by K. J. McPike
Kai moved to let Truman out instead as Oxanna’s astral form went to work undoing the ties holding her body in place. Once Dixon woke up, Kai undid the straps binding him, too.
When everyone except Elliot was awake and free, we joined hands silently. My heart thumped against my ribs, my palms slick with sweat. Shooting one final glance in my direction, Truman projected us into Elliot’s dream.
We appeared in a bright house with baby blue walls. The five of us stood at the edge of the living area, right before the beige carpet met the linoleum squares of the kitchen floor. Elliot sat on one of the stools at the counter, and I wondered if this was the home he and Amber-Ann had lived in before they had come to The Hill.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone more curious than angry.
“We need to talk,” Truman said. “Preferably fast. I don’t know how long I can hold everyone. I’ve never tried projecting so many people at once.”
Elliot frowned. “Talk about what?”
“Getting out,” I said.
“We already tried that,” Oxanna snapped. “You saw what they made me—” She paused, glancing toward the window on our left. “They’re going to catch us no matter what.”
“No, they won’t,” I insisted. “Not if we do this right. We just need to go over every obstacle and figure out how we’re going to overcome each one.”
“The obstacles are everything,” Dixon said. “The lab is blocked, the place freaks out and goes into lockdown if it senses any movement outside the rooms, every door requires a code to get out, and even if we do get out, we have trackers that will kill us the minute we escape.”
“Dix, we can figure it out.” I did my best to look encouraging despite his list of issues adding to the doubts already floating through my mind. I knew the escape wouldn’t be easy, but there had to be a way.
“She’s right,” Kai said. “The trackers are the biggest threat, and we saw how to get rid of them today when they switched them out.”
I gave Kai a grateful smile. At least he was on my side. Maybe everyone else would listen more if it wasn’t just me insisting that we do this.
“But that thingy they used to get the trackers out is locked in the cabinet,” Truman reminded us. “We have no way to get it out.”
“Oxanna, can you permeate the cabinet?” Elliot asked. “If you can move your hand through the metal, maybe you can feel around until you find the tracker remover.”
I grinned at him for what might have been the first time since we’d met. “That’s the spirit.”
But Oxanna was already shaking her head. “I can permeate, but I can’t make the object permeate, too. All I would be able to do is move it around inside the cabinet.”
“Okay, we’ll think of a different way then.” Scanning the kitchen’s wooden countertops, I racked my brain for what that different way would be. If it came down to it, could we break the cabinet open? Would that trip an alarm?
Well, it’ll definitely sound interesting on the monitor.
I sighed. The space inside the cabinet wasn’t big enough for Kai to project inside to get the thing. What were we going to do?
“Bianca,” Dixon said suddenly. “She can project objects. She could make the thing appear in her hand without opening the cabinet doors.” He was probably right, but that presented the same problem I’d run into when I thought about trying to utilize her ability earlier: We had no way to talk to her while she was in the other room.
“Great idea, Dixon.” Kai reached out to pat him on the back, though I wasn’t sure if my brother could feel anything in dream astral form.
“Even if we get the trackers out, how are we going to get out of the lab itself?” Elliot asked. “The whole thing is blocked.”
Not the glass room. The realization made me gasp. “No, it isn’t,” I breathed. “There’s a room with glass walls that isn’t blocked. I had to work from there today, and I could project outside. It’s the same room Sariah permeated to bring Kai and me here.”
“So if we get our trackers out and get to that room, I can project us out of here,” Kai said.
I nodded. “Do you remember that room?”
“Not really,” he said, giving me an apologetic look. But I wasn’t surprised. We’d only been in there for a few seconds before Sariah knocked him out. “Maybe you could project me there so I can see it.”
“I don’t know if that will work,” I said, hating to shoot down the plan now that everyone was more open to brainstorming. “There are multiple blocks between me and that room right now. Our door, the door to the glass room—”
“See, this is why I said the obstacles are everything,” Dixon mumbled.
I fought off an annoying voice in the back of my mind that insisted my brother was right, that there was no way out. But they couldn’t have thought of everything.
“I can try and figure out how to get to the glass room from here,” I said. “If I’m going to be working from there, I can learn the path and travel to the doors just outside that room in my astral form with Kai. Then once he sees it, maybe he can project us right to it.”
“What about the motion sensors?” Oxanna asked. “All of us appearing in the hallway would trigger them, and we wouldn’t have enough time to enter the code and get everyone through the door before the barrier came down.”
Crap. She was right.
“You guys, what about Macy?” Truman bunched his face like he wasn’t sure of what he was suggesting. “I mean, her astral form is invisible. If she projects with us, we’ll all be invisible, too. She could take us down the hall without tripping the motion sensor. And her astral form can move stuff, so she’d be able to type in the code to get to the glass room.”
I let out a stunned laugh. “That would be perfect. And if there’s an alarm in the glass room, she can carry us through there without tripping it at all. She could carry us to the portal and take us right out of Alea without them being able to see us.”
“Do you think she can carry all of us at once?” Elliot asked.
Truman shrugged. “Maybe if it’s not that far.” He looked at me. “Do you remember how long it took you to get there?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “We didn’t take a direct route. But I’ll pay extra attention tomorrow to try and figure it out.”
“Or you could ask Kala,” Kai pointed out. “She used to live here. She might know the way.”
My eyes widened. “That’s right. I forgot about that.”
“We just have to find a time we can talk in secret,” Dixon said.
“Elliot, could you project your thoughts to Kala during one of the transitions tomorrow?” I asked. “Maybe we can find a way for her to write down directions instead of saying them out loud. And maybe you can tell Bianca that we need her to get the tracker remover, too.”
“If I see them, yeah,” Elliot said, leaning back on his stool so he almost hit the counter behind him. “But I didn’t see either of them at all today. The only one in my department is a girl named Delta.”
I blinked at him. “You work with Delta?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“She’s just…a friend of ours,” I said, realizing it made sense that she and Elliot would be placed together. Their abilities were the same. “If we make it out, I want to find a way to get her out, too.”
“I think we have enough people to break out as it is,” Truman said dryly.
“Hey, speaking of Delta,” Kai said. “When you guys first got here, did she do her little crystal ritual to try and pull some of your astral energy into a stone?”
We all nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
“Do you think she could do the same thing with Sariah’s astral energy?”
“I guess so,” I said, trying and failing to get on his train of thought.
“I say she should take all of it,” Oxanna muttered. “That psycho chick is the reason we’re here.”
“Yeah, but maybe her astral energy is how we can
get back to our proper timeline,” Kai went on.
I stared at him, the pieces finally coming together in my mind. “You want to try and use her ability without her?”
He moved his head up and down slowly, his emerald eyes boring into mine. “If Arlo can do it, why can’t we?”
He had a point. If Sariah wasn’t going to help us get to our timeline, I had no reservations about trying to use her astral energy myself. If Delta agrees to do it.
Dixon looked between us with his mouth hanging open. “Do you really think that would work?”
“It’s worth a shot.” Kai turned to Elliot. “Could you talk to Delta about that? Or think to her about it? Tell her we need her to take some of Sariah’s astral energy, and we’ll break her out of here the first chance we get.”
Elliot shrugged. “Yeah, I can ask her tomorrow. But we need to fulfill our end of the bargain with the whole getting out thing.”
“Yeah, back to that,” Oxanna said. “How are we going to get the message to Bianca and Kala? The only time I’ve seen either of them was last night through the glass wall between our rooms.”
I gasped. The glass. “You guys,” I said. “Maybe that’s how we can communicate with everyone in the other room.” Everyone looked at me with blank expressions as I continued thinking aloud. “I know all the metal is mixed with the crystals to create the block, but I doubt the glass between our rooms is. Elliot could project his thoughts to everyone in the other room to let them know the plan. Or better yet, Truman can project all of us into their dreams so we can get their input, even if it’s just one at a time.”
Oxanna gaped at me. “Are you saying you want to lift up the metal between our rooms?”
“Yes.”
“What if that sets off the alarm?” Dixon asked, his bushy brows practically reaching his hairline.
I let myself consider the possibility. It hadn’t been an issue when Arlo opened it, but that was after they’d turned off the alarm we’d tripped. But there couldn’t have been a motion sensor in our room, or it would have gone off when we were all moving around earlier. I guessed it was possible that there was some alarm connected to the barrier…
“What if we do it right after the nurses head out for the night?” Kai asked. “My guess is that the alarm is set for after all the workers leave. But if we pull up the metal in the minutes before everything goes dark for the night, that should keep us from tripping the alarm.”
“Should isn’t a very comforting word,” Oxanna muttered. “If they catch us again, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“There will be nothing to catch,” I said. “If you flip the switch in astral form, you can be back in place in your bed a second later. Even if they come into our room, there won’t be anything to see.”
“I’m not flipping the switch,” she squeaked. “I’m not giving them any reason to target me.”
Well, I couldn’t blame her for that.
“I’ll do it,” Kai volunteered. “There’s no way it’ll set off the alarm when Arlo did it right in front of us. I’m telling you, it’s gotta be after lights out that the alarm goes live.”
“Well, we’ll find out tomorrow night,” Elliot said.
“And we’ll talk to everyone else,” I added. “Once we get the wall open, Elliot, you can project your thoughts to them and tell them what’s going on. If we smooth out a couple more kinks, I really think we can make this work.”
That time I didn’t have to pretend to believe it. Arlo and his workers might have thought they covered everything, but they hadn’t accounted for what would happen when we teamed up. And I would be more than happy to use that oversight against them.
Chapter 26
Planning
When Cora came in the next morning, I had to work to keep my expression neutral. I knew my face had a habit of giving away what I was thinking, and I refused to let something so simple ruin our plans. I managed to make it through breakfast, bathing, and being dropped off with the Intelligence group without looking any of the workers in the eye. With any luck, that would further convince them that this place had broken me and made me give up on getting out.
But secretly, I was counting. Every door and hallway we passed, I took note. From my room to the bathing area, from the bathing area to the Intelligence meeting room, I memorized each step and replayed the routes in my head over and over. I needed a decent mental picture of the lab’s layout, just in case Kala didn’t know the way to the glass room. Unfortunately, the best I could put together was a roundabout route, which would make it more likely for Macy to run out of energy projecting with all of us.
Still, an indirect path was better than nothing.
Sitting in the meeting room, I kept my gaze on the metal wall behind Brek as he explained our assignments. Thankfully, I didn’t have to follow Pane again. Even thinking about him and the unborn child I’d been forced to report sent surges of guilt through me. I could only imagine what looking at him would do.
Today my target was a female named Veeti. She was a short, curvy Astralis whose hair was charcoal gray on one side and navy on the other. Brek didn’t tell me what to look for, only that my job was to follow her from the lab to the main transposer until she was escorted home. Then I was to linger outside her house to see if she left.
Brek moved on to explaining everyone else’s missions for the day, and I let my mind race. I wasn’t looking forward to reporting anyone else, but at least following her to the main transposer would be useful. The portal to get out of Alea was just above it. If we wanted Macy to take us out of this realm, she would need to know the way. Kala may have lived at the lab, but given that she didn’t have an astral form and that she talked about living in the lab like she’d never left it, I wasn’t convinced she knew how to get there.
As soon as everyone had their assignment, we headed to the hallway. Keeping my eyes down as we walked, I noted the path we took. Once we’d stopped at the set of double doors I was sure led to the glass room, I managed to get a look at the code Brek entered. Six-one-seven-five-nine-five-one. I recited the numbers over and over, begging my memory to hang onto them.
The group moved into the glass room, and Brek began barking orders. “Lali, permeate to get outside, turn right, and stop at the second wing. Veeti will exit soon.”
Exit? My heart skipped at his words. Maybe I could get a look at another way out for us to consider. But my excitement evaporated almost as quickly as it showed up; I wouldn’t know the code to open the doors. I sighed. At least I knew the digits to let us into the glass room. With any luck, after we’d all finished spying on our targets for the day, I would be escorted straight back to my room for the night. Then all I’d have to do was reverse the steps in my mind.
Not waiting for Brek to say anything else, I closed my eyes and followed his directions. Floating through the glass and up into the orange Alean sky, I looked back down at the lab with disgust. The structure was shaped like a giant metal wheel, with spokes radiating out from a circular center. The ends were connected by a thin wall that only seemed to guard sections of what looked like concrete peeking out between the corridors.
Moving to the right, I counted two spokes before drifting down toward the end of the second one. Sure enough, a set of double doors greeted me. I waited next to them, staring at the incline surrounding the lab. It was covered in red and yellow grass that invited me to race to the top of the hill and out of this nightmare. If only it were that simple.
When the doors finally opened, I turned around as Veeti closed her eyes. Her silvery astral form appeared beside her and drifted through the doors just before they shut, leaving her body inside. I wondered if it was common for Astralii to leave their bodies indoors as they traveled. After all, that was what my Intelligence group was doing when we projected to spy on Astralis suspects. And it made sense—the heat in Alea was crippling.
I started after Veeti’s astral form, dreading what I might find as I followed her. I stayed as close as I could without
getting repelled, though I was tempted to let it happen. If I bumped into her enough times, it would send me back to my physical body. Given that I couldn’t project to astral forms, I’d have an excuse as to why I couldn’t trail her. But I didn’t want to risk getting in trouble. We had to discuss our plan tonight, and with a little luck, maybe we could escape before we had to wake up here for another day.
The thought kept me sane as I followed Veeti through the Alean air, passing the occasional Astralis as we moved. I focused on finding landmarks I could use. Thankfully, the route wasn’t complicated. From the back exit, we veered left and then moved straight through a patch of the enormous white trees, their red and yellow leaves blocking out most of the cantaloupe-colored sky. Once we came to the end of the forest, Veeti went left again until the steel transposer dome came into view.
She switched into her physical body, and two guards carried her home in what looked like little more than a playground swing. Not surprisingly, her house was one of the countless rings wrapped around the trunks of the enormous white trees. The block around her house meant I couldn’t go inside, and by some miracle, she didn’t leave the whole time I was on watch.
When Arlo came in for the report, I announced confidently that Veeti hadn’t given me anything useful. Still, he took me down the hall to a separate area, ruining my hopes of going directly from the glass room to my bed. But my disappointment evaporated when the doors opened.
Salaxia waited inside, standing beside a male in a lab coat. I ran up to hug her, part of me still afraid to believe she was really here.
“Are you okay?” I asked, scanning her for any signs of maltreatment. She nodded, but I didn’t believe her. Being in this place was getting to me, and I was almost twice her age.
“Of course she is okay,” Arlo cooed. “I would never let anything happen to my little polygraph.”
Hearing him refer to her with his disgusting pet name rolled my stomach. I inhaled slowly as I turned to face him. Of course he wouldn’t take my word for it that Veeti hadn’t done anything questionable. He had to try and get Salaxia to catch me in a lie.
