Athel (9 page)

Was it just a nightmare
?

I touch my
pocket and my fingers hit the flat of my hip.

The cylinder from Astraca.

It wasn’t a nightmare.

Yuri and Cal stole it
.

Despite the
analgesic and the nanobots reenergizing my cells, my heart sinks. I drop to my
knees and sob.

Chapter Seven

Athel

Day Number: 1,584

Event: Akaela disappeared

Number of Mayakes left: 429

Goal for today: Find Akaela alive.

By six p.m. Mom is frantic. Akaela
is nowhere to be found, and the daily bulletin of death brings gloomy news:
today we lost another Mayake to cancer, our second worst enemy after battery
failure. Prostheses make up for the limbs we lose to cancer and the genetic
defects we’re born with, but the nanobots embedded in every one of our cells
have to make up for our defective DNA. They release nanoparticles that destroy
any cancerous cells as soon as they develop, but when the fight happens every
day, sooner or later somebody’s bound to lose the battle.

Mom paces
our small kitchen wringing her fingers. “I thought Akaela was with you!”

“She was,”
I try to explain, “for a little while. But then she decided she wanted to be
alone and left. Maybe she got carried away while gliding over the mesa.”

I know
what I’ve just said can’t be true. If Dottie were gliding, Kael would be with
her. Instead, he’s been back to the Tower since four, Mom tells me.

She grasps
my shoulders and gives me a pointed look, the fingers of her prosthetic hand
digging into my flesh. “It’s your job to keep an eye on your sister. You know
she has no stops, no sense of danger. If something happened to her—”

She
presses her good hand over her mouth and chokes back her last words.

Mom
doesn’t need this right now. Losing our father hit her hard. Her cheeks now
cave inward, her jet-black hair is struck with white. Despite the anger I feel
at my reckless sister, I stare into my mother’s tired eyes and nod.
 

Kael claws
the windowsill and bobs his head. He’s nervous. If something happened to
Dottie, he would know when and where. I get my training glove, hood the falcon,
and leave. Once outside, I release him and watch him soar toward the forest. If
that’s where Akaela is, she’s in danger. I know she’s followed Yuri and Cal
into the forest before and if she’s done it again, chances are, she’s gotten
herself into big trouble this time.

I message
Wes and Lukas on my way to the stable, asking for help.

Wes
replies instantly. His nimble legs can probably beat me to the forest even at a
fast gallop.

Be careful
, I type.
I haven’t seen Metal Jaw around. He and his
brother could be out there too
.

Once we’re
in the thick of the vegetation, we can no longer rely on our wireless
communication network.

Taeh’s a
really good sport. As soon as I mount her, she feels the pressure in my legs
and sprints across the solar fields. Swarms of fruit flies linger over the
grass like golden dust motes, parting as we rush through. The sun is a pale
disk in an overcast sky, and the warm summer breeze carries scents of dry earth
and hay.

Stupid, stupid Dottie. What have you done now
?

Kael
circles south of Beacon Rock, a big mound that towers above the sea of trees. I
follow the edge of the forest for as long as I can, then slow Taeh to a trot
and turn into the woods. My brave horse leaps over rocks and ravines covered in
moss and dead trees. Flocks of sparrows scatter as we whisk through, scared by
Taeh’s thuds on the forest’s soft turf.

Closer to
Beacon Rock, I slow to a canter and look around. Some of the tree trunks are
chipped and axed, the edges burnt, as though some kind of machinery has trailed
through them. A vague whiff of smoke tinges the air.

“Athel!”

I pull the
reins and freeze.

“Athel!”
Wes calls. “I found her!”

Taeh
snorts and we run, following Wes’s voice.

Akaela’s
sitting on the ground by a tree, her face buried in her hands. As soon as I get
there and hop off the horse, Wes looks at me and shakes his head. “She won’t
listen to me. She says she can’t come home.”

“What?” I
crouch and grip my sister’s wrists. “What the heck’s going on, Dottie? Mom half
died when you didn’t show up back at the Tower.”

I shake
her, but she won’t unglue her hands from her face. I stop and finally take
notice of the cuts and bruises blemishing her hands and arms. I take in her
torn clothes, her matted hair, the smears of blood along her hairline.

“Dottie,”
I say, my voice just a whisper. “What the hell happened?”

She lowers
her hands, slowly uncovering her eyes, black and fierce as always. Her face,
though, is something else, her upper lip cracked open and swollen, her left
cheek purple and bruised.

“Who—who
did this to you?”

She shakes
her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. “They took it. They took the Astraca
cylinder.”

*
 
*
 
*

Lukas sits on the floor and slides
the data feeder out of his satchel. “We need to talk to Tahari.”

I snort.
“Are you nuts?”

Akaela
slumps on her bed and stares at the bunk above her. Ash hops on her pillow and
starts playing with her hair, but my sister doesn’t seem to notice. She told
Mom only half of the story and attributed all her injuries to the fact that the
currents carried her over the forest and forced her to land in a tree. Mom
grounded her because she should’ve known better than to glide on a day when the
winds were blowing in the wrong direction.

I know my
sister. She doesn’t care that Mom’s mad at her and or that she’s now forbidden
to glide for a whole week. Dottie’s devastated because she lost the cylinder,
even though it wasn’t her fault. Those two bastards stole it after they beat
her face to a pulp. I’m so angry I want to punch the walls, pretending they’re
Yuri’s metallic jaw.

Wes
shuffles over to the window and leans against the sill. Perched at the opposite
corner, Kael stares at him with one eye. I open the bedroom door and take a
peek down the hall. The light in the kitchen is on, the water in the sink
running. Mom’s letting go of her anger by doing the dishes. I sigh, close the
door, and sit on the floor next to Lukas.

“What’s
your next brilliant idea, Brains?”

Lukas taps
his data feeder and raises it a few inches above the ground. A light on the
side of the screen turns on and projects a map on the floor. “Astraca,” he says,
pointing to the sketch of convoluted roads, turrets, and dead ends.
“Reconstructed from all the remaining data I could collect over the last five
years. Most of it burned in the fire of 2065, leaving only ruins and collapsed
walls. Now, it’s all buried underneath the forest. Only one thing survives.”

Wes
unglues from the sill and joins us on the floor to stare at the map. Akaela
pushes Ash away and props herself on her elbow so she can watch too.

“The
Underground City—a city underneath the city built in secrecy as a last
escape for a time when disaster would strike,” Lukas explains.

“They were
prepared,” I comment.

Lukas
nods. “They sure were.”

Wes
scratches his head, a skeptical look plastered all over his face. “Why keep it
secret, though?”

“Because entry
was restricted to only a few privileged ones,” Lukas explains. “The Underground
City was to be tucked away, locked and inaccessible. The only way to gain
access to it was through these.” Lukas taps on the screen and projects a
picture of the symbol of Astraca. As he plays the animation, the five keys pop
out of the picture and become 3D, all five rotating on Lukas’s screen. “The
five keys to Astraca, or
chavis
, as
our patriarchs used to call them.”

Akaela
scrunches her face in a grimace and drops her head back onto the pillow. “And
we have none,” she says sourly.

“I’ve been
thinking about this quite a bit,” Lukas goes on, “especially after being out in
the forest with you guys this morning. Wes is right about that particular spot
in the woods. It’s like stepping back in time, going through the ghosts of
Astraca. I’m guessing the reason Tahari and the other man have been exploring
that part of the forest—and probably Hennessy too—is because
they’re looking for the
chavis
, the
five keys. And the only way they can find them is through the engrams, the
passed-on memories.”

I frown,
completely lost. “Where are you going with this?”

“The
recorded memories of where the keys have been hidden are scattered through all
the Mayakes. Those who have them don’t know they do until they bump into
something that triggers the memory.”

“Like
Dottie,” I say.

“Like
Dottie,” Lukas confirms.

“Name’s
Akaela,” my sister protests.

Good. She’s still part of the conversation
.

“So, when you
saw Tahari in the forest, he was following an engram?” Wes asks.

“Probably
the man who was with him had the engram, and now they must be looking for the
other ones. They’re the only clues to finding the other keys—assuming one
key is what they removed from the clearing. Unless they’ve already found the
other ones.”

“You think
the cylinder contained one of the keys?” Dottie says.

“Probably,”
Lukas replies. “And we needed another engram to unlock it.”

I slap my
knees in frustration. “Memories. Those are memories, Lukas. How are we supposed
to find memories that aren’t our own?”

Wes raises
a hand. “I, uh—I may have an idea.”

Lukas and
I stare at him, but before he can explain, my sister sits up, flings her legs
off the bed and snaps, “You guys don’t get it. Yuri and Cal have a rocket out
there in the forest. They can kill us all if they want to.”

Wes
winces. “They’re building a rocket? Is that why some of the trunks looked
burnt?”

Akaela
nods. “And they have an accomplice, too.” She rubs her forehead and closes her
eyes. “Somebody else was there. It all happened so fast, I can’t remember
clearly now.”

“Must’ve
been Hennessy,” I say.

“I
think—no, this person was shorter than Hennessy, with longer hair, but so
fast I couldn’t get a grasp of their face. And the rocket… It went off at the
wrong time and that’s how I got away from them. But I’ve seen the thing. It was
out of control today, bouncing off trees and splintering wood. If they perfect
it—”

“Between
the rocket and the laser beams, they’re going to win the weapon challenge,” I
interject.
 

A small
bug crawls out of Lukas’s satchel and flicks its tiny antennae. Lukas doesn’t
seem to notice. “That’s what
you
think,” he says, flashing a devious smile. He turns off his data feeder, sets
it down, and dips a hand inside his satchel.

“Where did
it—”

The bug
creeps down to the floor. Wes raises a hand, ready to swat it, but Lukas pushes
him away and scoops up the insect in his cupped hand.

“Stop!”

He lets
the bug climb to the tip of his index finger and shows it to us. “Ladies and
gentlemen,” he says solemnly, “meet Scrub. Scrub is the future winner of the
Kiva challenge.”

Chapter Eight

Athel

Day Number: 1,585

Event: Lukas can make microbots out of
droid legs

Number of Mayakes left: 429

Goal for today: Get more droid legs so
Lukas can make more bugs.

Akaela rolls in her bed and
snorts. “A bug,” she says. “I can’t believe it. Lukas is convinced he’ll win
the Kiva challenge with a bug.”

“He calls
it a microbot,” I reply. “Not a
real
bug.”

It’s
midnight and neither of us can sleep. Wes and Lukas left shortly after ten, but
not before Lukas lectured us on all the cool things his microbot bug could do.
Including winning a war, according to him, with the little caveat that he would
need an army of those tiny bots, not just one.

Dottie
can’t get over it. “You guys are crazy.”

“Genius is
the word,” I correct her. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the crickets
chirping through the open window. Windows never close at the Tower. The glass
panes shattered during the 2189 attack and were never replaced.

“Athel,”
Dottie calls, her voice squashed to a whisper.

“What?”

“Somebody
was in the forest.”

“You told
me.”

“No.
Somebody… different.”

“How
different?”

“They were
injured.”

I flinch.
“Nobody reported injuries. Not today, not yesterday.”

“I know. I
tell you, it was all very weird.”

“Maybe you
imagined it. I mean, they did beat you up pretty badly and—”

“I did
not.”

The
springs of her bed whine in protest, closing the argument.

I sigh,
toss and turn, and can’t sleep. So I hop out of bed, walk to the window and
stare into the night. The river gargles its song as it snakes around the Tower
and down by the mesa. Kael’s out hunting, his black silhouette framed by puffs
of silvery clouds. A sliver of moon peeks through the clouds and casts dim rays
across the landscape. A light bobs across the solar fields. Fireflies, I think,
but then realize they’d have to be gigantic for me to spot them from up here.

Ash stirs
from Akaela’s bed and comes to rub his side against my legs.

“I’m going
back,” I say.

“Back
where?”

 
“Back to the forest.”

Akaela
raises her head. “Now? You have to go
now
?”

I pick up
my backpack and check that I still have my penknife and all my other gear in
there. Ash thinks it’s all a fun game and starts chasing the strings of my
backpack as I drag it around the room looking for stuff. All the lights are
off, yet he and I can move around with the ease of nocturnal animals.

“Mom’s
sleeping, and you won’t tell her a thing.”

“Why now, Athel?
Are you nuts? Oh, wait. That second question was rhetorical.”

I grin.
“It runs in the family, you know? I need to go now because the droids aren’t
active during the night.”

She sits
up and gets out of bed. “Well, then, I’ll go with you.”

“No.” I
know she can’t see me as well as I can see her, since our room is lit only by
the glow of moonlit clouds, but I frown at her just the same. “I’m the only one
who can see at night. That’s why I need to go alone.”

Her face
is bruised and scraped, her upper lip split open and puffy. The sight makes me
seethe with anger. “You’d better stay home, Dottie,” I add, lowering my voice.
“Mom’s already very upset with you, and those two brothers—” I swallow.
“Wait until I get my hands on them.”

She slumps
back on her pillow. Ash climbs onto the bed and curls up on her stomach.
“Please make sure I’m there when you do that. I want to enjoy every minute of
it.”

“You’d
better stay away from them, Dottie. What were you thinking going after them in
the first place? Those two aren’t going to stop until—” I bite my lip,
close my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. “I don’t know what they’re
capable of. Just stay away from them.”

Akaela
scoffs. “You sound just like Mom.”

“Well
maybe it’s bec—”

Something
flies out of my backpack and drops to the floor. It’s the piece of fabric
encrusted with blood we found back at the gorge. I never took a close look at
it, just shoved it into my pack as we busied ourselves carrying back the droid
leg. And now, as I stare at it under the mellow light fanning in from the
window, I realize the fabric isn’t really fabric. All our clothes are made of
hemp and cotton we grow ourselves, but this—this one’s different. The
part untouched by blood is smooth and elastic, the color a steel gray that shines
under the light from the window.

“What is
it?” Akaela asks.

I sit at
the edge of her mattress and show it to her. She turns on the small lamp
clipped to the bedpost and takes it from my hands. I close my eyes, the sudden
light too bright for my sensors.

“It’s
nylon,” Dottie says.

“Nylon?”

She nods.
“Same stuff my sail is made of.”

I hold the
piece of bloodied nylon between my fingers, my thoughts reeling. “Right. Not
clothing, then.” I jerk to my feet and leap to the door. “Bye, Dottie. I gotta
go.”

Akaela
juts her chin at me and pouts. “I wanna go with you,” she whispers.

“You
better not,” I say and step out.

*
 
*
 
*

By the time I get out, the light I
spotted earlier bobbing across the solar field is gone. But I’ve got Kael on my
side, my faithful falcon with the nose of a bear. He can help me track
anything.

Or
anyone
.

Summer
nights smell of dry weeds and sunbaked earth. Swarms of insects buzz low in the
grass; crickets chirp, moths banquet on wild flowers, and owls hoot in the
distance.

The world
looks black and white to me at night, the colors drained. Maybe that’s why I
suddenly notice all the smells and sounds. Taeh’s hooves flatten the grass as
we leave the barn and head toward the forest. High above, Kael caws, dark
sentinel of our night skies. I raise my gloved arm and whistle. On cue, the
falcon comes down and perches himself on my shoulder.

“I’ve got
a plan, my friend,” I tell him.

As we
enter the forest, Taeh relies on her nose and ears to orient herself along the
labyrinthine trails snaking amongst the trees. We hike around slanted walls
draped in vines and moss, and over roots knotted around ancient foundations.

So many walls and never a door or a window
. It makes
me wonder what the keys in the Astraca symbol are for, the
chavis
Lukas talks so fondly of. What kind of doors do they open?
Why are they so important?

I stop at
Beacon Rock, where Wes and I found Akaela just a few hours ago, take the
bloodied piece of nylon out of my pocket, and present it to Kael. Our falcon is
a cyborg too, and his olfactory sensors are better than a hound’s. He opens his
beak, bobs his head, and a moment later he’s off, following the lead I gave
him.

The pale
clouds I spotted earlier from the Tower are now veiling the sky, their glow
blinking through the treetops. Compared to daytime, at night the forest seems
alive, the vegetation breathing, the animals scuttling, hooting, creaking, and
even bickering.

Taeh
proceeds quietly, her steps cautious. Kael flies from branch to branch, waiting
for us at each stop. I wonder how much he can track from a two-day-old bloody
piece of garment in an environment like this, drenched in scents from both
animals and plants.

He seems
to glide aimlessly for a while, until he stops on the low branch of an old oak
and refuses to depart again. I dismount and check the tree. The trunk is
chipped on one side, the bark dented and burnt at the edges.

Could’ve been the rocket Akaela talked about
.

I stand by
the tree and stomp my feet. The turf feels soft, muffling my steps through a layer
of moss and dead leaves. I follow the massive roots of the oak as they jut out
and then dig back into the ground, grappling off the edge of a ravine. I crouch
then hop down the slanting terrain covered in rocks and more vegetation, my
legs knee-deep in ferns. One false step and I trip, my left foot sucked into a
hole. I grunt and pull it out. Taeh snorts, while Kael flaps his wings and
moves to a different tree.

“Great
help you guys are,” I mumble.

I reach
for a small branch above me, snap it off, and test the ground ahead of me for
more holes. I move to the right, close to a large root that arches from the oak
tree down into the ravine, and cautiously slide to the bottom. And once there,
I finally see it. The roots of the oak tree form a roof and underneath, the
land caves into a small opening, sustained on one side by a cracked wall.

I pull
aside the blanket of vines and ferns draping the opening, crouch, and lean
inside. Cold, humid air brushes my face. My eyes take a few seconds to adjust
to the complete darkness, and when they finally do, it’s almost as if they’re
lying to me, my brain unable to comprehend the image scanned by my sensors.

Curled
against the underground roots of the oak tree, lies the strangest and yet most
beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.

I step
back and reemerge from the vegetation, pondering what to do, when Taeh lets out
a distressed whinny. I climb back up, but before I can reach my horse, a sudden
light shines in my face, blinding me.

I raise a
hand to my eyes and yell, “Who are you?”

As my
voice resonates in the darkness, a rapid rustle behind me tells me that
whatever was hiding in the niche below the oak roots is now gone.

*
 
*
 
*

I try to move toward Taeh but the
light keeps shining in my eyes, preventing me from seeing. I hear footfalls
approaching.

“Who are
you?” I shout again.

“Athel?”

The call
comes from farther away—a second man, one whose voice is surprisingly
familiar. He steps forward and pushes down the light in his companion’s
hand.
 

“It’s ok,”
Tahari explains. “I know him.”

My eyes
take a few moments to readjust. As I squint at the two men standing in front of
me, their grainy silhouettes gradually shift into familiar faces.

One is
Tahari, our Kiva leader. He holds a long walking stick and leans against it
while peering at me with small, inquiring eyes. Next to him is a short man
whose wiry hair spill into a shapeless, rust-colored beard. He’s the one who
was with Tahari the night Dottie and I spied the two of them digging in the
forest. And now that I see his face I recognize him as one of the rice farmers.
I’ve seen him leave at dawn with the other farmers to tend the crops upstream
of the river.

“What are
you doing out here in the middle of the night, Athel?” Tahari asks.

“I could
ask you the same question,” I reply. Snotty, I realize, but politeness is not
exactly my forte at three in the morning. I keep a hand cupped around my eyes
and ask, “Can you please turn that off? It’s burning my sensors.”

The man
holding the flashlight sends an interrogative look to our Kiva leader. At
Tahari’s nod, he turns the flashlight off.

Tahari
stares at me, his pupils dilated now that darkness has returned. He tilts his
head, his sagging cheeks tired from lack of sleep, and beats the ground with the
walking stick. “You’re looking for something, Athel?”

He puts a
strange emphasis on the way he pronounces my name—
Aeethel
—as though he wants to make a point that he hasn’t
forgotten me. Or what I’ve done.

“As a
matter of fact,” I say, “I am. What about you?”

The rice
farmer’s eyes widen at my tone—it’s certainly inappropriate for a
seventeen-year-old to address his Kiva leader this way. I wonder if they’ve
been looking for the niche behind me. I feel the urge to go and check it, but I
don’t want to give it away.

Taeh
whinnies. Tahari’s gaze strays over to her, then back to me. “We
are
looking for something,” he says at
last. “And I’m pretty sure we could use your help. Want to join us in our
quest?”

That
catches me off guard, my bravado suddenly deflated. “Help? Me? Why?”

Tahari
beats the ground with his walking stick again and, without steering his eyes
away from me, says to the rice farmer, “Show him, Aghad.”

Aghad
scratches his rusty beard, his wheezing a notch louder. “Show… the boy? Are you
sure we can trust him?”

Tahari
tilts his head, pondering. “I know this boy, Aghad. This boy right here is a
brave young man, one who isn’t afraid of breaking the rules for the greater
good. He’s made mistakes before, and he knows the value of sacrifice. An important
lesson in life.”