by L. A. Banks
“It’s hard to believe regular humans actually built this,” Tami said with amazement in her tone. She trailed her fingers along the walls as they walked, eyes wide.
“Yep, Regulars built this,” Ayana said with an authoritative nod, and then pressed on. “This bunker was supposed to be a safe haven for the legislative branch of the American government.” Ayana shook her head with a smile. “All that stuff they taught you at home wasn’t just theory, guys. They taught it for a reason.”
“I remember,” Sarah said softly. “This place was only five hours from Washington, DC, where the Armageddon began. This place was kept a secret for decades. Regulars dug out eighteen thousand feet of tunnels a hundred feet underground, then hid them behind twenty-eight-ton steel doors.”
“Right,” Ayana said with a clearly pleased smile. “We’re going down beneath what used to be the Greenbrier Hotel—our compound. We’re just on the other side of it here, and the Great Hall is on the opposite side of the mountain from it.” Ayana frowned and placed a finger to her lips. “The other kids think the old hotel is all boarded up and demolished, that it got overrun by the dark powers years ago. Nobody is ever supposed to know where the Neteru compound headquarters is located, so you keep that under serious lock, got it?”
Both girls nodded, stunned mute.
“Good. Keep it that way.” Ayana let out a breath of relief and then pressed on. “This place is so cool. The Regulars were preparing for what they considered the worst possible event, a nuclear holocaust, not realizing what was really coming when they put eighteen dorms in here that slept sixty people each. They were trying to save the government and wound up saving the worldwide Guardian teams’ kids. And we lucked out because the whole place was built on white sulfur springs for healing, something that the dark side really hates. You’ll see when you get downstairs.” Ayana continued with enthusiasm. “This place even has a five hundred seat auditorium, fully stocked library, broadcast-ready television and radio stations, medical and dental labs, a catacomb of offices on the second level, riot gear and weapons, along with decontamination showers and an incinerator for anyone who died.”
“Okay, you really are scaring me now,” Sarah warned.
“Nobody that we know of has been incinerated, all right?” Ayana glanced at both girls and urged them forward.
“What about the bodies they found?” Sarah asked, leaning on the wall for a moment to let everything she’d just heard sink in.
“They did find those two flier kids who went down in the forbidden zone…which is why I’m telling you to act like you know. We clear?”
Sarah shuddered, and she Tami exchanged a worried look as Ayana began walking again. None of the kids in the compound had ever heard a thing about what existed just below the Greenbrier Hotel. Until today, Sarah had always thought Ayana was being unnecessarily vague about where the Academy was located. But it had just become crystal clear why they were never allowed to leave their side of the mountain. If they had, they could have tipped off the whole school about where the Neteru headquarters were.
But in addition to all the terrible things her cousin had disclosed, Ayana had also mentioned the location of the library the Lowers were allowed to access. It struck her that she might finally be able to find out what the word nexse meant.
“Hey, Yaya,” Sarah said, jogging forward to catch up with her cousin’s purposeful strides. “Can anybody go into the library at any time?”
Ayana smiled. “Spoken like a true Net-pound geek. Yeah. Sure. As long as you don’t have class or something.”
“Have you ever heard the word nexse?”
Ayana shook her head.
“Nope. Seen it on the walls in the Great Hall, but couldn’t tell you what it means. That’s def what the library is for. But you’ll get a lot of archaic language work in ancient scrolls class, not to worry.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said, making a mental note to be sure to find the library as soon as she could after they got settled in the dorm.
She and Tami filed down a long corridor in silence behind Ayana, eyes darting toward the huge ceilings covered in hieroglyphs delineating ancient prayers. When they came to two large twelve-foot-high doors that were etched with gold and silver symbols, Ayana stopped.
“This is the gateway,” she said. “Like I told you, back in the 1950s, regular people dug this cavern out and blocked it with twenty-eight-ton steel doors. There’s a small city behind them, but nobody can stand to be underground like that indefinitely. Although this is the main door, the Neteru team added other exits that will put you in hidden courtyards and plazas, so you can get some fresh air and keep from going stir crazy. For security purposes, each one requires a special opening-of-the-way incantation to get in or out, and I guess you can understand why. So it’s really important to remember communication protocols, to travel in pairs, to make sure someone knows where you are at all times…and most importantly, to know how to get back in before sundown.”
Ayana spoke the words to open the doors, and long tile corridors stretched before them in what felt, as they traversed it, like an unending labyrinth, a human-created honeycomb of halls. The only thing that made the maze seem less foreboding was that it had been modified from its previous nuclear war functionality by grand murals painted by students and faculty to make the place seem less like the bomb shelter it really was.
Beautiful scenes of outdoor majesty and environmental splendor helped cue Sarah to where she was along the unending route. And just like the stream of arcane words in the Great Hall, the art moved, seemed to come to life on the walls, but when you touched it, the scene became inanimate again.
“This is so freaky,” Tami said, laughing, pressing her hands against the butterflies in the meadow scene that had been drawn outside the cafeteria.
Sarah tried to smell the wildflowers near them and bumped her nose on the wall.
“It changes at night, too,” Ayana said, giggling. “Fireflies come out, and the sun in the mural actually sets. It’s really cool. You can tell true time by it. Our Upper Sphere life-art gifted students did a lot of this with Aunt Jasmine. They’ve been working on it for years. Every semester they add new elements to it…keeps it interesting.”
“Whoa…Hyacinth’s mom coordinated all this?” Tami said, wide-eyed.
“Yeah. And listen. Don’t drop any trash in the hallways or bathrooms,” Ayana warned. “Hybrid beings, Fae and mythicals maintain the facilities, and they hate any destruction of property. They take it as a personal affront, probably because this is their new home now, after Nod got overrun by demons.”
The three of them began walking again, and Sarah took in the surreal quality of the section of the mural that depicted marine life. There were leaping dolphins, slow-moving whales and graceful stingrays beside schools of fish, many of which were created by bits of glass and mirrors and rocks, to add depth and texture to the art. The pool and gym were in this area, followed by calming scenes of lush greenery, where the nurse’s office, medical and dental facilities and instructors’ offices were located..
“There’s a full hospital down here,” Ayana announced, waving her arm as Sarah and Tami came to a stop. “Even got a bunch of medical personnel who were relocated from their Guardian field commands to be here, plus a dentist and school nurse for basic stuff. Plus, the teachers’ offices are on this row. This is where you’ll have to show up if you need extra help or get in trouble, because you do not want to have to go up into the administrative area to see Nana and Baba if you can help it.”
“You don’t have to tell us,” Sarah said, thinking back on the firm discipline her grandmother wielded when at home.
“Oh, I am so not trying to get into trouble with them,” Tami said fervently. “Try being grounded until, like, forever.”
“Right,” Ayana replied, waving them on. “They’ve got really gruesome chores for you to do if you get demerits. And, trust me, Nana is harder on those of us from the Net-pound than the other kids, just t
o set an example for being crazy enough to piss her off when we’re supposed to know better.” Ayana smiled. “And don’t ask me how I know.”
Sarah and Tami exchanged a meaningful look.
Ayana hustled the girls along, making them follow her like a bunch of normal human third graders on a field trip. The only thing Ayana didn’t do was tell them to hold hands. “Classrooms are in the purple zone,” she said, stopping just long enough for them to peer down one long corridor that was bisected by another. “The Lower Sphere library is that way, and down at the other end are the common study areas.”
Sarah’s eyes remained fixed on the library’s entrance for a long moment before she began walking again. A thick marble door frame held huge oak doors with smoked, etched-glass windows and a massive brass plate marked Library. That was all she could see of the place that she so badly wanted to enter. Something within that sanctuary of books was drawing her, something eerie that made the hair stand up on her arms. Something dark. She shook off the chill and closed the gap between herself and the others. As soon as she got a chance, she was going back there to look up the word that was haunting her.
Hues ranging from the palest lilac to the deepest midnight amethyst covered the walls to depict the expanding universe as a mesmerizing fractal mosaic of cells splitting, molecular attraction, scrolls and books moving as rings around slowly rotating planets and DNA strands. It was so impressively hypnotic that Sarah barely heard Ayana’s breakdown of the different departmental wings by subject matter or her explanation of where the student lockers were located.
“Students did some of this?” Sarah hadn’t even realized she was going to speak until the words were already hanging in the air. It was as though she’d entered a whole new world, and she couldn’t help herself.
“Adding to it is part of the Upper Sphere senior project every year,” Ayana said proudly. “If you stand in one area long enough, you’ll notice that each section of the mural’s gradually moving with the rotation of the earth. Each color zone is set up to give you a sense of the flora and fauna of a region…what it used to look like before the war, anyway. In the green zone today, you’re seeing what parts of New Zealand were like. Come back a week from now and it may be rotating through the Amazon rainforest or Ireland—same color schematic, just different flora and fauna.”
“Now that is way cool,” Sarah said quietly as she scanned the walls.
“It’s also for your protection,” Ayana added.
“Protection?” Tami wrinkled her nose with the question.
“That’s right.” Ayana looked at Sarah and Tami, and then let out a sigh. “While each area is there to remind you of the beauty of the earth and all living things, those living things can be called off the walls to help protect an endangered student. The dorms are in the yellow zone, for instance,” she said, beginning to pace. “That covers the grasslands of Africa, various world deserts, a lot of regions. The instructors’ dormitories are over in the orange zone, where you’ll see murals of the Grand Canyon, Sedona and the auditorium, broadcast studios and science labs are all in the red zone with lava murals, Ayers Rock in Australia, things like that. So if a walker got in here, or a werewolf happened to be on the loose, wouldn’t you want a pride of lions from the yellow zone to have your back?” Ayana folded her arms. “Or, say, scorpions to burst out of the desert scenes—maybe a mess of rattlesnakes that could overrun an attacker?” She made a face. “Okay, snakes, not so much. But you get the idea. A rhino could come storming out of the Savannah on your behalf. The students were put near the most prodigious color band, in terms of wildlife.”
“And the green area, where the medical center is, is also really well guarded,” Sarah added, catching on to the way the school was themed. “So, like, if you’re laid up with the flu or have a broken leg, and something was to get in the building, you would be seriously safe.”
“Yeah, you could have a Bengal tiger or an Amazon jaguar come out of a green jungle on an assist,” Ayana said, nodding.
“Not trying to be funny, though,” Tami said, looking around with obvious concern. “But what happens if one of them accidentally gets out of the mural?”
“That’s why you don’t get taught how to do any of that until you have the discipline to handle living art in a life-or-death battle,” Ayana replied flatly. “You don’t do it to play a prank on some kid—you could get somebody killed. By the same token, you don’t get to waltz around the halls by yourself as a Lower Sphere student, anyway, so if something were to be chasing you, you’d have an older student guide who could help defend the both of you.”
Sarah just stared at Ayana. The information didn’t help calm her worries in the least, but she vowed not to ask another question until her head stopped spinning.
“And…uh…we are going to get a book of all the rules, right? Because there seem to be a whole lotta ways to screw up around here big time.” Tami hugged herself tightly, waiting for an answer.
“Most definitely,” Ayana said with a smile. “You’re gonna get a rule book, class schedule, locker, keys, passwords to open the big doors to the Great Hall, all of that—if you let me get you to your room.”
The older girl chuckled, turned on her heels and began walking at a brisk pace. There was nothing to do but follow Ayana through the maze of hallways and try to keep up.
As they passed through brightly hued sunflower fields, the girls’ section of the dormitory was a welcome sight. An endless procession of boys was flowing to the right, and Ayana, Sarah, Tami and the other girls they’d run into in the hallway joined the crowd heading to the left.
Colorful doors with corkboards and erasable note boards lined the corridor. Laughter and girls’ voices rang out as the new-student tours came together and broke down into sheer pandemonium.
Sarah peered into the room that Ayana indicated and glanced around at their waiting luggage, lively yellow frescos, twin bunk beds, four desks, four dressers and four wardrobes. Again she and Tami shared a look that held an unspoken question—who would be the third and fourth roommates, and would they all get along?
“Don’t worry. They didn’t separate you guys,” Ayana said with an easy smile. “They don’t do that here. Guess they figure the kids coming in have been through enough traumas and have lost enough familiarity along the way. Hyacinth and Allie will be joining you guys soon.”
Sarah smiled. She was so glad that Ayana had been the one to give them the tour and not someone they didn’t know—even though Jessica and her friends seemed nice. Sudden emotion drove her to give Ayana a spontaneous hug, which Tami immediately joined in.
“Thanks, Yaya,” Sarah said, laying her head on her cousin’s shoulder.
“For real,” Tami said, squeezing Ayana hard.
“It’s gonna be okay. I told you, I’ve got your backs, all right?”
Both girls nodded and finally let Ayana go.
“Okay, I’m peeling off,” Ayana said, waving to some girls in the hall. “Catch you at lunch.”
Sarah’s stomach growled. It would be a late lunch, and she just now realized how hungry she was. Sarah looked after her cousin as she disappeared down the hall and tried not to let her body slump with relief. She didn’t want to seem like a baby, but it meant the world to her that their foursome wasn’t getting split up here in the dorm, even if talent divisioning had separated them in other ways. Just knowing that was enough to return the smile to her face and lift the invisible weight that had been bearing down on her entire body.
“Hey, where’s the bathroom in this joint?” Tami called out before Ayana disappeared, making both Sarah and Ayana laugh.
Ayana waved for them to follow her. “C’mon. This way. Can’t believe I almost forgot the most important place around here.”
Sarah and Tami followed Ayana until she came to a halt in front of a wide doorway covered in opaque stained glass. The designs were of water dragons in peach and golden hues.
“Say hello to Rama and Sita,” Ayana said, la
ughing. She waved at the large serpentlike forms that slowly patrolled the door’s glass, and Sarah gasped when they nodded in reply. “They keep the guys out of the girl’s locker room, bathroom and shower. Down by the gym, there’s another pair, Harry and Sally, plus the orcas—and don’t get me started about the dolphins. Complete gossips,” she added with a wink, and then pushed through to the bathroom.
Ultraviolet light combined with overhead fluorescents cast a glow that kept large potted ferns alive. It was the strangest combination Sarah had ever seen. On the one hand the bathroom was fully functional, military style, with rows of sinks and mirrors, as well as stalls, yet the wall art and the hanging plants made it seem almost spalike. Several groups of students were huddled in the locker and shower area behind a marble half-wall, and everything there looked just as pristine. And spotting Hyacinth and Allie made Sarah smile. Soon they could go to their room and take a break, however brief, from all this craziness.
But the haunted look in Hyacinth’s eyes gave Sarah pause. Something wasn’t right. Hyacinth was standing alone, apart from the crowd, a little hunched over, as if something was hurting her. Melissa Gray was giving some final little speech to the group of new Clavs, while her girlfriends hung in the back, whispering and laughing. Their laughter seemed to be directed at Hyacinth. But she noticed that one of Jessica’s friends, Bebitta, seemed to be standing close to Hyacinth, glaring at Melissa and crew. Andrea had a supportive arm over Allie’s shoulder, and she gave Ayana a meaningful look. Something had gone down foul. Sarah could feel it.
Just then Melissa looked over at Sarah from the corner of her eye and shot her a nasty glance. Remembering what had happened in the Great Hall, Sarah quickly said a prayer to shield her thoughts, calling down the white light to shield her mind.
Sarah’s eyes narrowed as she continued looking at her desperately unhappy friend. She wasn’t one to start a fight, but she would have no problem finishing this one. Hyacinth was a gentle soul who wouldn’t hurt a fly—someone who was the same to her as a sister. An elbow in her ribs from Tami confirmed that she wasn’t the only one who’d caught the bad vibrations coming from Melissa’s group. Ayana nodded and then sent Sarah a mental message. You need to pick your battles around here. This one is minor and not worth it.
