Modified- The Complete Manipulated Series

by Harper North

  “Out! Out!” Cal orders from the turnstiles.

  They come into view. I cough, throat painful and dry. My arms tremble with the effort of carrying Emma, whose eyes zigzag like she’s trying to focus. Stunned for sure. Maybe she even has a head injury and she’s going to die, leaving us alone again.

  “Fin!” Sky runs at me from the exit, arms spread, offering to take Emma off my hands. I hand her to him, and he grimaces as he takes her over the turnstile and through. Arms aching, I stagger out after him, the tail end of a human flood rushing over metal bars.

  One final rumble later, the most massive crack of all sounds in the protein bar facility and a deafening roar fills the space behind us, burying the last hope of food the underground has.

  A shock wave jolts through the ground and I come off my feet, falling to the concrete platform near the tunnel tracks. The mirrors in the facility are gone, buried under kilotons of rock. Flashlights bob around me as gloom falls and people turn them on.

  I push myself up and stand beside Sky, who gently sets Emma down to her feet. Cia hangs close to him and peers through the turnstiles. Cal shouts something, but his words turn into background noise and echoes.

  The entire roof has come down, filling the cavern with a landfill of rock slabs, twisted metal, and even some sparkles that must be broken glass reflecting the flashlight beams. That’s all that’s left of the mirrors. This cave-in is big enough to have buried an entire settlement. Had we waited another minute, none of us would have made it out alive.

  The thought puts weakness in my knees.

  “That’s a lot of rock,” Emma says absently.

  Cal paces in front of me, pupils wide. He’s just as in shock as the rest of us. “Head count!” he shouts. “We have Elias. Fin. Sky. Cia. Lacy. Talen. Emma. Emma, we need to get a bandage on your head, now! Someone tear apart something for her!”

  His words snap me back to reality. I look to Sky and then Lacy, who’s staring at a group of EHC ops. We’re back up to about thirty people again, and so long as the ops behave—what other choice do they have now?—then we might survive long enough to reach the Exodus Facility.

  But what will happen after that? The thought gets my heart racing. “Emma.”

  She sways on her feet and Cal catches her.

  “My head,” she groans. “Elysian Beach. They all left. They’re all in the Exodus Facility now. Elysian... it’s caved in. The lake’s flooded everything. All the food, gone.”

  Cal’s jaw drops. “The whole settlement is flooded?”

  Everyone’s just standing around in this dark tunnel. I rip the bottom part of my shirt off, forming a strip with ease, and I hand it to Cal, who wraps it around the gash on Emma’s head. She blinks and rubs her head as she regains some of her senses.

  “It was flooding when I got there. People were packing supplies and leaving,” Emma continues. “Everyone got out, but we only have enough food to feed us all for two days.”

  Then she closes her eyes and hisses in pain, rubbing her head as she leans on Cal. It’s clear everything’s an effort for her now.

  Cal’s face goes blank. “Then it’s all gone. We’re going to die slow deaths down here if the quakes don’t stop.”

  “Chain reaction,” Emma says. “Soon the tectonic plates will tear apart. It was in the files. He hid the Destabilizer and all his other experiments for a reason. We have to take my grandfather’s one escape.”

  Dark, inky panic wraps around my heart. There will be no escaping from that if I let it win. “Emma, what’s this one escape?”

  But she goes limp against Cal, who struggles to hold her up.

  “She needs water,” he says. “We all need water.”

  Steven takes over holding Emma, who seems to have passed out. She can’t heal the way me and Sky do. It may take months, if not longer, for her to get back to normal.

  “Move,” Elias says. “All of us. No more fighting among ourselves. If Emma found a possible escape, we need to reach the Exodus Facility and figure out what it is. Sounds like everyone else is already there.”

  Another tremor shakes the tunnel and a few pieces of concrete rain down on the tracks ahead. Elias jumps off the platform, shining his light down the endless tunnel. So far, Cho and his Naturals stay absent. It’s my hope that they’ve fled the other way down the tunnel.

  And that they don’t decide to follow.

  Everyone forms two lines. It’s an automatic response by now, and something about it makes it look like the world isn’t about to completely end. I link my hand with Sky, and right in front of us, Lacy and Talen do the same. No words have to pass between us or between me and Elias. He’s already made his apology without a word. Now, he’s determined to lead us to safety.

  Steven and Cal lead Emma along, who’s awake again and walking just behind us, while the ops mix with the Dwellers and the remaining Originals. We’re an odd group again.

  When the world is about to end, who cares about anything else?

  Numbness settles over me with the thought. Hope dies with a whimper, and instead, a strange peace settles over me. Like it’s all going to be over soon. I’m breaking my promise to Sky, but…

  “Emma,” I whisper, careful not to aggravate her headache, “how you doing?”

  She blinks at me and squints as someone shines a flashlight over her shoulder. “Head hurts. Think I’ll be fine.”

  “What’s this escape you found?” Sky asks. “I trust you, Emma. You wouldn’t lie to us.” His words are for me.

  Emma flicks her gaze between me and Sky. “My grandfather mentioned a vehicle. Called it the Elevator. It rides on carbon nanotubules. Strong material. I tried to find more information about it, but some of his files remained locked, and Betty was getting tired, trying to keep that generator going. By the time I sought out help, the place was caving in and the refugees who had made it there told me about your capture.”

  So she hadn’t completely abandoned us. “Any idea what the Elevator actually is?”

  “No. It has a capacity of five hundred. It must be big, whatever it is. And it’s stored underneath the giant lid in that big, cylindrical room.”

  “But an elevator will take us to the surface, and that’s unlivable now,” Lacy chimes in. “He must have built it before the radiation on the surface got as bad as it is now. I bet he didn’t expect Cho to erupt the Monster’s Nest.”

  I swallow thickly.

  The only thing alive in me is the inky monster.

  Sky looks to me. “Hold out,” he urges.

  I nod, not feeling it.

  “We have to activate the Elevator,” Emma says. “My grandfather knew radiation was a threat. I memorized the sequence. The activation panel is underneath the Facility’s basement. Once there, we should have time.”

  “But the Elevator might kill us,” I blurt.

  Emma nods. “Then we will all die quickly instead of slowly. This is our final chance.”

  A faint roar echoes down the tunnel ahead at us and Elias stops, flashlight still raised. The ground turns soft and shifts under my feet. I grab onto Sky out of instinct, just as a narrow crack opens toward us on the wall of the tunnel. Concrete teeth belonging to an impossibly long mouth lurch inward and stop, letting dust escape.

  I stand frozen, alive again, as the ground settles.

  This crack is huge, maybe even miles long, and it’s a sure sign that this tunnel won’t be a tunnel much longer.

  And then I hear something worse than another quake, from far behind us.

  Confused, scared shouts—possibly a half mile back.

  Cal curses. “It’s them.”

  Cho’s people. They’re pursuing us from behind in their own last ditch effort to escape, and when they reach us, they’re not going to listen. Cho’s too far beyond that.

  “Do we have any bombs?” Elias asks, clicking his light off.

  One of the ops answers, careful not to raise his voice. “We looted the only two we had off the dead Naturals back at
Elysian Beach. If we go there now, Cho will catch up to us. I doubt there are any bombs left we can use.”

  “Go,” Emma begs.

  More shouts and yelling, maybe even war cries, echo up the tunnel from behind. The acoustics warp the Naturals’ voices, but it’s clear from the tone that they don’t intend to let us out of here alive.

  “I say we fight,” Cal says. “We’re all tired, and before we know it, they’ll catch up to us when we’re at our lowest.”

  Elias hangs his head as Cal speaks. “I didn’t want to wear you out.”

  “We know you didn’t,” I tell him.

  Should we fight? My head pounds again and despite my enhancements, I don’t know how much longer I can walk. Not without water. Next to me, Lacy closes her eyes and leans on Talen, who has bags hanging under his. I calculate our chances of winning against the Naturals to be only about twenty percent.

  “Our best bet is to keep moving. We get to the supplies, we get the advantage.”

  Emma nods. “I agree.”

  “Then move,” Elias says.

  Our group continues. The shouts behind us go quiet. It’s as if Cho and the others already know they’re chasing weakened prey. One of the ops offers me a canteen, but there’s only one mouthful of water in it, and Sky has to settle with less than that when another op hands him her canteen. Somehow, the water just makes me even more thirsty. But Cho’s chasing us has given me a purpose again. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of catching us. I want him to stew in the end of the world. Maybe, just maybe, the Elevator can save us and leave him here.

  He deserves no less.

  The tunnel stretches on. I see it when I blink. We skirt around partial cave-ins, where people dare to sit for a few precious minutes. Elias silently waves exhausted people up with a terrified glance. Emma, who sat down on a piece of jagged rock, rises with a nod. She’s determined.

  Elias and I exchange a glance. The Exodus Facility will be our last stand.

  And, possibly, our very last battle.

  Seemingly hours later, after dizziness makes the world tilt and makes it hard to tell real quakes from the weakness inside, we come to an empty manual cart on the tracks that belonged to the homeless refugees. It’s parked beside the big hole in the tunnel wall, the one we can’t hide from Cho once he gets here and the one we can’t trap. Emma straightens up and enters beside Elias, and the rest of us duck through, ready to face the truth.

  CHAPTER 14

  WE AVOID THE asbestos on the cave walls as we did before. But it won’t stop Cho and his people. Not that it will matter if the planet’s crust is about to break apart.

  If it weren’t for Emma and Sky, I’d be tempted to rub against it, but I calculate that it’s not capable of killing quickly. My feet carry me through the cave as silence drags out. Sky remains beside me, Cia in front of us. Emma goes quiet, probably saving her strength as Cal and Steven help her along.

  “We need to know how much time we have,” I say. My mind tries to work out how close Cho and his remaining forces are, but dehydration and hunger are getting to me.

  “They’re a good distance behind us,” an op says.

  Then I finally get an idea through. “Elias, maybe we should send a scout back to check on them. Warn us when they start getting close.”

  He smiles at me. “Good idea.”

  Now he’s looking directly at me, if only for a second, before going back to leading our ragtag group through the cave with an Original woman’s help. We pass the crude traps with the heavy bags that still lie on the floor. The chances of Cho being fooled by those is only about five percent. Or seven point five percent. Yes, I need sustenance or I won’t be able to fight.

  “You should send me as a scout,” Lacy says from behind us.

  “But it sounded like there were three or four dozen of Cho’s ops,” Talen says.

  “So what?” Lacy asks.

  That’s the Lacy I know. I can’t help but smile.

  “Lacy—”

  “Come with me,” she says. “We’ve got the best chance of slowing them down.”

  “They’ll expect us,” Talen protests.

  “You two do have the best chance,” Elias says, walking backwards to the metal door that marks the entrance to the Exodus Facility. “Cho will be ready, but someone will have to die and intimidate the others. If the two of you are in danger, run. That’s my order.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lacy says, grabbing Talen’s arm and pulling him back through the line.

  My chest aches watching them go. Something feels so final about this.

  “Move along,” Elias orders, opening the metal door. At least he’s got more strength than the rest of us right now and can lead. The Original woman says something to Elias and they vanish into the facility.

  “They’ll be okay,” Sky whispers.

  “Cho’s people could just shoot them,” I mutter, heart racing.

  “It’s Lacy,” Sky says.

  The walls close in and I shuffle through the door and into the facility, where battery lanterns, probably brought from Elysian Beach, line the way.

  “Where’s Mom?” Cia asks, going ahead. She looks like a ghost moving through the pale light.

  “Everyone is in the main chamber,” Emma says. “Food and water there, too. That’s where the Elevator will rise. There’s a power source under this facility that’s been collecting solar from the surface for years.”

  “How’s your head?” I ask, walking around to face her.

  Emma has bags under her eyes and the makeshift bandage has shifted down over one eye. “I’ll manage.”

  I’m not sure I like the way she sounds. There’s a fire in her eyes I’ve never seen. She waves Cal away and he reluctantly lets go of her. Steven follows suit. My throat aches like there’s a rock lodged behind my tongue. My own head feels the way Emma’s looks. Before we even fight, we need water and food.

  And we don’t have much time for that.

  Sky and I follow Cia, and we pass Elias and his guide. After reaching the big circular hall with the paintings of the strange sky, we enter the main room, which is still intact with the giant lid on the floor and the equally huge lid on the ceiling. More battery lanterns stand perched on the railing all the way around the vast middle, and dozens of dark figures—people—stand around the perimeter among several crates, canvas bags, and blankets. The cables remain intact.

  “Mom?” Cia calls.

  Starla peels herself from the railing, where she stood talking to an Original woman and a couple of kids a moment before. Cia cannonballs into her arms while Sky loosens his grip on my hand. The dread leaves my chest, letting warmth flood in as my eyes adjust to the gloom. There must be four dozen people here. The remaining Dwellers, the Originals who couldn’t fight, and the homeless we met in the tunnel. Even Betty rests on a blanket, staring into the darkness in the middle of the chamber, and I spot Wendy and Charles. They’re all here with the same goal in mind.

  “It’s all right,” Cal announces, bursting through the door behind us. “Most of the EHC ops are now on our side. Emma says there’s a way we might get out of here.”

  I ignore the gasps in the room and the incoming flood of people. Wendy, hand still bandaged from Cho’s torture, waves me to a canvas bag that’s stuffed with cans.

  People chatter around me as I lift the can’s pop top and devour the beans, liquid and all, in no time. The pain vanishes and I polish off a second can, leaving no time to feel guilty. I know the fighters need the calories the most. When Cho gets here—there’s no way Lacy and Talen can take down all their forces in a tunnel without any cover before having to flee—those of us who are enhanced will do all the fighting.

  “Thank you,” I tell Wendy.

  She smiles.

  I turn. Elias stands beside two EHC ops, who hang back from the homeless even as the man with the gashed head hands them each a can.

  “Fin…” he starts, and that one word carries the weight of apology.

&
nbsp; “We’ll catch up later,” I tell him. “Cho still wants to make us all dead.”

  I pause as yet another quake rips through the earth. This one seems to come from deep within the bowels of the world, and people go completely silent as the low rumble echoes off the sides of the cylindrical chamber. The cables, however, stay in place. They’re stronger than any cables I’ve ever seen. At last it stops, but a few pieces of rock fall from the roof and pelt the metal lid below.

  “That’s not good,” Sky says, looking up.

  We need to activate this Elevator. I throw down my second can even as people continue to eat all around me. I feel bad that Lacy and Talen haven’t eaten. That’ll drop their chances of holding Cho back for sure.

  And, I calculate, there is a very good chance the quakes will ruin all this equipment within an hour, leaving us no escape. I imagine there must be a lid on the ceiling that can come down, one that’s out of sight.

  Unless the Elevator doesn’t take us all the way to the surface. In that case, we’re doomed anyway.

  “Fin,” Elias repeats, “do you have any good ideas? In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t had many lately.” He forces a smile even as his eyes shine.

  “We take all the enhanced to activate this vehicle as Emma mentioned,” I say, motioning to her.

  Emma offers a nod and scrapes her fingers through the inside of a potato can.

  “Stay with us,” I say. “Where do we activate this thing?”

  “Downstairs.” Emma drops the can to the metal lid far below, where it hits with a small, metallic ping. “Below the basement. Control panel. The code is one-seven-two-seven-eight. It should activate the entire system and use all the stored power.”

  I memorize it instantly. Sky nods at her. “Thanks.”

  Emma nods at the central space. “And the Elevator will rise here. People can board.”

  I wish she knew where it would take us. Probably to another facility in the ground that might have already crumbled by now.

  “Talk to them,” Emma tells me, grabbing her head.

  She means me. I look to Sky, but he only offers an encouraging nod. If I tell everyone we’re just prolonging our deaths by a few hours, that won’t boost morale. These people deserve to have hope, even if it’s false, so I’ll give it to them.