We turned to Anders, crouched at the shoreline, fingers in the water. His jaw hung open in silent alarm while the noise rang out around us, as if the air in the mountain was shrieking in pain. A ghost, maybe? I didn’t think I believed in ghosts.
While the screams continued, the waterfall pounded harder, a furious drumbeat. It shook the ground beneath my boots, like something was crawling up from the depths of the underworld to devour us. Waves rose higher, nearly obscuring the pedestal and the key at its center. My heart stuttered. Please don’t fall. If the key got knocked to the bottom of the lake, then we’d never find it.
I looked frantically to Elio. Then Wren. Then Anders, who slowly stood, pulling his hand from the lake. As soon as his fingers cleared the surface, the waves receded. The strange screams subsided to an echo, and then nothing at all.
“That was interesting,” he yelled to us over the rush of the falls.
“Let’s just get the key before it happens again.” I helped Wren push the bow of the skiff into the water. Elio scrambled to climb in after her.
“Someone should come with you,” he said. “I can’t drown, so it may as well be me.”
Her eyes swept over his metal plating, looking unconvinced. “Can you swim?”
“I can’t drown,” he repeated as if that were the same thing. He tossed a small bundle from his pack at my chest. “Cora, friend. Hold my chocolate fudge. I’m going in.”
“Where did you get this?” The fudge felt as hard as a brick. “You can’t eat this.”
“I made it!”
“Of course,” I muttered, but he had already pushed the skiff off shore. Part of me wanted to make him stay on land, but I knew it was pointless. Elio was capable of making his own decisions, and Wren might need another hand.
“Is he waterproof?” Anders asked me while we watched Elio and Wren paddle against the tide. They were only several yards out, but they were already soaked. I flinched when a particularly large wave nearly capsized the skiff, sending a spray of water in their faces. Reaching into his pack, Elio extracted a pair of goggles and snapped them over his eye sensors.
“Mostly,” I replied. The goggles were more for effect than anything. Elio always did like to play the part.
Anders paced the shoreline. “This will work. I know this will work.”
“Positive affirmations. Always a good idea.” Though my stomach was twisting just as violently as the ribbons of water above our heads. My heart stilled as two of them swooped down toward the skiff, curling over Wren and Elio. But they only doused them with a stream of dirty water before retreating higher into the cave.
“Please,” I whispered under my breath. “Please work.”
They made it a quarter of the way across the lake, encroaching on half in good time, though they had to paddle harder over the crest of every wave. I accidentally bit down on my tongue when the skiff toppled off an eight-foot surge, plunging into the lake and sending a spray of water in every direction. As they struggled, Anders continued to pace. The constant motion made me want to strangle him.
When they got halfway there, I started to relax. The ribbons continually spun above us, ever-present phantoms, but they hadn’t attacked again. Ahead of the skiff, the key gleamed beneath its little glass box. Beckoning.
Thirty yards to go.
“Come on,” I pleaded. “You can do it. You can do it.”
Fifteen yards.
Even Anders stopped pacing, too transfixed by the sight before us to move.
As the skiff closed in on the pedestal, a wave behind it started to rise.
I clapped a hand over my mouth. The water was curling toward the boat in the opposite direction of the tide. Impossible. Then again, so were the ribbons above us, swirling faster. They condensed, forming globes of water that spun before lengthening again, changing shape. Forming … was that a human? No, two humans …
Elio noticed them at the same time I did. Nearly sixty yards away and I could see the fear cloud his eyes as if he were standing right next to me.
I gasped as the water took the form of Cruz and Evelina.
The resemblance was uncanny, even though these versions of my mother and father weren’t made of flesh and blood. The figure of Evelina glanced toward the shore, looking at me for just a moment, and the resentment in her eyes was spot-on.
But they weren’t here for me. Elio crouched down in the skiff, shielding his head while Cruz and Evelina floated closer. He was more afraid of them than I was, and when the water around Cruz’s hand swirled and re-formed into a wrench, Elio nearly lost it. He’d told me numerous times of the attempts Cruz and Evelina had made to rewire him, to dismantle their broken servant robot and program him into something deemed more acceptable. It had happened when I was too young to remember, but Elio was far too smart to ever forget.
I shouted his name over the waterfall’s roar as Evelina nodded to Cruz and their figures crowded in. I didn’t know what kind of impossible magic this was. How did the water know Elio’s worst fear?
I could hear his helpless beeping all the way from the shore, and when Cruz raised the wrench over his head, Elio dived for cover. Wren batted at the figures with her oar, but they didn’t retreat.
The skiff tilted.
The figures exploded, flooding the small boat instantly.
“No!” I took two steps into the lake, water surpassing my ankles. I couldn’t make myself go any farther before nausea overcame me. The boat capsized, Wren clinging to it with Elio on her back. Cruz and Evelina were gone, but the wave that had been creeping higher finally crashed down. Elio flailed. Wren screamed as they were both shoved under the surface.
I grabbed Anders’s arm. “What do we do?” Out in the lake, Wren’s head broke through the surface. More ribbons of water curled around her face before bursting into hundreds of tiny birds, each with the head of a young boy I didn’t recognize. But Wren seemed to. She sobbed as they flocked her. Elio tried paddling to help her, but he was just as soon thrown underwater again.
“We need to get to the key,” Anders said. “We need to use them as a distraction.”
“We need to save them!” I took another tentative step into the lake. What kind of horrors would the water hold for me? Then again, I was already experiencing my worst fears in real time. There was water and there was Elio, in more danger than I could ever imagine. No illusions necessary.
Anders pulled me to a stop, and that’s when I remembered the screams the first time he’d come in contact with the lake. So that made him afraid of what, exactly? Loud noises?
“Whatever you’re thinking, I guarantee it’s incorrect.” He crossed his arms over his chest like a shield, but not before a bit of residual fear leaked through the aura he tried so hard to push down.
He yanked his defenses back up, and the crimson cloud around his head vanished in a puff of smoke. “Don’t do that,” he growled.
“Do what?”
“Read my emotions.”
“It’s hard not to. Are you actually admitting that you have emotions?”
Another growl. “Of course I do. This is a stupid conversation to have right now.”
Obviously. But my default setting in these kinds of situations was humor. The waves were intensifying, shaking the mountain walls each time they crashed down. Beyond the crest of a wave, I noticed Elio clinging to the side of the capsized skiff. Wren was swimming fiercely in the direction of the pedestal and the key, swatting at more birds and trying to keep afloat.
Anders nodded at the rocks to the side of the waterfall while he shucked off his boots. “Do you see that ledge up there?”
“You mean the one that’s the width of a toothpick?”
“That’s the one. Climb it.”
“Excuse me?”
He removed his flight suit, leaving him in only his oxygen mask and underwear. His red skin prickled with goose bumps as he walked into the lake up to his knees. “Go up the ramp, back the way we came. The ledge should be almost ground level there. Shuffle arou
nd the outside wall and it’ll bring you right to the waterfall.”
“Yeah, because that’s exactly where I want to go.”
“It will bring you right above the key,” he stressed. “If Wren can reach the pedestal, she might be able to hand it to you. Maybe she’ll be able to climb up too.”
I inspected the ledge that he pointed out, squinting across the inside of the mountain. The thing was so narrow, and even worse, it looked like the rocks around it had very few handholds to grasp.
“If Wren or I fall, it’s a thirty-foot drop,” I said.
“My advice is not to fall. I’m getting Elio out. Hurry.” Then he dived. His dark head of hair popped up ten yards out, and more of those deep, anguished screams—whatever mysterious fear that was—filled the cave.
“‘My advice is not to fall,’” I mimicked while I slipped up the ramp to the main floor above the pit. “Sure, why don’t I just land a spaceship on a sun while I’m at it?” I found a long braided rope coiled in a cluster of shadows at the very end of the ledge. It was soaked through with water, but I didn’t want to think about the person who might have used it last. Obviously they didn’t succeed, or the key wouldn’t still be here.
I gulped as I took my first step onto the ledge and looked down into the pit.
Okay, bad idea. Ignore the water, ignore the screams. I needed to think of something peaceful. Piloting my pod ship was kind of peaceful when I wasn’t flying to escape a job gone wrong. All right. Need something more peaceful than that. Inventing. That was nice. The sure weight of the tools in my hands, the holographic blueprints humming on the computer at my side.
Then again, my inventions rarely seemed to function properly …
Stars, this isn’t working. I adjusted the coil of rope on my shoulder as I shuffled forward. The ledge was barely wider than my foot, covered in a slippery layer of moss. All the handholds I could see were in awkward locations. Either I had to scoot down to grab them (nearly slipping to my death) or stretch up too high (also nearly slipping to my death).
More than halfway around the wall, the ledge widened a few inches, and I paused just long enough to loop the end of the rope around my waist and knot it, in case I could use it to pull Wren to safety.
Just like with all my inventions, I had a feeling this was not going to end well.
“Cora!”
I chanced a quick glance down, gripping a crack in the wall near my knees when I almost lost my balance. Wren had reached the pedestal and was clinging to it.
I let out a scream of delight when I noticed the box containing the key clutched in her hand.
“Toss it!” I heard Anders yell. I saw a flash of silver as his head and Elio’s head vanished beneath the waves.
“I can’t toss it,” Wren called up to me. “Help me!”
I could tell from my position on the ledge that the water level was rising. The mountain knew that we got what we came for. Wren screamed as a wave crashed into her, threatening to knock her from the pedestal. Another one hit the wall just below me, sending a spray of water against my legs.
I crept along the length of the ledge. Slowly. So, so slowly. Wren said something else, but by the time I reached the side of the falls I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t even hear my heart beating in my ears, but I could feel it pounding in my chest.
Holding on to the rock wall for dear life, I tossed the end of the rope down, where it dangled above Wren’s head. All she had to do was swim a few yards to the wall and climb.
The suspicion on her face and in her aura said it all. She didn’t think I could support her weight. And maybe I couldn’t. I had two good rocks I could wedge my feet between to brace myself and one above my head I could grasp, but I didn’t know how long they would hold me. I was going to fall. I knew it. Into the water, where I would be sucked under, unable to surface. Eventually my oxygen would run out, and that would be the end of me.
Below my knees, the rope went taut.
I turned my face to the wall, double-checked that the knot around my waist was secure. Please, please, please don’t let the rope snap. Please don’t let us fall.
A wave hit my back, slamming me face-first into the wall. The rope swung wildly. My feet started to slip, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see us fall. I didn’t want to know how much farther she still had to climb, because, stars, I didn’t think I could hold on anymore. My legs were aching, my fingers were bloody, nails ripped away where they dug into the rocks. My mask was running out of oxygen. I could tell by the sparse puffs of air hitting my cheeks, like it was spitting at me.
We were both going to die.
Maybe … maybe it would be best to leave her. I could untie the rope, let her fall, and then I could escape. If she died, Elio and I would have one less person standing in our way to the treasure.
No. No, no, no. Gripping the wall with more determination than before, I despised myself for even thinking like that. That was the kind of thought Evelina would have.
Just when I thought I couldn’t bear it, just when my feet slipped farther back and my heels teetered on the edge of the ledge, I felt the rope give a little, and a soaking wet weight slammed into my back. I hit the wall, nearly falling again.
“Go!” I read Wren’s lips over the roar of the water. “I have the key! Run!” Another wave—the tallest one yet—was rising above the pedestal, ribbons of water trailing from it like fingers trying to grasp us.
It was pure luck that neither of us fell as we shuffled all the way along the ledge while the wave continued to grow. By the time we reached the main platform of the pit, my legs were like jelly. I fantasized about collapsing on the spot and sleeping for eternity, but I didn’t have that luxury. Anders was dragging a beeping Elio in our direction, jabbing his thumb to indicate the monster wave, which had reached its full height above the walls and was starting to quiver.
Yeah, Andy. As if I didn’t already notice the one-thousandth thing today that’s trying to kill us.
We ran just as the water fell.
I was lost in the twisting catacombs, but Anders had no trouble remembering the way. He led us—Elio on his back, me and Wren exhausted and stumbling behind him—around corners, through the stalactites and stalagmites, across the bridge spanning the shallow stream, and out into the blissfully warm Cadrolla evening air. The wave lapped at our heels, chasing us, but by the time we exited hell and reached the mouth of the cave, the water had dwindled to a harmless trickle. The mountain groaned, ground shaking, and then the little bit of water that followed us outside was sucked back into the cave.
Wren patted me on the shoulder. “I think I understand,” she gasped between breaths, “why you hate water so much.”
“Do you have the key?” I managed to choke out.
She held up the glittering box. “Everyone have all their limbs?”
I nodded. So did Anders. I looked to a patch of grass beneath a bush where Elio had fallen after we burst from the cave.
A terrifying coldness spread through my limbs.
It was worse than the water in the lake, worse than thinking I was breaths away from death.
I didn’t care anymore whether my oxygen was running out.
Under the silver glow of the moon, Elio twitched silently on the ground.
Glitching.
13
“Move! Go! Go!” I yelled when the air lock hissed, doors opening into the Starchaser’s cargo hold. I barreled into the lift, stabbing my thumb against the button for cockpit access. Wren darted in after me, followed by Anders, a glitching Elio balanced across his shoulders.
Anders had carried him all the way down from the top of the mountain, running to keep pace with me while I’d sprinted through the jungle, and he hadn’t complained once. But now that we had stopped moving, I could finally see exhaustion forming wrinkles around his eyes. The four of us had almost died out there. And now, one of us could very well die in here if I didn’t do something to prevent it.
“Ignite t
he engines!” I ordered Wren as soon as the lift doors slid open onto the bridge. “Then I need you to reroute the ship’s auxiliary power to control panel A. Anything we can spare. Power from the backup generator, hot water pump, electricity from the refrigeration units. Any lights outside this room, shut them off, redirect them here so that I can pump them into Elio. Now, a cable. I need a cable…” I wrenched open drawers along the walls, ripping out the contents and spilling anything that I deemed useless on the floor. I tore off my oxygen mask and let it join the mess.
The cockpit floor rumbled as the engines beneath us whirred to life. Wren looked over the back of her captain’s chair, holding a thick three-pronged cable.
“Will this work? It has a universal connector. Power reroutes are above my pay grade though. My skills are limited to that of getaway driver and friendly interplanetary kleptomaniac. Maintenance is more your strength, isn’t it?”
“I’m not leaving Elio.” I snatched the cable from her. “Anders, lay him across the co-pilot’s chair. Roll him onto his back. Yeah, just like that.” I ushered Wren out of her chair, then inserted one prong of the cable into the power circuit on the control panel, one into the outbound drive on my comm link, and the third into Elio’s charging port.
“Wren, please. Go down into the engine room. You just have to flip a breaker. I’ll walk you through it. Unless you want this ship to explode into a fiery ball of death instead.”
She hesitated. Bit her lip. Then she glanced down at Elio, still and quiet. “Fine. Give me a minute.”
I wanted to snap that I didn’t think we had a minute, but she was gone too soon. My fingers twitched anxiously as I made a few adjustments on the control panel. The lights overhead surged, then dimmed. Outside the cockpit, the ship’s usual daily hums and vibrations fell silent, while the engines groaned louder.
I was prolonging reading Elio’s diagnostic scan on my comm, because I already knew what it would say. Failing. His memory core was failing, its capacity probably plunging lower than it ever had in the hour it took to run down the mountain. It was a mystery to me why none of Cadrolla’s creatures had tried to attack us. Had they left us alone because we found the key? Had the powers that guarded it inside the pit followed us out and guarded us too, now that we had it?
The Good for Nothings Page 14