by Gwynn White
Grigor sprinted. He reached the stairs and took them two at a time. At the top, he swung left. Just a few paces down the passage, his injured arm brushed the wall. It left a streak of blood on the wood paneling. The perfect trail for Natalia to follow.
She’s right. This is futile, he thought frantically to the unknown woman.
When the woman didn’t reply, he careened around a corner and slammed into a low, narrow door swinging open in the passageway.
The top edge caught his hip. He yelped before he could stop himself. Cursing the idiot who had left it open, he veered around it—and then stopped.
Since he’d been old enough to walk, he’d traveled this route to the turret, but never once had he noticed this door in the paneling.
He took it as a sign.
Heart racing, he crouched down to see where it led.
Eleven
Unlikely Allies
Meka cracked open an eye. His other eyelid was coated with something sticky. It refused to budge. He gazed blearily into a puddle of red. It smelled coppery. Just like blood.
Both his eyes popped open.
Congealed blood pooled around his head.
He jerked upright.
Had he been shot?
His fingers quivered as they prodded his neck and the base of his skull where the pain had been.
Blood caked there, too, but his skin was whole.
He heaved a sigh of relief.
It had to have come from Aljesh.
And Claire.
He’d shot her leg off.
He grimaced; much of the blood pooling around him had to be hers. She would need help if she were to survive. Still sitting, he spun—and flinched.
Claire was dead. Probably from shock and blood loss.
And so was Rowan. The bullet he had heard fire, which he thought had hit him, had struck Rowan’s chest. The Trevenite lay on his back, staring, unseeing, at the ceiling.
Meka’s heart ached at the waste, even if it had been their choice to fight instead of negotiating.
It also ached for his own soul.
There was no escaping that he was now partly responsible for the death of six people if he counted the three he’d gassed in Oldfort, and the guardsman Lukan had murdered to teach him and Grigor a lesson so many months before.
And all I ever wanted to do was fish. He sighed. And program informas.
As for informas…
It was time to face Kai Lin.
He yanked his rifle out of a pool of blood and tossed the grisly strap over his shoulder before yelling, “Kai Lin? Where are you?”
“Here.” Her voice, coming from behind a bank of informas, sounded strangled. “I’m trying to figure out what’s happening.”
He clambered to his feet—and gawped at the programmers.
Just moments before they had been an armed mob intent on killing him and Kai Lin. Now they stood like statutes. Only their dead eyes moved in their frozen bodies.
Their ice crystals must have kicked back in.
He opened his mouth to ask Kai Lin if hers had also started working again, then snapped it closed.
Aljesh had died over ice crystals.
He wasn’t ready to take on Kai Lin if hers made her go all crazy on him.
“You need to see this. Come to my station.” Kai Lin sounded perplexed.
Feet squelching in gore, he pushed his way through the statue-like programmers to reach her workstation. Dozens of dead eyes followed him, but no one tried to stop him.
He hovered behind Kai Lin to assess her before moving into her line of sight.
She peered at text flowing from her informas. “I didn’t understand what went wrong originally. Or maybe I should say right.” She turned and shot him a joyous smile. It made her eyes dance. A working ice crystal would never have permitted such animation.
He relaxed. Slightly.
Her smile faded. “But now I’m really confused.”
“Care to be more specific?” Still cautious, he edged next to her.
She pointed at the lines of text. “Your and my ice crystals are still not firing. I can’t even see a pulse from them. Why I don’t know. Everyone else’s—” She frowned. “Shale. Where is he?”
“I last saw him in the privy.”
“Would you mind checking on him?”
Meka hugged his rifle closer. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
She flopped back onto her stool, scowled, and stood again. “Bastard Felix for making us sit on those things. They make my back ache just looking at them. Just what I need to add to my headache.”
His head also throbbed, but he wasn’t going to mention it. “That sounds like an evasion.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a…” Kai Lin sighed and rubbed her arms. “To be honest, I’m singularly unequipped for this situation. All I know is that you, me, and possibly Shale are the only people out of the three hundred here in the Hive who are in control of our own minds.”
Father, does this have something to do with the countdown? Meka wiped his bloody hands on his clothes to cover up his inward discussion.
No reply from Father.
Kai Lin took a step back. “You look positively gruesome with all that blood on you.”
She must have known that Claire was dead. He was grateful that she didn’t accuse him of murder, even though she’d be right.
“You need to shower and change.” Her shoulders sagged. “Am I remembering right that there’s no water?”
He nodded, surprised she would even ask. His tongue was so thick and dry he was about to start slurring. Father, I asked you a question. Is this all linked to your countdown?
“Yes. Sorry about the headaches, but the good news is that you and Kai Lin will never be troubled by those ice crystals again.”
I’ll take the headache. Thank you.
“I thought you would. Now you need to survive.”
And Shale?
Kai Lin perched on her stool. She fiddled with her code. As far he could see, she was checking the Hive’s food supplies.
The zeros that came up in each inventory search was depressing.
“Focus on survival, Meka. There are three hundred people in the Hive who will die unless you bring in water. And food, if they are too keep functioning. That’s your first priority.”
Where do we find supplies?
“The palace is the only place with reliable food supplies. The rest of Cian is suffering.”
He gulped. Did that mean the entire city was starving? I can’t exactly walk up to Lukan’s front door and ask for a wagon of food to be delivered to—He looked around. Where is this place?
“Zone One. Very close to the main road to the palace. You need to be stealthy. It’s the only way. I suggest you forget the road and go underground.”
Kai Lin stepped away from her informas. Her hands hit her hips. “We’re in serious trouble. As much as I hate Felix, at least he took care of the basics.” She looked despairingly at Felix’s very comfortable chair. “He’s been captured by the warlord. We saw it on Nicholas’s Final Word.”
There was no way he’d tell Kai Lin that his dead father had said the same thing. Just like he’d never say that the same dead father had had a hand in the destruction of their ice crystals. Or that said dead father suggested an underground trip to the palace to steal food. And was such a trip even possible?
“Still denying my existence, Meka?” Father asked mournfully. “You know that never works out well for you.”
Meka ignored him and said to Kai Lin, “That means Felix isn’t coming back. We need to get to the palace to raid supplies.”
“The palace?” Her voice spiked, and her eyes narrowed. “Why would you want to go there?”
Her suspicion made his pulse race. “I assure you, it has nothing to do with any loyalty to Lukan. But it is the one place where we know for sure there’ll be food and water.”
She sat on the edge of her dreadfully uncomfortable chair and stared at
him. After an age, she stood. “Okay, Prince Meka, you risked your life to save mine, so I’m going to believe you. Just don’t let me down.”
He punched his chest in a Norin salute. “I’m part Norin. I make you an oath on my life that I support Nicholas and Axel. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“I know about Norin oaths. I accept them as binding.” Her lips turned down. “I dated a Norin alliance soldier before I was captured and brought here.” Her eyes fired, washing away her sadness. “I will have you killed if you break it.”
“That won’t be necessary. And you’ll see him again. But only if we can find supplies. Can the guardsmen help us? They blend in.”
“No. They can’t leave the Hive.”
He frowned at her. “But if you tell them to?”
“I can’t override their basic programming. Only Felix can change the parameters of our ice crystals.” She shrugged. “Until today, it seems.”
He waved airily at her informas. “You can’t figure something out?”
A definitive head shake. “I told you, he never delegated that to me or anyone else. He kept all those codes secret. His programming is designed to keep the guardsmen here.” She waved at the zombie programmers. “Same as them. Which is why I don’t understand how that glitch happened.” She plucked her lip between her thumb and forefinger. “And what happens if ours start up again?”
“We have to assume they won’t. And we must work fast while we have the energy.” As it was, he was dog tired. If it wasn’t for his raging thirst, he’d have curled up and gone to sleep right here and now. Instead, he had to figure out how to bring food and water for three hundred people to the Hive without help.
Kai Lin ground her lip between her fingers.
“That’s not working fast.” He strode over the closest programmer, a girl with the same skin and hair color as Kai Lin. He pulled the rifle out of her hands and tossed it to Kai Lin. “Until we know where Shale’s loyalties lie.” Despite what Father had said, he fully intended to look for Shale before he left here to find supplies.
Kai Lin fumbled the catch and had to dive for the weapon. A scarlet blush claimed her.
He turned away to save her the embarrassment.
She grabbed his arm. “Prince Meka, there’s something you need to know about me.”
He looked down at her—like Farith, she was tiny. “Make it quick.”
“I joined the alliance because I wanted to make the world a better place, but the truth is, I’m a hopeless soldier. That’s why the warlord offered me a position as a programmer. Now that is something I’m very good at it. But raiding the palace for supplies…” She pointed at the programmers. “I will be of more use if I stay here and control them.”
His eyebrows rose. “You’re responsible for the statue affect?”
“I voice-commanded them to stay. They won’t move until I counter-command.”
Meka shivered. “No wonder they love you so much.”
“Please understand that before this, I had no control over what I was doing. And now that I am in control, I’m not risking them attacking and killing anyone else if there’s another glitch. That’s why I’m keeping them on a tight rein.” When he nodded, she added, “But I can’t leave them like this, either. It’s cruel.”
He waved at the informas. “Why can’t they carry on doing what they always did?”
“It’s all a bit pointless now, isn’t it?”
“You’re absolutely sure that we can’t contact Axel?”
“I staked my life on it.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Get them back on their chairs. In the meantime, I’m going to find Shale. Then you need to help me track down the exit to this dump.”
“The exit? I suppose there has to be one.” Her fingers worried her lip. “Okay… I’ll get onto my informas and see if I can find the layout of the Hive.”
Meka had to step around Claire, Aljesh, and Rowan’s dead bodies on his way to the door. “Can you get this cleaned up?” That sounded terribly callous. Angry with himself, he added, “We’ll have to find a way of burying their bodies.”
“We can burn them.”
He stopped in his tracks. “How?”
“There’s a furnace here. Can’t you feel the heat? Felix didn’t just use it make the place insufferable. He also used it to dispose of bodies. The programmers who died at their stations were tossed into it.”
A tide of fury surged through Meka. But no matter how many times he tried, he couldn’t shift the haze of red that blocked his vision. Nor could he stop from shaking.
Kai Lin sighed. “Terrible. Isn’t it?” When he didn’t reply, she said, “I’ll program the guardsmen and other staff to ignore you.” She turned to the programmers. “Stations. Everyone work on your systems.”
As one, the programmers shuffled across the room to their back-breaking chairs.
“Dragon’s ass,” Meka hissed. “Pity we can’t get the guardsmen at the palace to roll over and beg like that.”
“Nothing in life is that easy.”
“No kidding.” He flashed his eye at the door scanner, and the door slid open.
He loped down the deserted passageway to the privy, where he’d last seen Shale. He threw open the door and looked inside.
The Norin had vanished.
Thirst stopped him from searching further. That, and hunger-induced light-headedness.
Also, the Hive was probably alive with Felix’s cameras. They could find him on one of those.
Despite his reassuring thoughts, the hair on the back of his neck prickled as he trudged back up the passageway to Kai Lin.
“Shale’s gone,” he said as he entered the room. Rowan, Claire and Aljesh’s bodies had been removed. A couple of cleaners dressed in regulation gray scrubbed the bloody floor. He moved around them to get to Kai Lin. “Can you find him on the camera network?”
“I’ve been looking. But nothing.”
That didn’t make sense. “He said he didn’t know the way out. He must have lied.”
“No. There’s an easier solution. I didn’t see you on the cameras, either.”
“They only detect ice crystals?”
“Seems that way. Which means—”
“That Shale’s programming is bust, too.” Unsure if that was good news, Meka pulled his rifle closer. He frowned at Kai Lin. Her weapon was propped up against the wall, well beyond hand’s reach. “Perhaps you should bring in a couple of guardsmen to watch over you while I’m gone.”
She nodded absent-mindedly. “I’ve been doing a search. I’ve found the blueprints for the Hive.” She jabbed her finger at a stream of images floating above her informas. “Look.”
Intrigued, Meka leaned in for a better view and then rocked back on his heels. “An underground tunnel.”
Kai Lin smiled at him. “Exactly that. And there’s more.” She traced her fingers across a series of tunnels. “They must have been built before the city was constructed.”
“Cian has been here forever, hasn’t it? Those tunnels look maintained. That doesn’t happen, does it?”
Kai Lin laughed at him. “I come from Zou. You’re the Chenayan prince, and you’re asking me?”
He grunted. Father, is this what you were talking about?
“Felix built these tunnels when the Hive was constructed. They feed into other, less well-maintained tunnels. That’s where you need to go.”
And these less well-maintained tunnels lead to the palace?
When Father didn’t reply, he guessed he’d pushed his luck with his questions.
“I’m going to need an informa with those maps. And to keep contact with you. The light will also help.”
Kai Lin rubbed her lips. They were beginning to crack, whether from thirst or her constant fiddling, he wasn’t sure. “You’re dead set on this adventure?”
“No,” he said honestly. “But what other choice do we have?”
Kai Lin opened a drawer and pulled out an informa. She flashed it a
t his eye. Next, she streamed the maps into it. When the images snuffed out, she held it out to him. “Be safe.”
He took it from her and stuck it into his pocket.
With her informa guiding them, they walked together through the Hive. Although they met no one, Meka could not shake the sense that they were being followed. But every time he looked back over his shoulder, he saw no one.
Where is Shale? he asked Father.
“A little trust, please, Meka.”
He had to assume that Father had his back. Even so, he wasn’t sorry when they reached a double steel door he had never noticed before.
A retina scanner blinked at them.
“First hurdle, I assume?”
Kai Lin delved into her informa. A moment or two later, she said, “The only people who can access this door are Felix and his personal guardsman, Oleg. Overriding the coding will take time.” She licked her lips with a pale, cracked tongue. “Time we don’t really have.”
Meka slumped against the wall to conserve his energy while he pondered the problem. Even then, his brain was too fuzzy to be of much use.
“There must be records,” Father whispered.
It took him a moment to fathom what Father meant. His shot off the wall. “Of course! There’s got to be a record of Oleg’s eye somewhere on the system.”
Kai Lin swore. “Why didn’t I think of that?” She shifted through screens on her informa, finally giggling hysterically. “Here! I have it.” An image of an eyeball bobbed in the air. “Transferring it to you.”
His device pinged.
Hands shaking, she held the image up to the scanner, and the door slid open. Beyond the pool of light spilling through the doorway, a tunnel gaped darkly before them.
The steady drip of water echoed down its length.
Meka grinned at Kai Lin. “You thinking what I am?”
“Race you.” Kai Lin broke into an ungainly trot into the tunnel.
“Definitely not a soldier’s butt,” he muttered as he fired up the light on his informa. Not wanting her to get too far from his protection, he ran after her. The squeal of his soft-soled shoes was replaced by sloshing water. He pitched his light down. A narrow line of water trickled around a corner in the otherwise dry tunnel.