Ignis

by Tracy Korn

  Something beeps, so Denison kills the feed and brings back the holographic charts.

  I point to the now blank feed screen. “I told you. Sinkholes that go miles deep. The water is already breaking high on the beach, you heard her…”

  “Miles deep is impossible at that rate of the displacement. I only turned the feed on so you could see the evacuation loop report,” Denison says, tapping onto the charts. “Your levels are rising again.”

  “OK…one thing at a time. How much longer until we connect with the Wraith?” I ask.

  Denison checks his arm panel and sighs. “Looks like they heard about the ship too. They’re going topside.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Debriefing

  Jazz

  “That’s the Wraith,” Arco says, pointing to the huge, almost metallic ship that’s already docked at a private hangar in Skyboard North. Dr. Denison lands our Phoenix next to it, and a tall man with thick, white hair is waiting for us when we come down the ramp.

  “Well, you’re a bit worse for wear,” the man says, seeing the bandages through Arco’s open shirt. He offers his hand.

  “Good to see you again, Dr. Halliday,” Arco says, taking it.

  “And who might this be?”

  “This is Jazwyn Ripley. Jazz, this is Dr. Halliday. He helped us with the testing victims from Phase Three. This is his facility.” Arco turns back to Dr. Halliday. “How are the test subjects doing?”

  “Several of them are stable,” he answers, then sighs. “And…some of them are not. We’re doing the best we can.” Arco nods, and for several seconds it feels like someone has sucked out all the air around us. “Ripley…” Dr. Halliday says, raising an eyebrow at me. “Any relation to Jack Ripley?” he asks just as my dad and Jax make their way toward us down the ship’s ramp. “I’ll be damned…it’s true.”

  “Good to see you, Reese,” my dad says, walking into Dr. Halliday’s huge hug.

  “Jazz!” Myra’s voice comes from nowhere, and I spin around in the direction of it to find her running toward me from the Wraith. She barely stops before throwing her arms around me so suddenly that I stumble backward. “Jazz!” she shouts my name again too close to my ear and immediately starts sobbing. “Did you see the explosions? Did you see them start?”

  “I did…” I answer, feeling my throat start to constrict again.

  “And they’re safe. They’re safe, Jazz. They found a ship down there! A ship…” She trails off in a mixture of laughing and crying.

  “I know, I know…” I keep saying, hugging her as tightly as I can. Avis and Ellis poke Myra on either side of her ribs until she laughs and lets me go.

  “There is a line forming here, Myra,” Ellis says, wrapping one long arm around me as Avis does the same on my other side.

  “Did you shrink? I think you shrunk. Space stunts your growth, you know,” Avis says, flipping his blue-edged wing of black hair out of his eyes to compare our heights.

  “Mollusk, we were not at zero gravity,” Ellis says, and Avis rolls his eyes.

  “It was a joke, crite. Can you program some nanites with a sense of humor please?” he says, glancing again at me and whispering, “You know I know about gravity. It was a joke.”

  We all laugh at this. Even Ellis cracks a smile and shoves Avis’s shoulder. They lead on ahead of me, taking turns pushing each other off balance.

  Jazwyn… I hear in my head, and I don’t even need to look to know it’s Ms. Reynolt. I turn around and see her open her arms, and I rush into them.

  I can’t breathe, not even a little. The air just hits a wall when it reaches my chest. I start the breath over and over again, but it just results in a convulsive cycle of sobbing that flushes out everything that has happened since we sat for our interviews. How many decades have gone by since that day? How many millennia? Everything from that life seems so small and so far away now.

  She grips my shoulders and smiles just before touching her forehead to mine. She cups my chin like my mother used to do when I was small and smiles at me in the same proud way. She doesn’t think or say another word, and she doesn’t have to for me to understand that there just aren’t any that could contain how this feels right now.

  “This way,” Dr. Halliday says. I’ve made arrangements for you to stay at…a former colleague’s hab. The heliocar is already loaded with the destination.” He says, offering his arm to Ms. Reynolt. She takes it, and Arco wraps his arm around my shoulder again. I lean my head against his chest as we walk past a huge angular house, which is hidden behind several palm trees.

  I keep looking up from there, scanning the sky for the pending port-cloud explosions, but there’s only the perma-haze that blankets everything.

  “Shouldn’t the port-cloud be coming down by now?” I ask.

  Arco scans the sky too. “Not yet. Phase Three isn’t even finished disintegrating. Once it starts going down, there will be chaos. The Grid is up there.”

  Dr. Halliday opens the door to a dark, pear-shaped heliocar with a wave of his hand, then nods to Ms. Reynolt. “After you.”

  Dr. Denison, Calyx, my dad, Jax, and Fraya also load into the heliocar, which fills it to capacity.

  “Guess that means you’re with us,” Azeris says, hovering to a stop next to us in another heliocar, only this one is red.

  “Azeris!” I say, “Is Zoe…?” I trail off, suddenly afraid to ask.

  “Riding shotgun, uh, yes,” she says, vaulting to the front. “One of you all can babysit that gear,” she says with a quick chin jerk over her shoulder. She taps the side of the red heliocar once, and the door slides up and away. In the center of the seat circle is a box of blinking panels and metal pieces with wires everywhere.

  “Excuse the mess,” Azeris says. “We were in a bit of a hurry on account of fleeing for our lives and whatnot. You coming or…?”

  “Excellent!” Avis says, heading straight for the box. “This is a Class Seven Seismograph! Only The State has these!”

  “Is that a Neural Wave Calibrator?” Ellis asks, following Avis into the heliocar. Lyden and Arwyn exchange knowing smiles and get in on the other side of them. This leaves only one seat left, and Arco raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Looks like I’ll have to sit on your lap.” He smiles. I can’t hold back the laugh, and especially not when he pokes me in the ribs and takes the last seat. He extends a hand to me. “Come on…”

  Once we’re inside, the door slides closed, and Azeris taps the long, wraparound dashboard.

  “All in?” he asks. “All right. Brenda, let’s go.”

  “Of course, Dr. Wright,” the heliocar says in almost the same arrow voice from Gaia. “Beginning course for home.”

  ***

  We’re in the air before I can sort out the details of what just happened…that this is Liam’s clone’s car, which means we’re going to Liam’s clone’s hab too? He’s the former colleague Dr. Halliday was talking about? The stacked rectangular building comes into view as we come through a grove of palm trees, the front of it almost entirely made of glass.

  “So…I’m going to go ahead and ask,” Arco says. “What happened to the clone?”

  “That doctor called it over for some emergency construction—“

  “Consultation…” Azeris corrects.

  “Right, consultation,” Zoe continues, “and stuck a needle full of carbon something-something in its eyeball.”

  “Carbon disulfide?” Ellis asks in disbelief.

  “Yeah, that. Right in its eyeball! Killed it dead to ash right there in the hangar.”

  “Crite…” Myra whispers, bringing her hands to her mouth. “Then that means this is…his hab?” she adds as we clear the palm trees and start lowering to the ground.

  “Arrived, Dr. Wright. Enjoy your evening,” the heliocar says.

  “So how are we supposed to get in there?” Arco asks.

  “Bioprint!” Azeris pulls out a surgical glove and slides it on, flashing a wide smile. “We had a little time before h
is hand disintegrated.” He shrugs.

  Arco opens his mouth to say something but just closes it and blinks a few times. He presses his lips into a flat smile and nods. “All right then.”

  “Careful with the gear, campers,” Azeris says to Avis and Ellis. They scoff at him like they’ve never been more insulted. Myra meets my eyes with amazement, and we both stifle a laugh at this whole situation.

  “Well, come on ‘fore the Bale bites ya,” Zoe says, already out of the heliocar and several steps toward the hab. She doesn’t get another step before the ground seems to open up and swallow everything. Her smiling face withers when she realizes what she’s said about the predatory grain crop from the Vishan cavern. I feel the ache start in her like needing to breathe, but not being able to. Before I can say anything to offset it for her, she’s clearing her throat and waving us on again. “Well, come on.”

  We make our way up the lamp-lit walk, which brightens as we approach and dims as we pass. Azeris presses his gloved hand to the door panel, making it slide open.

  “Good evening, Dr. Wright,” a woman’s voice says. I startle and immediately feel my heart start pounding in my chest.

  Arco grips my hand and gives me a sideways smile as we walk into the front room of the hab, which opens to a sitting area with four long, white couches and a coffee table in the center.

  “Why does a clone need this much space?” Avis asks, coming up behind us with the others.

  “Appearances, probably,” Arco answers.

  “Does that mean it eats for appearances too?” Jax asks. “That looks like a matter board to me, kids. Get set up and I’ll program some sandwiches.”

  He walks toward the kitchen counter area with Fraya and Myra not far behind while the rest of us move into the sitting area. Avis, Ellis, and Azeris begin assembling whatever seismic neural thing is in the box they’ve set down, and Arco searches for a neural feed panel in the wall. He waves his hand over it, which turns on a report that’s already happening.

  “Thank you, Monty. Breaking news tonight: Highland shelter evacuation efforts for all Seaboard North and inland communities have now been expedited to priority one, despite assurances from Spokesperson Daniels’s office that these are only precautionary in nature. Spokesperson Daniels himself could not be reached for further comment. The Maritime Council tells us the source of the tremors seems to be originating from beneath the ocean floor roughly 1,500 miles offshore, though specifics regarding that source are still being investigated. The waves here continue to grow in strength each hour, and as you can see, Monty,” she says, gesturing behind her, “these breakers are now nearly six feet high from just two-foot whitecaps earlier today. Stay tuned to Network Eight for—“

  Dr. Denison waves a hand over the feed, making it vanish when Jax, Fraya, and Myra return passing out plates of sandwiches and drinks.

  Arco shakes his head, still looking in the direction of where the feed was playing.

  “They’re too close. Skyboard is too close. Six-foot waves are nothing. It’s going to be a tsunami,” he says, pushing his hands over his face. “Ling, tell them,” he says after another second, looking up at Avis.

  “Tell them what?”

  “The tremors are getting stronger, you heard that? And a few hours ago the waves were less than half the size. Do the math, man.”

  Avis looks over his shoulder from the feed assembly he’s working on and shrugs. “Can’t assume the waves will just keep compounding, but if they do, yeah, that’s going to get hostile.”

  “There, she’s ready,” Azeris says, connecting a final cord and then flipping several switches on the side of the assembly, which looks like a small satellite dish on top of two rows of thick, coiled spring. A screen display panel sits over the front of the coils and is attached in the back with metal S-clips.

  I know it doesn’t look very sophisticated, Lyden thinks, but it’s powerful. I glance up at him and half-smile, forgetting completely that he can read me just like Liddick can.

  “What does it do?” Fraya asks.

  “Measures and tracks the electromagnetic pulse coming through the water, mainly. I’m still working on it, but sometimes we’re also able to capture that ship’s feed,” he adds, and after another few seconds, some grid lines waver in and out.

  “On the Phoenix I was trying to trace the developer of the permission relay Arco discovered, but the code is at least a hundred years old,” Lyden adds.

  “Well, looks like she’s in a good mood tonight.” Azeris nods, then laughs to himself while tapping something else into the side of the assembly. “See what you can make of this.”

  CHAPTER 42

  The Hole in the Sky

  Arco

  The display screen fills with columns of code and what look like blueprint images…layouts?

  “What are those?” Jazz asks.

  “Plans,” I answer, moving closer. “And trajectory maps for the pilots.”

  The lines in the code fold and bend into boxes, triangles, ovals, and rectangles until they all zoom out and take the shape of a…city?

  “Maps to where?” Calyx asks, making the image warble with her voice.

  “Somewhere that doesn’t exist…but will. Phase Three was only the beginning,” I say as quietly as I can so I don’t affect the graphics.

  “How can he be reading that fast?” Jazz asks. I narrow my eyes to push her voice out too.

  “Shut it off,” my sister says, nearly wiping the entire display I’m seeing, but not before I understand what they were building and why.

  “They were going to colonize it...”

  “Colonize the port-cloud?” Avis asks.

  “He’s bleeding!” Fraya says.

  “Shut it off!” Denison says this time. The images of the small city rattle and blur until they completely wash away and the display screen, which is frozen now, comes back into focus.

  “Here…” Fraya says, handing me a tissue. Arwyn crosses to me with another blast of oxygen or whatever is in that little metal cylinder. It stops the bleeding, but I feel like I’ve just fallen out of a window and landed on my head.

  “I thought you said that would stop happening when you took the tracker out,” Jazz says, her voice restrained and tight. Denison looks at me, baffled.

  “It…It should have,” he says, exchanging glances with Arwyn. “Unless...”

  “His neurons remembered the pathways and…remade them,” Arwyn says quietly.

  “Arco, look at me,” Jazz says, and a second later she’s straddling my legs to sit directly in front of me. “Arco…”

  I pull in a deep breath and close my eyes to clear my head, then finally look at her.

  “There were blueprints…coordinates. They even uploaded docking instructions,” I say.

  “Wait, he’s right,” Azeris says, reading the frozen assembly screen and comparing it with a newly projected holographic display of…Admin City? “The embedded coordinates align with an area about half a click from there…” He pauses. “But there’s nothing out there, according to these scans. “

  “There’s a trading post…” I say, studying the display above our heads and remembering when Tark and I picked up the zephyr from Fargo there.

  Calyx sucks in a quick breath. “That post is almost right on top of the port-cloud.”

  “Oh, no,” Jazz says, all the blood draining from her face. “How long before the DNA reaches it?”

  “Hard to say since we can’t see the destruction progress on Phase Three anymore,” Lyden says.

  “Wait, are you saying that ship is heading into an explosion?” Zoe asks, holding out both hands, as if that will keep the answer from jumping at her.

  “This can’t be happening,” Ms. Reynolt says, then covers her mouth.

  “Turn the feed back on,” I say. “Maybe I can find a way to follow the trajectory path and—“

  “No,” my sister cuts me off. “Your hemispheres are syncing again without the tracker interface. You might not come ou
t of it this time.”

  “Then at least turn on the audio,” I insist, but she just stares at me. “Arwyn, we need to know when that cloud is going to explode. They’re going to head right into it!” After another second, she reluctantly agrees, nodding to Azeris.

  The audio warbles at first, and then I actually hear another frequency fall into sync. “Standby...we got ‘em. We got ‘em!” Azeris almost sings.

  “Wait, what? Then turn on visuals too,” I say, getting to my feet. My sister opens her mouth, no doubt to protest, but I stop her before she can start. “We fired it up for trajectory feedback, but he just linked with the ship itself. Azeris, turn it back on!”

  “No!” Arwyn shouts me down. “I’m not risking your life after we’ve come this far!” Her voice catches on a sob.

  “—faster than—the threshold speed is holding, but not sure how—can last...”

  “That’s Liddick’s voice!” Jazz says.

  “Riptide! How—there? I thought—off the—Pier!”

  “Long story we ain’t got time to explain right now,” Azeris says. “We got a job here for you.”

  “Is he piloting?” Lyden asks.

  “No,” Azeris answers. “The feedback says it’s on autopilot until the crew signatures are entered…but even with those, they don’t know how to pilot that thing.”

  “Vox is with them,” Jazz says. “She’s a Navigator.”

  “As a secondary proclivity,” Ms. Reynolt says. “Her primary is Reader Empath.”

  “Azeris—still hear me? We’re showing trajectories through—undertows. Seeing effects—chop—happening topside?”

  “We’ve got six-foot breakers and climbing, along with tremors from that electromagnetic pulse your heap is emitting.”

  “—can’t stop—ic pulses—“

  “Listen,” Azeris starts, then exchanges glances with Denison and Jack.

  “Tell him,” Denison says. “Vox’s Nav class may be secondary, but Liam’s primary class is Coder. Between the two of them, maybe they can work on the trajectory.”