“I didn’t know about the biometric scanner until I went deeper into the data later. I am very sorry to have surprised you of that at the last minute. But tell me, how were you able to get past that?”
“Actually, it’s a mystery to us as well,” Geon said, explaining how Mama V left for the day and came back with the hair. “We honestly don’t know who the hair belongs to, or how she got it, and she wasn’t giving us any information either…”
“As long as it works!” Sabien declared.
Aurora nodded and mentioned how it was interesting that there was discontent about CARE, not just from them, but from others as well, once you “peeled their layers back and really got to know them.”
“It’s true,” Allea added. “Learning that Mama V knew about all of this, all this time, and how she felt about CARE… it was shocking for us. Imagine how many more people there are out there who feel the same.”
Geon wondered what the answer to that question was.
If they didn’t have that fear of CARE… that fear of Narakai… how many people would express dissatisfaction and anger toward CARE? Fear can be quite the suppressor.
They continued for some time in silence, each of them reflecting on what they were about to do. Geon could see that all of them were putting on brave faces, including him, but under the surface were saturated in terror. He knew that if they were caught they would pay the steepest price, but he tried to push those thoughts out of his head, telling himself that “without courage and sacrifice, we will never move forward.”
“Up ahead,” Aurora said, pointing toward the coastline. “Take it very slow and keep quiet. This area is patrolled by CARE.”
Geon turned the engine down to a low speed and approached the coastline carefully. Clusters of tall buildings dotted the skyline. They looked up, wondering what this miniature city in the sky looked like, but couldn’t see anything. All they could see were the defunct remnants of destroyed and abandoned buildings, and a thick layer of permamist which prevented them from seeing the rooflines. As they pulled up against the rocky edge of land, the metal bottom of the boat scraped against the rough ground, making a loud grinding noise and sending a shiver down Geon’s spine. Sabien jumped out and tied the boat to a nearby post and helped each of them carefully step out.
“By my calculations, it’s very close. See that cluster of five or six buildings? The tallest ones? That’s the entry point.”
“I think we can get there without entering the aqueducts,” Allea said. “Stay close to the edges of the buildings and stay quiet. We can go single file. Everyone got it?”
They continued onward, creeping slowly into the dark, quiet city. The buildings around them were massive, looming over them like dark leaning colossal creatures. Geon looked at them, their surfaces worn and crumbling and rubble all around them, and imagined that they were alive, looking back at them, their faces dotted with the dark openings from where there once were windows.
As Aurora guided them through the city streets, she kept her LifeCuff on private mode so that the lights were only visible to her. There was no one to be seen anywhere and no sign of life. Finally, they reached the center building in the cluster and Aurora motioned for everyone to stop.
One by one, she whispered to each of them to make a dash for one of the openings in the window, and one by one they quickly ran across and climbed through the window into the first floor. It was pitch black inside, with nothing but the remains of a relic from the past. The concrete walls were crumbling around them and all of the windows and doors were open to the streets. On the other side of the room was half a stairway, the bottom part of it completely missing. In the center of the room was the old elevator for the building, its doors blocked by wood and other debris.
“There’s no one here,” Geon said. “I was expecting…
someone
. This can’t be right.”
“You might be right, Geon,” Aurora said, “but these are the exact coordinates for the entry point.”
“It’s here,” Sabien said. “I can feel it. This is exactly what they want. Instead of guards everywhere, they picked a place where no one would ever even want to go.”
“Well,” Geon said. “Then we need to figure out how to get up there. Everyone spread out and look around, carefully and quietly. Ally, our signals are blocked, right?”
“Of course, G. I’ll check on this side. Look for a small device that could be a scanner.”
They split up and began searching the perimeter of the room first. It was so dark that Geon found himself using his hands to help him see, running them gently over the edge of the course, brittle walls.
Nothing.
He made his way around his corner of the room and closer to the stairway, looking up at it and wondering if that was the key to getting up.
It doesn’t seem likely
.
I can’t picture Lastentar Grilagan and his top officials, climbing their way down hundreds of flights of old, rusty, and rickety stairs. Keep looking, G.
He made his way to the center of the room, just as the others did as well.
“It has to be here,” Sabien said, trying to peer through the debris at the elevator door. He pulled aside just enough of the junk to get to the button for the elevator, but was disappointed to find that the button had been torn out and there was nothing left by a few dangling wires. They each walked around the column, looking for anything unusual, but couldn’t find anything. After nearly an hour of searching, Geon was beginning to give up hope.
“There’s nothing left,” he exclaimed. “There’s nothing here!”
“I dunno,” Sabien muttered. “I don’t know what we’re looking for. Allea did you try holding the tube up in the air?”
“No,” she said. “Here you go.”
She handed the tube to Sabien and he held it high in the air, his arm outstretched as far as it could, the other four stopping and staring at him.
Nothing happened.
“I give up,” he said, handing the tube to Kumuki, who walked off with it held out straight in front of him.
“Guys, I think we need to consider an alternate plan,” Sabien said. “Maybe the location of Zenith has moved. Maybe it’s somewhere else. Aurora, maybe you can get more information and we can try again.”
“No,” Geon said. “I don’t think we’ll ever get another shot. Her father will find out what she did soon. You know that, Sabe.”
Allea pulled up schematics of the building before it was demolished on her cuff, trying to look for some anomalies in the structure.
Suddenly, Kumuki cried out from behind the column where the elevator was.
“What’s this?”
The four of them ran to him and found him crouching down on the floor, his face inches from the ground.
“What is it?” Geon crouched down next to him.
“Here. There’s a little dent.”
Geon ran his fingers gently against the edge of the floor where Kumuki was pointing.
There WAS a dent!
“It’s a small indentation,” Geon said, feeling the semicircular notch but being careful not to put his fingers inside of it. “It could be nothing, but, it’s so…
symmetrical
. Look at it.”
The other peered forward, barely even noticing the tiny groove in the floor.
“Kumuki, place the tube there,” Geon said. “You found it. It’s your honor.”
Kumuki smiled and placed the small tube in the dent. A flash of blue light came out of a tiny pinhole on one side of the indentation. It appeared to be scanning the contents of the tube.
“Oh my God!” Geon whispered.
Please open. Please open. Please open.
Suddenly the light disappeared and there was a clicking noise and a strange whirring sound from behind the wall. As the five of them stood up and slowly stepped backward, the entire concrete wall in front of them made a deep ‘thunk’ and a door opened from the opposite side.
“Kumuki, you did it!”
Geon slowly crept around the open doorway and peered in. It was the area where the elevator used to be, but in the square shaft stood a circular clear tube, running upward and out of sight. On the front of the tube was an opening and a small round platform on the ground, and in the middle of the platform was a vertical pole about five feet high.
“Guys,” he said with a smile. “This is it. Aurora, you really found it!”
“We all found it, Geon,” she said, patting the now smiling Kumuki on the arm.
“Okay,” Allea said in a serious tone. “Let’s stay focused. I’m running the security program from Helano now, since we don’t know what we’re going to encounter up there. Let’s go.”
They climbed into the tube one by one and crowded around the small platform, each of them holding on to the vertical pole in the middle. Once inside, Geon could see there was a button on the inside of the tube. Sabien was about to press it when Geon stopped him.
“Guys,” Geon said. “I just want to make sure. This is our last chance if anyone has doubts. Are we all in this together?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, Geon.”
“YUP!”
“Do it.”
Geon hit the button and suddenly the platform took off, hurtling them rapidly straight up into the depths of the old building. As they flew upward, each floor of the building whirled past them in a blurred frenzy. Floor after floor passed until finally, the platform began slowing down. Before it stopped, Geon asked Allea to scan for other people or active LifeCuffs nearby. She scanned and found nothing. The platform came to a stop and the door slid open, each of them stepping out one by one.
The sudden cold and powerful wind hit Geon by surprise. He hadn’t expected them to be outside when they stepped out, but looking around, he could see they were now on the roof of the enormous building, high in the sky and above the permamist. The air was wet and stung his face.
“Oh my God,” Allea whispered. “Look!”
Geon followed the direction of her arm, pointing toward the sky above them. As he and the others turned to look up, they all simultaneously gasped in shock and Geon found himself breathless with wonderment. In the sky, about fifty feet above them, was a round structure, about four times the size of their home. It had windows all the way around the sides and lights from within those windows, but no lights from the bottom of the structure. Geon could make out thick cables protruding out from the edges of the structure, which appeared to be extending toward other buildings nearby. The most astonishing site, however, was what Geon saw as he looked up. Above the object was a dark massive round balloon, connected to the top center of the structure by a set of more thick cables.
Unbelievable
.
He wanted to scream out in shock and delight, but they had to maintain their stealth position to avoid being noticed by anyone that might be up there.
“LOOK!” Kumuki loudly whispered, pointing to the sides of the structure.
Geon squinted his eyes, trying to adjust to the dark, and wiping away tears from the blistering winds. The large round structure was surrounded on all sides by more, similar looking, smaller round structures. There were about fifteen in total. Each of them was separated by length of long thick cables that connected them to each other and to the remains of the buildings around them. Each of them also had a large silver balloon strapped to the roofs with cables.
“Oh my God, it’s a floating city,” Geon said in awe, unable to take his eyes off the surreal sight above them.
“Incredible, Geon,” Aurora said.
“Truly,” Sabien added.
“It’s amazing,” Allea said. “It’s truly a feat of engineering marvel. They used the defunct remains of the abandoned buildings as structural supports to keep them steady in the high winds, and then used those balloons to keep them afloat. Hydrogen, maybe? This is years ahead of any construction technology that we know about.”
The cluster of round structures slowly came into clear view as Geon’s eyes adjusted to the conditions, each of them glowing softly from within.
“You can even see the transport bubbles there, along the outsides of the structure. They run along cables from each unit to the next.”
“It’s like Enkia,” Kumuki said. “Except this one floats in the sky and that one floats in the water!”
Geon nodded and added, “It
is
remarkable. But we can’t stay here forever. The large structure right above us looks like the main one. I think that’s where we’ll find what we want. There’s another tube right there under it, behind that wall.”
“He’s right,” Sabien said. “We need to keep moving. Let’s go.”
They scurried across the roof quickly, making their way to the wall and creeping carefully around it. On the other side they found a tube like the one that brought them to the roof, leading directly up the middle of the structure.
“You guys ready?” Geon said. “Once we get in, let’s get the info and get out.”
They climbed through the door in the tube and hopped on the platform and tapped the button once more, sending them flying straight up into the center of Zenith.
The door slid open and Geon stepped forward, carefully prying into the room before them. It was a dimly lit entry point, and Geon could see that they were right in the middle of the structure. From the inside, it looked similar to the homes in Enkia, and appeared to have multiple divided rooms all the way around the exterior edge. Directly in front of them, Geon could make out a room with a long table and seats all the way around it. Seeing no sign of anyone else in the room, he motioned to the rest of them to step out of the tube. The only sound was a very quiet “wow” from Kumuki, and a low pitched hum from behind them.
“Stay close to the wall,” Geon whispered, as he pressed his body up against the wall housing the tube and slowly made his way around the large wide circular column. They followed in single file, stepping slowly and deliberately. Geon saw another room through a small window that appeared to be a medical clinic of some sort. It was hard to make out, but there was a cooling box in the corner with strange objects inside of separate glass jars.
“What are those?”
“Keep moving, Kuki,” Sabien said softly. “We don’t have time for that now.”
“We need to find the central brain,” Allea said quietly. “There will be some sort of primary holographic nervous center which houses all of CARE’s information.”