AER (The Elements Series Book 3)

by Tracy Korn

  "Well, yes, but we appreciate your hospitality all the same. Griswald will be in touch about lunch on the observation deck soon," Eddie says, winking obnoxiously. Charisse blushes, and her whole suit turns the same shade of pink.

  "Whoa…" I whisper before I can catch myself.

  "Do you love it?" she asks, running her hands over her hips. "It's called sentient silk…anger makes it turn black, happiness, white, sadness blue…"

  "So, then pink must be…desire?" Eddie almost slurs, and I cringe for him when she wrinkles her nose just enough that it registers. He's such a skod. Charisse laughs, and her suit fades to yellow, then returns to white.

  "Well, I'll just be up front. Nice to meet you, Ludwig. Do come back and see us on your next research trip," she says, her suit warming to pink again when I kiss her hand.

  "I couldn't resist if I tried," I say, finally putting some of these pieces together. She puckers a kiss at me, and her pink suit deepens to red as she makes her way back through the chrome arch. I turn to Eddie once she's out of earshot. "All right, what was all that? Ludwig? Really?"

  "Stow it and swallow this," he says, handing me a little silver square from his pocket.

  "A biochip? I already have one of those. How do you think I got through the Skyboard checkpoint?"

  "This one is a temporary override. Grisham's been monitoring you since you left, man, just to make sure you didn't have any tails. But now you do. You can't go through this port-carnate hub as Liddick Wright. Gaia just put out a net for you and the rest of your group—if your bio signature shows up in a port-carnate log, a virtuo-cine connection, or anywhere else on the grid, they'll grab you. Grisham already sent Finn with a mask for Azeris to install over his hub, so you should get to Admin City without too much fanfare. You're lucky they haven't clipped you yet," Eddie says.

  "Was a girl with Finn? Did he bring her to Azeris?"

  "Grisham didn't say anything about a girl. Swallow that already, will ya?"

  I swallow the stupid silver biochip, then grab Eddie's shoulders.

  "Look, I need you to tell Grisham that I'm not doing anything for him in Admin City until I get word that my friend is all right. Do you understand?"

  "Yeah, man, yeah."

  "And I need you to find Finn. Tell him to stay at Azeris's hab, all right?"

  "Yeah, man! C'mon, get in the hub. I got 10 more minutes before I have to jet, and I mean to get one of those pheromone scrubs, ya feel?"

  I roll my eyes at Eddie, then climb onto the silver disc of the port-carnate hub. It lights up, and a clear barrier closes over me like a dome. Eddie waves and blows me a kiss. I roll my eyes again.

  "Tell Finn!" I shout, but I know he can't hear me now. I can barely hear myself over the loud whirring that starts as the light cranks up and my hands start going cold.

  ***

  I don't remember closing my eyes, but they won't open when the light fades. After a few seconds, the crackling sound also stops, and I hear Azeris.

  "Thank you, Krishna," he says, then blows out a breath straight into the audio capture. I try to wince, but my face is still frozen. "All your parts are in one piece, chief."

  "You're a lucky frog," Zoe laughs, but the urge to do the same feels like an icepick in my chest.

  "Liddick, you're going to feel some pins and needles like the first time you transferred, that's normal. When Corva stripped your DNA, she had to strip all your port-carnate imprinting too. Just try to breathe," Jack says. All at once it feels like fire ants start biting my fingers, then arms and legs until the sensation runs up my neck and over my face. I try to swallow as hard as I can to push the feeling out of my ears, but it doesn't work.

  "Aaannnd….that should do it," Azeris says. A whoosh of air hits me in the face, and I can move again. I feel myself falling, but someone on either side catches me. I open my eyes, and finally, the prickling fire ant feeling passes.

  "Thanks," I cough to Jack and Finn, who are on either side of me. "Dez…did you bring her?" I ask, barely able to put air behind the words as I turn to Finn. He looks at Jack, then back to me. "What? Where is she?" I cough again, forcing out the words.

  "I brought her back, but she told Grisham she didn't want to go to Admin City. I gave Azeris the infobit Grisham sent to explain everything."

  "Where is she?" I almost shout, gripping his shirt the best I can.

  "He sent her home, man…to Sundial City."

  "That was not our deal!"

  "I told him you'd be stung about it, but he said he couldn't help you until her dad helped him. He said Azeris could keep his virtuo-cine tech on account of you're not gonna need it now."

  "What!?" I say through my teeth, but that's all I can get out before my throat locks up.

  "I don't know, man. He quick got her talking about who she was, who her family was, did some tear wiping, then started tapping away at his screens. Next thing I knew, he was having me go fish up Eddie. When I got back, there was a suit and a heliocar out back, but your Cloudy girl was gone," Finn explains. I push my hands through my hair.

  All right…calm down, I think…take a breath. Dez is safe, right? She's with her dad. Grisham must have made a deal—trading her for her dad's help…for getting the temporary biochip and for getting Grisham reconnected with some equipment, with some contacts…

  "Are you all right?" Zoe asks, crossing to me.

  "Let me see your eyes," Jack asks.

  "I'm fine!" I say too loudly, still trying to sort through this mess in my head.

  "We don't have a lot of time, son. Grisham's info bit card said there's a flag on our bioprints. It can only be from Gaia. We need to get to Admin City before the temporary overrides he sent wear off. We have to go now," Jack insists.

  "Then it's true," I say, trying to keep the panic in my gut from rising. "Grisham wouldn't have been able to find the flags on us on his own—he didn't have that kind of access to the Grid," I say. "It was all he could do to send out a local scan for Dez."

  "I don't know, man," Finn answers after a second. "After I got back with Eddie, Grisham just shoved an infobit card, a hub mask, and three biochips at me and told me to give them to Azeris. He's been monitoring you since the minute you left the hole in the sky, and he probably still is."

  "I haven't been anywhere or seen anyone who could have helped him like that. It had to be Dez's father, and men like him don't just trust people. He wouldn't have dealt with Grisham at all without proof that Dez was really there…he must have scanned for her on the Grid and saw that she wasn't on the Gaia mainframe anymore," I think out loud. "That must be how he saw we were flagged."

  "Why does this matter, man? You need to get out of here," Finn says.

  "Because! It matters because we need to know what we're walking into now before we walk into it!" I shout. "I have to figure out if Spaulding is on our side or not, and I can't think with this stupid reconfiguration fog!"

  "He's just trying to help, wise?" Zoe says, flipping a tangle of copper hair out of her eyes.

  "I'm sorry," I say, blowing out a breath. "Look…Dez's dad is going to get her a medical scan before anything else. He'll find out about her Vishan treatment, that Tieg is missing, and that Pitt is…dead. He's going to want to hold someone accountable for all this," I say, unsure where these thoughts are so urgent all of a sudden, or why I'm feeling so tense. Then I realize the tension isn't coming from the thoughts at all. It's coming from Jack.

  "The code…" he says, reading something on the console in front of him. "We need to get to Admin City."

  CHAPTER 36

  Marked

  Jazz

  "We have a problem," Calyx says before I can open my eyes.

  "Why? The second patch is populating," Tark answers.

  "It's not that; look…"

  "When did you pull this?"

  "I didn't. Jack sent it about an hour ago. We just broke the encryption," Calyx says.

  "My dad…?" I whisper, trying as hard as I can to push out of my virtuo-cine
chair. I force my eyes open. "You heard from my dad?" I ask, pinning Calyx to the wall with the question.

  "Yes, he's safe. He'll be here shortly, Jazwyn."

  "What about the others?" I ask. Calyx nods, and the next breath I take feels like the first one I've ever taken. They're all safe.

  "There has been a complication, though…" Calyx adds. "The Skyboarders are not with the rest of their group."

  "What happened?" Arco asks, sitting up in his chair.

  "We don't have all the details, but Jack's message said the girl is topside somewhere, likely in Skyboard North. She ran away from the group after her brother disappeared underground, and…she's not well."

  "Dez is sick? What's wrong with her? What happened to Tieg?" Fraya asks, panic rising in her voice.

  "Like I said, we don't know all the details. We also can't send you back into the Grid, at least not yet," Calyx adds, and everyone starts talking at once.

  "You've been temporarily compromised," Tark says, raising his hands to quiet us down. "There is a flag on each of your bioprints now. We pulled you off the Grid as soon as we got the message from Jack."

  "What does that mean?" Myra says in a small voice.

  "So far, it looks like no one was tracked, but we're keeping you offline until we can find out more information about the flags…our tech should have picked them up," Tark takes in a deep breath, then blows it out. "But we can talk about this after you decompress. Congratulations on patching the second Glyph, Ms. Toll."

  "I didn't do it. Vox did…" Myra says, looking warily at Vox, who bites the air several times at her. Myra's face turns white.

  "Vox!" I hiss, but she just laughs as Arco gets to his feet.

  "Who put flags on our bioprints? Gaia?"

  "That would be my guess, Mr. Hart," Tark answers.

  "Then even if they did track us to the Grid, wouldn't they just think we made it topside and went into a cinehouse there?"

  "No," Eco answers without looking up from his console. "You can only get on the Platform level here in Admin City."

  "Does Gaia know we're here now?" Myra's voice pitches.

  "No, not yet," Tark answers, glaring at Eco.

  "But they could if we went into another virtuo-cine?" Fraya asks. Tark pulls in another deep breath.

  "All we know is that your flags aren't warrant level. You've just been flagged with locators."

  "So they want to find us, but they don't want anyone to know about it," Ellis crosses his arms over his chest. "That means they want to get rid of us."

  "You've known that since your Leviathan imploded, Mr. Raj," Tark says, raising an eyebrow.

  Arco presses his teeth together, making the muscles in his jaw jump.

  "If we have flags now, so will the others right? Gaia is going to track them here," I say, the words sticking in my throat.

  "No, they used temporary identity override biochips. I just put the mask in place to match the receipt requests that Jack sent, see?" Eco answers, nodding to his console. "An adult male cosmetics chemist named Rizzo Trench, his assistant, and a teenager just came out of encryption as Azeris Frank, Jack Ripley, and a deceased girl named Zoe Frank…"

  "What? Zoe is dead?" Myra's voice cracks.

  "No…" Fraya says, crossing to Myra. "She's been gone for six years, remember? They just reclassified her bioprint."

  "And this trajectory log is Liddick's: Ludwig Sprague, storyboarder technician—"

  "Ludwig!?" Vox snorts, interrupting.

  "Where would they get identity override chips?" I ask, looking up at Arco. He shrugs.

  "Liddick is mixed up with a lot of people…"

  "Wait…where are you going?" Eco scrolls furiously over his hovering console screen, shaking his head again.

  "What's the problem?" Liam asks.

  "Your brother's trajectory. He's being rerouted to another hub…"

  "Another hub? Where?" Lyden asks, standing and crossing to Eco's console.

  "I don't know; the ping comes back different every time I send it—whoa, this just got encrypted above our pay grade." Eco blows out a breath, and the lights embedded in his cheekbones flash red and white.

  "Nothing is above our pay grade," Tark says, pushing toward Eco's console and waving Calyx over.

  "Well, someone is scrambling it. All I can see is that the destination hub is here in Admin City." Eco points to his screen. "See? The coordinates jump with every ping, but they're all Admin City Z-codes."

  "What does all this mean? Are they following us? Is Gaia coming here?" Ellis asks too loudly. Eco shoots a glare at him, the lights from his temples flashing only red now.

  "No! Calm down. No one is scoping anything here. Someone just rerouted Liddick's port-carnate destination. Someone who can only see Ludwig Sprague."

  "Are you sure that's Liddick?" I ask. "Maybe it's a mistake."

  "It's the only other launch from the same location as your dad and the others, and at roughly the same time. It can't be anyone else, especially not a storyboarder technician porting from the Badlands," Eco continues.

  "But that makes no sense. If they all left from the same hub, they should have been able to enter their destination coordinates," Lyden says. "How did Liddick's get rerouted?"

  "His trajectory was adjusted remotely; see the entry point?" Eco points to the screen again. "Someone doesn't want anyone to see where Ludwig Sprague is really going."

  "All right," Tark says when we all start talking at once again. "When are the others arriving?"

  "17 minutes," Eco answers, and Calyx's eyes dart to him.

  "Have team two clear the bridge—tell them we're in route," she says. Tark nods, and Eco stands to leave with Calyx.

  "I'm going too!" I shout after them.

  "You would only be a danger to both yourself and them, Ms. Ripley," Tark says. I try to protest again, but Vox cuts me off.

  "We have flags, sand dollar, remember?" she almost sings between biting her nails, then fashions her hand into a pretend gun and shoots it at me. "We're outlaws."

  "That's correct, Ms. Dyer. Ms. Ripley, your location would blip at the first Plank station, and you would be terminated at the next by people you'd never see coming," Tark answers. "Whoever planted these flags wants you to feel like you can go about your business, which is exactly why you have to lay low for now."

  "I am not just going to sit here," I say, pushing out of my chair. "We need to do something…my dad and the others are on their way, right? Then we need to find out who is controlling Liddick's course," I add, lacing my fingers behind my neck as I start pacing.

  "Ms. Ripley, we can't risk—"

  "Just finish the game," Vox sighs, resting her ankle on her raised knee as she lies back in her chair. Everyone turns to look at her.

  "Didn't you hear them? No one can go back in. We're all marked, Vox. Gaia will lock onto you if you go back in," Jax says. Vox starts humming, then pauses.

  "How many Biodesigners and Omnicoders does it take to make a temporary bioprint chip?" She asks her chewed fingernail, then starts chewing it again. "I mean crite, imagine what could be done with two Biodesigners and Omnicoders…" she adds, forcing her yellow eyes to open wide in mock surprise at her nail.

  "Wait…" Arwyn says to the floor, then to everyone else. "Of course. We can do this. They can go back in and finish patching the Glyphs."

  Vox sighs again, then swings up to a sitting position and grips the edge of her virtuo-cine chair.

  "Arco's slightly less annoying sister…they need you to tell them more words," she says, then starts swinging her feet back and forth like a kid sitting on a swing. "Here, I'll help. It rhymes with: give a shi—"

  "Chip!" Arwyn cuts her off. "We'll give you all a new, temporary bioprint chip. Then you can go back into the cines without flags."

  "We won't be able to find the Glyphs if we have a masked bioprint, though," Arco says. "Didn't you tell us the Glyphs are designed to seek out the Empath neural structure?"

  "Liam and I can
embed that into the new signatures. Then when Jazz's dad gets here, he can just update the rest of the evolving code," Arwyn answers, but Tark shakes his head.

  "We've been down this road…"

  "Skull, she's right. The code is spreading the wrong message to more people by the second. It also knows we're trying to alter it," Liam says. "Jack won't be here and up to spec for hours—what if the code learns how to create a firewall that won't even let him in by then?"

  "I'm getting a read on Ludwig Sprague. He's entered the Grid," one of the technicians says, staring into her console, then types something. A green holographic screen appears in the air a few seconds later, then zooms in on a series of coded lines.

  "Liddick is going into the cines?" I ask.

  "He's already been preloaded onto the Platform, sir…with an embedded storyboarder credential," the technician says, then raises her eyebrows at Tark. "Sir, he's accessing our cine queue…"

  "Crite…" Tark sighs, then turns to Arwyn and shifts his hands to his hips.

  "It's not his fault…" she says, shaking her head.

  "He's clearly the hack on our side door into the Grid. He can change the virtuo-cine plots with that credential. Do you know what that means, Ms. Hart?" Tark asks.

  "He's not the hack. Someone has an agenda—it has to be whoever hijacked his port trajectory," Liam adds, stepping out from behind his console. "He's not stupid, Skull, and even if Jack did tell him about The Seam's plan for the sleeper message, he wouldn't try to stop it. He's not a traitor."

  "If anything, he'd be thinking Gaia was trying to stop the code from evolving to reach everyone out there. If he's going into the Grid, he must have a valid reason," Lyden adds. "He's been with Azeris and Jack all this time, Skull. There's no reason to think he's not on our side."

  Tark shakes his head again and presses his lips into a tight line.

  "Then why would he be going into the cines under our hack? No, we can't risk—"