The Fourth Sage (The Circularity Saga) (15 page)

I'm not quite sure how to do that
.

Ty will most likely be at the command center in the middle of a large room. I can probably point him out to you—

I know what he looks like.

You do?

Yes. As much as you know how he looks. You cannot share only part of yourself with me.

While Aries thinks about this, the hawk swoops under one of the floors and through an opening that leads directly into the room with the command center in it. She stays below the ceiling until she reaches the center where all the computer screens are mounted together above the large table. She lands directly on top of one of the screens.

I thought we didn't want to be obvious,
Aries remarks.

We aren't,
Born-of-Night replies.
I'm sitting right above the cameras. Nobody can see me.

And just when I thought you wouldn't have any more surprises for me...
Her thought trails off when she sees Ty coming toward the command center. He looks fragile, his shoulders bent forward. She can't help but feel a sudden fierce love for her mentor. Does he look worried? Before she can answer her own question, Born-of-Night lifts off and flies toward one of the corners of the room. She lands on a ledge and looks back toward the middle. Ty looks directly at her. He must have become aware of the bird.

"What do we have here?" she hears him say, as he walks toward the hawk.

No, Ty, no,
Aries thinks.
That's too obvious. Don't come closer.

Born-of-Night flies up one floor to the edge of one of the stairwells. When Ty almost reaches her, she flies away again, this time into the space between two transformers. She lands far in a corner.

Aries watches as Ty slowly approaches. "What are you doing here, little fellow? Shhh, I won't hurt you."

He crouches in front of the hawk and slowly extends his arm. Aries can see the surprise in his expression when Born-of-Night jumps onto it.

"Woah, you've got strong claws, there," he says.

Aries can see Ty's face clearly now. In fact, it is as if he’s looking straight at her. His proportions are slightly distorted but she can see his grease-smeared face and his blue eyes.

"How did you get in here, huh?" he asks. "And what do you have there?" He looks down toward the hawk's talons. "Something's stuck there... What the hell...?"

Ty gently takes the piece of paper, opens it, and reads. Then he looks around as if to make sure nobody's watching. "Who put this on you, huh?"

Aries sees in Ty's face a whole array of emotions as he reads the note again. He wipes his hand over his eyes. She has never seen tears from him until now. Then he seems to collapse into himself, holding on to one of the transformers with one hand. After a while he gets up, straightens his coveralls, wipes his face with his handkerchief, and turns around. Aries sees him walk away and disappear around a corner.

What now?
she asks.

I don't know
.

Maybe you should follow him.

The hawk lifts off and flies to a ledge right below the ceiling of the command center. From here she watches Ty cross and walk toward the storage room. About a minute later he comes back out, a bag over his shoulder. He takes one of the stairwells down to a floor below. Born-of-Night follows at a distance. Aries isn't sure what Ty's intentions are until he goes down another set of stairs and toward the lift.

No, Ty, no! You can't do that. That's not what I meant. You can't come to me. I should've known that you'd do that.

Aries opens her eyes, and the connection to Born-of-Night breaks immediately.
Why is he doing that?
She can't help but think that she should never have put Ty into this position. When she wrote the note she thought he might somehow get her what she needed. She didn't think any further about how he would do that. Nor did she think that he would come down to her, in person.

I have to send him back,
she thinks, hoping that nobody would notice his temporary absence. He can't be involved in this. Whatever it is she needs to do can't involve her friends. None of them. This is something she needs to do alone.

That's impossible.
Born-of-Night's thought interrupts her.

Where are you?

About three floors above you. We're close.

Part of her doesn't want to face Ty, maybe because she's afraid of what he's going to tell her. Her decision to send him back redoubles. Their meeting should be brief; no need to expose him to more danger than he’s already put himself in. She feels a slight vibration in the metal grate floor, before she hears his footsteps. Then, Born-of-Night appears in the opening and soon after, Ty's head comes through as he crawls into their hideout. Born-of-Night flies back out.

"You okay?" Ty asks. Without waiting for an answer, he gets up on his knees, reaches over to Aries, takes her head into his hands and kisses her on her cheeks several times. Then he holds her close to him. Aries doesn't know what to do at first, but eventually she puts her arms around him.

"Don't ever do that to me again," Ty says quietly.

Aries's vision becomes blurry. His words cut through her walls, their kindness piercing her defenses. Her tears drip onto his coveralls and after a while she lets them come.

"Shhh," Ty says. "Shhh." He strokes her hair and her back and she can't help but begin to sob. Her strength bleeds out of her and she collapses into his embrace. At length, she lets go of him and he sits back.

"I thought you might be thirsty," he says, while taking a thermo out of his bag and handing it to her. She unscrews the top, takes several long sips of the ice-cold water. A couple of power bars follow.

"Thank you," she says, while chewing on the bar.

"There are no blueprints of the prison. At least, not that I know of. But—"

"That's okay," she interrupts him. "I'll find my way through it."

Ty looks at her, his eyes not letting go of hers.

"I'm not even trying to figure out what you're planning to do. And on my way down here, I decided that it's none of my goddamn business. And how you got the bird to bring me that note is beyond me. But you cannot... go down there. You hear me? You won't come out. I've spent a lot of time there on jobs over the years. The prison has its own systems; it's completely sealed off from the rest of the building and there's no access to it. And not only that, if you get caught, should you get caught, you're facing something you can only imagine in your wildest dreams."

Ty looks at her as if waiting for an answer, a response. Aries folds the wrapping paper around the other half of the bar and slips it into one of the coverall pockets.

"I agree with you."

"I'm glad you do."

"Can you tell me what the alternative is?"

"What do you mean?" Ty asks. Aries can see in his face that he probably doesn't want to know.

"The alternative to going down there. What do we have left? There is nowhere to go. I can't go back, Ty. Not after everything that happened. You don't know what they did. You haven’t the slightest idea—"

"I do."

"No, you
don’t
!"

Aries realizes, while she is saying this, that she is wrong. And for a split second she gets an inkling of the depth of Ty's knowledge, of what his firsthand experience must be.

"I know... what you're talking about," he says. "But trust me when I tell you that whatever it is you experienced is nothing compared to what awaits you down there. The choice, your choice, is between the life you have lived on the one hand and certain death on the other. There's nothing in between."

"Then I would rather die than spend one more day like this!" Aries is surprised by the ferocity of her own words. "This isn't life. This is a mockery of life. What do we live for, Ty? What? Each other? There is no each other. The Corporation makes sure there are no friendships, no true friendships. It only lets us marry someone to keep unrest to a minimum. Isolation and despair is what we call life. And I can't go back to it."

There is silence between them, a silence that comes from the knowledge that both have spoken the truth.

"I don't know what the right path is," Aries continues. "It seems to be between two equally preposterous choices. But I do know the outcome of one, because I can't go back. So I must try the other, even if it's the last thing I'll do. "

After a while, Ty nods his head.

"Okay."

"Okay? Okay, what?"

"If that's your choice, I'll help you in any way I can."

"You already did."

"I couldn't get an AI/RSC chip module."

"I’ll have to do without it then."

"But I got two." He takes out two small, flat, rectangular boxes, each attached to a string of wire with its ends tied together.

"They look like pill containers."

"They are pill containers. At least they were until they were modified and now hold an AI/RSC chip module. Put them around your neck under your shirt. The radius is about five feet in all directions. For any camera, you simply won't be there."

"Understood. You brought two in case one stops working?"

"No. I brought two because I'm coming with you."

"That's not acceptable."

"Since when did you tell me what to do, young lady?"

"You can't come with me. I have to do this alone."

"From what I have just learned from you, it's really bad—evil, if you will. If someone else makes decisions that should be mine to make!"

"You don't understand, I—"

"Aries. There's no discussion. I'm coming with you or you're not going."

Aries can see in Ty's eyes that there's absolutely no moving away from this on his part. She would have to physically tie him down in order to stop him.

"This is not what I want," she says.

"Well, it's not what I want either but, hell, that's life."

Aries leans back. All the tension is gone. Part of her hates herself for being thankful that Ty is here. She wishes that she could be stronger and tell him in no uncertain terms that it’s her burden and hers alone. But she has no arguments left. She made hers. He made his. He won.

"Thank you," is all she can say.

"You're quite welcome. Now, once activated, the modules have about forty-eight hours before the batteries run out. I'm not even sure if they’ll last that long. So, let's say we've got between twenty-four and thirty-six hours to do whatever needs to be done."

"That should be enough," Aries says without thinking.

"Enough to do what, exactly?"

"All I know is that we need to reach the Forgotten Floors. From there, I don't know anything."

Part of Aries hopes that Ty doesn't ask her how she got this information.

"So, no plan B, huh?" he says with a smile.

"In order for there to be a plan B, there has to be a plan A first.”

Ty smiles. His white teeth stand in stark contrast to his grease-smeared face. "You've always been the smartest of my protégés."

Aries smiles back.

"Until now, of course—"

Four guards, five floors above you!
Born-of-Night's thought is accompanied by a bright image of a group of guards making their way down the stairs. They are dressed in black, unlike the usual security guards’ blue-and-gray uniforms.

"S.S.U.," Aries says.

"What?" Ty's smile dissipates.

"Special Security Unit. They're on their way toward us. The drone must have picked us up."

"Dammit!"

Each of them grabs one of the chip modules, pulls them around their necks and tucks them under their clothes. Ty puts his bag over his shoulder.

"Let's stay in here," Aries says. "Maybe they won't find us."

"But if they do, we're in the worst possible position. We have to go. Now!"

He rolls out. Aries follows.

Through Born-of-Night's eyes, Aries sees four dark figures descending the stairs.

"Follow me," Ty says as he slips into a hallway to their left. "Try to be quiet."

They turn several corners and come to a stairway. Ty goes down the steps, with Aries following. From the landing platform they turn left and through several narrow hallways to another staircase. As Aries is about to go down that one, he pulls her back, reaches into his bag and takes out the thermos.

"Drink," he says.

"Why?"

"Just do it."

Aries takes several sips of the water and hands the thermos back.

"Can you ask your friend where they are?"

"My friend?"

"Yes, your feathered friend, the hawk."