“We will take the cub and your tribute to the Grotto before we leave.”
“Tribute? You mean Cassandra?” Darius asked.
“Yes.”
“No, she goes with me.”
“The Grotto will be far safer for her,” Ra replied. “Do not worry. She will not be alone. All of our young are there too. It is where we send them at night, to make sure they do not accidentally come to harm during the nightly attacks.”
“And the Phantoms just leave them alone?” Lisa asked.
“The Cygnians do not hunt our young. The cub you found is alive, is he not? That is not a coincidence.”
“If the Grotto is so safe, why don’t you all hide down there?” Blake asked. “Pretend to be teenagers or something.”
“The Cygnians’ sensors would reveal us.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and started down the street. It was thick with bodies lying in gleaming, moonlit pools of their own blood. It was almost impossible to walk without stepping on an outstretched hand or foot—or a severed one. Ra wove a path through the carnage, while the Vixxon and the Sicarian fell back to rearguard positions, each of them brandishing bulky black pistols like the one Ra had.
“What do you want to do?” Darius asked quietly.
Cassandra shook her head. “I want to stay with you.”
“Then you’re coming with me.”
Gatticus caught Darius’s eye and shook his head. “Ra is right. She’ll be safer here. We can come back and pick her up as soon as we have the fuel.”
“How do you know she’ll be safer?” Darius demanded. “What if they come back and find out that she’s due for this Crucible of theirs?”
“That is not likely,” Ra said from the front of the group. “It should not take us long to find Tanik with the sensors aboard your vessel.”
Darius walked on in silence, trying to weigh the risks of so many unknowns in his head. Would Cassandra be safer in this Grotto place, or with him? He remembered their last fight with Phantoms and how Cassandra had ended up rushing to his rescue, rather than the other way around. But maybe he could just leave her on board the Osprey when they had to go out on foot....
Except that wouldn’t be any better. The Banshees on board the Deliverance had torn through their previous Osprey’s airlock as if it were paper.
Darius grimaced. “They’re right, Cass,” he said quietly.
Cassandra’s eyes skipped up to his, and her brow furrowed. “But you said—”
“Forget what I said. I can’t keep you safe if you’re with me.”
Cassandra scowled. “Isn’t it a father’s job to protect his kids? Guess you missed the mark on that one, huh Dad?” With that, Cassandra left his side and strode by him to the front of the group, shouldering past Blake and Lisa to walk behind Gatticus and Ra.
Darius gaped after her in shock. A painful knot rose in his throat, and his chest ached with the echoes of Cassandra’s words.
Blake cast a knowing look over his shoulder. “Kids, huh?” he said, and shook his head.
Lisa sent Darius a sympathetic smile and fell back a few steps to walk beside him. “She didn’t mean it. She’s just scared and doesn’t want to be alone.”
Darius nodded. “I don’t blame her. Maybe I could stay with her,” Darius mumbled. “Ra? Can—”
“You cannot. If the Cygnians detect one of you in the Grotto, the consequences will be swift, and your tribute will be discovered.”
“He heard that?” Lisa asked under her breath.
“Sassy’s got ears in the back of his head,” Blake said.
They walked on for a while longer, winding through the streets of Karkarus. The dead bodies thinned out as they got farther from the wall. Eventually they reached the base of the giant tree where they’d landed their Osprey. Here the booming roar of waves crashing on the cliffs below the peninsula was louder, and more insistent.
Ra led them around the back of the tree to a large, round wooden hut. The door and walls of it were marked with what looked to be bloody hand prints and paw prints of various sizes and shapes. Not all of the markings were red, however, and not all of them looked like hands or paws, but Darius got the gist of it. It reminded him of when Cassandra was in kindergarten and all of the kids had placed their hands in paint to decorate a banner for the school.
Ra opened a pair of wooden doors, revealing a large wooden staircase inside the hut, spiraling down. The roar of the waves echoed inside the building, seeming to channel up through the stairwell, and the wooden floorboards shivered under their feet with each crashing wave.
Wordlessly, Ra started down the stairs. Darius heard hinges groan and turned to see the Sicarian and Vixxon standing outside, closing the doors. As soon as the doors were shut, the hut plunged into darkness. Pale white light shone up from below, illuminating the barest outlines of a wooden banister and the spiraling stairs.
They picked their way through the darkness to the top of the stairs. Blake ran into something along the way and cursed under his breath. “How come there’s no light in here?”
“To encourage small children not to venture up the stairs until daylight,” Ra replied.
Darius clung to the rough wooden banister to keep from falling as he walked down the shadowy stairs.
The staircase wound down and around for what seemed like an eternity. With each full turn, the light radiating from below grew brighter, and the sound of crashing waves grew louder. After descending for several minutes, Darius was sure that they must be nearing the base of the cliffs.
“What do you do with disabled kids?” Blake grumbled. “Give them a rope and tell them to rappel down?”
“Disabled?” Ra asked.
“There is no disability that nanites cannot cure,” Gatticus explained.
“What about missing limbs?”
“It is rare for children to suffer such injuries, since they are not hunted,” Ra explained. “We have not yet had a child in Karkarus who could not walk.”
They wound down the stairs for another three full turns, and then the light radiating from below abruptly swelled and the bottom of the stairwell appeared.
“Finally!” Lisa breathed, leaning heavily on the banister at the bottom of the stairs and panting to catch her breath.
Darius walked by her to catch up with Cassandra. She stood beside a dazzlingly bright lamp post in the center of the landing. That was the source of the light they’d seen from the top of the stairwell. Ra stood beside Cassandra, pointing to each of several tunnels radiating from the circular landing, his voice lost among the crashing waves. The tunnels appeared to have been carved from solid, glistening rock.
As Darius drew near, he overhead Ra explaining: “Each door leads to a different part of the Grotto. That one, with the symbol of a cup is the dining hall. The one that looks like a person lying on a pillow, that is the dormitory....” He went on to explain three more tunnels, one of them containing bathroom facilities, another with heated tidal pools for bathing, and a final one, the recreation and training rooms.
While he explained, Blake and Lisa came over to join them. “Now what, Sassy?” Blake asked.
Lisa cooed softy in the Lassarian cub’s ear while it purred like a kitten. Its eyes looked heavy, periodically sinking shut, only to spring open once more.
Ra nodded to the tunnel leading to the dormitories. “I will introduce you to the director of the Grotto.”
He led the way into the dormitory tunnel. It was dimly lit by a string of lights hanging from loops in the ceiling. After winding down through the tunnel for several minutes, a vast cavern appeared. The string of lights from the ceiling fell to waist height and wound through the space as railings, girding shadowy pools of water.
Here the echoing roar of waves crashing was a muted thunder that shivered subtly through the walls and floor of the cavern. Colorful, luminescent growths covered a jagged cascade of stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Water dripped from their tips to waiting pools below wi
th loud, echoing plops. Shadowy mounds that might have been sleeping children covered the floor wherever the cavern floor flattened out.
It was an odd feeling to be in such a serene setting after seeing the trail of death and destruction left by the Phantoms on the surface. Here these children were, sleeping soundly, with their parents all lying dead in the streets above their heads. How many of them were now orphans? he wondered.
Hades was living up to its name.
“I will take the cub now,” Ra said, and held his hands out to Lisa for the Lassarian baby.
Lisa frowned and hesitated.
“It will be safer here with the other children,” he insisted.
She gave in with a scowl and passed the cub to Ra. It twisted and pawed at the air, trying to get back to her as she held it out to Ra. “You’d better be right,” Lisa warned.
“I am.” Ra took the screaming cub and held it against his chest, and it quieted once more, nuzzling into Ra’s coat, as if it was only crying for the lost warmth of Lisa’s embrace, and not for Lisa herself.
Darius looked around for Cassandra. He found her standing by a string-light railing, peering into a dark pool. He walked over to stand beside her and peer into the pool. Their faces were reflected in the pool. Cassandra’s eyes looked hollow and haunted, and her face was drawn with exhaustion. He didn’t look much better himself. Maybe she would be better off here. She could get some sleep, eat a warm meal, perhaps.
Darius laid a hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t shrug it off like he expected she would.
“Look at this,” he whispered. “The Phantoms haven’t been down here. Everyone survived. Ra must be telling the truth. And if he is, then he’s right: you will be safer here.”
Cassandra’s eyes met his in their reflection. “Maybe, but you won’t,” she said softly.
That hit him like a splash of cold water to the face. She wasn’t angry at him because she was afraid for herself. She was angry because she was afraid for him.
“I’ll be careful,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder.
Cassandra shook her head. “That thing almost killed you. You didn’t see the look in its eyes while it was trying to chew your arm off. It was enjoying it.” She shook her head, and a drop of water hit the glassy surface of the pool. Their reflection blurred, shivering with ripples. Another drop, more ripples. Darius looked up to see where they were coming from; then he saw that Cassandra was crying.
“I promise I’ll come back for you,” Darius said. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed hard.
“Stay. We can sleep at the top of the stairs and wait for the others.”
“You heard Ra. I’m not allowed to stay here.”
“Even at the top of the stairs?”
Darius thought about that wooden hut, so easy for a Ghoul or Banshee to claw their way inside. “I don’t think we’ll be safe there, do you?”
“So you’re just going to leave me here with a bunch of total strangers.”
Darius winced. “You’ll be okay. Stay out of trouble, and do whatever they tell you to do—so long as it’s safe.”
“They who? The other kids?” Cassandra asked. “Kids supervising kids. That sounds real safe.”
“Quiet,” Ra said in an abrupt whisper. “You’re going to wake the others.”
They turned to find him standing there with a willowy, hairless Dol Walin from the Walros System. She wore a white, form-hugging wet suit, and had slick, glistening purplish-white skin. Her round, bald head and sloping brow led down to a bottle-nosed snout, and a pair of sharp, intelligent blue eyes that stared at them from either side of her head.
“This is the director of the Grotto, Titatara. We call her Tita.”
Tita extended a long, skinny arm to Darius with three broad, flipper-like fingers. He hesitantly accepted the handshake. Her hand felt just as cold and clammy as he’d expected it to.
“It is good to meet you,” she said in a watery whisper. Lisa and Blake came over with Gatticus to join them, and Tita tossed her snout at each of them in turn.
“She’s a... child?” Blake whispered dubiously, glancing at Ra.
Tita made a trilling and clicking sound, and her lips curved upward, baring two rows of fine, sharp white teeth. “No.”
Darius scowled at Ra. “I thought you said no adults were allowed down here?”
“She is a Guardian,” Ra explained, and Tita turned over her right arm to reveal a glowing white symbol—a triangle with an eye inside of it, the spitting image of an all-seeing eye from Earth.
“She has the Seal of Life?” Blake asked. “So what’s she doing here?”
“The Guardians are volunteers who live among the hunted to watch over their children,” Ra explained. He inclined his head to Cassandra. “This is the human tribute I told you about,” he said. “She will stay with you until we return.”
“I shall take good care of her,” Tita said, and favored Cassandra with another tooth-baring smile. She held out a skinny arm. “Come, child.”
Cassandra recoiled from the Dol Walin and wrapped her arms around Darius. “Let me stay with you,” she pleaded, while gazing up at him. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be safe. I promise!”
Darius felt torn.
“I cannot guarantee her safety if she joins us,” Ra said quietly. “And nor can you. The path through the ruins to reach the exiles is long and dangerous. If she falls behind, or gets tired and slows us down...” he trailed off and rocked his head from side to side.
Darius frowned. “I get it.” He grabbed Cassandra by her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I’ll be back for you. You hear me? I’ll be back. You just make sure you stay safe here while I’m gone, okay?”
Cassandra’s eyes were dull as rocks, but she nodded.
“I love you, Cassy.”
She said nothing, but pulled him into a hug. He held her for a long moment and kissed the top of her head. “It’s going to be okay. We beat the cancer. We’ll beat this too. Drakes never say die, remember?”
“Can’t kill a rock,” she replied in a muffled voice.
“That’s the spirit,” he said and kissed the top of her head once more.
“We must not delay here,” Ra whispered. “Tita, we will see you soon.”
“If the gods will it. Be safe,” she replied.
Cassandra withdrew from Darius’s arms, her cheeks wet with tears.
Tita held out her arm, beckoning once more. “Come, child, you will sleep beside me.”
Cassandra shuffled forward and the Dol Walin wrapped its willowy arm around Cassandra’s shoulders, guiding her along the string-light railing.
Darius’s heart ached as he watched her go. He wanted to call out some last word of goodbye, but he didn’t want to wake all of the children in the cavern by doing so. Cassandra glanced over her shoulder and waved.
Darius waved back and smiled, hoping she couldn’t see his lips tremble. Then she turned around, and Darius watched her walk up the path to one of the flat areas lined with pillows and sleeping children.
Darius’s hand fell back to his side. He just stood there, numb and frozen with grief.
“We have to go,” Ra whispered sharply.
But Darius couldn’t bring himself to look away from Cassandra’s diminishing silhouette. Suddenly he had an awful feeling that this was a mistake.
A hand slipped into his and tugged on his arm. He turned to see Lisa at the other end of that hand, her eyes shining and cheeks glistening. “Ready?” she asked.
No, he thought, but nodded and allowed her to lead him away. They followed Ra, Gatticus, and Blake down the tunnel, back the way they’d come and up the stairs into the deepening darkness of the stairwell. Lisa held his hand the whole way.
Chapter 25
Ectos, the Sicarian, and the Vixxon were waiting outside the hut at the top of the stairs. Ra led the way around the tree to the wooden platform elevator. Everyone piled on and Ra punched a button to take them up. As the elevator rose,
Darius noticed that the moon was now a full golden disc in the sky, peeking out just above the scraggly black branches of the forest canopy. The moon was smaller than before, now only taking up a quarter of the night’s sky. Looking down, Darius saw the streets stretching in all directions, littered with bodies. Here and there the streetlights flickered, alternately revealing and concealing the carnage. Darius was alarmed to find that he couldn’t spot any living people walking among the dead.
“Are there any survivors?” he asked.
“A few,” Ra replied. “Perhaps a dozen.”
“So all those kids...” Lisa trailed off.
“Tita will look after them,” Ra replied.
“But don’t you need adults up here to provide food and clothing for them?” Lisa asked.
“We will get a new shipment of prey with the arrival of the next Cygnian warship,” Ra explained. “They will help us rebuild.”
The elevator stopped. Their ship was sitting on the platform right where they’d left it, seemingly unharmed. Darius hoped none of the Phantoms had clawed their way inside. Captain Riker came striding across the platform to greet them. “Good to see you made it, Ra,” he said.
“And you, my brother,” Ra replied as he strode out to greet the burly human. When they reached each other, the two men gripped the backs of each other’s necks and touched foreheads in greeting. Darius and the others looked on from the side of the landing pad.
Ra withdrew and Captain Riker shook his head. “I have never seen a Phantom attack like that before,” he said.
“Nor have I,” Ra agreed.
“They slaughtered us. The entire village,” Riker went on. “My wife...” he trailed off, his voice cracking. Then he cleared his throat and shook his head. “She is with the Revenants now.”
“I am sorry,” Ra said. “Those responsible will pay.”
The Sicarian gave a low, sibilant roar, which might have been his agreement, and the Vixxon muttered something under her breath, making Darius wonder if they’d lost loved ones too.
“One of the Ghouls said something about this attack being revenge for the destruction of the fuel depot,” Darius said.
Broken Worlds: The Awakening (A Sci-Fi Mystery) Page 15