“Are you okay, Daddy?” she asked, as their eyes met. “How did you fall?”
Suddenly he saw Atara’s green eyes as cunning rather than innocent. First she’d frozen Theola with the open window, and now she’d tripped him—with Theola in his arms. It had to have been her. There was nothing on the floor, nothing else that could have done it. Was he the target this time, or was it Theola again?
Lucien felt a chill come over him. This was more than simple mischief or jealousy. Besides, Atara and Theola had more than a year together already, and Atara had never shown any signs of jealousy before. At least not to this extent.
“Atara...” he said slowly. She cocked her head to one side, her eyes full of concern, and a glitter of something else...
Amusement.
The chill Lucien had felt turned to solid ice, and he went suddenly very still.
“Did you trip me, honey?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light and clear of accusation.
Atara’s eyes flew wide and her lower lip began to tremble, but he could have sworn she was trying to hide a smile. “No!” she blurted out defiantly, and crossed her arms over her chest.
But he could see the lie gleaming in her eyes—the smug satisfaction. “Okay. I believe you,” Lucien said, lying back, and trying to pretend everything was normal. Behind that pretense, his mind raced with terror—fear of his own daughter. The Faros had done something to her. Somehow they’d changed her when they’d touched her, and if that was true, then the others had been changed, too: Chief Councilor Ellis, Admiral Stavos, General Graves... and who knew how many others.
“We’d better go to the hospital,” Lucien said slowly, trying to mask his thoughts before Atara realized he was on to her. “Daddy broke his finger, see?” he held up his hand for Atara to see.
She gasped at the sight of his swollen hand and crept forward for a better look. Stopping beside him, she leaned in and pressed his hand to her lips, smacking them in an exaggerated kiss. She retreated, grinning broadly at him. “All better!”
Lucien suppressed a shiver. Something told him her delight was in his pain, and not in the presumed healing powers of her kiss.
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” he said. “I’m going to need a doctor to fix this.”
Atara’s smile faded. “It’s that bad?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid so, yes.” Lucien cast about for Theola and found her pottering around the coffee table, sucking her thumb and shaking her bottle. She was spraying milk everywhere. Lucien grimaced. He walked over and scooped her up in a one-armed embrace, balancing her against a hip that wasn’t designed for the task.
“Come on,” he said, keeping an eye on Atara to make sure she didn’t trip him again—or do something worse this time.
“Why do I have to go?” Atara whined.
Lucien’s patience snapped. “Because you’re five years old and I can’t leave you alone! Now let’s go! To the garage. March!”
Atara made a pouty face and walked through the living room to the foyer. Lucien made sure to keep her ahead of him, where he could watch her. When they reached the foyer, Atara opened the coat closet and pulled on her gloves and winter coat. Lucien gave the closet a skip, deciding to brave the cold. Between Theola and his broken finger, it would be too much trouble to put on his coat—or his gloves, for that matter. He cringed at the thought of squeezing broken fingers into a glove.
“Open the door, please,” Lucien said, nodding to the garage door in the foyer. Atara did as she was told, and they hurried through the garage to their shiny new hover car; a midnight-blue six-seater that Tyra had somehow found the time to purchase this morning while he was at his meeting with the other ex-Paragons. The car had arrived on autopilot with a pre-recorded message from her, just in time for Lucien to use it to pick up the girls from school and daycare. The invoice from the dealer indicated she’d also bought a matching black car for herself. They’d lost both of their old cars with their home when Fallside had depressurized.
Lucien used his ARCs to open the car doors as they approached. As soon they were seated inside, the car greeted him, “Welcome, Mr. Ortane! Where would you like to go this afternoon?”
“Winterside General Hospital, please.”
“Right away. Please buckle up,” the car replied in a congenial voice. Lucien dropped Theola in the car seat on the row of seats in front of him and awkwardly buckled her in, wincing as he occasionally brushed his broken finger against something. Feeling weak, he slumped back into his seat in the middle of the front-facing row of seats. Meanwhile, the car had already powered up and hovered a few inches into the air.
“Is this an emergency?” the driver program asked, as the car rotated on the spot to face the garage door, which was already rising to reveal a bright bar of daylight at the bottom.
Snow swirled in underneath, dusting the entrance. As the door finished opening, Lucien saw that it was snowing hard outside, and the frozen lake below their home was barely visible beyond the snow-caked trees.
“My scanners report that your cortisol and adrenaline levels are elevated in a way that is consistent with a serious injury,” the driver program went on, when Lucien didn’t immediately respond. “I can have EMTs waiting when we arrive,” the car suggested as it shot out of the garage.
“No, that’s all right,” Lucien said, and laid his head back against his seat with a pained grimace. He allowed his eyes to drift shut, waiting for the trip to be over.
“Does it hurt?” Atara asked.
Lucien cracked one eye open to regard her. She was smiling faintly at him and reaching for his injured hand with her index finger extended, as if to poke his broken finger. He jerked his arm away and cradled his hand protectively. “Are you crazy?” he demanded.
Atara’s eyes flashed with hurt, and her lower lip began to tremble once more.
He made an irritated noise in the back of his throat and shook his head. Forget his hand. The real medical emergency here was whatever the frek was wrong with Atara.
He was almost afraid to think about what that might be. They’d mind probed and scanned her thoroughly. She was supposed to be fine. Obviously they’d missed something. This wasn’t the innocent, loving five-year old he’d raised.
This was a devil in a child’s body.
Chapter 32
Mokar: Underworld
Lucien’s armor screeched against the sides of the tube, but the friction was barely enough to slow his descent. He felt gravity shifting, as if the world were sliding out from under him. Up and down became sideways, and he lost all sense of direction, spinning and rolling as he fell. He caught a glimpse of green plants through the translucent walls of the tube, and suspected he was close to the ground. His suit clocked his speed at over forty kilometers an hour. He gritted his teeth, bracing for impact.
He flew out of the tube and landed hard in the overgrown field of flowers he’d seen from the concourse. The jolt of the impact was enough to clack his teeth together, but the vegetation provided a nice cushion.
Lucien stood up and struggled through waist-high grass and flowers. He saw Addy get up beside him, and a split second later Garek and Brak both came flying out of tubes adjacent to hers.
Lucien activated his suit’s sensory suite and an array of floral smells flooded his helmet, making his nostrils flare. The plants felt rough and prickly against his thighs and torso.
He reached out to touch a spiky blue flower the size of his head, and received a sharp stab of electricity—the simulated prick of a thorn.
The flower reared at his touch and let out a high-pitched whistle, blowing air in his face and shrinking into itself as it did so. Lucien regarded it curiously, and he felt as though it might be regarding him back, though he couldn’t see any eyes.
“These plants seem more alive than usual,” Lucien said. “And some of them have nasty thorns. Watch yourself, Garek. I wouldn’t want to see what one of them could do to your exposed face. You might swell up like a puffer fish.�
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Garek barked a laugh. “Probably make me prettier.”
Lucien snorted, but peripherally he noted that Garek was wearing his helmet again. He’d probably put it back on to avoid losing it on his way down the slide.
“Where to now?” Addy asked.
A piercing wail split the air, drawing their attention to a Mokari-sized bird circling the field up ahead. For all they knew it actually was a Mokari, but this bird was white rather than black, and it didn’t sound the same.
“I don’t know,” Lucien admitted, turning to look around and get his bearings.
The inside of the underworld curved up and away to all sides of them, divided in a farm-like patchwork of different-colored vegetation. In the distance, giant trees soared, each with just a handful of branches and one or two over-sized, opalescent leaves per branch. Towering mountains peeked over the treetops, sheer white cliffs striated with purple veins that might have been rivers. All of it curved up sharply, clinging to the inside of the sphere.
Lucien turned and glanced up at the concourse where they’d been standing moments ago. From the outside it looked like a low-rise apartment complex, but the rows of broken viewports lay perpendicular to the ground rather than parallel.
Looking up, he saw the blinding ball of light in the center of the sphere. It hung directly overhead, at the zenith of the sky. Its radiance blocked their view of the other side of the sphere.
The two black towers that Lucien had seen before now seemed to traverse the sky like two halves of a bridge, with the light source suspended in the middle.
“Let’s head for one of those towers,” Lucien suggested. “Whatever is generating that light might also be used to power the gateway we’re looking for.”
“Looks like a long hike,” Garek said, peering up at the nearest tower, and shielding his eyes against the glare of the artificial sun with one hand.
“We should boost up there,” Addy suggested. “I doubt it will take more than a few minutes to get there like that.”
“I agree,” Lucien said, and powered his grav boosters at a modest five percent to send himself floating up above the field.
The others joined him, hovering up one by one.
“Let’s not fly too high,” Lucien said. “Keep to an altitude of fifty meters just in case the direction of gravity doesn’t hold constant all the way up.”
“Roger that,” Addy said, and Garek and Brak clicked their comms to confirm.
Lucien powered the boosters in his palms and used them to rotate on the spot, orienting his body for horizontal flight toward the nearest of the two black towers. He waited for the others to get into position, and then boosted off at ten percent thrust.
The ground swept up quickly with the curvature of the sphere, making it hard to maintain straight and level flight, but by angling his body upward, he was able to keep a constant altitude of fifty meters.
His forward velocity hit one hundred kilometers per hour, and he backed off the power to his boosters to maintain that speed. He didn’t want to miss something important on the ground. The gateway they were looking for could technically be anywhere—not to mention the so-called magical key they needed to open it.
“Wow...” Addy breathed. “Take a look at that!”
Lucien cast about, looking for whatever had caught her eye. He didn’t have to look for long.
A giant two-legged creature roamed the plains below, leaving a trampled path through the multicolored shrubs and flowers. It had a row of wicked-looking spikes down its hunched spine, and two massive arms that it used like extra legs to pick its way through the field. The creature’s hide was dark brown and wrinkly, and probably very thick.
Lucien slowed down as they reached the monster, and its size relative to their altitude of fifty meters gave a sense of scale. It reached more than halfway up from the ground, making it at least thirty meters tall.
They could actually hear its footsteps booming as they approached. Lucien matched his speed with that of the creature at twenty klicks per hour. He hovered along behind it, watching it walk through the field.
Suddenly it stopped, and its head perked up, its attention fixed on a herd of bright green blobs rolling through a field of blue grass up ahead.
The monster suddenly leapt forward, bounding toward the herd of blobs at incredible speed. The air shivered with its footfalls, and the green blobs rolled away as it drew near, schooling like fish. The monster was too fast for them. It scooped up a pair of them in one giant palm.
But it wasn’t a palm; it was a gaping mouth lined with rings of sharp white thorns. The blobs were impaled on those thorns.
Lucien slowed his flight and circled down for a better look. The monster’s arms were like snakes, and the one that had impaled the two blob creatures was waving bonelessly in the air. Two large bulges inched down along its length with the help of gravity. It had swallowed the blob-creatures whole.
“Be careful...” Addy warned as he strayed within reach of the snake-armed monster.
It must have felt the pressure from Lucien’s grav boosters, because it looked up as he passed overhead. Its entire head was a giant, blinking black eye on a flexible stalk, rimmed with long red thorns. The eye narrowed as it tracked him, and then both of the monster’s arms shot up, swiping at Lucien’s ankles with giant, sucking mouths. They barely missed him, and hot rancid breath whistled out of those orifices as the arms sank back to the ground. Lucien’s stomach clenched with the smell and suddenly he wished he hadn’t turned on his suit’s sensory suite. He boosted up out of reach, trying to calm his heaving stomach. He did not want to throw up in his helmet.
“Are you okay?” Addy asked.
Lucien nodded slowly. “What is this place?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some kind of zoo,” Garek said.
“So why aren’t the animals in cages?” Lucien asked, staring at the two-legged, snake-armed monster as it bounded after the schooling herd of green blobs.
“Maybe the Grays don’t like keeping animals in cages,” Addy said.
“Or else they found a way to break out in the long years of the Grays’ absence,” Garek added.
“Good thing we decided to fly to the tower,” Lucien said. “There’s no telling what we might have run into down there.”
“Yeah, good thing...” Addy agreed.
They reached the end of the plains and flew over a rocky field of glowing blue crystals. Lucien couldn’t see any animals walking between them, but the crystals periodically discharged bright bolts of electricity from one to another. Each time one of them did so, it grew momentarily dark and opaque, only to light up again as another crystal zapped it.
“I wonder if those are alive?” Addy asked.
“Silicon lifeforms?” Lucien suggested.
“Why not? We found a few of those immediately after we crossed the Red Line.”
“Living rocks,” Brak grumbled. “What good it is to be alive if you are a rock? You cannot move. You cannot eat...”
“But you can think,” Lucien said. “For all we know, they’re more intelligent than we are.”
Brak snorted. “What does a rock have to think about?”
“They might not be alive,” Garek said. “Might just be part of the power grid that feeds this place.”
Lucien nodded at that. The field of glowing crystals came to an end, and they arrived at the forest they’d seen from a distance. The trees were incredibly tall, their boles silver and leaves opalescent white. They were far enough apart they they could fly easily through the forest. As they did so, Lucien noted that each branch had just one or two giant opalescent leaves. Those leaves sparkled brightly in the sun, casting deep pools of shadow on the ground below. Lucien thought he spotted small creatures moving through the underbrush, but it was too dark to be sure.
Mountains soared up to the right, their steep white slopes clearly visible through the trees. Again Lucien noted the purple veins snaking down from their peaks. Definitely
rivers, he decided.
“There’s the tower,” Addy said, as she zagged under a looming branch and over another one.
“I see it,” Lucien said. The curvature of the underworld made for an odd horizon, where they could never see very far in any given direction. A moment ago, looking straight ahead, they’d only been able to see more silver tree trunks and glittering leaves, but now they saw the smooth black sides of the tower soaring to block their view. The closer they got to the tower, the more their perspective shifted so that the tower appeared less like a bridge traversing the sky, and more like a skyscraper, rising up to blot out the sun.
The trees fell away abruptly and then the tower was all they could see. Lucien banked sharply to avoid colliding with it. The others followed him through that maneuver, and they circled back, spiraling to the ground.
They landed in almost perfect unison on a castcrete pad surrounding the base of the tower. Beyond that, overgrown black and red shrubs rose in a tangled wall. The shrubbery flowed gradually up along the curvature of the ground to greet the silver trees just over a hundred meters from where they stood.
Lucien turned and looked up at the black tower. It was shaped like an obelisk, and tapered to a slender point almost ten kilometers up—according to the rangefinder on his HUD. At that point it reached the artificial sun and disappeared in the blinding light. Assuming a perfect sphere, that put the size of the underworld at around three hundred and fourteen kilometers in circumference—tiny as far as planets went, and even small when compared with the vast scale of Astralis.
“I’m detecting a lot of lifeforms down here with us,” Garek said. “Medium to large. Most of them in the forest.”
“The hunt beginsss...” Brak hissed, and drew the razor sword from his back. The blade shimmered, blurring with a faint blue glow as Brak activated it.
Lucien’s scanned the wall of black and red shrubs running around the tower, his integrated lasers up and tracking.
“Form on me,” Lucien said after a moment, and started walking around the tower. “Keep eyes on our flank.”
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 49