by Tracy Korn
“You’re already a better pilot than I am, son. You just don’t know it yet.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I answer with too much of an edge.
“My specialty is in systems integration…neural connections and synapses. What I was showing you during the around the block we took on the Leviathan back at Gaia Sur was how to mentally engage with the ship.”
“Uh, you were definitely showing me how to navigate up and down, and generally, how not to kill everyone.”
“Well, yes.” Denison chuckles. “Those were the tools we used for integration. What I taught you was how to keep your panic and fear in check. Remember your hesitation to pull forward, even though the gate hadn’t opened yet?”
I nod. “You just kept telling me it would.”
“Right. You had to learn to trust the ship. The system log reported that you were the one who found the hole in the termite code Rheen planted, even when the others thought you were delusional. How do you think you knew it was trying to compromise the ship before anyone else saw it?”
“It was just…a feeling, I guess. I knew it was there.”
“Exactly. Because you were neurally linked to the ship. That’s your proclivity, son: Navigation integration, particularly now that your hemispheres are also merging.”
I can’t help but laugh out loud at this, and finally, I start to feel a little less like putting my fist through the front window of this ship. “So, Avis wasn’t too far off when he said I was psychic?”
“Not too far off at all.” Denison laughs now too. “So, get us into a nice dark corner on the northwest bank of that Phase Three doorway. You won’t be able to find it on the scanners through the barrier field now that the hole we made is likely repaired. But you’ll know it when you feel it.” He nods to me, then grins after a second. “Take us in.”
Denison looks back through the window at the port-cloud in the distance, and I scan the controls jutting from the console. The grids are all clear, the ship mask is holding… Apparently, I can pilot anything if I just let myself, but I still feel tense…like there’s something out there waiting to swallow us or blow us into oblivion. Then I remember the smile on her face after he kissed her, and I know the only crosshairs I won’t be able to outmaneuver are the ones I keep walking right back into. Let her go, man. Just let her go.
CHAPTER 27
Going Deeper
Jazz
I brush the dirt from my pants and scan the ground for my burlap wrap. Liam hands it to me and studies my face.
“What was that? You were talking to Arco… Did you see him?”
“Yes. He was in my channel like Vox was before. He was standing right there.” I nod a few feet in front of us where the two tall Vishan boys are now standing.
“What did he say? What’s happening up there?”
“He was gone before I could ask him. I don’t know how it happened—he looked just as surprised as I did when I saw him, so I don’t think he initiated the connection,” I add, still feeling hollow.
“They must be somewhere close to Phase Three,” Liam says, looking around the tunnel like there could possibly be an answer in the walls. “Whoa!” he suddenly shouts before quickly rushing past me. It’s then that I see Liddick on the ground, leaning against the earthen wall.
“What happened to him?” I almost shout, moving to kneel next to him, but no one seems to have an answer. A man in the same dark military fatigues as the Special Blacks kneels down next to him too, already shaking his head at me like I’m about to accuse him of something.
“He was standing right there when you went down, and then he just dropped,” he says, confused. “This happened once before, but he popped right back up.”
“Well, let’s pop him up again,” Dell adds, crossing to poke Liddick in the ribs with his boot. “Yo…wakey time, princess.”
“That’s not helping.” I glare at him, and the other man in dark fatigues starts to flick water from a canteen in Liddick’s face.
“Dell?” Liddick whispers, startling all of us. Dell raises his eyebrows at me and smirks.
“What happened? Are you sick?” I ask, returning my attention to Liddick as a panic rises in my chest.
“No…Azeris…found us.” He stands, then immediately wobbles and finds the wall to steady himself. “Whoa. Apparently, channel hops never get easier.”
“You saw Azeris? In your channel like before?” the man with him asks.
“Who’s he?” Liam asks.
“This is Finn. He’s an old friend from the Badlands. He’ll help us.” Liddick scrubs his hands over his face like he’s trying to wake up, then turns to Finn. “It was all of a sudden. No buzz like before… This time the connection came out of nowhere.”
“That’s how it was for me too just now with Arco,” I say, and Liddick’s attention darts back to me.
“You saw Hart in your channel?”
“He saw…us. It was only for a minute, and then he was gone again.”
Liddick raises his eyebrows and blows out a breath.
“All right…where was he?”
“I couldn’t tell. The last we saw them they were going to take down the port-cloud manually.”
“Take down the port-cloud now? That will cause global chaos. That’s if they can even get near it,” Finn says, his dark eyes widening so much he almost looks like he’s going to lunge at me.
“No, it’s the only way to stop the genetic testing,” Liddick says. “Azeris has been trying to make contact with The Seam, but they’re offline.”
“You unplugged them when you reset the server to the Grid. Oh! Did you see my dragon!?” Vox asks, popping to attention, which causes dirt to crumble from the ceiling and hit her cheeks. She brushes it away, and Liddick rolls his eyes.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I thought it was all Gaia’s propaganda that I was shutting down,” he adds, turning to me. “It wasn’t until I saw you really there in front of me in the cine that I… Anyway, but even then, I wasn’t sure.”
“It’s all right. I know. And we’ll make sure everyone else knows. We just need to find out how to get reconnected. How did Arco access my channel? He’s not a Reader.”
“Neither is Azeris,” Liam says. “It doesn’t depend on that, I don’t think. I mean, it helps, but it’s about finding the right frequency. Arco must be close to Phase Three—to the transmission equipment housed there.”
“But how would that reach us? We’re standing at least a half-mile underground.” Finn pulls the dark hair off his neck and ties it into a ponytail.
“It’s the NET,” Vox adds, raising her chin to Cal. “Proximity to that thing… Didn’t somebody say it enhances the channel signal or whatever?”
“Like an antenna—that has to be it,” I say.
“Can I see that?” Liam turns to Cal and extends a hand. Cal pulls the slim, silver, Y-shaped device from the leather bag slung over his shoulder and hands it to him. “Where did you get this?”
“Like I told Jack, our people have always had it—it’s from the ancestors.”
Liam starts nodding slowly, then switches to shaking his head. “You called it the NET? Well, that makes sense, a Neural Enhancement Tuner. But this one must be a few hundred years old.”
“That’s about the age of the Origin Wall, according to the Vishan records,” Cal adds. “The NET is one of the artifacts left to us by the original families.”
“The ones who escaped… I know this story.” Liam closes his eyes in a long blink, and Cal’s face tightens. He does not want to revisit the subject.
“Didn’t you say that unit had been modified?” Liddick asks Cal, evidently feeling the same tension from him that I do. Cal darts a glance at him, then nods after a second of consideration.
“Don’t ask me how. I just know if you have this with you, anyone on the Lookout Pier will be able to find you.”
“What is the Lookout Pier?” Liam asks.
“It’ll be easier to show you. We need to ge
t back to the Vishan right now.” Liddick rubs the back of his head.
“We aren’t even equipped to go that deep.” Liam almost laughs at the ridiculous suggestion, and I completely agree with him.
“We need to get back to Admin City with the others. Isn’t that what Azeris contacted you about?” I ask. Liddick shakes his head.
“Just the opposite. Not only did that thing help bolster our signal so he could find us, it also must have amplified the signal for Spaulding’s men. When he broke into my channel, he overheard them reporting that they had Tieg now, but not Finn and me anymore.” He nods toward the man who had been kneeling next to him. “Spaulding is sending a team to sweep Tinkerer Square in the Badlands because he thinks we’ll go straight to Azeris—he and Zoe need to get out of there now before they find them. Spaulding is also sending teams to sweep Phase Two and the Vishan tunnels. But if we can get there before them, we can save them.”
“Those skods are coming through the tunnels? Now?” Cal nearly yells. “We need to get everyone out.”
“How? We can’t take anyone up through the shark routes…they’ll be trapped at the surface. No way we can hide them in the Rush either,” Dell adds, his eyes darting to everyone in search of an answer no one has.
“No, listen! Azeris found a tunnel. It’s underneath the Lookout Pier,” Liddick explains.
“That pier is solid rock,” Cal protests.
“Wait…” I think, turning to Liddick. “The first time we were all up there, we felt a vibration and heard a loud hum, do you remember? I thought for sure I saw something in the wall move. Maybe it was a door, or a hatch of some kind. Something hidden?” I look to Cal. “Has Jove or anyone in the Council ever mentioned anything about a secret door up there?”
Cal shakes his head. “There’s no door or secret anything up there, as far as I know. Just the platform where you’re supposed to stand with the NET if you’re tryin’ to scout after somebody in the Rush.”
“Well, there must be an access point if Azeris saw the tunnel in his scans,” Finn says.
“It runs under the Rush and connects to Phase Two. The connection point is right below a port-carnate hub there. We could transport everyone to the Admin City bridge…if it’s still there,” Liddick says, then turns to Liam. “Could you reverse their DNA encryptions?”
“Theoretically, yes, but that would depend on if we could access the databases. Jack froze everything with a chaser code when we escaped.”
“All right. We’ll just have to figure it out when we get there. Cal, can you use the NET to warn Jove that Spaulding’s men are coming?”
“No…it doesn’t work like that. It just tells them where we are.”
“It has to work like that,” Vox says. “How else did I connect with Jazz when I was out there in that rainforest, or on the dune?”
Cal stares at her for a long second before shaking his head. “I don’t know. The Council was still trying to sort that when we all lit out after you.”
“Well, let me see it. Maybe you just shake it or something?” Vox reaches for the NET, but Cal grabs it from Liam before she can take it. He shoves it back into his satchel, muttering something in Vishan. Vox snorts, but Cal just rolls his eyes at her.
“If those toadies are coming to Vishan, we need to get there before they do,” he adds, motioning for everyone to follow him deeper into the tunnel. “You all coming, or are we waiting for one of the antlions to circle back?”
CHAPTER 28
The Between
Arco
We sit masked and on standby for several more hours before the feeds finally start reporting the body of the dead Organic found drifting just off the perimeter of Admin City. I close my eyes to pull the feed images out of my peripheral vision and enable the sound. A reporter with pink, jagged layered hair is standing on the edge of the glowing light field. She gestures to the hazy port-cloud in the distance. Denison’s friend Reese is standing with her in the same white tunic he wore to help us unload the testing subjects we pulled from Phase Three. I still can’t hear the reporter talking, even though I’ve closed my eyes, so I blink a few times to refresh the queue. Finally, it kicks in.
“—ectra Brown reporting from the Orion Deck, where the body of what appears to be a frozen man was found adrift just beyond the ion perimeter field. Dr. Halliday, could you please give us your professional medical opinion about…well, what happened to this man since it’s impossible for anyone to just fall through the ion field?”
“Like you, Electra, I can’t imagine how this man could have accidentally found his way off the platform to tumble through space, but what is more concerning to me are the physical…well, alterations he seems to exhibit,” Reese says, raising his white eyebrows.
“I’m sorry, did you say alterations?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he has mutations that appear specifically designed to help him withstand the freezing temperatures of space. To cope with the lack of oxygen, for example, the liquid in his body is not, in fact, liquid, but a complex gelatinous material.”
The reporter’s face blanches. “Could this be an effect of the port-cloud, Dr. Halliday? Radiation perhaps?”
“It’s hard to say, Electra, but from what I have been able to see, I can’t imagine how this could be natural. It seems the result of outside intervention.”
“Do you mean…aliens?”
“I can only report what I’ve seen, Electra. It will be up to you and your fine team to find out who did this.”
“Thank you, Dr. Halliday. Devereux, back to you with in-house guests, Doctors Cora Fields and Aldos Landers, whom I understand have also examined the body.”
The feed scatters and regroups, this time in a white studio with the guests, but the whole thing wipes when I nearly fall out of my chair at the sound of a high-pitched alarm.
“PERIMETER ALERT,” the ship’s calm, casual voice says after the loud bell.
“Show time, Mr. Hart!” Denison runs up the stairs at the back of the bridge like something is chasing him.
“How? The feed is still playing!” I stumble, scrambling to boot the Wraith’s systems and make sure we are aligned with the Phase Three docking bay doors.
“Headline teaser feeds started streaming an hour ago. Are we in position?”
“Uh…yeah. Yeah, now we are,” I say, adjusting the last of my scopes. “Spider waiting for the fly and all that.”
“Good. When that fly comes along, we’ll have about five seconds to get into its wake before Phase Three’s perimeter scan does all the math, understand? We need to be in that shadow before it figures out just how big the other ship is.”
“I’ll line us up—don’t worry.”
“PROXIMITY ALERT,” the woman’s ship voice says again, but my heart is still trying to hammer through my ribs.
“I don’t see anything—what’s coming?” I say, scanning the scopes for a ship.
“Wait for it…” Denison says. “It’s coming.”
A full minute passes, but it feels like twenty before a ship finally appears on our center scope.
“There!”
“TARGET IN RANGE,” the ship’s voice says.
“Yeah, yeah…” I lean forward a little in my seat and feel the engines fire underneath us.
“Easy, easy,” Denison says. “Feel it. You’ll have to feel this one through… Get into the wake as soon as the ship passes into the Between—don’t rely on the Wraith to tell you where that ship is. Run the numbers, son; we only have five seconds to play with.”
“Got it,” I answer. But crite, why did he have to say that? The blood pounding in my ears gets louder as numbers and geometrical symbols start flooding my peripheral vision. They appear this time like those invisible, floating specs that you can never really look directly at, so I don’t even try. I lean forward, and we pick up a little speed. Too much speed.
“Hot… We’re coming in too hot!” Denison says in the distance along with a dull, echoing bell alarm. His voice sounds muf
fled, and the pounding in my ears starts slowing down. Everything slows down as pieces of the geometrical symbols break apart, then fall into a kind of landing strip in my head. I look directly at the scopes, but what I see isn’t there…I’m generating it. “Mr. Hart! Pull back!”
The last of the peripheral graphics align, and finally, I lean back. The bell sound gets louder, but then eventually stops.
“ALIGNMENT LOCKED,” the calm ship’s voice says, and I blow out the breath that has been burning my lungs.
“Crite…” Denison exhales and leans forward into his hands.
“Sorry,” I say, a little curious how close we actually came to the back end of the other ship if Denison is all but in the fetal position over there. “It took a while to line up.”
He nods into his hands, then finally sits back in his co-pilot seat and shoots me a glance.
“Evidently, it did,” he finally says, then blows out a big breath on the edge of a few bubbles of laughter.
“What the actual hell up there!?” Avis shouts over the comms. Denison and I both almost choke on laughter this time. I hit the relay button to reply but don’t get a chance before he hears me. “Oh, it’s funny? You think it’s funny to break the damn sound barrier with no warning at all? I smashed my face with my own hand, Hart!” Avis shouts again, and my eyes start to burn from laughter. Denison’s face is bright red when I look over at him, which makes him start laughing all over again. “Yeah! It’s funny! Really funny, Hart! Mollusk!” he fires again all in the same breath, then starts all over in Chinese, and any shot I had at regaining my composure is utterly, irrevocably lost.
***
We pass through the docking gate undetected and settle behind the small personal carrier vessel that doesn’t look much bigger than a Sojourner. The mask on the ship seems to be working, because I don’t see an army of riot drones storming our perimeter.
“What kind of mask is this?” I ask marveling at how such a huge ship can be invisible in plain sight.
“Government grade,” is all Denison says before a set of guards in red jumpsuits comes through a door in the hangar about two flights up. They skitter over to the little craft in front of us just in time for the side panel door to open. Four men in long white tunics and pants walk out with purpose toward the stairs along the hangar wall. The guards turn on their heels and move quickly after them.