“One more. Just quick. That one screen that shows nothing. What is it supposed to be focussed on?”
“We’re not sure. The closest we can guess is somewhere on the swamp. Though why anyone would try hide anything there, doesn’t make sense.” Red shrugged. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about me. Do what you need to.” Trapped in a small place. Perfect.
Red shut the door, and Kai listened for the second click. But it didn’t happen. The door was built to mould seamlessly into the wall of the cave. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble for something so functional. Kai waited a moment and then decided to test his theory. He tried the door handle. It swung down easily and the door opened. He stuck his head out and saw Red halfway down the passage.
“Hey, aren’t you going to lock this?”
“No. I trust you.” Red waved and disappeared around the corner.
Kai sat down on the bench to think. He may need to destroy Red’s trust, but he wasn’t ready to do that just yet. He held up his arm, took a deep breath, and allowed Tau’s LifeLight to glow inside. Threads of light traced along his arm, but there was no filling inside. Kai had hoped that drinking Healing Stream water would fully restore his resistance to the negative Affinity serum, but here he was, barely able to light up more than a candle in a blizzard.
Getting Bree safely out of here was looking more impossible by the minute.
~*~
Evazee held onto Peta’s hand as the soldier led them toward a testing station. She debated telling him that she’d already been sorted, but then he’d ask all the awkward questions, and she could wind up worse off than she was now.
Evazee wanted to giggle at the soldier’s baggy pants and barefoot shoes. She caught a glimpse of Peta copying the soldier’s swagger. Evazee bit back a laugh and shook her head.
Peta grinned and seemed on the verge of skipping, but then she sighed and her face turned sad. Obviously, the gravity of the situation was not lost on her.
Evazee squeezed her hand, wishing they could be anywhere but here.
They were led to a soldier with a scanner, who seemed to have been out of bed for too long. Everything about him drooped. Even his ears. Evazee didn’t know whether to sympathize or laugh, so she held it all in and faced him with her shoulders thrown back.
“Hello, lovelies. Step closer. This won’t take long.” He hummed as he set up his equipment. He brought his scanner closer but stopped short of doing anything with it. He tilted his head at Evazee’s imprint nestling between her collar bones at the base of her neck. The humming stopped, and he called the other soldier closer. They examined Evazee’s mark and then withdrew a few paces to compare notes.
When he came back, his face was grim. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to split you two up.”
~*~
Kai was bored. He’d sat in the room for as long as his busy mind would manage, but he kept seeing the graveyard. Between Bree’s grave filling up, Zap’s death date being carved, and Bree’s dad’s date set for a few weeks time, there just wasn’t time to sit around and twiddle thumbs.
He let himself out of the room and turned down the passage to the right. This place felt hotel classy, even though it was a cave deep underground in some random section of the spiritual realm. His feet sank into the spongy carpet, and the walls glowed in a mellow shade of dark light.
The passage ended at a door at a t-junction. No signs indicated what lived behind the door, but to Kai, the logical thing was to try the handle. If it opened, he was meant to go in.
He listened to make sure no one was coming, breathed deep, and reached for the knob. The smooth metal turned easily in his hands and stepped through the hole before he could change his mind. He shut the door behind him and turned to see what he’d gotten himself into. He nearly tripped and fell head first into the hole at his feet. He hung on to the doorknob until he’d regained his balance. The walls of the room seemed fashioned from cold metal, polished and smooth. A stairway led down below, straight into the curving arches of Brio Talee. He’d come to another entrance to the spirit cuttings. There was no sign of the web that infected the tunnels elsewhere.
He studied the bridges with his Affinity operating. The structure glowed through and through. He walked down a few steps, listening for anything moving. Silence hung thick in this space between. Hearing nothing move, he grew more confident and climbed the steps until he stood on the bridge that led to the centre ball. There was no sign of the web that had nearly swallowed Zap, just a lot of emptiness surrounding the spindly bridges.
Kai resisted the urge to run and walked the rest of the way to the central ball. Tau, which one? Why am I here?
He turned in a slow circle, considering his options. A sliver of gold caught his eye, and he had to turn back to hunt for it. On one of the bridges, the faintest trail of gold ran down the centre. There was no other like that. Not that he could see. With no others showing even the faintest hint of anything other than green, this had to be a good one.
He bent down, tightened his shoe laces, and followed the golden thread.
~*~
Evazee hugged Peta hard and whispered, “It’s going to be OK. I will find you.”
Peta blinked at her as if Evazee were speaking a foreign language. Then she calmly turned to the soldier. She hauled up her sleeve and aimed her shoulder at the soldier trying to lead her away. “Is it because she’s got one of these and I don’t? Hmm?”
The soldier halted and bent down to examine the skin on the top of her arm. He rubbed at it with his thumb. “Well, I’ll be darned. Give me a moment.” He left once more to go find his fellow officer.
Evazee seized the moment and made the decision in less than a heartbeat. “Peta, run.” Holding hands, they made a run for it. If they could get to one of the side tunnels, they might just be able to hide and avoid being recaptured. Peta’s short legs flew.
“Hey! Stop those two! Catch them! Halt!”
The others waiting in line must have seen them run past but didn’t make a move to catch them. The officer himself lumbered after them, red in the face and sweating. Steps away from reaching the side tunnel, the lumbering ox came at them from one side, while his fellow officer cut them off from escape.
“Sorry girls. That won’t be happening. Take them downstairs. I don’t feel like any more excitement today.”
Evazee mouthed “I’m sorry” to Peta. Peta mouthed back something that looked like “we ride.” We ride what? She didn’t get to ask as they were bundled unceremoniously toward a side passage leading off the opposite wall of the room. The side that would take them deeper underground, not toward the surface.
27
Kai followed the golden thread across a bridge that was too long to see one side from the other. He walked as quietly as he could, shaking his head at himself as he went. It wasn’t even logical to think that the black ooze would hear his footsteps and follow him, but that didn’t stop him tiptoeing.
The bridge led to a doorway that looked more like the metal doors to an elevator than anything else. He looked for a button or a sensor and found nothing, but the doors drew back as he stepped close anyway. Kai hesitated before stepping through. He had no idea where this door led. He could only trust that it was Tau doing the leading.
He stepped through and blinked against the sunlight pouring in through a glass window. Wooden floor beneath his feet, greenish fog hanging in the air. He spun in a circle taking it all in. He was back in the OS.
Runt!
Waving the green mist away from his face, he found a chair and propped it in between the two lift doors before going to find his little friend.
“Runt!” He cupped his hands by his mouth and called again, louder this time. He ran down the passage, opening doors as he went. His small friend was nowhere on this floor. Everywhere he looked were bodies, passed out. He choked on the chemical taste of the Affinity Enhancer pumping through the building.
/> Instinct sent him to the kitchen. There on the floor, he found Runt. She had an upside-down kitten stretched out on her lap and a small bowl of water next to her on the floor. Kai watched her for a moment. She was picking fleas off the kitten and drowning them in the dish of water. There were dark rings under her eyes. The sight of them made Kai’s heart ache.
“Hey.”
She glanced up and immediately went back to flea hunting. Kai sat down on the floor in front of her and crossed his legs. “Are you winning?”
Runt thumbed toward the bowl. At least a dozen flea cadavers floated in the water.
“Looks good. I’m sorry you were left behind. I don’t know how that happened. Or why.”
She chewed her lip. It was the only sign she’d heard him.
“Elden and I were going to go back to look for Bree. But somehow this mess happened and everyone was taken back. It really is a mess.”
The kitten struggled on Runt’s lap, but before it could jump off, she re-tucked it firmly between her knees and kept on with her flea hunt.
“Runt, look at me.”
Runt huffed and glared at him. The kitten squirmed out of her grasp and ran to hide in a dark gap between two cupboards.
“This is far worse than we thought. When we took down this school, I thought that was the end, but there are schools just like this one across the whole world. It isn’t just one man’s little thrown-together idea. This is an organized mass brain-washing. They see everything, everywhere, everyone. If you’d seen half of what I’ve seen, you’d realize what we’re dealing with. I’m sorry you got left behind, but in another way, I’m not sorry at all.”
Runt shut her eyes and shuffled away until she was no longer facing him.
“Imagine how I would have felt if you’d come back with us and got yourself captured by these people again. I don’t think I’d have coped well with that.”
“Well it never bothered me before. It would be better than being stuck here with all these snoring bodies.”
“Listen, I need your help. Seeing as though I’m here now, let’s get rid of this green stuff.”
Runt shrugged, her face a carefully schooled version of I really don’t care, but she pushed up off the floor and dusted off her hands on her skirt.
Kai led the way to the office that he’d come back into, one of those with the jimmied air freshener mounted on the wall. He hoped that the chair was still holding the doorway open. As they walked in, the freshener released a fresh burst of Affinity enhancer into the air. Kai covered his mouth and nose with his T-shirt.
Runt sniffed the air and sighed. The noxious mist had no effect on her at all.
Kai stared up at the dispenser on the wall, wondering what would be the easiest way to make it stop. Loud scraping filled the air. It sounded like someone was dragging a chair across the floor.
Kai turned to see and yelled, “Runt, no! Put the chair back!” As the doorway started closing, he ran. He grabbed the chair out of her hands and flung himself at the shrinking gap. Too far.
He fell through the opening as it slipped closed, nearly catching his T-shirt. He overshot the bridge and fell tumbling through the nothingness in between the bridges of Brio Talee. A scream built in his belly but never made it past the lump in his throat. Kai smacked down hard onto the side of a bridge. The chair hit and shattered into a hundred tiny pieces, all of them floated off in different directions. He lay there watching tiny fireworks explode on the inside of his eyelids.
Someone was slurping a milkshake, at least that’s what it sounded like. A cold chill passed over him as he remembered. The soul-sucking black web made that noise. It was coming for him.
~*~
Evazee studied the cave they’d locked her in. It was made from the same holey rock as the rest of the structure, though the opening shimmered. A force field? It looked open, but she could hear the telltale whine. She found a small pebble and tossed it at the opening. It shot sparks and bounced back at her, smoking.
Right. No escaping out that door, then.
She turned her attention to the caves next to her. The walls were holey like Swiss cheese. Evazee turned to the right and peered through the lattice-like rock. Was she alone? Groans sounded from the cell next door. Evazee slipped lower and managed to catch a glimpse.
The silvery-blonde hair was pale enough to be Peta.
“Pssst! Peta. Is that you?”
“Yeah. Who wants to know?
“Evazee. I’m next to you.”
“I don’t like it here.”
“Me neither. You never told me you had an imprint.”
“What’s that?”
“The mark that got you into this mess with me. How long have you had it?”
“I thought it was just a birthmark. It was always just a dark brown colour. But since we’ve been here, it’s been changing to grey. I got grave dust on it from the graveyard, and it won’t wipe off.”
“Did you use it to see things the way you saw that stuff about Zulu?”
“Maybe. I dunno. Am I in trouble?”
“No. Not at all. Sometimes people are scared of other people who have special talents.”
“What’s yours?”
“Um, I haven’t felt it for a while, but usually I know the right thing to say. Now, I seem to just blurt out whatever’s in my head, and it just doesn’t work.”
“Is it broken? Your talent?”
Evazee snorted and bit back a laugh. “I guess you could say that. Everything we normally could do here is limited because we’re under the influence of the Dark Affinity Enhancer. It’s just not working like it should.”
“That’s not a very strong talent then, is it? If it can be broken by something else.”
Evazee didn’t answer as she really thought about it for the first time. Why should their talents be affected so strongly by a mere substance?
Why indeed?
~*~
Kai shot to his feet, his head spinning. It took a moment to figure out that the web was coming at him from the central platform. The only thing he could do was run toward the door at the end of the bridge and hope it would open for him.
This door was stone and it looked familiar. He ran at it and hit hard with both hands. It swung on its hinges, ponderously slow, and Kai fell out, landing on his rear and scrambling backward. He shot up, shouldered the door, and nearly popped a vein in his head with the effort of shoving it closed. This time, he’d been quick enough to close it before any of the web sneaked out, which was a good thing, as he had no handy sword-brandishing, baggy-panted soldier to sort it out.
By chance or divine will, he was back near Rei Lex, Stone City. A quick look around confirmed he was all alone. Now all he had to do was figure out how to get through the burning mist and the field of glass grass, and he’d get back to Bree.
As he hiked the path that led him to the city, he thought about Tau. He imagined the man walking with him. How nice that would be. He’d ask Tau how to get through the wall Bree so carefully built around herself. He’d ask about all the others who’d come back and who had been swept back into the system he’d just freed them from. And the network of schools. That was the most disturbing thing he’d seen yet. Cameras watching everything, everywhere, all the time. They could be watching him now.
Dropping his head, he focussed on his shoes. Nothing happening here, nothing to see. Move along people.
He’d also ask about that one place beyond the camera’s reach. Now that would be a useful place to launch an offensive strike.
What was he thinking? He wasn’t here to take down a world-wide system of corruption. He just wanted to help his friends. Yet there was nothing he could do. Only Tau could save them.
As he walked, he tested the LifeLight inside again. He wasn’t sure if it would wear off or if drinking the bit of Healing Stream water was enough to flush the green gas from his system. Kai shifted his thoughts from himself and focussed on Tau. Tau who made all things better. The tingling started at the c
rown of his head, trickling through every vein and pore. Golden LifeLight flooded through him. He glowed.
He grinned until his face nearly cracked. He reached the mist, felt the pulsing glow of LifeLight, and kept going. Nothing stung—there was no pain, no voices. Kai’s heart sang.
He came through the mist without a single burn.
But between him and Stone City stood the field of tall, swaying glass grass. His brightness dimmed as his heart sank.
Now what?
His gut told him clearly that LifeLight wouldn’t stop him from bleeding if he was foolish enough to try and cross. Testing the theory, he sat down and allowed LifeLight to soak through him. He reached out a glowing hand right in between the shifting blades. Sharp pain seared through him and he pulled his hand out. It was bleeding in three places.
There had to be another way. Sitting down, cross-legged, Kai contemplated the field.
Each shift in wind made the grass sing. Gingerly, he reached toward one and felt its coolness between his fingers. Each blade was see-through with a greenish tinge, nothing like grass really, except for the shape and the suppleness.
The wind blew again and the field responded as one, shifting and whistling. Kai flicked the blade closest to him and it sounded as a harmonic would on his guitar. He flicked a few in close successions, and it made a tune.
Kai leaned in close and hummed. A shiver ran through the blades of grass and they swayed and bent in time. Kai stretched out on his tummy, opened his mouth and sang. His voice blew across the glass grass and the blades closest to him flattened out, their edges zipping together much like the tiny sections of a bird’s feather does.
Kai stood to his feet and let it all wash over him. The overwhelming helplessness, the enormity of the foe they faced. His own inadequacies, his longing to see Bree fully alive again. It tumbled out of him in a song that burned through his chest. In his mind, he envisioned Tau gently take Bree’s hand and leading her out of all the chains weighing her down. He brushed his fingers through her hair, restoring the bright colour, the curls, and making her smile. All of it tumbled from his lips to a tune that had lay dormant for too many years.
Resonance Page 21