Horizon (29 page)

“Hiding has worked for the Coral Kampii for centuries,” he countered. “It’s a time-honored tradition.”

She snorted, and it was almost as if they were simply on another adventure, and not sneaking into the lair of the most dangerous man in the world.

C
ALLI CROUCHED LOW
behind a rock, trying to keep her wings hidden. Orange and pink tinted the sky at the horizon, announcing dawn.

“Now?” asked Squirrel.

“Not yet,” Calli said. She scanned the sky, looking for a sign from Electra that the Aviar’s attack had begun.

Nathif coiled next to her, his body low to the ground. Pocket, Odd, and Mags waited beside him. Six people. Was that a good number for a secret assault? Calli wished her people were at least a little superstitious so she could take comfort in the number, even if that comfort was irrational.

“There,” she said, pointing to the sky. “An Aviar. The battle has started.”

The others squinted, but only Odd’s goggle-covered eyes could make out the flying woman in the sky.

Below them, a band of ten Upgraders guarded the entrance to Strand’s secret tunnel. Squirrel had followed Scorch’s chariot and marked the location well. A towering rock blocked the entrance, but from up here, Calli could see the partially hidden rails it was sitting on. Pushing the rock out of the way looked impossible, but if they’d rigged it properly, it would actually be easy to move.

“Are you ready?” Calli asked Squirrel.

Squirrel, her dull-brown hair hanging around a face covered in layers of dirt, smiled with perfectly white teeth. Her green eyes glinted in the tentative light of dawn. “I’ll be fast,” she said. “Faster than all of them.”

“You stay away from the tunnel,” Mags said. “We’ll find you when it’s over.”

Squirrel nodded solemnly. For a brief moment, Calli could see how young the girl was, how skinny and frightened. It was so easy to forget.

“Blue skies,” Calli said, and Squirrel was off.

Calli watched Squirrel circle around and hop down the rocky mountain face as if she’d been born here. A moment later, the first Upgrader saw her and sounded the alarm.

Squirrel bolted down the path, screaming, “Secret tunnel! Secret tunnel!” Seven of the ten guards followed her, some pausing to shoot flames or harpoons from their arms or weapons.

“That is one brave girl,” Nathif said with no hint of humor in his voice.

“Now let’s do our part,” Calli said. She gripped her mother’s spear and silently hoped she’d remember how to use it.

“I’ll bash them two, the closest Gizmos,” Odd said, hefting his club. “Snake-boy can help.”

Nathif’s Serpenti body made him the largest person in their group, but he was no fighter. Not only was he bad at it, he was “ethically opposed to hurting others.” In retrospect, perhaps he hadn’t been the best choice for their tiny rescue team.

“Right. The rest of us will take the farthest one. The woman,” Calli said. “Mags?”

Mags lifted her hand and waved a needle full of dark-purple liquid. “Give me an opening and she’ll be snoring like a rhinebra in two beats of a drum.”

Calli sucked in a huge breath and said, “Go!”

She scrambled down the rocky slope with the others, afraid that if she flew, her wingspan might alert the other guards and bring them back. Odd got down to the path first so he could suck the remaining three guards in, like iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet. They saw him and charged.

Calli’s heart fluttered in her chest, her hands trembled. She’d hoped some sort of battle calm would overtake her and she’d be able to scan the fight, assess their situation, and call out orders. But once the first blow fell — Odd’s huge club crashing into the arm shield of the first guard — all reason fled her brain.

She found herself yelling as she charged the third guard, her mother’s spear out and extended and aimed at the woman’s heart. The Upgrader batted it out of the way with her own weapon, a sword crackling with blue light.

Calli’s hands buzzed with pain. Electricity! She wanted to drop her spear but she couldn’t. Her arms were frozen. Calli watched the Upgrader lift her other arm until Calli was staring into the sparking barrel of a flamethrower.

Pocket smashed into the woman from the side, knocking her over. Flames gushed from her weapon. Calli managed to twist just in time, getting her wings out of the cone of fire.

The Upgrader backhanded Pocket, and the boy flew back in a graceful arc and smashed against the pebbly ground. Calli heard him groan. She started to race over, but Nathif got there first. He coiled his snake tail around Pocket and hovered over him, protecting the boy with his body.

Mags maneuvered behind the Upgrader woman, her needle raised and ready. Calli’s hands and arms still tingled, but she kept her grip on Seeker and charged again, trying to give Mags the opening she needed.

Fire bloomed before her, hot and needy. Calli leaped to the side and felt it scorch her cheek and left wing. Black smoke billowed up around her eyes. She thrust her spear blindly. The point connected with something and she pushed, hard, trying to drive it further in. It sank in another centimeter and stopped.

Calli pulled back and swung the butt end of her spear around, aiming to whack the woman in the head. The Upgrader got her sword up to block, and Calli’s body once again shook with electricity.

She couldn’t move. The woman still had two deadly weapons, and now there was nothing stopping her from using them. Calli watched, comforted by the way the world had slowed down around her, letting her see everything that was happening even though she was unable to stop it. The Upgrader moved her flamethrower toward Calli’s face.

It never made it. The Upgrader collapsed to the ground, an empty needle protruding from her neck. Mags stood behind the Upgrader’s body and felt for her pulse.

“Alive,” Mags said, clearly disappointed.

Odd grunted and Calli turned to see him drop the second of his foes to the ground. One of them twitched and rolled, holding his side. The other lay still.

“Two broken ribs,” Nathif said as he helped Pocket back to his feet. “I will wrap them to help with the pain.”

Pocket nodded, his dark face an ashen gray.

“After we get inside,” Calli said. Her teeth still vibrated from the electric shock. “Squirrel has probably lost the others by now. Nathif, help me with the rock.”

As she suspected, the huge boulder moved easily on the hidden rails. With just Nathif’s help, she managed to move something that would have taken a hundred people to move otherwise.

They ran inside and pulled the rock back in place behind them. The tunnel fell into darkness. Only Odd, with his strange goggles, could see more than a meter in front of him.

“I’ll search for a control panel. There must be an artificial-light system in here,” Calli said. “The rest of you, try to destroy the track that the rock is on. Make it as hard as possible for anyone else to get in here.”

Calli ran her hands along the wall, grateful that the feeling had returned to her fingers. Nothing on the left. She stumbled over to the other side and quickly found a smooth patch of stone. The panel sat in the center, but too high up to reach unless you were standing in a chariot.

Or unless you had wings.

A moment later, she pressed enough buttons to illuminate the tunnel in thin lines of light. Her team cheered.

Calli lowered herself back to the ground. “How is the rock?”

“We could do more damage from outside, but even so, I believe the stone to be stuck,” Nathif said. “We have bent the rails, wedged smaller rocks under the big one, and basically wreaked havoc.”

“Havoc is good,” Calli said. “Pocket, are you doing okay? Odd, were you injured in the fight?”

“I’m good,” Pocket said. He seemed to be breathing shallowly. “Not going to say much, though.”

“Mags patched me up,” Odd said.

“I always do,” Mags added.

Calli nodded, suddenly overcome with emotion. She wasn’t even sure which emotion it was, only that her battle mind was fading, leaving her mentally tired and a little fragile. She hopped into the air and spread her wings, grateful that the tunnel was wide enough to accommodate them. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll take the lead and look for traps. Are we still tracking Dash’s homing beacon?”

Pocket pulled out a device. “Yeah, still got him. He hasn’t moved since I sent the coordinates last time.”

No one said anything to that. No one wanted to think about — or admit — what it might mean.

“Keep the scanner out,” Calli said. “That’s our prize. Let’s not lose sight of it, even for a minute.”

She flew ahead slowly and occasionally circled back to give them time to keep up. Five. Her team was now five. Maybe that was the lucky number.

A
LUNA SWAM THROUGH
the small hatch that led into Karl Strand’s ancient house, although she could just as easily have swum through the large hole in the roof. Unlike the other skeletons in the underwater city, this one had been rebuilt over the centuries. Its walls had been patched and reconstructed, and a crude roof rested on its frame, complete except for the gaping hole near the back. This house meant something to Karl Strand. No matter what else was true about him and his plans for the future, he’d never forgotten the past.

“Creepy,” Hoku said. “I can’t believe Sarah Jennings used to live here.”

“Big, too,” Aluna added. “So much space for just two people and a youngling. Why are all the doorways so big? Great White could swim through here without a problem.”

“There’s not even that much stuff in it,” Hoku said. “You’d think if he went to all the trouble to fix the walls that he’d have found some way to fix the furniture, too. It’s almost empty.”

Aluna picked up a piece of cold white stone resting on the floor, turned it over in her hand, and put it back. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything important in here. We need to find the passage into the mountain, if there is one.”

Hoku’s voice sounded in her ears. “Oh, there’s definitely a passage.”

She swam through the house until she found him in the back room. Unlike the others, this one had been reinforced with metal, even on the floor and ceiling. The entire back wall was a massive gate crisscrossed with thick metal bars, offering them a glimpse of a dark tunnel beyond.

“Can we open it?” Aluna wrapped her fingers around the metal and lifted. It didn’t budge. “Heavy as a whale.”

Hoku seemed lost in thought. His orange eyes glittered. Suddenly Zorro jumped off his shoulder, swam to the gate, and squeezed through the bars. The raccoon immediately swam over to some sort of control panel on the other side that Aluna hadn’t even noticed.

“Is there a code?” She shook the bars again. “Maybe we can smash the tech and the gate will open.”

Hoku said nothing. He just hovered there, letting the room’s current move him gently back and forth.

Aluna heard a beep and saw Zorro project the image of an eye into the water, right in front of the control panel. The light on the panel switched from red to green, and the gate rose with a clank.

“What? How did you —”

“Retinal scanner,” Hoku said, smiling. He was back from wherever he’d gone. “Luckily I brought Strand’s extensive medical files with me. Thought I could sift through them and look for a physical weakness. I never thought I’d need them for this!”

“You really are brilliant,” Aluna said.

Hoku used to blush when she called him that. He didn’t now. “Let’s go before Strand figures out what I’ve done. And . . . can I hitch a ride again? I want to try accessing his network, but if I try to do that and swim at the same time, it won’t be pretty.”

She nodded. “It’s not pretty when
all
you’re doing is swimming.”

They darted under the gate as it rose. Hoku gripped Aluna’s shoulders and she took off, adjusting her tail kick to avoid his gangly legs.

The tunnel started dark, but illuminated itself as they swam, thin lines of light glowing faintly in the water. The Kampii — and probably the Aviars, Equians, and Serpenti, too — would have decorated this passage with vibrant murals. Karl Strand had left them sleek and simple. Eventually the curved walls transitioned from metal to smooth stone.