The Mountain

by Kevin George

  Lump squawked, angry and strong, his wings flapping enough to hover several inches up. The Board did the same, and both sides threatened to take their dispute above the hangar floor. But it was Elias Kim that stepped forward before either group of Aviaries could launch the first attack.

  “We belong to nobody,” he said. “And our women belong to nobody. We only let them take part in the experiments when we thought it was the only way to create a proper Aviary, and potentially the source material for a proper Aviary Blast for us all.”

  Ms. Van Horn’s laughter was high-pitched and shrill. “Do you really believe you agreed to let us do anything? That your ancestors ever agreed to let the Board do anything?”

  Board members first squawked their agreement with Ms. Van Horn and then squawked their threats toward humans that dared to demand their women be released. More and more guards turned in anger toward the Board, the two sides ignoring both groups of newcomers.

  “Enough!” Elias called out, silencing them all. “Now that Martin LeRoque is back, he’ll not only protect the Descendant from harm, he’ll make sure we all have the best chance to leave The Mountain and find a new life in this world.”

  “It’s not him!” a voice cried out, not from among the Board or the guards. “Martin LeRoque isn’t the true savior.”

  “Quiet, girl!” Ms. Van Horn shrieked, flapping her wings and glaring in Carli’s direction.

  “He’s not the one from the stories, not the one that was supposed to tell us all how to survive!” Carli continued.

  Guards and Tunnelers alike looked to the girl and lowered their weapons, watching her with equal parts curiosity and confusion. Ms. Van Horn did not plan on awaiting Carli’s explanation.

  “Kill her!” Ms. Van Horn yelled. “All of you!”

  Chad had tried to shush Carli, but the girl didn’t heed his warning. Instead, Chad turned his head away from her, hoping to avoid being spotted by Prince Oliver. During the rising tension among the newcomers and The Mountain residents—and then among the Board and the guards—Chad had discreetly scanned the faces of the outsiders, recognizing not just the Wellers among the Tunnelers, but also Sally among the strange group of smaller Aviaries. He wanted to call out to Sally, to tell her he’d come to The Mountain to save her, but she seemed tightly aligned with the feathered newcomers. When Chad also spotted James, the man who’d locked him in the ISU and stolen his vehicle, he started to wonder if Sally had been better off separating from him when she had. . .

  When none of the guards reacted to Ms. Van Horn’s kill command, she screeched the same words again, this time adding that Martin LeRoque would be told of every single human that didn’t follow her orders. Most guards remained still, but a few finally stepped forward, raising their weapons. Carli shook her head and backed into a mountainous wall, with nowhere to go. Chad looked to James, the only other person who knew as much about the true history of the world. He wondered if the man would try to stop Carli’s execution, if only to hear whatever part of One Corp.’s story that she seemed to know.

  But James remained still, watching with more indifference than perhaps anyone else in the hangar. Only the guards’ leader can order them to stop, Chad thought, though he knew his role would not last longer than the next few seconds. Potentially the same length of time that my life might last. . .

  “Stop!” he said, rushing toward the guards before they reached Carli. “I order you to stand down!”

  The guards, already clearly hesitant to harm the girl, backed off quickly. All eyes turned to Chad. For a moment, there was complete silence. His face flushed and his mind blanked on what to say or do. He could only think to rush to Carli and hook his arm in hers, showing that she was under his protection. Chad expected the Board to react first—and not a single member failed to hiss and gnash their sharpened teeth in his direction—but it was another voice—one Chad suddenly wished he’d silenced for good—that called out first.

  “That’s Chad Upton!” Oliver called out. “He’s not a guard!”

  “And he’s only here to hurt the Descendant again!” Chad yelled back, pointing at Olly. “To hurt Emma or do worse!

  “Emma is here?” a voice yelled across the hangar. Martha Weller rushed forward, her brow furrowed in panic though her eyes widened with hope. “You have my daughter? Where is she?”

  Together with her husband and Isaac, Martha led the Tunnelers forward. The Swarm, led by Lump and BabyDoll, also pushed forward, cries of “mothers” echoing through the huge space. Chad’s eyes met Sally’s for a moment but he turned away, somehow ashamed to be holding on so tightly to Carli. That feeling didn’t last longer than a few seconds before Chad felt Elias and other guards staring daggers at him, the truth of his identity suddenly obvious to all. Chad didn’t expect immediate forgiveness, but he also didn’t expect so many guards to drift toward the side of the Board.

  “Enough of this!” Ms. Van Horn yelled. She turned to her followers and nodded. In unison, the Board members unleashed an ear-splitting caw and surged forward, knocking aside a few of the guards that had just joined their forces. Ms. Van Horn pulled out a gun and several Board members yanked weapons away from guards they’d downed.

  Chad tackled Carli to the floor as gunshots rang out, glancing up to see Ms. Van Horn and her followers aiming for nobody in particular, shooting toward anybody and everybody in the crowd between them and the hangar door. Tunnelers and guards and Swarmers screamed, ducking and diving for cover, scattering among the hangar, at least those lucky enough to react before being struck. Plenty of bodies hit the floor, never to move again.

  Although Ms. Van Horn and the Board had the upper hand, nobody made a run for the open hangar door, leaving only one direction for everyone else to flock. The moment the Board’s bullets ran out, guards and Tunnelers and Swarmers merged together and charged forward, creating a chaos that Chad feared none of them would survive. . .

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Billy felt no love lost for Quentin Bowie as he stared, still in shock, as Martin LeRoque thrashed at the downed Aviary over and over, Quentin’s screams of pain and anguish only superseded by the awful sounds of tearing flesh. Behind Billy, his father cried out for mercy, though Emma did not make a sound or move a muscle. Billy closed his eyes, but instead of seeing darkness, he saw another room. . . another attacking Aviary. . . another victim he’d been unable to help. . .

  When Billy opened his eyes, gone was the numbed feeling in his chest, gone was the feeling of detachment from not only his body but his life as a whole. He ground his teeth together and a shiver rushed through him. His heartbeat pounded in his ears and a lifetime of self-preservation faded from his thoughts. As he stomped across the lab—grabbing a rusted metallic pole that had once been used to hold an IV—he ignored Will’s warnings to not do anything foolish.

  Billy gripped the pole so tightly his knuckles ached. If he’d had any doubt about what he was doing, a glance at Quentin’s flailing, bloody body made Billy remember that this particular Aviary hadn’t been with the rest of the Board when they’d gone to the upper level cell. His mind even fought through the haze of shock to recall Quentin’s words about using the Aviary to help the human guards and not the Board.

  Martin LeRoque turned at the last moment, barely issuing the slightest chirp of surprise as Billy rushed toward him. Martin’s wings started to rise toward his head but didn’t make it all the way before Billy swung the pole and cracked his skull. Martin dropped to the floor, his wings twitching though his body remained perfectly still but for the smallest up and down movement of his chest. Billy dropped the metallic pole and stared at the giant Aviary, shock threatening to overcome him once again.

  “What did you do?” Will asked, the sound of his voice snapping Billy back to reality.

  Billy turned and saw a surprised smile on his father’s face. Billy felt better until thinking about what had happened to his brother. He opened his mouth to tell his father but couldn’t find the words, nor did he want t
o find the words. Instead, he nodded toward Emma.

  “We have to get her out of here,” Billy said.

  Will nodded and immediately started unbuckling the straps, his hands shaking so severely that he could barely grip them. Billy rushed to help and glanced down at Emma, who stared up at them in silence, her eyes wide as if expecting father or son to do something awful. Instead, they freed her, carefully lifting her to a seated position, her face grimacing as jolts of pain shot through her hip. Still, she looked toward the door and saw both large Aviaries splayed across the floor, her face finally brightening at the thought that this wasn’t a trick.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Will looked to his son and nodded, as if he had the same question.

  “We might not get a chance to escape again, and freeing her is the right thing to do, no matter what happens to any of us,” Billy said, barely able to choke out the last words.

  Will’s brow furrowed, apparently sensing that his son wasn’t telling him something important. Together, father and son helped Emma off the table, holding her up on unsteady feet. They each draped one of her arms around their shoulders and hurried across the lab, circling far around Martin LeRoque’s prone body. Billy watched LeRoque’s wings still twitching, uncertain if He was still alive.

  Quentin’s slumped body rested against the door to the hallway, blood trickling from countless gashes across his body, face and neck, his eyes remaining closed. Leaning all of Emma’s weight onto his father, Billy stepped forward and leaned over, slowly reaching out to push Quentin’s body aside. When the injured Aviary suddenly reached out and grabbed Billy’s wrist, Billy pulled away, scanning the ground for the same metallic pole he’d used to strike LeRoque. But the strength in Quentin’s grip lasted only a moment, his hand slipping to the floor as his eyes struggled open.

  “Please,” Quentin croaked, his breath coming in labored gurgles. “Help me.”

  Billy turned to his father, but it was Emma who pulled free from Will’s grasp—somehow finding the strength to stand on her own—and nodded toward the downed Aviary.

  “Do it,” she told Billy and Will.

  “After what he demanded we do to you?”

  Emma nodded, momentarily wobbly on her feet before steadying herself. “He was doing it for his people, not for the Board. He didn’t deserve this.”

  “Quickly then,” Billy said, taking Quentin beneath one arm, nodding for his father to grab the other side. Once they stood him up and supported most of his weight, Billy glanced back at the same table to which Emma had just been strapped. “Over there. We need to get this bleeding under control.”

  But they didn’t take more than one step before Quentin’s limp body tensed and he shook his head. “We have to get out of here.”

  Will said, “But if we don’t fix those wounds, you’ll most certainly—”

  “Now,” Quentin squawked, pulling away so suddenly that he broke their grips and collapsed to the floor.

  “You heard what he said,” Billy told his father, nodding toward Martin LeRoque, whose wings now twitched with greater frequency.

  Billy hooked his arm with Quentin’s and pulled him up, while his father helped steady Emma. The four of them rushed out of the lab without speaking of what their next step would be.

  Fewer gunshots echoed in the hangar, but human screams and Aviary squawks and general moaning and grunting from both groups led to utter chaos. Fighting raged out of control. Chad kept his head down and his hand firmly on Carli’s wrist, holding her close to the floor, out of sight of whoever wanted to kill her. Ms. Van Horn’s death order had been abandoned as the Board fought the Tunnelers, and the Tunnelers fought the guards, and the Swarmers fought the Board, and some guards fought other guards, few who seemed to know who was on which side of the battle.

  For a moment, Chad spotted Sally among the chaos and wanted to rush to her, but she seemed fully occupied guarding a small, dark-skinned girl and the tiny baby in her arms. When it appeared a Board member was about to reach them, Chad opened his mouth to call a warning but didn’t have a chance to yell before a large Swarmer—the same one who’d come forward to take BabyDoll from the guards—stepped in Sally’s way and began to battle the other Aviary.

  She and I are on different paths now, Chad told himself, his eyes turning toward the dozens of covered vehicles parked nearby. He considered taking Carli into one of the vehicles to escape, but he couldn’t shake the idea that Emma remained somewhere in The Mountain. Somewhere not being guarded by humans or Aviaries.

  Though self-preservation told him to escape while he could, Chad pulled Carli toward the steps, knowing he only had to rescue Emma from two Aviaries rather than—

  A blur of movement streaked down him. Chad had little time to react before Prince Oliver crashed into him, separating Chad’s hand from Carli’s. Together, Chad and Olly sprawled across the floor, both nearly trampled by fighters around them, their limbs becoming entangled. Chad momentarily felt the wind knocked from his lungs, but anger surged through his limbs and he soon found his hands wrapped around the prince’s throat, squeezing the life out of him the way he should’ve done in the Colisseo. Oliver’s eyes no sooner started to roll into the back of his head than a strong feathered hand grabbed Chad and pulled him away.

  Expecting to be ripped apart, Chad raised his hands defensively, hoping to live long enough to see another Aviary tear Oliver apart first. But he came face to face with the same Sky Person who’d saved him from the White Nothingness so many months earlier.

  “We all want to save the Descendant,” Love squawked. “The only way we can do that is together.” He pushed Chad back and helped Oliver to his feet, the prince and the Seconder glaring at each other. Love flapped his wings and lashed out in Carli’s direction, bypassing the girl by less than a foot and crashing into a guard rushing behind her. In the momentary reprieve, he took Carli’s hand and pulled her closer to the two boys. “You seem to know more about The Mountain and our savior that anyone here,” Love told her. “What should we do?”

  Carli’s eyes went wide. She shook her head, opening her mouth but barely letting out a small gasp. The screams surrounding them snapped her out of her momentary trance. “Not me. It was Wyatt, the boy I was with, the boy who. . . he’s the one that knew more than he ever told me.”

  Love spun toward another human rushing in their direction. Spreading his wings wide, he lowered his head to launch himself forward but stopped before doing so.

  “Hello, old friend, wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” James said. He turned to Chad and frowned. “Same thing for you. Sorry for leaving you behind. Not exactly glad the ISU and its history books are unmanned but glad to see you safe.”

  Chad’s jaw clenched as tightly as his fists. His anger for the prince no longer felt so solitary. But before he could attack, another small group scurried toward them, another familiar face that looked at Chad with the utmost confusion.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with any of you, but if you plan on rescuing my daughter, you need to go now while we have the others distracted,” Martha Weller snapped at them. She turned to the young man behind her. “And you need to go with them.”

  Isaac’s face was as battered and bloody as his fists. It was clear he hadn’t avoided the battle, and based on the wild look in his eyes, it was clear he didn’t want to leave it.

  “I want to fight,” he said.

  Martha shook her head. “I need someone I trust to help rescue Emma. William and I will remain here with our people. . .”

  “Your people?” Chad asked. “Are Thirders here?”

  Martha frowned. “Our new people, those who took us in when your family tried to betray us to King Edmond.”

  Chad shook his head, ready to argue when William interceded. “None of us—including Emma—will have a future unless we leave the past in the past. Now please, you have to hurry to the stairs before it’s too late.”

  The worst of the fighting—which, at a glance, n
obody could tell who was winning or losing, or even who was on which side—had cleared away from the bottom stairs. Without another word, Love, James and Isaac led the way. With a final glare toward the prince, Chad grabbed Carli’s hand and pulled her after the others, barely glancing back to see Oliver following.

  By the time Billy, Will, Emma and Quentin rushed down the hallway and reached the stairwell entrance, Emma regained enough strength to walk on her own, albeit with great strain and overwhelming pain. Quentin, however, lost so much blood and grew so woozy that Will also had to help drag him along. Things only became more difficult—and slower going—when they started up the stairs, many levels still to climb to reach Billy’s siblings.

  Two siblings now, he thought, wanting to tell his father what had happened but unable to find the words or the strength to speak them. Billy considered sending his father and Emma toward the hangar but doubted they would avoid the guards or Board and whatever was happening below. In honesty, he doubted any of them would survive the next few minutes, and a part of him wished something awful would happen to them before they reached the prison cell with his dead brother. . .

  That thought no sooner entered his mind than the silence in the stairwell was interrupted by the distant echo of footsteps and voices, some of them clearly human, some of them clearly Aviary. In that moment, Billy realized how foolish he’d been to hope for death. Together, he and his father pulled harder on Quentin, his dragging feet thumping up step after step. Behind them, Emma struggled to keep up, her heavy breathing joined by quiet groans. She fell farther and farther behind, soon an entire level down from Billy and Will. The voices and footsteps echoed louder with every passing minute, and a glance up showed no end of the stairwell in sight.

  “The host mothers. . . those being held with your family,” Quentin said. “Free them, too.”

  “You free them,” Billy said, grunting with exertion.

  Quentin shook his head. “Leave me. I’ll stay behind and slow them down.”