AER (The Elements Series Book 3)

by Tracy Korn

  "Are the consoles the same here too?" he asks, approaching the wall. Myra gets close enough that it starts to fade. She jumps, and it rematerializes.

  "I knew it!" she says, then walks straight through the wall. It surges with a low, brief, hum, and then solidifies again after Ellis makes his way through too. Eco sighs as he forks the last three bites of his spaghetti into his mouth all at the same time and then heads for the wall.

  Lyden walks through the wall next, followed by Arwyn and Liam. I turn to Jax, who is still forking up spaghetti, and narrow my eyes at him.

  "Are you kidding?"

  "I'm sure the thing has to heat up or something, right? Besides, they're OK. You heard Calyx."

  "Jax! This is our—"

  "OK!" he cuts me off and puts down his plate. "I'm coming. Put your skin back on."

  He looks at me for a second too long, all the levity draining away, and I know we're suddenly both thinking about Joss, about how we'll never use that phrase again because like so much else now, it's more than just a phrase.

  The rest of us walk through the white wall, which is just as surreal as when we did it at the Phase Two Gaia compound. On the other side, a small, white couch sits in the middle of the room. A round, white coffee table sits in front of it with an empty glass bowl in the center.

  "Where do you sleep?" Vox asks, looking around as she wipes her hands on the sides of her black jumpsuit, or, what's left of it. The sleeve is torn to the shoulder, and her winding, twisting map tattoos look like fraying threads from this distance.

  "There's another cell through there," Eco says, nodding to our left. "The walls wouldn't dematerialize at all if the hab didn't register my bioprint when we came in. Security, you know…" he says with a shrug. "Anyway. Rosie?"

  "Good evening, Eco. Welcome home," a woman's light, crisp voice says from…everywhere.

  "Thanks, Rosie. Console, please," Eco says, then takes a seat on the white couch, and we all follow him. He taps something into the coffee table, and after a second, a wide, wall-sized web of green lines fills the air.

  "Whoa…" Fraya whispers to Jax just off my shoulder. "It's like when Mr. Tark was briefing us before going out in the Leviathan."

  "Populate, encrypted…ready, Rosie?" Eco asks. After a second, the green lines snap to red all at once.

  "Ready," the computer voice says. Eco starts typing onto the floating holographic keyboard that has appeared in front of him. Several pieces of code start scrolling at different places on the network of red grid lines. Frustration swells in my stomach, and I clench my jaw to hold back my impatience until I can't anymore.

  "Eco! What is—" I start, but then hear Lyden in my mind.

  Can you…look through it, Jazwyn? Lyden asks in my head. I snap my eyes to his, ready to fire something back, but then I suddenly understand.

  Look through it…like on the Leviathan when the self-destruct sequence launched…when the scrolling code turned into ants, I think. They looked and felt like actual ants, but they weren't. Liddick said they were neural codes, designed to fight back if you tried to modify them. I turn back to the huge red Grid and try to focus on the scripts, to do what I did before, only instead of pushing them away, I try to pull something out of them. I imagine every breath I take is a vacuum, that every exhale is blowing the numbers and symbols away like it's sand covering something buried. After a second, I see people moving…playing a piano—no, typing. That's not my father, I think, and move my eyes to another stretch of projected code where someone else is yawning, then another person. And another that is not my father.

  "Where are they!?" I shout. Calyx jerks her attention from the Grid to me. "They're not there. They're not there…" I say, hearing my voice waiver, and I swallow hard to keep my throat from cutting off my words.

  "What's happening?" Arco asks, then waves his hand at the codes jumping across the grid in front of them. "These don't look like location signatures."

  "That's because they're not," Liam answers when Eco doesn't. "They're activity logs of everyone who has accessed the Grid in the last 24 hours—anything from reading newsfeeds to joining a virtuo-cine." He shakes his head, then looks at Calyx. "I don't see Jack."

  "Keep looking," I say, trying to focus again on the codes, but all I see are the same various people typing, eating, laughing, pantomiming movements like climbing and swimming…it's like watching everyone through tiny windows.

  "Did you enter the filter? There are too many entries to extract otherwise. Try just looking for an Omniclass log," Lyden says, and Eco nods.

  "Ohhhh, yeah. Forgot about that," he answers, then taps a few more keys on the floating red keyboard in front of him. After a few more seconds, a blue image comes into focus near the bottom of the Grid. It's blurry at first, but then I see him. I see my father.

  "He's there!" I shout, pushing past Arco and nearly running into the back of the couch. "What's happening? What's he doing?" I ask, turning to Liam. "Can you see him?"

  Eco narrows his eyes at me. "What are you seeing?" he asks, confused.

  "I see him," Vox says from behind me with her arms crossed over her chest.

  "You see his code?"

  "That too," Vox answers. "He's typing. Fast—wait, it just smeared out. Where did he go?"

  I look back at Vox, straight into her yellow eyes, which suddenly light like matches when they meet mine.

  "How do you see him? See his actual self in all those numbers and letters?" Ellis asks, gripping the back of the couch.

  "I saw him too, and others for a second…" Myra says in a quiet voice. "Just flashes, and then the code came back."

  "So did I. I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me," Fraya says.

  "That's what I thought too," Arco adds. "It was only for a few seconds…the different people. I thought it was some residual effect of our transfer."

  "Oh no…" Calyx says, sitting next to Eco in front of the Grid screen and taking over his keyboard.

  "You're all Empaths, at least Hybrids, aren't you?" Lyden asks. We look at each other. "That's why you could see the images and not just the code. It's a kind of mental syncing that happens when one Empath is exposed to a neural thread," he adds. "You must have picked up the neural thread from Liddick. It just wasn't supposed to work for any of you until we triggered it."

  "How?" Arco asks, shaking his head.

  "Heightened awareness and DNA integration is all it takes, even a handshake—any exposure to Empath DNA that has the neural thread embedded in it will result in a transfer to another Empath," Lyden says. "I suspected this is what happened for Jazwyn, but now with the rest of you, I'm sure of it," Lyden adds.

  "So now all stressed out Empaths can pick up this neural thread just by being around other Empaths who already have it in their neural channels? Is that what he's saying?" Eco asks Liam, all the blood draining from his face when he doesn't get an answer. He turns to Lyden. "How is this even possible? You planned for this?"

  "No…I mean, yes, that's what the neural thread was supposed to do, but not until we triggered it. Until then, it was only supposed to reveal for Liddick," Lyden answers, trying to make eye contact with Calyx, but she doesn't look up from her typing.

  "How long have you been able to see things Jazwyn?" Arwyn asks, and something about the gentleness in her voice makes my throat start to close up again. I swallow hard.

  "I don't know, since the port-festival I guess."

  "Since the marlin," Vox says over my shoulder.

  "You did see it that night. You did hear it," I ask all at once. "I knew it. That's why you were in my face everywhere after that. Why didn't you just ask me about it? You broke my nose!"

  Vox fights the smile pulling at the sides of her mouth, then lets it spring free with a chuckle.

  "You couldn't even manage your love life. Tell me how you were supposed to help me figure out why a dead fish was talking to us?"

  I open my mouth to argue with her, but nothing comes out. My voice is strangled som
ewhere at the base of my throat, and all I'm able to get out is the beginning of a choking scream.

  "All right," Arco says, putting his hand on my shoulder, then stepping between Vox and me. "So the Gaia bracelets they cuffed on us must have made us more aware or whatever…we already knew that."

  "That must have been the catalyst," Liam says, glancing up at Lyden and Arwyn. They both nod.

  "So, what's the problem with some of us seeing pictures in code now?" Arco adds.

  "The virtuo-cines they originally coded for Liddick are still in circulation. Some of them are archived, but the latest ones like Xenotrope 6, those are out there," Lyden says, turning to us. "If those of you with Empath tendencies can see the neural thread here on the Grid, that means it's probably accessible now to any Nascent Empath going into those virtuo-cines."

  "Nascent Empaths?" Fraya asks.

  "Any untrained Empath, no matter the prominence…Readers, even just a latency," Lyden answers.

  Liam sighs, then shakes his head and moves his hands to his hips as he turns his back to everyone. "But how could their bracelets have triggered this? We never opened the door for The Seam's transmission."

  "It's a bleed…" Arwyn says to the floor. "The neural thread is evolving."

  CHAPTER 7

  Damage Control

  Liddick

  Jack chips more ice from the blue glacier wall into the cloth I hand him, then ties it over Dez's other eye.

  "The cold will slow the cellular breakdown from the mineral rain. That's the best I can do without any equipment, but once we get to Azeris's hub, I'm sure I'll be able to do more."

  "And in the meantime? What happens to her?" Tieg says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a racehorse just waiting for the gate to open. Jack looks at him for a second too long, then sighs.

  "The cellular damage will try to spread to any other genetically engineered material in her body—it doesn't have to be external. Once the minerals from the rain are in her system, it's just…" he takes a breath.

  "What?" Dez says through a sob after another second.

  "We're going to fix everything—we just need to get to the hub as soon as possible. Can you walk?" Jack asks. Dez nods, and Zoe helps her to her feet.

  "There might be another way," Cal says, thumbing the point of his tunnel shark tooth necklace. "We could re-treat her."

  "Are you split? It took us days to recover the last time," Tieg says through his teeth.

  "Hang on—re-treat her with what?" Jack asks.

  "With Vishan DNA." Cal pulls up a small flame in his hand, then smothers it in a clenched fist as he punches the glacier wall hard enough that it leaves a hole. He pulls his hand out and opens it, then shows Jack his unmarked knuckles.

  "Fire and strength…" Jack whispers.

  "You all right?" Azeris asks him, raising an eyebrow.

  "Fine…I'm fine. That's the treatment…" Jack shakes his head, then clears his throat. "But how can you infuse DNA? There are no plasma converters out here…no grafting lasers."

  "We just need vein rock and the three fires. Well, and a few long reeds," Cal answers.

  "Vein rock?"

  "There's some at the edge of the ravine—I saw it when we crossed," Zoe adds. "We have to burn it in the three fires with some of Dez's blood and some of Cal's mixed together. That will bind the DNA, and then it will replicate once it's injected back into Dez."

  "Wait, do you have any idea how dangerous that is?" Jack narrows his eyes.

  "They've done this before—to all of us," Dell says, squaring his stance on the threshold of the glacier opening. He starts to step outside just as a flash of lightning turns everything white. He and Zoe exchange glances.

  "I'll get the reeds and the vein rock if you get the yellow fire," Zoe says. Dell nods, then turns again toward the trees just beyond the glacier threshold.

  "No way; we're not doing that again," Tieg says. "How much farther is the hub?"

  "How long do you think she's going to make it if we get attacked again by a tunnel shark out there? She's blind, you mollusk!" I try to control my voice, but can't rein in the frustration with his constant whining. He tries to advance, but Jack puts a hand in his chest.

  "No, he has a point. We have a long way to go, and the ice won't last much longer," Jack adds. "If this will fortify her DNA, it may be the only thing that can save her at this point. We're almost out of range from the Phase Two facility, and the baseline nanites in your blood will be offline soon."

  "And if we don't run into a tunnel shark this time, there will be no temporary nanite infusion to cover the ground between here and the hub," Azeris says.

  "No. There has to be another way." Tieg shakes his head and crosses his arms over his chest like he's bracing for a shuttle bus to run into him.

  "Well, please enlighten us with your better idea, or shut your vent already," I say, flicking a shard of ice at him.

  "That's it—"

  "Stop! Just stop fighting. I'll do the treatment," Dez says after another bolt of lightning flashes, and a crash of thunder rattles the frozen walls. She brings her hands over the cloths of ice on her eyes and almost starts to cry. "I don't want to be blind. I don't want this to spread."

  Tieg sighs and scrubs his hands over his face, then looks at Cal.

  "Fine," he says just as Zoe returns with a bundle of reeds. She empties a handful of black stones from her pocket, and another handful of white rock chips with dark lines running through them.

  "Hematite and Boron?" Jack asks, raising his eyebrows at the rocks Zoe has put in front of Cal.

  "Bloodstone and vein rock," she answers. "They're for the treatments."

  Jack shakes his head and takes a deep breath. "You just plan to heat blood over these rocks?"

  "No, we need the fires," Dell says, uncovering a stack of smoldering sticks. "Just managed to pull these from the lightning strike…it's the last of what's dry out there."

  "Put them here," Cal says, fashioning the last of the reeds into makeshift syringes just like Vita did back in the Vishan tunnels. "It's burning fast; we need to hurry—give me the cup from her satchel."

  Cal puts the metal cup over the yellow fire, then pulls up a red flame from the palm of his hand and catches one end of the kindling. The vein rock sparks, then ignites a green flame on the other side. Red, yellowish-orange, and green flames dance around the metal cup as he tosses in a few black stones, then jabs his arm with the reed and puts the extracted blood over them. The stones hiss.

  "OK, grip my hand if you want to—this is going to smart again," Zoe says, pushing Dez's hair back from her neck.

  "Wait, why her neck?" Jack asks, holding up a hand.

  "Can't roll up the sleeves on these things," Zoe answers, flicking the sleeve of Dez's black dive suit. "Jugular is the next closest to the heart—gotta be the freshest blood for this to work right."

  Jack's narrowed eyes relax, but not in relief. He's…exasperated?

  "Here," Zoe says, taking a deep breath and pointing to Dez's neck. "We'll put the needle right here."

  Dez pulls in a quick, short breath when the point of a reed breaks her skin, then another when Cal extracts the reed. She presses her palm against her throat as he adds the blood to the stones, which hiss again.

  "It's OK…just one more stick and you'll have all your superpowers back," Cal says, kneeling back down next to Dez. She smiles.

  "That's hot—you can't inject it now," Jack protests, taking a step toward Cal.

  "It has to be hot to bind," Zoe says. "It's all right. We really have done this before."

  "Be still," Cal says, bringing the reed full of mixed blood back to Dez's throat.

  She moves her hand, and tries to strangle the scream as he injects the blood.

  "Hang on, Dezzie…just hang on…" Tieg says, pinning his bottom lip down with his teeth.

  "Rinse the bowl so we can do the next one," Cal says, carefully reaching into the fire for the metal cup.

  "Wait!
"

  "They can't feel it, Jack. And it only marks them if they touch all three of those fires at the same time," I say.

  Jack shakes his head. "How is this possible? That DNA strand was corrupted—they abandoned it…" he says to himself, and Cal shoots him an icy glare.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Your DNA…" Jack says, taking a breath. "Son, the reason you can bind your DNA with others just by mixing your blood—the reason this treatment works to make others like you…it's because your DNA can only be the first strand Gaia created for genetic testing," he adds after a second, then looks apologetically at Cal. "The first 12 subjects they bonded it to escaped the Phase Two labs. They're the whole reason these biomes are predatory, but they must have survived…your people aren't just a Badlander subculture, are they? They're from the biomes?"

  Cal's face blanches as his eyes dart to Dell's.

  "It's like I was telling you. I'm sorry," Dell says. "They were science experiments…the 12 who became six families, who became five, and all that. It's exactly what will happen to the rest of those people still stuck in that facility if we don't stop Gaia. You can show Veece and Jove everything now."

  "So it really is…a lie, then…our whole culture," Cal says, looking into the flames. "When there was no Motherland in that volcano like the Origin Wall said, I knew it then…but part of me still hoped," he adds in a quiet voice.

  "I'm sorry, son," Jack says, surrounded by swirling smoke that makes the air feel thick and suffocating. After a second, Cal blows out a breath, then looks up from the fire. He jabs his original reed into his arm again and adds the blood to the cleaned cup. "Who's next?"

  CHAPTER 8

  Evolving

  Jazz

  The room is silent for a long time as we all look at Arwyn, waiting for her to elaborate. Eco turns to her as Calyx continues typing on the couch in front of the red Grid lines.