by T. S. Hall
Mr. Swan rushed through the hallway. Out of the black smoke, a series of lights escaped, shooting through and striking Swan on the shoulder. He hit the wall violently, crumpling onto the ground. Dax screamed, shooting at the shadowy figure that moved forward. He hit it in the chest, and it collapsed. Tanner pulled out the nova grenade and rolled it along the ground as three more black shadowy figures burst through the opening. He shot the orb with the pistol, grabbing Dax and stumbling along the linoleum floor. The orb imploded, sucking in the matter around it, and then exploded violently, collapsing the tunnel and room around it. A piece of the ceiling shattered, falling on top of Tanner. He crashed to the floor, surrounded by dust. Dax tossed off the shard of rock and turned his friend over.
“Tanner, Tanner!” he yelled, shaking his friend’s unconscious body.
Tanner grumbled, signaling he was alive. Dax pulled on Tanner’s shirt, dragging him toward Mr. Swan, who had his hand pressed against his blackened shoulder. Dax pulled back his bloodied palm to reveal a wound the size of an orange.
“Are you guys all right?” Allora asked, kneeling down to examine the three. “Oh God, we gotta get out of here.”
Allora took the sapphire cube in her hand and went to the only one who might have answers to the artifact’s origin. She rolled the big balloon ball and pulled the elf’s head up to the top, pushing it against one of the shelves that lined the middle of the room.
“I need you to tell me what this is,” Allora said, placing the sapphire object in front of the elf’s eyes.
“Well, why didn’t you ask? Of course I’ll tell you,” the elf said, and then he stuck out his tongue.
“I have no time for your sarcasm,” Allora said, picking up a vase and tossing it onto the ground.
“Hey! That was a priceless ancient dryad vase!”
“Then tell me what I need to know!” Allora said, picking up a glass orb.
“Wait, wait, wait,” the elf pleaded. “Please don’t break that. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“Ms. Smith, there is way too much movement in the square,” Brutus said, followed by a grunt from his partner. “Looks like they are preparing to attack.”
“What you have there is an ancient shipping departure cube,” the elf said. “It tells you the location where a ship departs from. It’s used for tracking purposes. It goes into a sapphire orb, which acts like a black box or shipping manifest for one of the older carrier models. It’s thousands of years old. If you’d like to part with it, I’m sure that I could get you a fair price.”
“How do I access the information?”
“You can’t.” Allora pulled the glass orb above her head and looked down at the ground. “Stop! You can’t access it because you’re missing the orb that it plugs into. The ancient carriers used information orbs to store shipping manifests and critical flight information. The departure and destination cubes are detachable for security reasons so that if someone finds the manifest, they can’t find out the locations for where the ships departed from and where they went. Mostly used for military intelligence or other clandestine operations. The Triple S use a similar system. You’ve got to find the sapphire orb.”
The shadows in the square appeared and moved quickly toward the shop. The two guards began firing, shattering the front windows as Tanner and Dax helped Mr. Swan out of the hallway. They put him down, grabbed their pistols, and ran to the other windows. Brutus suddenly fell backward onto the floor, his chest smoking. The front side of the shop had been hit with a barrage of hadron bursts as the number of shadows increased.
Tanner saw a small orb flying toward the front door and screamed for everyone to get down. The entire front side of the shop imploded and then exploded into the square. Allora flew against the wall, collapsing a shelf on top of herself. She pushed the debris from her body and pulled up her pistol. Her vision was blurry, and all she could hear was ringing. Between the splintered wood of the large hole in the shop, she could make out a couple of blurry black shadows advancing. There was no escaping. Then she felt a violent shaking, like an earthquake. Screams came from the square as streaks of blurred light shot down from the sky. Allora stumbled as she tried to gain her footing. From all fours, she scanned the double image of her friends as they escaped the debris. Allora crawled forward, blinking several times. From the sky, numerous soldiers jumped from five transports that hovered thirty feet above the square. They fanned out, taking out the remnants of the shadow gang as they scattered.
Allora’s vision was coming back as a woman approached, clad in a full battle suit. She smiled at the worried woman, who was screaming her name. Once the adrenaline had receded, Allora collapsed onto the hard stone. The last things she saw before the world went black were the bright-blue eyes of Jakar, staring from the alleyway. She smiled at him, closed her eyes, and dropped into her dreams.
Thirteen
BUBBLE
Allora woke and nearly fell off the bed when she saw the skeleton head of a bear staring at her from the headboard. Covering her was a thick bear hide. All around the small cavern were random weapons, ancient Chinese pottery, human skulls, and wooden furniture. She rolled over to her right, where an albino ferret was perched on the side table. It was still, like that of a stuffed animal. Allora tried to touch it, and the creature shrieked, which made Allora scream. The animal leapt up on her head and scurried down under the covers. Allora quickly got out from under the sheets as a white warlock burst into the room.
“What is going on, child?” Yeti asked, watching Allora dance with a disgusted look on her face. The ferret popped its head up from the bear hide and chirped. “Oh, I see you met Snowball.” The ferret crawled along the bed and jumped up onto Yeti’s shoulders. “Come on, deary. We are having pancakes.”
Allora followed Yeti through the archway, into a narrow tunnel, and out into a vaulted cavern where all of her friends were seated, stuffing their faces at a long rock table.
“Hey, how ya feeling?” Tanner asked as Allora sat down on a smooth, flat boulder, still wearing the same clothes as the previous day.
“A little dazed, but still in one piece.”
“You guys are lucky,” Yeti said, grabbing some more yak milk from a snow-filled compartment in a makeshift kitchen. “Those shadow gangs can be ruthless. The interior defense force has been trying to eradicate them, but since Shangri-La is overcrowded and only getting worse, they’ve seemed to be growing in numbers.”
“Milly, I’ve been trying,” a man said from the other side of the cave. “They won’t listen to me, no matter how hard I try to convince them.”
“Are they blind or just cowards?”
Two figures rounded the corner of the cave and walked through the vaulted opening. Milly and Captain Theus marched over to the rock table.
“You four sure know how to make a splash,” Captain Theus said.
“Are Brutus and Grunt alive?” Allora asked.
“Yeah. They are getting checked out at the hospital. Mostly just bruised egos, and they received a nice little earful from your mom here.”
“Maybe if they did their jobs, I wouldn’t have had to berate them,” Milly said, still angry about the whole incident.
“Mom, it was my fault,” Allora said. “I made them stay longer than we should have.”
“Oh, I got the whole story, missy. Those guards were very forthcoming with information. What were you doing in that shop?”
Allora hesitated, anticipating her mother’s reaction. She pulled the sapphire cube from her pocket and held it out in her palm.
“I’m following Ben’s memories. It’s a departure cube for some ancient ship during the Titan Wars. It’s supposed to lead us to the lost city of Alexandria.” Milly took it in her hand, rolling it over. “The shop owner told us what it was.”
“Theus?” Milly said.
“Already on it,” he responded, sparking his communication bracelet. A head popped up. It was another guard—stoic, serious, and fully clad in uniform.
“Toom. Do you have that shop owner in custody?”
“Yes, sir,” the guard responded in a deep voice.
“Keep him there. I’d like to interrogate him for a bit. Double the guards on him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you four to stay here until I get back,” Milly said, handing back the cube. “Yeti, do you have some time to teach these guys a few things while I’m away?”
“How about bubble jumping?”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
She quickly went back through the cave entrance.
“Does anybody else think it’s weird that my mother didn’t just explode?” Allora asked, still perplexed by the abnormal restraint.
“Oh, she already knew about your little quest,” Yeti said, flipping a pancake. “Swan spilled the rice before you left.”
“Beans,” Dax corrected. “Spilled the beans.”
“I think that you are more likely to spill rice than beans,” Yeti added.
“Hey, where is Swan?” Katie asked.
“Oh, he left about an hour ago with Abe,” Yeti responded, flipping another pancake on the coal-fired stove. “Not sure what they were up to, but it seemed important.”
After they cleared the table, Yeti led them to a storage room that was filled with all sorts of clothes, climbing gear, tents, backpacks, hats, shoes, skis, poles, and other gear they found around the Himalayas. They took a spoonful of warming liquid to keep their temperatures up and then stepped through the liquid rock security wall at the cave’s entrance and walked out into the frigid mountain air. The sun shone down on a beautiful white, snowy landscape. Rocky mountain peaks jutted up from a long valley of powdery snow. They stood on a ledge, staring down fifty feet to a snowy descent. In the distance, Everest loomed with a ring of clouds circling it. The wind gusted through, blowing specks of ice against their exposed cheeks.
“So first we’re going to learn how to create a bubble underneath our feet,” Yeti said. “I want you to close your eyes, pull in the hadrons, and push them into the bottoms of your feet. You’ll need to focus the energy in a straight line, or else it will dissipate out from the sides.” As Yeti spoke, she lifted up from the ground, standing on an invisible bubble of energy. Then she dropped down slowly. “Your turn.”
They all closed their eyes and tried to mimic the lesson. Allora started to get one of her feet to lift but stumbled as the other wouldn’t move. She tried over and over but couldn’t quite get it to work. After an hour, Tanner was finally able to create a full bubble and contain it for a minute. He helped the others until they were all able to create full bubbles.
“Now comes the hard part,” Yeti said, stepping out onto the edge of the cliff. “You’ll need to create a bubble that will slow your descent and cushion the fall into the snow.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Katie said, peering over the side.
“Come on. It’s easy. Just feel the hadrons flow in a circular pattern, pushing up on the bottoms of your feet. And don’t worry. I’ll be down at the bottom in case you are not able to do it.”
Yeti stepped to the edge, looked back, smiled, and then fell. They all leaned over, watching as she reached ten feet off the ground, slowed, and stopped inches from the small crater that was created from the pressure of the energy beneath her feet.
“Who’s first?” Dax asked.
“Not it,” Katie said.
“I’ll go, you chickens,” Tanner said, his toes on the cliff’s edge.
Without warning he stepped off the cliff and dropped quickly. Miraculously, he was able to create a perfect bubble, slow his descent, and drop down into the powdery snow almost exactly as Yeti had done.
“Show-off!” Dax yelled, cupping his mouth.
Allora decided to go next. She looked out onto the white landscape, took a deep breath, and stepped off. She waved her arms like a windmill, trying to make sure her balance kept her feet going downward. Focusing the hadrons in her body, she pushed them into her feet as she watched the ground coming at her. Her right side was able to push down a bubble, slowing her descent, but her left side didn’t work, making the bubble lopsided. Panicked, Allora accidentally pushed down further, which created a larger bubble on one side. The energy contained underneath her acted as a spring, flipping her sideways, spinning her erratically, and then crashing her into the snow with her feet in the air. Allora gasped at the cold cocoon and kicked her feet. Yeti stomped in the snow and pulled Allora’s feet into the air, laughing at Allora’s white face as she spit out snow.
“I don’t think I did that right,” Allora said as Yeti let her down.
They looked up at the twins, who kept moving back and forth from the cliff’s edge. Then both leapt off at the same time. Yeti could tell that they weren’t slowing, and she pushed both hands forward right before the twins hit the ground. They both bounced off the bubble and flew overhead, diving headfirst into the snow.
“Not exactly the most successful outing, but not too many get it the first time around,” Yeti said, pulling the twins out by their legs. “The launch will be easier.”
“Yeah, right,” Katie said, wiping the cold flakes from her face.
From the snow, Yeti instructed them to create a bubble of energy underneath themselves as they had done before. Once they were all able to lift off from the snow, Yeti faced out toward the long valley of white.
“Now you’ll need to push down on the bubble as if you’re bouncing on a spring, and then concentrate additional hadrons through your legs. As you come up, push everything you have downward. This will launch you into the air.”
Yeti demonstrated, rocketing over a hundred feet into the sky and dropping down over two hundred feet away. She returned the same way, landing cleanly in front of them.
“I got this,” Dax said confidently, stepping forward.
He created the bubble underneath himself, bounced, and pushed down. When he launched, his feet came out backward, flipping him straight up. He screamed as his body kept flipping in cartwheels and then dropped back into the snow a few feet in front of the group. They sloshed through the powder, stopping at the perfect silhouette of Dax’s figure lying prone.
“That was graceful,” Tanner said, extending Dax his hand to help him up.
Allora chose to go next, hoping to redeem herself after her last attempt. After getting a few more pointers from Yeti, she created a bubble, bounced, pushed all of her energy down, leaned forward with bent knees, and launched herself into the air. The wind rushed at her as she flew upward. When Allora started her descent, she rotated her feet forward and focused her body’s hadrons downward. As she got closer to the ground, the flowing energy made her lopsided again, but this time she corrected it. The landing wasn’t perfect as she wobbled toward the snow, but she was able to drop down without incident. Once on the ground, she raised both arms into the sky like a gymnast after her event. Muffled cheers echoed from the others. Tanner followed. He successfully completed a bubble jump on his first try and landed it perfectly. Allora jokingly sneered at his cocky smile.
Yeti helped Katie as she struggled to complete the jump. It took her twenty more cracks at it before she was able to get into the air.
They all spent the rest of the day jumping in the snowy valley, getting better with each new attempt. When the sun dipped into the western mountain range, they all jumped back toward the cliff. The precision jump to the ledge was much more difficult, but they all managed to do it after a few awkward shots.
When they stepped back through the liquid cavern wall, Milly and Mr. Swan were quietly talking at the stone table, while Abe was brewing tea. Snowball lay curled up with his fur on top of his right shoulder. His beady black eyes peeked out at the new arrivals.
“How’d it go?” Milly asked.
“Well, they need a little more practice, but not bad for their first time out,” Yeti responded, grabbing the tea tray and placing it onto the table. Everyone pulled off their gloves and grabbed the warm mugs, cu
pping them with both hands to warm their frozen fingers.
“How did the interrogation go?” Allora asked.
“Not so well,” Milly said.
“Pipmar is dead,” Mr. Swan said. “Someone got to him before we could get there.”
“How did that happen?” Allora asked.
“We’re not sure,” Mr. Swan said, leaning his elbows on the stone. “Whoever got to him poisoned the food that was brought into his cell. Theus is reviewing the logs and surveillance.”
“Now what?” Tanner said.
“Against my better judgment, we’ve decided that you four should continue to search for the lost city of Alexandria,” Milly said, causing Allora to cough and spit her tea. “If this scroll is as important as Mr. Swan claims, it may be just what we need to figure out what Salazar has planned for Earth. I’d have preferred that he do this on his own.” Milly said slowly. She glared at Swan and then looked toward Allora. “But since you’ve got some of Ben’s memories, it may be easier for you to find it.”
Allora was so excited that she knocked over the brass teapot as she hugged her mother.
“There is a condition to this. You must have one of us with you whenever and wherever you go outside of Sandy. It’s getting far too dangerous. Promise me?”
“I promise.”
Milly leaned over, eyeing the rest of them.
“We promise,” they said in unison.
After saying goodbye to Abe and Yeti, they went to the back of the cavern and down a long tunnel toward the stationary portal room. Allora walked with Milly in the back of the group.
“Why the change of heart?” Allora asked.
“My brother always tried to convince me that you were supposed to play a part in his plans to find these artifacts. We fought for years about it. I made him a promise that if the time should come when you found his path yourself, I’d support you, even if I didn’t agree with it, which I still don’t.” Allora smiled with guilty satisfaction upon hearing her mother’s words. The tunnel opened up into a wide staircase that led into a chamber. “That doesn’t mean that you get to run off on your little adventures whenever you like.” Milly stopped before they met the others at the stationary portal room, grabbing Allora by the shoulder with two hands. “I’m serious. There are people who will stop at nothing to find us and kill us. Until we can figure out a way to find another safe place to live, you must be as cautious as possible.”