Push (Beat series Book 2)

by Jared Garrett

  “Not a chance. The Ranjers will kill them all. Every single one.” Lily yanked her arm free. “We have to go warn them and get them out of there.”

  “Yeah, and our friend is there too. But he’s got my parents and a bunch of others,” I said. “He’s going to kill them too.”

  “When? Tomorrow?” Lily glared at us. “I have a family too, you know.”

  That set me back. Of course she did; triunes were supposedly made up of three big families. “I know, I mean . . . of course you do. But we’re already here,” I said.

  “Ask her how many people are going to be at the gathering,” James said. Pol relayed the message.

  “Hundreds. Over fifty triunes usually show up.” Lily stared me down. “We have to go. They’ll kill my dad.”

  “That’s a lot of people. It would take time to evacuate them,” James said. “And Lexi might not be the only one that can’t move on her own.”

  “James says it would take a long time to get them out of there,” Melisa said. She looked from me to Lily and back. “And I—I have no idea what to do. I mean, it makes sense that we could get to the Wanderers first then come back, but who knows what Holland’s up to? We might be running out of time to find him.”

  “But he helped you! He helped you find this place,” Lily said. You could hear the tears in her voice. “You can’t leave him!”

  “He helped us—” Spam. Bug me. The hug, her yelling. He’s more than just her triune leader. “Wait. Scott’s your father?”

  “Of course he is! Let’s go!” Lily turned for the door.

  “Wait, let’s think about this,” Pol called after her. How was he thinking straight? He and Lexi were close. “How far away is the gathering?”

  “You left your dad behind so you could fight?” I couldn’t believe it. How had I not known?

  “Yes! And he didn’t want me to go, but he’s always let me do my own thing.” Lily pleaded with her eyes. “Please, we have to go.”

  “She’s right,” Melisa said. “We have to warn them and get Lexi back.”

  “No, wait a second.” My head was spinning. How do you leave your family, your whole life, to join people you had met just over a week before?

  “Okay. I want to go get Lexi too. But just hold on,” Pol said. “Lily, how far away is it?”

  “I don’t know. It takes us like just under a day to get there from where we split off from my dad,” Lily said.

  “A day?” They were going to carry Lexi that far? “Why did he make us let them out so far away from it?”

  “We’re really careful about not letting other people know where the Gatherings are,” Lily said.

  “That can’t be that far,” Pol said. “Even if you’re walking fast, you’re not going to go farther than forty kilometers in a day, and that would be a long way to go over broken ground.”

  “The pod can do that in two hours,” James said. “Maybe less.”

  “Then some of us go and some stay here and search,” I said. I can’t believe I just said that. I can’t believe I have to say that.

  Pol and Melisa stared. “What about Lexi?” Melisa asked.

  “The people who go make sure she’s okay,” Pol said. “The ones who stay find what they can. Then we meet up.”

  A few seconds passed while we thought it through.

  “Good idea,” Melisa said. She met my gaze. “James, come pick up Pol and Lily and find that gathering.”

  “Melisa and I will search the building,” I said.

  “But then it’s just the two of you,” Lily said. “What if the Ranjers find you here?”

  “How? They have no idea we’re here and no way of finding out,” I said.

  “On my way,” James said. “Pol, you and Lily meet me outside in two minutes.”

  “Got it,” Pol said. He turned to Lily. “Let’s go.”

  “Remember to come back for us,” Melisa said. “And make sure Lexi’s all right.”

  “And stay out of sight,” I said. “We don’t want the Ranjers to know we have a pod.”

  “I know,” Pol said. “You guys try not to drown or do anything stupid.”

  “We’ll do our best,” I said.

  Lily squeezed one of my hands. “Stay safe. And thank you.”

  “Save your dad,” I said.

  Pol and Lily took off running. They slipped through the shadows of the hallway and out into the gray day.

  Melisa cocked a half smile at me. “Looks like it’s you and me again.”

  “Yeah.” I heard the pod land outside, trying to ignore the way her smile made my heart pound. “At least this time my back’s not scraped raw.”

  “Okay, got them,” James said through the EarComs. “We’re going to be out of range almost immediately, so plan on meeting at this building. Wait for us.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” I said. “Just get Lexi and those Wanderers somewhere safe.”

  “Don’t get shot again,” James said. “You might lose a kidney this time.”

  I laughed. “I like my kidneys.”

  Melisa gave me a questioning expression.

  “Just a joke.” I studied the area. We stood at the front end of the hallway that extended down the left side of the building. We’d come through a small area at the front that had a counter. It must have been the place where someone stood and greeted people who came in. The walls and floor were some kind of smooth stone that was mostly covered in grime and dry plants. Decaying wood hung off low walls and pillars here and there. “So where should we go?”

  “Split up or stay together?” Melisa asked.

  “Let’s stay together,” I said.

  “Yeah. That way I can find the stuff you miss.”

  “I just figured I could keep you from drowning if the tide comes all the way into the building.”

  Melisa laughed. “Like you know how to swim.”

  “Do you?”

  And that conversation was over.

  We opted to take this floor room by room, keeping our eyes open for the pictures Scott’s friend had seen. We covered the left and right hallways and came to a heavy door that hung askew on one hinge. Beyond the door were heavy, concrete stairs leading up and down.

  “Which way?” What if Holland was in this building? What if we found some kind of hidden lair or something? I slid my hand along the top of my keeper. As we stood there, I had a thought try to push its way into my brain. Something about the stairs.

  “Up?” Melisa pointed her keeper up the stairs.

  “Actually, maybe we should go downstairs. That way, if the tide comes in and makes a mess down there, we can go upstairs and search. That way we don’t go upstairs twice and waste time.” What was it about the stairs? Like a lot of the floor and ground outside, they were partially covered by sand and dry water plants.

  “That’s good thinking,” Melisa said.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” I said. I led the way down. What was it— “Wait a second. Why isn’t there water right here?”

  “What do you mean?” Melisa asked.

  “If the tide comes in, there’s nothing stopping it from filling in the whole level that’s underground, right?”

  She chewed on that. “Okay.” She nodded. “Right. So why isn’t there water filling the entire area right now, from the last tide?

  “Exactly.”

  “Maybe we’ll get down there and find like a meter of water or something.”

  We turned a corner on the stairs and found ourselves in near darkness. I hit my chest light; Melisa did too. I pointed mine down the stairs.

  “No water down there,” I said.

  “That really is kind of weird,” Melisa said.

  “Maybe it dried up?”

  We continued down the stairs. Our chest lights combined into one big patch of light that led the way.

  Melisa snorted. “No way. Literally. This is all underground; there’s no way that much water would dry up.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, we came to an emp
ty doorway that once had a heavy door in it. I stomped on the solid floor. “And there are those ocean plants down here. So the water has to have been down here at some point.”

  The stairs kept going down, but we turned to the long hallway that extended away from us. A thick, slightly sweet odor hit my nose. It was like the forest smell, but sweeter. And not sweet in a good way.

  “Well, maybe we’re about to find out where the water goes,” I said.

  Our chest lights bobbed cones of illumination into a hallway that was pitch black. This hallway was wider and ran down the middle of the basement space. We split it, each of us taking a side. In some of the rooms, the soft floor gave way to hardness covered by plants and sand. The rooms varied in size and shape, but were all completely empty. My guess was that people had been looting the city for around a hundred years, so it wasn’t too surprising that anything that wasn’t structural was gone.

  “Anything?” Melisa asked as she came out of the last room on her side.

  “No. Just empty rooms.” I directed my light back the way we’d come. “There’s another floor under us.”

  “Another flight of stairs on this end, too,” Melisa said.

  We came to the next level down. The sweet smell changed into something tangy. If I breathed with my mouth open, I could taste the smell a little. As we entered the hallway, I noticed that the floor felt different.

  “Feel that?” I asked.

  Melisa bent and touched the ground. “Yeah. It’s a little damp here. So water does come down here—but goes away somehow.”

  “I wonder if that’s why it smells,” I said.

  “Probably.” We continued down the hallway. “I wish I had a light on my head, and one of those hover lights Rojer and Pol made,” Melisa said.

  “That would be nice.” I stepped to the left side of the hallway and turned to Melisa. The floor felt soft and squishy. “Split it up again?”

  “Sure. We’ll find some—Nik, what?”

  All I could do was point behind her. My chest light had caught some reflecting shapes on the wall behind Melisa. A transparent material, flush with the wall, held pictures.

  Melisa spun, her keeper coming up.

  I got my voice free from my throat. “Bug me. It’s him.”

  Chapter 24

  “Adam Holland walked these halls,” I said. “That’s really weird.”

  “Severely,” Melisa said. “Let’s find where he worked.”

  “How are we going to know?”

  “No idea,” Melisa said.

  We scanned our surroundings with our chest lights. Why hadn’t I thought to bring some of the hover lights along? Because I was a spam-eater.

  The stairs had ended at this level, meaning it was the lowest floor. Unless there’s a secret elevator somewhere that leads to a room full of clones of the worst person in history. The bottom floor didn’t have a hallway. It was just one huge open space that smelled strongly of mold. Pillars were spaced maybe ten meters apart in a regular pattern throughout, but those were the only things that broke up the huge empty cavern of a basement. From where we stood, I saw no doors, no windows—nothing. My heart sank. Drek. We weren’t going to find anything here.

  “There’s nothing down here,” Melisa said.

  “Not even any offices or whatever those rooms upstairs are,” I said.

  “I wonder what they used to do down here,” Melisa said.

  “I don’t know. I remember Holland saying something about working with a team who didn’t have the will to make hard choices. Or something like that.” I scuffed a heel on the floor. No softness here. The floor was solid stone; concrete, I figured. “I would guess some kind of medical work, since he said he made the Bug.”

  “Well maybe there’s some kind of clue that was left behind,” Melisa said.

  “Maybe there was once,” I said. “But this place has been cleaned out. We’re not going to find anything here.” We’d come all this way, and this was it. A picture of Holland. Of course the entire building had been looted. Early survivors of the Bug had to have been desperate for any tech or even fuel they could use after everything collapsed.

  “Maybe not, but our ride isn’t back yet,” Melisa said. “I’ll take this side.” She split off to the right and directed her chest light downward. She walked slowly and methodically, bending intermittently to pick up a piece of debris.

  I did the same. My light threw big shadows off small chunks of rotting wood and piles of seaweed, and the walls reflected a pale gray color. The ceiling was about four meters high. It was strange to think that there were hundreds of tons of building above me. The domes in New Frisko had been all one story except, of course, for Prime One.

  And people used to spend their days down in places like this. No windows, no daylight. Did they ever feel like a kind of fungus, down in the dark of a man-made cave all day?

  I flipped a piece of wood over with my foot. Water droplets splashed the top of my shoe.

  “There’s more water coming down here now,” I said, raising my voice to be heard. The sound echoed, bouncing off the solid walls and ceiling.

  “Yeah, I felt it too. Probably flowing down the stairs we just came down,” Melisa called back. “Find anything?”

  “No, just pieces of rotting wood, probably leftover from doorways or workspaces or something. Can’t think of what else it might have come from.”

  I passed a few more pillars, finding most of the junk on the floors gathered around their bases. Wood, small chips of metal, pieces of rock that were smooth on one side and rough on the other. Nothing that pointed us toward Adam Holland.

  “Anything yet?” This was hopeless. We’d come all the way to an old, ruined city and weren’t going to find what we needed. How do I find them now? Do we capture a Ranjer and figure out some way to make them tell us?

  “No. Just that the water’s at my ankles. We’d better go up,” Melisa said.

  “Maybe there’s something upstairs,” I said.

  “Doubtful.” I heard a scraping noise and peered through the gloom. Melisa was lifting a long, narrow something.

  “What’s that?” I hadn’t found anything anywhere near that big.

  She lifted it. All I could see in the darkness was shapes. “Long piece of metal tube.” She put her hand to her chest light, angling it upward. “I think it must have come from the ceiling.”

  “Useful?” I headed her way, brushing past one of the pillars. These things looked like they were holding the entire building up. Was that even possible? I did a quick scan of the solid concrete pillars. There had to be at least fifty of them.

  “Don’t think so.” Melisa took the metal tube and bent it as if it were a wet stick. “Totally corroded by the water.”

  We stood next to each other as the water slowly rose just past our ankles. “I’m surprised the tube’s even here. Everything else is gone,” I said.

  Melisa pointed up. “Look.”

  I angled my chest light up and saw what she was talking about. It looked like there had been a complex pattern of tubing on the concrete ceiling, connecting what had been some kind of square thing—which was now just a different color of concrete. The tubing had been like a spider web of tendrils that spread all over the ceiling. Some of it was still up there.

  “What do you think that was for?”

  “Don’t know. But it’s skinny and flimsy—and the ceiling’s high enough that it would be hard to pull it off,” Melisa said. “That’s probably why there’s still some up there.”

  I nodded. Is that how they had gotten water down here? Speaking of water. “We should finish and go. The water’s getting higher.”

  “I’m keeping this,” Melisa said. “It’s like a piece of history.” She shoved the bent tube into her pack.

  I laughed and remembered the file reader I’d found so long ago with that music and the video clip. If I went back to the house in New Frisko, would it still be there? My chest light illuminated the walls and floor, the water refle
cting the light in glittery, shiny bits. It reminded me of the first time Mom had seen a river. She’d been so excited, talking about how it was so different than anything she’d seen before and wondering how there was enough water to run constantly.

  My parents had to be trusting us to find them. Were they all right? Had Holland already done something to them? I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

  “I’m sorry, Nik. I thought we’d find something too,” Melisa said. We had just finished our circuits of the room. “We need to go.”

  “Yeah.” I turned in place, feeling like the air had been sucked out of me. “This was drek.”

  “The spammiest drek.” Melisa headed back toward the door we’d come through. Her shadow jittered across walls, pillars, and on the water. The water was a few centimeters above ankle height. “Come on. It’s getting higher.”

  I turned again. This was supposed to work. We were supposed to find something. Now—I don’t know what to do next. I wanted to curse the entire building and break every pillar. All we’d found was an abandoned, useless room full of concrete. And my parents and Jan’s dad were still being held somewhere and Holland could just decide to kill them anytime. Spam. I punched the pillar next to me. I itched to blow up the entire room with grenades from my keeper. If I shot it right at that pillar near the end of the room, maybe the whole building would come down.

  Wait a second. “Melisa, hold on.”

  “Nik, the water’s coming in faster. We have to go. Now.”

  “No, wait. That pillar’s different.”

  Melisa splashed toward me, throwing up water drops that hit the back of my legs. “What are you talking about?”

  “Shine your light on the pillar closest to the far wall.” I pointed my chest light, trying to recreate what I’d just seen.

  The blob of Melisa’s light joined mine. That made it worse. “No, that didn’t help.” I put my hand in front of her light, dropping a shadow on the pillar. “Turn it off.”

  She did. “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know. My light passed over that pillar and I was sure I’d seen something different.” I stepped closer and moved my light around. “There!”