by Kevin George
“He’ll be fine,” she said aloud, though her voice—and especially her words—sounded hollow. “He’s bigger and stronger than anyone in The Mountain. He survived King Edmond, he survived a lava eruption. He survived exploring the Nothingness for years. He will be fine.”
Fear continued to itch at the back of her mind, but she pushed away the worst of it. Still, the last thing she wanted was to lie back down and allow her worries to take over. Emma stood up, her legs and body aching, her head spinning for a moment as she looked down at the arm from which blood had been taken. After taking a few breaths to clear her vision, she walked across the room and flipped the light switch up and down, watching the light turn on and off. Emma was no stranger to the wonders of electricity and technology, but it was clear The Mountain was far more advanced than the City Below had been.
If only our original founders had had more time to complete construction, she thought, recalling information she’d read during her brief stay in the ISU. Emma now wished she’d spent more time reading books in the ISU than planning a fruitless escape attempt into the White Nothingness.
When her room door burst open, all past regrets vanished and relief washed over her. “Love?”
Her relief didn’t last long. Two guards rushed in without warning. Both were dirty and malnourished, but that didn’t stop them from holding their guns where Emma could see them. One guard stayed back, his eyes momentarily finding Emma’s, shame etched across his face. Emma suddenly felt ill. The other guard didn’t appear so regretful as he stomped across the room and reached for her arm. Emma pulled away before he could touch her.
“You. . . you have to come with us,” the guard said, unable to muster the same conviction in his voice that he held in his glare. Emma no longer felt so frightened and wondered if either man had ever used their weapons.
She shook her head. “I’ll do no such thing,” she said. The two guards turned to each other, exchanging looks of confusion. The guard by the door stepped forward and lowered his weapon.
“Descendant, please,” he said. “We have to bring you somewhere else.”
Emma shook her head. “My blood was just taken. I need to rest. Besides, I’m not supposed to go anywhere without Love.”
“Love isn’t here now, is he?” said the nearest guard. “We’re just following orders. I suggest you do the same.”
Emma looked from one guard to the other. Neither wanted to be there, of that Emma was certain, but the closer one continued holding up his weapon, which shook in his hand.
“I was brought to The Mountain to help and that’s what I intend to do,” Emma said, softening her voice. “I want a workable version of Aviary Blast as much as you do.”
“I doubt it,” the guard said, finally lowering his weapon but reaching out to grab Emma’s arm.
Though the guard was painfully thin, his grip was tight, his bony fingers digging into Emma’s flesh. When he yanked her toward the door, blood rushed to Emma’s head, draining all strength from her legs. She nearly collapsed, somehow remaining upright as blurriness cleared from her vision. The guard dragged her out of the room, at which time the other guard met Emma’s eyes with his own.
“Descendant?” he asked her before turning to the other guard. “Is she okay?”
“We wouldn’t have orders to move her if she wasn’t,” his partner snapped.
Once in the hallway, a single word popped into Emma’s mind.
“Love,” she said breathlessly. “Where’s Love?”
“He ain’t coming back,” the guard said.
The shock of hearing such news sent a blast of adrenaline through her veins, allowing her to pull free from the guard. Emma wanted to run, but when she stared down the hallway, everything looked the same and the end seemed farther away than she remembered. Her moment of hesitation was all the guard needed to shove her against the nearby wall. Her head bounced off the rock, her vision snapping to blackness. She remained conscious and her ears picked up the voice of the worried guard, which somehow sounded nearby and distant at the same time.
“Are you crazy?” the man snapped. “She’s the Descendant, the only one who can save us and bring Him back. You can’t hurt her like that.”
As Emma’s sight came into focus, it brought a wave of pain in her skull so extreme that she felt the contents of her stomach rising up the back of her throat.
“She’s fine,” the other guard snapped, though his voice was tinged with concern. “If I were you, I’d be more afraid of what they’d do to us if the Descendant escaped our custody.”
Emma looked to the sympathetic guard, who avoided her gaze while leading them away. Emma’s head hung low as she was led through the facility, her eyes closing at times, staring at her dragging feet at other times.
“The Board,” Emma muttered, straining to think of any of their names. “Quentin. They made a deal with Love about how I’m to be treated. They would never approve of this.”
The guard snickered inches from her ear. “Who do you think gave us the order?”
At one point, they ended up in an elevator, and Emma felt as though the ground beneath her feet disappeared. When the ride stopped, Emma felt strong enough to walk on her own, not that the guard intended to let go of her arm. She squinted in the brighter hallway that she recognized as one of the laboratory sections Love had shown her earlier. This time, she focused more on sections of white wall stained with faded splashes of red and gouged with marks that couldn’t have been made by humans. Her feeble attempts to resist were easily overcome by the guards, who threw open one particular lab door and pushed her inside.
Emma stumbled to the floor and landed on her hands and knees, barely breaking her fall. She stayed down for several seconds, her eyes aimed at a floor covered in grime and broken glass and splashes of different colored liquids, none of which she wanted to know the origin of.
“She’s in your custody now,” the guard snapped. “If the Board asks, tell them we delivered her in one piece.”
“She doesn’t look to be in one piece,” said a gentle voice across the room.
“Close enough,” the guard said. “We’ll be outside.”
Emma turned to see the lab door slam shut, the two guards nowhere to be found. Lights flickered overhead. A glance around the nearby area found the walls as dirty and dingy as the floor. She expected to see Quentin or Ms. Van Horn or other members of the Board, but the footsteps of a lone person approached, and a pair of strong, yet gentle hands hooked her by the arm and helped Emma to her feet. She blinked hard, forcing away spreading blackness, and looked into the kindly eyes of an older man. He wore a white lab coat similar to the ones adorning Board members, but that was where any comparison with the Aviaries ended. For that matter, the older man looked nothing like any of the scrawny, unkempt humans she’d seen inside The Mountain.
“Are you okay, my dear?” he asked.
Emma nodded. His kind smile and gentle touch put her at ease as he helped her into the room. It wasn’t until she inhaled and smelled the stench of blood and filth that she sensed her problems were far from over. Metallic tables lined a wall of the lab, many of them dented and tilted and covered in feathers caked on by red splatters. In the far corner were several cages of varying size and states of decay. Emma couldn’t imagine what they would’ve been used for—and why they looked so beat up—but seeing the cages brought more fear into her mind, and that fear returned some of her strength.
She stopped, suddenly tensing within the old man’s grasp, gently pulling away from him. He didn’t try to hold on.
“I’m fine,” she said, trying harder to focus her eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not supposed to be here. I want to go back to my room; I want to know what happened to Love.”
Emma backed away in small, choppy steps and nearly slipped on a yellowish liquid.
“Please, come and sit down,” the old man said. “I don’t know what those crude humans have done to you, but—”
Em
ma shook her head so vehemently the lab momentarily swirled in front of her eyes. Still, she didn’t stop backing up, at least until another set of hands clamped her shoulders from behind. She barely had time to react when she found herself forced toward the nearest metallic table. As she passed the older man, he frowned but didn’t intercede as a younger man pushed Emma to lie down.
“Careful with her,” Will told his son.
“We tried it your way; now we do it mine,” Billy snapped. “We don’t have all day to get this done. Those feathered freaks won’t give us forever.”
“She’s just a girl, not much older than your sister,” Will said.
“My sister, your daughter, is who you need to worry about,” Billy said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Emma sensed strife among the two men but had an awful feeling she was the one that would pay for it. She wriggled in Billy’s grasp, continuing to fight even after the young man leaned his weight atop her.
“Straps,” Billy snapped. “Now.”
Emma shook her head and pleaded weakly, still trying to shake free herself. As Billy grew increasingly frustrated from the exertion of holding her down, he became rougher in his attempt, slamming his shoulder into her stomach, knocking whatever breath she had out of her lungs. Emma barely heard him snap at the old man again, nor did she bother fighting once the straps were spread across her body and snapped into place.
Tears streaked down Emma’s face as Billy stood up. The satisfied grin on his face faded when he saw how upset she’d become. Billy hesitated a moment and turned to his father, the two exchanging hesitant glances.
“Do we really go through with this?” Billy asked with a sigh.
Emma turned her head to the older man, whose eyes started to look down but suddenly stopped, the muscles tightening in his jaw.
“Please,” she begged.
But Will nodded at his son, who walked out of Emma’s view.
“What are you going to do to me?” Emma asked.
“Something I’m not proud of, but something that must be done for the benefit of us all,” Will explained. “Apparently, your earlier blood donation didn’t produce results desired by the Board. If my son and I had had access to your blood and the best version of Aviary Blast they have here, we could’ve. . . I’m sorry for babbling, this is all beside the point now.”
Glass shattered somewhere across the room. Billy unleashed a string of curses and complaints about the filthy conditions in the lab.
“I don’t know if these needles are sterile, let alone if any are big enough to reach her hip,” Billy said.
“Big enough needles?” Emma asked, unable to contain panic swelling within her.
She mustered her remaining strength and thrashed on the table, which creaked and rocked on its damaged legs. She felt the straps loosening across her chest and legs and used that as motivation to fight harder, even as Billy snapped at his father to deal with her. The old man stepped next to the table and stared down at Emma, his face etched with concern. She continued to struggle until he placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Please,” she begged. “Don’t do whatever it is you’re planning.”
Will frowned and nodded, reaching for the buckle to her straps.
“What are you doing?” Billy snapped from across the room.
A giant weight—both physically and emotionally—seemed to lift from Emma’s chest, allowing her first deep breath since Love left her room. But she no sooner opened her mouth to thank the older man when he suddenly pulled the strap so tightly that all air was sucked out of her lungs. Emma tried to struggle but the straps dug into her skin. She could barely move an inch.
“Why?” she gasped.
Will’s brow remained furrowed, but his eyes hardened as he tightened the straps near Emma’s legs, though she no longer bothered to kick them.
“I’m not going to lie, the pain you’re about to experience, at least from what I’ve read, is going to be. . . severe,” the old man said.
“Then don’t. . . please.”
“Extracting bone marrow is not as easy as taking blood,” Will continued, his tone now monotonous. “But our hope is the strength of your marrow will bond better with the chemical compound of the Aviary Blast, thus creating a higher degree of success in transfer to potential patients. Once we study how the Blast’s composition has changed with the addition of marrow, we’ll have a better understanding of—”
“Why are you wasting your time explaining things to the lab rat?” Billy asked, stepping into view.
His words may have been harsh, but the way he avoided looking at Emma—similar to the older man’s current treatment of her—told Emma he wasn’t looking forward to using the large needle in his hand. Emma tried to inch away but could barely breathe let alone budge.
“Everything about this is unsanitary,” Billy said with a sigh. “For all we know, we could take the marrow and it’ll be contaminated with whatever the hell’s in this lab.”
“No other choice,” Will said. He finally looked down at Emma again and sighed. “It might not seem like it now, but we’re actually trying to help you. The Board intends to keep you here forever so they have an endless supply of your blood and marrow, but if Billy and I can produce what they want—”
Without warning, Billy stabbed the massive needle into Emma’s hip. She heard the thud of pierced flesh a split second before feeling the pain. As if the injection wasn’t painful enough, the subsequent pushing of the needle deeper into her flesh and bone caused the world to spin and darken in front of Emma’s eyes. Her scream of anguish was the last thing she heard before falling unconscious. . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Love pulled his wings back into a steep dive, shooting his body straight toward the pair of unidentified flyers ascending along the cliff face. The flyers appeared as twin blurs to Love, but his vision narrowed on them and he saw they were smaller than he was, that they didn’t have wings like he did, that their ability to fly was the result of something unnatural strapped to their backs.
It’s not BabyDoll or Quinn or the others. These flyers aren’t like us, Love thought, suddenly remembering the stories about outside forces from far away coming to attack The Mountain. They were supposed to attack long ago but just made it here now. They’ve come to destroy us, to destroy the mothers inside The Mountain, to destroy the innocent humans. They’re here to destroy the Descendant. . . Emma. . .
Love had promised to keep her safe at all costs, and though he’d assumed that promise would be in regards to how the Board treated her, he realized the most pressing danger was flying toward The Mountain’s entrance. He took aim for the lead flyer, preparing to snap open his wings at the perfect moment to knock the invader out of the sky.
Carli instinctively eased pressure on her jetpack’s power button, watching with a mix of awe and curiosity and panic as the strangely winged human plunged toward her and Wyatt. Carli opened her mouth to call to Wyatt, despite knowing he would never hear her over the rush of speed and wind, but he suddenly banked hard from The Mountain, disappearing into the low-hanging clouds nearby. Carli started to lean in that same direction but stopped when she saw the winged man turning to follow Wyatt.
The entire moment took only seconds. When Carli turned to look toward the clouds, she could barely see the outline of Wyatt and whoever—or whatever—was chasing him. Instinct told her to follow and help Wyatt, but she had no idea how to do that and knew Wyatt wouldn’t want her flying into danger. Instead, she continued straight up, taking aiming for the ledge from which the winged man had appeared.
If that’s what’s coming from The Mountain, do I really want to go inside?
Upon her approach, Carli spotted several other humans—these ones either without wings or with wings she couldn’t see—standing on the ledge, holding black, metallic objects in their hands, objects they were aiming directly at her. Though Carli saw everything as a speeding blur, her eyes focused long enough to recognize what they were hold
ing, objects she’d never seen with her own two eyes but had seen pictures of onboard the HASS. A single word popped into her mind—gun—as did a warning about the danger they posed. The ends of those guns began to flash, and she somehow heard muffled popping within her helmet. She banked toward the clouds, immediately spotting the massive shadow of a blur speeding straight for her.
Carli tried to turn but wasn’t fast enough. The strange flying human lashed out with his huge, muscular wing and struck Carli as she tried to dip out of the way. Her entire body jolted, an explosive crack filling the inside of her helmet, her vision flashing to black as every muscle in her body went slack. As she fought to maintain consciousness, she distantly realized she’d lost hold of the jetpack’s controls.
I really need to stop doing that, she thought, smiling through the fogginess shrouding her mind.
When she snapped back to reality—plunging toward the ground for a second time, passing through low clouds, her entire body feeling like it already crashed to the ground—Carli flailed clumsily for the jetpack’s power button, her arms and hands not quite functioning the way they needed to. She narrowly missed a few rocky outcroppings on her plunge, her hazy mind recognizing the irony of her ‘luck,’ knowing the ground would kill her just as easily as the jutting rocks would have.
Wyatt suddenly appeared beside her, his free hand reaching out to her but coming up inches short. Carli didn’t know whether to reach for him or her controls. Just as their fingertips brushed, Wyatt barrel-rolled and turned, his jetpack scraping The Mountain, sending his body careening off to the side. Though the world seemed to pass in a blur, Carli had a strange moment of slow motion where she looked from Wyatt to the ground rushing up at her. She knew Wyatt would never reach her. As she fumbled for the controls, knowing she’d never grab them in time, she looked down at the rocks below, rocks permanently stained pink in some spots and red in others, a graveyard of bones covered in snow, a graveyard she would soon become a part of. . .