“Are you going to wait for people to start dying? My daughter can’t stop coughing. Now Ariana’s started. Daniel might already be dead. What is it going to take?” yelled Raven. “There’s so much dust in the air we might as well walk around licking the floor.”
Noah paused, his hand on the phone, not lifting it from the cradle. “Perhaps you should visit Preston again and ask him to check you for paranoia or delirium from whatever you suffered exposure to out there.”
“Didn’t he already talk to you about the tests? He found nothing.”
“Tests?” asked Ben.
Raven explained the swabs. “No traces of any identifiable toxin. Everything came back clean.”
“Some of the toxins out there are so potent they can have an effect from trace amounts, too little to show up on Preston’s equipment.” Noah flicked at the corner of his log book.
Raven narrowed her eyes, tempted to throw it in his face that she knew about the new Saints. However, she didn’t want to get the doc in trouble. “If anyone else went outside, Preston could test them the same way… like Lark. She went out to help me with the tarp.”
“What?” Noah blinked. “You took someone out there with you? I authorized one person.”
“Umm… the turbine housing had an enormous hole in it. To keep rain out, we covered it with a tarp. That’s not a one-person job, even in calm wind. When we went out again, the security team called you to make sure it was okay.”
He frowned. “Yes, but they neglected to mention you brought a friend. So there are now two of you who have been exposed?”
“We haven’t been exposed to anything but cleaner air than what’s down here.” She shifted her weight onto her left leg, cocking one eyebrow in a challenging stare. “If you know of anyone else who’s been outside recently, have them tested. I bet the doc won’t find anything.”
“Miss Wilder, I think you need to go take some time and de-stress.” Noah shifted his gaze to Ben. “Give her the rest of the wake… and the next one, off.”
“I can’t just sit around and watch things get worse. I’m not going to let Tinsley die.”
Noah again reached for the phone. “If it’s too difficult, I can always ask security to help you find a quiet place to calm down.”
Ben gasped.
Raven shook with rage. Blowing up on him now would definitely end poorly. Tinsley’s life being in danger terrified her enough already. Being separated from her and stuck in jail would be intolerable.
“Fine,” she said past clenched teeth.
Fuming, she stormed out.
Having no better idea of what to do, Raven found herself going to the classroom.
So as not to disturb them, she stood in a dark spot, watching the kids interact with Sienna. Every time one of them said something cute, she almost cried. Whenever Tinsley or Ariana coughed, she did shed a tear. Her daughter struggling to get math questions right scared the hell out of her. Ariana appeared mildly disoriented, too. Both she and Tinsley kept nodding off. Even though they’d both stayed up past bedtime last wake to sneak outside, her daughter’s visible fatigue infuriated her all over again.
He’s ignoring evidence just like people did before with the bugs. What is Noah afraid of? Something being true at one point does not mean it will always be true. Okay, so what if Dad had an issue the first time he went out. That’s like twenty years ago. Maybe he got a damn cold. He got over it and went back out there. It couldn’t have been toxin, or even a Plution attacking him. It didn’t sound reasonable that free-roaming poisons had been in the air as recently as twenty years ago for there to be as many weeds, grasses, bushes, and flowers as existed now. She blinked in astonishment at a sudden realization. Pollen… Dad could’ve had an allergic reaction to plant stuff in the air. None of us had ever been exposed to that before. Noah wouldn’t even know what pollen was.
The soft rustle of someone in a poncho and tread socks approaching made her look to the right.
Ben came around the corner, his clothes rustling. He looked tired, but hopeful… and a little worried.
Guess that means I don’t have to worry about the security people.
“Hey.”
“He’s wrong,” muttered Raven.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s wrong or not. He’s in charge. What he thinks, goes.”
“Yes, it does matter.” She stared down. “His being wrong is going to kill people. Can I tell you something in confidence?”
He nodded. “Sure. Least I can do for you not pulling my pants down in there.”
“What?” She blinked at him.
“Figuratively. The vents being a mess are my fault. You didn’t bring that up. And you interrupted him before he ripped my head off. So, yeah. In confidence.”
She swiped her hair out of her face and stared into his eyes. “If I wasn’t worried there’s no food topside, I’d have already grabbed my daughter and gone out there to stay.”
“Wow.” He made a soundless whistle. “You really trust it.”
“I trust it more than the mess down here.”
“Fair point.” He stuffed his hands in his pants pockets somewhere under the poncho. “I have some news you might like.”
She smirked. “You didn’t convince him to open the door.”
“No. Not yet. But I did tell him I don’t think you’re seeing things or paranoid. Our whole team works on the same systems you do, realizes the same things you do. I talked him into taking the doc’s tests seriously, but Noah seems unusually frightened about what’s out there.”
“So is everyone else. We’ve all grown up hearing stories.” She grimaced, thinking of the Saints she’d seen in their melted suits. “But wounds heal. Why do we assume the planet is going to stay toxic forever?”
Ben scratched at his nose. “Yeah. I’m astounded Lark went out there with you. Figured she’d have been harder to convince than Noah, but… she’s right with us in engineering. Noah sits in an office.”
“What if we drag him to the HVAC room and show him?” She grinned. “I could even take him on an outside tour.”
“I don’t think he’d appreciate being ‘dragged’ anywhere.” He chuckled. “Look, just try to keep a low profile for a wake or two.”
Raven shifted her weight from leg to leg. “I can’t do nothing and just wait for everyone to die.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you to do. But getting in Noah’s face and yelling won’t help. Look, give me a couple wakes to look at possible solutions, including if there’s a feasible way to draw in enough fresh air and circulate it down here.”
She gawked, unsure whether to feel happy he trusted her or worried that meant the systems were much closer to failure than she thought.
“Having something on paper to show him might make it easier to convince him.” He looked down, shaking his head. “The filters are shot. Even after cleaning, they’re useless. Air can barely pass through them, and they’re not pulling much dirt out.”
“We don’t have time.” She grabbed his arm.
He gave a sad chuckle. “I wish I had your trust in the air topside.”
“There’s an easy way to fix that.”
“Uhh… you might have inhaled a slow-acting poison or something. If you’re still here a week from now, maybe I’ll let you talk me into looking for myself.”
“Right…”
He started to walk off, but twisted back to point at her. “Please keep your head down. Give me a chance to work up some schematics.”
“I won’t scream at Noah again.”
Ben’s expression said ‘you’re up to something,’ but he didn’t press the issue, continuing to walk away. “Enjoy your wake off.”
Being given time without responsibility should have felt like a reward or a nice thing, not a chastisement. Raven fidgeted, staring again into the classroom. Tinsley and Ariana lay passed out on their desks. Xan had gotten stuck in a logic loop arguing with Sienna about the word ‘address.’ He accused her of writing address
on the whiteboard when the definition she tried to get out of him referred to address—to speak to someone.
He’s loopy. How can someone write the wrong pronunciation?
Frustrated, and not wanting to disturb the class, she went home. Upon arriving in her quarters, she threw off her poncho and pants, deciding to get comfortable in only her inside clothes and tread socks. Worried and restless, sitting still proved impossible and she wound up pacing—until her gaze fell on Dad’s storage trunk. The unassuming olive-drab hard case had originally contained delicate electronic parts, long ago put into use. It came a little too close to making her think of a Tinsley-sized coffin.
Be it from anger at Dad for going away or her unwillingness to stare into the face of her sorrow at losing him, she hadn’t opened the trunk since the time she’d moved from the two-bed quarters she grew up in to this one. He’d mostly kept his ‘expedition’ stuff in it, so while packing up his things, she put a few more notebooks and some gear in it—then pretended it didn’t exist.
Part of her always toyed with the idea of disposing of the trunk so she didn’t have to look at it and think about him, but now… she practically jumped into a cheer for never following through. All the times he’d gone out there and come back, maybe he found something she could use to convince Noah that his fears had no basis in fact.
As nervous as a little girl sneaking into her parents’ room to search for birthday presents two days early, she crept up to the trunk, knelt, then sat back on her heels, resting her hands on the lid.
“Okay, Dad. Help us out here.”
16
Permission
Hell no, I didn’t ask first. After I came back in one piece the first time, they couldn’t say it would kill me. – Ellis Wilder.
Dad’s trunk gave off a faint sucking sound when Raven pushed the lid up, a watertight seal around the rim separating. A thick layer of dark foam lined the walls, though the contents of mostly notebooks and hiking supplies didn’t need that much protection. Air trapped inside still held her father’s scent, triggering a lump in her throat. Though it had been four years since he’d vanished, for a moment, it felt as though he disappeared only days ago.
No way topside went from deadly to fine in four years. Dad didn’t die to breathing poison. Something else happened to him.
Her hands shaking, she cleared a poncho and two spare filter masks off the top, then grasped the first of many notebooks. Except for varying degrees of damage, they appeared identical—every one of them forest green with ‘Arcology 1409’ printed on the cover in white letters. Some looked new and unused, others like they’d suffered everything from being dropped in water to turbine gears chewing on them.
For her daughter’s sake—and the lives of everyone in the Arc—Raven set aside her emotions and concentrated on searching for anything she could use to prove her case. Her father had filled twenty-four notebooks. Between them and a collection of ‘artifacts’ he’d brought back from topside, there had to be something useful.
A couple hours blurred into oblivion as she went from one notebook to another, pausing every so often to look over an item she almost recognized. Between her technical experience and exposure to the previous world from reading, she guessed at cell phones, a video game on DVD, a heavily rusted handgun, half-melted Rubik cube, and so on. Two-thirds of the items had sustained damage similar to acid corrosion in varying degrees.
Looks like some places out there must have had a little protection. Not everything melted.
While poring over notebook seven, she discovered a journal entry regarding her father going to the remains of a ruined city approximately a two-hour walk ‘mostly west’ from the Arc. That made her pick up one of the compasses she’d already removed from the trunk, tilting it back and forth. The needle wobbled, definitely interested in pointing only one way. She didn’t remember if the white end or the red end pointed north, though. But, that wouldn’t matter outside. As soon as she could see the sun, determining direction would be easy.
Rises in the east, sets in the west, said Dad’s voice in her memory.
Her father’s writing described ‘streets lined with hundreds of metal frames of various size,’ which had to be cars. Two pages in, he described finding a large interior space that appeared to have been a storage facility of some kind. An enormous building contained shelves and shelves of tools, hardware, building supplies, and all sorts of ‘good stuff’ he didn’t have any room to carry except for the orange-and-black hammer.
“It’s mind blowing to think what our ancestors had at their disposal, and their sense of communal survival. To assemble such a vast storage vault of vital supplies that anyone could access is truly humbling. I must convince the little bastard to let me bring a group here,” said Raven, reading her father’s words. “Heh.”
‘Little bastard’ had been his name for Noah, even though Dad was only eight years older than him—forty-nine—at the time of his disappearance-presumed-death. Noah would have been thirty-seven then. He’d only worked as a section admin for a year before running in the election for big boss. Dad didn’t think Noah believed he had any chance of winning, but people liked the young, charismatic ‘new face.’ Her father forever considered him a ‘kid.’
Reading Dad’s words set off an explosion of hope. How amazing would it be if the ancestors had been so altruistic as to assemble a stockpile of supplies like that for the community? But… centuries had passed. Could anything out there possibly be useful?
She rummaged the trunk, looking for an ‘orange and black hammer.’ Removing the next full stack of notebooks revealed an ordinary carpenter’s hammer, solid steel, with a black rubberized grip, quite dried up and cracked. Traces of bright orange paint remained on the head, though much of it had worn off even though the tool had no scrapes, dents, or gouges suggesting it had never actually been used to drive a nail. Words stamped into the shaft spelled out: ‘Home Depot’
“Amazing…” She tried to imagine a surface city with a parts vault like the Arc had where people went to ask a quartermaster for stuff they needed. That this hammer survived gave her hope that other useful things might have. Maybe even material she could use to make new air filters.
True, she held a solid steel tool, but plastic lasted forever. Thinking about her father exploring ruined cities raised a new hint at what might have caused him to disappear—ancient buildings would be prone to collapse, especially if the Plutions had damaged them.
She couldn’t worry about that now. No time for mourning. Reading her father’s notes made it sound possible—even probable—that one of those old storage vaults might still hold useful materials.
Noah can go to hell. We can’t wait. If there is anything there I can use to fix stuff here…
Her mind made up, she went back to the start of that journal entry and read her father’s maddeningly brief comments about how to get there. She remembered seeing the tall concrete skeletons of old buildings way off in the distance. Those seemed to line up with the description, but she couldn’t remember where the sun had been at the time.
Raven studied the notes, plus a little map he’d drawn. Going miles away from the Arc could lead to her sharing the same fate as her father—disappearing and probably dead. No one would know what the hell happened to her. They’d blame the toxins and keep the Arc shut up tight until everyone died. But if she didn’t go, Noah would still keep the Arc sealed until everyone died. She had only one choice: make the trip and come home alive with something useful.
That would prove the outside air is safe.
Well, Dad. I guess I really am your kid.
The door opened.
Wrapped up in her plans to defy Noah, she jumped as if she’d been caught touching herself, expecting to see a security team here to arrest her for ‘defiant thought.’ At the sight of Tinsley letting herself in, her little face mostly hidden behind a filter mask a bit too big for her, she slouched with relief.
“Mom?” Tinsley’s muffled voice bro
ke the quiet. “Is something wrong?”
“Kind of.” Raven pressed a hand to her chest, trying to recover from the scare.
“Why are you home early? Are you sick, too?” The girl walked up to her, her posture slouched, eyes half closed like she could crawl into bed and sleep.
I can’t leave her here. Dread fear hit her that she’d go topside for a few hours and come home to find her daughter suffocated. Overcome, she grabbed the girl in a fierce hug, squeezing a squeak out of her. Tinsley draped over her, coughing.
“Ow.”
“Sorry, baby.” Raven relaxed her grip. “I’m gonna break the rules again.”
Tinsley leaned back to look her in the eye. “You’re scared.”
“I am, but not of being out there. I’m scared of you being in here.”
After a long stare, the child whispered, “Me, too.”
“We’re gonna go outside, okay?”
Tinsley nodded.
“I need you to do something important first.”
“You’re not trying to trick me to stay here?” Tinsley narrowed her eyes.
“No. I promise. We’re going on a long walk. I need you to go to the cafeteria and take a bunch of muffins without being seen doing it. Then come back here.”
The grogginess saturating the child’s presence faded noticeably. “How many?”
“At least four, but no more than eight. Enough in case we get stuck out there so long we have to sleep.”
“Okay.” Tinsley scurried out into the hall, her tread socks squeaking on the smooth concrete.
Raven stared at the notebook. Taking her six-year-old not only topside but two hours away from the Arc sounded reckless and dangerous. But she couldn’t leave her in an increasingly toxic vault. If she had any way to, she’d bring Ariana, Cheyenne, Xan, and Josh as well.
No way would Sienna go along with that. If I end up detained, we’re all screwed. Only choice is getting out there and back before Arianna succumbs. She’s the next smallest. Raven bowed her head. Saints watch over her. She got up, rushing to put her pants, poncho, and boots on. Even though she trusted the air directly above the Arc, she didn’t know what to expect miles away, so she hung the filter mask around her neck.
The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 16