“These are the only clues we have to finding the way to the West. The Third Protocol left behind detailed instructions, but warring factions over the last hundred years have destroyed the data in an effort to keep us from finding the key. This is all that’s left,” Glade said.
“Have you noticed this?” Bodhi pointed with shaky fingers at the drawn image. This had to be something. It was too much of a coincidence.
Glade looked. “I don’t see what interests you.”
Bodhi twisted the map around to Glade so that the image drawn into the land topography became noticeable. He pressed his finger to the spot, tracing the ovals. “This is the symbol of Treva’s uncle—his settlement, Stone Braide.”
Glade’s eyes lit up. “I knew you’d be an asset!” He shuffled through documents. Papers scattered everywhere.
Bodhi screwed up his lip at the disorganized chaos. Before coming here, he didn’t even remember paper as a medium. “Can all of this be scanned into a halo-tablet or bio-computer?”
“No, no,” Glade said, obviously distracted and excited by the revelation. “Subtle nuances will be lost by scanning. I never saw that symbol, and I’ve looked at that map a hundred times.” He scrambled to the pile on the floor and shuffled through the pages, grabbing specific sheets. “This is the first solid clue I’ve had since before I went away. My boy, you have redeemed yourself. Change of plans. Reschedule our departure for as soon as possible and inform Taraji of the change in plans. We’re going to Stone Braide.”
Bodhi gulped, not sure how helpful it was heading back to Stone Braide. He didn’t want to leave Selah, at least while Jaenen Malik was still in TicCity. And he definitely didn’t want to go back in the direction of that Mountain. “Is it necessary for me to accompany you on this trip? Are there other things I could do here to aid your research?”
“There’s nothing more important than this trip. It’s the first lead in years, and it comes at a very important time.”
“But there must be—”
“As a novarium, Selah is in danger.”
Bodhi narrowed his eyes. “So if being a novarium put her life in danger, why did you leave her and her mother? After all, you were in captivity for eighteen years. If I hadn’t come along you might still be there.”
Glade shook his head. “I wasn’t supposed to be there that long.”
“You knew how long you’d be in jail? Forgive me if I don’t believe you.” Bodhi would need to know a lot of details before believing this story.
“Actually, I owe you a lot of answers. You’ve been the fated answer to most of this.” Glade’s tone softened considerably, not just with sadness but with actual signs of friendship. “Do you really love my daughter?”
“Of course I do. You already know that.” Bodhi would follow that woman across the earth, regardless of her father’s plan, but the closer he could stay to her, the better.
“Then you’ll help me. You’ll dedicate yourself to the completion of this project. And my goals will become your goals—for Selah.”
“What specifically does this have to do with Selah?” Bodhi asked.
Glade looked him straight in the eye. “If I haven’t found the key to the West, and the Third Protocol, in nine months, then like all of the novarium before her, Selah will fragment.”
5
Selah stood on the composite plank walkway leading out to the docking pier. The Petrol City shuttle lumbered toward shore, reminding her of a giant futuristic version of a riverboat like they had at home. Only half the circumference of the circular structure was visible above water, and the whole outside revolved like a paddle wheel while the suspended core floated along on the water. She’d heard the shuttles could travel underwater to work on Petrol City’s underside, but she hadn’t seen them submerged.
She craned her neck to spot Treva. Why wasn’t she supposed to go to the MedTec Unit? The healers had always been more than helpful, and she considered them experts in care compared to the sometimes inept medicine handlers at home. The lead healer set her at ease the first time they’d met in the MTU. A fluttering gripped her belly.
Selah glanced over the disembarking throng. Treva, dressed smartly in the dark blue environmentals teaching uniform of a long tunic and slacks, her auburn locks twisted into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, worked her way out of the crowded doorway and down the ramp. She waved to catch Selah’s attention.
Treva whispered as they hugged, “Don’t look now, but the woman who just passed us in the dark green teaching uniform is the one who told me about the MTU.”
Selah defied the instant urge to look as they moved in that direction to return to the complex. She kept her arm around Treva’s shoulder so their heads remained close. “What does someone who teaches earth sciences know about the MTU?” She watched as the woman blended in with the other returning teachers and disappeared into the crowd.
“She’s a normal, and apparently she was in love with a Lander who vanished about a year ago. She said a lot of Landers who go to the MTU disappear, but the Committee always seems to have a reasonable explanation.”
“How can people just disappear? That sounds a little strange. I think others would be talking if it really happened. Give me something better than that.” Selah squinted in the bright sunshine, her mind still trying to digest all Glade had just shared. He was head of the Committee, similar to the Borough elders back home. She recalled some of the underhanded things the Borough had done in the name of progress. Could this be the same?
“Better than that—” Treva stopped short and turned to face her. “Are you all right? You feel like a bag of nervous tension. Are you having flashes again?”
“No.” Selah breathed a heavy sigh and her shoulders slumped. “I was just with Glade. Every time I talk to him it seems like I just learn more things I don’t want to know. It’s becoming overwhelming.”
“When you’re ready, I’m a friendly ear.”
Selah squeezed her friend’s shoulder, thankful for an anchor.
“As I was saying, the woman said it’s mostly couples without children who disappear, and she said the healers are responsible for people going crazy.”
Selah stopped mid-stride. “Can she prove it? It must be a city scare, a legend. It would mean the existence of this whole place is some kind of well-placed plot.”
Treva raised an eyebrow. “You want to talk plots, remember where I just came from.”
“Well, I need more substantial evidence before I ask Glade questions.”
“How about this—the healers do extensive testing, but only on specific Landers, and they don’t say what they’re looking for.”
“What did they say we were being tested for when we first came here?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything until we understood what was going on here, but I wasn’t happy with those blood and tissue samples the healers took from us when we arrived. There was no reason for them, especially using core needles—at least no reason that matched up with the explanation they gave me.”
Selah’s insides clenched at the memory of the needles. “Did you tell them about your biotech background?”
“That’s the last bit of information I’d give away. I like keeping them off guard—you’d be surprised the tidbits I’ve learned.”
“I’ve been dealing with the healers on an almost daily basis. I’ve probably made mistakes there too.” She thought of those she normally talked to when walking through MedTec to the Repository. None of the instances seemed out of place.
“Hopefully not, but it’s cautionary, so we can be mindful of everything we see or hear,” Treva said. “I’m stopping to get my gear and I’ll meet Cleon at the depot. So I’m giving you a last chance to come with us.”
Selah slid back into the station assigned to her on the main level of the Repository. She had first gotten the data file location from Jaenen Malik while they were in Baltimore. He said this particular file would help alleviate Bodhi’s diminishing abilities caused by
the process of transitioning her to a novarium. Among her other data searches, she finally had deciphered enough file language to be able to locate the data glass holding the file.
When she first came to TicCity, most of the people she spoke to didn’t know there was a Repository. Many suggested it might be a part of the university, or part of MedTec. In reality, the Repository belonged to the Lander Council that ran TicCity. It was a government entity that held the collective knowledge and details of the Landers since the very beginning—and most of the Landers living here didn’t even know it existed. She continued to face multiple questions every time she got one answer.
She held the data glass tightly in her hand, as though protecting it. But there was no one around to interrupt her, and her next thought was to ease up on the glass before she shattered it. The excitement of holding it made her breath quicken. Might she really be able to help Bodhi? His self-worth would return with his abilities, she was sure of it. Sadly, he just didn’t understand. He didn’t need his abilities to hold her affection.
She poised her hand in front of her reader. In the next few minutes she was going to read a secret file that had to be at least one hundred years old, maybe more. If this file could actually help Second Protocol Landers like Bodhi regain their strengths and abilities, why hadn’t it been used before?
Selah’s fingers shook. She finally rested them on the table edge, data glass still between her thumb and forefinger.
She inhaled sharply and inserted the glass in her reader. A couple of commands and she’d opened the right file. Her eyes skimmed line by line as she scrolled through the pages looking for the cure. A lot of the file appeared redacted, but someone had inadvertently left a code key open. She tried to restore the missing data.
Her reader glitched. The pages jumped, resizing at will. Her eyes began to water from trying to follow the jerky movement. The screen blinked in and out, followed by more fits of scrolling. She carefully tried to alter the settings and lines of text disappeared. She frowned and tapped on the workstation, trying to nudge the reader without smacking it. Nothing. She got up and paced. Most of what she’d learned in two years of technology at Dominion had to do with coding and not the machines. She didn’t know where she could get another reader right away. She rubbed her forehead and sat back down. If only Treva were here. Her skill with computer hardware would have been useful.
Selah made a face at the screen, as though it would help, and smacked at the area of the halo-keyboard, disrupting its digital stream. For a second, a blinking line of text solidified with missing spaces. Varro Chav . . . Bethan Everli . . . The line fragmented again.
She leaned forward. “What was that?” She banged on the keys. The screen glitched and the word Mountain appeared. Her fist whacked the desk. The whole data entry reappeared, scrolling by at a furious pace. She tried to stop the scroll, to no avail.
Selah rushed to copy the file onto her data glass. The machine made a strange noise. If she could copy the file, she could look at it in her quarters where she had another reader, hopefully in better condition. Yes, it was against the rules to remove data from the Repository, but if this was really the remedy for Bodhi’s lost abilities, she wasn’t going to take a chance on the file not being there when she came back with another reader.
Selah’s mouth went dry. Why were her stepfather, Bethany Everling, and the Mountain named in a data file that was supposed to be about latent and restorable Lander abilities? This file had to have been altered recently. Wherever her stepfather was, her mother and little brother would also be, and if her family was in the Mountain, she had to go.
She took a deep breath. Her personal fear was not an option. She felt strangely calm.
She reached for her water cup and stopped. The water’s surface vibrated in miniscule waves. She pulled back her hand as she glanced around.
A rumble came from deep within the bowels of the earth, working its way up, growing in intensity as it climbed closer to the surface. She turned, thinking she’d be able to see the source of the growl. Earth tremors were frequent in Dominion Borough, but she didn’t know how often they had them in TicCity. Mother had taught her and her brother Dane to press themselves into the sturdy arch of a doorway when they occurred. Slipping from her seat, Selah hurried toward the doorway of an adjoining office, hoping by the time she reached the old stone arch, the shaking would subside.
The still noon air exploded. A shock wave rolled through the Repository with a deafening roar. Selah jerked and raised both hands to shield herself as data glass and bio-computer units jolted off ancient wooden shelves. The sounds mixed together—metal crashed, shards of glass cascaded to the floor, and the roar continued.
Sharp-toned sirens screamed to life, punctuating the rumble with an irregular rhythm. The sirens, reminiscent of those in the Mountain when she’d escaped, unnerved her. Her muscles tensed. She wanted to cover her ears and block the sound, but she needed to run.
The old-fashioned black-and-white checkered tiles erupted as the ceramic floor twisted like a rope in slow motion. Selah froze, not knowing which way was safe.
Her feet finally caught up to her brain’s urge to run. She hopscotched over heaving sections of tile and sprinted for the front door at the other end of the long, narrow Repository. Dust floated down from vibrating ancient beams.
The earth groaned, punctuated by a tremendous grinding of splintered wood. The equipment rack opposite Selah jack-hammered itself loose from the anchor bolts and hung precariously at a forty-five-degree angle.
“My data glass!” She stopped short before the front door and darted back down the aisle toward her station. Between the piercing shrieks of the siren, she heard intermittent shouts. People were yelling to evacuate the building. Adrenaline surged to her limbs as she vaulted the debris.
Behind her, the equipment rack she’d just passed crashed across the aisle, blocking her way back to the front door. With pounding chest, she spun to it, thrusting out open palms. “No!” she shouted.
The rack exploded. Equipment smashed to the floor. Old knobs and dials scattered under the desk and rolled across the aisle. Momentarily stunned at the energy radiating from her hands, Selah stumbled, trying to regain her balance. Why were her hands throbbing?
Part of a five-foot light fixture swung down from its mooring on the ceiling. She jumped out of the way before it smacked her in the head. It crashed to the floor. Still attached by wires to the ceiling, the light arced and danced like a marionette in the trembling room. The acrid smell of the sparking current drifted from the smashed end of the fixture.
The files were still loading. She frantically watched the download ticking from forty-five to fifty percent. There wasn’t time to capture everything.
“Come on, come on!” Seconds ticked like minutes. She pounded on the desk in frustration, grabbed the glass from the device, and shoved it into her pocket.
The ceiling buckled. Another light fixture smashed to the floor. Shards of something sharp slid across the floor and hurled into other objects.
She ran toward a toppled bookcase blocking the path to the door. A cracking sound marched along the length of the room. Welds on the roofing sections snapped as the rafters twisted free.
Her arms felt like weights, but Selah dove under the canted bookcase blocking the doorway and crawled through the debris of data glass and musty, disintegrating paper books. Emerging painfully on the other side with shredded palms, she scrambled for the open door. The ceiling roared down behind her. A billowing cloud of dust trailed her out the door.
Hugging the wall, she felt her way down the long, darkened hallway. Her perception of where the front door stood was skewed by the fallen partitions and debris. She hadn’t been in this section of the complex before.
Selah coughed and wheezed, gasping for air. To keep from inhaling the grit, she shoved her face into her shirtsleeve, her lungs filtering only small wisps of oxygen from the enveloping dust cloud.
She tripped and lurch
ed forward, arms spread out to cushion the fall. Her palms skidded across the rubble-strewn floor and her chest slammed into the hard surface, knocking the precious little wind from her.
The shaking subsided. Selah lay on the debris-strewn floor, disoriented, her brain fogging from lack of oxygen. She tried to think, but it had happened too fast. She labored to push herself to her knees. Panting, she rose on shaking legs. Her palms were bleeding and raw. An explosion of pain tore through her right ankle as she limped out of the crumbling building.
She coughed a few times, clearing the dust from her lungs and the gritty taste from her throat as she brushed the hair from her forehead and raised her eyes.
Shaking her head a few times, she tried to make her brain understand what she was seeing in the courtyard in front of her.
6
Selah gaped. She glanced right to where a bunch of girls sat on the benches around an oasis of grass among the stone walkways. Off to her left two educators stood comparing notes on halo-tablets. The ocean air was still crisp and clean—nothing appeared out of place, no screaming mobs, no damage. Selah clutched at her throat where it had hurt a few seconds ago. It now felt fine. She stopped and stared down at her hands—both hands. She turned them over and back again, inspecting every surface. No damage. No grit, blood, or shredded skin, just perfect, soft, clean hands.
Her heart raced.
What manner of craziness had gripped her mind? She spun to face the Repository. The debris-clogged doorway she’d just escaped stood there pristine and clean with no signs of the disaster she had just experienced. Blood pounded in her head, filling her vision with micro-stars that floated before her eyes.
She felt faint. She extended her hands to steady herself.
She glanced into the Repository hallway. Every surface was in order. No dangling fixtures or dirt on the shiny floors.
The data glass! She scrambled to locate the contents of her pocket. Her hand found the small chip. She clutched it in her fingers and shut her eyes. A sigh of relief crossed her lips. She wasn’t completely crazy. What manner of deception was this? Did she do it to herself, or did someone do it to her?
Lightning Page 5
