The Proving (15 page)

“Walk much?” Cleo asked in his ear. “Please don’t trip and shoot yourself. You’re technically our medic.”

“I’m fine,” Ben said. His voice betrayed his nervousness and he silently cursed himself, taking a deep breath to calm his anxiety. He wished he could turn off the camera for just a minute. That was all he needed. Just a minute — why couldn’t the nanobots do something about his flushed face? He hated turning red. He hated blushing so much.

“Just take a deep breath,” Skye said slowly. Her voice sent a chill down his spine. She’d seen him trip in her pic-in-pic. Now she was trying to help him, which was only more embarrassing.

“I’m coming,” Ben said, a little too harshly. He winced. “Sorry, sorry. I’m almost there.”

He followed the curve of the building, lowering his pistol when he saw Skye. She was standing near the open rear door, her VR rifle aimed inside. At her feet was the woman’s body. Beside the half-open door was a much larger top-opening steel shutter for loading and unloading supplies. It was dusty, the word “EMERGENCY” covered by black water stains that ran down the exterior.

“Well?” Skye asked.

Ben knelt down, examining her. It was a middle-aged woman, her head resting on her side so her shriveled eyes seemed to be watching him. A calmness passed over Ben. It wasn’t the first corpse he had seen. Everyone spent some time in the morgue during secondary school. The corpses had names, and while some students opted to keep their distance, avoiding learning the names, Ben had preferred it. They were still human beings. They were just in a different stage of the life cycle.

“This woman was someone important,” he said, taking a deep breath. He could smell her so he breathed through his mouth. None of the medical corpses smelled, and the stench of rot and vacated bowels and urine jarred Ben’s senses. He blinked a few times, examining her. She was wearing blue scrubs and a white lab coat with a blue ID tag clipped to the breast pocket. She’d come from somewhere else. Somewhere nearby. “She’s . . . definitely dead.”

Skye raised an eyebrow, keeping her sights on the doorway.

“Did the professor just tell a joke about a dead person?” Cleo asked, her voice shrill in Ben’s ear. “That’s morbid, dasher. Seriously morbid.”

“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” Ben said. He reached for her badge but Skye’s hand found his neck. Her touch was electric, freezing him.

“Wait. Pull her out of the doorway. I want this door closed. We don’t know what’s in there.”

“We might not have to worry about what’s in there,” Ben said. He pointed to the woman’s head, which was preventing the door from shutting. “We have to worry about what’s out here.”

Skye took a step back.

“What?” Cleo asked in the earpiece. “What do you mean by that, professor?”

“The woman died trying to get
inside
.” Ben took a deep breath and looked over his shoulder. That sick feeling in the pit of his stomach was getting worse. He scanned the area beyond the fences. It was all undergrowth and tall pines, pushing on the fencing. Impossible to see deeper into the forest.

But
something
was out there.

The moment the body was clear, she slammed the door shut. But a shut door only afforded a little protection, especially if the there was a Specter inside. Even a weak Specter could phase through such a flimsy door. Skye’s glasses identified and highlighted a control panel on the side of the building that could be engaged to lock, but only with the right access code.

“Cleo . . . do you see this?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have access?”

“Doesn’t matter. I can hack it either way.”

“OK, get over here. And bring the Historian with you.” She looked down at Ben, whose hands were shakily pulling off the corpse’s white lab coat, revealing her bloated arms. The skin was dried and had turned a dark gray, the way every Specter victim looked after one of the ghost-like aliens passed through their body. Like it was taking their very souls.

She could feel an anxious sort of electricity surge through her body. The kind of electricity that Specters fed upon. There was one here. Maybe more than one, no doubt waiting in the ground for the sun to set.

This could be her chance to prove herself to Father.

Cleo and the Historian arrived. Cleo immediately looked away from the corpse. The Historian examined it, then looked up and examined the New Adults. Skye met his eyes, telegraphing confidence. She wanted to be sure he wouldn’t misread her. She wasn’t afraid. She was prepared for this.

“We need this door locked,” Skye told Cleo. “If you can’t look at the corpse, walk around it.”

The Persian girl did so, trying to make sure she didn’t get even a glimpse of the dead body. She reached out with one hand for the door controls, then cautiously turned. Her squeamishness was borderline annoying.

“It’s running on a reserve power source,” she said, lifting her VRacelet and using it to scan the mechanism. “This lady tried to get inside and just ended up sending a surge of electricity into the mainframe. Fried the circuits, all the way up to the solar panels’ photovoltaic sensors, which shut down to prevent overheating. Boy, these locking mechanisms always have a dozen bugs.”

“Can you fix it?” Skye asked.

“I can
totally
fix it.” She turned, smiling, then caught sight of the corpse. Her face paled. She looked away. “I’ll just wait until the professor’s done.”

“That’s a great idea,” Ben said, setting down his medical satchel. He unstrapped it, opening it up to reveal a dozen pockets full of Clan Athens medical devices. Besides the varying shape, they were indistinguishable in Skye’s eyes. “Whatever killed her definitely wasn’t inside, judging by the position of the body. She was running
from
something, probably trying to hide inside the supply depot.”

“Is it a Specter?” Skye asked, staring out at the trees beyond the perimeter fencing. If they were nearby, they were underground, waiting for night to fall. She turned back to Ben, hoping for confirmation.

“I would say that’s the most probable culprit.” Ben very gently pressed his fingers underneath the woman’s jawline. Her face was frozen in a look of horror, her bloodshot eyes looking somewhere to the right. It was as if she’d been aged a hundred years in the span of a second, leaving her skin wrinkled and ashen and her eyeballs sunken. Ben pulled a small phone-shaped device from the kit, turning it on and running it across the woman’s forehead. Color-coded messages appeared on the device’s screen.

“What is that?” Skye asked.

“A medscanner,” Ben answered. His hands had stopped shaking — whether he realized it or not, the nervous tension in his face was gone. If Skye didn’t know any better, she would have mistaken him for a fully-fledged Athenian doctor. “The magnetic resonance imager sends little pulses that echo, then decodes the echo to show me what’s happening under the epidermis. This will give me a better idea of her cause of death. Neural synapses are definitely damaged. Some minor trauma to the skull, probably when she fell.” He lifted up the collar of the woman’s blue scrubs, very gently pressing the device on the sternum. A summary of the readings appeared in the upper right-hand corner of Skye’s glasses. Medical terminology that she didn’t understand.

“How about you translate this junk for us?” Cleo asked.

“Oh. Sorry. Stress on the arteries, damaged neural synapses, simultaneous shutdown of the brain and heart . . . it was a Specter.”

“
Sacrebleu
,” Cleo whispered.

Skye turned to her, too annoyed to hide it anymore. “Doesn’t your clan practice formal language?”

“My clan does, but I don’t,” she responded, shrugging.

Skye bit her lip to keep from saying more. There were other things to deal with now. This wasn’t just a simple Proving anymore. This was an opportunity. A woman was dead, killed by a Specter. If it was still around, it would appear tonight. They could destroy it. And how many Spartans had killed a Specter during
both
of their Provings? Few.

Skye would be granted honors.
Glory
.

And what would Father think of that? Ha! He’d be speechless.

She imagined her offspring at Carnivale someday, their faces painted with the knowledge of a thousand past generations of Spartans.
And this one is Skye Mitchell, she who slew her first Specter in the thirteenth year of her life, and a second Specter in the eighteenth year of her life. Skye Mitchell, who later became General Mitchell and won great battles in the forgotten city of Moscow and held the terrain until a new Xenoshield could be put in place, restoring one more chunk of the Earth to humanity.

“Gabriel, are you seeing this?” Ben asked.

“Unfortunately,” the Parliamentarian answered through the earpiece. “Parliament will want information about her. They might want her body brought back for testing.”

“Clan Athens would certainly like that,” Ben murmured, staring at the corpse’s face. His mind was elsewhere, Skye realized. He didn’t see a simple corpse. He saw opportunity, too. How many Athenians got the opportunity to study a Specter victim?

Few. Which meant he would be easy to convince.

“We should repair the array,” Skye said. “Then we’ll decide what to do with the corpse.”

“Then let’s do it already,” Cleo said. “I’ve got the creeps just being out here.”

Skye hefted the VR rifle, feeling its weight in her upper arms. She panned the open compound. “Do you concur, Parliamentarian?”

“I concur,” he answered in her earpiece.

“We’ll clear the depot,” Skye said. “Then Cleo can get to repairing the wiring or whatever it is that needs fixing.”

“I can gather more information,” Ben said. He swallowed, nodding to the corpse. “From her. With the examination kits in the Tumbler, I can probably get a pretty good idea of what kind of Specter killed her. Maybe I could determine, uh, how powerful it was.”

Skye nodded. “Let’s clear the depot first. Then the Historian can help you drag it to the Tumbler.”

“
Her
,” Ben said, standing up. “She was a person, once.”

Skye didn’t say anything. His tone had been forceful. Authoritative.
He may be timid, but at least he’s assertive when it counts. By Hades, get a hold of yourself, girl! This guy’s going to be your medic for the rest of your life . . .

Cleo waited for Ben to step back, then unlocked the door. She pulled it open, stepping aside and indicating Skye should take the lead.
Good
, she thought. She leaned in and aimed her rifle at the dark opening. With the afternoon sunlight shining down, she couldn’t get a good look inside. But then the camera on her glasses started doing its work, sending the image back to the Tumbler. The Tumbler’s computers analyzed the dark image, then filled it in with bright green outlines, giving Skye an approximation of what lay inside.

A crescent-shaped computer console. Shelving units along the walls. Three crates stacked one atop the other near the loading door.

She took one step inside, flicking on the light at the end of the VR rifle. The beam cut through dust, landing on the crates at the far end of the large single-room building. Her camera adjusted again with help from the Tumbler’s CPU, magnifying the small amount of light and turning everything a tint of green, revealing most of the room. The crescent-shaped computer console sat near the door, and behind it were rows and rows of spare parts sitting on shelves. Any kind of spare part that might be needed to repair the farming machines, AI transport vehicles, or anything else that might make its way out beyond the Xenoshield.

“Looks clear,” Skye said. She stepped inside, checking her corners. The building’s walls curved, and along the walls were more shelves lined with larger equipment. Transistors and engine parts and breakers, the types of stuff that might fix a damaged Tumbler. This place had
everything
.

And arms. Dozens and dozens of robotic arms of all shapes and sizes. Skye flashed her light across them, ignoring the data points appearing on her glasses in green text. The usefulness of the arms — pollinating, pest control, soldering, drilling — didn’t pique Skye’s interest.

But Cleo on the other hand . . .

“This is ah-maze-ing. Look at that over there.” The Persian pointed toward the first row of shelves. Skye shined her beam of light on a row of box-shaped gizmos that seemed to be made up of much smaller boxes, like the toy building sets that could be designed on a 3D printer. “Ho-lee crap,” Cleo said. “You know what those are?”

“No idea,” Skye murmured. She shined her light left, down another empty row. There would be a lift somewhere that led to the lower level. If a Specter
was
in here, it would be on the lower level. Her right boot pressed down on the hard concrete floor.
It would be difficult for a Specter to pass through this floor without expending a lot of energy. If there’s a Specter below, it might be weak enough to take on myself, without Cleo’s help . . .

Glory
.

“Those are decommissioned repair bots,” Cleo said. “They used to repair bridge joints and skyscraper lifts and any other nook and cranny that humans couldn’t get to.” She scoffed. “They were replaced by these stupid little manufacturing bots that look like crabs. Total one-trick ponies, if you know what I mean.”