The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (41 page)

“Why did you do this to me?” I managed to ask.

“You mean save your life?” said Paul. “Obviously so that you could fulfill your destiny. As to altering your memories, well . . . You remember what I said back in Eden: You have to have a
vision
for how things will go. All this work I did on your mind was really for this very moment. It was an insurance policy. I’d learned from working with Carey that it might be helpful to have a card I could play to get you in line, rein you back in, if at some point you became resistant to our plans. After all, I knew you’d be changing so much, acquiring so much skill and power, and teens can be so
moody
. I wanted to be sure I could still get through to you, if I had to.

“I sent Francine to infiltrate Desenna right after you escaped from EdenWest. Emiliano is one of our operatives there, one of the many who prefer our way of thinking to Victoria’s. We’d arranged an identity and job for her to assume. And now here we all are, together again. This was clever forethought by me, I must admit, especially since at the time I didn’t yet know the full extent of your importance.”

I couldn’t hear this. My sister, dead—
I had a sister
—and my parents. I almost wanted to ask Paul what had happened to them. He would know, and he probably knew that I knew this. Maybe he was waiting for me to start asking, but nothing he said could be trusted.

A thought suddenly occurred to me, another memory, so ridiculous it almost made me laugh. “You said you never lied to me.”

“I know.” Paul shrugged. “Kinda lousy of me.”

“You’re a bastard!” Leech yelled.

“Carey, language,” said Paul.

“We’re not going with you!” Leech went on, his face boiling.

Paul made a face I remembered from Eden, a kind of displeased wince, as if someone’s defiance were an off-key note. “No, that’s true,” he said. “You’re not.” He made a small nod.

“Sorry,” said Francine.

There was a terrible explosion of sound as she pulled the trigger, and Leech spasmed back, sprawling to the floor.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I SCREAMED, MY VOICE A tattered rag. I fell forward against the cryo tube, over my sister, my found sister, to see Leech splayed out on the floor. His chest was convulsing, thumping up and down. He coughed out wet, choking sounds. Blood spread across his shirt.

“Carey is no longer necessary,” said Paul, again with as much concern as if he were delivering a report to the campers back at flagpole. “You on the other hand, Owen. Well, it’s like I said, you are the key.”

My legs buckled. It was all too much. I slid off the pod, down to my knees, shaking.

“We’ll be at the rendezvous in ten,” I heard Paul say. “Do you have the item?”

Mom—no, Francine
Not My Mother!
—turned toward the screen. I noticed now that she carried a heavy backpack, which she was showing to Paul. As she turned it toward me, a faint pale light glowed from inside.

Seven’s skull.

“Got it. Do you still want us to deliver the present to Victoria?”

Paul suddenly grinned more widely than I’d ever seen, his bionic eyes flaring. “I
do
. I want to show her what living bright can really be.”

The screens flicked off.

“Ready?” The distant shout came from Emiliano. Footsteps clanged up the stairs.

I gazed under the cryo pod and saw Leech twitching. Blood spreading. I saw Emiliano arrive and reach down to pluck the sextant from around Leech’s neck, then roll him over and yank his sketchbook from his pocket.

“I need you to get up now, Owen,” said Francine.

“No.” I moaned softly. I wasn’t getting up. I wasn’t doing anything.

Hands scooped under me, and Emiliano’s muscular arms hoisted me into the air. He slung me over his shoulder. I wanted to fight him, but everything was off, spinning but out of gear. I felt like I was beyond broken, more nothing than something, a hollow shell, falling in on myself. I wanted to die. Dying would be better. It had to be better.

“Did you deploy the code?” asked Francine.

“Yeah,” said Emiliano. “It’s going to start anytime now.”

We crossed the catwalk. With all the strength I could find, I craned my neck up and saw the back of my sister’s head, Elissa, the cryo pod . . . and then I lost sight of her. Leech was still lying there, one hand clawing at the ground. “You can’t just leave him,” I said to no reply. Then he bobbed out of my sight, too.

A huge sound erupted through the entire facility. A giant horn. It lasted a couple of seconds, and then there was a rush of air.

“I wish we could stick around to see it,” said Francine. “I put a ton of time into that cognition substitution software. I really want to know if it’s going to work.”

I felt us descending the staircase. I thudded against Emiliano’s back, a useless sack of meat. A lie, my life, all a lie . . .

The hissing sound flooded everything, and there was a gathering whir of machinery cycling to life. What had they done? What was the present for Victoria? But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Mom, Elissa, Dad . . .

Back through the glass doors, into the reception area. An upside-down view of two more bodies. Arlo, a black pool seeping into the soft carpet around him, and the guard, leaning against the wall, his neck twisted unnaturally. Also a set of feet in sandals. I craned my neck.

“Hey, flyboy.” Seven was standing there. Her hands were bound behind her, and she’d been tied to the desk. The side of her face was red, puffy from being struck, but I saw that her eyes were loose, darting around. She’d been taking Shine again. She’d left Tactical seeming angry. Had she taken it to cope? It had probably made her easy to catch.

As Francine neared Seven, the skull glow from her backpack increased. Francine untied her from the desk and grabbed her shoulder, pressing the gun into her back. “Let’s go.”

Seven stumbled forward, her movements rubbery. Any thought I might have had that we could try to escape was useless. Seven would be no help.

And what was the point, anyway? How could there be a point?

“I found a boat,” said Emiliano as we moved down the hall. “Should shorten our trip to the west hatch.”

Francine pushed Seven along beside me. She tripped, almost fell. “You are useless,” said Francine. The affectations of my mother were gone. Now she was just a scientist and a spy.

Behind us, the whirring and thumping of machinery increased. The walls and floor began to shake.

We reached the front doors and pushed out into the moist night, dark except for the soft glow of the skull, and silent save an occasional bird call. There was a rumble from somewhere distant. Thunder. I thought of my mother counting. Not this mother . . .

“Lake’s this way,” said Emiliano. He took a step to the right. But a sound made him pause.

There was a strange gathering, like a giant breath inhaling, all around us . . .

It was the wind. The wind speaking . . .

“QiiFarr-eeschhh . . .”

The words were unintelligible, and for a second I wondered if it was some kind of trick of the breeze between broken windows or just my broken mind making things up. But there was no mistaking the clutching swirl of wind that had begun to spiral around us.

Wind that seemed to have intent.

The skull erupted with light so bright it rendered the backpack transparent.

“Damn!” Francine twisted away, frantically tossing the pack off her shoulders as if the light had burned her. “What’s with that thing?”

The light grew, blinding us in white, washing out everything.

I tried to look at Seven through the glare. Was she doing this? But the light was reflecting in her busy eyes and she was just kind of smiling dumbly at it. If this wasn’t her . . .

“QiiFarr-eeschhh . . .”

The white was everywhere, as if the world were being erased around us. I could barely make out the outline of Francine, shielding her eyes and whirling back and forth.

Then I saw a new silhouette emerging from the side of the building, walking swiftly.

Within the rippling haze of light, I could just make out the form, a woman . . .

The siren?

Or maybe Rana, somehow made real . . .

She raised something over her head. Spun. Swung. It slammed Francine in the back of the head.

“Guh!” Francine crumpled to the ground.

The figure moved in a blur.

Emiliano turned. He saw the figure and dropped me. I landed on my back and looked up and in the ocean of light, I saw her strike again with the swinging weapon. Emiliano pirouetted and sprawled to the ground, a tooth flying free in a spray of blood.

The figure swam over me. All glow.

Then the light dimmed. My vision became a smudge of green.

A hand wrapped around my wrist.

“Owen. Come on.”

Not Rana.

“Get up.”

Lilly.

Lilly bathed in skull light.

She dragged me to my feet. In her other hand, she held Leech’s boccie ball weapon.

I just stared at her, my brain overloaded.

“Where’s Leech?” she asked.

“Inside,” I mumbled, wobbling, almost falling.

“Let’s go,” she said, catching me. She pulled me to her shoulder, then tied the boccie ball onto a belt loop of her shorts. She grabbed Francine’s backpack. The skull’s glow increased—

“Quiet,” she said to it.

The light went out.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

Lilly made an almost embarrassed smile. “Well, that’s easy. It’s mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah,” said Lilly. “I’m the Medium.”

“YOU,” SAID SEVEN. SHE WAS STANDING A FEW meters away, kind of bobbing from one foot to the other. She sighed. “Figures.”

I looked from one to the other. “What do you mean?”

“She knew,” said Lilly, eyeing Seven coldly.

Seven shook her head, Shine exaggerating the movement. “No, not
knew
, but . . . worried, yeah. I always worried. When Victoria woke me up, she told me I was a match to within a hundredth of a percent of the Atlantean DNA. . . .” She snapped her fingers. “So close.”

“But you said you saw the world inside the skull,” I said, “and felt it.”

“I thought I did,” said Seven. “I saw that vision from the pyramid top, of the Three being sacrificed. And I thought that was everything, but then you came out of the skull yesterday and started talking about singing to the Terra and all that . . . I never saw that.”

I remember how she appeared inside the skull, standing there, but with eyes closed.

“Figures it would be you,” Seven said, scowling at Lilly. “I had a feeling, after the way you were acting down in the temple. Boo for me.” She dropped to the ground, sitting on her heels.

“What are you doing?” Lilly snapped at her.

“What does it matter, now?” Seven muttered.

More pieces fell into place: Seven’s strange worry back at Tactical, when she heard Lilly wasn’t coming, how that seemed to bother her. And how she’d let me do the talking after the skull.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I said.

Seven shrugged. “I kept hoping it would change.” Her words were slurred at the edges. “I mean, I was close enough to be woken up and get gills and be treated like a god, close enough to open blood locks and see visions of death. I thought that was enough. I mean, how could it not be? And I figured maybe more would happen, like once we were out of here, and, if not, well . . . at least I’d be out of here.”

“So, was all that stuff with me just an act?” I asked her.

She looked at me, and even with the blur of Shine in her eyes, it was a sad look. “It wasn’t an act, flyboy. Not how I felt about you. I mean, sure, the part where we were going to fly out of here as gods made it more exciting, but . . . Well, you can believe me or not.” She stared at the ground, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m just a ghost. We’re all ghosts.”

“Oh, please. You—” Lilly bit her lip and turned back to me. “Where is Leech?”

“Back at the cryo pods,” I said. “My—” I looked down at Francine. “Sorry, she’s not my mom. She works for Paul.”

“Oh no,” said Lilly. “Owen . . .”

“Later,” I said. “Paul said they don’t need Leech anymore, and they shot him.”

Seven started to laugh. She smiled at the sky. “There’s more.” She kind of sung the words. “Guess who doesn’t need who?”

“What are you talking about?” I snapped at her.

Seven’s head kept moving to whatever music her Shine-bathed mind was playing, but she didn’t answer.

“Ugh.” Lilly looked like she might explode. “We’ll figure it out later.” She bent, grabbed the gun from Francine’s hand, and held the handle right in front of Seven’s face. “Can you handle this without doing anything stupid?”