by Greg Boose
Jonah hesitates for a second before asking, “Who’s Zion?”
Hess smirks and traces a finger along the wall. “He’s been telling you about Zion, huh? Listen, kid, there is no Zion. It’s something he made up. Like his alter ego or his imaginary friend or whatever. Zion is Tunick, Tunick is Zion. The guy’s absolutely crazy, if you haven’t figured that out yet. There is no Zion. That’s him.”
The remaining pain in Jonah’s eyes shrinks together into a tiny black mass that travels to the pit of his stomach. How can Tunick be Zion? Didn’t Zion shoot at him? And didn’t Tunick say Zion was the one who took the adults? He’s not working alone. The black mass wrenches free from Jonah’s gut, and a pool of red-hot aggression fills up his entire body, rising to suffocate his brain. Revenge. Justice. Answers. He knows he’s going to need all three if his body is ever to drain this anger.
Jonah grits his teeth. “Do you know how many people he’s killed?”
“You pass any of your math exams or…” the boy says.
Jonah leaps at him. One hand grabs his throat, the other his spear, and before Hess can reach them, Jonah slams the boy to the ground. He breaks the spear over his knee and aims the point at Hess, who circles them.
“You don’t want to do that,” she growls. The machete bounces at her side. “Let him up. Now. Or I won’t show you where your friends are. I actually know where they are. And they don’t have much time if they’re verving with him.”
Jonah squeezes the boy’s throat, feeling something crunch, and then he releases him and stands up.
“That’s a good boy,” she says.
“Why is Tunick doing this?” Jonah asks.
“I told you he’s gone crazy,” Hess says before pulling a small, crude canteen from around her back. She takes a deep swig, and then says, “Do you know how many seeds he’s up to a day now? Maybe fifty. Sixty? The guy’s mind is totally fried.”
“Totally fried,” the boy says.
“Well, is it fried enough for him to kill people? For him to kill people and then hang them from trees and write messages on their shirts for us to run? Is he crazy enough for that?”
“Yes,” Hess whispers.
The boy massages his neck. “But his brother could have done some of that for him, I guess. He was on your ship. In fact, he’s the one who brought you guys down.”
Jonah flattens his back against the wall, picturing himself shoving one of his black blades straight through Tunick’s chest. He’s going to kill him. And his brother. “Who’s his brother? Is it Paul? With the shaved head? Is it that guy?”
“We don’t know. We’ve never seen him,” Hess says. “We only know about him because on the day you crashed, Tunick came running into our camp like a fucking madman. He said his brother hijacked your ship. Then he said something about a battery, about a power supply. And then he threatened to kill us for a little while, which is totally normal. And then he ran off. But hey, do you know where that thing is? This battery thing? It’s really important that we find it before he does.”
“For the last time, no. We don’t know where it is. Why does he want it so badly? When we said we didn’t know anything about it, he put a gun to my friend’s head and almost killed her. We have no idea where it is, but he keeps saying we’re lying to him.”
The boy picks up a rock and throws it at the oval above, missing badly. “He wants it so he can get to Peleus.”
“Peleus?”
“Yup, the other moon.”
“What? How?” Jonah whispers. “He’s…he’s crazy.”
The boy chucks another stone at the oval, coming closer this time. “Didn’t we just say that? But that’s what happens to you when you take fifty to sixty doses—fifty verve seeds—a day, for months and months. And verve, if you haven’t figured it out yet, it ranks pretty high up there in hallucinogens and neurotoxins. It would be off the charts on Earth. Our scientists were studying it on Thetis. At least, for a while.”
He and Hess share a glance.
She quickly picks up the story: “You take just one or two seeds and you’re gone. You’re gone for hours. You eat fifty seeds a day and you’ll be like Tunick, or is it Zion? That guy right now is so out of his gourd that he says he can see the souls of Achilles floating around him. Like ghosts or angels, like he can channel the dead or something. He talks to them, and they talk to him.”
“He says he can talk to an alien race who used to live here, and they’ve been giving him orders to create an army. He’s nuts,” the boy says.
Jonah would laugh if it didn’t seem so deranged. “He thinks he can talk to aliens? That he can talk to the ghosts of aliens? So, that’s the ‘they’ and the ‘them’ he keeps talking about?”
The boy chucks another rock at the oval and it’s a direct hit. Nobody breathes for a few seconds, waiting for a click or the wall to separate, but nothing happens. He then looks at Jonah. “Verve is ridiculously strong and ridiculously addictive, and he’s running out of it. And fast.”
“How fast?”
“At the rate he’s going,” Hess says, “he’ll be through this area’s vervoluptis crop in about two months, which is the last crop he’s found on Achilles. That’s why he wants to get to Peleus. There’s more of the plant up there. Lots more.”
Jonah throws up his arms. “But how can he even get there if he found the battery? Our ship is toast, and you guys crashed here, too.”
“Right.” Hess takes another huge swig from her canteen and then looks up at the oval on the wall.
“None of this makes sense,” Jonah says.
“What does makes sense,” the boy says, “is why he left this area’s crop for last.”
It takes Jonah a moment. “Because that’s where our ship was supposed to crash.”
“Exactly. He had it all planned out. Always was a smart guy.”
“But you’ve been here for two years. How could he have planned something like that? I mean, is he able to communicate with Earth? If his brother was on the same ship as I was…”
Hess shrugs. “We haven’t figured that out yet. He’s definitely hiding something from all of us. Maybe he’s built something from the scraps of your ship, we don’t know. Keep in mind that we just heard of this whole crash plan idea ourselves a couple days ago.”
“Yeah,” the boy adds. “We learned about it right as we saw you fall from the sky.”
“That’s it. I’ve got to go. Right now. Take me to see Tunick.”
“Not until you open up this baby.” The boy nods at the wall behind him.
“Forget about the portals!” Jonah shouts. “My friends are going to die!”
Hess shrugs again. “Hate to say this, and I know it sounds awful, but we don’t care about you or your friends. We just care about getting inside this thing.”
“I’ll fight you.” Then Jonah says something he didn’t think he was going to say. “I’ll kill you. I swear.”
The boy reaches behind his back and produces a small blue handgun, just like the one Vespa had. Is it Vespa’s? “No. I’ll kill you. I swear.”
Hess pulls her own blue gun from under her clothing. “Open it. Now. And I promise if you do, we’ll take you to Tunick.”
Jonah shifts his eyes back and forth between the two of them. “What if I don’t know how?”
“I have a feeling you do,” Hess says.
Jonah looks up at the oval and then tests his knees. The star in the cave had five points for his fingers, but this symbol has four squares. He has no idea how to get it to work.
The boy raises his gun to Jonah’s temple. “Hurry up, blue eyes.”
Jonah wants to destroy this kid, to get his hands back around his throat and never stop squeezing, but instead he backpedals to the lip of the clearing and runs at the wall. He jumps, easily rising the fifteen feet. He slaps his large palm against the oval and then plummets back to the ground. The three of them wait for the wall to open, but nothing happens.
“Again,” the boy demands.
Jonah runs and jumps again, and this time he focuses on the rock surrounding the symbol. He finds a small ledge to land his toes, and off on the right protrudes a jagged knob that he can hold on to. He wavers, his toes slipping, his fingers losing their grip, but then he steadies himself and turns his head. He can barely see over the porcupine trees and into the clearing streaked with blood and dotted with black bodies, both big and small. Then it’s just more jungle. He looks up and considers scaling the wall and escaping, but it’s completely flat and too high to reach in a single jump. All he can do is attempt to figure out the oval.
Its lines are perfect and sharp, just like the star’s. Jonah digs his fingers into the oval’s outline, hoping to feel the sponginess, but it’s just hard rock that bites at his skin.
“Come on!” the boy shouts below. “Your friends need you, don’t they? Hurry up!”
Jonah tries poking his fingers inside the four squares, but they, too, are nothing but hard rock. He presses as hard as he can, and then he pounds on them. Nothing. He has no idea what else to do, but just before he jumps back to the ground, the bottom left square gleams white for a brief moment, and then just the square’s top right corner remains illuminated like an arrowhead. Jonah places a shaking finger on top of the square which is now warm to the touch, and instead of pushing inward, he swipes it up and to the right like he’s hiding his parents’ photo on his sheaf. Magically, the square shifts along the rock and joins the block in the top right. He does the same to the one carved into the bottom right, swiping it up and left. Jonah holds his breath as the two squares combine.
“You have three seconds!” the boy shouts.
“Hold on! Something’s happening!”
The edges of the squares soften and round, and soon they become ovals. Two ovals inside of one. The smaller symbols crawl downward until they’re in the exact middle. They look like eyes to Jonah, and without thinking, he places his two blue eyes directly in front of them. Instantly, the ovals blast a series of lights into his eyes, followed by two short gusts of cool air. He’s frozen, both mesmerized and physically paralyzed. He loses his grip on the rock and falls backward with his arms and legs open wide. He can’t breathe. He can’t scream. And when four arms break his fall, he can’t wrench himself away.
“I think he…” the boy whispers.
Jonah squints up at the oval and watches it streak downward like the blade of an axe, separating the stone like curtains. A thundering rumble knocks them all to the ground. He wants to run, but still he can’t move. The base of the wall rounds and reaches outward, and then it’s like Jonah lies in the opening of an ancient teepee. Finally, his legs regain feeling.
“Nice work, kid,” Hess whispers, getting to her feet. She still holds the gun in her hand.
“So, should we go get Lark?” the boy asks.
“Not this time,” Hess answers.
“Tunick’s now.” Jonah coughs. “I opened it. Now you tell me how to get there. Your end of the deal.”
The boy staggers into the opening and then twists to aim the gun at Jonah. “Not yet. I can never get these things to do what I want. For some reason I bet you can.”
“And then what?” Jonah asks.
“And then we’ll take you to Tunick,” he says. “Promise.”
Chapter Fifteen
As soon as all three are inside, a white blanket of electricity pops and sizzles in the opening, keeping anyone from leaving. Jonah shouldn’t be here; he should be halfway to Tunick’s—to Zion’s—with a decent plan on how to save his friends. Run. Kids are free now. He should be running back to Tunick’s. He should be freeing the kids.
The room isn’t a sphere, but instead like the inside of pyramid, pointed at the roof with straight walls radiating to the ground. Symbols are carved everywhere, including on the floor. All along the base of the room is one of the long white objects—the actual portal device—similar to the one that took Kip. Jonah knows they’re going to ask him to figure out how to start it, but he’s no demic. He can’t find hidden patterns and put together formulas.
“Now what?” Jonah asks.
Hess spins on her bare heels and studies the walls. “I’m looking for something… This one certain one… But it’s not…”
Jonah waits for something to illuminate in his eyes, or for the verve to point out a group of symbols, but all that comes is a shortness of breath, along with a wave of exhaustion. When was the last time he ate something? He sits in the middle of the room and holds his stomach.
The boy jogs around the perimeter pointing his gun at Jonah, his head bobbing up and down, his free hand fumbling over symbols at random.
When he was in the sphere, Jonah got an overwhelming sense of safety and the feeling that he was supposed to be there. In the pyramid, he feels absolutely nothing.
“Okay, kid,” Hess finally says to him. “Do your thing. Work your magic.”
Jonah laughs. “I don’t have a thing. There is no magic. I have no idea what these rooms are all about. I don’t understand portals. You’ve picked the wrong kid to follow.”
“Listen. I know you’re not going to believe me, but we’re actually on your side here,” the boy says. “We don’t want Tunick to get to Peleus for many reasons. We want the ship for ourselves to get to a different continent.”
Hess stiffens her shoulders and looks away.
“Wait. What ship?” A second later, it hits Jonah. “You guys didn’t crash here, did you? You landed here, and now he needs the energizer to power up your ship from Thetis.”
“Well, that’s out of the bag,” Hess mutters after taking a long drink from the canteen hanging from her waist. “We want the ship for ourselves. We want to get to another continent here on Achilles.”
Jonah presses his thumbs into his sockets. “This is unbelievable. I need that ship to get to Thetis, or I’m going to die. Where is it?”
“We don’t know,” Hess says.
His eyes begin to throb and he squints straight up into the pointed center. “How do you lose a spacecraft?”
The boy presses a squiggly symbol above his head and sighs. “That’s not exactly our finest moment. After we arrived here on fumes, on one of the first nights we were here, we very stupidly let Tunick cook everyone this huge dinner. Needless to say, we were all vomiting and sick and totally incoherent that night, and he used that time to move the ship, wasting the rest of its fuel. He showed up back at camp five weeks later—much to our surprise, I must say, because we assumed he was dead—and he refuses to this day to confess to knowing how the ship disappeared. We’ve been looking for it, off and on, ever since. So has another guy who has split off from everyone here and gone rogue, a guy named Armitage Blythe. Everyone has their own plans.”
“I saw Armitage last night.” Jonah waits for a response, but neither flinches. “How the hell are we going to find your ship on a moon this size? It could be on the complete other side of Achilles.”
“You really are stupid, aren’t you?” The boy laughs. “You must not have gotten a good look when you were going down in flames up there because you’re on a piece of land roughly half the size of Australia. And we’re more isolated. So our search area isn’t that big, but you’re right, it’s big enough. Several of us are on the east coast right now, half-looking for the ship, half-exploring. That’s what Portis’s sister, Blage, was doing. Hess and Lark and a few others like me try to stick close enough to Tunick without him feeling too threatened, not only to see if he’ll lead us to the ship, but also just to keep an eye out for him.”
“An eye out? For him?” Jonah is exasperated. “Are you serious? That guy just murdered over a hundred people and you’re looking out for him. That’s sick. That’s unbelievable.”
Hess points her gun at him. “All that just happened, remember. The murdering stuff is new for him. We’ve been trying to protect him from himself, as much as we could. We owed that to him after what he did for us on Thetis.”
“Wait.” Jonah stands and
points a finger at her face. He doesn’t care if she has a gun. “If you saw us crash and Tunick told you what was going on, then why didn’t you come and warn us? Come and help us? Holy shit, you guys could have stepped in at any point. You just let him kill us. You just…”
Hess exhales. “Lark felt it was best for us to stay out of it. We put it to a vote.”
“You voted whether or not to save us from being murdered by that asshole maniac back there? Jesus Christ! And now you want my help in here? How dare you ask me to help you?”
“We’re stepping in now,” she says. “We’re telling you now. We didn’t realize Tunick was killing anyone until just a short time ago, when we started finding the bodies.”
Jonah stares at a circular symbol with two lines intersecting over it. “You could have saved so many people.”
“Did you know you were on Tunick’s list? That he chose you?” the boy asks.
“Whatever that means.” All this talk is getting him some answers, but it’s also getting him nowhere. He has to leave. He has to get that force field in the entrance to disappear.
Hess sets her hands on her hips. “The day after the crash, he dropped in at our camp and said he picked out some of the kids at the beach to go with him to Peleus. He went on to describe them at length. He described you, in particular. He chose you.”
“Well, he unchose me.”
“Probably because you didn’t take to the verve,” she says. “Messed up his plans. Messed up his plants, rather.”
“So was that a verve plant in your hand when you saw us in the jungle?”
“I had just found it. Didn’t even get the chance to shuck the seeds. We try to find what we can of the plant ourselves, destroying and burying it. But we also keep a little to trade with Tunick when we need something from him.”
Jonah thinks of Armitage last night, carrying two huge bunches of the same plant. Either he’s addicted, too, or it’s for Tunick, as a gift, bribe, or deterrent. Jonah wonders if Armitage, Paul, and Ruth found Tunick’s cave last night, if there was a battle, if any of his friends were killed. He pictures Aussie lying on the floor, taking her last breaths. He’s wasting too much time in here. He has to get this portal working so he can get back to them.