The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (39 page)

“Yeah, I will.” I turned and rejoined Leech and Arlo.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Did you tell them where we were going?” Leech asked as we continued walking.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

Leech seemed to sigh. “Let’s just get out there.”

I wondered why that would bother him. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of any more people knowing what he was going through.

Outside the gate, the jungle was shrouded in deep shadows. The sky had shaded to lavender and pale blue. We walked quietly along the tire track road. Our footfalls seemed louder in the fading light, and I felt like we were more exposed, aliens in a strange land, at the mercy of hidden eyes.

We crested the rise and the dome sat giant and broken against a blood-and-pink wash of sunset. In the distance, tall clouds rose high in the sky. There was a flash in one’s belly. I saw a faint glow in the dome, light from Cryo illuminating the inner walls, but once we descended the rise, all we could see was the looming, dark exterior.

The daylight faded, and color bled out of the world. Arlo and the guard ignited headlamps.

The birds became quiet. The sounds of animals became more infrequent, lonely searching little voices, and the occasional crash of something in the brush.

We reached the entrance. Arlo unlocked the gate and it squealed open. We walked through the tunnel and into the silent city. Through the torn ceiling, the sky had cooled to deep purple. The buildings were dark, cloaked in shadows. Things scurried out of sight, startled by our presence. An owl hooted, the sound echoing in the cavernous space.

The distant glow of Cryo reminded me of approaching the skull. We wove through the empty streets, rounded a corner, and there it was: a solitary tower of soft light, like some alien spaceship from the future had landed among ancient ruins.

We reached the glass doors and Arlo produced a keycard. Very official lettering was stenciled in frosted letters across the glass.

E
DEN
S
OUTH
C
RYOGENICS
AND
E
XTENSION
S
ERVICES

There was a hiss as the doors unlocked.

We entered a clean hallway with white walls and a sky-blue carpeted floor. There was a little stone fountain, turned off, and art on the walls, paintings made of soothing bands of color.

We walked down the hall, our footfalls quiet on the plush carpet, the space so still that our breaths seemed loud. The hall ended at a reception area with a monitor-topped desk and sleek black couches. The wall behind the desk was one giant window, and through it, we could see the pods.

The light was soft and blue-white. The walls of the giant central room curved in the sweeps of the helix shape, two wide ovals with a narrow center, like a figure eight. At the middle, catwalks spanned the levels. There were ten floors, six above us, the rest burrowed underground. Each floor was open in the center, with a wide platform stretching around its perimeter. Circular pod doors were inset into the walls. The edge of each pod door was illuminated by a collar of soft blue lights. Every ten pods, a little workstation stuck out from the wall, with a monitor screen and an angled touch pad. The workstations were dark.

At various points on the platforms, skeletal elevator shafts and metal staircases connected the floors. Carts were parked on the central catwalks, with seats in front and a curved bed in the back for transporting a pod. Claws on steel wires hung down from the metal ceiling beams that ran between giant triangular skylights.

Leech put his hands on the glass. He breathed, making a cloud of fog. His fingers were trembling. “He’s on the sixth floor.”

“Wait here,” Arlo said to our guard.

There were glass double doors to our left. They hissed open and a burst of cold air washed over us, making me shiver. We walked out onto the platform of level four. There was a vacant sound of moving air and humming machinery. It sounded like a giant version of when I’d open the little refrigerator back in our apartment at Hub. The blue pods stretched away on the wall to either side of us, and on the opposite wall, across the central space. Leech headed for the nearest silver-doored elevator.

“We gotta take the stairs,” said Arlo. “Power’s off to nonessential features.”

There was a metal staircase at the corner where the catwalk met the platform. We climbed up two floors, our steps echoing in the hollow space.

“He’s on the far side.” Leech’s voice came out in a tight whisper. He led the way across the catwalk to the far wall.

There were little silver plates with numbers above each pod door. Leech walked slowly, reading them. I saw now that the doors were slightly translucent, just enough that you could make out the shadow of the top of a head and, dimly, shoulders. It was unsettling to think of someone in there, either a cryo kid or some terminally ill person who’d chosen Extension Services in hopes of a future cure, all of them placing their trust in Eden. They had no idea what had happened since. There would be no cures, no waking up to a better place. Instead, they were all frozen in a ruin.

As we walked, I gazed around the space, at all the blue rings of light and silhouettes above and below. I found myself stepping lightly, nearly tiptoeing, like I was trying not to awaken ghosts.

Leech slowed, and stopped. He pointed to a door. A shadow of a body inside. “This is it,” he said.

“Okay, one sec.” Arlo moved to the wall. He knelt beneath the pod door and flipped open a little metal panel. Inside was a red rectangular latch. “We have to use the manual opener.” He twisted the latch. The blue lights around the edges of the pod door began to blink off, one at a time, like a countdown. When they’d all gone dark, there was a sharp hiss and the door unsealed. A faint cloud of cold sprang free.

Leech took hold of the door’s edge and swung it open. It seemed heavy. Behind this was a circular panel of clear plastic with a steel handle in the center. On the other side we could clearly see a head of brown hair. The inside of the pod was softly lit in a whitish lavender.

Arlo unfastened three red latches around the edge of the clear panel. “Okay,” he said.

Leech gripped the handle with both hands and pulled. The pod slid out, rumbling on smooth rollers, a long, clear cylinder. Leech moved around to the side and put his trembling hands against the surface.

“Isaac,” he said quietly.

I stepped to the opposite side and saw the delicate face inside, a young boy with brown hair and freckles like Leech’s. His eyes closed, lashes and lips dusted with frost, his skin pale gray. He wore a white hospital-type gown, and lay on a contoured plastic surface with a small white pillow beneath his head. He had a peaceful sleeping expression on his face.

I heard a heavy sniffle from Leech. He slid his hands down the sides of the pod. He turned to us, and I saw the tears beneath his good eye. “Can you guys give me a minute?”

“Yeah,” I said. Arlo and I moved back out to the catwalk.

“Poor kid,” said Arlo. “Listen, Victoria wants me to take the readings from the power meters, so just meet me back in the reception area when he’s done, okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

Arlo checked his watch. “Don’t rush him, but we should start back in about ten minutes.” He headed down the stairs.

I could hear Leech talking quietly to Isaac. I leaned against the railing, peering up and down at all the pods. It was unsettling being in here. I felt my pulse jogging along. And it was sad, pointless. These people had tried to run from death, only to end up stuck here, paused. I wondered if this was any better a fate than living bright.

“Owen, come here.”

I turned to Leech. He was just gazing at me, but even though his mouth wasn’t moving, I still heard his voice, speaking softly.

I walked over, confused. He pointed down to the side of the pod. There was a little console there, and a small drive was stuck into a port.

“I’m playing my journal entries for him,” said Leech. “They used to say in EdenWest that Cryos can perceive sounds on a subconscious level.” Leech looked down at Isaac’s small face. “I just want him to know what I’ve been up to.” His recorded voice reverberated in muffled tones inside the pod.

A shudder wracked Leech’s body. He sighed, shoulders slumping. “This sucks,” he said, his voice choked. “This really sucks.”

I stood next to him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Leech nodded. “Thanks, but . . .” He glanced over his shoulder. “Did Arlo go back to reception?”

“Yeah.”

Then Leech said quietly, “There’s something else we have to do here.”

“What?” I asked.

Leech bit his lip. “Arlo doesn’t know. Nobody does . . . except me.”

I felt a little burst of nerves, and another uptick of my pulse. “What are you talking about?” Leech’s gaze at me was dead serious. “What?”

He took a deep breath. “Be right back,” he said quietly to Isaac, then he turned, leaving his journal entries playing. “Follow me.”

Leech started down the platform, past the catwalk, reading the numbers above the pods. He stopped in front of another one, and bent down. He opened the panel, and flipped the red latch. The pod lights began to blink off.

“What are you doing?” I asked. And yet, inside, I felt myself tightening, everything starting to race.

“You’ll see,” said Leech.

The blue lights extinguished. The pod hissed. Leech hauled open the door. Slid the clear pod out.

He stepped around to the opposite side of the pod and turned back to me. “Look,” he said.

I didn’t move. “What is this?” I asked, but my heart was galloping, I barely knew why. Maybe because of the way that Leech was looking at me—it was so weird, like he was scared or sorry or something . . . but also because I had this terrible growing feeling. An apprehension of something, something coming at me as if through a fog.

“Look,” said Leech. “Now.”

I stepped over, holding my breath.

Inside the pod was a child. A girl.

She had straight, deep red hair, pale features, the white gown. She looked a few years younger than us. Maybe twelve . . . yeah, twelve . . . and her body was striped in black, the veins discolored. Some had burst in inky puddles beneath translucent skin.

“Her name is Elissa,” said Leech.

Elissa
. “She’s a Cryo?” I asked. My voice had gotten hoarse. Fingers shaking. I knew something. There was something . . .

“Sort of. She died of the black blood. Paul wasn’t able to save her in time, but when he identified her DNA as being a potential match to the Atlantean genome, he ordered her cryoed, in case they needed her for future study.”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Part of it I read in the rosters that Victoria has. Part of it I knew from back in EdenWest.”

I kept looking at her, the black veins, the small nose, the flat base of her chin.
Elissa
. . .

“Do you remember her?”

I looked up. Leech’s eye was boring into me.

Did I— “What?” My heart was slamming, trying to break free and run.

Like it knew, it already knew . . .

“When Paul and his team found her, there was some initial hope that she could survive the plague, but then they learned that Elissa’s lungs had been too badly damaged. She’d always had weak lungs, from an accident when she was younger. From severe smoke inhalation.”

I leaned my hands against the cool pod. Felt my balance swim. This girl . . . “Smoke?” I said weakly.

“Listen, Owen,” said Leech. “I’m going to say a couple things, and I want you to just think about it all for a minute, and try not to freak out—”

“What things?” I whispered.
The smoke, the ash, plague, it . . .

“Victoria doesn’t know about this,” Leech was saying “Nobody does and I don’t think we should tell anyone, either.”

But I had to cut him off. “Tell me what this is.” I swallowed. It tasted metal. Her red hair, the lines of disease . . . “Do I . . . do I know this girl?”

Leech was still staring at me. He nodded. “Yeah. She lived at Hub. She died when the black blood plague hit in 2061.”

“Wait . . . 2061? That’s wrong, the plague was—”

“No. It’s not wrong. There’s more, Owen. Her lungs had been bad since the Three-Year Fire. The Three-Year Fire that was nine years before the plague. In 2052.”

“No,” I said, but inside, I felt things starting to crumble, the world outside my head and inside, none of it was stable, it was all falling apart . . . “The Three-Year Fire was when I was a kid. It . . . it was just a few years ago.”

“It was when you were a kid, but that wasn’t a few years ago. It’s 2086. The Three-Year Fire was thirty-four years ago.”

“What are you saying? It was just . . . I was six, it was—” I stopped.

Leech kept staring at me. “Stay with me, Owen. Try to put it together in your head. Some of this has probably been floating around in there. You’ve said some things about dreams . . .”

“Who is she?” I shouted. I looked down at the girl in the pod.
Elissa
. Died of the plague, smoke inhalation—