ARC: The Almost Girl

by Amalie Howard

  “Don’t–” I warn. But it’s too late. The sneeze echoes across the open ground like thunder. In the next second, all we hear is the rumbling of distant hooves and screeching that could rival an oncoming hover-train. “Run, Caden, run! To the chasm! Run!”

  And we are sprinting for our lives as the thunderous rumbling draws closer. I don’t want to look back, but I do. I have to see how close they are… whether we have a shot in hell of getting away from them. One we can probably take, maybe two, but definitely not six. With their breath hot on our backs, now I understand why anyone exiled to the Outers would prefer death. They’ll capture us and take us back to whoever their tribal leader is, and then we’ll be stripped for parts – skin, bones, organs, blood.

  “Don’t look back,” I gasp to Caden, but his face is already a mix of pain and terror. Ignoring my own advice, I glance back again. One of them is faster than the others and gaining on us with every leap. It’s the runner. All the pack reptiles have a runner – the quick one that snares the prey, and then the others follow to immobilize it. They’re all fast, but the runners are faster.

  I run out in a wide arc veering away from Caden. “Keep running to that gap, OK,” I scream. “No matter what.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to keep us alive.”

  And then I can’t think as I’m running into the reptile runner head on, ninjatas in both hands. I have thirty seconds before the others close the space between them and the runner. It’s smaller than the ones I’ve seen before, about horse-sized, but I know it’s no less lethal with its heavily muscled and metaled body. Its eyes glow white as its pointy snout gapes open, full of sharp, cracked teeth. Angled plates curve down its back and tail into some kind of pike.

  We are seconds from head-on impact, and in full sprint I roll head over heels, slashing out with my blades at the same time, snapping through the intertwined wires and tissue at the base of its hooves. I don’t stop. Momentum keeps me going, and I’m on my feet and running back toward Caden, but I hear the thump and screech of agony as it bowls forward onto its face. A grim triumphant smile graces my face for a second… It won’t be running for a while, that one.

  I’ve earned us a sliver of time; the rules of existence in the Outers mean that the others will fight to pick the fallen apart. It’s survival of the fittest and strongest. Sparing a look behind me, I see they’re already converging on their fallen pack-mate. I dash harder, pumping my legs like pistons until I’m almost flying. I have no idea where my extra strength comes from; I just go, taking advantage of my second wind. The pounding of hooves behind me echoes the pounding in my chest.

  Ahead of me, Caden barely squeezes into a tight gap, and I throw myself down behind him, crashing into his back and sending us both spiraling into the rock walls of the narrow grotto. We’re both hauling stale air into our lungs and clutching each other with numb fingers, even as dirt, rocks, and sour saliva fall on us from the creatures already snapping their mouths above us, trying to get in. We crouch farther down into the shaft but we’re safe. They’re too big to follow.

  “You OK?” I gasp.

  “What is wrong with you? You could have killed yourself!” I’m startled at the reprimand and his snarky tone, but I smile a tired smile.

  “Better me than you. Come on.”

  Caden doesn’t return my smile. He stands in front of me, staring at me with fiery eyes. “Riv, you can’t do that anymore, OK? I know you’re way better than I am navigating this terrain, but moving forward, it’s both of us or neither of us. Got it? We do it together.”

  I nod, an involuntary smile curving my lips again. Something in his voice makes me feel funny deep down inside, like he wants to protect me. People don’t tend to question my orders, especially here in Neospes. I lead and they follow. The smile grows into a full-on grin as I imagine what Caden will do once he finds out that I’ve been a general, commanding an entire legion here, or even worse that I’m now some kind of marked-for-death, dangerous renegade.

  “It’s not funny, Riven,” Caden hisses, misunderstanding my expression. “I already lost Shae. I can’t lose you too.”

  “I know,” I agree, his quiet comment slapping the grin from my face. “Together, from here on out.”

  Above us, the reptiles are still scrabbling – they’ll do anything to get in here as long as we remain this visible, including digging out a bigger hole, which they’ve already started to do. The foul steam of their breath swirls around us. I stare at Caden, and we both nod at the same time. We need to move. They’ll give up eventually and move on to some other target once we’re out of sight.

  The gap opens out to a deep gorge, above which the reptiles are furiously digging, but underneath the crack to our right, the tunnel burrows downward, disappearing into darkness. We don’t have much choice but to follow it.

  “Let’s go. Be vigilant,” I whisper to him, switching on the halogen lights on our suits. I’m torn between taking the lead and having to worry about him behind me every step of the way, or letting him go ahead and having to face any dangers head-on. In the end, I decide to take the lead. “Stay close, and don’t stop for anything. Got it?” Caden agrees and then we are off, moving as quickly as we can deeper into the gritty tunnel.

  I sigh inaudibly, feeling the weight of the dark earth on all sides of me. Why does it always have to be tunnels? They’re everywhere – in Neospes, in the Otherworld. I’m no longer claustrophobic, but tunnels still irk me. I was locked in a box underground for hours at a time to learn to face and harness my fear of enclosed spaces. It sounds cruel, but it worked. A key part of our mental training means I had to face and understand all of my fears.

  Shae had had a fear of heights, so she’d had to jump off the tallest point in Neospes every day for four weeks. The day she did it without crying was the day she overcame that fear. She was still be wary of heights, but it no longer weakened her. One of the trainees in my group had a fear of snakes. He ended up dropping out, unable to take the counter-fear measures.

  The system is brutal, but it’s effective. An initiate can always lie about their fears, but it’s counterproductive. Facing fear in a controlled environment and trying to overcome it without any preparation in a hostile environment are two vastly different things. In Neospes, fear is the paper-thin difference between life and death.

  The tunnel widens a bit and I drag my gloved hand along the oddly-hewn edges of the rock. It’s curiously smooth in areas and roughly chopped in others. I frown. My instincts warn that it’s probably because some combination of living tissue and metal had grated against it, but a part of me wonders whether I’m being overly paranoid after the run-in with the reptiles above ground.

  “Cade, you OK?” I whisper back. He’s tucked his hood around his neck, and even though the temperature is dropping consistently, there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. His eyes are dark in the stark halogen lighting of our suits.

  “Yeah. Where are we now?”

  I consult the holographic compass and map, which works just as well underground. We’re still making good time and heading in the direction of the city, about a quarter of the way there, but it’s far slower now that we’re not running. I squint at the map, noticing that it has now placed us below ground. The technology of the suit has dynamic virtual properties that allow its various operations to self-adjust, depending on external stimuli.

  Curious, I touch a spot on the base of the hologram that is highlighted with an “S.” The map is interactive and immediately shifts to show the entire network of the subterranean tunnels around us. Caden’s gasp is soft beside me, but I’m still staring at the intricate web of tunnels that connect nearly to the edges of the city so many miles away.

  Have those always been there?

  “Wow,” Caden breathes. “So I guess this means we can pretty much stay down here and not have to deal with those things up there.”

  “We don’t know that things exactly like that aren’t down here,�
�� I say flatly. “Or worse.”

  “You’re right,” Caden agrees. “But we haven’t seen anything even close to any kind of life for the last couple hours.”

  “Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

  I move the map with a swish of my thumb and forefinger, opening a wider subsection of the part nearest the city. It’s not connected, but it’s definitely close enough to get us to the east side – the least-policed side of the city. I trail my finger back toward the dot that indicates my current position, noticing several other tunnels below us that go deeper underground, but there’s no way I’m going to risk heading down one of those.

  “See here,” I tell Caden. “Here’s what we’re going to do. See this path, nearest the surface?” He nods. “We’ll take that. It may take longer, but it could be safer. And that way, if we do run into trouble, we can always get out.” I point to a few thin white lines marked at the surface by some odd red dots. “I think these are cracks like the one we came in. It looks like this runs along the base of the Peaks.”

  “The Peaks?” Caden repeats.

  I flip the map back to an over ground view, and show him the ridge of cliff-like mountains. “We’re running along the base of that.” I frown. “Actually, I think our path may even go under in parts. The inside of that mountain is literally pure volcanic glass. No metals can live there for some reason. Some kind of electromagnetic pulse.”

  Caden echoes my frown. “Volcanic glass.”

  “Ever see a mountain that has no caves, that looks like a sheath of sheer black glass? Well, get a good look, because that’s one.” I tap the map, switching the view to what the cliff mountains would look like at that moment on the hologram. “Used to be an active volcano thousands of years ago that the metals pulverized. Now it’s dead and impenetrable.”

  I close the map and pull a food bar out of my pack, handing it to Caden. “Now’s as good a time as any. Let’s rest for a second.” We eat in silence and drink a water packet each.

  “Can my suit do all that, too?” Caden asks, and I flinch at the sound of his voice in the quiet between us. I nod and show him the control panels on his wrist. The overview is short, but Caden picks it up rapidly and is soon flicking through all the versions of the map. Just in case, I also quickly run through the security parameters of the suit that I initiated for both of us earlier.

  “The suit is intuitive and attuned to you. It stores your data. Technically, we’re not really supposed to interchange the suits – they’re designed for each person – but Shae and I used to steal the Vectors’ suits because they had way cooler tech. I developed an algorithm to erase the programmed data so we could use them.”

  I blush and trail off, realizing that I’m showing just how much of a geek I am, but as Shae used to say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. My father knew what I was capable of at an early age and fed my brain a steady diet of bioengineering, physics, and advanced robotics.

  It was a conscious act of rebellion on my part when I opted to train with the soldiers and become a part of Cale’s personal guard. My father ranted and raved for days that I belonged in his lab with him. It incensed me to the point that I requested living quarters in the castle under the guise of protecting Cale, when it was only to escape my father’s manic rages. In the end, he twisted it to suit him, because I ended up leading his greatest creations – the Vectors. I’d never understood why he was so pleased about that, but it got him off my back, and that was reward enough for me.

  Caden’s voice makes me jump again. “I think it’s cool that you know all that.”

  “We learn different things than you do,” I say, shrugging. “But it doesn’t make what you know any less important. We just evolve differently based on where we live.”

  An indistinct sound brushes gently across my ears, and for a second I think that I’ve imagined it. But then I hear it again, like a single note of something. It’s some kind of bell-like sound. “Did you hear that?” I whisper to Caden.

  “No, what?”

  “It’s a chime or something. Listen.”

  We both sit in silence, our ears straining, waiting until the sound comes again. “There it is! It sounds like music,” Caden says, his eyes wide. “Count it; it’ll come back in six beats. Listen.”

  Caden’s right. The sound repeats, nearly inaudible as if it’s coming from a long distance away. It’s barely an echo of an echo, but we’re both standing and staring at each other, our eyes shifting around us. I glance down at the security pad on my suit and check Caden’s for good measure.

  Nothing.

  It doesn’t beep, not even when the shadows materialize from the walls before us, with weapons pointing directly at our hearts.

  THE OTHERS

  “What the–”

  “Shut up, Caden,” I hiss, staring at the five men in dirty brown tunics. Despite the weapons pointed toward me, I shift slightly to the right so that Caden is standing behind me. My eyes slide down to the keypad at my wrist – the alarm is still silent, confirming that none of them are hybroids. One of the men steps forward, and I tense automatically, wishing that the empty water packet in my hand were one of my blades.

  He holds a wand-like device in his hand, which he waves up and down our bodies. I realize quickly what it is – some kind of metal detection tool. But unlike our suits, it makes a harsh static-like sound, as if it’s malfunctioning. The man bangs it against his side, staring at it and then our uniforms as if confused.

  Did he think we’re Vectors?

  “Come,” he says, and I frown. His voice is non-threatening but firm. I have no idea who these people are, but it’s clear that they want us to go with them. The fact is, I could take them all out easily without endangering Caden, but I’m curious. I’ve never heard of people living in the Outers. I stare at the men. They all look physically fit, if a little thin.

  “Where?” I ask.

  “No questions,” he says, and then jerks his head to two of the men behind him. They remove our packs and our weapons, and I let them. Nodding for Caden to do the same, I study the leader carefully. There are no marks on his face or any other distinctive characteristics giving any clue as to who he is, but it is clear that he’s in charge. His body is lean with muscle, his eyes clear and bright. I need to know who these people are and what they’re doing out here.

  The men bind our wrists behind our backs, and we walk in single file down a tunnel offshoot that is completely concealed behind a bit of rock face right in front of where we had been sitting. I kick myself mentally, knowing that I should have investigated the tunnel maps in more detail when I found them earlier.

  They don’t blindfold us to conceal where they are going, and I understand the reason for that relatively quickly. I try to keep track of where we’re heading, but it’s difficult with all the twists and turns, and after a while, I realize that I have no idea where we are. Everything looks the same. Rock and more rock. Dirt floor. Dirt ceiling. The floor tilts slightly, and I wonder for a second how long we’d been walking downward. I hadn’t even noticed.

  After a while, the tunnel widens into a large cave that’s lit with some kind of sconces. There’s a guard at the end of the space who eyes us ferociously. Caden tenses beside me, but I throw my shoulder into his and force a reassuring smile to my face. When I pass the guard, I glare so hard that I see the shock in his face. He’s barely a boy, I notice with a grin. Good to see that my General mojo still works.

  In the cave beyond the one we’re in, the walls are black and shiny. The air feels cooler, as if there’s some kind of draft coming from outside, but I know that that’s impossible if we’re as far down underground as I’m guessing we are.

  There are a few more people now, dressed in the same brown garb. They stare at us with anxious, scared expressions as if we are somehow the enemy, and some of them even scurry away. A small face peeps from behind one of the people, and I feel my heart lurch. A child, barely three years old, stares curiously at me.

&
nbsp; “What is this place?” I ask, but the only answer I get is a burlap sack over my head. I struggle against the ties at my wrists and fling my head back so hard that it crunches wetly into bone.

  “Stop!” a voice yells, and then lowers at my ear. “No one’s going to hurt you, but we do not know who you are, and so we cannot trust you. If you are judged to be a friend, then we will remove the bag, but until then you must keep it on. Please do not struggle. There are ways for us to restrain you, or worse, sedate you.”

  “Where’s the boy?” I grit out, knowing I’m indeed at the voice’s mercy. I don’t know what kind of sedation techniques they use here, but I don’t want either Caden or me to find out the hard way. “I need to know he’s with me, and you have my word that I will not struggle.”

  Something heavy and warm is thrust into my left side. “Caden? Is that you?” I say urgently through the bag. “You OK?”

  “Yeah. I’m OK. Caught a hook to my chin, but can’t say I blame them. I kicked out when I felt the bag on my head.” He pauses and leans closer, led only by instinct. We’re standing back to back at that point, and I can feel his head pressing into my shoulder. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I’ve never even heard of people, as in real live people, living out here.”

  A prod, and we’re walking again. I stay close to Caden, making sure that our arms are always touching at every step. His voice is nearly silent. “Are they going to kill us?”

  “I don’t think so,” I whisper back. “At least not right now.”

  Engaging my other senses, I can feel the air change against my body. The space feels far more open than any of the others before. If I didn’t know better, I would say that we were once more outside. It even smells different, but my sense of smell is a little undermined by the musty odor of the bag over my head. Once in a while, I’ll also hear a gasp or a voice. More people? It baffles me that there’s a whole community of humans living in the Outers, obviously by choice. The Outers is a place devoid of life, devoid of anything but metals left over from the war, and hybroids that scavenge to survive.