Nemecene: The Epoch of Redress (17 page)

"Don't forget the frequency thrower." There are still protectors at the perimeter.

"You're learning, yeah? Here, catch. Your turn."

Juicy. Time to have some fun.

The only way out is how I came in, then straight down. I can hear them pace back and forth in the halls so the links should be clear. Don't look at it, just lean over and grab the edging. Yes. Down to 4. Breathe, 3. Breathe, 2, Breathe, 1. Slide. Oops. Watch the lobby guard. Grass. Oh yes! I do want to kiss you. Sorry. Have to run. Stitch is on the comm with someone. There's the perimeter protector. Fling him something in the ivy. Juicy. I like this thing. Finally the woods. He's fast. He's definitely done this more than once. Well, look who's here. I'll pass on the rot fingers and toe jam thank you.

"Busy night, Zaf? And Elize." He nods so graciously. We're getting the head-to-toe look. "A little dark for rock climbing is it not?"

Feeling a little sheepish right now, but Stitch banters in.

"Well, Odwin, you know me, yeah?" And I wouldn't mind knowing a bit more myself.

Did he say
Odwin
? Looks like he noticed my squashed frog imitation.

"Answers in time, my young princess."

Oh, I like him. A princess! The Gadlins are so chivalrous. And a wink as well. Juicy.

Finally, some time to relax. Away from the prison. Strange that I would think that word. Prison. I guess it's not the size that matters. It's the freedom or lack thereof. I spent months planning to leave Father's just to end up in a bigger one. How bent is that? But still. What is it about this free-spirited hip-wiggling hair-squirming lowlander that has me so agitated? For over three weeks he's played his social misfit role so well, and then overnight he's a different person. Could Keet have sensed something from the beginning? He's smiling again.

"Look up, chum. The stars are calling. Make a wish."

And I do.

Day 26: Early Evening

"A
dreamless sleep awaits her."

The notion that those beautifully penned words could represent such a foreboding end disturbs me. According to Eli's interpretation at the Snack Shack this evening, the message signals an end to her relentless nightmares, something she has been longing for since childhood, but Stitch offers a vastly different perspective. A dreamless sleep can only mean one thing, death. But for whom? My fear is that this cryptic warning in my journal is directed at Eli. Predictably, her reaction was a prolonged snare and an emphatic "you're both bent," but nonetheless, a twisted knot still grows inside me. Surely this morning's discovery was related. Someone is watching, and I shudder to think that they could have been rummaging through my belongings while I was there, in my bed, traveling to places only my mind has visited.

I was so exhausted after last night's surreal adventure that I was forced to cut our conversation short. By the time I had finished recounting the first part of the evening, the adrenaline crash from my unnerving escape had caught up with me, leaving me barely conscious enough to see clearly, let alone put to paper any manner of coherent thought. I'd like to believe that you were there, a third pair of hands entwined in the dark, creating a protective field around us, like our own personal biowall, while the operatives swarmed the floors, injecting everyone in their path with invisible restraints. How else could they have missed us? But I must concede to good fortune. Scanners are not infallible and drifting does occur during meteor showers, of which the skies threw us plenty last night. Whatever the source, I am grateful.

I sense I am at a crossroads, as does Eli, although she refuses to admit it. She was convinced I would succeed, even amidst overwhelming indications to the contrary. She might be all science and numbers, but she still has faith. Faith in me at least, something I have yet to embrace. As I recoiled at the edge of the tower, re-ingesting the contents of my stomach before committing to the task, I remembered the incident with the dark figure and found the courage to leap onto the first link. Once balanced, momentum and urgency carried me down the levels until I heard it again, the ominous flutter, so easily mistaken through a comm as the innocuous wings of night flyers. I froze on the last level, just in time to avoid falling into the path of the cloaked stranger and the pursuing pack of fork-tailed creatures. As the howling continued along the gap between the towers towards and around the center back, I regained control of my body, focused on my accomplice waiting beyond the ivy wall, and made a run for it, trusting that the hounds and their prey were suitably distracted. As I curved left towards the open gate, its protector slumped against it, my gaze was drawn to the absence of noise behind me. The stranger was gone and the hunters lay unconscious on the ground.

Yes, our paths are indeed becoming more entangled and our self-reliance is no longer enough, but inviting an outsider into our private pursuit was never part of the plan. Stitch's attentiveness towards Eli has clouded her judgment, and now she has wedged him between us and opened a door he immediately took advantage of. Although I appreciate the resourcefulness of this Zafarian character, if that is in fact his real name, I will continue to question his intentions until he divulges his true connection with the outlanders. But until then, I must choose to step out of my skin, to take an uncomfortable chance with him and open a door of my own.

It was not even hinting at dawn when I heard them knock. My brain must have still been processing yesterday's emotional whirlwind, because I shot straight up, covered in sweat with my heart trying to bust through my ribcage. I sat with my feet bolted to the floor by the edge of the bed until I recognized Eli's voice through the keyhole. "What's with the hat?" is all I could muster in my confusion, as she muttered something witty about my room protector, while Stitch attempted to restrain himself from bursting. She hadn't yet met the tiny yet effective addition to my crypt, since she hadn't been back here since my first day. Just try to go near my journal and you'll see how fast fingers can disappear. Nonetheless, I have to admit that it is difficult to imagine him expressing any wolf-like qualities when he's lapping up the pats and cuddles Eli is spoiling him with.

Suspecting that my new pup wasn't the reason for their impromptu visit, I bypassed any formalities and demanded some answers. After I had calmed down and essentially accused Stitch of corrupting my "cousin" and putting her life in danger by making her skulk around in the dark with a concussion, Eli rolled her eyes and started laughing. Evidently, she found my outburst entertaining, which irritated me even further, but I think Stitch got the point. He pulled himself away from the discussion and let her explain.

She had been thinking about the events which had happened since the medi clinic and my suggestion that her involvement was not accidental, and she admitted to feeling watched even before we left home. Her analytical self had rationalized it as being the result of emotional adjustments to a completely new environment, and in light of the circumstances of our departure, it seemed reasonable, but the compounding evidence is causing her to question her initial assessment. She was the one who enlisted Stitch for the lunacy they were contemplating.

The sun would be rising shortly and that meant the fog was not far behind, a perfect cover for breaking into the medical lab, she continued. After she filled in the details of their grand scheme, the only thing I could think of was: how hard exactly did she bang her head last night? The mere concept of attempting a breach was completely bent, let alone catapulting onto a roof through a blinding cloud. That was suicide. As I attempted to emphasize the fatal consequences of the slightest error in the plan's execution, she pulled me in close and whispered very deliberately: "I saw
them
take her."

At this point I realized that whoever
they
were, she had been keeping her encounters with them secret, so I pressed her for full disclosure, keeping Stitch well within my periphery and away from earshot. Her blood was already at the crime scene, and it was only a matter of time before they assumed her responsible, declaring her sick and dangerous so that Father could sign her away, just as he did you. Our choices were to flee and seek shelter with the Gadlins, remaining fugitives for the last half of our lives, or search Mashrin for clues that could lead us to the real mastermind behind these apparent coincidences and ultimately discover what they are looking for. Eli was right, we must leave at first mist and follow Stitch's lead, although watching him bopping around in the corner captivated by my magic books did not really instill in me a great deal of confidence.

His interest in my selection of literature of mostly myths, legends, lost civilizations, unsanctioned historical accounts, and biographies of great explorers, annoyed me, mainly because it implied that Eli was right again and that I have more in common with him than I think. He even ranted about your favorite game, the one we used to play when we were allowed to visit you, telling us about how his grandfather was unbeatable, and showing us a few of his best moves. When both Eli and I grew quiet, sensing that there was some emotional trauma attached to my memories of it and trying to lighten the mood, Stitch steered the conversation onto my crystal, which unfortunately had the opposite effect. He said he had seen something similar before, but couldn't remember exactly where, to which Eli stoically responded that it was my mother's who died when I was a child, adding credence to the story that we are just distant cousins who ran into each on the hovertrain several weeks ago. After a brief moment of silence, we spent the rest of the early morning rehearsing the break-in procedure and refining our exit strategy, and as soon as our fog cover rolled in, we were out the door.

The campus was unusually quiet. The regular clicking of heels between the Nook and Van Billund Hall as students grabbed some sweets before classes was missing. In fact, there was very little noise emanating from inside the buildings themselves as most students were still suffering the after-effects of last night's tagging frenzy. There hung an eerie stillness in the mist. Once we had made it along the orchard pathways, Stitch switched the frequency thrower to reflect mode and lowered its setting to below sentinel hearing range. He then handed us each a noise cancellation emitter to keep clamped to our wrists from now on and a set of gloves for prints, and we started our approach. Arms locked, we ventured step by step across the clearing and under the eastern links. Having seen them from above, the thought of climbing them without the benefit of my sight rattled my nerves. Stitch seemed to be the only one of us whose hands were steady and dry, so we shadowed him.

Once on the roof, I immediately switched to canine task force mode and crawled, sacrificing my fingers to the front line instead. From the northeast corner, Stitch hooked one end of a rope, attaching a fourth emitter to the other end, along with an autograbber. He then pointed himself in the direction of the western helix, shot straight into the fog, waited a few seconds, unhooked the rope, slipped a slide on it, pulled it back taut, clamped it, and told us to hop on. Just like that. Ok. So it wasn't a catapult sending me screaming through the air, which of course no one would hear because my emitter would cancel out the incessant wailing as I plummet to my death, but just the same… Being captured and sent to work the mines was looking pretty good just around then, but the gentle squeeze from Eli as she lovingly eased me onto the canvas hoop restored my spirit. "Fly like the wind," she said. And never look back.

Stage two was complete. He released the rope's grab on the spire and fired it back to its origin, for pickup later today, collapsed the slide into his bag, pulled the next set of gadgets out, put them on us, and triple tested them. Spiraling down a shaft across eighteen levels might be thrilling, but erupting out the bottom into a lobby full of GMU operatives because of a containment issue would be anticlimactic to say the least. The brakes had to control the descent and stop us at the right pod, and they did. Stitch was the first one at the panel. He punched a long sequence of numbers into the frequency thrower, camped on the controller channel, hacked the lock code and swung through the opening. Just then, I felt a vibration through the walls of the tube, and voices snaking upwards. Stitch's ingenious wrist clamp all of sudden lost its appeal as we could not hear what was happening in the cell. If the sentinel had him within close range, we would be deaf to it. They had called the lift and were heading our way and Stitch was nowhere in sight.

All of a sudden, my whole body flushed with blood. What if this was a trap? What if he was an undercover operative and had lured us into a false trust? He certainly has the right skills and the stone resolve. He wasn't going to take us that easily. I would rather die than have him take Eli from me. Just as I had decided to fly through the open panel, Stitch poked his head out and pulled us in. My fist was clenched so tight it exploded on its own, while he ducked and deflected its force with a chuckle, and I went stumbling into the belly of a gagged sentinel. Well, at least I didn't get slobbered on. Eli shook her head and mumbled something about post-traumatic stress and we put the incident behind us, for now. Mashrin was waiting.

There she was, covered in a silver shroud. Eli reached her first, pulled off the sheet, and searched through her clothing, while Stitch went straight for the base of her skull, rubbing his fingers against it, and I, well, I supervised. I prefer dead things without the juices intact. Besides, someone had to make sure the defenders stayed in the walls. As the pat-down continued, I saw Eli take something from the girl's pant pocket, then instantly put it back, oblivious to my questioning eyes. It looked like a rock, but I can't be sure because I only caught a glimpse of its reddish hue. Then Stitch called me over and together we carefully rolled Mashrin onto her side. They were keeping her warm. But why? Eli purported to lean into me to get a better view of what Stitch was revealing above her hairline, but what she was really doing was digging into my shoulder blade with her trembling nails. We recognized the mark and stood back in horror as Stitch proclaimed: "Part of her brain is missing."