Ignis

by Tracy Korn

  “Or some kind of human sacrifice!” I almost yell. “Their prophecy said these lands are going to break away, and then there’s going to be some kind of flood. Something is not right here, Liddick!”

  “Everything is not right here, Rip,” he says, gesturing again to the stairwell and Center Hall behind us. “Spaulding’s men are coming right now, and they’ll kill everyone. We can’t go back…” He moves his hand over my face. “There’s just forward, Rip.”

  Vox makes a roarfing noise and shoves past Liddick.

  “Crite, I’d rather be human-sacrificed. Just come on.”

  We cross the threshold at the top of the stone stairwell. Off the edge, the ribboned, dark gray clouds are bunched like several rolled blankets pushed together. They crackle with lightning flickers, which are followed by more low rumbles I can feel reverberating off the rock.

  “Are those zephyrs?” I ask, turning back to Vita.

  Her clear blue eyes widen as she shakes her head in disbelief. “No. This is a storm, but I have never seen one so dense.”

  A huge whip of lightning spiderwebs through the dark, rolled clouds, and I feel the crackles over my lips and in my ears. It sounds like fifty cannons going off one after the other just a second afterward.

  “Take your positions on the platform,” Jove says, holding his arms out to his sides with his palms facing the mass of gathering cloud ribbons over our heads. The electricity in the air feels like small prickles in my skin, and in seconds, the low rumble all around turns into violent shaking.

  “Spaulding’s men are here!” Liddick calls to Liam, who’s against the smooth, black rock next to the threshold.

  Liam looks around for a second, then shakes his head. “There’s nowhere to go!” he shouts over the rumbling sky. In the center of the Lookout Pier, a square stone column comes up from the ground like a peg being pushed from its hole. It’s about three feet across in any direction, glinting in the gathering storm clouds that spark again with the same kind of lightning that we hoped would hide us from the zephyrs in the Rush.

  “What is this!?” I shout to Liddick, but I can’t hear his answer until he says it in my mind.

  I don’t know! Hang on! He pulls me against him as everything rattles, and the electric buzz behind my eyes just gets stronger.

  Four more black, stone columns erupt from the ground, smaller than the larger one in the center that has only risen about two feet into the air. Each of the pillars is marked with a symbol—one that looks like a wave, one that looks like the top of an arrow, three wavy lines, and something that looks like a flame. I’ve seen these before…

  “Child of Vishan! Take your position on the platform!” Jove shouts to Vox over the howling wind. He moves behind one of the smaller columns as Veece and Vita move into place behind two more. Veece points to the other one for Cal, who reluctantly crosses into position.

  “What are they doing?” Liam shouts to us.

  “Some kind of ritual for their prophecy!” I answer, trying to remember what Vita told us in front of the Origin Wall.

  Veece leaves his column and walks directly toward us against the wall. He takes Vox’s hand and starts walking with her toward the platform in the center of the pier. She starts to pull away from him but can’t break free.

  “Something is wrong!” I yell to Liddick and Liam, feeling her fear knotting at the same time it starts spinning in my stomach.

  “What happens on that platform!?” Vox shouts to Veece, but he doesn’t answer. As strong and able to fight as she is, she can’t escape Veece’s hold. We all start to move toward them, but Liam is already there in just a few long strides. He pushes Veece a few steps back, which breaks his hold on Vox, but Veece seizes her wrist again and throws Liam to the ground like he’s made of cloth.

  “Let her go!” Cal protests, then starts looking at his legs as his expression changes from anger to shock.

  What’s wrong with him? I think, and Liddick answers almost immediately.

  He’s stuck in place. His feet are stuck in place!

  I pull away from Liddick to run to Vox, but the ground starts to crack in places between the short columns where she’s standing with Veece.

  “Watch out!” I yell to her.

  I take a step away from Liddick, just to make sure I can. The ground holds, but I can feel the tremor in the rockface running through my feet straight to my teeth.

  “Get back!” Vox yells. “It’s crumbling!”

  Veece pulls Vox onto the platform, and before I know it, I’m running toward him as fast as I can. I ram my shoulder into his back, making him stumble, then trip and fall to the ground. I land on my hands and knees as the hum in my ears turns into a deafening, incapacitating buzz.

  “Jazz!” I hear, and force myself to look up.

  “Arco?”

  CHAPTER 36

  The Channel

  Arco

  “Whoa! Lie back—lie back!” Denison shouts, but it’s a faraway sound, like it’s coming through a few closed doors. I hear the echo of it one more time, but then it’s gone, replaced by Jazz screaming. I blink to clear my blurred vision and see her running straight toward the cliff edge of the Lookout Pier…toward the open air of the Rush. This is why she’s out of range? What the hell is she doing back there?

  “Jazz!” I shout her name after she falls forward onto her hands. I scramble toward her as she looks around frantically, like she can hear me but can’t see me. I call to her again, and this time, she looks right at me. “What are you doing!?” I yell to her again.

  “Arco?” she calls back to me, then jerks her eyes away. I follow them to find Vox stumbling back from some kind of raised stone box in the center of the Lookout Pier. “This is the channel again…you have to be in my channel because I can’t see anything where you are. Can you see anything here? What can you see, Arco?” she insists without so much as taking a breath.

  “I can see you, Vox, and the Lookout Pier—why are you trying to run off the edge? Are you split? Do you see the storm!? What are you doing here?” I fire at her.

  “That’s not what I was doing. Veece is trying to pull Vox into the center…to that box platform, can you see it? Can you see the columns? The big one in the middle and the four smaller ones surrounding it?” she asks, but I don’t see anything until she turns around and looks at it again herself.

  “It’s there! I see it all now… What the…?” I add under my breath, amazed to see Jove, Vita, and Cal already standing behind the little pillars, while the short, wide square one in the center stands empty. “Where did all that come from? What’s happening up here?”

  “They have a prophecy,” she says turning back to me. “It started coming true when Vox arrived—now, Spaulding’s men are coming here too.”

  “Spaulding? As in Tieg and Dez Spaulding?”

  “Yes, I was trying to tell you the last time in my channel. Their father is the one who hijacked Liddick’s port-carnate transfer to Admin City. He’s the one who forced him to shut down the Grid server.”

  “Jazz—“

  “Arco, listen to me. Azeris intercepted their feed—they were on their way to the Badlands, and some are coming here. They’ll be coming for you too,” she says, finally taking a breath. “Where are you? What’s happening with the port-cloud?”

  I try to think of somewhere to begin, but any variation of the story is too long. “We’re in Phase Three, but we need more Vishan DNA to take it down. Eco ruined the archive we had,” I manage, then see numbers and symbols starting to flicker in my peripheral vision. Pressure builds behind my eyes almost immediately. No, not yet…not yet, I think, afraid that this will be the end of our channel connection.

  More numbers start compiling, separated by periods…by…coordinates?

  In that second Veece yells something in Vishan. Red flames jump from Jazz’s shoulders, which somehow makes the numbers in the corners of my eyes turn over faster.

  “Fire? How?” I ask, squinting against the pressure in my
head. “Your treatment was reversed like the rest of ours.” I stumble over the words, trying to pat out her flames until I realize, like an idiot, that I’m really only in her head.

  “Vox and Cal had to treat me again in the tunnels on the way down. She’s immune to the pressure, and Liam put on a suit that Liddick and his friend got from Spaulding’s men.”

  “Liddick’s fr—?” I start, confused, but then decide I don’t care. I don’t have time to care right now. “Jazz, if they’re coming, you need to get out of there. You should all be moving—Cal and Veece should be leading Spaulding’s men back to the falls where that worm thing is. What the hell are you all doing up here?”

  “I told you, it’s their prophecy! They said they’re trying to send Vox to the stars or something, and then everyone else will follow her.”

  I feel my whole face pinch with the effort to understand what she’s just said. These people don’t even have electricity, let alone a port-carnate hub, and they want to send someone into space?

  “How? With that NET thing? Jazz, you all need to leave! Now!” I say. She turns around, abruptly this time. The blackness behind her immediately gives way to the circle of little columns again, but this time, Veece is wiping blood from his head and moving toward us. I try to move into his path, but he walks right through me.

  “Hey!” I shout, then remember he can’t hear me because I’m only in Jazz’s channel.

  “What’s happening to the ground?” Vox yells as small fissures spring from the connection points all along the rest of the wall face and in the ground below. The splits in the smooth, black rock run like rivers all the way into the Bale field.

  “Jazz! We need to get everyone off this pier!” I shout, but she doesn’t even seem to hear me now.

  “Leave her alone!” she shouts, and the whole scene shifts to Veece pulling Vox by the wrist and hoisting her behind his shoulders, clamping her arms and legs down like she’s hogtied. She knees him in the face, and he drops her onto the square platform in the middle of the Lookout Pier. She sweeps his legs, and he falls beside her.

  “You have to fulfill the prophecy or we will all die!” he shouts.

  “We’re going to die if we don’t get off this pier, you mollusk! Look!”

  Vox points to the growing fissures all around the platform. She scrambles to her feet seconds before Veece and kicks him in the face. He stands up anyway, blood pouring over his lips.

  “You are the only one who can save us!”

  A flash of lightning blinds me for a second, and the rattle that follows just makes the cracks in the ground widen.

  “Take your position!” Jove yells to Veece. He moves behind the last little pillar, and Jazz rushes to her.

  “No! It’s cracking more—stay back!” Vox yells.

  “Wait!” Liddick and I both shout to her, but it’s too late. She jumps over two widening cracks, losing her footing on the second one. She slips into it, and everything in me stops hard. No…no… I think, racing toward her. I reach for her, but my hands pass through hers. “No! Jazz!”

  “Rip!” Liddick shouts, jumping over the fissures.

  “Hurry!” I call to him, but he doesn’t hear me. He stands where I’m standing. I watch his arms reach for hers…reach through mine, his hands through mine…except his take hold where mine don’t.

  “Hang on, Rip!” he says as another fissure opens under his feet. He catches himself with his knee but loses one of Jazz’s arms.

  “No!”

  “Arco!” she shouts.

  Wake up…wake up… I think, but it doesn’t end. She’s still falling, just like in my interview scenario. For a second I wonder if it’s a flashback, if it’s not real, and my stomach jumps with the hope, only to fall when she screams my name again.

  “Wright! Pull her up!” I yell, reaching for her, but my hands go through hers. Finally, he connects, gripping both her wrists and pulling her up from the fissure.

  “Hold on!” someone yells from behind us. I turn to see his brother, Liam, throwing out a length of rope. He pushes the satchel over his shoulder around to his back and calls to them. “Liddick! Get the rope!”

  He catches it, wrapping an arm around Jazz’s waist, and tries to pull her away.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  “We can’t leave her!” Jazz yells. “Just go! Go back and then throw us the rope again!”

  “Rip, no! I’ll get her. Take this!”

  More coordinates flash in front of my eyes, and then geometry formulas spread over the ground along the fissures. White veins appear in the black stone ground under our feet, branching off again into the Bale field, and I know those are where the next cracks will appear. The whole thing is going to give way except for the little columns and the center platform.

  “Jazz! Go with him! Get out of the middle—it’s going to collapse!” I shout to her. She looks at me and nods, but then pulls out of Liddick’s arm and lunges back toward Vox on the center platform. “No! Jazz! Jazz!”

  She leaps away from him and is suspended for a minute that seems to last an eternity in the air, but I don’t see her land. The clouds roll down, engulfing everything in a haze, and for a few more seconds I can hear the rumbling all around until the pressure behind my eyes swallows everything in another blinding white light.

  CHAPTER 37

  The Core Room

  Jazz

  The last thing I hear is Arco calling my name as I jump toward the platform where Vox is standing. I turn to tell him I’m all right, but he’s gone as fast as he appeared.

  He’s gone… He was just there! I think.

  Arco? But you’re awake? Vox says in my mind.

  I don’t understand it either...

  It has to be something with the NET out here on this platform, she thinks, helping me to my feet. The platform shakes beneath us again, and we drop to our hands and knees.

  We need to get off of here.

  “There!” Liam shouts from across the pier. I look up to find him pointing at the rock slab between the platform Vox and I are standing on and the other four pillars encircling us.

  “Rip! Don’t move!” Liddick calls to me.

  “What’s happening!?”

  “It’s the opening to the tunnel Azeris found!”

  Jove brings something to his mouth and blows, making a loud horn sound that reverberates off the black rock walls. Seconds later, the rest of the Vishan come pouring through the opening to the Lookout Pier and stand with Liam and Liddick against the wall.

  The ground separates even more, falling away between the center platform and all four pillars. When the dust clears, I see a set of stairs leading down from the outside perimeter of Jove, Veece, Vita, and Cal, leaving Vox and I standing on top of a now very tall square pillar.

  “Liddick!”

  “Hold on!” he shouts to us.

  “Sit down! It’s better if we get low!” Vox says, slowly moving her legs under her.

  I drop down and grip the edge of the platform when everything shakes around us again.

  “They’re here! The others are here!” Rav, Vita’s son, says as he runs toward the stairs with another Vishan woman. Jove’s family follows just behind them.

  “The hunting parties have blocked the entrance to Center Hall. But the others have weapons,” Flora says, directing the children to go with Liv, Rav, and some of the other Council members down the stairs that surround the pillar Vox and I are on.

  “Then we must hurry,” Jove says, striking the Net device hard on the stone column in front of him. The vibration starts in the pillar Vox and I are on and moves through my knees and up my arms, then rattles my skull. Vox growls through her teeth.

  What are they doing!? I shout to Liddick in my head because I can’t seem to use my voice.

  Spaulding’s men are here, Rip. Dell and the others just made it back and are down the stairs, he answers. I force my eyes open against the crippling buzz to look for them, but everyone is blurry. We don’t have a lot
of time before they break down the barrier the hunting party made. Liam and I are going to go down the stairs, and I need you two to jump to us, OK?

  I can’t see that far—it’s all blurry, I answer. Liddick swears.

  All right. We’ll move right under you then. You’ll just drop straight down. On my count, get ready…

  I turn to Vox, whose eyes are also narrowed against the buzz she must be hearing too.

  Liam and Liddick are going to catch us, I think toward her. We’re going to jump straight down.

  “Rip! We’re here! On three! One!” Liddick shouts, but I can barely hear him over the crushing buzz in my head. “Two…three!”

  Vox shifts away from me, then jumps. I try to do the same, but Jove must strike the NET device again because another deafening buzz hits me, freezing me in place and blurring my vision even more. Everything is heavy, cold…and the blur of everything around me fades to white.

  ***

  “I’ve got you. It’s all right,” Arco says, but it can’t be Arco. I try to talk, though nothing comes out. My head feels heavy, like it’s filled with sand—like it felt after the port-carnate transfer to Admin City after we made it through the Rush.

  I open my eyes and see Arco’s face, his mossy hazel eyes starting to glass over.

  “Arco?” I whisper, my voice feeling like gravel in my throat. “Is this your channel?” I ask, noticing the white walls and technical equipment behind him.

  “Don’t try to talk yet,” another man’s voice says. I look over to the source and see Dr. Denison, then feel panic swell in my chest.

  “It’s OK; he’s with us,” Arco adds before I can say anything. “He’s with The Seam. Crite, I can’t believe it worked…”

  “What? Where is this place? Am I in your channel?” I ask, feeling the weight in the back of my head and limbs finally start to lift.

  “No, this is the Phase Three facility, Ms. Ripley. And I’m afraid we don’t have much time,” Dr. Denison says, moving toward me. “Can you bring her here?” he asks Arco, who nods.