by s. Behr
“I still don’t understand why you’re doing this?” I whispered, feeling the gravity of what we were about to do.
There was a long stretch of silence, then she said, “I could say it is solely for the Ark, but that would not be true.”
“Then, why?”
“Because I believe in you.”
Her simple words caused a lump to form in my throat, making it hard to swallow. Finally, I managed to say, “I don’t know why you would, but thank you, Hailey. That means more than you can know.”
“Unless you tell me, of course.”
I grinned. “Of course.”
“You are very welcome, Your Highness. Now, stay focused. We have to keep moving.”
I stood and took a good look at the hatch. It was short and narrow like a door made perfectly for a ten-year-old. “Okay, Hailey, let’s go over it one more time.” My fingers trembled, and I hoped one last walk through would help me forget the pain in my shoulder and settle my nerves.
“Enter the unlocking sequence except for the last digit. Remember, do not enter the last number or it will alert her. Hook up the tablet to the red port. I need 8.23 seconds to get the information. As soon as you plug me in, it will alert the mainframe Hailey, and she will know we are here.”
She paused and added, “Don’t forget that the moment after you plug me in, you must enter the final number of the sequence and swing the door open. Because of the secondary thermal shield, it will take her ten seconds to initiate locking and closure of the hatch. You will not be able to stop it, so you must get your entire body clear of the door before it closes. You will have to leave me if you cannot disconnect me in time.”
Even after more than two hours of practicing the motions in the commander’s bedroom, having an injured shoulder was not something I had anticipated, and I was even less confident now than after Hailey had first revealed her plan. This was the only way to get the proof I needed, but I couldn’t leave Hailey here. I had to succeed. Shoving the pain aside and visualizing the sequence one more time, I exhaled.
“I can do this,” I told myself. I entered the unlocking code, and when I got to the end, I whispered, “Are you ready?”
“That was what I was going to ask you,” she said smartly.
“Display the countdown.” The suit’s headpiece allowing me to see in the dark had also been monitoring several statistics as I had traversed from the closet to this hatch. Now, the display had simplified into my surroundings, and the numbers 8.23 representing my Hailey and how much time I had to wait appeared on the left side of my vision, along with the number ten for the Ark Hailey on the right.
I pulled the tablet from my back pocket. “Okay, here goes nothing. Three, two, start.”
The timers began as soon as I attached the tablet to the red port with shaky fingers. I entered the last digit of the sequence and pushed the door open. It swung open smoothly. The screens twitched, and suddenly both timers were counting down evenly. I didn’t know what had happened, and I watched the time slip away as my heart thudded. The number three flashed, then two, and the door was already swinging back toward me with no intention of stopping. One.
I grabbed the tablet and jumped as far as I could to clear the door. The tablet slid across the dusty rubble, and I banged my head and knees, trying to catch myself in an effort not to crush Jane.
Watching the door seal shut, I rolled onto my back, relieved.
“We did it,” I said, but neither Hailey replied.
Finding beauty in unexpected places is like lightning in a stormy night sky. If you search too hard for the moon and the stars, you might miss the flash of brilliance and only see the rain.
Dust floated around me as I stared at the ceiling of the cave just outside the hatch. For a brief moment, I ignored how close we had come to disaster and let myself bask in the fact we escaped without losing any limbs or crushing Jane. But in the shadows several feet away, I saw the glint of the glass tablet.
Rolling onto my side, my shoulder screamed in protest. Pushing up with my one good arm, I ignored the pain as I scrambled for it. If I could see it, then so could the Ark Hailey. Grabbing the tablet, I glanced at the surface, seeing a few scuffs but no cracks. I immediately placed it back in the suit where it belonged and waited for my Hailey to resync. The throbbing in my shoulder worsened as the silence grew longer. I didn’t know how I was going to climb out of here.
“Please come back,” I whispered, fearing there was more damage to the tablet than I had realized.
Suddenly, Hailey’s loud, booming voice echoed throughout the cavern. “Breach at the Eastern Gate.”
My happiness crumbled when I realized it was the wrong Hailey. “Where are you?” I whispered into the suit. A faint buzzing answered, but nothing more.
I squeezed my arm, wincing at the sharp jolts of pain. Trying to shake it off, I focused on the light coming through a gap in the ceiling. That was our way out, and I knew, with or without Hailey, I had to stick to the plan. The suit’s visual display made seeing in the shadows easier, so I picked a path and kept moving with cautious steps. When I reached the top, I felt along the rim of the opening. Small pebbles dislodged, but overall, it was solid enough to hold my weight.
Pulling myself up into a small rocky alcove, it took everything I was not to scream as I could almost hear the fibers in my shoulder tear.
Nausea rose up my throat, choking me. Swallowing hard breaths of air, I got to my feet and leaned back against the wall. My vision swam with pain as I scanned the room, searching for my next step. By the rough, but precise corners, I could see this space had clearly been made by people rather than time. The room had three gray chiseled walls with one end completely open and bright with sunlight. After a minute of holding up the wall, breathing became a little easier, and gingerly, I stepped to the edge of the mouth.
To my surprise, a few feet away was an apple tree growing out of the side of the rock wall. Seeing our path out of this cave was clear, I let out a puff of relief. Then, the Ark door opened with a screech shattering the silence.
“Twigs,” I cursed, almost forgetting that the suit made me invisible, but I crouched back into the shadows just in case.
Out of the gate, three humans slowly emerged. Their backs were against each other, and their arms raised with palms facing out as if they were pushing the air in front of them. Their heads swiveled back and forth slowly, while their feet moved skillfully across the uneven rocky floor.
As they stepped away from the gate, they fanned out, each moving into different remnants of the cave in I had caused. With each step, their attention occasionally dipped toward their wrists as they continued a thorough sweep of the cavern.
“I’m not reading anything but rocks over here.”
On the farthest and the dimmest side of the cave, I heard a deep voice resonate from one of the largest men I had ever seen. He was even larger than Rall, the captain of the King’s Royal Guard. Even from this distance, I could still see the man’s muscles straining the seams of his uniform. His skin was not as dark as Rall’s, but if you went from size and shape, they could have been brothers.
“Same here, Chief,” the other soldier said.
My attention jerked across the cave, surprised I hadn’t realized this one was female. Almost every position in Amera was based on skill, so there was an equal mix of men and women. But this was a human woman with no engineered abilities, and it made me wonder if that mattered to the Hg-1.
Her hair was a strange mix of spiky dark strands that had silver streaks in deliberate patterns, making it hard to tell how old she was. But even though she was wearing the same black uniform I had seen on the screen, I could tell she was strong and confident. She moved with the same grace that all the guards in Amera seemed to have. Rall, along with his other duties, was tasked to be my personal trainer, and he had tried to instill that kind of fluidity into my training for almost a decade. Watching this girl move made one thing clear—I had a lot to learn.
&nb
sp; The giant man and the woman continued their sweeps, moving toward the walls of the cave and out of my view. I recognized the third human who was walking almost directly toward me as the self-proclaimed leader, Lance Yzer.
After studying his image for so long from the video loop, I would have known his face anywhere. Seeing him in person, he was larger than I expected him to be. Not quite as tall as the giant, but he was easily a head taller than the female in the group. His hair was dark and had shades of red and gold. He had deeply bronzed skin, making him appear as if he spent all day, every day in the sun.
He was definitely the youngest of the three, but if it was possible, he moved with even more grace and confidence than his companions. With the enhanced visual display of my suit, I could see a faint glow coming from the palms of his gloved hands. And in the forearm of his uniform, it looked as if there was tech embedded within the fabric. I was curious how similar it was to the suit I wore.
Jane stirred, and I worried that her sedation was wearing off. I didn’t dare move a muscle until Lance said, “All Clear. Whatever the A.I. detected must have been an animal. It’s long gone.”
“Or a glitch. Who knows how reliable this ancient tech is?” the large man retorted.
Lance threw him a sideways glance, and the larger man shifted to a rigid stance. “Sir. The area is clear; what are your orders?”
“Get back inside and continue your search, we’re running out of time,” Lance Yzer replied. His casual authority impressed me.
“Yes, Sir,” the giant answered, raising his arm to his chest. He spun on his heels and went back into the Ark.
The girl lingered, taking an extra scan of the area. As I watched the two humans directly below me, the woman gazed at Lance who continued inspecting the cavern.
“Lance, I’m not getting anything outside the cavern either, not even a bird. Amant,” she said, pressing into him in a way that made me think she knew him on a more personal level than the average soldier relationship. “I know what this mission means to you, your father, but taking it out on the others isn’t going to help.”
His face jerked toward her, and for a moment I thought he might yell at her too. Then, he sighed and said, “I know how everyone feels about me leading this mission. It doesn’t help that he sent you here as well.”
“I am only here to make my father happy; this has nothing to do with yours or the Homeland,” she replied, straightening her shoulders.
“We both know that’s not true,” he said, stepping away from her.
A simmer of emotions crossed her face as Lance donned a mask of the perfect soldier, and after a weighted pause, the woman turned away. With a last glance back at Lance, she said, “I won’t let you down, Sir.” Then, she followed the same path as the giant.
Whatever had passed between the two humans, my body was beyond caring. I was on the verge of succumbing to the pain, and I needed to get moving before my arm was completely useless.
After yet another scan of the cavern, their leader’s gaze shifted to where I was perched. To my horror, Lance walked to the wall directly under me, his head craned upward, staring at the tree next to me. I held my breath, clutching Jane, as a jolt of terror rushed through me.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the voice in my head I hadn’t heard in weeks practically yelled, “Violet!”
I gasped, and Lance’s gaze snapped to my exact location. My heart pounded as I prayed the suit kept me hidden. Lance took a few steps backward, and with a puzzled look, he studied the wall below me. The human turned away; I hoped with the intention of heading back into the Ark. My wave of relief evaporated, however, when he charged at the wall, running a few feet straight up, then springing even higher as he made a grab for a sliver of space within the rock face. I nearly fell over in a mix of shock and awe.
Scaling the wall using his arms and legs like a spider, he moved with precision as he propelled his body upward. From the strain, I could see he wasn’t using any special abilities other than his apparent gift for rock climbing. He reached the apple tree and after a few tugs to test its stability, he pulled himself onto the trunk with nimble grace, coming to rest on a sturdy branch hanging thirty feet in the air with nothing below him except a painful floor of rock if he fell.
He stared at the apples hanging next to him with a strange look of disbelief and plucked one off. Without bothering to dust it off, he took a bite. Apple juice dripped down his chin as he took another bite, then another. I sat there in agony, waiting as he finished off the fruit and let the core drop to the ground.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. A soft breeze fluttered the leaves around him and like the breeze, he turned without warning and leapt from the tree into the alcove. I flinched backward as he landed inches from me in the opening of the cave.
While cursing at this human’s relentlessness and my bad luck, he crossed the room and crouched at the hole I had climbed out of. He studied the ground. My heart pounded in my ears, and I was sure he could hear the blood pumping in my veins. Finally, he stood and walked back to the edge of the alcove, and I could almost see the ideas filter through his mind as he tried to figure out how someone could get out of here undetected.
He shook his head as if it were impossible. If only he knew how right he was. As he leaned against the wall only a foot from me, at most, I was too terrified to move, too terrified to breathe. Could he sense me, hear me? Would he be able to smell the lavender soap I used on Jane this morning? I wasn’t sure what the suit could save me from, and I was still sweating from the vent. I was a frozen blend of terror and curiosity being this close to a human.
His dark hair glinted with shades reminding me of a pear tree in autumn. His face and body were hard with muscles like he trained relentlessly and ate his meals with the same kind of ferocious precision he had used to climb up the rock wall. His jaw flexed as he looked around the alcove, and I thought it was a miracle his teeth didn’t crack from the strain.
This close, I could see the color of his eyes. They were a strange mix of shades of green that were so dark in spots they could have been black to shades of amber like a setting sun. It never occurred to me that I could find anything about a human beautiful. But I did.
“Boss, you have to get back in here and see this,” a gruff voice came from his suit, shattering the stillness between us.
“I’ll be right there. I have to check one more thing before I head back,” he answered with a shade of annoyance. He kicked off the wall and walked back to the hole.
“Copy,” the gruff voice replied, followed by a soft beep.
Out of his back pocket, Lance pulled out a small disc that he squeezed and with a pop, it illuminated. Throwing it into the hole, he watched as the sound of the light tumbled down the rocks toward the hatch below. Lowering his feet into the hole, I let out a small breath, knowing my chance to leave was coming when another small series of beeps made us both freeze.
He took a deep breath, and with a press of a button on his sleeve, he said, “Greetings Father.”
I could not hear the man he was speaking to, but by the way Lance’s back straightened, it was clear his father commanded respect, even if he wasn’t there to see it. Lance picked up a small rock sitting by his knee and tossed it in the air, caught it, then tossed it again without even looking. The third time he caught the rock he froze, his knuckles turning white with the poor stone in his hand. I guessed the conversation wasn’t going his way.
“The Ark has more security layers than we had accounted for,” Lance said in an even voice, despite every muscle in his face hardening. After another pause, he said, “She is not just a computer. The A.I. is far more advanced than we had anticipated.” His lips pressed into a thin line as his father spoke at length, both of us rigid as we waited for this chat to end.
“I understand what the mission is, but you are going to have to trust me,” Lance said. “I will find what we came for; it won’t come to that. We will find it before the Amerans know it even e
xists.” He sat there, his facial muscles tensing, and I could hear his teeth grinding from where I stood. Finally, he said, “Copy. Lance out.”
I watched him sit there frozen with frustration when suddenly, the rock that was in his hand hurdled toward me faster than it was possible to move out of the way.
In the span of a second, I learned that while the suit protected me from being seen, it did nothing to prevent a rock from hitting me with all the rage the human had thrown along with it.
I choked, unable to stop a cry from escaping me. I stilled from the pain and the dread that he had heard me, but when I looked up, Lance had already jumped. I was finally free to crumple in pain, wondering how I was going to climb out of here with a torn shoulder and a broken rib.
In the last two weeks, pain and I had become good friends, but this new ache in my side was special. My eyes were shut so tight that I saw stars, and breathing was something I had to convince myself was necessary.
I heard echoes of Lance’s movements coming up from the depths near the hatch. Still, even the fear of being found was not enough to motivate me to move.
“Violet!” I heard my name spoken in a strange unison of two familiar voices.
“It’s no use,” I cried, trying to stand.
“Princess Violet.” I heard Hailey’s concerned voice distinctly. I tried to speak, but only a stifled moan came out.
“I can’t move,” I thought miserably.
“Yes, you can.” This time the other voice answered. The one I had thought was gone forever.
“Where have you been?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“As if you didn’t know. You were the one giving me the silent treatment.” I was in pain, and I was confused. I was so happy to hear him, but what did it mean that he was back?
“I am here now,” he said gently.
“You have impeccable timing.” The entire right side of my body screamed, demanding my attention.