Sunscorched

by Jen Crane

  “What is your hurry?” Grant asked again. “Don’t you think we should investigate? See if it really does lead to the super secret headquarters?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “I don’t. There’s no way I’m taking the three of you in search of a secret entrance to a den of psychotic militants.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a drama queen,” Grant scoffed.

  “This is serious, people.” Cooper’s voice was clipped and angry. “The CCC is dangerous. I’ve seen it, lived it. Believe me when I say they would kill us without a second thought.”

  “Ah, guys?” Though she could still hear them arguing, Nori had wandered away from the group. A shiver snaked through her at the implications of her latest discovery. “Cooper?”

  “What?” he snapped, his murderous gaze still set on Grant’s face.

  “I think I found the way in.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Cooper clasped Kade’s forearm when he started toward Nori and held on even as the big man stared him down. “This is not a game, Kade.”

  “What if there’s a store room, though?” Grant asked. “We need food again. And Kade’s shoulder is still pink. We could use better meds.”

  “I said no!” Cooper’s voice boomed through the cavernous cenote.

  “Shhh,” Grant admonished, and Nori worried, truly worried, that Cooper might drown him right there.

  Closing his eyes and working to release flexed fingers, Cooper uttered a tense, “Out. Now.”

  The voices were so clear Nori could make out every word.

  Her gaze shot to Cooper’s, desperate to know if they were dead already. His mouth was open mid-word, but in the time it took to blink, he snapped it shut, and the group to order, with a finger to his lips and a motion toward the wall.

  Maneuvering silently through the water was impossible, though they tried. The men’s voices were bouncing down the corridor she’d spotted, though, and off the water. As the approaching strangers continued to talk, Nori closed her eyes in silent gratitude. They hadn’t been heard.

  “Lindgren said to prepare for combustion, I’ll prepare for combustion. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “This place gives me the creeps. I hate coming down here.”

  “Yeah, well, the cenote cover is stuck. Lotito and Ealy are going in from up top, but we gotta check if there’s something obstructing it from below.”

  “My dream job. A glorified flashlight holder.”

  From the cenote ceiling a hundred feet above them, a beam of light cut into the darkness.

  Backed into the eroded wall, Nori, Cooper, Kade, and Grant barely breathed, desperate to remain unseen. The light flashed over Kade’s head. If fear had force, Nori’s would’ve sent tsunami-level waves through their watery grave.

  But the beam of light swept past Kade, catching a reflection on the stamped red symbol and landing on two men in gray jumpsuits. The men stood at a flat embankment between a corridor and the water of the cenote, gas masks covering their faces. Their flashlight beams lit the cavern ceiling, revealing the heads of two other men bent into the car-sized hole.

  A voice came through radios attached to the first men’s suits. “Henderson, you and Jules see anything?”

  “Not from down here,” the taller of the two said into his radio. “You?”

  “No. Wait. Yeah, I see it. Rock’s jammed and won’t let the door slide. We’ll have it out in a minute.”

  “You don’t need us down here, then?”

  “Nope. Got it.”

  The taller one, Henderson, turned to the one who must’ve been Jules. “Commander Mills says we got forty-eight hours till the next scorch. They’d better hope they get that door fixed and back inside. Now,” he said, elbowing his partner, “who’s got the dream job?”

  And then they were gone. Henderson continued to talk as his voice faded and disappeared completely behind the heavy thunk of a closing door.

  For a small eternity, neither Nori or any of the four spoke.

  Blood roaring in her ears, she finally broke the silence. “They can’t know when the next scorch will be. Right? How could they possibly know that?”

  “Just a couple of idiots,” Kade said.

  Cooper hadn’t said a word since they first heard the men approaching. Nori turned and opened her mouth to speak, but his eyes were glazed, his mind somewhere else.

  “Cooper?” When he didn’t answer, she said louder, “Cooper.”

  Jarred from wherever he’d been, he finally focused, and seemed surprised to find himself in the cenote. “Ah.” He cleared his throat and looked away from her. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah, I think we should go, too.”

  “Sorry about before,” Grant said, sheepish.

  “No.” Cooper finally met Nori’s gaze. “I have to go. Back to Chicago.”

  “Chicago?” The three repeated at the same time.

  “What do you mean, Cooper?” Panic sent Nori’s heart into overdrive. She stepped closer and touched his arm.

  He looked down into the water. “I can’t take you to meet your parents, Nori. I’m sorry, but this is bigger than you, than any of us. I have to get word to Chicago about the scorch.”

  “You mean about what those guys said?” She stepped toward him. “You think they’re serious. That they’re right?”

  “I do.” He nodded, and his admission came slowly. “I know more about the CCC than I let on. This location…that intel about a scorch in the next 48 hours…about Commander Mills…it’s exactly what we’ve been looking for. I have to tell my people.”

  “But, they can detect scorches now,” Nori argued. “I saw it on a broadcast. You don’t have to go. You can’t leave us.” She stepped closer to Cooper. “You can’t…you can’t leave me.” She pursed her bottom lip to keep it from trembling as tiny tentacles of betrayal took hold inside her.

  Cooper shook his head slowly, avoiding her gaze. “It’s more than that. We’ve been looking for the CCC headquarters, for this Mills, for years. And it’s not just a lead. I’ve found an entrance. I have to report it as soon as I can and get people down here.”

  “Who’s we?” Nori asked, her stony gaze demanding an honest answer.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Tell us, Cooper.” Her voice was sharp. The betrayal, his willingness to break his word and leave her, stung. “You owe us that much. I’m the one who found that symbol, who found the entrance.”

  He inclined his head, closing his eyes before returning her hard stare, daring her not to take him seriously. “I’m part of a group committed to stopping the scorches, to stopping the CCC from destroying what’s left of our world.”

  Her mind sifted through a thousand thoughts, piecing together what she knew with with he’d revealed. “You’re telling me that all the sunscorches…” Nori swallowed, and her eyes welled with tears. “The one that took my siblings…so many families… You’re saying somebody did that on purpose? That the scorches are man-made?”

  Cooper nodded, his lips a tight, thin line.

  “How is that even possible? And why, for God’s sake? Why ruin the Earth over and over? What could someone possibly gain from such death and destruction?”

  Cooper shook his head. “Like many great tragedies,” he said, his jaws flexing, “it started as ideological. One group of people wanted to stop another from threatening their way of life. Only this group, the CCC, was made up of some well-funded xenophobic radicals. They hired the best scientists, the most strategic military minds. Over time, they devised a way to rid the world of who they saw as the biggest offenders. They took their employees and their families underground, and let the rest of the world burn.”

  “Nobody would do that, crazy xenophobes not.” Nori would not believe it.

  “They’d come close in the past,” Cooper said. “Maybe you’ve read about a little something called the Holocaust? Xenocide isn’t new. Whole populations have been targeted before, though this was the first time someone took the world with it.” />
  “Yeah, but they could never get away with that,” Nori argued. “Taking all those people underground would call too much attention. They’d be found out.”

  “The people who knew were kept on a tight leash and strict surveillance,” Cooper said. “If they were caught breaking silence, their invitation was rescinded.” He shrugged. “A lot of people disappeared, let’s just say that.”

  “How can you possibly know all this?” Grant asked what Nori had been thinking.

  Cooper cleared his throat. “The place I grew up… Ah… There are some people there who’d been on the other side.”

  “You mean people who’d worked for the CCC when they planned this extermination?”

  “Well,” he said, “they were a part of a partnership early on. One that quickly dissolved, but not before helping the CCC with what they needed to destroy the world.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Who were the other people?”

  Cooper kicked at a pile of rocks. It was obvious he didn’t like talking about this part of it, but Nori didn’t know why.

  “They called themselves the Architects of Global Climate Governance, or AGCG.” Cooper looked up then quickly back down. “Years ago, after the last round of global climate talks failed, this secret group of environmental hardliners’d had enough. Many were scientists; there were government officials from all over the world. They wanted to wake up the world to the effects of climate change, to do something so drastic people would finally understand the apocalyptic future of continuing down the same path.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kade scoffed. “Ruining the world to save it?”

  “They were desperate,” Cooper said. “Misguided, to be sure. For a while, AGCG found a common cause with the CCC. Some of the worst environmental offenders were also the most overpopulated. China, India, and South America were both destroying the Earth and gobbling up its remaining resources. So, together, the AGCG and CCC worked on a plan to scare the world into behaving.”

  Nori hung on every word of Cooper’s fantastical tale, but doubted the truth in it. It was too far-fetched. Then again, he had so many details. And the fact was, the world lay in waste above her. The reason for the sunscorches had never been determined. There were theories, sure, like the Sun was in the beginning stages of death, and the scorches a catalyst for the next Ice Age.

  “What was this plan?” Nori asked, confusion warring with fury and sadness inside her. “How did they supposedly create the scorches?”

  “They planned to decimate the ice sheets, both in Greenland and Antarctica, and then ignite the massive amounts of methane that escaped.”

  Nori gasped, and Cooper touched her arm. “Wait, though. The AGCG backed out. They wanted no part in it. They tried to put a stop to it.”

  Nori covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God. Why didn’t they?”

  “The CCC was too powerful. And vicious. They’d already gone too far. When the AGCG started backpedaling, the CCC knew they’d ruin their plan. They took nearly every member of the AGCG out.”

  “My God,” Kade breathed.

  “Someone made it out, though.” Nori looked from Kade and Grant to Cooper. “You said you know someone who was with the group.”

  “I do.” Cooper kicked at the rocks again. “And so, even though I’ve always lived Subterranean, I know the history behind the scorches. I know about the CCC—its past and present. And we’re working to stop them. There’s no one else. You see why I have to get word to Chicago. This is the lead we’ve been waiting years for.”

  “You can’t make it from here to Chicago in two days,” Kade said.

  “No, but if I go to Surface, I can make it to a comms post in one day. We can get word out about the scorch and save thousands. Maybe more.”

  “What will you do about the headquarters?” Nori’s voice was hollow. “About the CCC?”

  “They’re the enemy, Nori. Not just mine, but mankind’s.”

  She inspected Cooper’s face, which seemed older somehow. While he was making concessions, there was another thing Nori wanted to know. “And the man chasing you the night we met in the alley, was he with the CCC?”

  Cooper let out a long breath. “Might as well be. He’s a mercenary they hire to take care of their more… slippery problems.” Cooper smiled, but his face held no humor. “He’d been tailing me on the way back from Chicago. I went to Surface in Ralston to try to lose him, but he cornered me. I jumped a metal fence to escape, and that’s when I hurt my leg.” His gaze darted to Nori’s and she swallowed hard. “I’ve never heard his real name, but everyone knows him as Stealth.”

  Nori shivered. “It fits.”

  “Stealth?” Kade croaked. All the blood had drained from his face.

  “You know him?” Cooper asked.

  Kade cleared his throat and looked away. “Heard of him, yeah.”

  “He is one bad mother,” Cooper said. “He’s still out there somewhere.”

  Nori’s heart lurched to her throat and she grabbed Cooper’s arm. “You think he’s still looking for you?”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it.”

  44

  Barbaric Extremism

  Council of Concerned Citizens World Headquarters

  Sierra Papagayos Mountain Range

  Free and Sovereign State of Nuevo Leon, Mexico

  Latitude: 25° North

  “Lindgren, give me an update,” Mills said. The aging commander’s broad shoulders no longer stood at attention, but his razor-sharp gaze and the hard lines of his mouth still demanded respect.

  “Zhe sediment-water interface at Alaska’s North Slope has been set for extrication,” Lindgren answered. “Our testing indicates very high levels of CH4 just below zhe sediment’s surface—”

  “So I can understand it, you smug Swiss tripe.”

  Lindgren narrowed his eyes at the insult, but swallowed any retort. He simplified his report without comment.

  “Due both to previous sunscorches and zhe change in tilt of Earth’s axis, zhe increase in Alaska’s temperature has melted the ice molecules making up methane hydrate, leaving very large deposits of gas locked just below zhe surface. Our blast will liberate zhe CH4—” Lindgren closed his eyes and stretched his neck. “Our blast vill liberate zhe methane, and allow it to escape into zhe atmosphere. Ve add a few key ingredients and zhen remotely ignite it.”

  “We’re still on for the eighth, then? Your team will be ready?” CCC Commander Orval Mills’s posture was loose, confident, but his eyes, ice blue and bordering on maniacal, told another story. One of austere and unflinching determination.

  “Ve vill.” The scientist’s gray jumpsuit was filthy, wrinkled from too many nights spent sleeping on the hard sofa in his office. A smudge of something partially covered the embroidered logo that read Dr. Hugo Lindgren, Council of Concerned Citizens.

  “You think this scorch will rival the first one?” Mills asked. “How will it compare to the last?”

  “Nozhing could rival zhe original sunscorch. Ve haven’t yet found a deposit comparable to zhe CH4 zhat escaped vhen ve destroyed zhe ice sheets. Ve likely never vill.”

  The commander’s pinched mouth tightened a fraction more. “Find it. That’s what you’re here for.”

  Lindgren closed his eyes and let out a breath, along with the question he’d been holding in for months. “Excuse me asking, sir, but vhat for? Our initial scorch eradicated billions. Zhat doesn’t include millions lost to coastal flooding, cold, droughts, starvation. And zhen zhe last two scorches have picked away at populations across zhe globe. Surely zhe threat has been mitigated.”

  “‘Vhat for’?” the commander repeated in a mocking sneer. Black military-issue boots snapped together as he stood to his full height, looming toward Lindgren. “When the CCC aligned with those tree-hugging idiots at the AGCG, our mission was to put an end to overpopulation, to rid the world of those sucking it dry.”

  He stalked toward the scientist, who subconsciously conceded t
he space, backing up until he hit the cinder block wall behind him.

  “Look around, son. You see an abundance of food? Of resources?”

  Lindgren cocked his head and opened his mouth to speak, but Mills wasn’t finished.

  “No,” he snapped. “A barren wasteland is all we have to show for our efforts, for our sacrifice. You think I’m gonna quit now, when we’re so close? The CCC will endure. We’re ordained to fight this fight. Some day soon we’ll look up and be the last ones standing, the custodians of the world. That’s what we’re fighting for.”

  Lindgren's gut clenched at the baldness of Commander Mills’s objective, though he wasn’t surprised. He’d joined the CCC knowing full-well what he was getting into. The cause was one he supported. Watching countries like his, where people worked hard to support their families but the government sent millions of dollars in aid to countries whose people lived in squalor had infuriated him. Don’t spread my wealth, spread my work ethic—that was his motto. If the people in warring and starving countries really wanted to, if they would stop feeling sorry for their circumstances and apply themselves, they could pull their families out of poverty. Pull themselves up by the bootstraps, his father always said. Lindgren didn’t speak again, though his breaths came quicker. They mirrored his thoughts as he stood before Mills, who’d made it clear there were no plans to end the toxic agenda.

  But after years of systematically sabotaging the Earth, Lindgren was beginning to think it might be time to sit back and reap the fruits of their labor. To let the world recover. To begin anew. He wanted to see another alder tree before he died.

  45

  A Tough Goodbye

  Nori’s emotions were a gnarled cluster of confusion. Cooper’s intention to leave had struck suddenly, and she hadn’t had time to fully process it. She resented him for going back on his word. She had trusted him, counted on him. But if she was honest, it was fear she felt, too, and not just for herself. She’d known he would get her to her parents safely, hadn’t doubted that for a minute. But what if he ran into that mercenary again? Should she rage and insist he take her all the way to the 25th Parallel like he’d promised? Shame washed over her at the thought. No, of course not. If he had a chance to save even one person, he should do it.