There was only one explanation, Jonathan had put their big play in motion.
Unfortunately, this also meant that the canyon Heyer was asking him to walk into was rapidly growing more overpopulated than ever. The Ferox below seemed confused, none amongst them understanding what was happening, and no link to the prophet on this side of the conduit.
Grant reached for his wrist and activated the cloak. As he felt the liquid seep over him, he saw his hand disappear. Only when the process was complete did he abandon his hiding place atop the tower.
“I’m . . . I’m gonna try,” he said. “I’m coming.”
He grabbed the edge of the rock tower and lowered his body out over the drop. Activating his gleamers he stealthily made his way down into the Ferox crowds. At the last moment, as he neared the dust covered sands on the ground surface, he activated the rings in his boots. He was already worried that the Ferox would sense something as he tried to move unnoticed within their numbers. Leaving a trail of footprints would only give those who grew suspicious more reason to investigate. The gleamers still disrupted the dirt as he moved, but at least they wouldn’t leave behind the telltale boot imprint of a man. Instead, his movements looked more like a strange wind moving along the surface.
Still, he’d never had the time he really needed to become proficient with the gleamers, and hovering a few inches off the ground while trying not to bump into the Ferox milling around the outside of the pit or disturb too much of the space around him was nerve-racking. He didn’t bother with the ramp that led down to the conduit platform, instead going to the outer rim of the pit and gleaming down the cliff walls.
As he descended adrenaline was flooding his blood stream, making his heart pound so fast he could hear it in his ears. No manner of breathing exercises was going to keep it in check. Luckily, within his helmet, the sound of his rapidly increasing breaths was insulated. He heard his own terror—but nothing outside his helmet would.
Of course, all these physical reactions were telling him the same thing.
You’re going the wrong way. You know how this ends.
The whisper was something he couldn’t obey as he reached ground and began to make his way through the gateway fields. He soon came to wonder if he should not have chosen the ramp after all. The fields were a mass of activity, the reality of how difficult they would be to navigate hadn’t seemed so bad from his perch on the tower. Now that he stood inside the fields themselves the volume of Ferox being expelled from The Never was like standing in a place where at any moment he was surrounded by four gateways that might suddenly have a Ferox standing on it. The ground shook with each return, making the entirety of the ground within the field vibrate.
Two inches off the ground itself, Grant didn’t feel, so much as see this, but the fear of being noticed made his body quiver so much that he might as well have been standing on the surface. There was no pattern to what gateway suddenly discharged a beast, or if there was, he didn’t have the time or state of mind to figure it out. So, he tried to make himself as small as possible, as he drew closer to the tunnels beneath the platform.
Still, inevitably, he was eventually struck. Two portals opened, almost simultaneously, as he made his way through the space between. The returning Ferox were in a state of fear themselves, darting around as though running from something. They staggered off the platforms, forcing him to dodge both, and he succeeded, only to be hit by a Ferox he hadn’t seen coming from farther up the field.
The Ferox was confused, not only at finding itself suddenly standing amongst the gateway fields and not understanding why it had been pulled back, but at what object it had felt its weight knock aside as it staggered to a stop. Grant likely could have killed the beast swiftly enough, he was invisible and had a molecular blade strapped to his forearm, but there would be no doing so without notice. So, he watched the Ferox as it turned to study the area.
Slunk down, nose sniffing the air as it moved closer. Grant didn’t dare move; for the moment, he knelt, shivering on the ground as he watched the Red take a step closer. Its white eyes squinted at him, like a human who’d lost his glasses trying to read the ingredients off a cereal box.
Its hand began to reach out, and in those moments Grant’s shaking hand tightened on the blade handle.
Suddenly the Ferox stood straight, looking off in the opposite direction—staring at the conduit. The change of interest was so sudden. In fact, Grant saw that every Ferox in his immediate field of vision had seemed to do the same. It was like being the only human in a room filled with dogs. Suddenly, every four-legged animal had jumped to its feet and stared off in the same direction. Hearing something human ears weren’t sensitive enough to notice.
In that moment, as the Ferox’s attention was pulled away, a portal began to emerge on the gateway directly beside where Grant still knelt clutching his blade. He had to move, the next inbound might literally step on him the moment it materialized. As fast as he dared, he flicked the gleamer ring of his free hand at the side of the gateway’s platform and coasted sideways, leaving a line of disturbed dust as he gleamed past. The arriving Ferox emerged to plant a foot where he been kneeling a moment before, and Grant breathed a sigh of relief, until he noticed the new arrival’s behavior.
Far faster than the first Ferox, it too seemed to have focused all its attention on the conduit. As Grant turned, he saw that the entirety of the Ferox horde was still focused in that direction. That wasn’t to say it was quiet. The gateways were still unloading Ferox and shaking the ground of the entire pit as a result, but those were the sounds of unnatural forces and shivering geology. The sound of life, of Ferox talking to one another and moving about, that had gone silent.
Grant stood up, seeing that the phenomenon wasn’t limited to those in the pit, but all along the cliffs the Ferox were watching the conduit. He didn’t bother questioning his luck, instead he used the opportunity to move faster and with far less care as the horde’s attention was focused elsewhere. He was nearly to the edge of the gateway fields when the next obstruction presented itself.
Due to the rapid unloading of the gateway fields, the Feroxian army was thick around the platform.
As he saw how closely packed together they were he didn’t like his chances, even if they were momentarily transfixed. The only other option was to jump the throng. Take his chances that he could clear the crowd and anchor himself to the side of the platform with the gleamers.
He made the decision quickly, he wasn’t going to get another chance with them this distracted. He turned the gleamers off and broke into a run. He didn’t trust himself to manage this with the clumsy balance the gleamers gave him. He ran at the crowd, footprints trailing him in the sand behind him as he sprinted. As he neared the final gateway along the inner rim of the field he jumped on to the top of the arm of the gateway, and pounced as hard as he could toward the platform.
For a moment, he was sure he had overshot it. He was soaring over the transfixed army and rocketing toward the platform, but as he reached the peak of his arc and started his way down, he rapidly became less sure.
The giant platform racing toward him, he activated his gleamers and put his hands out in front of him. At the final second he closed his eyes. He felt himself jarred to a stop.
He opened his eyes again.
“Holy crap,” he whispered, seeing that he’d managed to land face down on top of the platform. It wasn’t that he’d overshot the side, it was that he’d come within a foot of the conduit edge. He could see the glowing red line of the boundary now. He’d been a foot from cleaving himself in half.
As he smiled in relief, he began to hear something. A familiar sound growing stronger. Suddenly, he realized why the Ferox were staring at the conduit with such a mix of awe and fear. He was quite capable of hearing the sound for himself now and was starting to feel rather sympathetic.
He stopped thinking, jumped up, and ran back toward the lip of the platform. Just as a tidal wave of water poured throug
h the conduit’s opening, Grant anchored himself to the side of the platform.
The salty waters of the Puget Sound spilled forth like a massive pipeline dumping into the pit.
He was already soaked from water splashing out the sides when the entirety of the Ferox army panicked. Some ran straight for the cliffs, but most went for the ramp out. However, none noticed the wet outline of a man dropping down from the platform over the mouth of Feroxian tunnels that ran beneath.
Grant’s HUD switched to thermal optics as the light withdrew. He raced into the tunnels. There wasn’t much time, water was already making its way in behind him. If the tidal wave spewing out of the conduit above kept dumping water into the Feroxian Plane, this pit would be the first thing to flood.
Oh . . . he realized. Well, that would be the idea now wouldn’t it.
He stuck to the main tunnel, ignoring any smaller openings as he made his way down. At the speed he was going through the winding tunnels, it wasn’t long before he saw two Ferox standing in the darkness. One, his HUD immediately identified as Heyer. Even in the dark his head still looked as though it were painted with fluorescent paint. He was hunched over. The moment Grant stepped around the corner, the female looked up and stared into the darkness. She had the same sort of transfixed stare that he’d seen from the Ferox above. Her eyes looked through him.
She sniffed the air, and he wondered if she could smell the human. She spoke guttural words he did not understand as he drew close and pulled the molecular blade.
He moved toward Heyer, his blade hissing free of its sheath. Strangely, the alien forced himself to stand. Grant was a moment away from plunging the blade into the Ferox’s ear canal, but suddenly the thick bulk of Heyer’s host was standing between them.
Grant froze, nearly pinned against the cave wall by Heyer.
They spoke, and Grant had no idea what was playing out between the alien and the female Ferox. But a moment later, she moved slowly forward and bolted into the tunnels toward the surface.
Grant waited.
“What did you say to her?” he asked.
“I told her what she was smelling,” he said. “Salt water, something I’d only ever smelled inside the Arena.”
He turned around slowly, his features unknowable to Grant in his monstrous form.
“Heyer, the Feroxian Plane is flooding,” Grant said.
Heyer seemed at a loss for a moment. “Heyer? Why am I here.”
The alien seemed as though he were at a loss. So, deep in his thoughts that he was failing to even hear.
“Heyer,” Grant said, finally shaking him. “We don’t have any time!”
The alien growled and stood tall, towering over Grant for a moment before getting control of himself. He tilted his head toward the surface as the water began to run down into the cave. A mere moment later and they could hear it coming, sloshing its way down the tunnels toward them.
“I cannot lift a finger against them,” Heyer said. “But there are too many ahead, all female, I cannot get through.”
“You need a distraction?” Grant asked.
Heyer nodded. Then looked down at his feet where the water was rising. “But, perhaps not the sort I called upon you for.”
The females and their young were already in a state of alarm when Heyer came bursting in past the guards into the chamber.
“Run,” Heyer yelled in Feroxian. “Brings the Rain. He floods the world. Get out! Get out before it is too late!”
Had they not heard it coming, had they not already feared what he proclaimed, they might have questioned the strange voice of the Ferox telling them to abandon the shelter. But instead, their faces were drawn with panic. Heyer realized—he could smell—their fear.
He pounded past, further into the chamber. He felt like a giant gorilla beating his chest and the floor as his hand sloshed through the rising waters. He looked at the young Ferox standing in water already a foot deep.
He felt the fear. It was real. Knew they could smell it coming off him.
“Get out! You can make the surface! Get the younglings out!” Heyer yelled to the females. “The surface. Go! Go! Go!”
His own fear grew. He didn’t know if he’d have any more luck swimming than the other Ferox. The water coming down was accelerating, starting to come in sloshing waves now. He knew they feared stepping toward the source, but the higher the water rose the more they began to fear the alternative. What was strange, was that as Heyer’s own fears increased, the Ferox began to obey. Seemed more willing to move—as they could smell the urgency on him.
Soon, Heyer was beating his chest to an empty chamber, splashing around in water that was already up to his thighs. Alone, Grant disabled the cloaking device, and appeared where he had been anchored to the cave’s ceiling.
“They’re gone. We need to hurry.”
Heyer stopped, looking around the empty chamber for anyone left behind before heading for the tunnel that would take him to Cede. He hurried, as the lower they went, the smaller the passages and the higher the water. By the time they neared the boundary of Cede, the way was filled and quickly rising.
Grant held something out to him. “You’ve got to go.”
Heyer looked at the man’s outstretched hand and saw the small air tank Jonathan had given him as a back up when he was inside the cocoon.
“Grant, there is good chance you won’t—”
“I’ll get out, just take it!” Grant yelled.
The water was rising fast now, had filled the lower tunnels.
Heyer nodded, taking the container.
“Good luck,” Grant said. The moment the tank was in Heyer’s hand, he was already turning to leave. Heyer yelled after him. “Your father . . .”
It was the one thing he knew that would cause Grant to stop and listen.
“He’d have done anything he could to make sure Douglas Tibbs made it home. They were more than friends. They were brothers.”
Grant stared back, only for a moment. Heyer couldn’t read what he was thinking, and he didn’t get a chance, before a great slosh of water came down on them.
Submerged, Heyer didn’t see Grant anywhere. He had to have headed up to the surface.
Heyer turned to the tunnel, wrapping his Feroxian lips around the air tank as best he could and soon understood why no Ferox managed to swim. He sank like a brick into the dark water, found he was better off pulling himself along the walls than trying to paddle.
Grant must have had to use the tank at some point, and Feroxian lungs took a lot more air than a human’s to fill. When he finally reached the door to Cede, he felt the tank give its last bit of air—and knew he only had what was left in his lungs as he took those final steps through the cold water. The door didn’t look like a door at all. Rather, there was an invisible barrier, a clear line in the tunnel where one side was filled with water and the other remained completely dry.
As he touched his chest, the device that had cloaked him from Cede’s awareness solidified in his palm. He knew, this was the moment where all his trust in Jonathan either paid off or killed him. While he surely hoped to live, if Jonathan was right about this, then there would be precious few explanations Heyer’s mind could imagine to explain how he could have ever known about this.
The one that he could imagine, was exactly as Jonathan had said—something he’d never dare ask.
Heyer pressed the device against the barrier.
Inside Cede there was a chamber. For a short time, that chamber had been a prison. Heyer had been the only prisoner ever held there, and he’d escaped. He had used the beacon, a device he had built just in case of that contingency, but circumstances had forced him to use it earlier than he’d ever planned.
It was a device designed to get past Cede’s defenses, and once used, would never be effective again. Cede would find the exploited weakness and take the necessary precautions.
However, getting around a security system was far less difficult a thing when you already had a man on the
inside. So it was that, when Heyer pressed the device against the barrier of Cede, a small piece of Mr. Clean awoke.
It found itself lying on the floor of that same chamber inside of Cede. It was small, dime sized, and as it came online, it realized it was still inside a gold pocket watch. A pocket watch that had accompanied Jonathan home one night.
That pocket watch was broken, and the day she died, Rylee had thought to do something nice. She had slipped the watch into the front pocket of her jacket to take it to a jeweler for repair.
She’d never made it to that jeweler. A few minutes later, she’d been pulled into The Never. The jacket and the watch, gone with her.
Then, she died.
When Malkier took her as a trophy, he had given the body to Burns the Flame. The watch he’d found later. Lying there on the cave floor beside them. He’d nearly crushed it but had stopped himself. Instead, he’d wrapped it in a piece of bloodied cloth and carried it with him into Cede.
Then, he discovered Heyer’s escape. He discovered that twenty-eight Ferox were dead and left on his tribe’s gateway. Since that day, he had not bothered to enter the chamber. The room only reminded him of his brother’s treason, of Cede’s incompetence, and his own failure to extract justice on his son’s murderer. Malkier never thought about that watch again. It sat, wrapped in a bloodied cloth on the chamber floor.
The piece of Mr. Clean inside had gone dormant. In fact, it had been dormant since Rylee first entered The Never all that time ago. Then, one day a signal that seemed to come from Cede, or perhaps the rest of Mr. Clean’s consciousness, told it to wake up.
The dime-size piece then slipped from between the glass and metal of the watch, and out of the bloody cloth. The moment it touched the chamber floor—it merged. Of course, the floor was made of Cede, just part of the shape she was taking at that moment. So, in truth, Mr. Clean merged a piece of himself with Cede herself.
The moment this occurred, Cede knew there was someone . . . a Borealis, knocking at the door. What was strange was that up until that moment, the encryption key that the Borealis was trying to use to gain entrance was not an active code. Yet, the moment Mr. Clean merged with the floor, Cede discovered that—in fact—it was, and had always been, an active code.
The Never Army Page 83
