Amira didn’t answer.
“Answer,” Huck prodded. He coughed and she wiped.
“Yes,” she said in a quiet whisper.
“Play,” Huck commanded and his bot continued.
“We will control the population on earth by upgrading Land Teams…Blair will continue to run and oversee the 500-Year-Plan from here…with her successors keeping this vision alive and working to hide the Truman safe house from others.”
Blair turned to her father—his crystal blue eyes on hers.
Huck’s voice in the background continued.
“Is this my consolation prize? The favorite gets to go live in luxury and the least favorite is delegated to stay back and run the family store? Why am I being left behind?” Blair gave no indication that she’d already been warned about the domed building in the vine-covered New York. No one even mentioned New York. Huck had no intention of telling everyone where he planned to hide.
“Come on,” Gordy interjected. “The favorite got her own Island named after her.”
Huck tried to talk, his voice rattled.
“Pause,” Amira commanded. She helped her grandfather sit up a bit on his elbows.
“You are being left behind to run my empire,” Huck laughed. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“If Gordy’s on land, does he abdicate power then?”
“Gordy will rule from land,” Huck said. “You will run from here. It’s too dangerous to keep us together out here…with the attacks on sea increasing and the numbers on land out of control. You tried to keep it a secret from me but I saw the numbers…but the answer is thousands, tens of thousands of people alive…”
Huck relaxed. He’d earned every word.
“Father,” Blair stopped. Someone had the sense to stop the communication bot entirely and send the digital Huck away. “I told you I was working on a project that would solve that problem.”
“You had fifteen years to solve that problem.”
Blair went quiet, the fight draining from her body.
“No,” she finally said, pained. “I dedicated the last fifteen years to that problem. And I will solve it. But let me see if this is what you think. That this vision of the Islands is no longer good enough for you…but it will be perfect for me and my family? That’s bullshit and you know it. If the Trumans are leaving the Islands, then we all go…all of us.”
Huck raised an arm but he was too weak and he let it drop. He struggled to sit up more, gain better leverage to speak, and Amira helped again. “Listen,” her grandfather said, spittle forming in the corners of his mouth, “I am putting you in charge of my most important vision…”
“You’re putting me in charge of Rome before it burns,” Blair replied. “My daughter and I deserve every bit of the luxury you plan for your life on land…”
“You have luxury,” Huck spat. “You have the luxury you deserve.”
“Sticking us here when tensions are high? You’re punishing me.”
“When I listen to you,” Huck started, dry-mouthed, his tongue lolling, “you sound so awful. You know. I won’t let you push her into command,” Huck’s voice said in a tone above a whisper. Blair leaned forward, processed his words, and tossed herself back as if slapped. She stood and motioned for Thea to stand as well. Her. The her was her, Thea.
Her grandfather didn’t want her to rule. He had to keep Amira, two death certificates away, safe from his second granddaughter.
Thea didn’t want to leave—she wanted to stay and hear her grandfather’s plans and watch as Amira realized she was being moved. To land. With a man she had no choice to marry.
But Blair didn’t give Thea the chance to stay and hear what plans were next. She grabbed her daughter’s arm and tugged her out of the suite and into the waiting area outside, stalling until the door shut behind her.
The nurses huddled together waiting to be called back inside, and when they noticed the family approaching they scuttled away and tried to look busy. Blair rushed them both past them and into the glass-walled hallways of the tower.
“He’s a spiteful old man,” Blair said with her hands balled into fists at her side. “His ridiculous ideas and prejudices…Gordy and Amira are not fit to lead…” she clenched her jaw and fumed. She slapped her hand against the glass and Thea jumped at the sound.
“You didn’t tell him about the project,” Thea said. The ace in her mother’s sleeve, the power that she held over everyone—instead, her mother ran away.
Blair marched further out, expecting her daughter to follow.
“It’s not time,” her mother answered. “I don’t trust him not to bomb them off the map. And they’re worth too much now…maybe they’re all we need. No. My father doesn’t get the Bermuda Project…besides, I have people in the field. Things are working fast and as I planned. So, you have to trust me.”
Thea nodded, not fully understanding.
“Your grandfather has just made a huge mistake,” Blair spat and she pushed the button for the elevator.
Thea went straight to the tech wing to tell her friend the New York plan was in motion, but Lesedi wasn’t at work. She also wasn’t at home. Thea went and grabbed her mother’s master key and shoved it into the lock of her friend’s small suite on the western side of the towers.
Then Thea nudged her way into her friend’s abandoned apartment and looked at the dark and dusty place, still littered with Lesedi’s clothes and remnants of a morning getting ready. A cup of coffee sat on the table, a thin layer of sludge floated on top.
The mess meant Lesedi expected to come back.
But she didn’t come back.
With crippling understanding, Thea sat on her friend’s small Island issued furniture and stared at the desolation with a growing sense of doom.
“Copia,” she breathed. They found out about Thea’s secret AR trip after all.
There was a knock on the door and it startled Thea out of her self-indulgent mourning. She tried to ignore it and hope the visitor went away, but Thea realized it was her mother’s voice on the other side of the door.
“Thea! Open!” Blair called and Thea got up off the couch to answer the call. When she opened the door, she saw two uniformed men waiting by her mother’s side. Thea stopped and went still at the sight of them.
“She’s right here,” Blair said and she stepped aside. “Hurry. Hello, sweetie. Change of plans.”
The Island guards stalked forward and Thea raised her hands and voice in protest. “What is this? Excuse me? No, you don’t get to touch me.” But they didn’t listen to her and followed Blair’s nod to continue.
“It’s simple,” Blair said. “It’s not safe for you here.” Her mother walked down the small steps into the suite and stood next to the guards, mustering as much maternal emotion as possible. “My dad You don’t know who to trust and you’re young and I need one of us in Bermuda. I thought you were ready, but then you failed me the other night. But I think once you’re there and entrenched with the work, you’ll see the importance of what has to be done…these children mustn’t hesitate because the fight will come fast and quick.” She stepped forward, inches from Thea’s face. “This is what I raised you for.”
“To rule,” Thea repeated.
“Yes.” Blair took her hand and tucked a piece of Thea’s blonde hair behind her ear. “And you’ll start with ruling the Bermuda Project. Take over. Get my army ready. When I send for you…we implement the next phase.”
“We attack.”
“Yes.”
“The Islands?” Thea asked.
“Not anymore,” Blair answered. “My father thought he was moving away from the war…leaving me to pick up the pieces of his failures. But my kids are mine,” she said. “We move the war to him.”
Thea thought of the AR experience and the beautiful moving artwork on the walls of Amira’s new bedroom, the best of everything humanity could offer given once again to a small sliver of a select few. What was the best twenty-five years ago would n
ow be left behind, but neither Thea nor Blair wanted the consolation prize. She’d cleaned up his spit, too, hadn’t she?
“You want me in Bermuda?” Thea asked and tilted her head. “I don’t think I’m built for the heat…”
“You’ll train the educators. Fulfill the experiments. And when you think we’re ready…we’ll strike. Trash Island pick-ups were onboarded yesterday…we have twenty new intakes. Breeders, that lot,” Blair said breezily. She stopped, put a hand on her heart. “Don’t’ look so sad. This is what you’ve been working toward. My army needs a commander and you are my commander…”
“You’re sending me away and putting me in charge?” Thea asked.
“Of course, my darling. Who else could I trust but you?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brixton, Nebraska
in Huck’s abandoned
Underground System
LARKSPUR
“Ummm…hey,” Lark mumbled, feeling dizzying vertigo take hold. “Hey. I saw people. In the…up on the…I saw people.”
Octavia’s face went white and Sally spun away and hit the elevator buttons in quick succession in vain.
“What did they look like?” Octavia asked.
“Men,” Lark answered. “I don’t know.”
“Great, we need to hold them off…I don’t even know if we can. Shit!” Sally hit her hand against the railing. Lark’s skin prickled with the eerie sense of forced drama. She pushed herself back against the railing, far away from everyone.
“How did they know we were here?” Octavia asked and she shifted in the metal box to get a better look at Sally. “You said this place was abandoned. You telling me there’s people waiting around in Nebraska?”
“It was abandoned. The last I heard,” Sally pleaded. The elevator shifted downward. Above them stayed silent. “There’s a fuel room. Storage with the underground tanks with the last of the reserves. I just need to flip it on then we can go fuel up.”
“You have access to it?” Octavia asked with an eyebrow raised. “Won’t that trigger where we are? Flipping the fuel on? Our plan is compromised—”
“This place isn’t monitored,” Sally cried. “Trust me. I know what we can do. Please…”
The first elevator deposited them into a long hallway and at the other end, another elevator. Sally pushed her hand against a panel to the left of the elevator and the second clanking machine burst to life.
The elevator to the surface lifted off, moving inch by inch toward the intruders above.
“You have access…just like that,” Octavia said. Lark could feel the distrust building and see Octavia’s hand twitch near her gun. Without drawing attention to her movements, Octavia slid out of sight of the doors and pushed herself against the far wall. Lark tried to do the same.
Lark bit her lip and her foot tapped with pent-up nervousness. The elevator clunked to a stop and the doors opened wearily, grinding against the old metal.
“You’ll see,” she said. “Fuel button and then back up to daylight…hurry.”
But outside of the elevator doors was a body. Several bodies. Their faces were well preserved in the underground home; mummified but still with most features intact—hair and teeth and nails and mouths agape.
“What the—” Lark said and she refused to move off the lift.
“This way,” Sally instructed but Octavia was skeptical. The girl rolled her eyes and stormed forward, away from them, in a huff. “Stand guard if you’re so worried and suspicious.” She pushed open two large metal doors and walked them into a large open space.
Dead bodies covered the floor. Some more preserved than others, but each skeletal and rubbery, bones twisted into agony, families, it appeared, huddled together. Some great act of violence was committed and Lark was unable to move beyond the doorway to examine the carnage further.
The smell of decay was muted but present—no insects ravaged the bodies so some were deeply protected.
Monsters. This is what the monsters did. This is what her parents escaped from and wanted to hide her from? She crouched beside a small body in a ratted and decaying dress.
“These poor people—”
“Poor us if we don’t escape this girl’s goons.”
Octavia pulled her gun and trained it on Sally. Sally didn’t notice as she shimmied her way into a control room and flipped a few buttons.
Lark walked over to Octavia.
“What do you notice about her?” the Child of the Lake asked as Lark watched Sally work with ease and then shut the doors and started the walk back toward them.
“She lied.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And people are here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You think she…”
Sally approached and smiled. “Back up.” She noticed Octavia’s gun and laughed. “What? Refueling makes you anxious? Get that thing out of my face…”
“Is there another way out?” Octavia asked.
From somewhere above them a crank and whine of the elevator began its journey back to the surface. The people there were tired of waiting.
A flash of fear passed over Sally’s features and she spun and lifted her leg hoping to connect her foot to Octavia’s gun, but Octavia was quick, too, and grabbed the extended leg and pulled it out from under her, sending Sally to the floor.
Their pilot rolled and tried to pull away, but everywhere she grabbed, she ran into another pile of leathered skin and bones and clothes. Octavia still held on to Sally’s leg and flipped her to her back and brought up her boot and placed it on Sally’s chest.
Sally kicked and bucked, but the pressure from Octavia kept her down.
“I’m going to ask this again,” Octavia readied her weapon. “Is there another way out?”
After a long beat, the girl nodded.
“Where?”
“Up,” Sally said, running out of breath.
“Take us there.”
“I don’t…have… the tools.” She was out of breath and her hands tugged at Octavia’s boot.
“Tools? What do we need?” Octavia asked and she pulled her pack down off her bag and tossed it to Lark who almost dropped the heavy thing to the ground.
“Fire. And force.”
Octavia lifted her shoe and leaned down and pulled Sally up by her collar. She knotted the fabric around her fist and drew the runaway upward to look in her eyes. Sally’s feet scraped the ground and she grabbed at Octavia’s hands.
“Well, what do you know. I have those things,” Octavia said. “Take us.”
Sally, with a gun to her head, trudged forward, injured, and led them to a room with a tattered screen and dusty theater seats. With great intention, she walked them to the fabric wall coverings and tugged one loose, exposing a door and a hallway and another elevator.
They rode in silence, Octavia’s gun against the back of Sally’s head. When the doors opened, Lark knew she could see a fading film of sunlight. Sure enough, the room was near the surface and had a skylight, covered in dust and detritus, but still allowing some light to filter through.
Octavia hit Lark in the arm and Lark cried out.
“Ouch,” she said and rubbed the sore spot.
“You hold the gun on her. I’ll work the skylight.”
Lark hesitated but did as she was told. Sally saw the tentative nature in her grip and started to jolt forward, but before Lark could decide how best to deflect the attack, Octavia, holding a small hand-held blow-torch, used the butt of her tool and whipped Sally across the face. The girl went down in a crumpled mess.
“Who knows how long that keeps her out,” Octavia said. “Find something to tie her hands.”
“I don’t know sturdy knots…”
Octavia paused, blank-faced, and then looked to the skylight and the torch in her hand. “Then you climb on this chair and start weakening the glass with fire. A square.”
Lark followed orders again without much complaint. She moved over a chair and balanced on its legs
and held up the small automatic fire-maker. She’d never seen anything like that—something that carried so much power in her hand. Beneath her, Octavia ripped apart an old blanket and used the strips to tie a convoluted knot around Sally’s feet and hands.
Lark’s attention moved between her task with the glass and Octavia’s with the knots. An echo rolled through her memory—a flood of words and images.
Once Sally was secured, Octavia shifted more furniture and joined Lark’s quest at the chunk of indestructible glass. The fire was creating bubbles of melt and before it had time to cool, the Child of the Lake whacked at the area with a small pick-ax. Together they melted and chipped away at the layers until they broke through to the outside. Octavia wrapped some of the leftover blanket around her fist and steadied herself. Then she reared back and punched the remaining glass with a solid crack and the edges gave loose, smashing to the ground and bouncing into the space below. A spark from the torch smoldered on an old sun-bleached couch whose original color was long gone. The red flame grew wider and wider, catching the fabric and the cotton. Smoke tendrils soared up and Octavia motioned for Lark to come over.
“Step into my hands,” Octavia made a bridge and Lark stood. Immediately she was propelled upward and she grabbed on to the edge, grasping and shifting, remnants of glass cut into her hands. But some unknown force pushed her and she lifted a leg to secure leverage. When she crawled away from the hole, she realized she was close to the planes—she scanned the area to see where the fuel lines were located, but all she saw were rolling hills of sand and solar panels.
Octavia called for Lark to help tug the unconscious Sally out to the ground. Lark looped her arms through Sally’s and dragged her outward. Her uniform, already scratched, look another beating and Lark pulled the traitor out of the way, watching as blood bloomed on her stomach.
Next, Octavia pulled herself up with ease and swung to the earth with a quick push. She stood and watched the hills and then noticed the fuel lines. Working with intense determination, Octavia sped about and refueled the Cessna, tapping her toes with worry and looking over her shoulder the entire time.
The Bedrock Page 26