by E. E. Giorgi
Cal’s eyes widen. “That’s not what Dad—”
“I said shut up!” Yuri yells. He scrutinizes me, his dark eyes narrowed to slits. “How do you know all this?”
“A sniper droid delivered the message. They want their rocket back, which is why we were trying to fix it. Given how fast it took off, I doubt we’ll be able to find it in time to eliminate the threat.”
“You didn’t make the rocket?” Cal asks.
Lukas squirms. “Guys. This is no joke. We need the key. And we need to find the other ones, too.”
Yuri juggles the cylinder in his hand, pondering. At last a smile escapes his lips. “You know what I think?”
I tilt my head. “What?”
He tosses the cylinder back at me. “I think you’re all full of crap. Let’s go, Cal.”
The two of them stand up again and look down on us with a spiteful glare.
“You stole, Yuri. My sister found the cylinder and you stole the key from us. The least you could do, if you have a grain of dignity left in your overgrown ego, is to return it to us.”
Yuri pounces, grabs my collar, and slams me against a tree. He levels his fist with my eyes and presses his phalanges against my air pipe. “Take that back, you filthy liar.”
I swallow, suppressing the urge to punch him back. I need him on my side, damn it, not against me.
“The key is our only chance to survive the Gaijins’ attack,” I croak.
“I know how to survive the attack,” he snarls. “I blow up those stupid droids with my lasers. You have a problem with that?”
“It’s you against an army.”
“My brother will have his own soon.”
“In less than twenty-four hours?”
He clicks his metal jaw, pondering.
“Do the right thing, Yuri, and give us the key. You may have the memory of how to retrieve it from the cylinder, but you don’t know what it’s for. We can show you.”
Somehow my lack of physical reaction opens a tiny breach. I can see in his eyes that he’s finally considering the offer.
“What’s in it for me and my brother if we help you out?”
“Your own life.” I swallow. “Because if you don’t give us back the key, we’re all gonna die.”
* * *
A family of chipmunks argues over a stack of acorns on top of a rock. As soon as they hear our steps, they scatter in all directions. A spotted dove hoots from a tall branch. The screeches of the jays echo her call.
Yuri and Cal walk behind us, keeping a cautious distance from Taeh. They stare at one another from time to time and flash us suspicious glares, as if unsure whether to trust us or not. I’m not sure either, but at this point I feel like there are no other options. Lukas claims he can find the Prudence door, and the two brothers have the key to unlock it. Once they realize the danger, they’ll cooperate.
I know they will.
We come to the clearing where Tahari and Aghad unearthed the map of Astraca. Dottie found the cylinder with the Prudence chavi not too far from here, and now Lukas is convinced the Prudence door is nearby, too. If he’s correct, we’ll finally be able to unlock the first of the five doors.
I walk Taeh by the reins and wade through tall vines while Lukas explains what we’ve learned about the five Astraca doors and the chavis that unlock them.
Yuri stops, crosses his arms and stares at us defiantly. “With a fifty-square-mile forest and plenty of places to choose from, why do you think they’d hide a key in the vicinity of its door?”
“Because it makes sense,” Lukas replies. “The doors were built for emergencies. They had to be secured so that no one would breach them, which is why no door will open unless all five are unlocked. Still, in an emergency, you want to be able to reach those keys fast.”
I step over a fallen trunk, my boots crunching on splintered wood, and ponder his words. “So five people were in charge of the five doors?”
Lukas nods. “Had to be. You wouldn’t entrust everyone’s safety to just one person, would you? I’m also guessing that each one knew of only one door and one chavi, preventing a single person from unlocking all five at once.”
“It would explain why all the engrams are so fragmented,” I reply.
“Also for safety. Can’t hand over all the info to a single individual. Now, if they were really smart—and so far they’ve proven they were—they’d not only make the information fragmented, but also redundant.”
We descend down a ravine and then cross a water stream that trickles over a bed of green moss. Taeh stops and dips her head to drink.
“Redundant?” I ask.
“Save it many times, in different ways.”
The terrain below our feet begins to slant in all directions. Old barricades sprout between the trees, and roots coil around broken pillars and charred bricks. Yuri and Cal stare at the place with their mouths hanging open. I can tell from the looks on their faces they’ve never been this far into the forest, and suddenly I wonder if it was a mistake to bring them here. Tahari has trusted only a few people with these ancient secrets. And here I am, spilling the beans to the two people I hate the most.
I let Taeh roam on her own while Lukas and I look everywhere. We scrape the moss off the cement, dig holes, upturn chunks of fallen walls.
Nada.
“Plenty of walls and no doors,” I mumble.
Lukas looks comical as he wobbles through the overgrown ferns. “Look beyond the obvious,” he chants.
His easygoing attitude irritates the brothers. Yuri sits on a log, scowls, and says, “You guys are full of it.”
“Lukas likes riddles,” I say, and then nudge my friend in the ribs and whisper, “Do you have it all figured out and now you’re enjoying teasing us?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be something we expect.”
“You said you’ve seen the door!” I hiss.
“I did. And now I can’t find—”
He stops so suddenly I almost bump into him, his nose stuck up in the air as he watches mesmerized the sun fanning through the treetops. The two brothers stare at us, their scowls deepening.
“What is it now?” Cal asks, rapping a hand against his side.
“This,” Lukas says, pointing at the sunrays sweeping the forest like a transparent curtain. “This is what I remember.”
“The light?” Yuri complains. He shoots to his feet and turns around, looking for the way back. Our steps are now lost in the sea of ferns and wild vines, the trail no longer visible.
“You’ve got no choice but stick with us,” I say, though deep inside I want to flick Lukas. “May I remind you that we’re looking for a door?” I whisper to my friend as he follows the light fanning through the trees.
“I’m telling you, this is it,” Lukas replies.
“Great.” My eyes burn from lack of sleep. I blink, trying to see what he sees. I’m clearly not trying hard enough, because all I spot are oaks, sycamores, and the occasional moss-covered chunk of ruin. “Are you hallucinating or what?”
Lukas walks through the sheet of light, sunrays framing his lanky figure. “A door doesn’t have to be made of wood or metal. If I were to hide something, I’d do it in a subtle way, one that can only be found at certain times of the day.” He climbs over a fallen tree and stops at the end, where the sunrays fall and hit the ground. He hops down and crouches, the exposed roots of the fallen tree like tentacles above his head.
I sigh. “Right. Perfect spot to look for a door.”
Lukas rips away the weeds and ferns growing underneath the roots and pushes his hands under the trunk, groping. “You’re not thinking straight, Athel,” he says. “A wooden door would’ve burned completely in the fire. That’s not what we’re looking for.”
He rests his hands on the fallen tree, plants his feet on the ground, and pushes. The trunk doesn’t budge.
I walk over and help him out of pity, not because I see any sense to what he’s doing.
�
�I expect the doors to the Underground City,” I reply, “to cover a manhole or something like that. They could be made of metal, cement, or—”
“A slab of rock,” Lukas interjects as the tree finally rolls to the side. Blinded by the sudden light, a colony of blue beetles starts swirling in the pocket left by the overturned tree.
Lukas freezes, his face ashen. “Can you… send them away?”
“You’re afraid of beetles?”
“It’s a phobia. You can’t control irrational emotions.”
I stifle a snicker and chase away the critters with a stick. “I thought you were all rationality, Lukas.”
“That would make me a robot,” he scoffs.
Yuri and Cal finally decide to shuffle over to see what’s going on. Part of me wishes they were scared of beetles too, but it turns out they’re not. They stomp over and squash the critters with their boots until I yell at them to stop wasting energy on stupid things.
“That’s what you’ve been doing from the get-go,” I say. “Wasting energy on enemies you don’t have, while the true enemies get their way.”
Yuri glares at me, my words hitting home for the first time, even though he’s too proud to admit it. He leans close and growls, “Fine. But you’d better have a really strong argument for keeping me here while I could be training with the one thing that will destroy the droids—my laser beams.”
“Your laser beams will do nothing against a full army of sniper droids.”
He balls his fists, itching to strike me again.
Something shines in my eyes, a pencil of light coming from one of the holes in the dirt. I ignore Yuri’s threatening pose and crouch over to take a better look.
Lukas cringes as a few beetles crawl up my arm. I dig with a flat stick until the tip hits a hard surface buried underneath, then continue spooning out dirt with my bare hands. Whether they’re moved by curiosity, or simply because they want to get the search over with, Yuri and Cal kneel at my sides and help me out, our blackened fingers crossing and touching as we brush away dirt. And when we finally uncover what’s underneath, we all stop and stare without uttering a word.
The familiar symbol of Astraca emerges through the dust, carved in black on the tarnished surface of a copper plate.
“What’s that?” Yuri asks.
“The symbol of Astraca,” Lukas replies, standing behind us and looking down on our find.
I swat the beetles away and knock on the copper plate. “It doesn’t sound hollow,” I say, not bothering to hide my disappointment.
If it is the door, there’s no empty space on the other side.
Lukas finally overcomes his terror of beetles, drops to his knees, and squeezes between us. Most of the beetles have fled anyway, their hairy legs digging for new hideouts under the fallen tree trunk. Lukas brushes his long white fingers over the plate and retraces the pentagon.
“Look,” he whispers as if in the presence of something sacred. “There’s a hole inside the head of the Prudence key. I bet that’s the lock.”
“I still don’t understand.” I rattle my knuckles on the plate one more time. “Hear that? It’s not the sound a door makes when you knock on it. This sounds just like what it looks like: an old plate buried in the dirt.” I slide my fingers along the plate searching for a hinge, a latch, anything. I close my fists around the edge and pull.
“Don’t,” Lukas says.
“Why not? I want to see if it’s a hoax or—”
“Stop,” Yuri says. He locks eyes with me and for the first time I see a sparkle of recognition. He waves a hand at his brother, his stare no longer spiteful. “Get me the thing.”
Cal blinks a few times. “What thing?”
“The key, genius!”
“Oh.” Cal fumbles in his pockets and finally produces it—the Prudence key. It’s smaller than I thought, and it looks just like the Wisdom key Aghad showed me, except the head is different: the golden thread is shaped like a crescent moon. I feel a surge of anger seeing it in Yuri’s hands, but then repress it, knowing that he’s the one who had the engram to open the cylinder. So, in a way, this is his chavi, too.
He leans forward, clears his throat, and then clicks the key into place.
At first, nothing happens. And then, just as Yuri’s anger is about to be unleashed, a light from within the symbol flashes. The pentagon rotates and the triangle containing the Prudence key slides open, revealing an LED screen.
I read the words out loud: “You have unlocked the Prudence door. One of five doors unlocked.”
We stare at the message one minute longer, holding our breaths. Smiles blossom on everyone’s faces. And just like that, for no reason other than that we’ve finally achieved something, and we did it together, we all cheer and share high fives.
“Where are the other keys?” Yuri asks.
“One’s still missing—the Foresight key. The other three are in Tahari’s possession. We should go retrieve them and unlock the other three doors. It shouldn’t be too hard now that we can pinpoint this location on the map.”
Cal raises a brow. “There’s a map?”
Lukas nods. “Yes, but it’s missing cardinal points. We didn’t know the exact location of the doors until we found the first one. So now we can find the rest.”
Yuri narrows his eyes, still not one hundred percent convinced. “What about the rocket?”
“The rocket belongs to the Gaijins. If you help us recover it, we may still have a chance to avoid a massacre tomorrow.”
Yuri considers the offer very carefully. He bends over the door and removes the key. “It’s probably best if we cover the door again, until we unlock all five of them.”
I nod and together we push the tree log back over the copper plate. When we’re done, Yuri wipes the dirt off his hands, then looks at his brother and says, “Come on, Cal. Let’s go find the rocket.”
Cal stiffens. “Seriously? I thought we were going to find the rest of the doors.” He scratches the top of his head and scuffs the ground. “This was… sort of fun.”
Yuri sends me a sideways glance. “No. Let them find the rest of the doors. We set off the rocket, so now we’d better get it back.”
I give him thumbs up. “Come get us when you do find it. We need to haul it back to the gorge.”
If it is the rocket the droids want back, I think.
But that last thought I keep to myself.
Chapter Fifteen
Akaela
Tahari looks at the three of us with big, worried eyes. He rubs his wide forehead the way he’s done multiple times these past few days, then jerks his chin toward the Tower and says, “Let’s go talk in my office.”
“But—” Wes starts, but Tahari is already climbing the stairs to the Tower and no longer listening.
On the second floor, a man is waiting by the door to the office. He looks old, his skin parched and his shoulders hunched from many hours spent out in the fields. He must be the rice farmer Athel told us about, I think. The one who helped Tahari find the map.
Tahari opens the door and motions us kids—Wes, Jada, and me—inside. We sit quietly on a wooden bench by the wall, overlooking Tahari’s wide desk. To the left, a large window looks out over the river bend, the hammering and beating from the workers on the shore muffled by the sound of water rushing downstream.
“They found the Ingenuity door,” Tahari explains to the rice farmer as he shuffles to his desk. There’s no enthusiasm in his voice, no reason to celebrate. I feel bad for Jada, who was so excited to tell Tahari about her discovery. She felt important when she realized it wasn’t just a dream.
Something’s not right, Wes messages.
“Should we go see it?” the rice farmer asks.
Tahari leans against his desk and crosses his arms. “No,” he says. “I want you to proceed as we’ve discussed.”
I shoot to my feet and demand, “Why not? We found the door. Don’t you want to unlock it before—”
Tahari raises a hand and s
tops me from saying another word. “It’s too late. I’m ordering an evacuation tonight, once night falls. We’ll hide in the forest and hope for the best.”
Wes backs me up. “But you already have three of the chavis, and we know where the fourth one is.”
“The fifth one is missing,” the rice farmer says, his voice grave. “We found the engram, went to the location and…” He rubs his tired eyes with flat, black-rimmed fingers.
“And?” I ask.
“It wasn’t there,” Tahari replies. “Someone took it.”
I open my mouth to say something and realize I’ve got nothing to say. What Tahari has just revealed is the worst possible news. Engrams are the only way we have to trace back the chavis. Once moved, the engrams are no longer a clue. They turn into a dead end.
Voices stream from the open window. They become louder and more frantic. Jada hops off the bench and runs over to see. “They’re coming back from the river!” she says.
Tahari nods. “Yes. I just sent out the order. I’ve asked everyone to drop whatever they’re doing, pack their things, and leave the Tower by nightfall.”
The message finally streams along the bottom of my retina. “Emergency order. Prepare for evacuation. Repeat. Collect all essentials and prepare for evacuation.”
Next to me, Wes’s face is as blank as mine. He walks over to the window, wraps his hands around Jada’s shoulders, and whispers softly in her ear.
“You too,” Tahari says. “Join your family and leave. Before it’s too late.”
I nod and storm out of the office.
Athel, I think. I have to find Athel.
Chapter Sixteen
Athel
Day Number: 1,588
Event: Tahari ordered an evacuation
Number of Mayakes left: 428
Goal for today: Hide in the forest and prepare for the attack.
The sun hangs low on the horizon. Pink clouds roll over the mesa, soon swallowed by the orange glow from the Gaijins’ factory. Everything seems so normal, so ordinary. Yet the air is tense, faces are grim, and the silence is heavy as people gather in the clearing outside the Tower. Those of us who own horses bring them out into the paddock and harness them. Some have small carriages, others bring out wagons and load them with goats and cages crowded with chickens.