Terra Nova (The Variant Conspiracy Book 3)

by Christine Hart

  “My friends, we cannot go by boat. Not by my boat. I am a fishing boat. Very small. Not enough fuel to cross the sea. I cannot go to Africa,” said Giorgio.

  “Damn it!” yelled Cole.

  “Is too bad. If you can get to Egypt, you can meet my friends in Cairo. Many variants live there, even some from America. Some worked for Evonatura for years. They know how bad the company was. Cause problems for many people, especially in Europe and the Middle East. They would help you if you can get to them. I take you to Athens. Airport there will be open of course,” said Giorgio.

  “Wait, have you been to Cairo?” I asked.

  “Yes. I go many times after Evonatura kick me and my wife off our land,” said Giorgio.

  “Ilya, can you take images from one person’s head and put them into another?” I said.

  “Not exactly. But I think I could create an illusion from someone else’s memories. Not perfectly, but believably.”

  “Could you search Giorgio’s mind and build us an illusion of Cairo? From there, Melissa might create a working portal.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous. I almost got us killed the last time I tried a destination I didn’t know very well. And I had actually been to Santorini.”

  “You have to try, Melissa. We can’t afford more delays. Who knows how long it will take us to get up to Athens and then get on a plane to Nairobi?”

  “I can’t even generate the portal if I don’t have a clear picture in my mind. It won’t work. That’s what happens. I’ve tried before.”

  “Can’t you try one more time?” said Cole.

  “We’ll need a guinea pig. Someone to go through and test it, like we did for our second attempt at Santorini,” said Jonah.

  “I’ll do it,” said Josh.

  “What about our passports? Don’t we still need stamps departing Greece?” I said.

  “Aren’t you people listening to me? It doesn’t matter either way. No matter how hard I tried, we simply couldn’t trust the portal.”

  Ilya ignored Melissa’s protests and walked to Giorgio. With a curious expression, Giorgio took Ilya’s hand.

  “Think of Cairo. What is your best memory? Is it a hotel room? A restaurant? A street? When you think of Cairo, what part of the city pops most quickly to your mind?”

  Giorgio stood in dumbfounded thought.

  “Excellent. That should do nicely,” said Ilya.

  My brother assessed the airport parking lot. The few people walking around the property were not interested in us. Ilya closed his eyes.

  It was almost like one of my visions. The airport and the landscape around us grew fuzzy and dark. I blinked and blinked until I stood in a tall corridor of clay and brick.

  A horn honked in the distance although we stood in a pedestrian corridor. Laundry hung between opposing windows over our heads. Sun bleached dust floated in the few shafts of light that cut through the buildings into the adobe canyon ahead.

  Men and women in ivory and beige robes mingled with peers in linen shirts and crisp slacks. All the hair I could see was black. People moved briskly, but not harried, knowing their destinations without the whip of time constraint behind them. The sheer volume of people prohibited real haste. I examined each of my friends. All of us except Ilya were bewildered at suddenly standing in Cairo.

  “Giorgio, can you take us somewhere secluded?” said Ilya.

  Giorgio was struck dumb for a moment, but then he spoke. “Um . . . uh . . . follow me.”

  We wove through the human traffic and a pang of panic hit me. Were we actually walking through the Heraklion parking lot, possibly wandering into the peril of real auto traffic back on Crete?

  “No, calm down. We’re not moving that far,” Ilya called back to me from the front of the pack.

  “This is good spot. It is my friend’s home,” said Giorgio as we reached a gap in the tainted whitewashed facades.

  We turned down an even narrower corridor. Only one person could walk at a time so we fell into single file.

  “This is his door. His name is Tarak,” said Giorgio.

  “Should we try to go in?” said Cole.

  “Popping out in someone’s kitchen or living room is too risky. Better to stick to a quiet alley like this,” said Josh.

  “This alley is a narrow window for me to hit. I usually choose open spaces. If I can manage a portal, it could lead right into one of these walls. It’ll probably kill whoever goes through.” Melissa pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She took a ragged breath, visibly distressed.

  “Take a long hard look. I trust you,” Josh said to Melissa.

  “Let’s give her some space.”

  Melissa observed up and around and down. She touched the wall. She knelt down and brushed the hard-packed bare earth. She crouched down. She closed her eyes and smelled the air. She tilted her head, listening to the world around her. “Ilya, you can shut it off now. I’ve got as much a feel for the place as I’m going to get.”

  A moment passed and the feeling of cool wet air washed over me again until we were all back in the parking lot of the Heraklion Airport.

  I whipped my head around evaluating what onlookers, if any, were witnessing. We merely seemed to be a stunned group of weary travelers, perhaps in shock that we would not be getting on a plane. A scenario that was essentially true, excepting our collective fake trip to another city.

  Melissa closed her eyes and stood still for a long moment. Eyes still shut, she swooped her arm around and nothing happened. She drew in a long deep breath and made the shape of an oval in the air again. The second time her gift worked and the now familiar silver window hung in the air at the center of our circle.

  Chapter 16

  “Giorgio, is there any chance you can get your friend on the phone and ask him if there’s a floating liquid mirror outside his front door.” Josh eyed the portal. He’d keep his promise to test it, of that I was sure, but he was too smart not to try an alternative.

  “I do not keep a phone. Too much money for me. I catch fish, I sell fish at the docks. No phone,” said Giorgio.

  “Awesome. Buddy’s probably got his head out the window checking a weird thing in the air, just getting ready to call the cops,” said Faith.

  “Well, it’s now or never.” Josh put his hand into the portal, waved it around, and withdrew it. “No wall so far. Here goes.”

  We took a collective gulp of air as Josh fully entered the portal. Melissa concentrated on keeping it open. No one said a word as we waited.

  Minutes passed. I paced around in uneven circles. Faith busied herself lighting weeds on fire. Jonah extinguished each fire as quickly as Faith started it. Cole slowly kicked apart a parking barrier.

  “It’s been too long!” I snapped.

  “Should someone go in after him?” asked Jonah.

  “If one of us was in danger, the person I’d send in would have been Josh,” said Ilya.

  “This was a moronic plan,” said Faith angrily.

  “He could have gotten tied up if he bumped into someone coming out of the portal. Our best option is for me to keep it open as long as possible.” Melissa strained to concentrate.

  I opened my mouth to protest and closed it again. Action was needed more than words. I stepped toward the portal, ready to plunge through and collided with Josh as he came back out.

  “Just about to lose patience?” said Josh.

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “Exactly where I was supposed to be, in Tarak’s house,” said Josh.

  “You were supposed to go through, and if it was safe, come right back and tell the rest of us. Go and come back, that was the deal!” I yelled, stabbing my hand back and forth.

  “I knew it was going to be safe.” Josh winked at Melissa and smiled.


  “You’re braver than the rest of us.” Melissa relaxed a little knowing her portal was stable.

  “Let’s get this show on the road. Giorgio, are you coming?” said Jonah.

  “You might get stuck in Cairo for awhile,” said Cole.

  “I’ll make sure he gets home before the end of the day,” said Melissa confidently.

  “What does Tarak say?” Giorgio asked Josh.

  “He would like to have us all over for tea. He says there are quite a few variants who would probably like to meet us, but they’re more likely to trust us if Giorgio comes.”

  “Will they help us?” I asked Giorgio.

  “I cannot speak for others, but some friends like Tarak will want to do right thing.” Giorgio’s eyebrows lifted high with optimism.

  “We should get ourselves booked on a flight to Nairobi as soon as possible. Then we’ll have tea,” said Jonah.

  “Follow me.” Josh walked back through the floating mirror.

  One by one, we popped through the portal and crowded into the alley in front of Tarak’s door where Josh already knocked. Ilya had been right. His recreation of Giorgio’s memory wasn’t perfect. The street was louder with chattering voices and vehicle traffic nearby. The air was full of spice, sweat, and dirt. The sun was fainter under a mildly overcast sky.

  I made a note to myself not to try a stunt like that with Melissa’s portal skills ever again. There were plenty of places other than brick walls and sandstorms where popping into existence could kill us.

  Melissa emerged and closed her portal in a smooth movement before she collapsed to the ground. Keeping a portal open for so long had drained her. Josh dropped to the ground to help her.

  “Come in, please. You are all welcome.” An older man with a neat goatee and a beige tunic opened the door. Giorgio took his hand and the two pulled into a friendly embrace before making way for the rest of us.

  “If we travel by portal again, keep in mind those doors take a toll when they’re open for too long,” Melissa said wearily.

  Josh helped Melissa to an armchair in Tarak’s living room. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.”

  A sudden tenderness in his voice caught me off guard. I could tell he meant it. Melissa wasn’t in the mood to smile, but she nodded in recognition.

  Gemma tugged my arm. “I’m not very good at it yet, but I could try to heal her.”

  “That would be lovely, sweetie. Anything you could do would help.” Melissa reclined in the armchair and closed her eyes.

  “Okay, um, hold still,” said Gemma.

  My sister moved her hands along Melissa’s body, starting with her feet and ankles, up her calves and thighs, over her abdomen and down her arms. None of the golden energy given off by Camille’s healing came out of Gemma’s hands.

  All variations are different, I thought. Cut her some slack.

  Gemma reached Melissa’s head and it happened. Golden pulses shot from my sister’s palms into her patient’s temples. Melissa remained motionless for a moment and then opened her eyes with a deep breath.

  “Ahhhh, that feels so much better. You really are a little miracle worker,” said Melissa with a bright smile.

  “Aw, thanks. I’m still learning.” Gemma flipped her wheat hair, acting much younger than her eighteen years. Still, I swelled with pride.

  I turned to see Jonah beaming at us, proud of Gemma himself.

  “Sorry, is this Egypt-Air? Yes, I’d like to book eight seats on your next flight from Cairo to Nairobi.” Cole held a cordless phone to his ear, walking toward the hallway door. “I’d like to pay in cash if possible. Will you hold the seats with my credit card, but allow us to pay cash at the desk? . . . Euros.”

  “I’m sure we’d have a lot of fun meeting the North African variant community, but I agree with Cole. We’ve got to keep pushing to Nairobi,” I said to Jonah.

  “The next flight with open seats might not be until tomorrow.” Ilya took a step to join us.

  “What if we can’t go for days? Maybe we should meet these local variants and do the destination-memory-transfer-thing again.” Faith shoved her hands in her pockets.

  “It’s an option, but there’s still a chance one of us could wind up at the bottom of the ocean or stuck on glacier. If she’s off by just a little, there’s always the brick wall problem,” Jonah said.

  “I think I’ve had my quota of blind leaps of faith for the day.” Josh took a chair and let tension melt out of his body.

  “If you stay the night in Cairo and meet variants here, you can share the load of what you do,” said Giorgio.

  “I agree with Giorgio when it comes to Evonatura. From what little Josh communicated to me, it sounds like The Compendium is a complex endeavor, equally complicated to undo.” Tarak stroked his goatee as he appraised us.

  “At this point, our first priority is stopping them from releasing the Terra Nova virus,” I said.

  “Share your Compendium data with me and my friends and you’ll have more arms tying up more loose ends.” Tarak gently brushed creases from his tunic.

  “We just met you. How do we know you don’t work for Ivan or Claude?” said Faith.

  “Not to disrespect you in your own home, but it’s a good point. Will you let me listen?” Ilya tapped the side of his head and extended his other arm to Tarak.

  Obviously offended and a little angry, Tarak glowered at Ilya.

  “You have time to take tea and enjoy my friend’s hospitality. Meet more friends.” Giorgio shifted, glancing at each of us. “You trust Giorgio, now you trust others here.”

  “Ilya, poke into his head anyway,” said Faith, whispering, but still audible to everyone.

  Tarak’s expression softened and he took my brother’s hand.

  Ilya regarded Tarak with unwavering eye contact as he pulled stories and images from our host’s head. “He knows people from Innoviro. Before my time. The first ones to leave the sewer. And he knows other Evonatura refugees. A man that got fired for asking questions at a lab in Madrid.”

  “So we call friends, yes?” said Giorgio.

  “Please do,” said Ilya.

  “Okay, we’re booked on a midnight flight that has a layover in Addis Ababa,” said Cole, returning from the other room to join us.

  Tarak nodded and took his phone back from Cole.

  “We still need to deal with the passport problem. Are we just going to fudge the fact that we have arrival stamps across the board for Greece with no departure stamps?” I said.

  “In this part of the world, many travelers come and go through ports with very low-tech customs officials. Many entry and exit points do not stamp. You should be fine,” said Tarak.

  I wanted to clarify that we had the added liability of using fake or possibly stolen passports, but I thought better of it. And then I remembered Melissa had never been to Africa at all. If we hadn’t detoured through Greece, we would never have met Giorgio and might not have found our way to a friendly home in Cairo. Was life funny like that or was I experiencing fate? I shook my head at the prospect of contemplating something so unknowable.

  Tarak dialed a number and started speaking rapidly in something I thought was either Arabic or Farsi. Tarak paced through his back rooms as he spoke. He made another call in French and finally a call in English. I heard the words, “variant warriors” and “bring a hard drive” before Tarak returned to us.

  “I have invited all the variants I know in the city. They will come quickly. They know your situation and that you are leaving in the middle of the night,” said Tarak.

  “I’m starving. Have you got any dates? I always hear about Egyptian dates.” Faith clasped her hands eagerly and Ilya rolled his eyes.

  Tarak laughed. “We will have a full dinner soon, my friends.”
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  Chapter 17

  Tarak began dumping ingredients into pots and saucepans, pulling loaves of bread and bags from his pantry. He filled plates with crackers, fruit, and cured meat. We relayed platter after platter to the dining room table.

  I quickly realized that Tarak had invited us for ‘Tea’ in the British sense. He meant for us to eat dinner with him. A knock at the door interrupted the mesmerizing simmer of what a dhal-type lentil dish on a hot plate.

  Tarak escorted an extremely tall man to his living room sofa. The man had to lean slightly while standing inside the room.

  “My friends, I would like you to meet my neighbor, Monsieur Bonne Nuit,” said Tarak.

  “I suppose we needn’t ask what his variation is then,” said Jonah as he rose and extended his arm to shake the man’s hand. Jonah’s six-foot two-inch stature was utterly dwarfed by Monsieur Bonne Nuit. Even Josh at six-foot-five looked up to the man.

  “Regrettably, we cannot shake hands, sir,” said Monsieur Bonne Nuit with a subtle French accent.

  “Yes, my friend delivers melatonin through contact with his skin. He will put you to sleep if he touches you,” said Tarak.

  “Worse things could happen.” Cole yawned, stretching his thick arms above his head.

  “I can prepare some crackers for you to take on your flight, to ensure you are refreshed when you arrive in Nairobi,” said Monsieur Bonne Nuit.

  “Sweet! Between that and the uber awesome dinner goin’ on here, this stop has been a total score.” Faith grinned and popped a date in her mouth.

  “Monsieur Bonne Nuit is a fugitive from Evonatura. Like Giorgio, Claude Mueller was very keen to take something from him. Only in my tall friend’s case, obtaining his value would have required extensive testing and therefore long term incarceration,” said Tarak.