The Rogue World

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “I can feel it,” he said. “I think I’ve felt it for a while.”

  The others turned now. Eleanor recognized the discomfort on their faces, but for the first time, that scrutiny wasn’t directed at her, and unlike her, Uncle Jack didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “I think it’s inside the mountain,” he said.

  Eleanor nodded. “I think so, too.”

  “So how do we do this?” Luke asked.

  “First we disable their security cameras,” Badri said. “Then we break through their perimeter without setting off any alarms.”

  “Cameras?” Finn said.

  “I assume you have a way to accomplish all that,” Luke said.

  “Of course.” Badri motioned toward a couple of members of her team, James and another man named Cyrus, and the two of them set off carefully down the hill. “The G.E.T. uses wireless cameras, as well as some other sensors, for their surveillance. Such devices can be hacked and disrupted, with the right equipment.”

  James and Cyrus reached a distant point below their party and stopped, the G.E.T. facility still some distance away.

  “It seems they’ve reached the first sensor.” Badri brought her gloved hand up as though she meant to chew on her thumbnail, looked down, and then lowered her hand again.

  “Are you worried?” Eleanor asked.

  “I said their surveillance can be hacked. I didn’t say it would be easy.”

  That didn’t help Eleanor’s confidence. She watched and waited, motionless.

  After several moments, during which Badri never looked away from her team members, the two of them finally moved again, creeping forward toward the facility.

  “Let’s move,” Badri said. “The first barrier is cleared.”

  Eleanor took her first steps down the hill hesitantly, still half expecting alarms to sound as they triggered unseen detectors. But no bells or sirens broke the silence, and all she heard was the sound of the wind through the canyons around her, and the scuff of her boots through the snow.

  When they reached the spot where James and Cyrus had been crouching minutes before, Badri halted them all. Ahead of them, the advance team members had stopped again, hacking the next round of surveillance devices. When the two had successfully finished with that task, Badri led the rest of them forward to that next point, and they proceeded in this way toward the facility, in cautious steps and stages.

  It used up a portion of the afternoon, but eventually they reached the outer perimeter of the Yggdrasil Facility, where a high chain-link fence barred their way. After deactivating the cameras mounted on the nearest fence posts, Badri pulled out a laser cutter. Its searing arc of white heat burned through the fencing, turning the metal ends briefly red, and when the cut segment fell free into the snow, it sizzled and steamed. Badri gestured past it, toward the opening she’d just made.

  She smiled. “Now for the hard part.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  THEY CREPT ACROSS THE OPEN YARD TOWARD THE BUILDING Badri had indicated from above. Eleanor expected to see guards or G.E.T. agents, or at least workers, but they didn’t encounter any.

  “Where is everyone?” she whispered.

  “This part of the facility isn’t in use right now,” Badri said. “All staff are guarding or working near the World Tree, and have been for months.”

  They reached the outbuilding, and after a few moments, Cyrus managed to pick the lock on the door. Then they all slipped inside, closing the door behind them.

  They stood in a noisy, empty control room walled with electrical panels covered in switches and fuses, as well as a maze of pipes, valves, and gauges. An old computer terminal stood in one corner, an industrial machine that bore dark, smudgy fingerprints across its beige shell and a yellowed plastic skin over its keyboard to keep the dirt out.

  Finn frowned at it. “You’re going to use that to access the confidential files?”

  Badri stepped up to the machine. “It doesn’t have to look pretty.” Then she started typing, and one of her team connected a portable drive to the terminal.

  As they worked, Eleanor stepped toward the wall in the direction of the Concentrator. Its pull on her had grown stronger since entering the facility. She peered between the pipes, at the painted cinder blocks, and imagined she could stare right through them, and through the rest of the installation, through the Sky Caves and the mountain, all the way to the Concentrator’s twisting branches and quivering roots.

  “I still don’t really understand any of this.”

  Eleanor turned. Uncle Jack stood beside her.

  She looked back at the wall. “That’s why we’re here. If I understand it, I can stop it.”

  “I’ll help you . . . you know, connect to it. If I can.”

  Eleanor glanced up at him. The creases at the edges of his eyes seemed deeper. “You already have.”

  “No,” Badri said. She stood at the terminal, staccato typing, shaking her head. “This isn’t working. They’ve increased security. I can’t get in from here.”

  “No wonder they weren’t guarding this place,” Luke said.

  Dr. Von Albrecht shook his head. “Watkins has grown even more cautious, it seems.”

  Eleanor crossed the small room to the computer. The strings of numbers and letters on the screen meant nothing to her. “So what now?”

  “We have to find a new way in.” Badri yanked out the cable and shoved the drive into her pack. “We need another terminal. One closer to the main installation.”

  “Closer?” Finn said. “You mean where they have G.E.T. agents?”

  “Yes,” Badri said. “I’ll go ahead with Eleanor, her uncle, James, and Cyrus. The rest of you will stay here.”

  “No way.” Luke stepped in front of the door. “I’m not letting you take her out of my sight.”

  “I’ll be with her,” Uncle Jack said.

  Luke’s eye twitched. “But I won’t.”

  “Finn is right.” Badri slipped the pack over her shoulder. “Security will be an issue past this point. If we all go, we’ll certainly get caught. This way, we have a chance. But if the worst happens and we do get caught, the rest of you can still escape.”

  “We’re not escaping without Eleanor,” Finn said.

  Eleanor looked at him, but he didn’t look at her. He stared at Badri, adopting the same resolute stance that Luke had. Eleanor’s cheeks flushed. It hadn’t been so long ago when all she could see were her differences, when she felt like a freak. Now her friends were here for her. And that gave her the strength she needed to go on without them.

  “It’s okay, Finn.” She gave him a firm nod. “Badri is right. It doesn’t make any sense for us all to go. To risk getting captured.”

  “None of this makes sense.” Luke stepped toward her. “I’ve come this far. I’m not going to just let you walk off with this person we just met.”

  “I believe you can trust her,” Dr. Von Albrecht said.

  “It’s not Badri I’m worried about.” Luke looked right into Eleanor’s eyes. “We’re in the heart of enemy territory here.”

  “No,” Eleanor said. “The real enemy territory is somewhere up there. In the sky. That’s why we’re here. That’s the enemy I need to understand.”

  Luke said nothing to that.

  “Wait here, like Badri said. I’ll be back, and hopefully then we’ll know what we need to do.”

  Another moment passed. Then Luke nodded, his head heavy, and stepped aside. Badri marched toward the door, and Eleanor followed her, with Uncle Jack behind her. James and Cyrus came next. At the door, Badri turned.

  “Stay in this building, but at the first sign of any trouble, I want you to clear out. If they catch us, they’ll search the rest of the facility.”

  “Be careful.” Luke gave Eleanor a nod.

  “We will,” she said, and smiled at Finn, Betty, and Dr. Von Albrecht.

  The five of them stepped out of the buzzing control room and let the door close quietly behind
them, plunging them into the silence of the mountain valley. Once again, Eleanor felt the tingling sensation she had experienced the night before in the tent, and she scanned the slopes around them for who or what might be watching them. She saw no one, and nothing but snow.

  “I think we should head that way.” Badri pointed at a large building adjacent to the main complex. “That’s the next most likely place where we might find a terminal with minimal G.E.T. staff.”

  Between them and that building lay a maze of equipment, pipes as big around as tree trunks, vehicles, and towers.

  “Let’s do it,” Uncle Jack said.

  James and Cyrus moved first, and Eleanor waited with Badri and Uncle Jack until they’d reached a forward point of cover. There, they assessed the security situation using their instruments, and then waved the all clear.

  Eleanor and Uncle Jack followed Badri toward them, and just as they reached that point Eleanor saw two G.E.T. agents come around a distant corner, dressed in gray snow gear. She didn’t see any guns on them, but assumed they would be armed, nevertheless. She and the others ducked down low behind a bank of pipes and watched. The guards were far away, and they didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but their presence tightened the muscles at the back of Eleanor’s neck.

  “Let’s watch a few moments,” Badri whispered. “To figure out their patrol pattern.”

  So they stayed where they were for several moments. Eleanor worried that doing so posed its own kind of danger, if they lingered too long. But Badri’s caution paid off when a second pair of G.E.T. guards came around another corner, much closer, marching in a different direction than the first two, and even though Eleanor held her body still, fear leaped around inside her like a caged and frantic rodent.

  A few moments later, after waiting and watching, they observed the specific moment and place where they could duck between the patrols, unobserved, into a narrow space between two large and buzzing electrical boxes. They proceeded this way farther into the Yggdrasil complex: racing from one hiding place to the next, pausing and watching, hacking surveillance along the way.

  Occasionally Eleanor looked back at the way they had come, but soon lost sight of the building where Luke and the others waited for them, and the deeper they went, the more Eleanor felt cut off from escape. That they were approaching a point of no return.

  They were also approaching the point where Eleanor hoped to finally understand what made her who she was. What made her and Uncle Jack and Watkins unique. Eleanor wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She certainly wanted to know, but a part of her was also afraid of what she might find out, assuming Watkins had been telling the truth and he actually did have the answers.

  A short while later, they reached their target, a building several times larger than the control room in which they had left the others. Cyrus set to work on the electronic lock, while Eleanor, Uncle Jack, Badri, and James stayed close to the wall. Eleanor felt exposed, and kept glancing over her shoulder.

  “Almost got it,” Cyrus said. “Just a—”

  “Stop!” a voice shouted.

  Eleanor turned to see a G.E.T. agent standing nearby. She didn’t know where he had come from, but he didn’t look like a guard. He wore regular polar clothing and did not appear to be armed.

  “Who—who are you?” he asked.

  Uncle Jack held up his big paddle hands. “Calm down now—”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down. State your names.”

  “We are Grendel,” Badri said.

  In the next moment, Eleanor watched as realization lifted the man’s eyebrows. “You—”

  Uncle Jack leaped toward him, moving faster than it seemed a man his size could, and soon had the G.E.T. employee in a bear hug from behind, an arm around his neck. Eleanor watched the man’s face go red and his eyes roll back, and then he went limp in Uncle Jack’s arms.

  “Got it.” Cyrus, who had apparently kept working during the confrontation, stepped away from the door as it popped open.

  “Let’s get this guy inside before he comes to,” Uncle Jack said. “He’ll only be out for a few seconds.”

  He slung the G.E.T. employee over his shoulder and carried him through the open door, the man’s arms and legs twitching. The rest of them followed, and they entered a long, cold corridor lined with doors. Eleanor tried the nearest ones until she found one unlocked. It turned out to be a supply closet, and after setting the G.E.T. employee down inside, they stole his security badge and key card and shut the door just as he seemed to be regaining consciousness. Uncle Jack gave the door handle a solid, heavy kick, bending it.

  “That won’t open easily,” he said.

  “Then let’s not waste another moment.” Badri pulled a small tablet out of her pocket and swiped the screen with her finger. “There’s a computer terminal this way.”

  Eleanor and the others followed her down the hallway, where they took a right turn down another corridor, and then a left through an open door. The building was frigid, and Eleanor shivered as they crept along the linoleum floor. Eventually, they entered a space that seemed used mostly for storage, with stacks of folding chairs, and folding tables, and regiments of filing cabinets. A desk in one corner bore a computer, its screen black and cold.

  “This thing work?” Uncle Jack asked.

  “Let’s hope.” Badri jabbed the power button. “It should.”

  “What is this building used for?” Eleanor asked.

  “Nothing,” Badri said. “This was the first building the G.E.T. constructed on the site. After they built the larger installation, they mostly vacated this one. That’s why they keep the temperature just above freezing.”

  “You mean that’s why I can see my breath,” Eleanor said.

  The old computer let out a little chirp, and then a whirring sound from its fan, as if yawning after being startled awake.

  “Here we go.” Badri plugged in the portable drive and went to work, the chatter of her keystrokes echoing throughout the room. “Much better. And that fellow’s security clearance will help, too.”

  Uncle Jack opened up a couple of the folding chairs for him and Eleanor, and they sat and waited. In the moments that followed, Eleanor’s anxiety over what was about to happen climbed, and pretty soon she had to get back up and pace around the room. What would the information in Watkins’s files say? What would that information mean about who she was? Maybe she didn’t want to know after all. At least, not for herself. But she felt trapped, because she had to know if she wanted to save the earth.

  “Hey,” Uncle Jack said.

  She turned toward him.

  He spread his lips in a broad and gentle smile. “Whatever that computer says, it doesn’t change a thing.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Read my mind.”

  He shrugged. “Just remember. You’re my Ell Bell. That computer might tell you something about these things you can do. But it can’t tell you who you really are.”

  His words loosened the muscles in her neck and relaxed her shoulders. She stopped pacing and returned to the chair next to him, where she leaned her head against his arm. They sat that way for a few minutes, until Badri called them over.

  “I’m in,” she said. “Pulling up Watkins’s files now.”

  Eleanor hurried to the woman’s side and watched as she scrolled through folders and documents. Eleanor scanned the names, looking for anything that might be related to the Concentrators and the people connected to them.

  Within a few moments, one caught her eye. “That one,” she said.

  “Which one?” Badri asked.

  Eleanor pointed and read the name. “Exogenetics.”

  Badri opened it and found it contained numerous subfolders, some named, some of them simply numbered. Badri opened a few of them, but nothing hinted at the answers Eleanor wanted, until she saw a file called “Summary Report: Longitudinal Effects and Influences of Proximity.” Badri opened that file, and Eleano
r began reading the document.

  She didn’t understand a lot of the technical language, but she gleaned enough to make at least some sense of the report. The writers suggested that at some point in the prehistoric past, the Concentrators had emitted a kind of alien radiation that influenced the DNA of those who lived close to them, creating a kind of affinity between them. It seemed that these ancestors had then passed on the gene that made connection with the alien technology possible. That particular gene was turned off for most people. But not for everyone, obviously.

  That meant Eleanor’s ancestors had lived near one of the Concentrators thousands and thousands of years ago. She didn’t know which one, but she wasn’t sure that mattered. The point was that Watkins was right, and there were probably many, many people around the world who were like Eleanor and Uncle Jack.

  “We need to show this to the professor,” Eleanor said. “He’ll be able to make more sense out of it. But let’s keep looking and see what else we can find.”

  Badri scrolled down farther.

  “What’s that?” Uncle Jack asked. “That ‘Zooid Theory’ file?”

  “Let’s see.” Badri opened it.

  “What’s a zooid?” Eleanor asked.

  “It’s a colonial organism,” Badri said.

  “Like a hive?” Eleanor asked.

  “No. A hive is a colony of separate bees or ants working together, but a hive isn’t an animal. Zooids are highly specialized animals that combine to form a larger organism. Like jellyfish.”

  “A jellyfish is a bunch of separate animals?” Eleanor asked.

  “Some species are,” Badri said. “And judging by this document, it seems that Watkins suspects that the alien biology works in a similar way. He believes they evolved from a type of zooid organism. Their parts are all connected to each other.”

  “Would that explain Eleanor’s connection to the Concentrators?” Uncle Jack asked.

  “Yes,” Eleanor whispered. Because it made sense. The Concentrators had given off the same kind of energy that connected the aliens to each other, changing the DNA of the humans nearby in the process. Those humans had then gained some of the alien ability to connect to the larger whole. “I think Watkins is right,” she said. “Maybe that’s why it feels the way it does when I shut down a Concentrator. It’s like I’ve injured the whole, so all the parts feel it. We feel it.”