by Peter Telep
“Look, this is all great,” I say, and then face Cypress. “But let’s get to the point: he was afraid of you. I could feel it.”
Cypress shrugs. “And I was afraid of him.”
“Okay, I get that, but I’m thinking maybe we can get your friends on Halsparr, like all the other woven. Maybe that’s how we’ll fight the Armadis.”
She’s not buying the idea. “Even if they would come and help, Mum says there are very few left. She says I’m the last in Grrethos.”
“And that’s our problem,” Meeka says. “We just need a billion more badasses like her.”
“Yeah,” Steffanie says. “And if they start taking people from Earth, we’ll need way more than that.”
I face Cypress. “Thanks for saving us.”
“I didn’t save you, Doke. She did.” Cypress regards Hedera with a faint smile.
“I’m carrying my first immortal,” Hedera says, rubbing her stomach. “And it’s… really… heavy.”
“Go big or go home,” I say with a smile.
“Yeah,” she says, wincing. “I feel like I ate ten pepperoni pizzas.”
“Keane told you about them?” I ask.
She nods. “I think you both did. But we didn’t have time to get one.”
“I trust you with Mum,” Cypress tells Hedera. “She’ll stay while we go back to Halsparr.”
“Oh, lovely,” Hedera says. “But I’m glad I can help.”
“We’d better roll,” I say, and then we face Steffanie and Meeka. “Let’s do the bubble and carry Tommy.”
“That’s okay,” Steffanie says. “You lost focus back there, but we saved it.”
“Damn, all right. We’ll do it the old fashioned way.”
With that, we’re back to hauling Tommy down the street, toward the temple.
* * *
Ten minutes later, as the sun reaches the horizon and the drizzle gets thicker, we arrive outside the temple.
Our arms ache from carrying the stretcher.
Meeka and I jump around the place, doing a little a recon to be sure the area is secure.
Once we’re finished, we carry Tommy down the stairs and into the basement office, setting him down beside the engine.
I project my grandmother’s immortal and ask for the coordinates back to Halsparr and Cypress’s place. She nods, tosses her long, white hair from her eyes, and then helps me at the terminal.
As we work, I ask, “Can immortals talk to you in your dreams?”
She stops and looks at me, narrowing her gaze. “You’re referring to that conversation we had.”
“So that really happened?”
“That’s another aspect of your trrune. Very few people can project a whole group of immortals, and some can connect with the ones they carry while they’re sleeping.”
“That’s so weird. It felt like you were right there.”
“We were…”
“So what did my father do? How did he know the bombs would go off? Why did he leave that letter?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe I used to know why, but I can’t recall anymore. I think if I shared that with you, it might change everything. Just go to Halsparr and find Doctor Arabelle.”
“Who is he?”
“He was your father’s teacher. That’s all I have.”
I sigh and hold back a curse. “Halsparr’s a huge planet. What if he’s not at Cypress’s place?”
“I’m sorry, Doc.” She steps back from the engine. “Your coordinates are set.”
“Thanks.” I pull her back and face the others. “Hedera? You’re in charge of Tommy.”
“I’ll take care of him,” she says. “But what if the masks come back? What do I do? I’ll be all alone…”
“No, you won’t. We’re all staying.”
The girls look at me like what now?
“What I mean is, we’re going in our personas because of the virus, plus we need Cypress’s body here in case the masks come back.”
“But I’ll just have my shields,” Cypress says.
“They won’t know that.”
“Oh, yes. Good idea, Doke.”
“So anyway, we’ll get some sleep here to conserve energy while we’re on Halsparr.” I drift over to the staircase leading up to the portal. I look at the girls. “This is nice.”
“What is?” Meeka asks.
“For once I’m the guy with all the experience—”
“And all the responsibility,” Meeka adds, raising a brow.
“Yeah, I guess so. You ready? Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Cypress’s place looks exactly as we left it.
She never blew out her the candles, and many of them still flicker and draw deep shadows across the metal beams sweeping across the rusty ceiling.
Yep, everything’s the same…
Except the grren are gone.
She arrives after me and stares hard at the enormous mat where they usually sleep.
Her hand goes to her mouth, her brown eye narrows, and a faint, high-pitched noise slips from her mouth.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I call softly. “We’ll do everything we can to get them back. That’s why we’re here.”
“I know, Doke.”
Meeka comes over looking concerned.
I gesture to Cypress and say, “It’s just hard coming back for her.”
Meeka nods.
“I’m okay, Doke,” Cypress insists.
“What’s that?” Steffanie asks, pointing to the long ticket booth with its dusty windows covered in vines.
“This place was like a subway station,” I answer. “I think they used to sell tickets over there for trips around the planet or over to Galleon. The engine’s in another room.”
“Wait here, please,” Cypress says, vanishing for a moment and then jumping back.
I look at her.
“The engine is okay. We have a ride home,” she says.
I sigh. “It’s about time something went right. I can’t go through all that drama of being separated again.”
“Tell me about it,” Meeka says.
“All right, show me what you have,” I tell Cypress.
“Yes, Doke. But let’s walk. I want you to see how big this place really is…”
“You’re the boss.”
We follow her along a far wall, toward the very back of the station and into a narrow hallway I never noticed before because it’s been hidden in darkness.
In the dim and twitchy light of our personas, we follow her down a creaky old staircase. The lower we go, the louder our footsteps echo.
“Obviously there was an elevator because no one would ever walk this far,” Steffanie says between breaths.
“We’re almost there,” I tell Cypress, hoping she’ll look back and nod. She doesn’t.
And down we go for another hundred or more steps.
The truth is we descend for another ten minutes, maybe twenty, before reaching the bottom where a door waits—
Or what’s left of a door. It’s been blown inward and hangs in jagged pieces.
Shards of glass from the nearby touch panel, along with fragments from the door, lie on the floor beneath a thick coat of dust.
I frown at Cypress. “Someone broke in here.”
“Yes, Doke. This place is just like the labs on Flora.”
“Something bad happened.”
“I don’t know, Doke. I found this place while exploring. I told Brandalynn about it, and she made me bring her, too.”
“Really.”
“Yes, come on.”
Cypress moves faster past three more security doors all destroyed like the first—but again this attack might have happened hundreds of years ago, maybe more.
Finally, we reach a cave-like room with a ceiling at least twenty feet high and covered in those black pressure panels we first saw at the lab in Brandalynn.
“Another First Ones lab,” I say, taking in the overturned conference tables and mangled workstations,
along with more of the wreckage. Parts for engines and small electronics that remind me of notebook computers lie across the floor, along with thousands of pieces of that strange paper, the same paper my father used to write the letter.
I reach down, pick one up, and try to read it, but it’s some kind of spreadsheet with patterns of numbers.
“Doc, check it out,” Steffanie says, tracing her fingers over bullet holes burrowed into the wall.
The holes reach up toward a bank of flat panel screens, perhaps a hundred of them forming a giant chessboard.
Cypress waves me over to the screens. “Your grandmother said it’s like a puzzle.”
“Something is like a puzzle,” I repeat without asking her what.
“She said everything has to fit together, otherwise nothing works. Sometimes the more you move the pieces around, the worse it gets.”
I nod. “And she said more things. Tell me. Her immortal doesn’t know much.”
“She started crying. She told me never to come back here, unless you asked about the address.”
“She knew I would ask.”
“I guess so, Doke. Now here, let me show you.”
We weave through the ruins and reach another door at the back of the lab whose handle has been blown off. She swings open the door and gestures for me to go in first.
It’s a small, private office that’s been frozen in time and looks eerily similar to my father’s study back on Earth.
Piles of documents lie on the desk. Cypress crosses to them and hands me a stack. “Look,” she says.
My wreath catches up on the translation, and the first file becomes some kind of scientific report “authorized by The Six Realms and commissioned by the Grrethos Academy of Particle Physics.”
The authors of the report are Dr. Thaddeus Harrison and Dr. Strayling Arabelle.
I start trembling as I glance around the room. There’s a framed photo on the wall across from us, but it’s so dusty that you can’t see the picture.
With a jolt of fear, I rush over, wipe off some dust, and stare in shock at my father, who’s probably in his twenties at the time the picture was taken. He’s standing in front of the ticket booths, which look brand new. An older man with a gray beard and blue lab coat presents my father with a silver trophy of a miniature engine.
The girls arrive at my shoulders.
“This is… it’s crazy,” I say.
“Wait, who’s in that picture?” Meeka asks.
In a panic, I return to the desk and sift though more of the papers. Many of them contain my father’s name.
I lose my breath. “I think…”
“I think it’s your father,” Meeka says, answering her own question.
“I think this was my... How is that even possible?” I ask.
Meeka rips one of the papers from my hand and reads it, and then she looks back at the framed photo.
Her mouth falls open. “Really? Your father was here? He worked here? On Halsparr?”
“Cypress, this place is very old,” I say.
“Over a thousand years,” she answers. “Your grandmother thinks the lab is even older than the city.”
A shiver works its way into my voice. “Oh, this is way worse than I thought.”
“Of course it is,” Meeka says darkly.
“I’m really confused,” Steffanie says. “I don’t get how he was here, and then—”
“Look, the clock’s ticking on us,” Meeka snaps. “And I have no plans to die separated from my body. If I’m gonna go, it’ll be trying to kill Solomon.”
“Okay, yeah, you’re right,” Steffanie says and then faces me, her expression urgent. “So where’s this Arabelle guy?”
“I’m not sure,” I answer. “But I think he’s been dead for over a thousand years.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Cypress frowns at me for a second, and then her brown eye glimmers. “You’re right, Doke. Dr. Arabelle is dead.”
“You know that because…”
“Because no one can live that long.”
“Uh, yeah? And you almost sound glad about it.”
“Not glad.”
“Can we slow down?” Steffanie asks, grabbing the paper from Meeka’s hand. “Is there anything else that can help?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. “Maybe we came all the way here for nothing. Maybe that letter is just another lie from my father.”
“All of this… it makes no sense,” she adds.
“It does if your father plays with fire. I’m not sure who I am anymore.”
“There has to be something.” Meeka crosses to a bookshelf where the trophy in the picture sits draped in green cobwebs and dust. “It’s just insane to think your father lived here over a thousand years ago.”
“When it comes to him, everything’s insane.”
“I think the guy in the photo is Arabelle,” Steffanie says.
“I think so, too,” I say.
“So what happened?” Meeka asks.
“Maybe the engine’s quantum computer got messed up and time shifted,” I answer. “Maybe I’m really Halsparran—”
“Maybe you are,” Meeka says. “Because your father was traveling in time, going back and forth. That’s how he knew we were gong to the lab. That’s why he left the letter.”
I shrug.
Steffanie nods. “The only way he could know the future is if he already lived it, right?”
I repeat my father’s words under my breath: “It’s never too late—not even after a thousand years.”
“Never too late for what?” Meeka asks.
“That’s the big question,” I answer.
Steffanie frowns into a thought. “What was your father trying to do? Stop the Armadis?”
I huff in disgust. “Maybe he was. Great job he did, right? And now he tells me to find a guy who’s already dead.”
“You don’t know he’s dead,” Steffanie says.
I tilt my head toward Cypress. “She thinks so.”
Cypress raises her palms as though she’s not prepared to defend that position.
“Wait, wouldn’t your father know that already?” Meeka asks.
“Yeah, I guess he would.”
“Right, he wouldn’t ask us to find someone unless he knew we could find him,” Steffanie says.
“And we can,” Cypress adds.
We look at her.
“I’ve been trying to tell you, Doke—”
“That you know how to find him,” I finish.
“Yes, but you talk too much!”
“I know we do, but Arabelle’s here on Halsparr.”
She nods. “On Halsparr.”
“Okay, you’re going to show us how to find a dead man… wait! You mean his immortal.”
Her brown eye widens. “Exactly.”
“And you know who has it.”
She shakes her head.
I throw up my hands. “Then how do we find it?”
“She’ll connect with everyone here,” Steffanie says. “She’ll ask around.”
“I don’t do that,” Cypress says. “It’s dangerous for me.”
“So we’ll connect,” Meeka suggests.
Cypress frowns. “They won’t accept your invitation.”
“Then what do we do?” Meeka asks.
“You come with me,” Cypress says, offering her hands for another jump.
* * *
“Whoa,” I scream, losing my balance.
Cypress grabs my wrist before I slip off an enormous tree limb and plunge hundreds of feet into the jungle below.
Meeka and Steffanie curse and raise their arms to catch their balance.
The branch is about eight feet wide and fairly flat, but we landed just inches from the curving edge. The tree itself is like an office building, just huge, even bigger than the ones in the Highlands on Flora.
Cypress gestures to keep low and leads us toward the edge of the branch.
The tree groans as we follow, and I exchange
a worried look with Meeka.
Cypress pulls back a few branches with thick, purple leaves to show us what lies ahead:
Two stone towers rise from the middle of a river clogged with islands of golden lily pads shaped like hexagons.
The towers remind me of the Royal House of Arabelle and are part of a bridge being gobbled up by the jungle.
Vines grow throughout windows shaped like arrowheads, and suspender cables holding struts and braces in place have long since snapped, leaving parts of the bridge drooping like curtains into the water.
The roadway itself is gone, replaced by more purple vines and bushes and silvery green trees growing straight out of the decking. Branches hang way over the sides of the bridge and glitter like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
And out there, among the ruins…
There’s movement.
Grren. Everywhere.
They lie on branches or on window sills, with dozens more perched along the cables and rooftops and rails like snipers or guards. They groom themselves or sleep in packs or tear into the bloody carcasses of rrinx.
Cypress lifts her chin at the bridge. “The immortal you’re looking for could be there.”
“That place has a name,” I say.
“Yes,” she answers. “It’s the Library of Grren.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
My eyes open, and with a violent surge of chills ripping across my shoulders, I realize Hedera has shaken me awake.
I’m confused for a second as my thoughts split in half and I’m back to multitasking again.
All right, I’m okay. My body’s back here on Flora. I’m in the temple’s basement behind a pile of rocks near the engine. I sit up and rub my neck. “What?” I ask.
Hedera looks at me and then gestures to Tommy—who’s sitting up and blinking the grit from his eyes.
“Whoa, you’re back!”
“Back from the dead,” he replies. “Feels like I got hit by a fifty cal, but I’m still kicking. So… should I thank our girl Cypress or kill her? I haven’t made up my mind…”
I smile with relief. “She saved you.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t pretty.”
I touch my chest, sympathizing with his pain. “What about your persona?”