Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (21 page)

“Is someone else in here with you?” Nanny Theresa says, looking around into the darkness.

“One!” my mother shouts as she suddenly turns and breaks into a sprint, dashing away from Nanny Theresa, her arms blading at her sides as the flare fizzes in her hand.

“Finn!” Bit shouts after my mother as she bolts away into the darkness.

“Come back here!” Nanny Theresa bellows as she sweeps through the air, floating after my mother. “You won’t escape me again!”

“Now, Finn!” My mother’s voice rings inside the small dome, and all of a sudden it opens and instantly disappears into the floor. I quickly stand up, waving the glow stick above my head.

“Bettina! I’m over here!”

With my mother’s flare now streaking through the blackness on the other side of the dome, Bit and the others are in complete darkness, but she must see me as her confused voice echoes through the blackness toward me. “Finn? Is that you?”

Bathed in a halo of glowing green light, Gazelle is off like a shot, and in three and a half strides, she sails though the air and skids to a halt, covering the distance to Bit and Dean and Dr. Pierce in three seconds flat. In the light of the glow stick, I see Gazelle quickly crouch down and grab Bit’s hands, pulling her arms around her neck. Bit screams out in pain, as Nanny Theresa bellows like a monster from the darkness, “Who’s in here?”

Nanny Theresa immediately halts in her tracks, and I can see her dark silhouette turning away from the red halo of the flare as she looks back in the direction of Gazelle’s glow stick. Nanny Theresa holds her hand up high, and a glowing ball begins forming in her palm, lighting up the section of the dome all around her. My mother, suddenly realizing that she’s no longer being chased, skids to a stop and turns on her heels.

“Theresa!” she shouts as Nanny whips her arm, sending the luminescent globe flying through the air. As it travels, it gets brighter and brighter and bigger and bigger, swelling to the size of a beach ball before coming to a stop, hovering in midair right above Gazelle and the others, illuminating the entire dome with bright white light. Even from all the way over here, I can see the rage on Nanny Theresa’s face as our deception is revealed.

With Bit clutching on to her, Gazelle leaps back toward me, and after a few powerful bounds, she skids to a halt right beside me. Gazelle gently lowers a grimacing Bit to the floor, and I immediately crouch down beside her. Bit looks up at me with a mixed expression of pain and confusion.

“Finn?” she whispers bewilderedly.

“Yeah, it’s really me this time,” I say with a little smile. “Get the others!” I yell at Gazelle. She nods and takes off toward Dean and Dr. Pierce.

“Where’s Brody?” Bit asks. “That crazy woman took our walkie-talkies. Is he OK?”

“He’s safe,” I reply. “C’mon, I’ll take you to him.”

The hatch is a few feet away, and as I help Bit up, I glance over my shoulder to see my mother sprinting at a glowering Nanny Theresa, hurtling toward her from behind. My mother has almost reached her when Nanny Theresa’s whole body suddenly drops in a straight line, vanishing down into the floor as if a trapdoor has opened up beneath her feet.

My mother skids over the spot where Nanny Theresa was standing and looks in our direction with panic in her eyes. She quickly dives at the floor, disappearing into it as if it were water in a swimming pool, leaving the still-burning flare spinning like a Catherine wheel on the solid black surface behind her.

Bit and I reach the hatch. “Quickly,” I say, pulling the lid open. “Let’s get you out of here.”

All of a sudden the lid of the hatch slams shut, and the shiny black floor around it becomes liquid. It washes over the closed hatch and then solidifies into floor again. “No!” I shout as I drop to my knees and claw at the spot where the hatch used to be.

In a rush of air, Gazelle slides to a stop beside me, with a loose-limbed Dean flopped over her shoulders in a firefighter’s hold. She lowers him to the floor and takes off again as an amorphous blob begins rising from the ground six feet away. Panic ripples through me as it reaches its full height and carves itself into a fully formed, menacingly glowering Nanny Theresa. I jump to my feet and begin walking backward, shielding Bit as Nanny Theresa slowly glides across the floor toward us.

“Tricky, tricky, girl,” she seethes as her right arm begins morphing into the shape of a long, sharp, shiny black pointed spear. “This needs to end, child, and it needs to end now,” Nanny Theresa says as she draws her spear arm back, preparing to strike.

“Sorry, not today,” says my mother’s voice. Suddenly, my mother’s hand grabs Nanny Theresa’s neck from behind. Her other hand grips Theresa’s thigh, and in one fluid maneuver, she easily lifts a wriggling Nanny Theresa in a straight-armed press high up over her head.

“Unhand me, Genevieve!” Nanny Theresa wails. My mother has changed back into herself again, but the beauty of her elegant white dress is a stark contrast to the determined frown on her face as she turns away, takes two quick steps, and, without the faintest hint of effort or strain, throws Nanny Theresa twenty feet through the air, clear across the dome.

Nanny Theresa sails through the air, flailing her arms, but instead of landing hard on the floor, her body completely disintegrates into a mass of black liquid in midflight, speckling the glossy ground and part of the crumpled transport wreckage in the distance like droplets of oily rain.

I look over at Gazelle, wondering why it’s taking her so long to retrieve Dr. Pierce, and I immediately see the reason as the gagged and bound old man bucks and kicks while Gazelle desperately tries to wrangle a hold on him.

My mother forcefully waves her hand over the floor where the hatch was, and the glossy sheen covering it slides away. “Quickly,” she says, looking anxiously from side to side.

I immediately dash at the hatch, and I’m taken by surprise as it suddenly flies open with a loud clunk and an arm reaches out of the opening and slaps onto the shiny floor. A heavily wheezing Brody hauls himself into the dome, looking around bewilderedly at all of us.

“Brody!” Bit wails, and Brody’s eyes light up. He quickly crawls to his feet, lumbers toward her, and wraps his arms around her. She grimaces with pain for a second, but that gives way to a smile as she looks up at his flushed and sweaty face.

“Brody! Get her out of here,” I yell at him. He gets the message, and with one arm around Bit, he begins quickly walking her back to the hatch. I look back at Gazelle. She’s given up trying to carry Dr. Pierce, but she’s already halfway back, dragging the struggling man behind her by the collar of his lab coat as quickly as she can.

My mother is clearly on edge as she scans the dome for any sign of Nanny Theresa, and we don’t have to wait for long. The hatch slams shut at Brody’s and Bit’s feet, and the liquid floor slides over it and hardens again. My mother waves her hand at it, and the floor recedes but only a few inches before sliding back into place. She tries again, but the same thing happens, so she tries yet again but still to no avail.

Gazelle drags Dr. Pierce over and has only just deposited him beside Dean when Nanny Theresa erupts from the floor ten feet away and hurtles toward our little group. Her face is twisted into a malicious sneer, her silver-gray eyes are sparkling with rage, and both of her forearms are sharpened into deadly spear tips.

My mother quickly waves her arms, and a circular wall springs from the floor, enclosing all of us inside a bright white dome. Two black spear tips puncture through the side of our enclosure, raining shattered fragments of white onto the floor inside. Bit screeches in Brody’s embrace as Gazelle reflexively snaps into a fighting stance. The spears withdraw, and my mother thrusts her outstretched hand toward the holes in the canopy of the dome. The holes instantly heal shut but are immediately replaced as Nanny Theresa slams her sharpened arms through the side of the enclosure again.

“Is there any other way out of here?” I whisper as my mother concentrates on closing the new ruptures in the dome.

“I can open a gap in the main wall,” she replies.

“Is that the only way?” I ask. “There are things out there somewhere, robotic spiders that—”

“I know,” replies my mother. “I felt them through the motion sensors and tried to sever them from Onix’s control, but I failed. I can’t stop them, but I was able to create a false motion reading and lead them away into Sector C. They won’t stay there for long, but it should give you enough time to get everyone to the school bus.”

“You’re amazing,” I say, looking admiringly at my mother.

“Thank you, sweetheart. I’ve been here for a long time. I know my way around,” she says with a smile. “Now, I think I may be able to breach the outer wall of the dome, but the system that controls it is separate from the floor. It will take all my concentration to access it, which means I won’t be able to protect you and your friends.”

“I can protect them, Mother.”

“You’re a brave young woman, Finn,” she says, smiling warmly. “Creating a breach will be difficult, but to
keep
it open, I will have to leave some of my code inside the dome wall. Once I do that, I may lose my ability to manipulate the quantum grains altogether, and if that happens, you must be prepared. Theresa will stop at nothing to prevent you from leaving.”

“I understand. How long will you need to create a breach?” I ask as Nanny Theresa slams her spear-tipped arms through the enclosure wall again.

“I’m not sure,” my mother says as she waves her hand at the holes. “I’ll be as quick as I can, but it may still take me thirty or forty seconds, a minute at the most.”

“I’ll get you the time.”

My mother looks at me with a mixed expression of concern and pride. “Then let’s get you to the main wall,” she says with a determined glare. My mother waves her hands, and the small dome opens up and drops into the floor, revealing Nanny Theresa standing before us in all her fearsome glory, her arms rearing back for another strike. My mother grasps the empty air right in front of her, and suddenly a huge glossy white copy of her own hand lunges up out of the floor at her feet and grabs Nanny Theresa’s whole body in a giant fist, lifting her up off the ground. Before Nanny has a chance to escape, my mother quickly swipes her hand through the air, and the giant, shiny copy of her arm mimics her movement exactly as it forcefully tosses Nanny Theresa away like a tiny rag doll. In midflight Nanny Theresa splatters apart into a shower of black droplets, and my mother quickly turns to me. “Hurry, join your friends.”

I nod without question and dash over to the others. Brody is still gently embracing Bit; Gazelle is on guard, glaring warily from side to side for any sign of Nanny Theresa; Dr. Pierce is still bound and gagged with strips of shiny black; and Dean is sitting cross-legged on the ground, smiling happily at the black curve of the dome high above him. I stand beside Brody and Bit and look back at my mother.

“Hold on!” she yells as she thrusts her open palm toward our little group. Brody and I both gasp, and Bit lets out a little screech as the floor bulges, rising like an ocean wave, sweeping us off our feet and sending us slipping along the glossy floor, carried by a gigantic ripple of shiny black. The base of the wave is so smooth that it’s like riding a perpetually moving slide at a children’s playground. Gazelle manages to maneuver around into a low crouch of sorts and kinda surfs the ripple; in fact she glances back at me with a look of delight on her face as we all speed toward the towering wall of the dome. Dean is skimming along on his back, a grunting Dr. Pierce is lying down, drifting sideways, and Brody is clutching on to Bit as they glide alongside me.

As we approach the curving boundary of Dome Two, the wave begins to wane, sinking back down into the floor as all of us come to a gentle stop ten feet from the dome wall.

I look back at my mother and see her quickly turn and dive in our direction, disappearing into the surface of the floor.

“We’re gonna open a breach in the wall,” I bark at Gazelle. “Get everyone through it as soon as you can.”

“Of course, Commander,” she replies.

“Commander?” Bit says, looking from me to Gazelle and back again.

Gazelle puts a hand on Bit’s shoulder. “It’s a long story,” she says, mimicking my voice, then she glances at me with a cheeky smile.

I smile back. “It really is,” I say to a very confused-looking Bit.

Suddenly a glossy black form hisses up from the floor, rising right beside me. Bit, Brody, Gazelle, and I all flinch, and I’m immediately on guard, but relief washes through me as the shape morphs into my mother.

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” she says, clearly not wasting any time as she strides over to the wall of the dome and presses her open palms against it. She groans quietly, her head droops forward, and she goes as still as a statue.

“Mother?” I say, looking over at her in concern.

She doesn’t answer. But it makes sense; she did say it would take all of her focus to do this.

“That’s your mom?” asks Brody.

“Yes,” I reply. “And she’s gonna need a minute to get us out of here, so I’m going to buy her some time.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but . . . please be careful, Finn,” says a clearly worried Bit.

I nod, take a deep breath, then turn and walk away from the group into the wide-open space of the dome floor.

“I’m here!” My voice echoes out into the cavernous area. “I’m facing you just like you wan—”

Suddenly there’s a spitting hiss. I feel a sharp, searing pain, and a woeful groan croaks from my lips.

“Finn!” Bit screeches.

“Commander!” shouts Gazelle.

I can’t move my legs, and my mind has gone white with shock. I’m rapidly gasping at the air, and adrenaline is pumping through my body as I slowly and reluctantly look down to see a four-foot-long shiny black spike jutting from the floor in front of me. With wide, tear-filled eyes, I trace along its length, from its base all the way up to where my blood is beginning to soak my hooded top. The spike has skewered a fist-size hole right through my stomach. Blind panic surges through me as I stare in disbelief at the thick lance impaling my gut, the gruesome sight framed on either side by my hovering hands and trembling fingers. A glossy black blob begins rising from the floor in front of me, and to my absolute horror, the spike begins to move with it. I grab a tight hold of the spike and throw my head back, screaming out in agonizing pain as I’m lifted clean off the shiny black ground, with my feet dangling uselessly beneath me.