The Proving (24 page)

You knew there was a Specter in the basement, girl. Don’t lie to yourself. You just wanted the glory. So you could impress Father.

“We were told to return to the city if there was any danger,” she said quietly.

“But what if we can help?” Ben asked. Skye turned to him, surprised. He shrank a bit. “I mean . . . uh, I know it’s strange to think about, but Mrs. Walker had a family. Someone is going to have to tell her parents and her family that she died out here.”

“And someone is going to have to tell your family that you died out here,” Skye said. “Is that what you want, Athenian?”

“I want to help those people if they’re in trouble,” Ben answered. The forcefulness of his tone caught Skye by surprise again.
So you do have a little fight in you, huh?
If he wasn’t arguing with
her
, she might actually find that attractive. Oh, who was she kidding? The fact that he was arguing with her made it even
more
attractive.

“We don’t know anything about this research facility,” Skye said. “Or the condition of the roads.”

“We know there are people in danger.” Gabriel shook his head. “This is why Coteries exist. This is what we’re expected to do after our Proving is complete. If someone is in danger, then we help. That’s the purpose of the Coterie.
Unity
. I vote we perform a standard rescue mission.”

“I second,” Cleo said. Skye glared at her, and for a moment she didn’t think Cleo would understand the look at all. Finally, it seemed to register. Cleo shrugged. “I’m a weirdo, but I’m not a
cold-hearted
weirdo. There could be people who need help.”

“I vote in favor,” Ben added. “Mrs. Walker must have run here for a reason. She ran nearly twenty kilometers. She didn’t give up. She was . . . she was
so close
.”

Every human life is precious.
Her father’s words echoed in Skye’s head. He’d said those words once during a speech to Parliament. He’d choked up; Skye remembered it vividly because it had been the closest he’d ever come to
crying
in her presence.

She knew they were right. But to risk failure . . .

Skye turned to the Historian. He shook his head. “I would strongly recommend against this.”

Skye, astounded, crossed her arms. “I can’t believe the Historian is the only one on my side. I . . . I refuse to drive.”

“You
have
to drive,” Gabriel said. “This is a binding vote.”

“I don’t care,” Skye told him. She had an urge to take back what she’d said, but stubborn pride pushed her forward now. “I’m not driving. This is a horrible idea.”

“Fine. I’ll drive,” Cleo told them. “Let’s go.”

Skye watched in shock as they began packing their things. “You can’t drive!” she told Cleo in an agitated whisper. “It’s a
Tumbler
! You don’t have clearance! You don’t have training!”

“How hard could it be?” she asked. “We’re traveling a few kilometers. If I can find the gas pedal, I’ll be fine.”

“You . . . that . . .” She looked down at Cassy. He shook his head at her, helping the fat boy fold the inflatable pillows. Fine. So she would appeal to reason, then. It was the only way out of this mess. She walked over to Ben, who was rolling up his thermal sleeping bag. “You have to change your mind. This is a horrible idea. We’re risking our lives over something that isn’t any of our business.”

Ben sighed, squeezing the rolled-up sleeping bag against his chest. “I know. But I can’t stop thinking about Mrs. Walker. She had a family, Skye. And she was so close to
surviving
. Maybe right now, there are others who are that close. And maybe we can save them.”

“We’re not following protocol. We risk forfeiting our Proving.”

“If it comes to that, I’ll assume the risk,” Ben said. “I know how much this Proving means to Spartans.”

Skye was momentarily speechless. “Why would you do that for me and Cassy?”

“Um.” He smiled and looked down at his sleeping bag, crushing it against his chest. “Well . . . the Proving doesn’t matter as much to us Athenians. That’s all.”

She watched him walk to the staircase. The Historian stepped beside her. He cleared his throat. “This is a very, very bad idea.”

“Agreed.”

Cassy grabbed her hand, pulling on it. “We can’t stay here alone, Skye. Please! Skye, I’m scared!”

She cursed, grabbing their sleeping bags. “Let’s go.”

To glory . . . or death.

Or both.

“Everyone strap in!” Skye hissed, helping each of the Young Adults into the Tumbler by literally grabbing their shoulder plates and giving them a hard push. “Kids in the rear, next to the medical station! If we’re going to do this, then we’re doing it by the book!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cleo muttered. She opened her utility pack, fingering a piece of peppermint gum. She popped it into her mouth, then reached into her other utility pack — the
special
pack — and pulled out her (totally-top-secret) data stick. She sat in the driver’s seat and inserted the data stick into the console’s utility port. “Reza, you’d better have that map up in five seconds!” she yelled.

The Tumbler’s control console came to life. A hundred different-colored buttons appeared, including a dozen readings — battery, temperature, proton charge — that Cleo only vaguely understood. Plenty of stuff to get confused about. Plenty of readings and electronic dials and nodes that Clan Sparta’s recruits no doubt trained on for months. But in the lower left-hand corner of the touchscreen was the little icon for her datastick, which was all she needed.

“What in Hades do you think you’re doing?” Skye asked, stepping up beside her.

“You said you didn’t want to drive,” Cleo said simply, tapping the icon for her datastick. A message appeared on the console screen, overlapping the myriad display of buttons:

LOADING PROGRAM . . .

The Tumbler door slid shut. Cleo flinched. She hated to admit it, but she was more than a little afraid of the Spartan chick. “You can’t possibly drive this,” Skye said.

Cleo shrugged. “Hey, I just thought you might want to use the big gun mounted on the roof.”

The program finished loading. The control console’s hundreds of buttons disappeared, replaced by a very simple schematic: a hand imprint to control the wheels, a sliding button to control thrust, a sliding button to control the air brakes. Cleo placed her left palm on the hand imprint. She put her right hand between the other controls, situating her fingers so they each touched a single control: speed, brakes, thrust, power, and the ever-important horn.

With her pinky, she tapped the power button. Beneath their feet, the engine hummed to life.

“What is that?” Skye demanded.

“It’s a driving console,” Cleo said simply. “I know how to drive a car, so I wrote a program that lets me simplify the driving schematics for other vehicles. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for a short ride through the countryside.”

“Sometimes, she drives autotaxis,” Reza said.

“Quiet, you!” Cleo looked over her shoulder. The Historian was sitting awkwardly between Wei and Tahlia, near the back. She pointed to him. “You didn’t hear that.”

Skye opened her mouth as if ready to shout, then closed it. She turned to her brother, who’d very silently slipped into the co-pilot’s chair. “Can you use the forward guns and keep an eye on the sensors she’s ignoring?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Are you sure, Cassy?”

“Yes!” he said louder.

Cleo turned to Skye, smiling. “I think he’ll be good.”

“Keep us steady at fifteen kilometers per hour,” Skye said. “The road is rough, so let Cassy find the best route.
Listen
to him.” She sat at Cleo’s command station, her fingers hovering over the holo-bulb’s control panel. “How do I access the VR gun?”

“Press the green button,” Cleo said. “Always the green button. Green for go, red for stop. Don’t mess with what works.”

“Now what?”

“The holoscreen is interactive,” Cleo said. “Pull up the command box, like you’re grabbing something and lifting it up.”

Skye grabbed the air, lifting an imaginary object up. A blue box popped up over the holobulb. It was loaded with simple-looking icons. “Now what?” she asked.

“Touch the icon that looks like a gun,” Cleo said. “Duh.”

Skye did. The screen changed, showing a green-shaded night-vision version of the world outside. The cameras on the exterior of the Tumbler gave her a full 360-degree view, with a red targeting reticule in the center. Skye’s hands found the manual controls underneath the holoscreen projector: two joysticks to move the targeting reticule on the screen, which moved the VR cannon mounted on the Tumbler roof. One joystick to manipulate the x- and y-axes, and the other joystick to adjust the distance of the proton shot.

“Now all you have to do is —”

“I know how to use a proton cannon,” Skye snapped. “Just get us out of here.”

Cleo very gently slid one finger across the blue acceleration bar on the console. The Tumbler jolted to life. The tires squealed.

“Easy!” Skye shouted.

“Like this,” her brother said, adjusting the speed on his console screen. “It’s touchy. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“Thanks,” Cleo murmured. Through the reinforced windshield, she could see the bumpy road leading away from the emergency supply depot. The headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the trees and tall grass along the side of the road. The rest was tinged green, visible with the help of the Tumbler’s night-vision program. Cleo’s contacts identified the foliage running along the road, giving her an annoying amount of information about their stupid leaves. “Crudmissile, minimize taxonomy.” She pressed her middle finger down on the touchpad, keeping the Tumbler straight.

She was doing it. She was driving a freaking Tumbler. Her driving program worked.

“OK, I know we’re in incredible danger,” she said over her shoulder, “but this is without a doubt the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Just get us there safely,” Gabriel said from the rear, “and we’ll give you a good pat on the back.”

“Ben!” Cleo shouted, doing her best impression of a grizzled Spartan soldier. “I’m gonna need you to move up to the seat next to Reza’s console. Now!”

“Sure thing,” he said, unstrapping and moving next to Reza. “What now?”

“Just hang out,” Cleo said. “I may need you to get me a drink of water if things get tense.”

Cassidy chuckled. He lowered the speed again. A dozen red dots appeared on the road ahead. “Those are big potholes,” he said. “Try to move around them.”

“Cool,” Cleo said. Her pointer finger and middle finger pressed down on the touchpad, guiding the Tumbler to the right side of the road. They hit a small bump; the vehicle bounced on its shock absorbers. Her hand slipped, causing the vehicle to lurch right. “Sorry, sorry!”

“You shouldn’t have used sensi-touch controls!” Reza said. “You should have used a z-axis motion for the driving!”

“Quiet, you!”

“Reepa or Reema or whatever your name is,” Skye called out. “We need directions.”

“It’s
Reza
,” Cleo’s brother whined. Cleo smiled. Reepa . . . what a good way to get under the boy’s skin — and the best part was Skye could call up his name on her smartglasses whenever she wanted to! Cleo would remember that next time he tried to fart on her.

“Just tell me what you see,” Skye said.

“We need to turn up ahead,” he answered. “Uh . . . I dunno where.”

“How about you be a little more specific, bro-bro?” Cleo asked.

“I can’t! There’s no road on this map. It’s just telling us to turn into the forest!”

A sick feeling hardened in the pit of Cleo’s stomach. Through the windshield, the Tumbler’s bright headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating heavy trees whose limbs reached high across the road.

SALIX BABYLONICA (WEEPING WILLOW)

LIFESPAN: 40-75 YEARS

Long, slender leaves hung downward like tentacles, billowing hypnotically, casting skeletal shadows farther along the road, where the darkness seemed to loom like a black hole. Cleo swallowed her gum. The excitement had just worn off, as if a fuse in her brain had been instantly tripped.

“Right. OK. So . . . I’ve had my fun. How about we switch places?” she called over her shoulder. “Skye? What do ya say?”

“We’re in trouble,” Skye murmured.

“What is it?” Ben asked.

“Sebecus Specters . . . two of them. They’re hunting us.”

Cleo’s hand instinctively went for the accelerator, but Cassidy reached out and grabbed her fingers. “We can’t speed up. The road is too choppy.”

“What do we do?” Ben asked. “How can we help?”

“Keep an eye on Reepa’s map,” Skye said. “Tell Cleo when to turn. I’ll handle our stalkers.”

“I’ll link our consoles,” Cassidy said calmly. A blue line appeared on the windshield, running up the road and into the darkness far ahead. Cassidy’s finger slid on the console, adjusting the path to avoid the red circles highlighting the worst sections of road. He was using Reza’s out-of-date topographical map to identify the potholes! The kid was damn good, Cleo thought. Downright calm. Sure, he was leaving a streak of greasy sweat on the console, but Cleo could hardly judge him for that.

She was sweating
buckets
.

Another bump. Something underneath the Tumbler rattled in a not-so-great sounding sort of way. Cleo’s tense fingers pressed down on her super-special navigation buttons, guiding the Tumbler on the path laid out by Cassidy. She pressed down with her pinky to lead the Tumbler to the left side of the road, avoiding a chunk of reinforced concrete whose rusted track-bars were sticking up like gangly fingers.

Suddenly, the entire Tumbler jolted. Cleo’s butt slipped in the seat; her fingers slipped on the controls, sending the vehicle lurching to the right. She adjusted, pressing down on the console with her pinky, feeling her heart thump against her ribcage. Yeah, the pressure-sensitive control scheme was probably better suited for hijacking an autotaxi, but there was no way in hell she would admit that to Reza.

Ahead, more weeping willows crowded the road, leaning down low and reaching for the Tumbler with their gangly branches. She felt an acidic burning in the back of her throat as her dinner of mock-steak tried making its way back up.