Athel

by E. E. Giorgi

  Unfortunately Wes replies before I can come up with some sensible lie.

  “A rocket we found in the forest,” he says. “We think it’s from the Gaijins.”

  Tahari runs a hand over his bald forehead, a tear of sweat dripping down his jaw. “Things are changing. It used to be—things used to be peaceful. Hard, yes, but peaceful. And now”—he shakes his head—“I don’t know what the future holds anymore.”

  “We think—” I start.

  “Where’s Athel?” Tahari interjects.

  Athel hasn’t responded to my messages for the past two hours. Which means there’s only one place he could possibly be. “In the forest,” I reply, “looking for the chavis, I’m sure.”

  Tahari lets out a whistle and frowns. “We’re running out of time. The droids are planning an attack within twenty-four hours.”

  My eyes widen. So he knows. Why isn’t he telling everyone, then?

  He looks back at the people working in the river. “I can’t have them panicking,” he whispers, as though he’s read my mind. “We have so little time. Maybe they should be making barricades instead of fishing structures.”

  I bite my lip. “Why don’t you have everyone go hunt the keys in the forest? We’d have a better chance if we all—”

  “I can’t trust them the way I used to.” His small black eyes dart back and forth between Wes and me. I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about talking to us so openly. “I used to trust everyone,” he adds, lowering his voice, his wide forehead pearled with sweat. “Three men lost their lives because of my naiveté. I can’t afford mistakes like that anymore.” He switches back to a more official tone and clears his throat. “I know you two have gone through a lot. Please go help Athel in his quest. I’ll join you after dark.”

  I nod, maybe a little too excitedly. “We think we can find the Ingenuity door. Maybe if we could have the key—”

  “That’s fantastic news,” he interrupts. “Once you find it, Aghad and I will bring the key over to unlock it.”

  He gives Wes a brisk pat on the shoulder, then turns around and walks back to the men and women rebuilding the fishing platforms. “Excellent progress, everyone,” he shouts, waving a hand. “By nightfall we’ll be able to hang back our nets.”

  Everyone cheers and claps at the statement, then the monotonous cadence of wood planing and hammering resumes.

  A light tap on my foot drags my gaze from the river. Jada grins at me, the lower tip of her birthmark curling up to her dimple. “Did you like my drawing?”

  I smile back. “I did, Jada. You’re very talented.”

  She nods and makes a serious face. “Well. I’m done with the dishes. When are we heading to the forest, then?”

  * * *

  Despite being barefoot, Jada has no problem treading the uneven trails of the forest. She climbs over obstacles and around rocks with extreme agility, happily skipping ahead of us.

  “Did she ever have arm prostheses?” I ask Wes.

  “When she was little,” he replies. “But then she outgrew them. Between the four of us, we all need some kind of device. My other two sisters would be completely blind without their bionic eyes. Jada is very selfless. Whenever something’s up for recycling, she gives priority to her siblings. She claims she’s accustomed to living without arms, whereas life without sight or legs would be impossible.”

  I watch in awe as she steps over a fallen log, balancing her lanky body on her long, skinny legs. Her naked feet wrap around objects and terrain as though they were made of rubber.

  The forest around us grows thicker and darker. Long beards of moss hang from low branches like curtains. We’re missing the map Tahari gave to Athel, but luckily it’s not too hard to remember: the five doors are distributed like the five stars in the Cassiopeia constellation, with Foresight and Prudence marking the two bottom vertices.

  Ingenuity was marked on the map as the last door after Beacon Rock, so we follow the path up all the way to a fork, the trail to the right mottled with manure and Taeh’s horseshoe prints. For a moment I consider taking the same path to find Athel and Lukas first. Time is ticking though, and we need to find the door fast. So we leave Taeh’s prints behind and take a left at the fork.

  “What do you think happened to the rocket?” Wes asks as we enter a part of the forest we haven’t explored yet.

  I duck under a branch stretching across the trail and hold it out of the way to let Jada pass. “I don’t know, and I’m worried about it. When I last saw them, back at the barn, Athel said Lukas was going to fix it and then they were going to take it back to the gorge.”

  “Maybe they were just testing it, to make sure it could fly again,” Wes offers.

  “I hope so,” I say, trying not to think of the consequences should this not be true. Will the droids really attack the Tower over a stupid rocket? Or are they sending us empty threats to reinforce their supremacy?

  Jada skips ahead of us, too excited to be in a new place to pay attention to our conversation.

  “Let us know as soon as you see a place that looks like your dream,” I tell her.

  “I will,” she replies, already several feet ahead.

  While Wes is usually the fastest of us all, now that the forest is thicker and the vegetation dense around the trees, he keeps lagging behind, his sleek blades inadequate for this kind of terrain. Jada, on the other hand, with her naked little feet, can tramp over obstacles like a mountain goat.

  Soon, the landscape blends with the ruins of Astraca: pillars sprout out of wild vines and ferns, and broken archways lean against trees.

  “Hey, look at me!” Jada calls. She climbs over a moss-covered rise and balances while walking a straight line. The rise gets narrower and steeper as the terrain around it descends into a ravine, gradually uncovering an old Astraca wall that survived the fire.

  “Jada, be careful!” Wes shouts. “Turn around and come back.”

  But Jada keeps going, and as we follow her from below, the slope of the ravine becomes steeper and the wall taller. My boots lose traction on terrain that’s sleek and damp with dead leaves. I turn to warn Wes a second too late. One of his blades slips, and before I can stop him, he falls on his behind and slides right past me, his blades up in the air.

  “Wes!” I run after him, which turns out to be a bad idea, and soon I’m slipping down the incline on my butt. Moments later we find ourselves piled up against a big log at the very bottom of the crevice.

  “Ow,” I protest, as one of Wes’s blades presses against my back. “You could slice me up with those things, you know?”

  I crawl back to my feet spitting pine needles and plucking twigs out of my hair.

  “Darn things weren’t made to walk on leaves,” Wes mumbles, checking both blades for scratches and dents, completely oblivious to the scrapes on his face and arms.

  “Wow!” Jada squeals.

  I have to crane my neck to glimpse her behind the tree branches. She’s like an exclamation point at the end of the wall, an ecstatic look on her face.

  “This is it!” she yells. “This is the place from my dream. How did you know we’d find it here?”

  “Great,” Wes says. “Please tell me we’re not going to find the door at the top of that wall.”

  Her joyful laughter echoes across the ravine. “No. But I know exactly where it is. Let me get down.”

  “Be careful!” Wes yells, but Jada is already skipping away. “Mom’s going to kill me,” he adds, rolling his eyes.

  I sit on the log and look around. Light streams from the treetops, making the leaf-covered slopes glimmer. The scent of damp earth and moss seems stronger down here. Water trickles somewhere in the distance, and birds I’ve never heard before chirp their songs.

  Jada comes running down the slope, her awkwardly straight frame wobbling side to side, and yet, miraculously, she manages to get to the bottom without falling. I’m beginning to see why she doesn’t want prostheses. This girl is so awesome she probably would
n’t know what to do with them.

  She stares at the log I’m sitting on, cheeks flushed with excitement, and says, “Follow me.” She climbs over the log, jumps, and vanishes.

  Wes shoots to his feet. “Freaking Kawa! Jada!”

  I lean across the log, but all I can see are the ferns still swaying where she just stepped through. “Jada!”

  “I’m down here!” Her voice comes from somewhere below the leaves. I stretch my arms and move the vegetation away until Jada’s happy face appears at the bottom of a pit.

  “Jada! Did you do that on purpose? You freaked the hell out of me,” Wes scolds.

  “Sorry,” she replies. “Jumping felt harmless in my dream.”

  “Well, is it?” Wes asks.

  “Pretty much.”

  Wes and I pull away the leaves and finally uncover the hole she’s jumped into, a pit about three feet wide and five feet deep. She sits at the bottom, looking like a little comma, her big eyes smiling at me as light shines on her dirt-caked face.

  “That’s cute, Jada,” I say. “Thanks for showing us your dream. Now come out and let’s go look for the door.”

  She looks at me and frowns. “The door? It’s right here. I just found it. The Ingenuity door!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Athel

  Day Number: 1,587

  Event: Lukas lost the rocket.

  Number of Mayakes left: 428

  Goal for today: Unlock the Prudence door.

  A loud roar splits the air as I’m riding back to the barn. Taeh hears it a second before I do and panics. She rises on her hind legs, whinnies, and then sprints like a fury through the forest, jumping over logs and ravines. I clutch the reins, squeeze my thighs, and duck, as branches whip my face and arms. One bough strikes me in the chest and almost knocks me off the saddle. To no avail I pull the reins to stop the horse, the leather strips digging into my flesh.

  When Taeh finally calms down, we’re miles away from the trail. My clothes are torn and ripped, and my hands burning.

  “What… the hell… was that?” I wheeze, catching my breath. Still frightened, Taeh shakes her head and runs in circles. The rumble is gone, replaced by a familiar wake of smoke that now mars the sky.

  Could that be…? The rocket!

  I steer Taeh back to the trail, thinking about what just happened. Lukas has obviously fixed the rocket and decided to test it, but if that’s the case… why fly it over the forest, in the opposite direction from the gorge? The droids will never come to this side of the river, and if they don’t get it back by tomorrow morning…

  Taeh still has a lot of energy in her legs. Fueled by adrenaline, she whips through the forest at a brisk pace, her hooves thumping on soft, mossy turf. Once back on the trail I stall, unsure whether I should go after the rocket or back to the barn to find out what happened to Lukas.

  Voices trail in the distance. They come and go, half-panicked, half-angry. I click my tongue and gallop in their direction, wondering if people have come out here after the rocket. Pain seeps through my body as the slashes and bruises I got during Taeh’s panicky flight start to take a toll on my riding. I close my eyes and will the nanobots to release molecules of analgesic into my bloodstream.

  Taeh jumps over a stream and suddenly the voices I heard earlier become louder. They’re not happy voices.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Not until you tell us what the heck that was!”

  “I would’ve told you if you’d let me explain instead of firing the thing off!”

  As soon as I hear Lukas’s screams, I whip the reins and prompt Taeh to a gallop. I find him a few hundred yards down the trail, and not in good company: Metal Jaw Yuri and his brother Cal walk at his sides, escorting him like two guarding dogs. Cal holds Lukas by one arm and pushes him along the trail.

  “Oh, look,” Yuri says as soon as I emerge from the trees. “I’m sure the goofball on the horse will tell us the full story.”

  “Let go of Lukas!” I yell, pulling Taeh to a stop.

  “Why?” Yuri challenges. “The nerd wouldn’t tell us what the rocket’s for. He claimed it didn’t even work and look how far it got!”

  Blood pulses through my head. “You’re the one who flew the rocket?”

  He smirks. “What better way to prove he was lying?”

  “I’d just fixed it,” Lukas mutters under his breath.

  Yuri’s reckless behavior has now endangered all of us. I hop off the saddle and throw my arms at his neck. “Bastard!” I yell. “Why did you do that?”

  We roll several feet through moss and dead leaves, twigs poking my skin everywhere.

  Yuri sinks an elbow into my ribs and wriggles away from my grasp. I pounce back, trying to stop him. “Leave Lukas alone and fight me instead. The guy wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  “What?” Lukas protests. He flails his arms, but Cal grabs him and pins him to a tree.

  Yuri throws a right hook, but I duck and his knuckles sink into fresh dirt. I quickly roll away and leap back to my feet.

  He stands up again, his eerie metallic jaw smeared with moss. “Is that how you fight, coward? By running away?”

  “You’re the coward,” I retort. “You just attacked a helpless boy.”

  “I’m not helpless!” Lukas shouts.

  Cal grunts and grabs Lukas’s arms from behind. I’m sure Lukas could free himself with a rapid kick, but he’s clueless when it comes to fighting. He just stands there, cringing and looking away.

  Taeh feels the tension and keeps a cautious distance. The rest of the forest is silent, birds and chipmunks suddenly muted.

  Yuri bares his teeth and balls his fists at me. The small barrels sprouting out of his knuckles look increasingly threatening. “Helpless, my boot,” he hisses. “I know you guys are up to something. Who made the flying rocket?”

  “Why are you so obsessed with the rocket?”

  He grabs the collar of my shirt and breathes into my face. “You’re a liar, Athel. I don’t trust a thing you or your freckle-faced sister do. You told people not to give up their prostheses to make more weapons like mine, and then you go off and make a rocket. Where did you find the stuff to make it, huh?”

  “I didn’t make it,” I snarl, holding his spiteful stare.

  “Of course you didn’t. Your nerdy friend did.”

  “I wish,” Lukas replies, and I’m sure he really means it.

  The whole thing would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that the rocket is now gone and the droids will never find it. Which puts us all in a very, very bad place.

  “I’ll tell you where the rocket comes from,” I say, trying to muster a deep, low voice. Because people listen to deep, low voices. Or so I believe. “But you’ll have to let go of Lukas. And you’ll have to cooperate.”

  Yuri’s right brow shoots up, taken aback. “Cooperate? With you? Why?”

  The way he said “you,” as if we were the most disgusting things on the planet, when in fact he’s the one who viciously attacked my sister. I swallow my pride and explain.

  “Because, believe it or not, we’re in the same boat. We need to have a serious conversation, but no serious conversation can take place while one of the parties is pinned to a tree. Let Lukas go.”

  Yuri’s face hangs between a sneer and a frown. He lets go of my shirt, hooks his hands on his belt, and studies me very carefully. Somehow my approach seems to have triggered his curiosity. “And you’ll tell us what’s up with the rocket and what the hell you were gonna do with it?”

  I nod.

  A jay screeches from the high branches. Taeh stomps her hooves on the soft terrain of the forest.

  Yuri clenches his jaw and lowers his fists. “Let him go, Cal.”

  “Really?” the boy protests. “You’re gonna let these traitors—”

  “I said let him go.”

  As soon as Cal releases his grip, Lukas scrambles away, massaging his wrists.

  I point to the ground. “Let’s all sit and att
empt a civilized conversation, shall we?”

  I sit down and cross my legs, my eyes on Yuri, hoping he’ll do the same. He does, and we all stare at one another for a good thirty seconds, me and Lukas on one side of the trail, and Yuri and Cal on the opposite side.

  I try not to think too much about the rocket because if I do, anger will muddle my thoughts. I need to be rational now. The rocket booster—as Lukas likes to call it—is lost somewhere in the forest and there’s nothing I can do about it. The Gaijins will attack us in less than twenty-four hours. We need to act soon, and bickering and fighting will only make things worse.

  I dip a hand into my pocket, take out the empty cylinder, and hand it to Yuri. “Show me how you opened it.”

  He blinks and flashes me a skeptical look.

  Cal juts out his lower lip. “Don’t trust him. Dad said—”

  “Shut up,” Yuri interjects, slamming a hand over his brother’s mouth.

  “I’m not trying to trick you,” I say. “You took something from us, now we want that something back from you. Show us how you opened it. It’s important, and many lives may depend on it.”

  He sneers at that. “What is this, some kind of puzzle?”

  “Technically it is,” Lukas says.

  I flash him a pointed look. “Let him show us how to open it first.”

  Yuri takes the cylinder and pokes a finger through the iris opening. “It’s already open.”

  “It wasn’t when you took it.”

  Cal stirs. “They’re trying to trick us.”

  “I knew how to open it,” Yuri says.

  I nod. “Because you remembered.”

  The word “remembered” seems to resonate with him. “Why is this so important to you?”

  I decide there’s no point in keeping him in the dark. Violent or not, we need him on our side. “The Gaijins are going to attack the Tower in less than twenty-four hours. These cylinders—there’s five of them—are our only hope to escape. The key you found inside is one of five. Once all five are in place we’ll have access to a safe place, a place where the Gaijins’ bombs won’t be able to harm us.”