Skylar turned to me, and I didn’t like the smug look on her face. “Tell him what you told us earlier, Leo.”
“What did he tell you?” Mason said.
Skylar lifted her chin. “That he’s a captain.”
“Of what?” Mason smirked. “An oolak wrestling team?”
“Hey.” I frowned at him. “I just saved your life, pal.”
The smile slipped from Mason’s face. “Good point. Sorry.” His brow furrowed. “Where are you from? Not seen you before.”
“The captain doesn’t remember,” Skylar said as the pencils set to work on her brother again, moving across Mason’s skin. “Says he’s lost all of his memories.”
“I have lost my memories,” I muttered.
Skylar cocked her head. “Still know your name, though, huh?”
“Most of my memories,” I corrected. “I’ve lost most of them. Okay?”
Skylar huffed and looked away. What was her freakin’ issue?
With everyone’s attention back on Mason, I removed my EVA pack, oversuit and gloves. Then I rolled up my undersuit sleeves and examined a few scrapes and bruises.
They hurt.
“Want me to fix those?” Eve asked, making me jump. She unclipped from the wall a device around the size of an electric toothbrush with a curved nozzle and stepped toward me.
I shook my head like the big brave boy I was and covered the wounds with my sleeves again.
Regardless, Eve fired the device at the back of my hand, and a scratch healed itself.
“Thanks,” I muttered. All I wanted to do was find my grandmother. The sooner I found Alice and got the heck out of this crazy game, the quicker I could have a family at home, together, back in the real world.
As Eve clipped the healing device to her belt, I thought about the game itself, along with all the destruction outside the ship, and knew nothing would be so cut and dried.
“What the hell were you playing at?” Skylar stepped over to her brother as he sat up. “You could have died.”
“I know,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”
“Wait.” Skylar gripped Mason’s arm before he had time to seal the suit at the collar. She pulled it down, leaned in, and gasped. “Where’s your Bluestone?”
At the top of his right cyborg bicep, near the shoulder, was an empty slot one inch long by half an inch wide.
Mason winced. “That’s why I couldn’t break myself free.” He looked at me, then back to his sister. “I’ll go find it once we get the chance.”
To my surprise, Skylar hugged her brother. “I thought I’d lost you.” She pulled back. “Where are Mum and Dad?”
Mason lowered his gaze.
Skylar stepped away. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know where they went,” Mason said. “Kelvin told me they’d be fine.”
“How could he know that?” Skylar said in a shrill voice. “I mean”—she waved a hand in the direction of the corridor—“have you seen the fleet?”
“Leo and I just flew through the remains of it, didn’t we?” Mason shot back.
“Why was everyone in stasis?” I said.
“For the journey to Antares.” Eve opened a cupboard near the floor, removed four bottles of blue liquid, and handed them out.
“Is there any food in there?” Mason asked her.
She checked the cupboard’s shelves. “No. Sorry.”
Mason looked at me. “Artificial intelligence runs most Antarian fleet operations.” He took a sip of his drink. “But Admiral Floyd still insists on a skeleton crew to monitor things. We’re flying to Antares.” He frowned. “At least, we were.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Is Antares a planet?”
Does it have anything to do with Grandma? Is Alice there? Is that why the CodeX shoved me into the middle of this nightmare?
“Antares is an underground city on a planet,” Eve said. “The birthplace of Bluestone. We’re racing the Kraythons to try and stop them destroying it.”
“Bluestones are the magical crystals you’re all using, right?” I pointed at the devices they wore and attempted to wrap my mind around how these people combined magic and technology.
“Why are we telling him all this?” Skylar jerked a thumb at me. “We shouldn’t say anything until we figure out who he really is.”
“Each Bluestone crystal has a different ability,” Eve said, still addressing me. “You find out what when you bond to them.”
“Bond?” I said.
“Bonding to an artifact means you can control its powers,” Mason said. “It’s kinda hard to explain, but you can feel their ability. Most people can bond with at least a Class Three artifact.”
“Can more than one person bond to a single artifact?” I asked.
“Not at the same time,” Skylar said. “That’s impossible, but you can bond to other people’s artifacts when they’re not using them. Some of us can, anyway.”
I nodded, remembering how she’d borrowed Eve’s glasses to look inside my skull.
“There are three classes of Bluestone artifact,” Eve said. “Class ones are the most powerful, and class threes are the least.”
“We all have class two artifacts.” Mason gestured between himself, Skylar, and Eve. “We got the opportunity to bond to them when we were twelve.”
“And then you lost yours,” Skylar muttered.
“Whatever.” Mason jumped from the examination table and faced me. “The fleet searches for Class One artifacts. That’s why we’re all here.”
“The Azurean monks scattered them across the galaxy,” Eve said in response to my puzzled expression. “Each is heavily protected by tasks and trials, but that doesn’t stop the Kraythons going after them too.”
As the others drank, I opened my bottle and sniffed the contents, getting a faint sweet aroma. “What is this?”
“Drink,” Eve said. “It’s good for you.”
I hesitated, then took an experimental sip.
Warmth slid down my throat and into my belly, and my health meter rose from eighteen percent to twenty.
“Hmm. Good stuff.” I took several deep chugs, and the meter climbed. Twenty-five percent, thirty-four, forty-two . . . By the time I reached the bottom of the bottle, my health had stopped on a respectable sixty-four percent, but my cuts and bruises remained.
I let out a breath. Much better. I handed the empty bottle back to Eve with a muttered, “Thanks.”
She returned the bottles to a rack inside the cabinet, clamping them into place. Brushes descended, cleaning both the insides and outsides, and rinsing them several times with water. Once cleaned, a purple light moved up and down the bottles, then nozzles descended, refilling each with more of the blue liquid and finishing up by securing new caps.
My gaze moved to Skylar’s crystal pendant. “What can that do?”
“From my point of view, time slows down,” she said. “But my artifact only makes it seem that way. It actually speeds up my reactions.”
“Like when you have an accident?” I said. “Time appears to slow down.”
She nodded, and I remembered the moment Skylar had attacked me in the hallway, and how bloody fast she’d moved.
Now it made sense.
It was a neat magical gadget to own.
I wanted one of those too.
Turning to Eve, I said, “Your glasses can see through walls?”
“Everything apart from metal.”
I thought back to the way she’d gazed into my noggin and imagined Eve seeing the CodeX implant nestled inside. That was awesome on the one hand, but at the same time, not so much.
“Can I have a Bluestone artifact?”
What could I use to help me find my grandmother?
Skylar folded her arms. “There’s one in your thick head. You, of all people, should know that.”
My eyes widened. There was an actual crystal in my head?
Mason looked at his sister. “Say that again.”
“
Leo has a CodeX implant,” she said, clearly annoyed about it.
It wasn’t my fault. That was Ayesha’s doing.
Mason gestured toward me. “Leo? Him? he has a CodeX?”
“Yep.”
Mason’s eyes sparkled. “That’s fantastic news. We’ll be okay, then, won’t we?” He looked between Skylar and Eve. “This will all work out.”
“Leo’s implant isn’t activated,” Eve said.
“Oh.” Mason’s shoulders slumped. Then he clicked his fingers. “We’ll find Kelvin, and he can activate it.”
As Mason beamed at me, I had a bad feeling, unsure why having an implant meant we’d all be okay. The impression I’d got from Ayesha was the CodeX implant was a mega-encyclopedia or an assistant guiding me through the game. That, of course, had sounded pretty great at the time. Something propping up my poor memory and equally limited thinking ability would come in handy. The rest of the game would be a breeze, if only the stupid thing worked.
“Only a few other people are known to have CodeX implants,” Eve said. “One of them is in the Antarian fleet.”
“Who’s that?”
“Admiral Floyd.”
“But the admiral is on the Leviathan, not here.” Mason scratched his chin. “So if we can get your implant working, you can use it to help us.”
“Right.” I tapped the top of my head. “CodeX, on.” I waited, but nothing happened.
Skylar rolled her eyes.
An explosion tore through the ship, throwing us across the room. I slammed into the wall, slid to the floor, and covered my head with my arms as debris rained down around us.
Twenty-One
The world collapsed around me, and I waited for everything to stop moving.
Mason pulled me to my feet. “Are you okay?”
I blinked away the dust and coughed. “Never better.”
Large chunks of the medical bay’s ceiling lay strewn about the room.
“We need to get moving,” Eve said, rubbing her neck.
“Wait.” Skylar faced her brother. “What were you doing before all this started?”
“Helping Kelvin,” he said with a shrug.
“To do what?”
Mason gave me an uneasy look. “I don’t know.”
Skylar glowered as if she was about to hit him again. “How can you not know, Mason?” She glared at him. “None of this makes any sense.”
Eve stared at me, and I figured she was trying to remember if she’d met me before the disaster.
My stomach tensed. Oh no.
She knew I was an imposter.
My gaze moved to Mason and Skylar as I wondered what they’d do if they found out who I really was. Probably blame me for the fleet tragedy.
I clenched my fists, remembering Ayesha’s warning about not telling anyone. I couldn’t let that happen under any circumstances. If the three of them suspected for even a nanosecond that I was anything other than what I said, I didn’t stand a chance of finding my grandmother. My breath quavered as I tried to keep my panic contained.
“Look,” Mason said in response to his sister’s glare, “all I know is Kelvin brought me out of stasis and said we had to get you three.” He pointed at Skylar, Eve, and me. “He said nothing beyond that. He only had time to tell me we were under attack and we had to hurry.” His expression darkened. “Next thing I know, pandemonium—the fleet’s getting torn apart. So we dragged your stasis beds into the corridor.” He looked at his sister. “You’re asking me why Kelvin kept us here? I don’t know.”
Another rumble reverberated through the ship. I threw out a hand and steadied myself against the wall, not sure how much more I could take.
“We saw what happened on the security feed,” Skylar said. “Still doesn’t explain why you snatched him.” She pointed at me but kept her attention on her brother.
“I don’t know the answer to that either,” Mason said, and he seemed to be on the level. “Kelvin insisted we take Leo from the stasis bay. I wouldn’t be standing here now if we hadn’t.” He glanced between Skylar to Eve. “I trust Kelvin. There will be a logical reason for all this. We find him, we get answers.”
“Then we need to go to the bridge.” Eve strode to the door.
“We’re still going to the bridge?” Skylar said. “Why?”
“To talk to the captain.” Eve marched into the corridor. “We must tell him about Kelvin.”
Skylar followed her out. “Kelvin’s dead, Eve.”
“Don’t say that.” Mason hurried after them, and I kept close behind. “He has to be alive, I know it. If I survived, so did he.”
Even though I’d never met this Kelvin guy, if I wanted to complete this level of the game and locate my grandmother, I was convinced he would be the key to that victory.
I hoped he wasn’t dead too.
“Look,” Eve said, striding down the hallway, “if we get to the bridge, we can see what’s going on. We’ll speak to the captain and find Kelvin.”
I had trouble keeping up with them; I wanted to look in every artifact-crammed cabinet and yearned to know about each item’s history.
“How can something destroy our entire fleet?” Skylar grumbled, peering out of the windows. “There’s no weapon in the galaxy powerful enough to cause this level of destruction.”
“Seriously?” I jogged to keep up. “Your spaceships are wooden.” Like sixteenth-century Spanish galleons, a few well-placed cannonballs could punch holes in them.
“Our fleet is stronger than it appears,” Eve said. “Grav shields protect each ship.” She grimaced. “At least they’re supposed to.”
“What the hell are grav shields?” I asked.
“I don’t understand what happened to the fleet either,” Mason said to his sister as we stepped through a bulkhead door and strode along the next hallway, packed with more cabinets overflowing with clutter. “We’re no threat to anybody.”
“It was the Kraythons,” Skylar said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Kraythons did this.”
I remembered the Kraythons being the bad guys, and the way I’d almost chosen to play on their side. How different the game would have been. Space Pirate Leo.
“The Kraythons have powerful weapons, it’s true,” Mason said. “But our shields—how did they break through the shields of every ship?” He gave his sister a dubious look. “Kraythons don’t have that level of technology. It’s impossible.”
“Clearly it isn’t, though,” Skylar said as we stepped through another door and marched down a third curved hallway lined with suits of armour. “Now the Kraythons have what they wanted all along—Antarians at their mercy.”
“If that’s the case,” Mason said to her, still sounding unconvinced, “where are the Kraythons now? They attacked and vanished?” He shook his head. “Something doesn’t add up. We weren’t even scheduled to visit this solar system.”
Now he came to mention it, I thought that was odd too. If the Antarian fleet had only meant to pass through on their way to Antares, then I couldn’t understand why they had stopped. And the fleet had definitely stopped because of the debris outside. Instead of racing past the ice planet with the speed needed to travel between stars, everything was almost at a standstill. I figured it would take a lot of energy and effort to slow down.
We continued to follow the curve of the hallway, and I scanned the various suits of armour. Some were tall and thin, others short, some helmets bulbous and top-heavy, some low and sloping. The one thing they had in common was that all of them looked alien, and my brain struggled to keep up.
We stopped at a set of double doors, and Skylar faced me.
“Who are you, exactly?”
Her tone wasn’t threatening anymore, but still firm, with an obvious no-nonsense attitude. My chest tightened, and I hoped she wouldn’t see through the lie.
Eve stared at me too, watching my reaction.
“I’m just a guy looking for my grandmother,” I said.
Three blank expressions.
&nb
sp; “Who is she?” Skylar’s eyes narrowed. “What’s her name?”
“Alice Bowman,” I muttered, hoping the name wouldn’t trigger any alarm bells or cause me to fail my quest.
But to my relief, saying Grandma Alice’s name didn’t seem to break any rules; none of them recognised it. I wasn’t surprised, given there must have been millions of people in the Antarian fleet.
“We can search the crew database once we get to the bridge,” Eve said. “We’ll find out what ship she was on.”
I swallowed, hoping Grandma Alice hadn’t died in the attack and grateful they weren’t going to ask any more awkward questions.
We walked through the double doors into a wooden elevator, and I wondered whether the CodeX would ever work.
Perhaps it was a big con.
Someone was clearly laughing at my expense.
My guess—Ayesha.
I’d bet it was her. She seemed like the type to enjoy other people’s misery. I pictured her sitting at a computer screen somewhere, laughing her butt off at me.
The elevator doors closed, and I faced the others, wanting to learn more about the game world. These people had mixed magic with technology—the old and new combined—and I found it fascinating.
“Do you guys go to school?” I asked.
“We’re doing apprenticeships at the moment.” Eve studied a display above the door as it counted upward.
“My specialty is security,” Mason said. “And Skylar is flight dynamics and control.”
“I’m going to be a pilot,” she said in response to my inquisitive look. “Hopefully with Dragon Force one day.”
“My dad’s a pilot,” I said. Much to my surprise, this elicited a grin from her.
“Wait.” A frown replaced Skylar’s smile. “You told us you couldn’t remember anything.” Her lip curled. “How do you know your grandma’s name too?”
I tensed. Crap.
“Well . . .” I swallowed and cleared my throat. “I remember a bit. Nothing else, though. More things might come back to me.”
“Get off his case,” Mason muttered in Skylar’s ear. “Leo saved my life.”
“If you hadn’t lost your Bluestone, you wouldn’t have needed saving,” she hissed.
I looked at Eve, eager to change the subject. “What about you? What are you studying?”
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