by E. E. Giorgi
I pat his arm. “C’mon, Wes. It doesn’t matter where we go. We just can’t stop now.”
I wish I could give him a better answer, but that’s all I have for the time being.
He follows Lukas but won’t shut up about it. “And what are we supposed to do, even if we do find the rocket? It’s not like we can haul it on Taeh’s saddle like Athel did when he first found it.”
“A little late to worry about that, don’t you think, Wes?” Lukas retorts. He’s been speeding ahead while I’m stuck behind Wes, who keeps dragging his blades. If the two of them don’t stop bickering, we’ll end up getting caught.
“I can fly the rocket back to the gorge,” Lukas explains. “We just need to find it in time to st—whoa!”
“Lukas!” both Wes and I yell at the same time as the light from his data feeder vanishes.
“I’m here!” he calls. “I just…”
I shuffle toward his voice, groping with my walking stick.
“Wait for me!” Wes whispers.
The light from the data feeder comes back suddenly, beaming upwards from underneath a canopy of ferns. It reveals a half arch, much taller than any other ruin I’ve seen in the forest before. It’s completely made of stone, its side gnawed and gnarled by time. I step closer and slide a hand over its cold and brittle surface, following the engravings with the tips of my fingers. They depict stories from different times: cows gathered in pastures, rice workers bent over the fields, and fishermen pulling their nets from a river.
Lukas climbs out of the hole he’s fallen into, shifting the beam away from the arch. I blink as my eyes try to readjust to the darkness. Up above, the clouds move and the moon peeks through. And right there, in the dim light of the moon, I finally see it. Not just the arch, but a whole plaza sprawling behind it: a flight of stairs to nowhere, a slanted wall, the scattered limbs of a broken statue, and then more arches jutting out of the earth and hanging unfinished like interrupted dreams.
The trees are sparser and shorter. Crawling vines choke the walls and dangle to the ground.
“What is this place?” Wes asks, gazing in wonder.
Lukas brushes dirt and leaves off his clothes and then taps on his data feeder.
“I think,” he says, chewing on his lower lip. The blue light from the screen makes him look like a ghost. I step closer and look over his shoulder. He’s pulled up a picture of the map Tahari gave to Athel. He presses a finger on the lower left corner and says, “Here. That’s where we are.”
“The Foresight door?” I ask.
Lukas nods. “Definitely.”
I frown. “It doesn’t make any sense. Neither one of the other doors has been out in the open. The Ingenuity door was in a hole, the Prudence one under a tree. Now you’re telling me this one’s been out here in the open for decades?”
“Not quite in the open,” Lukas replies. “We’re still in the forest. And we haven’t found the actual door yet.”
Wes sighs. He shuffles to a log and sits down. “Great. We were supposed to find a rocket. Instead, we found the last door. Isn’t this the one whose key went missing? So why does it matter anymore, anyway? We don’t have the chavis to unlock the Underground City. We don’t have the rocket. And now we’ve lost our people.”
He drops his face into his hands and sobs. “I shouldn’t have listened to any of your stupid blabber, Lukas.”
It breaks my heart to see him like that. I shuffle through the ferns—their leaves a pearly white under the moon glow—and wrap an arm around his shoulders.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have, Wes. But we’re here for one another, remember? And we need you because you’re a brave friend, a friend whose legs can take us anywhere, as fast as possible.”
He sniffles. “I guess so.”
Lukas steps under the half arch, his silhouette framed by the mellow rays of the moon. He walks though the ruins and holds his data feeder high above his head, shining it along the pillars, some half standing, some lying on the ground.
“Did you get the signal back?” I ask, but he doesn’t reply. “The signal from the rocket?”
He crouches down by one of the fallen pillars, the beam from his data feeder swallowed by the hard shadows.
“What’s he doing?” Wes whispers.
“No idea,” I reply.
I jump to my feet and wade over to see what Lukas has found. Wes tags along, hissing for me to wait.
The enclosure past the half arch looks like an ancient plaza. Patches of old cobblestone bulge out of the carpet of moss and grass. There are no trees blocking the light from the moon here, and the scattered ruins paint a picture so vivid I can almost imagine the way it looked back in the days when Astraca was alive and thriving. Rich men and women would stroll through these arches and talk about politics, art, and philosophy. Musicians would sit on the stairs and play their drums and fiddles, while dancers leaped to the rhythm in a celebration of life.
Lukas sets his data feeder on the ground and starts pulling a web of dead roots and weeds.
“What did you find?” Wes asks, crouching next to him.
“Best thing ever,” Lukas replies. “Check it out.”
I run over to see.
A light blinks in the patch of ground Lukas has just uncovered. Broken words stream on a cracked screen. Some of the LED lights are missing, making it hard to read.
“Fopesicht?” I ask. “What does it mean?”
“Foresight,” Lukas corrects.
And then it dawns on me. “The Foresight door!”
“It says it’s been unlocked,” Wes whispers.
Wes is right. The message loops over, and as my eyes adjust to the missing pixels, I can finally read it in full: “Foresight door unlocked.”
Lukas whistles. “Whoever took the key knew exactly what they were doing. They came here and unlocked the door.”
Excitement nibbles the tips of my fingers. “This changes everything. I mean—if this one’s been unlocked … we can still make it. We can still unlock all the doors before dawn!”
“Did you see the rest of the message?” Wes asks.
The words stream across the screen.
“Three of five doors unlocked,” Lukas reads aloud.
“Three?” I say.
“Athel and I unlocked the Prudence door,” Lukas says, scratching his head. “Who’s unlocking the other ones?”
Wes squeezes my arm. “Wait. Did the message… It just changed!”
I lean closer and read the new message aloud: “Foresight door unlocked. Four of five doors unlocked.”
“Whoa,” Lukas mutters. “Someone’s unlocking the doors as we speak. Only one left now.”
“You think Athel’s behind this?” I ask. “Maybe Athel, Tahari, and Aghad got hold of the Foresight key and spread out to open all the doors at once.”
“Not sure,” Lukas replies. He gets up and shoves the data feeder into Wes’s hands. “Here, take it. There’s enough battery life to make your way back to the main trail. Find Tahari and tell him to bring everyone here. Tell him we’ve found the main entrance to the Underground City, and soon it will be unlocked.”
Wes takes the data feeder with uncertain hands. “You mean—by myself?”
“You need to be fast, and neither one of us can keep up with that,” I say.
Wes squeezes the data feeder and nods. “We can do this,” he says, and then sprints into the darkness, the soft thuds of his blades swishing across the low vegetation.
Lukas and I return our gazes to the screen, both holding our breaths.
“So little now until the last door—” he says.
A rustle creeps closer from the grass behind us.
“Wes?” I call, thinking maybe he forgot something and came back.
Steps thud in the darkness. They approach slowly, methodically. Lukas grabs my arm.
I stand up and squint, my eyes useless. “Who’s there?”
No answer, only the relentless beat of the steps coming closer. And then,
suddenly, the ground shakes and a rumble comes howling from the deep bowels of the earth. As I fall to my knees, I barely have time to catch one last glimpse of the screen.
“Foresight door unlocked,” it reads. “Five of five doors unlocked.”
Chapter Eighteen
Athel
Day Number: 1,589
Event: All Mayakes have evacuated into the forest
Number of Mayakes left: No official report
Goal for today: Hide in the forest and prepare for the attack.
The night is cool, the forest fragrant with scents of bark, moss, and moist soil. People make small talk, babies cry. But once we hit the trail, all sounds die out except for our steps and Aghad’s heavy breathing. Tahari positioned Aghad next to me as lead.
“Cool night,” I say, for the sole purpose of passing time.
Aghad replies with a grunt. After that, all my conversation attempts fail miserably. So I shut up and count my steps, trying to focus on the trail rather than what lies ahead.
I don’t manage well, though. I keep thinking about what’s going to happen to the Tower when the Gaijins attack. Will they see we’ve all left and come looking for us in the forest? Will they destroy our home, our things, the solar fields, the rice fields… Will it all be gone, just like with the fishing platforms and cranes? If so, what’s the point of hiding if when we return, there will be nothing for us to eat, no energy to recharge our batteries, no walls to keep us safe from the harsh heat of the days and the bitter cold of the nights?
Somebody behind me moans and we all stop to see what happened.
Aghad sighs. “Just a child.” He turns to shout, “Pick her up and keep walking!” and then resumes hiking, undaunted by the darkness.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask.
“North,” he replies. “Just keep walking north.”
The trees rustle and creak around us. At every oak we pass I crane my head and hope it’s Lilun’s oak. I keep wondering whether somebody’s missing her right now, or even looking for her. Do they know she’s here? Would they still attack us if they did? Would they—
A thought dawns on me.
No, not the rocket.
She’s the one the Gaijins want back.
But then… how is she to return home without the rocket? Maybe the droids can take her back?
They’re just robots. How would they know?
The thought leaves me restless. I increase my pace, stomping over fallen branches and rocks. I need to find Lilun again.
The child wails again. Commotion ripples down the procession until Aghad, once more, makes us all stop. He sighs, stomps his walking stick, and tells me to take a break. “At this pace, they’ll lag behind and get lost. Let me go see what’s happening.”
He walks back, squeezing among the people hiking up the trail.
I sit on a rock and cross my arms. Long beards of moss dangle from the tree branches, whispering softly. A mockingbird whistles, a rat comes out to check me out and then vanishes again. I hear a whoosh, turn, and scan the expanse of trees. Pale trunks emerge from a drape of blackness. Something trembles underneath the ferns to my left.
Back on the trail, people stand and wait for Aghad to resume the lead. Some sit on the ground, others take the chance to drink or take a nibble of food. A mother rocks to sleep the child strapped to her chest.
The ferns give another shudder. I leave the trail and decide to check them out.
Something jumps at me from behind a tree and presses a hand to my mouth. The hand is cold and smells funny, a mix of medicine and metal. Makes me smile.
“What are you doing here?” I mumble, but all that comes out under the pressure of her cold skin is, “Mhh-mmhh-mhh?”
Lilun brings a finger to her lips. “Shh!”
That’s when I realize that “shh” works in all languages.
She steps back and motions for me to follow. Behind me, the people are still waiting along the trail. Somebody looks in my direction, their eyes vacant, their vision limited to only a few feet around them. Maybe they think the noise is some kind of animal. Somebody shines a flashlight and Lilun and I both duck. The beam sweeps from left to right and then dies out.
“Now,” I say. She nods, and then we run.
Lilun can’t see in the dark like me, but she has a small light clipped to her head. She turns it on as soon as we’re far enough from the trail and I follow as it bobs between trees and down an incline, skipping over slabs of rock and bushes. We reach a ravine covered in logs. Lilun crawls to the bottom and sweeps away a curtain of ivy hanging from the low branches of a sycamore. The beam from her flashlight reflects off something shiny.
“The rocket!” I cheer. “You’ve found it!” I reach out to touch it, but Lilun slaps my hand and pushes me away.
“Achs!” she hisses, her eyes suddenly hard.
I step back, confused. “Why show it to me if I can’t touch it?”
But it’s not the rocket she wants me to see. She crawls behind it and pulls out a sack, rattling with loose objects.
I sit on a log and wait, pondering. She has the rocket.
A rocket booster, as Lukas called it. This puppy is the propelling engine of some kind of capsule. It didn’t get here on its own.
Lilun acquired the rocket and used it to fly to our side of the mesa. Now the Gaijins want her back, and they’re going to destroy us if she doesn’t get home again.
I’ve tried telling her about the attack. I’ve drawn a picture and thought she understood. Lukas fixed the rocket. Why doesn’t she fly back? Where’s the capsule she used to get here? Maybe it’s too dark to fly it. Maybe at the crack of the dawn, when the light comes out… Except the crack of dawn will be too late.
I scratch my head, puzzling over our options. Did the rocket end up here after Yuri and Cal set it off or did she retrieve it herself? She wouldn’t be strong enough to lift it on her own, not with just one hand anyway, but she could’ve rolled it down the ravine. What happened after that? Lukas claims he lost the signal for several hours, until it finally popped up again on his data feeder. Why is he not here, then? Last time we talked, he was going to get Dottie and Wes and together they were going to retrieve the rocket.
Lilun sits in front of me and sets the bag on her lap. The bag is closed at the top with ties and she struggles to untie them with her only hand. I slide next to her, untie the knot, and widen the opening. The beam from the light clipped to her forehead falls on Mom’s old prosthesis, which she’s packed together with a few other items: the blue blanket I’ve seen in her niche; some spare engine parts, from the rocket, I’m guessing; the white, seamless box I’d found on the ground next to the blanket.
I pull Mom’s prosthesis out. “You’ve got to wear this,” I say. “It’ll make things a lot easier. Let me show you.”
My hands shake as I take her wounded arm and unwrap the gauze around it. Here I am, teaching a Gaijin girl how to use a rudimentary prosthesis when our people are about to be destroyed by her people. The realization that she may be the cause of all this doesn’t help. I find myself helpless, unable to fly the rocket lying just a few feet away from me. So I do the only thing I would’ve done in any other circumstance, if the world weren’t about to end and four hundred lives about to be endangered.
I help her wear the prosthesis.
Maybe, once she learns how to use it, she’ll agree to fly back home. Maybe she can still be back in time to avoid carnage. Maybe the world won’t end after all.
Lilun’s wound is capped with dried blood. The flesh around it is swollen and red but it’s starting to scab over, and, as far as I can tell, it’s clean and free of infection. I take the prosthesis and fit the cup snuggly over the stump of her severed wrist. She winces and stifles a yelp but doesn’t offer any resistance.
“I know,” I say. “It’s painful for a while, until you get used to it. It’s like wearing a new pair of shoes.” I grin and try to read her face, but the light clipped to her forehead b
urns my sensors, and all I see is white. So I return my gaze to her arm, secure the cup around her wrist, and then tell her to use it.
It takes a few attempts before she realizes how to control the clamp, and once she does, she practices plucking things from the ground: a stick, a rock, a bunch of weeds. She then dips the prosthesis into her bag and fishes out the seamless white box I saw yesterday in the niche.
“Garah no hookj,” she says, as if I knew exactly what she meant. But that’s what I’ve been doing, too, talking to her as though she can understand me. And in a way, we did manage to communicate.
I reach over and cover the light on her forehead.
She understands, reaches for a button, and turns it off.
I can’t decipher a word she’s saying, but at least now I can try to read her face.
Holding the white box with the clamp of her new prosthesis, Lilun brushes a finger along the edge and somehow makes it click open. A small disk—about the size of my hand—sits nestled in black foam lining. She carefully takes it out, holds it up in her open palm, and presses the center with her thumb.
Something zaps out of the disk so fast all I see is a flash. A metallic sound thrums through the air, and the tree branch across from us comes down with a loud swoosh. I run to check it out. A piping hot metal cable is wrapped around the five-inch-thick branch, fastened so tightly around the wood it dug half an inch into the bark. Smoke hisses from the groove it etched.
Another click, and the cable unfastens and vanishes. Lilun grins.
“Wait,” I mumble. “Is that… Is the cable wrapped inside that disk? Did you release it with just the push of your thumb? Just like that?”
Lilun pushes the disk into my hands. I hold it between my thumb and index finger. It weighs a lot given its small size, and the edge all around is seamless, just like the box that contained it. I brush a finger along its side, but I can’t find a dent or a hole from which the cable shoots out.
A red circle flashes in the middle of the disk.
Lilun looks at me and nods. I point the disk to a tall branch about twenty feet away and press the red circle with my thumb. The cable zaps out, jerking my hand backward from the recoil. Leaves rustle and another branch comes down, filling the air with the reek of scorched wood and resin.