“Nothing happened,” Isaak said.
I frowned, remembering the words that had been carved on Gitrin’s wall. The Liberator had said them to me before disconnecting. “N’elytherios tou shenos.”
Two things happened at once: the globe snapped open, parting between hemispheres, revealing a cavity; and Gitrin’s voice whispered in my ear, “Nadin.”
I gasped. Isaak grinned, reaching into the globe to pull out what was inside. My eyes couldn’t focus on him. There was nothing but Gitrin’s voice, telling me what I needed to know.
“Nadin?” Isaak asked, cradling the small object in his hands. “Hello?”
I blinked a few times, trying to bring my attention back to the classroom. I took a shaky breath and took the silver trapezoid out of Isaak’s hands.
“It’s a posternkey,” I said.
“For the time postern?”
“No.” I swallowed. “A regular space postern. It’s going to take us to where Gitrin is. And, I assume, Ceilos, too.”
Isaak furrowed his brow. “Well? Where are they?”
I looked down at the globe, slowly moved to close it. It snapped shut, seamless. You’d never know it had held something inside.
“Elytherios,” I said.
Isaak hurried after me down the Vi’in Exelishin. “But what is Elytherios?”
“It’s not a what. It’s a where,” I said. “It’s a word in the old language. That’s all I could think of every time I heard it. But that’s what the Liberator was expecting. Most people only use the New Standardized Language that was adopted after the Progression, at least officially. But the anarchists are using the old language for their codes.”
I stopped in front of the fountain. There was no one around. Most of the patroi would be in the pyramid now, working. If we were going to leave, we’d have to leave now.
“So Elytherios is a place? But how are we supposed to find it?”
“Gitrin left us a key.” As I spoke, I opened a System panel and began entering commands.
“And this fountain…?”
A few swipes and the water stopped flowing abruptly. I turned to Isaak. “It’s a postern. It was transporting hot water from the volcanic region northeast of here. That’s how we heat the subterranean villas. But right now we’re going to use it”—I closed the System panel with a quick movement of my hand—“to bring us to Elytherios.” As the water drained from the basin, I took my medallion from around my neck and pressed it into the posternkey. It sprang open, unfolding and unfurling, humming with blue electricity. The postern glowed in response to its commands.
Isaak grinned. “The geroi are the simpletons, Nadin. I’m pretty sure you’re a genius.”
My face flushed. I turned away from him, stepping gingerly into the shallow puddle of water that remained at the bottom of the basin. “We only have one key, so you’re going to have to hold onto me,” I said, hesitantly holding my hand out to him.
He nodded his head and took my hand. The postern began to glow brighter, the multicolored lights blending together until they were white and nearly blinding. I kept my fingers tightly clamped around Isaak’s and stepped forward.
Traveling by postern was never pleasant, though it was quick. For one searing moment, I could feel my atoms being ripped apart, squeezed through an incomprehensibly small space, then pieced back together. My knees felt weak as the brightness dimmed; Isaak staggered forward, and I had to brace myself against him to keep him from falling. I stood still, waiting for my head to stop spinning while Isaak fought to catch his breath.
Finally, I chanced a look around. We were still underground, but these caverns looked different than the ones beneath Hope Renewed. Instead of the blue-gray rock I was used to, the cavern walls were a rich brown, rough-looking and pockmarked. Rippled lines formed irregular curves, rounded gaps in the ceiling that let light filter in. Against the wall behind us stood the tall transportation postern we’d traveled through.
Isaak let go of my hand and moved to touch the cavern wall. “Looks like sandstone.” He swiveled, putting his hands on his hips. “Where do we go now?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Gitrin said the way would open to us, but—” I broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps. “Someone’s coming.”
Before I could react, a bright beam of light hit me in the face. I cringed, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Don’t move, either of you,” a woman’s voice said. “What are you doing down here?”
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw a short woman with Bright Horizon’s traits: green eyes and straw-colored hair. She wore her hair loose, wild curls cascading down to her mid-back and out past her shoulders. Her face and hands were covered with pale freckles, a tell-tale sign of UV exposure. A plivoin. I froze in a panic, unable to think. I hadn’t expected to meet anyone here—no one besides Gitrin, or Ceilos, or the Liberator. I hadn’t thought this through at all, I realized with a sick stomach, and now we were finished.
Before I could react, Isaak said in a steady, solemn voice, “N’elytherios tou shenos.” I stared at him in shock—even more so when the woman grinned and turned off her lantern.
“Degiim n’elytherios,” she responded. “Safe passage to you. My name’s Eliin, I’m the guardian here. I haven’t seen the two of you before. New faction members?” She squinted at Isaak. “Ah, no, of course not. With traits like yours, you must have been born on the mountain. I’m surprised they let you out, alos—any Progressive would notice your anomalies in an instant. Of course, you know what they say—it’s so easy to manipulate a mind that’s reliant on the System.”
Isaak laughed and tugged his earlobe, making my eyes widen. The gesture made him seem so effortlessly Iamoi, I could almost look past his bizarre coloring.
“So, are the two of you returning from a mission?” She began to lead us down a narrow passageway, back the way she had come.
“Yes,” I said quickly. “We were delivering Ferre to Hope Renewed.”
Eliin tugged her earlobe knowingly. “No trouble with the Enforcers, I trust?”
I smiled. “Not a bit.”
“Excellent. Well, I’m sure you’re eager to get back home. Was this your first trip outside?”
I glanced at Isaak. “Yes,” he finally said, his accent barely perceptible. “It was… different than I was expecting.”
Eliin sighed. “It’s gotten terrible. Every year, the geroi take more away. More freedoms, more rights. And the people there just accept it. The System numbs their minds to it a great deal, of course. Makes them forget what they’ve lost. But still…” She stopped in front of a blank patch of wall. “Here’s the place,” she said to Isaak. “Squeeze right inside. It’s a bit tight, but of course we can’t have Enforcers happening to find their way in.”
I frowned, and was about to ask where exactly we were supposed to squeeze into considering the wall was smooth and solid, when Isaak brushed past Eliin and disappeared into the flat surface. I stared, mouth agape, as she turned to me and said, “After him, alin,” and prodded me forward. I flinched, bracing for impact, but it didn’t come. There was no wall. As I stepped forward, it disappeared entirely, leaving nothing but a narrow gully just a few paces long that opened out into a wider cave.
Isaak was waiting for me on the other side. “Did you see that?” I whispered to him.
“See what?” he asked, a bewildered expression on his face. Then I realized—he wasn’t wearing his earpiece. He’d pulled it off after the Liberator had patched us into the gerotus briefing. He must have left it in the hospital room.
“It’s so easy to manipulate a mind that’s reliant on the System,” Eliin had said. Is this what she meant? The System had caused me to see a wall where there was none? How much had the System concealed from me in Hope Renewed, without me ever knowing?
Eliin squeezed out of the gully behind me, snapping her lantern on once more. “I have a small home here, just outside Bright Horizo
n. We have a stockpile of supplies for faction members traveling back and forth on missions. Do you know your way back to Elytherios?”
“No, this is our first time making the trip,” Isaak said.
“Well, you’ll be all right. The gurzas know the way. Can I offer you a meal before you leave?”
“Um, no,” I said before Isaak could accept. He shot me a crestfallen look, but I didn’t want to spend an overlong amount of time with this woman—just because she was believing our lies now didn’t mean we could keep it up indefinitely. “We need to get back. The Liberator is expecting us.”
Eliin looked confused for a moment, then she laughed. “You must mean Eos. I’ve never heard him called that outside of the citidomes.”
“She, uh, she hasn’t been with us very long, Eliin,” Isaak said with a shaky laugh.
Eliin grinned and tugged her earlobe. “Of course, of course.” She patted my arm affectionately and turned away. I felt an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. Eliin’s easy manner was a stark departure from the forced smiles of Hope Renewed. I wanted to get away from her as quickly as possible, but a strange part of me was reluctant to leave. And more than anything, I felt guilty for deceiving her.
She led us down another long corridor. In the distance, I could hear movement and the lowing of animals. The cool cavern air was heavy with the scent of dried grass and gurza dung, and sure enough, before long we had come upon a crudely-constructed pen. Six gurzas milled around inside it.
Isaak watched Eliin with wide eyes as she opened the gate and shuffled into the pen, talking to the animals in a low voice. “Wow,” he said under his breath, and I remembered his reaction when I’d shown him the image of one on the visual indicator. They were large reptiles, with strong back legs that made them ideal for bearing loads. Their scales were multicolored, usually blue or green with thick stripes of orange and yellow. One of the animals saw Isaak staring at it, and ambled slowly up to the fence. He reached out his hand slowly. The gurza sniffed him, then placed its muzzle in his palm. He grinned and stroked the creature’s snout gently.
“Looks like Tuupa has taken a liking to you,” Eliin said to Isaak as she led another gurza out of the pen. She handed me the reins. “And this is Thork. He’s a gelding, so he should be easy to handle if you’re not an experienced rider.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Eliin.”
Eliin helped us get the gurzas’ packs loaded with supplies. It would be about a week’s journey—eight days—mostly through the caves, but there were sections of the trail that went aboveground. “The breathing apparatuses in your packs should have more than enough oxygen for those parts.” She sighed. “It wasn’t long ago that we didn’t need to pack oxygen. The revivification process has done much to help the areas around the mountains, but it seems for every step Elytherios takes forward, the geroi drag us three steps back.”
“What about the gurzas, Eliin?” Isaak asked. “Will they need oxygen?”
“No, alos, at least not yet. They’re hardier than we are.” She glanced at me. “Oh, I nearly forgot. I can take your dummy earpiece for you.” She stretched out her hand and I stared at her blankly.
The smile wavered, fading slightly from her face.
“Your earpiece, Nadin,” Isaak said, glaring at me over the top of Eliin’s head.
My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t give her my earpiece—what if we got lost and needed to call for help? Or what if I couldn’t understand Isaak and needed it to translate for me? What if Gitrin had left another message for me somewhere? I had never taken my earpiece off. I couldn’t even comprehend how I would manage to function, to think, without the System there to help me process the world around me. It was a part of me, and I was a part of it. I couldn’t go without it.
But Eliin’s eyes were beginning to get a suspicious glint to them, and Isaak looked as if he was about to come over and rip it right out of my ear personally. So I forced a small chuckle. “Oh, how silly of me. I completely forgot I was wearing it.”
Eliin smiled again, hesitantly. “Of course, alin. You wore one your whole life. But that’s behind you now. You don’t need it anymore.”
I tugged my earlobe and quickly, before I could allow myself to think twice, I pulled my earpiece out of my ear.
Eliin turned to toss my earpiece—my life—into one of the baskets of tack on the ground while I gripped the reins of my gurza tightly, trying to keep from falling over. My vision blurred and spun, focusing and unfocusing as my brain tried to function without the System supporting it. But the strangest thing was the quiet. I thought I’d known quiet before, but it was nothing like this. Even when I was alone, in the solitude of my room, there had always been the distant hum of the System running in the background. I had never noticed it before. It had always been there.
But now it was gone. And it was silent. There was nothing but me, and Eliin, and Isaak, and the snuffling animals beside us.
Isaak nudged me. “Are you ready to go?”
I had never felt less ready to do anything in my life. But I didn’t have a choice in the matter. So I nodded my head at him and said, “Yes.”
We rode westward through the caves, winding our way through a jumbled labyrinth of tunnels. The globe in Nadin’s classroom had shown that Bright Horizon citidome was built in the valley east of the Elysium mountains. I remembered them from when I was little, when we lived in Elysium province, near Lake Amazonis—three giant, extinct shield volcanoes. Well, they were extinct in my time, anyway. Who even knew what they’d be like now? Considering the fact that I was currently riding on the back of a torquing horse-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex, anything seemed possible.
I still couldn’t quite believe what had been through that archway. Even knowing that ancient Mars had been inhabited, I never would have anticipated anything like this. Or that I would get stuck here. It didn’t feel real. I kept expecting to wake up back on Mars, in that cave, with Joseph Condor looming over me and telling me I’d slipped and hit my head or something.
I wasn’t sure what would be worse, honestly.
I leaned forward in my saddle, peering at the tunnel ahead of us. Sunlight streamed in through various holes in the ceiling, casting the sandstone walls in a vibrant orange glow. We were coming up to yet another fork in the passage.
“It’s a good thing the gurzas know where they’re going,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Nadin, “because I sure as heck couldn’t figure it out.”
Nadin didn’t respond. She’d been weirdly quiet ever since we left Eliin’s. Several strands of hair had fallen out of her braid, and she hadn’t even tucked them back in like she was always compulsively doing. As her gurza passed under a shaft of light, I could see that her face was noticeably paler, and a thin layer of sweat beaded on her forehead.
“Nadin? Are you okay?”
She blinked at me, like her eyes were having trouble focusing. “I don’t feel well,” she said.
I frowned, tugging on Tuupa’s reins to slow her down. Thork and Nadin drew up beside us. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Do you have a fever?”
“I don’t know. The System always regulated my body functions before. Without it, I feel…” She sighed, slumping forward and resting her face against the back of Thork’s scaly neck. “I feel like I’m going to die.”
My pulse jumped. Ordinarily I’d roll my eyes at a dramatic sentence like that, but Nadin looked like she really meant it. “Do we need to go back? Maybe Eliin can help—”
“No,” Nadin protested. “We can’t tell her. She was already suspicious. If she finds out we lied to her…”
“Then maybe we should stop for the day so you can rest.”
“We can’t stop! I have to rescue Ceilos.”
“Yeah, Nadin, but you’re not going to be any help to Ceilos if you’re dead.” The word made me feel nauseous. Taking her earpiece off couldn’t actually kill her, could it? I didn’t believe that could be possible, but she looked so weak. Not like Nadin at all.
We rode for another hour or so, until the tunnels opened up into a wider cavern, and the gurzas slowed to a stop. This must be a rest spot of some sort—I could see the blackened remnants of a fire on the cave’s floor, beneath one of the round holes opening up to the surface.
This time, Nadin was too tired to argue with me. She didn’t resist as I helped her off Thork’s back. I braced her weight against my shoulder until she could sit on a large, flat-topped boulder. She drank some water, and when I handed her a blanket from her pack, she bundled herself in it and drifted quickly off to sleep.
The sky through the ceiling holes was turning a deep magenta. It was hard to tell with Iamos’ weird, thin atmosphere, but I guessed it had to be close to sunset. I moved through the large cavern, looking up at intervals to see what I could of the sky above. If I stood at just the right angle, I could just make out the edge of that yellow moon I’d seen my first night here.
Nadin had said it was Venus. But that was impossible. Venus orbited between Mercury and Earth, more than a hundred million kilometers away. On Mars in my time, you could only see Venus at certain times of the year, and it was never closer or brighter than a big star. Jupiter was a lot bigger—sometimes you could even make out the stripes of its atmosphere—but nowhere near the size of this. This was bigger than Phobos and Deimos combined.
I’d thought about it last night, lying awake in the hospital after that riot in the citidome. I vaguely remembered my eighth-grade science teacher saying something about Venus’ poles being upside down, about it rotating backward. Nobody knew why or how, but there was speculation that something had happened to Venus—like a super-huge asteroid collision that had knocked it out of its orbit. What if its orbit in my time wasn’t its original orbit? What if… something had happened to it?
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