The Lifeline Signal

by RoAnna Sylver

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: Letting Go

  Chapter One: Lightning in a Bottle

  Chapter Two: Turn On the Lights

  Chapter Three: Radio Silence

  Chapter Four: Welcome Home

  Chapter Five: See You in My Dreams

  Chapter Six: Don't Go Out at Night

  Chapter Seven: Move Along Home

  Chapter Eight: Recovery

  Chapter Nine: Rocks and Hard Places

  Chapter Ten: The Smoking Gun

  Chapter Eleven: Find the Queen

  Chapter Twelve: Third Options

  Chapter Thirteen: Dark Clouds On the Horizon

  Chapter Fourteen: Ghosts in the Machine

  Chapter Fifteen: The Eye of the Storm

  Chapter Sixteen: The Calm After

  Chapter Seventeen: Teeth

  Chapter Eighteen: Turn Out the Lights

  Chapter Nineteen: Miracles and Repairs

  Chapter Twenty: Enough

  Epilogue: Waking Up

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  THE LIFELINE SIGNAL: A Chameleon Moon Novel.

  Copyright © 2017 by RoAnna Sylver.

  Cover art by Laya Rose.

  Interior design by Key of Heart Designs.

  Interior graphics by Kristina Kuznetsova, Sham Canggih and Pavel Konovalov.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely

  coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions

  thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

  I love you forever.

  I'll like you for always.

  As long as I'm living, your Bunny I'll be.

  People didn’t usually share dreams. But cities didn’t usually burn for years at a time either. The odds of anything surviving those flames were fantastic, unbelievable—but most things that happened in Parole were. And people did stay alive.

  The only thing rarer than a city that burned for years and survived was three dreamers sharing the same dream, like sitting around a radio for a favorite song. Tonight, when they tuned into their shared frequency, they listened like it was the only song that mattered in the world.

  They sat in a tree on what felt like a mild summer night. Darkness surrounded them like a gentle curtain and soft lights shone through the branches, so close they seemed like fireflies or flowers instead of stars. The trunk stretched up into darkness and down into the same, so thick around it felt like leaning against a wall.

  “Can you hear the sirens?” one asked suddenly. She sat up straight on her branch, holding perfectly still. The starlight above them died and a new light ignited down from below and grew brighter. They looked at each other, fearful eyes lit up in a harsh orange like the glow from a Jack-o’-lantern.

  The trunk was burning and the fire was rising.

  “I know what this is!” The tree swayed as wild winds began to rise around them, rushing on all sides as if they were caught in the center of a cyclone. As she spoke, there came the sound of running feet beating in time with a pounding heart. Like the roar of the fire and howl of the winds, the sound came from all around and she shouted above the noise. “I’ve been waiting for it my whole life, I’d know it even in a dream. Parole is collapsing!”

  “No way.” The second dreamer’s voice was incredulous, a snorted laugh over the sound of shuffling cards. A coin flipped into the air and fell, shining in the firelight—heads or tails, heads or tails? “Not real and not funny. Just knock it off, whoever’s doin—”

  Another sudden light from overhead cut him off, entirely unlike the soft light that belonged there. The branches were blazing as brightly as the roots, every one wreathed in flames. As above, so below. Sparks and burning twigs fell, shaken loose by impacts like blows from heavy axes.

  The dreamers reached for one another, but they were too far. The tree shuddered under one last, terrible impact—and fell. For a few endless seconds gravity disappeared. There was nothing but empty space, reaching hands, and the fire below.

  Then everything stopped with a jerk. The fire still raged, but the terrible shaking stilled as the figure of a boy appeared. He was suspended in the air before them, upside-down… and then he slowly turned, righting himself.

  “Gabriel?” The first dreamer squinted through the heat, shielding her eyes from stray sparks. Her voice was accompanied by the far-off sound of a revving motorcycle’s engine.

  “Yes!” The boy shouted above the roar of the inferno. He still had the round, soft face of a twelve-year-old. Now he always would. His thick black curls caught the sparks falling from the blaze above but they didn’t burn. His large, dark eyes shone bright in the void and they did not reflect the flames. But unlike the three in the tree, his image was partially translucent as if he were only half-solid, half-there. “I’m still here a little longer!”

  “Thank God.” She slumped against the tree trunk, weak with relief. “Thought we lost you again.”

  “Ten years was long enough.” The second shook his head, still laughing, nervous, not looking down even as the flames climbed higher below them. “Now seriously, whoever’s shaking up the tree, cut it out. We’re finally back together, nothing’s gonna—”

  “What did you mean ‘a little longer?’” the third dreamer asked with a flare of nervous realization. An overpowering surge of crackling energy flowed around everyone in the tree. Electrical currents raced white like lightning through a curling cloud of dark hair and shone from behind dark mirrored glasses. “Is Parole really collapsing?”

  “It’s falling.” Gabriel nodded, young face serious. Behind and through it, they could see rising flames. “And I don’t have much time. You have to wake up. Icarus!”

  “What did you say?” the first dreamer asked in a whisper. Her eyes went wide with shock as sirens and alarm klaxons bled through the wailing wind. “I know that word. What does it mean?”

  “You have to let go.” He stared directly into her eyes. “The barrier is down. Sixty seconds. Run.”

  “Wait! Will I ever see this place again?” she cried, seizing her branch with a renewed strength and pointing to the other two. “Will I ever see them again? Or you?”

  “Once you wake up, find each other. Then find me!” Gabriel shouted over the wind. “But you have to let go. There’s nothing left for you in Parole!”

  “I can’t.” Tears streamed down her face but they would never be enough to put out the fire. “Parole is my home! The people I love are here!”

  “If you want to save them, you have to let go!”

  “Where are you?” She looked around desperately. “How do I find you?”

  The one whose energy sparked like a live wire shouted above the roar of the flames. “I’m in the lighthouse! Find me in the lighthouse!”

  “Wake up.” Gabriel reached out and gently touched her forehead with one small finger. She froze, staring at him—then silently slipped off her branch and fell out of sight.

  “No!” the second dreamer screamed, finally shaken out of his anxious, smiling denial. Below his cry came the fluttering of wings, like dozens of panicked birds flapping to escape a hunter’s gun. “Fuck you, Gabriel! Bring her back! Just—just stop! We’re happy here! We’re finally back together, don’t take that—”

  “You have to wake up too.” Gabriel’s young face was set, determined. He bit his lip and reached
out, even as the terrified dreamer flinched away.

  “The lighthouse!” the third yelled again. The words sounded like wrong notes on a piano, discordant, desperate. “We’ll keep the light on for you! Find me!” Before the words were out, the second dreamer fell too.

  Gabriel slowly turned to look up at the third dreamer, the last one left in the tree. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted it. It took me so long to wake up and find you again, and now I have to split us up…”

  “Why? Parole’s collapsing, but this is a dream! Even if everything burns, nothing can hurt us here, right?”

  “There’s still so much to do,” Gabriel said, sounding more tired than anyone in a dream should. The last dreamer’s mirrored sunglasses reflected his tear-filled eyes. They looked many years too old and less solid every second. “And we can’t do it here. I’d love to stay here with you, but…”

  “What’s happening to you? You’re fading away, where are you going?”

  “You were my best friends in the world. I know I’m just a ghost now, but I wish we could…”

  “We’re still your friends.” A cool breeze rushed past them, soothing against the searing heat of the fire. The last dreamer reached out for his hand. “We never forgot you. We never stopped looking. You were never a ghost.”

  “Let go,” Gabriel said softly, watching as the branch shook in the dreamer’s tight grip. He did not take the offered hand, averting his gaze as if it hurt to even look. “Wake up. So we can start.”

  “I’m scared.” Clinging to the tree might be futile, but the choice between that and falling into the darkness was simple. There was no choice.

  “Trust me. Trust you. Let go.”

  “I’ll fall,” said the dreamer. Some fears never went away even in dreams.

  “Yes. But sometimes falling isn’t the last thing that happens to you. Sometimes it’s the first thing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know a lot of things,” Gabriel said, voice somehow sounding as faded as the outlines of his face. “But I know you’ll be okay.”

  “But what about you?”

  He didn’t answer. They sat in the tree together for another moment. Then Gabriel watched the last dreamer slip away—falling into the dark, but not into the fire.

  “Find them, Shiloh.” Gabriel was alone in the darkness, watching the tree burn. As he spoke, the sound of static distorted his voice, as if he were speaking on a radio channel with another signal bleeding through. There was a girl’s voice below, just barely audible. Celeste, where are you? We have to go… “Find them, and I’ll find you.”

  Three thousand miles from the fires of Parole, a dreamer sat in the warm midday sun, leaned against a cool concrete wall, and drew the dream.

  Shiloh Cole’s hand moved quickly, recreating the visual details before they faded. A trunk stretching up into darkness and down into flames. A city with fire underneath. A ship that sailed on the land. Memories of that tree and the people in it were clear and strong, much stronger than any memories of a childhood in Parole, ten years removed from this quiet moment.

  But there was still a barrier overhead. Like the one over Parole, it blurred the sky and made everything look wavy, like ripples on water or thick glass. Staring at it was a recipe for a headache—but that could be said for a lot of things. The barrier did nothing to block out the sun, there wasn’t enough shade in the world to deal with that monster. Not even with an oversized hat and dark, mirrored sunglasses that always stayed on, even inside and at night. For someone who lived in a lighthouse, Shiloh put a lot of time and energy into trying to avoid the glare. Avoiding pain, drawing, remembering…and now, waiting. Shiloh hated waiting, even more than the sun.

  At least the waiting wouldn’t last too much longer. Today the air seemed charged, filled with palpable electricity. Like the air before a storm. Shiloh couldn’t sit still and it wasn’t because of the usual cabin fever or coffee jitters. Something was about to happen. Soon. Today.

  In a sea of strangers, familiar faces were about to appear. Everything would change; Shiloh could feel it. Two of them. Any minute now.

  “Shiloh!” A tanned, white girl with strawberry blonde hair and a dusting of freckles strode closer, walking with purpose in her step and smile. Brianna. She wasn’t one of the people Shiloh was waiting for but it was never a bad thing to see her coming either.

  “Hey, Bri,” Shiloh said. “Catch anything?”

  “About to head out now.” She waved with one bare hand. A pair of thick gloves were tucked into the strap of a bag slung over her shoulder, along with a metal canister for collecting toxic samples. “Just couldn’t leave without seeing the sketch of the day.”

  “Sure. Pull up a wall.” Shiloh smiled at her approach and the one Brianna gave in return was reflected in upside-down miniature in Shiloh’s sunglasses. The eyes behind the mirrors were bright and sharp and there wasn’t much that escaped their notice. Shiloh’s sense of humor could cut too—but the hard edges ended there. The rest was soft. Round cheeks that curved and dimpled with easy smiles, a soft body that felt at home in gentle colors, warm brown skin, and loose-falling natural curls.

  “Good people-watching today?”

  “It’s not creepy if I’m an artist.” The half-joking answer was only partially true. Shiloh had been waiting by Meridian’s entrance for the past hour. The large gate in the surrounding high walls was open, the barrier arcing overhead. Traffic was picking up today, a couple of men in white uniforms stood inside the cubicle at the gate, waving people and vehicles through. A boxy delivery truck. A small group of relief doctors on foot. But no one Shiloh especially wanted to capture on paper. Today’s people-watching wasn’t for art inspiration.

  “You’re still feeling like a princess locked up in a tower, aren’t you?” Brianna asked, looking up at the barrier above and the walls below. The barrier was a dome, not a sphere, and only extended down to the top of the wall that encircled Meridian, but that wall was high, thick concrete, and just as impassable. When Shiloh didn’t answer she looked over. “Sorry. Is there a better word? A more nonbinary word?”

  “It comes closer than prince,” Shiloh said with a shrug. Neither word quite fit. Nothing like them did; even the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she’ didn’t work. ‘They’ came closer, but it was still worse than the sun on a hot day. “But the rest sounds about right. I’d rather face a dragon than one more day of nothing.”

  “Well, between you and me,” she grinned, “if it ever came down to you versus a dragon, I’d bet on you every time.”

  “Keep it under your hat.” Shiloh smiled back, pulling the floppy brim down, immediately feeling better when shaded from the harsh sun. There were a lot of words that didn’t work and searching for one that fit had taken a long time. Finally finding one was worth it, because it felt something like this—but a thousand times better. Some words could be worn like healing armor. Some brought the cool relief of putting on sunglasses at high noon. Out of several prescription pairs, Shiloh’s favorites were round and mirrored.

  When xie looked into them, xie saw xirself, and smiled.

  Brianna was quiet for a moment, then asked something a little more serious. “How’s Arnold?”

  “Not being an asshole for once.” Shiloh went back to xir drawing. It took painstaking attention to accurately recall each detail—emphasis on pain. That focus came with a price, and if the hand cramp wasn’t steep enough, the headache was. “Pretty good day so far.”

  Arnold wasn’t a person, but he was a major pain in Shiloh’s ass. Or more accurately, xir head. Arnold-Chiari Malformation was a condition—technically a genetic mutation—that involved the skull putting pressure on the brain where it shouldn’t, with problem areas in the spinal cord, cerebellum and occipitals. Scientific words to say there were a lot of ways for Arnold to ruin Shiloh’s day. On a bad day, the pain in the back of xir head and neck could be piercing, blinding, nauseating. Sneezing hurt. Even laughing hurt. Vertigo. Blackouts. Di
zziness. Disorientation. Dissociation; the lightheaded feeling that nothing was real—but Shiloh was starting to feel that one even without Arnold.

  “I like those two,” Brianna commented on the open sketchbook page and drawing-in-progress; two people and a less-practiced attempt at a ship with sails. Shiloh held very still, heart pounding, watching her reaction. These images had been stuck in Shiloh’s mind like a catchy song and right now it was like that song was playing in surround-sound. “Punk rock Asian girl? And this guy… sorry, his eyes. Dreamy.”

  “Punk rock Vietnamese girl. American.” Shiloh started busily drawing again and didn’t look up, focusing on looking intense and artistic instead of anxious. “And dreamy Indian American guy. Like the country India, not Native like my mom and me.”

  “Love her jacket,” Brianna said, resting her chin in her hand. “It’s like 80’s vintage punk—I hear that’s totally coming back now. What’s she wearing, armor?”

  “Uh, metal braces,” Shiloh said. “But they work as armor too.”

  “Awesome. Oh, I like dreamy guy's scarf too. Little hipster for me, but it goes nice with his skinny jeans. It’d look better on you.”

  “Ha, thanks,” Shiloh said with a head-shake, but not an annoyed one. Long as she didn’t start asking questions Shiloh didn’t know how to answer, Brianna’s happy chatter made it easier to relax. “She has this huge, cool motorcycle but I can’t draw vehicles to save my life—see?” Xie pointed at the ship in the upper right corner. “The sails aren’t right. People are easier, though. This guy can do all kinds of magic tricks, like cards and flocks of doves and… always staying one step ahead of… um, together, they fight crime?”

  “You gave them a whole little story? Do they have names?” Shiloh didn’t answer right away, but Brianna didn’t seem to notice. “You’re right, you are good at people. They almost look real.”

  “I’ve been practicing. A lot.” Xir smile faded and xie closed the sketchbook. “Not much else to do. I’m done with the semester already. That’s how bored I am, homework sounds fun.”