Ahead of them, Avril stood impatiently with her arms crossed, watching them move over the train. Dane was behind them, still stepping back and forth, practicing with his Lancet. He was drenched, but showed no signs of weakening. The rest of the White Helix waited there as well.
“What’s Avril going to do with us?” Mira asked.
“Avril isn’t going to do anything with you,” Masyn said, gently lowering her feet back down and walking again. “It’s not her place. It’s Gideon’s.”
“Gideon’s your leader?” Mira asked.
“Our teacher. A great man.”
“Because he makes you strong?” Holt asked back carefully. It was a phrase he’d heard the White Helix use a number of times. It must mean something. Masyn turned around and studied him curiously.
“No,” she said. “The Pattern does that. Not Gideon.”
“You mean the Strange Lands,” Mira said. “How do they make you strong?”
“By weeding out the weak,” Castor answered. “When one of us falls, the rest grow stronger.”
“How Darwinian of you,” Holt observed.
“Gideon says it’s the way of all things,” Masyn continued, slowly somersaulting backward. “Here most of all. It’s making us ready.”
Ready for what? Holt wondered. He started to ask more, then froze, looking past the train to the end of the bridge. “Where’d your pals go?” he asked. There was no sign of the White Helix now. All ten of them were simply gone, as though they had vanished. Everyone turned and followed Holt’s gaze, staring at the empty space at the end of the bridge where Avril and her Arc had been.
“That’s … never a good sign,” Masyn stated, alarmed.
“Well, that makes me feel much better,” Holt replied.
“If they’re gone, they have a reason.” Castor unslung the Lancet from his back. Masyn did the same. “Keep going.”
Holt didn’t argue. He started moving again, faster than before. One step, another—and then something flashed ahead of them, near where the others had been. Something big—reflective enough that it amplified what little light there was in the darkened landscape.
“Outlander!” Castor exclaimed behind them.
“Holt—” Mira started in exasperation.
“Wait,” Holt said, staring ahead.
“There’s nothing there but—” The air around them fizzled suddenly. Little sparkles of light materialized and floated like fireflies. Holt studied them in confusion, and then looked at Mira. Her eyes were wide with alarm.
“It’s syncing back!” she shouted, and shoved him forward.
Holt darted forward across the metal roof with abandon now. The static hiss in the air grew louder and he could feel the train underneath him begin to vibrate through his shoes. Things were about to get unpleasant.
They kept running. The end of the train was in sight, they were—
The sparkles in the air doubled, tripled, became so many that Holt’s vision turned white. The hiss of static drowned out everything. Then a jarring roar filled the air as the train and the bridge violently reconnected with the timeline.
Holt heard Mira scream, thought he saw Castor and Masyn leap clear in flashes of purple. The world upended, the aurora in the sky rolled past over and over, as the sounds of grinding metal and snapping wood filled the air, Holt free-fell down toward—
Everything went pure white.
Within the white he saw something. Something familiar. Holt saw Zoey. Standing still, staring at him, all around her a strange, vibrating flux of colored light that was both a part of her and separate at the same time.
There was a sound like a powerful, punctuated blast of distorted noise, and a quick wave of heat. Holt gasped, his stomach clenched, his ears rang …
He rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes.
Through the eerie, twisted fingers of dead trees, the strange aurora wavered. He wasn’t in the middle of a raging river or crushed beneath tons of train cars. He was alive in the woods, and everything was quiet.
Mira stared at him, also on her back, her eyes full of confusion. “I saw…” she started slowly.
“Zoey,” Holt said, holding her look.
A strange, electronic rumble sounded above them. They both looked up …
… right into the red, green, and blue three-optic eye of an Assembly combat walker. Five legs, a powerful, blocky body, armor bereft of color. It was the same one that had appeared twice before, and now it stood almost on top of them.
It was so surprisingly surreal that neither really reacted. They just looked at it, stunned, watching the strange eye whir and spin, left and right, studying them back.
“Hi, Holt,” a tiny voice said behind them. Both Mira and Holt turned. Zoey stood there, smiling. “Hi, Mira.”
Each of them stared at the little girl with the same blank look.
“Zoey…” Mira whispered, still unsure. It only took a few more seconds before it all clicked. “Zoey!” Mira lunged toward the little girl and pulled her close. Zoey giggled at the attention.
Before Holt could move, something big and furry slammed into him and knocked him back to the ground. Max wiggled on top of him, licking his face. Holt laughed and petted the dog, rubbing his head and ears. He felt just as much relief seeing Max as he did Zoey. He hadn’t really been sure if he would ever see either again.
Holt looked past Max at Zoey. The little girl stared through Mira’s red hair and smiled at him. “I get a hug, too?”
Mira let Zoey go and watched her run to Holt. He looked at Mira as he held her, and they shared the same emotion.
“You okay?” Holt asked Zoey.
“Yeah,” Zoey said. “Ambassador brought me here. I asked him to.” Behind them came the same strange, distorted rumbling. Slowly, both Holt and Mira turned back to the huge, silver walker. It just sat there silently, watching and hulking over them. Holt felt the first stirrings of apprehension.
“Don’t worry, Ambassador’s nice,” Zoey said. “He’s my friend. I think.”
“Is that right?” Holt asked, not entirely convinced.
“Well, he’s not really a ‘he,’” Zoey continued. “The Assembly don’t have boys and girls, but that’s how I think of him.”
“It has a name?” Mira asked, studying the thing warily.
“I gave it to him. He was going to take me to the Tower, but I wanted to go with you instead. He has to do what I tell him. It’s pretty cool, actually.”
“If that’s the case,” Holt said, “have you thought about … maybe telling your new friend to disappear back wherever he came from?”
Zoey shook her head. “That’s the only thing he won’t do.”
“Of course.” This was getting more confusing by the second. Holt wasn’t sure, but it seemed like, somehow, this thing had not only saved Zoey’s and Max’s lives, but his and Mira’s as well. That still didn’t make his feelings for the thing all warm and fuzzy. It was an Assembly walker, a big, weird one, and every instinct told him to get as far away from it as he could.
“He has a connection with someone again,” Zoey explained. “He doesn’t like being without other voices. It bothers him.”
“Great.” Holt sighed. “World full of killer alien robots, and we get the nervous one.”
The thing’s three-optic eye shifted to ponder Holt. It rumbled its strange sound.
Holt studied their surroundings. It looked like they were in the dead trees that had been flanking the train tracks, but the tracks themselves and the bridge and the White Helix were nowhere to be seen. “Zoey, did your friend … teleport us away from that bridge?”
“Yeah,” Zoey replied, rubbing her temples. “Ambassador calls it ‘shifting.’ But he can only do it if you touch him. The pretty shape inside the machine, I mean. So … I had to help.”
“That’s why we saw you,” Mira said.
“I touched all of us at once. And the lights, did you see them, Mira? Like strings that blossom out like flowers in all kinds
of colors?”
“Yes.” Mira nodded. “They were pretty.”
“That’s Ambassador,” Zoey told them. “That’s what he looks like. In my mind, anyway. He—” The little girl cut off with a groan, clutching her head. Holt reached out for her, and Mira moved closer, alarmed.
“Max, get back,” Holt said, pushing the dog clear. “Zoey, are you okay?”
She didn’t respond, just moaned and shut her eyes tightly. Mira and Holt both held her, trying to talk through the girl’s pain, to get her to answer, but she didn’t.
Above them, the big silver walker rumbled. A stream of green laser light shot from a diode on its body and enveloped Zoey.
“Hey!” Mira shouted at the machine. Ambassador didn’t move, though his multicolored eye flickered toward Mira. “Leave her alone! You hear me? Leave her—”
“Wait,” Holt said, watching as the green light pulsed around Zoey’s head. There was something familiar about it.
“Get her away from it!” Mira yelled at him.
“I think it’s helping her,” Holt said.
Mira spun, clearly intent on ripping Zoey out of his arms and away from the—
“Look!” Holt exclaimed and Mira stopped. Zoey had relaxed. Her eyes were still shut, but she was peaceful, not in pain, her breathing soft. “They did the same thing to me.”
Mira looked at him questioningly.
“After they took us, the Hunters, after the Crossroads. I was hurt. They healed me somehow. I remember this laser light, this green light.” The energy continued to stream from Ambassador, massaging and coating Zoey’s head, taking away her pain. “It’s helping her.”
They stared down at Zoey hopefully. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and looked up. “Sorry, Holt,” she said sincerely.
Holt brushed the blond hair out of her face. “Okay, but how about we don’t do that anymore?”
“I can’t help it,” Zoey replied weakly. “It happens more, the farther we go. But I have Ambassador now. He helps me. He stops the pain. Not all of it, but some. Enough so I can still be me.”
Mira breathed and looked away. It bothered her seeing Zoey like this. It bothered Holt, too. It was all the more reason to finish what they’d come here for. The green laser light flickered off, and when it did Mira looked back up at the silver walker. Its eye shifted to her.
“Thank you,” she said. The walker studied her with its optics. If it understood, it gave no indication.
“The Max,” Zoey said softly. The dog had pushed his nose under her hands, and she was petting him.
Movement appeared in Holt’s peripheral vision. He looked up and just managed to see a blur of blue-and-red light silently leap between two of the dead trees. He knew what it meant. “Oh no.”
Before Mira could ask, Ambassador stomped toward them. There was a flash, as a sphere of flickering energy blossomed to life, a protective shell around not just the walker but all of them.
It came just in time. Figures landed all around the walker in flashes of cyan, each holding their glowing Lancets. Their masks were over their mouths, their goggles covered their eyes, a dozen of them. Through the light of the crackling shield, Holt could make out Avril, Dane, Masyn, Castor, all of them.
Holt didn’t know what those crystal spear points would do when they hit Ambassador’s shield, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out.
“Wait! Avril! Avril!” Holt yelled. The White Helix leader was right on the other side of the shield, but she didn’t turn to look. Of course she couldn’t see them anyway, with those goggles. She was using other senses now. “Avril, listen! He—it isn’t an enemy. It’s with us.”
“It’s Assembly,” Avril said with disdain, and Holt felt a little relief. At least she could hear him through the shield.
“Yeah, it is. Which means, unless you want to die, attacking it probably isn’t the best idea.”
“We will grow stronger,” Avril replied automatically.
“Damn it!” Mira yelled through the shield. “I’m sick of this samurai crap. It’s not helping!”
Avril did nothing. The Helix all around them tensed. Ambassador rumbled in anticipation.
“Avril,” a small voice said. Zoey’s voice. And, soft as it was, her voice carried. “Avril.”
The sound of it changed everything. In spite of her goggles, Avril turned toward Zoey.
“Ambassador is my friend,” Zoey said, still lying in Holt’s lap. “He won’t hurt you. You can trust me. Like you trust Dane.”
Avril slowly pulled the goggles from her eyes, and her stare locked on Zoey. She gazed at the little girl with what seemed like awe—and then slowly lowered her Lancet.
“Stand down,” the Doyen said. The others looked at her, unsure. “Do it.” Slowly, her Arc lowered their weapons and backed up.
Zoey looked away from Avril to Ambassador. The walker’s eye moved to the little girl and it rumbled. Holt guessed they were “talking,” that Zoey was suggesting similar things to the machine—and it must have worked. A few seconds later its shield flashed off, returning the landscape back to shadow.
No one moved. Everything was silent.
Avril slowly lowered herself to one knee. The rest of the White Helix did, too, removing their goggles.
“The Prime…” some murmured.
“We grow stronger,” said others.
Zoey studied the White Helix, and then looked back up at Holt and Mira. “You made new friends, too.”
“I’m…” Holt said carefully, “not sure I’d go that far.”
Zoey turned back to the figures in black and gray. She studied them one at a time, until she got to the Doyen. Her little eyes narrowed. “Can I call you Avril?”
Avril looked up at Zoey with surprise. “It … would honor me.”
“Avril,” Zoey continued. “We have somewhere we need to go. Don’t we?”
At the question, the other White Helix looked up as well, and Holt saw their anticipation begin to grow.
Avril nodded. “If you will permit it.”
Zoey smiled and scratched Max’s ears. “Okay.”
Holt and Mira shared a look. Things just kept getting better and better.
35. SANCTUM
THE GROUP QUICKLY BACKTRACKED to the train tracks and followed them through the dark. They made good time, all things considered: a dozen White Helix escorting two prisoners, an honored guest—and a giant Assembly walker that could barely fit between the rows of dead trees. Everyone kept their eyes on the silver machine, and Avril even ordered Dane to stop his grueling Spearflow march. If things went south with Ambassador, she wanted him ready. Holt could relate.
The machine was Assembly, after all. A conquerer that had helped lay waste to this planet, and it had taken Holt’s sister and his family from him. Every hardship he had ever faced had been because of the Assembly, and now he was being asked to walk next to one. Holt might be able to do that—but he would never trust it. No matter what Zoey said.
Max followed next to Holt, dividing his attention between Zoey and the silver walker. When he looked at the latter, the dog made a low growl. He didn’t like the thing any more than Holt, but it was clearly hard for Max to know how to react. It had saved his life, too.
Ambassador, for his part, seemed only interested in Zoey. She walked maybe a mile before she had to stop, the pain in her head flaring again. Holt pulled her onto his back, and she hung there weakly while Ambassador bathed her in the green laser light, easing her pain.
Wrong as it felt, in this regard, Holt was grateful for the walker’s presence. It was the only thing that could make Zoey feel better, and if he had to walk next to it for that to happen—then he’d walk next to it. Forever, if need be.
As they marched, the husks of dead trees began to dwindle, thinning out until they were gone altogether. What they could see of the dark landscape gradually shifted to something more rocky, and just as lifeless. The White Helix were split in two, one group in front of them, and the other
behind. Holt could see Castor had taken point. Masyn was gone, scouting ahead, and Avril and Dane walked nearby.
“If your home is always moving, how do you ever find it?” Zoey asked from Holt’s back. Avril looked back at the little girl with a strange look. She almost seemed nervous.
“Everything in the Strange Lands … echoes,” Avril said. “That’s the best word I’ve got; but when you’re in tune with the vibrations, with the way it hums, those echoes become easier to feel. And they all feel unique. The numbers of White Helix at Sanctum make a very powerful echo.”
“How do you sense the land?” Mira walked next to Holt, her hand holding Zoey against him, worried the little girl’s grip might weaken. “I don’t get it.”
“Sure you do. You already sense it,” Avril replied. “You call it the Charge.”
Holt rubbed his arms, flattening the hairs back down where they had lifted up. Avril was right, the Charge had become a very noticeable thing since Polestar, like constant static electricity all over him. He didn’t much care for it.
“That’s the hum,” Avril continued. “It’s all around us. You’ve just never looked without your eyes. Your eyes … confuse things. Give you too much information. You have to get rid of them in order to truly sense the Pattern.”
If that’s what the Helix believed, then it explained their black goggles. They were clearly too dark to see through.
“You don’t … run into things?” Zoey asked curiously.
Avril smiled. “No. We don’t run into anything. The Charge tells you more than your eyes ever could.”
Something flared into the sky ahead of them. A streaking line of red light, followed by two more bursts of color, flashing upward after it. Both blue.
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