Luminary: Book Two In the Anomaly Trilogy

by Krista McGee

  “Thalli, you know the Scientists aren’t always truthful.” Berk’s sharp reply brings with it terrible memories. The Scientists tricked me into believing there was a colony right here, above the State. I had seen the people there, touched them, experienced this colony, only to find out it was a cerebral manipulation. It wasn’t real.

  “I found this map hidden among the Scientists’ data. They didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

  “But you knew, of course.” I hear myself saying this to Berk, hear the caustic tone. I hate it, but I cannot stop it.

  Berk releases a short breath. “I have been finding many things in the last few weeks. Some of those helped save your life.”

  “Save it for what?” I shout into my helmet. “So we can spend a few hours on the toxic earth before we’re discovered and killed back in the State?”

  “You are allowing fear to control you.” John’s voice is quiet but filled with authority. “This is not the Thalli I know.”

  I choose not to speak. He is right. I am not the same. I am not sure I will ever be the same again. I look down—at a gray, ashen ground receding below us. It looks the same in every direction. Flat, dry, gray. Even the sky is gray, the clouds filling in whatever blue spaces had been there.

  “What do you suppose the Scientists want to do with this map?” Rhen asks.

  “They are monitoring the pockets of survivors.”

  “So they can relocate?”

  “They are not interested in relocating anytime soon,” Berk replies, as the transport levels out. “They can’t control people up here. There’s too much space. Too much freedom. I think they prefer the confines of the State. That’s why they were so excited about yours and Thalli’s music simulation. They are hopeful they can use that data to find a solution to the oxygen crisis.”

  I remember that simulation. Rhen was trapped. In my music. It was awful. But she broke free. How the Scientists can use that, I do not know. I do know that music is powerful. Music pointed me to the Designer, spoke to me in ways logic never could. That music could also solve the Scientists’ dilemma seems very plausible.

  “How soon do you think the Monitors will catch up with us?” I look behind us, expecting to see another transport, weapons drawn to attack.

  “Don’t think about that.” Berk pushes the transport harder. I grab the column to keep from slipping to the center. “We are traveling as fast as we can, and we started before them. My hope is they’ll give up, assume we’ll die out here.”

  I scan the horizon again. Gray. Barren. “A good assumption.”

  “Their intention was to kill us anyway.” Rhen sounds like she is solving a calculus equation, not discussing our chances of survival. “I imagine they would prefer not to waste resources searching for us when there is so much need below.”

  “We are defying them.” I want to shake Rhen. “And we’re escaping the State. No one has ever been allowed to do either of those things.”

  “We can’t worry about what might happen,” John says. “Let’s just press forward. We will deal with the Monitors if they come.”

  “So where are we going?” Rhen asks.

  The grid moves south, then east. “See that pocket there? It is the closest to us. About nine hundred miles away.”

  “Nine hundred miles?” I don’t even know how to calculate that distance. It seems astronomical. The entire State is not more than ten miles from one end to the other.

  “This transport can move at about twenty-five miles an hour.”

  “That’s thirty-six hours.” Rhen figures it out before I can begin putting the numbers into an equation in my brain.

  “We can’t drive the whole time.” There is no room on this transport for any of us to sleep, even if we wanted to. “It could take a whole week to get there.”

  “I brought enough food for two weeks.” Berk’s calm voice just makes me angry.

  “And then what?” My breath is fogging the eyepiece in my helmet. “What if we get there and find those orange dots were wrong?”

  “Then we go to the next pocket.” The grid shifts to the east. “It’s only about sixty miles from the pocket we’re going to.”

  I take a deep breath. “Why are there two pockets sixty miles from each other and none around here for nine hundred miles?”

  “There are several others to the north of us, but the climate would be difficult for our bodies. It is warmer in the south. We’d do better there.”

  Of course Berk has thought this through. I should trust him. He is brilliant. He knows what he is doing. Why am I so angry? I shouldn’t feel this way. But I don’t know how not to feel this way. I am not the same person I was below, in the annihilation chamber. I was better then. Stronger. Up here, I am broken, useless.

  “So what is the plan, Dr. Berk?”

  I turn my head to look at John. I can sense the joy radiating off of him. He is relaxed. He has longed for this. For forty years. This was his home before the War. If he is disappointed to see it ravaged, he doesn’t show it.

  “I thought we’d try to travel eight hours each day.”

  I do the math this time. Two hundred miles a day. Five days, four nights. Why not travel twelve hours a day and arrive in three days and two nights? I look at John. That’s why. Standing for eight hours will exhaust him. John is old. Over ninety. His body will ache from this travel. Berk has thought of that too. Of course.

  “Excellent plan.” Rhen understands also. Even she is kinder than I. They never should have done this, never should have risked their lives for me.

  My mind drifts again to the annihilation chamber. To death. To heaven. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I long for it, wish for it. John says heaven is perfect. There is no pain there, no fear. I wouldn’t have to worry about my friends, wouldn’t have to live in fear of being caught and returned to the State. Death seems so much easier than what faces us now. And will it come anyway? Will death by annihilation be replaced with death by upper earth?

  Perhaps. Those orange dots seem so far. And so unstable. They blink and move. Are they friendly? Angry? Murderous? Of course they are primitive. And primitive people are dangerous. That’s what I’ve always been taught. So are we leaving danger to face danger?

  I tap the glass on my visor, forcing the map to disappear. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Death is coming. I am more and more sure of it as we travel on. We have gotten ourselves in a hopeless situation. Berk was thinking with his heart, not his head. He was acting like me. And that is never wise.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Texas.” John breaks the silence that hung over us for the last hour of travel.

  “What?” I ask, my voice sounding like a broken violin string through the helmet.

  “We are going to Texas.” The green map pops up on my visor once again. The orange blinking dots seem to mock us. “Before the War this whole area was called the United States.”

  We all know this, of course. That information was part of our history lessons. We saw on our learning pads recordings of these Americans—always yelling at each other, angry, complaining about their living conditions, their working conditions. This was part of what the Scientists sought to eradicate. People cannot be productive with so much emotion.

  “Texas.” John laughs. “People there were unique. It’s fitting that two colonies in Texas have survivors.”

  “Tell us about them,” Berk says, unleashing a forty-five-minute sociology lesson from John.

  If I knew how to turn off the volume in my helmet, I would. Instead, I have to listen to stories about hearty people, about a place called the Alamo, about cowboys and rodeos and boots. I don’t really know these words, but they are forced on me anyway in this transport going south, headed toward this place that used to house independent, hardworking people who rode animals called bulls for fun and holed up in forts until they died.

  I see my reflection in the mirrored surface of the helmet. My eyes appear more blue than green today. My hair hangs in limp, wavy b
rownish strands along the side of my face. I look the way I feel—pathetic.

  “A friend of mine was from Texas, and he used to call it ‘the promised land.’ ” John is still talking. “Fitting for us. We are escaping our own Egypt. Perhaps Texas is our promised land.”

  “Or maybe it’s just as barren as this land.” I can’t hold it in any longer. I have to speak. “Maybe we’ll get there and those orange dots will want to kill us. Or eat us. Maybe they are even worse than the Scientists ever were.”

  “The Israelites said the same kinds of things when they were making their way to the Promised Land. Let’s not make the mistakes they made. Let us trust the Designer. He has worked many miracles throughout history. I believe we are about to experience another one.”

  I bite my lip. I won’t argue with John. But I can’t believe blindly the way he does. I wish I could. But I have too many questions, too many doubts. I have just begun to believe in a Designer, in a plan, a purpose for humanity. But my faith is weak. This is too much.

  “We should stop here,” Berk says, and the transport begins to lower to the ashen ground. “Rhen, will you help me prepare dinner? Thalli, you and John can set up the temporary chamber.”

  I do not want to stop. The Monitors who might be following us won’t stop. They do not have a ninety-year-old man with them. They do have the impetus of the Scientists behind them, though, and I feel certain the Scientists want to bring us back, to make sure there is no possibility of anyone from the outside finding out about the State from anyone but them.

  Berk clicks a button and I no longer hear him, though I know he is still talking. Through the lens in my helmet, I see him walking beside Rhen—close beside Rhen. She is leaning her head toward Berk, like she can hear him through her helmet.

  “Shall we begin?” John’s voice is in my ear, as happy as ever.

  I try to focus on getting the temporary chamber assembled. I have never used one of these before. Never seen one. Why would we even have them? Our pods were perfectly good, safe. We had no need to leave them. Unless, like me, we had a medical issue. But then we’d go to a medical facility. I turn the white rectangle around. There is a small screen on the side. I touch it and it comes to life.

  “Press the blue initiation panel,” a computerized voice instructs me. I look all over. There is no blue panel. “Press the blue initiation panel.”

  “Be quiet!” I know the voice can’t hear me, wouldn’t care if it could, but I shout anyway. I throw the unassembled chamber to the ground. There is no blue initiation panel. We’ll be sleeping on the dusty, diseased ground. Which is fine. Death will only come sooner if we spend our nights sucking in this horrible air. These helmets can only protect us so much. Surely the toxic fumes are already finding ways to seep into our bloodstreams.

  “Here it is,” John says.

  Apparently, the panel is visible to everyone but me. I take a quick step back as the chamber comes to life. Its white walls are streaked with gray dirt as it rises from the ground, a cylinder-shaped chamber, large enough to house all four of us. John is on his knees checking the edges.

  “What are you doing?”

  John eases to his feet, his muscles likely sore from our day of travel. “Just checking. Back when I was a young man, we had something called tents, and we had to make sure they were stuck tight to the ground. I remember once—”

  John’s eyes lock onto mine and he stops his story. I don’t know what nonverbal signals I am sending of my boredom, but they must be pretty awful, judging by the look on his face.

  “This is in tight.” John looks back at the chamber. “I don’t know how they do it, but it’s solid as a house.”

  I walk around the chamber, touch the walls. They are solid. Not the same kind of material as the pods back in the State, but they are sturdy. I try to find the entrance, but the entire structure is seamless. No door, no window. And I still don’t see the blue panel.

  “Very nice.” Berk and Rhen are back. He surveys the chamber with a light in his eyes. He is happy. How can he sound so relaxed when we are about to spend our first night—ever—outside of the State, pursued, no doubt, by representatives sent from the State?

  “There’s no door.” I declare the obvious because it seems I am the only one who realizes it.

  “You’re right.” Berk doesn’t seem upset by this fact. He puts a hand on top of the structure, and an entrance appears. “This is a brand-new development. I grabbed it from another Scientist in training.”

  “You stole it?”

  “I couldn’t exactly ask for it, could I? We needed a place to sleep. And a transport. And food. And these decontamination suits.”

  “Isn’t stealing wrong?” I look at John.

  “Let’s think of it as plunder from the Egyptians.” John tries to sound confident, but I can tell he is bothered by this too.

  “Let’s just go in and take a look around.” Berk steps into the chamber. “Then we can eat and get some sleep.”

  I follow Berk. The chamber makes me feel relaxed. It looks familiar. Like my cube back in Pod C, but round. White walls, white floor, even white sleeping platforms. How this all fit in that tiny rectangle, I have no clue. But I am glad for it.

  “This is perfect.” Rhen sits on one of the platforms.

  “How are we going to sleep with these helmets on?” Just the thought of it causes my neck to ache.

  Berk touches the entrance and it closes, looking as seamless from the inside as it did from the outside. Then he removes his helmet.

  “No!” I rush to Berk and try to shove the helmet back on his head. “What are you doing?”

  Berk throws his helmet down and begins to remove mine. I push him away, but he is stronger than I am.

  “Relax.” Berk takes a huge breath.

  I lose track of my thoughts as I take in his face—so handsome it makes my heart hurt. His light brown hair is messy from hours inside the helmet, but his green eyes are bright with joy. His face is unshaven—light whiskers in patches on his cheeks and his chin. “The air is safe in here. This was a prototype designed for Scientists who wanted to spend evenings aboveground to begin testing the atmosphere.”

  “So the Monitors won’t have one of these?” The tightness in my chest lightens just a fraction, relief combating with anger that Berk did not tell us this earlier. “They only have the suits?”

  “Correct.” Berk pulls my helmet off my head. “It will take several months to make a new one.”

  I take a deep breath. The air is clean. “But it’s a prototype?” I grip the edge of the sleeping platform. “It hasn’t been tested?”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  Rhen and John take their helmets off at the same time. Rhen takes a cautious breath. “You’re sure it can withstand the travel? Being used and shut up again each night?”

  “It is made from the best material. It can handle anything.” Berk sits on a sleeping platform and runs his fingers through his hair. I look at this shelter, hoping Berk is right.

  “Amazing.” John leans forward. “I hate to be a bother, but I am quite hungry.”

  Berk jumps up from the platform. “Of course. The food should be ready now. We’ll have to put the helmets back on, but it will only take a moment.”

  We go back outside, to a pit Rhen and Berk dug. Smoke is pouring out of it. I am sure the smoke smells delicious. But, of course, I can smell nothing through this helmet.

  “Another theft.” I walk closer, seeing four meals in white containers at the bottom of the pit.

  “We have to eat.” Rhen shrugs and reaches for one of the containers. She hands it to me, then reaches for another. By the time she pulls the last one out, my stomach rumbles. I am hungry. I want to ask how these meals were cooked and stored. I saw so little on the transport, yet we now have a chamber and sleeping platforms and meals. But I don’t ask because I hear another rumble. Not my stomach this time. But surely not someone else’s. That loud?

  I turn to see where the sound
is coming from, and Rhen gasps in the speaker. And then I see what made her gasp.

  Three huge animals, with red eyes and saliva dripping off sharp, fang-like teeth. These are animals unlike any I have ever seen on our learning pads. Huge heads, smaller bodies, matted gray fur. And the noises they’re making are more than rumbles. They are angry sounds, hungry sounds. They have come here for their meal too.

  They have come for us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I have never known so much fear. Not even seeing Monitors would have made me feel the way I am feeling now. The three animals are coming closer, red tongues hanging out, red eyes darting from Berk to Rhen to me to John. I don’t know what to do. I am certain that if we move, they will move too. We are standing still but they are moving. Slowly. Very slowly.

  I suddenly remember seeing a video lesson on animals called wolves. They traveled in packs, were fast, and ate animals much larger than themselves. Because they were considered unnecessary to the State, the Scientists did not breed any. These animals look eerily similar to those wolves on my learning pad. But these survived the War, adapted to the toxic air. My heart beats faster. If the primitive wolves were dangerous, what will these mutated forms be like?

  I see Berk from the corner of my eye. As soon as I realize what he is doing, it is too late to stop him. He runs as fast as he can away from us, causing the animals to follow him.

  “Go back to the chamber.” Berk’s voice sounds so close, coming through the speaker in my helmet. Yet he is running so far away. “Go!”

  Rhen pulls at my arm. “Thalli. He is right.”

  The first wolf pounces on Berk, dragging him to the gray dirt. The animal’s teeth dig into Berk’s thigh.

  “No!” I am running, willing the animals off Berk. But they have surrounded him. I will not let him die for me. “Get off of him. Get away.”

  “Thalli.” Rhen’s voice is strained. “I’m going for the transport. Come with me. You can’t help him.”

  “I have to.” Berk is fighting, kicking the wolves. But they don’t let up. They are trying to rip off his suit, get to his flesh. They’ll kill him. They’ll kill Berk.