‘That’s what I see as well,’ I say, staring up at it in amazement.
‘I’ve never been able to work out how to unlock the gate from here,’ Aaron says as he approaches the metallic wall. ‘No matter what I did.’
‘That’s what I’m here for, right? To act as your magic swipe card.’
I can almost feel Aaron laughing now, the sensation dancing along my skin.
‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘I’m going to do a diagnostic check now.’
He moves to one part of the gate and extends his hands. The surface of the barrier vibrates when his fingers touch the metal and when he pulls back, tendrils of coding pull out, attached to him. The datastream wraps around his digits, snaking up to his arms and elbows.
I watch him a moment more, then stare up at the latticework of gears and switches, feeling hopelessly lost. Knowing I have to start somewhere, I move forward but can’t find the beginning of the puzzle, can’t get a sense of where to start. So I stand very still and clear my mind.
‘Josie?’
Aaron sounds worried and I try to ignore him. I try to listen to the barrier, hoping my instincts will kick in as Eckhart predicted, and show me where to start. I ignore the panic that begins to nibble at my mind. Instead, I turn my thoughts inwards. I remember nights as a little girl when I’d sit in bed with the blankets forming a tent around me, flashlight stuck in my mouth as I loosened one of James’s trick box components, just so I could speed open it the next day to impress him.
Sensing the wall in front of me now, I pretend I’m alone. That it’s just me, and this is one final puzzle from him, given to me to solve.
Reaching out to touch the wall, I feel gravity shift along my arm, pulling me towards the wall. Experimentally, I place a foot on the wall and step up, almost falling over with my new perspective as the giant wall becomes my floor.
‘Aaron!’
‘What are you doing?’ Aaron steps back from the wall and the surface he’s been manipulating subsides like molasses, leaving an unscarred surface.
I run along the wall, then push off in a jump, feeling the gravity of the floor take me, and I tuck my head in for a commando roll, springing to my feet near Aaron.
‘Having fun?’ he asks me.
‘Maybe a little,’ I pant. ‘Does anything feel different this time around?’
‘Not that I can tell. Every time I feel like I’ve hacked down a level of the lock, the code resets and different parameters seem to be required. It’s just impossible to break.’
Once again, I step up on the gate, stomach lurching as my gravity shifts so that the wall becomes the floor. Walking around the huge barrier and seeing it spread out around me from this new angle, I realise the pattern reminds me of the dozen petal-like structures around the gate.
‘Maybe there’s not just one lock,’ I tell Aaron, who’s watching me from the ground.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asks.
‘I think there’s twelve different ones.’
Crouching down, I run my hand over a groove that forms the edge of one of the petals. When I push, the surface yields and my arm plunges through to up past my elbow.
‘Josie!’ Aaron shouts, and then he’s at my side on the barrier, trying to pull me up.
‘I’m okay.’ My fingers run over the corner of something solid and I try to get a grip on the object. Twisting my arm upwards, I manage to get a hold and it comes freely. When I pull my hand out, I see a replica of one of James’s trick boxes in my grip.
‘What is it?’ Aaron asks. ‘Some kind of data router?’
‘It’s a puzzle. James used to make them for me. I remember this one. It’s made of silver wattle.’
My fingers move around the edges of the box, finding hidden tabs and panels at bottom corners and tilting the box to allow the sliding mechanism to be freed. Each panel moves only a few millimetres, but it’s enough for the top face of the box to move freely. I slide open the panel, seeing nothing inside.
‘Now what?’ Aaron asks.
Holding my breath, I push the solved box back into the space it had come from. The box slides back easily, and I watch the colour and texture of the silver wattle spread out over the mechanical components that make up the surface of the petal. The clockwork begins to slowly rotate and pinions begin their never-ending journey around annular gears. Balance wheels and pendulums also begin their slow back and forth movements and a low level hum, not much more than a background noise, fills the air, punctuated with the tick-tock of clockwork.
‘Eleven more to go,’ I say.
‘Eleven more,’ Aaron agrees, voice quiet.
I work my way around the petals on the virtual gate, pulling a trick box from a hidden compartment in each of the assemblies and solving them as I go. The ritual is familiar and each step brings back into focus a childhood memory. The oak box James gave me after we did a hard day’s trek to a nearby mountain top; the mahogany box that he made from offcuts of an old coffee table. The bluegum and myrtle boxes remind me of warm summer days and the ash of a cold winter, when we were snowed in for a week. Fingers moving faster and faster as each trick box sparks a happy memory, I quickly solve the next few: walnut, gum, beech and hickory.
The second last box is pine, and I recognise it as the last box James ever gave me. It was the most difficult one to solve, with a dozen separate steps required in sequence for a small panel on the outer edge to open and reveal its contents. I solve it with ease, placing it back where I found it, and the tanned colour of radiata pine floods another section of the giant mechanism. Instead of a metallic sheen, the wall now gleams with warm wood colours. My eyes fall on the last petal, and I’m suddenly worried, because I can’t recall any other puzzles he gave me.
The noise around us has increased with each subsequent lock being opened. When I reach the final lock, I hesitantly place my hand on the surface. The warmth I felt going into the other petals is replaced by a sensation like ice water pouring over my arm. Feeling around for the trick box, I gasp as my hand comes into contact with a warm object.
‘What’s wrong?’ Aaron asks from the ground, where he’s been watching me.
‘Nothing,’ I say, though I’m not really sure.
Levering my legs against the wall, I pull the final box free.
‘What is that?’ Aaron calls out to me.
The ‘box’ pulses in my hands, the same size as the others, but this one appears to be made of flesh, with veins and tendons criss-crossing the outside. My blood hammers in my ears as I try to understand what this means. Then it occurs to me the pulsing of the box is in sync with my heartbeat.
‘It’s me,’ I say, understanding. ‘I’m the last lock.’
My TP unravels a little from the thread and enters the strange object in my hands. As I investigate, I find the inner workings are made up of organic panels, switches and springs, the same as any trick box, but pulsating with a strange life. An unnerving familiarity creeps over me and I finally unravel the tangle of compartments to see it’s identical to my personal cherry wood puzzle-chest. Taking a breath, I unlock it.
Around us, the industrial noise increases and the virtual room begins to vibrate and thrum with energy. Hands shaking, I place the puzzle onto the petal and it sinks into the metal.
‘Josie, come down!’ Aaron shouts.
I hurry down to join him as internal mechanisms shift and grind. Then, the coloured petals shimmer once, before the entire construct fades, revealing a massive glowing grid beyond.
CHAPTER 33
With Aaron leading the way, we travel through the grid, passing multiple bobbly-things, illuminated by glowing code. As we move along a wide translucent white path, he pauses now and then to check structures and connections that branch off the path we’re on. His excitement is barely contained, and it affects my talents, making them jittery and hard to control.
He’s explaining to me what he needs to do now to open the gate, but I can’t follow the techno-talk and zone out,
trying to focus on keeping my talents under control. But a tendril of my TP still manages to escape my control, burrowing deeper into the thread, as if yearning for some more human input. A moment later, images flicker past me and I realise they’re Aaron’s memories. They fold back, fluttering across my mind, until I spy one that looks like Aaron as a teenager, scowling out across an open grave. A crowd in black press around him, and by his side is a younger girl, wearing an identical expression. Olivia. And beside her, Blake. His face is so sad. I realise it’s a snippet from the past, a time-stamp printed into Aaron’s memory. I quickly move past the private moment, letting the images fall away.
There’s a strange tickling at the back of my senses. At first I dismiss it as nothing, but then it accelerates, jarring my nerves, and I feel sweat trickling down my face. Then a rumbling cranks to life somewhere beyond our vision, filling my ears. Aaron freezes and I search the horizon, looking for anything that might signal some sort of attack. The heavy mechanical sound escalates into a high-pitched whine that fills the air around us. And there’s something else. Beneath the humming, there’s a buzzing noise and it reminds me of what I heard in the ocean of shadow, when Blake and I were searching for Cora.
‘What is that?’ My physical body asks the question and my voice echoes, as if from a deep cave.
‘Abort.’ Vogel’s voice booms through our heads. ‘Get out now.’
We retreat quickly towards the entryway and Aaron’s disappointment washes over me in a bitter wave. We’re nearly out when the lights inside the gate begin to dim and the high whine stutters, hiccupping into silence.
Once we’re out of the gate, I snap the connective thread and my consciousness slams into my body. Staggering back, I’m steadied by Aaron’s hands grabbing me. He blinks at me a few times, then drops his hands, his face tight behind his visor.
Above us, the petals slowly wind to a stop as the gate is powered down. Through the window of one of the viewing booths, I see Eckhart arguing with Wendell. Aaron’s visor snaps up, his composure crumbling with anger and disappointment.
‘What happened?’ he yells at Vogel, who has walked out from behind the shield and is talking to a knot of worried-looking techies.
‘We don’t know.’ Vogel strides over to us, a slate in one hand. ‘The instruments registered a surge in the biosphere, near where the gate was going to open. The safety measures were triggered.’
I press the button that lifts my face visor and take deep breaths as Aaron hurries over to Eckhart. Despite the failure to open the gate, I feel okay. The threading has left me on a high and being inside the gate, witnessing the legacy of my parents, has left me feeling invincible, as if anything is possible. After all, the safety measures worked and no one has been hurt.
I wait out the next hour, loitering around the edges of the room and sipping the coffee a techie brings me. Finally, Vogel appears and beckons me to follow her.
‘Come on. Eckhart could be here for hours chewing everyone out. I’m taking you back upstairs for some shut-eye. I’d be surprised if anything more happens tonight.’
I follow her without argument to the utility room and change back into my clothes.
‘You must be exhausted after all that,’ Vogel says. ‘Aaron looks ready to drop.’
‘I don’t feel too bad,’ I admit. ‘I feel good.’
She arches an eyebrow. ‘You might consider keeping that fact to yourself.’
‘Why?’ As we head for the blast doors, I glance back to see Eckhart has progressed from arguing to straight up yelling. Aaron works on a monitor, his back to us, Wendell watching the screen over his shoulder.
Vogel remains silent until the massive steel doors shut behind us, the metal locks clicking in place. We’re nearly at the elevator before she speaks again. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to be cautious, okay? We can’t forget that we’re dealing with something we don’t fully understand here.’
Inside the elevator, I lean against a wall. My heart has stopped racing now and the feeling of invincibility is fading. A part of me craves the rush again.
‘What do you think happened?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ Vogel says. ‘I just need you to promise me one thing.’
‘Anything.’
Her smile is tight. ‘Watch your back.’
CHAPTER 34
It’s nearly midnight by the time I step into my dark dorm room. Vogel didn’t elaborate on her cryptic comment and it lodges in my brain like a splinter. I try to think of what she might mean, but come up with nothing, besides the fact that trying to open the gate is dangerous. Still wide awake, I’m about to turn on a movie when there’s a light rap against my door. Opening it, I see Blake there, his face impassive.
‘What?’ I ask, and suddenly I’m worried he’s discovered I’ve begun work on the gate without waiting for him to make his enquiries, like he’d asked. I’d almost rather a lecture about how we can’t be together. That I’m not his type. I can barely meet his eyes, because I know I’ll see the answer there. Anger means discovery of what I’d been up to this evening. Pity means something inside of me will dissolve, along with what’s left of my dignity.
‘Go away, Blake.’ I close the door in his face, then rest my forehead against it.
‘Josie.’ Blake’s voice is muffled. ‘Open the door.’
‘No,’ I say, wishing I’d never confessed how the lock made me feel. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
‘Josie.’
Blake’s voice is a whisper behind me. I stifle a scream and whirl to see him step from the deep shadows of my room. I open and close my mouth a few times before I have the presence of mind to stab a finger towards the door.
‘Get out! Get out now!’
‘Be quiet, Josie.’
My arm drops. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I said—’ Blake’s jaw works, like he’s trying hard not to yell, ‘—be quiet.’
He puts a firm hand on my shoulder and pushes me to the bed. I sit there, my back rigid.
‘We need to talk,’ he tells me.
‘Fine.’ I pretend to make myself comfortable, like it was my idea to sit down. ‘Say what you’ve come to say, then leave.’
Blake steps over to my window and stares out at the faint half moon in the sky. ‘Where have you been tonight?’ he finally asks. ‘I’ve come by here at least three times.’
‘I’ve been out, studying.’ The lie just tumbles out.
‘You left before I was finished talking last time.’ He turns to me, his brows pulled low.
‘Okay.’ I gesture around the room. ‘Say it now, if you must. I am your captive audience, after all.’
Blake frowns, as if my flippant answer annoys him. ‘I told you that I felt nothing when Vogel broke the lock.’
‘I know. I was there, remember?’
Blake clears his throat. ‘I might have lied. I might have felt something.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ I sigh, my irritation dissolving at his obvious discomfort.
‘I didn’t think you needed to know.’ Blake stares at me, his eyes dark. ‘But since you asked, it felt like something was torn out of me. I wanted to check on you afterwards, but Vogel warned me to steer clear. She thought maybe your talents wouldn’t behave around me and if a second thread happened, the lock could be permanent.’
The wall I’ve been trying to build against what I thought would be his rejection now crumbles. I get off the bed and go to him. Blake backs up, his eyes darting around the room as if I suddenly make him nervous.
‘Best thing for both of us, right?’ he says.
‘That’s right,’ I agree. But I’m lying and I hear echoes of pain in his voice, revealing his own lie. Then I’m touching his arm, because I can’t help myself. Can’t help wanting to be near him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks when my hands move to his chest.
‘Hmmm?’
‘Josie.’
But he doesn’t move away and his hands unfreeze, rising to brush my hip
s, then creep around to my back. I know this is a bad idea, but the success of solving James and Alice’s puzzle, with its whispers of the past, has left me craving the comfort. And it’s not Aaron’s arms I want to be in, even though we make a useful team together.
Blake is all I want.
I lower my head against his chest and breathe in his scent, feeling safe. His arms wrap around me and when I tilt my head up, he leans down to claim my lips in a soft kiss. When I open my mouth to him, his grip tightens around me and the kiss deepens. My body melts into the strong line of his body, and I wrap my arms around him. Excitement sends my heart beating double-time and I break our kiss to bury my head in the crook of his neck, just to breathe in his scent, letting it fill me.
‘I miss you so much,’ I murmur against his warm skin.
A small laugh rumbles through Blake’s chest. One of my hands reaches up to grab a lock of his hair and tugs gently.
‘You think that’s funny?’ I don’t move, dreading his next words, knowing I should pull away so I can see his face. Watch his eyes for any signs he’s lying.
‘Josie, you caught my attention the moment I saw you in your uncle’s store.’ Blake’s words are halting, as if he’s unsure about revealing himself to me. His fingers slip under my shirt, touching my skin, stroking and caressing. He pulls away a little, then bends to nip my bottom lip as if to chastise me. ‘And when you embraced my talent with your own, I saw a glimpse of you.’ He pulls back, cupping my face. His gaze traps me, as if I am all that exists in this room. ‘The thread might have broken, Josie, but you’re still with me.’
His words send a tendril of worry and excitement through me. Am I ready for this? For Blake to admit he cares for me, as much as I care for him? My breathing quickens and my heart lights up when he kisses me again and I lose myself in the sensation of his body against mine. The feel of his hands, the whisper in my ear of how beautiful I am. At this moment, everyone’s warnings are nothing but dust, and I tighten my hold around the only one who matters.
CHAPTER 35
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