The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (43 page)

I leaned over and closed my eyes and kissed her forehead. It was damp. Smelled like soap and mildew, like the Camp Eden bathroom. Like the caves at Hub during a mold bloom, in the spring, so long ago.

“Good-bye, sister,” I whispered.

“Oh no,” I heard Lilly breathe behind me.

I lifted my head and opened my eyes and—

Elissa’s eyes had opened, too.

SHE’S ALIVE
. MY FIRST THOUGHT.
SHE’S BACK
.

Her lovely brown eyes—

But her eyes were dark, the whites clouded over in a filmy charcoal gray, congealed fluid, a mix of the black blood crusted and dried. Her lids blinking, the cloudy eyes flicking back and forth . . . Twitches began to ignite up and down her arms and legs. Spasms. Movement.

There was more movement. I glanced up. A head rose out of the next cryo pod over. A woman, matted blond hair and a pale face, moving disjointedly, still thawing, but waking up . . .

No. Rising.

Another head, another body, all of them, every one above and below. In all directions, hundreds of bodies were rising from their frozen sleep.

“What has he done?” Lilly asked hoarsely.

“It’s a program,” I said. Francine had said
software
. Cognition substitution.

Elissa began to sit up.

I stared dumbly at her, unbelieving. Her chest didn’t move. She made no sound except for a rubbery stretching as still-cold limbs and tissue began to move.

All around us, Cryos sitting. Necks creaking around.

Her head jolted toward me. The gray milky eyes. A tremor and her brow worked, her mouth twitched, like systems coming back online, technicians inside throwing switches.

Her arms rose. She reached for me with long fingernails and hands striped in black, the squiggles of black veins up her arms like a tattoo of tree branches. Her fingers touched my cheek.

And began to scrape. To dig in. The other hand locked on my arm. Yanked me close.

I couldn’t fight, I didn’t know . . . was she alive? But, no, she’d been dead. This was operation, function, but not life.

Hands to my neck. Closing. Tightening. And now she leaned over with her mouth opening and there was a strange kind of guttural sucking sound as air ran down her throat, rushing into spaces that had been closed for so long, not a breath but just simple physics, and yet it sounded like a deep, hungry inhale.

Teeth toward my throat. My sister. Back in Yellowstone, I let her out of my sight. She fell in that sucker hole. Now breathing into ruined lungs that were my fault, back to even the score . . .

No!
I had to keep reality straight. I closed my eyes and shoved her back. Her claws tore the collar of my shirt as I jerked away from her. She snapped her teeth at me, snatched at the air where I’d been. Some of the thawed black blood began to leak out the corners of her mouth now, to dribble onto her perfect white gown.
That’s not my sister
, I told myself.
That’s a machine and it’s programmed to kill
. I wanted to unsee her, to never know this, but I knew already that this image would haunt me forever.

Her twitching arms grabbed the side of the pod, and she started to pull herself out.

They were all getting out. Victoria could free people through death. But now Paul could raise the dead.

“We have to go,” I said. I spun, bent down, and grabbed Leech’s arm. Lilly got the other. Luckily he was small, and we got him between us, one limp arm over each shoulder, and we sprinted for the stairs.

There were thuds and smacking sounds from every direction. In the humid clouds of steam, pierced by the flashing orange lights, silhouettes of bodies stepped out of their pods, many stumbling on unsteady limbs and collapsing to the ground, making flat sounds like pieces of cold meat dropped on a table. Half-thawed bodies reanimated and unleashed. And despite the slipping and sliding, the staggering into walls, I could see them all slowly orienting their blank gazes toward the staircases. Each inefficient on its own, but as a collective they were like a wave, coming from all directions, and we were barely ahead of it.

We reached the stairs. “I got him,” I said, pulling Leech away from Lilly. She dashed in front of me. I turned back to see a mob lurching across the catwalk toward us, and in the front, small and frail and oozing with disease, was Elissa.
Not Elissa
, I told myself again, trying desperately to believe it, even as more memories returned to my mind, more beautiful visions of the sister I’d forgotten.

I hoisted Leech down the stairs. Lilly grabbed his arm again and we raced to the glass doors.

Sliding and scraping of thawing feet, slapping of hands on walls. And those weird guttural intakes, air sucking in, the dead bodies breathing.

We were through the doors. Pulled them shut.

“Is there a lock?” Lilly inspected them.

Thwack!
The first Cryo walked right into the glass like she didn’t even know it was there. A middle-aged woman, bony beneath the hospital gown hanging cockeyed off her, vacant red-stained eyes and the echo of boils all over her skin. She bounced back, walked into it again, then started banging her head against it. Harder, harder.

“A lock isn’t going to help,” I said.

More were reaching the glass. Hitting it. Trying to walk right through. A thundering succession of thuds, creating red blotches on the glass.

As we sprinted down the hall, I heard the first splintering crack. Then a crash as the windows gave way.

We burst outside. There was a roar echoing around us. Rain was cascading through the hole in the roof. Waterfalls everywhere.

“Damn,” said Lilly. I followed her gaze. Francine and Emiliano were gone. Seven was gone. “They got her. I should have known she was useless!”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We have to get back to the city. Warn Victoria. They have no idea.”

“Yeah.” Lilly hurried to the side of the building, and returned with her red bag. “Can you carry this?”

“Got it.”

We jumped at a crash from behind us. I turned to see them hitting the doors. A tall old man covered in lesions, a young boy, a teen girl, all just backing up and walking straight into the glass, their skin still blue in spots and their eyes vacant yet targeting us.

We ran back through the city and out into the inky jungle. The rain was torrential, soaking us instantly. We stumbled along the undulating, dark trail, a blur of water, a slick of mud. Even with Leech, we were faster than the staggering, thawing horde, and soon their shuffling, mud-splattering pursuit was lost to our ears. For a time there was just the rain beating on jungle leaves, and soon the growing rumble of the drums in the plaza, as the festival’s beginnings proceeded unaware.

I felt dampness on my chest. I looked down to see that Leech’s blood was soaking through my shirt.

“You’re gonna be okay,” I said to him.

“Nnn,” he moaned faintly.

We crested the rise between EdenSouth and Desenna. I looked back at the dome, and through the cracked ceiling I saw the ominous orange light of Cryo flickering on the inner walls.

Ahead, we could see the rainswept skyline of the city, lit in flashing lights and flickering torches. The drums were loud, thumping along with tinny echoes of music—

And then it all exploded.

A huge wipe of fire across our vision . . .

One . . . two . . . Mom says, counting down the thunder. It scares Elissa when she does this. . . .

The force of the blasts reached us and knocked us flat.

I felt a moment of loss, no sound, no breath, but then things filtered back in and I scrambled to my feet just in time to see a line of white lights swoop up over the back of the now-smoldering central complex. Copters. They arced overhead. Lightning rains flashed, taking out two copters, but there were at least five others.

“New plan,” I said. “Get to the ship. Get out of here.”

“Is it still on the pyramid?” Lilly asked. “The one that just got hit by rockets?”

“Yeah.” I peered ahead. The pyramid was choked in smoke and flames. “We have to try for it.” There was one thing I still felt certain of in my head, and that was how to fly. If the ship was gone, then . . . I didn’t want to think about that.

“Okay,” said Lilly. She glanced behind us. I heard it, too. The dragging and squishing of feet.

We ran on toward the city. The music had been replaced by screaming, shouts of confusion.

The copters came around for another pass, dodging lightning rain and firing again, streaks of light that arced into the heart of Desenna and caused more plumes of smoke and fire, more chest-thumping blast waves.

The copters veered off and disappeared over the trees. No more lightning rains followed them.

We pressed on through the damp dark, now thick with waves of acrid smoke. We reached the gate. It was in tatters, piles of rubble and twisted metal.

“Looks like they cleared an entrance for their cryo army,” said Lilly.

We made our way over the soaked wreckage, slow with Leech. In the jungle he’d been sort of moving his feet along with us, but now his legs hung limp. I saw that his face had turned a frightening white.

“You still with us?”

He coughed weakly.

“Let’s hoist him up,” said Lilly, getting her arms under his shoulders. I took his legs and we moved awkwardly over the rubble. It was tough going. I slipped, jammed my ankle in a crevice, scraped my forearm on a broken slab of stone. By the time we were through the wreckage, my cramp had started to knot up—

Not from a hernia. From spleen surgery. My life is all a lie—

I shook away the thoughts. Later. I would deal with them later, and it would be terrible, but now—

“Here they come,” said Lilly, glancing behind us.

I turned and saw the first forms, gray skin, soaked hair, and white gowns now smeared with mud, lurching from the shadows. We got Leech’s arms back around our shoulders and raced through the streets toward the plaza, fighting a tide of panicked people who were heading for their homes. I wanted to warn them about what was coming, but I didn’t have the voice, the strength. They would have to find out on their own.

The central plaza was in chaos. Buildings to either side had been hit in the rocket attack, and the café areas were scenes of carnage and flames. People were rushing in all directions like frenzied molecules, many in ceremonial robes, their faces painted in the emeralds and cobalts and whites, painted for a joyous celebration of living bright but now streaked with blood and dust.

“The Three!” someone shouted as we passed, as if we were returning with hope instead of leading an onslaught of horror.

I looked to the sky. “No more copters.”

Lilly glanced back toward the gate. “They’re just waiting now,” she said breathlessly. “Just sit back and watch the show.”

We rounded a collapsed spill of bricks, people pinned, screaming, medics on the scene—

My mother was a medic. NO, that wasn’t her! Was my real mom one? Ever?

We made it to the doors into the pyramid. There were guards there, wide-eyed, watching the sky.

“Watch the plaza!” Lilly shouted at them. “And get ready. They’re coming from Cryo!”

The guards looked at us, confusion on their already shaken faces, but we hurried by them, ducking inside and up the wide stairs. At the top, we were halted by soldiers digging at a pile of rubble. The hall leading to Tactical was blocked. Black smoke billowed from the seams.

“Did they get hit?” I asked.

A soldier turned to me. “Direct hit on the second pass. We can’t get in there from any side. And there’s been no word . . .”

Lilly looked past me. The stairway up to the pyramid top was clear. I nodded to her, and we hurried up.

My legs were screaming from the extra weight of carrying Leech. We reached the open-roofed hallway, passed all the bloody handprints, up the final staircase, and out to the platform.

The city unfolded below us, a hell of fire and smoke and rain. Clouds buffeted our backs, blown in by a salty sea breeze, making us cough. Thunder cracked overhead. The masses were scrambling below, a tide of shouts pierced by screams.

The left corner of the platform was gone, as if a bite had been taken out of it. The crater extended to the sacrificial stone, half of which was blasted away.

The other side of the platform, where my ship was . . .

Was okay. It was just sitting there, its blue light glowing serenely. There were bags of supplies stored in its front, all ready for our morning departure. The collapsed section of roof ended less than a meter from its bow.

“I wouldn’t want to say we’re lucky,” said Lilly, “but . . . that’s pretty lucky.” Her voice hitched as if now, after everything else, she might cry at the sight of it.

We laid Leech down in the craft, along with our bags. Then we heard a new sound, a ripple of shocked screams from below. I peered over the edge of the remaining platform. The Cryos were swarming into the plaza, moving faster now, their bodies warm and attacking without hesitation, without fear, without thinking. Every once in a while my eye was able to see a specific moment of the chaos, and there was blood and tearing and struggle and I wished I hadn’t seen it. But there was no denying that the wave of Cryos were treating the bystanders merely as obstacles. Their tide was clearly headed this way. Paul had aimed them right at Victoria.