Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (36 page)

“What have you done?” Banar roared.

The crowd was on its feet, high above us. The aliens were screaming and pointing at me. I ignored them. The facade was gone. It was just Banar and me now.

“You want the same punishment I dealt your bait?” I asked him.

“Ha!” Banar’s armor spun forward, locking in place as the monstrous alien lunged toward me. I
jumped
as he reached forward, or at least I tried to. Nothing happened. I remained exactly where I was. No smell of stinking feet. No pitted feeling in my stomach as if I were falling. Only Banar moving swiftly, arm raised ready to strike.

“JT?” My sister mumbled from the other side of the labyrinth. Ketheria was alive! I glanced past Banar to see Ketheria struggling to sit up. Every cell in my body wanted to be next to my sister. I jumped again, and this time I slipped through space and time as easily as if I were blinking. I was kneeling next to my sister as Banar stumbled over my previous location, reeling about. I heard the crowd gasp.

“Space Jumper!” someone screamed.

“Ketheria, Ketheria, are you all right?” I said, tapping my sister’s cheek. The blood had not yet dried on her mouth.

“Ketheria!”

Her eyes were closed again, but then they flickered open. She
was
alive. I let out a breath I had been holding for a very long time.

“Where are we?” she croaked, looking around.

“We’re still in the labyrinth. Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

Ketheria stood up, a little wobbly at first, but she assured me she would be all right. Banar was just as cautious. Everyone had heard stories about Space Jumpers, and I’m sure he was no different.

“It’s your choice,” I told him. “You can let us pass or you can die here. You might even find that honorable. The task will be nothing more than an annoyance for me.”

“JT?” Ketheria whispered.

Four security drones, larger than any I had ever seen before, drifted into the vacant playing field and splashed us with their incriminating searchlights.

“Remain where you are,” they demanded in unison.

“Nope,” I said, and pushed into each device simultaneously. I corrupted any functioning code I could find. The machines, disoriented and useless, crashed into the wall before hitting the ground.

“Well, Banar?” I said.

Banar did not speak. He simply stepped aside.

“Where are we going?” Ketheria asked.

“Down there,” I said, pointing to the drain at the center of the labyrinth.

A new and invigorating sense of myself streamed through my body as I dragged Ketheria through the drainage system of the labyrinth. It felt like someone had cracked open my skull and rewired my brain. The new data screamed at me,
Can you see it now? Do you get it?

I did. The Trust had awakened something inside me. I could even see Switzer’s point of view, if just a little. Whatever my parents had planned for us on the Rings of Orbis, it was not for me to find out, and I didn’t care anymore.

Ketheria and I were forced to squeeze together as the tubes narrowed. They were much smaller than the tunnels that led to Toll Town on Orbis 2. I was very aware, however, that the Trust might come after me. I had jumped again, and this time right in front of them. I didn’t have a clue if they could track my movements or if they simply focused on the point of my jump. The Trust
did
mention that they were aware of my staining, so I had to assume that they could track me as easily as my last Guarantor had. If that were the case, then where were they? They should have caught me the moment I jumped. Whatever technique they used, though, I was planning to make it very difficult for them to find me.

I stopped when the tunnel split. This new part of me felt very alien. This fresh sense of myself, of my own identity, pushed me, but I was still unaware of what it actually meant. My feelings kept giving me pause as I looked at each decision with this new filter. I knew I was no longer going to wait for people to tell me what to do. I was living for myself now. For the very first time, I felt like my choices were my own. Right now I wanted to find Switzer. I needed his help.

“You can’t possibly be considering that,” Ketheria said, reading my thoughts as I chose the tunnel to my right.

“Why not? I should have listened to him a long time ago. Besides, he’s only a means to an end.”

“You can’t trust him.”

“I don’t plan to.”

I knew Switzer was going after the Ancients’ Treasure. I was counting on the idea that the Citizens would make it quite difficult for him to get at it.

“What if he’s already gone?” Ketheria said.

“He’s not.”

Something inside me told me that he was still on his quest; that Switzer was still on the Rings of Orbis. It was all I had to go on.

Ketheria and I waded knee-deep through a small pool that gathered in front of another grate. The metal bars had been cut and pushed apart. Switzer had come this way. “What about the others?” Ketheria said.

“Once you’re safe, I’ll come back and get them. I’ll jump if I have to.”

Ketheria did not reply.

“Even Nugget,” I added to reassure her, but Ketheria simply waited in front of the grate.

“There’s a drop,” she said, peering through the gnarled metal. She was hesitating, but I sensed that it had nothing to do with the drop.

“If Switzer can do it, then so can we.”

“You’re assuming he survived,” she argued.

“He did.”

Ketheria jumped into the tunnel and disappeared. All I heard was her scream.

“Ketheria!”

I dove in after her, only to discover that the tunnel dumped into a large reservoir. It was a five-meter drop before I hit the water, barely missing my sister.

“This has to recycle back into the labyrinth,” I cried. “Switzer is close.”

I swam to the edge of the pool and then helped Ketheria out of the water. There was only one exit from the room, and the door was already pried open. A pinkish light seeped through the forced entry. From where we stood, I could hear the sounds of a struggle on the other side of the door.

“He’s in there,” I told her.

“JT, wait. Let him go. Don’t go in there,” she pleaded, wiping the water from her face, but leaving a look of worry.

“What are you
not
telling me?” I asked her.

“Nothing. We don’t need Switzer.”

“Yes, we do,” I said. “Now, stay close.”

We stepped through the door and under a huge dome. The pink light emanated from something suspended in the center of the room. It looked like some sort of kid’s toy — a bouncing ball covered in rubber knobs or something. The details were hard to distinguish as beads of golden light zipped around the strange artifact, obscuring it from my view.
Is that the Ancients’ Treasure?
I wondered. It couldn’t be; it seemed so insignificant. On the far side of the object stood Switzer. He was under attack from four heavily armed security bots. I saw two more robots lying lifeless on the metal walkway that circled the room. Switzer was no match for the remaining bots. He was already bleeding from a gash to his head, and his back was up against the wall, literally.

“Switzer!” I called out to him.

“Just in time!” he shouted casually as one of the bots blew a hole in the wall close to his face. I moved around the weird thing in the center of the room and pushed into the bot, disabling it. The flying machine exploded when it hit the ground.

“Where were you earlier? Stop the others,” he ordered me.

“I want to make a deal first.”

“You’re in no position to make a deal!” Another bot managed to zap Switzer in the shoulder.

“Fine. See you later,” I said.

“Wait! Stop them and we’ll talk.”

“No, we talk now. Besides, I don’t think you have much longer.”

“What could you possibly want? I am not giving you back your arm. I’ve kind of grown attached to the thing.”

“Keep the arm. Do you have some sort of plan to get off the ring when you get the treasure?”

“No, I thought I would hang out on the rings, see if I could get my old job back. Of course I do, Dumbwire!”

“Then I want you to take us with you, away from the Rings of Orbis. I want out of here.”

“No, JT!” Ketheria cried. “You know the consequences.”

Switzer swung a chain at the closest bot, but his effort was in vain. The thing didn’t even budge. “I think you should listen to baby-malf,” he shouted. “You don’t want to go where I go. You couldn’t handle it.”

“Let me decide that.”

The three bots had Switzer cornered. One moved in and fired some sort of wire that bolted Switzer to the wall. Switzer struggled, but he could not remove the wire.

“I changed my mind,” he cried. “You can come with me. Just get these filthy adding machines off me!”

I pushed into the remaining bots and wiped them clean. The bots crashed to the ground. Entering a computer component was getting easier for me. I didn’t even feel it this time.

“There will be more,” I said.

“You can count on it,” he replied.

I walked over to Switzer and, using my good arm, ripped out the wire pinning him to the wall.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.

I spun around to find Ketheria leaning against the wall, her eyes closed.

“Ketheria, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled, and tried to straighten up. I grabbed her arm to help her up.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. We have to leave here.”

“We’re going, but not until I have that treasure,” Switzer said.

“Hurry, then. Where is it?”

“Right behind you,” he replied.

“That?” I said, pointing to the device hovering at the center of the room. The treasure was suspended over a metal craft comprised of five tapered spokes. Each spoke, or arm, ended with some sort of small propulsion engine, and the whole device floated over a huge void at the center of the room. I followed a trail of light that descended into the nothingness and out of sight. I assumed they used this to raise the device up and through the ceiling.

“It almost looks alive, doesn’t it?” Switzer beamed. There was admiration in his voice.

“How do you plan on getting it?” I asked.

“Walk across those spokes and take it.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I’ve done it once already. That’s what triggered those flying chow synths. I even had the treasure in my hands, but it simply floated back to where it is now.”

“Don’t you think more people are going to come?” Ketheria questioned him.

“Of course they will,” Switzer mimicked in a high, whiny voice. “So let’s get moving.”

“How? Where?” I said.

Switzer stepped on the closest engine, and the strange flier teetered before readjusting to his weight. He moved quickly along the spoke to the machine’s center, where the treasure hovered.

“When the final match of the Chancellor’s Challenge is completed, the silicon gray matter in this sweet little thing sparks to life and lifts my treasure up and onto the labyrinth floor.”

“Right into their hands,” I pointed out.

“Quit interrupting,” he snapped. “The flier doesn’t stop. It can’t. It’s hardwired to continue up and past the audience, through the roof of the Labyrinth, and into an awaiting ship that collects their prized bauble and whisks it off to safety.”

“So you’re going to swipe the treasure on the roof? How are you going to get off the Labyrinth? This building is enormous.”

Switzer shook his head. “You’re going to make a lousy wormhole pirate.”

“Trust me, I don’t plan to stick around long enough to follow in your footsteps.”

Switzer snickered. “My men are pirating the craft assigned to retrieve the Ancients’ Treasure as we speak. Once we’re on the roof, this device, with us and the treasure on it, will tuck itself into the spacecraft and we’ll be back inside the wormhole before these space monkeys even know what happened.”

“You’re forgetting that many thousands of fans are about to watch you do this,” Ketheria reminded him.

“You give them too much credit. Now hurry and get on this thing.”

I took Ketheria’s hand and stepped onto the spoked flier.

“Don’t look down,” I whispered, and gingerly moved to the platform. Switzer knelt down and removed a long metal panel. He took a small device from his trouser pocket and attached it to something within the flier before replacing the panel.

“Wakey, wakey,” he ordered, and the five engines of the craft hummed to life. I looked up to see the iris in the ceiling crack open.

Switzer stood up, swiped at some of the dry blood puddled on the metal embedded in his forehead, and stared at the treasure. “I can’t wait to see what’s in there,” he mumbled.

“How do you plan to open it?” Ketheria asked.

“Only the Scion can open it,” he replied.

“The Scion won’t open it for you,” she said.

“I have his arm, remember? I have his fingerprints, his DNA. Hell, I even have tissue samples. I figured any one of those little trinkets would do the trick, but now that he’s here —”

“I’m not the Scion,” I interrupted.

“Yes, you are,” he insisted.

“I’m not.”

But Switzer wasn’t listening. I shook my head.