AQUA (The Elements Series Book 1)

by Korn, Tracy

  "Now that I have the sweep back—all those grains of sand—"Arco adds, nodding to Liddick, "I'll just need some time for the ghost ping to carry the piggy back code I wrote, which will jump off once it gets to the destination coordinates and trace any related signals, like if the source is mobile. After it sweeps for related signals, it will send back all the possible paths to the source signal like a breadcrumb trail. That's how I traced the marlin message back to somewhere in the core, but it fell apart before it reached the point of origination. With enough time, it will generate exact coordinates for multiple paths."

  "How long will it take to set up the ping?" Liddick asks.

  "Like I said, it would take a day just to get back to where it cut off before, but from there to finish it? I don't have any of my equipment here, so probably three weeks, maybe a month. It depends on how far away the source of the signals are."

  "We don't have that kind of time. You didn't see what they were doing to them," Liddick says.

  "Don't you think I want to get them out of there as much as you do? All my automators are at home, so the code has to carry the camouflage manually. It's the difference between gliding 10 miles, or walking 10 miles with a pack of lead strapped to your back. Camouflaging is the only way we're not getting caught pinging them," Arco says.

  Liddick clenches his jaw and turns away, bringing his hands to his hips.

  "So what happens once we find the exact location? We just go digging into the core? There are about three miles of water on top of us, in case no one has noticed. Did anyone bring a beach pail and shovel, because I didn't," Vox says from the seat of a transmission station at the corner of the room, a newly sharpened edge in her voice to replace the smarmy tone she had earlier.

  "Arco had to pilot a vessel in his interview scenario," I snap at her before I realize what I'm saying, and my stomach instantly drops when I meet his eyes. Crite, this is not something he wants to remember. "Well, you did, and you know that you can," I say, trying to help him to remember how he dove in to help me with that jellyfish as we'd discussed on the walk home after our interviews.

  "I'll figure that part out," Arco says, shaking his head as if to dislodge the memory. Vox shrugs and goes back to fingering through buttons and levers.

  "They put me in for Core Engineering," Jax says, "I don't know how yet, but I'm sure I can help code the system organics if we get into a ship."

  "And you're going to be able to keep this from Fraya?" Liddick asks, turning abruptly to Jax, but Arco brings his hands together and takes a step toward Liddick, answering instead.

  "If we're really going to do this—somehow put a crew together and follow the breadcrumbs to his father, my sister, and your brothers, we're going to need medical expertise aboard. If not for us, for them. Didn't you say they were slotting Fraya for biodesign?" Arco asks, now turning to Jax.

  "Yeah," Jax says, absently rubbing the back of his hand with the other. "Yeah, she is, and if staying behind means they're going to make her do what Liam's having to do—even if there's only the smallest chance of that—I don't see how I can keep it from her. I just hope her job won't be harder than all ours put together."

  CHAPTER 24

  The Echo Explanation

  Liddick and I look at Jax, then at each other, both of us remembering Fraya's meltdown after the interviews.

  "You're kidding me, right? How long did it take you to calm her down after the interview, Ripley? And now you're going to let Hart put her on board?" Liddick says, throwing a hand out at Arco.

  "We won't be over her shoulder screaming at her to harvest cells like they did in her interview, and if there's any chance something bent really is going on here, like I said, I don't want her staying behind in the middle of it on her own," Jax replies, and Liddick folds his arms around himself in thought, starts to speak, then stops himself. "What?" Jax asks.

  "Nothing. All right. I said I'll help. I just need to get in touch with a friend of mine. Hart, how long until you can hack into these things again and get me an open topside channel that no one can monitor?" Liddick asks, holding up his bracelet cuff.

  Arco shakes his head. "They don't work like that—it's just an uplink to Gaia's mainframe. They made the port-call system totally separate from the bracelet platform."

  "So we just need to find a way to port-call now?" Jax asks. "That shouldn't be hard, right?"

  "Except none of us is credentialed yet, and I can't even modify our profiles to make it look like we are because it would set off alarms everywhere we went: meals, med-bay, the endless algorithms wouldn't align anymore. Unless…" Arco jolts. "Wait a minute, I can modify this breadcrumbs piggy back for uplink, and then you can just attach it to the next port-call someone makes. I have to find the outbound schedule," Arco says, shooing Vox away from the enclosed screen of the transmission station and typing furiously.

  "How far will it reach once you get it modified?" Liddick asks.

  "Anywhere there's a receiver hop," Arco says. "I just need to camouflage the ping and the code it's carrying. It's really going to slow down the host transfer, so I'll have to find one that's going somewhere close so they don't dig around in the splicing looking for the lag source. Where's your friend?"

  "Skyboard East, in the hills," Liddick answers. Arco chuckles while panning through screens.

  "Of course," he says. "Let me guess, your friend is Ravvy Pierce? No, wait…Kit Dillinger? No, no… Sera Lim!" he says, chuckling again as he stops on a screen and scrolls with a wave of his hand.

  Liddick gives Arco a tolerant smile, which he doesn't look up to see.

  "Actually, he's behind the scenes—literally—a storyboarder."

  "How can a virtuo-cine storyboarder help us port-call?" Jax asks.

  "That's just a front for his real trade."

  Arco looks up at Liddick. "Which is?" he asks, leaning on the last word.

  "Port-carnate," he finally says after another beat and a few darting glances at each of us. After a second of silence, Arco guffaws again.

  "You are a spinner, and the worst ever," he says, his laughter slipping into percolations as he returns to his screen.

  "That's illegal, not to mention a death sentence. No way, Liddick," I add, about to dismiss the whole idea, but then I see the corner of his mouth twitch, and I shake my head slowly at him. "You haven't…"

  He nods back at me just as slowly as the twitch gives way to a grin.

  "So you see," he says, extending his arms out to his sides and turning a 360. "Obviously, it's not a death sentence."

  Arco finally punches his ticket on the clue bus and stops laughing, then looks at Liddick soberly.

  "You've gone? Physically transmitted?" Vox comes out of the corner and walks quickly over to the group of us. Liddick nods again, and Jax narrows his eyes.

  "Several times. And none of my parts have fallen off," Liddick says, wiggling his fingers in front of him. Vox's burgundy eyebrow arches sharply, and I feel a tingling in the back of my neck as the smirk spreads over my face. I swallow hard, resisting the urge to make the obvious comment she's trying to push me to make, successful only because I concentrate on the image of smothering her to death with a pillow tonight. "Hey, anytime either of you ladies want to test my honesty on that one, you just let me know," Liddick continues, his smile deepening again as he tilts a nod in our direction with a wink. "Happy to oblige."

  Did he hear her push that thought into my head?

  "Get wrung," I say through a smirk of my own, "and I don't care. It's too dangerous. Promise you're not going to try it," I insist, then notice the digital time projection against the wall near the door to the Boundaries room. How is it already almost 9:00 p.m.?

  "I didn't say I was going to do it, but I do need to get a message to my friend," he says, and turns his attention back to Arco, "So, can you get that open channel?"

  "The log says the next transmission is in two days. I'll work on reconfiguring the piggy back for port-call uplink tomorrow after classes, mayb
e during if this Organic Systems class gives me any autonomy," Arco says. "I'm going to need the coordinates for your friend."

  "You'll have to embed my initials in the outbound message because if his system flags a veiled code dig from here without it, it will just mirror all the port-carnate cache onto your system. That'll blow up your camouflage, and you'll have the security corps on the next sub down here to haul you to—"

  "I know, I know, Lima." Arco waves a hand at Liddick without looking up from the log he's pulled up on the screen.

  "Lima?" Vox asks.

  "Prison for tech crime," I say. "Not a good place."

  "The only thing worse than being surrounded by criminals is being surrounded by smart criminals," Arco says, and Liddick chuffs a laugh.

  "So what makes this port-whatever transfer so bad that it's illegal?" Vox asks.

  "Port-carnate—it's illegal because it would just be too damn great for the unwashed masses. Biotech Global owns the State. It wants everyone to think port-carnate is going to scramble their insides, or make them come back short an eye, or an earlobe and a lip will misidentify and switch places if they try it. Otherwise, people would teleport wherever they wanted to go. No more shuttles, no more subs, no more Biotech port-cloud, or Carbonetics Corporation's synthetic atoms to rain down and flesh out your port-call holograms. Big companies would lose big coin," Liddick explains, and I suddenly feel hollow in the realization that things are much more complicated than I ever thought they were. The world is so much larger, and so much worse.

  "Let me get this straight. Your actual, physical body transports from one place to another, no hologram and paste job—just like that?" Vox asks.

  "Just like that."

  "Does it hurt?" The question is abrupt and bubbles out on a giggle at the same time I think it. The blood rushes hot to my cheeks for what must be the tenth time today, and I glare shards at Vox as I violently rub the tickle from the nape of my neck. She shrugs.

  "Ask your own questions," I tell her. "Seriously, I'm going to smother you in your sleep tonight."

  Liddick tries to swallow his snicker and almost succeeds. "It doesn't hurt, no. Just a little nauseating at first, like losing your equilibrium after sneezing too hard," he adds, looking at Vox, then at me again like I'm four years old and have just told him how many animal crackers I can fit in my underpants. I raise my eyebrows at him and tilt my head to the side. "What?" he says. "It's cute when you get so...menacing."

  "Menacing," Vox repeats, slowly nodding like a wide-eyed idiot.

  Arco smiles begrudgingly and nods. "I hate to agree with him, but he's right."

  "Traitor," I say to Arco, who laughs, and I close my eyes as I take in a long, deep breath through my nose just as the curfew warning mercifully sounds in my head.

  CHAPTER 25

  Is This Seat Taken?

  Fraya and I wind up in line together for breakfast the next morning, both of us agreeing on portable food options since we're running late. I grab a protein bar and a handful of grapes that are greener than any I've ever seen topside, and Fraya does the same. Vox was still asleep when I came back from the hygiene room, but she has somehow beaten me to the table as we walk toward it. She's sitting next to Arco, grinning stupidly and hanging all over him, and I shake my head at her on the way to my seat.

  "What's that look for?" Arco says, surprising me. Oh good, now he's defending her.

  "Like you don't know," I reply and narrow my eyes at him, but this only seems to puzzle him more. I sit a few seats down from him next to Ellis, who is talking a mile a minute about something, his barrage of words pummeling back the angry questions that begin to surface inside me about seeing Arco and Vox like this. So what if they get together. In fact, good!

  "Anyway," Jax interrupts Ellis's monologue, "I will never do that again…" he trails off with a subtle laugh in his voice, evidently trying to kill the conversation before the whole table hears what he, Ellis, and Avis were just discussing, but I realize this a beat too late.

  "Do what again?" I ask, which somehow causes the table to erupt in laughter. I scan everyone's faces for input, a headache already beginning thanks to lying awake most of the night with the visions from Plume's office.

  "Your brother here assumed the hygiene room was like the one at Seaboard, and just let it all hang—ow!" Ellis's snickering turns into a yelp as Jax apparently kicks him under the table. He starts again, "Guess they don't do that here."

  Jax throws a blackberry at Ellis, which explodes all over the hand he holds up to deflect it. He laughs and grabs a napkin to clean it off.

  "Stow it," Jax says, fighting his own laughter again.

  "That's all that happened? What's so funny?" Vox asks, but Jax sends me an icy look through the remnants of his grin and clenches his jaw, his eyes alight and all the humor fading. I point to Vox in protest, and all at once Avis starts rambling.

  "So he's walking around without his towel, and one of the cloudies asks him where he went for splicing because he wanted one just like that!"

  The words are barely able to outrun the deluge of snorting guffaws that follows, which turn into soundless convulsions that bring tears to his eyes. Jax clears his throat and swallows hard as he instantly flushes red. He reaches for his juice and downs it, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

  "See you in class," Jax mumbles as he stands up and steps out of the giggling like it's a bath, taking long, purposeful strides toward the door. I put all the pieces together now and understand why he was trying to let it drop. Fraya pulls her chin to her chest, then covers her mouth with her hand as she blushes and begins picking all her grapes from their stems with the other hand. I look over at Arco, pointing him in the direction of Jax with my chin. If I thought I could help, I'd go after him myself, but I know that because I'm a girl, not to mention his sister, I'd just make it worse. Arco is still chuckling, but shoves Avis out of his seat in Jax's direction.

  "Go fix it before he finds a way to get even," he says, his laughter fading. Avis nods, having just caught his breath enough to excuse himself. As he walks away, Dez makes her way to our table and slides in next to Fraya, her sheet of blonde hair falling around her shoulder as she sits.

  "Ready for Organic Systems and Theory?" she says in an overly dramatic voice.

  "As ready as I'll ever be," Fraya answers, swallowing the last of her thick, green juice and pocketing her protein bar as she scoops the rest of the grapes into her hand. "See you at lunch, Jazz." She gets up and crosses the room to the door with Dez, and I watch them go, noticing how different they are—Fraya small and slight, Dez tall and athletic.

  "Ready for all this?" Tieg says, having straddled the bench next to me. I startle and turn directly into his perfectly sculpted smile.

  "Your sister just buzzed over here and asked almost the exact question to Fraya," I reply, collecting myself. I feel edgy this morning beyond being nervous about classes, so of course, I look over at Vox, who's chewing on a straw and staring at me from under whatever Arco is saying to the table. She threads her arm through his and smiles at me as I roll my eyes at her and turn my attention back to Tieg.

  "I guess it's a triplets thing," Tieg says with a shrug. "You and Jax are twins, aren't you?"

  I nod, willing myself to relax. Sibling annoyances. I can talk about that. "Jax will be the first to tell you he's older, which gives him the right to be in charge, but otherwise, yes."

  "Pitt's the same way. He's first, then me, then Dez. Three minutes between Pitt and me, a minute and 43 seconds between Dez and me."

  "There's a minute and 18 seconds between us," I say. "Does Pitt act like he's years older?"

  "All the time," he says, twisting to lean his forearms on the table as he interlaces his fingers. He has strong hands for a cloudy—hands that look like they've done actual work with a few scarred knuckles and raised veins that run up into his forearms. I shake my head and try to refocus on the conversation. "So what's your first class?" he asks over Arco's sudden throat
clearing mission. I open my mouth to answer, but hear Vox's voice instead. "Empathy and Psychosomatic Systems. We're roommates by the way," she says in a gush, which feels like a bucket of cold water on everything. I tense as Tieg looks over my shoulder at her and nods, then looks back at me trying to disguise the smile on his face by looking down at the table.

  "What she said," I say, shrugging and raising my eyebrows before taking a bite of my protein bar, which I discover tastes like peanut butter. I hate peanut butter.

  "So they have you paired up for classes too, then," he says, bringing in his outside leg and sliding closer to me as he talks. Arco starts clearing his throat again, and Tieg looks up.

  "Do you need some water, man?" Tieg asks, raising an eyebrow. I turn around and find Arco glaring.

  "I'm good, thanks," he replies from under a scowl. Tieg nods slowly when I turn around, then looks back at me and pushes the corner of his mouth to one side.

  "Anyway," he says with a final glance at Arco, "we're in Organic Systems Design and Theory, Pitt and Jax are both in Chemical Structures and…something, I forget the rest of it," he laughs, "so, it looks like they've paired up roommates by career field." He holds my eyes in place with his, the unnatural sapphire blue like some kind of gravity field pulling me in. I feel a prickle at the back of my neck at this thought along with the urge to tell him about his gravity field eyes, but focus on the disgusting glob of peanut butter I'm trying to swallow instead. I take a long drink of water before straddling my seat and turn my back completely to Vox. She's not going to push me into embarrassing myself.

  Tieg's blond eyebrows flinch, surprised at my sudden move toward him, but he mirrors my position by sliding his outside knee back over the edge of the bench. We sit face to face like this, and a small dimple appears just off the corner of his cheek as he smiles. It's then that I notice the flecks of ice blue in his eyes, and how broad his chest and shoulders really are now that he almost completely overshadows me. I swallow again trying to figure out what to say next.