The Rathmore Chaos: The Tully Harper Series Book Two

by Adam Holt

  “Is there a problem?” my dad said behind us.

  “No, no,” Ekphrasis said. “This one is modeled after the Lord Ascendant’s own royal tattoos. Older men generally like this tattoo, but the Lord Ascendant would be pleased to see a youth wearing it. He likes to be imitated and adored.”

  Oh, great, not only does the Lord Ascendant love it, it’s also a dad tattoo. I’ll be telling the same stupid jokes twice a day for the rest of my life now. Like, “Hey, so you’re Surprised. It’s nice to meet you, Surprised. I’m Tully.” Let’s get this over with…

  Ekphrasis handed me the black pill, which I popped. It tasted like dirt, and I didn’t feel anything like the others, but I checked my calf and sure enough, the numeral appeared. No pain, just the tattoo. Then Ekphrasis completed the process. There was no “falling on the floor like I was being attacked by bees” moment either. My tattoo appeared, which was pleasant and all, until I stood in front of the mirror.

  What I saw made me dizzy. My tattoos were moving dire fast. The serpent swam laps around my body, devouring five fish every second. My tattoos needed to slow down, so I took a breath and focused on slowing them down. When I looked at myself again, they had disappeared. Whoops. So I closed my eyes again and finally felt it – the ink under my skin. I could picture it. I could control it. This felt like the right pace.

  “Cool, you’ve got speed controls on yours,” said Sunjay. Ekphrasis stood beside me, and his face went pale.

  Up close he looked younger. His face showed no signs of wrinkles except laugh lines around the eyes. Those eyes! Blue eyes, flecked with gold, purple, and red. It felt too much like the Lord Ascendant’s gaze. I looked away, trying not to reveal anything to him.

  “You’re no Outlander,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing, and everything.” He inspected me like I was a puzzle that he could not solve. His voice was a thin whisper. “These scars are the marks of the Encountered.”

  “No, they’re not,” I said, but thought again. “Well, what if they are? What would that meant to you?”

  “That you are from the Sixth Step, and that is impossible. They are all gone.”

  “What happened there?”

  “This story is not widely known on Europa, or even in Rathmore. When the Lord Ascendant rose to power, the people of the Sixth Step opposed him. They were known as the Encountered. They were the Masters of the Sacred. They led a rebellion against the Lord Ascendant, but he won. And for their treason, he gathered them and their supporters onto the Sixth Step. Then he broke it. The Encountered fell into the sea.”

  “So these scars mean—“

  “That you are Encountered—or at least look like one. Who are you? What is your business here?”

  I gave it some thought. This wasn’t the right time to say my full name again. My dad glanced over at us, wondering about our discussion.

  “I came to see a play,” I told Ekphrasis.

  He scoured my face, searching for more of the truth. Finally, he sighed.

  “This will hurt.” Ekphrasis grabbed my hands and squeezed them so tightly that I cried out. My dad sprung to my side, but Ekphrasis flipped away from him. He was quicker and stronger than I guessed.

  “What did he do?” my dad asked. I held up my shaking hands. They were now so heavily tattooed that I could hardly see the lightning scars.

  “I covered the scars. That is all. And now my answer is yes.”

  “To what?” asked my dad.

  “I will be your guide,” he said. Then he pointed at me. “However, the boy must never alter his tattoos. Only the Encountered could do such things. And he, no, he can’t be.”

  An Ascendant from the Sixth Step, I thought. In a way, I am. They were called the Encountered, and I know exactly where they got that name.

  An image appeared in my mind of the Sixth Step crumbling into the sea. I wanted to know more of the story. I could imagine the Lord Ascendant and his army throwing down the survivors. It must have been thousands of feet. My dad interrupted those thoughts.

  “We may ask you more questions,” he said, “but we will not divulge anything else about ourselves. There is no way to be safe, but it will keep us all safer. Is this agreed?”

  Ekphrasis nodded. We all did.

  And so it was that Ekphrasis became our guide, and I had another clue to who I was. I definitely wasn’t a Master of the Sacred, but I understood why the Lord Ascendant had wanted me to join him.

  CLIMB

  “What did he whisper to you?” asked Sunjay as we exited the Ink Squad in the pale morning light. I explained the situation as best I could.

  We followed our guide at a distance, just two Ascendant boys with a girl walking between them, headed nowhere in particular. Dad and Buckshot trailed us.

  After a few minutes, we took a break from the heavy talk about falling steps and ascendant lords. Walking in low gravity brightened everyone’s mood, I guess. It didn’t hurt that the Third Step looked exactly like spring in Paris either. The cobblestones, streetlamps, and bridges made us feel like we were on vacation. Sunjay even bought a chocolate croissant. (Janice gave him some of her stolen shells.)

  Ekphrasis loved his hometown, and his enthusiasm was infectious. Throughout our journey he pointed out important landmarks that the Thirders borrowed from France. The Ascendant had a real thing for our planet.

  “Notice the architecture here,” said Ekphrasis. “That bridge is called the Pont de Neuf. I brought my younger sister here once for her birthday. She tossed a stone into the water and made a wish. I asked her what she wished for, and she said that she wanted to visit the real Pont de Neuf someday.”

  Then he would tell us to drop back as he bounded ahead with purpose. He told us to walk more slowly. We didn’t walk like teenagers. It was hard: all I wanted to do was jump over a streetlamp.

  Eventually our conversation turned to the rescue mission.

  “Let’s call it Operation Grabitha. Get it?” said Sunjay.

  “No, let’s watch this great new movie called ‘How to Lose Friends by Being Punny,’” said Janice. I high-fived her for that. Then I looked across at Sunjay and noticed he was holding her other hand. Oh, stars. He grinned at me sheepishly, then broke into a crazy smile.

  You guys picked a weird time to fall in love, I wanted to say, but I held back. We were in alien Paris. I shot Sunjay a look. Play it cool, man. Wipe that maniac smile off your face.

  Ekphrasis crossed a broad avenue and we snapped back to reality. He glanced over his shoulder to see if we were following. There were black staffs at the corner of every street. He could have turned us in at any time, and I half-expected that he would, but after a few blocks, it seemed like he was true to his word.

  “Here is the Eiffel Tower,” said Ekphrasis, dropping back again.

  “Oh, I know,” said Janice.

  “How would you know?” he asked her.

  “Uh, lucky guess,” she said.

  “Your sister, does she like this, too?” asked Janice.

  “I never got to ask her,” Ekphrasis said, his face darkening. “She was taken to the Undercity. The Lord Ascendant builds things in the deep.”

  Bad stuff below the city. I made a mental note. Ekphrasis pushed ahead of us again, lost in thought.

  We passed under the Eiffel Tower, and lights twinkled on the giant structure. Janice looked left and right, reached in her pocket, and took a selfie looking up at the tower. I almost told her not to, but then I had a handroid in my pocket that might spout commercials at any second. Who was I to talk?

  My night vision was still superhuman. In the distance on our left I could see the icy newel that supported the Seven Steps. The purple glow of black staffs lit the ice with an unnatural glow. We felt a slight rumble. The side of the newel opened, like an enormous elevator door. So it’s hollow. That’s news.

  In the gloom I could see a group of Firsters loading monstrous objects into the elevator. Some of them looked famili
ar, like the dozens of fiber optic laser whips. Those tend to stand out in the dark. Yes, there was something dangerous happening below Rathmore.

  Finally Jupiter’s glow crept through the dome above, down the icy walls around the city, and onto the Third Step. The rest of the group could see clearly. The streets filled with Ascendants, most of them headed, like us, to the performance on the next step. We crested a hill and came to a dead stop.

  The Fourth Step. Leaving Paris. Next stop? London.

  The bottom of the Fourth Step was an endless, seamless block of jade that hung one hundred feet above our heads.

  Ride or float? Ride, of course. Sunjay and Janice peeked out the window toward the beach a thousand feet below us. On one stretch of beach I could see the ruins of the Sixth Step. What history lay there slowly being buried by the sand?

  My dad looked like he was in a daze, but his eyes never left the direction of the newel. All the movement there caught his eye as well.

  The crowds swelled and security was higher on the Fourth Step. An Ascendant “greeted” us, then walked down the aisles, scanning our Roman numerals with his staff. My heart leaped into my throat, but he didn’t blink an eye when he scanned Buckshot’s tattoo, then mine, then the rest.

  The Fourth Step: wider streets, wealthier Ascendant, lots of green marble statues and fountains, and most of all, England. Big Ben, the Tower of London, all the sights spread out before us.

  The broad avenue filled with Ascendant, and soon we found ourselves shoulder to shoulder, struggling to stay together. I held Janice’s hand because she was a little taller than I was.

  “Can you still see him?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Wait, where’s Sunjay?”

  Stars, we lost him in the sea of Ascendant. Don’t panic, Tully. Ekphrasis put you on the biggest street on this Step. Just stay the course and things should be fine.

  We searched for any familiar face, but those faces were now covered in alien tattoos. The crowd stumbled along for another five minutes until it slowed to a standstill. I heard something up ahead. Cheering, a strong buzzing sound. The crowd paused on one side of the street in front of a large black and gold gate. Behind the gate loomed a mansion unlike any we had seen thus far—a black marble building with a wide, grassy lawn in front of it. The Ascendant flag flew at its gate.

  It was Buckingham Palace, Ascendant-style.

  I saw why the Ascendant had stopped. Several thousand young black staffs mustered in the lawn. Some stood at attention, some lifted massive weights, others made a ring around two warriors locked in combat. It was an Ascendant army training ground. The spectacle awed the crowd, most of whom had never been to this Step. The sea of people came to a dead stop, and Janice and I couldn’t push our way through. We were too short to see where we were headed anyway. We’re so toast. We lost our guide, the entire Ascendant army is in front of us, and I’m their worst enemy. What could be worse?

  “It’s okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We can still meet in front of the theater.”

  “Ekphrasis must have taken a side street,” she said. “We’re stuck watching this.”

  In the courtyard the battle intensified. The Ascendant leaped high in the air, blasting each other with incinerator shots with no regard for anyone’s safety. A ball of purple flames flew toward us and we dove out of the way. One woman put out flames on her arm while the others around her laughed. There were oooh’s and ahhh’s. Thirty, forty, fifty feet into the air they flew like acrobats, spinning and twisting, blasting and tossing each other in a combination of martial arts and acrobatics.

  The show distracted me until I heard a beeping sound in the distance, like a scanner at a grocery store. Standing on my tiptoes, I saw an Ascendant officer picking his way through the crowd. He was at least seven feet tall and wore a black hat capped with a purple light that blinked like an eye. It darted back and forth, scanning the crowd. Where it stopped, he posted his staff, and nearby Ascendant looked into the eye and spoke a few words. Then the staff beeped and moved on.

  “It’s a retinal scan,” said Janice. “If that thing scans our eyes, we’re caught.”

  We started to pick our through the crowd, but the beeping intensified behind us. I peeked over my shoulder to see the eye staring angrily at us. This won’t end well. The harder we push, the more attention we draw to ourselves.

  We heard a deep voice booming behind us. I stopped. Janice yanked my hand forward, but I shook my head. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. It was time to awaken the Sacred, once and for all. It was time to turn and fight.

  With my eyes closed, I imagined the Sacred. It was gray and life, still hidden on the submarine. You said you would try to wake up. It’s about time. I made it this far but can’t make it any farther without you. There was a stirring inside the Sacred. A red mist began to fill the submarine. Yes, you hear me! Wake up now! I need you.

  I could hear the scanner getting closer and feel my hands getting warmer. Would it happen soon enough? I wasn’t sure. We weren’t just standing in front of the scanner. A thousand enemies, all armed, stood on the other side of the black gate, ready to blast us to ashes.

  All of a sudden something gripped my entire body. It was like someone cast a net over me, a net that tightened like a boa constrictor. My eyes snapped open and the image of the Sacred slipped away. Janice was trapped in the invisible net, too.

  No! I never even had a chance to fight them. It can’t end like this. I can’t!

  There was nothing I could do though. I could feel some of the old power coursing through my hands, but they were useless, strapped tightly to my side in the invisible net.

  The giant approached. The crowd parted. Finally he stood before us, his breath foul enough to make me choke. He looked right through us with dead eyes as the crowd encircled us. He planted the black staff in the street. It cast sparks all around us, but to my surprise, the sparks bounced right off of us. The eye blinked and scanned back and forth, but it did not scan us. The giant looked confused.

  He shouted in Greek. We hopped back a few paces, still trapped in the net, but he made no move to pursue us, just looked through us like we were invisible.

  We were invisible.

  The giant knew something was wrong. He swung his staff in a wide arc, and Janice and I ducked to avoid it, falling to the ground. Then he used the staff to drag an old Firster from the crowd. She cowered before him. He scanned her, and his staff beeped happily. Angered, he shoved her down beside us in the street. No one helped her to her feet. With one last glare, he moved on.

  The show was over. The crowd murmured and melted together around us, and once they did so, I felt the invisible net release us.

  The old woman still lay on the ground beside us. Janice and I helped her up. She held my face in her hands, placed a small seashell in my hand, then let me go. More scanners worked the main street, so we swam through the stream of people toward a side street. We collected ourselves there.

  “Wow, good time to find your powers,” she said, sounding upbeat. “I thought you might blast him with your hands, but that was better. Was that an invisibility net?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, “but I haven’t ever done that before.”

  “You closed your eyes,” she said. “So you woke up the Sacred and your powers returned?”

  “I’m not sure that was me.”

  “Well, who else would it be? I guess that’s our good luck charm,” said Janice. I looked down at the seashell the old woman had handed me. It was a gray shell, and on the inside of it were scratched a pair of wings.

  “Where have you been?” someone behind us asked. We both jumped and my hand clamped tightly on the shell. Ekphrasis and Sunjay looked down on us. “You’re both very short. Stay close enough that you can see me next time. There are more scanners here than any other part of Rathmore. Your numerals will not conceal you completely.”

  “Super helpful tip,” said Janice.

  Ekphrasis ushered us
down several alleys with Buckshot and Dad behind us, and before long we finally reached the Fifth Step.

  THE FIFTH STEP

  “Almost there.”

  Ekphrasis waited with us as the Ascendant crowd poked its way up to the spot where the street ended and the trolley began.

  We crossed the wide gap between the Fifth and Sixth Step on a monstrous, double-decker trolley, with five hundred Ascendant on board. The Thirders and Fourthers stood on the roof of the trolley while the Fifthers sat on the lower level. It looked like drinks were being served below. There was no spot for the Firsters or Seconders. They clung to the sides or the bottom of the trolley and held on for dear life. When we hopped down from the trolley, Ekphrasis gathered us together.

  “This is as far as I can take you for now,” he said. “You can find your way from here.”

  “Thanks for your help,” my dad said. “It’s best that we part without any other words.”

  “It would seem so,” said Ekphrasis, “but not all is as it seems.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Buckshot. We all tensed up.

  “Nothing, and everything,” he said. “It’s just the kind of thing that a tattoo artist would say.”

  Ekphrasis’s smiled and his eyes darted over each of us and finally rested on me. Blue eyes that shimmered with purple and red. And without another word, our guide melted into the crowd of people behind him. It didn’t seem like a proper good-bye, and it was an unsettling way to begin our first moments on the Fifth Step.

  The wide avenues swarmed with Ascendant, and on either side of the street were imposing buildings, all of red marble with golden statues in front of them—museums, theaters, arenas, and mansions. Classical music played in the streets and street performers (living statues, dancers, drummers) all played to the enormous crowds, who tossed shells at them. It was an alien carnival.