by Julian North
“Give us a thumbs up if you’re ready to go.”
I wasn’t, but I made the signal anyway. The light of the main compartment vanished as the hatch closed. For three beats of my heart, I was alone in the metal tomb with only the faint, yellowed illumination of the wall panel for company. Then the water came. It rose from the floor, bubbling from the slits beneath me. My suited, webbed feet were totally insulated like the rest of the suit, yet my mind told me that the greenish, putrid seawater was freezing and deadly. I was about to immerse myself in the world’s toilet. There was a click. The water stopped rising. Another click. The exterior airlock opened. The darkness awaited. I clenched my jaw and lowered myself into that hole before I thought better of it. My skin suit’s shoulder lights clicked on automatically. Murky green appeared outside my facemask—and nothing else. It was a foggy, polluted expanse of ugliness. Alexander wasn’t there.
Panic surged through me. I twisted and twirled, my jerking body dislodging the equipment strapped to it. A trickle of icy water dripped into my helmet—or at least I thought it did. Did Rhett screw up sealing the helmet? I started sucking at air—too quickly. Something burned on my cheek. Seawater. My imagination magnified the pain. I flailed and grabbed for the hull of the Gaia to hold onto but missed the lone handrail. I sank into the vastness beneath me. I kicked, I waved my arms, but that only made me sink faster. The button. Press it and I’ll float.
My hands had a thousand pins stuck into them. I couldn’t get them to move. I was gasping for air but couldn’t catch my breath. I pressed something on my wrist, but nothing happened. Darkness was all around me. In my mind, the chill of the contaminated seawater seeped through the lining of my suit. Maybe it hadn’t been sealed properly either. An undersea current hit me, sweeping me away from the Gaia like a leaf in the wind.
Trusting people is like dancing in traffic. I really should know better by now.
Then, as if to prove me wrong, a disembodied hand grabbed my arm. The fingers were strong, familiar. A hazy glow tantalized through the water. I struggled to refocus, barely trusting that the outline of another suited figure beside me was real. But the shape drew close enough for me to make out a diving helmet identical to my own. A pair of azure eyes were bright enough to pierce the depths. Or perhaps I was delirious.
Alexander pressed something on my wrist. Instead of sinking, my body began to rise through the murkiness. He kicked his webbed feet and I was pulled along, back in the direction I had come—toward the Gaia and the platform. My breathing slowed. The sensation of pins jabbing into my hands faded. My jaw ached as it unclenched, and I knew I was a fool for panicking. The interior of my suit was dry.
We broke the surface of the water with a sky of perfect black above us. More than black. I was beneath something so massive it had presence—the beast. Alexander turned his helmet light down so he provided the barest ember of light and then did the same to mine. He adjusted the buoyancy of my suit so I could float without any effort. Even through the glassy visor, the urgency to speak shone in Alexander’s eyes. I raised my arm and gave the “okay” signal, the way I’d been shown.
Alexander pulled off his helmet anyway. “I’m sorry.” His voice echoed distantly through the thick composite alloy of my helmet. I fumbled at the clasps, finally pulling it off. A foul smell that was part decay, part bile-inducing bitterness mingled with the odor of salt. I stifled a gag.
“The current was far stronger than I expected. They may have an underwater discharge system that we didn’t anticipate. It yanked me away just as you were emerging.” He sounded tortured. It was unusual for Alexander to speak with emotion; that made me feel better than any apology.
“You were there when it mattered,” I said.
“Thank you.” He sounded relieved.
A moment later another helmet broke the surface of the water and swam toward us, followed a minute later by the last of the group. Everyone removed their headgear and turned down their lights.
“This thing is huge,” Nythan said. “The images don’t give it its due.”
“We need to get inside,” Alexander said. “Even in the suits, we can’t stay in this water forever.”
“I can see the service ladder on the nearest pylon,” Nythan said. “Just take it straight up. The ladder leads to a staircase. Leave your breathing units there. The stairs will bring us up to a service level that is usually used for heavy extraction equipment. There shouldn’t be anyone there. We can use that area to access the main building above.”
“Go, Nythan,” I urged, anxious to be out of the water.
“I’ll take the lead,” Rhett said in a soldier’s voice as we reached the service ladder. “Weapons should be used as an absolute last resort. We’ll never be able to shoot our way in or out of here.”
“We’re here for information, not to kill anyone,” I agreed.
Rhett hoisted himself onto the ladder. “Are people going to believe some recording? The net is down. There’s no one to watch it anyway.”
“We’ll need more than video records,” Nythan agreed. “And I’ve taken care of the net situation.”
“What do you mean?” Alexander asked suspiciously.
“It’s better you don’t know. It’ll bother your honor.”
“Tell me.”
“I hacked the Titan-Wind private satellite network while I was aboard the Gaia. I can upload anything from my viser. It’ll be sent to the Gaia, then to their satellites, then to a thousand storage nodes all over the world. They can’t keep the net down forever.”
Alexander wore a hard grimace. I knew what he was thinking: the Titan-Wind family would be held responsible for this. All for my family. Sorry, Anise.
“Not now, Alexander,” I said. “Rhett, start climbing.”
He did, and we followed. The service ladder was just some old, metal rungs welded onto the platform’s massive leg. It probably hadn’t been used in decades. It was a long, hard climb with the breathing unit strapped to my back, but I’d have climbed ten times the distance to get out of that water. I was panting when we finally reached the metal landing—climbing was harder than running. Alexander helped me get the breathing unit off my back. We all shed our skins with relief. A steady wind came off the ocean, whipping at our faces. I was too anxious to be cold.
A switchback staircase led up from the landing to the floor above. The waves crashed harmlessly into the legs below us. I didn’t want to think about going back into the water when this was done. If it got done.
Rhett continued to lead us up four more flights of stairs, onto an expansive, cluttered space that reminded me of the warehouse where Aba worked in Bronx City. The walls were metal grates that left the interior exposed to the elements, including a fierce wind that constantly whipped in from the seas beneath us. Pieces of ancient, derelict equipment of uncertain purpose were strewn about like forgotten fossils of another age. Only a few of the service lights hanging from the ceiling still functioned, giving the place a shadow-infested gloom. This was an area for unneeded things—except for the giant machine near the center of the floor.
Nythan started toward the huge contraption, his eyes fixed on the shining circular walls that extended into the ceiling and floor and the twisting durasteel pipes that led into it like arteries from a heart. The ominous machine hummed an indecipherable, low-pitched message, constant and disconcerting, like the snoring of a mythical giant. This thing was not part of the original platform, and I was certain it had nothing to do with resource extraction. Rhett placed a hand on Nythan’s shoulder to restrain him and silently took the lead. He gripped his force pistol tightly with both hands, arms extended in military fashion. The rest of us followed, warily. The air became warmer as we drew closer to the metal monster.
When we reached the machine, there were no obvious controls, no markings, no indication of what purpose it served. Except that it emitted a great deal of heat. Standing before it was like standing outside the door of an open oven.
“What i
s it?” I asked.
Nythan moved ahead of Rhett. He touched his fingertips to the metal surface for a moment, tapping his nails on the hard casing before yanking them back. Then he walked over to a cluster of giant pipes that descended from the ceiling into the machine. A smaller number of tubes led out, toward the other side of the chamber. On the ceiling was a web of coiled black cables. Nythan placed a hand just above the surface of one of the intakes, flicking his viser. His mouth twitched with distaste.
“What?” I asked.
“This is only the bottom part. But I think this is the source of the undersea currents we felt coming here. Some of these pipes are intake, the others are exhaust and expulsion systems that take the residual waste and heat and dump it into the sea. The cables carry power.”
“What is the purpose of this machine?” Alexander asked. “It looks nothing like the rest of the equipment on this level.”
“I believe it is an incinerator.”
Chapter 33
I shuddered despite the heat bombarding me. “What does it incinerate?”
“My guess is any evidence of what is being done at this facility.” His eyes flicked nervously at his viser readout instead of meeting my gaze.
“Just say it, Nythan. This is what we came here to find out.”
“It’s hot enough to reduce anything to ash, obliterating any evidence of what was fed inside. But I scanned the intake pipes… there is organic material inside.”
“As in human?” I asked, my voice catching. Mateo. Is this what Virginia intended for my people?
“Probably human. Although the data from my viser isn’t completely conclusive.”
I swallowed. “This is what we came here for. Part of it anyway. Can you transmit with the net down?”
“I told you, I hacked the Titan-Wind satellite data link. Everything scanned by my viser is being relayed to Gaia. Everything will come out.”
“But we need more,” I said. “Virginia will not be undone by some video and sensor scans of an incinerator. We need proof of something that threatens those who support her—we need to know the whole truth of this place.”
Alexander nodded gravely, staring at the incinerator. “Yes, we do.”
“Then let’s keep moving,” Rhett said. “We have only a few more hours till morning.”
We left the incinerator and its grizzly implications behind. My feet felt heavy, but my blood surged. This wasn’t just about Mateo and Matias and Bronx City. It was about what was right. Alexander and I could agree on that much.
Nythan took the lead and brought us to another corner of the maintenance level, to another switchback metal staircase seemingly identical to the previous one. There were more thick black power cables above us.
“These stairs lead up to the main deck. But there’s no telling how many people are on duty up there. It’s dangerous to stumble up there blindly.”
Rhett craned his neck as if he could somehow see to the top of the stairs. “It’s the early hours of the morning. They’ve got naval patrols and radar. There is probably a crew in the command center, but otherwise they feel safe. I would guess there is the occasional patrol, but it’s cold and windy on the deck. I doubt there’s going to be much activity outside at this hour.”
“We can handle the guards.” That incinerator lingered in my thoughts.
Rhett was about to scoff but stopped when he saw my face. His eyes narrowed. “You seem to know something I don’t.”
“Lead the way. And don’t ask questions.”
Rhett tried to peer into me with those shining brown eyes. I’m not sure what he thought he saw. But he turned after a moment and headed toward the stairs without looking back to make sure we were following.
The staircase brought us up beneath a moonless night sky, the black interrupted only by the twinkling of a hundred stars. The nearly frigid ocean wind howled as it swept across the platform’s deck. A brightly lit landing pad with two sleek, military-style aircraft parked within its circumference shined in the distance. On one side of the pad was a squat multistory building. Light shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the top floor, which I guessed was also the command station for the platform. Several prefabricated modules that reminded me of the ones I had seen in Bronx City were stacked three containers high beside the building. On the far side of the platform, as far away from the research complex as was possible, loomed a windowless, rectangular monolith, its top ringed by flashing red warning lights. A steady cloud of steam rose from its roof.
“That’s the power station,” Nythan said, pointing at the lonely structure. “Those cables on the level below move the power from there to the machines in the main building. All the equipment will be in the complex, above the incinerator.”
“We’ll be exposed while crossing. Anyone in the tower will see us when we cross near that landing pad,” Rhett said.
I peered at the top of the complex. I couldn’t see anyone at the window, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I pulled in the cold of my will, reaching out toward the building. I sensed nothing—it was too far away.
“They might be watching their screens, napping, whatever,” Nythan offered.
I shook my head. “Or they might not. I’m not feeling lucky.” I looked at Rhett. “We need some insurance.”
“What do you mean?” he asked warily.
“Nythan, you said those power cables lead from the reactor into the complex, correct?”
He nodded. “Yes. Severing those cables will knock out the complex’s main power.”
Rhett frowned. “Knocking out the power is going to set off alarms and wake everyone up. They might need that reactor to power their incinerator and complex fabrication machines, but you can be sure there is a backup generator inside the building for the lights and security systems.”
“I don’t want to knock out the power. Not unless we have to. Like I said—insurance. If we’re spotted crossing the platform, or an alarm sounds when we’re inside, you start blasting those power cables.”
“You just want to get rid of me,” he accused. “You’ve wanted that from the beginning. What is it that you’re afraid of me finding out?”
“This is about saving my brother, my friends, and just about every other person who isn’t Virginia Timber-Night or her lackeys. So will you do it?”
He took a heavy breath, then glanced at his viser. “It will be dawn in ninety minutes. If you aren’t back in sixty minutes, I’ll assume something has happened to you, and I’ll do what I have to—blow the power and the rest—even though you don’t trust me.”
“It’s not about trust, but thank you.”
I looked at Alexander. “It’s no more than a hundred yards. You think you can keep up with me in a sprint?”
“You know the answer to that.”
Nythan stepped in front of me. “You need me in there. You won’t know what you’re looking at otherwise.”
“I know,” I told him. “We’ll go first, make sure the entrance is clear. If no alarm gets raised after we cross, follow us after five minutes.”
Rhett tapped his viser. “Remember what I said about the time. I’ll be below deck. Be careful. I hope you all know what you are doing.”
I hoped so too.
Alexander and I set ourselves in starting positions. The distance was a trifle for either one of us—we’d cover it in a matter of seconds. On the track at least. The wind was an issue. The ground wasn’t quite even. But what really mattered was what was happening in the command center.
“Go,” I said.
We raced as if our lives depended on it. One foot then the other, our soles barely touching the ground. My arms pumped, my eyes focused on the doorway in front of me. Wind blasted against my shoulder, then swirled around to hit my face. I pushed harder, faster. Alexander was with me every step, his motions a twin with my own. Damn, it felt good to run.
The single door leading inside the research complex was a beaten metal relic, ravaged by years of use a
nd hard salt air. An ailing sodium light flickered above it. That was my finish line, and I was running to win. Eyes could’ve been looking at me from above. There could’ve been security cameras. But no alarm sounded. We were five yards from the door. I slowed to avoid slamming into it. As I did, it opened.
Eyes, wide and white with shock, stared at me from just inside the complex. I caught only a few details: olive uniform, a pockmarked face, pistol at his side. I was as startled as he was. Except I had momentum. He didn’t have time to grab his gun or sound the alarm on his viser. I kept going once I saw him. So did Alexander. We barreled into the man with desperate strength. I took him on the left, Alexander on the right. He went down flat onto his back. I cringed at the ugly thud his skull made when it struck the hard ground. Alexander grabbed the guard’s force pistol, but there was no need. The man’s eyes were closed. Blood puddled behind his head.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
Alexander placed a hand on the man’s wrist. “There’s a pulse.”
“We can’t leave him here.”
I looked around. The ceiling lights were dim, but there was enough light to determine that we were standing inside a large, open chamber—the place that Nythan said consumed most of the complex’s energy. The floor was filled with row after row of seemingly identical rectangular obelisk-shaped machines that extended from the floor to the ceiling, all the same perfect black color. They hummed a machine’s song, and the heat from their operation radiated to the doorway where I stood. A drab corridor with yellowed walls and flickering lights that reminded me of my public school in Bronx City extended off to my left. There was a stairwell at the end.
Nythan chose that moment to arrive. He opened the exterior door and stared down at the bloody body at our feet. “Jack me, Daniela. You didn’t waste any time.”
“Let’s move him behind one of those rows of machines so the first person to walk in doesn’t stumble on him.”
“What about the blood?” Nythan asked.
