Teryn stirred first. The rustle of his motion woke Kiera. She rolled to the left, cuddling against Mala as he stepped over them both, Pet following so he could see. A few seconds later, he exploded. Kiera cringed, pulling the neck of her dress up over her nose. The echoes of a long-ago playful argument between her other parents rose up from her memory, a time when Bio-Dad had dropped a nuclear weapon in the bathroom right before Mom needed to shower. That he’d only laughed at her mother’s disgust got her calling him a ‘stupid little boy.’
Despite cringing at the noises coming from her new dad, she grinned.
By the grace of the Sky Spirits, no smell followed him back to the area of carpets and pillows.
Soon, Mala woke as well, and they ate a breakfast of raw vegetables from the satchel, munching in silence. She made sure not to touch any food with her left hand.
Teryn picked up the laser pistol. “I am going to hunt. Boar dwell in the woods near the edge. It is not far, fifteen minutes.”
Mala grasped his shoulder. “I will hunt. You are still hurt.”
He looked up at her, frowned at his thigh, and nodded. “I married her for her brain.”
She poked him.
“And a few other parts.”
She poked him harder, grinning. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”
He offered her the laser when she reached for the bow. “This will be faster and you will not need more than one arrow.”
Mala studied the pistol, turning it over in her hands. “How do I make this machine go?”
Kiera yawned and scooted closer. “I’ll show you.”
After teaching her mother how gunsights, the safety, and the trigger worked, Kiera headed to the wall to add some more water to the pool while Mala climbed up and out of their sanctuary. Once finished, she hurried back to the warmth of the carpeted area and reclined over the pillows.
This is boring. At least at the house, she had things to do. Chores though they may be, they kept her mind occupied. And tending a garden so you didn’t die had a whole different feeling than ‘go clean your room’ or ‘go wash Dad’s Benz for allowance money.’ Here, in this sewer hideout, she really missed her Supernova 2. She didn’t even have any homework to eat time.
Glumness must have been radiating from her face, as Teryn tweaked her chin with a finger. “Hey… it’s not your fault. You’re only a child. We’re not upset or angry with you.”
Kiera looked up at him, eyes brimming with worry. “I miss home.”
He sighed. “I’m sure you do… this is not what you―”
“No.” She leaned on him. “Home. Where we live.”
Teryn put his arm around her. “Mala’s heart will fill when she hears you feel at home, but you do not have to forget your other life for our sake.”
“I don’t.” Kiera smiled. “I mean, I forgot a lot of it. I remember more of that fake world than what really happened. But I know it’s all made up. I’m sad about missing my best friend, but she’s only a sim.”
“A what?” asked Teryn.
“A simulation. Computer program. Umm. Kinda like a puppet?”
“Ahh. I’m sorry. I cannot imagine how something like that could be so real to you that you’d feel loss.”
She sighed into his chest. “What did I do in there that got me in trouble? I think it was trying to turn the citadels on, but that computer couldn’t even do it.”
“As a security precaution, the citadels’ primary terraforming system can only be activated from a specific physical access point,” said Pet. “And that access point is beneath the Citadel.”
Kiera squinted up at the glowing cube. “You said the Citadel. Not any one?”
“The atmospheric processing facility in this refuge is the primary one designated Citadel Zero. All other citadel nodes are subordinate to it. The initiation command can only originate from the master.”
Teryn chuckled. “Well that explains the Administrator. Maybe he knows he’s got the king citadel, so he acts like it.”
“Heh.” Kiera grinned. “Is he really that big a douchebag?”
“What is a douchebag?” asked Teryn.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on….”
He pretended to cower away from her wrath.
“It’s like a term for someone who’s really annoying. They do stuff because it annoys people and like to see bad things happen to other people and think they’re all self-important.”
“Oh.” Teryn scratched the side of his head. “Doooosh bag?”
She giggled. “It’s not really a nice thing to call someone. There’s worse, but I’m not allowed to say those.”
Pet coughed.
Dad tilted his head.
“Bad words.” She laughed. “They’re probably not even bad words anymore since no one knows them.”
“Maybe.”
She stretched and sighed at the dingy ceiling. “Ugh. I am bored.”
Pet swooped in, hovering between their faces. “I have a large library of fiction novels. If you like, I can narrate one?”
Kiera shrugged. “Sure.”
The floating cube projected a holographic screen, showing book titles. Most appeared familiar, as in coming from the 2030s or earlier. Guess no one had time to write books when the world was dying. She flicked her finger at the ghostly screen, spending a few minutes paging down the list until she settled on something fantasy looking.
Pet’s somewhere-between-child-and-teenage-girl voice echoed in the sewer. It had to pause often so Kiera could explain concepts and words to Teryn. He had no idea what wizards, magic, or dragons were, and initially thought the ‘chronicle’ the cube spoke of was historical rather than fictional.
Eventually, Mala returned with a watermelon-sized boar she’d shot in the head. The laser had left a tiny tunnel clear through its skull, the singed pork giving off a smell like bacon. Teryn took a pot from the plastic crate shelves and collected some water from below the wall.
“Eww! We’re peeing in there! And… and… doing other things.” Kiera shivered.
“It’s not for cooking.” He set it on the small grill by the flue. “It is for washing our hands.”
“Oh.” She still eyed it with disgust.
He lit a fire and brought the water to a boil before taking it off the flame and letting it cool. Once it had gone from boiling to merely ‘oh crap that’s hot,’ he washed his hands in it and bid Kiera to do the same. She hissed at the heat, but hoped it killed germs.
“There’s so many germs in this… ugh.”
“The world’s bacterial life perished,” said Pet. “Any organisms in that water prior to being boiled are most likely from the three of you.”
She cringed. “Are you trying to make me feel better or hurl?”
Pet drooped. “He did boil it. It should be safe. Also, that pool is not stagnant. There is a flow.”
Once they’d washed, Teryn rummaged a knife from the bag and dragged the boar closer to the ‘bathroom.’ He gutted it, tossing the inedible parts into the water, all the while showing Kiera how to clean a kill. She watched with a modicum of controlled horror, her ‘aww, but it’s an animal’ side in a fistfight with ‘I don’t want to starve.’
Preparing and cooking the boar made time go by quick. When it had cooked through, Kiera sat cross-legged in a circle with her parents, all gnawing on fresh-grilled pork. A scratch of memory told her Bio-Mom would’ve refused to touch it, due to it being fatty, but she didn’t bother talking about it. For one thing, she barely remembered them. For another, she didn’t want to make her parents feel bad. Besides, she didn’t have the luxury of the modern world to be picky about food. Even Bio-Mom would eat pork if it came down to that or starvation. If she kept reminiscing about the probably-dead-and-barely-remembered other parents, her present ones might think her unhappy. She was happy with them.
Well, as happy as one can be going from a comfy room with a brand new Supernova 2 to a destroyed planet overnight.
“What circles your h
ead?” asked Mala.
“Pet,” said Kiera.
Mala furrowed her brows. “You are making that face because of your little flying box?”
Kiera chuckled. “No, I was being literal and cracking a joke. Circles my head?”
“Oh.” Mala laughed. “I mean what is… Umm.”
“What’s on my mind?”
“Her hair,” said Teryn.
Kiera gasped, feigning surprise, then grinned while leaning in to put a hand on his forehead. “I think a sense of humor is developing. Might be a fever though.”
He set his food on his plate before attacking her with tickling fingers. Kiera squealed into a giggling fit and held her dinner in her teeth while flailing and trying to defend her sides.
“Stmmm! Stmmm!” She squirmed.
He relented after a moment, leaving her trying to catch her breath despite laugh-choking.
Mala grinned, as did Teryn.
Kiera smiled back at them, still not fully sure how to process having parents spend actual time with her. At thinking she liked these parents more than her biological ones, a bit of guilt stole some of her happiness. Of course, everything she had seen pointed to them being dead.
They ate the last of their dinner without conversation.
“Is something wrong?” asked Mala, noting Kiera’s downcast gaze.
She sighed. “I was wondering about the Cairns. There could be hundreds of thousands of people on ice, stuck in vaults.”
“Hundreds of thousands?” Mala thought for a moment. “That is… more people than even the Exalted. Far more than the tribes. There is no room. We would be unable to find a place of ground to stand on that did not have four others in it.”
“They’re not all here.” Kiera held her arms out to the sides. “The world is a ball.” She made a fist and tapped her finger around it. “There’s other citadels all around the planet. The Cairns are spread out, too.”
Mala leaned close to her, speaking in a comforting tone. “Are you sure what you saw in that place is true? Because it is on a machine does not make it true.”
“I dunno.” Kiera shrugged. “But it’s true enough to make that douche want to kill me.”
“What?” asked Mala.
Kiera and Teryn laughed. She explained the word again.
“It is true,” said Pet. “There are multiple citadels across the globe. Most are concentrated on land masses, but some were also constructed in the major oceans.”
A daydream of a waterbound citadel filled Kiera’s head. She wondered if the people living inside it ever left to go fishing or swimming in the sea? Or if they hid inside from violent storms and listened to the endless crash of waves on the walls, like being in a huge submarine.
“The Citadel radiates a field that keeps the poison away. I learn how to fix the machines that do this.” Mala smiled. “Even if there is more than one citadel, the Torment would kill anyone trying to go between them. It does not matter if they exist or do not exist.”
Kiera snagged another small piece of boar meat, scarfing it down in three bites. With a groan, she reclined on the pillows and patted her belly, too full to move.
Teryn brushed his fingers at her hair, smiling. “We should come up with a plan. We cannot remain down here forever.” He leaned toward Mala. “Or the two of us shall turn as pale as this one.”
Kiera gave him a raspberry.
“We could go to the Great Ruin,” said Mala. “In the southwest.”
“Hmm.” Teryn shook his head. “So close to the Torment. If the wind shifted, we could be caught in it.”
Mala cleaned off her boar bone and hurled it into the darkness. A watery ploink came from the distance. “The wind does not shift that much or that fast. His robots would not like to venture that far.”
“Pet said there’s a fabricator somewhere. A machine that makes stuff. Maybe it’s in a place we could live for a while?”
Pet glided in a lazy figure eight. “I don’t have information about what is inside, other than there is a facility on my map and it is marked as having a fabricator. It could be as large as where you found me, or as small as a one-room emergency bunker.”
Teryn settled into the pillows. “It is worth more discussion. I think for now, since we are safe and hidden, I would like to know how the boy deals with the witch’s bottle trick.”
“What?” Mala glanced at him. “There’s a witch?”
Kiera laughed herself to tears. “No, Mom. It’s a story. Made up.”
“Oh.” She relaxed.
Pet glided over to hover between them, and resumed narrating the story of a fourteen-year-old wizard’s apprentice.
26
Where They Cannot Follow
A sharp bonk on the head woke Kiera.
She sat up. “What was that for?”
“Shh!” said Pet, her volume down at the level of a whisper, but her voice sounded normal. “Robots are coming.”
Kiera leapt onto her father, shaking him until he awoke. As soon as he moaned and raised an arm in protest, she flung herself at Mala and shook her.
“What’s wrong?” muttered Teryn.
“Robots,” whispered Kiera. “Pet can feel them coming.”
Mala grabbed the laser Kiera had been carrying. Teryn raised the one he’d taken from the robot that tried to invade their home. Both aimed at the hole in the ceiling leading to the manhole cover. In the darkness opposite the drop-off to the water-filled tunnel, a swarm of glowing green hexagons appeared.
“Where are they?” whispered Teryn.
Kiera pointed. “There.”
“Get down,” whisper-shouted Teryn. He shifted aim. A spot of flames burst in the distance, the flare revealing wall-to-wall androids. “Damn.”
Mala opened fire as well.
Kiera yelped and backed up, head swiveling about as she searched for a place to hide. Other than plastic crates holding crude plates and bowls, a stack of pillows offered the only other concealment.
Flame sputters appeared and vanished as fast as her parents fired blind in the dark. A scintillating white energy ball streaked out of the tunnel and struck Teryn in the stomach. He convulsed on his feet before flopping to the ground and twitching uncontrollably. White foam leaked out of his mouth.
Pet flew into Kiera’s chest. “Go. Follow me.”
She backed up two steps. Mala kept firing while weaving side to side. Another flickering white light missed her by inches and hit the wall, where burst into tiny lightning sparks skittering across the concrete. An android advanced close enough to enter Pet’s light, raising its arm at Kiera.
“No!” shouted Mala, throwing herself in front of Kiera an instant before another sparking ball came flying from the robot’s gun and hit her in the middle of the back. She fell flat on the ground, flopping and twitching like a fish out of water. She tried to shout something, but her jaw refused to unclench.
“Kiera! Run. This way,” said Pet. “They will not be able to follow you.”
Kiera pounced on the laser pistol lying in front of her feet and backpedaled. They’re using stunners… She aimed for a second before losing count of the number of arms poised to fire stun balls at her.
With a high-pitched yelp of fear, she whirled on her heel and sprinted, not even realizing where the floating cube led her until she tripped over the short concrete wall at the drop-off and fell headfirst into the water on the other side.
Eww! She sank a decent distance under before righting herself and peering up at the distorted blue glow of Pet hanging over the surface. She started to swim up, but a handful of stunners hit the water. Painful shocks raked down her body like an army of extremely irate housecats. She screamed out a bubble, her muscles spasming and jerking from the electricity, but the paralysis didn’t last more than a second. Icy water made the pain worse. She swam away from the wall, keeping her head down, until another barrage of stunners pelted the water.
That time, she twitched and twisted from the collective shock. Ten thousand sewing
needles stabbed into her everything. She screamed, blowing the last of her air off in a streamer of bubbles. Her head pounded as she tried to command her body to move, to swim for air before she drowned. Limbs on fire, she pulled herself up until her face broke the surface. After taking a quick gulp of air, she dove again before a stunner could strike the back of her head.
Long strokes and kicks pushed her along underwater. Above her, silvery puddles shrank toward the middle, gathering like globs of mercury, suggesting the water touched the top of the sewer passage here. Another group of stunner balls created a dazzling display of white light and sparks some twenty feet behind her, but at that distance, she didn’t feel anything.
Kiera swam up, sticking her head into mere inches of air between the surface and the ceiling. Pet scraped forward, dragging a clean spot in the muck on the concrete overhead. There’s gotta be air the whole way… it’s not closed off. She shivered with fear. Being stuck in a pipe full of water made the idea of the robot swarm seem not quite so bad.
Keeping her head above the surface, she swam into the dark, following the pale blue light from Pet up ahead. The sound of her breathing echoed in the tiny air-filled channel. Dark green slime, some kind of moss, grew from every crack. Initial shock had worn off to fear and sadness. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, her lungs burned, and she couldn’t feel her hands or feet after a while. Numb, she let herself drift in the feeble current, lacking the energy to swim any more. She didn’t even cry—too exhausted.
Pet glided up to her face. “Put your hand on top of me.”
Kiera reached up and grasped the little cube.
It angled forward, the light sphere emanating from its thruster swelled as it pulled her like a tiny tugboat. Thin sparks appeared in the water that steamed away from beneath it, her mouth filling with the taste of ozone. She tightened her grip, content to be dragged along for some time. Eventually, the water level dropped enough to reveal a narrow sidewalk on the side. Pet guided her over to it and hovered.
Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Page 25