Banished (The Ravenmaster Chronicles Book 2), page 5
6
AIRPORT
“I’m not a Ravenmaster,” I correct him, ignoring the “birdbrain” insult and the totally uninvited hug. “I have the potential to be a Ravenmaster. But so far, it’s just me and Render. And I’m hardly his master.”
Brohn latches onto Angel Fire’s arm and tugs him away from me. The smaller boy winces under Brohn’s powerful grip. His eyes go wide as Brohn leans toward him. “You need to take us back up. We have friends to find. And those Scroungers could be getting killed up there.”
“The Devoted aren’t after them. Anya will take care of the Scroungers. They’ll survive.”
Brohn shakes his head, hard. “Not if your Renegades blow up the arcology.”
“That’s why you need to help me.” Brohn seems suddenly aware of the anguish coming from the smaller boy squirming in his grip. He releases Angel Fire, who rubs his arm and scowls up at Brohn. “You have a choice: You can dig through the rubble and go back up there and find your friends, or you can come with me and save them.”
“Come with you where?” I ask, unconvinced and with what I’m sure is a palette of suspicion and doubt painted on my face. “To the airport?”
“Once Anya’s made sure the Scroungers are safe, she’ll meet us there.” Angel Fire tells us to follow him. When he starts walking, but we don’t, he calls back over his shoulder and asks us to trust him. “Branwynne did.”
“He’s right,” I tell Brohn, looking back the way we came. “It’s not like we have a choice.” The cave-in hasn’t sealed off the stairs completely, but if we tried to go back up, it would only be to walk right into the crosshairs of those drones.
“Fine.” Brohn stabs his finger in the direction of Angel Fire. “But if this is some kind of trick…if this kid double-crosses us…”
“I’ll kill him for you. I promise.”
After a visible gulp, Angel Fire leads us to the end of what turns out to be a concrete platform next to a mag-track of some kind. A line of glass-sided rail cars is recessed halfway down into the concave channel. Angel Fire slaps his hand to the curved wall of the nearest glass capsule. “The tram will take us back to the airport.”
I let out an impressed, “Huh” and Brohn says, “So this is how you’ve been getting in and out of the city.”
“The mag-tram system was being built right before the Atomic Wars,” Angel Fire explains. “It was never finished. But there are enough active lines to get us under the city’s perimeter walls without alerting the Devoted.”
He taps a blue button on the side of the tram, and the scarred and smokey glass door whooshes open.
With Render on my shoulder, I step into the capsule. Hovering over a single mag-strip. It bounces lightly under me like a rowboat on a pond as I take my seat. Brohn stops with one foot in the capsule and one foot still planted on the platform. “You’re sure this thing still works?”
Angel Fire plops down into one of the seats and assures Brohn that it does. “Mostly, anyway. It hasn’t failed us yet. The tech is a little glitchy. I think it was supposed to have more bells and whistles. But it goes from point A to point B and back. And for now, that’s really all we need.”
Brohn harrumphs, and I ask him what’s wrong.
“Public transportation,” he offers through a weak smile. “Maybe it’s a sign that someday there will be people with places to go because they want to connect with other people and not just because they’re running for their lives.”
Absently tracing circles with his finger on the inside of the window of reflective, black glass, Angel Fire nods his agreement. “Krug used the Eastern Order as an excuse for a lot of terrible things. One of them was making sure we all stayed put in the little pockets he carved out for us. He made it a point to blow up as much of the airfields, railroads, subways, highways, and shipping ports as possible. Men who are obsessed with building walls can’t exactly have people moving around freely, eh? It’s why the Unsettled started in the first place, and it’s why we managed to stay alive for as long as we have.” He strokes the back of the seat next to him like he’s praising a small dog. “The mag-trams don’t need a ton of power, but they do need some. They draw it from the same grid as the arcology up there. We have to be careful, though. Too much use—even from a trip or two in the tram—and the energy monitoring stations will let the Devoted know something’s up. We’ve been using the system for a couple of weeks now. So far, we’ve been okay. But we also don’t want to push our luck.”
“So yes,” I urge Brohn, sliding over and patting the empty seat next to me. “It works, and we’re okay going with Angel Fire, at least until we figure this thing out with him and the Unsettled.” I flip my gaze to Angel Fire, locking my eyes to his so he knows I’m serious. “After that, though, Brohn and I are coming back here to the find the Fallen. Agreed?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Brohn steps in and takes a seat next to me and across from Angel Fire. It’s a fairly roomy pod, almost all glass, with enough seats for twenty people. There’s a set of chrome shelves on each end. I’m guessing the racks were designed to hold luggage during the trips to or from the airport. The seats are cushion-less, cold plastic, there are no internal lights, and the cover doors are missing from most of the car’s interior access panels on the walls and floor.
“You might want to hang onto something,” Angel Fire tells us from within the eerie golden glow still lingering around him. “These things go pretty fast, and their auto-stabilizers tend to misfire whenever they feel like it.”
Although the magnetic properties of this kind of tram greatly reduce surface friction, there’s still air friction to deal with. Plus, according to Angel Fire, the technology used to make this system was in its prototype stage when it was first implemented more than twenty years ago. “It was built to be fast and smooth,” he explains as the cars rattle around a bend and send us leaning hard to one side. “I know all about it,” he boasts. “Three of the engineers on the original project were once part of the Unsettled.” He sighs and drops his head a little. “The Devoted got them, too.”
The three of us fall into a mournful silence as we zip along, the steel and stone interior of the unfinished sections of the tunnel system whipping past in a blur.
Finally, the mag-tram sighs to a breathy halt. The glass door whooshes open, and Render bursts out from the confined space and into the high-ceilinged station. He weaves around a forest of widely spaced, thirty-foot-high concrete columns before landing on top of an overturned, glass-walled security booth. He pecks at some of the booth’s exposed wiring before deciding it’s not food and takes a second to preen himself of the dust he accumulated during our narrow and sooty escape from the drones.
Brohn, Angel Fire, and I step out of the capsule and onto a floor of tiles polished to a nearly blinding shine.
Catching us staring, Angel Fire points down and twists the toe of his boot into the floor. “These floors…they’re coated with a kind of adaptive molecular resin. They don’t get dirty, scuffed, or dulled. You’ll see…most of this place has been damaged or destroyed. But the floors stayed shiny.”
Brohn says, “Impressive,” but Angel Fire partially disagrees.
“Shiny and sterile has its advantages,” he concedes, sounding more like an old, grizzled man than a plucky teenage boy. “But it’s also a dangerous thing to keep putting barriers between ourselves and the earth.”
“Barriers?” I ask.
“Our boots, these floors, the sub-flooring, the concrete foundations. It’s all just stuff we’ve put between ourselves and the natural world. It’s the world we’re all from, and it’s where we’ll all end up.” Sighing, he adds, “I don’t know when ‘dirty’ got to be such a bad word.” With a grimace, he presses the pad of this thumb to his neck and deactivates his embedded Illumination Coil. Striding ahead, he leads us through an entranceway with its two cracked, sliding glass doors stuck half-open and sitting slightly off their rails. “Come on!” he waves to us. “This way!”
After a long walk down another glossy-floored corridor—one that frankly looks greasy and makes me long for a nice, rough surface to walk on—Angel Fire stops us at a door marked, “Baggage Handling: No Unauthorized Access.” He tells us, “We’ve got to go one more level down” and leads us to a nearby flight of stairs.
The “stairs” he takes us on next are a deactivated escalator with silver treads stretching into the darkness. I’m reminded of my descent into the nightmarish, hallucinatory hell of the parking garage where I had to leave Caryl behind. It’s not a place I’m eager to go back to, but when we’re finished here, that’s exactly where I’m planning on going.
When we reach the bottom, Angel Fire leads us into what’s probably the biggest room I’ve ever been in. It’s not even really a room. More like an underground baseball stadium with its far walls barely visible in the distance. We duck under an unending maze of silver chutes and inactive conveyor belts. Most sections are bent, broken, or missing large pieces. There are mountains of old luggage stacked into pyramids off to one side and a fleet of small, broken buggies on the other. It’s enough to remind us that people once traveled, that they had places they wanted to go and the means to get there safely.
His thumb toward the lofty ceiling, Angel Fire tells us about how most of the airport was destroyed by the Eastern Order. “Well, that was the story, anyway. Our founders, the original members of the Unsettled, suspected something was up. That’s why they bought, borrowed, stole, or commandeered every big rig they could get their hands on and went on the move. It’s why our people stayed on the move for decades…until the Devoted stopped us in our tracks.”
“We’ve been to airfields before,” Brohn tells Angel Fire. “But never in an actual airport.”
“There was that one in England,” I remind him.
Brohn says, “True. But that wasn’t much more than a couple of single-story buildings.” He waves his hand in a big arc, taking in the enormous hangar around us. “This is practically an entire city by itself.”
“Minus the people,” Angel Fire adds. “This airport used to be a hub of connections. And I don’t just mean the kind that gets you from one city to another. Above our heads—in all those gates, lounges, terminals, concourses, corridors, garages, and waiting areas—people connected. They met each other, they cared about each other, and they worried about each other. It was up there they realized how much they loved each other. It was where you valued people the most because you knew you might be seeing them for the last time.”
“I don’t know if that’s gloomy or inspirational,” I confess.
“Maybe a bit of both,” Angel Fire admits.
Appearing to perk up a bit, he guides us the rest of the way through the baggage-handling warehouse and into a large break room filled with plastic-topped tables and occupied by at least forty or fifty people. They’re all teens and pre-teens, they’re all dressed in matching white coveralls with yellow reflective tape at the elbows and knees, and they’re all giving us looks that could kill…or, at least severely injure.
Three of them break the stalemate of stares and welcome Angel Fire back. A boy, not more than twelve years old but with dark speckles of hair already forming on his upper lip, rises from his seat and asks Angel Fire if he had success with the Scroungers.
“They’re struggling,” Angel Fire admits. “As always. We’re going to need more supplies for them. And soon.”
“There’s not much left,” the boy confesses, his head sagging low in defeat.
“What about Bondo?” a round-faced girl asks. She bites her lip, and her eyes go watery. “Zephora’s still going to talk him down, right?”
Angel Fire’s eyes do a fast dance around the room. He promises he’ll pass along all the information he has. “Right after I have a little talk with our friends here.”
Now, every eye in the room is pinned to me, Brohn, and, of course, Render, who is perched on my shoulder. No one says anything to us—either in greeting or in defiance of our presence—but the dozens of cold stares aren’t exactly welcoming. A half-bald girl just a few feet away from us starts to reach out her hand like she wants to pet Render, but he clacks his beak and hiss-barks at her. Startled and teary-eyed, she snaps her hand back.
The older boy and the girl on either side of her step protectively forward, while offering up challenging snarls toward me and Brohn.
Angel Fire gives a dismissive flick of his hand and tells us not to pay them any attention. “They’re a little skittish around Emergents.”
“They know who we are?” I ask under my breath as we slide into three of the chairs at one of the empty tables.
“You’re kind of required reading. Not that any of our knowledge about you helped us against Epic and his band of superpowered assassins.”
“Those are Hypnagogics,” Brohn clarifies. “We share techno-genetic origins but that’s about it. They’re insane.”
“How’d you all end up here, anyway?” I ask. I can feel the eyes of everyone in the room on us, but the tension seems to be ebbing. Even Render notices the shift in mood from wariness and hostility to reluctant acceptance. He lowers his hackles and doesn’t seem to be on high alert, although he continues to keep his onyx-black eyes fixed on the girl who was brave, naïve, or dumb enough to try to pet him.
“After the Devoted hunted us down in the desert, hundreds of us were slaughtered. Most of the rest were turned into slave labor. What you see is half of what’s left. The other half are the Renegades. We’re careful. They’re impatient. And we’re all angry.” Angel Fire lowers his voice and adds from behind his hand, “But the Renegades are bat-shit crazy and blow-it-all-up angry.” Turning his attention to the Unsettled who are now mostly standing and milling around the room, Angel Fire calls out, “So anyway, these are the Reformers.”
A few of them raise their hands in greeting. Most just stare.
“I know you have your own mission to get back to,” he acknowledges, returning his attention to us. “And I promise I’ll help send you on your way. But if we don’t manage to talk Bondo and the Renegades down, your five Fallen friends are going to be buried along with the rest of the city. That includes the Scroungers, the rest of the Fallen…everybody. So? Will you help me so I can help you?”
Deep in thought, Brohn laces his fingers behind his head and stares at a spot on the ceiling. He doesn’t say anything, so I respond to Angel Fire’s request on behalf of both of us. “You said this airport was a place where people connect. Let’s see what we can do about getting you and Bondo on the same page.”
“You’re optimistic,” Angel Fire beams. “Like a true hero! Forget pages, though. Let’s start by getting us in the same book!”
7
MEETING
A tall boy with long hair and sad eyes bursts into the room. He scans the space, spots Angel Fire, and dashes up to our table.
“They’re getting ready to go,” he cries, panting as he relays his information. “The Renegades…no sign of Zephora…Devlin said Bondo has confirmed strike-points and is already testing the leads on the CSDs…!”
Apparently not sharing the boy’s panic but definitely registering the urgency, Angel Fire nods and pushes himself up. “We’d better get moving.”
“Where to now?” Brohn asks, as he and I both stand as well.
“East Garage.” Angel Fire directs the rest of the Unsettled Reformers to stay here. “If this doesn’t work, you’ll need to get out of the city if possible and as far away as you can. And you’ll need to do it before tomorrow!”
“We’re not leaving without you,” a small boy cries out, a squint of defiance set into his ash-gray eyes.
A round-faced girl next to him echoes his opposition. “And we’re not letting you leave without us!”
Like a baby giraffe, a tall boy with shaggy black hair strides forward on gangly legs and plants himself in front of Angel Fire. “You kept us alive in the desert.”
“Then let me do it here, too,” Angel Fire pleads, looking first up at the tall boy looming over him and then at the rest of the Unsettled Reformers bunched in a nervous cluster. “The reason there’s no sign of Zephora…”
Terrified he’s about to pin the blame for her death on me and Brohn, I swallow down a gulp of panic. It’s not that we don’t deserve at least some of the blame. Hell, we probably deserve all of it. It’s just that standing here in close quarters with a bunch of world-hardened teenage desert warriors who were counting on her to save their lives could lead to a lot of trouble if they find out about our involvement in her death. And I seriously doubt anyone in here has the stomach to handle that kind of confrontation.
Angel Fire doesn’t mention us, though. Instead, he composes himself as his voice shifts from boyish bluster to unruffled leader. “Zephora was killed by the Devoted.” The kids in the room gasp. Some of them make a show of coiling their fists or letting their hands come to a hover over the holstered knives or other assorted bladed weapons tucked into their belts. Several of the kids cover their mouths as Angel Fire continues, his tone strong and even, although not quite enough to completely mask the pain, sorrow, and fear he must be feeling over the loss of his friend. “She was a casualty of war. That doesn’t make her someone to be worshipped or glorified. Only not forgotten. Let’s face it, to one degree or another, we’re all casualties of war. Zephora, though, she had influence. She had the power to prevent what’s about to happen. We all thought she was the only one who could stop this.” Angel Fire clears his throat. His voice dips to a near whisper as he extends a hand toward me and Brohn. “We may have thought wrong.”
