by Lola Dodge
Tair picked up one of the milkshakes and took a sip, but headed back for the printer. “I’d like to eat at least one vegetable.”
“Potatoes are a vegetable.”
He shook his head. “That’s exactly what my sister would say.”
While he was printing his health food, Dex popped into the dining hall and slid into the seat across from me.
He helped himself to a milkshake and a slice of pizza. “Devan’s still asleep. Left her a note, but I doubt she’s twitching unless there’s an earthquake. What else do we have to do before tomorrow?”
Tair sat next to me, setting down a veggie-packed sandwich of some sort. “Teddy’s started the process on our Helix tattoos so our disguises will be set as long as Devan is recovered. We need to finalize our infiltration strategy.”
Everyone turned to me while I was mid-bite into a pizza slice. I almost choked on the cheese. “I’m going to look, but this is Alpha Citadel. There are so many ways to fail, I don’t think I’ll be able to see the safe path until we get in there.” Assuming there was a safe path. I managed not to shudder as a few of my deaths flashed. Appetite gone, I pushed the pizza away.
“I’d rather have more intel.” Knight tapped the tabletop while he thought. “We need to choose an entry point and get to where Tair’s sister went offline. We can try to trace her from there, but playing it by ear isn’t ideal. As long as Quanta can rewind us…”
“I can.” And good thing, because there was literally no way we succeeded on the first shot.
I let myself zone out a little as they dug into the nuts and bolts of the plan—what weapons and tech we needed, and where to go if we got split up. Tair would tell me the important points again later, and I wanted to start getting serious about what we were heading into.
Timeghosts drifted into place around me, showing a thousand, thousand ways tomorrow might go.
We sprint through blurred corridors, our disguises flashing on and off as Devan stumbles; Knight lies in a sea of blood, and Cipher crouches next to him, crying as blue lightning bursts from her like the beginning of a supernova; I stand surrounded by a ring of guards, with a faux Black Helix on my arm and no idea where the others have gone as bullets start to fly; Dex fights three Helixes hand-to-hand, holding his own for a moment before one lands a punch that cracks his jaw; a volley of tranq darts hits me in the chest, but Tair catches me before I hit the floor.
“You have to rewind!” But I’m already limp, drugged out. More darts hit Tair. He falls. Men in white lab coats hurry to drag us in opposite directions. They carry me past the others: Knight bleeding from a head wound, Cipher with too many holes in her chest, Dex not moving, and Devan being dragged behind me into a white room and lab experiment hell—
I gripped my arms to my body, hugging myself to keep from shaking. That last image…
We’d be better off dead.
At least seeing the nightmare made one thing clear: If I went down, so did everyone else.
I lifted my hand until the others noticed me. “This is going to be one of the most selfish things I’ve ever said—which is impressive, actually—but you guys have to protect me at the expense of everything else. As long as I’m alive, I can make sure the rest of you are alive. If things go down like they might…” I shuddered. “Dying isn’t the worst that could happen, and I’m not letting any of us end up on lab tables.”
“Christ.” Cipher shook her head. “Count me in. Anything’s better than ending up a fucking lab rat.”
Dex lifted a brow. “Dude. It’s a little selfish, but we’re all on board. As long as you’re safe, we survive. I think it’s a fair trade.”
Knight nodded. “We’ll keep in formation to protect you and Devan from the line of fire.”
It sounded so much realer when he made it all soldiery, but I knew what I was asking. They’d prioritize my safety.
I had to prioritize their futures.
In a million years, I never would’ve imagined getting a Black Helix tattoo. If anything, I’d have qualified for an artsy Orange one. Art skills, I had. The warrior skills, not so much. But being a Red disqualified me for any of the other colors, and I’d rather the whole Helix system didn’t exist at all.
Luckily, this Helix would just be a temp. Teddy said he could laser them off later without permanently staining our skin.
He stood in front of the humming tattoo device. He’d already fixed up the guys’ ink. Knight and Dex had dual Helixes that were half Black already, so it hadn’t taken much time to draw over them. He’d just finished covering over Tair’s Green Helix.
Encoding the tattoos with DNA was a separate step, and since we all had Helixes already, Teddy said we were in for a long night. He had to make sure none of our existing code got tangled up with the code of the guys we’d be impersonating. He still thought were bonkers for considering doing this, but he could think what he wanted as long as he kept helping. We were kind of bonkers.
“Who’s next?” Teddy asked.
“I’ll go.” I took a seat on the stool and slipped my right arm into the machine’s cradle. The sooner this was over, the better.
“Here we go.” Teddy punched a few keys on the screen and the little robotic arms kicked into motion. The needle pricked my skin, and then the laser flashed. It stung enough that I started to sweat a little, but it was well within my pain threshold. Prick, flash, prick, flash. I was probably supposed to look away from the laser, but I wanted to watch the stylized lines of a Helix blooming on my arm.
It was weird. I’d seen this moment so many times in other people’s pasts. For the guards that had watched me in Alpha, and even the guys we were about to impersonate, getting a Black Helix was monumental. Once they got the tattoo, they were officially in the system and had earned themselves a lifetime of the perks and opportunities that went along with being Seligo. Maybe even an immortal lifetime if they served well and got upgraded to the full UV Helix.
Now that I was getting a Black Helix of my own, it felt more like a handcuff than a big break. I hoped it got removed sooner rather than later, but that depended how successful we were tomorrow.
“Doing okay?” Tair asked.
I nodded. The sting was still bearable and the robotic arms worked fast. “Looks like I’m almost done.”
After the machine filled in the last of the color, it spritzed my arm with something cold and all the metal parts retracted. I slid out of the cradle. My skin was a little bit too red, but the tattoo itself looked perfect with smooth and even lines of black ink.
No one would ever think it was a forgery.
Except that it made zero sense on my scrawny arm. Nobody was mistaking me for a warrior.
Cipher was next up, but with as much ink as she already had, the girl was a pro. It was Devan we had to worry about. She was still passed out in the bunks, but we were going to have to wake her up soon. Tair had drifted back to talk strategy with the other guys, so I slipped out of the room without bothering them.
I spotted a timeghost of Dex and Devan and started to follow their shapes to wherever the bunks were. Figures from the past led me across a catwalk and into a tunnel that sloped downward. I wasn’t sure if we were in the cliffs or underground at this point, but the space was a lot bigger than I’d expected. More like an anthill than a beehive.
The farther I walked from the entrance, the more the crowd of timeghosts thinned. It was definitely a newer place without much history to it. Or it was so old the timeghosts had faded. Whichever, having less interference was always a plus.
The tunnel ended with a door on either side. The one on the right opened before I could pick which way to try.
A dark-haired girl jumped when she noticed me. Then she made a squeak and hopped back into her room. The lock clicked behind her.
I frowned. Was it me? Or was everyone at Roboloco skittish? It was hard to tell with so few of them around.
Rather than dwelling, I took the door on the left. I practically ate a bunk bed as I stepp
ed inside and only the flashing warning from a timeghost let me step aside in time to avoid banging my head. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Three empty bunks were squeezed in the closet-sized room and only a few centimeters separated the frames—just enough to walk through sideways. It felt stuffy and hard to breathe, and anyone who slept on the top bunk was in serious danger of getting concussed on the low rock ceiling. Whoever had built this place around the existing caves had been seriously deranged.
Devan lay on the bottom bunk in the corner, curled up in a sheet. Her pack lay at the foot of the bed, but no one else’s things were in the room. Roboloco had either lost more members than I’d thought, or Cass had been planning a huge recruitment drive.
“Devan?” I squeezed my way through to her and gently touched her shoulder. “You just have to get your tattoo, then you can go back to sleep.”
She groaned, pulling the sheet tighter around herself.
I patted her shoulder. “Come on, sunflower.”
Eventually, Devan wrenched herself upright, but she moved slow and jerky, like an 80-year-old woman instead of the youngest one here.
“What’s wrong?”
She groaned again, this time rubbing her arms. “Everything aches.”
“Your powers?” Being a Red hit us all differently. I got headaches, went in and out of touch with reality, and got super nauseated—kind of like a suped-up hangover—but all of us knew exhaustion. Devan looked a step beyond that.
“Yeah. It’s like arthritis when I use my powers too much. I just need some Vitamin D.”
I cracked a smile. “Don’t ever use that phrase in front of Dex.”
“Why… Oh.” She winced but ended up smiling.
“Let’s stop at the dining hall and get you some food. I’ll share the rest of my cake with you.”
“Cake? Sugar’s not going to work. I need, like, protein. Eggs.”
“You poor child.” I helped tug her from the bed. She still creaked a little, but the more she moved the more her muscles seemed to loosen up. When she had to balance against me, I couldn’t stop the rush of timeghosts that fluttered into place.
Devan reaches out to me as she falls, riddled with bullets; “I can’t hold it anymore.” Her face flickers between Black Helix and Devan; she collapses into Cipher’s arms, face drained of blood.
The futures kept swirling. No matter how many I checked, every path ended more or less the same.
Devan’s disguises would get us into Alpha Citadel like a charm. But after that?
There was no timeline where she could manage six full-body disguises all day without breaking. Her powers would burn out before we escaped.
Every time. No question.
Seeing the future gave me no edge. Just a million more fears.
Mostly one big fear.
Because I didn’t see any way for all of us to survive.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ALTAIR
I was starting to worry when Quanta finally appeared with Devan. Once I saw them…
I more than started worrying.
Devan looked the opposite of refreshed. She leaned into Quanta, walking so slowly I could almost hear her joints creak. Her face looked drawn, and her skin was eking toward jaundiced.
“Here.” Quanta led her to the stool in front of the tattoo unit, but rather than sitting Devan simply let her knees collapse. “We stopped and got her some dinner, but…”
Devan didn’t need dinner. She looked like she needed a season in hibernation.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Devan seemed to be addressing everyone in the room. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
Even if Devan believed her own words, her body obviously had its own ideas of her limits. “We shouldn’t be putting all the pressure on you.”
“No. Put it all on me. I don’t care if have to burn myself out. I’m getting Kiri and Aliya back.” She stuck her forearm into the tattooing cradle and then met each of our gazes with determined eyes.
Knight scratched his scalp. “We have to plan for success and failure. It’s not going to hurt anyone to have a few backup strategies in place.”
“Agreed,” I said. The girls’ Red Helix powers were our biggest asset, but also our biggest vulnerability. Burning out could mean simply exhausting herself, but on the other end of the spectrum, there was a real risk Devan could go supernova, taking half the Citadel down with her. She didn’t need any more pressure.
“Before anyone does any more planning?” Teddy waved for our attention. “Gotta encode you all.”
“Everything’s ready?” I asked.
“Just about.” Teddy tapped through the tattoo machine’s interface as it finalized Devan’s ink. She managed to get herself off the stool, and Teddy waved me to sit. “You’re up first. Green to Black is the easiest.”
I took the spot Devan had vacated and slipped my arm into the cradle. Balling my hand into a fist, I braced for the jolt.
“This part shouldn’t hurt as much,” Teddy said. “I’m just screening over your original tattoo, not erasing it. And the tat doesn’t get fused with your DNA this time, either. We just layer a section of…” He checked the name of the sample he’d loaded into the machine. “We layer a section of Pasha’s DNA on top of yours. Your white blood cells will tear that part up after a week or so, but you’ll have to come back to me if you want the ink beads lasered out.”
I understood the process, but it definitely wasn’t a standard function of the machine. And I could already guess who’d programmed it.
“Going to strap you in so you can’t move.” Teddy punched a button and bands jutted out of the machine, pinning my arm at wrist and elbow. “On three?”
“Don’t bother. Just go.” I wanted it done.
“Suit yourself, guy.” Teddy hit the screen.
Pain flashed. A pulse of lasers seared my skin.
For a split-second, it was purely localized to my arm. Then the pain radiated outward like molten razors swimming through my veins.
“It shouldn’t hurt as much?” I gritted my teeth. I expected the sensation to end after a few seconds, but it kept on burning.
“Shouldn’t,” Teddy said. “Everyone’s different.”
Sucking in another breath of cold air, I disconnected from my body, focusing instead on what was to come. This was a means to an end, and the end was Cass safe and sound.
After another minute, the laser pulse cut off and the bands retracted. Then the machine spritzed my arm with a chilling aerogel, and I was free to move back. I resisted the impulse to rub the tattoo, but I did examine it.
Full Black Helix, fully encoded. Our key into the Citadel.
“You’re Pasha Petrov now,” Teddy said, reading off the screen. “At least your arm is.”
Pasha. The boxer I’d fought. I had the contents from his pockets in my pack but wanted to do a bit more research on him before morning. Better to be over prepared in case I was recognized by someone he knew.
Ignoring the lingering sting in my arm, I clicked open my com and started to research. I’d pull up whatever public data I could find on Pasha and the others.
The more we all prepared, the more likely we’d be able to save our loved ones.
After the others endured their encoding, we sent Devan back to sleep and moved to the dining hall to finish hammering out the plan of attack. We had a general idea where Cass and the others could be, but that was a starting point, and it was already deep enough behind the Citadel walls to cause transpo problems.
“I still say we take a pod from the start. Going over water wastes too much time.” Dex pushed the tablet showing our map back into the center of the table where the five of us were clustered.
“Seriously. No more boats,” Cipher said.
“Not a good idea.” Quanta’s face scrunched up.
I didn’t need to see the future to agree with her. “If we enter through the harbor, then we can dock and walk through the security checkpoint. That gives us t
he option of running if something goes wrong. If we’re in a pod…”
“Death trap.” Quanta nodded.
No one could argue with that.
“So we enter through one of the harbors. Here.” Knight tapped the map at the southern tip of the island that formed Alpha Citadel, pointing to a spot west of the main shipping harbor. “The port is out. Too much security. But we already have the Seligo boat we stole and its codes should let us dock with all the megayachts at the marina over here.”
“The marina doesn’t get much foot traffic.” I’d only been there twice—both times on forced family boat outings—but I remembered the layout and of all the entrances into the Citadel, this would be the smartest one to try. “Even assuming Doctor Nagi has bulked up security everywhere, the marina should be the easiest entry point.” So the theory was sound, but I still turned to Quanta for confirmation.
Blue light wrapped her fingertips as she drummed them against the tabletop. “That can work. But then what? We can’t walk the rest of the way.”
“We’ll have to take some kind of pod.” We couldn’t walk and make the deadline. It was too far, and it would look too suspicious.
“Can’t we just drive?” Cipher asked.
Knight shook his head. “Nobody drives in the Citadel other than Seligo drag-racing their antiques. I don’t think the ground roads are even maintained.”
“Not as far as I know.” And I’d spent most of my life in Alpha Citadel. Either way, we couldn’t smuggle in a car. “We’ll have to take a pod at some point.”
“Whoa.” Dex lifted his hands. “Am I hearing things? Because Q just said pods were a goddamned death trap.”
“We can’t walk.” Quanta was still glowing as she gazed ahead into space. “Taking a pod once we’re inside is different than crossing the wall in a pod.”
“Yeah,” Dex said. “But also death trap.”
He wasn’t wrong. Because they were fully automated, pods were loaded with sensors. If the pod’s systems noticed anything that revealed our true identities, then it could be locked down and diverted straight to a detention center. That didn’t mean taking one was impossible. “We don’t know if the guys we’re impersonating have private pods or if they’d usually travel in a military pod. Either way, those might have voice recognition systems we can’t bypass. If we take a public pod, stay quiet, and keep our heads down…” It was still enough ifs to make my head ache, but I held onto hope as I glanced at Quanta.