The Rogue World

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Luke had a pair of binoculars, scanning the surrounding terrain.

  “Any sign of Eleanor?” Finn asked.

  “No.” The pilot’s voice sounded heavy. Finn knew how much he cared about her.

  “I’m sure they’re safe,” Betty said.

  “I told you,” Cyrus said. “They got out.” He was one of the two Grendel team members who’d gone with Eleanor and her uncle into the facility. He and the other one, James, had brought back the portable drive with Watkins’s files, but no Eleanor. “It was Badri who they captured.” His voice sounded bitter.

  “They may have made it through the fence”—Luke lowered the binoculars—“but you didn’t wait around to see if they got clear of the helicopter and the agents.”

  James pointed at the portable drive. “Badri gave me orders.”

  Luke shook his head. “Lot of good those files will do us without Eleanor.”

  “Stop it, Fournier,” Betty said. “This isn’t helpful.”

  Luke waved her off and raised the binoculars back to his eyes.

  Finn’s body tightened up again, a wave that started in his calves and worked its way through his knees and thighs, up his back. A restless wave that crashed around inside him, so that he had to fight the urge to get up and pace to shake it off. He had experienced these waves since leaving his father and brother behind in Egypt, but now, with Eleanor gone, they’d gotten worse. There wasn’t anything he could do, but he needed to do something.

  “What about the files?” He turned to the professor. “Maybe we should take a look at them?”

  Dr. Von Albrecht half nodded, half shrugged. “I suppose we should.”

  James hesitated, but then reluctantly nodded. He handed the portable drive to Dr. Von Albrecht, and the professor connected it to a tablet belonging to one of the other Grendel team members.

  “We managed to steal quite a bit of data,” he said, scanning the screen. “There are things here I knew nothing about even when I worked for the G.E.T.”

  Cyrus’s face looked stony. “Badri doesn’t leave anything behind.”

  Finn understood the Grendel team’s resentment, and he felt bad that Badri had been captured, but he didn’t think the G.E.T. would hurt her. They would try to get information out of her, for sure, but after the short time he’d spent with Badri, he didn’t think that would be an easy task.

  “So what does it say?” Finn asked.

  “Give me some time.” Dr. Von Albrecht adjusted his glasses, read and clicked and read for several minutes.

  Finn’s legs crawled.

  “Interesting,” Dr. Von Albrecht said. “It seems Watkins had a theory about the nature of the alien life-form that would explain how Eleanor and others like her can connect to the Concentrators.”

  “Is she in danger when we shut them down?” Luke asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Von Albrecht said. “There is a file here that claims it isn’t dangerous. Or at least, that is the conclusion Watkins came to. But there is another document that suggests otherwise.”

  “So which is it?” Luke sounded angry. Or impatient. Or just worried.

  “Perhaps both,” Dr. Von Albrecht said. “It seems to depend on the strength of connection to the alien technology. Some people have a stronger affinity than others. Most people would be perfectly safe. . . .”

  “But?” Betty said.

  Dr. Von Albrecht cleared his throat. “Some people may not be.”

  Luke swore. “Let’s keep a lookout.” He nodded toward the Grendel team monitoring the surrounding hills for G.E.T. agents. “As soon as she gets back, we’ll get her out of here. Regroup.”

  Dr. Von Albrecht returned to the files. Betty scooted closer to Luke and put a hand on his back. Finn started to rock, trying to work out some of the tension holding him hostage. Looking at the files hadn’t helped. In fact, they had made it worse. If Eleanor couldn’t safely connect to the Concentrator, do whatever thing she did to shut them down, where did that leave them?

  Would that mean Finn had abandoned his father and Julian for nothing? He knew his dad was wrong. Finn still had nothing in common with his dad, or his brother, especially now that they had signed on with Watkins and the Preservation Protocol. Finn didn’t believe anyone had the right to decide who survived and who didn’t, who was worth saving and who wasn’t. But if the world was going to end no matter what, did any of that really matter? Shouldn’t they be together to face it?

  “It looks like the G.E.T. agents are retreating,” James said, pointing.

  Finn watched the distant figures moving away from them, back over the hill toward the Yggdrasil Facility.

  “Why?” Luke said. “They know we’re out here.”

  “I don’t know,” James said. “But we may not get another chance like this to—”

  “What if it’s a trap?” Luke asked.

  “We’ll wait another twenty minutes to make sure,” Cyrus said. “And then we move out.”

  “And what about Badri?” Luke asked. “What about Eleanor?”

  “We’re an army,” James said. “Armies take casualties—”

  Luke dropped the binoculars and lunged toward the man, grabbing James by the collar of his coat. “She’s not a casualty, you understand me? She’s a kid.”

  James stared into Luke’s eyes. “Stay here, then. Wait for her if you want. But Grendel will live to fight another day. That’s what Badri would want.”

  Luke released the man. James then ordered the rest of his team to pack up. They left one of the snow blinds behind, as well as one of the tents and a few provisions, before marching away without a farewell or a backward glance. Finn watched them grow distant, shrinking to the size of grains of rice, and then they were gone over the crest of a hilltop.

  “That’s that.” Dr. Von Albrecht turned to Luke. “So, what is your plan?”

  “You wishing you’d gone with them?” Luke asked.

  Dr. Von Albrecht blinked. “Certainly not. And I don’t appreciate the question.”

  “Oh, you don’t, do you?” Luke scowled. “Well, Professor Dr. Von Skeptic, I don’t appreciate your—”

  “Shut it, Fournier.” Betty glared at the pilot. “What has gotten into you?”

  Luke bit his lip and ran his hands through his hair. “She’s out there. Somewhere. Or they have her. And I don’t know which. I don’t know what to do.”

  “None of us do,” Betty said. “But that doesn’t give you cause to turn on us.”

  “I know.” Luke picked up the binoculars. “I’m sorry.”

  Finn had stayed quiet, letting the adults argue it out. He was used to that. His mom and his dad argued all the time, less often since the divorce, but even when they weren’t together in person, they tried to argue with each other through Finn and his brother. So Finn had learned to stay quiet, do his best to stay out of it, and make up his own mind about what he was going to do.

  The way he saw the current situation, Eleanor had either hidden somewhere and she was safe, or she’d been captured. If she was safe, she was probably working out a strategy to shut down the Concentrator, and to do that, she’d have to get back into the Yggdrasil Facility. If she’d been captured, she was already in the Yggdrasil Facility. It was also possible his dad was down there with Julian somewhere, but Finn tried not to think about that. It seemed just as likely they were still in Egypt, and he didn’t know what the point of finding them would be, anyway, if they were still working with Watkins.

  Regardless, Finn needed to get into a position to watch the Yggdrasil Facility from a safe distance. That meant higher ground.

  He felt the tension in his body loosening now that it had something to do. “I’m going to make my way over there.” He pointed at the top of a distant peak, the one across the valley, directly above the facility.

  “Are you now?” Luke said.

  Finn nodded.

  Dr. Von Albrecht looked at the mountain, squinting, and appeared to be thinking about it. “I agree,” he sai
d. “Our best option at this point is to wait and watch.”

  Luke turned to Betty.

  “Sounds good to me,” she said.

  “Fine.” Luke rubbed his beard. “Fine, we’ll make our way over there. Carefully.”

  They packed up the snow blind and the other gear the Grendel team had left behind and crept along the hill, staying out of sight of the G.E.T. installation, climbing down into shallow ravines and back out again. They passed more of the Sky Caves, and Finn thought the openings would make perfect hiding places, if hiding were necessary. But he couldn’t keep an eye on things from the inside of a cave, so he kept moving.

  They crossed the wider valley far to the north of the Yggdrasil Facility and climbed the mountains on the opposite side. The sun lay near the horizon by the time they reached their destination. Finn looked back across the valley, at the point where they had started, from a ridge that gave them a view of everything below.

  They set up the snow blind and the tent and settled in to wait and watch. It didn’t take long for the exertion heat in Finn’s muscles to fade, and the cold to set back in as night came on. The lights of the Yggdrasil Facility grew sharper and brighter, piercing the darkness with multiple dagger points.

  Finn and the others took turns with the binoculars, monitoring the activity down below. They observed guards marching back and forth. They observed vehicles coming and going, supply trucks and transports like those the G.E.T. used in the Arctic. But they saw no sign of Eleanor and her uncle.

  “I still can’t figure out why they called off the search,” Luke said. “They had us. Or they could have had us.”

  Finn wondered that, too. He’d expected that the G.E.T. would send the helicopter back up, or send agents into the hills, but they never did.

  “Maybe they know something we don’t,” Betty said.

  “They’re the G.E.T.,” Finn said. “They always know something we don’t.”

  Dr. Von Albrecht laughed, darkly. “That is what they want the world to believe. It is often the case, but not always.”

  “You all should stay warm in the tent,” Luke said. “We’ll take shifts tonight. I have the first watch.”

  Finn climbed into the tent with Betty and Dr. Von Albrecht. They ate a few bites of dried fruit and settled into their sleeping bags. Finn had worked out enough of the tension in his body, and exhausted himself enough, that he was able to fall asleep quickly.

  Luke nudged him awake a few hours later.

  “You okay taking a watch?” the pilot asked. “Not much going on down there.”

  Finn sat up, wondering where he was for a moment, but soon reoriented. “Yeah—yeah, I can take a watch.”

  “Good man.” Luke handed him the binoculars. “Stay right by the opening of the tent. If you need something, we’ll be right here.”

  “Got it.”

  Finn traded places with Luke and stepped outside into the night. Overhead, the stars were doing their infinite thing, the Milky Way a loose, silken scarf wrapped around the neck of the world. Finn stared up at them for a few moments before turning his attention to the facility below. He didn’t even know what time it was, but nothing seemed to be moving down there. Here in the Himalayas, in the middle of the night, Finn felt like the only person awake in the world, and he was fine with that—

  He smelled something on the air. Something animal. It was musky, but also . . . sharp, a smell of old sweat that was almost human. It seemed familiar. Finn lowered the binoculars and looked around, sniffing. He was alone, but the smell grew stronger, more pungent, carried toward him on the wind.

  Then he saw movement. Farther along the hill, perhaps two hundred feet away, a towering shape loped down the mountain. Finn raised the binoculars, and when he looked through them, he stopped breathing.

  It was tall, at least eight feet. Its long arms seemed to reach to the ground as they swung along with its gait. Finn remembered then how he knew that smell. It was the odor of the gorillas in the Central Florida Zoo. But this animal wasn’t an ordinary gorilla. It had white fur, and a face that looked more human than ape.

  It was a yeti. A Bigfoot.

  Finn wouldn’t have believed it, except for the fact that he had already seen a woolly mammoth and Amarok’s prehistoric wolves—not to mention Amarok’s ancient people. And Eleanor had seen living mummies in Egypt. All resurrected by the energy of the Concentrator. In fact, Finn thought, I probably should have expected something like this.

  This must have been the creature they had heard the other night stalking them. This might have even been the reason the G.E.T. had given up their search, if they knew a creature like this lurked in the hills.

  Finn held still, trying not to panic, and realized that if he could smell the yeti, it might mean the yeti could not smell him. Their tent was downwind of it, and with their snow blind providing camouflage, the animal probably couldn’t see them in the dark, either.

  The yeti descended the mountain a short distance and then crouched, sitting on its haunches, staring down at the Yggdrasil Facility. It looked strong, quick, ready to strike, tilting its head from side to side, taking in all the angles. The animal appeared to be contemplating something. Working something out.

  A few moments went by, and then it rose up to its full height, its posture now menacing. Then it slammed the ground with its fists. Finn could hear the impact from where he sat, and could almost feel it. The yeti did it again. And again.

  “What is that?” came Luke’s voice from within the tent. “Kid—”

  “Shh!” Finn said, partly taking his eyes from the yeti for a moment.

  Luke fell silent, but when Finn looked back down the mountain, the creature had vanished.

  “It’s gone,” Finn whispered.

  “What’s gone?”

  “You’re not going to believe it,” Finn said.

  Silence.

  “Really?” Luke unzipped the tent and poked his head out. “You think there’s something left that I won’t believe?”

  “You tell me,” Finn said, and began to explain what he’d seen.

  CHAPTER

  8

  ELEANOR SAT AT THE EDGE OF THE TUNNEL, LOOKING OUT from the cave. Dozens of G.E.T. workers surrounded the Master Concentrator, moving about with a frantic energy. She couldn’t make out anything they were saying.

  “Maybe we should wait until nightfall to try to get closer,” she whispered.

  “Good idea,” Uncle Jack said. He motioned for her to follow him, and then he crept farther back into the tunnel the way they had come until they were a safe distance from the opening. “I don’t want to risk getting spotted,” he whispered.

  “Also a good idea,” Eleanor said.

  They settled down opposite each other, their backs against the walls of the tunnel, Eleanor’s legs parallel to his. He winced and grunted the whole way down, and Eleanor saw sweat gleaming across his forehead in the dim light.

  “You look pale,” she said.

  “I’m fine. That guy definitely cracked a rib or two. But I’m fine.”

  Eleanor wasn’t so sure, and kept an eye on him as they sat and waited.

  “I just hope Badri’s okay,” Uncle Jack said.

  “Me, too.”

  “She’s tough. But I don’t know if she’s tough enough.”

  Eleanor smirked at the thought of Watkins trying to get a single word out of her. “I doubt he’ll hurt her.”

  Uncle Jack folded his hands in his lap. “You have a higher opinion of the G.E.T. than I do.”

  Eleanor understood what he meant, but she had actually come to think highly of Watkins, in a weird way, and only when looking at him from a specific angle. He wasn’t evil. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He had simply made up his mind about the best way for humanity to survive the Freeze, and he wasn’t going to let anyone else get in the way of that. When viewed that way, he appeared determined, and intelligent, and capable, qualities Eleanor actually hoped she possessed. She would need all that if she w
as going to stop him.

  What she didn’t understand was why her mom had agreed with him and turned against her.

  “What do you think changed?” Uncle Jack asked.

  “Changed?”

  “With the telluric currents?”

  “I don’t know.” Eleanor laid a palm against the smooth sandstone wall beside her, feeling for the energy coursing through it. “I think the World Tree took charge. Maybe the—the zooid organism finally realized what was going on. We’ve been threatening it, so its defenses kicked in.”

  “But what was that thing we felt on the plane?”

  Eleanor remembered the arrival of that . . . presence. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think we should figure that out before we do anything?”

  He had a point. But Eleanor didn’t know what they could do about it. “I’m worried we won’t have another chance like this again. We need to take our shot at the Master Concentrator. We can figure everything else out later.”

  Uncle Jack nodded, and Eleanor could hear his labored breathing.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He closed his eyes. “Trying to keep the pain at bay. I might just hold still and rest for a few minutes if you can keep an eye on things.”

  “Of course. I think we’re safe here.”

  He nodded and let out a long sigh.

  Eleanor watched him rest for several hours, feeling both love and concern. She also felt a knot of guilt knowing it was her fault he got injured. He was here only because of her, and if anything happened to him she knew it would destroy her. She suspected he was already hurt worse than he was letting on, and he didn’t seem to be in any shape to continue.

  His breathing had settled into a steady rhythm, and she realized he was sleeping, or nearly sleeping. Had enough time gone by for the facility to clear out a bit? It would be easier if it was just her sneaking around anyway. Maybe she could slip away, shut down the Master Concentrator, and be back before Uncle Jack even knew she’d left.

  She decided to risk it, for his sake.

  Eleanor eased herself up to her feet, careful not to scrape the wall, and stepped over his legs. He never stirred as she crept away, back down the corridor, toward the World Tree. There did seem to be fewer agents around when she reached the opening and peered out, but not few enough to make her job easy.