“Right, well, that was Anton’s idea. You see, the Shepherds want to expand the flock, to herd humanity to greener pastures. We want to make sure that the human race survives anything that time and misfortune might throw at it. That’s why my father was such a perfect addition to our ranks. He also wanted to help the human race survive. That’s why he built Omega City, as a fail-safe.”
“But the Shepherds don’t want us to stay on Earth.”
“Exactly. They didn’t agree with Dr. Underberg that there was any hope for us here. During the Cold War, they were sure we’d destroy the planet, and that our only salvation would be in outer space.”
“Do they still think that?” Howard asked.
“You heard Elana and Anton the other night. It’s not like they hide it.”
“We didn’t know they were Shepherds,” said Eric.
“Oh,” Dani said. “Interesting. So according to you, the problem isn’t what Elana and Anton think, it’s that you’ve already decided Shepherds are the bad guys.”
Yes, I thought. But what I said was, “The problem is that you’re lying about asteroids, and killing bees and chimpanzees, and kidnapping people!”
Dani nodded. “I agree with you. That is the problem. And it’s because of people like Anton. He was raised in the organization, just like me, and he’s getting impatient. He doesn’t think we’re heading into space fast enough. I think he always believed, when we were growing up, that we’d have colonies on Mars by now.”
“Yes!” Howard exclaimed.
Dani gave him a weak smile. “You actually remind me a lot of him.”
“Except Howard would never do anything to hurt the planet, just to send us into space,” I said defiantly. “Right, Howard?”
“I don’t know if you really want the answer to that,” said Eric, and he was probably right.
“It’s where I stopped agreeing with the Shepherds, too,” Dani pointed out. “I want to get to space, don’t get me wrong, but I have no interest in poisoning the well. Earth has enough problems as it is. We shouldn’t do anything to make it worse.”
“So,” Savannah said, “you’re a double agent?”
“I didn’t know where to go,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of people you can turn to if you go against the Shepherds. Then Sam Seagret published his book. Your family was a target of the Shepherds, but instead of disappearing, you fought back. You even found my father.”
“So we’re not idiots after all?” I asked sarcastically.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was angry. You haven’t been very discreet since you got here. You practically told Elana about the numbers station.”
The numbers station, where I now realized Dani had never been sending messages to the other Shepherds.
Seagrets accepted invitation to speak at Guidant. Please advise.
“Wait a second.” I held up the sheets we’d stolen from the station. “These messages . . . They were for Dr. Underberg?”
And that was why he’d given Howard the code book. He wanted us to listen in.
Dani nodded. “It’s how my parents communicated all those years. It was a brilliant system—public but untraceable. Mom taught me how to decode them using their old letters. They used to love sending each other coded messages. He stopped writing to us after Mom died, and I figured he’d passed away, too, until I read your father’s book. So I sent him a message, using the old code, and he responded. We’ve been talking ever since. I’ve been keeping him up to date on the Shepherds’ plans, and he’s been doing whatever he can to stop them.”
“I knew he was okay,” I said.
“Of course,” she replied. “Aloysius Underberg is the world’s leading expert on survival. You don’t think something like a rocket-ship launch could kill him, do you?”
“So are you the one who sent me the code book?” Howard asked.
Dani made a face, crumpled up the ice cream wrapper, and stuck it back in her pocket. She wouldn’t even litter in this wreck of a habitat. “No. Apparently Underberg doesn’t trust me enough to keep me entirely in the loop. I have no idea how you got that book, though I have a few suspicions.”
“So there are other people on this”—Savannah gestured vaguely to our little group—“team?”
“We’re not a team,” I insisted.
Dani chuckled. “I’m inclined to agree with you, but my father doesn’t see it that way. And Elana is taking advantage of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s recruiting your father.”
“Dad would never be a Shepherd,” I stated.
Dani’s expression was filled with pity. “That’s cute.”
I bristled. “He wouldn’t! The Shepherds tried to destroy our lives.”
“Haven’t you wondered why the Shepherds never tried again?”
Well, actually, yes I had. We all had. Even Mom.
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, Gillian,” said Dani. “We ruined your father before he found Omega City, but he was very persistent. You were very persistent. So we had to step it up a notch. If threatening your dad didn’t put him off his research, then the next best thing to do would be to distract him.”
“Offer him a job,” said Eric softly.
Wow. Mom had been even more right than I’d thought.
“And honestly, I thought that was the end of it,” she said. “But Elana’s plan was more devious than I expected. I thought she just wanted to get you guys to side with her. But Underberg is threatening to sabotage her Capella project.”
“Is that what Dr. Underberg is doing up in space?” Howard asked. “He’s getting proof that the satellite data is being tampered with?”
Dani looked at him curiously, and her next words hit me like a punch in the gut. “What satellite?”
I gasped. “Wait a second. Are you saying that Guidant never put a satellite in space?” That was insane. Everyone had seen their images! Just last week Howard and I had listened to stories about how they’d discovered asteroids only a few hundred thousand miles from Earth!
“They put something in space,” said Dani. “And Dr. Underberg is threatening to expose the truth.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. A spy satellite, to monitor everyone on Earth? A giant missile launcher, to rain down bombs from above?
Dani went on. “Elana is desperate to stop him, and for that, she needs leverage.”
“What do you mean?”
Dani sighed. “For whatever reason, my father is very protective of you. That means you aren’t recruits, Gillian. You’re hostages. And unless Underberg does what the Shepherds want, you’re in big trouble.”
SAVANNAH DIDN’T WANT to leave the chimpanzees “unprotected,” but Dani convinced her that she was in no position to play guard. After all, she was pretty much a captive herself. Our only goal now was to figure out how to get away from the Shepherds and find my dad before Elana decided to make an example of him to Dr. Underberg.
Dani was skeptical of this. “Last I heard, they were transporting him to the biostation.”
“Then we have to go!” I exclaimed. “We have to get my dad.”
Dani shook her head. “To be honest, I’m not sure we can. I’m not even sure we can get you guys out safely. I’m sure your dad wouldn’t like it if you risked yourselves to—”
“No!” I shouted. “We have to.” I looked at Eric. “Right?”
He nodded firmly. “Yes. We have to.” Savannah and Howard nodded, too.
Dani scowled. “Fine. But it’s your funeral.”
Together, we headed back into the elevator and down to the biostation.
“Be careful,” Dani said to us as we exited. “If you get caught again, I can’t help you or they’ll nail me for sure.”
We crept around the edge of the biostation. Parked out front were several electric cars and a large truck like a moving van, with personnel loading equipment and long gray containers into the cargo area. I caught sight of Elana Mero in a smart black pa
ntsuit, standing in the midst of the activity.
Dani let out a mumbled curse, then pushed us all back behind the edge of the enclosure. “We’re later than I thought. You should have just let him go.”
Let Dad go? Easy for her to say. She’d never even met her father.
Quickly, Dani discarded her utility suit, leaving her dressed in the pants and shirt she’d worn earlier. She strode out from our hiding spot, her posture casual and commanding.
“Elana!” she called brightly.
“There you are!” Her boss came over. “Where have you been?”
“Dealing with the kids. They’re neutralized.”
“Do you have them in pods?”
“Oh!” Dani sounded surprised. “No . . . I didn’t realize you were sending them to Infinity Base.”
Elana groaned in frustration. “That crazy old man. He’s not giving us any choice. I will not let him ruin what I’ve worked for all these years, even if I have to destroy Infinity Base to do it.”
“Why can’t you leave them?” Dani pressed.
“You know the answer to that,” Elana said, and patted Dani on the arm. “Underberg has always had a soft spot for children. It’s the only way we’ve ever been able to control him.”
Dani said nothing. I reached out blindly for Eric’s hand and squeezed, hard.
After a moment, Dani seemed to find her voice. “We could just make it look—”
Elana threw up her hands in frustration and stormed off. “I don’t want to hear it. I’ve already had a horrible day. I swear, Dani, if you thought the kids were bad, you should have seen the mother. . . .”
They entered the enclosure, still talking.
“Gills? Gills. Gills, Gills, Gills . . .” Eric tugged my sleeve. “What is she saying? What are pods? What’s Infinity Base?”
“I don’t know.” I felt cold, and it had nothing to do with the cooling setting on my utility suit.
If you thought the kids were bad, you should have seen the mother. . . .
We kept in the shadows as Shepherds swarmed the area in front of the station, packing supplies in long narrow boxes into the cargo truck. When they were done, they piled into the cars and and drove off in the direction of the Eureka Cove campus. When only the truck remained, Elana and Dani emerged from the station. I risked taking a half step out of the shadows so that I could catch their conversation.
“We’ll have to come back with the last load of pods,” Elana was saying. “Do you think the others will be ready in time?”
“Oh, without a doubt,” Dani said. She looked over her boss’s shoulder and met my eyes, then glanced pointedly at the door to the station. Her intent was clear.
Inside.
Elana climbed into the cab of the truck, while Dani began talking animatedly to the driver. As soon as I was sure she had the driver distracted, I motioned to the others, and we hurried around the side of the biostation to the front door. We slipped inside, then stopped dead.
The place looked completely different than it had only an hour or two before. Instead of a bunch of tiny chambers, the interior was entirely open, a giant, glowing white bubble. At the far opposite end stood five of the cooling station tables, their equipment, and a pile of what looked like dirty laundry in a heap in the front. I recognized jeans, a sweater, even a pair of sandals I swore I’d seen on someone before.
If you thought the kids were bad, you should have seen the mother. . . .
“Um, guys?” Savannah’s voice was shaking. “I think they graduated from chimpanzees.”
As a group, we drew closer to the remaining cooling stations. As far as I could tell, only one was currently occupied, its gel mattress inflated and the tubes and wires in place.
My feet stopped working. I couldn’t bring myself to move closer.
Eric, however, only sped up. By the time he reached the mattress, he was practically sprinting.
He looked down at the body on the table.
“It’s Mom!” he screamed. “Gillian! Help me!”
My knees were jelly. My lungs were rocks in my chest. I tried to inhale, but nothing happened. If Mom was on the table, then that meant . . .
Savannah reached the computer terminal and pulled up the warming protocol on the screen. “It’s okay. She’s just in torpor. Like the chimp.”
Eric was ripping the wires and gel pads off our mom. “I’ve got you, Mom, I’ve got you. Gillian!”
If Mom was on the table, then that meant . . .
Far in the distance, I heard the rumble of the truck starting up. Somehow, my feet turned. Somehow, my lungs drew breath. The sound of the engine filled my ears as I sprinted back toward the doors. I heard it rev, heard the truck roll away.
“Dad!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. But I knew I was too late. They’d taken him. The Shepherds had taken him away.
“Um, Gillian?” Howard’s cry pierced the fog that fell around me. I turned to see him rooting in the dirty laundry. He held up Nate’s General Tso’s T-shirt. His voice was high-pitched and terrified, his eyes wide. “Gillian? Where’s my brother?”
I looked from Savannah, working feverishly at the keyboard of the cooling station, to Eric, his face stricken as he rubbed my mother’s frozen hands between his own. And there I stood, alone, as the sound of the truck vanished into the distance.
My dad was gone. We were on our own.
45 11 21 13 22 11 35 45 31 35 51 13 23 . . .
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve always wanted to live in the future. When I was younger, I loved learning about new technologies or watching demonstrations of inventions that would soon take over the world (like touch screens). In this book, Gillian and her friends have the chance to live in the future for a few days. Most of the things they discover, from drone feeders to robot restaurant hosts either already exist or are just around the corner. Medically induced hypothermia is being used in hospitals around the world to help accident victims, and the space industry is looking into it as a way to keep costs down on long-term flights. Self-driving ski boats are a little way off, but self-driving cars can already be found on the roads. Solar-paneled highways and bike paths exist—are specially programmed sports courts next?
But the future also holds a dark side. There actually has been a mysterious plague affecting honeybees, and no one quite knows what is causing it (though it’s probably not the Shepherds or Wi-Fi). Many scientists agree with the Shepherds that we’re not doing enough to prepare our society and our planet for a global catastrophe such as a large asteroid strike. And though the real Ham the Astrochimp, who traveled in space in 1961, retired to a zoo in North Carolina to live out his days in comfort with a mate and family (and his remains probably are in New Mexico . . . or the Smithsonian archives), the fate of many research animals is not so rosy. The abandoned chimp research station in this book is, unfortunately, inspired by the true stories of chimpanzees and other primates used for medical testing and then left to die alone with no food or other resources on islands in the Ivory Coast and Liberia.
As we look forward to the marvels that the future will bring, it’s important to remember the dangers, and the responsibility we owe to every fellow inhabitant of this Earth.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my extended family, who took the pressure off when I needed it most, as well as the mysterious properties of a farmhouse on the northern neck of the Rappahannock. Thank you also to Carrie Ryan and Mari Mancusi, who held my hand through the difficult parts, and K. A. Linde, a marvel, who read an early draft. I also appreciate the advice of E. C. Meyers regarding codes and codebreaking; the anecdotes of Elizabeth Traci Babcock, whose close personal experience with workplace campuses of the future inspired both cool and the terrifying parts of Eureka Cove; and the input of Eliot Schrefer, who made sure I didn’t embarrass myself with the monkeys. All remaining errors are my own.
Thank you again to the entire team at Balzer+Bray for their support these many years, especially Kristin Rens, who is
the model of patience. I am, as ever, in awe of the artistic ability of Vivienne To. Much love to Michael Bourret, for never giving up on me. Last but not least, thanks to all the readers who want to know what happens next with Gillian, Eric, Savannah, Howard, and Nate.
And Dr. Underberg, of course.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Vania Stoyanova
DIANA PETERFREUND is the author of many books for adults and children, including Omega City as well as the critically acclaimed For Darkness Shows the Stars and Across a Star-Swept Sea. She lives with her family outside Washington, DC, in a house full of bookshelves, and is always on the lookout for lost cities or stray rocket ships. You can find out more at www.dianapeterfreund.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2017 by Vivienne To
Cover design by Joel Tippie
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
OMEGA CITY: THE FORBIDDEN FORTRESS. Copyright © 2017 by Diana Peterfreund. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950332
ISBN 978-0-06-231088-0
EPub Edition © January 2017 ISBN 9780062310903
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