AER (The Elements Series Book 3)

by Tracy Korn

  "When can I—" Vox starts, but Lyden holds up a hand.

  "We'll have to acquire a wagon…ladies here don't ride horses cross saddle in lovely pink dresses, I'm afraid. Much less dragons."

  Vox rolls her eyes and scratches at the lace under her chin.

  "I wish Jax could see this," Fraya says, almost to herself as she holds out the front of her long, light green dress. Hers buttons up the front instead of in the back like I assume mine does, then immediately wonder how anyone gets these things on or off. Fraya's hair is pulled to the side in a long braid that spills down her back from under her matching bonnet. My hand flies to my head wondering if I'm wearing one too, and something bites me. I pull my hand back and see a drop of blood pooling on the side of my finger.

  "Whoa…" Arco says. "Careful. You almost knocked yourself out," he laughs, then straightens what must be a hat on my head. "Pin," he adds, pulling out a long needle with a butterfly on the end of it and showing it to me. I feel my hair fall out of the back of the hat and hit my shoulder blades.

  "Thanks," I say, taking the long pin from Arco, though I have absolutely no idea how to put everything back together. "Uh…" I say, looking around, my eyes landing on Vox.

  "Like I have the first idea…" she says with absolutely no expression on her face at all. Laughter bubbles in my chest again, and I can't help but let it out.

  "You don't need it," Arco says, brushing a loose hair from my face and tucking it behind my ear when I look up. I smile at him, but then he blinks and clears his throat before pulling his hand back and turning to Lyden. "So, we just walk around, or what?" he asks.

  "Is anyone hungry?" Lyden points to an old-time inn across the street. "They usually have food at places like that in the Westerns."

  None of us have eaten since this morning, but it doesn't seem like it will be real if we eat anything here.

  "Wait, if this is all happening in our heads, are we really eating?" Fraya asks, as if on cue.

  "If we're under long, they'll give us a protein drip. Don't worry," Lyden says. "Arwyn will be all over that," he adds with a laugh at the ground, but I suddenly get the feeling that something is wrong.

  Don't tweak in here…don't tweak. One step at a time…I hear in my head, but it's not Vox or Lyden, and these aren't my thoughts. I look back at Myra and Fraya, but neither of them are paying attention to anything except the wrist frills on each other's dresses, not that they could talk to me in my head anyway. Arco is walking with Lyden a few steps ahead of me, so even if he could, which he can't, it wouldn't be him either. Can I hear their thoughts now, even though they're not Readers? Is this part of the code evolving?

  I look around at the people—the…programs?—that are walking up and down the wooden paths in front of the shops. No one looks back at me. Who is this? I think…but I don't hear a response. It can't be him. It doesn't sound like him…Liddick?

  ***

  The wooden doors of the inn squeak as they swing open when we walk through. Men are playing cards and arm wrestling at tables as Lyden ties the horse he had to one of the posts outside. Where are we supposed to get a wagon? I wonder. A woman with tightly curled black hair in a low-cut blouse is behind the counter pushing a towel into a glass. She sees Lyden, and a wide smile moves over her face.

  "Hi, lover," she says, then winks. "What can I get you?"

  "What's the special of the day?" Lyden asks, pulling up a stool to the counter like he does this all the time. The rest of us do the same.

  "Got some fresh duck, red potatoes. I'll even cut you a slice of my famous peach pie," she adds, leaning in on a whisper.

  "Well, how could I pass that up…" he answers, then angles his head at the rest of us. The woman's face falls, and she looks back at Lyden from under a cocked, inky brow.

  "She an injun? In pink there?"

  "What about in pink there?" Vox says, getting to her feet.

  Are you split? Sit down! I think as hard and as loudly as I can.

  "Looks like an injun to me, Faye," a man from across the room says, slamming the arm of his opponent to the table. Men at the next table lay down their cards and get to their feet.

  "She's just powdered up," the first man says. His large belly testing the limits of the buttons on his dark shirt.

  "Doesn't look like the rest of the injuns, though, does she?" a short, skinny man says from the end of the counter on the other side of us. My heart starts pounding. We've been in here 12 seconds, and already the whole place is up in arms about us.

  "Boys, boys, boys…" Vox says, turning to face the men approaching us from their abandoned card game. They stop and hook their thumbs into their gun holsters. The fat man who was arm wrestling pats his stomach and belches.

  "She speaks English too!" he says. "Fellas, we got ourselves an edgi-micated injun here! She ain't half bad on the eyes, neither, save that warpaint 'tween her eyes. What kind of injun has eyes like that anyhow?" the fat man laughs. "You some kind of exotic injun, Lily pad? They got names like that don't they, Sam…Lily pad and Running Deer, or some such?"

  "My name is Vox. It means…Stronger Than Fat Old Men, in my language," Vox says, unbuttoning the cuff of her silky pink sleeve and holding up her hand at a right angle like she wants to arm wrestle the air right there in front of her. The men explode in laughter. Everyone else starts whispering and exchanging money.

  "You…heh…lemme…lemme get this straight…" the fat man says, wiping his round, sweaty face, then pulling out a comb to tidy his dark mustache. "You can't weigh more than a wet hen in a bucket, and you think you can pin me, injun girl?"

  "I said my name is Vox, and it looks like you're the only chicken here."

  The entire inn is swallowed in low whistles and voices of shock and awe.

  "Vox…we should really…" Fraya starts, but Vox just curls her lip at her.

  "Look, we don't want any trouble, all right?" Arco says, stepping in front of Vox.

  "Well, son, looks like you found it all the same," the fat man with the dark mustache says, then rolls up his sleeves.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Air Up There

  Liddick

  We've been hiking up this stupid slab for hours, and the red-wall tunnel seems to get narrower the higher we climb. Dez can't walk alongside Zoe anymore, so she walks in front of her. I'm glad because at least I can't feel the stabbing of her grief as much with some distance between us. The edge of Zoe's short, red ponytail keeps putting out the licks of red fire that shoot up from the inside of her collar, and I know she's barely holding it together. She might never see the Vishan again…Vita…Veece…none of them who helped raise her after she was pulled under by the tunnel shark like Dell and the others. I try to push this out of my head too. There's no sense trading one girl's pain for another. I have my own problems.

  "Are we getting anywhere?" I call up to Jack, who is in front of Dez, Zoe, Azeris and me.

  "The air up there should be cooler—it's already lighter here, can you feel it? That means we're getting close."

  "And if the sun is up…what's the plan then?" Zoe asks after a minute. "We can't hit daylight."

  "I know…I've been thinking about that," Jack says over his shoulder to us again. "If we surface in daylight, we'll just have to wait out the sun at the top of the tunnel. It won't be comfortable, and not exactly safe, but it's the only option until we can strip the Vishan splice from your DNA. I need equipment for that."

  "But will that mean we can't go back?" Zoe asks quickly. "I mean, ever?"

  "I don't know. That's something we'll have to work out when I have access to equipment again."

  "We'll figure something out, Zo. Don't worry," Azeris says.

  "You can probably kill the flames now," Jack adds, then rubs his fingers together. "Do you feel that? Dew…"

  The air is still heavy, but it actually is cooler now. I feel it chilling the sweat on my upper lip.

  "We're almost to the top? We're almost home?" Dez asks.

  "Not quit
e your home…but a lot closer," Zoe says. "A whole lot closer."

  We hike another several yards before any of us pull back our fire. I expect everything to go pitch black, but there's actually enough light to make out the general surroundings. I lower my palm, finally, and my shoulder and forearm ache in relief.

  "It's daytime. We won't be able to surface yet," Jack sighs, his voice seeming to bounce off the earthen walls now that we have a little more room. He takes a seat, then racks his forearms over his knees and leans toward us. "Listen…we're sitting in a sack hole. The tunnel sharks dig these out and lie in wait, then snatch anyone walking by. See those vents?" he says, pointing to a few slits several feet away, which are actually the source of the filtered, dim light.

  "Is that…the sun?" Zoe asks.

  "That's the sun, Zo," Azeris answers, then sucks in a long breath and wraps his arm around her shoulder.

  "You said the tunnel sharks lie in wait. So, this hole belongs to one of them. Is that what you're trying to tell us?" I ask. My stomach feels like I swallowed a box of lit matches again at the idea of a tunnel shark racing up from under us, forcing us into the sun where we'll be fried alive, thanks to the Vishan treatments.

  Jack nods. "We'll need to keep watch. I'll take the first rotation—we're going to be here the whole day. From the looks of that light, it can't be much past sunrise up there. As soon as the sun goes down, we'll move."

  Dez leans into Zoe, and Zoe leans into Azeris. They all close their eyes after a minute, but there's no way I'm going to be able to sleep. Not while we're this close, and this far.

  "I can take the first watch. You've been on point this whole time," I say, looking across this hollowed out dirt cave at Jack. He pushes out his bottom lip and subtly shakes his head, just like Jazz does.

  "I don't mind. It's my fault you're even here at all. I should have done a better job with the code splicing so you got clearer messages."

  My stomach sinks a little remembering all the virtuo-cines where I thought I was losing my mind…the characters that just seemed to be saying things they could only know if they were in my head even when I wasn't in a virtuo-cine.

  "It's no one's fault except my own. I didn't put the messages from you and Liam together fast enough. If I had, Jax and Jazz never would—" I start, but Jack interrupts me.

  "That's not your fault…we're in the home stretch now. We'll catch up to them."

  I stare at him for a long time, wondering what it must be like for him to sit there, perfectly capable of popping through the hardened earth hatch just above his head and going home to see his wife and Nann, Jazz's little sister. He's been gone longer than any of us have, except for Zoe.

  "You should go back—you should go to the greenbed and find your wife. Tell her you're home," I say before thinking it through, and I know instantly what he'll say. It doesn't change the fact that if it were me…if that were Jazz thinking I was dead, I'd have a hard time sitting here waiting to be dragged miles back through the earth by some freak show tunnel shark, or baked alive on the other side of a five-inch thick dirt hatch.

  He looks at me like he knows I just needed the extra ten seconds to come to my senses. It's more complicated than what he wants—than what any of us want anymore.

  "I can't leave them again, you know…" he finally answers. "I can't put them through thinking I might not come back."

  "I know. I'm going to find Jazz. I promise," I say. Jack just offers a half smile and nods at me, then we both watch the sliver of light flicker across the hatch.

  ***

  Before I know what's happening, I'm coughing and flinging forward, choking. I force up whatever flew down my throat and spit. Sand covers my tongue and gets in between my teeth…dirt. How did I get—I start to think, and another shower of crumbled earth falls onto my head.

  "What happened? I fell asleep…what—are you all right?" Jack asks in a panic. His eyes are wide as he scans everyone.

  "It was…just dirt," I croak. "Fell in…my mouth."

  "OK…all right…" he says, then takes a deep breath. "All right."

  The slit of light in the hatch is dimmer now, but not dark yet. It must be evening.

  "Is it dark enough? The sun has to be almost down by now if that's all the light there is," I say, pushing closer to the hatch. I startle when long, spindly roots I hadn't noticed before brush my cheeks.

  "No, it has to be completely dark. We can't risk anything less after coming this far," Jack answers. "It shouldn't be much longer."

  "How are your eyes?" Zoe asks Dez. She pulls up a low red flame in the palm of her hand and holds it in front of Dez's face. "The black is gone except for some streaks here, but that might just be dirt," Zoe says, wiping the dirt away.

  Dez smiles, and in the dim light, her solid bar-wedge of teeth almost looks normal.

  "They don't sting anymore, but I'm also not crying," she says, trying to force a smile. A lead weight drops into the pit of my stomach, remembering the antlion…remembering all of it. "Do you think Cal and Dell found my brother yet?" she adds after a second.

  "They've only been looking a little while," Zoe answers. "But if anyone can find him, it's those two."

  Dez actually smiles now, and the pressure in my stomach lets up.

  "Can you tell where we are?" I ask, trying to squint enough to see through the crevice in the hatch.

  "It's been awhile for me, I'm afraid," Jack answers. Azeris makes his way toward us.

  "Make a hole," he says, lumbering past me like a dog with no concept of how big he is.

  "Crite…I'm right here, man," I say when his shoulder knocks more dirt into my face.

  "That's why I said make a hole." Everyone laughs at this, but nothing is funny to me anymore. Azeris peers through the slat just over our head. "Sand here, mostly, but some scrub too. Looks like the marketplace warehouse in the distance—could be the Tinkerer shops, though. It's hard to tell from here."

  "Either way, we're close to buildings," Dez says. "We're close to people."

  Azeris turns to her abruptly. "Listen, we can't let anyone know you're back, understand. None of us. Bigger things are in the works—Gaia is probably looking for you and Liddick, and definitely Jack. We can't trust anyone in the street."

  "How exactly are we supposed to get past anyone looking like this?" I ask, looking down at my torn dive suit, which no one else topside would have seen before. "We're gonna stand out just a little."

  Azeris and Jack exchange glances.

  "Here," Zoe says, taking off her jacket and cutting the remaining arm of it free with her belt knife. She cuts a clean edge on what's left of the burned off sleeve from when she lost her focus over the ravine the first time we crossed. She hands the leather vest to Dez. "Put this on."

  "Good idea," Azeris says, taking off his vest and giving it to me.

  "No, you better take this," I say, handing it to Jack, whose white jumpsuit, even though it's dirty, is a lot more conspicuous than my torn black dive suit. Can I borrow that tunnel shark tooth? I ask Zoe when my machete won't cut through the fabric that's already ripped at my shoulders.

  I perforate the rest of the way around, then do it again since I still can't rip the sleeve free. I do the same to the other side, and finally, I get them both off and hand them to Jack.

  "What are these for?"

  "Pull them on over your arms. Then just try to rub some of this dirt into your pants—they're too white," I say.

  Jack nods. "Good idea."

  All of us help scrape dirt from the walls to cover Jack's pants, but stop after a few minutes when everything around us starts shaking just a little again.

  "Tieg!" Dez shouts, but doesn't wait for a reply before she drops the dirt in her hands and starts trying to crawl back down the tunnel.

  "Whoa, whoa…" Azeris says, catching her arm. "Can't go back down there, sorry."

  "Let me go! It's Tieg!" Dez's voice is loud and unhinged as another rumble starts all around us—this one stronger.

&n
bsp; "That's not your brother down there," Zoe says, unsheathing her machete. A low, almost inaudible buzzing comes out of the dark, and my blood goes cold. "That's a tunnel shark."

  CHAPTER 22

  Dustbowl: Part Two

  Jazz

  Arco and Lyden exchange glances as the fat man finishes rolling up his sleeves and takes a step toward us. The short, skinny man pulls out a table and drags a chair to each side, and people start to gather around it. The fat man keeps walking toward us until Vox stops him in his tracks.

  "That pile of money there at your seat should do just fine," she says, looking over at the card table just before she nods and meets the man's small, dark eyes again.

  "Come again?" he asks, cocking his greasy head.

  "Oh, when I win—I'll just take that pile of money off your hands. You can consider it a down payment for me not spreading the word about how the only thing strong about you is the way you smell," she adds with a small grin. I don't realize I've been holding my breath this whole time until I try to gasp and can't. The tavern explodes in laughter again, and a wash of red splotches the man's thick neck and round face. He starts toward us again, this time with purpose. Lyden and Arco both move at the same time, but Lyden is the one who speaks first.

  "Whoa, hey…and if she doesn't win—how about you take that horse out there. Right there; take a look," he says, holding his hands out in front of him and nodding to the doorway where we can see the long neck and head of the huge brown horse at the post. "Saddle and bags and all. All right then?"

  "Don't worry horsey; that fat man isn't going to break your back," Vox shouts over everyone toward the door as she takes a seat at the table and plants her elbow in the middle of it. "Well, come on," she says, then clucks her tongue at him like a chicken. The man flushes red again, his small, dark eyes flashing like the last coals in a fire. He shoves Lyden out of his way and seethes at Vox as he pulls the chair back so hard he completely lifts it off the ground before he takes a seat.