SYLO (THE SYLO CHRONICLES) (43 page)

I rounded the Subaru and walked slowly toward the dark wreck, ready to bail at the first sign of trouble. There was no smell and no sound. There didn’t seem to be danger of an explosion, and if it was leaking invisible radioactivity, we were already doomed.

Its rounded lines reminded me of a B-2 bomber but with no obvious wings or engines. There didn’t appear to be any hatches or windows either. It was like a giant clamshell with absolutely no aerodynamic qualities. Kent’s crazy theory of these craft being from another world was beginning to seem
less
crazy. I walked with caution, hoping that there wasn’t an injured alien trapped inside preparing to defend his craft.

As I drew closer, I actually thought of Marty Wiggins. This had all started with his final moment of glory. The crowd was going crazy. Marty was on top of the world—until he fell off. It didn’t seem fair that somebody’s life could end at a moment of such triumph.

Or maybe that was a good thing. What better last memory to have than the joy of hearing the cheers of adoring fans? In light of all that had happened since, he might have been the lucky one.

Marty’s death was the beginning.

Or was it?

I had to accept that my parents had moved us to Pemberwick Island years before to prepare for SYLO’s arrival and some big event that was planned long before Marty had taken a fatal dose of the Ruby.

The event.

What was the event? Was it the battle between the Navy and the dark aircraft? Was it the attack on Mr. Sleeper and his band of rebels? Or did the event have something to do with the lights in the sky and the fact that sixty thousand people from Portland seemed to have disappeared, along with some of their buildings?

Had the event already happened? Or was it still to come?

I stopped a few feet from the edge of the dead aircraft and scanned its surface, looking for any clues that might help me understand. It was coal-black, with seams and rivets that told me it had been manufactured. This was no organic, alien creature. Check that off the list. I took a chance and ran my hand across its surface. The cool skin looked and felt like the pieces of wreckage that had washed up on the beach, along with a ton of the Ruby. That made it more likely that the exploding shadow Quinn and I saw on our midnight ride was indeed one of these alien-looking planes. Had it actually been loaded up with the Ruby and on its way to make a delivery to Pemberwick, courtesy of SYLO?

That’s what Feit said. But he was a liar.

I circled the wreck, looking for something. Anything. This was one of many lethal weapons that had attacked a fleet of warships from the United States Navy. Was it because the Navy, under the command of Granger and his SYLO goons, had blockaded Pemberwick Island? Were they trying to blast past the Navy to rescue us?

Or had they meant us harm and the Navy’s mission was to protect us?

Either way, why would anyone care so much about Pemberwick Island? The reason for the battle may not have been obvious, but this much was clear: These aircraft had flown over Portland
and lit up the sky. Now a major city lay empty and several massive buildings had been vaporized.

Between the deaths on Pemberwick and those from the air and sea battles, there was no way to know exactly how many people had died. Wars are fought for many reasons: religion, power, land, riches, prejudice…Name a basic human conflict and you can bet that a war was fought over it. But what was the issue
here
? There had to be a good team and a bad team but it was impossible to know which was which without knowing who was fighting and what was at stake. I was hoping that I would find something about the aircraft that would at least tell me where it had come from and maybe open a few doors that would lead to understanding.

I walked further along and saw something on the skin of the craft that was totally out of place. It looked like somebody had crudely scrawled a line of graffiti using white paint. I didn’t understand the words because it definitely wasn’t English, but the letters were recognizable.

S
EQUENTIA
Y
CONOMUS
L
IBERTATE TE EX INFERIS
O
BEDIANTER
!

Was it Latin? I had no idea. Who could have done it? Someone from Portland who was angry over the attack on their city? If it were me, I probably would have just thrown a rock at the downed plane or hit it with a baseball bat. I was looking for answers and found yet another maddening mystery.

“Anybody know what it says?” Kent asked.

I turned quickly to see that he had joined me, along with Tori, who leaned on Olivia for support. Tori looked pale and I didn’t think it was from the blood loss.

She was staring at the graffiti.

“Do you know what it says?” I asked.

“No,” she said, sounding numb. “But I can guess what it means.”

She picked up a stone from the street, leaned down to the plane and underlined four letters, scraping a mark under each.

“Sequentia yconomus libertate te ex inferis obedienter,” she said, sounding it out awkwardly.

“Oh my God,” Olivia said, stunned.

The four letters Tori had underlined were S – Y – L – O.

“SYLO,” Olivia gasped.

“So what the hell does that mean?” Kent demanded.

Since the moment of Marty’s death, I had been grasping at pieces of a hundred maddening clues, desperately trying to understand what was happening to us. It took the revelation of those four letters for my brain to finally start putting the pieces together.

“It means Feit was lying,” I said with confidence.

“How do you figure that?” Kent asked.

“Somebody scrawled this after the plane crashed, marking their kill. These planes aren’t SYLO. That never made sense. SYLO is part of the Navy. They wouldn’t battle themselves.”

Tori said, “So Feit lied about Granger asking him to bring the Ruby to Pemberwick?”

“Absolutely,” I said with total conviction. “I don’t think SYLO has anything to do with the Ruby.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Olivia asked.

“When Quinn and I were on our midnight ride, just before the black plane full of the stuff exploded, there was a steak of light that came from the ocean—”

“I saw that too,” Tori said. “I have no idea what it was.”

“I think I do,” I declared. I’ll bet it was a missile fired from a submarine. I think SYLO blew that plane out of the sky, just like all the others they’ve been shooting down since.”

“Whoa,” said Kent.

“That makes total sense!” Tori exclaimed as the realization hit her. “The battle began long before anybody was aware of it. Before Portland was attacked.”

Kent asked, “So if these aren’t SYLO planes, what are they?
Who
are they? And why were they bringing the Ruby to Pemberwick Island?”

“Whoever they are,” I said, “Feit was one of them.”

“But that doesn’t matter anymore, right?” Olivia offered hopefully. “Feit’s dead.”

“Yeah, he is,” I said. “But if he was waiting for a delivery of the Ruby, whatever he was up to, he wasn’t doing it alone.”

Pieces of the puzzle were falling together quickly and the implications were frightening.

“There were a lot of strangers on the island,” Kent said thoughtfully. “Way more than normal. I thought it was because of the late summer and the quarantine but…”

He let the thought hang.

“Who
were
all those people?” Tori asked. “Strangers were being arrested all over the island, and being held prisoner in the SYLO camp, and rioting downtown, and plotting with my father on Chinicook Island and—”

“It’s like there were two invasions of Pemberwick,” I said soberly. “One obvious, one not. I don’t think SYLO is the only enemy on Pemberwick Island.”

Olivia was on the verge of tears. She leaned into Kent and said, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

I took a long look around the Old Port and at the once lively city that was now very dead.

“So where do we go?” Kent asked.

“We have to find somebody who knows what’s happening,” I replied. “And somebody who can help us tell the world what we’ve been through. I say we go to Boston. That’s the closest big city.”

“And what if Boston was attacked too?” Tori asked.

“Don’t even think that,” I replied quickly. “But if it was, we’ll keep going. To New York. Or Washington.”

“Maybe my mother went back to New York,” Olivia said hopefully.

I doubted that, but I didn’t say so.

“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. But one thing’s clear—there’s nothing for us here.”

“And we sure can’t go home,” Tori added.

That was the most sobering thought of all. I can’t speak for the others, but as much as I wanted to escape from Pemberwick, my goal was to find the truth, blow the whistle on SYLO, and get them the hell off our island so we could get back to normal. Seeing what had happened to Portland made me doubt that would be possible. Ever.

Kent kicked the plane in anger. “Who the hell
are
you?”

“Let’s get Tori to the hospital,” I said. “Even if it’s deserted, we’ll get medical supplies.”

We started back toward the car, finishing the full circle around the downed plane.

That’s when I saw it.

I stopped short.

“What?” Kent asked.

It was a simple clue, but unmistakable. If the sun hadn’t been hitting it at just the right angle, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it because it was the same shade of black as the skin of the craft. It stood out only because it had a slick sheen that reflected the sunlight.

It was a logo, no more than ten inches wide. There was a star inside a circle with two flaps, like wings, to either side with three stripes on each. Normally it would be red, white, and blue but there was no mistaking the monochrome version.

“This is no alien spaceship,” I declared, pointing to the logo.

Kent joined me, took a look, and gasped. “Oh, man.”

It was the logo of the United States Air Force.

We had been in the middle of a monstrous battle between two different branches of the military from the same country. My country. It was no drill. It was no training exercise.

“So what does that mean?” Kent asked.

“It means that the United States of America is at war with itself.”

Tori said, “It’s the second Civil War.”

It was almost too much to accept that such cataclysmic events, events that were sure to shake the world, had begun in my own backyard, at a high school football game, on a warm fall evening that turned out to be the perfect night for death.

The first death.

How many more were to come and how far would we have to go before it would end?

“Do you hear that?” Olivia asked.

We all held our breath and listened.

Portland was dead. Dead quiet. There were no normal sounds of life. No traffic. No voices. No screams or laughter. All we could hear was the forlorn cry of seagulls floating on the ocean breeze…

…and music coming from the sky.

TO BE CONTINUED…