by Korn, Tracy
"Let's just say I did a little coding of my own this afternoon—you remember when Denison and the others walked into that light field in a single file line and came out cloned? Now we can do that too. We can take a ship, and no one will know we're gone," he says, looking at me and smiling almost imperceptibly, apparently pleased with himself that he almost gave me a heart attack. Arco's eyes narrow as he processes, then quickly dart to mine, then back again to Liddick as he waits for the rest of the story. I exhale, relatively assured that this is now going in a completely different direction than I'd feared, and my heart stops trying to crash through my ribs to run down the hall.
"That's actually not a bad idea—why didn't I think of that?" Ellis asks the ground, shaking his head.
"And exactly how are we supposed to cover for a missing ship, Wright?" Arco asks, now with a strange edge in his voice.
"I'll leave that one to a core engineer. We need an Omnicoder…" Liddick says, his eyes falling on Jax.
"You said we can leave tonight? Why not right now?" Jax asks.
"Do you have an instant ship-replacement plan we can execute that I don't know about?" Liddick asks. "I thought you might need at least a few hours to make an entire vessel available, then rig the system to actually get it out of the dock and into the water without anyone seeing you. But maybe you're more talented and resourceful than I was giving you credit for?" Liddick asks with a smirk. Jax nods.
"All right. I'll figure it out if you're sure we can go after them tonight."
"We're going to need Dez," I say, and both Liddick and Tieg immediately turn to me.
Are you split? Liddick says in my head, but I don't acknowledge him.
"In case someone needs medical help," I say.
"Myra's in biodesign too," Liddick protests.
"No, no, I'm just trained as a secondary. I can help, but I can't do—I mean I would, but I—" Myra stumbles.
"It's OK, Myra. That's why we need Dez," I say, then look right at Liddick. "I don't ever want to be in a situation where I can't get someone the help they need. It's just… too hard."
Liddick inhales slowly, resigned.
"No way," Tieg says, sitting up and resting his forearms on his knees, then opens his hands as if to catch a gravity ball while he talks. "If any of you think that I'm letting her get caught up in this, you're split."
"She's already caught up in it, Tieg. We all are. Something is out there taking people. It happened to Liddick's brothers, Arco's sister, somehow my father, and now Vox and Fraya. How long do you think it will be before it takes Dez, too, or Pitt, or one of us. How long before it takes you?" I say, turning in my seat to face him. He looks up at me with a set jaw and hard lines around his almost glowing blue eyes, but then softens his expression when he sees that mine is imploring instead of chastising. "We need her to help us stop whatever this is, please," I say. "Will you ask her?"
He looks at me for a long time before he answers, leans his head to one side, and then looks at the ground with his hands clasped in front of him. He pushes his fingers through his light brown hair as he straightens up, then interlaces them behind his head before leaning back and closing his eyes.
"All right. I'll ask her," he says, and I let out the breath I'd been holding.
"And the thing that's taking people isn't the shadow in the cave—that's just what they want us to think so we'll go back there thinking we know what to look out for," Arco says, looking at me. "It hit me earlier tonight," he adds, smirking at Jax.
"When is the next port-call scheduled?" Ellis asks.
"Not until tomorrow night, so even if this all were to come together tonight, we'd have nothing for the piggy back to ride, and if it can't ride, it can't ping back coordinates. We have to wait until then," Arco says.
"If there's no team, we need to get in that cave now," Jax says, and the memory of Vox's message hits me hard enough that I actually feel my stomach contract. I boggle at my own self-absorption—first I forget that my friends are missing after everything with Arco, and now I forget to mention I actually just talked with Vox after everything with Liddick. What is happening to me?
"I talked to Vox—" I confess, and everyone stops arguing to look at me, stunned. "Almost an hour ago. I was wandering around waiting for Arco to find Tieg, and Ellis to find Liddick, and I wound up in the Boundaries room. I heard a buzzing coming from one of the helmets just like the buzzing from the cave, so I went to it, and it was her. She was calling us," I say, feeling breathless.
You talked to Vox? Liddick thinks, Then, in that chair?
Yes, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was a little distracted with your whole dying right in front of me thing at the time, then, with the…um—with the not dying anymore thing.
"You're just now saying this? How did you not come running in here with news like that?" Avis scolds, raising his wispy black eyebrows and letting his mouth hang open after his last word, genuinely baffled.
"Hey," Arco holds a hand out at him.
"Did she tell you anything about Fraya? Is she OK?" Jax asks, bracing his hands on the back of the couch and leaning in.
"She said Fraya was OK, and that we shouldn't go through the cave because they were already waiting there. It's like Arco said…they want us to think we know the threat, but there's another that we must not be able to see—one that we'll never see coming," I say as pieces start falling into place.
"Is that all she said?" Tieg asks.
"After that, she said she would find another way in for us, and that there was a vent just past the cave that led to them too, but she didn't know if it was safe. That's all before the feed cut out."
"That's it, then," Tieg says, extending his arms out to either side of him along the back of the couch. He flinches when he realizes his fingers brush my arm, then brings his hand up to support his head instead. I stare at him for a second in total disbelief—how long is this iceberg treatment going to last? "We can't get through the cave, and even if we could, it's not like we could leave a ship that size just sitting outside—someone would see it before long, and it would be a matter of time before they caught us. There's nowhere to go until Vox gives us new coordinates, and then we won't need to ping anything," he adds.
Jax exhales hard before pushing his hands through his hair. "I can't just stand here knowing she's out there somewhere, maybe hurt, or if someone—" he says, his voice breaking off on the last word as he crosses his arms over his chest. He clears his throat and swallows, clenching his jaw, then turns around to look through the long window on the far wall.
"Jax, Vox said she's OK…we'll find her," I say to his back, but he doesn't turn around.
"If the only thing stopping us right now is needing someone to rig an unauthorized port-call without triggering alarms, like I said, we can go tonight. My friend can help with that," Liddick says to his lap, then looks up at me before meeting everyone else's expectant stares.
"Your friend can pull off an unauthorized port-call?"Arco asks, narrowing his eyes. Liddick nods.
"I just need to fix my channel so I can send up a buoy signal when we're ready, then he can port-call down here to help set up the hop."
"Oh, so your friend is topside?" Arco laughs and puts his hands on his hips. "Yes, please, explain how you'll be using Gaia's own mainframe to send up a buoy signal to reveal our exact coordinates to some random topsider who will then port-call to us and set up an outgoing hop."
Liddick takes a patient deep breath. "Because Gaia's mainframe will never see the buoy, or the channel for the port-call, or the outgoing hop," he says, but it doesn't seem to satisfy Arco, who hasn't changed his dubious expression or his stance. "All right, you want all the how and why? Fine," he says with one more quick look at me. "We were late tonight because I had just come back from a port-carnate call," he says.
Now Arco's eyebrows shoot up as Jax turns around abruptly, and the others lean forward in their seats. "I went to see that friend I just mentioned, and came back wrecked because I didn't c
onsider the nanites in—"
"Heh, you don't look wrecked," Tieg interrupts, laughing as he looks Liddick up at down.
"Like I was about to say, that's because Jazz saw me in the Boundaries room after she talked to Vox and…helped me until it passed," Liddick replies carefully, and I feel Arco's eyes on me before I even look at him.
"Port-carnate?" Myra asks, pushing forward in her chair. "But how?"
"The night before we left Seaboard, I had to know we could get out of here if we had to, so I went to see someone I knew could help. He gave me the micro-technics I'd need, and showed me how to set up a hop point from this end back to him."
"Wait, you did all that just in case? We've spent our whole lives trying to get into this place—why would you even think of just in case?" Avis asks. Liddick sighs again, then rallies, leaning forward on his elbows with his hands held out to help him explain.
"The night before we left to come here was the first time Jazz heard the voice that said, 'I never saw it coming,' but I'd been hearing it a lot longer," he says, working his way into the whole story about Liam and Lyden, about the scar that Liam no longer had, and about the hijacked plots he'd experienced in the virtuo-cines. I catch Jax's eyes as he realizes now, too, that all this time we'd thought Liddick just got caught up in Skyboard culture after his siblings left, but he was actually researching—collecting snippets of code, short messages, missing words, anything that might help him solve the mystery that at the time, haunted only him.
As he explains, I see him again like I did that night on the beach after the marlin when he pulled me back from an edge I hadn't foreseen, and later that night when he seemed to be fighting even the wind. He's had this whole separate nightmare for years, and none of us ever knew. I feel guilty all over again, and don't understand how I couldn't have known any of this if we're as much alike as I'm learning we are.
"Crite…" Ellis says, looking drained.
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Jax asks.
"It was my problem, and at the time, I didn't think it affected anyone else trying to get into Gaia. It wasn't until I saw Jazz reacting to everything I was seeing and hearing with the marlin that I knew I had to build a safety net before getting on that sub."
"So this was your friend you went to see, the one from Skyboard you were talking about earlier?" Arco asks, but Liddick shakes his head.
"Same friend, but no, he's not really from Skyboard, at least, not anymore," he replies. "Sorry, I had to be sure you were invested first. He's in The Badlands."
CHAPTER 44
Confessing to Arco
Everyone is speechless as Liddick's last words sink in—The Badlands? I can't even put together a coherent thought to ask him. He looks around at everyone's blank faces and chuckles.
"They're not all tunnel diggers and cannibals," he says, mocking our urban legend fears. "A lot of them are just people who don't want to be a cog in the machine."
"And what machine is that?" Tieg asks, his eyes narrowing over the sharp cut of his cheekbone.
"All of this," Liddick says, looking around the room. "This idea. This whole one-way track to happiness and success—fame and status. Crite, we have an entire career field that codes DNA just so people can look the part. A lot of the Badlanders just don't want to be moulded into society's version of somebody," Liddick answers, raising his chin the way he did against the wind that night on the beach, then darts a glance at Tieg.
"And what's wrong with creating opportunities?" Tieg bristles, now moving to the edge of his seat like he's going to get up. The heat coming from him and the ice coming from Liddick meet in the middle, exactly where I happen to be sitting, and it's anything but comfortable.
"He's not saying that—" I interrupt before Liddick has a chance to stoke the fire he's just set. "He's saying that some of them just didn't want to play the game. Our whole lives have revolved around getting into this school, haven't they? At least ours have at Seaboard. I imagine there were similar expectations for you at Skyboard, maybe even more," I say to Tieg, and judging by the way his jaw relaxes in recognition, it must be true. "We've all felt the pressure to be what someone else has decided we should be. Probably even convinced ourselves that it's what we wanted too."
Tieg swallows and presses his lips together at this, and everyone looks down or away except for Liddick. He angles his head up and looks right at me, the corner of his mouth pulling back just before Jax puts everything back on course.
"Well, how's this Skyboarder supposed to help us from The Badlands when we're here under three miles of water?" he asks, tilting his head.
"He can walk me through how to launch these," Liddick says, holding out his hand to reveal two slim cylinders that together, are no bigger than a fingernail. "They're for your piggy back so you can ghost ping the messages again once you get it modified to ride an outgoing port-call."
"Automators? Where did you get those?" Arco asks, taking a few steps in for a closer look.
"From my friend when I ported earlier—he gave them to me after I explained how your code was going to take forever with the camouflage, but he made me promise to bring him in when we were ready to install them," Liddick explains to Arco, whose eyebrows draw together.
"Anyone can swallow automators. Why does he have to do it?" Arco asks, an annoyed clip returning to his voice.
"Not him. Me. He aligned them with my bioprint just in case anyone got ideas about stealing them and leaving me behind," Liddick says, shaking his head and holding up a hand when Arco begins to protest. "I know, I told him I didn't have to worry about that, but he doesn't trust many people—you can understand why. He also insisted that he oversee the launch because apparently, these aren't your average automators. I need to find a way to fix whatever I corrupted in my channel when I came back through so I can at least send up the buoy, and then, open up a hop that can receive his port-call."
"If you can get a connection window on both ends like that, we really can just piggy back his port-call instead of waiting until tomorrow night, right?" Ellis asks, looking at Arco, who nods after a second.
"Exactly. So Ripley, you can handle the ship?" Liddick asks.
"Not yet, but I'll find a way."
"I'll help you," Ellis says. "I have an idea. Avis, we'll need you too, and also a knife or something. Myra, you should probably come with us." Avis and Myra both agree, but exchange wary glances.
"All right, then I'll go get the clone-sim program ready. I need DNA. A hair?" he says, holding out his hand. Everyone pulls out a strand of hair and passes it to him. "I'll put these in to cook after we figure out where we're going and are actually ready to board the ship. No sense in having two of us all running around here," Liddick says.
"One of you is already too much to handle," I say, grinning at him. His eyes light with danger and promise, and a smile spreads across his face as everyone chuckles…everyone except for Arco. "Anyway, how can I help?" I ask.
"Come—"Liddick says at the same time Arco says, "Stay—"
They both look at each other, then look at me, and Arco is the first to talk again.
"You should try to get some rest, Jazz. It's been a long day, and if this works, it's going to be an even longer night, you know?"
OR, help me fix the channel and maybe we can figure out how to port-call topside before we bring my friend down…come on, Rip. I hear Liddick in my head and just barely catch myself before I look at him in astonishment.
"Yeah, maybe," I manage to say in answer to Arco, my head suddenly spinning with Liddick's proposition, and I struggle not to make eye contact with him. "When are we meeting up then?" I ask the group.
"Eleven," Liddick says, and now I turn to see his smirk deepening as I'm sure he's enjoying the dilemma he's just caused in me. "Is five hours enough for you to do something about the ship, Ripley?" he continues, turning to Jax.
"We'll still need time tonight for Tieg, Arco, Avis, and Ellis to recon and map afterward, so it'll have to be," he answers.
/> "All right, eleven then," Liddick says.
"I'll encode your profiles so curfew doesn't pick anyone up," Arco says, and Tieg is the first to get up.
"Tieg—don't forget to bring Dez, OK?" I ask abruptly, reaching up to grasp his forearm. He stops and looks down at me as if he's thinking of something to say again, but just nods before walking through the projection field and toward the dorm wing. Why can't I understand him as easily as the others? Is it because he's from the mountain? Have they been modified there that much?
"Well, if you need us, we'll be figuring out how to clone the hull of a two-ton Leviathan so we can leave it in the dock while we simultaneously steal the real Leviathan and get it outside of the nanite coded triple security gate—you know, just an average Coder Friday night," Ellis stands and gives us all a double thumbs up. Jax shrugs out a laugh and shakes his head.
"OK, come on," he says, slapping Avis on the back as they both follow Ellis out of the field with Myra at his side. Arco stands next to an impassioned, albeit silently lecturing Abe Lincoln as Liddick leans back in the perpendicular chair, making the tension in the air suddenly unbearable—one of them needs to leave right now, or maybe I do.
"So, Hart, I guess we're both off to make an inroad then? Both of us working on a path?" Liddick says after a minute. I feel the barbs in his tone and narrow my eyes at him. Arco angles his head and looks at him cautiously.
"If you want to call it that."
"Your job may be a little harder, though…what, with having to start from nothing. I just have some repair work to do," Liddick says, standing up and darting a glance at me. I squint at him in disbelief and shake my head.
What is wrong with you? Stop it. I think, but he doesn't respond. Arco looks at me quickly as understanding lights in his eyes, then turns back to Liddick and takes a step forward.
"You really think your inroad could even begin to lead somewhere?" he says, moving his hands to his hips and squaring his stance.
