by R F Hurteau
“Hey Killian. Sorry, kind of in a hurry right now.” Ben strode past him and down the aisle towards the entrance, and Killian loped along beside him, having to move quickly to match Ben’s longer strides.
“Oh, sure, no problem,” Killian said, speaking fast, “but listen, real quick, I just wanted to let you know that the supplies you requested have arrived.”
“Awesome. Whatever you’re working on, drop it. Grab some of your guys and get to work on those.”
“But I—”
Ben stopped and turned to face Killian, raising a hand.
“This is important, Killian.”
A brilliant, crazy idea had taken root in his head, and he didn’t want to risk it slipping away while he stood here talking.
“I have a feeling we’re going to need that stuff sooner rather than later.”
He walked off, leaving Killian looking dumbstruck in his wake.
The labyrinthine underground was so familiar to Ben that his feet took him where he needed to go without conscious thought.
When he’d first come to work in Pods, the basement level had appeared a real treat. He’d loved the added mystery, the idea of getting lost in the passages. There weren’t too many places on the surface that anyone could feel any danger of getting lost in. He’d come in early for shifts, giving himself plenty of time to explore. But the novelty had soon worn off, and his route rarely deviated any more.
He took a lift to the first floor and hurried toward Sylvia’s East wing laboratory. He arrived before her and Edwin and let himself in, looking around.
Sylvia had the medical pods arranged in a neat ring around the room. One cylindrical glass one was occupied.
This pod was very familiar to Ben, as it had been the first that he had ever converted for medical use. He stepped closer, looking at the man who lay suspended in a viscous green liquid, naked except for a mask that obscured most of his face, releasing bubbles as he exhaled. Although the green goo gave his skin an eerie appearance, it was easy to see that the man had been badly burned. Most of his body was covered in shiny scar tissue, devoid of hair. Ben almost fell over backward as the masked face turned toward him. Shaken, he stared into pale eyes. Or rather, one pale eye. The other was a milky white orb, which took on a minty green hue through the liquid.
“Ben?”
He jumped a second time, his hand flying to his chest.
“Good grief, Sylvia! You startled me!”
“Sorry. We got here as soon as we could. What’s so urgent?”
Ben was still flustered and struggled to remember why he’d come.
“Oh. Oh, right!” He glanced around, homing in on Sylvia’s workstation. “I uh, need to use that real quick.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You called me down to use my workstation?”
“No. Well, yes. But no. Just wait, okay? I need to find something...” his voice trailed off as he worked, hands flying over the panel.
“You remember...” he said, trying very hard to concentrate on what he was doing and saying at the same time, “how a few of the Elves were abandoned here?”
“How could I forget?”
He could see his sister’s mournful reflection in the screen, shaking her head. “I wanted to treat them, but there were too many injured Humans to take care of. I was overruled. I did what I could to make them comfortable, but...”
“But you still have data on them, right? You took their vitals, and samples, and everything? I remember seeing it.”
“Oh, yes. Yes I do,” she confirmed, pointing over his shoulder. “It’s here, see? Down, down—no, back up. Yes, that’s it, there.”
Ben clicked the file, opening it and gazing at the familiar patterns with a growing feeling of excitement building in his chest. The numbers weren’t an exact match, but the pattern was the same. He gave a low whistle.
“What’s going on, Ben?” Edwin demanded at last.
Ben turned to Edwin with a look of triumph shining in his eyes.
“I think I just figured out what they were really up to down in there.”
Eight
Unexpected Visitors
PERHAPS Terrance had been a little overindulgent on the trip, but the whole idea of being trapped in a small craft surrounded by four other people he had never met before for ten days had called for desperate measures.
He eyed the crate of Nouritas with longing as he surreptitiously took the last swig from his own, now empty, bottle. He placed it on the console, where the constant grinding of the prototype’s advance made it walk slowly across the smooth surface with each rhythmic bump. He watched its progress idly, stretching a hand out to catch it as it tipped over the edge. Then he placed it back upright, forcing it to repeat its slow, unsteady journey.
“We’re almost there,” said Leon, tapping on the glass cover of a pressure gauge hopefully. “So far, everything seems to be holding together just fine.”
“Excellent!” Bohai scooted to the edge of his seat, bouncing with anticipation. “Very good. I wouldn’t want to greet the Therans with anything less than a functional prototype. Leon, will you be able to explain everything to them in detail, but in terms that are easy to understand?”
Leon, a scrawny man with slicked back hair and a nose so pointy that contact with it could be dangerous, gave a nod of confirmation.
“I can explain, sure. But I’m not sure if they’ll understand it or not. There is quite a bit to this little machine.”
Engineers, Terrance thought with disdain. An ironic thought, to be sure, since he himself was one of the finest engineers in all of Culei.
He gave a derisive laugh which ended in a hiccup that brought the Nouritas up into the back of his throat. Everyone looked at him and he smiled, the mounds of his cheeks raising his spectacles until they brushed the base of his brow.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to underestimate the pointy-earned rapscallions. If you think that the Elves are going to be dumbfounded by this little toy, then I’d say you are, best case scenario, a gravely mistaken ignoramus. I might bring to your attention the fact that they systematically attempted to destroy our planet with biological warfare?”
Bohai looked stunned at the bold insinuations, but fact was fact. “Terrance, please. We have all agreed that the Sequencing will not be among the items we discuss if we hope to broker this alliance with Thera. Nor will the terms Elf or Elves be appropriate. They are Therans, Terrance. Anything else could be viewed as a derogatory slur.”
Terrance shrugged, unperturbed by the chastising. He couldn’t understand why they were expected to pander to the enemy.
“Yes, I remember the briefing. I’m just saying, they’re not idiots. You’d do well not to treat them as such.”
“Well, if they could figure it out themselves, they wouldn’t have agreed to meet us,” Leon pointed out. “They aren’t used to such extreme weather. Their climate is always temperate.”
“I said,” Terrance replied dryly, “I remember the briefing. They need us, we need them...yada yada pomp and circumstance yada. Am I the only one who has the wherewithal to read between the lines of this tragedy? All they want is for someone else to do their dirty work for them.” Terrance made a throaty noise of disgust. “No matter how many times I expound on the obvious, no one seems capable of seeing past the immediate benefit to the inevitable blowback.”
Bohai’s lips formed a tight frown that showed how hard it was to restrain himself from saying what he was thinking. Terrance rolled his eyes and went back to watching the empty Nouritas bottle edging along the console.
He hadn’t wanted to come on this mission. In fact, he’d found himself standing before Her Majesty the Queen as the sole voice of reason. Terrance had said that the whole plan was a bad idea. That Culei should focus on maintaining strong bonds with the other nation-states. Helping the Elves escape their icy foothold on Antarctica could only end in disappointment.
But he had been overruled. No one cared about the opinion of one lowly mecha
nical engineer, not when there were hordes of brown-nosed advisors falling all over themselves to offer the Queen endless affirmation of her ever-impressive wisdom. Culei was a proud nation, and the Queen had viewed this as the most logical option. The Elves were bound to come up with a plan at some point, with or without Culei’s help. They didn’t want to take chances; they wanted to take the winning side. The Queen’s Council had advised her that this meant doing whatever it took to secure the favor of the Therans.
And since all Culei had to offer was a way to get the Elves from Antiquity’s Gate to their ultimate destination, that was the deal they were bringing to the table.
Terrance had been conscripted for the mission not because of his desire to serve, but instead because he was one of Culei’s best and brightest. If anything were to malfunction on the prototype while in transit, he was one of the few people who had a shot in hell of fixing it before they all froze, drowned, or met some other equally unpleasant end.
But he had come under protest and, as a result, the other four members of the team who had volunteered to be here had spent the better part of the last ten days pretending he didn’t exist. To them, he was more of a life jacket, or something kept in a case that said, “In Emergency, Break Glass,” than a member of the team.
Terrance didn’t mind, though. He’d drowned his better judgment in Nouritas and let the chatter of his compatriots wash over him like a chilly breeze.
“Head’s up! This part will be a little rough,” Leon warned.
Terrance slid against the back of his chair as the whole vehicle began to angle upward. The sound of the drill soon became less of a grinding and more of a whirring as they broke through the icy surface of the Antarctic landscape.
Terrance had also postured that there were easier ways to get to and from Antiquity’s Gate, but the Queen was nothing if not eccentric. The idea of a drill, hidden beneath the ice, was the one that ultimately tickled her fancy.
And boring through the ice shelf got the job done. It was just that, if Terrance had to die, he did not want to do so under a million tons of ice and rock. He was used to the open ocean, where one could travel in any direction at any time. Burrowing through the ice at a snail’s pace, creating a path that allowed for no deviation; it was unnerving.
The whirring died down to a dull hum as Leon killed the engine and Dante, Bohai’s aid, began passing out heavy parkas.
“Put these on,” he said, handing one to Terrance along with a pair of wool-lined gloves and thick goggles. “I brought one in your size, as well,” he quipped. “It’s going to be cold out there.”
Terrance snorted at the slight and Bohai shot him a warning look. The Ambassador had either not heard or had not cared.
“All right then,” Bohai said, his voice shaking. “This is it. Let’s get through the Gate quickly. The sooner we’re out of this ice chest, the better, I say.”
Leon stepped forward along the slanted ground and released the lock from the overhead hatch. He pulled down the retractable ladder, and one by one they made their way outside.
The legendary Gate loomed in the distance, larger than Terrace had imagined. It sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the frigid air, the pulsating light that surrounded it seeming to shout go back, stay away.
But after the initial awe wore off, Terrance gave it a long, incredulous look. This was it? The source of all their troubles? This purple monstrosity had brought Therans and plagues and destruction down on mankind?
It hardly seemed capable of all that, out here in the middle of nowhere.
Squinting through the thick goggles, Terrance tore his gaze from the Gate to look around.
He could make out the outline of the infamous domes of Sanctuary. They were almost a comforting sight, because they felt familiar. Terrance’s great, great grandfather had been one of the people who helped design the domes and had agreed to oversee their construction, as well. Against the wishes of his wife and son, he had left them with only the promise that he would bring them to see his creation when it was finished.
He’d never returned.
Before the domes had even been completed, the first cases of the Sequencing had begun to spread. The population of New Zealand, Terrance’s ancestral home, had been nearly eradicated.
His family had taken shelter with other survivors in boats, a mixture of old New Zealand and Japanese seamen who had been brought together by the infinite wisdom of the sea. They’d hidden in sea caves, distrustful of others, far from the relentless scourge of the Sequencing.
It had been this meager handful of survivors who had founded the great nation of Culei, whose capital was built using the knowledge and plans that Terrance’s family had protected through the chaos.
Deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, the domed capital of Paru lay safe from attack. From that single city, the first Culeians had leveraged their sea-faring skills and stealth to wage battles against other small powers until their territory had expanded into a full-blown nation. Still, despite their size and prestige, the pride of Culei would always remain with Paru, the pearl of the ocean.
“Don’t just stand there, Terrance, get a move on.”
Terrance shook his head to clear it. The last of his drink was still affecting him, and everything was a little fuzzy.
Still, the warmth in his belly did little to combat the cold as he stomped along behind the others toward the ominous purple glow of Antiquity’s Gate.
Bohai reached it first. The Ambassador craned his neck toward the sky, taking it all in, clasping his crate of Nouritas before his chest like a shield.
The others stopped behind him, but when Terrance caught up, he became impatient. He stepped up behind Bohai, giving him a quick shove from the back.
And just like that, Bohai vanished from sight.
The others cast anxious glances at one another, but Terrance was beyond caring. He only wanted to get out of this awful cold.
He stepped through the Gate and disappeared.
***
Terrance squinted around the clearing, which was swarming with Elves.
Like the rest of Humanity, Terrance had only ever seen these fabled monsters in pictures. He knew that somewhere out in the world photos that had been taken prior to the Sequencing were still in existence, but he had never seen any.
Instead his entire knowledge of the Elven physique came from sketches, paintings and descriptions that, apparently, had taken a good deal of artistic license.
Though the Elves, on average, seemed taller than most of the people Terrance knew, they more or less resembled Humans. They had no horns between their pointed ears, or fangs that peeked out at the corners of their mouths. Those without hoods, Terrance had to admit, were actually rather attractive.
But the eyes. The stories had not lied about the eyes. They were deep and cold, flashing in the sunlight in a way that amplified their iridescence so fiercely they almost appeared to be generating their own light.
Like the Gate, Terrance thought, thinking of the pulsing glow of the crystals behind him.
It wasn’t a warm light, not welcoming. Terrance did not need to be an expert on emotions to understand that they weren’t wanted here.
Two long rows of cloaked, pompous looking guards flanked the Gate, and a number of others were gathered around several small crafts that appeared to be hovering in midair.
Terrance threw a look in Leon’s direction, as if to say, “See? I told you they were smarter than you gave them credit for.”
Leon just offered a shrug in reply, a look of preoccupied anxiousness on his thin, pointy face.
After several minutes Bohai returned. Although Terrance hadn’t been able to hear his exchange with the sour-faced Elven man who had just walked away, he could tell that Bohai had not had quite the experience he’d been hoping for.
“Men,” Bohai said gravely, handing Dante his gloves, “I’m afraid I have some rather unfortunate news. The Lord Nero has informed me that my team w
ill not be welcome at the talks and that you should return to the prototype at once.”
Terrance shook his head in disbelief. “Did you happen to inform this Lord Nero of the sub-zero temperatures on the other side of this confounded thing? And that without the engine running constantly the likelihood of our survival would most assuredly fall within the sub-zero percentile, as well?”
“I did try to explain—”
“I think I speak for the rest of us when I say, I would go right ahead and try to explain again. If they are averse or otherwise unwilling to accommodate us in their city, I for one would not be opposed to pitching a tent right here.”
Bohai threw a worried glance over his shoulder.
“You will do nothing of the sort. I am here to make them happy, not cater to your comfort. And you will not make a scene. Now, go back to the drill. Run the engines. Pile on some blankets. Do whatever you need to do. I will return as soon as our talks have come to a favorable conclusion.”
The others grumbled, but no one said anything else. They turned around and vanished through the Gate once more.
Terrance was the last to go.
“Don’t screw this up, Bohai,” he warned. “There’s no puttin’ the ink back in the squid, you know.”
Bohai straightened to his full height and raised his chin.
“For Her Majesty’s honor!”
Terrance sighed. This non-answer offered little by way of comfort.
Then he turned and held his breath, anticipating the bite of bitter cold awaiting on the other side.
