Secret Worlds (566 page)

The orb window gapes open.

Now,
we decide. I reach down and lift the cargo door. Dozens of Reds swarm up, jabbing at the window.

Release us, release us!
they demand.

Cover the security cameras
, we tell them.

But first, help me get in,
I instruct.

The second I open the window, the Reds zoom out. Half of them fly inside and the rest, hovering, wait for me.

“I’ll go in and dose the guards,” I say.

“Good luck,” Armonk says.

Blane squeezes my hand. “We’ll be right behind you.”

I climb onto the undulating carpet of Reds they’ve formed like a magical woven basket to hold me aloft. They deliver me gracefully to the orb’s window. I sense that the Reds who have already flown in are covering the security cameras with their pliable bodies.

My vials at the ready, I leap off and through the orb window. The burly guard, dressed in jackboots and a NanoPearl logoed jumpsuit, wheels around with a scowl and a cry of shock. He raises his weapon, an odd looking blaster with tiny blinking lights. With everything I’ve got, I attack him before he can fire by leaping on him and smearing elixir over his face and hands. The salve’s effect is instantaneous. He groans as phlegm drips from his mouth. Drooping inch by inch to the floor, he sticks one sluggish arm out to brace his fall and then crumples like a doll that’s lost its stuffing.

I yank up his shirt, and spread salve, on his stomach and back—anywhere there’s exposed skin. The more I smear on, the longer he’ll stay zonked. And I want him zonked a whole lot longer than my demo lizard at the Axiom contest. Then I stuff his blaster in the waistband of my suit.

Dashing back to the window, I signal for the others to enter. Armonk secures the glider to the frame, and a contingent of Reds zooms out to ferry the guys in. Once in, Armonk adjusts his bow and helps Thorn slide inside. With all of his muscle mass, Blane has the hardest time squeezing in. The Reds soar around us, forming a crimson tide.

We blink at the flickering light in the hall. Its tremulous strobe reminds me of the carnival funhouse the elders made for us children in one of their rare playful moods.

Once my eyes adjust it’s clear that the hallway itself is dark, but a series of animated holograms, at intervals, spark the darkness to light. They’re almost as high as the ceiling. Some holos are spinning, while others jag maniacally up and down. As long as they don’t come near me I’m okay.

“Which way should we go?” I glance over at Thorn, our truest weathervane.

His eyes run down the length of hallway, as if he’s scanning what exists behind the surface. Then he wheels around and studies the hall from the other direction. Along this section, I see a few side doors. “How about those office doors—”

“No office.” Thorn stops and closes his eyes. “Warehouse.”

“Which way?” I whisper. He shrugs. The Reds seem momentarily confused too. They perch on the rafters, nervously chattering.

“Let’s huddle,” Armonk suggests. When we take each other’s hands and stand in a closed circle the air around us seems to talk.

Don’t damage us. We’re part of you. Don’t damage us.

Get us out of here, free us, get us out of here!

It’s confusing because even though the message is contradictory my inner core tells me it’s coming from the same source. During our huddle, the Reds careen overhead, from one end of the hall to the other as they
eep
loudly. I worry that their nervous chatter will give us away.

Don’t damage us
, a stranger’s voice pleads.

Destroy them, destroy them
runs a contradictory line.

Again, I have the same strong feeling these lines are coming from the same source. Can’t say why; it makes no sense. I look around our circle and whisper, “Who wants to destroy us?”

Judging by everyone’s mystified expressions no one has an answer. Yet, while we’re still in the huddle, our feet begin to carry us along the first hallway.

As we proceed, the holographic ghoul closest to us skitters over. Its light is blinding at close range, but when I blink to adjust, I see it’s a spinning, larger-than-life replica of the same tiny tech device that was implanted in Thorn’s brain. But this one has eerie, gleaming knobs where eyes would be. Its animated prongs look truly real and terrifying, as if with a thrust, one could pierce my heart.

“Shoo!” I manage.

In response it hovers so close that its light brushes my skin, its prongs assault my torso with sharp tentacles of light. It’s not that it hurts, but it’s frightening in its unpredictability.

“Get away!” Armonk bats his hand at it. The holo doesn’t seem to like this. It jumps forward and literally invades Armonk, its massive light making Armonk glow as if he’s polluted with radiation.

“We said lay off, bud,” Blane snarls. He pushes us forward, swerving around the holo. We pick up speed, moving away from it.

But it catches up. In jerky movements it launches its transparent body at Blane, and it starts to babble in a gravelly voice. “Data collection tools are a must in this dangerous era. You need us.”

The Reds try to peck at it, but their snouts dive right through it. The holo goes on. “As Adam, I’m everyman, helping you discover the devious secrets of others. Collection tools are a must in this era of pre-war.”

“Pre-war?” Blane scoffs, “Who the hell are you really,
Adam
?”

As if the holo
is
a man, it starts explaining the dangers of pre-war without actually explaining what pre-war is. “You’ll be in danger of losing your money, your house, even your mind. You’ll need every nanotool for the ramp up. NanoPearl and I, Adam, have partnered for the future.”

“You’re a freaking ad, aren’t you?” Blane jeers. “You stupid tool! You’re worse than those stupid Stream ads.”

“Tool,” parrots Adam. “Tool. I’m the best pre-war tool ever.” Finally, with one glazed stare back at us, Adam bumps down the hall from the direction “he” came.

Blane wipes sweat from his brow. “Holy Fire, that thing was obnoxious.” Clearly, the transparent stalker has unnerved him. Blane is used to knocking down enemies with two solid legs and a fleshy torso that he can neatly tackle and pin to the floor.

“If this is who we’re fighting, get ready for a different kind of fight,” Armonk warns. “An arrow or elixir won’t work on a stalking hologram.”

The next holo, a black, oblong device with two red nubs for eyes, also babbles about the ramp-up. But it signals a worse problem. Right behind it, a real flesh and blood guard is marching our way, doing his rounds. He’s got a massive neck and shoulders, and he’s holding some type of futuristic looking weapon.

“Crap!” Blane whispers. “Why’d I let you talk me out of my gun?”

“Halt,” orders the guard when he sees us. He raises his weapon.

The Reds rocket into action, swarming the guy. He stumbles as he fends them off.

Blane dives, tackling him at the ankles and they crash down together. As the man’s weapon bounces away, I see Armonk reach for it and stuff it in his side pocket. I join the melee, desperately smearing elixir wherever I can, across the guard’s wide face, his callused hands and, yanking up his uniform pants, over his legs. He slumps down like a sloppy drunk. Blane clambers up and asks Armonk for the guy’s weapon. I guess Blane gets a gun after all, if he can figure out how to use it.

We only have a moment before the third holo whirs our way. This one is shimmery yellow, with wormy fronds spiraling out of where its head and torso would be if it were a man. “Nod here. I’ll be your seventh sense during pre-war. I have teamed up with NanoPearl in this dangerous ramp-up time.” Its “eyes” rudely ogle us up and down.

The Reds charge it, but their leafy wings sail right through its ghostly core.

“Nod, here, Nod, here,” it repeats. Somehow the Reds have flummoxed its promo rap. “When you need to ferret out the enemy, use Nod here, Nod here.”

Thorn barrels right through this holo, and runs to the end of the hall. With that, the holo spins away and dissolves.

Warehouse door
thinks Thorn, and his thought shudders through us all.
In there, in there, in there.

An infuriated chorus from behind it strikes back at us.
Destroy them, destroy them!

There’s no one standing between that last door and us. We can power into that warehouse now, finally see what the stroma wants from us. Except that a forbidding wash of danger crashes toward us, warding us away. It’s so strong that it nearly knocks me to my knees.

I brace myself with Blane’s hand, and he, in turn takes Thorn’s. Thorn reaches for Armonk’s. We all sense it, a fearful machine.

Fearful machine
whirs the stroma.
Fearful machine, fearful machine.

Fear not, I’m part of you. Fear not
comes the retort from inside the warehouse, trying to convince us.

Destroy them, destroy them, destroy them
another invisible wave rolls through the door, sending us all into baffled confusion.

Two parts of the one
breathes Thorn, deep in his stroma trance.
Two parts divided
.

So that’s why I sensed it came from the same entity! Thorn’s ability amazes me.

Blane breaks the human link to march over and jiggle the door handle. It’s not budging.

I point to an outline of a hand embedded on the wall. “ID pad, upper left.”

Blane curses under his breath as he scrambles back to the guard, still passed out down the hall. He drags him toward the door by his limp arms. Armonk helps haul him by grabbing the guy’s jackboots. Blane pauses before pressing the guard’s hand on the ID scanner. He gives us each a pointed look. “Once I do this, we’ll need to be ready for anything. Got it?”

We nod. As he matches the guard’s hand to the flat screen print, the door clicks open to a scene more frightening than my worst Stile’s nightmare.

We look down from a platform to a vast stretch of factory, larger than anything conceivable are rows upon rows upon rows of monstrous Reds, each in its own pod, custom-molded to its massive wingspan, its hawkish head and leathery torso. The way they’re hooked up to sensors and what look like feeding tubes reminds me of carnivorous dinosaurs, half-grown, yet still nested. These beings are clearly derivative of our Reds, but they’re not cute and leafy. They are geometrically jagged like the rocks of Skull’s Wrath. Their blood red wings have scaly, angular planes as if they’re designed to fly as swiftly as the rockets the world knew before the Border Wars, the rockets Nevada drew diagrams of in her history lessons. Rockets of fire that were meant to populate other planets. These beasts bask in the glow from the skylight above.

No, these aren’t the Reds we know and love. Not at all. These beings are as big as giant gliders. They raise their necks, narrow their beady eyes at us and gnash their sharpened pickaxe teeth.

Jaws gaping, they snarl at us. The clamor eats at my brain:
Enemy dares come here, enemy dares come here, enemy dares come here!

And their own baffling counter refrain:
I am you, I am you, I am you.

Why is their message so ambiguous? Are their ranks divided? Blane and I exchange troubled looks, and then we glance over at Armonk and Thorn to see if they understand. We all have the same desperate impulse:
go into the huddle.
But there’s no time.

Because live human watchmen are rising from a handful of the pods.

Armonk flies into action, raising his bow and aiming, firing, aiming. A few of the watchmen go down, but others are stalking toward us.

Blane fumbles at the lights and levers of the pilfered weapon to figure out how it works. Our own Reds, in the meantime, glom onto the watchmen who are reaching for their same narrow-barreled guns.

One guard flips open his holophone to call for backup. “Main office? Reporting a—” he starts until our Reds dive-bomb his face.

I creep up from the back, reach around and slather elixir in his eyes. Nasty move, but we need this to work instantly.

“Frying hell!” the guard scrabbles at his eyes, trying to wipe them clean. As he does this, Armonk lands an arrow in his back. The guard grunts, falls and his holophone clunks to the floor in a stark splotch of his blood. That’ll keep him down. I race on to my next mark.

Blane has figured out how to shoot the weapon. It’s a taser with all of the bells and whistles, including a high-pitched digital shriek as the thing hits its mark. The next two guards seize up in spasms, while I swoop in to paralyze.

We must be venomous and swift, and we are, because there are five more men coming at us. Thorn guides the Reds to create interference, Blane tackles, Armonk shoots his arrows, and the moment I see a watchman down I smear my elixir in his eyeballs, his mouth, on his exposed neck.

The last guard manages to trip me. I hit my chin hard on the textured floor. He whirls around and zaps me as I try to deal with the throbbing pain in my jaw. As I convulse from his taser, I see Blane, firing at the man’s torso.

Blane hauls me to my feet as this last watchman goes down in fits, clutching at his chest. Turns out I’ve only been hit on my shoulder. It burns like crazy but I can function.

All during this time, the monstrous Reds continue to struggle against their thick restraints. As they writhe, they release terrifying, ear-shattering roars.

You! You! You will pay for this invasion.

Who knows how much more time we have before they explode out of their binding. If they do, we’ll be crushed.

We did not come here for murderous, bloody slaughter
I think.

Thorn looks my way.
We need to use our real power. Remember what we are
.

What we’re capable of
Armonk joins in without speaking.

Raising my arms and face to the skylight, I soak in the sun and gather my strength, my shared power to transmit silent messages.
Let’s ask the monsters questions
I suggest to my friends.
Trump them at their games.

Armonk, Blane and Thorn receive my message, I know this by the way they pause, head my way, and raise their own faces to the skylight—for energy, for direction.