Travelers

by K A Riley

  From my other side, Rain also edges her way to the window. Unlike Cardyn, she doesn’t reach out to pet Render—she’s always been a bit on the skittish side around him—but she does offer him up a hearty, “Hi there!” and a beaming, welcoming grin.

  He answers her with a strained battery of guttural croaks.

  “It’s too hot out there,” I tell him out loud. “Why don’t you come in here with us?”

  ~ If we’re both going to be hot, at least one of us should be free.

  Speaking of which, any chance you could get us out of here?

  ~ There’s always a chance.

  A good one?

  ~ A slim one. Don’t get greedy.

  Render severs our connection and settles down on the ledge to survey the city with us. From up here, we can see the places we’ve already traveled through this morning:

  Kensington Palace. The Hyde Park Settlement. Buckingham Palace. St. James Park Lake.

  We can also see a lot of places we haven’t been and definitely don’t want to get to:

  The scarred ruins of what must’ve been some pretty majestic office buildings.

  A glittering, craggy-topped mountain range of glass running through the city to the south.

  A marble church to the west of us, taller than most of the city’s remaining buildings, with slanted spires and with what’s left of its dome bleached white by the sun.

  A cluster of tall towers with their top halves blown off.

  A huge section of the city, a whole neighborhood it seems, that’s nothing more than a smoldering, flattened mass of melted steel and stone.

  And there’s the twisted, fragmented wreck of a giant Ferris wheel across the river, not too far from the tower. Its crushed network of curved tubes and steel struts rise up from the water like the giant, broken hand of a desperate and drowning man.

  I can’t stop staring at it. I’m fixated, but I’m not sure why.

  “How long do you think we’ve been in here now?” Cardyn asks, snapping me out of my trance.

  Rain is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the small room now and doesn’t open her eyes when she says, “Just shy of two hours.”

  “Really?” I’m shocked. It feels like it’s been a month.

  “I’ve got to say,” Cardyn exclaims, stretching his arms wide and giving a huge, open-mouthed yawn all at the same time, “I’m so glad we came here, Kress. As far as vacations go, this has got to be the topper!”

  “We came here to find and rescue fellow Emergents,” I remind him. I almost tell him and Rain about my secret mission, but the timing doesn’t feel right. Not without Brohn and Terk here as well.

  “Great,” Cardyn grunts. “Now all we have to do is hope Granden figures out how horribly we suck at this and wait for him to send someone competent over here to find and rescue us.”

  “Hey,” I say, turning my attention to Rain and away from Cardyn who is quickly crossing the line from amusing to annoying. “Do you think the Banters set us up?”

  Rain cups her chin in her hand. “I was thinking the same thing. What if there is no Alternator? What if they really just wanted to use us to help get those kids out of the palace dungeon?”

  “Joke’s on them,” Cardyn mutters.

  “Grizzy warned us about people around here using us for their own good.”

  “What’ll we do about Terk? Without the Alternator…” I keep my voice low, although there’s no one around to hear me. I’m just afraid that if I say it too loud, I might start crying.

  Cardyn’s lip quivers when he asks Rain, “How much time?”

  Instead of answering, Rain bounds up and goes over to stand by the window again, her elbows on the dirty concrete sill. Despite our predicament and confinement, she’s still remarkably high-energy. “There’s power over there,” she notes, pointing through the bars toward Buckingham Palace. “And not from fire or old generators like the Banters have in Kensington Palace. Those were holo-lights we saw when we were in there.”

  “Those aren’t solar.”

  “And they’re not electric.”

  “So it has to be an Alternator, right?”

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “And you think they really have something that could help Terk?”

  Rain frowns. “For their sake, they better.”

  “How much time?” Cardyn asks again, more insistently this time, without looking up.

  I know what he’s asking, and of course Rain does, too, but neither of us says anything.

  With a groan, Cardyn pushes himself up and goes over to stand with Rain at the window. He presses his cheek to the bars, which causes his face to scrunch up and his voice to distort in a weird way. “Weather’s strange here. It’s hot.”

  “No kidding,” I say, standing up myself and plodding over to join my two friends.

  Render is long gone. I don’t know where. I miss him, of course. I always do when we’re apart. But part of me is glad he doesn’t feel the need to hang around with us and wallow in our misery of imprisonment.

  “They get rain.” Cardyn draws his face away from the bars. There are two parallel reddish lines running down his cheek. He tilts his head up at the sky of churning billows of red and gray gasses. “Only I’m not sure if I’d want to drink whatever winds up falling out of those clouds.”

  “Seems like even the atmosphere wants to kill us,” I agree with a self-pitying sigh.

  Nodding, Cardyn joins me in gazing out at the remnants of the huge half-submerged Ferris wheel, folded over in the middle and scorched black, on the opposite side of the river. A half-dozen giant pods—smooth and glossy as a handful of throat lozenges—are wedged against it with a few more stranded, half in and half out of the water, down river on the far bank.

  “They look like dolphins,” Cardyn says absently.

  “Hm.”

  “The earth’s alive, you know.”

  “Alive?”

  “Like us. It’s an orphan in a war. A survivor.”

  “It’s not alive, though,” I remind him. “It’s just covered in stuff that is.”

  “Isn’t that all being alive is? Aren’t we all just a soul covered in a galaxy of little solar systems of cells with a glucose-powered, twenty-watt brain?”

  “That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”

  Cardyn grips the bars on the window and gazes back and forth at the polluted river down below and at the countless islands of brick, concrete, and steel—all the leftover remnants of the area’s offices, skyscrapers, shops, churches, pubs, bridges, cars, and buses—that have swollen its edges beyond its banks. “Earth is suffering,” Cardyn says with determined finality. “It knows what we’ve done to it. The earth knows. That’s why they call it ‘global awareness.’”

  At first, I think he’s making one of his terrible puns, but when I glance over at him, he’s stone-faced and glossy-eyed.

  He’s still staring through the bars and doesn’t look up when he says, “This is the earth getting back at us for what we did to it.”

  “What’s the deal with Brohn?” I ask before I have time to stop myself. I don’t really mean to cut Cardyn off, but the question’s been burbling inside of me since about two minutes after meeting Harah. Besides, Cardyn’s in a weird mood, and I don’t really know how to react to him right now.

  Snapping himself out of his philosophical reverie, he asks me what I mean, but Rain’s eyes pop open as she says she knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  “He did latch onto Her Royal Highness pretty fast, didn’t he?”

  “I’ve never seen him look at anyone like that. He definitely doesn’t look at me like that.”

  “I noticed it, too. She’s very pretty, you have to admit. And powerful. I mean, she’s a queen.”

  “And I’m just a girl who ‘dreams in raven.’ What’s your point?”

  “No point. I’m just saying that Brohn’s our lifelong friend. But he’s also a guy. He’s going to find certain girls attractive. It stands t
o reason.”

  “He’s doing this for us, not for himself,” I remind her.

  Cardyn scratches his head. “Seriously. What if he’s being brainwashed? Or if they slipped him something…?”

  Rain seems to ponder this for a long time before partially agreeing that it’s technically possible. “If Harah’s an Emergent…”

  “She could have some kind of hold over him.”

  “Maybe pheromones?”

  Cardyn scrunches up his face. “Pheromones?”

  “You know, secreted hormones that’ve evolved to evoke a chemical stimulus in a receiving individual.”

  I clench my fists and my teeth. “If that British bitch even thinks about secreting anything—”

  The three of us share a good laugh for a second, but then the seriousness of it hits me hard enough to add a dash of fear to my jealousy. “What if that’s really it? What if it’s permanent, Rain? What if she did something to mess with his head, and he forgets about us?”

  “Forgets about us? What do you mean?”

  “Either he’s being controlled or else he seriously thinks sacrificing himself is an acceptable course of action.” I stop for a second to wipe my eyes before they start watering too much. “I really don’t know which option is worse.”

  Cardyn looks back and forth between me and Rain before grunting a dismissive half-laugh. “You’re kidding, right? It’s not complicated. Brohn’s toying with her. Don’t you see? He’s using her, getting in good so he can get us out of here and then start planning his own escape. There’s no phero-whatevers, and he’s not interested in that uptight, stuck-up, royal Miss Fancy-pants.”

  I tell him I’m sure he’s right as I slide my back down the wall so I can sit on the floor and sulk. I don’t mean to feel sorry for myself. But something’s not right. Normally, I’d agree with Cardyn. But since we’ve been in here, I’ve been trying to contact Brohn through the mental connection we sometimes share. It’s never been as strong or as clear as what Render and I have. Not even close, really. But I could always feel Brohn’s presence somehow.

  Sitting here, locked in this tower while we await our fate, I still feel it.

  Only now, for the first time ever, it’s pushing me away.

  35

  Strength

  If Rain had a watch, I’m sure she’d be looking at it every other second. Without a proper chronometer on hand, though, we have to rely on the movement of the sun and on our own gut instincts to keep track of time.

  The irony of being locked in a clock tower with time running out but not knowing the actual time isn’t lost on any of us.

  Rain, especially, keeps pacing the cell, looking through the barred door and then back through the barred window, staring back and forth from where the guts of the world’s most famous clock used to be to where they are now.

  I know how Rain feels. We’re supposed to be the result of some kind of techno-genetic human evolution. We’re supposed to have access to special, enhanced abilities. We’ve faced off against the Patriots and their superior numbers and weapons. And we’ve survived.

  And now, we’re locked up and helpless like some fairy tale princesses in a cell at the top of a dying clock tower.

  Pathetic.

  Plus, Brohn’s out there in that palace doing who-knows-what with Harah. If he’s playing her, he’s doing a good job of it. Maybe too good. That look. That…kiss.

  Ugh.

  My mind may be on Brohn, but I know Rain’s mind is firmly locked on Terk.

  “I’m sure he’s okay,” I assure her.

  She gives me a corner-eyed stare before going back to peering out through the bars of our prison cell. “Maybe you could connect with Render and get a message to someone. Try to get help?”

  “We don’t know anyone who isn’t out to kill us,” I remind her.

  “What about the Banters?”

  “If they sent us into Buckingham to do their dirty work, I doubt they’re going to come storming up here to rescue us.”

  Rain gives me another dirty look like it’s my fault we don’t have allies in a foreign country where we’ve been for less than half a day.

  Cardyn continues to sulk over by the door while I go to sit cross-legged in the middle of the room with my black dress gathered around me like a rippling puddle of glistening tar.

  I let my mind roam around until I finally connect with Render, who’s gone off exploring somewhere.

  I need to tell them about our other mission.

  ~ It’s not time yet.

  They need to know. If this is it for us…Manthy was part of all of us.

  ~ And she always will be, in life or in death. Which aren’t as far apart as you sometimes seem to think. Right now, though, you need to focus.

  Focus?

  ~ On Brohn, on Terk, and on not getting killed while you try to get them back. You’re in danger of thinking too far ahead. You have abilities.

  I push up my sleeves and run my fingers along the tattoos in my forearms. Not that they’re doing me any good in here at the moment. Even if I could fly, I’ve got nowhere to fly to.

  ~ I wasn’t referring to our shared perceptions.

  What then?

  ~ Patience is also an ability.

  I get it. And a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right?

  ~ I have to admit, I’ve never really cared for that metaphor.

  Sorry.

  ~ It’s okay. Now concentrate so you can prepare yourself for the future.

  How can I prepare myself for what I don’t know?

  ~ Like life and death, the present and the future aren’t all that far apart.

  Life and death? Are we talking about me, Cardyn, and Rain…or are you talking about Manthy?

  He doesn’t answer right away, and before I have a chance to ask him to elaborate, a clang of iron interrupts our exchange, and my eyes snap open.

  “Where were you?” Cardyn asks, helping me to my feet.

  “Render had some advice for me.”

  Cardyn tilts his head toward Squire and the four giant knights behind her. “I hope it had something to do with getting out of this alive.”

  “It did. Kind of. I think.”

  Squire looks a little sad as she calls us forward. With their two-handed broadswords drawn and their visors down, the guards just look menacing.

  I’m still waiting for them to disobey Harah’s orders and exact their own vengeance against us for what we did to their two compatriots back in the maze. For now, fortunately, they seem dedicated to some sort of chivalric code of honor that compels them to obey their queen at all costs.

  Still, this isn’t the first time I’ve caught them glaring at us from behind their visors while their hands inch impatiently toward the hilts of their swords.

  A quick glance over at Rain tells me she’s slipped into her Culling mode, but I’m disappointed when she catches my eye and shakes her head.

  That means she’s got nothing. No strategy. No options. No solution.

  I can’t say I’m surprised. I don’t need her Emergent decision-making abilities to know that Cardyn, Rain, and I—completely unarmed and disoriented—don’t have a chance against Squire and these four walking, sword-wielding tanks.

  “Harah has made her decision,” Squire informs us as we begin to descend the tower steps.

  “So…?” Cardyn asks through a sarcastic drawl. “Do we live, or do we die?”

  Squire shakes her head and avoids making eye contact as she leads us back down the spiral staircase.

  Great. We’ve come all this way to save Emergents and now we’re about to need saving, ourselves. Granden would be so proud.

  The trip back down the tower is easier, although the creaking stairs and wobbly brass guardrail with sections missing don’t exactly inspire confidence.

  I don’t bother counting the steps this time. I’m too busy thinking about poor Terk. He can’t have more than a couple of hours left. And if he goes, so does the Auditor.

  T
hat last part shouldn’t bother me. After all, the Auditor is just a computer that’s been programmed to mimic a person.

  On the other hand, the programmer was my father, and the person he designed her to mimic was my mother.

  My throat tightens up, my jaw clenches, and I squint hard to stop myself from bursting into tears right here in the middle of the staircase.

  Keep it together, Kress. Brohn’ll get us out of this, I promise myself. He’s protected us for this long, right? Why stop now?

  When Squire leads us through the door at the bottom of the tower, I half expect to see Brohn waiting there, his arbalest slung across his chest, his fists like stone, ready to lead us all in one more brawl. We’ll make our escape, complete our mission, and return home as heroes.

  But there’s no one on the other side of the door. No light at the end of the tunnel. No savior. No Brohn.

  Without Terk and Brohn, it’s just me, Cardyn, and Rain: the three weakest members of our Conspiracy.

  Render interrupts my despondent self-pitying with his trademark brand of vague raven wisdom. His voice slips in and out of my head like an egg yolk from a shell.

  ~ There’s more than one way to be strong.

  The missions I was trying to finish…I failed.

  ~ You’re not searching for Brohn. Or for Manthy. And you’re not searching for a power source to save Terk.

  Then what am I searching for?

  ~ Strength.

  He’s right. Now all I have to do is find it. And for the first time, I think I know where to look.

  36

  Execution

  We’re led by Squire and the four knights back the way we came toward Buckingham Palace. The shoddy wooden turrets built onto the top of the palace’s flat roof rise like wobbly popsicle-stick watchtowers into the reddening sky.

  In front of the palace is a huge stone sculpture. We passed near it on the way to the clock tower, but it was on the other side of the dead forest, so this is our first up-close look at it.