The Proving (38 page)

“Um, is that a good idea?” Ben asked.

“Incoming message,” Cleo announced. She raised an eyebrow. “That was fast.”

“Let’s go,” Skye said, ushering everyone into the command room. The door slid open but the lights didn’t turn on — just the large screen hanging over the computer consoles. Seamus filed in last, unable to shake the jitters. He had a bad feeling. He hesitated and felt the butt of Skye’s rifle jab against his back. The motion hurt him more than he expected. He’d felt surprisingly close to the Coterie. He’d felt honored to have been even considered to partake in a vote. He wanted that. He didn’t want to be an outsider.

But he had so many secrets.

The face of Gabriel’s mother appeared on the large screen. Carmen Martinez, thrice-elected representative of the Third District. Gained notoriety during her first term when she and her husband led an investigation of the potential health effects of the city Xenoshield on human beings, requiring Clan Athens to pursue further study. Seamus knew all this and yet seeing her on the screen now sent a chill down his spine. Parliamentarians of her stature maintained a stoic presence on public and private feeds. All feeds ended up public at some point.

But Gabriel’s mother, now, looked tired and weary and sick. Her skin was pale, the bags under her eyes pronounced; her normally smooth brown hair looked as if it had been bunched up inside a helmet of some kind.

“Gabriel,” she said. “It is good to see you and Wei are safe.”

“What’s happening?” Gabriel asked. “How can we help?”

“You will take the doors to Hangar Bay Two and board the ship named Apollo. Skye will evacuate your Coterie to the Ark.”

“Absolutely not,” Gabriel stated. “Mother, you can’t be serious! What about you? What about everyone else’s families?”

“I am already aboard the Ark,” she said sharply. “And I do not know about the families of your Coterie. What I do know is that your safety comes first.”

“My life isn’t worth more than anyone else’s!” he shouted. The response surprised Seamus. Of
course
Gabriel’s life was more important. His parents were highly respected, and it was historically accurate to state that the offspring of great politicians were often great in and of themselves. Gabriel’s very upbringing granted him exceptions and opportunities that most Clan children and free citizens didn’t experience.

The others in the Coterie could be replaced by the Gene Bank.

“This order comes from Parliament,” she said calmly, looking at every single one of them. Her eyes lingered on Seamus, making him incredibly nervous. “You will bring Gabriel and Wei and the Historian to the Ark. That is your new mission.”

“We can save —” Gabriel stopped. The communication had been cut off. The holo-bulb, still warm, slowly cooled like a spent fire ember. Only the soft hum of the environmental unit broke the silence.

“Well.” Cleo tapped on her VRacelet’s touchscreen, powering up the room. More lights blinked on overhead. Consoles booted up, a chorus of fans whirring. Her robot, AGNI, floated beside her, its little camera eye surveying the room. “I guess it pays to have friends in high places.”

“I’m not going,” Gabriel said flatly.

“Uh, yes you are. We all are.” Cleo waved a hand toward the lift doors to their left, next to a tall server station built into the wall. “Something went totally wrong. We lost. So now we’re going to pack up our things and start over on a new planet
and it’s going to be totally awesome because we’re going to be alive and not dead
.”

“No.” Gabriel shook his head. “Take Wei and save yourselves. I’m not leaving.”

“Gabe!” Wei squealed, hugging his waist. “Don’t leave me!”

“You’re going to be with our mommy,” he soothed. “You’re going to be fine.”

“I want
you
, too. You’re my brother and I love you.”

Seamus felt a tug on his heart. How stupid this boy was, to even consider giving up such a relationship. To give up the opportunity of starting a new life on a new planet free of the Specter threat.

“I don’t think any of us have a choice in the matter,” Ben said quietly. “We would be hard-pressed to explain ourselves if we arrived at the Ark without you, Gabriel.”

“I can’t leave.” He shook his head, pacing near the door. Seamus watched Skye take a careful step closer to him, no doubt sensing that he may run. “This planet is worth fighting for. We can stop the Specters. We can part the water.”

Seamus blinked. Part the water? A reference to an ancient religious text, perhaps? Did the young man see the Specters as an enslaving army led by some ghostly pharaoh? Or was it a reference to something else?

“Just because we’re going up there doesn’t mean the fight is over,” Ben said. “It’s possible that essential personnel are being relocated for safety. It’s also possible that leadership is using the Ark as a command post. Right, Skye?”

The Spartan girl nodded reluctantly. “It might make sense. If the Specters are breaching the shields on Earth by moving underground, the Ark’s shield system is probably still impenetrable.”

“All the more reason for us to get our butts up there,” Cleo said. “Shields. Safety. Probably some clean clothes. What’s to hate?”

“We’re all a little traumatized,” Ben said quietly. “If we, uh, just took a few deep breaths and thought this through . . .”

“And what if you’re wrong?” Gabriel asked them. “What if we get there and the Artemis Bow shoots us through a wormhole and we end up orbiting New Earth?”

“Then we thank the universe for saving our butts,” Cleo said. “Seriously. Am I the only sane one here?”

“No, I’m sane too and that sounds great,” her brother added with wide, serious eyes.

“Listen to me.” Gabriel began pacing again. He pointed to the floor. “We will never have this again. No poverty. World peace. A true Democracy. Medical advances that would have been unfathomable just a few hundred years ago. Clean, unlimited Phenocyte energy. The Ark is a colonizer frigate. If we abandon this planet, we start over from scratch.”

Reza’s head turned sharply to his sister. “So we
really
won’t have video games?”

Cleo rolled her eyes. “We’d still have the technology aboard the Ark, but I guess we’d have to do some rebuilding. Anyway, you’re missing the main point:
we will still
be alive
. And really, isn’t that what we’re talking about here?”

“She’s sugar-coating it,” Gabriel said. He seemed to be talking directly to the Skye and Ben now, in Seamus’s opinion. “There are no cities on New Earth. No plumbing. No shelters. It will all be built from scratch, and yours will be a hard life. In time, we’ll forget about how far we’ve come and we’ll start arguing about resources. Then we’ll fight. Then we’ll choose sides.”

“OK, so you definitely win an award for Best Drama,” Cleo said, clapping her hands. “Way to go. You’ve managed to scare all the kids. But it doesn’t matter because we have direct orders. We’re screwed if we don’t follow them!”

“She’s right,” Skye said. “Our orders are to take the Apollo to the Ark. But that doesn’t mean we have to stay.”

Ben ran a nervous hand over his head. “You can’t be serious.”

Skye looked at him. “I want to fight back, too.”

“So how do we do it?” Gabriel asked.

Skye nodded to Cleo. The Persian girl slid her finger across the VRacelet’s touchscreen. “Lift power activated.” Cleo pointed to the sliding door on the far end of the control room. A touchscreen beside the door blinked on, and the words AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL appeared in green letters. “There’s our way out of this nightmare. I don’t think anyone will mind that I hacked the
private
lift for our purposes.”

Seamus followed them to the lift. They all squeezed in, and once the doors closed they immediately descended. AGNI bumped into Seamus and he reached out to keep her from floating directly in front of his face like a giant annoying fly. Seamus’s stomach shifted as the lift plummeted quickly, then slowed, putting pressure on his sore feet. The doors opened again a breath later. Seamus was the first to step out, and the moment he did, the lights turned on, revealing the underground launch center.

Steel floors. Walls carved out of rock, reinforced with massive steel beams that ran crisscross all the way to the top, a hundred meters above. Lights hung from the beams, shining down on the Apollo. The jet sat on heavy double-wheels, its dagger-like nose aimed toward the far end of the hangar. It reminded Seamus of the paper airplanes he would make in primary school, during lunch when he and the other Alexandria students had a few spare moments to just be kids. He’d made 324 airplanes, and 27 of them had flown so well that the delicate paper noses had plunked into the far wall of the cafeteria.

The Apollo was the opposite of delicate. Twin engines ran along its back — big, tubular devices made of blackened steel. Heat-resistant panels lined the wings and remainder of the hull. The panels were clearly used, judging by their scratchy appearance: The Apollo had breached Earth’s atmosphere before, and it had made the return trip, too. Seamus could only stand in awe of the thing. His memory pulled up obscure tidbits he’d seen about ramjets — once, during a news report about the transport of zero-gravity building bots destined for the Ark-in-progress, a reporter had casually mentioned that the average ramjet was thirty meters long. This seemed about right.

“Supersonic ramjets that draw in oxygen to break the sound barrier, plus additional rockets to provide the extra kick to breach the atmosphere,” Skye said, unable to contain her excitement. Seamus knew with near-certainty that she was anticipating the opportunity to fly it.

“Forty fist-sized rocket thrusters to provide movement in space,” Cleo added. “Two ion batteries to provide additional power. Two emergency solar sails.”

“It’s awesome,” Reza said.

Cleo nodded, looking up at the ship’s twin vertical stabilizers. “You said it, bro-bro. We’re leaving this planet in style.”

There was only one way inside: a pull-down staircase leading to the cabin door. They walked fast, but not so fast that they couldn’t all take a moment to admire the ship.

“It’s a Fifth Generation Apollo, if anyone’s interested,” Cleo said. She plucked AGNI from the air and cradled her in both arms like a teddy bear. “They used these to ship a few people to the Artemis Bow, after its Phenocyte reactor was put in place and its shield was up and running. Robots probably carved this entire bunker out. Probably PLX-TOOL bots. Good for digging but they tend to wear down their rotors pretty quick.”

No one else spoke until they reached the stairs. Skye led the way, pulling open the door and stepping inside. One by one, they followed. When it was Seamus’s turn, he ducked inside, surprised to find a spacious cabin with five rows of chairs and U-shaped consoles, two per row, built into the metal floor with fat, circular rivets. The two pilots’ chairs were tucked snugly into a command console at the front that was as daunting as any console Seamus had ever seen. He’d expected a tight compartment and uncomfortable seats, but each seat had thick yellow cushions and a fully functional console complete with a touchscreen and holo-bulb.

Skye stood by the entrance, glaring at him. “Back row,” she said.

Seamus walked between the seats. Ben and Tahlia were sitting in the two seats nearest the front. Gabriel and Wei occupied the next row. They were holding hands and had to let go so Seamus could pass. The second-to-last row was filled by Cleo and Reza.

In the last row was one empty seat. The other seat was occupied by AGNI, which Cleo had taken the care of strapping in. The bot had assumed a rectangular, vaguely humanoid form to accommodate the straps. She turned to stare at Seamus through her camera eye, once again giving him the creepy feeling that she was alive. Referring to the bot as a “she” in his mind wasn’t helping things, he realized.

Seamus climbed into the neighboring seat and buckled in, feeling the cushion adjust to his weight. It was almost
too
comfortable under the circumstances. Fleeing Earth required uncomfortable seats, in his opinion. He didn’t want to feel comfortable.

“Engines warming,” Skye said. Her voice coming through Seamus’s earpiece tickled the fine hairs in his ear. His body was tingling now, a chemical reaction happening inside a closed system. This ship couldn’t possibly make it into space. They couldn’t go into space without spacesuits. They would crash and die.

His memory brought up something Ben had said: “We’re all a little traumatized.” Was this trauma, then? This icy tingling that made his left leg bounce against the soft seat? This terrible worry that death was lurking over his shoulder, sickle ready to slice his neck? This irresistible urge to break down and cry?

Sharp, perfect memories of all the Specter victims ran through his mind. Gray flesh. Sunken eyes. Wrinkled, dry lips.

“All systems go,” Cleo announced. She had a holoscreen of the Apollo brought up on the console in front of her, providing her with more than a dozen readouts. “Literally everything. This ship is in perfect condition.”

“It’s possible this ship was prepared for those working in the secret facility,” Ben said. “It would make sense to extract them in an emergency.”

Behind Seamus — and above him — he could hear the screeching whine of the engines beginning to pick up speed. The low metallic sound seemed to vibrate the steel directly above his head. That couldn’t be the right sound. It was too loud. And steel shouldn’t shudder like this.

“We run on twin turbofan engines first,” Skye said calmly. “To escape the atmosphere, we use the rocket fuel. You’ll feel the change. Double-check your straps. Make sure they’re tight.”

Seamus’s shaking hands found his straps. He ran a finger along the metal connector twice to be sure.

“Opening the hatch,” Cleo announced.

Suddenly, they were lifting. Not flying, but
lifting
. Either the floor was rising on hydraulic lifts to the surface level or the ship’s hoverfan was propelling them upward. They breached the surface. Sunlight streamed in through the panes of rounded glass at the nose. They were facing south, where the mountains were low enough for a jet to take off and land.