by Sean Platt
“Let’s start,” Stranger said, “by discussing the Internet.”
CHAPTER 7
The knock repeated.
Clara waited, knees to her chest, arms around them, pulling herself into a ball. The sound beyond the home’s walls was loud, both inside and out of her head. Inside, she heard fear and begging and bargaining, soul searching and loss and abject panic. Outside, she heard screams and pops and bangs, crashes and Reptar purrs.
And yet the knock, when it came a third time, was soft and polite. Respectful. As if the person on the other side hadn’t noticed all that was happening at the end of the world and was doing her best to not wake the home’s occupant from a nap.
“Clara?” It was a young voice, but she couldn’t tell how young because the door muffled it. “Clara, open up.”
Clara crawled forward. She tried to peek through the window near the door but couldn’t see the porch. Then she crawled to the other side and managed a glance — two kids on the steps: a boy and a girl. The boy looked about twelve or thirteen with hawklike features and a lock of hair that wouldn’t stay off his forehead. The girl was maybe ten, black-skinned, strong-looking and tall, her hair a messy halo around her head.
His name is Nick. Her name is Ella.
[We know you’re in there. Don’t be afraid.]
Clara recoiled, looking around as if someone had shouted. And someone had, outside near the home’s rear. While the main part of Clara’s attention had been on the visitors at her front door, part of her had been listening all around. A Reptar purr had preceded a shout of pain and surprise. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what had happened.
(Maybe she can’t hear us.)
[Of course she can hear us.]
(I didn’t mean your out-loud voice.)
[I know what you meant. But she talked to us, too, didn’t she?]
Clara ducked, feeling watched. She hadn’t spoken, but the sense that she knew these kids — specifically, that the boy was Nick and the girl was Ella — had been like her own voice speaking inside her mind. It had been stronger and somehow different from her normal internal voice — almost as if it were somehow coming both from within and from the kids themselves.
“Clara? We’re friends, okay?” came the boy’s
(Nick’s)
voice. “Let us in, will you? Nobody seems to want to eat us, but I get a bad feeling about those little flying balls.”
“Who are you?” Clara said.
“We’re like you.”
“Like me how?”
And then it was like someone had shut off Clara’s sense of vision. For a split second she saw only blackness, then in the dark, a sort of mental video show began to play. Whoever had spliced this particular film had been manic and low on attention; it was composed of second-long clips, possibly images, that seemed to fly toward her, like a rush of speeding traffic: an Astral ship above a city, a baby cradled in its mother’s arms, a hive filled with swarming honeybees, a series of beams of light in a web that seemed to be streaking toward each other like contrails of jets, only much faster, a chasm opening in the earth to expose a pit like Hell come topside, a group that seemed to be family, a wad of garbage washed from dishes and sliding down the dark maw of a running sink.
Images blasted into Clara like a strong wind, and then, when it was over, she felt their residue: the meaning behind all that had at first seemed only visual.
The children were Lightborn, same as her.
Clara turned the deadbolt and opened the door.
“How did you know I was in here? How did you know my name?”
The boy shoved past her, followed by the girl, who turned to shut the door and re-lock it. He was taller than Clara had imagined, and perhaps a bit younger. Eleven instead of twelve or thirteen.
“You know what you are, right?” the girl asked.
Of course she knows, the boy said without opening his mouth.
“You don’t know that,” the girl said, turning to the boy with juvenile disdain. A snippy response that said that he should have known better.
“Clara,” the boy said. “What’s my name?”
“Nick.”
“And her?”
“Ella.”
“That’s how I know your name. That’s how I knew you were in here.”
“I knew, too,” the girl said self-importantly.
“How long you been in Ember Flats?” the boy asked.
“Few days?” And then an out-of-control addition blurted from Clara’s mind: We’ve been in the palace.
The girl nodded at the boy, hands on her hips and mouth pursed, as if she’d won a point in an argument. “That’s why.”
“Why what?” Clara asked.
Still speaking to the boy, the girl said, “I told you so.”
“You didn’t tell me so. Winnie said it first.”
“Winnie and me.” The girl raised a finger in victory. With her finger still up, she said, “There. Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Clara asked.
From Nick, Clara heard a mental voice say (to someone apparently not present), Stop encouraging her, Win.
“What are you guys talking about?” Clara asked.
“Hang on,” Nick said.
Clara heard chatter, like people arguing, barely there. Like something coming through on a fuzzy station, a fraction from being on frequency. Nick and Ella — neither of whom had introduced themselves, Clara realized — didn’t seem to be having trouble. Both had their heads cocked as if listening to an inaudible argument. Like crazy people.
“Hey!” Clara said, waving a hand. “You came to me.”
Ella broke from whatever was happening and turned to Clara. “You’re related to someone, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” Clara replied, her patience wearing thin.
“No — I mean you’re really close to things up here somehow.” The girl tapped her head, managing to find it through all her black hair. “Like, you’re close with an alien. Or your mom is part of a hive or something.”
“What’s a hive?”
“When you were still in your mom’s stomach, you were near one of the ships. Is that it?”
“Is that what?” Clara felt lost in this discussion yet sure that Ella was also involved in several other conversations and effortlessly managing them all. Nick, who was now paying attention to Clara and Ella, was clearly doing the same. Although based on mental fragments that Clara seemed to smell wafting off of Nick, she was somehow certain that he wasn’t just conversing but figuring something out as well. Each was doing five other things at once, and Clara was only doing one, and yet she was the one having problems following along.
“Let’s spell it out,” Nick said, half to Ella and half to her. Clara, sure she was about to be condescended to, tried not to be insulted. “You know what you are, right? In the city, they call kids like us ‘Lightborn.’”
“Of course,” Clara said, keeping her shoulders back and proud.
“We can do all these mind tricks. Like talking without really talking. Like having a really good feeling about what’s happening even if nobody tells us. Sorta-kinda predicting the future.”
“Sorta,” Ella added. “Maybe.”
“I was reading adult books when I was three. I guess that’s not normal. My mom was funny; she tried to keep me from knowing about Hell’s Corridor. But I knew who was there, and what they did. I knew what a cannibal was without ever having to learn. It didn’t scare me. It just made me want to stay inside the walls. You know what I mean?”
“I can do all of that stuff, too,” Clara said.
“Yeah, but I can barely hear you. And now you say you’ve been in the palace since you’ve been here.”
“Are you deaf? And why does it matter that I was in the palace?”
“I mean, I can barely hear you.” Then Nick tapped his head like Ella already had. “In here. You’re part of that group that came in a while ago, right? So you were out in the desert. Is th
at where you were born?”
“Why does that matter?” Clara fought frustration, still sure that each of her new companions were doing ten other things while speaking to her, handling each effortlessly while watching her flounder.
“You’re not used to being around other Lightborn, is all. Right?”
“No.”
“And the palace shields everything. They know some of what we can do, and they don’t want us peeking. The Astrals, I mean. So the palace walls are made of that same rock that dark minds use.”
“Dark minds?”
“Sorry. I mean normal people. That’s what we call them, since we’re light. It’s not like they’re bad people.” Nick looked for a moment like he thought he might have offended her, then pressed on. “They need the rocks to hook their minds up, and we don’t, but the same rocks can keep us out. Sorta.”
“What do you mean, sorta?”
“If you haven’t been around a bunch more of us Lightborn kids, that’s probably why you’re bad at this. It’s okay; you’ll get better.” Ella said it as if offering Clara a gift.
“I’ve been around plenty.”
“In an outpost or something?” Then, speaking to Nick out loud for what was clearly Dumb Old Clara’s benefit, she added, “You know many Lightborn in outposts? I thought they were mostly in capitals.”
“I grew up in Heaven’s Veil,” Clara said, trying to gain any credibility she could muster. She felt like a yokel: a poor country cousin who knows nothing of the civilized world.
“Really?”
“Yeah. In the mansion there, too.”
“Your dad an ambassador or something?”
“No, but my grandpa was the viceroy.”
Nick and Ella looked at each other. Finally, Clara had drawn an ace.
“That’s why she stuck out so much,” Nick said.
(She’s lying.)
[No she’s not. I can feel it. Can’t you feel it?]
(She’s just saying it because he did that whole speech. It’s crap.)
[Why would anyone claim to be related to Viceroy Dempsey who wasn’t?]
“Hey!” Clara said. “I can hear you, you know.”
“Sorry,” Nick said. “It’s just that … ” Images followed, all about Heaven’s Veil and her grandfather, none flattering.
“It’s not true. My grandpa is a good man. Kindred, too.”
“Who’s Kindred?”
Clara tried what Nick had done, using her mind to push out a string of images and feelings. It was easier than she’d imagined, once she offered her full attention. Just being around these two for five minutes had fortified her. She felt her eyes opening, her mind getting stronger. They were right; she had been isolated — in one shielded palace, then in the desert away from other Lightborns, followed by yet another palace. She’d heard there were plenty others like her in the world, but she’d never met any face to face. Being around them felt powerful, like one plus one making five. Or ten.
“He’s the … clone? … they made to replace my grandpa when they had my grandpa prisoner up in their ship. Actually the second. The first replacement was killed.” Clara stepped hard on the following thought, suddenly sure she didn’t want Nick and Ella to know it was her own father who’d killed that first doppelgänger. It felt shameful, like something best relegated as a skeleton in the family closet. “Kindred came after that. Nobody realized he wasn’t really ‘Viceroy Dempsey.’ Not any of us. Not even himself. But then he figured it out and saved my grandpa from the ship, and now they’re kind of like twins but not really.”
Nick and Ella traded a glance, a stream of communication moving between them like a whisper that Clara couldn’t catch.
“Saved him, huh?” Nick said.
Clara nodded.
“But he’s an alien?”
“Was. I think he’s stuck as a human now.”
“So it really is like there are two Viceroy Dempseys. Like on the broadcast.”
Clara tuned her mind and saw what they were talking about: something she’d missed while with the Mullah. But one of the children had seen it, or someone they were mentally linked to. A full record of the broadcast, complete with many emotional interpretations, seemed to be right there in the middle of some sort of shared Lightborn archive.
In that archive, Clara saw something else about the broadcast. She leaped upon it.
“And it really is like they said. Astrals destroyed the city because they were looking for the Ark. It was still hidden back when I was little, but still sorta listening to the world’s feelings. I was there when they blew up the city, and then they just listened to the sounds of all those people dying, and followed the screams so they could figure out where the Ark was. That’s why they did it, I swear. It wasn’t Grandpa’s fault.”
Nick was nodding. “It’s true. You’re right.” Clara could feel him rooting around inside her mind, sifting through memories of the event. Clara’s words weren’t convincing him. It was her personal firsthand account, which Nick and Ella now seemed able to see.
“And he’s your grandpa?” Ella said.
“Uh huh.”
“What are you doing out here? You stuck out to all of us like you’d set the house on fire. It sounded like you were in here crying.”
Clara wasn’t sure if Ella meant it literally or metaphorically, but her agreement didn’t seem necessary, so she kept her mouth shut and answered the question instead.
“You know the Mullah?”
“Mullah?”
“They’re — ”
But then all of a sudden, inside Clara’s mind, everything was strobing red. A mental klaxon blared, and all three children slapped their hands over their ears. It wasn’t a literal alarm that anyone could hear, but it was something, all right. A decision being made, perhaps. Something horrible about to begin.
“Tell us later,” Nick said. “Right now, I’m thinking we’d better get the heck out of here.”
CHAPTER 8
“Did you hear that?” Peers asked.
Lila turned to look at Peers. He wouldn’t stop pacing the bunker. The room reminded Lila of so many places she’d hoped to never think of again: her father’s Axis Mundi, Derinkuyu, their hidey-hole in Roman Sands, even Mount Sinai, where they overnighted in a cave once before seeking the Ark’s original location. Life, it seemed, had become one long series of dark holes. Although the alternative — the viceroy’s palace above — wasn’t much better. It was plush but reminded Lila of their mansion in Heaven’s Veil. And that had its own horrible memories.
“Stop it, Peers,” said Meyer.
“Stop what?”
“I don’t want to be here any more than you do. But we made our decision, as a group.”
“I just asked if anyone heard anything.”
“Stop it, Peers,” Jabari said.
“Jesus fucking Christ! What’s wrong with you people?”
Peers shouted too loud. His accented voice echoed in the concrete chamber. But it also proved Meyer and Jabari’s point: Peers was pacing because he was agitated and angry, not because he was stir-crazy. There was something going on with their fearless desert wanderer that he wasn’t saying, and ultimately that had been the nail in his otherwise reasonable plan’s coffin: too much unknown, too many frayed nerves, too many secrets that Peers obviously held and refused to divulge.
There are tunnels below Jabari’s mansion that even Jabari doesn’t know about? How do you know that, Peers?
How can you possibly know how to get into those supposed tunnels, Peers? And what makes you think you have any idea where they go … if they can get us to the Cradle to escape or not?
Why are you so sweaty, Peers? Why so jittery?
What are you hiding, Peers?
Lila stayed quiet, not liking the bunker more than anyone else (although she liked the decision to stay where Clara had gone missing an awful lot more), taking it all in. She didn’t feel as timid as she probably appeared. She was actually feeling bold, now that th
ey’d made the decision to stay. She was turning over what Peers had said about Ravi: how he — not the Mullah at large — had written the note demanding the Ark be opened. It meant that Ravi was rogue, and that there was an outside chance that the enemy of her enemy might turn out to be her friend. Could she approach the Mullah, if she found a way to contact them? What was she willing to do if it meant getting her baby girl back?
Just about anything, really.
If action had to be taken — if someone needed to push Peers into danger so that no more of her people would fall to harm — Lila thought she could do it. Same for Jabari, if worse came to worst. She didn’t trust either of them. They both announced that things were done after they’d happened and nobody could verify anything one way or the other.
Oh, Clara was kidnapped? Sure, I’ll believe you weren’t involved even though you benefitted. And oh, the Astrals always just kind of paved the way for you despite your claiming not to be in league with them? Sure, no problem — I trust you.
Peers especially irked her. She didn’t have the deductive genius that her father and Kindred had with their blended minds, but she had her mother’s intuition. For some reason, everyone was taking Peers at his word. They’d always taken the man at his word. He’d shown them his Den full of Astral technology, but everyone believed that he and Aubrey had simply stumbled upon it. The Astrals didn’t chase Peers’s big, obvious bus through the desert, but everyone believed it was luck. Peers could yammer on and on that it happened because the Astrals wanted Cameron to use his key all along, but who was left to corroborate his story? Not Cameron, who was dead. Not Charlie, who knew all the Ancient Aliens lore — also dead. No. Their only expert was Mara Jabari, a woman whom — let’s not forget — Peers came to kill because her troops had murdered his son. And everyone sort of ignored that the conflict had vanished with their arrival.
Peers, Lila felt sure, was hiding something.
Something big. And bad. He’d been sneaking around most of the time like a teenage boy hiding porn. The fact that nobody had called him on his late arrivals, wild eyes, or flimsy excuses seemed ridiculous to Lila. He’d been around the night Clara had vanished, but nobody wondered if he’d been in any way responsible. Oh, it was the Mullah, Peers? I believe you. And yet the man seemed to know a lot about the Mullah.