“Mary, Dean, over here,” Slate said, nudging us out of our reverie. He was looking down into the water, which was now basking in the same blue light. “I think the seed grew into the water.”
It made a strange sort of sense. The holographic creatures were gone now, and when we jumped into the water, it felt warmer, more inviting. The gemstones built into the walls were bright blue now, and we moved down through the water, my body feeling more rejuvenated the longer I was in the ocean.
“There’s power in this,” I said. Slate nodded, and Mary took off, racing past the entrance and on toward the bottom of the village.
“It might still be there!” I called after her, warning of the monster we’d left battling Aquleen, but she didn’t slow.
Slate and I kicked faster, attempting to catch her, and when we found Mary, she was on the ocean floor, Aquleen’s damaged body in her arms.
“She’s alive,” Mary said.
I watched in the bright glow of the stones as the clear box opened of its own volition, and murky black ink spilled out. The Theos ink-shadow took the form of their symbol before transforming into the lanky figure once again.
It seemed to sense Aquleen’s anguish. The stones in the circle around us burned brightly, the water warming as they did so. The shadow bent and flowed with the ocean’s movement, never quite looking directly at us, or at the dying woman.
Tendrils of blue light crawled from the stones, sparkling as they touched one another before merging and heading for Aquleen. I now saw more wounds on her, and blood oozed from her mouth as she coughed, her gills leaking the red life-fluid too. The azure light entered her nose first, spreading over and throughout her body.
Slate and I watched from a few yards away, in complete awe, as Aquleen’s injuries healed themselves; her damaged, dying body was being repaired. Mary held her until her bleeding stopped; the angry wound on her leg closed up, her skin a fresh soft brown.
Aquleen’s eyes sprang open and widened as she saw the light covering her body. She fought to break free but caught Mary’s caring face and calmed, seeing she was being helped, not attacked.
Mary let her go slowly, and Aquleen stood on the floor of the ocean, looking over her smooth skin, seeing the damage she’d obtained from saving us from the Picas had disappeared. We could tell she had a lot of questions, but when she saw the Theos shadow looming beside us, she seemed to forget them all. She got on one knee and glared back at us, upset we didn’t join her.
“Looks like we’ve passed the test,” Slate said.
“It appears so…” I was cut off by the Theos. It had no mouth to speak from, but its voice carried into my earpiece.
“You have completed your task.” The same phrase as before, in the same voice.
“Are the Picas gone?” Mary asked it.
“It is gone,” it said in a solemn voice.
“Is it safe for them to move back home?” I asked, looking at Aquleen, who was getting none of the conversation.
“It is safe.”
“Why upset their world?” Mary asked.
“To challenge you. Do you think you should be able to walk right through each stop on the map?”
Since it was a recording, I didn’t know if it was going to wait for an answer. We didn’t give it one.
“Welcome to your third challenge.”
The sand shook, and beneath the box the Theos shadow had come from, the sand caved in, revealing a room lit by more blue light.
“Do we want to just go like this? We don’t have any weapons.” Slate picked up a spear from beside him and spun it slowly in the water.
They both looked at me, expecting me to give advice. If they wanted to know what I thought, I wouldn’t hold back.
“Let’s see what’s in the room. They gave us masks to breathe underwater. I have to think they’ll give us the necessary tools to survive what comes next. They even gave us…whatever that healing stuff was, in case we were harmed. They intended to help us if the Picas injured us.” I didn’t want to stay another minute. Suddenly being a couple hundred yards underwater, breathing through an impossible mask, was all too much. It felt like the weight of the ocean was pushing down on me, and I wanted nothing more than to escape it.
“I’m with Dean. Let’s keep going.” I’d expected this from Mary. She was gung-ho to solve this missing Theos puzzle. Slate shrugged but kept hold of his spear.
“Okay, Theos, we’re ready. What’s next?” I asked the wavy black ink-shadow.
It moved slightly before speaking through our earpieces. “Next is darkness.”
“Darkness?” Slate leaned closer to it, as if listening for a further clue.
“Bring them light. End the dark. Only then will you move on.”
“Bring who light?” Mary asked, but it was over. The crude man-shape began to blend together, back into the Theos symbol, before pouring into the clear box.
“That sounds easy. Let’s go to the next world, find a light switch, and be done with it.” Slate made it sound so simple. We knew it would be anything but.
Aquleen’s mouth was wide open, and Mary reached for her arm, helping her to her feet. She shook her head and pointed to the box, to which the black shape had returned.
“You don’t need to pray to it.” Mary repeated the motions, and Aquleen nodded along, as if understanding.
The woman of the water looked up, and I followed her gaze. The village already looked more vibrant. I wished we could stay around just to see the Apop people’s expressions when they were brought there.
“Dean, bring her back. She’s tired and drained of energy. Take her to the beach and return to us so we can keep going,” Mary said.
I smiled at her and reached for Aquleen’s arm. She pulled away, but when I took out the Relocator, she caught on and let me grab her forearm. She touched Mary’s hand briefly, giving a look that we hadn’t seen on her before. Joy.
Mary gave her a hug, and Aquleen stood there, hands at her sides, with a blank expression. She eventually copied Mary and gave her a hug back.
“I’ll be right back.”
Slate gave her a smile, and I tapped the Relocator. The familiar buzz surrounded me, and we appeared on the beach. The sun was much lower, close to setting. My legs almost gave out at the sudden weight pushing on them. I knew I was tired, but just not how much. It appeared the healing waters didn’t take away exhaustion.
Aquleen’s two friends were waiting there by our tent, and they reached for their knives the second we arrived. Relief washed over their faces. I had my translator turned on.
“We can go to Aquadomum,” Aquleen said as her arms reached to the heavens in triumph. They were all talking so fast now that I couldn’t make out the words. I reached for the waterproof pack with our meager rations in it. We carried our few possessions inside the pack, and I tucked in two pulse rifles. Three wouldn’t fit if I was going to bring our jumpsuits.
It hurt to leave the tent, but I didn’t have space for it either. Mary had the cloaking device, and I the Relocator, so we weren’t empty-handed, and Slate had a spear. That was something. I laughed, thinking about him running around in the dark on the next world, trying to stab an adversary with it.
I watched the three alien females dance as they rejoiced, ready to head back to their village and tell everyone the good news. Instead of breaking it up, I hit the Relocator one last time, happy to have helped another race find their home.
I was back at the bottom of the ocean in a blink. Without asking, Slate grabbed the pack and headed for the hole in the ground. He dropped the bag, and it sank down. He followed it inside.
“Was she okay?” Mary asked, worry on her face. She was such a kind-hearted woman.
“She’s more than okay. She was ecstatic. The Theos seem a little sick, don’t you think?”
Mary looked insulted. “We don’t know if they set the Picas on her people.”
“Come on. It’s obvious, and the shadow all but admitted it. And the holograms? Just
some convenient local Picas technology?”
“Maybe you’re right, but they need to make sure whoever finds them is worthy.”
I didn’t love the way Mary’s eyes widened as she spoke. “Do you think we’re worthy?” I asked, to see what she’d say.
“We’ll find out soon enough.” She turned from me, ready to head into the room where Slate was silently waiting.
I grabbed her arm, stopping her from going. “Mary, this is serious. They’ve manipulated lives. They think they can do anything they like. Do you really think we should find them? Maybe we should just try to go home and leave them to stay hidden.”
Mary was just angry now. “You know we can’t. They told you they needed you. The True, remember?”
“Maybe I’m not the True.”
“Maybe not, but we won’t know unless we finish this and find them. And how about a little plan called the Unwinding? If that doesn’t sound like something we need to stop, I don’t know what does. Did you save humanity to watch it get taken from us so soon?” Her passion was evident, and I loved her for it. Her behavior did feel uncharacteristic, though, and I worried about her.
“Okay. I trust your gut, Mary, even if mine is telling me to turn around and find a portal back home. Let’s stay on the same page.” She nodded and smiled, and kicked off the ground, swimming down the hole headfirst. I followed her into the room, which was lit by more blue stones.
“You guys know I can hear everything, right?” Slate asked. He pointed to the four corners of the room, where pillars stood. We were in another portal, more similar to the ones we were used to than the one from the metal tree we’d grown on Atrron.
There was a screen in the middle of the room, only one icon plastered in the center of it. It was the third symbol from the cube map we’d found on the ice world. Slate held a long box in his hands, and it remained unopened.
“From the water into the dark,” I said and tapped the screen. White light covered us, then darkness.
Fourteen
I fumbled for the pack Slate was carrying. He gave it up to me, setting it on the cold, hard surface. I found the LED switch on one of our jumpsuits, and silently thanked Clare and her team for adding a light to the EVA’s undergarments.
It was Mary’s suit, and I passed it to her. We were all soaking wet, dripping on the black clay ground. I already had a small pool around me and moved away to slip into my jumpsuit before turning my own LED on. The light was on the right breast pocket, which allowed the beam to follow my body’s movement.
“Isn’t this quaint,” Slate said. He was using his suit’s light to scan the room, and he stood nearly naked in the small space we were cramped into.
“Would you mind covering that up?” I asked, getting a laugh from the big man. He didn’t reply; instead, he just jumped into the legs and pulled the clothing on, zipping up the front.
“That feels better.” He slid his mask off, testing the air.
“Slate! Wait!” Mary called, but it was too late. He’d already breathed in a lungful.
“It’s fine. Little thick in here. Musty. But the air is fine.”
“You don’t know that. Have you heard of airborne viruses?” Mary said.
I decided to slip mine off too. This got me an angry glance from my wife. “We don’t have the tools to check the air quality. I don’t think the Theos let us get this far to have us die from the air.”
She shrugged, letting it go, and removed hers as well. I tucked the three masks into the pack and took out the two pulse rifles, hoping we weren’t going to need them.
“Let’s see what we have going on.” Mary stood, and I joined her, getting a good view of our surroundings. We were underground, which seemed to be the most common location for a portal to open into. The Theos wanted the openings to other worlds to be hidden. There was no table in the middle of the room, telling me this was a one-way trip.
We had no way of hopping out of here, at least not from where we currently stood. The room funneled to an opening a few yards away.
“Guess we go that way.” I zipped up my own uniform and passed Slate a pulse rifle. Mary took the other, leaving me with pack duty. In this case, I was okay with it.
“Aren’t we forgetting something?” Slate asked, eyeing the box sitting on the ground. I still had the underwater gift bestowed upon us from the Theos.
We all stood around it, and since Slate had lugged it here, we waited for him to open it.
The box was four feet long, and it opened on nearly invisible hinges with ease. Inside lay a weapon much like a bow. Beside it were two sets of goggles.
“Just two?” I asked, hesitant to touch anything.
Mary reached down, taking the metallic bow. It had a few buttons in the middle of the lower limb. She touched one, and it quietly hummed in the otherwise silent space. A white light shone down from the upper tip, entering the lower. It was a bowstring made of energy.
Mary held it up, grabbing the angled center grip with her left hand, and touched the string-beam. She pulled away as if it burned but quickly went back to it, drawing it with no ill effect. “This is cool,” she whispered.
“That’s badass. Where are the arrows?” Slate asked, looking inside the box for them.
Mary tapped the next button, and an arrow of light appeared on the bow, nocked and resting with a hum. She looked ready to test it out, and she smiled as she yanked it back with a grunt.
“Maybe we should wait until we’re not in a cramped space smaller than my childhood bedroom,” I said, but it was too late. Mary spun and loosed the arrow beam. It flew and stuck into the wall several yards away. It flashed and flickered out.
“That was anti-climactic,” she said, a look of disappointment in her eyes.
“Let’s go. We can play with it later,” I said.
“Who gets the goggles?” Slate asked.
I passed them to Slate, who tucked them into his pockets. “We can draw straws later.”
The hallway beyond the room was tight, and Slate’s wide shoulders covered any vantage point of what was coming ahead. He held the pulse rifle at ready. I now held the other one, with Mary taking the bow. I followed behind, Mary covering the rear. The walls, roof, and ground were all the same hard black clay-like substance. The area had a strange scent to it, and it took me a moment to remember the smell.
When I was a kid at a summer camp back home, we made an outdoor sweat lodge with a fire and stones. We would pour water on the hot stones, and the steam would create the effect of a sauna. The musty, warm rock smell carried into my nose now, and the memory rose to the forefront of my mind.
“Anyone else know that smell?” I asked.
“Not sure. It’s familiar.” Slate turned sideways, glancing back at me as the passageway narrowed. “If this gets any narrower, I might start to freak out. Being this size, I’ve never loved cramped spaces, boss.”
“I know, Slate. It’ll be okay.” I couldn’t know that, and if he did get stuck, we had no way out. Behind us was the only direction to go, and that was where we’d come from. An empty room. If we tried to blast our way out, the whole place could cave in on us. I didn’t like our options, and I could see the sweat beading on Slate’s neck as he thought about it too.
It went on for another few minutes before I could tell the walls were getting wider, the ceiling rising higher with each step we took. I saw Slate take a deep breath and relax in turn.
The hall ended abruptly and we all looked up, noticing ladder rungs carved into the wall. Without any preamble, Slate raised his right arm and gripped one of the footholds. He began to work his way up, his rifle slapping his back as the strap ran over his shoulder.
“After you.” I waved a hand forward, letting Mary go in front of me. She smiled and began her ascent. With a last look behind us into the darkness, I went after them.
By the time we were near the top, sweat poured off me in droves. I stopped frequently, wiping my brow with my sleeve, hoping it would keep some of the perspi
ration from blinding me. Our LEDs aimed where our chests did, so looking up only allowed me to see the wall where Mary’s and Slate’s lights hit. Every time I glanced up, my eyes stung.
It was getting progressively warmer, like we were climbing into hell. The thought startled me, and a shiver ran over my overheated body. There were a lot of places we could visit, but hell wasn’t a likely destination on this trek.
“We’re at the top,” Slate called down to us, and my protesting arms and legs gave it their all to finish the climb.
Slate disappeared at the entrance, and soon Mary did too. When I reached it, Slate’s hand was there to steady me, and he made sure I didn’t fall backwards. He took the pack and set it down on the ground. I rolled over onto my back, a few yards from the drop, and took a few deep breaths. When was the last time we’d slept? Or eaten?
As if reading my mind, Mary found water in the pack and passed it around, giving it to me first. I took a liberal amount and handed it back to her. We each ate half an energy bar and stayed put, discussing what we knew so far, which wasn’t much. Sleep was becoming a luxury we couldn’t afford, and I knew we’d end up making mistakes because of it.
“We must be inside a big cavern here. I can’t see walls anywhere,” Slate said. His light beam went on for a bit before fading to nothing. The beam spread was wide, and was meant for seeing things up close rather than farther away.
“I don’t know. I can’t hear an echo.” I wanted to test the theory but was hesitant to yell out. It might draw unwanted attention to our position.
“You’re right.” Mary got up and began to walk away from us.
“Stay close,” I said, but she either didn’t hear me or chose not to listen to my urging. “Crap. Let’s go, Slate.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” He took the pack without complaint. We trailed the bobbing light coming from Mary.
“Do you smell that?” she asked, her voice rising to carry back to us.
I sniffed, smelling the faint odor of rotten eggs.
“Smells like my brother’s socks,” Slate said jokingly.
“It gets stronger. And look!” Mary was waiting for us, and when we made it to her side, she was pointing forward, where a dark orange glow shone from beyond a ledge.
The Survivors: Books 1-6 Page 74
