Longwei raises his hand. “How do we communicate with each other?”
The marine nods stiffly. “Hold down the button on your shoulder.”
We each reach for it. After three seconds, helmets spawn from the fabric at our necks. I feel mine stretch over my forehead, and then a clear visor encases me inside the suit. My breath fogs in front of me. As always, Jazzy speaks what’s on everyone’s mind.
“This is amazing, y’all.”
“Totally,” Katsu chirps back through the comm. We all look like real astronauts now.
The marine asks us if there are any questions, but I can’t think of anything. We’re all still in the middle of the shock-and-awe stage. Katsu was right and wrong earlier. They aren’t letting us fly spaceships, but they are handing us the keys to million-dollar mining equipment. Babel’s trusting, but I guess they have to be. We’re their only shot at more nyxia.
After a short silence, the marine salutes us.
“Your first task is to excavate an operational tunnel. You will need to dig down to a depth of exactly one hundred and fifty meters. Good luck, soldiers.”
He vanishes into the mist. We snap into motion, but it’s a frantic and unsure kind of activity. We have no idea where to really begin, so we all huddle around the digital readouts and pretend we understand what they mean. The ground is vibrating in a steady rhythm with the truck’s engine. Longwei stands over the readout for a second and then pushes past us. He takes a handhold and begins climbing up the metal beams tented over the drill. When he reaches the top, he flips open a capsule and disappears inside.
“Why does he get to go in the drill?” I ask.
“I’m in the drill because I’m the best,” Longwei replies.
My eyes widen. I forgot about the helmet comm. Katsu laughs like an idiot at me. A few seconds later, the drill roars to life. We all watch the teeth spin with menace. It’s impossible to hear anything but each other now. Longwei’s voice pipes through again.
“Keep an eye on the readouts. If you see the gas pockets getting closer, say something.”
Hydraulics hiss and the drill plunges down into the earth. Mud peels out in slick strips and we watch the silver drill bit vanish. We gather around the readout and spot the white of our drill appear on the diagram. The very tip slices into the black-labeled nyxia, and behind us the sound grows to painful decibels. The whole world shakes.
When the drill’s halfway underground, I realize that this is very, very boring. There’s nothing for us to do but watch the little blips on the screen.
So we watch. For almost an hour. Once, we have to warn Longwei of a red pocket that’s growing five meters below and left of his current position. He presses a button that dispenses the gases and continues down. He’s ten meters away when another sound cuts through the deafening rumbles. The three of us whip around as a pair of dark forms slouch through the fog.
“We have company,” I say.
The screech of the drill lowers to a whine. Longwei asks, “What?”
“Monsters,” Jazzy says. “On the surface.”
The word monsters makes her sound like a little kid, but the things looming in our vision make me feel like a little kid. They are monsters. They move on all fours, their gait shuffling and drunken. The closer they get, the more muscle I can see in their chests and wide forearms. The closest thing I can think of in our world is a gorilla, but the word feels wrong. Instead of fur, they have diamond-shaped scales and daggered claws. Their shoulders come to jagged points, and their long tongues flicker from the deep pits of black mouths.
I’m the first to step away from the safety of our truck and toward the intruders. Focused on the image, I transform my nyxia into the shielded glove from the pit. A second manipulation forms in the shape of my jagged iron knuckles. I slide the weapons on as the animals lope toward our drill. A glance shows Jazzy walking in step with me. I’m not sure why I expected her to be afraid, but she’s got her chin raised and a weapon ready. Katsu stands frozen by the truck.
“Wake up, Katsu. We need your help.”
Heat’s flooding up from the hole Longwei’s cut into the ground. Smoke gathers and scatters as one of the beasts pauses by one of the supporting legs of our drill. It drives both clawed hands downward and the metal dents. The beast pounds again as the other stops, regarding us quietly. They’re just twenty meters away now. My steps continue closing the gap.
“Hey!” I shout. I don’t have a real plan, but if these things destroy one of our supports, I know the drill won’t be able to keep cutting to the depth we need. “Hey, over here!”
The other lizard’s attention swings, and it crosses the distance between us in a heartbeat. I slide right and let my jagged spikes rake across an exposed forearm. Most of the blow is turned away by the thick scales, but I catch skin at its elbow joint, and the beast roars with pain. Blood spits out, and I’m thrown to the side by a lowered shoulder. Jazzy screams and slashes her short sword down, severing the beast’s outstretched hand.
The monster roars again and is backing away as the second one darts forward. I block two blows with my off hand and then it lands one on my hip. And everything shatters. I feel bones rattle and the air leaves my lungs and I feel like I’m falling through the world. The animal roars as it towers over me, but a massive sword plunges up through its exposed chest. Katsu thrusts it fully in, dodging the frantic claws until the thing gasps, coughs a death rattle, and dies. We’re all panting, and I know I can’t move, not even to stand. I lie back in the dirt.
“Everything all right up there?” Longwei asks.
“Just keep drilling,” Katsu snaps.
The whirring of the drill picks up, and my pain doubles. I reach a hand down and groan at the slightest pressure. A strike from the creature dented metal. My bones don’t dent. The hip is shattered, and shards of it feel like they’ve been shot like bullets into the rest of my side.
“What do we do?” Katsu asks in panic. “Jazzy, what do we do?”
Jazzy is far calmer under pressure. A glance shows her running back for one of the med kits. The edges of my vision are blurring as the edges of my pain sharpen. This is the worst thing I have ever felt. Worse than my concussion last year. Worse than the broken noses I got playing football. Worse than all the dislocated shoulders I got ballin’ with PJ over the years. Jazzy yells something through the comm, but I can’t make out the words.
I feel everything shrinking away. And then it stops.
We trade dirt for rubber, misty fog for dangling wires. The Rabbit Room comes back into view, and my pain vanishes. The others come snapping back to reality with me. Defoe’s there with a pair of attendants. They disconnect the white cords and hand each of us a bucket.
“What’s this for?” Katsu asks.
“The brain and the body don’t always agree,” Defoe explains.
On cue, Jazzy vomits. Katsu drops to his knees and does the same. Longwei and I are staring at each other, faces tight, like this too is a competition of wills. Something punches me in the stomach; I feel the taste of it rise, and I break first. Longwei wins again, but the spoils of victory leave him hurling into a bucket too. The attendants provide us with towels and water bottles as the other team steps in to replace us.
Bilal offers a hand to me. “And I was hoping not to throw up today. You all right?”
“Yeah.” I’m still rubbing my hip bone. My brain can’t accept that it’s not shattered. I can feel the virtual reality dragging at my senses and stomach. I almost tell Bilal about the lizard-gorilla things, but catch myself. Why warn him? It’s his team versus our team. He’s watching me awkwardly, so I just say, “Good luck. It’s a little weird in there.”
He nods and joins the rest of his team. We’re ushered out of the way but allowed to watch from the back of the room. The white cords attach to their hosts, and soon all five of them are floating in midair. Did we float like that? I’m not even sure how it’s possible, but their hands are twitching and their legs walk them
through that other world. They never move more than a few feet left or right, but it still looks a little frightening. Like watching human puppets on strings. Azima bends down and scoops a handful of invisible soil. Bilal points into the distance. It’s not hard to imagine his eyes lighting up as he sees the truck for the first time.
I watch for a while before leaning back and closing my eyes. For some reason, I feel more tired than I ever did in the Rabbit Room. Like my brain and body worked harder entering another reality than they did running through a physical obstacle course.
Our group stays quiet, and I actually manage to fall asleep before Katsu wakes me up and the others start snapping out of the simulator. Just like us, they vomit into buckets and stagger around drunkenly. It’s as miserable to watch as it was to feel.
Defoe announces, “Congratulations to team two. You reached the next stage five minutes faster than team one. The victory goes to you.”
My shoulders slump. I wonder if Roathy’s absence made the difference in round one. More likely Kaya was the deciding factor. We all expected Longwei to act like a leader, but he jumped in the drill and forgot about the rest of us. Usually, it’s the kind of problem I’d take to Kaya for help, but this is the one time she won’t be offering her advice, the one time our alliance is suspended. Azima starts to brag about their victory but ends up puking in the middle of her sentence. After that, both teams weave through the halls in silence.
The scoreboard looms on our left.
All eyes flicker over to it. Our daily reminder of success and failure:
The damage of the day isn’t awful. Third place and with a huge cushion over Isadora and Roathy. I remind myself that this is only the eleventh day of our voyage. The goal isn’t to get comfortable. It’s to work hard enough that if I’m the next one sick or hurt, I still won’t have to worry about falling out of the top eight. Knowing that’s the best advice I can give myself, I head back to the room after dinner and force myself to practice nyxia manipulations.
Faster, and faster, and faster. I push past my own limits so that when I do put my head down on my pillow, I fall instantly asleep.
DAY 12, 8:23 A.M.
Aboard Genesis 11
Roathy makes an appearance at breakfast. Everyone welcomes him back, wishes him well, but he ignores us. He still can’t eat solid foods, so he blends a handful of fruits from the buffet bar into a smoothie and sits down with Isadora. She leans in and kisses his cheek. Kaya sees it and glances my way. Isadora’s continued attachment to him is worrying. If Roathy’s counting me as an enemy, then that means Isadora’s counting me as one too. I glance their way a few more times and can’t help feeling jealous. I want to be looked at like that. I want to be wanted.
Defoe arrives for morning exercises. As everyone’s gathering to leave, I try to take the high road one more time. Isadora rejected my apology, but I still have hope for Roathy.
“No hard feelings,” I tell him. “I was just playing the game.”
A smile cuts across his face. Roathy looks at me the way he looks at everyone. Like he can see the strategy hidden beneath my apology. My whole body tightens as he leans in close and whispers in a voice only loud enough for my ears, “If you’re going to hit someone like that, you better make sure they don’t get back up.”
He raises an eyebrow and walks away. Bilal sees it all and backtracks to me.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Roathy’s all talk.”
Bilal looks even more worried. “I don’t think he is, Emmett. You have to be careful.”
“Nothing I can do about it now,” I say. “Come on, we’re falling behind.”
Roathy’s return isn’t the only surprise. Our normal manipulations are replaced with a different kind of test. We’ve been pushed for focus and speed so far. Today Defoe wants to test our strength. A row of geometrical shapes runs along the back wall of the room. I spot cubes and spheres and pyramids and cylinders. They’re all the black-hole color of nyxia, and as the row sweeps from left to right, they get bigger and bigger in size.
“Longwei,” Defoe calls. “Step forward.”
He does. His tuft of hair looks messy today and his eyes are red. As with all of us, the simulator drained him of energy. We watch him set his hand on a sphere the size of an apple.
“On my command, transform it into a 3-D shape of equal size. Ready?”
Longwei nods.
“Cube.”
We watch the air ripple and a cube clatters to life. He moves on to the next one. Cylinder, cube, cube, sphere, pyramid, and so on. Longwei’s about three-fourths of the way through the line when he stops in front of a sphere the size of a beach ball. There are only six objects left.
He reaches out, closes his eyes, and collapses. He twists onto his back and starts to writhe like someone has him hooked up to a transformer. I move forward to help, but Defoe holds out a hand. “He has to get out of it himself,” he warns.
I curse under my breath. Even if I don’t like Longwei, it’s hard to watch his body get pulled around on marionette strings. It lasts for thirty seconds. When his eyes finally open, he gasps in thick lungfuls of air and lets out a terrified scream.
Longwei, the toughest and hardest one in the group, screams until a pair of attendants remove him from the room. Defoe calls Azima forward next.
She makes her cautious way through the objects. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her show any fear, any restraint. She looks like a child reaching into the unknown, a darkness where sharp-toothed danger waits. Her collapse comes halfway through the exercise. Invisible forces crush her, pin her, and wring the life from her. After about ten seconds, she comes gasping back to us. Azima doesn’t scream, but she can’t get back to her feet on her own. Bilal rushes forward and drapes her arm around his shoulder. Together they limp to the door.
What the hell is this? Kaya’s name is called next.
“No,” she says.
Defoe raises an eyebrow. “No?”
“No.”
“Kaya, if you do not participate, you cannot earn points.”
“That’s fine. I’m not comfortable with this drill. I will forfeit it.”
Dead silence shrouds the room. For the first time, Babel’s methods are being questioned. They only have the authority we give them, and right now Kaya’s putting her health over her points. I remember that the money we all so desperately need doesn’t matter to her. I know she wants to go to Eden. She wants to see another place and escape a life of sorrow on Earth. So she wants to win. But right now she’s saying no. Mad respect.
Defoe’s expression tightens. “Five hundred points docked. That penalty will double every time we participate in this activity and you do not.” His eyes dart to me. “Emmett.”
Kaya glances over. Her eyes are dark pools, and I see the sadness there that I saw during our conversation on the couch. She’s not trying to be rebellious; she’s just terrified. Whatever the first two saw behind Babel’s dark curtain, she doesn’t want to see. I don’t either, but competition is competition. Every point matters. I nod to her before stepping forward.
The longer I’ve had my ring, the less I’ve felt the nyxia’s temptation. It still feels alive and vibrant, but I’ve ordered it around long enough to not be frightened of it. The first sphere of nyxia I set my hand on has a stronger lure by far. I can feel the vibrating pulse of something inside the substance. Then I hear Defoe say, “Cube.”
Focused, I press the image forward and watch as the sphere sharpens into a cube. Each successive block has a stronger influence over me. I’m only six objects down the row when I start to feel the nyxia pressing back. Only through intense focus can I push past its defenses and transform the object into a pyramid. My breathing slows and my heart feels like it’s barely beating. I move past the one that Azima struggled with. Then the next one, and the next one, until I’ve passed Longwei’s mark.
I am stronger than you, Longwei.
Pride comes before the
fall. The third to last object cuts me away from the world.
I am drowning in the deepest waters. I am being pulled too fast for my body. I feel my arms moving in and out of their sockets. The drag slows, then stops, and now something outside me pushes its way in. Claws explore the deepest places, touch the parts of me I will never see. In that impossible dark, I see a face…just before the lights return.
My lungs beg to be filled. I scream until they take me away.
Vandemeer sits with me in a comfort pod. He’s patient and kind. I try not to look out into space because the black nothing has a face now. Vandemeer notices and presses a button, and an image of looming snow-capped mountains replaces it. Everything with Babel is so damn point-and-click. It’s digging under my skin.
“Who are you people?”
“Just people,” Vandemeer answers.
“Nah. My friends are just people. PJ and the Most Excellent Brothers, they’re just people. Me? I’m just people. But you guys? No way. What do you want?”
“Money,” Vandemeer says. “It’s always about money, Emmett. Babel wants to be the richest and most powerful corporation in the world. I joined them for the same reason. They paid the best and had the most resources. Everyone likes to be on the winning team.”
And what about the losing team? I want to ask him. I want to know all the things they don’t want me to know. The secrets that were digging under my skin that first day, the fears my pops had about them, they’re all resurfacing. This flight must be costing them billions of dollars. So what do they want? The nyxia? Could it really be that simple? Spend a few billion to make a few hundred billion?
“What just happened to me?” I ask. “What was that?”
“Nyxia is an interactive element. You can manipulate it using your thoughts and intent. Every person is capable of manipulating the substance, but there are thresholds. We’ve discovered that if you try to manipulate too much, nyxia reverses the manipulation process. It’s as if the substance is trying to take your skin and blood and bones and make…something else.”
Nyxia Page 9