The Almost Girl – ebook edition (26 page)

“You’re right,” Caden agrees. “But we haven’t seen anything even close to any kind of life for the last couple hours.”

“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

I move the map with a swish of my thumb and forefinger, opening a wider subsection of the part nearest the city. It’s not connected, but it’s definitely close enough to get us to the east side – the least-policed side of the city. I trail my finger back toward the dot that indicates my current position, noticing several other tunnels below us that go deeper underground, but there’s no way I’m going to risk heading down one of those.

“See here,” I tell Caden. “Here’s what we’re going to do. See this path, nearest the surface?” He nods. “We’ll take that. It may take longer, but it could be safer. And that way, if we do run into trouble, we can always get out.” I point to a few thin white lines marked at the surface by some odd red dots. “I think these are cracks like the one we came in. It looks like this runs along the base of the Peaks.”

“The Peaks?” Caden repeats.

I flip the map back to an over ground view, and show him the ridge of cliff-like mountains. “We’re running along the base of that.” I frown. “Actually, I think our path may even go under in parts. The inside of that mountain is literally pure volcanic glass. No metals can live there for some reason. Some kind of electromagnetic pulse.”

Caden echoes my frown. “Volcanic glass.”

“Ever see a mountain that has no caves, that looks like a sheath of sheer black glass? Well, get a good look, because that’s one.” I tap the map, switching the view to what the cliff mountains would look like at that moment on the hologram. “Used to be an active volcano thousands of years ago that the metals pulverized. Now it’s dead and impenetrable.”

I close the map and pull a food bar out of my pack, handing it to Caden. “Now’s as good a time as any. Let’s rest for a second.” We eat in silence and drink a water packet each.

“Can my suit do all that, too?” Caden asks, and I flinch at the sound of his voice in the quiet between us. I nod and show him the control panels on his wrist. The overview is short, but Caden picks it up rapidly and is soon flicking through all the versions of the map. Just in case, I also quickly run through the security parameters of the suit that I initiated for both of us earlier.

“The suit is intuitive and attuned to you. It stores your data. Technically, we’re not really supposed to interchange the suits – they’re designed for each person – but Shae and I used to steal the Vectors’ suits because they had way cooler tech. I developed an algorithm to erase the programmed data so we could use them.”

I blush and trail off, realizing that I’m showing just how much of a geek I am, but as Shae used to say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. My father knew what I was capable of at an early age and fed my brain a steady diet of bioengineering, physics, and advanced robotics.

It was a conscious act of rebellion on my part when I opted to train with the soldiers and become a part of Cale’s personal guard. My father ranted and raved for days that I belonged in his lab with him. It incensed me to the point that I requested living quarters in the castle under the guise of protecting Cale, when it was only to escape my father’s manic rages. In the end, he twisted it to suit him, because I ended up leading his greatest creations – the Vectors. I’d never understood why he was so pleased about that, but it got him off my back, and that was reward enough for me.

Caden’s voice makes me jump again. “I think it’s cool that you know all that.”

“We learn different things than you do,” I say, shrugging. “But it doesn’t make what you know any less important. We just evolve differently based on where we live.”

An indistinct sound brushes gently across my ears, and for a second I think that I’ve imagined it. But then I hear it again, like a single note of something. It’s some kind of bell-like sound. “Did you hear that?” I whisper to Caden.

“No, what?”

“It’s a chime or something. Listen.”

We both sit in silence, our ears straining, waiting until the sound comes again. “There it is! It sounds like music,” Caden says, his eyes wide. “Count it; it’ll come back in six beats. Listen.”

Caden’s right. The sound repeats, nearly inaudible as if it’s coming from a long distance away. It’s barely an echo of an echo, but we’re both standing and staring at each other, our eyes shifting around us. I glance down at the security pad on my suit and check Caden’s for good measure.

Nothing.

It doesn’t beep, not even when the shadows materialize from the walls before us, with weapons pointing directly at our hearts.

THE OTHERS

 

“What the–”

“Shut up, Caden,” I hiss, staring at the five men in dirty brown tunics. Despite the weapons pointed toward me, I shift slightly to the right so that Caden is standing behind me. My eyes slide down to the keypad at my wrist – the alarm is still silent, confirming that none of them are hybroids. One of the men steps forward, and I tense automatically, wishing that the empty water packet in my hand were one of my blades.

He holds a wand-like device in his hand, which he waves up and down our bodies. I realize quickly what it is – some kind of metal detection tool. But unlike our suits, it makes a harsh static-like sound, as if it’s malfunctioning. The man bangs it against his side, staring at it and then our uniforms as if confused.

Did he think we’re Vectors?

“Come,” he says, and I frown. His voice is non-threatening but firm. I have no idea who these people are, but it’s clear that they want us to go with them. The fact is, I could take them all out easily without endangering Caden, but I’m curious. I’ve never heard of people living in the Outers. I stare at the men. They all look physically fit, if a little thin.

“Where?” I ask.

“No questions,” he says, and then jerks his head to two of the men behind him. They remove our packs and our weapons, and I let them. Nodding for Caden to do the same, I study the leader carefully. There are no marks on his face or any other distinctive characteristics giving any clue as to who he is, but it is clear that he’s in charge. His body is lean with muscle, his eyes clear and bright. I need to know who these people are and what they’re doing out here.

The men bind our wrists behind our backs, and we walk in single file down a tunnel offshoot that is completely concealed behind a bit of rock face right in front of where we had been sitting. I kick myself mentally, knowing that I should have investigated the tunnel maps in more detail when I found them earlier.

They don’t blindfold us to conceal where they are going, and I understand the reason for that relatively quickly. I try to keep track of where we’re heading, but it’s difficult with all the twists and turns, and after a while, I realize that I have no idea where we are. Everything looks the same. Rock and more rock. Dirt floor. Dirt ceiling. The floor tilts slightly, and I wonder for a second how long we’d been walking downward. I hadn’t even noticed.

After a while, the tunnel widens into a large cave that’s lit with some kind of sconces. There’s a guard at the end of the space who eyes us ferociously. Caden tenses beside me, but I throw my shoulder into his and force a reassuring smile to my face. When I pass the guard, I glare so hard that I see the shock in his face. He’s barely a boy, I notice with a grin. Good to see that my General mojo still works.

In the cave beyond the one we’re in, the walls are black and shiny. The air feels cooler, as if there’s some kind of draft coming from outside, but I know that that’s impossible if we’re as far down underground as I’m guessing we are.

There are a few more people now, dressed in the same brown garb. They stare at us with anxious, scared expressions as if we are somehow the enemy, and some of them even scurry away. A small face peeps from behind one of the people, and I feel my heart lurch. A child, barely three years old, stares curiously at me.

“What is this place?” I ask, but the only answer I get is a burlap sack over my head. I struggle against the ties at my wrists and fling my head back so hard that it crunches wetly into bone.

“Stop!” a voice yells, and then lowers at my ear. “No one’s going to hurt you, but we do not know who you are, and so we cannot trust you. If you are judged to be a friend, then we will remove the bag, but until then you must keep it on. Please do not struggle. There are ways for us to restrain you, or worse, sedate you.”

“Where’s the boy?” I grit out, knowing I’m indeed at the voice’s mercy. I don’t know what kind of sedation techniques they use here, but I don’t want either Caden or me to find out the hard way. “I need to know he’s with me, and you have my word that I will not struggle.”

Something heavy and warm is thrust into my left side. “Caden? Is that you?” I say urgently through the bag. “You OK?”

“Yeah. I’m OK. Caught a hook to my chin, but can’t say I blame them. I kicked out when I felt the bag on my head.” He pauses and leans closer, led only by instinct. We’re standing back to back at that point, and I can feel his head pressing into my shoulder. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I’ve never even heard of people, as in real live people, living out here.”

A prod, and we’re walking again. I stay close to Caden, making sure that our arms are always touching at every step. His voice is nearly silent. “Are they going to kill us?”

“I don’t think so,” I whisper back. “At least not right now.”

Engaging my other senses, I can feel the air change against my body. The space feels far more open than any of the others before. If I didn’t know better, I would say that we were once more outside. It even smells different, but my sense of smell is a little undermined by the musty odor of the bag over my head. Once in a while, I’ll also hear a gasp or a voice. More people? It baffles me that there’s a whole community of humans living in the Outers, obviously by choice. The Outers is a place devoid of life, devoid of anything but metals left over from the war, and hybroids that scavenge to survive.

A few minutes later, we stop walking and the bags are removed. I blink against the sudden light. Only three of the initial men are with us. We’re standing in some kind of holding room, with a rough-hewn door barred with metal on one end and two thin cots on the other. They thrust us into it and swing the door shut behind them. Our packs are placed along the wall near the outer passageway. Our weapons are nowhere in sight.

“Wait!” I shout, but they’ve faded into the darkness before I can take a breath.

“What do we do now?” Caden asks. He looks concerned but no worse for wear, other than a reddening bruise on his chin.

“That looks like it hurts,” I say.

He grins wryly. “The one who hit me was my age, I think. I saw it coming, but my brain said freeze instead of duck. Don’t worry; I have my eye on him for a little payback when we get out of here.”

“Cade,” I begin. “I don’t know who these people are or what they’re doing here, but you need to know that they may not want us here.” I don’t say that they wouldn’t want
me
there, especially if they know anything about who I used to be. But if they are from Neospes, sooner or later one of them will recognize me. “And if they don’t, we need to do anything we can to get out, OK, even if they look like kids your age.”

“I get it.”

“No, you don’t. In this world, we are taught how to kill before we even learn how to talk. They are not kids like you are. If they see you as the enemy, they will take you out without blinking.”

“Riv, I said I got it,” he snaps.

I stare at him but he looks away. I can tell that it’s bothering him. That kid had probably hit him out of pure gut instinct, and he maybe hadn’t expected it to hurt quite as much as it did. I, for my part, was happy that it had only been a fist and not something worse.

My head feels fuzzy, and I’m not sure it’s because we’re underground. Something feels off but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I lean against one side of the room and close my eyes for a second before taking stock of the cell we’re trapped in.

The walls of our prison are the same dark, shiny rock from the first cave, and it’s oddly warm and smooth to the touch. There are no openings, but I can feel airflow coming from somewhere against my legs. I push off the wall to follow the changes in the air to an inch-long vent carved into the floor. The air is cool and smells fresh, as if it’s being piped in from the outside. I find that odd and am intrigued, because it seems like this whole place has somehow been
constructed
. Such an elaborate venting system hasn’t happened by accident.

Someone enters the hallway beyond our door with a tray. It’s a young girl. Her face is covered with a veil, but she doesn’t look at us. She’s been instructed to deliver whatever is on that tray and leave without any eye contact.

“What’s your name?” Caden asks, his hands wrapped around the bars of the door as she slides the tray underneath along the floor.

Startled, she answers automatically. “Sela, sir.”

“Thank you, Sela, for the food.”

She smiles despite herself at his gentle words, and then without warning, her eyes grow wide and terrified as she glances up into the far corner of the room. Realizing that I’m following her gaze, her eyes drop hastily to the floor. Sela shuffles out far more quickly than she’d entered, and is gone without another word.

“You scared her,” Caden says reproachfully to me.

He pulls the tray to the middle of the room, and I squat next to him. There are two wooden cups of water and some kind of ground meal in a bowl. He stares at me.

“You think it’s safe?” he says. I frown. “You said if they wanted us dead, they would have killed us by now, right?”

“Yes, but killing by poisoning is far less messy than an arrow in the stomach.”

Caden rolls his eyes at me and stares glassily at the food. “I’m starving. It feels like hours since I ate that food bar. And I’m so thirsty.” He looks away from the tray with effort. “The smell of it is killing me.”