A shaking rose up from the floor. Cool put his hand on the wall and it, too, shook—so much so that his hand bounced off and he fell into his brother. A deafening rumble thundered from outside. The shaking floor kept Cool from getting his feet under him to stand. Debris rained down as dust clouded the air. Viky, Jeff, and his mother huddled in the doorway around him.
Jeff! What’s going on?
“I don’t know.”
Are we safe here? What if nanos keep coming?
“I can’t walk in this. Maybe it will pass soon.”
The shaking rattled harder. Cool tightened his hands over his face. The floor tilted, causing him and Jeff to slide into their mother. What’s happening?
The flashlight shone its light from under Viky’s chin into space outside the door. Where someone stood in man’s boots, undisturbed by the floor’s slant or tremors.
Jeff…Cool thought, a distant plea for help to understand how these dirty brown pants could feel familiar. The crusty edge to their folds and brushes of tar stains bore eerie resemblance to distant memories.
“Just hold on,” Jeff said. “This has to stop soon.”
What if he didn’t want it to? Cool’s gaze reached the bottom of an untucked pale shirt. Viky’s light only cast a faint glow that high, but hidden behind the space between pants and the shirt was a bronze belt buckle of an open-mouthed fish. Cool’s eyes strained against the beginning of tears. He reached for the flashlight, fighting to control his aim with the constant shaking. His hand landed on the back of the flashlight. Viky jolted at the movement. Cool pointed up at the man standing outside, maintaining his grip until she let go, and he shone the light on his father.
Back from the dead.
The light hit his face. His skin. The color and youth. He barely met Rush in age. It couldn’t be. He looked exactly like Cool imagined. Before the accident that ruined Cool’s life. His face and arms were not broken like Cool had seen in countless nightmares since his death. The tower of broken concrete no longer kept his father in its dark prison.
Jeff…it’s Dad.
If not for the thought communication, Cool couldn’t have relayed the strange miracle before him. Dad was another word too powerful to breach his throat.
Dad stepped forward and reached a hand down for Cool to take.
Cool dropped the flashlight. His father’s grip tightened in his palm and a great strength lifted him to his feet.
Jeff. Mom. You’re not going to believe this. Dad is back.
If the world had to tear itself from the center up to bring him back, it was a price he’d gladly accept. Cool surged forward and wrapped his arms around the solid, warm, and living body of his father. The smell of tar and wet cement in his shirt was as welcome as any breath Cool could remember.
Dad’s arm around him helped steady his steps as they walked left down the hall. As he thought about his steps and the incessant pounding of earth against building, it almost connected that he might not be touching the ground. Almost. He only cared that his dad was back and his grip tight and alive.
It was too bad Jeff and Mom hadn’t come with, but he missed having alone time with Dad.
They’ll catch up.
67 – Carroll
The sniper, Chris’s shot hit the hybrid kid in the back, but didn’t stop him from knocking Dixon over.
“We go now.” The Gov backed up, forcing Carroll to do the same. The ceasefire was over. W’s extensions would be after her now. Negotiation over. She couldn’t leave The Gov’s ship to get Dixon herself. On top of the danger of getting captured, something was happening in the sands. It wasn’t stable. Could be that was exactly what W wanted her to do, jump down and bury her in a coffin of hardened sand. Her power over W was mental more than strength. She had to stay and wait. Use The Gov as protection until she could slip into a connection to a W interface, wipe it, and leave to do it again.
They made it into the galley with Chris locking them in from above. The static charge buzzing through her veins made her hurry down the ladder. Two steps from the bottom, the charge erupted. Lights popped out. The ship flipped into a sideways roll.
Carroll flew with it. Her shoulder jammed into a counter edge. She screamed. Her back bent forward into the tight space between sink and cabinet. Glass cracked and metal clanged as the ship’s rotation dropped her onto the ceiling. Then the bottom fell out. Her stomach caught in her throat. The free fall—how is this possible?—did not cease.
She found a grip on the underside of an open cupboard and pressed her heels into the bottom. With the counter rubbing on her head, she held on. “Gov?”
Why are we falling?
“What has W done?” she asked.
“That little shit,” The Gov said. “He stole my idea.”
“What idea?” Pressure continued to tighten her insides, magnified by the anticipation of their abrupt landing. And the fact that she’d not see her death.
“Using plasma powered nanos to unbury Denver.”
“Unbury? How?”
“Flushing the sand into an outer valley rimming the city, exposing it to light and prosperity. Abundance of metals and the open air to improve communication between machines.”
Something shuffled along the ground. A latch unlocked. A hinge whined.
“He thinks he’ll steal my life’s work and leave me to splat on his street? I don’t think so, Son.”
“How are we going to…not splat?”
Something zipped up. A hum synced with the light from a dive suit. “We’re going to take some of those nanos back.”
A ball of thin material and a weighted middle thumped lightly on her stomach. She felt over it. A dive suit and visor, minus an air tank.
The rotational shift in their fall rolled her backside onto the ceiling between cabinets.
“Put that on quickly,” The Gov said. “It’s mostly charged.”
She did. Powered up, and visor in place, the room lit with the infrared of her and The Gov’s life sources.
He had one hand on the ladder and the other reaching out for her. “Quickly. Before the splat.”
She took his hand. He jerked her forward. She hit and wrapped her arms around the ladder. The loud hum of the ship’s generator tempted her to lose focus to its rhythm.
He slapped her in the butt. “Go!”
She raced up the ladder, dizzy and with a careful transition from hand to rung, and opened the hatch. It fell open to a swirl of wind and what her off kilter balance had feared: a league above—below—them was the flat ground of a city surface. Air pushed her cheeks in and whistled in her ears. Her stomach hurled, but she held in its contents, swallowing back the acid of its first wave.
The Gov tapped her calf. “You ever dive before?”
“No.” She refused that future.
“But you understand how the visor reads your thoughts?”
“No, I’ve dived. I’m not diving like this.”
“It’s not quite a dive without sand to land on, but you’ll need your suit to soften your landing.” The Gov was shoulder to ribs with her, peering out as the hatch view slowly rotated upward to a sand strewn sky. He took a dive knife from his suit. Carroll flinched, but he didn’t attack. Outside, the red form of a tall building’s roof was a few hundred feet below and a few hundred feet away. No way they could use it to slow their descent, even if they could pilot this ship like a blimp.
“We have a small window when this ship rotates sunward to get up there, cut sails free, and use these to knit them into our suits.” He handed her a small rubber ball with a flat lever across its middle. “Nanos soaked in plasma. Open this when you’re ready for them to fuse the sail to your suit to make a parachute.”
A parachute?
The Gov bit his knife blade flat between his teeth and climbed upside down while holding onto a rung.
Memories of tower divers came to mind, and the many broken bones they’d suffered. Even the experienced ones died on occasion. And their parachutes were carefull
y made. Oh, but these are nanos soaked in plasma, winkedey-do.
The Gov twisted to get his feet into the hatch’s opening. An air tunnel sucked him through, but he held on.
Carroll’s breath held in her chest. He wasn’t joking. This would either work or kill them both. Wind riffled through the short hairs on her scalp, reminding her of Viky. She wished her friend were here to help. No one’s here to help you. This is your problem. She stuck a toe into the hatch’s lip, turned over, and climbed somewhat upside down as gravity turned.
The Gov lay at a thirty-degree slant with his legs out and stomach on the deck. The main mast had snapped off. Thankfully the boom, and the sail tied to it, was intact.
She slid out next to him and switched out of thermals to clear view. The mainsail mast had also snapped off and gone but its boom and sail remained.
A metal chatter directed her gaze right to a rifle flapping end to end against a crate, held against it by a thick rope. Is that Chris’s? She looked around, but didn’t see The Gov’s bodyguard.
The Gov’s glance pointed over her at the crate. “Use the bayonet to cut your sail.”
Gravity eased away at the slant and the need to hang onto the hatch.
The Gov reached up to grab the headsail boom for balance. He took the knife out from his mouth and sawed the sail’s ties. He glanced up and noticed she was in the same place. “Go!”
She jerked out of her reverie, crawling with sluggish limbs and wondering how soon before she was flapping her arms toward a quick death.
The top of the crate had a splinter sided by a streak of blood melding into the hand print of what might have been Chris’s second to last impression. He hadn’t said much, but the finality of his fate impacted her with its close tie to hers.
She wiggled the rifle out of the crate, eying the sharp, ten-inch bayonet wrapped under the barrel by brown twine. The ship’s balance tilted toward the other side and the sail she needed to cut free. She let the downward slant push her speed to the first tie of the sail.
She was halfway down her boom when The Gov shook out his sail. She refocused on sawing through the current tie. The ship’s tilt made her knees slip toward the stern.
Tie free. Two to go. Her shoulder burned with the weight of the rifle and the repetition of sawing. Over the stern rounded out a wide view of buildings and concrete streets. They were still higher than the towers of Springston, but not by much.
Tie free. One more. She scooted on her knees and grunted as she again sawed into rope. Free. She dropped the rifle to roll into the stern wall. Slack on the sail pulled down to the deck.
The Gov was behind her and pushing the ball of material toward her feet. His sail was wrapped around his arm, held to a point on his back. “Get your ball out.”
She took it out from a pocket in her suit, thumbed open the lid and exposed the glowing blue orb tucked inside. It leaked out and extended into a string crawling up her arm as quick as a sucked noodle. She slid the corner of the sail behind her as The Gov dug for its edges, the material swishing over the wood deck. The decline dropped the rifle up into the lip at the top of the rail. It rolled another rotation and flew off before she could reach it. Her extension took her off the ship. The Gov caught her. She grabbed onto the boom as her stomach tilted and rose into her chest.
“Okay, you’re set.” The Gov stuffed the wadded sail against her ribs.
She let go with one hand to catch the sail and stop it from fluttering out behind her, throwing her into a canopy of caught breeze.
The Gov pointed off to her right where a large block of flat concrete drew the space between buildings. Old World cars looking much smaller than normal at this height were parked in odd slots along its rows. “Jump, count to three, and throw back your chute. Pretend the ground’s a bowl of porridge. Let your body slack into it.”
The ship dipped. The Gov bumped her shoulder as he fell backwards over the edge of the ship. Her feet left the deck. She caught the boom, wrapping her arms and legs around its length. She closed her eyes as if to shut out the world and its grave threats. “Dixon!”
The boom snapped. Splinters stung her face and neck as she swung out into a tailspin. The blur of her windswept horizon left the dark mass of the ship and entered a bright and empty wilderness of swirling air. Two. Three. She kicked the boom. It swatted her in the back of the head, spinning her into a forward roll. Her mind clouded with unreachable needs and a disconnect to the limbs she required to command. Just let go.
She peeled back her death grip on the sail. It whipped under her arm and snapped above her like a gunshot. She lurched up, grabbing her collar to stop her body from leaving her head.
The ache in the back of her skull transferred to difficulty opening her eyes, but as she did, the quickly approaching ground came to view. Shorter, three to five story rooftops stacked around the parking lot. Below, cars and concrete increased in size and detail. They were not porridge, but metal and rock. Her suit covered feet weren’t strong enough to withstand their hardness and her speed. She closed her eyes and pictured porridge. Tasted it between her teeth and swallowed it down. 1, 2, 3…curiosity burned to see the climax.
Something creaked below her. Again. Was that a grunt?
A force rammed her in the back, throwing her forward as an assailant wrapped its arms around her stomach and held her close to what felt like a man’s body.
“Gotchu,” Dixon said.
They fell together, drifting with his back toward the ground. Carroll opened her eyes as purple swallowed the sky above and red held firm on both sides. The burnt orange shape of a car passed from below to above. They sank into the red ocean. Carroll held her breath as it splashed over her face.
The backward dive and suit-morphed ground slowed her fall to the safe transfer of momentum she feared would not happen.
Dixon held her as he kicked them back to the surface.
Her empty lungs filled with fresh oxygen.
He helped push her up onto firm ground.
She did not see him as he touched her stomach and lifted her legs out of the soil waves. She mentally switched to clear view and instantly saw his wading figure in the Old World new, black dive suit.
He smiled. “Didn’t see me, did ya?”
“Nope.” Around the city background towered a mountain of sand circling the unearthed buildings.
“Good. Hope The Gov didn’t either.”
Smash!
Carroll turned around as a thousand shards and splinters of wood sprayed into the air around the flattened landing place of The Gov’s former ship. After the explosion settled, she lowered her arm from her face and scanned the parking lot for The Gov or his sail parachute. “Did he make it?”
She released too much concern in her tone.
Dixon caught it and screwed up his face. “Did he make it?” He heaved himself onto the ground behind her. As his legs lifted out of the soil it hardened and held as he rested his legs back down. “Gee, I sure hope so… Are you friends now?”
“He surprised me.”
Dixon grabbed her foot and gently slid her around to face him.
“I know what he’s done, but I didn’t expect him to make so much sense.”
“Sense?”
“I understand what he’s trying to do…” she recalled him telling her his plans in the bilge of his ship as they sailed under cover of dark, away from the tunnel into Danvar. “Quake almost recaptured me. The Gov helped me get away in his ship. He told me what I did to set us free is exactly what he needs to stop W before he replicates across the country and becomes unstoppable.”
“I… You can’t be the only one that can stop him. If he finds a way to overcome your invisibility or whatever it is you do.”
“I create blank spaces in nano activity and fill them with mirages.”
“Still, it’s a computer. We can’t be sure it won’t figure out how to undo your blank spaces. If he does, and you get captured…”
“He won’t. The Gov showed me w
hat I can do.”
Dixon lifted his visor so he could show her his utter lack of enthusiasm. “His slave camps are the reason we’ve had to live in Springston. Now you’re friends.” He shook his head.
“Oh, and you working with Warren is better.”
“Carroll, I…I’m sorry. I did it to save us a long time ago, and I’ve regretted it since. I didn’t know about his nanobot slavery, which The Gov invented. We need to destroy them before no one can escape.”
“I invented them to reward those I trusted.”
Carroll twisted toward The Gov’s voice but saw only the cars parked in sparse spots through the lot.
Dixon swept dust up as he rose and stood in front of her. He looked back and forth for something close, squatting and ready to attack. The Gov had sounded only a few feet away, but the nearest object large enough to hide behind was a rusted red car twenty feet away.
“I still reward those I can trust.”
Behind her. She snapped around. Dixon pressed on her shoulder as he scrambled to get in front of her. His silence enhanced her fear that what they faced didn’t have a weakness.
The Gov appeared with a pistol aimed at Dixon. “He’s not dead because I am who I told you I am.” His tone delivered the same gentleness he’d shown on his ship. “I will if he gets in my way, but you’ll need to convince him I’m not one to be destroyed.”
“Let him talk,” she told Dixon.
68 - Dixon / Rush
The Gov’s form blinked to invisible and back to solid. A sly grin formed beneath his opaque visor. “You can thank your wife for that trick. Her clean slate program is remarkable. I just adapted it one or two steps further.”
“When I said, talk, I didn’t mean brag,” Carroll said.
“If only there were enough time in the day. No, I say that as a kind of thanks. You’ve given me—us—the chance to stop Warren before he gets loose. I’m the lesser of two evils in that future, I assure you, but you don’t have to look at me like that. We can be allies. I can take care of you two.”
Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two) Page 28