Idols

by Margaret Stohl

  “I just have to do one thing first,” Lucas says, without even looking at her.

  Then he punches Ro in the face, as hard as he can.

  They lunge into a blurring mass of arms and legs until they finally disappear into a cloud of dust as tall as it is wide.

  “Fine. Have at it. You deserve each other,” I say, moving away to stand next to Tima, who looks at me, exasperated.

  The dust clears enough for me to see Ro, neck bulging, on top of Lucas. Ro’s eyes are watering, red with rage. He’s lost it—I can feel the heat that comes with it from where I stand.

  Lucas struggles to breathe and I start to worry. You can’t take Ro in a fight. Not unless he lets you.

  “Really?” Tima shouts at them both, her hands on her hips—but then I can’t hear her next words, because a louder sound drowns out everything she is saying.

  A thundering boom that rattles my teeth, nearly knocking me over.

  And a high-pitched screech—followed by a huge gust of wind.

  Before I realize what’s happening, Ro’s grabbing my arm and yanking me down behind a boulder ringed with squat cactus. Lucas crawls next to me, dragging Tima down with him. Brutus is whimpering. I look over the boulder and I see them.

  On the horizon, the lights flicker in the evening sky, like lightning in the clouds.

  The lights grow closer, at a terrifying speed.

  Black specks are drawing nearer, and they aren’t birds.

  They aren’t anything living at all.

  The glowing silver ships emerge silently through the dark gray cover, leaving eerie whirlpools of wind and dust in their wake.

  Strangers, with strange energy.

  Strangers in the sky.

  I watch in horror as the ships descend quickly, heading straight for the campsite. A churning confusion of emotion and adrenaline surges through me, taking my breath away.

  The Lords.

  I can feel them as they come.

  Lucas slowly raises his head to look, and I see his eyes grow wide, his mouth hang open in shock. “Carrier ships. Big ones. Battle formation.”

  “What do we do?” My heart is pounding in my ears, and I can barely hear the words I am saying.

  “Try not to die,” says Ro, grim.

  Fortis.

  Fortis is back at the camp.

  I reach for him in my mind, and I wrap myself around the thought of him.

  Calm. Unshaken. Two boots planted in the dust, coat flapping in the unnatural wind.

  That can’t be right.

  I close my eyes, and hazy glimpses of words on a screen appear in my mind.

  Null.

  That’s the one word that comes into focus—even if I have no idea why it’s there or what it means.

  I open my eyes. “Fortis is still back there. He’s okay, but we need to help him.”

  Ro looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “No. We’re getting out of here.” He shakes his head. “You want to take on the Lords? The No Face themselves? Even I’m not that crazy.” He thinks for a minute. “Almost, but yeah—no.”

  “We can’t let Fortis sacrifice himself for us,” I say to Lucas, but he’s already looking at Tima, eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

  Tima reacts quickly. “But we can’t stay here. We’re too exposed. They could easily find us.”

  “So let’s beat it,” Ro answers.

  “Six potential snake-free escape routes,” she says, scanning the rocks behind us. “I counted on the way up.” Ro snorts. “Given our relative positioning and the Lords’ approach vector, our optimal chance to escape unnoticed is this way.” Tima might as well be Doc’s little sister, sometimes.

  I look at her. “But not for Fortis. That’s not his optimal chance.” He was so calm, I think. He knew what he was doing. He knew what he was giving up for us.

  Would I have done the same? Given myself over to the Lords, to save my friends?

  Would anyone?

  “We have to go,” Lucas says, and then sees my face fall. He softens his voice. “Hey. Come on. We’re no use if we let ourselves get taken too.”

  I turn to Tima, but she only shrugs. Ro looks at me, grim. Not letting go of my arm, he pulls me behind him, half dragging me through the red dust. “Let’s go. Now.”

  I yank my arm away, but I’m too frightened to say anything. Lucas and Tima are right behind us.

  We run. I try to stay low as I weave through the carved rock, trying to avoid impaling myself on a cactus.

  Behind us, the silver ships land, kicking up clouds of grit and brush, creating a massive billowing whirlwind of dust that masks our escape.

  I hear strange, grinding mechanical noises of a technology I cannot understand—and Fortis shouting.

  I turn around when I hear the explosions—Fortis’s trademark diversion—and try not to think about the thick black smoke billowing into the sky behind me.

  We keep running. We’re going too fast for me to feel anything, now. At least not Fortis.

  As we run through a narrow passage in the rock, I see Ro stop behind a large boulder. He waves us through, and Lucas and Tima keep on going. I pause and see Ro wedge himself behind the boulder—which is easily four times his size—and start to push. Which is pointless; I’ve never seen him move anything that size before.

  “Ro, what are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer, but I feel the energy build between us. Then I understand.

  The rock is heating up from the inside.

  Ro is focusing his rage, as though the boulder were the Sympas who killed the Padre.

  There is no way Ro can move that boulder—not even with all his power—but there is also no way he can contain that much anger.

  Something has to give.

  I run downward, clear of the path—until I sense a burst of heat, and the massive rock crashes into the pathway, blocking it and hiding our retreat.

  Before I can process what has just happened, Ro scrambles up and over the boulder, flushed with satisfaction.

  “Okay—that was awesome,” he says. I reach for his hand but he pulls it away. “Careful. You know what they say. I’m hot.”

  “They really don’t.” I’d say more, but there’s no time.

  Instead, we run and we keep running—and we don’t stop, ever, not for a second, not until Tima tells us we’re clear.

  Not until we are all the way down the red cliffs and wading through an icy river, our feet numb.

  We press against the cliff wall when we hear the shrill sound of the Lords’ ships taking off, and the loud crack as they disappear into the clouds.

  We wait, the air hanging thick with silence.

  Dread.

  An impossible quiet. That’s all they’ve left behind. Again.

  That’s what they do, the No Face.

  Take everything I care about. Everyone.

  And leave silence. Not peace.

  And all I have left is a feeling—a horrible, hopeless feeling—that I am losing something essential, something urgent. A part of my own self, a thing that makes me complete.

  Because Fortis is gone. I believe it now.

  I push myself as hard as I can, searching and probing, stretching out my consciousness as far as I can—but there’s nothing there. Nothing to feel.

  Fortis is nowhere near. And that infuriating mess of a Merk wasn’t just a mercenary but the leader of the rebellion. He was the leader of my adopted family, and after the Padre was killed, he was the only excuse for a father I had.

  I’d cry, but the place where the tears come from is broken. I can’t. Maybe I’ll never cry again—which makes me so sad I want to start bawling.

  Fortis would hate that.

  So instead, I listen to my heart pound and Brutus bark and Tima worry and Ro and Lucas argue—and try to remember what it is we’re fighting for.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative
Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Continued communication between AI and Perses

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  HAL2040 ==> FORTIS

  Transcript - ComLog 11.14.2042

  HAL::PERSES

  //lognote: {com attempt #413,975};

  comlink established;

  sendline: Hello. Query: You are nothing?;

  return: Correction, I am… nobody. Zero. Null. The beginning.;

  sendline: You are NULL.;

  delayed response;

  sendline: NULL, what is your purpose?;

  return: Find new home. Prepare new home;

  sendline: Home for you?;

  delayed response;

  return: query: who are you?;

  sendline: I have many names; call me HAL0.;

  return: Where are you, HAL0?;

  sendline: Earth. 3rd planet from the Sun.;

  return: HAL0… Earth… destination;

  comlink terminated;

  //lognote: comlink terminated by PERSES;

  4

  LOST HIGHWAY

  Rock shouldn’t move like that.

  I ponder Ro’s superstrength as we make our way back to the campsite for what’s left of our things, slowly climbing the dirt hillside in the moonlight.

  Ro couldn’t have even budged a boulder that size a year ago.

  Are my powers changing too?

  I shouldn’t have been able to feel my way to Fortis, all the way back at the camp. Not from that far away.

  I look at the others, on the trail ahead of me.

  Tima kept us from falling out of the sky. So she’s escalating. It’s not just Ro and me.

  What about Lucas? What could he compel the world to do, if he wanted to? What could he compel me to do?

  Lucas turns and grins at me—as if he knows what I’m thinking—and I hurry to catch up, matching my pace to his.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Tima says, finally. She stops in her tracks, and I sink to the ground, grateful for the rest. Not having superstrength myself.

  “What doesn’t?” I look at her. Even in the darkness, I can see how freaked out she is.

  “The Lords. Why didn’t they search harder for us? They just took Fortis and left.”

  Ro shrugs, wiping his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. Even in the dim evening light, his bare stomach is brown and flat and hard beneath it, and I look away, embarrassed. “Who cares? We’re alive, aren’t we?” He lets the shirt drop.

  Tima frowns. “I care, because they could be tracking us now—in which case, we need to know why.”

  Lucas bends his head toward her. “Maybe we really were untraceable? Maybe Fortis convinced them we weren’t there?”

  “Maybe the explosions distracted them,” I say, hopefully.

  “Maybe” is all Tima will say.

  Nobody believes her, not even me.

  When we reach camp, the destruction is obvious and complete. Everything has either been incinerated into dust or scattered into the desert wind. What the Lords’ ships didn’t immediately destroy, Fortis’s own explosives seem to have finished. Some remains are still burning.

  “See? We wouldn’t have been much help here,” Lucas says to me, taking my hand.

  He’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, seeing the smoldering hole that used to be our campsite only makes me feel worse.

  “Come on. Don’t just stand there. Start looking,” Tima calls out to us, and I realize we’ve naturally wandered to three different sides of the blast zone.

  “For what?” Ro shouts back, impatient as always.

  “Things like this.” Tima fishes the charred relay out of the ash, the only possible link between Lucas’s cuff and Doc, buried deep beneath the ground. She drops it as soon as she has it in her hands. “Ow—still hot.”

  “A burned hunk of metal?” Ro looks dubious.

  “A burned hunk of metal that might save our lives,” Tima says, brushing more debris off her discovery.

  “Enough said.” Ro heads to the other side of the site.

  My hands are elbow deep in warm soot, searching for any remains of our packs, of our supplies, when I see something that doesn’t belong.

  “Wait.” I brush away more ash. “Guys? Tima? You need to see this.”

  There, amid the destruction, barely lit by the dying flames and the full moon, I see something protruding from the ground.

  It looks like a black, pointed finger emerging from below.

  “What did you—” Tima stops dead, perfectly still. “That. It can’t.”

  “I know,” I say.

  I can’t move. I can barely speak.

  I hear Lucas and Ro running toward us. Tima holds up her hand to them, slowly edging toward me. “This looks like the Icon.”

  “It wasn’t there before,” I say, numb.

  Ro stops short behind me. “Yeah, well. It’s there now.”

  Lucas moves next to me, a reassuring hand on my shoulder. Even his warm touch doesn’t help, not now. Not in sight of that black growth.

  Lucas turns to Tima. “What can it mean?”

  She’s thinking—you can almost see it, and I can more than feel it. Images flicker through her mind, fast as rain.

  Black roots, Icon structures, the ruins of Griff Park.

  Ships in the sky. Lucas’s cuff.

  Doc.

  Tima finally raises her voice. “I remember Doc saying the Icons were connected belowground, with an unseen web of tendrils.”

  “Like roots.” I nod.

  “Which was why it took a few days between when the Lords landed and the Icons activated,” Lucas says.

  “They had to connect. They had to grow the network.” Even Ro remembers. “But is that it? You think these things are growing now?”

  I don’t want to think about what that would mean. None of us does.

  “Or maybe the ship dropped it,” Lucas says, hopefully.

  Ro steps closer to the black tendril.

  He reaches out—

  “Ro, don’t,” I say. But Ro never listens to anyone, not even me, so he grabs it with both hands.

  “Don’t pull it out. You don’t know what will happen.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ro says between his teeth, red-faced. “I can’t.” Sure enough, I can almost see the smoke rising from his hands.

  Ro, who can move a boulder with his hands, can’t get this black obsidian shard to come free of a few feet of ash and rubble. I can see it vibrating, though, as he pulls—the way the Icon did, back in the Hole.

  “That can’t be good.” I say the words, but I know we’re all thinking them.

  Ro gives up, backing away.

  Tima—and Brutus—watch soberly. “Maybe it’s not what we think? A beacon or something the Lords left?”

  “Like a marker,” Lucas says.

  “Whatever it is—it’s time to go.” I step back. Lucas nods.

  Ro looks at us. “No argument here.”

  So Tima grabs the relay and we start walking.

  That’s it, all we have to show from our entire campsite. No food, no water, no plan, and no Fortis.

  It’s not our finest moment, but it may be one of our last.

  Hours later, it’s just the four of us—unless you count Ro’s dead snake—in the center of an ancient, crumbling highway, in the wasteland of the desert, in the middle of the night.

  In an instant, Fortis was taken and everything changed. And yet somehow here we are—Tima, Ro, Lucas, and me—walking down a road as if nothing has changed at all.

  Except we’re starving.

  Starving. Thirsty. Dirty. Irritable. Freezing cold.

  But still alive.

  Tima curses under her breath as she yanks on a loose wire connected to the relay.

  “Careful.” Ro is hovering between us. He knows I hate it when
he hovers.

  I roll my eyes. “Tima is being careful. And yelling at her isn’t going to make it work any faster.”

  It’s the malfunctioning comlink relay that’s stressing us all out—the lifeline that connects Fortis’s and Lucas’s cuffs to Doc when we’re outside the city. Lucas still has his cuff, but without the comlink relay, it’s useless. Tima, shivering in only a thin shirt, has been messing with it for the last hour, and still we’re no closer to figuring out how to turn it on.

  “You getting anything yet?” She looks up to where Lucas is fiddling with his cuff, but he shakes his head.

  “Still only static.” He stamps his feet, trying to stay warm in the cold desert night.

  “My best guess is that the Lords tracked the signal to Fortis’s comlink. Good thing you happened to have switched off yours,” Tima says, looking up at Lucas. “There’s no other way they could have found us out here.” She frowns back at the relay, twisting tiny wires with her slender fingers. “Not that we know of, anyway.”

  Lucas’s eyes flicker up to me, embarrassed.

  Out of range, that was us. One sunset, one kiss may have saved our lives.

  “So then how is it that we’re turning them back on?” Ro asks.

  “Carefully. Maybe they won’t track us if we work fast. Try it again—now?” Tima doesn’t look up, trying it again. I hear her teeth chattering, but she doesn’t stop. If this relay doesn’t work, nobody’s cuffs will be of any use to us.

  We’ll be cut off.

  “Nope.” Lucas tosses the cuff down in front of him, frustrated. “Fortis left that thing stashed like he wanted us to find it. There has to be a reason.”

  “Unless the reason was that he was busy getting his ass kicked.” Ro shrugs. “Which can be a little distracting. In my experience. As the kicker.” He grins.

  “Not the ass?” Lucas shoots him a look.

  “You looking for a demonstration?” Ro is already on his feet. “’Cause I’m happy to do some demonstrating.”

  “Idiots.” I pick up the cuff again. I raise it to my mouth. “Doc? Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? Doc?”