TERRA (The Elements Series Book 2)

by Tracy Korn

  I hadn't considered that the interviews might be about seeing which of us would be safe to bring to Gaia…which of us would have the aptitude to do what they wanted us to do without having the nerve to take a big risk, even if we had to. But he's right. Rule followers don't rebel.

  "That makes sense," I say quietly. "I never thought about it like that, but most of us had to be pressured into the scenarios in our interviews—that, or when we were pushed to rebel, we didn't fight back until now."

  "Exactly. We just have to remember who we are, so whatever you're clinging to in Vox and Liddick…it's already part of you," he says, taking a few steps toward me, then winces as he runs his thumb just under the bruised part of my cheek from when I hit the ground during Vox's last message. "Maybe the pressure we've had to deal with our whole lives with trying to be good enough to get into Gaia has short-circuited our ability to take credit for those traits. I don't know, but Jazz," he continues, combing his fingers through my hair, "you are so much more than what you're letting yourself see. You have to find a way to connect to that."

  I stare up at him, the yellow light falling over the sharp angles of his face, softening them in the glow that also bounces off the black, glass-like facets in the walls all around us. The hollow feeling in my chest starts to fill with everything he's just said to me—not just because of how he sees me, but because I do recognize Liddick's fearlessness and Vox's stamina in myself, and maybe that means if I believe they'll both be all right, I will be too.

  This is the right answer. I know it is, and the certainty is such a relief that I slide my hands over his chest and move as closely to him as I can. He smiles at me as he wraps his arms around my waist, then pulls me into a hug.

  He's warm and solid, and I can feel his heart pounding under my hands. I slide them around his neck and press my lips to his, which launches a rush of adrenaline everywhere inside me that scatters in all directions like tiny embers blowing in the wind. He lifts me off my toes and turns so that my back is at the wall, and I sit on one of the flat rock edges. He steps between my knees, his fingers pressing into my hips as he pulls me toward him, then smiles against my mouth before trailing kisses along my jawline and abruptly stopping with a sigh at my collar.

  "If it would not literally kill us to take these off…" he growls in my ear, sending a jolt of electricity straight through my stomach. I swat his shoulder as a laugh bubbles in my chest.

  I lean back and move my hands to his face, suddenly needing to see him. His eyes are warm and soft, and so close that I can see the flecks of gold dancing in the dark, mossy green. I watch my thumb trace over the edge of his high cheekbone, along the rough, dark shadow of his jaw, then over his full, parted lips, which quirk in the corner under my touch. His small smile turns into a wide, brilliant one, and I feel heat pushing through my chest again…the same expanding pressure that Ty radiated with Ada, the same total happiness and gratitude and security no matter what. For a second I wonder again if these are just Arco's feelings I'm picking up, but I can't find the disconnect inside myself any more like I could when I picked up Ty's. I really do feel this way, and not just because I'm afraid or looking for something solid to hold onto…I'm what's solid.

  "Crite, what's in your head right now" he chuckles, then looks away for a few seconds before meeting my eyes again. "You know you're gambling with your life looking at me like that…" he grins, tugging on my dive suit pull cord as he arches an eyebrow.

  "Guess I should have led with being able to take off the dive suits as an argument for getting the Vishan treatments then?" I ask, barely kissing his bottom lip, then pulling away before he can connect.

  "There wouldn't have been an argument," he whispers in a rasped voice, then smiles when he presses his hips and chest into mine.

  I kiss him again, then laugh, easily now, relaxed and comfortable…happy as I rest my forearms on his shoulders and let my fingers brush through his wavy light brown hair. I find his eyes again.

  "Arco, I think I—"

  "There you are," Jesse's impatient voice crashes into us from the fissure where he stands with a scowl, and the shock makes me feel like I've almost fallen off the pier itself. "Cal said to hunt you up. Your friend is awake."

  ***

  It takes us several minutes to descend the connecting corridor and find our way back to the little cave where Vita and Cal gave Liddick the Vishan DNA treatment. His coloring is darker than it was a few hours ago, like he's been in the sun all day, and the contrast makes his blue eyes almost as bright as Tieg's. Dez smiles sitting next to him on the dark stone slab, his legs hanging over the edge with his black boots planted on the ground, and his hands gripping the smooth rock like he's going to stand and take off running any second.

  "Cal said no one has come out of it this fast before," Dez says proudly, but the second I see Liddick, it feels like I've just caught something heavy. Liddick, crite…I start to think. What's wrong? I feel helpless and awkward standing in the doorway watching him like this, but then he heaves a breath, and the pressure lifts from my chest.

  I couldn't get a sense of you, Liddick thinks. I thought the treatment reversed us—reversed me…

  I try to resist the urge to go to him. Dez wouldn't understand, and while I think Arco might now, I know he wouldn't want to see it. Liddick's chest expands as he takes in a deep breath, and I know he can feel my dilemma as I press my lips into a thin smile.

  "Welcome back," I say as casually as possible. He clears his throat and nods, and just like that we are back within our lines again.

  "So when do I get to start lighting campfires?" he asks. Everyone laughs at this, even Arco, and Vita moves to Liddick's side to angle his jaw upward.

  "This will scar, but it won't cause you pain," she says, tracing a red line that looks like the letter S stretched at the top to a point.

  "It's like a little fire," Myra says just as Vita smiles at Liddick.

  "This is the mark of the Vishan. Now, you are one of us."

  CHAPTER 28

  One of Us

  "What does being one of you mean, exactly?" Liddick asks, looking down at his palms. "This itches a little."

  "If you focus on the itch…focus on making it worse, it will—" Dell starts, but Liddick immediately jumps off the stone slab when a flame bursts from the palm of his hand like a small explosion, and then is gone. "It will light," Dell finishes with a laugh. Ellis and Avis move quickly to Liddick as Dez examines his hand.

  "Are you burned?" she asks.

  "No…it just surprised me," he says, then swallows. "My hands tingle like they're asleep," he adds, blowing out a breath, then notices the back of his hands. "When did I get a sunburn?"

  "That will darken after some time. It seems to be a side effect of the DNA bonding," Vita answers. "Leave your suit on for the next 24 hours, and then you can be sure you are climatized."

  "Pressure proof," Avis adds helpfully, and Liddick gives him a tolerant grin.

  "Thanks," he says, nodding with a thin smile as he closes his eyes in a long blink.

  "You'll be able to pick up the NET's signals now…the bond expands our neural channel," Zoe adds.

  "What if we have more paths than one? Are they all enhanced?" Liddick asks, suddenly rigid. "Or at least are they all preserved?"

  "That's right, you have a splice," Tieg laughs. "I forgot about your port-carnage death wish. Did your cannibal install that?"

  "That cannibal is the only one watching our backs right now, so if you ever want to get out of here, I would stow it," Liddick says, then raises an eyebrow at Tieg. "If I recall, you didn't make a great first impression," he adds, tapping his teeth with his index finger the way Liddick's Badlander friend, Azeris, did when Tieg insulted him back in the Boundaries room back at Gaia.

  "So he's watching us right now?" Dez asks timidly.

  "No, it's not like that. He adjusted my port-carnate splice so it could also serve as a direct link between us. He was going to align our coordinates with Liam's
and Jazz's dad's and send us map updates, but so far all I've gotten is visual of his digital signature—the wavy letter A repeated on the walls from before—and some hellacious buzzing in my ears from the channel feedback."

  "Wait—didn't you see those letters in the walls too?" Arco asks me, and I nod.

  "I didn't at first, but I could after I concentrated, why?" I answer. Arco turns back to Liddick.

  "You said she could see everything Liam sent out—the marlin, and if she'd gone into the virtuo-cines, all those messages you'd received in there too—because you're the same, and he'd hacked into your neural channel through the virtuo-cine network, right?" Arco asks, narrowing his eyes at Liddick, who takes a stiff breath and angles his head in a warning back at Arco. "But you just said that's not how Azeris is sending you signals, so how could Jazz see those letters in the wall without a port-carnate channel splice too?"

  I feel heat rush into my face at Arco's implication and turn to face him.

  "I was the one who insisted that port-carnate was too dangerous," I say, feeling the pulse in my throat pounding all the way through to my teeth. How could he think I would be all right with physically teleporting, and especially after it nearly killed Liddick? "You actually think I'd somehow secretly get a splice?"

  "I never said I thought you'd do it," Arco answers, his brows pushing together and his eyes softening for just a second before he shoots a glare at Liddick. "But he would. That's why Azeris pulled her in that automator launch with you. It wasn't to help stabilize you because her neural structure was the same as yours, it was to copy your splice onto her neural channel. She's rigged for port-carnate now too, isn't she?"

  Arco's chest heaves with his quickening breath, and I feel his anger boiling up like acid behind my ribs, leaking behind my collarbones and climbing up the back of my skull. At the same time I feel like I'm falling, unsure of what actually just happened. I bring my hands to my head and look at Liddick with the question I can't seem to verbalize because I'm terrified that once I do, it will be a real possibility that's loose in the world.

  Liddick? I think…

  "Isn't she!?" Arco yells through his teeth, the violence in his voice and the pointed steps he takes toward Liddick jostling my attention back to him. Dez jumps in front of Liddick and holds out her hands to Arco, who stops abruptly.

  "Spaulding…" Arco shouts, but Tieg is already only a step from ushering Dez from his path. Arco takes several more steps toward Liddick after she's clear, but the delay has given Dell and Jax enough time to scramble to Arco and seize his arms.

  Everyone else turns to me—Zoe, Avis, Ellis, Vita, Joss, and Myra… even Dez and Tieg—and I feel everything flying into me all at once: fear, anger, pity, jealousy, but it takes a minute for my own feelings to work their way up from under the pouring deluge of everyone else's. Liddick meets my eyes, his, laced with apology, and I can only shake my head.

  I'm sorry…he thinks. It was just the only way to make sure I could get you out if things didn't work.

  "If what didn't work?" I say out loud, feeling ice crawl up my spine. His eyes widen a little, and he angles his head.

  The channel…all of it. We had to get out of there, Rip…you heard Liam, you saw the experiments they were doing on Lyden and Arwyn. Will you just talk to me? he thinks again.

  "You mean like you talked to me about copying over your port-carnate splice while letting me think I was helping you?" I say out loud again. "Is that why you grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go, so the circuit would go through me too? Is that why we were supposed to think of happy thoughts, Liddick? Were we supposed to get on the same frequency or something? Just get out of my head, all right?"

  "Rip, it was the only way to make sure you'd be safe—you wouldn't have taken the risk because—" he says out loud now, but I don't want to hear it.

  "It was mine to take or leave, not yours," I say, letting the ice racing through my veins freeze each word.

  "The splice is just insurance…it can't hurt you," Liddick says out loud again, looking at me now like there is no one else in the room—the same sincere blue eyes, the same full lips held just on the edge of smiling like when we sat on the dune the night before we left for Gaia, and he told me about getting messages from his brother Liam. The angle of his jaw shifts when he clenches his teeth after I don't respond, and I hear him again in my head. Do you really think I could ever do anything that would hurt you?

  "I didn't until now. Get out of my head," I say aloud, and watch the tremor of it move over his face. His brows contract as he presses his lips into a hard line, then swallows before walking out of the small cave. Dez tries to follow him, but Tieg intercepts her.

  "Let him go," he says as Ellis nods in agreement, evidently heading after Liddick himself.

  "Arrogant ass!" Arco hisses, then pushes his hands through his hair and turns into the wall.

  "Guess training starts now," Dell says to Zoe through a long exhale just before turning to follow Ellis.

  Arco resets, then walks back to everyone with his hands on his hips and his eyes on the ground. He looks up at me and sighs. "It's going to be all right. The splice can be taken out…we'll just need to get back to some kind of data hub like in the Boundaries room," he says, reaching for my hand.

  "He said it can't hurt her, though?" Joss speaks up. "Is it really so bad to have an extra channel?"

  "That's not the point," Jax says, biting off the words. "What did he think he was going to do? Port-carnate them both out of Gaia?"

  "Calm down," Fraya says at his side. "She's all right."

  "And he wouldn't have done it if he thought she would be in danger," Myra adds. "He must have known she would be OK."

  "Well, it's not OK, Myra. You can't just make decisions about other people's lives like that," Arco says, bringing a hand to his temple in frustration.

  "Why not? If it's the difference between them living and dying?" Cal asks abruptly, then folds his arms over his chest.

  "What?" Arco squints at him, a few words forming on his lips before he shakes his head and starts over. "That's the same kind of thinking that created this situation in the first place! What gives you the right, any of them in that mountain, or back at Gaia, or anywhere the right to alter people? What's wrong with you?"

  "Your one-track world where everything stayed in the lines is gone, sandy. Down here, we don't always have the luxury of being idealistic. You either learn to bend, or you're going to break in the Rush," Cal says as he pushes past Arco and stops at the cave opening, then turns back to us. "Liddick's cells will be turned over in a few weeks, but you'll be able to see the full effects of the treatment by tomorrow. We'll treat the rest of you tonight so that you're all ready to leave at the same time," he adds, then nods to Jesse. "Help me find Veece."

  Jesse rolls his eyes and pushes himself off the wall, then follows Cal through the opening. Vita smiles at me as she puts the rest of her materials into the cloth and holds them to her chest.

  "Don't be angry with him for too long. Crimes are not reflected in the outcome, but in the intent. His was to protect you," she smiles softly. Arco huffs, but she just lowers her blue eyes in a small nod before following Cal and Jesse.

  Everyone's eyes are on me again, except for Dez's. She looks off to the side, and the only thing I can feel from her is an ache in the back of my skull that spills into my jaw, then down my neck. It pinches everything like it's trying to shrink the muscles in my shoulders, pulling them tight to the point that it feels like they will snap. I squeeze my eyes closed and turn away from her, then scrub my hands over my face to dislodge her confusion, her anxiety. I want to explain to her that I didn't know, that it wasn't my fault he chose me, but I get the sense she already knows this, and that's part of what makes this so hard for her—I didn't even want him to.

  When I open my eyes, Tieg is talking firmly with her, and Jax is making his way toward me with Fraya. He puts his arm around me and pulls me toward him like I've had a bad day, then palms the back
of my head with his huge hand.

  "He shouldn't have done it, but he was right that it can't hurt you, especially since you're not actually going to try to upload your consciousness and send every atom of your body into the port-cloud, right?" Jax laughs, trying to find the bright side of things like he always does. A spark flickers in my chest for just a second at the idea that I actually could upload myself into the port-cloud now, then rematerialize somewhere else. The thought is quickly snuffed out by the flash of Liddick's bloodshot eyes when he came back from his port-carnate trip to get the automators for the port-call that helped us map our way out of Gaia, not to mention the deluge of public service announcements warning about misaligned body parts and scrambled insides. I must grimace at this, because Arco grips my hand, and Fraya brushes my shoulder.

  "A splice is just like our regular neural channel for the Network…virtuo-cines, school feeds, weather, and with the new nanite constructions from Gaia, port-calls. It's just an extra path, Jazz. You're upgraded!" she giggles, which is infectious, and I feel a smile spreading over my face.

  "And since you can tap into his Badlander friend's feed now, we don't have to rely entirely on Liddick for path updates once we get out in the Rush," Jax says, elbowing Arco's arm just as a low hum starts in the base of my skull, then vibrates my teeth.

  After a second, I start to see fiery green flashes materialize into thick, dark brows that push together over a set of round, brown eyes—older, scrutinizing eyes that suddenly widen from behind a large, strong hand with veins that run between the battered knuckles. It falls away from the man's face to reveal dark stubble flecked in gray. The man opens his mouth to speak, but then the image breaks apart and is gone. I blink a few times and shake my head, still trying to understand what I just saw…