Travelers

by K A Riley

  52

  Landing

  Cardyn gives me a penetrating squint. “The Arrival Station? Why?”

  Terk, the veins of his neck stretched tight in worry, asks, “How?”

  Branwynne takes my hand in hers and gives me a feeble smile. “You’re sure?”

  I tell her I am, and she hesitates but then nods in spirited agreement. “It’s not far. I can get us there.”

  “What about Noxia and the Hawkers?” Rain asks. “They’re still going to be out there, you know. They’re still going to be looking for us.”

  “They don’t quit,” Brohn murmurs. “That’s what that little girl told us when we first got into the city.”

  “She also said all they do is hunt and catch,” Cardyn manages to mumble while simultaneously biting his bottom lip. “And that they never fail.”

  Brohn’s smile radiates the kind of supreme confidence only he could command in a situation like this. “There’s a first time for everything. And if Noxia and her Hawkers don’t know what failure feels like, I say we give them a chance to find out.”

  “If Kress is sure, then I am, too,” Rain says. I give her a “thank you” look that I hope conveys the sincere, deep appreciation I feel for her support.

  Terk pushes his cowl back as he gazes through the half-wall and out into the bleak night. “So…we’re going back out there?”

  “Why not?” Cardyn says, giving Terk a playful punch to the shoulder. “It’s the crazy thing to do, right?”

  We check our weapons, take a collective breath, and swing our eyes from one to the other as if to ensure we’re all on the same page.

  With Branwynne back in the lead, flanked by me on one side and Brohn on the other, the eight of us sprint out of the museum lobby, down a winding footpath, and into a nearby ravine.

  Overhead, Render flutters his way along, impatient with our slow pace.

  From the ravine, we snake our way along a dried-up trench—an old open sewer or rain gutter, I think—and under a series of broken stone bridges, before we plunge into a thin, dead forest of white, petrified trees.

  From there, Branwynne leads us through a waist-high field of crispy brown grass and then down a set of concrete steps and into an underground tunnel.

  A rail car, similar to the one Grizzy used to get us into the city, is sitting, barely visible, on the tracks.

  I’m just ready to congratulate all of us on a job well done when a hail of gunfire erupts behind us.

  “Hawkers!” Rain shouts as we all duck down.

  Cardyn screams out, “No fair! They’re not supposed to have guns!”

  I grab his hand and drag him in a crouched sprint toward the rail car. “Let’s get out of here alive,” I shout over the echo of the blasts. “And we’ll lecture them later!”

  Branwynne hurries us all onto the train and goes to slide the door shut, but it won’t budge.

  Render bursts in, nearly knocking me backward as he spreads his wings and tail feathers to stop his acceleration.

  With all of us inside, Terk locks his six-fingered pincher onto the handles and drags the door closed, but not before a hail of bullets sears into the car, striking him in the arm and chest.

  He staggers back, slamming against the far side of the train and smashing into one of the windows, which blasts out in a hail of shards.

  Branwynne leaps up into the front of the car and flashes her hands over the panel of buttons and levers.

  The train comes alive with a horrifying groan, and we all pitch backward into each other as it leaps forward, barreling down the tunnel into an even deeper darkness.

  Behind us, muzzle flashes from the Hawkers’ illegal handguns light up the tunnel. Bullets ping against the back of the rail car and send spider-web cracks creaking through the rear panel of glass.

  But we’ve got enough distance between us and them to be safe.

  Rain bolts over to Terk, who is busy trying to extricate his mechanical shoulder and arm from the frame of the broken window.

  Terk assures her he’s okay, but that doesn’t stop Rain from choking back a bout of tears as the rest of us rush over and gather around him.

  Rain catches her breath and wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I thought…”

  “It’s not the most pleasant feeling in the world,” Terk admits, patting his metal arm with his human hand. “But I’ll live.”

  Rain says, “Promise?” and Terk says he does as we all drop, with a host of overlapping sighs and gleeful chuckles at our escape, into the rail car’s plastic seats.

  Less than half an hour later, the train screeches to a painful-sounding stop.

  Terk, reminding us that he feels fine, forces the door open, and we pile out.

  Even Branwynne doesn’t seem certain about where we are as she looks around on the dark concrete platform.

  On the far wall, a huge steel door swings open, letting in a blast of light and a shadowy silhouette.

  The figure steps out onto the platform and grins at us from under her fur-lined hood. “Back so soon?”

  “Grizzy!” I squeal.

  She pulls her hood back to reveal that familiar mountain of hair. “Monitors just went off like a Christmas tree in the station. Hasn’t been anyone but me in that tunnel for a long time now.” After a low bow to each of us, she asks, “Who are your friends?”

  We introduce Grizzy to Branwynne, Lucid, and Reverie.

  “‘eard of you,” she grunts to the twins. “Always figured you were a myth.”

  The twins don’t have time to answer as Grizzy is already swinging around to face Branwynne. “You, I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, you were a lot smaller, but yeah. I met you and your folks years back.”

  “You know my parents?”

  “Llyr and Penarddunne. Sure.”

  Grizzy takes us all in, her eyes skipping around from one of us to the next before she squints hard and scratches her head. “Good timing, by the way. Not sure how you knew.”

  “Knew what?” Brohn asks.

  “About the visitors.”

  “Visitors?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. All I got was a flight manifest for cargo. I just cleared a plane for landing. Two seconds later, you all come barreling up the tube. Come on, then. Hurry along!”

  Render barks a greeting at her before clamping himself onto my forearm and pressing his warm body against my chest.

  Grizzy leads us through the Arrival Station and up to the front door. She directs our attention through the grime-encrusted glass. Out on the tarmac, maybe a couple hundred yards in the distance, is an idling jet with no markings and a sleek, silvery-white surface that makes it look vaguely like a medicine capsule.

  It exactly matches the image I saw when Render morphed out of his raven form back in the ruins of the hotel lobby.

  “A plane?” Brohn asks.

  Grizzy starts doing up the big black buttons on her fur-trimmed coat. “Not just any plane. That’s a decommissioned presidential airplane.”

  Imagining Krug, our president-turned-tyrant for so many years, I swallow hard. “Um…Presidential?”

  “Well, thanks to you and your mates, I don’t imagine it carries presidents anymore. I sure hope not, anyway.”

  Grizzy grabs a pump-action shotgun from an umbrella stand by the door. Pushing the door open, she beckons us forward and strides ahead, her bootheels thumping on the rocky walkway leading out to the tarmac. “Let’s be careful,” she says, slipping two fat red rounds of ammo into the gun. “But not afraid.”

  “We’re not afraid,” Rain objects.

  Walking along next to me, Cardyn extends his index finger from his half-raised hand. “Um…some of us are afraid.”

  Grizzy flicks a glance over her shoulder, offers up a gruff chortle, and tells Cardyn he’s cute.

  Normally, the crimson patches that appear on his cheeks make me giggle, too, but right now, I’m too disoriented by the sight of this plane that less
than an hour ago existed only in my mind’s eye.

  With Render soaring overhead and our weapons at the ready, we follow Grizzy out of the building and all the way up to the parked aircraft.

  Maybe it’s the experience of our last plane or the fear of uncertainty, but either way, I’m bracing myself to face who or whatever is about to come through the slowly opening door.

  53

  Ghost

  My hands tense up, ready to snap my Talons out and fight to the death for my Conspiracy. Next to me, Brohn puts his hand on the strap holding his arbalest in place.

  The plane’s side hatch unseals and slides open with a long sigh and a firm clank.

  We all drop our hands and breathe a sigh of relief when a young man steps out into the early morning light.

  Granden emerges from the aircraft, looking as put-together as ever, despite the long trip. His dress shirt is open at the collar with the sleeves neatly cuffed above his elbows. His olive-colored pants are crisply pleated. As he starts down the staircase, the wind ruffles his hair a little, and he swoops it back into place with a casual flick of his hand.

  Right behind him is Kella, but she doesn’t stay behind him for long. By the time their feet hit the ground, they’re holding hands and looking once again like the ultimate power couple. His secretive but friendly brown eyes and her flashing baby-blues make it look like, together, they could see right into a person’s soul.

  When Wisp follows our two friends out, Brohn’s welcoming grin for Granden and Kella morphs into a full-on sunbeam of a smile.

  Rushing over, we exchange an overlap of burbling, fragmented greetings.

  Granden answers our flurry of questions with his palms out and a long and laughing, “Whoa!”

  Granden and Kella step to the side, as Wisp directs us to the plane’s exit hatch. “It’s great to see you all again so soon. But there are more important reunions than ours.”

  The fourth person to step out of the plane and descend the ladder is a ghost.

  But not the foggy, scary kind. Not the spooky kind made up of wispy swaths of old clothes and shredded bedsheets.

  No. This ghost has dark, downcast eyes, partly covered by smoky shoals of chestnut hair streaked through with splashes of sun-kissed auburns and golds. This ghost moves with the easy grace of someone who knows how to turn invisible at will and who doesn’t care who’s watching.

  This ghost—the fourth person to step off the plane and descend the ladder—is Manthy.

  I’d like to say that we all react with mature, orderly joy at our friend’s miraculous return to life.

  But that’s not what happens. The second Manthy’s feet hit the tarmac, Brohn, Cardyn, Rain, Terk, and I break out of our split-second of frozen shock, and we…well, we smother her.

  Granden, Kella, and Wisp are lined up on one side of us.

  Grizzy, Branwynne, Lucid, and Reverie are looking on from the other.

  Render is barking out happy kraas! from overhead.

  But my Conspiracy and I…we are all over Manthy. We practically leap on her, bouncing, laughing, crying, and holding her more tightly than we’ve ever held onto anyone or anything in our entire lives.

  I don’t care if we’re witnessing the impossible, and I don’t know if what we’ve done has opened up some Pandora’s Box of calamities for the future of humanity or the nature of the universe or whatever. I still don’t know what the Lyfelyte is, exactly, and I have no idea how Lucid and Reverie were able to team up with Render and the Auditor to do what they did back there in the museum.

  And I don’t care.

  What I do care about is that my dear, odd, mysterious, and amazing friend, who was once as far away as the distance of death, is now close enough to touch.

  And Manthy’s not a toucher. She’s a hider. A brooder. A loner. And a total and absolute wallflower. She has the Emergent ability as a technopath to communicate with many types of advanced digital technologies. But she also has the introvert’s ability to disappear, to blend in, to sneak away, and to avoid explosive public displays of affection.

  And she’s usually pretty good at it.

  This time, though, she doesn’t stand a chance.

  Our happy, chattering avalanche of laughs and tears is such a jumble I’m sure no one can make out a word.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Some moments are more important than all the words in the world.

  Finally, though, we settle down enough to start asking an avalanche of questions.

  “Are you really you?”

  “How did this happen?”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Did what we did back in the museum actually work?”

  Manthy withstands the barrage with heroic composure, and we finally step back enough to let her breathe.

  “You were right, Card,” Manthy says in a near-whisper. “You were right about what you told me on the rooftop.”

  In a flash of my mind’s eye, I’m back on top of the Old Post Office where just over two weeks ago, we stood around our dying friend. Cardyn supported Manthy’s head in his hands and told her what she’s responding to now: He told her she’d be okay.

  It’s only now, at this exact moment, that I realize he wasn’t asking, hoping, or predicting. He was promising.

  That’s when I start to cry.

  Standing behind me, Brohn slings his arms around me and pulls me close. He leans down, his cheek pressed to mine, and he kisses the corner of my mouth. And it’s not just my tears I taste.

  Hauling us all back to earth, Granden tells us we should really get inside.

  With a chorus of agreement, we follow Grizzy back to the Arrival Station.

  I notice that Cardyn makes sure to stay next to Manthy.

  We walk along, chattering with each other and reaching out to touch Manthy, to make sure she’s really there.

  We might have stopped hugging her, but there’s no way in the world we’ll ever let her go.

  54

  Next

  Grizzy escorts us back into the Arrival Station and then into the Canteen where she outfitted us not much more than twenty-four hours ago. At the moment, it feels like a lot longer. At least a full lifetime ago. Maybe two.

  Grizzy recruits the twins to help her drag metal-framed chairs over and gather them in a circle around the big, round table in the center of the room.

  After we’re all seated, Brohn starts us off with the one question I know we’re all beyond desperate to ask and eager to have answered: “How?”

  Granden directs our attention to Kella, who smiles, drums her fingertips on the tabletop, and begins to explain.

  “Back in the Control Center, we were with one of the Tech Teams doing some routine maintenance and systems checks after that last Devoted attack from right before you left.”

  “The one that nearly killed us,” Brohn says aside to Branwynne, who looks appropriately horrified.

  “One of the Techies—a girl named Calliope—came rushing up to me,” Kella continues. “She was all wild-eyed and out of breath. I mean, totally out-of-her-mind insane. Anyway, we finally got her calmed down, and she dragged me down to the cryogenic crypt in the sub-basement.”

  Rain’s forehead wrinkles. “The Retirement Vault?”

  “Right. As you know, there’s a glass wall and a kind of open space…a little vestibule between the main room and the vault door and its security panel.”

  Kella takes a breath and scans us to ensure that we’re all paying close attention, which is pointless since we’ve never been more captivated by any story we’ve ever been told in our entire lives.

  “Well…sitting cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the glass, just as calm and cool as anything, was Manthy.”

  We all look over at Manthy who barely lifts her head as she glances around at us from the tops of her eyes. She gives us a weak wave and says, “Hi,” from behind her hair.

  I smile and say, “Hi” back, wh
ich seems like a dumb thing to do, but with Manthy sitting here…alive…normal reactions have kind of gone out the window.

  “What about the others in the cryo-crypt?” Terk asks under his breath. “The Modifieds?”

  Kella drops her eyes and shakes her head. “After we got Manthy cleaned up and squared away, we did a full diagnostic of every monitoring panel, control network, and service system in there. I personally accompanied a team of Techies inside, which you’re not supposed to do. Even in full protective gear and with the battery of immunity shots, the ionized and de-oxidized gasses they use down there to prevent infiltration and system failure are deadly. As you can see, I made it in and out okay. But the Modifieds were still…”

  “Dead,” Terk finishes. He nods, but it’s not a nod of approval. It’s one of resignation and sorrow at the surrender to the finality of death.

  “There wasn’t any way to bring them back,” Kella apologizes. “There shouldn’t have been any way for Manthy to…come back.”

  “But here she is,” I smile.

  “Here she is.”

  “Here I am.” Manthy scowls at us for staring before grumbling, “I’m thirsty. What’s a zombie got to do to get a glass of water around here?”

  This makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Of all the things I’ve missed since losing Manthy a couple of weeks back, I never thought her surliness would be so high up on the list.

  Manthy allows herself to be escorted by Cardyn over to a water dispenser built into the far wall at the end of the counter.

  When they’re out of earshot, Rain and Terk start plying Kella with more questions about Manthy’s appearance and their flight here.

  Kella and Granden take turns answering those questions and then asking their own about Branwynne, Lucid, and Reverie, who seem content to sit in sleepy silence, their eyelids at half-mast, as Rain and Terk take animated turns recounting all the details of our latest adventures.

  When Wisp asks Terk about how things are going with the Auditor, he perks up and launches into a lively, breathy tale of his near-death experience in Kensington Palace. Rippling out from the black disk on his back, the Auditor’s voice peppers his story with color and splashes of trivia as he goes.