by K. J. McPike
“But we need Kai to project us somewhere safe,” Dixon pointed out.
“We have to think of another way,” I said. “You guys, wait here a minute. I’m going to see if anyone’s in the house.” I headed for the trap door, holding my breath as I pushed it open.
“Hello?” I called out, looking up through the opening.
No answer.
“Hello?” I tried, louder that time.
Still no answer.
Climbing into the house, I looked around the elegant living room. It was empty and quiet, moonlight fighting through a haze of clouds to make its way through the wall-length windows. No one was here yet, but it was only a matter of time before they would come looking.
The patch of trees just outside the house flashed into my mind. We had hidden there while we were waiting for this timeline’s version of Mom to come back for us the night we’d found her in the transposer tunnel. Maybe we could regroup there and come up with a plan.
Leaning back through the trap door, I waved for the others to follow me. We moved to the back of the house and out into the San Francisco air. The evening carried a chill that only added to the one already present within me.
We found the same patch of trees we’d used to hide before, and I told myself it would at least keep us covered. Thankfully, it was dark, so we would have a better hope of staying out of sight.
“What are we gonna do?” Oxanna asked as we all collapsed onto the ground. “We can’t just stay here all night.”
“I know,” I said, my mind stumbling over what to do next. We still had to get to Kai, but I didn’t want to leave everyone else out here. If any Astralii showed up, we would just end up back in the lab. But where could we go? And how were we going to get there?
The best I could think of was to have Macy take us across the water so we would be further away from the cliff house, but I didn’t want to risk her running out of energy while she was floating above the bay. And if she took us a few at a time, there was too big a risk of getting separated if she didn’t have the strength to make all the necessary trips. We could try to go on foot, but I didn’t know how long Caleb and Amber-Ann would last.
Salaxia crawled over to lean on my shoulder, and I hugged her against my side. The slick material of her jumpsuit sent a shiver crawling up my spine.
“Guys,” Bianca whispered, turning her body to shield Caleb from a gust of wind while Elliot and Amber-Ann huddled next to them. “We need to get moving. If they come looking for us—”
“They will not find anything,” Kala said.
We all turned to look at her.
“What do you mean?” Ulyxses asked.
“If we hear someone approach, I will create an illusion to hide us. I can make it look like there is no one here.”
I gasped. “Kala, that’s perfect.”
She smiled, the angles of her face appearing sharper from the moonlight overhead. “It will be as soon as we get my brother.”
“I think I know how to do that,” I said. “Bianca, I’m going to need your help.”
“Of course.” Bianca didn’t hesitate. “Just tell me what to do.”
“I need you to project one of the guard’s necklaces to us,” I told her. “If you need to get a look at one of them, I can project you to the main transposer. They monitor that one, so I’m sure at least a couple guards will be around.”
Bianca nodded. “Okay.”
I turned to the rest of our group sitting on the ground and wearing identical jumpsuits that hardly provided any warmth. “We’ll be right back, you guys,” I said, holding out my hand to Bianca. “I’ll try and make this quick.”
I projected to the transposer dome just below the portal, finding the area around it dark and deserted. I groaned. Of course the guards wouldn’t be in plain sight when I needed them. Drifting away from the steel dome, I searched for where they were hiding.
“Are you sure they’re out here?” Bianca asked.
“They have to be. What kind of guards don’t guard?” Remembering my first time here, I scanned the area in search of the twine that had triggered the snare and left me trapped inside a net. I wished more than ever I could manipulate things in my astral form and trip it again to get the guards’ attention.
I flew up toward the canopy, hoping to get a better view from above. At first, all I saw were leaves and branches, but after a few more minutes of searching, I spotted two guards hovering between the trees.
“There they are,” I whispered, starting to point and stopping myself when I remembered we were invisible. I moved closer until we were only a few feet away from the Astralii. The sky was dark, but I could make out enough to see the stones.
“Can you see the necklaces?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Bianca said. “Just give me a minute to focus.”
A moment later, she told me she was ready, and I gave in to the pull to return to my physical body. My throat felt like it was stuffed with cotton as I watched her hold out her hand and bunch her brows.
The necklace appeared like magic, and I let out my breath.
Bianca opened her eyes and smiled as she passed me the necklace.
“Thank you,” I breathed, knots already forming in my chest at the thought of going back to the lab. But we had to get Kai out of there. I turned to Macy. “I’m going to need your help again. Do you think you’re up for it, or do you need to rest?”
“I’m good,” she said. “What do I need to do?”
I held up the chain, the oblong stone dangling between us. “If you wear this, you’ll be able to penetrate the block around the lab,” I explained. “I’ll project us to the glass room so we can use that transposer to switch into our physical bodies. That’ll spare us the trip from the portal and save you some energy. But I can’t wear the necklace in my astral form to project to Kai, so I need you to take us through the lab again and get us to him without being seen. Once we give him the necklace, he can project us out of there.”
She swallowed, but she nodded along with my plan.
Passing her the necklace, I looked at the rest of the group. “We’re going to get him out of there,” I promised.
“Do not forget the tracker remover,” Kala said. “In case they have put another into his arm.”
Oh. I hadn’t considered that. “Got it,” I said, my hand moving to where the device was still tucked inside my pocket. I nodded toward the others. “Keep them out of sight for me.”
“I will,” she promised.
“And I’ll fight off any attackers in my astral form,” Oxanna said, forcing a smile. I knew she was trying to make me feel better, but it only made me worry that there would be attackers.
“We’ll be fine,” Elliot insisted. “You guys just be safe.”
Taking a deep breath, I reached for Macy’s hand and told myself that we would get Kai out of there before it was too late.
Chapter 29
Search
We appeared in the glass room, and something about the silence set me on edge. The sirens and flashing lights had stopped, and the barrier blocking the door had lifted like nothing ever happened. Beside us, the transposer glowed against the darkness in an invitation to switch out of astral form, but I hesitated. Though the glowing ring lit the space enough for me to see that there were no guards inside, that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding somewhere close, waiting to pounce.
“Looks like the coast is clear,” Macy said, her voice a source of comfort even though I couldn’t see her.
“Just a minute.” I drifted toward the glass, scanning the outside to see if anyone was lurking. All I saw was the dark slope of the hill surrounding the lab. Its shadowed edge met an amber sky so dark it was almost black. There was no sign of any guards.
“No one’s here,” Macy insisted. “Let’s go get Kai.”
Surveying the area one last time, I finally conceded. “Okay, just make sure to switch us into astral form as soon as you can. I don’t want to be visible any longer than we have to.
”
“Got it.” Macy’s physical body appeared in the center of the transposer and dropped to the floor with a thud.
Not wasting any time, I dove through the ring behind her. Tiny stabbing sensations moved up and down my body, and the next second, my side slammed into her leg.
“Ow.” She jerked her calf out from under me. “You could’ve waited until I moved.”
“Sorry,” I whispered, straining to listen. I couldn’t help but expect guards to ambush us or an alarm to sound now that we were in our physical bodies. But everything stayed quiet.
Macy reached out to take my hand, and the purple stone resting against the center of her chest caught my eye. It glimmered in the transposer’s light, as if to remind me that no matter what, we had a way out of the lab. Even if we accidentally tripped an alarm, we could still move through the block before anyone caught us. There was nothing to be afraid of.
Except for what they could be doing to Kai.
Dread crept up my sides, making me shiver. With no one left to use as leverage over Kai, he would suffer Arlo’s wrath himself. I couldn’t bear to think what they might have done—or might still be doing—to punish him.
The feeling in my body faded until I was only aware of a light pressure where Macy held onto me, and I realized she’d switched us into astral form. Carrying both of us toward the door, she permeated the metal like it was nothing. We drifted into the empty hallway, finding it quiet and dark, save for a faint light coming from the space where the walls connected with the floor.
“Okay,” I whispered, running through the directions I’d memorized to come to the glass room when we’d escaped. Right, five doors, left, seven halls, left, fifteen doors on the left-hand side. I just had to reverse them—assuming Arlo would put him back in the same room. I knew that wasn’t guaranteed, but we had to start somewhere.
“Okay,” I whispered, trying to keep the reversed directions straight in my mind. “Count fifteen doors and turn right down the next hall.”
Macy followed my instructions step by step, and though she traveled quickly, it felt like a lifetime had passed by the time we finally came to the two sets of doors that were closer together than the others.
“This is it,” I told her, rejecting every panicked thought that insisted we wouldn’t be able to find Kai.
Macy hesitated, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to brace herself to permeate again or if she was listening for anyone inside. Before I could ask, she took us through the doors.
The main light was off, but the soft glow from the base of the walls offered enough illumination for me to make out the outlines of the beds.
All of them were empty.
Macy gasped. “He’s not here!”
Crap. Crap, crap, crap. I turned toward the glass pane between the rooms, only to find more empty beds on the opposite side. The workers hadn’t lowered the metal into place again. Maybe they hadn’t come back to this room at all. But where would they have taken Kai? I racked my brain, scouring my memory for any mention of where they might put uncooperative semmies.
Nothing came to mind.
“How are we supposed to find him?” Macy asked, her voice frantic.
Fighting back my own building hysteria, I raced through possibilities. The lab was a huge structure, but it had a finite number of rooms. If we went through the ceiling, we could map out each corridor to make sure we covered everywhere.
“We’ll have to search the whole place,” I said. “He’s here somewhere, and we’re not leaving without him.” I managed to sound confident, and in theory, I knew it should work.
I just hoped Macy would have enough energy.
I sat next to Macy on the roof of the lab, scanning the sky for Astralii and doing my best to fan her against Alea’s overwhelming heat. This was our third break, and I was starting to lose hope. We had already searched more rooms than I could count, none of them offering any sign of Kai. The fear that Arlo had decided not to let him live after the rest of us got away was growing stronger and stronger within me.
Why did my astral form have to be so useless? If I could just put on the necklace to penetrate the block, I would have been able to project right to him and figure out his location. Instead, Macy was draining her energy passing through room after room.
We’d come across small groups of people—most likely semmies—strapped to beds like we had been, and it had taken everything in me to resist trying to free them. If it weren’t for the fact that I knew Macy would burn out if she tried to carry so many people at once, I would have insisted we take everyone with us.
“Okay,” Macy said, shifting beside me. “I’m ready to look some more.”
I eyed her cautiously, wondering if the heat was draining her as much as projecting had. “Are you sure? You still need to have enough energy left to get us out of here, too.”
“I’m fine.” Grabbing my hand, she switched us into astral form and permeated the roof directly below us so that we were back inside one of the lab’s many hallways.
“We stopped with this room,” she said, moving through the set of doors to our right. The space looked like a classroom, its five rows of empty chairs making me wonder just how many semmies were trapped in this place.
Macy took us through the wall and into what looked like a supply closet, followed by two meeting rooms.
“That is not good enough!” A shout came from the other side of the wall, and I immediately recognized the voice as Arlo’s. “There must be something in his memories!”
Another voice answered, softer, and harder to make out.
“Do you think he’s talking about Kai?” Macy asked. I didn’t even get out a response before she’d permeated the wall, bringing us mere inches from Arlo’s back. He stood with two other workers, all of them wearing matching lab coats and standing around a bed. Macy drifted over to get a better look, and I saw him.
Kai.
I let out a cry as I took in his face. His forehead was split open, and one of his eyes had puffed up to the size of a golf ball. Though the others talked over him, he didn’t stir.
“We cannot use him if he is going to fight us all the time,” Arlo barked, rubbing his jaw as he glared at the worker I recognized as Sind. “We need leverage, or we will be chasing him through the lab every day. When he wakes up, you will try again until you find something in his memory that will tell us where they went.”
Without warning, Macy moved back through the wall, keeping us in astral form. “What do we do?” she asked once we were in the next room. “I can’t switch us into our physical bodies with all of them there. They might catch one of us.”
She was right. Even if she vanished right away, they would know we were there. If one of them bumped us in astral form, it might separate us.
“We have to get them to leave,” I said. “What if we trip the alarm? That should get them out of there.”
“Yeah,” Macy said. “I can take us to the hall and switch us out of astral form.”
“We’ll have to trigger it somewhere far enough that we can get Kai out before they come back,” I told her, thinking aloud. “If you take us a good distance down the hall, it should work. We just have to count the doors so we don’t lose this room.”
“Okay.” She took us back into the hallway. “Right or left?”
“Um.” I looked both ways. “Let’s try left. There are more doors down that way.”
Once we’d counted twenty rooms, I told her to stop. “When you’re ready, switch us just long enough to set off the sensors. Then we need to get to Kai as fast as we can.”
“No problem.” She moved closer to the floor, and suddenly, I felt my feet land on the tile. Within seconds, the sirens were blaring. The red lights lit the stretches of metal as I stared in the direction we’d come, waiting for Arlo and the workers to spill into the hallway.
It didn’t take long for the alarm to stop. The overhead lights came back on, and voices echoed down the hall.
“It seems
they have come back for their friend.” Arlo’s voice rang out as I saw a flicker of motion coming toward us.
“Now,” I said, squeezing Macy’s hand. She switched us into astral form, and we surged toward the room where we’d found Kai. We reached it in less than a minute, and Macy permeated the door.
Two of the lab workers still stood by Kai’s bedside.
“Crap,” I hissed.
“We can take them.” Before I could react, Macy switched us back to our physical bodies, leaving us visible as we stood next to the doors. “Whatcha doin’?” she taunted, pulling both workers’ attention to us.
“Macy!” I cried, my heart nearly exploding.
The workers charged in our direction, but Macy changed us into astral form before they could reach us. Their stunned faces whizzed by as Macy tore over to Kai’s bed. I could hardly keep up as she moved us into our physical bodies again, grabbed Kai’s hand, and switched the three of us into astral form.
“Arlo!” one of the workers shouted. He stabbed the code into the keypad near the doors, but Macy had flown us out through the ceiling before he could get them open.
“We did it!” she cried as we shot higher into the air at top speed.
“Wait,” I shouted, remembering that Kai might have a tracker. With our luck, they would have put one in him that would release poison into his system if he went beyond the perimeter of the lab. “We have to make sure he doesn’t have a tracker before we leave.”
“We can’t go back in there,” she argued.
I looked down at the snaking corridors of the lab. “The roof,” I said. “Take us back down and switch us on the roof.”
“What?” she gasped. “Are you crazy? They know we came back. What if they come out here looking for us?”
“We can’t go too far beyond the lab without risking the tracker releasing poison.”
She didn’t respond.
“Macy, it’s the best way. It’ll only take a second. If anyone comes through the roof, you can switch us back into astral form.”