by Kevin George
Quinn finally released Sally and shoved her toward BabyDoll and the rest of the Swarm. He grabbed James by the arm and led him out of the radio room, crossing the hallway until they reached the lobby. Quinn pushed James to the floor and approached the blockade by the front door. He flexed his back time and time again, blowing the stacks of furniture out of the way, causing one of the cracked windows to shatter completely. Quinn didn’t seem to mind.
He yanked James back to his feet and led him outside, not noticing—or not caring—that James shivered from the swirling winds. The rest of the Swarm followed, a few of them squawking nervously as they peered into the snowy distance. But Quinn didn’t look back at anyone, friend or foe. Without warning, he wrapped his arms around James and flapped his wings, shooting them skyward. A few flaps later, James’s vision was completely clouded by snow and he lost sight of the ground.
He squirmed in fear and Quinn threatened to let him go. Seconds later, they reached the top section of tower. Quinn dropped him on a small platform, attached to which were covered control panels with blinking lights, glowing switches and wires that looked to have been torn apart. James didn’t need to be told what he was there to do, but a quick search of the tower’s systems led him to shake his head.
“I don’t see it up here,” James said.
Quinn grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him over the platform’s railing. Quinn’s grip was the only thing preventing James from falling a hundred feet. James started to wriggle but thought better of it. Distant cries echoed up from the ground, but James dared not look down to see who was screaming.
“Did you really think I’d allow such a lie to go unpunished?”
James shook his head. “Really, I don’t see a beacon up here. I don’t know. . . maybe it’s somewhere else in the building. . . but I can’t imagine where else it would make sense to keep it. From what I read, One Corp. set up all of their facilities to be interconnected so there’s a chance—”
“One Corp.?” Quinn asked.
“The people that established the City Below and Mountain and this building,” James said, his body tensing as he felt himself shifting farther over the railing. “I read all about them and how their founder intended to communicate with other survival arks out in the—”
“I don’t care about other people or arks or survivors,” Quinn said, loosening his grip further. James slid back even more. “I want you to find the beacon. . . unless you’re stalling to allow more time for dangerous humans to arrive.”
James shook his head. “Let me back inside the radio room. . . if I check the monitor hooked up to the GPS, it might tell us where to find the beacon. . . I had a monitor like that in my ISU. . . it’s the only thing I can think that might—”
Quinn’s hand opened, a sight James seemed to witness in slow motion, though he didn’t have time to scream ‘no!’ before he plunged toward the ground. His freefall only lasted seconds, just enough time to see that he fell faster than the snow. The tower sped by in a blur and he heard wild squawking below. He wanted to tell Sally and the little Aviary to look away, but there wasn’t enough time. James exhaled deeply and closed his eyes, ready to rest forever, when he heard a single flapping sound and felt intense pressure on his ankle.
He opened his eyes to see his body hanging a few feet above the snowy ground. He turned his head to Sally and the Swarm rushing toward him, and then looked up to see Quinn hovering above, maintaining a tight grip on his ankle. James opened his mouth to thank him, but that didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Besides, Quinn didn’t give him the chance before releasing his grip, sending James plunging face first into the snow. James lifted his head and fought the urge to vomit.
“If you don’t figure out how to divert these people from our building, I won’t catch you next time,” Quinn said. He looked up at Sally and BabyDoll rushing toward them. “And maybe you won’t be the only one I drop.”
The crowd arrived as James climbed to his feet. Though his legs were shaky and his body shivered from an abundance of adrenaline and freezing temperatures, he nodded to Sally and BabyDoll and headed back inside. James marched through the building, ignoring the squawking from the crowd and the threats Quinn continued to mutter at him. Inside the radio room, he checked the connection between the GPS and the monitor before turning on the screen.
The One Corp. logo slowly appeared. James immediately recognized the same operating system that he’d had in his ISU, though he had full access to the tracking system this time. It took him a few minutes to locate the beacon’s coordinates, but once he found them, he typed them into a mapping system and an image appeared. Gasps arose from a crowd James hadn’t realized was behind him, but it was Quinn’s laugh—his genuine joy—that caused James’s stomach to sink.
“You sent them there?” Quinn asked. “How can that be?”
James shook his head. “I’ve doomed them,” he whispered to himself before Quinn pressed him for more information. “Like I said earlier, One Corp. originally planned for all parts of their operation—The Mountain, the City Below, the ISUs, this communications building—to be an interconnected series of installations capable of remaining in constant contact with each other. From what I’ve read, the City Below wasn’t finished in time to connect to the system, while the ISUs were cut off once their long-term viability was deemed unlikely. This building was also abandoned after the death of One Corp.’s original founder and—
“You know what? None of that is important now,” James said with a sigh. “But I should’ve realized sooner that the beacon wouldn’t have been installed here since this building was only meant as an outpost for communicating with the arks. Whoever received the coordinates has no idea what they’re getting themselves into.”
James stared at the map and shook his head, finally lowering his face into his hands.
“So. . . where is the beacon?” Sally asked, her voice strained.
Quinn looked at her and smiled. “The Mountain.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ryo hurried down the ramp, looking back to see large sections of the palace crumbling, the columns near the entrance toppling, steam pouring out of the throne room as well as the cutout windows in other sections of the palace. Huge chunks of debris fell onto the uppermost steppes, smashing into the homes of the highest-ranking One guards. Most of those men were off fighting in the Main Tunnel, but plenty of their wives and children tried to flee, some of them escaping immediate danger, others crushed by falling rocks.
Screams echoed throughout One. The remaining citizens ran in a panic, but few seemed to be going in any particular direction. Ryo stumbled as the ground continued to shake violently, cracks of various size threatening to collapse the entire ramp. He leapt over some cracks and ran around others, staying as close as he could to the side wall, which continued to hold firm.
“Help us! Please! My daughter!” a frantic voice called.
Ryo didn’t know why that one voice made him stop when he’d ignored so many others. He was near one of the higher steppes and looked over to see a pale-skinned, older woman kneeling beside a chunk of debris. A teenage girl lay on the ground, debris trapping her leg, pinning her down. The mother looked at Ryo, a flash of disgust sparking in her eyes, her expression quickly changing to panic as she begged for help. Ryo looked down at the newborn in his arms, his son, not quite as dark-skinned as Ryo but much darker than most citizens of One.
That woman wouldn’t help us if we were in trouble, Ryo knew with certainty.
His natural inclination was to keep going and focus on himself and his son, but something about holding his son gave him a sense of wanting to do better. The debris atop the teenage girl didn’t look so big and Ryo started toward them, determined to spend only a few seconds trying to help. But he no sooner took two steps toward them when he heard an awful squeal followed by an explosive snap. The mother and teenage girl both looked up, their screams cut off a second later when the Palace Lift’s cart crashed atop them. Ryo turn
ed away at the last moment, his back sprayed with shattered rocks. He didn’t look back and continued down the ramp.
He didn’t stop again until reaching the opening to the QZ tunnel. Its two guards were nowhere to be seen, and Ryo couldn’t decide whether they’d fled into the tunnel or headed down the ramp, a decision he was suddenly struggling with. He peered into the tunnel and saw mostly darkness. The section he saw appeared intact, but he couldn’t help wondering if the white hallways beyond had crumbled the same as the palace. Either way, Ryo doubted an existence Above would be any less unpalatable than escaping One for another section of—
“Daddy!”
The voice brought weakness to Ryo’s legs. His daughter, Mia, ran down the ramp, followed closely by his wife, Tera, a spear in her hand.
“What’s happening, Daddy?” Mia asked, crashing into—and hugging—his leg so tightly that Ryo nearly lost his balance.
“I was just coming to find you. . . both of you,” he said, looking up at his wife. Tera’s eyes were wide as she took in the destruction in One, which wasn’t quite as extreme farther down the ramp. “We have to get out of here.”
He pried Mia from his leg and took her hand. The little girl tried to see the baby in his arms, but Ryo held his son to the side, not wanting to get into that situation right now. But a glance at Tera showed her wide eyes suddenly narrowing at him.
“You’re lying. We haven’t seen you in days and you had the guards block us from King Edmond’s ceremony,” she snapped at him. The baby began to cry again and Tera’s eyes found him. “It’s true what they’re saying?”
She worded it as a question, but it was clear from her tone that she’d already knew the answer.
Ryo shook his head. “It wasn’t me, it was Marcus. He and the queen, they had a. . . thing, before he died on that mission Above.”
“I know when you’re lying,” Tera said. “If you want this family to remain a family, you’ll put that baby down right now and leave with me and your real child.”
Ryo shook his head. “But you don’t understand. This child is key to controlling the city.”
Tera made a show of looking at the devastation around One. “And what city is that?”
The section shook harder, leading to more screams. Ryo looked up to see parts of the ceiling plunging through the heavy steam cloud, flashes of blue crashing into more homes along all levels of the steppes.
“He’s only a baby,” Ryo said.
“Can I see?” Mia asked.
“No,” her mother snapped, but Ryo already kneeled and pulled the small blanket away from the baby’s face. The baby stopped crying the moment it saw the little girl’s face.
“Aww, he’s so cute,” Mia said.
Ryo nodded. “I can’t believe you were this small only eight years ago,” he told his daughter. “And I’m sorry I lied to you and your mother. She was right, like always. This is your baby brother. Do you want to hold him?”
“Get away from our daughter!” Tera screamed.
When Ryo didn’t immediately do as she said, Tera swiped at him with her spear, coming inches short of the baby. Ryo tried to grab it out of her hand, but Tera backed up and held the weapon ready. Ryo looked into his wife’s eyes and saw only hatred looking back. He shoved the baby into Mia’s arms.
“Go, now, hurry to the Main Tunnel,” Ryo told her. “Board one of the hovercraft and leave One.”
“No!” Tera yelled, stabbing at Ryo again. This time, he caught the tip of the spear, which cut into his hand as his wife tried to pull it back.
“Please, Mia, get your little brother to safety,” Ryo said.
The little girl hesitated until another chunk of debris crashed to the floor a few feet away. She scurried down the ramp, soon lost among a crowd of other One citizens fleeing the section. Ryo watched her go, relieved as his two children got farther from the worst of the danger. He turned to talk sense into Tera, but she jabbed the spear at him again, this time impaling his forearm. He screamed in pain and pulled his arm away, blood seeping between his fingers as he clutched his wound. There’d be no talking sense into her now.
“You disrespected me, your real child and our entire kind by doing what you did with the queen,” Tera yelled. “The Lord and Jonas will never let us into his Light now.”
She attacked again but Ryo sidestepped the spear, catching its hilt between his injured arm and torso. He tried to pull it from her hands, but Tera held on tightly, never letting go as he twirled her around and hurled her against the wall. She groaned and fell to the floor, her grip ripped from the spear as tiny pieces of debris fell onto them both. Ryo wielded the spear and loomed above her, glaring.
“I never wanted to marry you in the first place,” he spat.
Any pain or fear in Tera’s eyes faded. Hatred etched her face and she started to stand, ready to attack. But she barely made it to her knees when Ryo launched a vicious front kick, striking her squarely in the chest, knocking her back against the wall. She struggled to take a breath and held the back of her head. Ryo touched the blood on his arm and sneered at her again.
“At least I know I can never trust you with my life or my son’s,” he said, twirling the spear. He knelt in front of her, holding the tip of the spear an inch from her throat so she wouldn’t dare move. “And I want you to know that if it ever comes to choosing between Mia and my son, our daughter can swim in lava for all I care.”
Ryo didn’t enjoy the agony in Tera’s eyes as much as he’d expected. Though the rest of One echoed with screaming citizens, cracking rock and hissing steam, two sounds stood out to Ryo more than all others, two sounds that seemed out of place among the chaos. The first was grunting, deep and heavy, unlike the grunting sometimes made by people in battle. The second was footsteps, also deep and heavy but also strangely muted. Ryo’s mind told him what was causing the sounds, but he could hardly believe it possible.
He took a step back from Tera and looked down the tunnel leading to the QZ. White blurs suddenly exploded out of the darkness, moving so quickly that Ryo didn’t have time to raise his spear before they crashed into him. He heard—and felt—the crackle of his bones as he soared across the ramp, smashing down along the nearest steppe, his body inches from the edge leading down to the next steppe. He tried to crawl toward it, if even to fling himself over the side and hope for a soft landing away from the beasts, but trying to move sent waves of fire and agony through his body. Something was seriously wrong with him and he had no doubt what the next few seconds would hold.
With his little remaining strength, Ryo turned his head toward his wife, her screams matched by the mighty roar from one of the beasts. Ryo opened his mouth—wanting to yell at the beast to stay back—but he couldn’t take a deep enough breath to utter a sound. As one of the beasts lumbered toward him, Ryo peered around it to see two others pounce on Tera, abruptly cutting off her screams.
Ryo wondered how the beasts could’ve gotten Below, though he didn’t have long to ponder before he felt the beast’s hot breath on his face and the sting of razor sharp teeth chomping down on his neck. The popping and crunching of bones was the last thing he heard before his sight went forever black. . .
Oliver slashed and stabbed with his spear, fighting wildly but never losing control, Walter’s training engrained in his mind. His focus on the battle was instinctually sharp, allowing him to spot—and attack—every immediate threat, all while keeping Emma out of danger. She fought when she could but remained behind the remaining Fifther force, which battled valiantly in protection of their king and queen.
The distant rumbling came in waves, sporadically joined by explosive echoes. Each time the unexplained noises reached the battle, both sides would back off for a few moments before resuming the fighting with greater intensity. Oliver couldn’t help but wonder if his father had set up something bad to happen in case of his death. . .
A spear was jabbed in his direction and he sidestepped at the last moment, the sharpened tip missing him by inch
es. He heard a pained yip behind him and attacked the One guard, taking aim for the side of his neck, landing a killing blow that sprayed blood all around and dropped his foe. Looking across the chaos, he caught a quick glance of Paige Blake off to the side of the battle, kneeling beside a Thirder that was clearly dead already. As suddenly as Oliver had spotted her, though, the battle shifted and cut off his view. He turned and saw Emma grimacing, blood oozing from a gash in her arm. He rushed to her side.
“I’m so sorry,” Oliver said, reaching for her wound. “I should’ve—”
Emma pulled her arm away and shook her head. “I’m fine,” she snapped, though she allowed Oliver to lead her farther back from the battle. As he wrapped a torn strip of his shirt around her arm to stanch the bleeding, another loud explosion—louder than the others—erupted from down the tunnel, causing a crack to run the length of the ceiling. A massive piece of rocky debris broke free and fell atop the middle of the battle.
“Paige!” Oliver yelled, his voice cut off by the crash and subsequent screams.
Oliver started forward to look for Paige, but Emma grabbed his arm.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said. Oliver couldn’t tell if the edge in his wife’s voice was caused by bitterness or pain. “What do you think is happening?”
Combatants from both sides stopped fighting and hurried to the fallen debris, where they tried to pull their friends free. With a break in the action and Emma’s arm still oozing, Oliver looked beyond The Fourth’s blast door and toward the far end of the Main Tunnel, where there was now a clear path.
“Should we run and search for cover?” Oliver asked.
“Back to The Fifth? Now that we’re gaining an advantage?” Emma asked, shaking her head. “Besides, if whatever’s happening to the city can reach us here, it’ll be bad enough to reach us in The Fifth.”
Before Oliver could convince her otherwise, Emma picked up her fallen spear and hurried toward the One guards. She nearly reached them when more commotion echoed in the distance, another strange noise that led to a further respite in fighting. Oliver stepped forward and joined the rest of the fighters looking up toward the ceiling. It took Oliver a moment to spot a silhouette flying in their direction.
