The Exodus Towers (31 page)

At least, not until Skyler nudged her. He pointed north,
and for the first time she set her attention beyond the camp’s perimeter.

Trails of devastation marked the paths the aura towers followed. As she watched, one group moved through the slums of Belém, half-hidden by night and the dust thrown into the air as buildings collapsed in its wake. The towers there rippled with murky purple light.

“They started moving the instant that RPG hit one,” Skyler said.

“Four groups,” Karl noted. “Why four? And why didn’t they all go?”

“And where will they stop?” Tania added. “At least they’ll be easy to track.”

Skyler gestured east. “Those two groups crossed water already, so that answers one question. It would seem they don’t sink.”

“Oh hell,” Karl said. “That means—”

“When they hit the Pará, or even the ocean, they may just keep going.”

The words left both men silent. Tania looked at each path in turn, trying to form a hypothesis as to where the towers might be traveling, and why. Four groups, each at least forty towers in number, gone without any concern or care for what lay in their path. Was the movement some kind of programmed self-preservation? The fog and noise some kind of defense mechanism? One gets attacked and the rest instantly scatter to the four winds, in groups, on different paths?

She wondered if they would stop somewhere, or just keep going, eventually circumnavigating the globe and returning right back here. That didn’t make much sense to her, but when it came to the Builders nothing seemed to make sense.

“Well,” Karl said for everyone’s benefit. “Who wants to talk first?”

Tania decided to take the opening. “I will. For what it’s worth, four days ago we sent an aircraft down to try to secure the camp. Or at least help us figure out why we’d lost contact.”

“What aircraft?”

She told them of the plane, and the fighters aboard it. “They never made it here,” she whispered. For the moment she thought it best to leave out the price she’d paid for it, and for the air and water she’d acquired from Russell Blackfield.

“Gabriel’s people must have spotted them, and set up an ambush,” Karl said.

“Maybe,” Skyler said. “Maybe not. Tania, where did they land?”

“On Water Road, about a kilometer from camp.”

Skyler glanced in that direction, his eyes two narrow slits, his bloodied face grim and full of disapproval.

“We had no other options,” Tania said, “and no information. After that failure, our only choice was to listen to Gabriel’s demands.”

If Skyler heard her he didn’t show it. His focus remained on the northeast.

“And those demands were …?” Karl asked. “I think I know, but I’d like to hear your version.”

Tania started to speak but caught herself. How much to say? “Gabriel wanted to test each of us for immunity from the disease. He held some delusion that he was supposed to gather all immunes together to form some new society.”

Karl nodded slowly. “He must’ve asked me a hundred times where Skyler was. I said nothing, because I knew nothing, not really. Didn’t stop them from giving me a bruise or three. As if this constant goddamn subhuman headache wasn’t bad enough. Remind me not to go without pills like that again.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Skyler told him. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m grateful that you didn’t cooperate.”

“I might have,” Karl admitted, “if I had known anything. Where the hell were you, anyway?”

Skyler told them of two immunes, twins in fact, whom he’d met in Belém. Escapees from Gabriel’s flock. “They told me of more like them, ones who didn’t want to be part of Gabriel’s new world order. The dissenters were being held at a ranch house, in a valley west of here. So I made them a deal. I’d help free their friends, if they in turn helped me oust Gabriel from the camp.”

“Your timing was impeccable,” Karl said. He smiled then,
and winced for the effort. With one finger he gently probed a cut on his lip.

“Not really,” Skyler said.

“No?”

Skyler ignored him. He looked at the metal surface upon which he stood. “Tania, about this test. Were you coming down to take it? To get the others to, as well?”

She held his gaze as long as she could, then turned to Karl and found no strength there, either. “After the aircraft and crew vanished, I didn’t know what else to do. Coming here seemed a better choice than abandoning everyone and returning to Darwin.”

“Grim choices,” Karl said. “I don’t envy you.”

“Did Gabriel want anything else?” Skyler asked.

Her stomach clenched, and Tania felt her cheeks grow warm. “He wanted you,” she admitted. “He wanted me to convince you to come in, to surrender.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him no,” she said, lying.
I didn’t say yes, either, but I may as well have
. Lying to Skyler pained her more than negotiating with Blackfield, or caving to Gabriel. What choice was there, though? It was over, and thankfully the moment never came where she would have had to ask Skyler to lay down his gun.
Would I have?

Skyler stared at her for a long moment, so long that Karl began to shuffle awkwardly. Tania suffered the gaze like a spotlight she dare not turn away from. “I’m just glad you’re safe,” she managed to say.

At that he finally turned away, and with it went the weight of her shame. Not all, but enough.

Skyler returned his focus northeast, and Tania followed his gaze. The reddish glow of the towers in the rainforest appeared to have slowed or even stopped.

“I think I know where one of the tower groups is headed,” Skyler said a moment later. He pointed northeast, toward the reservoir. “I found something out there, in the forest. Something you both need to see. And it may explain what happened to that aircraft, too.”

“What?” Karl asked. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Skyler replied. “Whatever it is, the Builders sent it.”

Tania and Karl exchanged a glance.

“There’s a shell ship out there where that red glow is,” he said. “A small one. Crash-landed, or, maybe not a crash exactly.” He visibly struggled to find the words to describe it, then sighed. “Sorry, I’m asleep on my feet. I’ll explain better in the morning.”

Karl nodded sympathetically.

Tania wanted to ask a thousand questions, but Skyler’s mention of sleep suddenly made her own exhaustion come forward. “We could all do with some rest. Let’s talk more at dawn,” she said.

Once down from the overturned cargo container, Karl mumbled something about finding a medic to look at his face, then he wandered off.

When he’d vanished amid the bustle of the liberated camp, Skyler turned to Tania. “Follow me. I need to show you something.”

A vague uneasiness festered within her as he led her toward the base of the Elevator. His path took them beyond it to another cargo container, the one that served as the camp’s headquarters and comm station.

At the door, Skyler turned and handed her something. A small gadget made of metal and plastic. A handheld two-way radio, she realized. She stared at it, confused, and then Skyler reached out and switched it on.

“Stay here,” he said, then went inside. A few seconds later she heard him speak through the tinny speaker. “I heard your conversation with Gabriel,” he said, his voice gruff and metallic. “I make no judgment on your decisions, Tania, but you lied to me just now. You never told him ‘no.’ You said there were logistics.
Logistics
.”

Tears welled in her eyes and she made no effort to stop them. She just stood there, in the center of the wounded camp, surrounded by death and pain and despair, and stared at the radio in her shaking hands. The world around her receded to a blur, leaving nothing but the tiny speaker through which Skyler’s voice lashed out at her.

Skyler went on. “I understand the dilemma you were in, Tania. One man for the safety of a thousand. Not a bad deal under the circumstances. But you lied to me. You’d let me believe that you stood up to that monster, when in fact you did no such thing.”

I wanted to. I tried. The aircraft. I tried and I failed
. “I never asked for this position. To make such decisions,” she whispered, unsure if he could hear her.

“Go make rounds of the camp.” Through the speaker he sounded so cold, and half a world away. “I’m not of a mind to talk about this more right now.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, frozen in place.

Skyler remained inside the dingy room and paced its length until his heart stopped hammering in his chest.
I should have just let it go
, he thought. For some reason, he couldn’t do that.

Tania had been in a fog the last few months. Since Neil died, really. Skyler couldn’t claim to know her well, but he knew enough to realize she’d fallen into some kind of pit within herself. Even if a rift now formed between them, at least he might have shocked her back into her true self. At least, he hoped that would be the result.

When he exited through the door, she still stood there, the radio held in two cupped hands, her eyes fixed on it. If she noticed him, she made no move to speak or even look up.

“See you here at dawn,” Skyler mumbled, as he walked away.

He went to the south side of camp, first, where the colonists had been sitting on their hands when the battle started. Almost all the towers had been parked here, and had careened away to the north and east with reckless abandon. As such, the human toll turned out to be worst here. By now most of the dead and wounded had been moved, or at least covered. Sixteen dead, twenty-three injured, Skyler overheard. One older man was still being treated nearby. A crushed leg, and Skyler guessed from the look of it that it would need to be amputated. Mercifully, someone had brought a medical
kit taken from the hospital and injected the poor fellow with a powerful painkiller.

Others were busy picking up the tents and other supplies knocked aside by the runaway towers. A few acknowledged Skyler when he passed. Some even thanked him for coming to their rescue. Just as many, though, looked at him with accusing eyes, and he couldn’t blame them. They didn’t know what he did, didn’t know what Gabriel was capable of. As far as they knew, Tania had come down to negotiate some peace, and he’d ruined that effort.

A few had even seen him dispatch the newly infected subhuman. In hindsight he might have chosen a less brutal method, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

At the tower yard Skyler paused only a moment. The few towers that remained were silent, dead hulks. They almost looked lonely. A few of the colonists lingered about, working to reposition some of the huge monoliths. They guided the bulky forms with a newfound reverence, he saw.

Skyler hiked through the old university grounds west of camp, then toward the dockyards.

He found the rest of his immunes in a small field between three buildings, huddled below a tree.

A few were crying, he realized. Ana knelt below the tree, a limp body in her arms.

Davi
.

She looked up at Skyler, her cheeks wet with tears already shed. He wanted to look away, to fall to the ground and cover his head in guilt and shame. Anything but meet her gaze. He expected to find accusation there.
My brother is dead, thanks to you
.

Skyler forced himself to return her look. In her raw, red eyes he saw no accusation. Instead she seemed to convey one simple thought:

I have nothing now except you
.

Belém, Brazil

6.MAY.2283

T
ANIA SLIPPED INTO
the makeshift comm room shortly before midnight. The events of the day had drained her to the point of collapse, but there was one more thing she had to do before she could find sleep.

She closed the door behind her and flipped on the LED lantern that hung from an exposed bolt on the wall. For a long time she simply stood just inside the door, numbly studying the cramped and cluttered room. None of the tables or chairs matched. Maps and scraps of paper littered every horizontal surface, save for the few places where the communications equipment had been assembled.

She tried to picture Karl sitting in here, chatting with her when one of Gabriel’s people had stormed in and clubbed him. The poor man had been through so much since the day Neil Platz had sent him to Anchor Station disguised as a common janitor. She couldn’t recall a single time that Karl had questioned an order, or flinched in the face of danger.

Then she imagined Skyler, more recently, sneaking into this room while enemies lurked just outside. He’d had the presence of mind to hide a handheld radio, transmit button taped permanently down, so that he could spy on the intruders. She pictured herself in the same scenario and knew she’d never have thought to do something like that. She would have powered up the comm and tried in desperation to raise Melville Station before they came in and caught her.

She would have blown it, if she’d even made it that far.

A feeling ate away at her, the undeniable sensation that
she did not belong in the role she’d somehow wound up in. That Neil Platz, for all his amazing instinct, had misjudged her ability as a leader.