That’s what it’s like when I enter the systems room.
A second before impact, the Youli turns around. Marco is nearly on top of him, but the Youli’s eyes find mine. They’re big and black and bottomless. Even though I’m still moving, I feel frozen. And as I brace for the Youli’s onslaught of feelings, expecting to sense rage or confusion or maybe even fear, I’m overwhelmed with curiosity and kindness, like that’s the place from which the Youli operate. Curiosity and kindness.
Marco knocks the Youli to the ground and punches his face. I kneel on his shoulders and keep him pinned while his brain floods mine with blurry thoughts of the battle and the summit and the crazy Earth kids who have just attacked him.
Cole races around the center pillar. Lucy fishes the patch from her pocket. Mira stands at the door. Her arms are wrapped around her body. She rocks her chest forward and back as if tilting on an internal pivot.
“Have you got it?” I shout to Cole and Lucy.
“Not yet!” Cole hollers back.
“Hurry!” Marco yells.
“You’re not helping!” Lucy snaps.
The Youli struggles, and a new wave of words and emotion rushes over me. Stop! Peace! Please!
He pushes against my brain. My patch twinges. It takes all the focus I have not to respond with my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut and press my hands against the Youli’s chest.
“Almost there!” Cole shouts.
Stop! Peace! Please!
I funnel all my energy—mental and physical—into restraining the Youli and keeping him out of my brain.
“Jasper!” Lucy yells like it’s not the first time she’s called for me. “What’s happening? What’s going on with Mira?”
I open my eyes. Mira stands at the door. Her face is filled with frustration. She’s clapping her hands.
Why would she be . . . ? Oh . . . of course . . . she has no way to communicate.
She throws up her arms, and glares at me. Her voice reaches my mind. They’re coming! They’re coming!
As soon as her words touch me, the Youli jerks. He heard her, too.
“They’re coming!” I yell to our pod mates.
“All set!” Lucy says. “Next stage. Go!”
Marco slaps my leg. “Bound! Now!”
I open my port and—Bam!
My feet hit solid ground: the Gulagan Space Dock. My pod mates surround me on the flight deck. We made it!
My brain is finally free of the Youli’s grasp. All that’s left is a memory, a lingering trail across the cosmos.
Mission accomplished.
And that’s when it hits me. The Youli’s sensors may not be able track our bounds, but thanks to the patches and our brain-talk, their minds sure can.
27
SECONDS AFTER MY FEET HIT the deck, I’m airborne. Strong hands grab my thighs and hoist me up. As my head crests above the crowd, I see the entire flight deck is crushed with people—humans and Tunnelers, all celebrating an Earth Force victory. Voices chant my name and the names of my pod mates. The shouts swell so loud, I cover my ears.
I’m propped on the shoulders of two officers. Not far from me, Marco barely stays balanced on the backs of two Tunnelers. He pumps his fists in the air then tips his head and howls. When he catches my eye, he turns up his thumbs.
Captain Han steers through the crowd with Cole on his shoulders. Lucy stands on the bounding ship scaffolding, waving to the crush of people below. She looks like a star. She even blows kisses.
Everyone’s cheering. They’re cheering for us. They’re cheering for victory.
None of them knows a Youli attack is imminent.
Maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m being paranoid. The only person who can help me figure that out right now is Mira.
Where is she?
I scan the crowd but can’t find her. “Mira! Mira!” It’s no use. There’s no way she could hear me over the hoots and hollers and Gulagan grunts.
I could be wrong. If the Youli tracked us, Earth Force would know, right? We wouldn’t be celebrating. We’d be preparing to defend the space dock, the quantum fleet, Gulaga.
Something catches the corner of my eye, and I turn. A few meters to my right, two officers have Mira in their grasp. They’re probably just trying to lift her, but she’s having none of it. She pushes one of them in the chest and shakes free of the other.
I focus on her with all my might. Mira!
Her eyes dart around until they find mine. Her gaze is drenched in panic. Then she thinks the same words she used on the Youli vessel. They’re coming!
She sensed it, too. The Youli are coming. They traced us. And it’s all because of Waters and his stupid brain patches.
We need to do something.
“Put me down!” I shout. “The Youli are coming!”
No one can hear me over the din. I kick the officers in the chest, knowing I’ll probably pay for it later, until they’re forced to lower me. I slip through their grasp and duck into the crowd, desperate to shield the space station before it’s too late.
But now that I’m down, I’m not sure what to do. How on earth can I convince this horde a threat’s on the way?
I run toward Lucy who still clings to the scaffolding. When I reach the metal rungs, she waves at me with an enormous smile on her face. I climb up and spin around, linking my arm around a vertical bar for balance.
As I scan the crowd, Lucy sidles up beside me. She presses a giant kiss on my cheek. “We did it, Jasper!” she speaks into my ear.
Below us, Earth Force officers and Tunnelers cheer. Their shouts converge on a single chant.
“Birthright, Bounders Fight!”
“Birthright, Bounders Fight!”
“Birthright, Bounders Fight!”
“They’re coming!” I shout back at Lucy.
“What?”
I twist on the scaffolding so I can shout in her ear. “The Youli! They tracked us! Through the brain patch!”
Lucy pulls back as a wave of concern sweeps her face. “No.”
I lean close. “Yes! Help me find Mira! Then grab Cole and Marco and head for the elevator!”
Lucy scans my face. First she shakes her head. Then, when she’s convinced I’m serious, she nods. We search the crowd. Seconds later, she grabs my forearm and points. Mira is making her way through the masses, heading for the large, elevated platform near the doors where Admiral Eames stands, flanked by Captain Ridders and Suarez.
I grab Lucy’s hand and squeeze. She squeezes back, then we both descend the scaffolding and are swallowed by the crowd. I can only hope she finds Cole and Marco in time. My job is to intercept Mira.
I keep my eyes locked on the admiral. From her post on the platform, she claps and waves to the crowd. She’s obviously just as oblivious as everyone else.
A large Tunneler in front of me refuses to budge. He grunts in Gulagan. I try to ignore him and scoot by on the side, but he blocks me, still talking. Doesn’t he understand I have no clue what he’s saying? He sounds happy enough, for a Tunneler at least, so he must be congratulating me. I give him a thumbs-up. He nods and slaps me on the back. I duck around him and continue on.
Someone catches my sleeve, and I’m jerked to a stop. I spin around to find Ryan standing there with a huge grin. He gets inches from my face. “You rock, Jasper!”
“Thanks! Gotta go!” I don’t bother explaining. I rip my arm from his grasp and spin back. I take one step and slam straight into Maximilian Sheek.
He is the last person I want to see right now. Sheek swings his arm around my shoulder and bends over. “The heroic Jasper! I knew my pointers would pay off. Let’s try for a photo op!”
“I have to find the admiral!” I shout.
“Excellent idea! EFAN is sure to run extra coverage if the admiral is in the shot.” Sheek presses his hand against my back and steers us into the celebration. It turns out running into Sheek was a stroke of luck. The crowd parts when he waves his hand. Don’t they know he’s a total phony?
&nb
sp; Mira reaches the platform seconds before us. She’s already climbing when I grab the rungs and haul myself up.
Captain Suarez is on us immediately. “Whoa! Back off, cadets! You can’t be up here!”
“I need to speak with the admiral!” I shout.
Suarez levels a cool stare at me, then shifts to Mira, who pulls at her braid and looks like she’s about to bolt.
“It’s important!” I cry. “High-level intelligence about the mission!”
She hesitates but then alerts the admiral, who waves us to the back of the platform.
The admiral smiles and spreads her arm wide. “Miss Matheson, Mr. Adams, our very own heroes. If it weren’t for you and your pod—”
I can’t waste time with this. “Admiral, I’m very sorry—I know interrupting you is against like every Earth Force protocol, but you have to listen to me. The Youli tracked us. They’ll be here any second.”
The smile leaves the admiral’s face. “The diruo pulse rendered our ships untrackable. The only thing you’re right about, cadet, is your violation of protocol.”
“Listen, it’s hard to explain, but I had this sort of brain connection with the Youli, and—”
“Brain connection?” the admiral interrupts. She shouts to be heard over the cheers below.
“Yes, and there was this Youli in the systems room—”
An alarm sounds, and it’s not in my head like on the Youli ship. This alarm is loud, piercing, and capable of calling every one of the soldiers celebrating below to attention.
The admiral lifts her com link to her ear to hear over the siren.
A tense moment passes. All eyes on the flight deck are on the admiral.
When she lowers her com link, her face is drained of color. “It seems you might be right,” she says to me before turning to Suarez, Ridders, and her honor guard. “We’ve detected an incoming bound in Gulagan space. Get everyone off this space dock now!”
The admiral issues orders, then her guards rush her off the platform. Suarez and Ridders swing down and guide the panicked crowd toward the dock doors.
When Mira and I get off the platform, we link hands. We’re about to join the evacuation when a hand seizes my forearm.
“Not so fast!” Sheek shouts. “What happened to our photo op?”
“What? Don’t you know what’s happening? The Youli tracked us. We’re under attack.”
Sheek’s face contorts as he processes this information. Then he roughly shoves us aside and runs for the door. “Stand aside! Coming through!”
Mira rolls her eyes then takes off after him, dragging me behind her.
The crowd funnels toward the narrow door opening until we’re all stuck and jostling in a human traffic jam.
Screams ripple through the crowd. Someone ahead of me points. I spin around.
Just off the flight deck, a Youli ship has just bounded in. The space surrounding it still shimmers with the aftershock of the bound.
The ship looks just like the one from the Paleo Planet, except now it’s reversing the bound sequence. First, it’s a ball about the size of our quantum ships, then it starts to unfold, so that by the time we finally reach the doors amidst the crush of people, the disk is wider than the flight deck. Shots fire from the craft and ricochet off our shields.
We press forward and squeeze through the doors. Inside, the space dock is jammed with people, and the air is thick with smoke. The floor rocks, and we’re thrown down. A Tunneler falls on top of me, and his fur rubs against my face. I push off with my feet, trying to stand. The ground shifts. But it’s not the ground—there’s a person beneath me. He shifts out of the way, and my shoes find a solid surface.
I shout for Mira, but I can’t even hear myself over everyone else’s screams. Smoke burns my throat as I suck in a breath.
Mira finds my hand and laces our fingers. Don’t let go.
I’m grateful she can reach my mind, even if it’s what led the Youli to our doorstep. Fear rolls off of her in big waves. I can only imagine what my brain must feel like right now.
We creep forward until the crowd thins and we’re running for the space elevator. Dense smoke clouds the main passage, so we reroute through a generator room. A narrow bridge spans the engineering center, a four-story drop to the floor below. I don’t even think about falling when I dash across.
When we’re nearly at the door, the space dock reels from another hit.
We’re launched forward, away from the pit. The sound of bending metal echoes through the cavernous room.
Mira and I scramble to our feet amidst the screams.
“Help!”
Mira pulls against my hand. Stop!
I jerk forward. We have to keep going. There’s no telling how much time we have before this place blows apart. We have to make it to the space elevator.
“Help!”
Mira releases my hand. I skid to a halt and spin around. The narrow bridge we crossed has collapsed, but its center support still stands. Perched on the narrow platform, completely stranded above the engineering room, is Regis.
“Help!” he shouts. “Please!” He sees that we’ve stopped, that we’ve heard his call. His face lights with hope. But when his eyes meet mine, his face falls.
Everything in me wants to turn my back. This is the guy who left us for dead on the tundra. He tried to push us off the bridge in Gulagaven, and now he expects us to save him from a bridge that collapsed?
Payback, Regis. Ultio.
I take a step backward and will myself to turn around and run for the space elevator, but I just can’t do it. Regis is stranded with no blast pack and no hope of rescue other than us. I grab the straps for my pack. Mira pushes off, and I follow, flying across the pit for Regis.
I send Mira a mental picture, and we execute, gliding behind him from either side.
“Hang one of your arms over each of our shoulders,” I shout to him. “We’ll fly you back.”
Regis hesitates. “How do I know you won’t drop me?”
“Now or never,” I say. “If you don’t want to trust us, suit yourself.”
He spreads his arms across our shoulders and steps off the platform. His weight threatens to pull us down, but Mira and I hold steady and steer us back to the ledge. Regis leaps as soon as we clear the pit. He takes off running without a glance back.
“Nice of you to say thanks!” I call after him.
The sudden shift knocked Mira off balance. Fungus Butt! she brain-screams after Regis.
No kidding, I think as I help her up.
We stumble out the door and into the crowded hallway.
When we’re steps away from the bay, the news reaches us.
“The elevator just left without us!”
“They hit capacity! We have to wait for the next trip!”
“The Youli will shoot us out of the sky!”
“This is a death sentence!”
Wait . . . no . . . the elevator left? What are we going to do?
Everyone crowds into the bay. Sure enough, the elevator has already started its descent. Tunnelers work feverishly at the controls. Commander Krag grunts orders. Every few seconds, he activates his voice box and assures us that they’re running the cab on an emergency speed setting, that it will be back for us in less than twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes? How on earth do they think we’ll last twenty minutes with the Youli firing on the space dock?
There’s nothing we can do but wait. I scan the bay but can’t spot my pod mates. I hope Lucy, Cole, and Marco made it onto the first elevator. We probably would have made it, too, if we hadn’t stopped to rescue Regis.
The bay is packed and still more people pour in. Smoke seeps in, too. It’s getting hard to breathe.
“Please stay calm,” Commander Krag says. “The first evacuation trip has already reached the atmosphere. The cab should arrive for a second evacuation in eleven minutes.”
“Eleven minutes!” someone shouts. “We won’t be here in eleven minutes!”
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Mira squeezes my hand.
“Do not panic,” the commander continues. “We’ve raised traditional force fields. We’ve implemented auto defense measures that should keep the Youli ship off our immediate perimeter. Where you’re standing is the most secure location on this dock. I have no doubt we’ll weather this attack. At least for another eleven minutes.”
The elevator bay is so packed, it’s hard to see. The only place that’s clear is down. Down through the transparent floor, past the occludium shield, all the way down to the Gulagan surface. Down to safety. All we can do is look down and watch as the elevator now makes its way back to where we wait.
Minutes pass like hours. We have no idea what’s happening outside, but it’s hard not to imagine the worst each time the floor shakes or the lights flash in the reflection of the windows beneath our feet.
I clench my fist and feel the link between my brain and my gloves. It’s so tempting to bound. It would be so easy to visualize the Nest, open a port, and step through. But if even part of the occludium shields around this dock or the planet remain intact, or if the scrambler is still activated in Gulagaven, we’d never materialize.
Mira’s brain touches mine. They followed us.
I circle my arm around her shoulder. I know.
Is this our fault?
Will she know if I’m telling the truth?
No, I lie.
I know you’re lying.
Even in the eye of this awfulness, a smile teases my lips. At least I’m with Mira. It’s not like our connection makes the brain patches worth it—particularly since the Youli just used them to track us—but since I can’t change the past, and there might not be a future, I might as well smile at the one positive result of Waters’s folly.
As if she read my mind—which, I guess she did—Mira wraps her arm around my waist and douses us in her sparkly energy. But beneath the sparkles, I sense her mind is poised to spring. She’s ready for battle.
The Tundra Trials Page 23