Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter (22 page)

He toggled the joystick to highlight his home in Conception, then pulled out a sliding keyboard and typed in his comm number to contact his father when he felt a presence looming over him.

Ray was standing behind him with Sally loitering in the background.

“What are you doing?” Ray said sharply.

Breeze stood up. “Good question. Found this machine running while you two were getting friendly again. Turns out it’s a comm unit and it’s been activated, so I decided to give my father a call over the frequencies.”

Ray looked over Breeze’s shoulder to view the screen. A series of numbers were rapidly scrolling across it and he began to shift his feet nervously.

Breeze turned to look back, then immediately crouched down to get a better look. The screen was scrolling as it shifted away from his hometown and drifted to the east, then north, where it zeroed in on a location in the North Eastern Territories, when the screen suddenly went blank and the hum of electricity was silenced.

Breeze shot up and was greeted by the sight of Ray holding up a cable from the back of the machine.

“Sorry, technical malfunction.” He grinned.

Breeze lunged and shoved him, sending Ray falling into another machine. He hit it hard and cried out as he fell over and the tarp covering the machine came down with him.

“What’s the matter with you?” Breeze stood over Ray and roared.

Ray looked at him with seething rage. “Who do you think you are? How dare you push me—”

“Stop it! Both of you!” Sally shoved Breeze aside and knelt down to check on Ray.

He pushed her away. “I’m fine. There is nothing this desert rat could do to hurt me. He just doesn’t know what he’s in for.”

Sally put a hand up to his face. “Stop it!” She shook her head. “Sometimes Raymond, I feel I don’t know you anymore.”

She turned to address Breeze, but he had stepped away and stood before another comm unit that was active.

Ray scrambled to his feet and lunged for the power cable that ran from the comm unit to a receptacle on the structural support next to it.

Breeze caught the motion from the corner of his eye. He spun around and grabbed Ray by his jacket collar and flung him into another machine.

Ray scrambled back to his feet and confronted Breeze with glowing fists.

“Do you really want to start a fight with me?” Ray growled.

Breeze wasn’t intimidated by his words. The trimaran accident proved to him that Ray was full of bluster and a bit of a coward. But the maniacal look in his eyes did concern him. It was the same look he’d had when he was steering the trimaran during the storm. To Breeze, it seemed as if Ray became a completely different person during times of high stress. He has seen this back home with test pilots who couldn’t handle the high level of danger they faced every day. Life on the edge made them morph into men made of stone with ice flowing through their veins. But other pilots would crack under the pressure and become almost diabolical in the way they behaved toward others. Veteran pilots would believe in superstitions that claimed these men had picked up a passenger while flying through a storm cloud. He was beginning to wonder if the superstition were true and something similar happened to Ray on the trimaran.

Breeze pointed a finger at him. “Don’t know what your problem is with me. And I really don’t know why you’ve been running around and avoiding me these past couple of weeks. But I aim to find out what you’re doing skulking around here at night. Why did you cut the power to the comm unit I was using? And what were you doing in that elevator shaft?”

Ray raised his fists as they crackled with energy.

Sally boldly stepped in front of him. “Answer him.”

“Get out of the way!” he shouted.

She took a step closer. “You’re acting like a madman. This is how you sent me to the bottom of the bay to drown, and it was Breeze, not you, who rescued me. Ray, you were always so sweet with me. Ever since we were little you would always hover around and protect me. Are you going to hurt me again?”

Ray’s breathing became ragged as his shoulders slumped forward. He lowered his hands and the glow dissipated. “No Sally, I won’t hurt you.”

She reached out and touched his face. “What were you doing in the elevator shaft?”

He looked at her with red and swollen eyes as his heavy breathing subsided to a wheeze. “Found something below. Something weird. Didn’t want to tell you guys about it just yet because, you know, the sailing accident.” He took Sally’s hand from his face and squeezed it. “I was pretty torn up about everything. Felt like I had to prove myself and try to do something right.”

Breeze snorted, prompting Sally to shoot him a nasty look, and then turned back to Ray. “Ignore him. What else did you want to say?”

He pulled her close. “Just that everything I did almost made me lose you. I knew the very next day after the accident what we needed to do. We need to leave this place. It’s no good for us. Not being able to contact our parents is strange and this school feels more like a lonely outpost. This whole place is weird.”

Sally nodded as he spoke.

Bolstered by her compliance, he then addressed Breeze. “I can’t speak for you, but I know Sally and I need to go. I’ve been avoiding you because I thought you would try to sabotage me.”

Breeze was stunned by the statement. “Me? Sabotage you?”

“Yeah, exactly. Look, let’s be honest; we don’t really like each other so I just struck out on my own. I wanted to explore and try to find out what it is about this place that makes me feel crazy sometimes. I figured if I asked you for help, you would laugh at me, or worse, go running to Oslo and say something.”

“Ray you’re rambling. What are you getting at?” Breeze said.

“I’m looking for a way to get out of here.”

Breeze stared at him. “Then just go. Ask Oslo for a transport and leave. Why would he keep you here?”

“Because he wouldn’t understand! He would say no and tell me to stay here until the end of summer.”

Breeze arched an eyebrow. “Did you ask him?”

“No-, I mean yes. I...don’t try to trick me!”

Breeze sighed. “If you were so eager to leave, you could have at any time. Instead, you’ve been running around this place like a ghost doing who knows what. And you still haven’t answered the question. What were you doing in that elevator shaft?”

Sally whimpered as Ray squeezed her hand tightly.

“Why do you keep asking me that? What do you care what I was doing?” Ray said.

“Look, if you want to get off this rock, the hangars are that way.” Breeze jerked a thumb to his left. “I’ve been spending my time hanging around there and trying to get the RF to acknowledge me so I can ask them about the aerocraft they’re fixing. Instead, all I get is stares from those robots as they step away to avoid me, and yet never once did I see you down there trying to get into an aerocraft. If you want to leave, that’s the place to be. Not here, unless you’re trying to contact somebody. Since you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, I’ll just go to the elevator and find out myself.” Breeze broke away from them and strode down the aisle toward the hallway.

“No!” Ray shouted and ran after him.

Breeze didn’t look back as he started to sprint and the faster he ran the more it felt like his feet were lifting off the ground.

He burst into the hallway and smashed into the wall next to the elevator. He stumbled back amidst the dust and debris from the shattered wall and was stunned that he felt no pain.

He heard the sound of running footsteps and turned to see Ray racing toward him with Sally close behind. He lunged to push the call button for the elevator when Ray grabbed him and shoved him away. As Breeze fell back, he managed to grab Ray’s hands, pivot on his heel and send Ray sprawling to the floor.

The elevator chimed and the door slid open. Breeze quickly stepped inside just as Sally arrived.

“I can’t take it with you two fighting all the time-oh!” She began to chastise them when Breeze grabbed her hand and yanked her into the elevator. The door slid shut and they could hear Ray yelling and banging on the door as the elevator descended.

“Why are we going down? Let’s go back!” Sally was frantic.

“There’s no panel to choose a floor. It just seems to run on auto. And no, I’m not going back up for him. He’s a jerk and I don’t know what you see in that guy.”

“Breeze, he’s my friend. I’ve known him since we were kids.”

“Right. Everyone is your friend. Got it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Breeze didn’t answer as the elevator slowed to a halt and the door slid open. They both stepped out and were immediately enveloped by the sound of electrical machinery humming like a swarm of bees as the cavernous room was filled with a greenish glow. It reminded him of the night when the transport delivered him to Perihelion by entering the vortex, and his thoughts turned briefly to Vermillion and Horton and wondered where the two recruiters were.

His musings were interrupted when Sally gripped his arm.

“What is this place?” She looked around wide eyed. “I don’t like it. Let’s go.”

“No, you go. I need to know what Ray found down here.” He broke away from her and began exploring.

She stood and sulked, expecting him to turn around and come back for her. Seeing his determination, she relented and ran after him. “Don’t leave me alone!” she wailed.

He held out a hand. “Then come with me already.”

She hesitated, and then took it and together they walked from one console to another as they marveled at the dizzying array of work stations that were spread out across the room. At the far end was a wall with metal panels partitioned into equal segments.

Breeze pointed at them. “Everything you see here is for whatever is behind those steel panels.”

Sally shrunk back and looked toward the elevator. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

Breeze ignored her and strode toward one of the metal panels to rap his knuckles on it. “Yep, solid steel.”

“Let’s go,” Sally said a little louder.

He ignored her as he scanned the entire expanse of metal paneling and noted how both ends curved into the walls. Breeze took a step back and followed the steel paneling up to the rocky ceiling and saw how it also curved into the rock.

Rock
, he thought to himself,
how deep down are we?

His train of thought was broken by a sound coming from a console before him. He leaned forward and the vid-screen came alive as undecipherable numbers and equations appeared. He pulled back a metal chair that was attached to it on a swing arm and sat down. The moment he did, the entire console lit up and a deep rumble emanated from the ground below. He felt a tiny hand grab his shoulder and turned to look. It was Sally. Her face was contorted in fear. “I’m scared, let’s go,” she said.

Breeze nodded. “All right. Just let me—”

Before he could say another word, the console curved around them forming a circle, then rose into the air as free floating platform.

Sally gripped his shoulders and dug her fingernails into his skin. Breeze grimaced and reached up to grab her hands when the expanse of metal paneling on the wall lowered into the ground, revealing a dimly lit chamber. The console platform lurched forward into the chamber as the green glow throughout the room became even more pronounced.

“Breeze?” Sally whispered.

Her voice was faint and weak, and when he turned to look at her, she had deathly white skin and her eyes were fluttering rapidly.

He shot up and grabbed her before she fell to the floor of the platform. He lowered her into the chair he had been sitting in and patted her face when her eyes opened suddenly.

“Get me out of here,” she said with a trembling voice.

He nodded. “I’m working on it.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the platform tilted into a steep incline, and the green glow became brighter as the platform rushed deeper into the chamber before stopping just a few feet above an iron tube. The deep rumbling from below settled into a vibration that shook the building as chips of stone broke off the ceiling and pelted them. The quaking abruptly ceased, but was followed by the sound of static filling the air.

Breeze leaned over the console to get a better look at the tube. It was in an inclined position and underneath he could see wiring and cabling snaking away from it and into a row of metal cabinets filled with electronic equipment. Breeze looked up saw how the chamber was shaped like a dome with its peak containing a crystalline structure embedded into it.

He felt fingernails digging into his arm and he turned to see Sally pointing weakly in front of her. The iron tube opened lengthwise as both halves rotated down to reveal a man reclined in a metallic chair. His entire body was strapped in a stainless steel mesh that kept him firmly in place. His eyes were closed.

Sally looked away and covered her face. “Make him go away!” she cried out.

Breeze desperately searched for a lever or a joystick, anything that would let him retract the platform out of the chamber when he succumbed to the urge to look at the man.

He was of medium build with dark hair, and as Breeze squinted, he could see his chest gently rising up and down.

Several vid-screens flickered to life around him displaying vital sign readings. He concentrated on a screen that showed heart rate. It was faint, but beating.

The sound of static became overwhelming. Breeze turned to look at Sally, who was beginning to fade into a mirage.

Breeze yelled but couldn’t hear himself. He smashed the console with his fists as he frantically looked for anything that would bring this horror show to an end. He saw a panel to his left with a symbol that contained a circle with several arrows emanating from it. He hit it with his hand and the panel sprung open, revealing an oversized joystick with a pistol grip. He grabbed it and yanked back. The platform responded with a lurch and began to retract.

The man in the chair writhed and convulsed when his eyes fluttered open, revealing glowing orbs that pulsated.

Breeze grabbed the joystick with both hands and pulled back with all his strength. He turned to look at Sally who was slumped in her seat and fading away as her body began to dematerialize.