by Tracy Korn
I stare at him for a second, unsure how to respond because he’s right. I can’t plan this, but I don’t know how to not plan it either.
“But what if…?” I start, but then trail off because I realize I’m trying to plan it all again. I really can’t, though. Not this. And that’s the hardest part. Liam smiles a little at me as we start walking again. He drapes his arm over me like Liddick used to do, and I suddenly see him in a new light. I see the big brother who cut his own eyebrow to calm Liddick down when he fell on the dune. The big brother who told him nobody was going to bleed to death that day because they were just going to hold it together until they got home. One step at a time.
“He doesn’t even have our wraps!” Liam laughs and nods. After a few seconds, I start laughing too, and for the first time in what seems like a very long time, I feel like maybe everything is going to be all right. One way or another.
CHAPTER 16
Package 872
Arco
I scan the never-ending screens in front of me, all of them saying different things with different numbers and different symbols that I don’t understand, but I know there’s enough fuel in the ship. I know the pressurization is sound. I know those things that attacked us outside are long gone, except for the carcass trapped in the fuel sector…but I don’t even want to think about that when I don’t know how I know any of the rest of the information. I shake my head and blow out the breath in my lungs. How do I know so much and at the same time, absolutely nothing? Blood trickles over my upper lip again, and I pinch my nose.
“What the…?” I start, looking around for some kind of cloth.
“There have only been a few others like you in the years I’ve been at Gaia,” Denison says, tossing me one from the little medical kit he fishes out of one of the compartments in his console. I look at him sideways, still a little afraid I will somehow turn the ship upside down if I move the wrong way.
“What do you mean, like me?”
“A fast burner—your synced proclivities of Navigator and Coder,” Denison replies, raising his chin at the expanse of black before us, at the intermittent stars brighter than the haze that seems to be everywhere underneath us.
“A lot of good it does. I can’t explain how any of these screens tell me what I know they’re saying. I hate not knowing why.”
Denison laughs out loud. “That’s a slippery slope,” he says without looking at me. “Because the flip side is why not? That’s the question that started this whole mess. Transcend the environment…why not? Breathe underwater, resist the heat and pressure miles within the earth…withstand cold and oxygen deprivation…hey, why not?” He trails off, shaking his head like it’s his fault, though he said he never was part of the experiments.
“And you plan to use my sister to start answering that question?” I ask more loudly than I should because I still don’t believe him. The ship suddenly surges, and I don’t know why until I realize I’m leaning toward him with my hands gripping the edges of this console seat. I’m anxious all over again at the reminder that I’m actually physiologically linked into this ship.
“It’s not my first choice to send her into Phase Three with Calyx, but it’s our best option,” Denison says, unfazed by the sudden speed of the Wraith. I straighten in my seat, and the ship levels out as he continues. “Rheen and Styx were expecting Lyden and Arwyn several days ago. This will be the only opportunity we have to get through that front door without the rest of our support in place.”
“And what would they do if you did have support in place, storm the facility? Run in there and kill everybody? How does any of this end well?”
Denison looks at me hard, then and takes a breath. “Lyden and your sister will walk out of there. I won’t let Gaia keep any of the kids they’ve taken, and neither will you.” He gives me a single nod, like that’s supposed to be enough of an answer.
“They’re making good progress on the coding,” Calyx says, walking up behind us.
“I knew they would. Are you ready to report?” Denison asks, gesturing to one of the screens in front of me. Calyx looks over her shoulder as my sister and Lyden close the distance between us, and the ship starts to shimmy.
“Sit tight, sit tight, Mr. Hart.” Denison chuckles, then hits a series of buttons in front of him. I hear a hydraulic shift in the ship under me and the shimmying stops. “Autopilot engaged,” he adds, smiling. “You’ll hone your focus, don’t worry.” I sigh as the adrenaline hits my blood and makes it hammer in my ears.
“I don’t like this,” I say through my teeth as I cut a look at Calyx. “We don’t have a backup plan—what if they don’t believe you? What if you’re caught helping them once you’re inside?”
“I won’t let that happen,” she says, exchanging glances with Denison, and that’s all I can take of this make it up as you go mentality.
“See, here’s the problem with all of you,” I say, getting to my feet. “You’re so sure you’re in control of everything. You remember they blew up our ship after they watched us steal it, right? They knew we were planning to take the Leviathan, and they let us do it just so they could see what we could do. What makes you think they don’t already know you’re coming?”
“We don’t know that,” Denison says before Calyx can answer. “But the advantage of not knowing is that Rheen and Styx won’t know what we’re doing until we’re doing it either. We’re going to have to put our faith in that.”
“This is insane,” is all I can say when everyone just nods and looks enlightened. “Am I really the only one on this ship who thinks this is all utterly split? We need a way out if something goes wrong!”
“We have one,” Tark says, clearing the last of the stairs from below deck. He’s holding out the same little box Fargo gave him.
“It’s already done?” Lyden asks, raising both his eyebrows, which disappear under his dark, messy hair.
“It should make a hole nobody but us will know is there…straight through the wall of that lab.”
“Nobody will be able to see it?” I ask.
“Not with this coding,” Tark says. “On the surface we have the A-sym patch that will take on the appearance of what’s around it. The molecules themselves, though, will move out of our way like displaced water when we walk through it.”
“Great. Once we’re in, we’ll launch this, and you can bring Jack and the others through the hole. It will eat through the wall of the lab, and then you can launch the wind on the cloud barrier to bring the ship inside. You’ll have a straight shot,” Lyden says, nodding to me. I look at my sister, and find her nodding too.
“And what will Jack and his team do once they’re in there? How do we get them back out?” I ask.
“They will upload the archive into the columns once Lyden and I raise them. Once the archive is loose in the system, we’ll all meet you in the labs and board the Wraith,” my sister says. “We just need you to get as close as you can without being seen.”
As soon as she finishes, I realize I have a huge headache. I close my eyes and rub my temples hard, hoping for something else to come to me. Something I can count on. But nothing does.
“All right,” is all I can say after a few minutes. “How far are we from the facility?”
“Nearly there,” Denison says, scanning the screens behind us. “Everyone needs to get into position.”
“Mr. Hart, stay close because we’ll need to move fast after we leave,” Tark says, with a nod to Calyx. Lyden and Arwyn hold out their hands, and Calyx levels a flat metal rod against them until it encircles each of their wrists and seals.
“Are those really necessary?” I ask, stopping in my tracks.
“Mr. Hart, if you were a prisoner, would you board that facility if Calyx just asked pretty please?” Tark asks with a half-smile. He taps something onto the console before he starts talking into it, still smiling. “Eco, show time.”
A few minutes later, Eco walks onto the bridge wearing a red military jumpsuit that l
ooks like he’s had it awhile. He drops the duffel bag on the floor at his feet and raises his chin to Calyx.
“Everyone below deck is dressed already. The rest of these uniforms are yours,” he says.
“Where did those come from?” I ask, looking from him to Tark.
“The good doctor made some arrangements for us,” Tark says with a nod to Denison, who returns the nod and claps his hands together.
“We should get moving. Get changed and get into position. I have to go get that Organic off the hull before they scan us.”
***
Tark punches something into the controls and a few seconds later, a voice floods the cabin.
“Wraith Class 77, state your business,” the male voice says.
“This is Skellig Tark delivering package 872, reporting officer Calyx Frome. We have two in custody scheduled for Phase Three trials.”
“Stand by…” I glance at Tark, holding my breath. “Says here Briggs Denison was delivering that package. What happened?”
“He was needed at Phase One to deal with a clone malfunction,” Tark replies. “It would have been suspicious for him to leave now. He asked me to make the run—authorization seven, seven, alpha BCD.”
I push my hands over my face half in disbelief, half in panic. This could be the end of everything. I hold my breath and wait for the voice to come back over the comms.
“All right, it checks out. Prepare for entry. You said just two in custody?”
“That’s right. Bringing her down. Wraith Class 77 out.” Tark hits another button combination before looking at me. “Just stay calm and quiet for the next little bit, and we’ll go to work.”
CHAPTER 17
Stranglebush
Jazz
The sand starts to turn into briars and vines like when I was walking with Dell in the Rush—the wet marshland giving way to the gnarled bushes of the next biome. A shiver runs down my back as I shake my head, trying to forget that place.
“You OK?” Liam asks, shooting me a sideways glance.
“This part of the Badlands looks like the Rush…the—“
“The Tanglebush,” he finishes with a nod, narrowing his eyes against the sun in front of us.
“Did you really design the biomes?” I ask after he doesn’t say anything else.
“No.” This time he answers quickly. “The framework was already there. My brother, Lyden, thought he was working on virtuo-cine templates when he coded some of it. Same with your dad’s program—the whispers and everything over the chasm. Neither of them would have ever agreed to make any of that real.” He doesn’t look at me as he explains, and my chest tightens before he talks again. “Rheen and Styx kept me with the kids that those shark things pulled through the ground,” he finally says. And that’s all he says. I let my mind wander over the possibility that maybe Dell was in the Phase Two facility when they were making Liam carry out the experiments on people.
I look up at him, and my chest tightens even more. The air seems thicker now, harder to take in.
“Something isn’t right here.” Vox stops several feet ahead of us, then drives the toe of her black boot into the ground a few times.
“What’s wrong?” Liam asks just as the pulse in my throat starts to jump and my heart tries to pound out of my chest. It’s the feeling of something coming toward us fast, but there’s nothing anywhere. I frantically scan the horizon, seeing only the distant, thick trees and the haze of Seaboard North far in the distance beyond it.
“We should run…” I barely say the words because it feels like something is listening. They don’t do any good anyway because my feet are stuck in place like they’re rooted to the ground.
“Don’t run,” Vox adds in an equally quiet voice. She narrows her eyes and scans the scrub at our feet. She takes a step, then swears.
“What’s the matt—?” I start, but we’re falling straight through the ground before I can finish my sentence. The burlap wrap flies past my face, blocking the light until a second later I stop hard. Dirt falls into my face and down my throat, but I can’t get enough of a breath to cough. My lungs start to burn as my throat tightens. I roll to my stomach and try to push to my hands and knees, which helps me get a little air into my lungs. Shallow breaths, Rip. Shallow breaths… I hear the echo of Liddick’s words back in the Rush, and I try to follow their advice.
Vox is spewing a litany of swear words somewhere in front of me, but I can’t see her. When she stops, I hear her in my head.
Are you dead? It doesn’t feel like you’re dead, so are you? She asks, which steals my newly collected breath and makes it come out in a choked laugh.
I’m not dead. Where’s Liam?
He might be dead. I landed on him.
I choke out another laugh and push to my feet.
“Liam, are you OK? Where are you?”
A low groan comes from the same place Vox’s swearing was just a minute ago. Did she really land on him?
“Hey, are you dead, Liddick’s brother?” Vox asks as the dust in the air dissipates, and I see her push her boot tip into his ribs. Liam groans again and rolls away from her prodding. “He’s not dead,” she answers with a big, stupid smile.
“Liam!” I stumble over to him and roll him onto his back. “Are you OK? Just hold still. Does anything hurt?”
He spits dirt to the side and raises his hand to his face to clear the rest of it, which just pushes it into the dark roots of his blond hair. He blinks several times before opening his eyes, which almost seem to glow blue now against his dirty face. He spits more dirt to the side and tries to push up to his elbows.
“Jazwyn!” Vox shouts from the earthen wall in front of me, which rips my attention away from Liam both because of the urgency in her tone and because she actually used my name instead of sand dollar. “Come here! Both of you, come here!” she says, this time through her teeth. Liam and I exchange confused glances until something tightens around my ankle and yanks me away from Liam.
For the second time in a handful of minutes, I land hard and lose my breath, but this time, I’m still vertical. I try to take a step, but my legs are pinned in place to the wall, along with my arms. I lean forward a little, only to feel something smooth and hard slither over my ribs.
“What is it!? A snake!?” I shout, but what I hear myself say just comes out in rasps and gurgles.
“No! Stranglebush! Close your eyes and—“ Vox starts, but she’s cut off when another vine wraps around her waist and slams her against the wall too. Relax, she says in my mind. “Get in the sun,” Vox whispers to Liam, who starts to scramble to the patch of light in the center of the pit we’ve fallen into.
“Crite…” he growls, but finally makes it to the center.
Every breath I take feels like it makes the vines tighter around my ribs, and all I can think about is how it will only be a few more minutes before I can’t take in another one at all. I swallow hard, trying to keep my throat from closing up like it’s already trying to do with the panic.
I said, relax. They respond to motion like a python, Vox thinks.
These are what caught you before? These are the things you said you convinced to let you go? I answer in my head, but even in my thoughts it sounds spluttered and anything but relaxed.
Just stop fast-forwarding to your death, crite. Think about right now. Think about relaxing—about the vines turning dry or something. Vox coaches again, but I can’t stop imagining my next several breaths. The vines move a few more inches around my ribs and constrict even more. Jazz! Stay in right now! Vox shouts in my mind.
The air fills with dust again as a thudding sound crashes, then another. Liam is on his feet throwing his boots against the ceiling, which makes the opening inches bigger with each impact. The vines recoil to the shadows, and adrenaline fills my chest. He’s trying to flood the pit with sunlight. They’ll let us go. They’ll let us go! I think, and the vines loosen enough for me to take a breath.
They clamp down on my ribs again jus
t as fast in response to the motion, but I fight to keep the air in my lungs.
Right now! Stay in right now! Vox shouts in my head. I try to focus on the vines loosening, on the feeling of knowing they’re going to loosen like I felt when I saw them recoil in the sunlight. To my amazement, they start to shift in response. I take in another small breath.
It’s working…it’s working… I think, and the vines loosen even more.
A crash of dirt falls to the ground, blinding me for a minute with the kick-up of debris and sunlight. A high-pitched keening sounds from the vines as they fall away, and I wriggle free. Vox and I both stumble to the center of the pit next to Liam as the vines shrivel and recoil to the walls.
“Are you OK? Anyone hurt?” Liam says, out of breath.
“I’m all right,” I say, rubbing my ribs, but I think the pain there is from the original fall through the ground rather than the hold of the strangle bushes.
“I’m good,” Vox says, spitting dirt. Her face is pinched as her burgundy eyebrows dart in. I’m surprised by the wave of violence I feel radiating from her.
“Hey…” I say, taking a step toward her until I see her warning look.
“Don’t say it, or I’ll have to gut you.”
“Say what?”
“That I should have seen it coming. I’m a Boundary Scout, aren’t I?”
“Vox, nobody could have seen that coming,“ I say. “We were right on top of it and couldn’t tell what was underneath.”
“You’re not Scouts,” she says, still looking like she’s going to kill me, but I know the anger I’m feeling from her is anger she feels at herself rather than at me.
“You called it out—if you hadn’t, we would have been walking when we fell instead of standing still. That probably would have meant a broken leg,” Liam offers, and this seems to soften Vox’s expression. After a second, the radiating violence subsides from her. She takes a deep breath and sends him a sideways nod.