by S. S. Segran
He ran back, drinking in the unfolding results with the thirst of a dying man. Comparing them to the printout beside him displaying Piper’s initial results, he discerned the colored dots inching higher and higher until they all hit the top edge of the screen. Kenzo would have kissed the monitor except just then the doorknob started to jiggle. He froze.
What do I do? What do I do? His mind launched into a frenzy. He grabbed the printout and for a fleeting, absurd moment considered shoving it into his mouth before he crumpled it up and stuffed it into his pocket. His fingers flew over the screen, trying to hide evidence of his tampering.
The door clicked and swung open.
“Mr. Igarashi?” a sandpapery voice called. “What are you doing?”
Kenzo wanted to rip the cabinet doors off their hinges. Of all the people, it had to be Dr. Nate.
“Just doing some work, sir,” he said, not turning around, fingers still hurrying across the monitor. The waveform had reverted to its original shape.
“I’ve been trying to reach you through Ms. Abdul.” Dr. Nate’s shoes slapped closer as he moved to join Kenzo at the terminal. “What’s this? Why do you ’ave a Steward with you?”
“I noticed a minor discrepancy in her results last week, sir. Been trying to fix it.”
“It must ’ave been awfully slight if the program didn’t initiate a warning. And yet you picked it up?”
“It was more of a gut feeling.” Kenzo was suddenly in desperate need of some water.
Dr. Nate gazed up at him, bulging eyes bugging out even more behind his glasses. “No wonder you’re leading your echelon. Tell me, tell me! What did you find?”
“I—I wanted to take a look for myself before I brought it up to Ms. Abdul. Turns out my suspicions were right. See here? I’ve been monitoring Ms. Whittaker’s data points. They’d started to leave the safe zone, and right before you came in, there was a huge shift upward. We can’t have that.” He forced a smile. “I was just about to fix this.”
Dr. Nate gripped Kenzo’s forearm with a vice like a constricting serpent. “This ’appened just before I walked in?” he asked, low, disbelieving.
Kenzo’s limbs locked up. Sweat trailed down the back of his neck. “Yes, sir.”
“What. Strange. Timing.”
The man moved closer with every word, his hot, putrid breath rising up toward Kenzo. Kenzo swept the room for something he could use to defend himself.
Dr. Nate reached up with his other hand toward Kenzo’s throat. Before he could fight it off, the hand stretched higher and patted his cheek. “You are an amazing young man,” the doctor said softly. “We are so blessed to ’ave you with us.”
Kenzo thought he might puke from the flips his stomach had done. “It’s nothing,” he said weakly.
“No wonder you didn’t respond to Ms. Abdul’s pages.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Just trying to do my job, you know.”
Dr. Nate stepped back and indicated the screen. “Well, finish off ’ere, then let’s go. I’d like to get to know you better so I’ve ordered a three-course meal for us to enjoy as we chat.”
“I-I can’t leave her here alone. I need to monitor—”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll send for another Counselor. Go on, then.”
With nausea threatening to upend his insides, Kenzo started the process of reversing his work. It felt as if he’d brought Piper back to life only to plunge her head beneath the water, holding her under until she was dead again.
As he followed Dr. Nate out the door, he looked back at her motionless form with damp eyes. I’m sorry, he thought in a whisper. I’m so sorry.
The funeral was a grief-laden affair. Ashack’s body, wrapped in the finest of dark blue fabric, was laid to rest in the Emerald Field. His face, even in death, somehow remained stern. To see him in a hollow in the ground among the snow and ever-blooming flowers wrenched anguish through Tayoka, stinging and smarting as if his soul had been flayed.
How was it that, just a couple of days ago, he had been by Ashack’s side, walking with him out of the training ground toward their abodes? How was it that everything had changed so fast?
Tayoka pulled his white tunic tighter around himself to keep away the bite of winter, but it did nothing to dispel the chill inside him. How could Akol have done this? Why did I sense nothing when we spoke to him just before he killed Ashack? If I had, could I have stopped my friend’s death?
His lips wrenched in an effort to quell its tremors, and he was never more grateful for the beard he could hide behind as he was now. Beside him, Huyani stood completely still, eyes fixed on Ashack’s body as Tikina led the massed villagers in prayer. Across from them, Saiyu knelt by the other side of the grave, one hand supporting her on the ground, the other wrapped around her midsection. She, too, was still, even as sorrow trailed down her cheeks. Nageau stood behind her, eyes screwed shut.
All around them, the people of Dema-Ki fought to contain their grief, but the tears refused to be concealed. Death, though a painful separation for the living from the deceased, was supposed to be a joyous occasion. It symbolized the end of tribulations in the physical plane, allowing the soul to transcend to a place of peace, free of its corporeal limitations. But to be ripped from the world without cause—that was too cruel.
Tayoka clenched his hands inside the pockets of his tunic. I’m so sorry, my friend. You deserved so much better. For all your gruffness, you were a formidable Elder, and it was a privilege and an honor to serve with you all these years. Thank you for your dedication . . . and for putting up with my antics. I know I annoyed you constantly but, despite your impatience, I never once felt like you resented me for it.
The prayer drew to a close. Tikina descended to her knees. She crossed her right fist across her heart and bowed deeply toward the grave. The villagers followed, some prostrating themselves fully as pain overtook them and they wept onto the cold ground.
When Saiyu rose to her feet, they stood as well, hurriedly drying their faces. Magèo and Nal stepped forward, carrying a celebration flare shaped like a crystal between them; the old man was stoic, Nal’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.
They approached Saiyu. Magèo passed her a thumb-sized flame maker. She flicked it and a miniscule fire flashed to life. The villagers took a few steps back and formed circles around the grave, young and old alike, arms around each other. The Elders went to stand beside Saiyu as she lit the fuse. The flare rocketed into the air, spiraling upward. At its zenith, it exploded, sending vivid colors bursting across the gloomy sky. The runes that appeared spelled out Ashack’s name. All who passed into the next realm received the same send-off, but the writing that followed was a personal message the family of the departed would request to be included. Tayoka’s breath locked in his throat when the next runes appeared:
You are carved into my soul. You and I are one, forever and always.
I will see you soon.
Tayoka clutched Saiyu’s trembling shoulder, resting the side of his head against hers, and Tikina held the other. Nageau took her hand in his, the alarm on his face poorly hidden.
Saiyu gave them a weak smile. “Do not fret. I only meant that we would eventually be reunited as time marches on.”
The panic in Tayoka eased. “I can only imagine your pain,” he murmured. “That said, if you scare us like that again, I will personally get Magèo to find a way to fuse me to your hip so you will have to go through me before doing anything rash.”
The Elders shared a soft laugh, an incongruous sound for such a solemn occasion. Saiyu tilted her chin up, tracing the colors fading in the heavens. “I am glad to have you by my side. This desolation does not feel as heavy with you around.”
“We are always with you,” Nageau said. “Never forget that.”
“I will try, but some days might be difficult.”
“I know.”
Saiyu linked hands with him. “Ashack cherished the three of you. He never said it, but he did. Greatly.”
“And we cherish him,” Tikina whispered.
Nageau followed Saiyu’s gaze upward. “He was so diligent about his position as Elder, always working hard to find ways to better our village, always looking to see what could be improved. And always pointing out flaws in thoughts and plans whenever the Council convened. For a time, when you were both inducted, I thought he was merely trying to be difficult. Now I know better. His sharpness was exactly what we needed.”
“He was—is—a good man,” Tayoka said, “and we will carry him in our hearts until we see him again.”
As the last traces of the flare disappeared, a wind brushed against the Elders, as soft as a passing hand on their cheek.
Tayoka’s vision grew hot and blurred, but he managed a small smile. Rest easy, my friend.
Mariah sat on a countertop, facing the Scourger’s opened carcass and picking at the surgical mask covering her mouth and nose. Deverell and Aari had spent most of the night in this room, trying to uncover as many of the beast’s secrets as they could. “So the collar is for sure relaying messages from a satellite?”
“Yup.” Aari rolled back and forth on the wheels of his stool. “When we pulled out one of the sockets in the Scourger’s neck, we found it was organically connected to the brain through strands of natural polymer fibers. Guess it’s the only way Reyor can control them after the EMPs went off.”
“That means we have to take down satellites to stop these things? How would we do that? I’m pretty sure my telekinesis can’t reach that far.”
“That’s getting ahead of ourselves. There are at least five thousand satellites in space, though probably only half are operational now. And that’s not including the ones from possible black projects belonging to different governments. We don’t know which satellite—or satellites, most likely—belong to Phoenix.”
“All this was for nothing, then?” Kody was hunched over in a chair farthest away from the odorous remains. The side of his head rested tiredly against his fist, and his eyes shot daggers at nothing in particular. His red ball cap rested on his lap. “What did we waste this time for when we could have been out there looking for Jag?”
Tegan spoke up, tone flat. “We have no leads. Nowhere to look. You wanna wander around aimlessly until another horde of these things shows up?”
“I’m frustrated!” he snapped. “It’s not even a one step forward, two steps back situation. Which I’d rather have, by the way. You know what this is? This is one step back, and another, and another, and—”
“I get it. It sucks.”
“Understatement of the year.”
Mariah, wanting to diffuse the tension before it boiled over fully, piped up with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “Guys! It’s Christmas Eve eve!”
The others looked toward her. “You’re kidding,” Aari said.
“I think it’s fair to say that this is gonna be an awful Christmas,” Kody muttered.
Tegan made her way over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck from behind, resting her chin atop his head. His demeanor softened a bit, and he scrubbed a hand over his eyes.
“You know, that means in about a week it’ll be Jag’s birthday,” Aari said.
Mariah brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face in them, socked feet balanced on the edge of the countertop.
“Okay,” Tegan said after a long silence, “Jag wouldn’t want us moping. Since it’s almost Christmas, he’d probably have us list out things we’re grateful for. I know it’s been a hard year, from the crop failures—”
“When you and I were kidnapped,” Mariah said, “and then you got abducted again with Aari.”
“Right. So from that, to running all over Israel and Africa to find the seeds to the Trees of Life—”
“Where Marshall would have died falling off Masada if Jag hadn’t saved him,” Kody said.
“And Jag broke his leg from that, resulting in him having to stay back, and that got him nabbed,” added Aari. “Then Marshall’s IDF friend got killed, Kody contracted one strain of Reyor’s virus, and we nearly lost him.”
“You guys are making it hard to find any kind of gratitude here,” Tegan complained.
The group chuckled half-heartedly. Mariah picked at a frayed thread on her sock, then said, “We never got to meet Gwen when she tried to rescue us, but we got to travel across so many countries with her cousin.”
“Domi’s a beast,” Kody agreed, “and she’s got this really cool older sister vibe. I miss her.”
“We all got to unlock either a new ability or add another level to our first ones,” Aari added tentatively. “I’m still waiting on telepathy, though, if that’s even gonna come. And you know what, I’m glad we went after this Scourger. It’s not another dead end. Gareth and Dev are gonna work on the microchips in the collar and I’m sure they’ll find something useful.”
Tegan dipped her head at that, thumbing her bottom lip. “I’m grateful our families are safe, and we have the Sentries to thank for it. Also, I really do think we’ve gotten stronger. The us from a year and a half ago are babies compared to who we are now.”
The group murmured its assent.
“We’ve met interesting people and visited amazing places,” Mariah offered. “And I really love this Lodge.”
“And I got this baller staff from Dema-Ki made specially for me.” Kody reached back for his weapon but grasped at air. “Shucks. Left it in my room.”
“We did end up finding the seeds,” Aari said, “And that saved Kody and many others.”
Kody held out his fist. Aari rolled over on his stool to bump it, then pushed off with his legs to glide back to his original position—except he overshot and collided with the metal table. Ricocheting off, he came to a spinning halt at the door where Victor now stood, slouched against the frame.
“Am I interrupting?” he asked, staring down at the boy with an arched brow.
Aari shot to his feet and dusted himself off, visage as red as his hair. Mariah had to bite back a snicker.
“No, you’re not,” Tegan said. “We’re just trying to find things to be grateful for.”
Victor surveyed the four of them, then jerked his chin and turned back the way he’d come. The friends removed their masks and followed him up the stairs into the meeting area where they took a seat around the table.
“Elder Nageau reached out to me a short while ago,” Victor said. “We might have a break.”
Mariah and the others regarded him unenthusiastically.
“Might?” Kody echoed, dropping his head back to stare up at the lights. “Great.”
“Some of the Elders have been working on their end, looking for records of the home island since they think that’s what the Heart is. Or at least it’s in the vicinity of the original island.”
Mariah poked her armrest. “Wasn’t that island destroyed over two thousand years ago?”
“Add another five hundred years. A fire aboard the ship that brought the ancestors to North America burned all the maps and charts. With those records lost there’s no way to pinpoint the island. Good news is, the Elders found an old journal.”
Bless these journals that survived, Mariah thought.
“It was preserved in a sealed case. We’re lucky; if it had been exposed to air all these years, we’d have nothing left of it. It belonged to a boy named Oten who lived on the Island. He talks about a tool that supposedly points the way home.”
Aari’s face crumpled in thought. “Like a compass?”
“Sort of. There was apparently a pointer crystal inside that was capable of indicating the direction of their home at all times.”
“How does that work?”
“Don’t know.”
The friends waited for the Sentry to say more. When he didn’t, Tegan cocked her head. “Where’s this compass thing now?”
Victor seemed to have shifted to some other train of thought as he looked at the friends, and the briefest wave of emotion passed over his feature
s before the hardened look they’d all gotten to know returned. “The boy talks about Mons Calpe. It’s either Roman or Phoenician, neither Dev nor Gareth could confirm one way or another.”
“And here I thought they were walking encyclopedias,” Kody said, tongue-in-cheek. “Where are they, anyway? I don’t hear them around.”
“Taking Anya out to stretch her legs with Chief.” Victor reached for a couple of actual encyclopedias on the side of the table and opened them to the list under the letter M. “The boy also mentioned pillars. But what he meant by that isn’t clear.”
Aari leaned forward on his elbows, scanning the pages. “So what exactly is this kid’s story?”
“He was out with his aunt on a sailboat. She wanted to test her new creation, but they got caught in a storm. They tried to take shelter in a bay, ended up being swept overboard. The aunt died. The boy made it out alive somehow, pushed to shore by the waves. The Elders are still trying to decipher the entry and look for clues in the writing. The compass was lost wherever their boat sank. Oten also wrote about being wary of the Realm of the Unknown, whatever that is.”
Kody scratched his head. “That . . . sort of rings a bell.”
All eyes turned to him.
“Back in middle school—grade six, I think?—we did a unit on Ancient Greece, and we had to pick some prominent person to do a report on,” he explained. “I was researching Plato at first because everyone talks about him, but Aari beat me to it on the day we finally got the sign-up sheet.”
Aari wore a humored smile. “The only thing I remember about that is you throwing your Goldfish crackers at my head for two whole classes because you were so mad.”
“And I’m still not apologizing for that. But that did make me learn about Diogenes, and I’m pretty sure that gave me the best grade out of everyone. Plus, everyone loved my report.”
“Is there a point to this?” Victor asked.
Kody lightly tapped his cheeks. “Right, sorry. As I said, before I got beaten to the sign-up sheet, I was already reading up on Plato. He mentioned something about the lost city of Atlantis being beyond the pillars of something, which he said put it in the Realm of the Unknown.”
