by S. Harrison
“Brent! Stop!” I yell as I climb after him as quickly as I can.
Brent ignores me as he slots one foot into a handhold, braces his back against the tube, and spins the wheel in the center of the hatch cover.
“Don’t leave me!” Margaux screams. Brent looks back down the tube, his eye line shooting past me and focusing on Margaux below. His panicked face seems to soften, and he pauses for a second.
I take the opportunity to lunge toward him, but as I reach out his attention immediately switches back to me, and his expression snaps into an angry glower as he kicks out with his free leg. I raise my arm to shield myself, and his heel thuds into my elbow. My shoes slip on the smooth metal, and I fall flat inside the pipe, hanging from a handhold by one arm as Brent’s toe hacks my fingers. Three more times he kicks hard at my knuckles, and I curse out loud as I lose my grip and slide on my stomach to the bottom. I watch in absolute horror as Brent pushes the hatch open and hauls himself out onto the surface, leaving me lying at the bottom of the pipe, staring up in disbelief at an open hole filled with stars twinkling in the night sky above.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The rest of the group quickly get to their feet and dust themselves off. Everyone looks even more stunned and mortified than I feel, well, all except for Margaux, who’s crouching beside me, staring up into the pipe with a steely-eyed, clenched-jaw look of seething rage. “Bastard!” she screeches as she dives headfirst into the metal tube and begins scrambling toward the surface.
“Margaux! What are you doing?” I yell, but she doesn’t turn around, and she doesn’t stop climbing.
“I’m going to bring him back!” she yells over her shoulder, and it only takes a few grunting arm hauls and scuffling leg strides before she disappears from sight through the opening at the top.
“The blasted idiot!” grunts Dr. Pierce. “I should’ve chained him to a table in the back room!”
“He can’t have gone far, and out of all of us Margaux is the fastest runner,” says Bit. “She’ll catch him.”
“It’s too late for that, girly,” says Dr. Pierce. “That moron and his girlfriend will have tripped the motion sensors out there. Those R.A.M.s will be heading back this way any second.”
“Bit, keep an eye on that slate,” I say as I duck into the pipe. “I’m going up.” I quickly climb to the top and pop my head out of the open hatch. The cool night air wafts across my face as I take in the surroundings.
The hatch’s exit is in a tiny courtyard. Weeping willow trees hang down over a fishpond to my left, and beyond that, low wooden decking surrounds the base of a tall Japanese pagoda that stretches into the sky. The courtyard is lit by a soft glow behind the paper windows of the multitier pagoda, giving the secluded area a calming aura of serenity, a tranquility that’s rudely tainted by the pervading smell of smoldering fuel and plastic that hangs heavy on the evening breeze. I can’t see Margaux and Brent anywhere, which is hardly surprising considering that there’s a path that leads to a narrow alleyway less than thirty feet away. It’s the only obvious way out of this courtyard, so that’s where they must have gone. I reach into my satchel, pull out my radio, and squeeze the “Talk” button. “Margaux? Can you hear me? Where are you? Margaux, come in.”
There’s no response.
Jonah’s voice issues from my walkie-talkie. “Finn, what’s wrong?”
“We’ve got a problem. Brent flipped out and exited the hatch,” I reply. “He’s trying to make it to the bus and escape without us. Margaux ran after him to bring him back, but she’s not answering her radio.”
“Dammit!” grunts Jonah.
“What should we do?” I ask.
“We’ve made it to the roof, and the tanks are rigged to blow,” says Jonah. “We’ll drop the first one, and hopefully it’ll keep the R.A.M.s heading our way. What the hell was he thinking?”
“He wasn’t,” I reply. “We should have left him behind.”
“Well it’s too late for that now,” says Jonah. “We’re lifting the first tank into position. Cross your fingers, and pray that this works.”
“OK,” I reply. Less than a minute later, I hear the thud of the oxygen canister detonating in the distance.
“The R.A.M.s have tripped the third ground sensor,” Bit calls up from below.
“I don’t know if that blast helped or not,” I say into my radio. “But it doesn’t seem like they’re turning back yet.”
“That’s a good sign,” replies Jonah.
“Wait,” Percy’s voice says in the background. “I . . . I can see movement between the buildings.”
“Where? Let me see,” says Jonah.
There’s a scuffling sound of what I can only assume is Jonah’s radio being swapped for a pair of binoculars.
“Yes, that’s them alright,” says Jonah’s voice. “They’re approximately half a mile away. All three of them are still walking toward our position.”
“Finn, I think you should all go for the dome,” says Percy.
“I agree,” says Jonah.
“Maybe we don’t have to go anywhere,” Brody calls from below. “Brent might make it to the bus, then he’ll bring help and everything will be OK.”
“No. We clearly can’t rely on that boy for anything.” Dr. Pierce’s voice echoes determinedly from beneath me. “We absolutely must restore Onix as soon as possible. It’s our best chance at setting everything right.”
Even though I know Dr. Pierce has ulterior motives, and I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, restoring the mainframe is important for a lot of reasons other than his: finding Mariele, helping any survivors, freeing Gazelle, and, most importantly of all, getting all of our butts the hell out of here.
“I think we should make a break for the dome, too,” I call down into the tunnel. “And we need to go right now.”
“I vote you do exactly that,” says Percy. “Because it just occurred to me that unless you can shut those R.A.M.s down, we’re never leaving the top of this building alive.”
“That only occurred to you now?” Professor Francis says in the background.
I see Bit looking up at me.
“OK, let’s do it,” she says as she tucks the slate into her satchel and starts climbing.
I step out of the opening into the courtyard, and as Bit makes her way to the top, I squeeze the “Talk” button on my radio. “We’re leaving the hatch and heading for the reservoir door.”
“OK,” says Percy. “Good luck.”
I lean down, grab Bit’s hand, and help her out of the hatch. A few seconds later Brody appears and climbs out, followed shortly after by Dr. Pierce.
“OK then, let’s move. Quick as we can,” I say as I turn and begin jogging toward the path that leads to the alleyway.
The others follow closely behind me, and as we make our way toward the other end of the short alley, I can see ambient light from somewhere out in the open, highlighting the edges of large rocky silhouettes. As we emerge, the jagged shapes reveal themselves, and my eyes are met with a scene of widespread destruction. Long spans of monorail track have collapsed onto the ground, leaving piles of rubble strewn over a long white promenade. A number of the silver support towers that used to hold the tracks up are lying among the busted slabs of concrete, and over the top of the debris to the left, beyond the blasted-open, gunfire-shattered walls of several other buildings, I can see a thin column of black smoke in the distance, lazily wending its way into the starry sky above.
I pause for a moment and pull my radio from my satchel. “Margaux, come in. Where are you?”
There’s still no answer. Where the hell did they go?
Dr. Pierce stops beside me. “Forget her. Forget them both. That is where we need to focus our efforts,” he says, pointing ahead.
I look up over the top of a pile of crumbled track and see there in the distance, high on a hill in the center of the sector, is our first destination. Dome Two. Spotlights around its base illuminate a third of the way up its glossy su
rface. Its pure-black crown would be almost impossible to see if it weren’t for the fact that the dome’s sheer size obscures the stars behind it, making it appear as if a huge rounded shape has been cut into the fabric of the night. “I know what we need to do,” I hiss at Dr. Pierce. “But I’m not just going to forget about Brent and Margaux.”
I defiantly press the “Talk” button again and bark into my radio. “Margaux! Where the hell are you?”
To my complete surprise, Brent’s voice suddenly blurts from the radio speaker. “She’s with me!” His words are jolting and breathy, and I can tell that he’s running. “She’s come to her senses, and she’s coming with me!”
“Get back to the others right now!” Jonah barks into the conversation.
There’s a shuffling sound as Margaux grabs the radio. “We’re going for the bus,” she says. “Two plans are better than one! If you don’t make it, we’ll bring help!”
I squeeze the “Talk” button hard and grunt into the walkie-talkie. “Brent, I swear, if we make it out of here alive, I’m gonna shove that cheeseburger down your throat and make you choke on it.”
“You’ll be choking on your words when we come back and save all of you!” he shouts in the background, then the signal cuts off.
I look around, trying to spot them, but they could have gone in any one of multiple directions, and there are high piles of debris and fallen towers everywhere, blocking my line of sight into the sector.
“Listen,” Dr. Pierce says, glaring at me. “They are the ones who decided to go off on their own. After we fix Onix and reset the mainframe, you’re free to go and find them and force-feed the boy any high-calorie foods you wish. But until then, you do exactly what I tell you, OK?”
Without another word Dr. Pierce turns and jogs away, making a beeline for the nearest heap of rubble.
“I think he’s right, Finn,” says Bit. “We should neutralize the danger first.”
Brody shrugs his shoulders in apparent agreement and falls in step behind Bit as she follows after Dr. Pierce, who, despite his age, is striding away at a surprisingly spritely pace.
Still fuming at the fact that Brent would do something so mind-bogglingly stupid, I angrily thrust my walkie-talkie back into my satchel, let out an infuriated sigh, and set off behind the others across a patch of manicured grass to the edge of the promenade.
I reach the base of the rubble pile just as Brody is boosting Bit up onto the side of it. The mound of debris is about twelve feet high but has enough gaps and divots to make it a relatively easy obstacle to climb; in fact, Dr. Pierce has nearly reached the peak. Bit is having a little more trouble than I am scaling the rubble, which is hardly surprising, seeing that she’s trying to climb with the slate still clutched in one hand. I scramble past her as Brody stands patiently on the ground below her, holding his arms out to catch her if she falls. Dr. Pierce disappears over the top, and as I reach the peak I see him slide down a smooth, mostly intact concrete incline to the ground on the other side.
I kneel and reach down toward Bit. “Pass the damn thing here,” I whisper. Bit gets a good foothold and stretches her arm out. I take the slate from her, and I’m about to help pull her up when I notice a flickering light coming from the diagram of Blackstone Technologies.
My eyes widen.
The fifth little orange dot is blinking, showing that the R.A.M.s are still moving toward Jonah and the others. That’s exactly what I was expecting to see, so it’s no surprise. But the reason why my heart has begun to thud a little faster than it should is because both the fourth and fifth sensor dots are flashing, which could only mean . . .
“Finn!” Percy’s muffled voice says from inside my satchel. Still staring in horror at the slate in one hand, I scramble through my bag and retrieve my walkie-talkie.
“I read you,” I blurt into it, fearing that he’s about to confirm exactly what I already suspect.
“I’ve lost sight of the third R.A.M.,” he says. “I think it might have turned back. You have to move!”
I quickly look down at Bit and Brody. Bit is staring anxiously up at me as she hauls herself to the top. “I heard,” she says as I hand her back the slate.
“Go, go, go,” I insist as I pat her on the shoulder. She nods, carefully lowers herself onto the lip of the incline, and slides down the concrete to the ground beside Dr. Pierce.
“C’mon, get a move on!” he barks from below.
I reach down and offer Brody my arm. He gratefully grabs my wrist, and I hoist him to the top, then I turn and slide on the soles of my shoes down the slab to the ground. Brody skids down the concrete slope to the bottom behind me, and after we exchange a few nervous glances, Dr. Pierce turns and heads off across the promenade. Clutching the slate in the crook of her elbow, Bit follows after him, then Brody, then me, all of us running in single file across a reasonably clear stretch of paving.
Up ahead I can see cherry-blossom trees lining the far edge of the promenade. They’re filled with twinkling lights that are casting a pinkish hue through the trees’ cloud-like bushels of flower petals. I look to the right. The promenade curves away, into the distance. Apart from piles of rubble and a couple of fallen support towers, it’s empty, but something strewn on the ground in the distance catches my eye. It’s Margaux’s pink cardigan. They must have gone that way. I try to spot them farther along the promenade, but I can’t see them among the shadows and debris.
The thought of trying my radio again crosses my mind for a second, but I quickly decide that there’s really no point. They didn’t want to listen to me a few minutes ago, and I seriously doubt that they’ve changed their minds since then. They chose to go it alone, so they’re on their own, and as I glance along the wide stretch of paving that curves away to my left, it becomes glaringly clear why Brent and Margaux chose to head to the right. Even the gentle light filtering from the cherry-blossom trees can’t soften the impact of what I see. Many more sections of monorail lie collapsed all along the promenade, and strewn among the rubble are the bullet-ridden, fluid-leaking bodies of Drones and the horribly mutilated corpses of Captain Delgado’s troops. They’re nearly everywhere I look. It almost seems as if some giant demonic child grew weary of his toys, crushed them by the handful, and heartlessly scattered them across a charred and broken landscape. It’s a brutally gruesome sight, a nightmarish war zone that looks as if it’s been ripped straight from TV and regurgitated into stark reality.
My memories of being here when all of this happened are still so cloudy, but as I run through the cool night, transfixed by the scene of carnage and ruin, a dim spark of memory pulses in my mind. I can feel spiky tips of recollection slowly poking tiny holes in the milky film that’s vacuum-packed around my brain.
The more I look at the Drones and the bodies and the blackened scars blasted into the ground and buildings, the more the memories push, until suddenly, out of nowhere, part of the misty shroud splits open, and lost details begin oozing into the forefront of my mind like a thick soup of images and sensations.
I gasp out loud and almost stumble over my own feet when, instead of running through the night, I’m suddenly flying high above Blackstone Technologies, watching out the side door of a transport as a twirling bouquet of heat-seeking missiles heads directly toward me, the rockets curving and weaving through the air as they get closer and closer with every passing second. Strange blue lights begin dancing in the smoke of the missiles’ vapor trails, and the projectiles begin to tumble and fall away toward the ground, where they detonate into a rolling swath of fire far below.
There are three other people in the transport. Crouching beside me is Gazelle, her elvish features rigid with concentration as she closely watches the holographic screens projecting from the roof of the cabin. In the pilot’s seat, veering the transport through the sky with determined precision is a wiry young man, the stubble on his defined jawline visible beneath the visor of his bulky helmet. And in the copilot’s seat, the third person is staring out the si
de window, the profile of his face completely hidden by a combat face mask and silver-tinted visor. Jonah mentioned the Saviors’ code names when we were back in the lab, and as the memory of flying in the transport unfurls, those names snap into their proper places like magnetic puzzle pieces. Kestrel. That’s the pilot, and the other guy, with the mask and the metal arm, is the one they call Zero.
Suddenly a floodgate seems to open in my mind, and jumbled flashes begin spilling forth in rapid succession as the memory becomes even clearer. I see clouds of fire following us as we soar and swerve just above the ground. Metallic support towers are toppled by explosions, while sections of concrete track crumble in the wake of the transport as it zooms dangerously low over the promenade.
I remember climbing high into the sky over a crashed aircraft lying on the edge of a massive dark circle below. I see survivors hurry past a line of dead bodies as the huge glossy black wall of the re-forming dome curves over above them. It crunches down on the smoldering wreckage. There’s gunfire, screaming, an almighty explosion, and suddenly I’m being slammed around inside our tumbling transport as it rolls over and over down the hill.
I remember being carried away and lying in the sand, wounded and bleeding, watching the terrified faces of soldiers and survivors running for their lives from three giant green boulders thundering toward them. All around me silver Drones, trees, people, and buildings are crushed with impunity, and just when I think it couldn’t get any worse . . . the howling wail of the R.A.M.s’ weapons begins. I remember the battering rhythm of bullets pulverizing stone, the screams of the dying, and the red glow of artificial eyes scanning through clouds of dust and smoke for someone else to kill.
Time flicks forward, and suddenly I’m alone. Everything is crumbling and falling, and I’m desperately trying to escape on legs that won’t carry me. My undiluted fear quickly becomes overwhelming panic, and the last thing I see as I scream out in terror is the whole world collapsing on top of me.
