by Tracy Korn
"Wasn't enough time to explain anything until now. Trust me, I wanted to. If it weren't for Veece keeping me in my skin, I'd have 110% ruined Cal's Gathering," Zoe answers, and I immediately look over at Cal.
"You have to be at least 18, 19 years old?" I ask, and he nods.
"19."
"So that means…" I turn back to Zoe, whose eyes shift from sharp and clever to soft for just a second. "You've been here…six years?"
Liddick gets to his feet and moves his hands through his hair, then laces his fingers behind his neck as he presses his lips into a line. What does he know about Zoe?
"Yep," she answers, all traces of that fleeting softness gone from her eyes now and replaced with her normal clip and sarcasm. "Pulled through that sand when I was 12 and stuck with these smelly wrecks ever since. Taught me to scrap, though my mom wasn't keen on that."
"I do not smell," Cal protests, then tosses a shard of limestone into the stream to our side.
"All boys smell," Zoe laughs, knocking shoulders with Dell, who is sitting next to her on another small boulder. He smirks and gives her a narrowed sideways look.
"Your mother knew you were down here?" Jax says just as the exact words form in my head.
"She disappeared with you, didn't she?" Liddick asks in the space between Jax's question and what would be Zoe's answer. She looks at him with a flash of those soft eyes again.
"So what is it about you…" she says out loud, but to herself, and he quickly shakes his head.
"I mean, how else could she know, right? She had to be down here with you."
"She was. Long enough for us to make at least a dozen satchels like the one my dad made," Zoe adds, thumbing the strap of the one she's wearing. "Felt like he was with us for a while." Liddick closes his eyes and turns to face the mouth of the Swim chute, and I don't have enough time to ask him anything in my thoughts before Zoe continues. "Few months later she found out we could go back up at night, so she went to tell my dad we were fine, but…she never made it back. The supply-run parties looked for her some nights after. They found her." Zoe holds out her wrist to show us a gold bracelet with two letter As on it, one line crossing through them both. "Brought me back what they could after the sun got her. She was just about a block away from her tunnel."
Zoe clears her throat after a second, and even though her voice, her posture, everything else about her snaps back to normal, her eyes take longer to harden and twinkle this time. The air seems to crack all around Liddick when I glance over and find him gripping his elbow with one hand while covering his mouth with his other fist.
Liddick? I think, but he just shakes his head without looking at me.
"That's why we can't go back after the Vishan treatments," Dell says. "The ones who got pulled through the sand before us were sure they could manage going back home at night, but they never came back here after trying. Eventually, the Council just stopped allowing it."
Liddick, they burn up…that's why all those bones were always in the Badlands…people were just trying to get back down here? But why do they let everyone think they're cannibals? I think, and when Liddick finally meets my eyes, he doesn't have to answer me. "The Badlanders have been letting everyone think they're cannibals to keep people out of the sand…to keep them safe," I say out loud to everyone as I look from Jax and Fraya to Zoe, Alec, and finally, to Dell. He nods, and we're all quiet for several seconds before he stands, then holds out his hands.
"All right, so let's have the other questions. We have to be back before curfew," he says, pulling a gold colored stone out of his pants pocket. "Which is in an hour."
"What's that?" Jax squints, then rubs his eyes.
"Cycle stone. It's synced with the torches. When it's red…" Dell starts.
"It's time for bed," they all say together, then join in a barrage of half smiles and eye-rolls.
"It's just not safe at night out here. Most everyone gets tucked up after gold, so any stray sounds stir up the water worms," Alec adds, and my eyes dart to the stream. "That's not deep enough, though. Worms can't shimmy quite this far in. Still, curfew helps keep people from wandering," he laughs, crossing his long arms over his chest.
"So there's more than one worm? And the sharks?" I ask.
"Never placed a bet, but for as many tunnel sharks as they have running from the barrier to the surface, figure there's bound to be more than one worm," Alec answers.
"The people in the mountain made them, you said… the Biodesigners and Molecular Coders? And the tunnel sharks gave you all nanites?" I ask.
"Not all of us—just those who got pulled through the sand. Those nanites only last a few hours, though," Zoe answers.
"Then why did they say Dell's don't work past the barrier?" I ask, but Zoe just looks at Veece as Cal closes his eyes and sighs.
CHAPTER 17
Catching Up: Part Two
Dell leans forward over his knees as he scans the ground, then takes a deep breath.
"I was crossing home one night. Kept to the outskirts of the sand, but not enough I guess. Once I got pulled through, the tunnel shark took me to the mountain…into the mountain," he says after a long pause, and I know he's telling the truth, or at least believes he is when I feel the wave of suffocating anxiety flooding from him.
"But you escaped?" I ask, trying to help him wade through the memory. He nods again.
"Then found my way into the Rush—the seven biomes between here and the mountain."
"That's the rainforest you talked about before?" Liddick asks Cal, who looks up like it's a terrible effort.
"That's part of it," Cal nods slowly.
"Rainforest? Did I hear that because I hit my head? We're miles from the surface," Jax protests, then winces in pain with the effort. Fraya moves her hand over his arm as he covers his eyes with his hand.
"He needs to lie down," she says. "Where can I take him?"
"I'm fine," Jax argues, but his eyes are still narrowed against the torchlight.
"I'll show you back to Ada," Alec says, and Fraya nods before crossing to hug me.
"Thank you for coming for us," she whispers.
"Of course we came, Fraya."
She squeezes me more tightly, then returns to Jax's side. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my cheek into his chest as nearly losing him resurfaces. He leans down and chuckles.
"What's all this?" he whispers.
"I had to find you when you fell…when they took you," I say before my throat closes, and I have to swallow to keep the tears from choking me. We stand like this for a few seconds more before he takes a deep breath and leans down to whisper again.
"You jumped after me, didn't you?" he asks quietly, then tightens his arms around me I choke on a sob. "We're going to be OK, Jazz. We're going to find dad, and this will all be OK." He kisses the top of my head, and I close my eyes against the tears flooding my eyes despite my efforts. I nod, and finally manage to take a deep enough breath to steady the convulsions in my chest.
"I love you," I say, then take another deep breath before wiping the tears from my face. Fraya is crying too when I look up, and I feel heat rush into my cheeks. "OK, go lie down," I say impulsively with a forced laugh as I take a step back from Jax, wishing desperately that everyone would talk, or at least stop staring at us with their wrinkled foreheads and watery eyes. I swallow hard to steady my voice, then wipe my face again as he moves his big hand from the back of my neck to my shoulder and squeezes. He smiles at me and nods, then disappears around the corner with Fraya and Alec.
"Isn't there any way to reactivate his nanites? The ones that will fix him?" I ask after Jax is gone, then turn back to Dell once I feel in control of myself again. "There's a cave about 10 miles that way where they'll work," I add, but he just shakes his head.
"He needs help making it back to his bed stack. Not a chance he'll hang for 10 miles in any direction yet," he answers.
"Where's the barrier? Is it closer? Your nanites worked until you crossed it, so m
aybe Jax's will work there too."
"Or, maybe they won't," Dell says, then stiffens. "Don't know if they're the same as yours…the only reason I had repair nanites at all was so I'd heal faster after they…" he trails off, then abandons the explanation altogether. "Anyway, it's suicide to gamble on nanites past the crop barrier. You need Vishan treatments."
"But Vox is out there," I say, and Cal lowers his eyes.
"Vox is Vishan," Veece answers, but is cut off by Cal's rebuttal.
"No, she's right. Vox might as well be like them because she hasn't been completely trained."
"Not now," Veece says, leveling a glare at Cal.
"Trained for what?" Liddick asks Zoe quietly.
"For using the gifts—the fire, the strength…"
"I don't understand…so none of the other people who were pulled through the sand ever had repair nanites like Dell's? Like ours? What kind were theirs then?" I ask.
"They were from the tunnel sharks, and weren't for keeps. They were only meant for making the trip to the mountain," Zoe answers.
"So they wore off?" I ask, and Zoe nods.
"The people the Vishan rescued from the tunnel sharks before us eventually started getting sick: paranoid, delirious, mean, and then…they died," she says, then takes in a breath. "The Vishan found a way to mix some of their DNA so it would fuse to theirs, so the sickness would stop, but the price of the fire, the strength, the price of being Vishan was that we couldn't go back to the surface, at least not into the daylight."
"But Vox is from the surface just like we are," I say. "If she's Vishan, she's lived her whole life in daylight."
"The Council thinks her gifts were dormant, but now that she's used the fire, she may not be able to go back," Veece answers.
"Does she know that? Does she know all the new abilities she has, but doesn't know how to control?" I ask, and Cal nods at the tail end of a long sigh.
"I told her not to leave before we could finish training her," he answers, then glances sideways at Veece. "The Council wouldn't stop her."
Veece starts to protest, but Liddick takes a step toward Cal, cutting off Veece's line of sight.
"Look, we need to get to that mountain. We need to follow her. Will you show us where she's going?" Liddick asks.
"You don't get it," Cal rounds on him. "There's nothing in that mountain except what will kill you five kinds of dead, and that's if you can even get through the Rush," he says, throwing a hand out to Dell. "Tell them. Take off your shirt again and tell the whole thing. It's because of your delusion that Vox left in the first place."
"Say that again." Dell's hazel eyes flash in the torchlight, and the muscles in his jaw tense as he takes a motivated step toward Cal, but Veece grabs his arm.
"No, let him come. He has no trouble preaching on how we're all mislead by the Origin Wall, but he won't lead anyone out to prove it. Well, you forget that I believed you, sandy. I went to the Motherland to see if it was nothing but labs and scientists like you said, but you know what I found? Nothing. No Motherland, no labs. It's just a volcano, and you're just another storyteller."
"I'm the storyteller because I won't go back out there to prove otherwise? Why do you think the tunnel sharks head for the mountain with people in the first place? But you're right about one thing—there is no Motherland out there…no people-gods, no great Bestower. What's in that volcano are people who think they're gods, and you simples run around here proud of being descended from their science experiments. Read your own wall!" Dell growls, and Cal lunges before Veece catches him with an arm in the chest.
"Enough!" Veece says, then turns back to Dell with the same warning glare. "Most of the Vishan believe the Origin Wall as it's written, but there are some who believe there's more," he says to us as he lets go of Cal. "But we can't destroy our entire culture to find out who is right."
"Why does knowing more mean it's destroyed? Why can't it just be changed? Evolved?" Dell presses.
"That's the problem the two who went to the stars had. Have you read the wall?" Veece returns his attention to Dell, then nods to Cal. "One of my distant grandfathers and one of his distant grandmothers refused the gifts of fire, strength, and pressure—they didn't want to change or to be advanced because it meant they could never go home to the surface again, so they were lost."
"To the stars? But Vox said all the Vishan were in the stars?" I ask.
"Her father's line is Dyer. Like Vita. There are legends of a terrestrial line of two brothers…one stayed on the surface, and one returned to the earth with the others. We never thought these were more than stories before Vox came here with most of the Vishan markings," Veece continues, his voice steady, but not calm. "Her people were lost to us, and we were lost to her people. This is what happens when we break from tradition."
There's a long silence before Liddick takes a step toward Veece.
"But if they didn't want to be changed, you should understand why we have to stop what they're doing in that mountain," Liddick says, looking from Veece to Cal.
"We understand, but the council won't believe mad scientists are trafficking sandies in there. The packs we send out for patrols, the ones like ours and Kesh's, they're sent because the Vishan believe we have to prove to the Bestower that we're still worthy of the gifts—the sandies are the chosen; the tunnel sharks are our tests," Veece explains.
Liddick looks from Veece to Dell, who tosses up a hand and shakes his head. Cal nods in reluctant agreement.
"Is he serious? People are dragged down here from the surface, and their council thinks it's because they're chosen for them? That these tunnel shark things are some kind of divine monster sent to test their—OK, I can't…" Liddick closes his eyes and shakes his head, then pushes his hands through his hair.
"It's an old way," Veece says. "And it's a beam we can't shake, or we'll crash our whole culture."
"Truth doesn't matter…only tradition matters," Cal says. "Nothing new can replace it on account of it takes a long time to build. It would be like starting yourself over. How do you ask a whole culture to start itself over?"
"Maybe you don't. Maybe you just start over, and that eventually inspires others to do the same," I say, then immediately wonder where the thought comes from until I feel a tingle in the back of my neck just like I do when Vox is trying to push a thought into me. Everyone is quiet for a second as they look over at me. Liddick raises his eyebrows.
What is it? he thinks.
I don't know. Vox…somehow. I feel her.
"Well, Dell managed to inspire others to think he's cracked. Nothing out there is designed by scientists. It just evolved," he adds, and Dell narrows his eyes.
"Vox is still out there," I say. "I know she is, and I know she'll help us."
"She's going to have a hard enough time helping herself," Cal answers in a quieter voice, then blows out a labored breath. Liddick takes a few quick steps over to Veece and pulls up the sweep map on his forearm unit.
"Is this where she's heading? Is this the mountain?" he asks, pushing a button that doesn't do anything but make him swear. Finally, he pushes one that brings up a 3-D projection of the tunnels we're in, but he swears again when it cuts off after what looks like a grain field, and beyond that, dense…trees? "Crite, it only shows three miles at a time. Is she at least heading in that direction?" he asks, waving the map closed in frustration.
"Let's go to the Origin Wall," Zoe says to us all, and Cal launches a barrage of words in his language at her before switching back to ours.
"This is pointless!" he adds.
"No harm in them seeing what's between here and the mountain," Zoe says, then turns left of the chute we all just slid down.
CHAPTER 18
Origins
The white and yellow lights begin to haze near the top of the wide, limestone corridor until we reach a small cave that opens straight up into another narrowing passage, which is flooded with blue light trickling down. The walls in here are hard to see as a result, but t
hey look like they have etchings all over them. As soon as we walk in, we can hear the blue lights above us squeaking—the closer we get, the louder it is. After a few seconds, the blue mass rushes down around us. I turn around directly into Liddick's chest, and he catches my arms so we don't fall with the momentum.
"What are those!?" I shout over their flapping, and just as quickly as they started moving, they're out of the cave. I look back over my shoulder to make sure they're all gone, then take a step back toward the middle of the room so I can look up into their narrow passageway again. "There were hundreds of—"
My words stop instantly in my throat when I feel something on my shoulder, then hear a high-pitched squealing close to my ear. I start swatting at the noise, making contact with something wet that then begins struggling in a tangle of my hair. I try to shake it loose, but it just starts squealing more.
"Hold still!" Cal says as the thing flaps and squeaks more violently.
"What is it!? Get it off!" I say through my teeth.
"You see?" I vaguely hear Cal's voice behind everything, then feel someone gripping my shoulder. When I look up, he's standing right in front of me with his other hand moving once, and then twice through my hair before he pulls it back and holds a little blue bat in front of my face, caging it with one hand while holding his other underneath it like a saucer, which catches the glowing blue viscous liquid coming off it. "Can't deal with a lux, and you want to send them into the Rush?" he laughs over his shoulder at Zoe. Liddick takes a step forward and scratches the animal on the head, but the tiny, rounded blue ears and long, pointy blue nose instantly disappear into Cal's hand. He sucks in a quick, startled breath around a laugh and brings the creature into his chest to help catch even more of its pooling liquid. "Rav calls this going goo," he adds.
"Wh—? Did it just—? That's a bat! Why is it—ugh!" I shout, seeing nothing more of it except the blue, glowing liquid oozing through his fingers.
"Its insides are changeable like the other invertebrates down here, so it can actually break into pieces and move all its bits independent of itself before coming back together," Dell says, studying the animal as it starts to reform, "but mostly you'll just see them going goo like this. Stretched my head the first time I saw it happen too," he adds.