“I’ll do it,” Addy says.
“Nah,” Marco says. “Jasper was right. I shouldn’t have invited you. This is way too dangerous.”
Addy lifts their clutched hands. “A simple thank-you would have sufficed. Oh, look! I think that one likes you.” A small snake is curling its way up Marco’s leg.
“Get him off me!” Marco shouts.
Addy calmly plucks the snake off of Marco’s pants, gives its small head a pat, and tosses it into the writhing pile of its brothers and sisters.
We finally reach the other side and clamber up onto the low wall that holds back the baby snakes.
Serena grabs a tiny snake with her small hands and lifts it up. She nods at Cole for the voice box. “Meet Seelia. She’s one of my youngest.”
The tiny snake shakes her tail and hisses. Serena brushes her tongue across Seelia’s nose, then gently sets her down among the others. Seelia darts into the horde of snakes, instantly unrecognizable in the mass of thousands.
“Umm . . . ,” Marco starts, “can we move a bit farther away from the snakes?”
Serena slips up beside us. Her babies cry out in a fit of hisses and clicks. She hisses back in a soothing tone, probably assuring them that she’ll be back later, as she leads us to a door and then out of the snake pit.
“So let me get this straight,” Marco says into the voice box once the door closes behind us. “All of those snakes are your children?”
“Yes,” Serena says, “I am their mother.”
“What happens when they get bigger?” he asks.
“Once their venom dries out, they are taken. You should know better than I. You have been to the other side. I have not.”
Other side? As in the other side of the tube? Because we definitely have not run into a band of teenage snakes just hanging out. I have no clue what happens to her kids once they outgrow the milking farm.
“Does she mean that her babies go to live at the Alkalinian Seat?” I ask the others. “That they grow up to be Alks?”
“Of course that’s what she means,” Lucy says. “These snakes are baby Alks. Serena’s their mother, so she must be an Alk, too.”
“But she’s so long!” Cole says. “She doesn’t look like the other Alks.”
“Sure she does,” Addy says. “She’s just older, and wiser, and hasn’t been surgically enhanced with a cyborg arm. And there’s something else you seem oblivious to.”
Lucy rolls her eyes. “Please, grace us with your insight, Adeline.”
Addy ignores Lucy’s sarcasm. “Serena is the only adult female Alk I’ve seen.”
All of our eyes—even Lucy’s—go wide. Addy’s absolutely right. How come I haven’t noticed that before?
“That’s so strange,” Marco says. “It’s clear that Steve and Seelok and most of his close advisers are male, but I haven’t even noticed the gender of the other Alks.”
“Yeah, it’s like it doesn’t exist,” Lucy says, “at least with all those scooter dudes we saw yesterday in the lower levels.”
No emotions. No identity. Nothing, Mira thinks.
“Mira feels like they don’t even have an identity,” I say. “Is that what happens to the baby snakes when they’re brought to the Alkalinian Seat?”
“What about what’s happening here?” Addy says to us. She grabs the voice box. “Do you know what the Alkalinians do with all the venom your babies produce?” she asks Serena. “Are you okay with that?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Serena says. “The children stay with me while they produce venom, then they are taken. I miss them, but that is what happens.”
“It’s not like Seelok is going to ask Serena’s permission,” I say under my breath.
“Well, I’m not okay with that,” Addy says. “It sounds like forced child labor, not to mention what it is they’re laboring over.”
“What I want to know is what happens to all these baby snakes,” Marco says. “There are thousands of them, and we’ve seen barely a hundred Alks on the other side, and that’s including the scooter dudes.”
Addy’s about to say something when Cole puts up his hand. “Stop! Don’t get any more sidetracked! We’re on a tight timeline, remember?” He takes the voice box back from Addy. “Serena, there’s a pipe that carries the venom from this side to the other. Can you show us where it is?”
“And while you’re at it,” Marco shouts into the voice box, “we need a different way back upstairs. I am not crossing that sea of snakes again.”
Serena nods. She seems sad, not that I know what a sad snake looks like. One thing is for sure—she misses her babies, and it sounds like it’s only a matter of time before the ones in the pit are taken from her, too. That’s enough to make anyone sad.
Serena leads us through a small doorway and down a narrow hall that borders a machinery room. My guess is those machines process the venom for transmission through the tube and over to the Alkalinian Seat to be loaded into the vats we saw yesterday.
Across from the machinery room is a door guarded by a security panel covered with Alkalinian symbols.
Serena lifts up and presses the code with her short, stubby hand. “I’ve seen the guards come through here before,” she says into the voice box. “Good for you that I have an eye for detail and remember the code. Though I’ve not been myself, I believe you’ll find what you’re looking for inside—the pipe and an alternative route to the upper floors.”
The door buzzes open, and we head through. Serena stays behind. She hisses and bows her head.
We thank Serena and let the door swing closed behind us, sealing us out of the snake pit.
The room we’re in mirrors the room on the other side of the tube except that it’s missing the wall of windows looking out at the ocean (no complaints there). There are more large vats connected to a second pump, which in turn is connected to a pipe. The pipe bisects the room and exits through the wall, presumably into the tube. A sealed door hides the tube from view.
I jerk on the door handle. The door is heavy, but it opens, thankfully. Except now that I can see down the length of the tube, I can also see the water surrounding the tube on all sides. My stomach sinks.
“It’s unlocked,” Lucy says. “That’s good news.”
“What about from the water side?” Marco asks. “If Earth Force needs to take down the tether, they’ll be coming from the Alkalinian Seat. It doesn’t matter how easy the door is to open from here if it’s locked outside. Go ahead, Jasper. Check it out.”
Somehow the fact that I was first to check the door from this side means I volunteered to check the door from the water side. I’m about to protest, but instead I shrug. I just waded through a pit of snakes. How bad can two seconds in the tube be?
I pull the door all the way open and step inside. The door barely closes behind me before the claustrophobia sets in. Water surrounds me, and I gulp for air, half feeling like I’m already drowning. I turn around and stare down the tube. I can see all the way to the Alkalinian Seat. Off to my right, through the glass and fifty meters of open ocean, the bubble holding the occludium tether glows silver. Its shaft extends up to the generator room above.
I take a few steps farther into the tube. One of the black sea creatures swims nearby. As if the creature senses me, it spins around with a swing of its tail and glides closer. It fixes its black marble eyes on me, then it lashes the plastic side with its ebony tale. The whole tube trembles.
I jump back. Get me out of here!
I scramble to the door and confirm that it’s sealed. Then I look for a way to open it.
The sea creature doubles back for another pass.
Thump!
The venom pipe shakes, and the tube echoes with the sound of the creature’s collision. I glance behind me. More sea creatures race in my direction, baring their silver fangs.
A lever is mounted to the right of the door. In a panic I grab it with both hands and pull. The door clicks and swings open, and I rush through, then slam the do
or closed behind me.
“You okay?” Lucy asks.
“I guess,” I say. “Those nasty sea creatures are out there. At least we know we can open the door from the outside. Someone could definitely cross through the tube.”
Cole hurries over from the side of the room. “I found stairs. We need to go. We’ve already been gone too long.”
Luckily, the stairs dump us out in an old systems center down the hall from the generator room. Even though the computers look like they haven’t been used in years, the door is locked—which is why we couldn’t get in here before. We’re able to unlock it manually from the inside. We hurry into the hall and start heading to the hangar.
“I want to see the occludium tether!” Addy says when we tell her what’s in the generator room.
“There’s no time,” Cole says.
Addy ignores him and heads in.
“Lovely,” Lucy says.
“I’ll get her,” I say. “You guys go back. Tell Gedney we had to have a brother-sister talk.”
“About what?” Cole says.
Lucy grabs Cole’s arm and starts down the hall, with Mira right behind them.
“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it,” I call after them.
Marco makes for the generator room, but I block him. “I’m not kidding, Marco. I need to talk to Addy. Alone.”
Marco throws his hands up and takes a step back. “Good luck,” he says, then turns and chases after the others.
I walk in and find Addy by the windows, gazing down at the venom pipe and the shaft that leads to the bubble on the ocean floor, where the occludium tether is housed.
“Would you have to climb all the way down there to deactivate the tether?” she asks.
“We think there’s probably a remote shutoff somewhere up here. But without an Alkalinian to show us, we’d probably need to descend the shaft. According to Gedney, there’s a manual shutdown at the anchor spot.”
“How does Gedney know?”
“Earth Force traded the occludium to the Alkalinians. They had to provide their tether specs in order for us to give them the correct concentration.”
Addy turns to face me. “We gave the Alks occludium? You mean, we wouldn’t need to do any of this if we hadn’t traded with them in the first place?”
“Something like that.”
She shakes her head and turns back to the window. “Earth Force will never cease to baffle me.”
“About that,” I start, not entirely sure where to begin or even what I’m going to say. “Earth Force may do some baffling things, and we may not agree with all of them, but they’re still calling the shots. I feel like you don’t always remember that.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just . . . I think you should be careful, that’s all.”
Addy crosses her arms against her chest. “Is this another lecture?”
“No. I’m just looking out for you. You kind of give the impression that you think you can do whatever you want, and it might land you in trouble.”
She laughs. “Says the guy who just violated a direct order from the admiral not to investigate and then crawled through a snake hole to find the entry to a venom pipe that I’m pretty sure the Alks want to keep top secret. Who thinks they can do whatever they want, Jasper?”
She kind of has me there. “I get that it might seem hypocritical, Addy, but most of the juniors are falling in line a bit more than you.”
“Ahh . . . I get it. This boils down to the same thing that has Lucy all tied up in knots.”
“What would that be?”
Addy smiles. “You’re jealous.”
“Jealous? Of you?”
“That’s right. You’re mad that I hang out with your friends, that I can insert myself into your pod whenever I want. It took you a long time to form these relationships, and you don’t think it’s fair that I get to piggyback on that. I kind of get that, J. But isn’t that exactly what a big brother is for?”
This conversation has seriously derailed. “No. That’s not it at all.”
“Oh, isn’t it? You don’t care that Marco and I are palling around? ’Cause Lucy sure does.”
Is that what’s been bothering Lucy? “Forget it, Addy. If you don’t want my advice, fine.”
“That’s just it, Jasper. I didn’t ask for your advice. And I definitely don’t need it.”
She spins around and marches out of the generator room. I hope she’s heading back to training, but I’m definitely not going to ask. I’m done trying to talk with Addy, at least for now.
I turn around and gaze out the window. Some of the sea creatures still swim around the venom pipe. They swoop low as they glide by the tube, then swing wide and circle around for another pass. They’re scary, but there’s something familiar about them. Their long bodies, their tiny arms, their beady black eyes. They almost look like Serena. Maybe this planet is in the same system as the original Alkalinia, and the life forms share descendants.
All I know is I have no desire to be up close and personal with those huge sea creatures ever again.
As I walk back to the hangar, I steel myself for a talk with the admiral. She’s not going to be happy that we took matters into our own hands, particularly after she ordered us not to, as Addy so pleasantly reminded me. Even so, our pod accomplished a lot on our own. We have new intelligence on the late-night testing, we located the occludium tether and a route across to it, and we even found the nucleus of the Alkalinian venom operation.
Now we’ll hand the information over to Earth Force and get back to the business of following orders.
24
WHEN I ARRIVE AT THE loading bay, everything is in chaos. Cadets crisscross the hangar in their blast packs, dive-bombing one another with protein bars and carob-coated fruit balls and other Earth Force standards that the officers carted over for lunch. On the ground, cadets chuck crates with their gloves. Everyone is screaming and cheering. Meggi is running around trying to wave the fliers to the floor. The twins target her with empty fruit ball boxes. Meggi jumps out of the way at the last second and lands on her hands and knees. She rolls onto her back and launches a crate at Orla, knocking her to the floor. Aela dashes to check on her sister.
My pod mates run over when they spot me. I can tell from their faces that something’s happened, and it’s not just the pandemonium in the hangar. Are we in trouble? Did the admiral already discover that we violated her orders?
“We’re too late,” Lucy says. “Admiral Eames, Sheek, Gedney, all the Earth Force officers, they’re gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” I ask, shouting over all the noise. From across the hangar Addy sprints to join us.
“Did you tell him?” she asks, catching her breath.
“Tell me what?” I demand. Whatever this is can’t be good.
Marco leans close. “Apparently, Seelok showed up and invited all the officers to a special reception of his own. A dinner reception. They left twenty minutes ago to get ready.”
A dinner reception . . . all the Earth Force officers in one place . . . eating Alkalinian food . . . “Do you think the Alks are up to something?”
“Well, we know what they put in their food,” Lucy says. “And we know they’re planning something. We’re just not sure what it is yet.”
“Do you think they’re trying to take the officers out, at least temporarily?” I ask.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Cole says matter-of-factly.
“Can we stop them?” I ask. “Maybe we can find Gedney before the reception starts.”
“Good idea,” Lucy says. “We’ll shake Steve when we get back to the Seat and somehow warn the officers.”
“That won’t work,” Cole says. “As soon as we try anything, the Alks will know their plans are at risk and act accordingly. The officers could be in even more danger.”
“We can’t do nothing! We need to mobilize!” Addy shakes her arms impatiently. I suspect it’s not the first time she’s suggested th
is. “Let’s round up the cadets and find out where the Alks are holding the reception. We’ll storm the place!”
“No,” Cole says. “The Alks have the advantage. They’re armed. We’re outnumbered. The tether is up. We can’t even get everyone off this planet without their help. We shouldn’t raise an alarm until we know what’s happening and can formulate an effective military strategy.”
“Not to mention the chance that nothing is happening,” Lucy says. “Nothing bad, anyway. Maybe the Alks are actually throwing a super fun dinner party for the officers!”
“Alks and super fun don’t go together,” Marco says. “I say we take out the tether now!”
“Or maybe our pod should bound to the space station,” Lucy says. “We’re outside the tether range. We could ask some of the officers there what to do.”
“No,” Cole says. “Any of those options would raise a red alert and put every Earth Force officer and cadet in jeopardy. The Frogs will be here any minute. If we’re not on board, they’ll know. We’ll be conceding victory before the battle even begins.”
“I agree with Cole,” I say. “We need more information. I hate to say it, but the best option is to head back to our quarters like nothing is wrong. Cole can rig the voice box. Tonight I’ll connect with Mira, and we’ll spy on the testing again, this time with translation. Once we have concrete information about the testing, we can plan our strategy.”
I look at Cole. I’m not sure whether he’ll be on board with the late-night spying. We promised we were done defying orders.
Cole nods. “It’s the only reasonable option. Until we have confirmation of the officers’ safety, we have to assume they’re out of commission.”
Addy throws up her arms. “I can’t believe this! The Alks could be taking out every Earth Force officer on this planet, and we’ll be sitting in our quarters playing video games.”
“If they wanted us dead, we’d already be dead,” I say. “Think about it. There’s more to this than we understand yet.”
Addy scrunches up her face. “I suppose you’re right, but what about me? What should I do tonight?”
The Forgotten Shrine Page 22