She walked back to the baby muskox, watching him drink.
“Do you have any opossums?” she asked.
His face softened. “That’s a very specific request.”
“I knew one once.”
“As a matter of fact, we’ve revived and reintroduced them to a couple forests east of Delta City.”
H124 wondered if the one she’d helped was one of those.
She moved to the DNA display. “May I look?”
He stepped aside. “Of course.”
She scanned the names of available samples:
Beringian bison Bison priscus
Gray wolf Canis lupus
Woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis
Wolverine Gulo gulo
Woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius
Sea mink Neovison macrodon
American pika Ochotona princeps
Musk ox Ovibos moschatus
Vaquita porpoise Phocoena sinus
Mountain lion Puma concolor
Caribou Rangifer tarandus
Tasmanian tiger Thylacinus cynocephalus
Grizzly bear Ursus arctos
Polar bear Ursus maritimus
She advanced the screen, reading off a number of bird species:
Golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos
Common raven Corvus corax
Passenger pigeon Ectopistes migratorius
Great auk Pinguinus impennis
Dodo Raphus cucullatus
Then she moved to a screen labeled “Osteichthyes”:
Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis
Coho salmon Oncorhynchus kisutch
Lahontan trout Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi
Atlantic salmon Salmo salar
The lists went on and on, screen after screen. She swallowed, sick that so many creatures had vanished from the earth.
“This is our overall databank,” Raven told her. “We share it with several other de-extinction labs around the world.”
“There are more of you?”
“Not a lot. But we have other DNA storage facilities around the globe. When we can, we de-extinct creatures in their native habitats. But so many of those places have been fragmented and destroyed that in many places we can’t rewild them, so we haven’t tried to bring them back. Then there’s the PPC, with its megacities. They take pleasure in destroying experimental forests. Nature seems to challenge their sense of power. They just don’t see the bigger picture. In other places, extensive, unsustainable agriculture has caused extreme desertification, and the land can’t uphold its original ecosystem.”
He moved to another terminal, and brought up its display. “That reminds me. I’ve been thinking of those things we encountered . . . the ones that killed Cal.”
She moved to his side.
He brought up an image of what appeared to be a tiny insect, then enlarged it. She saw that it wasn’t an insect at all, but a composite of plastic and metal. “What is it?”
“They were called agrobugs. Before they were developed, farmers used poisonous chemicals to kill insects that fed on their crops. But it backfired. The pesticides got into the ecosystem, killing natural pollinators like bats and butterflies. Their populations plummeted. So the agriculture industry devised these agrobugs that would serve as both pollinators and pest control. The first few batches stopped functioning after only a couple seasons, so they built them to repair themselves, eventually to replicate autonomously. And so they spread, eating not just the pests, but the crops themselves. Then they moved on to destroy any living thing in their path; breaking down organic matter was their best means of replication. Before long they were grazing land, killing cattle . . . Fertile lands had to be abandoned.”
He brought up an antiquated map of the country, zeroing in on a section near the west coast. “This was once the most fertile land in the west. They called it the Central Valley. This is where the agrobugs really took hold.” He switched to a current view. The Central Valley was underwater. “As sea levels rose, the lowlands flooded. I think the agrobugs were pushed out, moving south and west to where we were with Cal.” He shifted the map nearer to the coast, where the radar facility stood. “Most likely they’ve been surviving out there, destroying any living tissue they encounter.”
H124 shuddered, recalling the horrid way they swarmed over Cal.
Raven shut off the display, gaze cast downward. “It’s something I didn’t even consider when we planned the trip.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
He exhaled, and checked once more on the muskox. “Ready to continue with the tour?”
She nodded.
He took her through the rest of the city, showing her chemistry and biology labs as well as food preparation areas where they made the MREs they stocked in the weather shelters.
Then he showed her to her quarters, a roomy space with open windows that allowed plenty of light. A bookshelf stood in one corner, and in the other, a bed covered in soft blankets. It looked like heaven.
“Why don’t we get some rest, and tomorrow we’ll plan how to retrieve the next spacecraft section from Delta City?”
“Sounds good.” Once he left she turned to the bed, excited to sleep as long as she wanted. Her whole body ached with cuts and bruises.
* * * *
The next day Raven stopped by her quarters, and they made their way to a communal dining area. She dove into her fare, tasting a number of dishes for the first time. She ate a salad with things called quinoa, kale, and beets—all strange-sounding, but no less delicious. The latter was the most gorgeous shade of red she’d ever seen.
Her PRD beeped and she looked down at it. A stream of numbers came up, filling her display. The string grew so long it started scrolling down. She frowned. “What is this?”
Raven leaned forward, the same message coming up on his PRD too. “We don’t know. It’s been happening for the last few months. The numbers come in. They’re always the same. We have some people trying to decode it, but no luck so far. We don’t know where it’s coming from or from whom.” He closed off his display after saving the numbers. He leaned forward. “We’ve been calling it ‘the phantom code.’ It only happens when we’re in Sanctuary City.”
She saved the numbers too, and shut down her display. “Spooky. I wonder what it is.” She finished her tea and leaned back in her chair, watching the trees dance beyond the windows. The entire building drank in light, and everything took on a golden hue.
Soon they made their way to Rivet’s office. She was still poring over schematics, moving between the craft and another worktable.
Moving to a quiet corner, Raven brought up a map of Delta City on his display. He and H124 studied it. The location of the ancient aerospace facility was on the western side of the city.
“How would we get in?” Raven asked.
“If Willoughby’s there, he could help us.” She called him on her PRD. He didn’t answer, so she left a message. She returned to the map. “Before, we were able to enter through these huge tunnels that vented out CO2.” She looked for the nearest CO2 vent, finding it some fifty miles from where they needed to be. It was too far in such a dangerous place. They’d be killed.
She glanced around at the other Rovers. Two people clustered around Rivet where she stood scrutinizing the diagrams. A few more passed in and out of the Engineering lab, carrying supplies.
“Have you been inside Delta City before?” H124 asked Raven.
He shook his head. “I haven’t been inside any of the megacities.”
H124 bit her lip.
“What is it?”
“Do you have any fighters?”
Raven leaned back in his seat. “You mean are there any Rovers who specialize in combat?”
She nodded.
He ran a hand thr
ough his hair. “I’m afraid not.”
She thought back to the nightmare of Delta City, or “Murder City,” as the Badlanders had so aptly named it. They’d barely made it out alive. She released a heavy breath. “We’ll have to rely completely on stealth, then.”
“It’s bad in there?”
Memories of the crush of bodies came back to her, the shoving and grabbing, the cry for Badlander blood, the teeming masses dragging them down. She studied the overlay again. With the nearest vent that far away, they’d have to travel quite a way into the city.
“Have you been to this part of Delta City?” he asked, leaning forward to soak in the detail.
Her PRD beeped. Willoughby was calling her back. “Hello!” she greeted him.
“H! Sorry I missed your call. Had to get somewhere where I could speak privately.”
“Where are you?”
“When the airship picked me up, the PPC gave me orders to check out a few of these abandoned satellite sites where the old transmitters used to be. Seems that BEC City has really been cutting into their feeds, and they want to build some stronger transmitters.”
“So you’re not in Delta City?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. What did you need?”
“A way in.”
He screwed his face up. “Sorry. I’m not there yet.”
“No problem. We’ll find a way in.”
“I’ll contact you when I’m there. Oh—I have to go.” He looked over his shoulder, and hung up quickly. She caught a glimpse of a PPC airship pilot to his rear before the transmission ended.
“Well, we’re out of luck there,” she told Raven. She thought a minute, then said, “Rowan might have been to that part of the city. I’ll call him. Maybe he knows a better place to get in.” She brought up the comm window on her PRD. When he answered, she lit up at the sight of his face.
He grinned. “Hey, H.”
“How’s it going down there?” she asked him.
“We’re a long way from being done. But things are shaping up. I meant to call you earlier, but things have been crazy here.”
“No problem.”
“How did it go retrieving the first part of the craft?”
“Piece of cake,” she said, a phrase she’d heard him use in the past, though she had no idea what “cake” was.
Raven laughed, and Rowan noticed him. “I take it this isn’t a social call.”
“We need to access part of Delta City, much farther west from where I’ve been. We wondered if you had any ideas. It’s an area that doesn’t have any CO2 vents nearby.”
He bent his brow. “What part?”
She sent the coordinates to him, and he consulted his map. “This is a much older part of the city. The infrastructure’s really run down. It’s basically been left to rot.”
“What about crossing from the nearest vent?”
He scrolled through the map. “It’s way too far. You’d need a vehicle, and you’d be torn apart.” He looked up at her. “Who are you going with?”
“Probably just Raven and me.”
Rowan’s mouth parted somewhat. “Just the two of you.”
“We got the first piece together.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Weather is one thing . . . Murder City is something else.”
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “We’re not exactly teeming with fighters here.”
“Damn. I can’t leave until I get everyone set up here. But I think I know someone who can help. He’s not far from that location either.”
“Who?”
“Byron. Call him and tell him I thought you could use the Silver Beast.”
“Byron?” She hadn’t spoken to him since the Badlander camp had been attacked after their harrowing escape from Murder City. Though she’d started out his prisoner, they’d ended up forming an uncertain alliance in the end.
“Yes. I think he can get you in,” Rowan went on.
She thought of Byron’s reluctance to help before, and seriously doubted he’d drop whatever he was doing to come out and help her break into a city where desperate, starving people cried out for Badlander blood in exchange for food.
A man ran up to Rowan and spoke into his ear. “I have to go, H. Contact Byron. Tell him I said if he doesn’t help you, I’ll come down there and kick his ass.”
H124 felt a pang of disappointment. She’d hoped Rowan would know a good way to infiltrate the city that they could use immediately. As he ended the transmission, she and Raven exchanged glances.
“Who’s Byron?” he asked.
“This Badlander who kidnapped me, stole my car, and used me to infiltrate Delta City.”
He pursed his lips and nodded, unsure of what to say. “And Rowan thinks this guy will help?”
“By the end we were sort of friends.”
“Sort of? Can you trust him?”
“I’m not sure if I can trust him exactly.” She thought of Byron and his comrades—Astoria with her bloodthirsty grin and readiness with a knife, as well as her sweet-natured twin brother, Dirk. “But they’re fighters. And they might know another way in. I’m sure they’d been inside Delta City before they captured me. They must have a way that doesn’t involve using the TWRs in the CO2 vents. Maybe this Silver Beast thing.”
Raven frowned. “Or they used other workers who they buried in shallow graves.” He swallowed. “Or ate.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking. Only then did she wonder how lucky she’d been getting away from them. “It’s worth a try. I did save his life.”
“That’s got to count for something. Call him.”
She brought up the comm window. Using the Badlanders’ encrypted message system, she put out a call for Byron. She had no idea where he was now. For all she knew, he was off rebuilding a different Badlander camp, or breaking into some PPC facility to steal weapons.
She brought up her beeping PRD. Byron’s face filled the floating display, his long, dark blond hair falling about his shoulders, his face rough shaven, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “H!” he said, the corner of his mouth turning up. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Don’t tell me your mission to save the world’s landed you in trouble again.”
She couldn’t help but smile back. “Hey, you were the one who got me in all that trouble last time, if you remember.”
“Our lark into Murder City was a blast! Would you trade that experience for anything?”
“In a heartbeat.” She still had nightmares about the people grabbing her arms and legs, calling for their deaths. She dreaded the thought of going back into that chaos. “But since you bring it up, I need to get back in there.”
His mouth formed an uneasy circle. “You want . . . to get back into Murder City . . . ?” He made a face. “If you’re looking for a good vacation spot, I can recommend some much nicer locations.”
“Thanks all the same, but I have to. We need something in there to avert the asteroid.”
“Still trying to save the world? I think ‘H’ must stand for ‘halo.’” She didn’t know what a “halo” was. When he saw her puzzled expression, he added, “It’s what angels have, you know?”
She didn’t.
“It’s these glowing rings that . . . and angels are these . . .” He sighed. “You can’t get in through a CO2 vent?”
“The closest one to where we need to be is fifty miles away.”
“Damn.” He glanced behind him, where she could see Badlanders milling about, some drinking, others standing around a massive bonfire and daring each other to jump over it.
“Rowan mentioned something about a Silver Beast?”
He laughed. “Oh, did he? So it’s Firehawk who’s put me up to this?” He shook his head good-naturedly. “We could use the Beast, but it’s dicey. It’s much safer to use the TWRs.” He said i
t like “twirs.” TWRs, or theta wave receivers, were installed on most locks in the megacities. Workers like H124 could mentally send signals for them to open or close, and it’s how they’d gotten in through the CO2 vents in the past. “But fifty miles . . . that’s a suicide mission.”
“We’ll take the alternate way.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ You didn’t actually find the Rovers, did you?”
She grinned. “I did. And we’re making progress.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t think they were still out there. Thought they were just a myth.”
Raven leaned into view. “Hello. Myth here.”
Byron grinned. “I’ll be. You did it, Halo.”
She sent him the coordinates of the old aerospace facility. “This is where we need to go.”
“What is the Silver Beast?” Raven asked.
“It’s a mobile transmitter. We use it to make pirate broadcasts, targeting the citizens who maintain the atmospheric shield. They get distracted, the shield goes down in places, and we get in. But the PPC is quick to notice and zero in our location.”
“We’ll take it,” H124 said. “How soon can you meet us outside the city? Are you close to it?”
“Did you hear me when I said that the Beast is also a surefire way to get attacked by PPC troops? I can get you in, but getting out might be a different story.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Nothing dissuades you, does it?” When she still didn’t answer, he said, “Okay. I’m relatively close. I just need to check the Beast over. Make sure it’s got a full charge. Send me your coordinates, and I’ll get back to you with an ETA.” He laughed under his breath. “Ironic that now you want me to get you into that place.”
“At least I’m not kidnapping you and stealing your solar-powered car.”
“I love that car.”
“I’m going to need it back one of these days.” The Badlanders had held onto it after their escape from Murder City.
“After you save the world?”
“Exactly.” She smiled. “Thank you, Byron.”
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