gives him a hard, unblinking look but doesn’t say anything else. The air turns thick with tension, which Veece tries to cut.
“Did t
he hunting parties return? Is the platform ready?” he asks, almost out of breath with anticipation.
“Yes, we are making preparations in light of their reports,” Jove answers. “We will need the artifact to activate the platform.”
Cal takes a few steps forward and pulls the slim, Y-shaped NET device from his satchel and hands it to Jove.
“Who are you trying to call with that thing? We’re all out of the Rush now,” Vox asks, too abruptly. Jove nods in her direction, then turns to Veece.
“We are creating a place for your group on the edge of the Council circle. Secure your hunting parties and then join us. We have much to do.”
Jove turns toward the small corridor that I remember leads up to Circle Hall, the enormous cavern where everyone sleeps.
“Who else is out there?” Vox asks again after Jove leaves. She nudges Cal in the ribs.
He shakes his head and shoots a sudden glance at Veece. “They think there’s still a Motherland out there, and it doesn’t matter what I tell them. It doesn’t matter how many times I come back from that mountain to tell them there are no ancestors waiting. They’ll never believe it’s just a story.”
“Everything is a story until it happens,” Veece growls. “Then, it is the truth.”
“You know as well as I do there is nothing up on that Lookout Pier except rock,” Cal says.
“Then how do you explain her?” Veece fires, gesturing to Vox. “She was the beginning of the prophecy, and others are coming now. We have to trust the Origin Wall.” Veece takes a few steps to follow his father up the small corridor into Circle Hall, then turns back to us. “Stay close. We don’t have long to prepare the platform…or our people.”
Cal pushes his hands through his white-blond hair and blows out a breath. Liddick looks at me from under a raised, dark eyebrow.
The Lookout Pier is about thirty feet up another narrow corridor, if I remember the schematics. There’s no way a few hundred Vishan will all fit up there at the same time, he thinks.
And what are they planning to do once they do get up there? Toss them off the pier and into the Rush below? All at once, terror washes over me.
“Are they going to move everyone to the Lookout Pier?” Liddick asks out loud, putting words to my fears.
Cal turns and gives him a grave look. “Like I said, all I know is there’s a platform up there for scouting somebody with the NET. Ain’t a thing else except what’s wild beyond the Bale field threshold.”
“But Vox just told him there’s no one in the Rush anymore,” I say. “Why is Jove getting the platform up there ready to look for people?”
“It’s the prophecy,” Cal explains with an exhausted sigh. “We get into our positions, and it will connect the Motherland with our lands here. The prophecy says this will open the tunnel to the stars.”
Dell shakes his head, his expression crumpled like he’s bracing against a loud noise. “How is everyone standing up there all particular and such supposed to attach that mountain with this one?” He throws a hand out toward the Lookout Pier corridor.
Liddick shakes his head too and exchanges glances with Liam. “There has to be something we don’t know. Azeris showed me the tunnel under these lands that runs the length of the Rush. Something is down there.”
“Not like we can just start digging,” Cal replies soberly. “It’s rock all around, save the ash field under the Bale crops. There’s nothing about fighting off zephyrs to connect the two mountains in the prophecy, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“Well, while you all are debating the details,” Dell says, “we have firsthand account that some undesirables are making their way here now or soon thereabouts. I’m going to help Veece with the hunting parties.” He looks over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you up there. If folks are coming to do no good, we best get fortified.”
The rest of us make our way back to Center Hall, which is scrambling with Vishan gathering up their belongings. Kesh and her crew are ushering people to line up at the threshold of the Lookout Pier corridor, but it’s still mainly chaos. Cal starts shouting something in Vishan as he, Liddick, and Liam cross to aid the organization efforts.
“Come on,” Vox says, darting for the far corner of the area. I follow her trajectory and see Vita helping the others load their belongings into woven baskets. She sees us approaching, and the tan color of her face blanches.
“You’re alive…” she says quietly, then drops the basket in her hands and rushes us, throwing her arms around Vox. “The Council did not think you would survive the Rush…” She exhales.
“The Council can kiss my—“
“Vita!” I say, cutting Vox off. “We need to ask you something.”
Vita holds Vox at arm’s length and looks her up and down.
“Is this suit from the Motherland?”
“Not exactly,” Vox says, glancing down at her white jumpsuit from The Seam, which is marred in dirt from the tunnels. “Vita, Dell was right. There are scientists in the volcano. Bad ones. They’ve been hurting people there for a long time.”
Vita’s face blanches, but I can tell it’s not out of surprise. She nods a few times and lets go of Vox’s shoulders.
“People are coming—people like the bad scientists,” I say. “Veece said this was a prophecy? But where’s everyone going? Is there a way to escape on the Lookout Pier?”
She looks at me for several seconds before she nods one more time. “Come with me,” she says, leading us to the Swim, the opening in the rock floor on the other side of Circle Hall, which slides to the lower level of the Vishan cavern.
She and Vox step off the edge like it’s the first step in a staircase, then quickly vanish into the black hole. I never did get used to this. I sit on the edge, then slowly push off it with my hands. Immediately, everything gives way, and I’m flying through the darkness.
A few seconds later, I slow to a stop at the bottom of the slide and inch my way to the edge. Vita and Vox offer a hand to help me out, and we all move through the corridor that leads past the natural spring pool where Zoe tossed me in the water. A chill runs through me at the memory of having to get the microscopic bugs from that water so the Bale stalks outside, just at the perimeter of the Rush, wouldn’t attack us when we went to collect the harvest.
“Where are we going?” I ask, but we’re at the Origin Wall room before Vita can answer.
“This is the prophecy,” she says, pulling up a small fire in the palm of her hand. She moves it close to the etchings under the wall, which dance in the shadows. “It says that people from the topside world will come, following the one who is like us, but different,” she says, glancing at Vox. “When this happens, it will no longer be safe for us here.”
“We already know this. But how are you supposed to get to the stars? Veece is taking everyone to the Lookout Pier,” I ask. “Where does it say how everyone gets out?”
“Here,” Vita says, pointing to the diamond scar in the middle of her forehead and holding the little flame in her hand under the same diamond etching in the wall. It sits between two sets of arrows—the arrows above pointing up, and the arrows below pointing down, just like the scar design, and just like Vox’s tattoos.
“So what does that mean?” Vox presses. “The diamond is the topside world, right? How is that supposed to get us out of here?”
Vita points to the top two inverted arrows carved into the Origin Wall. “These are the first and the second skies,” she says, then points to the inverted arrows under the diamond. “This is the first barrier and the second barrier…”
“Vita,” Vox says impatiently. “We don’t have time for a cartography lesson. Those skods are coming.”
“This is all we know,” Vita says firmly, darting her eyes to Vox and pressing her palm flat against the Origin Wall. “The answer must be in our maps…our paths.”
“But they’re just—“ Vox starts, then quickly looks at me. “Wait, there are two ways to the stars. The first barrier from the topside wo
rld…” She lifts her hand to trace the diamond tattoo on her forehead, then closes her eyes. Almost immediately, I can feel her flood with emotion—fear, pride…
“What? What is it?” I ask.
“My grandmother told me the first barrier to the stars is the water. The second is the earth…” she says without opening her eyes. Her fingers trace the inverted arrows just under the diamond tattoo on her forehead. “We came through the water, and down here under the seafloor—we must already be through the second barrier. Something is here.” She opens her eyes to look at Vita, who nods.
“Azeris said as much, but that doesn’t help us. We don’t know how to get to it,” I say. “Is there something else on the wall about how we do that?”
Vita shakes her head. “The one who is like us, but different, holds the key. This is the one who must open the door to the stars. That’s all that is written.”
“Vox, that’s you. Maybe something up on the Lookout Pier activates for you? A secret door or something?”
“It never did anything when I was up there before,” she says, her yellow-green eyes narrowing. “I don’t know any secrets,” she says.
“Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you are the secret,” I say. “Come on. We need to get up to the Lookout Pier.”
CHAPTER 34
Distractions
Arco
“OK, so you’re going to print naked clones of us, and then what? Slap everyone on the butt and send them streaking past the clone guards?” I ask, shaking my head in disbelief at this plan.
“Basically.” Jack nods, pushing out his bottom lip like he’s been mulling this over awhile. I’m speechless at the stupidity of this idea, but I don’t have a better plan.
“Crite…how long will this take?”
“Two, maybe three hours.”
I shake my head. “We don’t have that kind of time. Do we even need all of us cloned?”
“The smallest of us will take the least amount of time to print, and even less time if I only program a basic framework for the tissue overlay—no organs,” Jack says.
