AER (The Elements Series Book 3)

by Tracy Korn

  So, it looks like it wasn't all a bad dream, unfortunately, she thinks. The corner of her mouth twitches as I shake my head.

  They're going to take us to that Boneyard place today…they said we might have to go onto the Grid. What do you think that means? Do you think my dad and Liddick will be there somewhere? I think in answer. She shrugs, but I feel a bubble of panic well up in my chest, then blow out like a candle. It must be her feeling. Arco suddenly takes in a quick, sharp breath. I turn to face him, and his eyes are wide and scanning.

  "Whoa…you OK?" I ask. He swallows a few times and then closes his eyes in a long blink before opening them again.

  "I'm fine," he says, scrubbing his hands over his face. He stands up all at once, leaving a blanket of cold in his wake. Vox pulls her knees to her chest to get out of his way as we both watch him cross to the kitchen to talk with Eco. She turns to me and raises a burgundy eyebrow.

  Brrr, she thinks. What did you do?

  I didn't do anything, I answer, but I know this cold, hard edge feeling in the bottom of my chest. It's the same thing I felt from him when I ran to Liddick after I finally got free of that giant bullet ant in the Rainforest biome back in the Rush. He thought that because Liddick and I could talk telepathically, because Liddick is the one who helped me stay calm then, that I wanted Liddick instead of him.

  Leave it to that tree trunk to be jealous when we've just escaped a mad scientist school six miles underwater, discovered a new, tornado-monster fighting culture under the ocean floor, and crossed seven biomes of random nightmare beasts only to get launched into the stratosphere where we wake up on a couch owned by a guy with sparkly lights in his face, Vox thinks without even pausing. I gape at her, but she just stares at me blankly like I owe her an explanation.

  Stop…eavesdropping in my head. I hadn't even actually thought any of that yet, is all I can manage to answer. She rolls her eyes and pushes off her knees to join Arco in the kitchen. He hands her one of the square, white cups.

  "Ugh. Is this supposed to be coffee?" Vox asks, wrinkling her nose in the steam rising from the cup and encircling her face. "Did the matter board make it?"

  "Yes, and yes," Eco says. "It's infused."

  "With what? Burned hair?" She takes a sip, then sticks out her tongue.

  "That's disgusting," Myra says through a giggle, stretching her arms over her head in the corner of the couch across from me as she watches Vox. Her reddish blonde hair is everywhere before she pulls it into a bunch behind her head and stands.

  "As long as it's hot, I don't care what it tastes like," Ellis says, rubbing his eyes. He pushes Avis's shoulder, which almost knocks him out of the chair he's sleeping in, but this just moves him enough to shift his wing of blue-edged bangs over his face. Fraya laughs next to me, Jax's enormous arm draped over her collarbones. She carefully slips out from under it, which makes Jax snore abruptly in surprise. Fraya covers her mouth with both hands to keep from laughing out loud.

  "Where's Calyx?" Arco asks, then takes a long swig of his coffee.

  "She's meeting us at the Boneyard," Eco answers. "You can change clothes and clean up there. Tell the matter board whatever you want to eat, and let's get going. There might be some tests we need to run before you meet Skull."

  "What kind of tests?" Arco narrows his eyes.

  "Threshold scans. Not all of you will be able to go into the virtuo-cine network, if that's what Skull decides to do with you."

  "Threshold scans for what?" Fraya asks, then sips her coffee. Eco sighs.

  "Too much to explain here, and we're going to be late. Wake up the rest of your group."

  ***

  There aren't many people on the street when we leave Eco's habitat. In the distance, the sky, for lack of a better term, is a charcoal black, and I remember that this isn't night, it's space. The light from the sidewalk, which fades into the darker road at our left, stretches out to a horizon with intermittent, tall, cylindrical buildings stretching so high I can't see the tops of them as they disappear into a gray haze.

  "Is that the port-cloud?" Myra asks, craning her neck upward at where the buildings disappear.

  "No, the port-cloud is below us. That's just light pollution," Eco says, pulling the collar of his long white coat around his neck.

  "If this environment is sealed somehow, which it has to be or we would all choke to death, why can't they climate control it to be warmer? Hello, maybe program summer? Why is this hard?" Avis says, rubbing his arms as we walk.

  "Has to be cold—this whole place is built on top of a moon-sized server cooling system," Ellis says, nodding at Eco for confirmation that he doesn't get.

  "This way," Eco says, leading us back to the column of light that we came out of on the way here yesterday.

  "Where is the Boneyard?" I ask, trying to push the nausea down in anticipation of the G-force waiting for us in that tube.

  "A few hops from here—it will be a shorter trip than the shift we took from the transfer hubs last night."

  "Are we going to feel like we're being turned inside out again?" Myra asks, already turning a little green.

  "Probably," Eco says without even the slightest smile.

  "What's his problem?" Jax whispers down to me.

  "I think he's upset that he was left out of the loop about the Vishan DNA code that Calyx gave dad. He doesn't seem mad, just…offended," I answer.

  "Or maybe he's just like that." Jax raises and eyebrow, and I try not to laugh.

  Fever Plank…River Plank…Solis Plank…I read the floating, glowing signs that sit just in front of different light columns—shifts, as Eco called them—to the different destination hops here in Admin City.

  "Where is the Boneyard? Which Plank?" I ask, trying to decide how close we are to our column of light.

  "Tide Plank—right here," Eco answers, pointing to the glowing, shimmering letters suddenly above our heads. "Remember the drill; try not to move once you feel the air rushing in, and make sure you touch your head to the back of the light column. Seeing your own face stretch out in front of you is disturbing—trust me," Eco says, managing a small smile.

  In seconds, another whoosh of air washes over us. I touch my head to the back of the column and shut my eyes tightly.

  You all right? I hear Lyden in my mind and nod, unable to form words. I try to catch up to my stomach, which feels like it has dropped about a hundred feet. The memory of Myra's elongated neck stretching out what seemed like several feet from her body with the light distortion jumps into my head, and I almost scream out loud. Almost, because I can't seem to open my mouth.

  Another whoosh of air passes over us before the feeling subsides.

  "Let's go," Eco suddenly says, ushering everyone out of the tube.

  "So…did we go up or down? Or sideways?" Avis asks, holding his palms to his temples without having yet opened his eyes.

  "Up," Lyden answers when Eco doesn't. He seems to be even tenser now. "The Boneyard isn't far from here."

  This Plank looks almost exactly like the one where Eco lives—tall, white, simple buildings that all seem to be the same height, none of them with any windows to one side with a stretch of light-to-dark fading road to the other. The haze in the sky seems a lot closer to us now too.

  Eco suddenly stops, then holds up his hand over a door, which then disappears.

  Inside, music that sounds like someone is playing a set of wine glasses suddenly fills the air, and a man about my father's age nods to us from behind a brushed metal countertop like at Eco's hab. He's typing on a floating blue, holographic keyboard also like the one back in Eco's hab, but I can't see a screen. The walls in here are made up of a series of criss-crossing lines of differently colored light, which appears and disappears like shooting stars. They move so quickly it's almost like tiny fireworks explosions filling the walls.

  "New graduates?" the man says, looking up quickly from his invisible screen to scan us. He forces a smile comprised of exactly one spaceless bar, just like Tieg
and Dez have.

  Eco nods. "Cally make it in yet?"

  The man returns his nod without looking away from the screen this time. "You know the way," he adds.

  "Come on," Eco says, walking behind the counter. He raises his hand to a spot on the flashing fireworks wall, which disappears after a second. We follow him down a corridor, and the wall closes behind us.

  "Whoa…" Avis says. "What was that back there?"

  "That was Nev. He runs the Plank shifts."

  "Is that what all those lights were? Trajectories?" Ellis asks.

  "Something like that," Eco says without turning back to us.

  "Like the old air traffic control grids," Ellis adds, elbowing Arco in the arm, which only earns him a scowl.

  "What?" Arco says.

  "The walls back there. What planet are you on?"

  "Right, yeah. Sorry. I guess I didn't notice."

  "How could you have missed that?!" Avis says, scurrying past us like a monkey. This is the most excited I've seen him in a long time.

  "Keep up!" Eco shouts back to us, and we all break into a jog.

  We come to a fork in the corridor and follow Eco down the path on the left. He places both palms flat on the wall, in line with his shoulders, and this wall, too, fades out. Behind it, people either slow down walking, or stop all together to stare at us. Several different port-call stations like the ones at Gaia Sur line the walls, but these are mismatched with some of the cylindrical bases being the normal, polished white, and some made out of metal. The screens sitting on top of the bases are also erratically shaped—some rectangular, some round, and some that are just hovering in the air like the ones in the port-carnate hub of Phase Two.

  In the center of the room is a large, roped off pad on the floor. It's white in places, metal in others, and a row of differently shaped screens arc behind it. People are sitting at each of the stations, and everyone seems to be wearing the same style, but differently colored jumpsuits like the teachers at Gaia Sur.

  "Are they from Gaia?" Arco asks, seeming to pull the thought right out of my head.

  "No," Calyx says, walking up behind us. "These are all Admin City employees in one capacity or another—mainly the virtuo-cine industry…and some work in the mouth of the wolf."

  Arco narrows his eyes at her. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing. It will clear out soon when their shifts start wherever they're supposed to be normally."

  "What do you do normally?" Arco asks, now with an edge in his voice. Calyx just smiles at him for a second, then meets my eyes.

  "Ready?" she asks, and my heart starts pounding in surprise.

  "For w-what?" I stumble.

  "Skull is waiting for you."

  CHAPTER 13

  Breaking the Ice

  Liddick

  "We should get moving," I say, tossing my water bottle into my satchel and slinging it over my shoulder. "We're going to freeze down here."

  "Aren't you getting any warmer since the treatment?" Dell asks, then darts a glance from me to Tieg.

  "We'll warm up by walking; let's go," I say, pushing past him. I've had it with this tunnel, with everyone's lack of urgency.

  "Liddick, wait…" Dez calls after me, but I don't slow down. She's at my side in a few seconds, hooking her arm in mine; I let it fall through, and the whip of pain she feels lashes into my chest.

  "I just need some space, all right?" I say, too harshly, but I don't care. She doesn't deserve it, but I just don't care.

  "It's Jazz, isn't it? You blame me, don't you?" she finally asks. I blow out a breath as an answer. "When did you get so selfish? Have you always been like this and just pretended to be interested in me at Gaia?" she keeps pushing. I don't know what to tell her—more accurately, I don't want to put the work into figuring out how to tell her anything in a way that would spare her feelings. I wasn't thinking at all when I let her believe we were a thing back at Gaia, if she wants to know the truth. But she doesn't…not really, so I don't say anything at all. "Liddick! Are you at least going to answer me? You blame me for getting locked out of the transfer hub? Getting locked away from Jazz and being stuck down here with me?" That's the last of this pushing I can take.

  "Yes! All right!? Is that better?" I round on her. "I'm done being on my best behavior. You and I are over, Dez. It's been over since before we left Gaia. I don't want you, OK? Is that what you need to hear?" I say through my teeth and watch the tears pool in her sooty eyes. My stomach instantly falls, and whatever heart I might have drying up in my chest somewhere breaks under the weight of these feelings that aren't even mine. I'm just a mirror. That's all I've ever been.

  The thought is knocked out of my head when I realize I'm going to hit the ice floor, and it's too late even to get my hands out to break the fall. My cheekbone and jaw hit at the same time, the instant cold cancelled out by the burn of the scraping. I look up as fast as I can only to see Tieg hovering over me, then reaching down, and the ice underneath us both starts to crack.

  "Stay back!" I hear Cal's voice raise above everyone's shouting in the growing distance. Tieg's eyes are wide until he takes a deep breath and then closes them tightly. A second later, we must hit another level of ground below us because everything in me feels like it's on fire, and I can't get my breath. But we don't hit the ground. We keep falling—floating, and the fire over every inch of me gives way to a prickly, stabbing pain before it goes numb. I open my eyes, not realizing that I had closed them, but see nothing except distorted colors as I gasp for a breath. Freezing water pours into my nose and mouth, then reaches down my throat. I choke, but everything is in slow motion. Water…no more water…I hear in my head again—the same fragment of virtuo-cine script that has been playing in my head for years. Swim…I think. Or do I just hear this word too? Riptide? Jazz, is that you?

  I squeeze my eyes closed to keep the freezing water from burning them, and will my arms over my head. I can't feel the water, but I know it's there. I push my arms down to my sides, then force them up again. Am I moving? Is this up? I break the surface of the water and choke again, but I feel nothing. This is how it should be. This is what I deserve. This is what they all deserve.

  "Liddick!" Jack calls. "Hold on! We're coming!"

  I can't see him, but he's somewhere above me. My shoulder hits something hard behind me, but I only feel it dully until I'm yanked violently upward by the collar and then dropped onto another hard surface. I cough, which feels like daggers in my chest. I blink hard to clear my vision and see Tieg sitting against the ice wall stuffing white, shimmering fabric into the toes of his boots.

  "Mollusk—you blew your impact gear when you jumped off that waterfall in the tunnels before," Tieg says, pushing an already packed boot into my ribs.

  "No," I cough. "It didn't…blow…"

  "Then you didn't reel it in right last time because it didn't deploy this time," he laughs. "Saved me the trouble of having to beat you through the ice, though."

  "Can you hear me? Tieg, is he conscious?" Jack yells again.

  "He's fine! Head's bleeding, but it's nothing I wasn't already going to do to him," Tieg shouts.

  "We're scaling down—stay on that ledge until I can get down there!" Jack's voice sounds closer, but like reverberation inside a bowl, and then I realize that the bowl is the inside of my head.

  "There's…sand in here…" Tieg says to himself, and then shouts it: "Hey! There's sand in here!" He pushes up to his feet and starts walking toward the ice wall, which starts to blur.

  "Stop! That ledge could give way any second!" Cal yells down to us. "About seven feet above you is a crevice! Wait for us to scale down to it, and we'll pull you up! It runs parallel to the water—just be still!" he adds, but the rush of the water and the pounding that has started in my head make him sound muffled. I close my eyes, and after a second, everything is quiet and still again.

  ***

  I can't see when I open my eyes because the light is blinding. My head feels like it's fil
led with sand, and when I try to sit up, that's exactly what I feel between my fingers.

  "What?" I hear myself say.

  "Welcome back," Dell says from somewhere. I squint in the general direction of his voice and start to see his outline through the enormous red campfire between us.

  "We're out of the glacier? How?" I ask.

  "You two mollusks made yourselves useful for once and found us a shortcut," Zoe says, flicking a small, red flame to life in the palm of her hand, then studies it. "Sand was already in the ice wall where you landed—we just scaled down and burned through it." Her reddish hair looks like it's just an extension of the fire in this light, but when she turns to look at me, her dark eyes are cold.

  "You hit your head pretty good, so be still—the Vishan DNA from the treatment isn't doing anything more than making sure you don't implode," Azeris says around a mouthful of something. I look around for Tieg, remembering that he must have hit me, and we must have fallen through the ice floor. The water…we fell into some kind of pool in the glacier, I think.

  "That's all we need it to do for now. We're definitely too far from the Phase Two hub for your Gaia nanites to function—your dive suit is damaged enough now that your baselines could start to glitch at any time. We're lucky we got as far as we did without that happening," Jack says.

  "Where's Tieg?" I ask. "And Dez?"

  "Asleep." Cal jerks his chin over his shoulder. I look past him and see them both.

  "And the dead tanglebushes? Where's all the brush?" I ask, looking around and seeing nothing but sand and more sand.

  "Not there yet—with any luck, we won't have to go that far," Cal says, poking at the fire with a long stick he must have picked up before we left all the trees.

  "Then why are we stopped? How close are the tunnels to the Badlands?"

  "Well, up until about 19 seconds ago, you were out cold, and nobody was trying to carry your sack of self through any tunnels, wise?" Dell laughs. "Besides, can't see the antlion funnels so well in the dark," he adds, poking at the fire. I raise my eyebrows.