The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (4 page)

Someone was screaming. A girl. I couldn’t tell if this was a memory, too, or a new dream reality. All I knew was that I had to reach her, had to hurry, so I turned and jumped off the ledge. I floated down over the burnscape, arms out, soaring.

I landed on my knees in the ash, a fine powder, still warm. It clung to my arms, chalked my hands, smudged my jeans.

Nearby, a tree carcass popped and hissed, its cinder jaws gleaming red.

Owen
.

I looked up and there she was.

Not the siren.

A girl. She was young, with deep red hair that fell to her shoulders and quartz white skin, translucent like

—
like the skull
—

and reflecting the color of the ash. The ash and the skin nearly the same. Something was wrong with her. Maybe an illness.

If it gets worse, she will leave
.

The girl gazed at me with enormous brown eyes and a kind of brokenhearted expression, her eyes so serious, her mouth so small. She wore LoRad pajamas decorated with smiling green frogs. . . . How old? Three? And what was her name? I felt like I knew it. Had known it at some point. It was something I was
supposed
to know. I could almost envision the blank spot where that information should have been, but it was lost to me. She held a toy crocodile, its velvety tail hanging down and making little swipes in the gray . . .

And she was starting to sink into the ash. Inch by inch, up her pajamas as if she were being erased.

I have to save her
. That I knew for sure. I was worried about her,
terrified
, only the ash felt like mud, resisting me . . . and my legs were suddenly weak and useless, like my dream was at the mercy of technicians, laughing mischievously as they changed the rules.

Wait!
I kept trying to run, but my legs churned, and I sank, too, down into the ash which was now also the sky and water, and I was drowning, like in the lake all over again. The black trees floated in the murk, their branches like sickly veins twisting through the gray, and I couldn’t find the girl—

O-wen
.

I thrashed around. Up. Down. Which was which? Who was calling me—siren or little girl?

Except this voice sounded different. I saw a glowing form again, but it wasn’t the siren. This was a rectangle of light, and there seemed to be a face floating in it.

All at once my mind woke up enough to stash the dream props back in their closet, to attach gravity and time and space to the real. Ash became water became air. I felt the hard sand against my cheek, the oven-hot air of midday.

The light was the computer pad, lying next to Lilly, who was asleep on her side.

I sat up and saw a face on the pad.

“Ahh, there you are.”

Paul’s face.

PAUL GAZED UP AS IF FROM A WINDOW IN THE SAND. His tinted glasses were on, his expression calm. Other than an inky bruise on the side of his head—the spot where Lilly had slammed him with the skull—he looked like he always did: a mystery, only he wasn’t a mystery to me anymore. I’d seen his electric circuit board eyes—the bionic implants—and so his stillness now just made me think of an android, cold and calculating.

“Enjoying your trip?” he asked.

I picked up the pad, feeling around its edges for an off switch, but I couldn’t find one. This must have been some older model; Lilly had said that her parents had left it to her when she was cryoed.

“Owen, look at me.”

I kept fiddling.

“Owen, my boy . . .”

“Shut up!” I shouted, holding the pad at arm’s length, as if he might reach right through and grab me.

“Okay, don’t get so worked up,” said Paul. “I just want to talk before you make a mistake.”

I looked at him. “Mistake?” My whole body was shaking. “My only mistake was not realizing what you were sooner.”

“Oh, come on,” said Paul. “Have you and your pals made me out to be a villain or a monster? That kind of thing? Because I think if you really reflected on our conversation in the temple, you’d realize that I am the best ally you three could have.”

“I remember the temple,” I said. “When I didn’t agree to join you, you tried to hook me up to the skull like I was another one of your test subjects.”

“Well, let’s be clear about that.” Paul smiled. “You were my
prize
test subject. You hold the key to saving humanity, and I can help you unlock it.”

“Stop!” I felt a surge of hate like a wave breaking inside me. “Just shut up!”

“Owen?” Lilly rolled over, eyes blinking open. When she saw Paul, she lurched up. “Turn it off! If they’re transmitting to this pad that means they can track our location.”

Paul glanced in Lilly’s direction and smiled. “I always liked Miss Ishani’s instincts. Owen, please don’t let her kill this chat before I’ve had a chance to warn you.”

“Give me that.” Lilly grabbed the pad.

“It’s about your father. About your home. You can’t go there.”

“Good-bye, jerk,” Lilly said, tapping quickly to reveal a side menu on the screen.

“Hold on.” I caught her wrist.

“Owen,” Lilly urged, “anything he says is a lie.”

“On the contrary,” said Paul, “remember what I told you, Owen: I’ve never lied to you.”

I knew Lilly was right, and yet, based on what Paul had just said, I also knew that he’d guessed we would head for Hub, which meant that they could try to intercept us there. Maybe if I let him say whatever manipulative speech he had planned, we could break it down and figure out their strategy for catching us. If there was one thing I hadn’t liked during the past night, it was looking back at an empty horizon and wondering where Eden was.

I took hold of the pad. For a second, I thought Lilly might not let go. But she did.

“Fine,” I said. “What.”

“Thank you,” said Paul. “Now listen carefully. This morning, EdenWest sent a message over the gamma link to all major federation intelligence and news agencies stating that three suspects had escaped from EdenWest. Detailed descriptions of you all were included in this statement, as well as of your craft.” He stopped.

I knew what question he wanted me to ask. “Suspects?”

“Indeed. Three suspects wanted in connection with the murders of EdenWest’s head of security and communications coordinator.”

I tried to hide my surprise, but Paul saw it, and it made him smile.

“Yes, that’s right. Because let’s think through what really happened yesterday, Owen. Photos of Cartier, dead from the arrow wound, were circulated, as well as surveillance footage of you pushing Aaron to his death from your craft.”

“He survived that fall!” I countered. “I saw him come up.”

“That’s funny,” said Paul. “He doesn’t surface in the footage. And there were many eyewitnesses when his body washed ashore on the Camp Eden beach this morning during polar bear swim.”

I wanted to reply, but I was knotting up, heart racing, breath getting short. And I could tell that Paul was enjoying this. So I stayed quiet, trying to give him nothing.

“Right now,” said Paul, “law enforcement in every major city-state has your profile and knows that Eden is offering a substantial reward for your return. And that includes Yellowstone Hub. So, you may want to skip your little homecoming.”

“Turn it off,” said Lilly. “That’s enough of
him
.”

“Not quite,” said Paul. “You’ll want to hear this part, Miss Ishani. I also wanted to let you know that we captured your coconspirators as they tried to escape. Evan, Marco, and Aliah have proven quite . . . useful for rounding out the intelligence profiles we sent out about you.”

Lilly couldn’t hide her expression either. “You’re lying,” she said.

“Is that him?” I turned to see Leech hurrying around the corner.

“And I found
this
interesting,” Paul continued. “After Evan had been interrogated, and just before I cut open his chest and hooked him up in my lab—”

Lilly threw her hands over her mouth, trying to hide a gasp.

Paul’s smile grew. “I asked him if he wanted me to tell you anything, Lilly, I mean since you two have such
history
. And he said, with tears in his eyes, I kid you not, that he would never forget that night in the boathouse.”

“Shut up, liar!” Lilly reached over my hands and stabbed at the glass with a shaking finger, opening the menu again.

“Owen, think about it,” said Paul. “You don’t have any options. So just sit tight and wait for us to arrive. I promise you I’m willing to forgive yesterday’s squabble.”

“Hey!” Leech shouted, running toward us. “Hey, you!” He was pointing at the pad.

Paul’s head twitched like he may have heard Leech. “You’re the
one
, Owen,” he said, “the one who can lead us to Atlantis. And like I told you, I want to follow you. But you can’t do it alone, especially not as a fugitive.”

“Go to hell,” I said to him.

Paul frowned. “Owen. Really. There’s more I could tell you. More you
should
know. I’m keeping things from you for your safety, but, trust me, you do not want to make this journey without me.”

Lilly reached the gamma link menu.

“I’ll even give you time to let the other two escape if you want. They don’t matter to me, Owen. Only you.
The Three
is a myth. You are all that matters.”

“Bye!” said Lilly.

“I’m coming for you, either way.”

Lilly’s finger was descending toward the Disconnect button when Leech snatched the pad out of our hands.

“I matter too, you ass lesion!” he screamed at the screen, then he twisted and hurled the computer. It twirled across the canyon.

“Hey!” I shouted.

“What are you DOING?” Lilly echoed.

The pad smashed against the far wall and fell to the sand, broken glass pattering around it.

Leech just stared after it, his face red, shoulders heaving up and down. “They can track us with that.”

Lilly jumped up and ran to the wreckage. “That’s why I was disconnecting it, you idiot!” She slid onto her knees and started picking up the pieces.

“Disconnecting it isn’t enough,” said Leech. The sight of Paul seemed to have gotten to him even more than it had rattled me. He looked so different from the cocky kid I’d known in Eden. His hands were shaking, fingers fluttering. He caught me noticing and made fists. “If they hacked into that pad, that means they have the unique network ID it creates when it connects to the gamma link. They could reverse link to the pad anywhere and determine its location.”

“Gamma link is only identifiable when it’s connected,” I said, remembering what I’d heard about data hackers back at Hub.

Leech rolled his eyes. “Maybe where
you
come from,” he said. “How do you think he appeared on it just now? Lilly, didn’t you disconnect the link before you went to sleep?”

“Yes,” Lilly muttered.

Leech looked at me. I thought I’d see his slopey, know-it-all grin, but instead he had a serious expression, like he really wanted me to understand where he was coming from. “See?”

“Fine.”

“Besides,” he added, “we have Aaron’s subnet pad.”

Lilly thrust the broken parts down on the sand. She got up and stomped over to Leech, glaring down at him. She was a good ten centimeters taller. “Yeah, but then we need a subnet connection. And where are we going to find one of those out
here
?”

Leech just shrugged.

Lilly spun away. “That’s what I thought.” She threw herself down on the blanket.

A silence passed over us. There was only the gentle shush of wind slipping along the contours of the canyon. The sight of Paul had shattered the slight sense of safety I’d been feeling and reminded me of what we were running from, and what would happen if we were caught.

I glanced at Leech, wondering about his behavior. It was one thing to not want Paul to track us, but Leech had seemed so furious at the sight of him. Maybe it was because of Paul’s comments about me being the only one who mattered. What could he have meant by that? Leech was just as important. Maybe Leech was still wounded by Paul’s betrayal. Paul probably knew those comments would upset Leech, just like his comments about Evan had been designed to upset Lilly.

She stared off into space, biting her lip. The thought of Evan cut open like Anna had been . . . no matter how I felt about him, he didn’t deserve that. No one did, and . . .

“It was our fault,” said Lilly.

“Yeah,” I agreed. The thought sunk deep into me. Evan and Marco and Aliah had saved us from Paul. If it wasn’t for them, we’d be in that lab, and now they were paying for it.

And of course that would torment Lilly. I thought about going over and trying to do something supportive, like rub her shoulder, but I found myself hesitating. I couldn’t stop thinking about the other thing Paul had said: a night in the boathouse. . . . What had that been? Lilly had his T-shirt in her bag. . . .