The shadow condensed into something denser, peeling away from the walls and forming a demonic outline. “Prey,” came a sepulchral utterance. A hand lashed out and enveloped AnnaLea. The rest of the shadow followed, covering her and collapsing downward until she and it were a two-dimensional stain on the floor.
Two of the guards fired at the floor, three of them stared in astonishment, and the remaining five ran.
“Deklan,” asked Jamie in a gasp, “what was that?”
“Don’t ask. This is our chance. Run!”
The others didn’t need to be told twice. Calm pulled himself to a standing position and pulled his blood-stained clothes over his head. Jamie teleported Deklan through the door and returned for the others. When she came back with Arkady, Deklan had already made it halfway to the stairs at the end of the hall, and a second later Jamie was standing near them holding Calm. Arkady’s feet pounded the tiles behind him as Deklan reached the stairwell.
“Deklan, what was that thing?” Jamie asked again as they started down the stairs.
A host of answers—monster, murderer, psychopath—swirled in Deklan’s head. “A Keystone, psychotic and homicidal,” he answered without stopping. “He calls himself Stalker.”
“That thing made of shadow was a man?” Jamie’s voice grew louder with every word as she teleported herself and Calm to the stairwell. Arkady was racing to keep up with the group.
“Keep it down,” cautioned Deklan, “and, yes, he turns back into a man.” Deklan shivered, thinking of Stalker’s human form. The one time he’d seen Stalker in the flesh the man had oozed danger.
“What’s he doing to AnnaLea?” Jamie asked in a fractionally quieter voice.
“By now she’s dead and the men with her too. He freezes his victims.”
“How do you know that?”
Deklan’s throat tightened. “I was one of his victims. The last time I saw him my Keystone powers were gone, just like now.”
“Why was he in your pocket?”
Although Jamie’s question wasn’t accusatory, Deklan knew that his next answer was important. “After I was separated from all of you, Cheshire gave me the sphere. He told me that it would arm itself and that I was to use it when I was out of options. I would have told you except that it’s been only a day since you all thought I was crazy. What was I going to say? A teleporting man that I’d met on Earth and the Terra Rings appeared, gave me a black ball, and disappeared?”
Calm broke into the conversation for the first time. “I would have believed you,” he said. “I’ve met him too.”
“Fine,” replied Deklan, “but let me ask you this. If I had told all of you, what would we have done differently?”
“He’s right,” declared Calm. “We can argue about it later. For now let’s keep going.”
“It’s three more floors before we’re at the ground level,” said Arkady, her words coming between short, sharp pants.
Deklan and Arkady vaulted down the remaining three flights of stairs, trailing behind Calm and Jamie. Deklan’s legs burned, and sweat drenched his forehead. He needed to pace himself if they were going to make it. Pausing for a moment, he said, “Wait! Calm and I are covered in blood.”
“No,” replied Jamie, pointing at him. “You’re covered in blood. They cleaned Calm up. Turn your clothes inside out and rub your face.”
Deklan peeled off the blood-caked tunic, inverted it, and slid back into the garment. Dry spots of blood crackled against his skin, and tackier spots stuck to him. It felt like wearing clothes lined with drying mud. He then rubbed his face with a sleeve, trying to wipe the blood from his skin.
Seeing his discomfort, Jamie couldn’t resist a jibe. “Deklan,” she said, “if you could shrug off being shot, you can survive this.”
Her memory was coming back, but he didn’t see any other changes in her personality. “I’m fine,” he muttered. His voice was gruffer than he intended it to be.
“Arkady will lead the way,” directed Jamie. “She can pass for a native, and she can match the Tau Primans’ accent.”
Arkady’s apprehension made itself known through a tightness in her jaw. “Okay, then. We need to go.” She pushed open the stairwell door and led them into the bustle of the ground floor.
Streams of people were flowing in and out of the building’s main concourse. The sound of a sharp intake of breath drew Deklan’s eyes to Arkady. The stiffness in her face had spread to the rest of her body. Back at Sanctuary she had admitted that she didn’t like crowds. Seeing her now, Deklan understood what an understatement that had been.
In the back of his mind he half-expected everyone to point at them and cry, “Tainted!” Meanwhile Jamie walked behind Arkady, flanked by Deklan and Calm. Calm kept his steps slow but even. No grunts or groans escaped his lips, and his face was placid.
The four of them joined the flow of people leaving the building. As he and Calm walked through the door, Deklan felt as though he had a bull’s eye painted on his back. The beacon in his pocket banged against his leg, and he worried that each time it bumped against him it would attract attention.
Once outside the building Arkady stopped, and Deklan surveyed the crowd around them. There were hundreds of people in red, none of whom looked at them twice. “Father promised something spectacular,” murmured Arkady, loud enough for Deklan to catch but not loud enough to carry beyond their circle. “I just don’t know what it will be.”
A gathering commotion rippled through the crowd, and isolated gasps punctuated the sound. “Down!” Deklan yelled, not knowing what the danger was but sure they were going to be shot. He pushed Jamie down with him to the ground. Hearing no immediate sound of gunfire, Deklan risked a look up. Not a person moved. The Tau Primans’ feet were rooted in place and their heads tilted back with jaws open. He followed their collective gaze.
The ocean was moving. It still floated as one long cylinder in the habitat’s center, but a tsunami was traveling toward the end closest to them.
“Something spectacular,” echoed Deklan. “Is this it?” He helped Jamie to her feet.
Arkady ignored his question. “That’s going to take less than a minute to reach this side of the habitat.”
“Then what happens?” Deklan asked.
“Theoretically it will crash against the end of the cylinder and flood down to the ground.” She looked at their group with wild eyes. “We’re going to be swamped in less than two minutes.”
“Great,” said Deklan. “We have the distraction we need.”
“What?” replied Jamie.
“We’re no longer priority number one. Arkady, can we get back to Jonny now?”
“Yes, we can.”
“To which end of the habitat do we need to head?”
Arkady made a face and pointed to where the water would be flowing from.
“How fast is the water going to be moving?” asked Deklan.
“Not fast. The 180-degree change in direction from the ocean will lessen its speed. Most of what momentum is left will come from its fall.”
“Does that mean it’s safe to head that way?”
“Maybe.”
It wasn’t the answer Deklan wanted, but it was all he had. “Good enough.”
Arkady’s eyes returned to the ocean above them. “This will be chaotic,” she said quietly. Deklan wasn’t sure whether she had meant for him to hear her comment.
The waves crashed against the far wall in a silent explosion of water that sent spray sparkling into the air. Seconds later the impact’s thunderclap came to his ears. Water ran down the cylindrical end of the habitat in an ever-expanding froth of white. An undersea station erupted from the surface and was carried down the side of the wall. It was hard to see, but Deklan could tell that its domes were shattered. “Was that. . . ?”
“No, that wasn’t Sanctuary.”
Another station burst to the surface, its domes also broken and half of the main body snapped off.
“How many stations are there?�
��
“Ten, with five kilometers between them,” Arkady answered without looking at him. If Daniil hadn’t warned people in time, she might see everyone she ever knew die.
“How many people lived between them?” asked Deklan.
“Less than five hundred.”
If five hundred people had been evacuated from ten different locations, the surface of Tau Prime teeming with so many more people must have been terrifying for Arkady. “Are you okay in this crowd?” he inquired.
“I’m not thinking about it.”
Deklan gripped Arkady’s shoulder and made her meet his eyes. “We’ll find your father and the others, but we have to move.”
Arkady nodded, and Deklan could see that she was pulling herself back together. “Stay with me,” she said, squaring her shoulders and walking in the direction from which the water would surge. While hordes of Tau Primans fled in the other direction, Arkady soon was running toward the oncoming current. “Stay with me, but stay behind me,” she called over her shoulder before picking up the pace.
The street was lined with tall buildings that would funnel the water into more dangerous waves. It was the last place that he wanted to face the tsunami, even if it were reduced in power. “Shouldn’t we get a flitter?” Deklan yelled at Arkady’s back.
“No.” Her voice was almost lost amid the increasing roar.
More than twenty blocks away a wall of water was visible. People ran ahead of it, and an unlucky few who were too far behind were either tossed aside or vanished in the surf. Abandoned vehicles absorbed the brunt of the tidal wave and disappeared beneath it.
Deklan didn’t want to admit fear, but he was anxious about what lay ahead of them. “Jamie,” he said, “do you know what Arkady has in mind?”
“Yes.” Her voice was quiet and intense.
Deklan glanced at her. The red hair was gone, and her features had vanished behind a mask of pallid skin. “You look ready for action,” he remarked.
Jamie ran her fingers over the smooth expanse of her face. “I didn’t do this on purpose,” she replied softly.
Arkady ran ahead of them, a small body arrowing toward an advancing wall of whitecaps. All other sounds were drowned out by the rumble of rushing water, and Arkady crashed against the churning maelstrom. When she disappeared, Deklan feared the worst.
A crocodile exploded through the water’s surface. She was enormous but smaller than before. It hadn’t been obvious in the gloom of Tau Prime’s ocean, but now Deklan could see that her scales alternated between black and the brightest emerald. Water surged around Arkady, but with a shoulder height of twenty meters her feet were planted on the ground.
Deklan realized what was about to happen. “Oh, no. That’s not the. . . .”
Jamie teleported him onto Arkady’s back. “Hold on!” she yelled. A second later she was back with an arm wrapped around Calm.
The three of them lodged themselves in a half-meter space between scales on the forward portion of Arkady’s crocodilian back. When Arkady shifted position, however, Deklan fell to his knees. Her scales had little give. The impact felt like slamming into a steel plate. As water rushed up her sides, he grabbed the edge of a scale for a secure grip with his right hand while his left darted to his pocket for the beacon.
They ploughed ahead with Arkady’s elongated face breaking through the water like an icebreaker ship through the Arctic. Each plodding step reverberated through Deklan’s body, especially when she crushed something underfoot such as a submerged car. Icy water lapped at Deklan’s knees and soaked into his clothes. “Are you okay?” he called out to Jamie.
“We’ll get there soon,” she yelled back.
An unexpected swell washed over Arkady and submerged the trio. If Deklan had thought it was bad before, his entire body was now almost numb. He worried that he was going to drop the beacon. The only saving grace was that the fresh water didn’t sting his eyes or foul his mouth the way saltwater would have.
As the swell receded, Deklan, feeling like a bedraggled rat, called to Jamie, “Now are you okay?”
“Calm’s pale and shivering, but we’ll make it.” She too sounded less energetic than before the drenching.
Arkady’s feet then left the ground, cutting off further conversation and immersing her passengers in the lapping waves. Her enormous tail thrashed the water’s surface and propelled them forward. Cold air became a knife-like wind that compounded Deklan’s misery. They moved with enough force to create a bow wake, passing tall buildings that lined the submerged streets. Stranded and gesticulating people were visible in the skyscrapers’ windows.
“I hate this plan,” said Deklan between chattering teeth.
“It’s not my favorite either,” allowed a blue-lipped Calm.
A rumble shook Arkady’s body and vibrated through Deklan’s. As the water’s surface tension around them broke, Arkady sped up and created a churning counter-current. The wall of plummeting water that previously had been so far away grew closer and closer. Deklan’s aching muscles demanded that he abandon the struggle. “Jamie,” he shouted, “what are we going to do when we get to the wall? Arkady can’t open a hatch.”
“I’m going to teleport,” she replied.
Arkady drew to within ten meters of the cascading water. Here the noise was so loud as to obliterate all other sounds. Jamie was pointing, and her mouth opened and closed on her blank face, but Deklan had no idea what she was saying. In some ways the scenario was like a silent movie. Arkady’s massive crocodilian head swung back for the first time in their journey. Miniature waterfalls ran from her temples, and one large orb locked onto Deklan before looking back in the direction where they were headed.
A sense of foreboding came over Deklan as Arkady sped up in a vector aimed straight at the water ahead of them. Deklan crushed his body against her scales, seeking the best grip possible and filling his lungs with air.
Then came the water.
It slammed into him with bone-shaking force. His one-handed grip on Arkady’s back came loose as he was thrown to her left, another hand still wrapped around the beacon. He had the presence of mind to take a deep breath before he went underwater.
Only meters away from him Arkady set her feet down on the ground next to an access port like the one that Eric had used to bring them to the surface of Tau Prime. When one of Arkady’s hind legs collapsed, a broken section of an undersea station careened down on a collision course with Deklan. He tried to swim out of the way, but the current drew him further into its path.
Total darkness ensued. Deklan couldn’t see or hear anything. He was enveloped in freezing cold and velvety blackness. Water swirled around him. He didn’t know what had just happened. Fragments of the undersea station swept past him, but he remained untouched. No explanation made sense.
Suddenly Jamie was next to him, having teleported to Arkady’s back. Then Arkady’s crocodilian mass dwindled away to nothing, leaving her momentarily a beautiful and pale and naked woman before currents swept her away from them.
Deklan’s lungs burned. He was on his first breath, most of which he’d lost when he’d fallen, and the surface was still far above him. Jamie had one hand on him, another on Calm, and looked at both of them and then at Arkady.
Arkady was struggling against the current, trying to reach the habitat wall.
With firm fingers Deklan encircled Jamie’s wrist and squeezed. He pointed at her and then at the door, imploring her to take action. She was the only one who could open the door, the only one who could enable them to escape.
With a sudden implosion of water, Jamie was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Shadows
Fire burned in Deklan’s lungs. His vision was tinged by green and blue. He didn’t know where he was, but he couldn’t breathe. All he wanted was air. It wouldn’t come, and he gasped at the fire in his chest. Ice was everywhere else, but he couldn’t feel anything except in his lungs. His field of vision narrowed to a black-rimmed tunnel. He th
ought about Jamie and his parents, whom he was never going to see again.
Slam.
Deklan convulsed as his mouth opened wide.
Slam.
Water shot in a fountain from his mouth.
Slam.
He coughed and choked before pure air kissed his lungs.
Deklan let his head sag back and took deep breath after deep breath before opening his eyes. He was in a flooded hallway and held against a wall. Jamie, once more an attractive blonde, had a hand braced against one of his shoulders and was punching his chest in an aggressive version of CPR. Her free hand hovered in the air, ready to unleash another blow should it prove necessary. Water came up past her waist.
Deklan held up his hands and was alarmed by how much effort the action cost him. “I’m okay,” he said. The soreness of his throat indicated how far from the truth his words were.
“You are not okay, Deklan,” replied Jamie, but her voice was awash with relief.
Arkady stood nearby with her arms crossed over her chest in an attempt to hide her nakedness. Deklan plucked at the fabric over his chest. “Need this?” he asked with a weak grin.
She nodded her head.
“Do you want to let me down now?” he asked Jamie.
When her hand withdrew, he dropped from the wall.
“When I told you not to get shot,” said Calm, “I didn’t mean for you to drown yourself instead.” His voice sounded weak.
Deklan appreciated the attempt at humor, poor though it was, and peeled off his tunic but kept his pants and boots.
Arkady snatched the garment from his hands and pulled it over her head. When her face emerged from the top, she looked a good deal more comfortable, even though all she was wearing was a soaked thigh-length shirt.
“Where are we?” asked Deklan. “How’d we get in here?”
“We’re in an access shaft to the shipyards,” Arkady answered, pushing her wet blond hair back from her face.
“How’d we get here?”
Jamie pointed straight up. “We couldn’t have done it without him.”
Keystones: Tau Prime Page 18
