The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (14 page)

“Or maybe they woke him up, and now he’s in Desenna.”

Leech shrugged again. “Sure.” He didn’t sound like he believed it. “So you asked me what I was doing before. . . . I was recording messages for Isaac. It’s like a journal. Just in case . . . in case I find him. It’s probably stupid. I just want him to know how I’ve been.”

Hearing this awakened that urge in me to get in touch with my dad again, to make sure he knew I was alive, where I was. It hadn’t been decades, like between Leech and his brother, but it still felt like a long time. “Sorry,” I said to Leech, “for thinking, you know . . .”

“It’s okay. I get it. I haven’t given you a ton of reasons to trust me.”

“No,” I said. “You know, just because Paul didn’t want you to tell me I might be an Atlantean, that didn’t mean you had to be a jerk to me at camp.”

“Don’t forget that you were also completely annoying,” said Leech. “All mopey and wimpy. But, yeah, I should have known by how Paul acted when you showed up. When I think about it, it just makes me so angry, I can barely stand it.”

I noticed that his hands were shaking. He had them by his sides, and now crossed his arms.

“That’s not the anger,” he said quietly.

“What is it?”

“Cryogenic sickness,” said Leech. “The procedure got perfected in the later decades, but the cryo program was only experimental when we went under.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“Yeah, and it’s getting worse. They had some treatments back at Eden, but . . .” He grabbed the shaking wrist, squeezing it.

I looked at Leech and thought that it was amazing how wrong I’d been about him. Then again, he hadn’t made it easy.

A question came to my lips. I hesitated, but then asked it. “Do you think you killed that guy back there? Harvey?”

“I don’t know,” said Leech quietly. “I wasn’t
trying
to kill him, but . . . I wasn’t trying
not
to either. Anyway, who cares if I did? He was just another one trying to use us.” He looked at me. “You know what Eden will do to us after they find the Paintbrush, don’t you?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, once they’ve gotten what they need from us . . . it won’t be like what you saw in the lab, with Anna and the others.”

Now I understood. “You mean they’ll kill us,” I said.

“And it won’t even be a thought,” said Leech. “We may be a vital part of Project Elysium, but we’re not part of whatever comes after that. We’re going to have to do whatever it takes if we want to survive this. If people die . . . better them than me.”

I looked at the knives in his belt. “Can I have one of those?”

“Sure.” He handed me a serrated knife with a white handle.

I ran my fingers over it. “I don’t know if I could kill someone,” I said honestly, “if it ever came to that.” I hated admitting it.

“Yeah, well, great,” said Leech. “I better not die because of that.”

We lay there silent. I dozed off. Lilly came in later. I started to make room on the couch, but she headed for the bedroom.

We waited until late afternoon, lying still and silent in the coffin of heat.

“We should go,” I said, “if we want to make the marker by morning.”

We trudged back to the craft through wicked winds, sand pelting our faces.

Lilly handed me the thermal, and I spread it over the craft. “You did a good job with this,” I said. The air hole was nearly exactly the size of the previous one.

Lilly didn’t answer, just slumped into the craft and pulled her blanket over her to shield herself from the sun.

When the balloon was full, I got in, bumping Lilly’s side by accident. She popped out of the blanket and unleashed a terrible wave of coughs. When she pulled her hand away from her mouth, there was blood on her palm. I saw fresh red trickling from her gills, too. She lay back and pulled the blanket over her again.

We rose into the golden late-day heat. The hot winds whipped, the craft harder to control with the natural sway of the thermal, and my already sore arms burned. When I turned around to check the heat-melted horizon, the pain made me cry out. More spots in my eyes.

“Save your strength,” said Leech. “Don’t you get it? They’re not coming.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, and yet I’d been thinking the same thing.

“Why should they?” said Leech. “We’re going to lead Paul where he wants to go anyway, right? So why not just watch and wait until we get there?”

I hated this thought, felt it fraying the weak thread of resolve I had left. “You make it sound like we haven’t escaped at all.”

“I know.” Leech started sketching.

I flew on, trying to think of some way to fight this new yawning sense of doubt. I kept checking the horizon, but it remained empty of answers.

DESOLATE. THE MOUNTAIN LAKE WHERE I HAD trained with Lük was still, the Atlantean city dark. The morning light flat, the sun unmoving, as if the world had been frozen.

Then it changed . . . to the ash-covered moonscape outside the caves at Hub after the fire. I was standing among the dead trees. They looked like skeletal animals about to come alive, to bend down with brittle creaks and spear me with their blackened skewers.

“Owen!” I turned to see Mom up on the ledges, hands to her mouth. “Owen!” She sounded desperate. Terrified.

“Psst.”

Then it was dark, a single light throwing shadows. I sat up from blankets and looked across a little bedroom. Parents sleeping in a bed against the triangular far wall. I was up in a top bunk. Was this Hub? No, I was in that yacht back at the dry lake. The voice had come from below.

I looked over the edge of my bed to see a small face looking up at me. “Owen, let’s go see.” A young boy with wide gleaming eyes.

“Isaac, no,” I said to him. “Mom said stay here. Besides, Leech would be mad.”

“I want to see the snow,” said Isaac, with the kind of expectation that you’d feel about presents on Christmas morning. He was wearing frog pajamas. He had Leech’s field of freckles spreading across his small, curved nose.

“It’s not snow,” I whispered. “It’s ash, and it might still be hot.”

“I want to see.”

I checked Mom and Dad. They were still asleep. Dad’s breathing was already labored at night, even this long ago. The bedroom was the yacht, but it was also Hub, my brain blending the two places.
It’s my job to keep an eye on him
, I thought. But then the door was flapping open and little Isaac was gone, except now he had long, red hair. . . .

A hand shook me. I opened my eyes to the stars, and the whispers of the dream took flight on the breeze.

I was curled up in the front of the craft. Leech had woken me, and was sitting back down, his face lit by the dim orange glow of the battery flame. I’d given him a basic flying lesson at sunset. He’d picked it up okay, well enough to keep us in a straight line.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“One,” said Leech. “I’m getting tired. You should take over.”

Just after dark, we’d drunk most of the last water bottle, unable to hold out any longer, and shared the final package of synth veggie crisps. We still had a single soymeal bar, and we were chewing our way through the last of the dry noodles, but it was getting hard to dissolve them when our mouths were so dry.

We’d decided no more stops until the marker, unless we found some sign of an outpost or supplies. At the marker . . . after the marker . . . what would happen then? And yet, given our condition, it didn’t seem worth spending any extra energy thinking about. We’d all gotten Rad burns over the afternoon, pink blistery swatches of skin. I had one on my shoulder beneath my sweatshirt. Leech’s leg had a long strip, the center of which had shaded to brown. Lilly had an oozing spot on her cheek. I thought the cold night air would bring relief, but they just kept burning.

I got up, every muscle brittle, and traded places with Leech. Lilly was still asleep, her face pale, her lips purplish, her neck a worry of red and brown.

“Did she wake up at all?” I asked Leech as he lay down in the front of the craft, pulling the pink blanket over him.

“No. You both just moaned a lot.”

I started to focus on the wind, trying to find just the right angle to get maximum speed, but then I felt Leech’s eyes on me. “What?”

“You said my brother’s name in your sleep.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry, it’s just weird. Tell me what you were dreaming about.”

I tried to remember. “I don’t know, really. I’ve been having this weird dream about back at Hub, around the time of the Three-Year Fire. Did you hear about that, living in Eden?”

“Yeah,” said Leech. “I heard about it.”

“Anyway, it was that, but then in the dream I was on that boat we found today, and your brother was there and it was like he was my brother or something. And then it turned back into this other dream I keep having where I’m outside the morning after the fire, in the ash, and there’s this girl sinking into the ash. . . . I don’t know . . . just dream stuff, I guess.”

“You have weird dreams often?” Leech asked. I felt like he was studying me.

“I don’t know, not really that I remember.” I tried to think back. During camp, I’d been in a perpetually under-slept haze. Maybe there had been some dreams about the siren and dark water, but that was about it. And before that . . . I couldn’t really pick any out. Again, trying to think about my life at Hub, little more than a week ago, seemed like trying to peer through a foggy window. “I guess just recently,” I said. “I figured with everything we’ve been through, a few weird dreams aren’t too surprising. Why?”

Leech didn’t answer. I heard him breathe in like he was about to say something.

Before he did, a bright flash caught both our eyes. It had come from the west, somewhere between us and the Rockies, whose distant moonlit peaks were now just visible. More flashes followed, a bunch in rapid succession.

The booms began to arrive, shaking the craft.

“Lightning rain?” Leech asked.

“I don’t think so.” Their quick attack reminded me of that explosion back in Eden, when the Nomads had bombed the doors as a diversion. “More like fighting.”

The flashes grew brighter, the booms deeper. They were coming from a valley a few kilometers away.

Something tore through the air above us. A high-pitched, fast-moving sound. We looked up and saw a shadow shape skimming by, only visible as a glint of moonlight.

“Holy crap, that’s a drone fighter,” said Leech. It was lost to the darkness, but then twin beams of fire lit the sky from its likely trajectory, hurtling dashes of light that arced and disappeared into the valley.

And then the biggest explosion yet.

Another jet screamed overhead. More fire in the distance. I lowered us, and angled farther south.

“Hey, I want to see what’s going on up there,” Leech urged.

“Me too, but I don’t want to be seen . . . or shot down.”

Something in the craft began to beep.

“Whoa.” Leech twisted around and grabbed the subnet computer pad. A green light was flashing on its top. He pressed a button and the sound stopped, the screen lighting.

“What’s up?” said Lilly groggily. She sounded like someone had coated her vocal cords in glue and sand.

“We just hit a subnet zone,” said Leech.

More booms and blast concussions pummeled the craft.

“And that?” Lilly sat up and peered toward the flashing lights.

“We’re not sure. Hold these,” I said, passing the sail lines to Lilly. I turned to Leech. “Let me see the pad for a second.”

“Why?” Leech asked, but he handed it over.

I tapped the pad and found the video chat icon. “I’m calling my dad.” I scrolled through headings for locations and found Yellowstone Hub.

“Don’t,” said Leech. “Eden will be monitoring that.”

“I don’t care.” That feeling was back, like I needed to connect, and this might be my only chance. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have an idea.”

I found a menu of Hub numbers, and scrolled through links for the offices at the geothermal plant. I wasn’t sure what day it was . . . but there was a good chance Dad was at work, especially without me around. Also, if Eden was expecting me to call him, they’d more likely be monitoring our home number.

I hit connect. A small horizontal bar filled and emptied, over and over. A message appeared, reading:
Video connection unavailable
. Then there was a beeping and a click as someone picked up the line.

“Hello?” The connection was uneven, broken by static and choppy cuts.

“Hi!” I shouted. “I’m trying to reach Darren Parker.”

When the connection was solid, there were lots of sounds, grinding and humming, the workings of the geothermal station. It sounded bad, worse than I remembered even during the times when Dad would have to pull all-night shifts.

“Hello?” the male voice asked again.

“Is Darren Parker on shift tonight?”

“Da—you sa—? What was th—la—me?”