“My apprenticeship covers more general subjects at the moment,” she said, her attention on the display as it counted floor numbers.
“She hasn’t decided on a job,” Skylar said.
Eve nodded. “Perhaps something in communications or botany, I’m not sure.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Meaning you want to talk to plants?”
She chuckled.
I let out a puff of air, trying to take it all in. “What about Kelvin? What’s his specialty?”
“You mean apart from being a pain in the neck?” Mason said. “He’s a year younger than us”—he indicated himself and his sister—“and has almost finished his apprenticeship. Total genius. Intelligent way beyond most people.”
“His forte is Bluestone technology,” Eve said.
“Which is why we need to find him. Kelvin will know what’s going on and what to do about it.” Mason’s expression turned serious. “We ask the captain to locate Kelvin first, right? He’ll have the answers.”
I could wholeheartedly agree with that. The number one priority was finishing this game and finding my grandmother.
The elevator came to a grinding halt.
Great.
Now what?
Twenty-Two
Stuck in the teeny tiny wooden elevator with Eve, Mason, and Skylar, I wondered whether the game knew about my phobia of getting trapped in confined spaces and was deliberately being a dick.
My guess was that it did, and it was.
Knees shaking, I backed up to the wall, grabbed a handrail, and prayed the stupid thing started working again.
Of course, it didn’t.
Eve sent puffs of magical smoke from her phase-band to the doors, then seemed to come to the same conclusion as me—we were screwed.
“I’m not waiting for it to fix itself,” Skylar said. “We need to get to the bridge and the captain now.” She leapt onto the opposite handrail in one acrobatic move, threw open a hatch in the ceiling, and deftly climbed through. “It’s only another ten floors,” she said, offering a hand to her brother.
Mason took it, and she lifted him up.
Next, Skylar and Mason pulled Eve through.
I hesitated, weighing my limited options. I could have stayed in the box, shaking like a coward, and waited to see if the damn thing miraculously fixed itself, or I could’ve gone with them.
Those were the choices.
“Watch out,” Eve screamed.
Mason jumped aside as something the size of an oven fell past him and slammed into the corner of the elevator, making it drop a few feet.
Okay, I’ve made up my mind.
The second Skylar and Mason returned, I reached for them, and they lifted me onto the roof.
Feeling slightly more than a smidge of apprehension, I murmured under my breath “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” and peered around me.
The shaft was a few elevators in width, stretching high above our heads. Instead of thick steel cables, the elevators ran on parallel rails, like three vertical ladders or train tracks fixed side by side.
I groaned as Skylar leapt onto the nearest track and scaled the rungs like a monkey on a climbing frame. In less than a minute, she’d climbed ten levels. She stopped at a set of doors, prised them open with her cyborg strength, and slid through.
“I’m glad it was so easy for her,” I said, incredulous.
Another chunk of wreckage, this one the size of a bread bin, dropped from the top of the elevator shaft and shot past me, making me scream like a two-year-old. I leapt to one side, into Mason’s arms.
He grinned at me.
“Get lost,” I muttered, pulling myself free.
With trepidation, I peered up to where Skylar had vanished. That’s when I spotted something that made me want to curl up in a ball and wish the world away.
The entire roof of the elevator shaft was a mess of junk, with whole sections of spaceship dangling over the precipice. Some were only held up by a spider’s web of fragile-looking cables and pipes. Other pieces balanced against each other, ready to come tumbling down like a giant game of KerPlunk.
I let out a small manly yelp and gestured frantically.
Mason’s eyes drifted upward, and his face dropped. “We need to move,” he whispered, as if speaking louder might bring the ceiling crashing down.
The ship shuddered, and several smaller pieces shook loose, one of them barely missing me.
“Hurry,” Eve urged, gesturing to the middle makeshift ladder. I grabbed hold and started climbing, Eve close behind and Mason bringing up the rear.
Skylar stuck her head through the door, and I pointed past her. She looked up at the chaos, then beat a hasty retreat.
Wise move.
Stomach tensed, I continued climbing, only a third of the way up and already huffing and puffing like Milo after a jog.
The rungs were spaced two feet apart, around double those of a standard ladder, and the extra effort took its toll; my legs burned and my heart hammered against my ribcage.
An almighty bang followed by a deep grinding sound reverberated through the ship, and my head snapped up as several chunks of the ceiling fell away.
“Watch out,” I shouted, leaping to the left-hand ladder.
The debris plummeted past me, knocking my arm. With my heart now in my throat, I looked down at Eve and Mason. They were still with me, but it had been a close call.
Too close.
Against my will, my gaze moved up again. More items were in the process of working free, and there was no chance I could shout quickly enough as each piece fell.
I jumped back to the middle ladder, gesturing for Mason to stay left and Eve to go right. “Split up,” I said. “It’ll triple our chances of seeing the falling debris and acting in time. Keep looking up.”
The three of us continued the climb. Another piece broke free, and I leapt across to Mason’s ladder and back again, only to have him join me as chunks rained down on his side. Then it was Eve’s turn to jump across. The three of us scrambled up the ladders, leaping from one to the next, climbing as fast as possible.
We were two-thirds of the way up, the open door only a few floors above us, but anticipating the debris and reacting in time was getting harder with every rung we climbed.
Eve screamed as a piece the size of a bowling ball slammed into her arm, almost tearing her from the ladder. I reached out for her, but another chunk punched my hand, sending pain shooting up my arm. I recoiled, avoided several more lumps of debris, dropped a few feet, and leapt across to Eve’s ladder, directly below her.
She continued climbing, with Mason jumping to the middle and then back to his ladder. He made it to the open door first, slid through, and stuck his head out with Skylar, motioning for Eve and me to hurry.
“Go,” I shouted at Eve, urging her on.
Mason and Skylar hoisted Eve through, returning for me just as another loud bang shook the ship.
My head snapped up as the entire ceiling wobbled.
Eve, Mason, and Skylar screamed words I couldn’t make out above the din, but I got the gist and scrambled up. They pulled me through the door just in time. Tons of debris thundered past my feet, slamming into something below that could only have been the elevator.
I dragged myself across the smooth floor, sweat pouring from my face, and rolled onto my back, wincing at the pain in my hand and the burning muscles in my arms and legs.
“Well,” I said, happy we’d all made it through alive, “that’s officially the last time I get into a bloody elevator.”
“You’d love an orbus, then,” Mason said.
I raised my head and cocked an eyebrow at him. “What’s an orbus?”
“They have them on the Leviathan. Quickest way to get about.” Mason’s eyes wandered to the ceiling, and he pursed his lips. “They’re a cross between an elevator and a Trilaran rollercoaster. Mega-fast and super awesome.”
I shook my head and told myself never to ride in one. “
Wonderful.”
Twenty-Three
After we’d all recovered from the death climb of doom, Eve, Skylar, Mason, and I headed across a circular gallery lined with red doors, up a short flight of polished wooden stairs—yes, regular, normal, non-life-threatening stairs—and stopped at a set of double doors.
Mason waved his phase-band back and forth, sending pulses of energy into the door, but it remained closed. “We’re not authorised to enter the bridge.”
He knocked.
No one answered.
“Out of my way.” Skylar grasped the edges of the doors and attempted to pull them apart.
They didn’t budge.
She braced her feet against the frame and heaved with all her might, but no matter how hard she tried, they still wouldn’t open.
Skylar shook a fist in her brother’s face. “If you hadn’t lost your Bluestone, you could have smashed your way through.”
“Give it a rest,” Mason fired back. “A shield surrounds the whole bridge. Even if I still had it, no deal.”
While they argued, I stepped to the doors, looking for a buzzer or bell of some kind. The next second, they slid open.
I raised my hands and stepped back.
Eve, Mason, and Skylar faced me.
“How did you do that?” Skylar demanded.
“Leo’s CodeX implant,” Eve said with a look of awe. “Even though it’s not activated, it must give him access to parts of the ship.”
Mason thumped me on the back. “Good job.”
The three of them marched past me. I followed, and my breath caught.
The room—if you could call it that, since my definition of a room included walls and a ceiling—was a glass bubble thirty feet in diameter, perched on top of the remains of the ship’s bow.
Outside was destruction in all its panoramic glory—a debris field stretching for hundreds, if not thousands of miles—and to the left was the ice planet.
“What did this to us?” Tears formed in Eve’s eyes as she surveyed the carnage.
Mason shook his head. “According to the scans they did before we got here, there’s no life above microbial in this entire solar system. Or in any of the solar systems we were set to pass through. That’s why they chose this path—far away from other civilisations.”
Having a bunch of aliens fly close to your planet would undoubtedly make you a little edgy. If it had happened anywhere near Earth, with all the trigger-happy morons there, it wouldn’t have surprised me if a few of them had taken some nuclear potshots. But I doubted human weapons would have any impact on an advanced race capable of interstellar travel, despite their ships being made of wood, metal, twine, and canvas.
“This is the bridge?” I looked around the minimalist interior with a bemused expression. A bank of screens mimicked the curve of the dome, with another display ahead of them, and that was all.
“Where’s the captain?” Eve said. “The crew?”
Skylar hurried back down the stairs, vanishing around the corner.
Mason clicked his fingers. “Captain’s galley.” He raced off too.
“Are you serious?” Eve called after him. “Don’t you think we’ve got bigger priorities?” She noticed my uneasy expression as I stared at the dome. “When we meet other civilisations, we sometimes trade technology. This is an example. It’s a one-way meta-composite. Super strong and only transparent from the inside.”
I nodded.
“Dragon Force handle any battles with the Kraythons, well away from the main fleet.” She inclined her head. “Are you feeling overwhelmed by all this?”
I nodded again. Overwhelmed was an understatement.
A weird look came over her, one that made me think that Eve knew I wasn’t part of this world.
I clenched my fists. My stomach clenched too.
Whatever Eve asked me, there was no way I would admit the truth. I had zero intention of finding out what Ayesha classed as dire consequences by telling someone in the game who I really was.
Besides, if everything that had happened so far wasn’t dire, then what the hell was?
Eve opened her mouth to say something, but Skylar came hurrying back.
“Th-they’ve all gone,” she said in a shaky voice. “C-captain and the others. They used their escape capsules.”
Eve gasped. “They abandoned us?” Her face fell. “Why would they do that?”
“They didn’t know they left us behind,” Mason said as he returned to the bridge carrying four tubes, each around six inches long and one in diameter.
Skylar’s expression darkened. “Which leaves us with a more important question. If the crew escaped to safety, why did Kelvin force us to stay behind in the wreckage?”
Mason offered a tube to Eve, who shook her head, so he held it out to his sister.
Skylar pushed his hand away. “How can you think of your stomach at a time like this?”
Mason shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
He handed a tube to me, and I frowned. “What is it?”
Mason popped the lid off one tube and pressed his thumb into the bottom, forcing up a spongy substance embedded with chunks of what looked like walnuts. He took a bite and grinned.
I removed the lid of mine and gave it a tentative sniff, recoiling at the scent of onion and cherry.
“It’s called chirorja,” Mason said, munching away and still beaming at me. “Only thing the crew didn’t take when they abandoned ship.”
I screwed my face up at the awful smell. “Can’t imagine why.” I held the alien food at arm’s length. I was pretty sure other worlds would have different biology and DNA, meaning alien stuff could be poisonous to me.
Noticing my unease and still obviously not caring, Mason said, “Stop whining and eat your chirorja.”
I took a tiny bite, chewed, swallowed, and my health meter jumped from sixty-four percent to seventy.
Hmm.
Even though it tasted like crap with a texture of cat litter mixed in jelly, the chirorja was a welcome boost, and by the time I’d finished the tube, my health sat at a respectable eighty-six percent, with my vision and the world around me bright and sharp.
Much better.
Mason offered another tube, but I declined, not wanting to push my luck. Anyway, I was having enough trouble keeping the first one down.
As Mason strode over to the left side of the displays, a chair rose in front of them as though growing from the wooden floor, and he sat down. The crystals in his phase-band glowed, and he twisted his fingers, controlling the screen with magic. “We’ve got next to nothing. Life support is barely hanging on, water is at a minimum, and there’s no way to move.”
“Can the ship heal itself?” I asked.
“It can, but not on emergency power,” Eve said, consulting a display on the right side and sitting in front of it. “The primary core was in the aft section of the ship, where it can maintain the stasis bay during a disaster.”
“Like now,” I said.
Eve let out a slow breath. “Like now.” She swiped her finger across the display. “The grav module’s gone too. We’re dead in the water. No way to move. Best guess is that the whole rear section of the ship separated and headed there.” She pointed at the ice planet.
“I’m not so sure.” Mason flicked his wrist and scrolled through screen menus. “I’m not picking up any sign of the crew. We need to find Kelvin. He’ll have the answers. I’ll scan for his Bluestone artifact.” Mason glanced over his shoulder. “If Kelvin’s drifting out there somewhere, he can’t have gotten far.”
Skylar folded her arms. “If he’s still alive.”
“He’s alive.” Mason scowled at her. “Stop doubting it. Why are you being such an idiot about all this?”
“I’ll search for your grandmother,” Eve said, waving me over to her while the other two bickered. “What’s her name again?”
“Alice Bowman.” I peered over Eve’s shoulder as the crystals in her phase-band glowed, sending wispy, smoke-like
energy across the back of her hand. With a flick of her fingers, pulses shot into the screen, bringing up a virtual keyboard.
Eve entered the name into a search box and sat back. “I’m sorry, Leo, there’s no record of a member of the fleet called Alice Bowman.”
“What?” I said, aghast. “How can—?”
Eve held up a finger. “Hold on.” She leaned forward, brought up another menu, and repeated the process, then let out a breath. “It’s okay. She’s here. Crew member on board the Leviathan.”
“The Leviathan is the command ship?” I said.
“Exactly.” Eve worked the display, controlling the magic and the screen by quick motions with her fingers. “It follows the main Antarian fleet. The Leviathan is where Admiral Floyd and the other officers live and work.”
I relaxed slightly at this news. The thought of my grandmother not being in the fleet when the Kraythons had attacked filled me with renewed hope of finding her alive and well.
I pictured the five of us when this was over—Mum, Dad, Grandma Alice, Grandpa John, and I—sitting around the fire at the lodge, chatting, laughing . . .
“Wait. This can’t be right.”
I snapped out of my daydream. “What’s wrong?”
Eve pointed at the display.
She had Grandma Alice’s file open, but the whole thing had been blacked out apart from her name and the infinity symbol from the front of the CodeX and her locket.
“What does that mean?” I pointed at the symbol.
Eve shook her head. “I’ve got no idea. I’ve never seen anything like this file before either. It’s flagged as top secret. Only a high-ranking officer will have access to it.”
My blood ran cold.
“There must be a logical reason, Leo,” Eve said. “Don’t worry, Admiral Floyd’s a good person and will tell us your grandmother’s location. We’ll get answers.” She smiled. “At least we know your grandmother’s on board the Leviathan. That’s the main thing.” Eve selected more menus on her screen. “I’ll get ahold of them and ask to speak to the admiral directly. I bet they’ll make an exception, considering the circumstances.”
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