Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (21 page)

Leonidas smirked. “I’m sure you can tell me to the nearest minute.”

Probably. She’d spent only a few days in Oasis, but she’d paid very close attention—and had read the enormous safety procedure book in the lab.

“A long time, Leo,” was all she said. There was no need to let him know his mocking words had gotten under her skin. That would be like releasing blood into the water when sharks were around. “So, once you get to the lever, you first check the valves. Right now, the thrusters are still being managed by the city’s control room. The valves are only used when the electricity is down. When the valves are not being used, they should all be closed.”

She set her hands on the lever and tried to turn it to the right. It didn’t move.
 

“This one is closed, but please double check each one before removing the lever. We want them closed. Except the last one we each remove. Those three valves need to be opened.”

She flicked the lever with her finger. “Ok, then. After checking the valve, you need to remove the lever. Your screwdriver will do most of the work for you.”

Marin set the screwdriver head against the single screw holding the lever to the wall. When she squeezed down on the button, the buzz of a rapidly-turning electric screwdriver bounced off the metallic piping. Vibrations shot up her arm, tingling her skin.

“Use both hands to operate the screwdriver,” she called out over the noise. With only a one-handed hold, the pressure of the rapid rotations could throw the screwdriver from their hands.

Marin watched the screw turn loose, her eyes scanning over its threads. Hmm, they'd picked a ‘fine’ screw. That didn’t make any sense. She could have removed a ‘coarse’ screw in half the time. Besides, the threads on a fine screw were meant for precision devices. There was nothing precise about a fat lever you turned with pure brute force.

The lever loosened, then suddenly dropped. Ariella’s hand shot out, catching it before it hit the ground. It was a good thing, too. That would have made quite a racket.

“Oh,” said Marin, sliding the screwdriver into her hip holster.

Ariella held out the lever. “Oh?”

Marin took the lever from her and tucked it into her bag. She slid in the tablet and keyboard beside it, then pulled the zipper shut. “Never mind.”

Suddenly, the choice of a fine-threaded screw made sense. The extra time it took to remove a screw with closely-placed threads meant there was at least
some
warning before the lever suddenly popped out.

“Just keep an eye on the lever. Catch it before it falls to the floor. The noise could attract attention. Or if it hits your foot, it would make all the running you have to do more difficult.”

Ariella gave her an indulgent smile. Ok, maybe the comment about not dropping levers was too obvious. Marin doubted the silver-haired Elition would ever drop anything on her foot. She could probably also run the entire ten kilometer lap around the city in well under fifteen minutes, and no injury would take her body more than a few seconds to heal. Some things in life weren’t fair, and Marin’s lack of Elition healing powers was one of them. All those times she'd hurt herself trying some crazy stunt—skydiving, mountain bicycling, working in her laboratory… She could have made good use of speedy healing.

Marin cleared her throat. The gesture did little to calm her nerves.

“Ok,” she said, looking at Leonidas and Ariella. “Let’s review quickly.” She leaned over to set the two alarms at forty-five and sixty-five minutes on Ariella’s watch. “Before we head out, we start our countdown.” She set the same two alarms on Leonidas’s watch. “The countdown will begin when you hit this button.” She pointed to a grey knob on the right side of the watch, then quickly set her own two alarms. “As we run out of this room, Leonidas will head for…”

He met her prompting gaze and nodded. “The next thruster room on the left side of the city ring. I'll take the levers from that room and the others on that side.”

“I'll use that time to take the tunnel shortcut to the other side of the city,” Marin said. “Just before your first alarm goes off, I'll upload the update to break communication between the control room and the thrusters.

“Now, when Ariella leaves this room she will…”

“Head for the next thruster room on the right side of the ring. I take the levers along that path. At some point along the way, this contraption will start complaining.” Ariella shook her wrist, but the watch was too well secured to flop about.

“Then Ariella and I each muss about inside our respective cable box with the cutters, slashing a bunch of cables,” said Leonidas.

Marin nodded. “That will alert the control room that something is broken in those two rooms, and they'll send technicians. If I’ve timed this correctly, right after the cutting, my update will infect—err, modify their systems to break the city’s internal communications. They'll lose the ability to see or control the thrusters and to contact their technicians. This will buy us enough time to…”

“Continue pilfering the levers from the thruster rooms,” Leonidas supplied. His eyes twinkled. “Hopefully, Ariella is fast enough in her run to keep up.”

Ariella showed him her teeth. “Just a relaxed jog through the city.”

Leonidas stumbled back. “Woo, watch that deranged smile. I hope you’re not auditioning to become the team’s new Silas.”

She shrugged. “I can’t phase my eyes like he can.”

“Thank goodness,” Leonidas muttered under his breath.

Marin clapped her hands together. They both turned their eyes on her, neither looking very pleased with the manner in which she'd gotten their attention. Trying to mask the sheepish expression she knew was creeping across her face, Marin pressed on.

“Even before we make it to the final three thruster rooms in the city, the update has already gone into effect. Because of the malfunctions in the two rooms where we cut the cables, the Helleans will hopefully think that’s where the problem lies and send any technicians there rather than elsewhere in the city. Those two rooms are quite distant from our final three rooms, so that should also give us some time. When the second alarm goes off at sixty-five minutes, we'll manually open the three valves on the far side of the city. We then remove the levers and meet up in the storage room over there, where we'll find the ladder to take us down a few levels to the hangar. By the time we’re there, the city should be over the continent and we can use the equipment in the hangar to jump out. Any questions?”

Leonidas grunted out a broken laugh. “Of course not. It’s all so simple. What in the world could possibly go wrong with such a convoluted plan? You know, besides getting barbecued by Hellean machines or being buried by rubble when we end up crashing the city.”

“Let’s not crash this monstrosity into Elitia,” said Ariella.

“No one is crashing anything. My plan
will
work,” Marin insisted, handing them each a radio.

Leonidas looked at his watch. “Fine, let’s just do this. Now. Before sanity takes over.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

~
Anecdotes ~

526AX August 23, Blizzard’s Point

“LEO?” MARIN SAID.

His name was a whisper in his ear, punctuated by static hiss. He checked his watch. Why was Marin radioing him only ten minutes into their run? If she'd gotten herself cornered by some warped Hellean hunting machine… His mind drifted back to the demonic golem that had thrown a hissy fit back in the tunnels and in the process smashed one of the Elition assassins against the wall.

Leonidas sighed. If Marin had gotten herself into a mess, he would, of course, save her, but it would be a phenomenal pain in the ass to deal with even more Hellean creations, whether monster or machine—or both. He’d had quite enough of that over the past week to fill a lifetime, thank you very much.

He adjusted the ear piece connected to his radio and spoke, “What can I do for you, Marin?”

Static hiss reigned for a few seconds before she replied, “I…want to talk. I
need
to talk. To keep my mind off…things.”

Off Silas, she meant. She'd taken his disappearance through the portal hard. Real hard.

She'll get over it
, he told himself. Marin was tough. She habitually threw herself at danger, never meeting a consequence she couldn’t stomach. Long after everyone had given up, she plowed on. It was one of the things that made her so annoying. And endearing.

But this was different. Leonidas had thought her feelings for Silas to be mere girlish infatuation, but could he have been wrong? Would she survive monsters, machines, and assassins only to fall to a broken heart? He shook the vicious thoughts from his head. They weren't helping anyone.

Leonidas did not slow his pace as he ran into the thruster room and went through the tedious task of removing yet another lever. As exciting as Marin’s brilliant plans always sounded on the surface, for those poor souls she recruited to make them a reality, they often turned out to be congested with a hell of a lot of mind-numbing monotony. Well, except for those times they were running for their lives. In short, Marin’s plans were bipolar.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked her as he left the room and took off once more down the curved hallway.

He tried to keep his voice steady, but a few huffs came through. Well, he was running, after all, and while he could technically do four hundred meters in two minutes, it wasn’t conversation speed. And Marin’s crisp calculations didn't take into account that repeating the feat no fewer than a grand total of twelve times—each time with a heavier load on his back—was not exactly his idea of a good time. Good times meant chic bars and colorful drinks with names like Sunburst Surprise. It meant music and dressing up and attractive dance partners. The only music that would be breaking out in those Helleans hallways was the screech of machines with a hit list of entirely the wrong kind.

“I don’t know. I…I’m worried about him,” she said.

Leonidas swallowed a groan. “Didn’t you want to talk to keep your mind off precisely that?”

“Well…yes. I guess.”

The conversation was going nowhere as fast as a deflated airship.

“Why don’t you try Ariella?” he suggested. “She seems far more capable in these matters.”

“What do you mean by that?”

There was an edge in her voice. If he didn’t know better, he'd have said she sounded hurt by his words. But Marin’s skin was as hard as rock and her tongue as sharp as acid. Especially when it came to him. She was used to enduring his stabs and dealing out a fair share of her own. They had only been fighting their entire lives.

“She’s a woman,” he said.

“But I’ve known you longer. I like Ariella, but she’s…pragmatic. I’m not sure she’d understand.”

“Oh, I think she would. After all, she’s pining for that Elition prince.”

“Elition prince?”

“Davin Storm, the crown prince of Elitia. From what I’ve gathered, she’s absolutely enthralled with him. While he alternates between acting as though she’s a sister to him and like she doesn’t even exist.”

Yes, he'd been paying attention to the chitchat between Ariella and Silas over the course of their journey together through the Hellean environments. As far as Leonidas was concerned, Davin Storm was an insufferable twit, and Ariella could do much better. In that, he and Silas were apparently of one mind. Imagine that.

“How sad that must be for her,” said Marin.

“The only sad thing about this tale is that she hasn’t punched Davin Storm in the face yet. Especially when he so clearly deserves it.”

“I had no idea you were so protective of Ariella.”

Neither had he. Leonidas sucked in a deep breath as he ran into the next thruster room.

“Talk to her,” he said. “She'll understand.”

Marin fell silent again. “I tried. She wasn’t answering,” she finally admitted.

“I see.” Her response hurt more than it should have—or at least more than he wanted it to. “Maybe she had trouble getting the radio to work. Or turned it off. You know how she feels about technology.”

“Yes,” Marin replied. “And she was complaining about a shrill screech in her ear when she put the earpiece in. Do you hear such a thing?”

“No. But the Elitions do have sensitive hearing.”

“True.”

Silence fell as thick as syrup. Leonidas was about to bring up something irrelevant, such as the recent increase in the use of feathers amongst the Selpe nobility’s wardrobes, when she spoke again.

“Keep talking.”

“It’s all superficial small talk, Marin,” he decided. Women didn't like to hear about ridiculous fashion fads—at least not women like Marin.

“You excel at superficial small talk.”

True. “But it won’t help you. If you really want to keep your mind off him, then you should be doing the talking. Tell me something.”

“Ok.” She paused. “Well, I've been wondering about the Helleans’ so-called portals. They are clearly not Elition. For one, humans cannot see Elition portals, and I definitely saw something before the jumps. And aren’t Elition portals supposed to always be there, not appearing and disappearing as they see fit? I timed the intervals between the portals’ appearances in each city and discovered them to be precisely twenty-four hours apart. To the second. That’s about as naturally occurring as a purple elephant.”

“I don’t know. Apparently, unicorns and dragons exist, so why not purple elephants?” he teased.

Marin didn’t seem to notice his interruption. He could almost picture her hands, swaying like a conductor as she spoke. It was a habit he'd teased her mercilessly about, but actually it was rather cute.

“And then I thought, well, if the portals always showed up at precisely the same time each day, maybe it had something to do with the Hellean cities themselves. Maybe the portals are more an effect of something. Maybe the Helleans require an incredible amount of energy to create that effect. Then it would be conceivable that they kind of have to store the energy first, like with an insanely large capacitor. Or they run one of their reactors hot and then have to cool it down. Just as we and the Avans use fusion reactors to power our cities on the ground, the Helleans use them to run their cities in the sky. But while we have to frequently shut the reactors down to prevent an energy overload, the Helleans might have found a way to handle the energy.
Or they might have found a completely different solution to fusion altogether, like that Wiffle-Ball idea someone from my university had. And who knows what other side effects their new solution has. Maybe they produce a portal every 24 hours. Who knows?
The portals’ appearances on the various cities were not entirely in sync, but that makes sense if they plan to use them as a means of transportation. They would need time to get from one portal to the next.”