“This song is called ‘Reynardine,’ ” I say, my words ringing out in the silence. “It’s an old Celtic folk song about a fox, written a long time before the UNA got formed. I learned it from my dad when I was a little girl. I’m going to play it now as an instrumental, in his memory.”
I lower the microphone on its stand, adjusting it so it will pick up the sound of my guitar. Then I shut my eyes and strike the first haunting chord, the noise echoing loudly against the rocks of the cave, amplified by the microphone. My nervousness starts to melt away the instant I begin playing and the music overwhelms me.
The song is second nature to me. I remember practicing it with my dad, when I was only ten. It’s like no time has passed at all since then.
I open my eyes, looking only at Liam over the work lights. I’m conscious of the other people watching me, but except for Liam and my mom, no one else really matters. It feels like I’m playing this song just for them. And for my dad as well.
I’m in the middle of the first chorus, and I haven’t screwed up yet, when something strange begins to happen. I feel a slight vibration underneath my feet. It’s faint at first, but slowly intensifies. I try to ignore it, thinking that it’s just the scientists working on something in one of their labs.
No one in the audience seems to notice it. I keep playing, putting the sensation out of my mind and focusing on the song. But I can feel the vibration getting even stronger.
I’m not sure what to do. I see a few heads in the audience turning around, like some of them are starting to feel the vibration too.
Then, above Liam, one of the chandeliers in the ceiling begins swaying slightly. I’ve never seen or felt anything like this in the weeks I’ve been at Destiny Station.
At the same instant, my microphone cuts off. Wailing sirens slice through the air. The floor is shaking more now, much worse than before. I stop playing and stand up. The audience starts standing up too.
I hear a deep creaking, groaning noise, and then a harsh splintering sound. In horror, I watch a large crack appear across the rock wall to my left. Then another fissure appears, bursting across the opposite wall of the cavern, lightning-fast. People start yelling out to one another.
Movement catches my eye. Faster than I thought possible, Liam has scrambled up onstage, rushing to my side. Everything is sliding into pandemonium, as debris begins raining down on us from the ceiling.
“You okay?” Liam yells over the noise.
“Yeah, but what’s going on?” I clutch on to him with one hand, and grip my guitar with the other.
As if in response to my question, the lights flicker and then dim.
Then everything goes totally dark, plunging the cavern into blackness. People call out instructions to one another.
A few battery-powered emergency lights near the exits snap on, bathing everything in a spooky red glow. The noise of the crowd gets louder. People are trying to guide everyone to the exits at the back of the cave.
“We need to get out of here right now,” Liam says. We start heading down the steps off the stage.
Suddenly, a figure dashes out of the darkness, making me jump. It’s Cass. She tugs at my arm, trying to pull me sideways.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“This way!” she says. Behind her, I see other dark figures waiting at the side of the stage. Other former drones, and Emma too. “Staying in here isn’t safe,” Cass continues, yanking off her heels and tossing them off the stage. “Trust me! If the station’s being attacked, then you’re safer coming with us.” I realize then that they’re heading for the secret cave.
More bits of rock rain down. There’s an explosive noise as a chunk of sandstone breaks loose and crashes down in the center of the cavern, decimating some of the empty rock benches. The air is already thick with dust. With the power out, there’s no air circulation, as well as almost no light. More rocks come tumbling loose. It looks too dangerous to run through the cave now. Our best option might be to follow Cass after all.
Liam has seen the falling rocks too. “Let’s go!”
“Stay close behind me,” Cass says to both of us. “Don’t get lost. I move fast!”
“So do we!” I retort.
Cass races across the stage toward the smaller cave, with both of us in tow. Ahead of her, I already see her friends moving quickly through the dim light. We barrel into the small cave. The metal beams creak wildly behind us. I hope they can bear the weight of whatever’s happening, or else this entire cavern is going to collapse.
I look up ahead. Cass is headed for a narrow opening in the side of the cave wall. I’m startled that I didn’t notice it before. It must have been hidden by a hanging tapestry.
I realize then that I’m going to have to let go of my guitar. I can’t take it into this narrow tunnel with me. I pause for a millisecond, setting it down on a wooden table with a pang of regret. And then I’m running again with Liam, right into the darkness of the hidden tunnel.
“It gets pretty tight!” Cass yells back at us, from up ahead. The earth feels like it’s shaking around us now. I’m worried about my mom. Did she make it out in time?
“You first,” Liam says into my ear, letting me slip past him. “I’ll be right behind you. You’ll be safest in the middle.”
I keep moving, sheer momentum driving me forward. It’s almost pitch black in here. I can barely catch a glimpse of Cass in front of me. I struggle to keep up. Liam is just a step behind me.
The narrow tunnel takes a sharp turn—but I don’t see it in time. I slam against the rocks, scraping my arm. I cry out in surprise, but I keep moving. So does everyone else. Behind us, I can hear increasingly loud noises that sound as though more of the rock ceiling is collapsing into the main cavern.
“Hurry!” Cass yells.
We keep following her, plowing forward in the darkness. The tunnel seems to go on for forever. It continues to twist and turn, and I keep banging my elbows and knees. And then it starts to get even narrower.
After the machine attack on the roof deck, I knew it was likely that something else bad would happen to Destiny Station. I just didn’t think it would come so soon, or be so drastic. I keep running.
“Careful up ahead!” Cass’s voice calls out.
And right then, I slam my head hard into a low piece of rock. I stop for a second, stunned. Liam stops too, right behind me. White stars flash and sparkle across my vision. I blink my eyes, reaching up a hand to touch my head.
“What’s wrong?” Liam asks. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, probing my forehead. I can already feel a hard lump forming. But I shake it off, and we start moving forward again.
“C’mon!” Cass calls back to us impatiently. Her voice sounds fainter, like she’s farther up ahead now.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have gone with them,” I say to Liam. “These tunnels are like a labyrinth.”
“If there’s trouble, we can always head back and take our chances in the station. Or if we actually get outside, we can run and hide in the dunes together.”
“Okay.” Ignoring my throbbing head, I move even faster. The roof of the tunnel is lower here, but it’s finally starting to widen at the sides. Of course, there’s no sign of Cass anymore. Or of anyone else.
Then our tunnel starts moving upward. I feel like we’re running up a sharp incline, and the air is getting thinner and cleaner.
“Cass?” I call out.
“Alenna!” a voice drifts back to me, sounding frustrated. “What’s taking you guys so long?”
A moment later, Liam and I burst out of the tunnel and into another cave. Both of us are panting for air.
This cave is partway open to the outdoors. The front half has collapsed into a pile of rock and sand, obviously a long time ago. It now resembles the shell of an amphitheater.
From here, I can see the gentle curve of sand dunes under the stars and moonlight, and beyond them, Destiny Station itself, about a quarter of a mile away.
Kids stand there inside the mouth of the cave, staring out at Destiny Station. Their backs are to us as they watch the besieged mesa. Most of them don’t even notice our arrival, except for Cass. She’s waiting for us.
“You made it,” she says. “And I thought you said you were fast!”
“You know these tunnels. We don’t,” I tell her.
I stare past Cass at Destiny Station. I see flames blazing out a few of the lower air shafts. What is happening to it? I think of my mom again, and my heart seizes up.
“What’s causing the fires?” I ask Cass. “Why did everything start shaking?”
“We don’t know.”
She leads us over to the group of other kids. There’s at least twenty of them here in the cave. Other than Cass and Emma, and the three glowering boys with shaved heads, they are strangers. Ex-drones. Liam and I stand there with them, watching the station. It appears to still be shaking, like it’s at the epicenter of some strange localized earthquake.
Under the moonlight, I see people streaming out of the large opening at the base of the station. Running for safety. But I don’t see any sign of machines or bombs—or of anything attacking the base at all.
“Maybe this is some kind of accident,” I say. “Maybe something went wrong in one of the labs? Maybe they fixed that machine and it got loose.”
Emma turns to me, pushing her glasses up her nose. “The scientists have way too many safety protocols.”
“Then, what?” Liam asks.
“Some kind of weapon,” another voice says. “The UNA is behind this. They have to be.” The voice belongs to one of the three boys who blocked our path in the tunnel earlier. The one with the eye patch.
“I’m not sure it’s the UNA this time,” another boy pipes up. “Could be the Aussies. Could be they finally want us off their land.” Heated voices start talking over him.
Liam and I stand there as the kids around us begin to argue. I still can’t take my eyes off the fires burning inside Destiny Station. How much of the station is going to be engulfed before the flames get put out?
“Quiet!” Cass yells at the crowd. “I feel like I’m back on the wheel!” She pauses, as her friends stop yelling. “It’s obviously the UNA, just like I was afraid of. It must be some new kind of weapon that we don’t know about yet. Could be subsonic or electromagnetic, beamed down from a satellite.”
“Or someone could have sabotaged the station from within,” Liam says in the ensuing silence. “That’s another possibility.”
“No one would do that,” Emma says.
Liam gazes around at the crowd. “No villager would do it.”
“None of us would either,” Cass says. “This place is our home too.”
A sudden explosion makes everyone startle. I watch as a fireball bursts out of one of the upper vents on the fifth level, blasting the metal grate into the air. More people stream out below. Destiny Station is being completely evacuated.
“We need to go and help them,” I say, stepping forward. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing while people get hurt!”
“It’s too dangerous,” another boy says. “It’s better if—”
“We don’t have a choice,” Liam interrupts him. “The scientists will be looking for all of us. If they can’t find us, they might think we’re trapped inside the station.”
“We’ll tell everyone where you are,” I add. “In case they want to know.”
Together, Liam and I start walking out of the cave opening, stepping over fallen rocks.
Cass moves forward and holds out an arm to stop me. “Alenna, wait—”
I brush past her, my eyes fixed on the ever-growing crowd of scientists and kids fleeing the burning station. My mom is in there somewhere. I need to find her.
Liam and I make it out of the cave entrance and onto the sand.
And that’s when it happens.
An object plummets down from the sky, dive-bombing straight into the crowd in front of Destiny Station. At first I think it’s a giant chunk of sandstone, shaken loose by the explosions. But then the screaming starts, and I realize that it’s something far deadlier.
Another object zooms down after it. Followed by another. And another one after that—like a whole buzzing swarm descending at once.
They’re killing machines. Just like the one Liam and I battled on top of the rock.
“No!” shocked voices yell behind us.
“The machines were waiting until everyone was out of the station,” I say to Liam. “Waiting to massacre them!” I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Liam and I start moving forward again even faster, still ready to fight, no matter the odds. But then even more machines burst down from the sky, plowing into the crowd.
I start hearing gunshots, as guards fire back at them, trying to blast them out of the sky. A machine gets hit and explodes in a flare of white light. A piece of it crashes down into a nearby dune, kicking up a massive spray of red sand.
Liam pauses for a moment, and so do I, blinking sand from our eyes.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Cass’s voice calls out behind us. “At least not right now . . .”
I keep watching the machines in horror, barely listening to her words.
“Look!” Liam says, pointing out at the dunes.
A small group of figures are racing away from Destiny Station. They’re running across the sand straight toward us, like they know exactly where we are. They’re clearly scientists from the station. Some of them are waving at us urgently.
I move forward again to help them, heading rapidly in their direction with Liam as more machines blaze paths of destruction down from the night sky.
4ESCAPE
WE GET CLOSER TO the figures in the sand. I can’t see their faces yet. But then a voice cries out, “Alenna, is that you?”
“Mom!” I yell back, my heart surging with relief as I recognize her voice. I rush forward with Liam. I finally reach my mother and we hug.
“Thank god you’re all right,” she says. Her face is pale and worried in the moonlight. Her dark hair, streaked with gray, is dusty with bits of sandstone. Her eyes—which look so much like mine—are wide and frightened. We hug again. She feels fragile.
Five other scientists are with her, including Dr. Elliott. Two of them are carrying shotguns. I hear more gunshots as the scientists at the station continue to fight the machines, and try to survive this terrible night.
I glance behind me. Cass and the other kids are just watching us from the cave entrance. They don’t come to our aid. They just stand there—like they’re unwilling to risk their own lives. I can’t believe they’re not helping us.
My mom looks at me. “It’s not safe at Destiny Station anymore. We have to leave right now. I came to get you, and Liam too.”
“How did you know where we were?”
“You think that we’d rescue you from Island Alpha but not keep an eye on you once you got here? Cass and her crew don’t think we know about this cave, but we’ve always known they meet here. We’ve got hidden cameras mounted in the ceiling.”
“Hurry,” Dr. Elliott says. “To the cave.” We follow his lead, racing back toward the cavern opening.
“What’s happening?” I ask my mom as we scramble over the low dunes. “How are we going to rebuild from this?”
“We can’t.” My mom glances at me and Liam. “But we have an escape route. We’ve always had one, in case something like this happened. You kids didn’t know about it for your own safety.”
“You mean you didn’t trust us,” I say.
“We trust some of you, just not others,” my mom replies.
When we reach the opening of the cave where Cass and her friends are waiting, we rush inside, seeking shelter. The sound of the machines attacking the station c
ontinues.
Everyone is talking and asking questions. Cass looks pretty surprised to see the scientists here. Voices echo off the walls, mixing with the distant sounds of gunshots.
“So what’s the plan? What do we do?” Liam asks the scientists, his voice cutting through the noise.
My mom turns to him. Dr. Elliott gestures sharply for the rest of the crowd to be silent. “Underneath these natural tunnels is a man-made one,” my mom explains. “We built it three years ago. It stretches from here to an underground lake, which leads directly into the ocean.”
“How’s that going to help us?” Cass asks. “I don’t—”
Another loud explosion in the station startles us all. The impact shakes my bones, even from this distance. Small pieces of rock and grit fall from the ceiling of our cave. Everyone looks up nervously.
Someone starts crying. It’s a girl I don’t know. A former drone with red tattoos on her face, and teeth filed into sharp points. She’s huddled in the corner. Emma moves over to console her.
“So many people are dying!” the girl sobs. “It’s not fair!”
Liam starts pacing back and forth. “We should be fighting. Doing something!” I feel the same way.
More explosions fill the air. I try to block out the tragedy of what’s going on at Destiny Station. Bleak thoughts rush through my mind. Maybe after they’ve killed everyone at the station, they’ll come after us next.
“We have to go now,” Dr. Elliott says. “I’ll lead the way into the escape tunnel.”
Outside, I continue to hear screams and see flashes of gunfire. I also see the endless shadows of machines shrieking down from the sky to claim fresh victims.
Dr. Elliott quickly extracts a remote control device from his pocket and presses some buttons. Immediately, with a creaking groan, part of the rock wall behind us starts opening up on hinges, revealing a circular metal portal. Cass and her friends look stunned.
“Unbelievable,” Cass mutters.
My mom rushes over to the side of the portal and types a code into a computer panel. There’s a loud click as the metal portal unlatches itself. It automatically opens outward, revealing a wide, man-made tunnel hidden behind it. We cluster around the opening. The two scientists with guns are guarding the cave, in case any machines head our way. Liam takes hold of my hand.
The Uprising: The Forsaken Trilogy Page 5