The Ark

by Laura Liddell Nolen

  Isaiah took another step. I was unsteady. “I know. I mean, I am. This isn’t easy, what you’re asking.”

  He stopped, gave an easy shrug, and sat back down on the bed. It was a much less threatening stance. “We all been through a lot.”

  I shook my head, forced my hands to relax. He was right. The Commander was our enemy. I was being ridiculous. I had never understood how normal people were able to trust each other. Maybe I would never have a solid grip on anything, and I would always feel this sliding suspicion about anyone I cared about. Maybe I would never trust myself, either. That was what I deserved, anyway.

  “It’s nothing compared to what will happen if we fail,” I said shakily.

  Isaiah, on the other hand, was as solid as ever. “We’re not going to fail. We got you.”

  Adam was in the Big Room with the lighting techs, running a prototype for a storm simulation. I entered the half-lit room just as a bolt of lightning struck, followed by a deep clap of thunder. The techs jumped.

  Adam smiled from his perch on a metal platform welded to the wall about ten feet up. “Nice entrance.”

  I took a moment to admire their work. “Nice storm.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Lightning needs work, though.” It was an attempt at modesty, but his youth and excitement were written all over his face.

  I returned his smile. My ears popped. “Oh, the room’s pressurized.”

  “It was until you opened the door,” he said, decidedly less modestly. “Look up.”

  I did. Gray tendrils swirled far above me, and the air became chill against my skin. “Oh. Are those… real clouds?”

  He shrugged. “Depends on what you call real.”

  I raised an eyebrow. It was going to be a long day, at the rate this kid was going.

  “Okay, yeah, they’re real,” he conceded. “It’s technically a nimbus cloud. But we can’t make it gather right without using up a lot of the life support system.”

  I was suddenly less inclined to stick around. “Sounds dangerous.”

  “It’s actually pretty cool. The ions have to be—” He broke off when he saw my expression. “I’m guessing you don’t care about the science.”

  “No, it’s fascinating,” I deadpanned. “But we have a job to do.”

  “Now?” His voice had the slight tone of a kid being told to leave his friends and come home for dinner.

  Which made me the mom. As grating as that was, it was a dynamic I could use. We’d be breaking into one of the most secure places in existence, so it was in my interest to be in control of things. “Yes, now.” I chucked a blue uniform at his head.

  Adam caught it easily and sighed as he slid off the platform, then ducked into a closet to change.

  “Do you want to carry the light?” I asked.

  He shrugged, but took the flashlight from my hands and secured it in his pack until we reached the edge of the sector.

  As we crossed the threshold into the black space between the sectors, Adam stepped aside to let me go first. I smiled at his youthful gallantry, and he caught my eye as he followed me, shadows eclipsing his impish grin. The air was instantly cooler, and my pulse quickened as absolute darkness closed around us. The tenor of our relationship had changed, too. We were partners now, and the job had begun.

  I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed this.

  “Aren’t you going to turn on the flashlight?” I asked.

  “You scared or something?”

  I laughed. “Nope. Just checking to make sure you didn’t need it.”

  “I heard you pulled all your best jobs in the dark.”

  “People like to talk,” I said easily. His footsteps quickened, and I followed apace. This kid wouldn’t have the best of me.

  “So it’s all talk?” he said after a moment. We were fairly sprinting, but he wasn’t even short of breath.

  “What is?”

  He snorted. “You know. All the stories.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, trying to hide my breathlessness. “But if you want stories, you’re better off with Isaiah.”

  “The King? They talk about him, too.”

  “What do they say?” I asked.

  “They say he broke you out of jail.”

  I nodded, forgetting that Adam couldn’t see me. “Yep. Broke himself out first. Then he came back.”

  “And that’s why you love him,” said Adam. “But you had another boyfriend.”

  “I didn’t have a boyfriend. And Isaiah is just a friend.”

  “You’re the only one who can call him that.”

  I paused to consider that, and to force Adam to slow down a bit. “Friend? Or Isaiah?”

  “Either one,” he said. From the sound of it, he was still smiling. “But I meant his name.”

  “Names can be tricky.” I clucked my tongue against my teeth, and the sound echoed in the darkness.

  “Some people say your boyfriend blinded him. They got in a fight, but the Mole King won.” Adam’s voice was now far ahead of me. I sped up, hoping I didn’t trip over a pipe or something.

  Something in his voice made me press further. “But?”

  He spoke like a child, freely and honestly, unfettered by concerns for any possible reaction on my part. “But most people say it was you. That he wouldn’t show you the way out, so you blinded him. That way, he had to take you with him when he left.”

  The chilly air thickened, like a draft around a bonfire. There was danger here.

  I spoke carefully, in contrast to my companion. “So why would he still be with me, if that were true?”

  “Because you’re the best. Everyone knows that.”

  “So he’s using me for my tricks.”

  “You used him to get out,” said Adam. “According to the stories, I mean. And maybe he loves you.”

  “Well, the stories are wrong.” I could have explained further, but I might need the shroud of uncertainty Adam had spun around me. He, on the other hand, was proving to be a fount of information. And information was more valuable than any of my other tricks. “What else do they say?”

  “That you can crack any safe and hack any house. That you never came back from a job without the goods. That your family disowned you. You’re crazy fast, faster than the cops even.” He barreled through the list, oblivious to its sensitive nature as only a child could be. “They say you’re not afraid of anything.”

  I thought of Jorin, and the bin full of weapons. I thought of a war big enough to break a bioship, and the emptiness of space. I remembered the feeling of a stunner cracking through my body, and I shuddered.

  But the darkness was my ally, and Adam was blind to my reaction. So I lied. “They may have a few things right, then.”

  “Then why is he blind?”

  “That’s not my story to tell.” We had arrived at the entrance to the cargo bin. My focus returned to the mission at hand. “And besides. We have a job to do.”

  We slowed our pace as we cut a path among the cargo bins. I couldn’t look toward the corner where the weapons bin had been. Adam trotted along gamely beside me, clearly enjoying the adventure so far. He reminded me so much of West that I had to look away.

  Except that, when it came right down to it, West had been smart enough not to follow in my footsteps. Not that I would have let him. His easy grin flashed across my mind, and I endured a moment of heartache so intense that I had to dig a nail into my palm just to keep moving. The wrenching in my heart lessened as the pain spread through my hand. In spite of it all, my legs never stopped moving.

  I gritted my teeth. I really was cut out for this. And West was cut out to be a good son. My father’s son. The thought was oddly comforting.

  “First, we need to get to the Guardian Level.” I shouldered past the corner of another bin, this one chalk blue. “Not a lot of space between these bins,” I observed, by way of distracting myself from further thoughts of West. “On Earth, you’d stack them far enough apart to get one out, if you ne
eded.”

  Adam threw his head back, eyes wide, taking in the vastness of the room and its contents. “There’s nowhere for them to go. It’s not like we can take them outside until we get where we’re going.”

  He was a sharp kid. “I suppose not.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

  “Well, my young cohort, we need some way to get there unnoticed.”

  He perked up at the challenge. “Food delivery?”

  “Everyone notices food, grasshopper. Especially halfway through an eight-hour shift.”

  “Laundry bin?”

  I shook my head. “I’m betting guardians don’t do their own laundry. So the bins would go in the wrong direction.”

  He was silent a moment. “Prisoner transport?”

  “That would be the most noticeable thing of all. Criminals are not exactly the norm in this part of the Ark. Plus, trust me. People stare at you if you’re in handcuffs.”

  He sighed. “Fine. Medical emergency?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Are you offering to take one for the team? Good ideas, but that’s going to stand out. Think about it. Put yourself in their shoes. They’re bored and tired.”

  “All right,” he said. “I give up. How do we do it?”

  I let the question hang before answering. “We walk.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “That’s the worst idea ever. They will definitely catch us.”

  “No, they—” I started.

  “We’re totally going to jail.”

  “No, Adam, we—”

  He broke into a grin. “This is awesome! You can show me how to break out!”

  “We are not going to jail. Jail is not awesome. Space jail is absolutely not awesome. Besides,” I said, pulling him into the last bin before the door to the stairwell. It was full of seedling trees, and probably close to the door because they needed to be watered. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  Adam stared excitedly as I unzipped my pack. When I angled it away from him, hiding its contents, I realized he had done the same thing with his own bag when he’d stashed his flashlight. I put the thought out of my mind, though. We both needed to focus. Giant supercomputers don’t exactly rob themselves, after all.

  “What is that?” said Adam. “Scissors?”

  “Nothing gets by you.” I took the flashlight and laid it on a shelf, positioning it so that the light hit Adam’s head.

  “What for?”

  “For not going to jail, mostly. You need a haircut.”

  “I really, really don’t.”

  I clicked my tongue and gave a disappointed sigh. “That right there? That’s you not trusting me. Bad move, if we’re going to be partners. Now, I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in the rest of the Ark, but believe me, no one out there needs a haircut. Hold still. I’m not planning to lose the game because you insist on looking like some kind of space rat.”

  Adam puffed his cheeks, but held still while I started trimming his bangs, then the rest of his hair.

  “Isaiah said this is some kind of supercomputer?” I asked.

  “It’s literally the strongest computer ever built,” he said. “There’s one on all five Arks, but they’re all different. They were all designed by the continents that own them. This one, for example—”

  “Does it know everything?” I interrupted, thinking suddenly of my family.

  “Nothing knows everything. That’s not possible. But this one knows where to look.”

  I pursed my lips, concentrating more on the computer than the haircut, and looked over my handiwork. The result was something in between a bowl-cut and a total mess. I wouldn’t be fighting off haircut requests from the rest of the Remnant any time soon.

  He noticed my grimace. “How bad is it?”

  “It suits our present purposes,” I said, in as dignified a manner as possible. “Uh, you can always get someone to clean it up when we get back. Let’s move.”

  We made our way through the bins as quickly as possible, easily avoiding the guardians on night patrol by keeping out of the longer aisles whenever possible.

  The stairs were as daunting as before, but I pressed on, knowing gravity would decrease as we approached the sweet spot of the ship.

  Adam, on the other hand, seemed unaffected by the climb. His voice piped up the stairwell ahead of me. “Not that I don’t trust you, but how are we going to take them out?”

  “We don’t,” I said, struggling to keep my breathlessness from showing. “I really can’t stress this enough. We don’t take anyone out. We just need to slow them down for a minute, assuming you’re as good at this as Isaiah seems to think.”

  He scoffed. “Don’t worry about me. Everyone says you’re going soft.”

  “Everyone has vastly overestimated my feelings about their opinions.”

  Adam turned back, his hand on the rail. “Aren’t you a wanted fugitive? I mean, I’m pretty sure those guards were about to—”

  “Details, details.” I waved at the blue door at the next landing. “This is where we get off. Now let’s go.”

  Our key card unlocked the door to the Guardian Level without giving us any trouble. I stuffed a rubber band into the hole for the deadbolt, effectively assuring our safe re-entry to the stairwell in case the floor were locked down.

  Adam started jogging down the hallway. “Hey. This way,” I hissed.

  “The map says it’s this way,” he said.

  “The map isn’t taking into account the fact that we need a diversion,” I whispered, possibly more loudly than necessary. “Also, chips.”

  “Chips?”

  “Or whatever they have in stock. The Remnant is awesome, but we are seriously lacking in junk food.” I rounded a corner and used our hall pass to access the commissary.

  “Whoa,” said Adam. “Whoever owns this pass must be a pretty big deal. This place isn’t even open, and the pass still works.”

  “Makes sense, I guess,” I said. “They run the computers at Mission Control. Hand me that rack of chips.” I waved at a metal stand with rows of puffy, family-sized bags of potato chips on display.

  Adam selected a bag from the top shelf and tossed it over to where I stood in the doorway.

  “No, not the bag, sorry,” I said. “The stand. I can’t move; I’m keeping the door from closing behind us.”

  “Oh,” said Adam, as understanding lit his face. “Got it.”

  He wrenched the potato chip stand from the wall with surprising strength—or maybe the stand wasn’t as heavy as it looked; I couldn’t tell—and wedged it into the doorframe as I hopped out of the way.

  I did a quick check of the room and bar area to make sure we were alone. “Isaiah says you’re some kind of a genius with them.”

  “He said that? Nice.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, well. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  Adam laughed at that. I was just thinking that things were going pretty well, and that Adam and I might even make a fair team, when Adam caught a glimpse of himself in the huge mirrored wall where the snack stand had stood a moment earlier. His hand went immediately to his scalp, and what was left of his hair. His voice went up at least an octave, along with his eyebrows. “What did you do?”

  “Oh, stop whining. It’s not that bad.”

  “Not that bad? I thought you used scissors, not your teeth! I look like I had a run-in with a pack of hyena barbers on their way back from a middle-school playground.”

  “You’re a bit dramatic. You know that, right?” I selected a few items from the food rack and tossed them into the top of my pack.

  He ignored me, his grimace deepening as he turned his head from side to side. “Stoned hyenas. Just, massively high. Are you—are you stealing potato chips?”

  “And gum.” I zipped my backpack closed.

  “I thought you were… like, more serious than that.”

  “Watch and learn, Grasshopper. Gum should be the first thing in your pack on a mission. Any mission. It
has a million uses.”

  “You’re expecting our ears not to pressurize or something? What about the chips?”

  I paused. “I just really like chips.”

  Adam sighed and, with visible effort, removed his hand from his hair and his gaze from the mirrored wall. “I can respect that.” His eyes slid back to his reflection. “Maybe I’ll look okay with a buzz-cut.”

  “That’s the spirit!” I said brightly, giving him a light slap on the shoulder before hopping over the counter and pressing the alarm button. I took a split second to enjoy the shock on his face. “Now get going. Cops are on their way.”

  We vaulted over the food rack jammed in the doorframe and sprinted down the hall, then slowed to a casual walk when we turned our first corner. I popped a stick of gum in my mouth and slid the wrapper into the pocket of my uniform. It was an old trick of mine. Or of Kip’s, actually. When I started chewing, I blocked everything from my mind except the mission at hand. Spearmint flooded my mouth, and in response, I was utterly calm. I could do this.

  When we saw that no one was in the hallway, we sped to the next corner and repeated the process, slowing to a casual walk as we rounded the bend. This time, a woman in a blue uniform was swiping her card to enter a room on the hall. She took in our black uniforms, gave a small, deferential nod, and slipped into the room. Adam let out a breath.

  Isaiah’s intel was spot-on. The white door marked “Mission Control—Danger! No Unauthorized Entry” was exactly where his team had promised it would be. “Moment of truth,” I said, indicating that Adam should try his key card on the panel.

  He popped the card into the slot and the door sucked open.

  Well, that was easy.

  Before I followed Adam into the room, I paused to fold my silver gum wrapper into a thin rectangle, which I stuffed way down into the key slot. There. That should slow the guards down if they tried to access the room while we were still in it. When they stuck their access card in, it would only pack the wrapper tighter into the slot. I couldn’t suppress a smirk, and a small thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d missed this kind of thing.

  I rushed into the room, then stopped cold. Mission Control was tiny. There were two stark white walls and a white ceiling. The floor was an intricate swirling pattern of stark white and black reminiscent of a galaxy. A third wall contained a porthole, complete with a view of the star-studded ever-blackness of space, and facing us, on the fourth, smallest wall, was a single desk with a computer.