The Lifeline Signal

by RoAnna Sylver

  The face that looked like Garrett’s mimicked confusion. His eyebrows knit together in deep thought and again Shiloh felt the impact of memory like a physical blow, mingled with a nauseated chill. Xie knew that expression, but it only belonged on Garrett’s face. Not this one, not with these eyes.

  “No.” Shiloh shook xir head. “You’re not. You look like him and you sound like him but you’re not. Why are you doing this?”

  “Exchange.” The voice had Garrett’s rich, melodious timbre but the words came very slowly, as if each one was a tremendous effort. “Showing you…the way.”

  “The way to what?” Shiloh’s voice shook but xie didn’t let it break. “Parole?”

  The ghost did not respond. Not a word, not a nod, not a shake of the head. The look of confusion bordering on frustration remained etched into Garrett’s features.

  “The FireRunner? We know the way there,” Annie said, with a similar look of confusion but with an underlying wariness instead of frustration. “What are you trying to show us?”

  The ghost with Garrett’s face hesitated, seeming to wrestle with an insurmountable dilemma. Finally, it raised its recreated hands, gesturing to Garrett Cole’s face, then spread its arms. If all the world was a stage, he’d just stepped into the spotlight.

  “Him,” Shiloh said in an awed whisper. “Where he’s hiding. Where my mom went to find him. You’re going to show us how to find my parents.”

  A pause. Then a slow incline of Garrett’s head. His fingers went to the brim of his hat. Then one hand slowly came up again, reaching, not toward any of them, but the sky. Shiloh turned to look, eyes following the outstretched finger.

  “Oh…” Xie took in a breath, slow and shaking.

  Something came into view above their heads, like the fullest, brightest moon possible emerging from behind a curtain of heavy clouds. But it wasn’t the moon, or the stars. Even at night, it seemed to shine almost as bright as the sun. A silver-violet stream curled in a shimmering path like a comet’s tail. It ran parallel to the highway, a glittering aurora borealis, curling in sibilant whirls and curves arcing toward the horizon. Shapes and swirls, like someone took a paintbrush and started making an iridescent watercolor across the sky.

  “What is that?” Annie’s eyes narrowed and she took a step back. But she was the only one suspicious. The other two were staring, motionless at the lights in the sky.

  “You asked what I was looking for when I looked up at the stars. Well, there it is.” Shiloh’s voice was hushed. Xie adjusted xir sunglasses, smiling, and the other two didn’t need to see xir eyes to tell they were wet behind them.

  “What is it?” Annie stared up at the metallic swirls. The light started faintly at first and then grew, thicker and wider, until it looked solid enough that they could have walked on it. Tiny glittering particles danced in its spread, sparkle snow cascading gently like dust in a sunbeam. The motion almost made it look alive.

  “My mom’s lights!” Shiloh laughed, but swiped at xir eyes. “Remember back when we split up, we kept talking about stuff like, ‘you know what to look for,’ and ‘what we planned?’ This was it!”

  “Pretty,” Indra said appreciatively, then saw the look Shiloh was giving him. “What?”

  “You can see it?” Shiloh looked at him, then Annie, then up at the sky. “You can see that, is that what’s going on?”

  “What are you talking about?” Annie turned to stare at her friends now, as if they were just as strange a sight. “Of course I see it. Am I not supposed to?”

  “Not without these,” Shiloh said, tapping xir mirrored glasses. “All my life, there have been two kinds of light that didn’t hurt to look at. The kind that I make…and the kind my mom uses to write in invisible ink. Invisible unless you’re wearing something that lets you see it.”

  “Then why can we see it?”

  “I don’t know.” Shiloh shook xir head in wonderment. Xie experimentally removed xir glasses; as expected, the lights faded.

  “What—where’d they go?” Indra said in a startled voice, then turned to look at Shiloh. “Did you—”

  Shiloh put xir glasses back on and the lights seemed to re-appear, bright and shining as before. Apparently, not just to xir eyes, because Indra and Annie looked back up at the sky immediately.

  “This is weird,” Annie muttered. “Really weird.”

  “It’s gotta be the brain-link stuff.” Indra shrugged. “Nothing else makes sense.”

  “None of it makes sense at all,” Annie said.

  “It kind of does.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, and shot a suspicious glance at the Garrett ghost. “Shiloh can only see the lights with those glasses, so, same for us.”

  “This is so weird,” Annie repeated under her breath.

  But Shiloh was only half-listening. “Don’t you guys know what this means?”

  “Weird.”

  “It means my mom’s okay!” Shiloh laughed with sheer relief. “She’s writing in the sky, she’s pointing the way to my dad, she might have even found him by now—and she was right about them!” Shiloh turned to look back at the Garrett ghost, who was also gazing serenely up at the starry night sky and glittering lights. “They communicate, she must have found a way to talk to them and—she was right, I knew it!”

  “That’s a lot to take on faith,” Annie said warily, looking not up at the sky but at Shiloh’s face, lit up from the inside with relief. “But I’ll agree with one thing. That light is pointing us directly toward the rendezvous. Your family and mine must be going the same direction.”

  “You think they’re all together?” Shiloh asked in a small voice. “You think when we get to the FireRunner, my parents will be there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, turning away from the hope in Shiloh’s eyes to look back up at the stream of light flowing toward the horizon. “But it’s in line with our next step.”

  “Move along,” boomed Garret’s voice, and Shiloh turned around with a slight jump. Somehow xie’d almost forgotten the ghost was there.

  “Thank you,” xie whispered, blinking back tears. For some reason xie was sure the ghost could hear even the softest whisper.

  “Um, am I the only one having a hard time with this?” Indra eyed the glittering lights, then peered around Annie at the ghost wearing Garrett’s face again. “Like, where did that light come from? How did that even happen? Was it always there, and the ghosts were like, hiding it until now? Do the ghosts have your dad? Is he a prisoner, or are they working together? And if your mom made the lights—is she with them too? Is that good or bad? Is any of this good or bad?”

  “And those are all good questions.” Annie leveled a hard stare at the Garrett ghost again. “Garrett Cole is very important to us. So is Dr. Maureen Cole. Are you friends with them?” She waited for an answer. When the ghost didn’t give one, she tried again. “You haven’t attacked us. You keep trying to talk to us instead. Why?”

  “Icarus.” The word rang low and settled warmly in the deepest part of Shiloh’s chest. Maybe the questions were sensible. They might even be right. But xie couldn’t stop looking up at Maureen’s encrypted invisible ink pointing the way, or stop listening to Garrett’s voice and just hearing confirmation that everything would be okay. Just for a minute, Shiloh wanted to see, hear, and believe. “Exchange.”

  “And then there’s that,” Indra said quickly, sounding less and less reassured by the word. “That ‘Icarus’ thing again—and ‘exchange,’ what the hell does it mean by that?”

  “Exchange,” Garrett’s hands gleamed silver-bright in the light of the proximity ward circle; strange shadows danced across his face as he stepped closer, lit from below as if he stood inside a ring of tiny stage floodlights. “Turn out the lights.”

  “What?” Every bit of the warm glow Shiloh had felt the moment xie’d looked up into the sky was gone, as if xie’d been plunged into cold water. Something about the enigmatic words in xir father’s voice sent a shiver down xir
spine. Was it a mere request? Or a threat? “My mom’s lights? No, we can’t turn those out, we need those, they’re important—”

  “Exchange. Icarus. Turn out the lights.”

  “Exchange for what?” Annie cut in as Shiloh opened xir mouth to protest again. “Just tell us what you want.”

  Before the ghost could answer, a long, high-pitched howl split the quiet night air, so strange and sudden everyone fell silent and very still.

  “Was that a freaking wolf?” Indra inched closer to Annie and Shiloh. “There are wolves out here too?”

  “There shouldn’t be,” Annie said, though she sounded just as unnerved and raised the baseball bat she still held. “I don’t remember ever seeing an actual animal around here. Only—”

  (Enemy.) It wasn’t Garrett’s voice anymore and it wasn’t even the dragon’s. The sound like a ghostly choir rose up from every direction again, many voices all together raising the hair on the back of Shiloh’s neck.

  “What?” Xie looked up, shaken alert by the cold surge of panic. Above the eerie voices, a new, strange sound rose up through the cover of darkness. Something was running toward them. It sounded like a horse’s gallop, without the sharpness of hooves.

  (“If you ever thought the law was on your side…”) The voice shifted again, back to a single girl’s that everybody knew. Everyone here had heard these words before, when an Angel on the radio talked a frightened city through a disastrous collapse. The ghost shook its head, borrowed face twisting into a furious scowl. Again, its outline began to twist and shift. (Think again.)

  “Wait!” Shiloh cried, suddenly overwhelmed with panic at the thought of Garrett disappearing again. Even an imitation, even a ghost. He’d still be gone.

  But nothing could stop the change and Garret’s features began to morph into something else. His features disappeared into the dragon’s sharp, snakelike face and, soon, any trace of humanity was gone. The only things that stayed the same was the pair of tunnel-like eyes.

  A terrible metallic screech erupted as something slammed into the dragon at high speed. The suffocating pressure vanished and the lights flickered back on. In an instant, the whispers were gone and all that remained was a struggle between two very solid creatures: a huge canine shape wrestling with the dragon on the ground.

  A surreal battle unfolded before them. A giant metal wolf rolled across the desert floor, fighting the dragon tooth and nail. The bear-sized animal had paws the size of garbage can lids and glowing blue eyes, which gave off sparks and metallic glints when it moved. It didn’t look entirely robotic—it moved with the fluid grace of a real wolf—but had enough metal and synthetic parts to suggest a blend. And all of it was focused on slaying the dragon.

  “Annie, suggestion, maybe we should get back on the bike.” Indra pulled at her arm, trying to edge all of them toward the motorcycle and hopefully the open road. “They look busy, we can probably get away while—”

  “No, we’re fine!” Annie wasn’t going anywhere. She was actually grinning, relief shining through the fear on her sweat-drenched face. “It’s Dandy!”

  “Are you kidding?” Indra stared at her as if she’d grown another head. “Fine and dandy? Fine and—”

  “No!” Annie pointed directly at the robotic wolf. “He’s here to help us! Good boy, Dandy!”

  The cybernetic wolf shot Annie a glance as if he’d been called by name. Then he lunged toward the dragon’s head, but that wasn’t the only weapon at the dragon’s disposal. Its tail cracked like a whip through the air, then slammed into its opponent’s skull, slipping away while its opponent was off-balance.

  “Wait… what?” Annie whispered, joy at seeing the wolf dissipating fast, replaced by horror. “No, they’re not supposed to be solid. They’re not supposed to be real!”

  The ghost almost seemed to hear her. It turned with frightening speed, and dove away from the wolf—and directly toward Shiloh.

  Xie stumbled backward and tripped, over a rock or maybe just xir own feet. Xir back hit the ground and the wind rushed from xir lungs before Shiloh could react or even process what was happening. The dragon was there in an instant, looming over Shiloh and staring straight down. In shock, Shiloh stared back, immobilized under its terrifying, empty eyes.

  (Turn out the light.)

  “No!” A flower of light, defiantly blazing, bloomed from Shiloh’s hands. Unlike the flashlight or the harsh halogen lamps, it didn’t hurt xir eyes. It grew into a sphere, brilliant and prismatic, filled with the full color spectrum instead of the sterile white of the lights on the ground—which exploded in rapid pops and showers of sparks. It enveloped the dragon, then Annie and Indra and the entire camp and beyond it, below them and above them, the entire world—

  It was almost impossible to see through the flare but Shiloh could just make out a long, curving silhouette. The dragon reared back, head and neck poised like a cobra about to strike. Curls of smoke so thick it seemed almost solid poured from its nostrils and between its teeth, cascading to the ground. Shiloh squeezed xir eyes shut and waited for the blast of killing smoke, but it didn’t come. After a few terrifying seconds, Shiloh opened xir eyes—and gasped in horror.

  Indra stood between the dragon and Shiloh, one arm raised in a defensive block as swirls of the dragon’s oily-smoky breath curled around it. It must have burned where it touched his skin, because his mouth was open in a silent scream of agony. Still, he didn’t make a sound or move an inch—until he slowly fell to his knees, eyes wide in horror.

  “Indra!” Shiloh gasped, scrambling to where he lay in a heap, curled around his right arm, shoulders shaking.

  “Stay down!” Annie shouted, swinging her bat wildly at the dragon’s head, gasping as it connected. Shock waves shot up her arm, nearly jarring the bat from her hands. Slowly the dragon turned to stare at Annie and, in a horrifying flash, Shiloh remembered the soldiers in Meridian, the torrent of poison, the way they’d burned—

  Shiloh’s brilliant light sputtered and went out. Snarls and screeches filled the air but Shiloh couldn’t move, paralyzed with terror. Xie hunched down over Indra, who reached out in the dark to catch hold of xir hands and held on. Every instinct screamed to run but the fight sounds seemed to come from everywhere, one wrong move would take them right back into swiping claws and razor teeth. After a terrifying, disorienting moment, xie felt a hand on xir elbow—Annie. Behind her something sputtered and struggled to stay lit: the last remaining perimeter light, pointing the way. Together, she and Shiloh half-dragged Indra toward it and out of danger.

  The fight wasn’t going nearly as well for the ghost anymore. Needle-sharp metal fangs tore at its impossibly solid flesh, unaffected by its toxins. Curved razor claws raked, huge, heavy paws crushing its skeletal frame, blue gem-bright eyes staring down at it. It didn’t fight back or even move, instead just slumping to the ground with what looked like a tired sigh.

  Then, after one last swipe of the wolf’s steel talons, the dragon was gone. It dissipated into the dark as quickly as it had come, leaving behind nothing but a thin trail of curling smoke and a puddle of viscous black liquid on the ground. Toto-Dandy turned with a satisfied flick of his tail, to look at the trio of exhausted, and in one case wounded, young humans.

  Indra curled protectively around his arm, breathing in harsh, painful hisses. He didn’t look up or seem aware that the fight was over, or even that Shiloh or Annie were there.

  “Let me see,” Annie reached out to gently take his arm for a better look. Indra didn’t flinch, but he did turn away and shut his eyes.

  “Indra, are you…” Shiloh stopped. The question didn’t deserve to be asked. Of course he wasn’t okay. He hadn’t been okay since they’d arrived at Radiance Headquarters and maybe not for a long time before that, certainly not now. “Say something.”

  “Like what?” He gritted his teeth against the pain. The skin of his injured arm was beginning to crack and peel, as if it had been touched by an open flame. It didn’t look melted or as destr
oyed as the SkEye soldiers had been, but the damage was still clearly severe.

  “I need to clean this, at least get the surface poison off,” Annie said in a low voice, shaking her head to keep from sinking into a painful reverie. “Shiloh, there’s a first aid kit in the left front compartment. Grab it. And a water bottle. And a jacket or blanket or something.” She looked up as xie hesitated, still staring at Indra’s arm in horror. “Now!”

  “Okay!” Xie snapped out of it, scrambled hurriedly off, and Annie looked up at Toto-Dandy.

  “You—I don’t know how you found us, but good boy. Good.” The synthetic wolf did not loll out his tongue or prance around like another animal might have. Instead he met her eyes and dropped his head in a strangely human response, almost a nod of agreement. Praise acknowledged and accepted. “Now… make sure none of those things come back.” He trotted a small distance away and sat down at the edge of the faint light of the halogen lamps. Dandy looked alert and on guard, but the night air was still. No sign of ghosts or anything else.

  “Here we go,” Shiloh reappeared at her elbow, kneeling down with xir arms full of the items she’d listed and clearly still running high on adrenaline. “What can I do to help?”

  “You can take some deep breaths.” Annie opened the white and red crossed box and started digging around. “Then help Indra do the same thing. This might sting.”

  “Okay.” Shiloh cradled Indra’s head, smoothing his hair back and trying to get xir own panicked breathing under control. “Hey, Indra, look at me. You’re gonna be okay. We’re both right here with you, we got you. We’re not gonna let anything bad happen to—”

  “Aaaghh!” Indra cried as Annie poured water over the burn-like wound, then followed it up with antibiotic ointment and an ace bandage.

  “That’s all we have?” Shiloh cast her a worried look.

  “I lost a lot of supplies on the trip,” she answered shortly. “I have bandages and I can keep it clean, but that’s about it.” She moved as quickly and gently as she could, but everywhere she touched sent pain radiating up Indra’s entire side. The burnt texture continued to spread across Indra’s skin, as if it were still slowly burning with an invisible fire. “We just need to reach the FireRunner. They have treatments, prototype antitoxins Radiance hasn't even made public yet. They can help.”