TERRA (The Elements Series Book 2)

by Tracy Korn

  You're up late. I jump when I hear Liddick in my mind, then turn around abruptly to find him leaning on the black wall at the threshold of the corridor that leads down to Center Hall. "Sorry, I was trying not to scare you," he adds out loud as he takes off his dive suit to reveal his blue jumpsuit underneath, then folds it next to my dive suit against the side wall. "I can help you practice if you want," he adds as I pull up another pathetic little flame in my hand so I can try to extend it in an arc over my head like Dell and Veece did in the training circle, but it dissipates before it gets past my shoulder.

  I let my hand drop to my side, frustrated as Liddick crosses to sit on the smooth ledge that juts out of the otherwise jagged wall next to me. The muted, glowing light hits the angular lines of his face and filters through his blond hair, making the dark roots disappear against the backdrop of the poured black wall behind him. He looks like an apparition again just like he did against the dark sky that night on the dune…the night before we left for Gaia when he told me about the messages from Liam. Thinking of this reminds me all over again of the years everyone misjudged him for being shallow, vain, and obsessed with Skyboard North virtuo-cine culture when all he was really trying to do was find his brothers without endangering anyone else. That seems like a lifetime ago, but I still regret not seeing it…not helping somehow.

  "How did you know I was up here?" I ask, trying to bring up another flame when I feel the dull itch returning at the base of my fingers.

  "I had a feeling you were practicing," he says, gesturing to the palm of his hand and winking at me.

  "Of course you did," I reply, trying to sound casual, but I can't keep the anxiety out of my voice. I'm still not completely sure what to do about us now being able to physically feel what the other is feeling. I was just starting to keep clear lines between us with the telepathy we already have. With this new layer of connection, I can't risk losing sight of where he ends and I begin again. I feel a dull pain in the base of my chest after realizing this, and have to look away from Liddick.

  "Is being able to physically feel things like this now with each other why you've been avoiding me?" he asks.

  "It's just…this is too much, Liddick," I sigh, closing my eyes and shaking my head, suddenly exhausted. "This is all just too much." I try to relax my hands when prickling heat starts to race down my arms, then take another deep breath and push back the doubt I feel about being able to handle whatever is waiting for us in the Rush, especially if I can't even keep myself together around Liddick.

  "If it helps, Vita said we won't be able to feel each other's physical reactions after the DNA bonding period. I guess everything just goes a little outer ring before it's permanent for some people," he adds, and I can feel the dull ache in my chest spreading like something cold has spilled inside me: disappointment…his disappointment, which is quickly blotted up by my own anger.

  "You told her we could feel each other's physical reactions?" I ask, the ache sharpening to a stabbing panic at the idea that Arco will find out and think it's just one more thing Liddick and I have, but he and I don't.

  Liddick straightens, his brows darting together as he angles his head at me. "Crite," he says through a wince as he presses a hand to his chest. "She's basically the Vishan doctor, Rip. I had to find out what was happening with us, didn't I?" he adds, trying to smile through the shock in his eyes, which then narrow in disbelief. "If you're this worried about Hart knowing…" he starts to say, gesturing to the hand at his chest, but then abandons the thought and shakes his head.

  "What? Finish what you were going to say," I press. He takes a deep breath, then lets it out all at once.

  "If you're worried this much about Hart knowing that you and I have another level of connection, then maybe what you think you have with him isn't what you want after all," he says evenly, like he's been working on the theory for a while. Suddenly, all my accumulated frustration hits me like a crashing wave—the last several training sessions that end with me losing control, and the follow-up nights of failed practices here on The Lookout Pier where I still can't shut out enough of the world to focus.

  "How would you react, Liddick? What if Arco could feel what I felt, hear what I thought, and you couldn't? Can you imagine that for a minute? What if I were with you, and I couldn't pull away from him?" The words are out before I consider their implications, caught up in the whirlwind of building pressure and fear and confusion as I dig my fingernails into my palms to keep the itch at bay. He meets my eyes as the striations of muscle in his jaw release, and now he has confirmation of his suspicions about me being as drawn to him as he is to me. The piercing anger in my chest softens and warms, then swells against my ribs as I take a deep breath and wait for him to flesh out the rest of his reaction—to say it again…to tell me we fit and that's why it's so hard for me to pull away from him. I can feel it just below the surface like I'm about to say it myself, but it's not what he says when he responds.

  "You're hearing the sounds now too, aren't you? The whales and whispers?" he asks, pushing my hair behind my ear after a few seconds. I stare up at him.

  "It's not the paranoia…" I say too quickly, both a little relieved and a little disconcerted because if Liddick can hear them too, if it's not just the paranoia Dell was talking about, that means the whispers are real. "Can everyone else hear them? I didn't want to ask because…"

  "Because you didn't want anyone to think the paranoia hit you…that's why I didn't say anything either," he nods in understanding, then lets his eyes drift to the ground as he smiles, but that falls away after another second as he tenses again. "I felt you pushing away, Rip—pushing me away, but I thought you just needed time, I don't know. The physical feelings…this new connection. I know it was…it is a lot," he adds, starting and stopping until he abandons that path and returns to a safer one. "Anyway, the others hear some of it—Dez hears the whales, but I think you and I are the only ones who hear the rest."

  "Why do you think it's just us?" I ask. He meets my eyes again and takes my hand.

  "Because we're the only ones who can't sleep any more."

  He doesn't look away when he lets out the long, slow exhale that tells me he's been with me the last several nights lying awake on his blanket stacks just 30 feet below while I've been up here watching this new, impossible world spread out before me, trying to train myself not to be afraid. I cross my arms and turn back to look out over the Rush because I feel myself getting pulled into him again…into the comfort of not being the only one who sees what I see and feels what I feel.

  "So you made up with Dez," I say, clearing my throat and changing the subject so I can redraw the ever fading lines that separate Liddick from me.

  "I suppose she doesn't want to kill me any more," he says with a quiet laugh in his voice.

  "She's good for you if you'll just give it a chance," I answer, feeling my heart start to pound in my chest as I hear him walking toward me.

  "Why do you keep playing this game with yourself, Rip?" he says quietly over my shoulder, giving into the need to say it again once and for all. "You think if you just ignore how you feel, you'll stop feeling it or something, but it doesn't work like that," he says in the same quiet voice against the distant sound of muffled whale songs and whispers.

  "Liddick, it's more than that—" I start to say, feeling his hands rest on my shoulders as carefully as they did when he checked my back for the gills I dreamed I had that first night after we escaped from Gaia. This time, his hands slip into my hair when I turn to face him, his clear blue eyes reflecting the golden light of the Rush behind me as his thumb traces the line of my jaw, and the way he looks into me makes me forget to breathe.

  "You're right. It is more," he whispers, leaning in, and turning away from is like trying to resist gravity. I can't move except to ball my hands into fists to prevent the fire from escaping again as I fight to take a slow, deep breath, to disappear in him and forget about everything else, at least for a little while.

&n
bsp; "Liddick…" I finally manage just before his lips touch mine. "This pull I have to you…isn't what you think," I say, lightheaded as my heart pounds in my ears. He pulls back slowly and scans my eyes, then furrows his brow in confusion when I don't say anything else. After another few seconds, realization spreads over his face, and my throat constricts with all the words I haven't said, but don't have to now.

  "You love him…don't you?"

  CHAPTER 36

  Into the Storm

  Liddick takes a step back from me, nodding to the air over his shoulder, and I feel like someone has punched me in the stomach. I didn't even completely realize that I do love Arco until recently, but it still feels like someone is squeezing my lungs because Liddick had to find out from reading me rather than me telling him myself.

  "I didn't even know that's how I felt until before we all went to the circle arena for training that first night…you were right about me needing some time to think I guess," I say, hoping to take the edge off of the news for him, but he bristles instead.

  "So you were planning to tell me this when…somewhere in the third biome when we're outrunning tunnel sharks or giant taloned mosquitoes or something?" he asks, narrowing his eyes again and pressing his lips into a thin line as his teeth lock together, making his jaw contract.

  A gust of anger hits me, which I know is his, and I know he's angry because he's hurt…but the heat rising in answer is mine, and it's because I'm so done with him not accepting what I've been telling him from the beginning.

  "Liddick, I told you within five minutes of you kissing me after your port-carnate debacle that we couldn't be together, remember? And when you told me I was what you were coming for—when you told Arco as much with me standing right there—I told you again that you and I couldn't be together like that," I say, then take a deep breath so I can control my tone. His narrowed eyes widen, and I can see the red outlines near the edges. He hasn't been sleeping much either.

  "And the times since then—these past weeks…all the times I felt you needing me, Rip, not Hart," he says, pointing toward the dark fissure opening, which is awash with glinting specks of reflected light from the Rush. "When you were the most afraid, you looked for me—when we first surfaced and everyone was wrecked over Pitt dying…and when you were coming through the squeeze with your nanites failing? When you had to take a breath or you were going to—" he stops abruptly and closes his eyes, then swallows hard and pushes a hand through his hair, gripping it in a clenching fist as he turns away from me and moves to lean back on the black, glassy ledge that is so shiny in places it looks wet. I watch him for a few minutes with all those scenes racing through my mind before I manage to pull together a response.

  "You're right…" I say, then take a deep breath, which I hold a second before letting it out as if it will buy me some time to find the words that will pull him back from this harsh, lost place that's twisting in my own stomach now too. "I was…I am pulled to you, Liddick. We can literally hear each other's thoughts, feel each other's feelings," I add, but he still doesn't look up at me. "Knowing I'm not the only one who feels the concentration of everyone's emotions all the time on top of my own is probably the reason I've made it this far without losing my mind down here," I say, taking a step toward him. "But I disappear in you, Liddick. I just melt down and reform into this soldered rebellion with you against the rest of the world. We turn into this strength for each other when things spin out, but at the core of that, I don't see myself any more. I just see you, or us. I can't even tell the difference. Don't you think that's…terrifying?"

  "No," Liddick answers casually and immediately as he straightens, gripping the black rock ledge at either side of him and shaking his head adamantly as he drives his bottom lip against his teeth. "No, Rip, I don't. I think that's what people go their whole lives trying to find—someone who gets it. Someone who can just look at you, and you know you're everything to them because you're that intertwined. There is no you or me when it's right like that…there's us. That's love, Riptide. Going all in and not looking back. Tell me you really can't feel it—a level of connection that no one else could ever have with you? Tell me we don't have that," he says, reining in his voice and angling his head. His brows pull together as he tries to soften the rigid set of his mouth.

  I take a deep breath and feel tears burning the back of my throat, then welling in my eyes as everything inside me feels like it's being ripped out. I shake my head, feeling my heart breaking…his heart. Ours? I can barely find my voice to reply.

  "But how do you know you're everything to someone when you disappear?" I manage, and his eyes narrow like he's trying to wall off my words. "Of course we have that connection, but it's because we're so intertwined that this isn't good," I say, hearing my voice failing under the weight of the words. "You've felt me need you, felt that I've wanted to be with you, and you were right, but don't you see how you've run those feelings through your own filters? We have different definitions of love, Liddick. I don't want to disappear. I don't want to have to wonder if all the things that I think make me who I am are just reflections of you, or us, or whatever. Can't you see that? Can't you feel that in me?" I ask, watching his bloodshot blue eyes ignite as they glass, and his dark brows crash down in an effort to stop them. He swallows hard again and locks his jaw, forcing the muscles to jump and outline the sharp angles of his face as the cords begin to show in his throat. I watch his pulse jump under the small S scar of his treatment injection just above his collarbone until his chin lowers to his chest. He grips his elbows like a cold wind has just blown over us, and the chill runs through me like a blade. I just want him to talk, to say something. Liddick? I think. Several more seconds pass before he sighs, but he still doesn't look up at me.

  All right, he finally answers in my mind, then nods to the ground a few times before turning back toward the shadowy fissure, which flickers as he passes in front of the reflecting light from the Rush behind us. He stops abruptly with his back to me, then stands still for a second before turning around and pulling something from his pocket. He walks a few steps back to me and reaches for my wrist, his hands warm as he folds my fingers over the smooth, cool stone he puts in my palm. It's bright red with spots of gold marking one end—a Cycle stone like Zoe and Dell had earlier to tell the time.

  "We leave in the morning—when this turns green in about five hours," Liddick says out loud, then silently to me as he closes his fingers over mine, his eyes bright blue with fatigue and narrowed like he's fighting against too harsh a light. At least that's one thing we can see coming down here, he thinks, then forces a smile, but doesn't meet my eyes again before he grabs his dive suit and disappears into the fissure. I sit down and stare at the rock, running my thumb over the smooth, flat surface, then stare out over the Rush. The white, limestone pillars stab upward through the bellies of the seven biomes that unfold for miles into the distance under the floating zephyr nests and striated, muted gold light of the gas clouds above.

  ***

  It feels like I've barely closed my eyes when the sensation of drops hitting my face forces them open, and I startle at the crack of thunder that follows about three seconds later.

  "Good way to get yourself sparked sleeping up here all exposed like that," Zoe says from behind me as I scramble to my feet and move back to the overhang of the Lookout Pier with her. "I was just about to start throwing pebbles to rouse you," she adds, then lets the handful of dark stones in her hand spill to the ground. "Come on—they're dishing breakfast, and Jove wants to talk to everyone before we push into the Rush. We need to light out while it's storming…harder for the zephyrs to make us out during storms," she says, jerking her freckled chin at the weather beyond the edge of the pier, which I haven't really looked at until now.

  "What is that!?" I gasp at the huge, cylindrical tubes of dark clouds that cover the entire sky, bunching in places like thick, rolled blankets against what looks like a bright, intermittent light on the other side.

  "S
torm clouds," Zoe shrugs.

  "Those aren't storm clouds. They're…layered!"

  "You heard the crack, right? And you see those flickers up inside them?" she asks, cocking an eyebrow at the sky. She nods at the same time I do and shrugs again. "Storm clouds. Come on."

  I can't tear myself away from the tubular bands that seem like they will drop down from the sky like an unfurling curtain at any second, and Zoe suddenly jerks my elbow. I turn abruptly and follow her down the rise to Center Hall to find everyone standing around the cook pot—everyone, that is, except Arco and Dell, who are talking off to the side. I scan the room for Liddick but don't find him near his blanket stacks, or anywhere else nearby the others.

  "Where's Liddick?" I ask Zoe as we make our way to the food.

  "Last I saw he was sliding down the Swim. Haven't seen him since," she answers.

  I try to focus my thoughts enough to call to him, but once we pass through the opening to the large room, there's too much noise and commotion to hold him in my mind for more than a second or two without actually having him in sight.

  "Maybe he went to practice in the circle arena" I say, but Zoe doesn't seem to hear me as she reaches for the bowl that Myka, the tall Vishan animal expert with giant brown eyes is passing her. Myka glances at me, then does a double take before looking over her shoulder.

  "Have you talked to Liddick?" she whispers as she leans toward me and pushes her straight blonde hair away from her face.

  "No, why?" I ask, surprised, and now suddenly feel like something bad has happened, or is about to. "What is it?" I press when she just looks at me blankly and straightens.