The Mountain

by Kevin George

  “And for that, I shouldn’t trust the Board?” Martin asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Why do you think I risked my life to bring you the Aviary? I have no doubt Ms. Van Horn intended to keep the new Blast for herself and her followers. She had no intention of bringing you back to challenge for her power,” Quentin said.

  “You believe anyone could challenge me?”

  Quentin bowed his head as he shook it. “No, but I believe your greatest threat of danger comes from those who’ve held power their entire lives, not those who’ve looked to follow their entire lives,” he said. “If you keep the Descendant alive, if you slowly take her marrow and produce enough Aviary Blast for every male and female human in The Mountain, you will have countless followers that can be sent out to search for places where future generations might survive and repopulate the world. You’ll truly prove to be the savior of our species that Mountain humans have been praying for generations to return.”

  Emma began to groan at the thought of more marrow being extracted from her but kept quiet when considering the alternative. The old scientist’s reassurances of the procedure being easier in the future calmed her enough to avoid hoping for death instead.

  Martin’s scowl faded and he stared across the lab, not looking at Quentin or either of the scientists. Quentin could see their savior contemplating the offer, which made Quentin grateful and worried at the same time. Quentin had always assumed He would return and bring a long-term survival plan on his own; he hadn’t considered Martin LeRoque being as power-hungry as Ms. Van Horn and the rest of the Board, though Martin’s suggestion to release the prisoners had shown a glimmer of mercy.

  Martin finally blinked hard, his shoulders sagging just slightly “You’re right, of course,” he said. “One Corp.’s goal was always the preservation of the human species. Forgive me for failing to recognize that sooner. You, of all people, should understand this day has been quite the whirlwind for me.”

  A weight felt lifted from Quentin’s chest. He allowed himself a smile and a small bow. “Please, there’s no need to apologize,” he said. “I hope you can forgive me for not properly preparing you for the situation in The Mountain before we had to deal with the Board and the guards.”

  Martin nodded. “I suppose I’ve also erred having the young lady from the HASS ark sent away. If you wouldn’t mind, please fetch her before she’s released. We must find a way to work with all humans.”

  “Of course, right away,” Quentin said, heading for the door, nodding to Billy as he walked past. The young scientist did not appear to notice, though Quentin saw him suddenly look toward the Descendant.

  “On second thought, the idea of there being more than one Aviary like me doesn’t seem so good for my future,” Martin LeRoque said.

  His words made Quentin’s blood run cold, and when he turned around, he saw the white-haired savior lower his head, flap his wings and shoot directly toward him. Quentin tried to move out of the way, but Martin rammed him before he could budge. Quentin’s body—stronger as it was—still absorbed bone-crushing impact as they slammed against the lab’s heavy metallic door. Quentin felt all air sucked from his lungs. He collapsed to the floor, the weight of Martin LeRoque’s body pinning him down, the savior’s wing smothering his face. Quentin couldn’t even muster a cry as Martin’s sharpened, beak-like nose snapped down at his torso over and over, boring one hole after another into his feathery flesh. . .

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The guards led the group down the stairwell, with the prisoners directly behind them. The Board pulled up the rear, dutifully following His order to escort the prisoners, though making sure to keep one flight of steps between themselves and the others. Humans exchanged excited mutters about LeRoque’s arrival, while Ms. Van Horn paid little attention to the Aviaries’ grumbling about ‘being sent to do a human’s job,’ as well as complaints about Quentin’s betrayal for ‘being the only one in the good graces of Martin LeRoque.’

  “That’s why we can’t ever trust humans,” a Board member said loudly enough for his voice to echo one level down, where several guards glanced up and shot dirty looks toward the Board, muttering quietly enough so their own insults couldn’t reach the Aviaries.

  Tension filled the stairwell and wasn’t helped by the largest individual making the same argument over and over, trying to convince human and Aviary alike.

  “We have to free the Descendant,” Love said. “She’s not going to survive whatever He is planning for her.”

  Ms. Van Horn snapped that Martin LeRoque would do ‘whatever he damn well pleased with the silly girl,’ while the guards tried to assure Love that He wouldn’t be here without the Descendant, and therefore wouldn’t do anything to harm her. A few of the more sympathetic guards even promised to pass along a message from Love to the Descendant if he had anything he wanted to tell her, though his only response was another impassioned plea for them to return to the lab and release her.

  Chad made sure to steer well clear of Prince Oliver’s semi-conscious body being dragged by Elias Kim and another guard. His mask remained off and nobody seemed to recognize his ruse, which was exactly how he planned to keep it. Each one of Love’s warnings about helping Emma made the knot in Chad’s stomach twist tighter and tighter, but he dared not call attention to himself at this moment. He could only hope Emma would survive long enough for him to figure out a plan to set her free later on, especially once the prince was tossed out into the White Nothingness.

  Carli kept glancing in Chad’s direction, but he could do little more than nod his reassurance at her. Inside, panic began to set in as they neared the hangar bay and no ideas came to mind about how to spare the teenage girl from being cast out. He didn’t care about Oliver’s fate in the cold and was fairly certain Love and the smaller Sky Girl could survive the harsh conditions, but he’d made a promise to Carli and couldn’t figure out how to keep it. He’d heard about a strange flying contraption she’d been wearing upon entering The Mountain but didn’t know which of the guards had taken it and couldn’t very well ask for—

  Love squawked wildly and fluttered his wings, causing the guards to stop and aim their weapons at him. The Board answered his ruckus with shrieks of their own, several Aviaries snapping in Love’s direction and calling for him to ‘shut up.’ A trio of Board members descended on Love. Ms. Van Horn followed, yanking BabyDoll away from her protector. Ms. Van Horn pressed one of her sharpened fingers against the small Aviary’s throat.

  “Will this get you to shut up, traitor?” she screeched.

  “No, no, no,” BabyDoll said, though she didn’t struggle, “please let Love go.”

  Elias Kim watched the encounter between feathered foes but could no longer remain quiet. “What are you doing? She’s just a little girl.”

  The nearest Board members hissed at the guard leader, insulting him with barbs about being a ‘foolish human.’

  “Your duty is to shut your mouth and follow orders,” Ms. Van Horn snapped at him. “The same as it was before Martin LeRoque returned, and the same it will forever be.”

  “You heard what He told us and the Board,” another guard called up. “Martin LeRoque wants nobody hurt, especially not a little girl.”

  From her vantage point a flight of stairs above the guards, Ms. Van Horn looked down upon the humans with the utmost disgust. For a moment, she tightened her grip on BabyDoll’s throat, the little girl chirping with fright as the tip of Ms. Van Horn’s finger pierced a tiny hole in her skin. When the guards responded by aiming a dozen guns at her, Ms. Van Horn sneered at them before pushing BabyDoll into Love’s arms.

  “Speak another word about the Descendant and next time I won’t be so kind,” she warned. Love squawked in anger but did not mention Emma again.

  The entire group descended several more levels in silence, the bottom of the stairwell looming just below. The quiet was broken by the unlikeliest among them.

  “It’s not him, you know,” Carli said to nobody i
n particular. Chad looked at her and shook his head, hoping she’d take his cue to stop talking. But Carli kept going, turning from one guard to the next. “Martin LeWhatever-his-name-is, he’s not the founder of One Corp. I might not know the entire story, but I know he’s not the person that will lead anyone to prominence in this world.”

  A few guards looked at her with furrowed brows, but even more of them scowled at her. The Board wasn’t so nice, squawking threats about the girl not making it out of The Mountain alive if she kept talking about their savior in such a way.

  “Maybe she knows something we don’t,” Chad said, receiving confused glares from his own kind. “Let’s face it, have we heard any details about what really happened in the past?”

  His stomach swirled as he waited for any guards to call his bluff. In truth, he had no idea what the residents had or hadn’t been told about the past, but he could only assume The Mountain’s powers-that-be were as forthcoming with information as King Edmond had been in the City Below. When nobody objected, he saw a few more sympathetic eyes turning in his direction, though just as many guards gripped their weapons tighter and watched him with distrust. The guards were clearly split on the matter, and for the first time, Chad wondered if all the humans were on the same page.

  It didn’t help that Ms. Van Horn and the Board continued to call out warnings about any and all non-believers joining the outsiders in leaving The Mountain once and for all.

  “From my understanding, the Board is no longer in a position to give orders to anyone in The Mountain,” Elias Kim interceded.

  Ms. Van Horn squawked, loud and high-pitched, echoing in the vastness of the stairwell, her temper much shorter than it had ever been. Ms. Van Horn flapped her misshapen wings and hovered down a section of steps, heading straight for Elias and a band of guards forming behind him. Strangely, other guards backed away and lowered their weapons, making it clear they wanted no part in this matter. Sensing this confusion might be the only chance to make a move, Chad scurried toward Carli, grabbing her arm and looking for any place where they might escape or hide.

  But Ms. Van Horn no sooner landed in front of Elias than the guards at the bottom of the stairwell called out for everyone to quiet down. A frightened plea caught everyone’s attention and convinced them to back away from each other.

  “Does anyone else hear that?” the guards called up.

  Chad listened to his heart thumping within his ears, a few tiny chirps and the labored, wheezy breathing of several Aviaries, but he heard nothing else, at least at first. But when the echo of whistling wind reached his ears, he realized the colder temperatures hadn’t merely been caused by the frosty relationship between guards and Board. All eyes turned on him.

  “I swear, I closed the hangar when I left,” he lied, wishing he still had the mask to shield his guilt from the others. But if anyone suspected Chad of keeping the hangar open—or of not being who he pretended to be—they said nothing about it, especially when the echoes of voices from the hangar reached the stairwell.

  Sally remained with Lump and the Swarm, none of whom proceeded more than a few feet into the open hangar door. It wasn’t exactly warm near the open door but being out of the harshest wintery elements reinvigorated Sally, not to mention the blast of warmth she received when Lump wrapped his wing around her. She was alive, barely, but couldn’t celebrate that fact as she sensed the hesitation of Aviaries around her. A few whispered about their ‘mothers’ being nearby, but none rushed forward to find them despite the hangar seeming to be empty of Mountain residents. The Swarm whispered the word ‘trap’ nearly as often as they mentioned their mothers.

  The Tunnelers showed no such hesitation to rush inside, with James and Henry Jonas leading the way. Only Paige remained cautious, holding back Mia and the baby from hurrying alongside the others. The Swarm warned the Tunnelers to take things slowly and be careful of hiding guards, but Martha and Isaac began pulling tarps off the strange vehicles, many of which appeared to be in pristine condition.

  “Maybe they’ll work in the cold,” Martha said.

  “Maybe they won’t,” Isaac said sullenly.

  “After we almost died to get inside, you want to head back into the Nothingness? Into the storm?” William Weller asked, struggling to keep hold of the toddler squirming in his arms.

  Martha shrugged. “I don’t know what this place is like,” she said, glancing toward the frightened Swarmers. “They do, and they don’t seem excited to be back. That should tell us something. Or maybe you want to go back outside and see what the people here did to our friends from the lead vehicle?” Martha shook her head. “We should take advantage of the vehicles before anyone shows up to stop us.”

  “Someone obviously knows we’re here or the blast door wouldn’t have opened,” William argued. “This is starting to feel like a setup.”

  Before anyone could disagree, a Swarmer unleashed a frightened squawk that echoed in the cavernous space. All eyes turned toward the bottom of the open stairwell, where a squadron of Mountain guards rushed into the hangar, holding weapons that ranged from spears—similar to those being brandished by some of the Tunnelers—to black metallic contraptions that were nothing short of ominous. Several Swarmers muttered about escaping but found the bravery to stay when Sally stepped forward. Staring at the Swarm, some of the guards appeared mesmerized, others confused. Neither side spoke a word until two familiar feathered figures arrived at the bottom of the steps.

  “BabyDoll!” Lump called out. “Love!”

  Sally and Lump hurried forward, hands raised in a show of peace, ignoring the weapons being aimed at them.

  “Let them pass,” a gruff voice said among the guards.

  Though Sally and Lump received quite a few glares upon their approach, nobody stopped them from reaching the little Aviary or Love. Love nodded to the guards and let go of BabyDoll’s hand, urging the little girl to go with Lump and return to the Swarm. BabyDoll shook her head, not wanting to leave her savior but eventually doing so when Love nodded his insistence. He stared at the rest of his Swarm, tears welling in his eyes at the sight of them.

  In the group of humans behind Love, Chad was relieved the guards had listened to his order without question. He kept his head turned away from the newcomers, excited by the thought of fellow outsiders being there but worried about someone recognizing him. He wasn’t certain who was here or what they wanted from The Mountain, but he hoped their presence might be the distraction needed to save Carli.

  “It’s the boy, Liv’s boy!” a Tunneler cried out. “They have him!”

  Chad glanced to Oliver and saw the prince stirring in the arms of two guards. Oliver blinked over and over, his eyes having trouble focusing, his head slowly turning toward the sound of voices calling his mother’s name. Olly didn’t notice the nearby guard leader turning away, nor did he notice the other teenage prisoner being restrained by guards behind him. Instead, he saw the bright white of the outside world through the hangar door and felt a cold breeze stinging his face, thrusting him past the nagging pain in his skull and back to consciousness.

  He first spotted the ragtag group of Aviaries just inside the door, a bunched together group that bore no resemblance to the Board member who’d injected Liv. Mother, Olly thought, as if hearing the curious cries of his mother’s name wasn’t enough of a reminder about what had happened. A new kind of pain—one far worse and, he knew, longer lasting—invaded every fiber of his being. His legs lost all strength and threatened him with collapse. Olly somehow found the strength to pull away from his captors, wanting to attack every guard near him though it hadn’t been any of them that killed his mother. He glanced around for the Board, his vision swirling from his sudden head movement, but he heard the Aviary leaders before he ever spotted them.

  “Get out, all of you!” Ms. Van Horn shrieked as she emerged from the stairwell with the rest of the Board.

  Lump squawked first, a reaction echoed by the rest of the Swarm, many of them crying the wo
rd ‘Mountain’ over and over. Not a single Aviary noticed the guards subduing Olly as he tried to push his way toward Ms. Van Horn. Members of the Board fanned out in a line upon reaching the hangar floor, their leader standing tall and in the middle; the Swarm huddled closer together, some of them inching back toward the open door.

  “You rescued all of these failed experiments?” Ms. Van Horn asked, turning to Love.

  “In truth, they saved me, each and every one of them,” Love said. “They gave me a purpose in life.”

  “Your true purpose was to find the Descendant,” a Board member yelled. “If you would’ve focused on that, maybe we could’ve brought back Martin LeRoque sooner.”

  “But it’s not him, he’s not the one,” Carli said, though few eyes looked away from the Board or Love.

  “We never should’ve trusted you,” Ms. Van Horn told Love. “You’re a failure, just like the rest of them.”

  Love shook his head. “Not a single one of them could ever be considered a failure. They have lived for each other, and loved each other, and were a family for each other after you took that away from them. I’ve risked everything for those that deserved it and now I’ll do the same for the Descendant.”

  “And mothers!” Lump cried out. “Mothers!”

  Another nearby Aviary repeated that same word, followed by another Aviary and then another, until the entire Swarm was chanting. The huddle of frightened Swarmers began to break apart, forming their own line staring down the Board. The Tunnelers and guards looked from one side to the other.

  “Those mothers,” Ms. Van Horn said, her face twisting in disgust at the mention of that word, “are nothing more than wombs that produced failure. They belong to us, like the rest of the humans in The Mountain. Ours to do with as we please.”