Awakening on Orbis (17 page)

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“Leave it alone, JT,” Max called out.

“He is my prisoner,” Queykay responded as he stopped in front of the wall of guards.

“What did he do?” I asked

“Darja didn’t do anything!” Grace said, and kicked one of the guards with her boot. The guard only glanced over his shoulder at her.

Queykay threw back his crimson robe and reached behind the guards as if digging into a shipping crate. He surfaced with his rigid white fingers ensnared in Max’s hair and dragged her to the front.

“Maybe I should arrest everyone to prove my point,” he said with a snarl.

“Don’t you touch her!” I yelled.

“I can do whatever I want. I am a Trading Council member.
You
are nothing.”

Queykay’s brood scrambled down his arm and reached for Max’s hair as well. They were getting bigger now, more than ten centimeters long. Queykay barked something at them, and they scurried back into his robe. Max’s toes clicked on the floor as he lifted her higher off the ground.

“Stop it!” Ketheria yelled at him. “Put her down.”

“If you hurt her, Queykay, I swear, I’ll —”

“You’ll do nothing unless I tell you to do it,” he hissed. I watched in vain as Max clawed at the alien’s hand.

“We’ll see about that,” I said, and moved toward the guards.

“Don’t!” Max screamed, but I would not stop.

As I moved, I adjusted the strength and torque settings in my right arm and used it as a battering ram on the four guards. I hit the middle one, hoping to buckle its armor and send them scattering. As my arm made impact, I heard the metal crunch and then snap apart as the guards scattered. I spun around, ready to attack Queykay, but the guards re-formed and surrounded me, their plates locking together again without a scratch.

“How pathetic,” Queykay sneered. “You? As the Tonat?”

“Let them go!” I yelled from within my makeshift cell.

“He is my prisoner. He is charged with treason. I have proof that he has been tampering with the taps and spreading lies around the rings. His punishment is death.”

“No!” Grace cried.

Nugget ran toward Queykay, his big snout open. He clamped onto Queykay’s leg as the guards broke rank and turned on him. As Nugget bit down, Queykay screamed and released Max from his grip. She fell to the floor and rolled away from Queykay. I moved toward her.

“I’m fine,” she said.

I looked up and saw Queykay remove a long, silvery talon from under his cloak.

“Don’t!” Ketheria screamed.

He raised it over Nugget’s head. The four guards that circled me broke rank and lashed at Nugget with black metal prods. In an instant, they had each secured one of Nugget’s limbs with a lasso of sorts that was attached to the end the prod. They pulled, lifting Nugget off the ground as I leaped toward them.

“You’re hurting him!” Max yelled.

Just as Queykay was about to bring the talon down upon Nugget, the hallway went silent. Queykay slid into a state of motionlessness, his eyes locked on Ketheria. The air around us was so still, I could hear my heartbeat. I could even hear Max breathing behind me.

I looked down the corridor and then back the other way. It seemed as if everything was a little less colorful, a little less in focus. Frozen in their attack, Queykay and his goons did nothing as Ketheria moved toward Nugget and untangled him from the metal prods.

“Are you doing this, Ketheria?” I asked.

But she didn’t say anything. She worked quickly to get Nugget loose, and I moved in to help, snapping the prods in half with my robotic arm.

“What sort of powers
do
you have?” I whispered.

Once Nugget was free, she looked at me and said in a hushed voice, “I don’t really know. I find new ones every cycle.”

With everyone still locked in some sort of alternate reality, Ketheria turned to me and said, “I suggest you leave.”

“Wait!” I protested. “He’s not safe.” I pointed at Darja. “Queykay will take revenge on him — I guarantee you that.”

“Queykay will not remember a thing. Nor will the guards. At least I don’t think so,” she replied, and turned to Darja. “Where were you when this all started?”

“I was in my room,” he said.

“Go back there. I will meet you there shortly. Queykay will attempt to arrest you as he did before, but I will be there with a Keeper and a Nagool. They will not let Queykay take you. Max, Grace, take him there now, please.”

Then Ketheria put her arm around Nugget’s shoulder and started to lead him away.

“But wait. I don’t know when I will see you again,” I said.

“You will. That’s all that matters.”

Ketheria disappeared down the corridor and I turned to Max, but she had already disappeared with Grace and Darja.

“Max?”

I looked up at Queykay, who was still staring at the spot where Nugget once was. I stepped toward him and reached up with my hand, waving it in front of his icy face.

“I wish you could stay like this forever,” I whispered.

With my forefinger and thumb, I picked at the edge of Queykay’s sleeve and lifted it up, hoping for a glimpse of the tiny creatures nurturing themselves off Queykay’s body. Before my eyes were able to crack the darkness of his sleeve, two bloodred eyes launched themselves at me. A zipper’s worth of pointed white teeth sparkled as they broke from the shadows, and I fell back, horrified. The little worm landed on my leg screeching as it tore at my pants, trying to burrow itself into my leg. With a quick sharp blow, I struck the abomination with my right hand and watched it skitter across the stone. I was on my feet and down the corridor before it even turned around.

I sat up in my sleeper.
Theodore will be here soon,
I thought. I had tried to sleep, but instead I’d lain awake berating myself the entire spoke. I was ashamed at how useless I had been against Queykay and his goons. What good was I going to be to Ketheria? What could the Trust teach me that wasn’t better than these powers she kept developing? I hoped I had made the right decision.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to stop at the chow synth before I went to the meeting with Theodore. I needed to get that food dispenser to manufacture Tic’s lifesaving potion into some sort of solid form, like the food tablets we ate at Weegin’s World. There was no one at the chow synth when I entered, and I was glad for that. I poked into the synth’s chip, and despite the infinite array of choices, I could not figure out how to change a liquid to a solid. The synth would let me freeze and dehydrate, which I thought might work, but it would not let me make a tablet. I pulled out and called Vairocina for help.

“I was wondering when you were going to call,” she said.

“Can you help?”

“Let me link through the chow synth,” she replied as she materialized before me.

“I guess you know I’m leaving.”

“I do,” she said.

“I should have called you to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye? I assumed I was coming with you.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about bringing Vairocina.

“I was told I could not bring anything — I mean anyone!” I said, correcting myself and trying to sound as if I had already thought about this. “Besides, I would feel much better if I knew you were still here keeping an eye on everyone for me. I have no idea what my training is going to be like or even how long I will be gone. I really need you here. I’m sure if anything goes wrong, you can get a message to me through Theylor or Drapling.”

“So, this is good-bye then?”

“It’s more like see you in a while.”

Vairocina dropped her head as if she were looking at the ground.

“It’s getting boring in here,” she whispered. “It’s so much more exciting when I’m inside your arm, going places with you.”

“I’ll be back, and it will be like I never left. I need you here, V,” I said, hoping Theodore’s nickname would help.

She smiled. It was a small smile, but it was better than nothing. “I’ll try to find the link the Keepers use with the Trust, and maybe I can communicate with you through that,” she said.

“That would be perfect,” I told her. “Now, any chance you can help make this thing spit out some magic tablets for me? I’m going to need a lot.” I was also thinking about taking some for Switzer.

“My pleasure,” she replied.

By the time I returned to my room, Theodore was waiting for me to go to the secret meeting. I had half expected to find a couple of Space Jumpers waiting for me instead.

“I thought Max was going to be with you,” I said.

“She went with Grace.”

“Does she know I’m coming?”

“Yes, she does, but Darja doesn’t think this is a good idea.”

“Darja?”

“You know, that kid. He changed his name again.”

I shook my head. “How long do these meetings take?” I asked him.

“Usually most of the spoke,” he replied.

With the tablets spread between two pockets in the legs of my pants, I slipped Quirin’s disc into my back pocket. I had become used to traveling light, and I saw nothing else worth taking. I tossed my skin onto my sleeper.

“You’re not coming back, are you?” Theodore asked. There was a little worry in his voice.

“Not for a while, I’m beginning to think.”

Theodore checked and rechecked each corridor leading to the far end of our building and away from Queykay’s quarters, counting his steps as we moved. When he was sure no one was watching, he overrode the security panel at the back exit of the building using a crude-looking uplink attached to his neural port. A small blinking box dangled in the middle of the hardwire. When it turned blue, the door opened.

“How did you learn to do that?” I whispered.

“Max showed me.”

As we sprinted across the open compound and into Murat, Hach’s suspicions that one of us was involved in the attack on Ketheria trickled into my thoughts.
That’s just ridiculous,
I told myself.

The city was rotating into shadow, and the building lights blinked on in sequence as the city was slowly swallowed up by the encroaching darkness. I stayed close to Theodore as he picked up the pace and raced toward the darkness. This was my favorite time on the rings. Sparkling reflections of red and gold replaced the dirt and grime, which seemed to wash away with the receding light. Things that once looked decrepit and uninviting now shimmered in the golden dusk.

This was also the same time of cycle that Max had taken me to the concert in Murat and the time we’d held hands while watching the musician play those strange glass bowls on Orbis 3. This was also the time Max and I would leave the Labyrinth and head home after a Quest-Nest match last rotation. It was in this same dusky glow that Max and I would walk in the garden behind Charlie’s, and it was the same time of the cycle that Max and I often strolled through Murat. I loved this time of cycle.

Theodore and I stopped in front of the podlike living quarters that stacked up and over the street. Using a control pad, he punched in a long access code, one I would never have been able to remember.

“We can’t possibly be meeting in one of these things, can we?” I said.

“Keep it down,” he whispered. “We’re not.”

One pod broke rank, rotated silently to the street level, and then cracked open. Theodore reached inside and pulled out a tap that he attached to his neural port.

“What’s it say?” I asked.

He pulled the tap out and dropped it on the ground. Then he crushed it under the heel of his boot. “I got it,” he announced, and turned up the street. All I could do was stare at the shards of plastic on the ground. What had happened to the Theodore I knew? The one who avoided trouble like a Trefaldoor avoided a lie?

“Wait up!” I called after him.

“It’s not far,” he said, pointing up ahead.

“Does everyone find out about the meeting this way?”

“Pretty much. It changes, though, when we think someone might be watching us.”

I turned and looked behind me to see if that was the case, but I saw no one. “Who sets this up? I mean who’s going to these great lengths to keep this hidden?”

“We are,” he replied.

“I know that, but who’s the leader, who’s the head guy?”

“Oh, we’ve never met them. We’re just one cell. There are hundreds, just like us, waiting all over the ring.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For orders.”

“Orders for
what
?”

“Well, obviously we’re waiting for the big order, the one that tells us we’re going to fight for our freedom. When the Keepers and the Trading Council go at it, we’ll be ready to spring into action. But mostly it’s little things. Like that tap back there. I’m sure someone in some cell was given an order to place that there. They had no idea why; they just did it.”

“Have you ever had one of these orders?”

“Lots.”

“Wait,” I said, stopping in the street. “What’s going on here, Theodore?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone running around following these orders, with no connections to the big picture. Think about it. How easy would it be to set up an assassin to take out Ketheria? No one would really know what had happened. All these little things could be put in place without anyone ever knowing they were helping to kill the Scion. Think about that.”