Thirteen Rising

by Romina Russell

  For a brief moment, the fog lifts a little in my mind, and I see Crompton standing before me, flanked by a Stargazer and a Dreamcaster. As I raised my Scarab to shoot him, the Zodai beside him raised weapons of their own—an Arclight and—

  “I was hit by a Sumber, too,” I say, piecing it together out loud as I go. “I think it was a few days after you. But how did we find each other here?”

  Her gaze loses its intensity as her focus drifts away. “The Sumber’s mind control must run off Psynergy . . . and our Psynergy signatures must be naturally drawn to each other. What can you remember from before you fell? Who shot you?”

  As usual, while I’m still trying to process the new information, she’s pressing us onward. If we were in class, Deke would be groaning and begging our instructor to ban Nishi from the room until the rest of us mastered the lesson.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asks in surprise.

  “I just really missed you,” I say, reeling her in for another, longer hug. Neither of us says anything as we hold each other, and I close my eyes as I breathe in her thick, dark hair. Even now, unwashed and in an alternate dimension, it still holds hints of the expensive, lavender-scented products she imports from Sagittarius. “I’m going to find you,” I whisper, tears threatening to overtake me again.

  “I know, Rho—”

  She cuts out and yanks on my hand, and we leap off the bed just as an explosion blasts above us, and the ceiling comes crashing down on the mattress.

  “RUN!” she shouts.

  Fingers laced together, we burst out of my room and hurtle down the hallway, ducking our heads and skidding to stops as chunks of the cement compound begin crumbling down around us. “Don’t let go!” calls Nishi over the deafening quaking and thundering.

  We turn the corner toward the dining hall and freeze as a massive ball of fire rolls our way. She shrieks, and I pull us in a new direction.

  The air grows hotter with every breath as the fire burns up more and more of our oxygen until I shove open a searing red door, and we topple into the swimming complex. Sucking in synchronized breaths, we leap into the salt water.

  We stay down as long as we can, and when we finally surface for air, there’s no trace of fire, not even a wisp of smoke. “What’s next?” I ask between breaths.

  “Something worse,” says Nishi darkly. “It’s always something worse.”

  We climb out of the pool and take each other’s hands again as we step through the red door—only we’re no longer in the Academy.

  The gray hall has turned glossy black, and it extends infinitely in either direction. The feeling that I’m being watched is back, and I pull Nishi along with me through the passage at a quick clip.

  “How do we wake up from the Sumber?” I ask as we hurry hand in hand past symmetrical rows of nondescript doors.

  “It’s not up to us. Whoever has our bodies has to administer the antidote.”

  I slow down in disgust at the thought of someone else having complete control over me. And suddenly the polished ground rises before us like a black wave.

  Nishi’s grip on me tightens as we start to slide backwards, and we wheel around to run in the opposite direction—but we skid to a stop as the path ahead starts rising, too.

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  Nishi yanks open one of the nondescript doors, and we escape into an unknown room. As the door shuts behind us, I look around and see we’re standing in the entrance hall to Zodai University.

  Every campus includes this identical chamber, a remnant from the days when all our worlds were ruled as one. The mismatched walls are crafted from stone, and they represent the four elements—sapphire for water, tigereye for earth, ruby for fire, and gold for air. On the ceiling above us is the ancient crest of the Zodiac Galaxy: a massive Helios with twelve sunbeams, each one pointing to a different House symbol. Within the sun is our old name: Houses of Helios.

  I used to cut through this place every morning when I visited the solarium.

  “Where’d the door go?” asks Nishi.

  I turn to see there’s no longer the outline of a doorway in the wall made of rubies, and I hear a strange flickering sound. “What is that?”

  “Do you smell—”

  Nishi’s voice cuts out as a blast of red flame blazes out from the wall, like a fiery hand reaching out for us.

  We leap across the room, falling back against the wall of cool sapphires. “What’s happening?” I shout as water starts to shower down from the blue wall, drowning my words and drenching us both.

  Since the fire’s flames are still reaching out for us, we tread along the wall of gold to avoid the water and the heat—until a strong gust of wind punches out from behind us, blowing our bodies across the room.

  Nishi and I lose hold of each other, and my back hits the tigereye wall, and then I slide down to the floor. Behind me the stones tremble from the impact.

  Water is still falling from the sapphire wall, and by now it’s about a foot high, so I’m soaked once more. Nishi reaches down to pull me up, and then we back away from the brown wall as its shaking intensifies.

  Tigereye stones begin dislodging and rolling down like pebbles, spraying our heads and faces and legs until we’re forced to huddle together in the middle of the room, equidistant from all four sides.

  “What happens if we die?” I ask Nishi, shouting over all the noise.

  “Each time we survive a danger, a new, worse threat is waiting for us,” she says, shivering as more of the flames are drowned by the rising water. “And it keeps going until the dream finally kills us, and a new nightmare begins.”

  I flash to Corinthe’s torture; I instantly shove the image away, terrified that the mere thought could re-trigger it.

  The water is now up to my waist, and it seems to be pouring in faster and faster. “If we drown, will you and I be separated?”

  Nishi doesn’t answer, but she tightens her grip on my hand as my feet float off the ground. “When Imogen shot me, how did you escape the Party?”

  Whether she’s asking from curiosity or just to distract us from our imminent deaths, I’m glad to feel useful one last time. I furrow my brow in concentration, and I find that the more I focus on the past, the better I remember it.

  “It was . . . my Mom.”

  “What?” Nishi’s amber irises grow bright with wonder.

  “She saved me.” As I say the words, the full memory unfurls: “Hysan found her. They were working together in secret for weeks—”

  Our heads bob against the Houses of Helios emblem on the ceiling, and we cling to each other as our faces tilt up into the last layer of air. I pull in as deep an inhale as possible before we’re sucked under.

  It’s pitch black all around us, more like Space than underwater, and I feel bubbles streaming from my nostrils as we descend deeper and deeper and deeper. My head starts to pound from the lack of oxygen, and Nishi’s hand grows limp in mine, and I know soon this will all be over.

  Suddenly my boot brushes against something solid, and I reach down and feel the ground. There’s some kind of metal lever sticking up from the floor.

  I try to push it down with one hand, but I can’t. Nishi must realize what I’m doing because she frees her fingers from mine and wraps both hands around the metal, and together we try shoving it.

  The lever gives way, and water begins to whirlpool around us as a drain opens in the floor, and all of it swirls away. As I finally draw breath, I turn to my best friend in relief—and I run out of oxygen again.

  Nishi’s sprawled on the ground, her long dark hair fanned around her.

  Dead.

  4

  “NISHI, NO!”

  I drop down beside her fallen body, her eyes closed and chest unmoving. Remembering my childhood training, I apply chest compressions and administer mouth to mouth, again and again an
d again. “Don’t leave me alone here, Nish, please,” I beg as tears well in my eyes, and I press down on her chest yet again—

  Her eyes fly open, and she starts coughing up water.

  Air rushes out of my lungs as quickly as it rushes into hers, and I help her sit up, the tension in my body finally easing. When it’s clear she’s going to be okay, I finally take note of our surroundings.

  We’re in a supersized supply closet lined with aisles upon aisles of shelves. Compression suits, helmets, oxygen tanks, and other gear are stacked alongside weapons like Tasers, pistols, and Ripples.

  I help Nishi to her feet, and we survey the supplies around us. Then she wordlessly grabs a pistol and starts filling her pockets with extra ammunition, and I raise a Ripple to eye level, resting its butt against my shoulder. It’s House Cancer’s signature weapon, but it’s considered mostly ceremonial, since Cancrians don’t have a violent gene in us.

  Unless our loved ones are threatened.

  The crossbow device is made of tightly woven strands of Sea Spider silk that propel up to a dozen slender darts whittled from nar-clam shells and dipped in the paralyzing poison of a Maw. The weapon isn’t light, but its weight is comfortable, making the device sturdy enough to keep steady.

  Even though I’ve never held one before, it feels familiar. As Nishi hands me extra dart cartridges, she says, “Remember that Protector of the Planets holo-game you used to love playing because it always greeted you by announcing to the whole entertainment center that you had one of the highest scores?”

  “That’s not why I loved playing it—”

  “The Ripple is just a fancier version of the crossbow you always used in there,” she finishes.

  It feels like years since the carefree days when I used to hologram myself into that virtual reality world. The game would provide players with a weapons cache that holds twelve devices, and now that I think about it, they all seemed a lot like watered-down versions of the signature weapons of every House.

  “I always chose the crossbow,” I muse out loud.

  Nishi strides up to a different shelf and pulls down a couple of blue space suits with the university’s logo. She hands one to me. “In case the walls come down around us,” she says with a shrug.

  Since she means that literally, we pull the suits on over our uniforms. “So where’s your mom been this whole time?” she asks as we change.

  “With the Luminaries.” It’s getting easier to lower my guard with Nishi around, and I continue pushing down on the walls that barricade my memories to keep filling in the blanks. “It’s a secret society of people who’ve Seen the Last Prophecy, which is—”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of the Last Prophecy,” she says dismissively as we clip black helmets to our belts and holster our weapons. “There are tons of conspiracy nuts on Sagittarius who believe in it.”

  “It’s real, Nish. The master himself confirmed it.”

  She stops working and steps closer to me, staring into my eyes. “Who’s the master?”

  “Crompton.” For some reason, I whisper the name. “He’s the original Aquarius.”

  Her face pales, and she begins to shake her head. “No way—”

  “It’s true, Nish. He betrayed Ophiuchus to the other Guardians and stole his Talisman to keep his immortality for himself—”

  An arrow flies over our heads, and we duck.

  Without looking back, we hurtle down the aisle, holding hands, running past rows of shelves in search of an exit as more arrows shoot after us. A dart lodges into the wall a hair behind me, and items keep exploding over our heads.

  “There!” shouts Nishi, and she pulls me down a row that dead-ends in a metal elevator, its doors opening like it’s welcoming us in. An arrow bounces off the helmet clipped to my hip as we slide inside.

  Nishi frantically presses the button to close the doors, and while we wait for them to shut, I catch a glimpse of our pursuer. He’s in a billowing black cloak, his facial features shrouded in his hood’s shadow. And as he marches toward us, I realize he isn’t human.

  Twin walls of metal swallow the view before I can see more, and I blow out a hard breath as we ascend somewhere—anywhere.

  “What’s the plan?” I ask Nishi. “While we wait for someone to save us, we’re just condemned to live out our worst nightmares?”

  She shakes her head. “The antidote alone isn’t enough.” Her voice sounds small again. “Even if you’re dosed, you won’t escape until you’ve faced your greatest fear.”

  “My greatest fear? Nish, this whole place is one huge fear fest!”

  “You don’t understand. This is the final thing the nightmare world is keeping from you—it’s the blow that breaks you.” Her voice grows rough, and she clears her throat.

  Deke’s death must’ve been the last memory she recovered. Her greatest fear was probably a future without him.

  “That’s why some people never awaken from a Sumber dose,” she explains. “And I think that’s probably why you’re still here.”

  The person I’ve forgotten clouds my mind again. The one I expected to see at the hospital . . .

  The elevator opens.

  We raise our weapons quickly but step out slowly. The metal doors shut behind us, and we find ourselves in the place that was literally and figuratively the brightest point of my time on Elara. It’s the highest peak in the whole compound, a wide room with windowed walls that curve to form a windowed ceiling.

  The solarium.

  Silver starlight glints across the collection of moonstone statues that are modeled after our Holy Mothers, and written across the floor beneath them is the Zodai axiom: Trust Only What You Can Touch. Any fantasies I ever had about the future were born in this room.

  “No way out again,” says Nishi, and I realize she’s right—the only exit is the elevator. And its doors are opening again.

  “Hide,” I whisper, and I pull Nishi into the collection of stone statues. I place her behind Mother Crae, and then I hide behind the neighboring sculpture of Mother Origene. I’m in the exact spot where Mathias used to sit when he meditated.

  I rest the Ripple against my shoulder, and from the corner of my eye I see Nishi aiming her gun at the elevator as our pursuer steps into the silver light.

  I can’t tell if the gasp is mine or Nishi’s.

  The creature’s legs are as thin as sticks, and tucked into its sides are great feathery wings. It’s the one-eyed bird-man.

  Its beak is still steeped in blood, and adorning its head is a crown of pointy thorns—they’re the arrows it’s been shooting at us. Trying to steady my nerves, I lean out the slightest bit and aim my weapon at its chest.

  When I see that Nishi’s also in position, I shout, “Now!” We fire at the same time, and the bird-man immediately goes down.

  We approach it carefully, and Nishi hangs back, her pistol pointed at its head, while I make sure it’s really dead.

  I lean over its cloaked body slowly . . . and it rears up and launches at me.

  We crash to the floor, where the creature easily overpowers me. Pinned down, I feel strong hands wrapping around my neck—not wings, but human hands. Blackness drowns my vision as I choke, and my pulse echoes in my ears, my throat afire—

  A bullet goes off, and my attacker’s hands fall away.

  He slumps to the side, and through my blurry vision I see Nishi, her chest rising and falling with adrenaline, her face set in a warrior’s scowl.

  “Stellar,” I say hoarsely, and she reaches down and pulls me up. I rub my throat as we stare at the human man beneath us, facedown on the floor.

  “Let’s flip him,” I say. Nishi takes his feet and I grab his shoulders, and together we turn him over.

  Nishi gasps, but I don’t understand.

  I stare at each individual feature like it’s a clue: the blond curls, the sun-k
issed skin, the open and glassy green eyes.

  Then I blink, and all at once the pieces come together.

  And I scream.

  5

  DESPAIR DROWNS ME, AND I remember the Cathedral, watching my brother and Aryll roll around on the bone floor, struggling to overtake each other. I see Hysan and Mathias running to help Stan, but they’re too late.

  There’s no cry or gunshot or blood—there’s only Stan’s pale green eyes as they turn toward me, lifeless.

  My heart howls in agony, and it feels like every bone in my body is breaking. I’m coming apart bit by bit, painfully, permanently, and even if the heartbreak doesn’t kill me, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll never recover.

  I’ve already lost everything I loved in the Zodiac. My brother, my home, my House. Returning to reality would be the true nightmare now. I’m safer in here, where the horrors aren’t real.

  “It’s okay, Rho, it’s okay, calm down. . . .”

  Nishi’s murmurs of reassurance blow softly into my ear, and as her voice comes into focus, I register that I’m on the floor, sobbing hysterically beside my brother’s body, held up only by my best friend’s arms.

  “It’s going to be okay, I promise,” she goes on gently. “This isn’t real. Don’t let this place destroy you, Rho. I need you. Please, focus—this is just another nightmare.”

  Nishi’s presence is proof I was wrong—I do have a reason to return.

  Just one.

  “He—Aryll—killed him,” I spit out between sobs, my teeth chattering and limbs shivering. “The master told Aryll to take my mom, and my brother attacked him to try to save her. But I don’t even know if she—if she made it out—” My muscles feel gelatinous, and I sink down further until my head is pressed into Nishi’s chest cavity.

  She inhales sharply. “You mean, he’s actually . . . oh, Rho. I’m so sorry,” she breathes, her voice choking with her own sobs.

  “I don’t want to go back,” I say, shaking my head vehemently against her. “I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to go back—”