The Far Dawn (6 page)

As Lilly raced away, I heard a sound like puffing air, and then a streaming whistle. A trail of fire streaked through the sky, but not toward us—

There was a crush of sound and an explosion of fire and blue energy. The blast wave buffeted us and sent Lilly sideways, our shoulders slamming into the cliff face.

Another whump of air . . .

Another explosion. When I looked back, I saw the last remnants of my ship consumed in smoke and flames.

6

“KEEP YOUR EYE OUT FOR MORE!” LILLY SHOUTED as we hurtled upward.

I craned my neck, looking for the source of the missile strike. It must have been a soldier on the ridge. We'd be hard to hit as a small, moving target.

Except then I realized I was an idiot.

Of course they wouldn't fire directly at us. Paul didn't want us dead—he wanted us in his clutches. Which meant they probably wouldn't have fired at all if we hadn't jumped out of the craft. If I hadn't panicked . . . I should have kept my head! Just taken off . . . now, what did we have left?

“Hang on tighter!” said Lilly.

I gripped Lilly's shoulders as she banked hard and my legs dangled thousands of feet above deadly rock.

“Which way?” she called over her shoulder.

“There was that opening at the top of the spire.”

“Got it.” Lilly arced upward. I took one look back at the smoldering wreckage of the craft. Flashlights darted around on the rim above it, their beams crisscrossing in the rising smoke.

The full shock began to sink in: the craft was gone, our supplies, our means to get anywhere, and my power as the Aeronaut was gone with it. . . .

We rose straight up the back of the spire, the heights dizzying my already spinning head. As we closed, I could see that the opening was definitely a little archway, like a castle window.

Lilly slowed as we neared it. Moonlight outlined the inside of the arch, but beyond that it was dark. She edged close to the side and I hopped through, dropping onto a stone floor. Lilly climbed in after me, her light and song fading. Looking back out the window, I saw miles of mountain peaks stretching in all directions, just tinted in dawn light.

We stood in a small room. The floor was bare and damp, the air raw. Our rapid, thin breaths made clouds. The window cast a narrow triangle of faint light onto the stone-block floor, and in the shadows I could see a table covered with large, flat pieces of slate. I ran my finger over one. It was etched with a star chart. Ancient carving tools were arranged neatly beside it. More tablets leaned against the wall. Some were hung on the walls.

“Here,” said Lilly. She stood by a dark patch against the far wall. I joined her and spied a narrow stone staircase spiraling downward.

Come home, Kael. Come home, Rana.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Lilly.

She nodded. “My skull is here.”

“Leech's, too,” I said. I felt that familiar magnetic pull, drawing me toward them.

“And both skulls are calling to you,” said Lilly, “even though they're not yours.”

I shrugged. “Kinda.”

“And we still don't know why.”

“No,” I said,
but I think the Terra does, only she won't tell me.
Maybe here, at last, we would find out.

I pulled the knife from my belt and stepped onto the staircase.

“Owen, wait.”

I turned to see Lilly's eyes wide. “What is it?”

She looked away and shook her head. “Nothing.”

I stepped back and held her shoulders. “Tell me.”

She glanced to the ceiling, and I saw that her eyes were rimmed with tears. “It's just that . . . Paul is already here. He knows we're here. It's . . . I'm scared of what happens down these stairs.”

“Me, too,” I said, feeling the sickening wave of hopelessness well up in me again, because what exactly were our chances at this point? I wanted to say what I'd been thinking before: that we should run, but where? The craft was gone. We had no supplies. And there was the Terra's message, about finding the Sentinel . . . but also her comment that we were a lie. If we were, then all this was pointless.

“But what else can we do?” said Lilly. “This is our destiny, our mission. What we were chosen for.”

Again, I thought,
no,
or at least,
does it have to be?
And yet, what choice did we have? So I said, “We know more than Paul does, and we're strong. And you can fly us out if we need it.”

Lilly nodded resolutely. “You're right.”

“Okay,” I said. Only later, when it was too late, would I know how wrong she was.

I started down the stairs, running my fingers against the cool stone walls. Lilly rested a hand on my shoulder and followed close behind. The steps were slippery, the ceiling low, and we had to hunch to fit.

The staircase went on and on in tight spirals. I slipped once, then twice, so did Lilly, but we held each other in the pitch dark, clawing for the seams in the walls. We tried to make our footfalls quiet, but I was so tired, my brain and muscles so rubbery with the altitude and worry.

I started to lose track of time, to see dull flashes in my vision. Had we been climbing down for five minutes? Twenty? It felt like we were tunneling into the center of the earth.

But then we began to hear sounds: distant, undefinable echoes of voices; the humming and grinding of machinery; and finally, a flicker of light.

I could just see the outline of a doorway, the staircase coming to an end, when Lilly gasped and gripped my shoulder.

“What?” I hissed.

She was squinting, her breath held.

“Lilly . . .”

Her eyes snapped open, and she exhaled. “There's something here,” she whispered.

“You mean something besides Paul.”

“Something ancient. Powerful, and . . . dangerous.”

“The Sentinel,” I said.

“I think so.”

“Can you tell where it is?”

Lilly closed her eyes again, but then shook her head. “No, but, even if I could . . . I don't think we want to be around when it wakes up, no matter what the Terra said.”

I nodded and led the way to the edge of the light. We looked out into a high-ceilinged hall. It ended to our left at a massive stone door, ornately carved and shut tight. Two black-clad soldiers stood a few paces away, gazing at it and aiming strange weapons. They looked sort of like guns, except with wide disk ends, almost like small radar dishes. The weapons hummed, as if they were emitting a signal.

“It's in there,” Lilly whispered. “It doesn't know we're here yet. Those guns must be masking our presence.”

“The skulls are this way,” I said, pointing in the opposite direction, the magnetic pull increasing inside me.

“I feel it, too,” whispered Lilly. “If we had my skull, I could use its power to take these two, like I did in Desenna.”

I remembered Lilly creating storms of wind and light. “Except wherever your skull is, that's where Paul will be, too.”

We were still paused in the doorway when a scream echoed from a far distance. Human and in agony. From the same direction as the pull of the skulls.

“Skulls, then Sentinel?” said Lilly.

“Yeah.”

I glanced back at the door, thinking we could maybe get the jump on those two . . . but it would definitely be easier if we had Lilly's skull power.

The scream echoed again. We ducked out of the doorway and crept along the wall. The hall ran wide and straight for a while, and then curved out of sight. A battery-powered light stood at the bend, offering weak yellow light.

Around the corner, the hallway became a grand staircase, sweeping downward in a wide arc around a vast, open space, a giant cylindrical chasm that stretched out of sight above and below us.

“Yikes,” said Lilly, peering down.

The space was maybe fifty meters across. Below, stone bridges spanned it here and there at angles, leading to different tunnels. Smaller staircases hugged the inner wall, connecting the bridges and tunnels that weren't aligned with the giant curve of stairs we were on. It continued like this, downward into the gloom.

But not total darkness. Far below, nearly out of sight, there was an ominous glow of red light.

“It's like it goes into the center of the earth,” whispered Lilly.

I peered along the inner wall of the chasm and saw more weak battery-powered light spilling faintly from a tunnel two levels below.

We made our way down the wide arc, and then crossed a stone bridge across the chasm. It was narrow with waist-high sides, and when we reached the middle I felt a breath of hot air from below. In the dark and the heat, the bridge felt too narrow, the black, too, beckoning, like some ancient urge to fly was activating, and it was all making me dizzy. Lilly and I held hands and also the stone railings, focusing on each step we took.

We reached the other side and entered an arched tunnel, past the temporary light. The magnetic pull grew. The sound of voices became clearer, and now a tight cry of pain, a weaker, more-defeated version of the one we'd heard before. We moved down the hall as quietly as we could. At the next light, I spied a narrow doorway in the wall of the tunnel and beside it, a vestibule with a bone-spiked hand impression.

The key is inside you.

The door was already open. Electric light flashed from inside, like lightning.

Come home, Kael. Come home, Rana.

We edged in. The light grew, the familiar skull white, along with the sounds of electric circuitry.

My head blurred with that first vision, of the Three on the roof of the Atlantean temple like I'd seen in EdenWest. Lük, Rana, and Kael, kneeling on pillows and about to have their throats slit, their world darkened by ash and destruction. Lük and Rana sharing a tragic glance.

We reached the end of the short tunnel and peered in.

A circular room. A pedestal.

The third Atlantean skull.

A figure stood over it, hands pressed to its gleaming surface, but in the shock of bright light, I couldn't make out who it was.

The skull blazed ghost white, casting shadows around the room, bathing the onlookers, who all wore welding goggles, except for Paul. He stood on the far side, his bionic eyes sparking in electric blue, dressed in his usual shirt, tightly knotted tie, khaki pants, and EdenCorp vest, like this was another day at the office.

Seeing him, it was all I could do not to scream, to run at him with my knife. The man who had lied to me in nearly every way, killed my friends, turned my sister into a weapon . . .

Francine and Emiliano stood beside him, clad in the black of Eden's soldiers. I felt a moment of tightness inside me, a wave of the lost confusion that had nearly drowned me back in Desenna, at having my mother again, only to lose her—

But no. I'd had enough time to remember my real mom, to remove Francine from the spaces she'd tried to occupy. She'd never been my mother. She was just a soldier of the enemy. But she was also a symbol of what I'd lost both in time and in memory . . .

Lilly squeezed my shoulder, giving me the strength to shake off the feeling. I glanced back to thank her, but saw that her touch had actually been to keep herself standing. Her eyes were trembling, the white skull light dancing in them. She wasn't looking at Paul.

My gaze returned to the skull. Its ancient carved face grinned at us, and the person standing over it was aglow, hands on it, the white lighting up his fingers, his veins, radiating beneath his shirt. But this was Leech's skull. Who else could be accessing it? His head was down, hair falling forward, but he was tall, broad . . .

And screaming again.

“Nnnaaa!” His head snapped up, jaw clenched, eyes squinted shut, white light making his own skull glow out through his skin.

I heard Lilly's gasp.

Evan's hands popped free of the skull as if a magnet had repelled them, and he staggered back, panting, the light fading from his skin. Evan, who'd saved us in EdenWest. Who'd said, on the raft before that, that we were
lucky
to be in Camp Eden, who'd suggested working together with Paul. Now, he was, but this didn't look like the partnership he'd imagined.

The skull stayed aglow.

Come home, Kael,
it called to me again.

“Did it work?” Paul asked. He checked his watch. “We're in a hurry.”

Evan nodded weakly. “Yeah.” He doubled over and vomited on the floor.

I tapped Lilly's shoulder and motioned at Francine with my eyes. We'd have the element of surprise if we moved right now. Could we get the skull before anyone could react?

But Lilly didn't look like she could move. She was staring tragically at Evan, her lips trembling. I stepped back, starting to move her out of here. We'd need to regroup—

“Excellent,” Paul was saying, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him turn . . .

Right toward us. “And now we have everything we need.”

I grabbed Lilly's hand and started to retreat, only to feel the press of a gun barrel in my back.

7

THE SOLDIERS PUSHED US FORWARD INTO THE skull light.

“Lilly?” Evan's voice was weak, made uneven by the tremors racking his body.

“Go to him,” said Paul, motioning casually. “He'll be so happy to see you.”

Lilly's fingers grazed my arm and I met her eyes. She nodded and then rushed across the room, kneeling beside Evan. I couldn't believe he was here. It meant part of what Paul had told us back in the desert was a lie. He had caught the CITs, but he hadn't cut Evan open. At least there was that.

“Lil,” Evan croaked. “Is it really you?”

“It's me, Ev.” Lilly sniffed, rubbing his shoulders. “It's me. It's gonna be okay.”

“Owen, it's nice to see you again in the flesh.” Paul grinned at me, his eyes whirring, and I hated him so much, but I didn't reply. I wanted to give him nothing. He didn't seem to care. “You look different,” he said. “Older. I guess you've had to grow up fast these last weeks.”