The Proving (29 page)

“An achievement award,” Seamus recited from memory, “for valor during a rescue operation of a passenger vehicle transporting foodstuffs to the protected city of Tristan.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t cheap. You need grain crops and machines to harvest the crops. You need a still made of copper. You need to age the whisky, which takes time.” She poured a few drops into one of the little glasses sitting on a thin rubber mat on one side of the counter. “And then you have to stomach the taste. You need a good reason to drink it.”

“That whisky brand has a history of over seven hundred years,” Seamus said, unable to control the information from being recalled. He shook the thoughts away. “Skye, Cleo must
not
go into the research labs.”

“My father painted a line on my forehead at Carnivale,” the young woman said, pressing a finger to her forehead. “He drew a single line himself, snatching the ink pen from the artist’s hand. He drew it right here. He said the line was for my real mother, my DNA mother, Skylar Morrison.”

“She was a famous jet pilot,” Seamus said. He cleared his throat, hoping he might appease her to keep her mind from wandering. “Her lineage is centuries old. She flew a single ramjet through a pirate outpost in the remote port city of Johannesburg. Skye, please listen to me. Cleo must be stopped.
Now
.”

“Why,” she asked absently, lifting the little glass above her head. She let the drop of whiskey land on her tongue. Her lips puckered. She was thinking about her father and the whisky he drank. Was she trying to understand him, perhaps? Did she really think that tasting what he tasted might give her some insight into his thoughts?

Had something happened to her at Carnivale? Seamus searched his memory, but found nothing of importance from the morning news feed. Citizens in each city-state celebrated Carnivale a little differently. Free citizens in Neo Berlin enjoyed elaborate costumes of ghosts and spirits and monsters, a deliberate show of resistance intended to reduce the terror of the Ring. Amsterdam lit up the sky with bonfires, culling a centuries-old tradition of lighting the way for lost souls. Rio citizens danced all night long. Clan Persia mostly avoided spectacle, unless there was new technology to showcase. Athenians were encouraged to mingle, to interact with people outside their clan, because Clan Athens treasured the diversity and social relationships. Spartans could relax a bit during Carnivale, enough to allow themselves a single pleasure: face painting.

Skye probably didn’t know the history of it, which Seamus thought was a shame. The tradition was as old as the human race, and harkened back to a time when Nonam Wounaan people used ink to “draw” ancestral knowledge onto new generations. It was a fascinating history. A beautiful history of transmission and tradition kept alive first with the ink of a plant, then ink printed on paper, then inside a microchip guarded in Spartan safe vaults.

What knowledge did Skye desire?

Seamus followed her around the bar, to another door. It slid open, revealing another empty room, clean and organized with the pillows sitting on top of the tightly made bed sheets. “Spartan. This is a Level One research facility.”

“Move.”

He stepped aside. She opened the next door, pointing her rifle inside. There was a small, old-fashioned desk lamp sitting on the desk inside, and drawings of animals spread over the surface. A hobby, perhaps. Something to log away, for when the Historians pieced together what happened. The family of whoever lived here would enjoy the little details, something to cling to while they mourned.

He again shook the thoughts away. Curse his memory. Curse his brain. “Please, Skye, I must insist.”

She turned to him. Her pale lips looked dry, and two lines of dirt ran along her freckled left cheek. She could pass for someone five years older, he thought; the Spartan New Adults always could.

“This a Level One research facility.”

“You said that.”

“We don’t have clearance. Please, I know you do not trust me, but you must consider what Cleo is about to do. She will be
breaking the law
if she enters that facility.”

“If she doesn’t shut off whatever’s draining the battery, we’ll lose all power. Our chances of survival drop.”

“And if they enter the research labs,
there is no going back
,” Seamus said. He couldn’t control the nerves and his voice squeaked and cracked. Shaky. Uncertain. He tried to so hard to control it and had done so well and now all that control was coming undone in front of this Spartan. She would no doubt think him weak. Weaker.

“Fresh food, fresh alcohol, all the amenities,” Skye said. Seamus could see a fiery intelligence behind her green eyes. Intelligence and suspicion. “What was given up, that Parliament had to offer so much?”

“I cannot tell you. I swear to you I would
if only I could
.”

Skye’s eyes narrowed. She reached up and tapped the side of her glasses to open a communication channel. “Cleo, hold your position. We’re almost finished searching the rooms.”

They waited for a response.

“Cleo. Can you hear me?”

“We must return to the loading bay,” Seamus said.

“We need to check the last few rooms for survivors.”

“Skye, please believe me when I tell you that
whatever exists inside those labs is not for our eyes
. Please. Please trust me just this once. I say this for your sake and for the sake of the Coterie. For the New Adults
and
the Young Adults.”

She studied him a moment more, then slowly nodded. “OK. So let’s go.”

They made their way across the Commons room, into the hallway leading to the cafeteria. Seamus was walking fast, faster than he ever had inside the city, inside the safety of the shield. Historians were always taught tranquility and due diligence and patience but now he could feel a tense anxiety coursing through his body like a flooding river. He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. Nothing could stop him. They would thank him some day for this. When they had their dream jobs and nice families and everything else normal people wanted . . .

“Seamus!” Skye screamed.

He saw it out of the corner of his eye and his entire body went limp. Fiery red crocodile jaws opened, closing around Seamus’s body. It passed through the wall like a ghost, effortlessly and without pause so that it pressed against his Xenoshield and pinned him to the floor. This was it. The Specter would pass through him and his body would shut down and then everything would go black. He wanted to shut his eyes but he was too afraid and so in a moment of pure defiance — or perhaps subconsciously it was to simply catalogue the historic moment — he turned his head to face it.

The giant Sebecus Specter’s razor-sharp teeth stopped just an inch from his skin. The shield shimmered; each glowing red tooth sent ripples across the bubble-like forcefield. His elbow hurt. The muscles in his back stung, but it could have been worse without the Ecosuit. Still, he’d fallen hard and the Specter, almost entirely through the wall, was pressing down on him and he could
feel
it. He could see the scales on the creature’s glowing dark red skin. He could see purplish veins underneath the scales. He could see the door leading to the cafeteria
through
the creature.

It was terrifying. And with each passing fraction of a second, his sharpened memory had that much more to store away. Even if he survived, this creature would haunt him like a ghost until the day he died. Better to die. Better to let this be the end.

His right arm stung when he tried to move it so he held out his left hand. The shield kept his palm from touching the creature’s neck but he reached out anyway, feeling the force of the shield press against the creature, feeling the creature push back. His body was numb. He was prey caught in the jaws of a lion.

In the corner of his right lens, his shield meter slowly drained, turning from bright green to dull yellow.

Suddenly, the Specter’s neck exploded as a blue Proton bullet ripped through it. The creature let out a low moan and turned its head. More blue bullets pierced its body. It turned, stepping off Seamus and moving toward Skye. She fired a half-dozen more shots, and each little blue bullet ripped through the creature’s body with deadly precision, leaving little holes that spewed yellow sparks. The Specter’s long, spiked tail lingered over Seamus, wagging left and right, disappearing partway into the wall. Even after being shot half a dozen times, it was still glowing blood-red.

Never in his memory had he seen one with so much power.

“Seamus,” Skye said, her voice shaky. “Draw your pistol. Aim for one of its legs.”

Seamus felt a bead of sweat slip around his thin eyebrow, traveling into his left eye. It stung. He could taste copper on his tongue. His hand found his pistol. He pulled it from his belt. “I . . . I’m not a Spartan . . .”

“My battery is almost dead,” Skye said. All calmness had escaped her voice. She’d stepped back, only a few paces away from the door leading into the Commons area. The Specter loomed between them, moving silently on the steel floor grates toward Skye.

Its moan seemed to echo above them.

Seamus pointed the pistol. The barrel shook uncontrollably. He tried to steady it but the Specter was moving faster now, its thick rear legs carrying it as if it was more comfortable walking like a human than a reptile. Its back was hunched over, its tail swinging left and right like a shark propelling itself through water.

“Seamus!” Skye shouted, stepping back. She reached for the spare rifle clip at her belt but it slipped out of her hand, landing between her and the Specter.

Seamus pulled the trigger. The pistol kicked and a blue bullet flew out, cutting through the Specter’s rear leg. But the creature refused to stop, reaching the door at the end of the hallway and then disappearing through it.

Both the creature and Skye were gone.

Ben watched Cleo tap wildly on her VRacelet while she explained how her hacking program worked. She seemed to be moving impossibly fast through the program she’d called up, as if it was anticipating half of her orders and carrying them out independently of her rapid finger strokes. Her explanations sounded like gibberish, but he nodded when appropriate to encourage her. This was clearly something she was proud of. Who was he to diminish that?

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re wondering why their servers aren’t equipped to defend against my backdoor approach.” She chuckled, sliding her finger across her VRacelet’s screen to open up a second program. It took a moment to load. “It’s funny, actually. See, these kinds of closed computing systems are usually running a bunch of programs at once, and so what my special program does is it inserts about two hundred characters into various command functions, and those characters form a
new
chain of commands. So the computer checks the command, but at the same time it’s running this new chain of commands, overriding the system!”

“How did you write something like that?” he asked, astonished.

Another devious chuckle. “Oh, I’ve been known to sneak around a few computer systems in my time. For fun. And nothing too important, otherwise the wrong eyes might start noticing. Just a few credit machines here, a database there . . . See, most 4048-bit encryption keys are nearly indecipherable because you have to determine the two prime numbers that make up this huge integer. But this takes tons of computer processor power, so the trick is to link up with other computers …”

“Um, are you sure there’s no other way to do this?”

Cleo looked at him and rolled her eyes. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

“No.” He sighed. He was thinking about Skye again. He felt guilty for doing it, too. They were on a rescue mission. There were dead people. And he was thinking about a Spartan girl in an entirely inappropriate sort of way, given the circumstances.

But it was normal, he reminded himself. Hormones and the such. Perfectly normal for a teenage boy, and that was what he was — he needed to remember that. He just needed to make sure he didn’t make the number-one mistake boys his age made: letting the hormones take control.

“Maybe there’s another way to stop the battery drain,” he offered. He didn’t want to tell her the truth: he wasn’t all that excited about breaking the security rules. He didn’t exactly know what Level One clearance was. He’d never seen it in any Clan Athens facility.

“This is a gravity battery,” Cleo murmured, still tapping away at her VRacelet’s touchscreen. “For months, maybe years, excess power from this facility’s Phenocyte reactor pumped water up the mountain to a storage tank. When emergency power is needed, the water flows back down and turns hundreds of little turbines. When the water runs out, we’ve got no more power. So we kinda need to preserve as much as we can.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I suppose.”

The large steel door slid open. “Got it!” Cleo exclaimed. “Boy-oh-boy, am I good. Come on.”

Ben followed her inside. Lights running along the ceiling automatically lit up. They were in a tall, circular room with another steel door at the other side. To their left, a wide computer screen turned on, welcoming them and warning that they would need to undergo the decontamination process. The door behind them shut.

The bitter scent of lemon filled Ben’s nostrils. He held his arms out like wings. Cleo looked at him, raising one thin, black eyebrow. “You have to hold your arms out,” he said.

“Please hold your arms out,” the computer’s soft, female voice requested. On the screen, a picture of a man and woman holding their arms out appeared. Cleo followed the directions, albeit not without wearing an annoyed face.

“It’s for the best,” Ben assured her. “These decontamination chambers are incredibly effective. Your people helped build them.”

“Not surprised. We Persians are pretty awesome.”

Ben’s brain barely registered the snark. He was thinking about Skye again. Something about her voice . . . like maybe there was a hidden element of vulnerability underneath all that authority and confidence. Or was that just something he’d seen in a movie? “She sounded a little weird.”