Behind me, Rigel remained silent. I could feel his entire body tensing with each and every dodge and weave I put the bike through. I couldn’t help but appreciate how much he trusted me. One meter in the wrong direction, and we would both be done for. He was literally putting his life in my hands. It meant a lot for him to have that faith in me.
After a few more moments of playing in the traffic, it began to thin out, and plumes of dark smoke and steam were visible just up ahead, billowing out of an expansive industrial complex. Without a doubt, this was where we needed to be.
The crafts coming in and out of the complex were much bigger than anything else in the air. They were full of raw ore and smelted metals, heading to warehouses and stores to be sold and crafted into tools and machines. The ore came in from every mountaintop mine in the Dominion, funneled into this one plant. No wonder this city was so wealthy.
Weaving around the towering smokestacks, Killian and I steered our bikes toward a large, open courtyard on the north side of the complex. As we slowed down and descended, we knew we were in the right place. The courtyard was framed on three sides by massive heaps of rusted scrap metal, and the place was almost entirely deserted, with the exception of a few men dressed in pristine black suits. They looked just like the man from the docks, or the one guarding the Villefort warehouse. We had definitely made the right call.
After powering down the bikes, I pushed the goggles up onto my forehead, and the four of us jogged toward the nearest suited man. If it was anything like the last couple of stages, he would have something important to give us. The man we chose was short, but was rather round, and wore a thick handlebar mustache on his face. He smiled at us as we approached him.
“Congratulations,” he said warmly. “You have chosen…wisely.”
The four of us exchanged excited glances, all of us breathing heavily from the adrenaline. We didn’t say anything, though. We just listened.
“You are looking for one of these,” the mustached man said, producing a tall, thick metallic cylinder from behind his back. It had a thin, empty line going up one side of it, but other than that, it was covered in raised, textured etchings. It was very intricately carved. Maybe it was molded. I couldn’t tell. Either way, I had no idea what it was.
“There are several hidden in the refuse deposits around you,” the man continued, gesturing to the mounds of old scrap metal lying around the courtyard. “Once found, it will give you the clue to your next destination.”
Again, the four of us took turns looking at one another. But really, there weren’t really any further questions to ask. Our task was pretty clear. We needed to sift through the mountains of junk metal until we found one of those cylinders. I didn’t know how many there were, but I didn’t imagine they would be too difficult to find.
“Split up!” Killian shouted, immediately bolting toward the nearest pile of rust. None of us argued. It was the best plan. With the four of us in an alliance, we only needed to find one of them, and we could all move on. In the back of my mind, I wondered how the dynamic between us would change once the status quo was altered. When the end of the race was near, how would the four of us decide to handle it? Was someone going to betray the rest? There could only be one winner, after all.
Running a hand underneath my helmet, I scratched my cropped hair and let the thoughts out of my mind. I had other things to focus on. Watching Darby and Rigel go in separate directions, I fixed my eyes on the nearest junk pile and jogged over to it.
I didn’t even know where to begin. A cursory glance over the pile yielded no results…shockingly. I sighed and just decided to dig in, grabbing the nearest piece of cold iron and pulling it out of the way. Several smaller pieces of metal bounced down the pile, clanging loudly against each other, and I wondered if I would be able to survive if the whole pile suddenly came crashing down on me. Disregarding the danger, I continued to pull and dig through the scrap, ignoring the tons of it that was sliding down around me.
Several frantic minutes went by before Darby’s high pitched voice rang out over the courtyard. “I got one!” she bellowed.
Luckily, there was still no one around but the four of us, and we all scrambled to where Darby stood, holding the cylinder like it was a sacred object.
“Stellar!” Rigel said happily, smiling widely.
“What do we do with it?” I asked.
Instantly, the happy faces vanished, replaced with the realization that none of us knew, and we had received no such explanation from the mustache man. Common sense told us that he wouldn’t be allowed to give us any more hints, but we had to try. Sure enough, as we looked in his direction, the rotund man simply shook his head at us.
“Okay, think!” Killian said, pulling his hair into a dark ponytail on the back of his head. “What all did we get in that silver ball?
Darby handed the cylinder to Rigel. She reached into one of her belt pouches and retrieved the shining capsule, deftly cracking it open with her slender fingers. “One big piece of parchment, folded up nicely, and a bottle of black ink,” she said.
“It’s obvious that we’re supposed to use the ink and the paper,” I said, brainstorming out loud. “And surely, they’ll have to be combined with this new thing in some way.”
Beside me, Rigel was staring intently at the carvings in the cylinder’s surface, biting his lower lip as he thought. “There are letters on here,” he said after a minute, running his thumb over a section of the etchings.
Killian leaned toward him. “Letters?”
“Yeah!” Rigel said, his excitement rising again. “There’s a message. I think I know what we need to do!”
“It’s a stamp,” I said, looking at the cylinder. “That’s what the ink is for!”
Darby was already unfolding the big parchment. She had put the clues together, as well. Rigel cracked the wax seal off of the ink bottle and dripped it evenly across the metal surface of the cylinder, using his hands to smear it over every inch.
Before it could start to dry, Killian dropped to all fours and laid the paper out on the ground. “Start with the empty space!” he rambled.
Rigel knelt down beside him, rotating the cylinder until he lined up the edge of the parchment with the empty line in the carvings. Slowly, with Darby and me holding the paper in place, he pressed down on the metal and carefully rolled it across the length of it. Sure enough, it made one perfect rotation before rolling off the other edge, and before our eyes, a map had appeared on the parchment. The raised etching on the cylinder had been nonsensical until now, but now I could see the impressive work that went into the stamp. Rigel had been right, too. At the bottom, there was a short message.
“Your ship has been locked down, and you aren’t allowed to leave,” I read aloud. “Only for the price of one pearl, will your vessel be freed.”
“Elana, take the map,” Rigel instructed. “My hands are covered in ink. I’ll just ruin it.”
I took the map in my hands as we all got to our feet, blowing on the paper to make sure the ink was quite dry. I didn’t want it to smear it at all, especially since it looked like we were going to have to take it with us. It was an aerial map, and according to the longitude, it looked like our next stop after Shiloh was about eighteen hundred miles to the west.
“A pearl?” Killian said, setting his hand on his hips. “I know of them, but I’ve never seen one in my life.”
“I guess in this city, they wouldn’t be such a rarity,” Darby said, her voice bearing a note of disdain.
Rigel sighed, wiping his inky hands on the legs of his trousers, but it didn’t help. It stained his pants, and his palms were still dyed black. “Where would we even get a pearl?” he asked, his brow creased with frustration. “We can’t just ask people for one. I’m sure they’re still forbidden from helping us.”
“Well, how are they made?” Killian mused, stroking his beard. “Isn’t it…clams?”
“Oysters,” Darby corrected him. After a second, her eyes began widen
ing. “Wait a minute…Elana, didn’t you say something about oysters last night? About seafood in Shiloh?”
My jaw dropped open as the realization hit me. “Yes! Yeah, the Citadel! The big dome in the center of the city! They have seafood things in there, and one of them is definitely oysters!”
“Exemplary!” Killian said with a wide grin. “To the Citadel, then!”
Making sure the map was dry, I began re-folding it into the small square that it had been in and stuffed it back into the metal capsule before handing it back to Darby. As she tucked it back into her belt pouch, we split up to saddle up our bikes once more. We didn’t need a game plan. We all knew where we were going. The Citadel wasn’t hard to find at all. Even from miles out in the sky, you could still spot its giant dome. As we were revving up our engines, though, another person sprinted into the courtyard, and I froze, feeling my anger flare suddenly beneath my flesh.
Audra.
Before my mind could even catch up, my body had already stepped off the bike and was stomping toward her. From behind me, Rigel was calling my name, but I ignored him. A film of rage had been draped over me, and the logical world could not reach me. In front of me, Audra had stopped at the same mustached guard that we had spoken to, and he was in the middle of his riddle-like speech when I grabbed the straps of her leather chest holster and spun her around, yelling with effort as I slung her into the nearest pile of scrap metal.
She landed with a cry of shock and pain, and turned to face me. Before she could say anything, I was upon her, my hands pinning her elbows out beside her. I moved in and slammed my hips against hers, rendering her motionless. I enjoyed the momentary feeling of power I had over her.
She let out a groan as her mouth twisted into a sick smile. “Silver…you going to make this worth my while, or what?”
“Shut your mouth,” I growled. “I know you killed my mother.”
The grin faded from her lip, and her face relaxed into a cold smoothness. “I’ve killed a lot of people. I can’t keep track of them all.”
“It’s on your stupid cape!” I snarled at her, shoving against her in the hopes that there was something pointy jabbing into her back.
Beside use, one of the arbiters was moving toward the commotion. I had to make this quick, or I’d end up being sent home early.
Audra smiled, and her cocky façade began to reappear. “So do it,” she said, her dark eyes boring into mine. “Kill me. Go ahead, I can see you want to. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
I squeezed her biceps as hard as I could, trying to dig my fingertips into her skin. She didn’t say anything else, but she began eyeing my mouth hungrily, looking like she wanted to either kiss me or bite me. It was enough to slightly unnerve me, and either way, I didn’t want it to happen.
“Before everything is over,” I whispered to her. “I will kill you.”
In the next instant, Rigel was grabbing my shoulders and dragging me backward, away from Audra. “Are you crazy?” he grumbled. “They’ll disqualify you, for crying out loud.”
I said nothing. Now that I was apart from Audra, my thoughts were much clearer, and he was right. I was stupid to accost her, especially so violently, right in front of several race arbiters. I felt embarrassed, but I also wasn’t sorry I had done it. Audra had been getting the best of me for the last several days, and it felt stellar to have finally given her a taste of it.
As I mounted up on the bike, Killian and Darby rose into the air beside me. “You gonna be all right?” Rigel asked. His scolding tone from earlier was gone.
I nodded, pulling my goggles over my eyes again. “I’m fine,” I told him.
Pulling the handlebars back, I shot us up into the air, spinning starboard to follow Killian before cranking the throttle. Luckily, our route took us around most of the heavy traffic of downtown, but we still had to dodge a few stray taxi-cabs and personal craft. The Citadel loomed in front of us, and we had our eyes trained on it. Nothing was going to stop us now. With any luck, Audra was still fumbling through piles of scrap metal, and she was our closest competition.
Huge and ominous, the Citadel’s dome was an architectural sight to behold. It was perfectly rounded, with a diamond lattice pattern made of concrete, each cell filled with thick, smooth glass. Around the base of the dome were guard shacks, space evenly all the way around, and a massive arching door, which would allow all kinds of vehicles and personnel into the structure. On top of the thing, there was a large, circular hole. I wasn’t sure, but I assumed it could be opened and closed at will, depending on the weather. I wondered if I could just fly this hoverbike straight through that hole, but it didn’t look quite big enough. Instead, Killian and I both targeted our bikes toward the massive front door, which was flanked by two arbiters in black suits, one man and one woman.
I set my bike down just a few yards away from the woman, who was standing guard on the left side of the door. She watched us, intrigued, as the four of us powered down our vehicles and dashed over to her.
“You’ll find the doors locked. You can only exit through them,” she said mysteriously, peering out from underneath her black, perfectly straight bangs. “There is only one way to enter inside.”
“The roof,” I said, already having suspected it.
The woman simply nodded her head as a confirmation, and Rigel immediately tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on!” he shouted, starting our bike back up.
I walked back towards him. “This thing won’t fit through that hatch up there,” I said. Despite my own logic, I threw my leg over the seat behind him and wrapped my arms around his chest, feeling his warmth radiating into me.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I can get you up there so you can get in.”
The bike’s engine hummed loudly as it propelled us back into the sky. The air rushing around me was cool and strong, and chilled my fingertips as they rested against Rigel’s middle. I felt the urge to bury them in his trouser pockets, but that would probably distract him like crazy. Instead, I took my mind off of it by watching Killian and Darby soaring upward right next to us. They looked intensely focused, and I wondered how we would handle things if the four of us were all vying for first place at the end…
It only took a moment to reach the top of the massive Citadel dome, but before I knew it, Rigel was bringing the bike toward the hatch, hovering low and steady so that I could hop off. Without so much as a parting word, I slid off the seat and dropped onto the dome, clinging to one of the ladders that led all the way up from ground level. From the back of Killian’s bike, Darby dropped down next to me, and we both peered into the hatch.
There was a thin, metal staircase that was visible. It clung to the rounded wall, using a simple support system to stay upright as it switched back all the way to the floor. Unfortunately, the last few meters of the stairs had been folded away from the hatch, leaving nothing between us and the massive pools of dark water underneath us.
The water was divided into separate tanks, each of them probably housing a different type of aquatic creature. The one directly under us wasn’t very big, but the water was very dark, which suggested it was quite deep. The roof of the dome was ten stories high, so I hoped it would be enough to keep us from splattering all over the bottom of the tank.
“Looks like we’re getting wet!” I shouted to my companions.
Rigel nodded, exhaling deeply. Killian, on the other hand, looked very concerned. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to swim,” he called from his bike, sounding slightly ashamed.
Darby looked over at me apologetically. “I don’t either,” she said.
I nodded with a small sigh. “Do you want to go back down?”
She shook her head, wobbling the goggles atop her red hair. “No way. I’m going in with you.”
“Okay, listen,” I told her. “When we land in that water, just sort of flap your arms like wings, and you’ll come to the surface. Rigel and I will help you to the side, and you can hold the pearls.”
She
gave me a wavering smile. “Deal.” I could tell she was trying to be brave, but she was clearly petrified. I felt the fear, too, but unlike her or Killian, I knew how to swim. Rigel did, too. In the spring and summer, the rainfall over Adams was significant, and it always pooled in the lower reaches of town. Some of the vacant streets became lakes, collapsed roofs became ponds, and everyone with a few feet of space around their home would set up metal pools to catch the runoff. It was one of the few great things about living in Adams. Rigel and I used to spend every summer afternoon scouring the town for stagnant pools of water. It was dirty and dangerous, but we didn’t care. It was fun for us. As the years went by, though, we started going less and less. Even so, swimming was something we both knew well.
“All right,” Killian said, still hovering next to us. “Rigel and I will return to the ground, then I’ll bring him up on my cycle, and I’ll just…”
“Actually,” Rigel told him. “We’ll need you to stay outside and make sure no one steals our bikes.”
Killian nodded, a wry smile on his face. “Wilco, my friend.”
With one last encouraging thumbs-up from Rigel, the both of them were gone, speeding over the edge of the dome and out of sight. I glanced over at Darby, who was staring down through the hatch. She was silent, but I thought I could see her lower lip trembling.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you sure you want to do this? They’ll be coming back up in a second. You can go down and guard the bikes with Killian. It’s okay.”
She shook her head once more. “No. I’m going with you. I wouldn’t have made this far without you, Elana. I’m not going to let you down.”
I felt a strange tugging at my heart as she spoke. I kept my face as smooth as I could, but I reached over to her and grasped her hand tightly. “I wouldn’t be here without you. You could never let me down, Darby. We’ll go together, okay?”
She nodded, smiling through the mist that was forming in her eyes. “I used to get nervous a lot. I used to worry about everything. I try not to let that happen anymore. So yes…we’ll go together. Thank you.”
The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) Page 24