by Adam Holt
“Then that will have to do,” he said. “This will happen quickly. Follow my instructions.”
We crept down the quiet hallway and stood before the door. It wept with condensation, like old glass does when it gets cold on one side. Icarus motioned to me. One guard, he said. One portal. His plan became clear. I created an entry portal in front of the Weeping Door and opened an exit outside the training grounds. Then Icarus raised his hand and knocked hard. The knock did nothing. The door must have been made of solid steel. Seconds later, we heard a faint click on the other side.
An Ascendant guard appeared, shivering and groggy. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and caught a glimpse of Icarus. That woke him up. He lunged toward Icarus—for a second—before he fell into the portal and disappeared out of sight. I closed the portal.
“Now,” he said, bounding into the dank, dark room, a room full of cages. In the cages, skinny Ascendant children huddled together in rags. Dozens, maybe a hundred of them. They staggered to their feet in a daze.
“Portals for them all,” Icarus told me. “Gather them here.”
“All of them?” I asked. “I can only do one portal at a time.”
“Then hurry,” he said. “That guard will return with friends.”
I had no idea of the rest of Icarus’s plan, but he had not led me astray yet. So many cages, so little time. Portal after portal I closed and opened. The children caught on and scrambled into the portals. Icarus shepherded them to the middle of the room and kept them calm. Outside we heard commotion. Shuffling feet.
“Hurry, Tully,” he said.
“Done,” I said, out of breath.
“Now, one big portal to the same place you sent the guard.”
“How big?” I asked.
“How big do you think?” he said, looking at the children. Outside the hallway filled with a deep buzzing sound.
Portal, portal, portal.
A thud on the door. It was thick. Was it thick enough?
Portal, portal.
Wait.
“Where’s Sunjay?” I asked, but the children were starting to cry. The door made strange creaking noises. “SUNJAY!”
A little child tugged on my tunic. He pointed at the floor, where a small latch stuck up. I ripped up on the latch and saw, deep in the dark hole, several sets of wide eyes.
Just then the Weeping Door flew off its hinges. It nearly took my head off. Without a second thought, I faced the five black staffs at the door. They lit the ends of their staffs, planning to incinerate us. Icarus, Sunjay, me. All of these alien children. Forget that.
My hands burned white hot and the children took a step away from me.
Someone roared in a deep powerful voice. Then flames burst from my hand and launched those black staffs back into the corridor. The flame died. The enemy was gone. And the roar had come from deep within my throat.
A hand gripped my shoulder and reminded me of my injury. I spun around and looked into Sunjay’s bruised face.
“Big fast portal!” he yelled, reaching out to me for support.
Right.
In a flash we had what we needed. The kids filed into the entry portal with Icarus taking up the rear.
Safe houses. That’s what Icarus called them. This is when I knew that he was a genius. Leading the Outlander children, we portaled our way across the Fourth Step. We took exactly the same route back to Adele’s house, so I could portal us to every stop, and every stop was a safe house.
We dropped off the kids in groups of three or four, sometimes in back yards, sometimes on street corners, often at houses. It was tiring work, but within an hour we dropped off every captured child with one of the Friends of the Encountered. That left the three of us.
“What happened?” I asked Sunjay, when Icarus finally let us take a break.
“A scanner,” he said, “outside the theater. After Operation Grabitha went bad. The scanner caught me and these other Outlanders. He started kicking them. They were little kids, Tully. And I tried to fight him. A few of them got away, but I don’t remember after that. Just being cold and in that hole.”
Sunjay grabbed hold of me and buried his head in my chest. I could only imagine what he saw. After he composed himself we managed the last few portals to Adèle’s apartment. She was waiting for us. It was near morning.
“Merde!” she whispered, when Icarus and I stumbled in with Sunjay. “Irresponsible. Always at the wrong time. Where have you been? Oh, out with this little idiot. And you found another one!”
“Yes, just this one,” Icarus said, looking at me knowingly. “Spaceboy couldn’t sleep and I took him to the bridge. We ran across this young Outlander and saved him from a scanner.”
“Fine, our powers return, you convince me to march,” she said, “and then go wandering off into the night – I almost said a prayer for you. You almost made me pray!”
“Ah, then you are welcome,” he said. “Now let me put this one on the couch. He will need my care.”
“Boy on the couch – blood on the couch,” she said. “And if I find—”
Adèle stopped abruptly. Janice knocked her out of the way. She smashed Sunjay against the couch with a hug. And I thought Janice was excited to see me. Not even close. Adèle dropped her shoulders. She put a hand on her head looking at Janice and Sunjay whispering to each other.
“Uh, pain. Hug. Not okay,” Sunjay said.
“Now you know how I felt,” she said.
All the tension melted from Adèle’s face. She looked at Icarus and shook her head.
“Carpool,” said Adèle. “You did not tell me you had a boy.”
“His name is Zaxon the Almighty,” said Janice, laughing through tears. “He’s an idiot and – we’re friends.”
“Ah, I have an idiot like this, too,” she said, pushing Icarus, who smiled. She held up her hand, and her ring finger shined. No, it was a tattoo of a golden ring. She shook her hand and the ring vanished like magic. These two are married? No way! Adèle smiled her fierce smile, but still, she never looked at me. I was glad. She didn’t trust me, and I thought she might read something on my face. Icarus didn’t explain our whole adventure.
I backed away and looked at the four of them. Two humans. Two aliens. Two…couples…back together. All of us were safe for the moment. I should have felt good about that, but there was that itch in that back of my mind. What about my dad and Buckshot? I hoped they were together. That wasn’t the itch though.
A thought gripped my mind and would not release it. A few portals, a little fire, and we saved all of those children. How hard could it be….
I stewed on an idea for the rest of the night. It took shape. It snowballed. How much help would I need… Even as Icarus shared his plans for the march, the idea gripped me. It wouldn’t be that hard for me to… Even as Sunjay stopped shivering and looked healthier under Icarus’s care… portals can keep me safe, and the river of fire can do the rest… And as I lay down before the rest of them, needing sleep, the idea kept me awake. It told me something else…take it into your hands…do what you came to do…time for a rescue of your own…
I spent a lonely day in Adèle’s apartment. Sunjay improved quickly, but the last two days exhausted both of us. He slept, and I tried to. Adèle took Janice out for food and supplies – it was weird, watching them leave together to run errands – and Icarus and Bernard planned. All the while I kept my eyes shut and did some planning of my own.
Sunjay and I finally rose around noon. Or “quarter of Jupiter,” Icarus told us. We ate and they shared their plan. “The march will begin at Christ the Redeemer,” Icarus told us. “You may go with us, if you like.” I remembered the giant statue on the beach. I had seen the real thing in movies before – a big concrete Jesus that stood on a mountain above a beach. Icarus glanced toward me. He still wanted an answer.
All I wanted was the night to come. Finally, it did.
That night there were no visions. And no sleep. Jupiter set, and in the dark night I rose
from my place on the floor. The apartment seemed perfectly still. This time, when I passed the sitting room, Icarus was not waiting to stop me. Part of me wanted him to be there, to give me some scrap of advice or convince me to do something one way or another. That was not his way though.
I wrapped Tabitha’s mood scarf around my hand, tucked Little Bacon into the belt of my tunic, and left the apartment for the last time.
PART FIVE: THE SEVENTH STEP
ROOFTOP RUN
As I bounded toward the Fifth Step, the cold air made me alert and excited. The last few days – of walls and wild histories and The Weeping Door – faded to gray. Back to the real mission. Time was short. Save her and leave.
I took an account of my resources: one half of a mood scarf, one whole Handroid, a vision of a girl in a purple tower, and my Sacred Powers. What does the Lord Ascendant have at his disposal? Hundreds of thousands of black staffs and one deadly Android.
Not exactly a fair fight. As I hopped from rooftop to rooftop, the space between the steps came into view. Occasionally I saw black staffs on the streets below me. If any one them looked up, they would blast me into space dust, but I was quiet as a cat. So was, for once, Little Bacon.
My conversation with Icarus kept coming back to me in snippets... Who are the Ascendant? Where did we originate? What is the Sacred? You can’t save anyone without answers to those questions...five times I plotted to kill the Lord Ascendant, and five times I escaped while others died. I thought about how much history was here. Thousands of years, many generations. I haven’t even scratched the surface. History, yes. Janice’s words echoed in my mind, too...Europa, Tully. It all makes sense now. They aren’t just on Europa. They are Europa. How were they connected to the myth? I still had no clue what she meant...I just wanted to reach the Seventh Step.
I reached the edge of the Fourth Step. On the streets below Ascendant guards stood watch with black staffs glowing purple. But in front of me, the coast was clear, mainly because there was no entry to the Fifth Step. Or so they think. I looked across at an imposing wall made of solid jade. Impenetrable. Just the day before I had leaped off that wall, and now I was headed back. I remembered the distance well—probably two hundred meters across the divide. Two hundred meters to the bottom of the wall. Another hundred meters to the top of the wall. Reality sank in. Stars, that’s a long jump! I can make the bottom of the step, but not the top of the wall.
Not that I needed to make the top. It would have been more convenient though. I had been on the other side of the wall, so I knew what to do.
I walked to the edge of the rooftop and looked down. One thousand feet below were a Ferris wheel and the foaming waves of the beach. That would be a long, slow plummet to death. Backing away from the edge, I walked to the other end of the roof, probably one hundred meters from edge to edge. That will have to do. There was a clock building beside me. Its hour hand hung just before 2 a.m. When that clocks strikes, you go. I positioned myself in a track stance and pretended that there was a tape stretched across a finish line at the other end of the building. Quick start, Tully. When you hear that sound, become a bullet. Run for your life. No, fly.
I closed my eyes and pictured the hour hand behind my feet. Fly. When it sounded, it would launch me toward the other end of the building. Fly, fly, fly. Time passed, I heard muffled talk in the street below. Doors opened and closed. A dog barked. Another. A cat meowed. The hand of the clock pressed hard against my heels.
There it was.
I bounded off the line, using every ounce of my legs, trying to stay low and gain speed. Step. Step. Step. My arms pumped. My shoulder burned with pain but that didn’t matter. I got in ten steps before the edge of the building loomed. One more step. And then.
Explode.
I catapulted myself into the air, the wind in my hair again. I was flying, gaining altitude, but the Fifth Step was still so far away. I will not fail, I will fly.
Halfway across it was clear that I wouldn’t make the top of the wall. Everything in me wanted to panic. My body told me that was the right thing to do. So did my brain. But not my will. My will was stronger than either of them. I took a deep breath and focused, even as the height of my jump peaked. I was started to descend in small measures.
I pictured the wall, three feet of solid marble. I could see each molecule in the marble. My will forced its way through the solid rock and out the other side into an open, grassy field. Portal, portal, portal.
Opening my eyes, I saw a glowing red circle on the jade wall. Portal, portal, portal. It grew, inch by inch, until it was almost my height. Perfect.
The only thing that wasn’t perfect was my aim. Maybe it was the wind, but I was about four feet too low.
I smashed against the wall just below the portal. A little faster and I would have knocked myself out. An inch lower, and I would not have gained a handhold with my good arm. Which I did. Low gravity comes in handy sometime.
I crawled into the portal and found myself magically transported into the garden on the other side. Well, magically transported might be an exaggeration. More like luckily mangled, or breathlessly butt-kicked. The portal was about four feet off the ground so I fell a few feet into a rose bush.
Stars, I’m out of practice, I thought, finding my footing. Fortunately there were no guards guarding the garden, or they would have seen a boy covered in thorns limping into the woods.
“Uh, sir, if you have a moment,” said Little Bacon. I looked down at my traveling companion. His head poked through a hole in his hat, which was full of thorns.
“You’re a mess right now, LB,” I said.
“I would prefer to be a little mess than a big one,” he said, plucking a thorn out of my hand. He straightened his hat and gave it a tip in my direction...before I shoved him back into the fold of my tunic.
Once undercover, I weighed my options. Sorry, our options.
We could attempt to run and portal our way across the Fifth Step just like we had on the Fourth. That was my original plan, but the streets were wider. I could not jump between buildings, and the black staffs would see me if I ended up in a street. In the distance I could see the Seventh Step, but there was no place to hide if I took that path.
Also, the gap between the Fifth and Seventh Steps was impossibly far. I could not make the jump, and I could not portal to the other side because I could not see my landing. Dangit, Icarus gave me good advice. We turned up a street and headed toward the Grand Newel, which stretched miles into the empty sky above. The street wasn’t the safest bet though. I crossed a streets, sneaked into someone’s backyard, and leaped onto their wall. Once there, I saw row after row of gardens separated by walls. Little Bacon cleared his throat. “The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française (literally, “garden in the French manner” in French), is a style of gardenbased on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature.”
I crept across the garden and found myself on top of another wall peering into a similar garden.
“…zen gardens are composed of water features, rocks, and raked sand to represent waves…”
“Are you going to do this the whole way?” I asked him.
“Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown is known as England’s last great gardener,” replied Little Bacon.
Bacon and I made quick work of the maze of gardens. Actually, I made a game of it, landing in some powerful Ascendant’s backyard and then seeing how few steps I could take before launching myself over his wall.
Finally, at the last wall the Grand Newel loomed above us. The jagged remains of the Sixth Step hung on the side of the newel, but otherwise it was a tower of smooth, impenetrable ice. Occasionally ice sheets fell from its sides.
“Stars, it must be a mile around,” I whispered to Bacon.
“By my calculation, 1.24 miles,” said Bacon.
In the darkness, the newel took on the colors of its surroundings, so it glowed red in front of the red wall.
I laid flat on top of t
he final wall and peered down at the street below. From there we could see the texture more clearly. Rectangles of different sizes were carved into the ice.
Two black staffs stood in front of the smallest rectangle, and it occasionally slid open to allow a small company of black staffs to enter or exit. I caught a glimpse of the interior, and that meant one thing.
“I can portal us in,” I told Bacon.
We waited until a group of Ascendant left. The door slid open and then slid shut. Now or never, I thought. I took a deep breath and created a portal on the ground below us, and one inside the wall. I stood up on the wall.
I waved my hands at the guards. They spotted me, which is when I jumped off the wall and into the portal I had created. The next thing they saw was a scrawny Fourther vanishing before their eyes.
The portal landed me in a dimly lit corridor that cut through the newel. I was exposed there and needed to move quickly, so I darted down the corridor toward the center of the newel. That was almost a fatal mistake. A giant black gap loomed in front of me. I teetered for a moment on a thin ledge, but my momentum sent me over the edge. I reached back and gripped the ledge with my good arm. My feet dangled in the darkness before I pulled myself up. Doing a one-armed pull-up is no problem when you weigh fifteen pounds. I found an indentation in the wall and backed against it.
The interior of the newel was hot and humid. The clanks and grinds of machinery rose from the deep. The Undercity, I thought. I peered into the blackness below my feet. Along the walls ran a series of ledges, stairs, ladders, and elevators, but from the deep there rose a hot wind. I was relatively hidden so I closed my eyes and tried to picture the Undercity. Through the red mist I pictured myself jumping off the ledge and into the deep. Down, down, down I went past the exits for the lower Steps and into a cavernous room. There I caught a glimpse of the Undercity.
What I saw horrified me.
Thousands of ships sat side by side. Some looked like the Lion’s Mane and others looked more like passenger ships. Skinny Ascendant with sad greasy faces labored on the ships, snapping on red tentacles and other unfamiliar weapons while black staffs directed their steps and yelled at those that stumbled. Forced labor. Slave labor.