Recreance (The Aeternum Chronicles Book 1)

by H. G. Chambers

  Clem stood in shock as the water sloshed and gurgled down the shop drain. She put the pouch over her shaky hand, and used it to pick up the strange stone. She was still struggling to make sense of what she had seen when a small clink came from the door. Clem threw on her backpack, ran over to her bike and jumped on it. She kick-started the motor and hit the garage door emergency release. It banged open, just as a blast blew open the walk-in entry to her shop.

  A group of wards lined the wall outside. Clem throttled the bike to maximum, blowing by them down the walkway. She heard shouts from behind and several shock-darts clanged against the buildings, missing her. They’d found her hideout. This is bad, she thought, really bad. Clem cut into an alley.

  She was snaking her way toward Hatch’s shop. The sooner she could be rid of this canister the better. Clem slowed a few blocks from her destination. She pulled into an alley, and continued on foot. Creeping in the shadows of nearby buildings, she peered around a corner at Hatch’s place. The door was open. Not a good sign.

  Scanning up and down the street, Clem saw no one. Normally there were at least some neighborhood kids getting into trouble this time of day. Another bad sign. She made her way toward the open door, poking her head in and out quickly to scan the interior. It too was empty. She crept inside, leaving the door open. The first thing she noticed were Hatch’s tools. They were scattered across his workbench, and some were on the floor. This was decidedly un-Hatch-like behavior.

  Clem glanced toward the secret door in the floor. It was closed. She walked over to the metal workbench attached to the left wall, and slid her fingers along the underside. They found a small circular button. She pushed it, and the door slid open silently, revealing the familiar staircase.

  Clem made her way down into the secret basement refuge. It was completely ravaged. The ornate tables and chairs lay in broken disarray around the room. Shattered glass covered the floor near the bar, and paintings had been slashed and ripped from the wall. Clementine turned to bolt and froze at the sound of footsteps moving across the floor above.

  She sprinted over to the bar, searching frantically for the button to close the door. Too late. Boots stepped slowly down the stairs. Clem ducked behind the bar, searching for something to use as a weapon. She found a bottle and clutched it. Her heart raced as she waited for the footsteps to grow closer. They changed from a thump to a muted thud, and she guessed that whoever it was had reached the carpet.

  Clem popped up with a yell and hurled the bottle. It soared end over end through the air toward her target. She realized with panic that the target was Hatch. He ducked just in time and the bottle smashed into the wall behind him.

  “Clementine! Clementine, it’s me!”

  “I’m sorry!” she winced. “What’s going on? Who did this? We should get out of here!”

  Hatch walked over to her. “Listen Clementine, there isn’t much time. They’ve discovered who I work for; we’re not safe here.”

  Clem asked, “Who discovered?” but she already knew the answer.

  “Were you successful? Did you retrieve the canister?” Hatch asked urgently.

  She pulled the tube out of her backpack and shoved it toward him. “Here, take it!”

  Hatch breathed a sigh of relief. “Excellent work, Clementine. You—”

  He stopped suddenly and looked up toward the shop door above.

  The bottom dropped out of Clem’s stomach as she felt a gentle tugging toward the front of the shop. “Oh no,” she whispered. Hatch ran around behind the bar and tapped something beneath. The door in the ceiling slid shut silently.

  He looked at her with sad eyes, and glanced down at the canister. “You hold on to it,” He said, pushing it back toward her. “I’ll stay here and hold them off.”

  “Hatch, that’s a Breaker up there. There’s no way you’ll survive. Besides, we’re trapped down here!” Clementine’s eyes darted around the room.

  “Come, quickly!”

  “I—” The tugging sensation became stronger, this time from directly above. There were no footsteps.

  “Listen to me blackbird, you must take it.” A loud CLANG from above interrupted him. “Bring it to Magdalene Medeia, beyond the walls of New Arcadia.”

  “Beyond the what?”

  “There isn’t time to explain. You will find her two-month’s journey to the northwest. Beyond the Miralaja—”

  “Two months? Hatch I’ve never been outside the city, much less New Arcadia, and you want me to—”

  “Beyond the desert, there’s a small settlement called Masada; you will find friends there. Go west toward the lowest star in the Jackal’s Head constellation.”

  CLANG.

  Hatch bent down and removed a loose floorboard behind the bar. He pulled a key from his pocket and inserted it into a keyhole beneath the floor, and turned it. A mechanical noise came from behind. Clem turned to see the red and gold door with the ornate handle slide into the wall, revealing a cement staircase leading down.

  “You’ll find supplies at the end of the tunnel. Bring as much as you can carry. The Miralaja is extremely unforgiving, but you are strong. You will survive.”

  “Hatch, wait!” Clem looked into his brown eyes. The nightmare of him running was still fresh in her mind. She fought back tears. “You won’t survive this. You have to come with me!” her voice was quivering.

  “Shhhh Blackbird,” Hatch said, gently touching her face. “If Brahma wills it, I will leave this world, but I will do so knowing that my sacrifice was for something far greater than myself. You now hold the fate of New Arcadia, maybe even the world, in your hands. You must get that canister to Magdalene.”

  CLANG. The secret door began to buckle.

  “Go, now!” Hatch gripped her by the shoulders and turned her toward the newly exposed opening. He gave her a gentle shove and she trotted past the threshold.

  “Clementine!”

  She spun around. Hatch removed the key, and as he did so the door began sliding closed. He tossed it toward her.

  “Follow the water!”

  As the key arced through the air toward her, the metal door across the room crumpled like paper and slammed down to the bottom of the stairs. Clementine caught the key, and through the closing gap saw a robed figure descending the stairs. The air warped around it, distorting and lensing the light. Hatch pulled something from his pocket, and the door clicked shut. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  Run. The voice in her head was insistent. Clem spun and descended the stairs as fast as she could, nearly stumbling in her haste. After a moment, she reached the bottom and ran down the dimly lit corridor. A faint scream echoed from behind. The gray cement corridor wasn’t much wider than she was. There was a light in the low ceiling every twenty feet or so, illuminating the unchanging tunnel.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, Clem ran for an immeasurable amount of time. Her calves ached, and her chest heaved. Eventually she had to stop. Breathing hard, she leaned with one arm against the cold cement, the other on her bent knee. The guilt was crushing. She wasn’t sure she could ever forgive herself for leaving him. Hatch was the closest thing to a real father she’d ever known.

  He took her in when she had nowhere else to go; helped her to recognize her own self-worth. She’d likely be dead if not for Hatch, and how did she repay him? By abandoning him when he needed her most. Why wouldn’t he just come with her? Stupid, stubborn man! She sank to her knees and sobbed into her hands for the loss of the only true friend she’d had since Oren left. I’ll never forgive myself. I’m such a coward!

  Long after her tears ran dry, Clementine pulled herself up off the floor. She had failed him, and she’d have to live with that. His final words echoed in her head.

  “You must get that canister to Magdalene.”

  The thought of leaving New Arcadia scared her almost as much as the Ministry did, but she owed it to Hatch to fulfill his final wish.

  “I swear it, Hatch. I’ll get this stupid canister to her, or d
ie trying.”

  Clementine took a deep breath, found her center, and continued down the corridor at a jog. The nondescript walls continued unchanging for hours. How long could this thing possibly go on? The next light flicked on and illuminated a solid wall up ahead. There was a yellow and black sign in the center with an arrow pointing down. Clem jogged toward the sign and stopped several feet ahead of it. The floor gave way to a straight drop into darkness. An iron ladder leading down jutted out from the side of the drop closest to her.

  Clem knelt and maneuvered herself over the edge, gripping the top rung and lowering her body until she stood on the ladder. With a deep breath, she began descending into the unknown. The light above flicked off, and the darkness deepened. Clem hooked an elbow around a rung, and reached into her backpack to fish out a glow-tube. She pulled it out and twisted, and the liquid inside popped and fizzled as it lit the shaft with blue light. Clem tucked it into her belt and continued climbing down.

  When it became apparent that the bottom was nowhere close, she began counting rungs. Ninety-seven, ninety-eight…Her mind wandered. She tried to imagine a life outside New Arcadia, but had trouble even picturing it. She’d seen pictures of the desert beyond the walls of the colony, but none of it seemed real.

  Hatch had said she’d find friends in Masada. Were they from New Arcadia too? I guess they’d have to be. How long have they been out there? How did they survive? The Ministry taught that life outside the colony was treacherous and impossible…that anyone who tried to survive out there would die. Well I’m not anyone—

  Her foot hit open air and she quickly pulled it back up to the ladder. Where’s the ground? Clem took the glow-tube out of her belt and held it down toward her feet. In the dim blue light, she could see the ground, about fifteen feet below. So it’s a one-way trip, then. She had known from the beginning that there was no going back, but this sealed it.

  Clem carefully lowered herself down until she hung from the final rung of the ladder. Her legs dangled in the air, and she looked down between her feet. Not a huge drop, but long enough to twist an ankle if she landed it wrong. In other words, certain death outside New Arcadia, she thought.

  She prayed for some luck and let go. Moist air blew by as the ground rushed up to meet her. She bent her knees and landed on her feet, then crashed down onto her rear with a thump. Not the most graceful landing. Clem stood up and patted the dust from her pants. She was in a small cave with rocky, uneven walls. She paused and listened. The faint hum of electricity permeated her surroundings, and flickering light outlined the small mouth of the cave. Clem walked toward it, capping the glow-tube and tucking it away. She ducked down and peeked out of the craggy hole. Outside was a sheer drop several feet straight down to what appeared to be a metallic grate deck catwalk. Clem crouched and hopped down, again landing on her feet, but this time falling forward onto her hands.

  The humming was much louder outside the small cave. She stood and was immediately awestruck by the view. Her mind struggled to comprehend the staggering scale of what she was seeing.

  The catwalk beneath her feet curved around the perimeter of a vast, circular underground canyon. It must be miles across, she thought with wonder. She looked down over the edge of the catwalk and found the source of the electrical humming.

  Hundreds of feet below lay an enormous flat black disc, filling the entirety of the canyon. A pair of broad metal arms rotated low over the disc’s surface, like the blades of a steel propeller. They turned at a glacial pace around a large steel pillar rising up from the center of the disc. Clem followed the pillar with her eyes, all the way up to where it ended in a circular platform. Fifty feet to her right, a service bridge extended from the catwalk to that platform. Another extended from the opposite side of the canyon; together, they created one long service bridge that spanned its diameter.

  Down below, bolts of blue electricity jumped between the broad metallic blades and the black disc they rotated over, producing erratic, flickering light. Incredible, Clem thought, a fully sized ferromagnetic discharger! She had reasoned out the mechanics of them a long time ago, but no number on a page could have conveyed the sheer size of such a marvel. Eighteen of these discs were arranged in concentric circles, supporting the entirety of New Arcadia. They were the reason it hovered above the surface of the planet.

  Clem put her hand to her chin and studied it. The underside of the disc would mirror the top with turning blades, telescopic collapsible central pillar and all, enabling it to flip in case of polarity shifts. Clem imagined the entire massive disc flipping over. It would need to be anchored deep within the canyon walls, allowing it to rotate around a fixed axis…

  Clem shook her head, willing herself to focus. The Ministry was behind her and a hundred billion joules of electricity were below. She felt the hair on her arms stand on end. She jogged over to where the service bridge began and peered across it to the other side of the canyon. Squinting, she could just make out a tunnel at the far end.

  Clem shrugged her shoulders and adjusted her backpack. She considered wearing the mag-suit inside, then quickly dismissed the idea. The electromagnetic energy in here would supercharge it exponentially. One jump and the g-forces alone would crush her like a bug.

  Clem began the jog down the service bridge toward what she hoped was an exit. The hum of electricity was even louder out over the drop, nearly drowning out the sound of her boots on the deck. The service bridge was wide, but Clem kept to the center given the lack of railings. After jogging for several minutes, she neared the center where the bridge gave way to the circular steel platform. The top of the pillar, she thought. It looked to be about ninety feet across. There was a metallic console up ahead, rising out of the center. Must be the control panel for manual override.

  A red light on the console flashed.

  “Huh. That’s new,” she muttered.

  It flashed again.

  Clem furrowed her brow.

  “Attention. Disc inversion imminent. Please evacuate the containment sphere,” a female voice echoed from unseen loudspeakers above.

  Clem’s eyes grew wide, and she bolted, running full speed toward the flashing light.

  “Attention. Disc inversion imminent. Please evacuate the containment sphere.”

  The service bridge began to retract underfoot, and Clem got the sensation of running faster while making less forward progress. At the same time, the round platform atop the pillar began lowering toward the disc below.

  The electronic voice repeated continuously, but Clementine ignored it. If she could just reach the controls atop the pillar, maybe she could stop the inversion. If not, she’d undoubtedly be cooked by the high voltage of the disc as it flipped…assuming she didn’t fall to her death before then.

  Clem reached the edge of the retracting service bridge and leapt, pushing off with all her strength. She soared through the air, hundreds of feet above the massive electrically charged disc, and landed hard on the round metallic surface of the pillar. Her momentum carried her forward, tumbling and sliding across it. She was abruptly halted by the metal console at the center, and her shoulder erupted in pain.

  Clem cried out and rolled onto on her back, clutching her arm as the pillar continued its decent toward the disc. She took several deep breaths.

  Once the initial pain receded, she sat up, rolling her neck to test for injuries. She slowly got to her feet and began to assess the manual controls. The interface was on top of a waist high, metal cylinder, sheared down toward the front. A wide array of switches and buttons littered the oval surface. Her eyes quickly scanned for an emergency override.

  “Attention. Disc inversion will initiate in t-minus, sixty seconds.”

  Clem read the labels to herself, “Electromagnetic Voltage Distribution, X-Axis Rotational Acceleration, Polarity Inversion Detection…” If I can override the polarity sensors I might be able to trick them into thinking the disc doesn’t need to flip.

  She scanned that section of the contro
ls and found a row of switches with the word “POS” repeated above each, and “NEG” below. They were all switched to “POS”. She flipped them all down with both hands and looked around. The pillar was still descending…nothing had changed. Clem cursed under her breath and searched the panel for another option. After a few seconds, she spotted a capped button near the bottom right of the oval. “Emergency System Shutdown” was stenciled above it in tiny letters. Clem immediately flipped the cap open and jammed her finger down on the button.

  Beep beep beep.

  A small red light flashed on a keypad next to it.

  “Attention. Disc inversion will initiate in t-minus thirty seconds.”

  Clem looked at the numerical keypad and tried the first thing that came to mind, 1 2 3 4 5. When she hit 5, it beeped three times. She tried 0 0 0 0 0 next, while analyzing the odds in the back of her mind. Five digits, ten options, one-hundred-thousand possible combinations. Twenty seconds left, that’s five-thousand options per second. She tried a few more combinations without luck.

  “Boil it!” Clem smashed her fist into the keypad.

  “Attention. Disc inversion will initiate in t-minus ten seconds.”

  The pillar continued to lower. Bolts of electricity crackled loudly as they stabbed mercilessly at the disc below. Think, think, THINK Clementine! She racked her brain for any piece of information that would help. Nothing came to mind. She was moments from panic when the memory surfaced.

  “Well, are you going to tell me how you did it or not?” she asked.

  Hatch turned a winch, lifting the hover bike’s drive up off the shop floor. “Based on my initial analysis, I have determined that the malfunction had to be in one of two places. Either the power distribution regulator had failed, which I ruled out by diverting power past the regulator to an alternate drive. The other possibility was that the hover-drive’s internal safety override mechanism misfired, blocking the charge and preventing the drive from functioning.”