Old World (The Survivors Book Eleven)

by Nathan Hystad

Magnus cringed at the vicious murder.

  “It was better than he deserved,” Amada said, wiping the blade on the dead man’s grimy shirt. “We go.”

  I glanced at the body, then at Magnus, and shrugged. “We go,” I agreed, not wanting to be here another second. Seeing her murder a man like that reiterated how dangerous the Restorers were, but at the same time, the man wasn’t there to talk to her. Amada was right. The man was a piece of garbage.

  Magnus led us out the exit, and soon we were moving toward the outer stone fence. I peered toward the fire, which was half the height that it had been. There were only a couple of people around it at this late hour, but if Magnus was right, their leader in the glasses would return to talk to Amada soon enough. We needed to be long gone.

  “Where’s Alfonsi’s house?” I asked her.

  “That way.” She pointed east, and instead of staying along the village’s fence, we elected to hit the cow pasture, making it a shortcut. A few cows roused at the sight of us, gently mooing at our passage.

  It took about ten minutes of hustling, but we were on the road once again, and moving toward the engineer’s home. It was too close to the local camp for my liking, but with any luck, we’d be able to find what we were after and notify Frasier that we were done. Once he picked us up in the hovertrain, we could leave this godforsaken place and never return.

  It was another ten minutes before we found ourselves at the end of a gated drive. Here the acreages were spread out, the homes far from one another. Amada didn’t waste any time hopping the fence, and we hurried after her. Magnus and I kept glancing behind us, making sure no one was pursuing our escape.

  I was glad for the clear night, because the stars guided our trip up the long dirt driveway and to the dark house beyond. It was so much different than the rustic villas and mansions around us. It appeared as though Alfonsi had torn an old building down and rebuilt a modern masterpiece in its place. The building was squat, square and black, mounted up the hillside. We jogged up the incline, and when we were finally at the entrance, Amada tested the door handle. It was locked.

  I was shocked to find none of the windows were damaged. Judging by the look of the group we’d left, I would have expected them to have ransacked the entire city.

  “How do we get in?” Magnus asked, but Amada was already walking around the house.

  “Break the glass?” I asked, trailing after her.

  “This glass is shatterproof. But…” She stopped at the side of the home, where a second door was also locked. She pulled off her right boot and rolled up her pants leg to reveal a small leather pouch. “They rarely put the same effort into the servants’ entrances as the front doors out here.”

  She started to pick the lock, reminding me of Sergo. I wondered how the Padlog was doing aboard the Horizon without the captain’s presence.

  A couple of minutes later, and Amada was in. I thought I heard a truck engine, and Magnus and I scanned the roads from our perch on the hill. When I didn’t see any lights, I entered the home.

  It was dark, but Magnus fished a flashlight from his pack, passing it to me. I clicked it to life and aimed it forward. The floor was a shiny white marble tile, and everything seemed in order as we moved through the secondary mud room and into the main house. There were light wooden beams running along the ceiling of the living space, a massive stone-accented fireplace wall beyond.

  “It looks like he went on holiday,” Magnus said.

  “I know. I wonder what happened to him?” I asked.

  “None of that matters. The plans. We need the plans,” Amada said tersely.

  “Look, you went through a lot tonight. Let’s work together and then we can be on our way,” I told her.

  She stopped and turned to face me. “You know nothing, Larson. You’re idealistic. You have a romanticized dream of a world without technology, but we live this. I saw your eyes when I killed that man. Being a Restorer is dirty work. And when we succeed, we’re going to have to live with ourselves and our actions.”

  “We’ve seen more than you know,” I admitted.

  “Then help me find the plans, and we can leave.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling us,” Magnus said, arms crossed.

  Amada stormed away. “My communicator. I lost it… they took it from me.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means I can’t contact Frasier,” she told us.

  My heart sank. “So what, then? We find the plans if they’re here, and walk away? In case you haven’t noticed, there are over a hundred people that are going to be searching for us. They probably already are.”

  “I know!” Amada shouted. “We’ll have to figure that out.”

  “He’s in Old Rome. We’ll go there,” Magnus suggested.

  “It’s dangerous here. Lots of groups like the ones we just left. We’ll head for Pisa. We have another base there. We’ll get word to Frasier then,” she told us.

  Goosebumps rose on my arms at the mention of the city. Pisa. That was where our night visitor at Frasier’s complex had told us to meet her. Magnus met my gaze for a second, then broke it.

  “Good idea. In that case, let’s find these plans,” Magnus said. “Let’s start on the top floor and work our way down. Stick together.”

  We wound our way through the elaborate living room, past the immense kitchen, and toward the staircase at the front of the home.

  “This could take a while,” Magnus suggested. “Let’s start on the left.”

  We found a library and stepped inside. I shone the light across the various volumes of books, most of them appearing old and parts of matching sets. The brown leather seats were inviting, and under different circumstances, I could picture myself spending a day in there, reading and relaxing with the fireplace on.

  Amada was already at the desk at the rear of the room, sifting through it, searching for hidden compartments underneath it or secreted shelves inside. Soon the desk and room were covered in papers and unimportant files not relating to the station above Earth.

  I led us to the next room, and the next, and we carefully dismantled every single space we entered, trying to find the plans. When the entire upstairs was ransacked, we headed to the main level and proceeded with the same process. It was two hours later, and we’d found nothing remotely suggesting the man had ever worked on the station.

  “It has to be here. All signs told Frasier it would be,” Amada said, dropping to the couch in the living room.

  “What about the basement?” Magnus asked.

  “These homes don’t have basements,” Amada said. “Frasier had the blueprints for the home, and there was nothing about another floor below this one.”

  “Interesting.” Magnus crossed the room to the throw rug, which had been disrupted. The corner was flipped over, revealing a mismatch on the tilework.

  I moved the flashlight beam to it, and Amada gasped, moving quickly to Magnus’ side. She tugged the carpet, but it was stuck under a coffee table. Magnus shoved it aside, and threw the carpet on the couch. The mismatched tile was obvious, but with the covering, no one would ever have seen it.

  “Nice work, Nilsson,” she said, giving rare praise.

  “All in a day’s work,” Magnus said in reply.

  I crouched, searching for a handle, and when I didn’t find one, Amada pulled out the knife she’d used to kill the man with the bat. She found hinges on one end of the secret door, and pried the opposite ledge, lifting up.

  Stairs greeted us, but there was nothing clean and modern about these ones. They were overgrown with cobwebs, my flashlight beam seeming to die after a few feet inside.

  “Who’s going first?” Amada asked us, and Magnus and I pointed at each other at the same exact moment.

  Sixteen

  Jules spotted the out-of-place structure first. Her legs moved one after the other, ever forward, ever at a steep incline. They burned, and she knew the others were feeling it as much as or more than her, but
no one was complaining, not since Slate had called them out on being Gatekeepers.

  “Slate, over there,” she said, nodding to her right.

  Slate lifted a hand and everyone stopped abruptly, Canni bumping into Dean.

  “It’s a building. Way out here. It might be some sort of park ranger-type structure for the Nirzu,” Slate said hopefully.

  The sun was setting beyond the mountains, visibility decreasing rapidly, and this meant they could stop for the night soon. It was the only thing keeping Jules going. They’d managed a relentless pace all day, but they’d made it over twelve kilometers. The air up here was thinner, and Jules took a deep breath as she followed Slate across the level platform on the edge of the ridge toward the building.

  “Can we sleep here?” Kira asked.

  “I don’t see why not.” Slate spoke as he walked. “You all have done amazingly well today. I couldn’t be prouder.”

  Wentle smiled tightly, the others grinning at the small praise. Slate knew how to motivate them when necessary, and Jules tried to remember his tricks in case she ever needed to do something similar.

  The place was made of a synthetic material, the same stuff Jules had seen in the city. There were glass windows throughout, but it was dark inside, telling her there were no Nirzu inside.

  Slate waved Dean to him and told the others to stay put. Jules huffed internally at this but didn’t object.

  “I’m so exhausted,” Kira told her, leaning her head against Jules’ arm.

  “So am I. We can finally rest. Then tomorrow, we’ll arrive at our destination,” Jules said, knowing that some of their questions might be answered then. Jules closed her eyes and tried to let her powers course into her. At first, she thought there was a trickle of the Iskios energy, then it was gone. The only other time she’d felt this was after the shrunken world, with Papa. It was as if her reservoir was empty, and she worried it was gone for good.

  Canni walked to the nearest wall and peered through the window. A figure appeared and banged on the glass. It was Dean, and he was laughing at Canni’s expression of fear.

  Slate poked his head out the door and called them over. “We’ll stay here tonight. Let’s unpack and prepare something to eat.”

  An hour later, Jules sat on a flat rock at the top of the ridge overlooking their temporary home. She wasn’t overly full, but having food in her belly was a relief. From here, she could see the peaks of the mountain they were heading for. The sunlight was gone, but the stars were bright. She watched them for a while, remembering that each of them meant life. This planet’s star was failing after so many millions of years, but because of the Alliance, the Nirzu people could live on at another world. It was all miraculous.

  Tumbling rocks drew Jules’ attention, and she spotted the group hiking below the ridge, their forms tiny and distant. It looked like an army was heading for them! She raced to the building and found Slate leaning against it, sipping from his canteen.

  “What is it, Jules? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he told her.

  “There’s people. I can’t tell who they are in the dark,” Jules said, grabbing his wrist. She dragged him away from camp, and in three minutes or so, they were at the ridge, staring into the valley below. The people were using a makeshift switchback path and heading toward the Academy group.

  “I see at least fifty of them, maybe more,” Slate said. “They carry lanterns. It has to be one of the Nirzu mountain villages.”

  “Why didn’t they evacuate?” Jules asked.

  “That’s what we were sent here to help with. The senator thought some of the groups weren’t even aware of what was transpiring. Not all of them use technology or communicators.” Slate stood tall and watchful at the slowly nearing people.

  “What do we do?” Jules asked.

  “We greet them as friends. Hope that’s enough.”

  “Do you have a translator?” Jules asked. If these people didn’t use technology, then they wouldn’t be able to talk with one another.

  “Good call. It’s in my pack. Can you bring it here? Tell the others to hide out until we ensure these aren’t our enemies,” Slate ordered, and Jules nodded, happy to be accommodating.

  She ran to camp, filled the others in on what was happening, and told Dean to head around the ridge a ways to hide with Kira, Wentle, Extel Four, and Canni.

  “Fine. Make sure Slate doesn’t bluster the welcome,” Dean said with a smile.

  Jules took the portable translator and clipped it to her belt, before returning to Slate’s position.

  They waited, and Jules noted how her uncle’s hand never strayed far from the pulse pistol at his hip. It took another hour before the first of the incoming group crested the hill, appearing in front of them. Slate stood there, hands up, and called his greeting. “Hello, I’m Zeke Campbell, with the Alliance of Worlds.” The translator was programmed to the Nirzu language, and a comforting stream of words echoed out from the device.

  A woman’s eyes went wide, and her hands rose in the air, mimicking Slate’s. He chuckled and lowered them.

  The woman spoke softly, her words passing through Jules’ translator and out in English. “Hello, the one called Zeke. I am Briler. What is the Alliance of Worlds?”

  More of the Nirzu arrived, each of them wearing sturdy hand-crafted robes that Jules could tell were warm and comfortable. As the night air cooled around her, she wished she had one on.

  “Who are these visitors?” a man asked. Briler whispered something to him, and he nodded, his dark-green face grim.

  “What happened to you? Why didn’t you leave with the others?” Slate asked.

  “This is our home. We have only ever sought peace and solace in our village. If the world dies, we shall perish with it,” the newcomer said.

  Briler set a hand on the man’s arm, and he lowered his head.

  “Our village has been destroyed. The ship came last night. It took Egant, our son. It destroyed our community with bright cutting blasts of light. Only half of us survived,” Briler said. “If we’d listened to the senator’s warnings, Ezzal, we’d still have our son.”

  The man – Ezzal – nodded gruffly and coughed. “My wife is right, but we are Beese, the original tribe of the valleys, and by our god have offered our lives in his service. We protect the valleys, he protects us.”

  “Our god is good, Ezzal,” she told him, and Jules felt like they’d walked in on a very important and private conversation.

  “He will return one day. We must be here to prove our loyalty and faith,” Ezzal said.

  Briler shook her head sadly. “What of Egant?”

  “Perhaps that was our god returning to show his dismay,” Ezzal said.

  “No. That was no god. It was a Collector. He stole your son to add to his compilation of life forms,” Slate told them.

  The others were gathered around the ridge, their lanterns burning oil and flickering in the light breeze. Jules scanned the tired faces, seeing so much fear and worry on each of their expressions.

  “A Collector.” Briler said it not as a question, but as a twisted understanding. “Will you help us?”

  Jules smiled at her. “Of course we will. It’s what we do.”

  ____________

  The steps creaked under my weight, and I knew it had been some years since anyone had walked into this cellar. I used my arm to brush the cobwebs away, hoping that they were only that, not immense spiders’ webs.

  The wooden stairs were grimy, the particles kicking up as I slowly made my way below. There were more steps than I’d expected, but I soon found myself on the basement level, which appeared to be polished concrete. Years of dust had settled on the surface, and I used the flashlight to gather my bearings. There was a single narrow hall leading to a room with a tall, smooth white door.

  Amada was right behind me, with Magnus staying upstairs as a sentry in case one of them had spotted and followed us to Alfonsi’s home.

  We entered the room, finding the do
or unlocked, and I was surprised by the ceiling height. My flashlight shone around the space, stopping as it found a long built-in desk.

  There were two computers along the edge of the underground office, and a massive flat screen was mounted to the left wall, with two comfortable chairs on the floor ten meters away from it.

  “He must have done some work here,” I said, wishing I could power up the computers and television. I’d bet we’d find some 3D plans and videos of the proposed space station that still orbited Earth. I didn’t know what they wanted the plans for, and thought it was a good time to ask Amada again.

  “What can Frasier possibly want with the blueprints to a space station? It seems too… far from his Old World vision,” I said.

  She glanced at me, tight-lipped, but eventually, she opened her mouth and licked her dry lips. “There is much you don’t know, Larson, including his plans. When Frasier is done, we won’t have to worry about the colonies any longer. There will be no advantages there, and finally, everyone will be on an even playing field.”

  Her words were cold, offensive in nature. I didn’t like them one bit. It sounded like Frasier was going to attack Paul and the many Earth colonies. We’d spent so much effort building them up, at first with the assistance of the Empress, and more recently with the funding and resources brought in from our Alliance of Worlds. The wounds of Haven were too fresh in my memory, the death of my good friend Terrance so tragic, I couldn’t stand the thought of more bloodshed, especially on Earth.

  “You have something to say?” Amada asked.

  I shook my head. “No. Nothing at all. I was just curious. I want to help him meet his goals, so we can push forward as a people.”

  She turned from me, moving to the desk. She began to open drawers and compartments, finding nothing of note inside.

  I checked the other side and found a notepad in the top drawer. Alfonsi’s initials were written on the first page of the leather-bound book. I flipped through it, finding sketches of the station, round and familiar.

  There were notes inside, along with a series of long numerical passages. I tapped the page. “This could be something. Might be a passcode to a program. If I was a betting man, these computers hold everything you need to know.”