Waybound (11 page)

A little spritz of glitter squirted out of the pinwheel into Micah's face. He backed off and brushed the dust away.

“You okay?” Phoebe asked as she approached.

Micah sneezed. “Yeah, I'm fine, I'm…” He sneezed again, knocking his helmet askew. “I'm just…ah…ahh…”

“Don't sneeze.”

“Ahhhh…”

“Seriously, seriously. Don't sneeze.”

Micah's eyes opened, and he scrunched his nose uncomfortably. “Why? Wha…what's wrong?”

She looked at him intensely.

“Nothing. But it stopped your sneezing, didn't it?”

Phoebe smirked, and he growled in annoyance, rubbing at the pesky irritation in his sinuses.

She looked around to get their bearings and realized that it must have been midday because the ring of mehkan suns had nearly joined in the sky. Something pale and hazy loomed in the distance. At first, it looked like a massive white flower, hundreds of petals splayed wide. It reminded Phoebe of the dahlias from Mr. Kashiri's garden back on the estate. But it must have been miles away. Beyond it stretched a vast silver ocean, blanketing the horizon like a liquid mirror. There was movement among the flower's ruffles like little bustling ants, and it had creepers too.

Not creepers. Roads.

“It's a city,” Phoebe marveled.

“Pretty,” Micah said distantly.

She looked at him with a cocked eyebrow.

“Pretty, pretty coconut,” he said, sort of to himself.

“What did you say?” Phoebe asked.

He lolled his head around to gaze at her.

“What's that? No, nothin',” he said.

She watched him curiously. “There's Covenant hiding out in the cities, that's what Dollop said. Maybe we can get help there.”

“Better skedaddle then,” Micah blurted. He marched off, wending his way along the creek. Phoebe watched him stumble and giggle as he regained his footing. She frowned and followed behind, focusing more on Micah than on her surroundings—so much so that she missed a muted sound echoing in the jungle.

A creak. Then a snap.

A scattering of mehkans limped out of the shadows. They helped one another along, some carrying comrades on their backs. Luckily, a hohksyk was with them—he was climbing through the jungle canopy, using his liquid-silver sensor to lead the way. The ragtag Covenant band was headed to a rendezvous.

And Dollop was just trying to keep up.

Back in the camp, falling debris had pinned his leg, separating him from Loaii and Micah. After wriggling free, Dollop had rearranged his pieces to shorten the wounded leg, using the leftover parts to extend one arm like a crutch. With the help of his brethren, he had hobbled to the Housing tent, where Axial Phy opened a secret tunnel. Once they were through, the axials had collapsed the tunnel so the Foundry couldn't follow.

That was clicks ago, and now it was nearly fusion.

There was a voice up ahead, and the survivors quickened their pace. Just beyond the next tahnik, the meager remnants of the camp were gathered around the mouth of a fresh salathyl hole. They were listening to Overguard Orei issue commands, her arcs and sliders moving briskly.

Dollop nearly sang with joy at the sight of her, but he knew such an outburst would be frowned upon.

“Proceed two hundred eight quadrits. Join secondary and tertiary teams. Overguard Zo'rinder commands there.”

The warriors were divided into two distinct groups. Dollop wondered what was going on.

“Those are your orders,” she said. “From arch-axials. From the Ona herself, may her golden ember blaze. Repeat, this is critical. Her most vital component. Now go.”

The mehkans saluted, clenching their fists to their dynamos, and Dollop hastily did the same. One group prepared to depart while the other stayed behind, organizing their thin ranks.

“Ov-Overguard!” he called out.

Orei was engaged with one of her subordinates, and she didn't look at Dollop as he limped up to her.

“You were spared the Shroud,” Orei said. “Unexpected.”

Dollop didn't know what to say to that.

“You are no warrior,” she stated flatly. “Go with Underguard Cya's unit. Departing now.”

“Wh-where are they going?”

Orei turned to Dollop at last. “To find Loaii.”

Dollop's liquid amber eyes bulged.

“Bu-but I thought they didn't ma-make—”

“Status unknown. My failure.” The movement of Orei's apparatus began to lurch and slow down. “I had Loaii. In Hy'rekshi camp. Outnumbered. I—” Her warbling voice quivered, becoming almost unintelligible. “Lost her. No remains detected. Covenant Command requires status of Loaii.”

From the confines of her orbiting form, Orei withdrew a long white spike—a salathyl prong, used to summon one of the great mounts. Dollop reached out tentatively and took it from her.

“I-I'll do my best to fi-find them both.” Orei's discs began whizzing, and he had to pull back to avoid a painful slash.

“You must,” she barked, regaining control. Orei strode past him to join the team of warriors that waited to serve her.

“Wh-what about you? Can't you, um, come with me?”

She stopped and spoke over her shoulder.

“I am strategist of Covenant Command. Not permitted to seek Loaii. Makina guides our hand. The Ona has spoken.”

Dollop could hear wind whistling through Orei's scythes.

“And Her word is war.”

Something was wrong with Micah.

He had been talking about Moto-bikes for the past ten minutes without a break, and most of it was clearly nonsense.

“See, in '78 they totally screwed up the Mach Three chassis design till it was all
WEEEEEHHHWW!
”

He knocked into her with his oversized body armor and Dervish rifle, then leaned in close and made a lunatic face. Little specks of dust twinkled amid his freckles.

“Which is funny 'cause that was right around the same time they started powering their tire pumps with pinstripes.” He staggered ahead of her, careening toward a stand of spinning flowers. “Bin stripes. Gripes. Pipes. Pah, pah, pah.”

“Careful. It's steep here,” she warned. The vesper creek was rushing past them now, cutting a deeper path into the ore.

Micah tripped over his own feet and took a nosedive into the fluorescent pinwheel flowers. As he crashed into them, they released a hiss of glitter, showering him in sparkles.

“Party time!” Micah crooned. “Party ti…taaa…Ahhh-CHOO!”

The flowers.

A cloud of shimmering dust rolled toward Phoebe.

With a wild grab, she ripped at the facemask built into her coveralls. She affixed the breathing apparatus just as the tinkling powder rolled past her. A tacky, stale taste of nicotine still lingered in the used tubes, but watching Micah's galloping pony dance was enough to make her fight the urge to spit it out.

He spun around in circles, his helmet rattling atop his head. Phoebe grabbed his arms to try and get him under control.

“Stop it, Micah,” she insisted, struggling to keep her balance.

“Vurbbble, vurbbble, vrrr­oooo­ooo­ooo­oooom!” he sang. “That's the sound a Hyena Turbo makes when it's in ice cream!”

He burst into a fit of sneezing laughter, grabbed her, and twirled around and around.

“I said STOP!”

But that only made him go faster. In a clamor of body armor, they burst through the undergrowth near an embankment where the ground dropped away. Micah scrunched his nose.

“Don't sneeze. Hey, seriously, don't—”

They fell. Phoebe screamed. Micah yodeled.

In a sloppy tangle, they plummeted down a mudslide of ore. They tore through wire roots and jutting branches, clinging to anything to slow their drop. The ground pitched steeper, until there was nothing beneath them but air.

Splat!
Phoebe landed on Micah, blasting the air out of his lungs. Even that didn't stop him from wheezing with laughter.

She heard a series of aching metal creaks above their heads. Phoebe grabbed his armor—hauled him back in the nick of time.

SNAP.

Giant metal jaws the size of an Auto-mobile trunk crashed shut right where Micah's head had been. She saw them in terrifying detail—firework orange with canary-yellow stipples, lined in brutal foot-long steel fangs. The massive mouth groaned and retracted in a rustling scrape of metal foliage.

“Oooooooooh,” Micah said in dazed wonder.

This was bad.

She and Micah had fallen into a sunken grotto that twinkled with the toxin from countless pinwheel flowers. There were hundreds of fanged shapes settling among the blooms, but she couldn't make them out clearly.

Very, very bad.

“I think the playground's this a-way, Freddy!”

She turned around just in time to see Micah stumble deeper into the glittering darkness.
Snap, snap, snap!
Rainbow-colored mandibles clamped shut, shearing off a panel of his armor like it was made of cardboard. She rushed after him.

“Stop!” Phoebe cried. She spun him around, and he sneezed in her face. A chorus of creaks. She hurled him to the ground.

CRASH.
All around them, fanged jaws slammed shut. A wall of teeth pinned them in, every size and every magnificent color.

After a couple of seconds, the mouths retracted, creaking as they hinged back open. It went deathly quiet. Her breath came in constricted gasps. She looked around at the spongy bog as one of the snapping things flattened out, nestling into the stagnant mud so that only the tips of its magenta fangs poked out.

Phoebe was reminded of biology class when Mr. Pomeroy made her feed bugs to a Venus flytrap. She stared in horror at the hundreds of fanged rings lying in wait all around them. Some were as small as coins, others as wide as Aero-copter pads.

More like Venus beartraps,
she thought with a shudder.

“Ahhhh…ahhhhh…AHHHHH—”

“Micah! No, no, no, don't sneeze,” she hissed, shaking him.

He looked at her with glazed eyes and rubbed at his nose.

“I said cut that out, Freddy. Or I swear I'll sock you one.” He shoved Phoebe, and she took a step back to keep her balance.

Through the sparkling gloom up ahead, she saw an elevated mound that led out of the grotto.

Micah started using a strand of metal vine as a jump rope.

“What are you…” Phoebe gaped.

“Coach said I couldn't beat your record,” he said, huffing and puffing, “but I bet I…ahhh…AHHH—”

“Whatever you do, don't sneeze. Don't sneeze!” Phoebe whispered. She snatched his jump-rope vine and tugged him toward her as a couple of jaws nearly snapped shut on his butt.

While he pawed at his nose like a bear swatting a bee, Phoebe spun him around and wrapped him up with the vine.

“Wheeeeeeeeeeee!” he cried, whirling.

The jaws creaked.

“Keep it down, Micah,” she hissed. “We're in the library.”

“Library?” he scoffed. “I don't care about no stinkin'—”

“It's a Moto-bike library.”

His eyes lit up.

“Really?” he whispered.

Phoebe smiled and nodded. “And if you are very quiet and you follow me…maybe the little Moto-bikes will come out to play.” She tied off the vine, leaving a strand to serve as a leash.

“Ya think we'll see an Afterburner ZX?”

Again, she smiled and nodded. She picked up his rifle and tugged him toward the mound that would lead them out.

“It was discontinued after the recall of 2002. In a tutu. Toodleoo, tutu!” A demented smile spread across Micah's rosy cheeks as he babbled.

Phoebe prodded at the ground with the butt of the rifle. Each time she did so, fanged traps clanged shut, and she stepped around them, guiding Micah while they creaked and reset. It was slow and tedious, and the tension was turning her knees to jelly, but they were inching toward safety.

Until they weren't.

Phoebe faced a tunnel of traps, fangs sticking out of the mud like railway spikes and slung low in a menacing, phosphorescent ceiling. She turned around to go back, but the predatory plants had shifted and closed in behind them.