AQUA (The Elements Series Book 1)

by Korn, Tracy

  Liddick! Stop. Just walk away. Why are you trying to pick a fight with him tonight? I think, but he doesn't take his eyes off of Arco.

  "It already is, Hart. Already is," he says dismissively, less than a foot of space between them, then turns and walks through the projection field toward the Boundaries room.

  I sit motionless on the couch watching him walk away, trying to choose which question to ask him in my thoughts among the thousand fighting to get down the pipe, but I can't focus enough on just one—what was that all about? Is he trying to make Arco angry? What is he trying to prove with me sitting right here like that? Then he's out of sight, and I feel the empty place where the potential for answers used to be.

  "What's he talking about?" Arco shifts his weight to one leg and his eyes to the floor, his hands still on his hips.

  "About fixing his port-carnate channel for port-call while you build your code," I say, my heart starting to hammer in my chest. Arco nods, still not looking at me. "What did he mean when he said you helped him," he asks, and I suck in a breath. There it is. Now, I have to tell him.

  "Arco, sit down."

  "I don't want to sit down, Jazz. What did he mean?" he says, his voice restrained. His eyebrows are drawn together as he studies the floor, then shifts his weight to the other leg again and crosses his arms over himself. How this feels for him cuts into me, and I know I have to stop it. I can't let him worry like this.

  "Something happened to his nanites during the port-carnate transfer. I don't know, they got misaligned somehow. I wanted to get a medi-droid, but he was sure it had to be the nanites because they weren't fixing him when he got sick, and before he got them, that never happened after a transfer," I say all at once, waiting a second so he can process.

  "Then what?" Arco says quietly, the hollow dread radiating from him and scooping whole sections out of my chest. I take in another breath and try to steel myself to jump in cold water.

  "So, he needed another dose of them to realign his, and when I asked him how to get that for him, he said I already had it, and…he kissed me," I say, closing my eyes in anticipation of the explosion. It doesn't come, and when I open my eyes, I see he hasn't even moved. "Arco?" I ask softly.

  "So he must be your nanite classification exactly? That's why you've been so close with him lately," he says, his eyebrows still drawn together as he tries to unravel it. "You're the same." He looks up at me as his jaw flexes like he's trying to keep more behind his teeth, then swallows it down, and I feel like the weight of it lands like an anchor in the bottom of my stomach. I have to get out from under it, to just put everything on the table.

  "The same classification, yes, but I don't know how to do what he does, what Vox does. I don't know how to read people, or write or fix code channels. I don't know what I am, Arco… and so yes, maybe that's why. Maybe there's something about him that tells me something about me, but it's the same with Vox," I say, fighting against the crushing feeling in my throat as it threatens to close around my words. "But you know what, none of that even matters because I just couldn't let him die, and there were a few times when he couldn't get up—when there was nothing I could do because he couldn't talk, he couldn't even answer with think—" I say, unable to hold off the constriction anymore.

  I try to swallow, to gather back the composure that's peeling away from me, and then desperately realize how tired I really am when the tears start to burn my cheeks. That's it…I close my eyes and take in a breath that hitches in my chest, no more energy even to wipe them away or try anymore to stop them from falling.

  After a minute like this, I feel Arco's hands on top of my thighs, then look up to see him kneeling in front of me. He wedges in close and slowly wraps his arm around my waist, slipping the other around my shoulders to pull me into him. All the confusion and anxiety, all the exhaustion rushes up fast like a geyser, and I hear the sobs—my sobs. I don't want to cry. That's actually the last thing I want to do right now, but I can't stop it. How can I push other people to feel anything when I can't even push myself? This idea just makes me cry harder, and Arco pulls me even more tightly against him until there's no space between us at all.

  "It's OK…" he says over and over. We stay like this until I start to feel like it really is OK— his arms around me, his warm, strong body against mine, and his voice in my ear.

  "Arco, I didn't mean—" I start to say into his shoulder, but he hushes me.

  "Stop, I said it's OK. It wasn't your fault."

  "But—"

  "Jazz," he pulls back with a laugh in his voice, then brings his hands to my face and looks straight into my eyes. "It's all right. It's all going to be all right. I love you," he says, the vibration of it, low and full like the bell from class echoing in my chest and causing more tears to spill into burning rivulets down my cheeks. The laugh he'd been holding in gives way, and a smile slips over his face. "Oh, you're so wrecked," he says, brushing his thumbs over my cheeks. "Come on." He helps me up, and we walk side by side, his arm around me all the way to my dorm.

  When we get there, he kisses the back of my hand before turning to me, bringing his fingertips softly to my cheek again.

  "Arco, I didn't mean to hurt you," I finally say, but he just shakes his head as his jaw tightens, and I know he's still upset even though he's trying not to be.

  "You're totally wrung because of his jacked nanites, so stop worrying about any of that and take a nap so you get better, all right?"

  He angles his chin down to catch my eyes, and I look up at him and smile as he brings my hands to his chest. I feel his heart pounding again, and something about knowing it's racing like that for me makes my own heart start up too.

  "I'm OK," I say, feeling safe again—feeling like all of this is going to work out somehow when I see the warm smile flicker in his eyes.

  "Then everything is OK for me too," he whispers, leaning in to kiss me again like he doesn't want to wake me up.

  CHAPTER 45

  Azeris

  The drumming on my door seems to come five minutes after I close my eyes, and I startle awake.

  I fixed it. Jazz, come on, I hear in my head, and as the fog clears, I realize it's not a dream, it's Liddick. He fixed his channel? I scan my bracelet along the reader, and the door slides open.

  "Hey," he says, out of breath.

  "Did you run down here?" I ask, rubbing my eyes. "Does Arco have the piggy back finished? And the camouflage?"

  "Yes. And I don't know, but we won't need the camouflage. I found a better way just in case, so come on and I'll sh—"

  "He'll get it done," I say, bringing my hands down. "He's reliable." I hear the defensive edge in my voice, and know it comes off the way it sounds when Liddick's face registers surprise. He abandons whatever he was going to say and resets, swallowing and tilting his head to one side.

  "And you still don't think I am," he says, raising his chin now and bracing his forearm against my doorframe, but then changes his mind as he brings his eyes to the floor and puts his hand in his pocket.

  "Liddick…" I say, letting some of the exhaustion about this old conversation linger in my voice in the hopes that he doesn't start it again.

  "No, if you still think I'm unreliable, then I still have work to do to, and that's all right. I'll do it," he says, drawing his dark brows together as he looks quickly to the side, and after a second more, meets my eyes again. "But Rip, you know the rest of the story now…I couldn't let you get caught up in that."

  "And since I am now I'm just supposed to reconfigure everything?" I ask, squaring my shoulders and pulling a hand to my hip, remembering what he did a few hours ago in front of Arco. "What were you trying to accomplish by bringing up inroads back there? What was the point of telling him that, especially with me right there?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at him. He doesn't look away this time, and doesn't try to corral the anger I know he feels from me either. Instead, he takes a step toward me.

  "I brought it up so he knows what I'm coming for. So yo
u know that he knows," he answers, then pushes a hand through his hair as he walks past me a few steps before turning around to face me again. "I've had enough unpleasant surprises for a lifetime, Rip, and I don't wish them on anyone. If you tell me right now that you're with him, I won't ask you for more, but you have to understand that it won't stop me from wanting more. Hell, I can't even tell you I won't still try for more. We fit, and as long as I can feel it in my teeth that you know it too," he says, pinching the air next to his mouth between his fingers, "I'll keep fighting for it because then…then it's just a matter of you trusting it eventually." I swallow hard when I hear the word eventually again, remembering my conversation with Arco, and the whole last 24 hours come swirling in on me like a whirlpool. "So, are you with him?"

  I shake my head and blow out a long breath. "I don't know," I say, pulling my other hand to my hip as I scan the floor for an answer I don't really find, so I just give him the pieces I have. "I do have feelings for him, though, Liddick. Everything is just so wrecked here, and he's…" I search for the word that feels like a traitor who has abandoned me until it's right there, just in time. "He makes me feel safe," I say, still nodding to the floor, and in the space of two beats, Liddick crashes through everything I think I know and scatters it in a hundred directions.

  "Safe…that's not what you're built for, Riptide," he says in a slow, quiet voice. I look up at him then, something sparking low inside me like a dare, like a promise, and when I see the flicker in his eyes, the catching light behind the blue, I recognize it.

  I swallow hard and pull in a deep breath against the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, but, "I—Liddick…" is all I can say. He nods after a long pause.

  "Like I said, I still have work to do," he winks, cutting me loose from it, letting me step back from the heat that's too bright and too much to be mine. "Come on, I want to show you something."

  "What time is it?" I say, disoriented again as I scrub my hands over my face and try to reconstruct the reality of why he's actually here.

  "Almost eleven, so hurry."

  "How did you even get down here? Aren't there monitors or something this late?" I ask, following him to my door.

  He taps his bracelet. "Not now—they won't loop back here again until tomorrow night."

  "How did you—never mind," I say, realizing I'm still too tired to process whatever Coder jargon he would wind up telling me as we go through the door. How we have the same classification makes no sense to me, I think to myself, shaking my head and finally dislodging the surreal feelings of a few minutes ago.

  "This way," he says, leading the way down the corridor to the Boundaries room.

  Everything is deserted; even the floating screens in the student center are gone. It makes me feel like we're that much more conspicuous, and that's probably the effect they're intending by having everything off like this.

  In the Boundaries room, Liddick crosses to the station I sat in for Vox's transmission. He pulls up the screen and starts entering characters into the keypad.

  "What are you typing in?" I ask, taking a few steps forward to watch over his shoulder.

  "Just running the Trojan code and opening the channel inside it. This is why we don't need Hart's camouflage."

  "Trojan? How does it work? You're sure it won't trigger the alarms Arco was talking about?" I ask.

  "No, it can't. It just looks like a housekeeping program to the mainframe. They run all the time cleaning up bugs, emptying trash files that are out of date, no one monitors them."

  "Liddick, how do you know all this?" I ask.

  "Because…I…" he leaves a few beats in between each of his words as he finishes typing, then takes a step back from the screen, "…know there's always a road into where I want to go," he says, turning to me with a knowing smile. I sigh and raise an eyebrow at him. "No, but really, it's years of screening cine code to find my brother's messages, and this was right there just waiting to be repurposed. I don't really know how to write more than a window channel like this, and only that thanks to my friend Azeris—whom you'll meet momentarily, if I did this right. Watch the floor there," he gestures to an area a few feet from us, radiating excitement as only he can, lighting up like a match because a devil is after him.

  "So, if this works, how does it work? How is your Badlander friend really coming down here?" I ask.

  "I just sent a buoy signal with the Trojan anchor, so once he gets it, he'll read it and plug in our coordinates to open up a hop on his end," Liddick says, then checks his bracelet cuff. "It's 20 to eleven now, so when he secures the anchor and uplinks to our hop, the path will run through the Trojan windows like water through a straw—that should be any minute now."

  "Liddick," I say out loud, suddenly chilled by his detailed explanation and kicking myself for prompting it with my question in the first place. Arco doesn't know where we are, so he wouldn't have extended the privacy field again…we're not masked in here, I think.

  Liddick looks up from the transmission station and blinks at me absently.

  "Have you no faith at all in me, Rip? I'm wounded."

  "What are you talking about?" I ask as the adrenaline hits me and makes the chill worse.

  "I rerouted all that the first day I came down here to start installing the port-carnate channel. That's how I got the idea for the Trojan. They're monitoring looped feeds of the last year—the same way I looped your hallway. By the time they figure it out, we'll be long gone. Hart's field is just another layer between us and them," he says, and I feel the panic start to subside.

  "All right, good."

  "See? Reliable," he says, winking. I start to laugh as the nervous fear dissipates and push my hands over my face.

  "OK, so this is really going to work?"

  "If Hart's piggy back code works, it should. After it hitches on to the port-call transmission, it'll jump off the signal halfway through the pathway and wait for it to close. The Trojan will drop its anchors at the hops, and will shrink around it, sealing it inside while it starts bloodhounding the signature for the updated message you got. Once it does that, we'll have a map, and neither should take too long with the automators—I just won't know how to launch those until Azeris gets here. Anyway, then there's the small matter of your brother procuring that Leviathan after he plants a clone…" he says, and trails off when he sees my reactions to the flickering image beginning to appear in front of the station he's just keyed.

  "Look!" I say. He turns around and laughs in satisfaction. In seconds, the rest of the image materializes, and a man about our parents' age with dark brown, messy hair wearing a battered leather vest and heavy, canvas pants appears. A leather strap runs over his shoulder and across his chest to a holster, but I can't make out what's inside it. His black boots look like the old military ones from our history imagers, and his linen shirt is marked by streaks of dirt and black grease. He's taller than Liddick, actually broader than Pitt, and I instantly want to run in the other direction when I see the hard line of his black stubbled jaw. I take a few steps back, and Liddick turns around to extend his hand.

  It's OK, he's a friend, I hear him say in my head, and take his hand to step alongside him.

  "Azeris!" Liddick says when the transfer completes, then drops my hand to shake the man's. Azeris looks around the room, his golden-brown eyes round and wide like a lion's. He cracks his neck and looks right at me, making the blood pound behind my ears.

  "And who's this?" Azeris asks, but his voice isn't the growl I expect. It's almost happy, like I'm a pleasant surprise.

  "This is Jazz, a friend. There are others coming with us. Jazz, will you bring them?" Liddick asks, then turns back to Azeris. "You and I need to talk about nanites," he says, bringing his hand to Azeris's shoulder, then fishes something out of his pocket with the other. "And do I really have to swallow these things?"

  ***

  I smile when I see Dez sitting next to Tieg on the couch in the Records room, but I didn't expect to see Pitt or Joss. I a
lso didn't expect to see Pitt, Ellis, Avis, and my brother looking like they've just been through a war.

  "What happened to your arms?" I ask as they come out from behind the couch and sit. "Why are you in bandages? And…Joss?"

  "I needed another Omnicoder, and since Tieg and Dez were already coming, Pitt just made sense," Jax says. "Joss was in the fitness room too when we went there looking for Tieg, and after hearing what happened, he wanted to help."

  "It's just not right—" Joss starts, then glances at Arco and stops himself."

  "As for the bandages, we couldn't get access to the Leviathan fleet without reconfiguring some nanites for the scanner. The only place to get Coder classification nanites was here," Jax adds, raising his hands to reveal two bandaged forearms. He gestures to Pitt, Avis, and Ellis, who do the same.

  "The nanites age like the rest of us, but they age in layers—so third year cadets here would have nanites with three layers in their blood, and that's the minimum security clearance to open the Leviathan dock," Ellis says.

  "Are you telling us that you fished nanites out of your blood and stacked them up somehow?" I ask, incredulous.

  "Finally, we did," Ellis says, a scowl moving over his face. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep them from self-destructing outside of the bloodstream? This stupid…" he starts, indignant, then takes a deep breath and resets. "This particular nanite self-destructs if not in constant contact with blood. Needless to say, we figured that out." Everyone is wide-eyed looking at the four of them, each of us no doubt picturing them taking turns dripping blood over these tiny machines as Ellis reconfigures and stacks them. This must have taken forever.

  "But where did you work? How…?" I trail off, then feel compelled to look at Myra and Dez. "The med-bay. But how did you get in?"

  "Arco helped mask my clearance so it wouldn't be traceable back to me. Ms. Karo will see that someone came in tonight, but when she sees the unidentified clearance, we're hoping she'll just assume it was someone above her pay grade checking up on her and let it go," she says. I nod, and then look back at the four POWs. "They'll be healed up in an hour or so—the nanites that they didn't sacrifice are knitting everything back together as we speak," Dez continues, smiling, apparently proud of her handiwork. All of the boys in bandages give her a tolerant smile.