TERRA (The Elements Series Book 2)

by Tracy Korn

  Tieg finally nods in agreement, and I feel something break inside me. He blames himself...they both blame themselves, I think as a tear actually makes its way down the side of Tieg's face.

  Too bad they can't seem to figure that out until after they tackle someone. Apes. At least we finally got a read on him, though, Liddick says in my head, having overheard my thoughts like he's been doing lately when I don't realize I'm transmitting them, as he calls it. When I look over, he's smiling to one side and rubbing his throat while leaning back into Dez's arms. I return his smile, but the sight of them like this causes a pinch in the hollow behind my jaw. I swallow to push it down because I'm not supposed to react to this—I've already dealt with it—but the feeling doesn't clear.

  Jax grips the back of Tieg's neck, then slaps him on the shoulder a few times as they move back to their original places along the wall. They both spread out and close their eyes, giving over the rest of their anger, frustration, and guilt to the darkness as Arco crosses back over to me, his arm drawn tightly into his side.

  CHAPTER 2

  Recovery

  "Are you OK?" Arco asks me quietly, then takes my arm and leads me around the bend of the wall to continue talking as everyone settles in. "Did I hurt you?"

  "Hurt me?"

  "When I pulled you back from jumping in the middle of them," he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "You know they both have at least 40 pounds on you right? Tieg probably 60," he answers, slipping his Nav system off his arm and putting it on the ground. I raise my chin to him.

  "I would have held my own, thank you very much," I say, raising an eyebrow at him and setting down my supply bag from the Stingray, grateful to breathe easily again as the tension in the air dissipates with everyone now too exhausted to do anything but sleep. When I turn back to Arco, he's still smiling at me. "What?" I ask, but he just shakes his head and chuckles, then presses his arm into his side again. "Your ribs do hurt!" I say, brushing several loose hairs from my eyes. I try to stare straight through him, but instead of addressing my accusation, Arco lets his free arm slip around my waist and pull me into him as he leans back against the dark cave wall. I feel him wince when my hand moves over his ribs, and I immediately pull back.

  "All right, take off your shirt," I say, and his eyes widen as a stupid grin spreads across his face.

  "Well, I mean, I thought you'd never ask, but here?" he says, raising his brows as he angles his head at me. I roll my eyes.

  "Oh, crite, show me your ribs." I pick up my bag again and fish through it for the medical scanner like Dez had—my kit should have one too, although I have no idea how to use it. I peer down the wall to see if Dez might still be awake so I can call her over, but she's fast asleep with her arms still wrapped around Liddick. I feel another sharp twinge when I see them like this again and force my eyes away to refocus on finding the white cylindrical medi-wand. Arco has managed to release the back panel of his dive suit and is just pulling his arms out of the sleeves when I find the wand and look up at him again, his face serious now. "How bad does it hurt?" I ask, but he just shakes his head and shrugs his right shoulder. "Yeah, sure," I nod. "Keep going." I angle my head at his jumpsuit, feeling the air suddenly shift as the rushing stream behind us seems to get louder in my ears.

  Near the collar of his blue Gaia jumpsuit, he finds the zipper that only appears when he touches it, and I immediately remember being fascinated the first time I saw this happen when Vox showed me her tattoos in our dorm. My stomach sinks at the thought because it reminds me of our reality now—of having escaped the one place I've spent my whole life trying to get into because Gaia isn't what we thought it was. Worst of all, I remember that now our friends are missing, one of whom will never come back. I close my eyes in a long blink to force these thoughts out of my head because I just don't have the energy to work them through, not without some sleep. For now, I just need to find out what's wrong with Arco's ribs, and why his nanites aren't fixing them.

  I open my eyes to find him pulling his arm out of his jumpsuit sleeve, then letting it fall to his waist with the other one just like he did with his dive suit. Both sets of sleeves hang at his sides as he pulls the hem of his dark base layer tank top to his collarbones, and I can't help but watch the fading blue light reflect dancing lines from the stream over his skin. My eyes dart to all his indentations: the notches of muscle over his hips, the grooves of his stomach, the curves of his broad chest and shoulders. I swallow and blink a few times to focus as my heart starts pounding, which I try to dismiss because it's not like I haven't seen him without his shirt at the beach or when playing gravity ball with Jax, but I suppose I've never seen him just inches from me like this...never felt the air spark and crackle all around us.

  He lifts his arms to his sides just a little and bends them slightly at the elbow, his palms up like he's waiting to be searched. I suddenly remember that's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with this wand, but when I see his biceps contract and the muscles in his shoulders pulling taut, I want to trace all the small places that weave in and out and curve and bend.

  I move my fingertips up the long vertical line that starts above his navel, and he takes in a shallow breath, but doesn't flinch. I can feel his eyes on me, watching me study him, and as I trace the hard lines of his stomach, then press the palm of my hand over the narrow valley in the middle of his chest, I can feel his heart pounding too.

  "Nothing hurts yet?" I ask looking up just enough to see him shake his head slowly. I meet his eyes and find something in them that I've never seen before—they're not kind or compassionate like they usually are, and they're not commanding like I've seen recently. He looks at me like he's hunting, like he's been gauging every move from a remote corner somewhere without me knowing, just waiting for the perfect moment to leap out—but I'm not afraid of him.

  I watch my fingers move over the rounded edge of his chest, then along the interstices between each of his ribs on the left when I hear him start struggling to modulate his breath. Is this because he's anticipating pain again? Or is he just responding to my touch? I wonder, and try to look more closely for signs of injury in the dimming, refracting light. I don't see anything at first, but when he takes another breath, his chest expands and reveals the beginnings of two small purple bruises on his side. I touch them lightly, and he winces again.

  "It's there?" I ask, pulling out of the spell I was just under, but he only answers with a slow, labored exhale. "Turn that way a little," I ask, gesturing to the right, and when he does, I see the rest of the nearly black bruising reaching around his left side. I gasp, then meet his eyes again. "Arco, crite. What happened? Dez's scanner would have detected this when we brought you out of the Stingray," I say, but he just clenches his jaw and looks away without answering me. "Arco, what happened to your ribs?" I repeat, more intensely this time as I wave the medi-wand over the damaged area. It immediately turns red, and I pull it back to read the diagnosis.

  Internal hemorrhage and intercostal muscle tears between left ribs 4 and 5, left ribs 6 and 7.

  Calculated trauma lineage: 43 degrees at sternum point C, 61 degrees at sternum point D.

  Nano-restructuring reinitiated at 03:14. Current status: 12% complete. Estimated time remaining: six hours 23 minutes.

  Administer dopamine block and morphine surge for pain. Vein combination: 3, 7, arterial.

  "This says you have at least two torn muscles!" I try to whisper. "And the nanites had to reinitiate, so you made it worse when you stopped Tieg earlier. Give me your arm so I can figure out this vein combination to release the painkillers."

  "No, I don't want that—I can't have them clouding my head," he answers, pulling his arm in.

  "Arco, when did you first hurt your ribs? Dez didn't pick up any injuries like that after the Leviathan implosion," I insist.

  "Coming through the crag then I guess, just before that black thing took Pitt. I tripped with the momentum or something, I don't know. I was still a little out of it f
rom the concussion."

  "But I saw Ellis and Avis on the other side waiting to help you. Didn't they catch you?" I ask.

  "I remember them picking me up after things went black for a minute, but Tieg and Dez were the ones who caught me—or, I suppose didn't catch me," he tries to chuckle. "I don't know how I fell, Jazz, but it's nothing."

  "I do, and it's obviously something," I say, showing him the scanner readout and biting back the urge to confront Tieg. Arco follows my eyes around the corner where Tieg is sleeping with his back to the wall a few feet down from Jax.

  "Jazz, come on," Arco says, filling in the pieces. "He couldn't have done anything with the others standing right there."

  "There's no way Dez could have caught you on her own. All he had to do was not take hold, and it would have looked like you fell by accident," I explain, suddenly wishing Liddick were awake so I could see what he thought.

  "I don't know. You saw how upset he was about Pitt, and how he tried to help Dez through it. We have some friction, no doubt, but I can't see him taking cheap shots like that."

  "That's exactly why he would have done it, Arco. He already had issues about seeing you kissing me by the moon pool, right? And there was nothing but tension between you two over piloting the Leviathan, plus, considering what happened to Pitt—you just heard him say that he blames us, and if you're the one leading us, he has to blame you most of all," I say, blood pounding in my ears as Arco's muscles tense, making him wince again. This pulls me back into the moment, and I know I need to shelve my accusations for now. "All right, so we just have to watch him. There's nothing we can do tonight," I say, looking around for the rest of the medical kit, then picking it up next to my feet. "You need to rest and let the nanites finish repairing everything—it's going to take them the rest of the night, so just be still a minute," I add, pulling the dark compression bandage from my supply bag to wrap around his ribs as methodically as I can in order to push back the urge to wake up Tieg with my boot.

  Arco must sense my vehemence because he doesn't play down his injury any more, especially not since he grimaces with almost every pass of the wrapping over his side. I press the bandage into itself at his sternum to seal it as he brings his hand over mine, then lowers his chin to catch my eyes.

  "Thank you," he says quietly, then moves his hand into my hair and kisses me. I can feel his heartbeat quicken under my palms, his skin warm as one of his arms wraps around my waist, pulling me against him. I feel him wince again when he does this, and lean back. He makes a low growl from somewhere in his chest, but I raise an eyebrow at him.

  "Go to sleep and let the nanites fix you," I say quietly. His eyebrows draw together as he opens his mouth to protest, but then thinks better of it and smiles to one side, resigned.

  I help him put his suit layers back on before he stretches out carefully along the wall, then position the more cushioned part of the supply bag under his head and find another place for myself.

  "Hey," he says, almost completely in shadows, save the dancing blue water lines reflecting over him. "Why are you all the way over there?" he asks, bracing his left side against the wall next to him and turning to me, his right hand outstretched along the ground.

  "You're hurt. I don't want to accidentally—" I start to say, trying not to sound like I think he's a giant idiot for not putting this together himself, but he cuts me off.

  "Come here," he says, waving me toward him, and I catch his smile in the fading light. "Next to me."

  A warmth radiates through my chest when his arm tightens around me as I move to lie beside him. I turn toward him and take a deep breath, then close my eyes with the sound of his heartbeat echoing in my ear.

  CHAPTER 3

  Signals

  The tunnel walls glow yellow and white, sending mottled light over the black, undulating mass in the distance, which turns just like it did in the cave from our Stingray practice run…just like when it took Vox and Fraya from the underwater cave. The high-pitched buzzing in my ears grows louder the closer it gets, and I look around for Arco—he was just here, wasn't he?—then for Jax, for Liddick, for anyone else from our group, but I'm alone as I cling to the sloping wall in this long, dark corridor.

  I never saw it coming when I refused the stipend, but now I see that Denison's offer was targeted at those of us who turned Gaia down, my father's voice says from somewhere in the walls. My breath catches in my throat, but I still call out to him.

  "Dad! Where are you?" My voice is muffled like it's underwater, and the buzzing grows louder as I move more deeply through the tunnel, straight toward the flipping black shadow creature and now…Vox in the distance? She's walking directly toward it with something in her hand that I can't make out. I call to her, and when she doesn't answer, I try telepathically, but she doesn't acknowledge me that way either.

  They needed us because we were capable of too much to be unaffiliated…to be unmonitored…my father's voice echoes in the walls again. I bring my hands to my mouth like a megaphone to call for him more loudly this time, and feel the resistance of water against my arms.

  What? I wave my hands back and forth, and hundreds of little bubbles appear in their wake. I'm…underwater?

  I feel for my helmet, but it's not there. My heart hammers in my chest as my eyes dart to my torso, which should be covered by my black dive suit, but all I see is my pale woven shirt and pants from back home billowing around me. How am I breathing? How can I still breathe down here?

  A tickle runs up the sides of my chest as Vox approaches the mass of shadows that now hovers against the stone wall, its high-pitched keening competing with the low, droning buzz in my ear. Vox extends her hand out to the creature like it's a skittish horse, and the sound starts to subside. As I get closer, the enormous black creature compresses against the rock wall like it's trying to cover something, its wings like a misshapen, much too large manta ray's. My blood freezes in my veins when I see the hundreds of differently sized mouths, some horizontal, some vertical, some with teeth, and some without running the length of its body. I nearly choke on a gasp when Vox starts stepping into the mouths…climbing them like stairs as she hoists herself all the way to the top, where she takes her pick knife out and actually leans down to say something to it.

  Vox! What are you doing?! I shout to her in my head, then out loud when she doesn't answer me, but I'm too late to stop her from stabbing her knife between what I can now see are the creature's eyes. She slips off its back as it starts sliding downward along the rock, then she pounds her fists against the glowing tunnel wall as the manta ray monster slumps into a large, black heap that nearly blocks the rest of the corridor.

  What gives you the right!? Vox screams into the rocks, her voice thick with tears. Her yellow eyes flash at me, and the glow of the walls surges in answer as another scream rips from her throat.

  The tickle on the sides of my chest suddenly turns to an unbearable itch, and I pull at the buttons of my shirt until it falls open. The water that was just all around me vanishes, and my blood freezes in my veins when I see the skin over my ribs folding inward in long, red arcs that begin under my arms and disappear around my back. I reach around to feel for it on one side, and immediately choke when my fingers slip inside the fold. I yank them back, fear crawling up my spine as my eyes fall again on Vox.

  "What are these?!" I scream at her, but instead of answering, she starts running toward me as fast as she can, gripping her pick knife in her hand.

  Wake up, Jazz, she says in my mind. Wake up and follow me.

  ***

  The dim, blue light of the glow rod has completely faded when my eyes fly open, and I hear the rushing sound of water against a dull buzzing in my ears. I don't know where I am at first as my heart crashes against my chest in the darkness, but immediately begin reaching around my side to feel for the indented sections of skin. When I don't feel anything but my dive suit fabric, I pull the cord release behind my shoulder. The back panel of my suit falls away as I pull my
arms out, then fumble over the collar of my jumpsuit to find the invisible zipper. I startle when I hear a snap from behind me, which freezes me in place. Another dim light floods the ground just enough to catch the water about five feet in front of me, making the blue reflection dance over the stone walls.

  "Rip?" Liddick whispers from around the corner, and the buzzing in my ears starts to get louder. I try to reply to him in my thoughts, but I can't seem to focus enough on the words to make the connection. He takes a few steps toward me. "What happened? What are you doing?" he whispers as loudly as he can without waking everyone up. I do the same, still scrambling to find the stupid collar zipper until I just give into frustration.

  "Get this off! Get it off!" I stammer through my teeth.

  "OK, whoa, hold still," he says, closing the distance between us and holding the blue glow rod he's just cracked under his arm so his hands are free to search my collar. "Get what off? Where?" he asks, confused.

  "This! I can't find the zipper! Get this off me!"

  "Your jumpsuit?"

  "Liddick!"

  "All right…calm down," he says, folding his hands around mine to still them, then he lowers his eyes to mine. "Stop panicking. Take a breath, OK? It was a dream. Rip, listen…"

  "Get this off me right now!" I hiss as tears claw up the back of my throat and choke off the ends of my last few words. He presses his lips together into a hard line and takes a deep breath as he lowers my hands to my sides.

  "All right, all right…" he says, then finds the zipper in an instant just under my chin. The second I feel it open, I start pulling my arms out of the sleeves and accidentally knock loose the glow rod he's returned to his hand. It rolls into the wall behind us as my hand rifles under my base layer and around to my side, groping for the long indentation I just felt, but I don't feel it now. I turn my back to Liddick, peeling my base layer tank top over my head and holding it to my chest.