by Emily Suvada
“There are troops in the atrium,” Anna says, “and snipers in the apartments above it. We’ll be totally exposed getting to the lab, but we can probably use cover fire to get you there.”
“That’s suicide,” Cole says. “We’ll have to find a way through these hallways.”
“This place is a goddamn labyrinth,” Anna says. “I don’t even have a map for it. Who’s to say there aren’t more troops in here than out there?”
“Give me a minute,” I say, turning my focus into my cuff, sending a pulse through the atrium. “I think I can find the soldiers.”
I look up through the atrium as lines of light streak across my vision, sketching the inside of the bunker out for me. I can see the empty space of the park, and a brilliant light on the far side of Regina’s lab where her terminal is. Countless dancing specks of light glow brighter as I push up the resolution of the scan. The panels of the soldiers. Genkits and tech left in the apartments around the atrium, rising in a cylinder that stretches up to the dark void of the sky.
But the sky overhead isn’t entirely dark. Wild arcs of light are glimmering above the bunker, swooping down through the atrium. If my cuff is showing points of light like this to me, it means they’re wireless connections.
But it looks like they’re in the pigeons.
“What the hell?” I breathe, staring up at the flock. There’s something strange about these birds that’s tugged at me since I took down the destroyers. I push the scan on my cuff, staring up at them, at their black wings and glowing feathers, their toothed, clicking beaks.
But there’s a flicker of a reading from the birds that I can see with my cuff. Something tiny, blinking. Flashing in an encoded signal. I turn my focus to one of the birds, zeroing in on it, and the breath rushes from my lungs.
They’re panels.
Tiny, miniature panels built into the pigeons. They’re Regina’s design, the same as the single spots of light that glow across her skin. But there’s no way people budded millions of pigeons with panels. These must have been in the birds since they hatched. Coded into their DNA, passed down to their offspring, their cobalt glow masked by the luminescent tips of their feathers. The signals blinking from them are faint, barely perceptible against the blazing light of Entropia, but they’re just strong enough for me to grasp onto them.
Text spills across my vision. The panels have a rudimentary operating system that’s running a single app—a navigational tool, based on the birds’ own impulses. It can be programmed to guide the birds to any location. Regina said the birds were coded to migrate back to Entropia once a year. I thought she meant that it was part of their DNA. But it looks like it was more—their movements are being controlled.
Which means that I might be able to control them too.
I draw in a slow breath, reading through the app’s triggers, its controls, and alter the settings in my cuff to match them.
“What are you doing, Bobcat?” Agnes asks.
I blink out of my session. My vision is still a mess of light, painted across the atrium. “I . . . I don’t know if this will work. But don’t freak out if it does, okay?”
Cole takes my arm. “If what will work?”
Anna glances out at the atrium. “Holy shit.”
A roar is rising in the air, echoing from the atrium walls. A hailstorm, growing louder, rising until it’s deafening. Arcs of black and cobalt cut across the view of the park. The pigeons are swooping through the atrium, descending until the air is black with them.
“That’ll do it!” Anna yells over the roar, gripping her rifle. “Come on!”
Cole’s grip on my arm tightens, his muscles tensing, and we rush out of the lobby and into the park. It’s like running into a hurricane. The birds swerve and dart around me, feathers brushing my skin, beaks snapping past my ears, catching in my hair. I throw my arm up, pressing my forehead into the crook of my elbow, trying desperately to see through the flock to the ground, but they’re too dense. Agnes grabs hold of the back of my shirt, but we’re losing momentum, lost in the cacophony of the flock.
There are too many of them. We’re completely blind. But I don’t need to see.
I scrunch my eyes shut and push my focus back into my cuff.
The world goes dark, then flashes with light, the storm of pigeons tracing wild, glowing streaks through the air. Their signals are weak, though, and I can see through them to the glowing heart of the mainline connection in Regina’s lab ahead.
“This way!” I shout, but my voice is lost. I scrunch my eyes shut, reaching out to grab Cole’s arm, clutching Agnes’s wrist, and lurch forward, boots crunching over rubble. Cole’s body jerks, his muscles tightening as he grabs at Anna, dragging her into our circle, his arm looped around her waist. I see their panels glowing in the darkness behind my eyes, flickers of light blinking from their guns. We half run, half stagger through the birds to the other side of the park and into the stairwell beside Regina’s lab.
There are pigeons in the stairwell, but they’re sparse enough to see through. Agnes’s face is white, streaked with blood, and I realize slowly that I’m hurt too. Nicks and scratches cover my arms and chest from the flock’s razor beaks, but the tiny wounds are better than a sniper’s bullet.
Something booms behind us, followed by a hail of gunfire. I can’t tell if it’s one of the pigeons blowing, or a grenade from the Cartaxus troops. The pigeons scatter, their cries rising into a roar that saturates my audio tech. Bullets hit the wall behind us, sending out flying chips of concrete.
“Run!” Cole shouts, pushing me up the stairs. We reach the landing with the door to Regina’s lab, and he presses himself against the wall, dropping into a crouch. His skin is slashed, his hair beaded with blood. “Anna, get them inside!”
More gunfire echoes behind us, voices cutting through the roar of the flock. Soldiers, racing for us. I glance back at the door to Regina’s lab. Agnes is at the scanner beside it. The scanner flashes green, the door sliding open. I don’t know how Agnes got it to unlock, but she did, and the soldiers will be here in seconds. We need to get behind those steel doors and close them, but Cole pushes me away.
“Go!” he shouts, shouldering his rifle. “I’ll hold this door.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
The soldiers round the corner at the bottom of the stairs, and Cole lifts his rifle, sending a spray of bullets down at them, forcing them back into cover.
“Anna, take her!” he shouts, firing another round.
“No way!” I yell. I can see the panels of the unit at the bottom of the stairs with my cuff. They’re readying to strike again. “We’ll hold it from inside. I’m not leaving you behind.”
He shakes his head. “Can’t risk them getting through. We need to finish the mission. Stop flood protocol. That’s the only thing that matters.”
I look around, my heart racing, reaching for Jun Bei’s presence, for the scythe, for anything that can get Cole safely inside with us. All I can see is the wall of the pigeons, and Cole exposed on the stairs. Jun Bei could solve this, I know it. She could find a way to get him through, to guard the doors without leaving him behind. I urge my consciousness closer to her, trying to find a way to give her control now, to let her take over.
But it’s too late.
A soldier at the bottom of the stairs lobs a smoke grenade up to the landing. White, bitter gas billows into the air. I double over, coughing. Cole growls, turning, slinging one arm around my waist, heaving me back toward the doorway. I keep stretching for Jun Bei’s presence, hurling my mind against the wall between us. A spark runs through me, burning like fire.
“Anna!” he shouts.
“Just a minute!” I scream. “I can stop them!”
But Anna’s arms slide around me, wrenching me through the door, and Agnes slams it shut.
CHAPTER 39
THE DOOR TAKES THE SOUND of the gunfire away, replacing it with dull thuds of bullets hitting the steel. I choke out a cry, straining against
Anna’s grip. Cole is still out there. He’s completely exposed. There’s no way he’s going to be able to keep that many soldiers at bay.
“Why did you leave him?” I cry, shoving Anna away.
“He’ll be fine,” she says.
I stumble away, wiping my eyes, coughing. The gas from the smoke grenade is sour in my mouth, stinging like acid in the cuts across my skin. “How do you know that?”
“Because he’s trained for this. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Let’s go, Bobcat,” Agnes says. “Sooner we get this over with, sooner he’ll be safe.”
I stare at the door, sending a pulse from my cuff, searching for Cole’s panel, but the steel blocks my scan. He could be hurt out there right now, and I wouldn’t know.
“Come on,” Anna says, reaching for my arm.
I snatch it away. “Why didn’t you stay with him?”
“Someone needs to be in here to protect you in case they make it through that door.”
“Why didn’t you stay instead? He could die.”
Her eyes flare with the accusation. “He chose to stay out there. It’s not my job to protect him, and it’s not yours, either.”
Another hail of bullets thuds against the wall.
“We don’t have much time,” Agnes urges.
I clench my hands into fists, then turn and push past Anna, striding through the rows of plants in Regina’s nursery.
The lab has been cleared out—by Regina or by Cartaxus, I can’t tell. The cages are empty. Potted plants lie strewn across the floor, spilling drifts of dirt across the concrete. The wall of sample canisters is half-empty, and the row of tanks along the far wall have been drained, the twitching bodies gone. Regina is standing at the massive coding terminal on the far wall.
She turns, her black eyes wide, letting out a sigh of relief. “You made it.” She looks at Anna, a flicker of recognition in her eyes, and then frowns as she looks at Agnes, as though trying to place her face.
“You,” I say, striding for Regina. “Where the hell is my hand?”
“You were supposed to stay here,” she says. “I didn’t think you’d actually cut it off. But I couldn’t resist once you had. We thought we needed a living sample of your DNA.”
I stop. “Who needed it?” But I already know. “You’re working with Lachlan.”
“I am now,” she says. “I wasn’t lying to you, I swear. I had no idea Lachlan was in the city until you told me. I was planning on helping you find him and turn him over to Cartaxus, but then Brink sent destroyers to my city to kill my people.” Her voice grows sharp. “Lachlan found me, and we tried to stop the attack together. But then you did it all yourself, my clever girl. We’ve been trying to use your Origin code to stop flood protocol, but it’s locked to your DNA. We haven’t been able to get it to work.”
I look around, gripped with fear, expecting to see Lachlan, but there’s no sign of him. He must be working from wherever he’s been hiding. A crash sounds near the door, and Regina straightens. “Quickly,” she says. “We need to stop this attack, or this will all be for nothing.”
“You think we’re going to help you?” Anna spits. “You’re working with Lachlan.”
“Yes,” Regina hisses, “I’m working with him to stop hundreds of millions of people on the planet’s surface from being slaughtered. This isn’t about ideology anymore, child. This is about survival. Brink is playing an end game here—don’t you understand? He’s just rounding up everyone he thinks could be useful to him before he deploys the scythe. He’s already taken most of my people. We don’t have much longer. I think I can stop him from deploying the scythe, but I can’t get past their firewalls.”
I look down at the memory chip Dax gave me, then hold it out. “I think this might help.”
Regina snatches it, striding back to the terminal. I start to follow her, but Anna pushes past me.
Her muscles are rigid, her eyes black. She lifts her rifle in a swift, mechanical arc, and fires a clip of bullets into the terminal. It explodes with a crash, sending out a shower of sparks. Anna turns, swinging the rifle to me, her eyes flat and black.
Time seems to slow.
The crack of her rifle echoes through the air, its barrel aimed at my heart. I try to throw myself to the floor, but I’m too slow. I see the bullet coming for me, racing through the air, and a dark-haired figure blurs in front of me, straight into its path.
“No!” I scream.
Regina cries out, falling to the floor, scarlet blossoming across her chest, soaking through the emerald material of her gown. Anna aims her rifle at me again, but Agnes strides past me, holding her hand out.
Anna freezes.
Her eyes stay black, unblinking. Her rifle falls from her grip, and she slumps to her knees, falling sideways on the floor. She’s not wounded—she looks like Cole did when Mato took control of his black-out tech. I turn to Agnes, my heart kicking.
“How did you do that?”
“Put pressure on Regina’s wound,” Agnes says, her gaze still locked on Anna.
I look down and choke back a cry. Regina’s eyes are wide with shock, her breathing ragged. I drop to my knees beside her and press my hands to the blood bubbling from her sternum.
“Why?” I gasp. “Why did you take that bullet?”
“It’s your time now,” she whispers. She lifts her hand, the memory chip clutched in the black-and-emerald spotted scales of her palm. “I’m so proud of you, my daughter. I’ve spent my life working to create the keys to immortality, and then you did it at fifteen.” Her hand rises to my cheek, tracing blood across my skin. “I’m sorry I won’t get to see your world, but you already gave me more than I could ever have dreamed of.”
“No,” I say, pressing down on the wound. “No, you have to hold on.” Her blood is bubbling between my fingers. I look up, scanning the lab for healing tech, for anything that might help stop her bleeding. There’s nothing. It’s cleaned out.
But Regina already has the code she needs inside her.
“Jun Bei,” I gasp, pressing down on the wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. “Jun Bei, if you have any idea how to use the code, you have to try. We need her. She’s our mother. Please, Jun Bei.”
The presence in my mind whips into a storm.
Code scrolls across my vision, lightning fast. Gentech commands interspersed with blocks of protein array and nanite instructions. I shove down hard on Regina’s chest, blinking as the pages of text flicker in front of me, catching the briefest glimpses of meaning.
But there’s so much of it. Millions of lines. It is a universe of logic and algorithms written by a girl who wiped it all from her mind. I can feel Jun Bei’s frustration rising, her thoughts growing sharp and violent, the text flashing across my eyes whirling into a hurricane.
Agnes drops to her knees beside me and puts her hands over mine, pressing down on Regina’s wound. Anna is still slumped on the floor, motionless.
“Your friend will be okay,” Agnes says. “Her black-out protocol kicked in. Brink must have programmed her to stop us if we got close to hacking his systems.”
My vision is a storm of code and logic, battering my senses, my hands slick with the warmth of Regina’s blood.
“There isn’t much time,” Agnes says. “You need to stop this attack now, Bobcat. It’s up to you.”
Regina lets out a shaking breath, and the lights dotted across her skin blink off one by one—a dark patch around the wound that spreads across her chest. Her collarbones go dim, the starlight of panels in her arms flickering off as the code in her skin fades into darkness.
She’s dying.
“No,” I gasp, pressing down harder on her chest. Jun Bei’s presence roars inside me, the code scrolling frantically. Regina’s black eyes drift closed, her breathing stopping, her head tilting back on the floor. Her blood is splattered on the concrete, soaked into my shirt, slicked across my hands. Too much blood.
Her body falls limp, and I feel something tear
inside me.
She’s gone.
Agnes’s eyes grow steely. “Get yourself together, Bobcat,” she snaps. “You have a job to do. A lot more people are going to die if you don’t hurry. You can’t save her now, but you can save her people.”
I look down at Regina, at the dark stars on her skin, pain wrenching in my chest. I barely had time to meet her. I never got a chance to know her. The storm of code around me falls silent, Jun Bei’s presence going mute.
I drop my bloodied hand to the concrete, picking up the memory chip that’s fallen from Regina’s hand, numb. The terminal on the wall is still sparking, billowing dark smoke into the air. I can’t hack Cartaxus from here.
Agnes follows my eyes. “There has to be another one,” she says. “Lachlan must have been using one.”
“But he could be anywhere . . . ,” I trail off, holding her gaze. Mato was working with Lachlan—he said he spoke to him while we were here at Entropia. My mind flicks back to the glowing dust I saw on his hair after I met with Regina. He said he’d gone to get something from the jeep, but there was nothing in his hands. He’d been down to the basement levels, to the maintenance shaft cut into the rock.
The shaft that wasn’t on any of the maps Mato gave us access to.
“I know where he is,” I breathe. “In the maintenance shafts. I went right past it. . . .”
“Can you get there now?” Agnes asks.
I look back over my shoulder at the door. The sound of gunfire is still echoing from the atrium, bullets thudding against the door. That means Cole’s still alive and still defending us, but I can’t go out there—I don’t know how to get to the basement levels from here, and Anna said the troops were massing there.
But I saw a ring of light from Regina’s lab when I was in the agricultural room with the underwater lake. I look over my shoulder at the floating platform in the center of the room. It’s stacked with glass tanks, hanging above the giant drain in the floor.
“I think I can get to it,” I say.
“Quickly, then,” Agnes urges. “I’ll get Cole inside once you’re gone. Hurry, Bobcat.”
