by Tracy Korn
"Let go! Let me go!" Dez yells at the ground.
"It's the shark! I see it!" Fraya shouts, jabbing the sharp end of her stick at the long, dark gray fin, which stretches through the ground to the length of a human arm, then wraps around Dez's calf up to her knee. Dez screams in pain as Tieg fires his stick at the ground where the fin emerges, stabbing a hole through it, but it doesn't let go. He stabs through it again as another fin shoots up and grabs Fraya's stick, flinging it several yards away, then whips back in one fluid motion and wraps itself around her thigh. She screams, and Jax drives his spear into the narrow part of the fin just above the ground where it isn't attached to Fraya. Dez passes out just as Tieg manages to stab enough perforations in the fin to sever it. He drops his stick and picks up Dez, jostling her shoulders and shouting her name.
"Dezzie! Can you hear me!? Dezzie!"
"She's just knocked out from the nanites! She'll wake up! Stay in the middle with her!" Cal shouts, his machete in his hands. "Jax, back up!"
"It's got her!"
"I know! Back up so I can cut the fin loose!" Cal shouts again, but Fraya's screams are the only thing Jax can hear as he keeps rifling the point of his stick at the fin and flames shoot everywhere.
"Ripley!" Arco yells. "Ripley, back up!"
The ground sounds like thunder as the huge, gray nose breaks through the packed earth, reddish, then black dirt crumbles and rolls down its face as the jagged teeth zipper down what should be a throat, then open into hundreds of differently sized pocket mouths, which open and close sporadically, some slowly, some so quickly that they blur just like the Bale stalks when the zephyrs were hunting us.
Jax stabs his spear into the center of the tunnel shark's throat, but one of the mouths just bites the stick in half.
"Its eye! Aim for the eye!" Arco shouts.
"Back up! Damnit, get clear!" Dell shouts to Jax, but he won't be moved. Fraya screams again as the other fin, which is severed in a ragged line at the tip from Tieg's stick, wraps around Fraya's hips, pinning one of her arms. She screams again, the kind of blood curdling scream I know I'm going to hear for years to come. Jax stabs at the tunnel shark again, and two horns like elephant tusks shoot out from its shoulders, which now break free from the ground.
"Back the hell up if you want her to live!" Dell shouts as he, Zoe, and Cal try to take aim at the eyes, but the tunnel shark is moving so erratically, they can't get a fix with my brother in the way.
"Jax!" I scream. "Jax, back up!"
"No!" he yells in reply, stabbing again at the shark only to lose more of his stick to its snapping mouths.
Arco wraps his arm around Jax's neck to drag him backward, but Jax elbows him in the face, knocking Arco to the ground. He scrambles to his feet, blood spilling from his nose as Liddick has no choice but to hit the back of Jax's legs with the side of his spear, knocking him to his knees. Arco jumps on top of Jax then and holds him to the ground.
"Now! Now!" Arco yells to Dell, who swears when he realizes that he's too far away to take out the shark's eye. He swings his machete clean through the base of the fin wrapped around Fraya's thigh instead. The other fin is still wrapped around her hips, and I grip my stick now that there is room to take aim at the eye. Once I'm about three steps closer, Fraya's head falls forward just like Dez's, and Jax lets out an anguished scream that freezes me to the bone. I raise my stick, then pull it back just before accidentally running it through Cal's arm as he punctures one of the tunnel shark's eyes before I can. The shark's body jerks violently toward him, whipping Fraya into me and knocking me to the ground.
My lungs stop working so quickly that I am terrified they've somehow been ripped out of my chest. No matter how hard I try to breathe, I can't make any air enter. How am I drowning? I hear myself wondering. There's no water…how am I drowning?
"Rip!" Liddick shouts, but I can still only see hundreds of little round, white lights.
"No!" Arco yells, and I try to grab onto something solid, but my fingers only dig into the crumbling ground.
Someone lifts my head and shoulders, then moves me to my side.
"Little breath! Take a little—oh no…" Liddick says.
"Stay there and hold him! Arco, hold him! It's not dead yet!" Dell yells in the distance as Zoe shouts over everyone, and Myra giggles hysterically.
"I have a clear line! Run interference!"
My lungs feel like they're on fire, and a thousand little stabs run up my chest. But how…how am I drowning? I think.
You're not drowning, Rip! Listen, you're fine…you're fine. You just hit the ground full tilt. It just knocked the wind out of you, OK? OK…? Myra! Liddick shouts, but he sounds so far away.
But there's…no water…in the desert, I think as the white lights get brighter, spreading out until they touch each other, and the searing pain in my chest starts to subside.
Rip! Crite, please…damnit…Rip, I love you—I know you can hear me. I love you…fight! You have to fight!
"Watch the spikes in her thigh—unwrap it slow!" Cal shouts along with all the other noises in the background of Liddick's fading screams.
CHAPTER 47
The Channel
"It's you, by the way. You're the one calling me," Vox says. "At least this time."
I blink until the blinding white light clears, then notice the floor I'm lying on is metal and freezing cold. When she comes into focus, she's leaning against the wall with her knees up and her boots turned in, one bare, map-tattooed forearm hanging over her leg as a few ragged scraps of dive suit sleeve dangle from her shoulder. She props her other hand on the ground and leans into it, then turns her head absurdly on edge to meet my eyes.
"Vox?" I ask, surprised to hear my own voice sound so muffled, like I'm talking under water.
"Well, yeah. You linked into anyone else's head? Oh, you remember Azeris?"
"What?" I say, pushing myself up on my elbow, relieved when my voice starts to sound normal again.
"Hello, Jazz," Azeris says, bringing two fingers to his forehead in a salute as he stands, leaning against the wall. He's wearing dark pants, which are tucked into his boots just like they were the first time I met him in the Boundaries room at Gaia. This time, though, his shirt is faded tan with a thermal weave like the young Vishan and tunnel Badlanders wore. He smiles, and his white teeth stand out against his dark stubble and tanned skin.
"Your lung is punctured by the way. I hope that chutz stops jostling you back and forth with all that I love you rag," Vox says, then sticks out her tongue like she's gagging. Azeris shoots her a look, which makes her hold up her hands in faux surrender just before she turns to me and rolls her yellow-green eyes. "OK, well you need those nannies from the tunnel shark, or you're going to die, so tell Liddick, yeah?" she adds with a thin-lipped smile, and I start to feel nauseous.
"What?" I manage to ask, and once I do, the other questions spill out in a deluge. "Where are we? Why is it so cold? How did I—"
"Look, can you just not die first? Because that would kind of end our conversation here. Go ahead and think really hard, sand dollar. Nnnnnannies!" Vox interrupts, holding out her hands like she's just finished a performance and is waiting for applause.
"Nanites," Azeris corrects, then locks his hands behind his neck and takes a deep breath.
"Oh, yeah sorry…nnnnnanites! Think it, Jazz."
"Vox, I—"
"Think it, or you. are. going. to die," she enunciates. "And I did not come all this way through giant bugs and talking ravines just for you to die at the front door of everything, so can you stow it and think nanites, please?"
I try to concentrate on the word, but nothing happens. "It's not working!" I say, shaking my head against the clatter of voices pushing into the corners of my focus.
"No," she says, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "Picture Liddick. He was wrecked, remember? He's still wrecked…I can hear him wrecking all over the place, and the only way I can hear him now is if you can hear him, so listen and connec
t."
"Close your eyes, Jazz," Azeris says, pushing a weathered hand through his dark, curly hair.
I close my eyes, trying to listen for Liddick's voice, but everything is just as jumbled as it was, especially with the overlay of buzzing and the distracting, sharp pain in my chest again.
"It hurts," I say, trying not to take a deep breath.
"Good, that means you're closer…you're connecting back to your consciousness there—to what's happening around you right now in the Sand biome," Azeris says.
She needs the tube! Cut it! A voice shouts, but it's too far away and warbled for me to identify.
Is Dez awake yet? I can't do it!
"Myra… that's Myra!" I say.
No, so you have to do it! The first voice says, closer now.
"Jax?" I ask, trying as hard as I can to hear him.
"Jax can't hear inside your head! Call to Liddick!" Vox sounds like she's right next to my ear, which is so loud and so abrupt that I'm shouting his name in my head before I even realize it.
Liddick!!
"Tell him to get the nanites!" Vox yells again, but her voice is farther away now. "Hurry, Jazz!"
Nanites! Tunnel shark nanites! I think as loudly as I can, picturing Liddick's face, replaying his voice, strained and desperate. He said…he loves me?
Rip!? Crite…yes! Hang on! I hear you! Hang on! Liddick says, but his voice sounds like it's coming through a wall, and I start to feel heavy and tired as all the other sounds sink under me.
You heard her? What did she say!?
Hart, move!
We need the fin!
I know, Ripley! Cut it! Hurry up!
No! It has to be attached! Drag it here before that thing dies! The last few voices muffle again in the wake of the growing buzz, and something cool starts hitting my face.
"He heard me…" I say, bringing my fingers to my cheek before I open my eyes. "What's this?"
Vox exhales. "It's rain," she says just as I blink, then see that she's touching her face too.
"You can feel what I feel back there?" I ask, placing my palm on the ground to push myself up a little more, but I don't feel the same cold that I feel with the other palm. "Wha—?" I start to say, looking at Vox for an answer. She moves her other hand to the ground, and then I feel the cold.
"You can only feel what you feel there, and what I feel here. Trippy, yeah? This chokes by the way…" she says, lifting one of her hands to the side of her chest and wincing in pain as she raises a dark red eyebrow at me. "No pun intended."
"If I can only feel what you feel, then how can I see you if you can't see yourself?" I ask, confused.
"This, I guess?" she says, pulling the Vishan's NET artifact from inside the collar of her dive suit and holding the flat, metal Y-shaped bars out at an angle, making my view of her ripple. "Whoa, yeah, it's this," she laughs. "Sand dollar, you're bendy!" she almost sings as she turns the bars from one side to the other, which stretches her head and shoulders to the ceiling, then her torso and legs until they're just inches from my fingers.
"Stop!" I say, pushing the heels of my hands into my eyes to stop the nauseating distortions, then hear her laugh echoing like it's in a canyon as I wince from another sharp pain.
"He did it," Azeris says, tapping something onto a small blue screen that hovers over the palm of his hand. "Your lines are regulating," he adds with a quick glance at me. I try to get to my feet, but the stabbing feeling in my chest puts an immediate stop to that. I bring my hand to the source of the pain, but there's nothing there. Vox chuckles.
"You're not really here—you won't be able to see the damage because you haven't actually seen the damage yet. Only your brain is in my channel, sand dollar," she winks. "Though, maybe I have to stop calling you that because trying to cyclops a tunnel shark was pretty brass," she adds with a nod as she cocks her eyebrow.
"You were there? You were with me?"
"No, I saw it because it was the last thing you saw before you hit the dirt. Are you listening to me or what? We can feel what we would normally feel, and what the other one feels. You're still in the Sand biome with everyone else just like I'm here in what is apparently the freezer room of this stupid mountain Gaia," Vox explains, and after a second Azeris clears his throat. "What? She is still there because I couldn't make her all bendy if she were really here," Vox says, rotating the flat, metal Y-bars of the NET artifact in her hand again, and immediately, both she and Azeris twist and pull in opposite directions around the room.
"All right," Azeris says through his teeth, then closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose as I nearly roarf. The sensation is pushed back only by the overwhelming need to laugh as I wonder if I would be throwing up in Vox's head.
"So are you going to get your doodle plate out or what?" she asks Azeris, rolling her bright green eyes as she returns the NET artifact to the inside of her dive suit. She squints suddenly to study the scratches on the underside of her arm just as my own arm starts to itch in the same place.
Azeris sighs, then pulls up the glowing panel in the palm of his hand again, which projects about a foot into the air this time. He draws two big circles inside the blue projection with his index finger, then connects them with parallel lines before looking up at me.
"Jazz, this is your channel—your consciousness," he says, pointing to the first circle, then to the other. "And this one is Vox's. This pathway between them, that's your channel bridge," he explains, pointing to the two parallel lines connecting the circles. "You can see and hear her consciousness, and she can see and hear yours. Normally, you'd just meet in the middle of the channel bridge and see each of your environments behind you, but the NET must be overriding that and pulling you all the way into Vox's environment somehow—into her channel," he says, then draws another circle with two more parallel lines that intersect the others. "When I uplink to your channel, but you don't uplink to mine, I can see what you see in just that time and place too. I can see into your channel," Azeris adds.
"So the buzzing we've been hearing…that's just you connecting so you could keep track of us?" I ask. He nods and starts to elaborate, but Vox cuts him off.
"Or, it's me trying to get this thing to stop vibrating the teeth out of my head," she says, pausing her arm inspection long enough to reach for the collar of her dive suit again.
"No! It's the NET, I get it!" I say, throwing out a hand to her, which sends a wave of nausea over me again. She grins, then goes back to scratching between the healing marks on her arm as Azeris scowls at his palm display.
"Those nanites are lagging…" he says to himself, then looks up at me. "Jazz, even though you're linked into Vox's channel, part of your mind is still in the Sand biome. That's the part reporting the pain in your chest…when you move, or when you get close to waking up there, you can feel it more. Think of it like your consciousness is water being poured back and forth into glasses on a scale. The more water you have in one glass, the more information you process from that environment—it tips the scale of your awareness, wise?" Azeris asks, and I'd almost forgotten that he was a Badlander. His thick, dark brows raise in question, and several lines crease his forehead as he waits for my answer.
"I think I understand," I say. "But you're here? Really here with Vox in the mountain?" I ask, and he nods.
"I used port-carnate tech as soon as she made it here. When I was able to lock onto her channel before that, it was easy enough to find yours at the end of the bridge between you," he says, gesturing to the hovering blue grid over his palm again.
"That's what Liddick was trying to tell us," I say, remembering how adamant he was that Azeris had found us.
"You're going to knock out any minute from the dose of tunnel shark nanites, but when you wake up, tell Liddick this," he adds, then draws three triangles with three corresponding symbols: a wave on the first, the point of an open arrow on the second, and three undulating lines on the third. "Phase One," he says, pointing to the wave. "Phase Two, Phase Three," he
adds, pointing to the arrow, then, to the three wavy lines. "Tell him that Liam and I are almost finished with the Phase Three bridge—I don't know when I'll be able to connect to him now that we're here in the labs," he adds, and I try to nod.
"A channel connection to Phase Three?" I ask, shaking my head in an effort to keep everything straight.
"Yes…this one is an encrypted path that will connect the labs here to the counterpart site just outside the port-cloud. Do you remember launching the automators into the system back at Gaia?" Azeris asks.
"When you put the port-carnate splice in my head—yeah, I remember that," I say, narrowing my eyes. Azeris's mouth quirks.
"Just doing my job," he answers, "and I aim to finish it. The bridge will connect the hub here to the Phase Three hub inside Admin City. There's a—"
"Inside what?" I ask, looking from Azeris to Vox, who shrugs.
"Giant floating candy bar," she says, nodding like this will explain everything.
"What?" I squint at her as Azeris sighs.
"Ask Liddick about Admin City. There's not enough time to explain it right now. Just tell him about the symbols and their corresponding phases, and that we're almost done with the bridge. He'll tell you the rest, wise?" Azeris asks, then flips his hand, which brightens the blue, hovering screen that had almost faded out. "You have about two minutes before those nanites make it to your brain and put you down for a few hours, so try—"
"My dad…is he OK?" I interrupt, feeling my stomach drop in panic that I will run out of time before I find out everything I need to know from Azeris.
"He's fine, for now. He's in a holding tank because he sabotaged the last Phase Two test for Lyden and Arwyn. The biodesigners have to wait another 48 hours now before they see the results of the test they had to redo. Your father bought us another few days," Azeris says with a small, proud smile.
"What are they going to do to him in that tank?" I press, feeling my heart starting to pound hard against my ribs, which makes my side ache again. Azeris's screen beeps, and he jerks his eyes from me.