Lucas grimaces and shakes his head. “He’s at forty-thousand feet right now. Drews will probably have a goon waiting for him at XNA, looking for any evidence that we communicated. It’s safer for him if we don’t.”
Io heaves a sigh. “In other words, we’re on our own.”
Lucas looks thoughtful. “We may be thinking too small. Io, you said you might know a way to close the portals. If we can manage that, Gothic will be reopened, and the people in my care—” He snorts softly. “Formerly in my care — will be able to go home.”
She looks embarrassed. “We were working on a lead when the old Director died. Plus, it’s in that other world.”
“Then I think our next action is clear.”
She looks startled. “You . . . You want to cross over?”
“We can’t approach Gothic directly. Even if we somehow got past the fence, we’d have to deal with the soldiers. So instead, let’s cross over, find some portals, and keep trying them until we find one that gets us close to Condy and your sister.”
A hopeful grin spreads across her face. “I’ve been trying to do that for the past month, but if I have help . . . I mean, it’s incredibly dangerous, but . . . If you’re willing . . . It’d be like taking a Way through the Nevernever!”
“A what in the what?” He holds up a hand. “Never mind.” He starts back toward the truck. “You’re the expert on the other side, so I need you to warn me about hostile life-forms—”
“I’ve learned the secrets of the fire swamp, and can live there quite comfortably.”
Zechariah uses long strides to come up even with the hurrying Lucas. “I’ll be in charge of killing these ‘hostile life-forms’.”
Lucas shoots him a surprised look. “No, no, definitely not. I need you to stay behind on this side and guard the portal.”
The younger man snorts. “Good one.”
“I’m being serious.” They come to a stop beside the truck. “I’m not bringing you along into an alien dimension and getting you killed by monsters or soldiers or God knows what else.”
Zechariah stares at him, offended. “I know I’ve played the useless stoner all these months, but I thought you of all people were smart enough to see past it.”
“What is there to see? You’re a civilian with zero combat training.”
Zechariah throws up his hand; his other arm was still hidden underneath his jacket. “All this time, I thought you understood me. I thought you knew what I’m capable of. Now I find out you bought that story, just like everyone else!”
Lucas gives him a bewildered look. “What story? What are you capable of? Nothing you can say can change the fact that out of the three of us, you’re the odd-one-out!”
Io looks back and forth between them, wide-eyed, unsure of what to do.
The younger man’s eyes flash. Then, one-handed, he begins to unbutton his jacket. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he mutters, reaching the bottom and wrestling it off his shoulders, “that you might be the odd-one-out?”
The jacket falls away, dangling from his right wrist.
His left arm ends just below the elbow, a mess of sharp edges and jagged lines. He raises it to show a horrified Lucas the wound, how great yellow pustules are already forming on the torn flesh.
Lucas shakes his head dazedly. “When did your arm—”
“When you brought out that fucking orb. I was standing too close, reaching for you.” He steps closer, forcing his friend to watch as the pustules gradually fill in flesh where the blue energy has disintegrated it. “I don’t blame you. You apparently had no idea.”
“You’re . . .” He glances at Io, who has both hands pressed to her mouth in horror.
“You’re one of mine,” she confirms in a whisper.
“I am my own.”
“Don’t give me that shit!” Lucas explodes, jabbing a finger in his face. “How the fuck was I supposed to guess that you were secretly an alien?”
“Hey!” Io snaps, her shock evaporating a little.
“I never expected you to guess.” He lowers his arm. “But I thought you recognized me as an equal. Why else did you bring me along on patrols, but for backup?”
Lucas rolls his eyes. “I didn’t need backup! The people living in that park were all old and fucking harmless! I brought you along because I thought we were friends!”
Zechariah flinches as if cut. “You thought I was beneath you. You mistook my respect for worship.”
“That’s not— How the hell are you making this about me when you didn’t tell me you’re an alien!”
Io makes an ‘I give up’ gesture. “I’m standing right here.”
“Don’t get me started on you!” Lucas spits. “You did nothing but lie to me—”
“Sure I did! And sure, Zechariah did! And I don’t blame him one tiny bit!” She holds up her hands. “Zechariah, why didn’t you just tell us earlier, after I came out?”
He stares at her, mouth twisting into a grimace. At last, “Habit.”
“Exactly! When you’re infected, you stay hidden. It’s instinct.” She looks pointedly at Lucas. “That instinct kept him from ever having to see the inside of that base. Kept him from being treated like a thing. Every day, new experiments, benchmarking tests, every tiny moment recorded and dissected and studied— You can’t imagine what it was like.”
When his lip curls, she adds, “I’m not blaming you, Lucas, and neither should you.” She frowns at Zechariah. “You kept your secret by pretending to be a normal civilian, so you can’t be surprised that Lucas thought you were a normal civilian.”
Zechariah’s lip curls, and for a long moment he struggles to find a valid argument. Then he looks away, embarrassed.
Lucas grunts and pulls open the passenger door, hauls himself up into the cab.
“I didn’t know there were others,” Zechariah says quietly, to Io. “If I had . . . Maybe I would have tried to rescue you.”
“I appreciate that.” She smiles tiredly. “To tell you the truth, I’m glad not to be so alone. But how were you infected?”
“I woke up in a collapsing building with a wound in the back of my head. By the time emergency crews found me, I’d healed.”
She nods, grimacing. “Probably an accident. The Oath hasn’t been broken.” She peers at him curiously. “Interesting that you had the same instinct for secrecy despite never meeting another acicular.”
“The . . .” For the first time, he looks truly uncomfortable. “The needles talk to me sometimes. They told me to hide them, that I’d be treated badly if discovered.” He flexes a pale, long-fingered hand. “Their main goal is survival, but I want more. There has to be a reason I stay alive.” He watches Lucas sort around inside the cab, and raises his voice: “I protect my friends, even if it kills me. So I’m coming with you.”
Inside the truck, Lucas pauses, hands full of bottled water. His bewilderment and anger have coiled together as a lump in his throat. With a heavy heart, he realizes that he failed the young man long before he even met him. Now there’s no way through but down. He heaves a sigh and nods. “Okay.”
His habit of leaving non-perishable groceries and outdoor gear in the truck has finally paid off. Besides the entire pack of bottled water, he’s also gathered protein snacks, canned vegetables, a compass from the glove compartment, and other random tools. He hands the items out to Io, who loads them into her backpack.
He has no holster for Drews’ gun, and is reluctant to pocket it, since it has no manual safety. In the end, he takes the plastic shopping bag from Io and slides the gun in beside the laptop, then slings the strap across his chest and shoulder so that the bag hangs near his hip where a holster would normally rest. Despite himself, the weight comforts him.
Zechariah sits on the hood of the truck, watching the portal in case the vines return. When the other two finally join him, the young man voices what they’re all wondering: “Who goes through first?”
Lucas absently runs a thumb along the hammer’s handle. “Io is more f
amiliar with the other side, but if I take the hammer through first, I can clear away any vines waiting for us.”
Io reappears from around the back of the truck, where she’s changed into a clean t-shirt from her backpack. “We’ll stay way back here and wait for you to poke back through and signal that the way is clear and that the hammer is closed. Otherwise, we risk walking right into its range of influence.”
He nods, ready to start forward — but first, he sets a hand on the hood of his truck and stands for a moment in farewell silence. The others trade a look but say nothing.
“Right,” he whispers, and lets go of the truck.
As he approaches the eye-tickling distortion, butterflies rage in his stomach. The hammer is in his hand; before he reaches the folding space, he switches it open so that its faint blue glow spreads ahead of him on the grass. Still, violent chills of apprehension run up and down his neck.
He stands for a moment, mesmerized and dizzied by the air-tearing shimmer. Then he tears his gaze away and looks back over his shoulder at his companions. They watch him in tense silence; even from this distance, he can read the anxiety in Io’s crossed arms, the way Zechariah hunches forward in readiness. The younger man holds his arm against his chest, wrist nearly restored.
Lucas straightens his shoulders, faces the portal, holds the hammer in front of him, and steps forward. Instinct makes him suck in a deep breath, though he feels silly doing so.
Moving through that jagged space sends a chill through his entire body, like the first shiver of a violent fever. He squeezes his eyes shut and lets out his held breath in a puff of surprise; when next he inhales, the air is warmer and tastes of ozone.
Tiny bits rain down around him, catching in his hair and clothes. He opens his eyes, holding up the hammer to light the way.
At first, he thinks he’s emerged inside a sphere of complete blackness, but as he takes a tentative step forward, it draws away from him in fear, revealing the trunks and branches of alien trees. He holds out a hand, and fine black needles gather in his palm, the remains of disintegrating vines. He grabs the front of his sweatshirt and holds it to his mouth, breathes carefully, not wanting to find out what will happen if he inhales them.
A little light filters down from overhead; the retreating vines reveal a high canopy, beyond which are snatches of blue sky.
Slowly, moving carefully on the uneven ground, he sketches a spiral outward from the portal. The trees he cleanses of parasites are thin with few branches, and their bark is mottled green-black. They might be standing corpses; he isn’t sure how any plant could live under the oppressive weight of the vines.
At last, when he’s cleared a space several meters wide all around the portal, he returns to it and steps back through. His spine elongates and shrinks, his hair crawls, and then he’s standing in the clearing once more. His companions are still waiting by the truck.
Io blows out a sigh of relief. “I was about to come in after you!”
He frowns. “I was only gone ten minutes.”
The two approach, wary of the open hammer. “Fifteen for us,” she points out. “Time moves at a rough 3:2 ratio between Earth and the other side.”
He grunts. “So if we’re on the other side for two hours, trying to find the right portal . . .”
“. . . three hours will have passed here. A day over there is a day and a half over here. It adds up.”
“Then we need to get moving.” He looks to Zechariah, whose hand is restored but mottled, made of fleshy pine needles. “Last chance to stay with the truck.”
The younger man smirks. “Let’s go find some nasties to kill. I owe you a show.”
He sighs and reluctantly smiles. “Part of me is glad we’re sticking together, mano.”
“To Hell and back. Especially if Drews will be there.”
Io rubs the side of her face, watching the dangerous weapon in Lucas’ hand. “You’ve already seen that a pulse will spread out if you drop it or hit anything with it. I’d better stay about twenty paces back, just in case.”
Zechariah senses Lucas’ unasked question and holds up his left hand, its freshly-healed skin cracked with red fissures. “Only my head, shoulders, and arms are needle. I’ll stay ten paces back. If any vines come after us, we can hack our way closer to you.”
Lucas nods. “I’ll step through first. Count to ten and then follow.” He turns and, with a long-suffering sigh, makes his third journey across the portal. It’s no easier than the first two; the bones in his shoulders click together as if wrenched by invisible hands.
On the other side, the vines have already begun to creep back into the clearing he’s made. He moves to the edge and busies himself clearing away more of the vines; the task is somehow soothing.
Io and Zechariah appear a moment later. The young man stares around curiously; Io consults Lucas’ compass and frowns for a little while, thinking deeply.
“Assuming we’re still in the same general area where the other portals led,” she explains, “there’s only two places this could be. We’re either right where we need to be, in the wood that holds the key to the portals, or in the heretofore-unexplored forest southwest of the mountain.”
Lucas grimaces at her. “How will you know the difference?”
She stares around for a bit at the woods, and finally shakes her head. “This isn’t the wood. I’d recognize it from my dreams. That place has a . . . a ‘mystic’ quality, I guess. This is just an infected forest.”
“Then which way do we go?”
She checks the compass again, turns in a slow circle, and points. “Due east. Even if we’re not in the right general area, we should reach the edge of the trees eventually. Once night falls, I can use the stars to get us where we need to go.”
Lucas starts in that direction, open hammer held out to clear a path. “You didn’t say you were a xeno-astronomer.”
“Amateur. My true passion is mythology — and what else do humans name constellations after?” She lets Zechariah go ahead, then takes her place at the back of the line.
Zechariah raps his knuckles against the trunk of a tree. “Just like Earth trees.”
“Not quite. It’s a coincidence that they have about the same shape. The botanists said they evolved independently, just like everything else on this side.”
The younger man looks over his shoulder at her. “What’s it called? This side.”
She looks uncomfortable. "They haven't given the planet an official name yet. It's such a momentous discovery, after all. Everyone on-base calls it 'the other side' or 'that other planet'." She rubs the back of her neck. “But, I mean, if anybody ever asked, I’d want to name it ‘Fortuna’.”
Way up ahead, Lucas calls over his shoulder, “Why? Is there gold? Oil, or something?”
“Nah, not that kind of ‘fortune’. Fortuna is the goddess of fate — good and bad, with no regard for justice or probability. Anything can happen. Certainty is an illusion. Take nothing for granted.”
He peers up into the canopy and mutters, “Greeeaaat.” Louder, “Are there any soldiers on this side?”
“If we go near the mountain, you’ll see Forward Operating Base Barlowe. Fenced-in area, staging ground for expeditions on this side—” She throws an irritated kick at a vine that has nosed into her path. “But a few weeks ago, right after taking command, Drews recalled everyone stationed there. I already raided it for supplies — what little they left behind . . .”
Mild panic abruptly sweeps over Lucas: What if they can’t find their way back to the portal? Vines are already closing in behind Io. She claims they’re headed due east, but still, this is a big forest.
Surely there will be more portals. Gothic is apparently infested with them, and even the site had a few. He won’t be trapped on this side forever, the only uninfected human, with no food or fresh water except what they carry.
Nonetheless, he has to switch the hammer to his other hand for a moment so he can wipe his sweating palm on his jeans. If the
others notice the gesture, they say nothing.
The three walk in silence for a while, increasingly conscious of the forest’s quiet hostility. Io shapes her hands into black scythes, hacking at vines that stretch across her path and interfere with her steps. Judging from her grunts of frustration, she wishes she could walk closer to Lucas’ sphere of safety — all the same, whenever he stops, she makes sure not to approach.
Zechariah, meanwhile, walks as if enjoying a hunter’s stroll. He’s fashioned a walking staff out of a long stick with the smaller branches broken off; he uses it to whack at the creepers around them, enjoying how they flinch and writhe.
Io peers at his back. “You said your head is all needles. We— My sister and I had a lot of trouble with that. Do you have amnesia?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know who my parents were, or where I lived before the Disaster. But I don’t really care. Living in the past hurts your chances of survival in the present.”
“What about your personality? Has it changed?”
“What would I do with a personality? Can I kill things with it?”
Lucas steps over a fallen trunk and peers ahead, holding up the hammer’s unflickering light. “Daylight ahead.”
“Thank God,” Io mutters, and slices at a vine hissing near her face.
A few hundred yards later, the parasitic tendrils have faded, leaving only black trees swaying in the wind. The air still tastes of storm. Once Lucas is sure they’re clear of the vines, he switches the hammer shut. Zechariah and Io each let out a breath, and the three gather in a little knot.
“We’re making good time,” Lucas encourages them, checking the branch- and leaf-screened sky above. “We can rest for a few minutes before continuing.”
Each finds a spot to sit on the gently-sloping ground. Io and Zechariah finish off four bottles of water between them; Lucas takes one for himself, and a protein bar. He watches them as he eats, especially Zechariah — searching for some sign he missed, some clue to the younger man’s true nature. But when relaxed, the two are utterly human.
Time is a weight on their minds, and soon enough, they continue on. The gentle hills soon clear of trees, but they also steepen, and their valleys fill with sluggish streams and drifts of rotting leaves.
New Night (Gothic Book 2) Page 10
