by Joss Ware
Sage looked up, tension on her delicate face. “We’ve been trying to identify that symbol,” she explained dismissively. “The Strangers use it to identify themselves, and we’ve been looking for other uses or history that might tell us more about them.”
“I know exactly what it is,” Quent said, standing up straight. His face looked pale. “It’s the symbol for the Cult of Atlantis.”
“The Cult of Atlantis.” Lou’s fingers froze on the keyboard. He turned to look up behind him, and their eyes met.
Elliott could almost hear what they were thinking. He was thinking it too. No way.
Atlantis. In the Pacific Ocean.
Jade wasn’t able to find Geoff, which bothered her more than it should have.
But surely he wasn’t foolish enough to make another mistake like he had only three days ago. And his parents didn’t seem to be concerned that they hadn’t seen him since early that morning, at breakfast. School wasn’t in session, and he and the other teens spent their free time doing odd jobs or learning trades, which often included discovering ways to reuse or remake scavengeable items found elsewhere and transported in to Envy.
After leaving Geoff’s home, Jade thought about making a quick stop to try and find Rob Nurmikko . . . just to see if she could glean anything from him. But she decided that might be best left to someone who couldn’t be recognized by a Stranger or a bounty hunter. Someone who didn’t have a reward on her head.
So she went to see Flo, because she knew the older woman worried about her whenever she left Envy. It was a good thing she didn’t know exactly what Jade was up to when she went on her Running missions, for then she’d worry even more.
“Vaughn was looking for you yesterday,” Flo said after her greeting hug. She was shorter than Jade, but soft as a downy pillow, and she always smelled like the roses she grew in a tiny courtyard. Roses, and whatever cosmetics or beauty aid she was experimenting with on that particular day. Her short strawberry blond hair still retained its brilliant color except for an inch-wide stripe of blond coming from one side of her part—the result of a dyeing experiment gone wrong two years ago. Her current favorite style was that of the movie star Marilyn Monroe, with a deep sweep of bang over one eye and the ends flipped up all around in what she called a pageboy. Jade felt that was an improvement over the last trend Flo had attempted to imitate—something called feathering, which had been popular in the 1970s.
Despite the fact that Flo was more than a decade older than Jade, an array of freckles spattered over her round cheeks and pug nose—which was why many of her cosmetic experiments revolved around finding a way to fade freckles.
“What happened?” Jade asked, grimacing. Vaughn had had a lot of questions after her performance the other night—where she’d been, what she’d been doing, and why she hadn’t rehearsed that afternoon. She’d had to evade his question by making up an excuse about taking care of Flo’s granddaughter.
“I just told him you had a bad headache and had gone to rest. Thank goodness you’re back already—I was wondering what to tell him if he came by again today. You’d think the mayor of Envy would be too busy to be checking up on you.”
Jade smiled and shook her head. “Vaughn’s very hands-on. I mean, he’s more than a figurehead mayor. That’s why everyone admires him so much, because he doesn’t just sit around and give orders. But he’s going to think I’m the sickliest thing ever. Didn’t you use that headache excuse three weeks ago?”
“Now don’t worry about that,” Flo said, patting her hand with a small, pudgy one, beringed within an inch of its life. She wore eight rings and five bracelets on that appendage alone. “I just told him it was your time of the month, and he skedaddled before I could give him any further details. As far as he knows, when your aunt Pearl comes to visit, you get it bad.”
Jade rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help a smile. “I guess that’ll work as long as I keep to a monthly schedule for my travels. Not that he needs such an intimate look into my life.”
“Now tell me all about that gorgeous man you took off with you,” Flo insisted. “I could eat him up with a spoon. Even without strawberry sauce.”
“But not without whipped cream?” Jade laughed, and felt her cheeks heat under the other woman’s direct gaze. “He’s nice.”
“Nice? Honey, that’s what you say when I try a new hairstyle. Especially when you don’t like it. Now tell me the truth. Did you make a nuisance of yourself by telling him how to walk, talk, and breathe?”
“No. Well, a little. He . . . well, he actually listens to me. He’s not always telling me what to do.” She felt her cheeks grow warmer.
Flo’s brown eyes widened, and her well-plucked brows rose. “Oh-ho, so he knows how to handle the likes of you. Calm and easy does it, hmm?” She smiled, exposing three mismatched dimples on her left cheek. “Not like Vaughn Rogan, who half the time is afraid to breathe around you for fear he’ll chase you off—but too afraid to let you think for yourself, for fear you’ll think your way out of his life.” She shook her head. “The poor mayor. God love ’im. Maybe he’ll be needing some comfort for his broken heart.” A decidedly pleased glint twinkled in her gaze.
Jade rolled her own eyes. “The only reason Vaughn will care is because he won’t have me to hide behind anymore. Elliott asked me about him, and I explained the situation. But then. . . .” She shrugged as if she didn’t care. “He backed away. And that was it.”
“That was it?” Flo’s eyes narrowed. “You explained about Vaughn, exactly how?”
“I told him that we were just friends. And nothing else. He did mention Luke too, though.” She made a face, remembering the lunkhead’s insistent kiss. “He got a little friendly.”
“Elliott?”
“No, Luke. I’m not going back to Greenside alone, that’s for sure. That man has one thing on his mind.”
“What did you tell Elliott about Luke?”
“I didn’t tell him anything. There’s nothing to tell.” Jade felt her mouth set firmly. “The craterhead made a move and I . . . got out of it. I saw no reason to explain myself to Elliott about something that means nothing. I don’t need to defend myself to Elliott—or anyone—about anything. I don’t need him asking me questions or trying to tell me what to do.” She ended her little speech strongly, feeling her cheeks warm. “I don’t even know him. And I went through that with Daniel, don’t forget.”
Flo merely looked at her blandly. “Uh-huh. Okay.”
“It doesn’t matter what Elliott thinks—I’m really not interested anyway.”
But of course, Jade was lying. And Flo knew it.
Nevertheless, the older woman didn’t press her, and instead produced her latest invention: lip color. “Pink as a baby’s butt,” she said, slipping her pinkie into a little metal pot. “It makes your lips look soft and slick, and it gives them a little color.” And before Jade could protest, Flo was swiping the stuff onto her lips. “He won’t be able to resist.”
“Who?” Jade asked innocently, but Flo didn’t bother to reply.
The lip color tasted a little chalky, but when she looked in the mirror, she could see the difference. Her lips, already naturally full with a shallow, pointed vee on the top, looked sensual and pretty, and lusciously pink.
Jade could have wiped it off, but she didn’t. Just as she didn’t comment on Flo’s arch smile as she left, lips rosy and glistening.
Taking care that no one would notice her, Jade hurried across the thoroughfare from Flo’s place and slipped into the dark recesses of the old hotel through a side door. Moments later, she opened the old door to the empty elevator shaft and climbed down the stairs hidden inside.
Just as she walked into the computer room, she heard them talking, and immediately identified Elliott’s familiar rumble.
“The Cult of Atlantis?” Jade said. “What’s that?” All eyes turned to her, but she felt it the moment Elliott noticed her fresh, pink lips. His chin moved in a sort of surprised little jerk, hi
s eyes fastened on her mouth, and she swore she saw him straighten up. His own lips softened, parting as if to allow him to take in a deeper breath.
The expression on his face made her knees weak.
Don’t get all jinky now, just because Flo was right about the lip color.
She walked farther into the room as Quent, the blond one, explained. “It was a society that my father belonged to. Years before the Change.”
“You’re certain this is the symbol?” said Sage, who’d glanced up at Jade’s arrival.
She sounded a little annoyed, but Jade thought she understood why. Sage had been searching for information about the labyrinthlike symbol for five years, spending hours with bloodshot eyes, scrolling through cached computer data that Jade and Theo and the other Runners obtained, reading and cataloging any book or magazine that came to her intact—and even ones that didn’t. And she’d never found anything remotely similar.
“Yes, I’m certain it’s the Cult of Atlantis,” Quent replied, his voice almost as tetchy. “The traditional drawing of a labyrinth is common enough, but the superimposition of the swastika near the top of it is unique. Add in the scrolls around the edges that look like waves . . . there’s no question. I’ve seen it before.”
“The swastika is an ancient Sanskrit symbol for the sun,” Sage told them.
Jade hid a smile. Her friend had so much information crammed in her brain that she couldn’t help but spout off with it whenever she had the chance. She knew Sage well enough to know that it was a defense mechanism—she was a social misfit and kept to herself as much as possible.
She continued her lecture. “It got a bad rap because Hitler used it to symbolize his Nazis, but he really stole it from the Hindus, and in doing so, blasphemed a religious symbol.”
Quent gave Sage a measured look. “I’m fully aware of the history of the symbol, which as you likely know has also been called the hook cross, double cross, or sun wheel.” He spoke precisely, his British accent more clipped and pronounced than usual.
Jade made the mistake of glancing at Elliott and felt a rush of warmth suffuse her face. He was still looking at her, although it was obvious he was trying not to. Even from across the room, she felt the heat of his blue, blue eyes.
“I thought I’d seen it somewhere before,” Elliott said, and Jade felt the weight of his attention slide away from her. “Was it something you were studying?”
“My father wore a ring with that image on it, and I’d seen paperwork in his private office as well. I don’t know—I must have told you about it sometime,” replied Quent.
“What do you know about the Cult of Atlantis?” asked Lou.
“Not a whole lot. From what I gleaned,” Quent said, “the cult was a secret society comprised of some of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful people who lived . . . well, before the Change. I don’t know much more about it than that—and I didn’t care to learn. They had secret meetings, and didn’t talk about them. I don’t know if they were named after Atlantis because they believed it existed and were trying to find it, or if the name has some other significance. My father and I were estranged, and his interests meant little to me.”
Lou was nodding, his face grave. Jade noticed lines of weariness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and instead of going to sit by Elliott—as every nerve in her body urged her to do—she moved over to Lou. It would be good to get in touch with Theo and get him back here too.
“This all gives credibility to a concept that seems impossible,” he said grimly. “This, combined with what we know about the Strangers—that they seem to be powered or immortalized by crystals—makes frightening sense.”
Sage jumped in. “The myths and legends of Atlantis most always include elements that describe their energy as coming from crystals.”
“So are you saying,” Fence spoke up, “that this new continent or landmass really could be Atlantis?” There was disbelieving laughter in his deep voice.
“It’s not conclusive evidence,” Lou replied. “But we do have enough connections to theorize: the mass that appeared after the Change, this symbol which Quent indicated represents a cult named after Atlantis, and the fact that crystals are important to the Strangers—they wear them in their skin, they use them for energy. It’s far-fetched, but possible.”
“Well, at least with your information,” Sage said, “I have a better path for my research. It could be coincidence, I suppose.”
“I’m not sure what your research sources are,” Quent said, “but I doubt you’ll find much about the Cult of Atlantis. It was very clandestine; I’d never heard it mentioned or referred to outside of my father’s office—and even that was an accident. He was livid when he realized I’d even heard the name.”
“Can you think of any other people who were involved with it? Maybe investigating them will lead to more information,” Jade suggested.
“I don’t know for sure, but I would suspect people with whom he regularly spent leisure time, or at least, didn’t have ongoing business dealings—like Bill Brass. He was a real estate mogul. Also, a man named Remington Truth,” replied Quent. “My father seemed to be quite in awe of him—a shock in itself, because my father was never in awe of anyone.” Jade recognized the loathing in his voice when he spoke of his father, and wondered what could have caused such an estrangement. She glanced at Elliott, but he was focused on his friend. That gave her a moment to admire the strong line of his jaw and handsome profile. Covertly.
He really had the most amazing lips.
“Remington Truth?” Lou said, looking up from the book.
“Yes. He was the head of the National Security Administration, for the second Bush administration, and left the post not long after nine-eleven,” Elliott said.
Lou nodded. “Ah. Yes, I remember the name.”
“Also Chas Kidley.”
“The big-name actor?” Lou said. “Really?”
Quent nodded, smiling grimly. “And you thought Tom Cruise was the only actor who belonged to a special cult.”
“Kidley was bigger than Cruise or Pitt,” Lou said. “I’m surprised he was able to keep his involvement in the cult a secret.”
“I don’t know that it was a cult as much as a secret society; I mean, I don’t know that there was a worship or spiritual aspect. I got the sense that it was more of a cartel—wealthy, privileged, and powerful people supporting each other behind the scenes. Perhaps not always legally. Let’s see . . . there was Tatiana, the actress. The governor of Louisiana—I believe it was in the first decade of the new millennium, but I don’t recall his name. Grim Halliday, the CEO of Magnew Industries. There are others, but I’ll have to think to remember. These are people my father would visit often, and I’m certain they were part of the society.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Elliott, “is how you’re using the Internet when it can’t exist any longer. Can it? And I saw Google—or something like it—there on your screen. How are you doing your research?”
Lou smiled and a proud gleam flared in his eyes. “That’s what Theo and I have been doing for the past fifty years. We’ve been rebuilding as much of the Internet as we can, by using cached files on computers—PCs from homes, offices, schools, libraries, and also the caches on servers and backup servers. Google, Yahoo!, all of the ISPs like Comcast and SBC. They all had multiple caches located throughout the world, including here in the western U.S. The problem—or perhaps I should say, the challenge—is that what we have is only a snapshot of what was on the Web at any given time. The Internet that we’ve created is no longer the dynamic entity that you remember, but a static one, culled together from pieces that we can find.”
“That means,” Sage added, “that there are holes in any given place or in any given site. In fact, we run into 404 page errors all the time.”
Lou laughed. “Sage, let’s be honest. You run into the 404s. You’ve done most of the work and research all along, and we wouldn’t have half of the information and
data we have if you hadn’t been working with us so steadily.”
“You and Theo and Jade provide the data for me. I just churn through it.”
“And never forget a thing once you’ve seen it,” Lou said, reaching over to touch her hand, closing knobby fingers over it. “Sage has been brilliant with this because if she sees a document or Web page or something, and it’s incomplete, she’ll remember it when she finds another part of it later on. She’s documented and indexed, and—”
“Lou,” Sage said, her face bright red. Jade stifled a smile. Poor girl. Being the center of attention was definitely not her thing.
Quent appeared interested, Wyatt bored . . . but Jade noticed that Simon—the strikingly handsome guy with the dark ponytail—was looking at Sage as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Hmmm.
“And that,” Lou said as a wrap-up, “is why we’ve kept this whole project a secret. If the Strangers were to discover what we know, and what we’re trying to find out, they’d squash us. Like bugs. Like they did fifty years ago.”
Elliott looked at Jade, and then Lou. “What are we—you—trying to find out?”
Lou’s expression sobered. “I thought you realized. They’re bent on keeping us confined and ignorant. They destroyed the world. We’re trying to find out how to destroy them.”
Chapter 14
“I want my damned arrow back.”
Quent turned slowly, as though facing a skittish cat. He’d half expected it, been waiting for it. That was why he’d left the buzz of people inside and chose to walk among what was left of the tall buildings of Vegas. Alone. For the second night in a row.
Hoping she’d find him.
Hoping she’d followed them back to Envy.
Last night, he’d walked for hours beneath the tall, deep shadows of the destroyed Strip. Tonight, after his disconcerting experience this morning, then spending too many hours in Lou Waxnicki’s secret computer lab, Quent had needed fresh air.
He’d needed to clear his thoughts. And, he’d hoped. . . .