by Erica Rue
No one stopped them, or even really paid much attention to them. Cora led her to the base entrance, and she was easily allowed to pass. No one suspected she wasn’t doing so at her father’s wishes. Lithia couldn’t fathom that level of trust. She had never bothered building it. When someone pushed her, she couldn’t help pushing back. She was practiced at ignoring the little voice in her head that told her to back down.
Cora began explaining what the different floors of the building were for. The top floors were living quarters for her family, the middle levels were for research and government business, and the basement levels were for storage, among other things. The roof functioned as a landing pad, but there were no Flyers there.
Cora led her into the basement, cheerful and calm. She looked up the location for the anti-parasitic, and they easily found its case. Cora looked inside to find it missing, and Lithia watched her cool disintegrate.
“It should be here,” Cora said.
“Maybe it got mislabeled, or someone put it away in the wrong place.”
“No, it hasn’t been moved in a long time.”
“Why would someone move it?”
“They wouldn’t. Unless…” She trailed off. “If someone checked it out to study it or use it… I didn’t bother checking requisitions.”
Cora passed the catalog, and scrolled through the requisitions log. “Moira has it. She’s running tests in her lab.”
“So, we go and get it,” Lithia said. “Where’s the lab?”
“It’s upstairs, but you don’t understand. Moira hates me. She’ll never let me into her lab.”
“Hates you? I can’t believe that anyone hates you.” Lithia had seen nothing but respect and deference shown to this girl.
If asking nicely wouldn’t work, she had another idea. “Is there any way to get my stun rifle, the one I came here with?”
Cora looked alarmed. “Your weapon? Why would you need that here?”
“It doesn’t do any permanent damage. Just knocks you out for a while.”
“Oh,” Cora said, looking relieved. “No, I don’t know where it is. The techs are probably checking it out. Plus, carrying around a weapon would make it a lot harder to hide in plain sight.”
She had a point. It was amazing that no one had stopped them yet as it was, but would they really question Cora? As much as she wanted to look around for her rifle, they didn’t have time to waste.
Cora led them upstairs, and a few turns later, they were at the entrance of a small work room. Tucked away at the back of the hall, it was rather remote compared to the other labs.
“In there,” she said.
Lithia barged in without knocking. There was a short-haired blonde woman in the corner reviewing notes on a computer. She turned at the sound of the door and frowned at them.
“You can’t be in here. Who’s this?” she said.
“I’m getting the tour. What is it that you work on here?” Lithia said.
“A lot of things,” Moira said. She turned to Cora. “And how did my miserable little lab become a stop on your tour?”
“You know how valuable my father considers your work,” Cora said.
“Some of it, certainly. That’s the only reason I’ve still got a lab. He doesn’t much care for my work with plants,” she said. “Says he has no use for study into phytoremediation.”
“Phytoremediation?” Lithia said. “That sounds familiar.” Dione had talked about it a few times.
“Healing the land through plants. The Ficarans destroyed their farmland with heavy metals, and I’ve been working on a way to remove the contamination with plants. It’s long-term, but I seem to be the only one to see the cliff up ahead. We need the Ficarans, which is something no one around here likes to admit.”
“But they’re the enemy,” Lithia said.
“They don’t have to be, but Regnator Bram won’t let go. He’s not interested in trading knowledge for peace.” She turned to Cora. “When we go to war, and it’s a when, not an if, you’re gonna see that boy you’ve been pining after beaten and bloody. I don’t want that. Not for anyone. Now your father’s got it in mind to send this medicine to me and tell me to make more like demons are on the way.” She pointed to a vial on the cluttered table. It didn’t look like Moira had spent any time on it yet. That was it. That was what they needed. Just one dose.
“So here I am, wasting my time, when the real threat is our own stubbornness.”
“Cora’s here to listen to what you have to say,” Lithia said, positioning the confused girl in front of Moira.
“You want to learn, child? I’ll give you the general principles. Maybe you can talk some sense into your father.”
Moira explained the research she had been doing, though in basic terms. She sounded like Dione trying to explain her latest obsession.
“Phytoremediation uses certain plants that are tolerant of heavy metals to clean up the soil. The plants pull in the poison along with other nutrients they need, and the poison doesn’t kill them. Once they’ve absorbed the poison, you remove the plant, taking the poison with it. The soil is cleaner. It takes years and multiple applications, but it’s amazing what these plants are capable of.”
When Moira turned to produce a few diagrams, Lithia struck. She stole the small bottle of medicine, and put it in her pocket, now surprisingly grateful for the billowy parachute pants.
At the next pause in Moira’s lesson, Lithia broke in. “Thank you, but we’ve got to continue on. Cora, maybe you can come back sometime?” Lithia thought she could stand to learn a little more from Moira, who seemed to have some human decency when it came to the Ficarans.
“And who are you, anyway? Why are you getting a tour? You look an awful lot like Miranda.”
Lithia had no good answers. There were no long-lost cousins in this world, at least none that wouldn’t cause immediate suspicion.
“Just a friend who’s never seen the Temple. I offered to show her around,” Cora said. Apparently she wasn’t supposed to talk about the whole cousins thing. Or maybe Moira would have started asking questions.
“Hmmm.”
That explanation was good enough. Moira was reading something in her notes, even as she listened to Cora, and Lithia knew that look. She had seen it in Dione’s eyes a million times. Moira was eager to get back to work.
The two left the lab, and after easily walking back to the entrance, they emerged into the sunlight. The city was beautiful. Small houses made of brick and stone and concrete formed neat rows, each one unique yet a complement to the one next to it.
The buildings were new, yet permanent. Cora led her to an open-air market selling fresh produce and crafts. It was full of people, and the perfect place to hide in plain sight. On their way, Cora innocently bought a few pale lavender fruits and a painted wooden pendant necklace. She gave the necklace to Lithia, as well as a piece of fruit.
“What is this?” Lithia asked, rubbing the small bumps on the fruit’s textured surface with her thumb.
“A polla. It’s my favorite. Try it.”
Lithia waited for Cora to dig in for a clue on how to eat it. The apparent answer was skin on, leave nothing. The fruit was sweet with just enough tang, and the only downside was the sticky juice that Lithia wiped on her pants.
They were out. She should update Zane on their progress. She couldn’t believe they had succeeded. She looked down to her manumed and read the message waiting for her there: The Vens found us. Holding position at the moment.
Her entire body went cold. The crowds moved around her, but she tried not to look at their faces. These were the people who would die when the Vens landed. And she had led them here. When she got the data from Zane, the list of all the planets outside the Bubble where her grandmother could have landed, she had never had much hope about this one.
Could the Icon save this planet? It had struck them down after all, but they were just in a shuttle. The Ven ship was much larger and had better defenses. It really wasn’t much o
f a weapon at all, and Lithia puzzled over why it had even been left there. Maybe it was broken.
“Lithia, what is it?”
She wasn’t ready to tell Cora. Not until she had a plan.
“I need to tell Zane what’s going on. Is there somewhere less crowded we can go?”
Lithia couldn’t help but laugh when Cora brought her to a tree house, just inside the border of the woods. The few children playing in it scattered when they saw them coming.
Lithia put some distance in between herself and Cora. “Zane,” she said in a low voice. “Got your message. Where’s Dione?”
“I haven’t heard from her yet, and I’m a little worried. She should have checked in by now.”
“Give it a little more time.”
“I don’t know how much time we have. Lithia, the Vens are just sitting there, like they’re waiting for something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”
“We can’t let them come here. We just can’t.”
“I know,” Zane said, “and I’ve got an idea.”
35. DIONE
Dione’s stomach was in knots. If the journal contained the answer, she hadn’t found it, and now she was out of time. She had to deliver on her promise. If she failed, she couldn’t save Lithia and Bel. Maybe everything would make sense once she saw the shuttles.
Victoria was already at the hangar. She was flanked by two men, one of whom Dione recognized as the especially burly man from breakfast.
The hangar had also been built into the hill, and the doors were open. Victoria proudly walked her through the two rows of shuttles. Dione counted there were about ten in total, but there were two different designs. At the front of the row was the simple carrier design, just like the one Lithia had flown, or rather crashed, a few days ago. At the end of the row were some slightly larger shuttles, probably designed for cargo transport. They looked as if they had been built by different manufacturers, but Dione wasn’t certain. Lithia would know these things. She would ask her in a few hours once they rescued her.
“Here it is,” Victoria said. She opened the doors, and inside everything looked fine, at least Dione thought so. Lithia was the pilot and would be much better suited to this, but she was on her own. She would figure it out, but for now, she had to stall.
Dione needed some time to think. Once Victoria left, she would be able to think out loud, maybe bounce a few ideas off of Brian. Most importantly, she’d be able to relax. Victoria made her feel nervous and prevented her from thinking.
“I’ll need to conduct a visual assessment,” Dione said. Lithia had said something like that when they crashed, right?
Victoria followed her. Every movement that Dione made, Victoria was her shadow. Dione thought everything looked all right and went into the shuttle. She took the pilot’s seat. There was power, which was a reassuring sign, but none of her commands were accepted. She was indeed locked out. The issue was, she didn’t see any place to input a code. That must mean this was a spoken code, and as such, could be anything.
She thought about just reading the diary out loud, hoping that the right combination of words was in there, but Victoria was there, staring at her.
“Go ahead,” Victoria said. “You claimed to know how to start it.”
“It’s not the starting it that’s the issue. It’s the controlling it. I can unlock it, but I’ll need some time.”
“That wasn’t the agreement. You said you knew the key.” Victoria could see straight through her delay tactic.
“Do you even know why the Architect locked them all in the first place? She didn’t trust you. This isn’t going to be easy to do.” The longer she sat there, the worse she felt. She couldn’t just hand over a bunch of weapons to Victoria. She would have to find a way to start and take just this one shuttle. The relief she had felt when she knew Brian was on the same page was immeasurable. His cooperation would make this whole thing easier. She knew that offering the Ficarans the key to unlocking all the Flyers, if she ever figured it out, would lead to war. That’s what happened when one animal had an advantageous adaptation.
It made her think of invasive species. Normally, predator and prey would co-exist in a balance. Invasive species could disrupt this balance. Often, an invasive species would come in and decimate an existing native species because it had no natural predators, but sometimes it wasn’t that simple. The Cornula boar was introduced on a Rim colony as a food source. However, the boars routinely lost the tips of their horns, which were hollow and perfectly-sized for the hermit crabs of the jungle floor. The only problem was that the birds’ beaks had evolved to break the crabs’ old shells. They couldn’t get through the new horn ones. They were too tough. The birds that couldn’t find another food source died.
Humans liked to pretend they weren’t animals, but if she gave this harried leader a weapon, even if it wasn’t her intent, she would use it. In this scenario, Dione was the Cornula boar, and she didn’t like it.
Starting and taking just one shuttle was the only solution. In order for that to work, Victoria couldn’t learn how to start the shuttles. Brian would still get it when she was finished with it, and he could control the use of the Flyers. Dione trusted him a lot more than she trusted Victoria.
The Ficaran leader looked angry, but swift footsteps echoing outside the shuttle caused her to turn. A man stood outside the shuttle, breathing heavily and fidgeting with his hands.
“Victoria,” he began. Dione relaxed her shoulders once Victoria shifted her gaze.
“What is it, Nick?” she asked, as if she had been interrupted while reading a very good book.
“There’s a dispute about the rations again,” he said, squeezing out the words in between gasps.
“So settle it. That’s your job, right?”
“I’ve tried, but they are requesting your judgment.”
“Send them away with nothing, then.”
Dione was watching the exchange with interest, no longer fiddling with the panel. She watched Nick open his mouth and close it twice before finally getting the words out.
“It’s Melanie.”
Victoria stiffened next to her, clenching her hands at her sides.
“Melanie?” Dione whispered.
“She’s our best tech. Can fix almost anything. Gotta keep her happy,” Brian whispered back. He was smiling, and Dione suspected he had something to do with this distraction.
Victoria turned to the burly man. “Colm, stay here and watch them.” She pointed a finger at Dione. “You’d better have this thing up and running by the time I get back.”
Victoria didn’t wait for a reply before leaving, trailed by Nick.
Colm, the large, muscular man from breakfast, stayed close, watching, but not with the same interest. In fact, he seemed more interested in glaring at Brian than watching her. She figured now would be her only chance to look at the journal. She pulled it from her bag, and flipped to one of the more enigmatic passages.
She had barely reread the first sentence when Colm was on top of her, swatting the book from her hands.
“Get to work, now.”
Brian stood up and looked like he was about to take a swing at the muscular mass in front of him. Luckily, Brian was too smart for that. He knew he would not win in a physical altercation. Despite that, he was not shaking like she was. Dione hated getting yelled at.
She glanced down to the journal, which had landed open and face down, causing the pages on either side to fan out. Her heart pounded in her chest when she realized that the answer had been hidden in plain sight.
“This journal is the key. Hang on,” she said.
Colm backed up a step when she reached for the book.
“What is it? Did you figure it out?” Brian had already grabbed it off the floor and handed it to her.
“Look at this,” she said. Brian leaned in close, while Colm gave them space. Dione fanned the gilded edges of the journal, and revealed an
image. No, not an image. Measures of music. Dione adjusted the edges until the book was fully fanned, revealing an entire song. This was it. This was the key. It had to be.
“The lullaby,” she said, so quietly only Brian could hear. “I’ve heard this one before.”
Dione didn’t know why lullabies were so dreary, but she started singing. She wasn’t going to win awards for her musical talent, but her voice was smooth and pleasant as it followed the tune.
Oh the waters are rising,
Uprising, my dear.
And there’s no compromising
This time, no, my dear.
She paused after the first verse, waiting to see if anything would happen, but the Flyer’s controls were still not responding.
“I don’t understand. This had to be it,” Dione said, deflated.
“Let me see the journal,” Brian said.
Before she could, Colm approached. “Give it to me,” he said. “This is a waste of time. I’m taking you back up to Victoria.”
“Stop, Colm, just give her another chance,” Brian said, stepping in between Colm and Dione.
Dione knew what was about to happen, but she was powerless to stop it. Colm punched Brian in the gut, hard. Brian doubled over, gasping. Despite being strong and fit, Brian was no match for Colm, who probably received five times the average Ficaran’s rations to get that size.
“It’s the wrong key,” Brian wheezed. “Just change it.”
Change it to what? How could it be wrong? Before she could ask, Brian got back to his feet, but Colm was already stalking past him toward Dione.
“How’s your daughter, by the way?” Brian said. Dione watched Colm’s eyes go wide before they narrowed. Dione immediately deciphered the meaning behind that comment, but she couldn’t figure out what Brian meant by the wrong key.
How could something so well hidden be the wrong key? That had to be the code. This had to be it. Maybe she needed to sing the whole song. She fanned out the pages again to look at the lyrics for each verse. There were three.