by Tracy Korn
"You saw Vox again, didn't you? Just now?" he asks, his hand gripping my knee to get my attention. He's the only other one not covered in mud when I look at him and nod, then notice Arco, Dell, Cal, and the others starting to move toward us.
"She's in the Sand biome," I say, but my voice sounds far away. "She killed a huge bug at the bottom of a sand funnel," I ramble, then feel Liddick gripping my knee harder.
"Did she tell you she was hearing buzzing—like the kind we've been hearing?" he asks, but his urgency is confusing. "Rip! Could she hear it?"
"Hey, you can back up," Jax says, taking several steps toward Liddick, who just fixes his wild blue eyes on mine and reaches out to square my shoulders with his.
"Rip, did she hear it or not?" he presses like we're the only two there, and somehow running out of time.
"Really." Jax takes another step toward Liddick, but Arco jumps in front of him before I can say anything.
"What is your problem?"Arco shouts, hauling Liddick up by his arm, but Liddick jerks away as soon as he plants his feet on the ground, then pushes Arco so hard in the chest that he stumbles backward into Jax.
"Get off me, chutz!" Liddick shouts, suddenly as if he's another person. His chest heaves, and for a second I think he will go after Arco, who regains his composure just long enough to lose it again.
"Oh, I've been waiting for this," he says in a low voice as he takes a few steps toward Liddick, but he barely finishes the last word before Liddick lunges at him. His shoulder drives into Arco's stomach, the momentum bringing them both to the ground before Jax pulls Liddick back, then shoves him toward Dell and Ellis, who both take an arm.
"Zone!" Jax yells as Liddick struggles out of their grip.
"I'm fine!" he says, then walks a few steps away from them, balling his hands into fists to smother the flames whipping out. He turns to me, his eyes still blazing. "So did Vox hear the buzzing or not?" he growls, and I pause in answering as I notice Jax pulling Arco to his feet, then putting a forearm against his chest to keep him from advancing.
"Yes," I say, confused until I feel the desperate ache he's projecting pushes into my chest, but that's all I can process before a deep, droning hum fills the air. I look around for the source, but only see trees and vines all around us.
"Skeets!" Dell shouts, pulling out a long machete from a sheath on his back. "Come on!"
"But the mud!?" Myra calls as we all scramble to follow Dell.
"It's too late for it to work—they already found us!" Cal shouts over everyone. "Go! Go!" he adds, waving us on as he brings up the rear.
We only get about 10 feet before one of the mosquitoes breaks through the leaf canopy and dives at us, its long, spindly legs dangling like several loose, fraying ropes. I almost can't keep my eyes open long enough to make out the rest of it with the reverberations of its wings beating sheets of air against my eyes. But I do see two hooked talons at the ends of its forearms, its translucent, bulbous body with spider webbed veins running to its pointy stinger-like tip, and the silver needle beak that must be three feet long.
I stumble backward over a downed tree, landing hard on the backs of my hands. Jax helps me to my feet, and I see our reflection in the mosquito's black, empty eyes. Each ones spans the entire side of its head, which juts out of its hairy, humped shoulders. It seems to see us too as the dangling ope-arms spread wide and its thick, spiny back legs drag along the ground just before its talons swipe at us. I look around for something to use as a weapon, but only find more vines.
"Jazz!" I hear Arco yell, then see Dell with his machete out of the corner of my eye, but it's too late. I feel the itch in my palms and the prickle in the hollow of my jaw. Fire! I have fire! I remember, then immediately see a curtain of it unfold in front of me, catching the hairs on the mosquito's legs, which blacken and curl as the fire peels back toward me along the ground and disappears into the soles of my boots. The mosquito slashes its talons in every direction as a high-pitched squeal pierces my eardrums. It thrashes as it burns, slamming into nearby trees, then ricocheting off the ground and into more trees before the smoldering body falls in a bouncing crash at my feet, then rolls so fast I don't have time to move out of the way before my legs are pinned underneath it.
"Get it off!" I scream, trying to pull myself free as its antennae dart back and forth and its talons twitch, either in death spasms or in one last frantic attempt to find me. "Get it off!" I grip the vines closest to me as Jax scrambles to his feet, then starts pulling me from under the charred body of the mosquito.
We're running within the next three steps. Tree limbs sting my face as they whip past while more bone-rattling humming pours down over us from somewhere above.
"There are more of them!" Tieg's voice bellows from behind me.
"Keep moving!" Cal yells from somewhere near Tieg as another crack of thunder explodes all around us, and marble sized raindrops start to fall again. Dell curses, then stops abruptly.
"Wait! Bring those leaves!" he shouts, pointing at a collection of small trees just to our left. "Help me bend the saplings!" he calls to Tieg and Jax, who move quickly to him as he lowers himself down a small ravine just ahead. "Bend them down to me!" Dell shouts, reaching upward as Tieg and Jax arc the trunks of several small trees. Dell takes one of the nearby vines and ties the grouping in place, the beginnings of a bowed shelter taking shape over him. "More! Get the rest!" he calls up as Cal starts hacking giant leaves from nearby plants.
"Zoe! Bring your blade!" Cal yells, and Zoe moves to help him cut.
"Come on! Help run the leaves!" Arco shouts to everyone else, and we all make our way to deliver the giant leaves Cal has cut so far.
"Weave them up and under the sapling trunks!" Dell instructs as the rain starts to fall more quickly, making it feel like someone is hitting my back and shoulders with tiny hammers.
"This won't hold up out here!" Tieg yells down to Dell, whom I can't see any more through the leaves we're placing.
"Just keep layering!"
After several more minutes, Cal rushes up behind us and motions everyone into the small shelter, which butts up against a grassy ravine that is veined in a gnarled root system. Everyone is dripping, the green mud on their hands and faces nearly gone as the rain pounds on the makeshift roof of leaves over our heads, which leaks water in several small streams.
"This won't hold for long, but it will give us a few minutes out of sight from the skeets. They probably just started burrowing to get out of the weather…we'll need to run again in a minute, wise?" Dell asks, taking an overdue breath as he wipes the mud dripping into his eyes with the back of his wrist. Most of us nod, but absently, still in disbelief of what just happened. Jax turns to me.
"Are you all right? Your legs?" he asks, surveying the damage caused by the burning mosquito body. Nothing hurts, but as I follow his eyes, I see singe marks burned all the way through to my blue jumpsuit just over my knee, and just under it, another patch is burned all the way through to my skin.
"I'm fine, it doesn't hurt," I answer, suddenly cold as the rain sinks in. Arco maneuvers next to me, then pulls me into a hug.
"Are you OK? Did it cut you?" he says, out of breath, and I shake my head as Liddick stands against the twisting tree roots with his arms crossed over his chest, trying to ward off the cold that I know he feels sinking in too…the same cold that forces my teeth into chattering spasms when I meet his eyes.
I'm sorry…he thinks after a second, but trails off as water drips from his long, rain soaked hair and falls over his lips. He wipes them with the back of his hand, then pushes through his hair as the same heaviness I felt before with him settles in my chest again. He rests his forehead against one of the tree roots, then closes his eyes, and no matter how much I focus on trying to connect to him, he won't let me in.
Another crack of thunder booms overhead, and we all startle.
"Can't risk this lightning…we'll have to wait this out in here!" Dell says over the ringing in my ears, then shakes h
is head at Cal. "If one of them sparks out there again…"
Cal nods reluctantly, then turns to face the rest of us.
"Downpours don't last long—just stay calm! The Bog isn't far off!" he says over the storm.
My teeth chatter more violently after a minute, and I wrap my arms around myself trying to decide if I should risk closing my eyes and seeing that mosquito all over again. Arco holds me against him, but I can't seem to let myself relax.
"What was that out there?" Jax shouts over the hammering rain, and my eyes jerk back to his. He's shaking his head at Liddick, who just narrows his eyes without answering. "Why did you tweak about Vox?" Jax reiterates, but Liddick still ignores him.
"It was Azeris…" I answer too abruptly, suddenly putting the pieces together as I look over at Liddick. "From this morning, wasn't it? When Myka saw you in the Origin Wall room. What did he tell you?" I ask, stepping out of Arco's arms and trying to make myself heard over the rolling thunder. Liddick looks up at me and takes a breath.
"He said he was going to look for Vox…if she's hearing buzzing, it's him. He found her."
"He told you that? He said he found her?" Tieg yells from the far side of the enclosure, only half his face still covered in the brownish-green mud. It makes him look like an exotic wild animal huddled in the shadows with his unnatural, electric blue eyes.
"No. He said he was going to try, but if she's hearing buzzing, then he found her," Liddick answers, clearly out of patience. He turns to me again, and I know there's more he's not saying.
Another crack of thunder explodes all around us as Liddick turns to Zoe, whose question hangs in the air without her even asking it. Liddick thumbs the leather strap of Zoe's satchel, which he still wears across his chest. Her smile starts slowly, then breaks free and lights her whole face.
"He saw it? He knows?" she asks, and Liddick nods to her.
"He knows we found you," he explains, and another chill runs down my spine.
"Can he get into the mountain? Does he know how to find us?" Zoe asks, barely able to stay ahead of the words.
"He's working on it," Liddick answers, but I can still feel him holding more back.
What did you start to say about Phase Three…? I think, bringing up the story that he started to tell me before we set out past the Bale field. He turns to me again, but his expression instantly hardens, and I feel him trying to push me out of his head. Arco must misunderstand the wall that goes up because a wave of heat pushes at my back as he suddenly starts shouting.
"I'm done with this!" he says, then maneuvers from behind me and advances until he's just inches from Liddick. "What are you telling her now? What do you know?" he presses, and before I can blink, Liddick pushes Arco back in my direction.
"You want to know, Hart? Lyden and Arwyn have two days before they're sent to Phase Three. Two days, not two weeks before they're launched into the atmosphere, all right? And we can't get there in two days! That's the message I got from Azeris in the Origin Wall room this morning!"
Arco straightens, and I grip his arms to keep him from retaliating as small flames shoot from his shoulders and from Liddick's palms. The combination of their anger feels like something is trying to claw its way out of my chest as a flash of lightning temporarily blinds us, and the almost immediate explosion of thunder leaves another ringing in my ears.
"Put it out! Put out your fire!" Cal shouts over the rumbling, but his voice sounds distant and hollow in the wake of the thunderclap. Ellis crosses to talk to Liddick while Jax moves in front of Arco, and I can't hear what either are saying over the rain. After a few minutes of listening to Ellis, Liddick is the first to get his fire under control, but he's had a lot more practice than Arco. It takes another few minutes for the periodic flames to stop snapping from Arco's shoulders, but they finally subside as the thunder starts to disintegrate into a slow, distant roll.
"If you're trying to melt your faces off, by all means keep flaming up like that out here with lightning and vein rock everywhere!" Del scolds as he rounds on us inside the small shelter. "Lightning will spark an orange fire if it strikes, and if you spark red anywhere near the vein rock, the green will ignite—all three colors together will mark us, wise?" he says, pulling up his pant leg to reveal a swirling burn pattern on his leg, which looks like an old pinwheel branded into his skin. "Bury your axes!" he shouts one more time, then closes his eyes in a long blink and pushes his hand over his face in exasperation.
Arco sighs as Liddick stands with his hands on his hips, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a big, caged cat. Arco clears his throat.
"All right, I'm sorry," he finally says to Liddick, the rain still pelting the leaves overhead. "I overreacted," Arco adds. Liddick stops shifting, but his eyes are still narrowed when he acknowledges Arco with a begrudging nod. Arco offers his hand, and the hot feeling in my chest turns into a bubbling tickle as Liddick's eyes widen just a little. The corners of his mouth twitch like he is trying not to laugh, and I glare at him.
We can't keep going with you both at each other like this. Do you want to get to the mountain or not? I think, focusing as hard as I can to penetrate the wall Liddick has up. His eyes dart to mine before he can catch himself, and I watch the muscles in his jaw flex as all traces of amusement fade from his expression. He grips Arco's hand after another second and meets his eyes, each of them refusing to look away first.
CHAPTER 42
The Edge
The rain slows, and I'm paranoid that every click, chirp, croak, and rustle is something that will try to kill us. I notice that the tubular clouds have spread out again in the muted sky—or, actually, they've spread out against the walls of this enormous cave, as Zoe keeps reminding me. I wonder if there are other impossible creatures living in plain sight like the zephyrs…creatures that I can't even imagine, let alone see coming.
We've been walking for what has to be an hour now, and while our dive suits and boots managed to keep us mostly dry, my hair is saturated with rain and sticking to my face. I look over my shoulder and see Liddick walking with Dez, Ellis, Myra, and Tieg, but he might as well be walking alone for all the interacting he's doing. He meets my eyes, and for a second, his are not hard or narrowed like they have been all day. He hasn't spoken since his episode with Arco back in the shelter we made against the rain, and I hope he can feel how much I wish he would stop shutting me out.
"The canopy is thinning," Cal says as we walk through the dense foliage covering the ground, which is so thick it comes halfway up my shins with each step.
"What does it mean if the canopy is thinning?" Ellis asks from behind Arco and me.
"It means we're crossing into the Bog biome," Cal answers.
"Is that why it's about a hundred degrees hotter now?" Zoe asks, then starts to take off her leather over-shirt. "Can you imagine being out here without our treatments? Topside folks would fry up like fish in oil. Can we stop a second?" she adds, holding her pack with one hand and shaking her other arm free of the sleeve.
Dell and the others start to slow down, and I lean against a nearby tree to take a swig of water from my desalinator tube as Liddick and the others catch up to the rest of us. Cal smothers a laugh at Zoe's remark and hesitantly removes his own leather over-shirt.
"We'll have to put these back on when the green gets thick again. Too many things crawling in these trees," he says, and immediately, I start to move away from the one I'm leaning against. After just a few steps, Dell holds up a hand to stop me in my tracks.
"Jazz, don't move," he says evenly. Fraya's hands fly to her mouth, and my heart starts hammering in my chest. I move my eyes wildly from Fraya to Dell, then to Ellis, whose mouth has fallen open.
"Why not? Why shouldn't I move…what—?" I say, my voice sounding like it's coming from somewhere outside of me, but Arco holds up his hands like he's about to say something.
"Jazz, it's OK, just hold still," he says cautiously, taking a step toward me, but Dell shifts his hand to stop him
. Arco's face blanches, and his lips press into a stiff line.
"Everyone just be still," Dell says in the same steady voice.
"Then get it off her!" Jax commands, and Cal holds out an arm to him.
"Get what off me!?" I ask, trying to keep my voice level, but I hear it shaking anyway as Myra folds her hands over her mouth and Tieg's face contorts in a grimace. "Get what off!?" I say again with the last of my voice.
"Just relax and don't talk. Breathe and pull your flames back," Dell says quietly, and I feel my throat start to close with fear. My flames? I think, then notice the itch in my palms and the whipping sound behind my head. "Pull them back now, Jazz. Right now," Dell says again, his voice pulling tightly around the words as his forehead wrinkles and his wide eyes fix hard on mine. I swallow hard and try to take a deep breath. "Good, Jazz…" Dell coaches, nodding as he takes a slow, careful step toward me, but the terror behind his eyes makes me lose my focus, and I hear the whipping just beyond my ears again. I clench my teeth together and try to keep my chest from heaving, but my breath is getting harder and harder to control.
Rip, listen…Liddick thinks. Close your eyes. Don't look at anyone. Their reactions are making you tweak…it's just a stupid bug on your arm. We'll get it. Just don't move, and don't look at anyone, OK?
I hear everything 10 times more loudly when I close my eyes. Something is scurrying several feet above my head, something else is pecking out a steady rhythm to my left, and I can even hear the shallow hum of wind combing through the leaves. The whipping behind my ears starts to fade, and then it's gone…replaced by cracking twigs and the sound of sucking mud…footsteps.
Is that Dell? What's happening? Is he coming? I think in a rush, and it feels like I'm running in the dark. Liddick!
I'm right here. It's OK. Dell is walking toward you. I told you we're going to get it. It's just a stupid ant, Rip, he thinks, but something in his tone is forced…the levity, the casual, dismissive humor surrounding words that are rigid and measured.