by Tracy Korn
It’s all right, I think toward Liddick. He looks up and around, but he can’t seem to see me. Here! I say again. I’m here.
I know you are, Rip, he answers. You’re always with me.
I turn to see Arco again in the bright distance several feet away. He’s still gripping the side of the standing table. I turn around to see that he’s also still typing feverishly at the console.
“Arco?” I say, turning back to find him standing in the bright room.
“I’m here,” he says as blood starts streaming down his nose and over his lips. “I’m always here with you.”
“Arco!” I try to go to him, but I can’t get through the space. It’s like we’re separated by a window now. “No...no!” I pound on the glass with my fists as the ship rumbles again. I stumble backward, falling on my elbows. I scramble to my feet and see the other Arco finish typing. He just stands there and watches the window, which is still black, but is now streaming with periodic white bubbles.
“We’re in the water...” Liam says, standing not ten feet from me, but sounding so much farther away.
“Arco,” I say, but he doesn’t move. “Arco!” I move between him and the console, and over his shoulder, see the other version of him with blood completely covering his mouth and chin and soaking the front of his shirt.
“He won’t let go!” Avis says in the distance.
“He pulled off the filter!” Dr. Denison shouts from even farther away.
“Arco…” I turn to the version of him standing in front of me. “You have to go. Arco, you have to go now!”
He doesn’t move, so I start pushing his chest until he takes a step backward.
“Turn it off! Azeris, now!” Dr. Denison yells in the background.
“Arco, please!” I shout, and when he still doesn’t move, I kiss him, gripping his shirt between my fingers and holding on like if I didn’t, he would fall down a hole and be gone forever. I feel his hands close over my shoulders—actually feel them, which doesn’t make any sense. I pull back and look at him, into his eyes that are the same mossy color they’ve always been, but different...distant. He moves with me until we get to the opening with the other version of him still gripping the table and bleeding everywhere. “You have to go,” I whisper. “You have to go back.”
“Not without you,” he says.
“I’ll be there.”
“Promise me...”
“I promise. I promise...” I say, feeling the tears choking off my words. I push him as hard as I can back through the opening to the room. It seals the second after he falls through—after he falls and disappears into the bleeding version of himself, who finally lets go of the table and falls into blackness, washed away in white.
CHAPTER 46
Somewhere Between Us
Arco
“Keep his head steady!” Denison says against the backdrop of roaring wind. We’re moving, swaying… I hear the ocean surf and feel the spray on my face.
“Pull him up!” someone far in the distance says. Bright light comes out of nowhere, and even with my eyes closed, I have to turn away.
“What…?” I say, but there’s no one to hear me. I turn my head the other way and feel stabbing pain behind my eyes. Black closes in from the edges, but not before I see Denison clipped to a platform that’s directly below me and the heliocar following us.
“Easy…easy…” a woman’s voice says. “All right, we’re unlocked. Slide it on three, one…two…three…”
“Where is she?” I ask, trying to open my eyes, but the throbbing in my head spikes every time I try. “The wave is…coming. She’s on the beach…”
“Don’t talk, son,” Denison says. “Breathe…”
Something cold presses over my face—my nose and mouth—and the air is thinner, cooler. The pain in my head lessens enough that I can open my eyes, but what I see isn’t what I expect.
“What is this?” I say, but I can’t hear myself through whatever is on my face. I reach up to pull it off, but my arms are strapped down. I try to lift my head to get a better look, and the icepick between my eyes returns, bringing the tunnel vision back. Someone in red moves over me.
“Let’s not do that,” she says, but I can’t make out her face. She moves something cold to either side of my head and runs another strap between them over my forehead. I can’t look to the side anymore and I can’t sit up.
“Where is she!?” I shout this time, pushing against the straps holding me down. Everything flashes white, and a searing pain shoots between my eyes.
“Stop! Stop, son!” It’s Denison. The cover over my mouth moves away, and the air is thick and heavy again. The first breath I take feels like it’s pouring in and pooling at the back of my head.
“Jazz…” I say while I can, while I can still keep the words out of the deepening water. The water…
I see her again, pressing her hands against the glass. Her head is bleeding, but her eyes are open, searching. Debris washes past in the lights of the shuttle, in the muted light from the surface. Where are you…? Where are you…? I watch the streams of white bubbles pushing through the green and black water. They crash and dissipate against a dark shuttle. Where are you…?
The bubbles move into symbols, numbers…into coordinates.
“What is this? Look at the screen. Where is it coming from?” the woman’s voice says, making the image of Jazz in the shuttle warp and ripple in the rushing water.
“I’ll find you…” I say, pushing out her voice and focusing again on the shuttle—on the speed of the racing water and the turn of the current.
“It’s what he’s seeing,” Denison says, warping the images and the numbers again. This time I almost lose the image of her completely.
No! Stay there… I’ll find you… I think, holding out my hands to meet hers on the other side of the glass.
“That’s the Seaboard coast—ground zero, Briggs,” the woman’s voice says.
They can see this? I think, which costs me a little clarity in the image, but this time the numbers don’t freeze. I stop resisting their voices.
“He’s…stabilizing? I don’t understand it,” the woman’s voice says.
I concentrate on the coordinates. Can you see them? I think. Go there. Go there!
A wash of white bubbles floods the image of the shuttle. The water currents scatter the numbers in a hundred directions. Another wave. It wasn’t the tsunami yet, then… It’s still coming.
“Arco?” I hear her call my name, but the image is still lost in the white wash of the wave that has just crashed.
“I’m here. We’re coming… Hold on. We’re coming.”
“Are we moving?” she says in a tight voice.
“Another wave crashed over you.”
“Then we’re moving… Arco, you have to get out of the water,” she says, her voice getting thin.
“I’ll find you no matter where you go, do you hear me? Hold on!”
“You’re so cold… Why are you so cold?” she asks. “You have to get out of the water, Arco…”
“Jazz…I’m not in the water. Listen to me. I’m—I don’t know where I am. Somewhere between…us. Your head is bleeding. You have to stay awake, all right? You have to hold on,” I say, moving in closer and pressing my hands again to the glass. Her hands drop and splash the water rising around her waist. “No, no, no…Jazz—Jazz, stay awake! Damn it, we didn’t come from six miles under the ocean for you to drown here! Jazz! Denison! Where are you!?” I shout into the water and pound on the window with my fists. With the last crash, all the water disappears. All of it, just…gone.
“There! There in the trough! Send them! Send them!” the woman’s voice says again. “Watch that swell! We only have about five minutes!”
“We found them, son. Hold on—all of you, hold on!”
Beams of light spill over the shuttle, which is wedged in the sand. Four men in red flight suits drop down in a raft-sized basket, which lands near the roof of the shuttle. They b
reak the windows and send two of the men into the shuttle while the other two wait outside just as a bone-shattering roar floods everything and wipes away the image.
“No!” I say, but I barely hear my voice, only the continued roar all around. I blink a few times to make sure that the wall of water moving toward us on the horizon is actually what I’m seeing—the arcing dark mass rising in slow motion.
“He’s awake! Briggs! He’s fighting!” a woman says, but again, I can barely hear it over the noise flooding the air-transport we’re on.
“Let me up!” I shout, realizing the straps on my wrists are cutting into me as I struggle against them.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Denison shouts as he appears at my side.
“Let me up! I’m all right! Do you see any blood? Damn it, let me up before that tsunami gets here! You need this bed!”
Denison’s eyes flash to the screen next to me, and his face blanches. He shakes his head, pulling his hand down over his mouth and off his chin. He starts unstrapping my arms.
“OK, slow! Slow!” He holds up his hands as I push up. He shakes his head at me again and grabs an earpiece from the wall. He hooks it over my ear and taps the side. “You listen to me,” he says in a clear, booming voice. “I don’t know what kind of scrambled eggs you’ve made of your brain, or how you’ve managed to unscramble them—if you’ve even managed to unscramble them. The only reason you’re out of that flatbed is because the probabilities read you wouldn’t relapse, but if you stayed in it, you would. I don’t understand that, so you sit there and don’t do anything until I can figure it out, all right?”
Before I can answer, the long basket platform is back at the threshold. The two men standing on the perimeter are holding on to the ropes. They jump down into the transport and turn back to the basket platform.
Two more from inside it help lift Jax to the men who are waiting in the transport. They strap him onto one of the flatbeds, repeating the process for his dad, then Ms. Reynolt, Myra, and Fraya. Lyden and my sister are conscious, so they climb onto the platform quickly with the help of the men, who return their efforts to lift out someone I don’t know, and…Mr. Paxton? Jazz is the last one out of the basket. I move to the flatbed before they put her in it and shut the door. Denison crosses to us carefully between the flatbeds, where the men who have just closed the door begin attaching oxygen masks for everyone.
“Secure! Go! Go!” a woman says over the earpiece. Denison passes ear pieces to Lyden and Arwyn, who lean against the wall. Lyden clutches his chest and gasps.
“Breathe through your nose…in and out. Watch me,” Arwyn says. He complies and slowly starts breathing normally.
“Jazz…” I hold her face in my hands, feeling for her pulse. It’s strong, crite. “Hey, come on…come on,” I say, but then realize she probably can’t hear me. I grab another ear piece off the wall and slide it into place. Denison moves to her side and punches something into the small panel on the side of the flatbed. A hologram grid appears behind her head, populating with images.
“Category two concussion, and something strange here between her hemispheres…but that’s not related to the injury. She’ll feel that bump in the morning, though,” Denison says. “Put this on her,” he adds, handing me an oxygen mask.
“Jax? My dad?” she asks before I can secure it.
“A little waterlogged, but otherwise, they’re clean,” Denison says, blowing out a breath.
“You’re all right,” I say, looking back at Jazz. Her eyes are still closed, and I brush the dark hair away from her face to position the mask over her nose and mouth. It secures itself around the back of her head.“Everyone is all right. We did it… We did it.”
“Arco, look,” my sister says, but the only thing I can look at is Jazz as she opens her eyes slowly.
I watch the smile start in them before it spreads to corners of her mouth, covered by the mask. My chest constricts, pushing up a laugh, then another. I swallow hard to keep my throat from following suit and shutting off my words. But I only get one out before I lose that battle altogether. “Hey…”
CHAPTER 47
Transport
Jazz
I don’t know if he’s really there, looking down and smiling at me with bloodshot, glassy eyes. Maybe this is all happening in the space between us again. Wherever it is, as long as he’s with me, I’ll stay as long as it lasts.
“Hey…” he says. I smile, feeling something covering my face. I try to raise my hand to it but can’t move my arms. “Oxygen. And it’s free.” He chuckles.
I laugh, but it makes my head hurt. He takes off the body straps holding me in place, then the mask, and it’s immediately harder to breathe. But I don’t care.
“Jax…and my dad?” I say, trying to look for them.
“They’re OK. Denison is checking on them now. Everyone is OK.”
I take a deep breath because it finally feels like I can. His fingers brush the hair from my forehead and move over my cheek. He’s really here.
“I saw you there…” I say. “Under the water.”
“I saw you in the ship,” he replies, cocking an eyebrow for a second as he looks to the side in contemplation. “I guess that’s still technically under the water.”
“Arco—you need to look,” Arwyn says, then angles her head toward the cockpit window. I push to my elbows, which makes everything spin.
“Here, wait.” Arco moves his arm behind me, but then he suddenly stops and holds me against him. “Crite…there it is.”
I don’t see anything at first, but just as I’m about to ask what we’re supposed to be looking at, a burst of light erupts in the sky, sending out whips of lightning in several directions. Against the illuminated sky, the horizon is warping upward in an arc.
“Rally, Unit 792,” a woman’s voice says over the comms system in my ear. “Please be on the lookout for abnormal electrical activity surrounding you. We have tsunami confirmation with trough exposure. Estimated culmination within ten minutes. You should have visuals westbound. What’s your SA?”
“What’s she saying? That it will hit in 10 minutes?” I ask.
Arco nods. “It’s coming…”
“Copy, Control,” the pilot says. “In that case, we will not be out of range yet without a lift for the hitchhiker we picked up. Medical is stable and we have two Capables aboard. Please prioritize.”
“Copy that, 792. Phoenix Seven, confirm coordinates received and begin route to intercept 792’s drag. 792, you are cleared for landing on the roof of Skyboard Prep. Triage units are in place and they could use the Capables.”
“Phoenix Seven responding. Copy that, Control,” another ship says over the comms.
“Unit 792 responding, what he said, Control. Thank you.”
Arco blows out a breath, relieved just before another flash of light streaks across the dark sky and lights up the enormous bowing horizon.
“What hitchhiker? What does that mean?” I ask, pushing with my hands to sit up more.
“The heliocar we took. Azeris is still in it with Avis and Ellis. They brought me up on a platform like you. Denison came up with me.”
“You were in that room. I don’t know how—our channels, or whatever—you were just bleeding so much…”
“I didn’t have a choice…and then I didn’t want one,” Arco says, looking away.
Another flash streaks across the sky, lighting up everything like the middle of the day for several seconds. The wave on the horizon bends more steeply, moving like it’s floating in slow motion toward the shore.
“Arco…”
“It’s like I was inside that ship, Jazz. Like it was inside me. I wouldn’t have let go.” He chuffs a laugh and shakes his head. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but when you kissed me, it just—you cut me loose. You brought me back.”
Another crash of light blows up the sky, spider-webbing innumerable lightning streams.
“Crite, it’s the cloud…” Dr. Denison
says, then moves quickly to the cockpit. “Listen, that’s not an electrical storm up there. How soon until we can get on solid ground?”
“Running at least ten minutes in the headwinds,” the pilot answers.
The glowing outline of the explosion and lightning hangs in the air until another bright explosion obliterates them. In the light, the wave on the horizon stretches and sharpens to a peak.
“Where’s the ship?” I ask, feeling my chest start to hollow. “It was set to launch right into the explosions. Where’s the ship, Arco?”
“I killed the launch—the engines are offline.”
“But where is it?” I press.
“It’s…under the water somewhere. It has to be.”
“Phoenix Seven to 792, be advised we are relieving you of your hitchhiker—locking on. Stand by,“ the comms chatter again.
“Copy that, Phoenix Seven. Standing by. Try not to get cooked in your flying oven.”
“Copy that, 792, we will take that into consideration.”
The comms go quiet again for several seconds as the transport jerks and rattles. Several smaller pops of light stretch across the sky, but they don’t produce lightning flashes.
“What happens if we’re still in the air when the cloud comes down?” I ask.
Arco turns to me. “If the Grid goes down, so do their Nav controls. They’ll have to land blind.”
A flood of light fills another part of the sky, this one lingering longer than all the others. Lightning races from all sides, shooting into the horizon and straight overhead. No matter where I look, breaking diving and rolling waves streak the ocean surface, seemingly just to gather all the water ahead to feed it to the growing wall in their wake.
“Phoenix Seven to 792, be advised your hitchhiker has moved into our basement,” the comms start again. “Give us a three-second head start, then buster like your ass is on fire.”
“Copy that, Phoenix Seven. Much obliged. Meet you at the bird’s nest. 792 out.”
The transport hovers for another few seconds before turning sharply and picking up speed. The lights from the other transport are almost gone.