My stomach protested all of the acid activity and growled loudly. I grimaced, not wanting to find the cafeteria to see what was for lunch in the midst of all of the local residents. I was still working out all of my answers.
I was to go someplace that I didn’t know to find the codes to the safes. All the others who had gone before me hadn’t come back. That didn’t bode well for me. However, once I was outside of the tech bubble, I might be able to use the firefly pixies to scout out the area. They had a little more influence with new animals. Furthermore, what did a code look like? Where could I find a code? What would keep people from finding these codes and bringing them back to Cheyenne Jr.? I guessed it was something big, bad, and evil, like a large thing that lived in a tunnel and glared out at you with large red eyes.
One might be surprised, but that wasn’t my biggest worry. I was going to have to go nail Theo down on the details of Zizi, Craig, and Delphine’s release. If I had to go with just getting Theo to allow Delphine to go free, I could contact Landers, and get him to meet us at the entrance to Cheyenne Jr. He could take her away from this so that she would be with people who would take care of her.
Landers.
I’m here, came instantly.
I—
Lulu, what’s wrong?
It’s not good. I’m trying to get them, uh, him to let the others go. He’s thinking about it. Stay close because they’ll need you when they come out.
Anger pulsed from Landers in red waves that were tangible. I caught an image of people being hurt that came from him. He was picking up on my anxiety and assigning a reason for it.
They’re not hurt, I tried to reassure him. They’re okay, but I don’t trust these people. I don’t trust Theo. He has all the right answers, but it’s like a viper is writhing about behind his eyes.
Landers didn’t respond. All I could feel was his blossoming worry threatening to balloon over both of us. You want to sacrifice yourself, he thought. It was half an accusation and half a question.
I don’t want to.
But you will.
It’s Delphine, Landers. She’s just a little girl. How can I not?
Landers’s thoughts became a black rock. He didn’t know what to think at me. He wanted to chastise me and order me at the same time. He wanted to drag me out and hurt all of the ones who had hurt me.
He…liked me.
Louise whispered, “How very intriguing.”
“Shut up, you twat,” I said to Louise.
How long? Landers’s thought was like an arrow.
Theo is on Theo’s schedule. I’m not privy to that information.
Then make yourself privy. Tell me about the setup there.
My head started to ache. I wasn’t used to whatever Landers was doing to my brain. It didn’t feel exactly right. Nausea flickered from the bottom of my stomach. I told him about what I had seen and how many people there were in the facility. I told him about Ariel the Air Force major and how they had been left in Cheyenne Jr. An image of letting Penn’s head drop to the concrete floor floated past, and I almost heard Landers’s dark chuckle. By the time I had run out of things to tell him, the nausea had nearly boiled up in my throat.
I can’t talk to you this way anymore, I thought. I don’t feel good.
Landers understood immediately. I caught something that whipped out of his brain; it had happened with other people when he’d been in their heads too long. I’ll talk to you soon, he thought, and he was gone.
I put my head between my knees and tried to take deep breaths. Slow and deeply, I breathed. The nausea began to recede.
A hand delicately touched my ankle. It was my bare ankle that I had stuck into the water. I had pulled the leg of the cammies up so that I wouldn’t get them wet. It wasn’t a grab for my flesh, but just a gentle touch to let me know I wasn’t alone.
Salome was correct. The mermaids could come into the zone; she didn’t like it much, however, based on her expression. Her flesh was milky white and her eyes the color of sea glass. When the light of the rechargeable lantern hit her eyes the right way it reflected back reddish-pink. I stared down at her, and she was no more than three feet away from me.
I could see that her hair wasn’t hair like mine. The lightly waving tendrils were more like that of a jellyfish. I struggled for the words that I had learned in some marine biology class I’d taken in college. Oral arms and tentacles. The gills at her neck showed that she was not a mammal. Her upper body had the head and arms and torso of what resembled a human being, but up close she was more like a fish that was somewhat human shaped. What I’d thought of as corpselike flesh was more pink than white. She didn’t appear as unhealthy as I had previously thought.
One of her hands reached up, and her clubbed fingers touched the place her nose would have been had she possessed one. I didn’t realize for a moment that she was trying to tell me something.
I touched my nose and realized it had started to bleed. Talking to Landers had given me a headache and more. I think that it had to do with the tech bubble more than anything else. I wiped away the trail of blood without looking away from the mermaid.
“My name is Lulu,” I said.
The mermaid jerked at the sound. Her eyes blinked, and I could tell that they were more like a shark’s eyes albeit a different color. They were solid and round instead of having an iris and a contracting pupil. I was wrong because it wasn’t all pale blue. The middle was a slightly darker color. A noise came out of her mouth, and it sounded like she was clearing her throat. She wasn’t used to being out of the water, but whatever had culminated in her ultimate features hadn’t meant for her to stay underwater all of the time. Not a mammal, but not really a fish, either.
“Lulu,” she repeated.
I wanted to yank my foot back, but there was one thing I had learned in the new world; take your friends where you can get them. There was a lesser, but not unimportant, lesson to that as well; friends might not always be human.
The mermaids might have been listening to the humans in Cheyenne Jr. for months or years. They might know a lot more than one might assume. The ill-fated Tucker had jabbed his last red-hot poker into his final victim one time too many.
“Do you understand me?” I asked. Where was Sophie when I really needed her?
The mermaid nodded.
“You’re trapped in this place,” I said.
The mermaid nodded again.
“There are lakes nearby with fresh water,” I said. “Perhaps we can take you there.”
The mermaid took this in. She stared at me with an unerring look. She was taking my measure. I had never thought about the new creatures in such a way before. Perhaps some of them had been trapped as much as Ariel. This place had been tunneled out of the mountain. The water here wasn’t ideal for animal life, but something had taken. I had heard stories about people introducing trout and fish to cavern streams to see how they survived.
They’d gone blind in the darkness. It might be water, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“Don’t…trust the others,” she said.
Well, duh. Evidently the mermaids weren’t stupid. I didn’t blame her or her kin. I didn’t trust the others.
“These people aren’t trustworthy,” I said.
“And you are?”
“I won’t make promises I can’t keep,” I said.
“And you’ll take us to this lake?” she persisted. The tone of her voice bordered on not being a question as if she knew something about me that even I didn’t know.
“A man that’s here,” I said and trailed off as I recognized confusion in the mermaid’s face, “the one with the beard. The white beard,” I added. “It’s the same color as my hair.”
The mermaid nodded again and her eyes narrowed in a way I recognized all too well. “Martin,” she said. They had been listening. In fact, some of that college geology came back to me. The rocks in the mountain were conductors of sound. The mermaids could probably hear a lot more than they migh
t be willing to admit.
“He wants me to do something for him,” I said.
“And he’ll allow those other humans to go,” the mermaid said. She had an odd accent, and I understood it was because English wasn’t her first language.
“I think he lies,” I said. “He doesn’t speak the truth.”
The mermaid stared at me. She didn’t blink, and it made me uncomfortable. Slowly she sank under the lapping edge of the black water, and I could only see a white shape before it melted away.
I understood her departure a moment later when Theo said, “Time to put your happy face on, Hasadiah.”
Chapter 18
Lulu and the Precipitous Exit
The Present – Colorado
Like I needed a reminder of such a blissful time whilst drinking martinis and cavorting on The Golden Gate Bridge with Theophilus. Not.
I braced myself to be thrown off the metaphorical bridge, but Theo didn’t move. Instead, he stared at me, and I couldn’t quite see his eyes because his back was to the light coming in from the hallway. I was between him and the rechargeable lantern that I used, so it wasn’t revealing anything either.
“You can go,” Theo finally said. “I’ll give you a map. We’ll tell you what we know about the area. We’ll give you your weapons back. All we need are the codes to the safes.”
“And the others?” I asked.
“You were right,” Theo said heavily. “We should have asked for your assistance. We’ll escort them back to Sunshine, provided we can get a guarantee that none of our people will be harmed.”
Penn should be harmed, I thought. Maybe they shouldn’t send Penn with them. Rather I said, “We’ll have our own escort. That’ll solve that problem.”
Theo considered me. I leaned back slightly so that the lantern’s light exposed his face. I wanted to see the range of emotions crossing his features. I wanted to know what he was thinking and what he wasn’t thinking. I suspected some kind of ulterior motive, and I couldn’t suss out.
“Your own escort,” Theo repeated. I could see that he was trying to work that out. “How would you arrange that without communications?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to give any secrets away, but I feared I already had.
“How would you have done that?” Theo pondered. I pulled my foot out of the water and rolled the cammis back down. “Your little friends? The firefly pixies? Isn’t that what you call them? Sometimes they’re called Tinker Bells.”
Penn wasn’t the only plant in Sunshine. I didn’t know who the other was, but I was going to find out. Landers, I thought as fiercely as I could. I needed to warn him. I needed to hear his thoughts in my head.
Lulu, came back almost instantly. He might have been standing beside me waiting for me to speak to him.
They’re coming out now. They’ll need you there to help them. Be careful of booby traps and don’t come inside the tech bubble.
We’re already here, he thought. There was a brush of something across my entire being. It was like he’d kissed my cheek, lips, and forehead all at the same time. It was warm and reassuring all at once. I opened my mouth to take a breath and sucked some air down.
There are other spies at Sunshine, I thought. I don’t know who they are.
We’re working on it, came from him. See you soon. Then he was gone.
Then I looked at the water. I could see the mermaid there under the surface. I made a motion with my hand. I murmured, “I’ll be back. I promise.” I could see her nod under the surface of the water and then there was a pale flip, and she was gone. With a little hope, the mermaid understood my dilemma. I didn’t know how I was going to arrange their exit from Cheyenne Jr. Theo had made it clear that he hated new animals. He’d called them abominations. He’d called the changed world an abomination, too. I would do it with or without Theo’s permission. The story of my life.
I awkwardly climbed to my feet using the crutch. “You know a lot about Sunshine. Was that all from Penn?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” Theo said enigmatically. “You shouldn’t get too close to the water in this reservoir. There are…creatures in there.”
I had an image of the creature from the Black Lagoon swimming just under the surface of the water while the babe in the white swimsuit swam on the surface. Theo hadn’t come any closer. It dawned on me that he was afraid of the mermaids. “I’ve seen them,” I said. “They don’t seem to want to harm me.” There was a slight emphasis on the word me.
“Perhaps not,” Theo said. “Time to go now, Hasadiah. Time to do what needs doing.”
I didn’t need any further reminders from Theo, but I limped toward him. He turned and went down the hallway, leaving Tate with another rechargeable lantern in his hand to guide me.
I made Tate wait for me as I went into the room where they’d kept me while I was unconscious. I pretended to search for a few things that I wanted. (What I really wanted was sharp and pointy, but they weren’t giving those items to me as of yet.) I think Tate knew exactly what I wanted and remained outside the room. I stood near the cot and then glanced at the sole other occupant of the room.
I approached him. Anthony of the stab wounds didn’t look so hot. He had an IV attached to one arm, and his color was about the same shade as the mermaids’ skin. “Hey,” I said.
Anthony’s eyes jerked open. From the dilation I understood that he was doped up. “Who’re you?” he slurred.
“Lulu,” I said. “I’m visiting. Tell me why someone stabbed you. Quickly.”
“Get me out of here,” he said.
“I don’t think they’ll let me,” I said. “What happened?”
“What usually happens,” Anthony muttered. “I didn’t agree with Martin. Then I tried to leave. One of the heavies, John is his name, decided I wasn’t leaving. I got the sharp end of a bayonet.”
Anthony didn’t agree with Theo. That wasn’t a big surprise. I didn’t know too many people who would agree with him even when he was acting sanely.
“Obviously, they don’t want you to die,” I said, “otherwise, they wouldn’t be taking care of you.”
Anthony barked out a strangled laugh. “Jeez, for a blonde you’re kind of stupid.”
“That isn’t very nice,” I said. “Are you saying they want you to die?”
“Open your eyes, doll face,” he muttered. “Take a good long look around and—” he stopped abruptly as his eyes skittered over my shoulder, and I knew without looking that Tate had entered the room. Anthony grimaced and said, “Thanks for the bedpan, sweetness.”
“Anytime,” I said and turned back to face Tate. The Burned Man’s face was implacable. I didn’t care for it much, and I had run out of options for the moment.
It wasn’t thirty minutes later that I walked out into the sunshine. I had lost track of the time of day inside the mountain, but it was headed into afternoon. I smelled the piñon-juniper woodland and the gambel oak trees as a brisk cross breeze burbled up the mountain. I said a little prayer of thankfulness for my freedom. Then I glanced over my shoulder at Craig and Zizi. Delphine held Zizi’s hand while Tate watched from the tunnel. Tate was like a vampire who feared the full light of day, or he was like a man who feared the turtle-spiders who waited just outside the tech bubble’s boundary.
Everyone was dressed, wore good shoes, and had been supplied with a backpack full of food and water. Theo wasn’t shortchanging us in that manner. To be precise it seemed somewhat overdone.
“Watch out for the booby traps,” Tate warned. “The map is in your backpack, Lulu. I suggest you read the notes carefully.”
“Map for what?” Craig asked.
“I’ll explain later,” I said shortly. I wanted to be out of the bubble and away from all things Theo. I wanted to be away from all things Tate, too, but he seemed like the lesser evil at the moment.
“You’re not coming?” I asked Tate.
“No, I’m not coming,” he said. Tate grimaced
as he realized I was being sarcastic. “Watch your butt, blondie. It’s a nice one.”
“It’s not on the menu,” I snapped.
“Where are those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups you promised?” he asked.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” I said. I’d stuff each and every one in my mouth at the same time before I shared them with him or any of the other psychos there. I’d rather give them to the centaurs. I’d probably stomp on them for good measure, too. The whole train of thought reminded me that I’d have to retrieve my own backpack from the nearby grove. “Where’re my knives?”
Tate pointed. “Just at the point where the zone ends. You can grab them on the way out. You know, after we have the door shut.”
Sounded like a trust issue on both our parts. “Tell Theo I’ll be back,” I said, hating to sound like a movie cliché because I thought I could come up with a better line. “I wouldn’t miss it. He won’t take my knives then.”
Tate shrugged. “Martin said to remind you that if you don’t come back, it’s all of our asses. You know—” he spread the fingers of his remaining hand out wide, and added—“boom!”
I didn’t need to look at Craig and Zizi to know that they had just straightened up like rebar had been inserted into their spines.
Zizi didn’t bother to ask questions; she moved forward with Delphine. After a few steps, she swooped and picked the child up. Delphine made a noise like she was surprised. “Want to say bye-bye to the fish girls,” she said petulantly.
I saw Tate’s sudden frown. “She didn’t see them,” he said. “How could the child know about them?”
“They know,” I said to Delphine. I waved Zizi and Craig forward. I wanted to be between Tate and the other three, just in case. Then Salome came to stand beside Tate.
“I’ll tell them,” Salome said to Delphine.
Craig and Zizi made it all the way to the edge of the bubble and passed through without issue. Delphine made a happy noise as they crossed over, and I knew that she was meant to be in the changed world. I limped after them, careful to keep scanning around me, expecting the third shoe to drop right on top of my hapless head. (Not a shoe, but a steel-heeled boot of a giant.) The tech bubble barrier didn’t represent safety in its entirety, but it meant that Landers and the others were waiting. I didn’t see them, but I knew they were there all the same.
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