Ascend (The Cure Chronicles Book 3), page 7
“You’ve been hiding this whole time,” I finally say as I follow breathlessly, reality sinking in with each step. “You’ve been in the Arc all along…”
“Hiding? Yes, I suppose I have. But it’s not for lack of desire to see you. I—”
“Guys!” Rys barks. “Focus. Please.” He looks over his shoulder, his skin pale, his face shiny with perspiration. “They’re going to be on us in seconds.”
I glance back to see several of the horsemen charging our way once again, though their mounts are skittish and in disarray, seemingly terrified that another unseen wall may rise up to break their necks.
Calmly, Finn turns to look ahead, pointing toward a row of perfectly coiffed hedges. “This way,” he says, guiding us to a spot where a tall shrub seems to split apart just slightly. He slips into the opening and we follow, pushing our way through the greenery.
On the other side, we find a white-washed wooden wall lined with a series of doors that look like something out of a drug-induced dream. Each is a different shape, size, color. Red, blue, pink, purple, yellow, green.
“Another hologram?” I ask, frustrated.
“No. This has been here since I was a child,” Finn explains. “When I was younger, we called them the Magic Doors.”
“Do you know which to take?”
“Depends. Where did you send the Quantum Sources?”
“Service tunnel on the Sector Eight rail line,” Rys says.
With a nod, Finn guides us to a teal door whose handle is shaped like a silver dolphin. He pulls it open, but instead of walking through, he spins around to face us.
“What are you doing, man?” Rys snaps. “Just go!”
“In a second. They’re close. If I don’t stop them, they’ll catch up. We can’t risk them following.”
I can feel the rhythmic beating of the horses’ hooves in my feet, and instinct tells me to grab Finn and pull him through the door. But instead, I choose to trust him and watch as he works another miracle.
Holding a small silver gadget in his hand, he closes his eyes, his body tightening, the tendons on his neck jutting out prominently as though it’s taking all his strength to press the button on the gadget’s surface.
After a few seconds he’s crafted another wall, another blockade to save us from death.
When he’s finished, he lets out a heavy breath, turns to the door, and says, “Let’s go.”
Rys and I slip through before Finn follows us into a sleek white Conveyor and calls up a menu on his wrist implant, selecting our destination.
I scan the Conveyor, expecting the walls to start flashing red at any second. Surely the alarm will sound and the entire Arc will soon know what’s happened.
“Don’t worry, I’ve disrupted the system,” Finn says. “Just enough to get us to our destination. We’ll soon reach the Quantum Sources you two so cleverly swiped.”
“You’ve been anticipating all this,” Rys replies, a reluctant note of admiration in his voice. “You knew our plan…”
“I knew you two would go find the Batts, yeah,” Finn replies. “And I wanted to help, for obvious reasons.”
He glances at me, and I’m acutely aware that he hasn’t yet touched me, held me, kissed me. It’s almost like he’s reluctant to prove to me that he’s real. I’m terrified that if I reach out to slip my fingers along his flesh, my hand will go right through him.
My chest tight, I ask, “How did you know we’d be in the Palace Grounds?”
“For one thing, I followed you after the so-called memorial service,” he says with a sardonic chuckle. “I overheard your conversation. You two need to learn to be more careful. You never know who could be listening.”
His calm demeanor and the casualness of his tone set a slow-growing anger simmering inside me. I step over to him, press my hands to his chest, and force him to look into my eyes. “You were cloaked behind us and didn’t say anything?”
“It wouldn’t have been prudent.”
“You let me think you were dead!” I snap. “You have no idea what that did to me, Finn. How it tortured me.”
“I didn’t want to be a distraction,” he says, his tone oddly matter-of-fact and devoid of apology.
This isn’t the Finn I know and love. This isn’t the Finn who tells me with nothing more than a reassuring look that fate will find a way to be kind to us both, and that I have nothing to worry about.
“It didn’t occur to you that constantly thinking I’d murdered you was a distraction?” I ask, my voice quivering with a combination of rage and self-pity. “That living with what I’d done was like being stabbed in the heart every waking moment?”
Finn takes a deep breath and fixes his eyes on my own. “You really thought I was dead?”
“Of course I did!”
My anger increases when a smile spreads itself across his lips.
This time, instead of simply pressing my hands to his chest, I push him so hard he stumbles backward into the Conveyor’s wall. “I’m so pissed off at you right now. You have no idea.”
“I’m sorry,” he replies with a chuckle. “I really am. It’s just—if you thought I was dead, that means the illusion worked better than I could ever have thought. It means we’re one step closer.”
“To what?”
As the Conveyor slides to a halt, Finn says, “Victory.”
When the doors open, we slip out into a passageway so dark I can barely make out my hand in front of my face. “The Service Conveyor is up ahead,” Rys says. “We’ll find the Batts there.”
He pulls a device from his uniform’s pocket and lights our way through a nearly impassable tunnel filled with crumbling concrete and twisted rebar. This passage evidently isn’t used frequently—which hopefully means no one will expect to find us here.
“What do we do when we reach the Batts?” I ask, shoving my anger aside just long enough to focus on the task at hand. “I mean, Finn and I can only carry them so far, and I can’t imagine the Bug can follow us through the woods. It’s a long hike back to the Pit.”
“I have something in mind,” Rys says, “to take us as far as we can go via the old highway. The rest we’ll have to do on foot. In the meantime, I’ll send word to the Pit via Atticus that we’re on our way.”
When we come to a fork in the tunnel, Rys signals us to be silent before turning right. We pad along quietly behind him until we’re certain no one is lying in wait for us. After a hundred feet or so, we come to a small door that slides open on our approach to reveal the Bug.
“We need to move fast,” Rys says as our rolling black companion begins to move along at his feet. “The King will be aware soon of what’s happened. He’ll lose his mind and there will be no escape.”
We jog after him until we reach another Conveyor, which Rys programs to bring us to Sub-Level Four.
“This is the level where they store the vehicles the Chaperons and others use,” he tells us. “So all we have to do is take one for ourselves.”
“Sounds so easy,” I reply. “Why do I get the feeling it won’t be?”
“It’ll be easy if you both cover your faces, go into stealth mode, and keep your mouths shut. I can’t disable the cameras down here—they’re on a system I don’t have access to, and the garage’s security is multi-layered. Meanwhile, I’m going to put on my best I belong here face and hope no one notices what I’m doing.”
Finn begins to pull the fabric over his face, but hesitates, turning to me. He puts a finger under my chin and lifts my face to his. “I’m really proud of you,” he says softly. “And I promise, I won’t fake my own death again. At least, not without telling you first. I never meant to hurt you, Ash. I only wanted to save your life.”
“I’m still mad at you.”
“Are you?” he asks, leaning in to press a soft kiss to my lips. “How about now?”
“Slightly less,” I reply with the faintest hint of a smile. “If you want to make it up to me, you’d better be prepared to tell me everything. The King has freaking cat-bots and the Duchess—well, you were at the memorial service. You saw what she has in her possession. Those Cyphers are killing machines.”
“Yes. I saw. But you I want you to know they were never…” Finn says, his gaze and voice suddenly distant. “The Cyphers’ tech is stolen. They shouldn’t exist.”
I press a palm to his cheek, trying to pull his eyes back to mine. “What are you saying?”
“I’ll explain everything I possibly can,” he promises in a soft, sweet voice that half melts me where I stand, and I’m relieved and grateful when he focuses on my eyes once again. “But some things have changed, Ash, in ways I can’t control.”
Rys clears his throat, and I can tell without looking that he’s ready to punch us both in the face. “Come on, Romeo and Drooliet. Mask up and let’s go. We don’t have time for this.”
When Finn and I are masked and cloaked, I ask Rys, “Where are we going, then?”
“Follow me,” he says, guiding us along by the dim light of his handheld device.
We eventually come to a steel door that Rys opens with a press of his palm to a security panel. We’re greeted by the cleanest, whitest parking garage I’ve ever seen, filled with shiny vehicles like the one that picked me up at my home in the Mire on the first day I came to the Arc.
Rys guides us through to the far end of the garage, the Bug following obediently.
The car he brings us to is larger than the others. Silver and sleek, its wheels are streamlined, smooth, and devoid of detail, its windows tinted dark.
Rys presses a hand to the driver’s side door, which lights up with a blue input panel. When he strokes his fingertip over a series of shapes, the door slides open upwards, as do the other three doors and the trunk. Finn and I deposit the Batts and slip into the back seat together as the Bug disappears into the shadows at the far end of the garage.
Rys leaps into the driver’s seat and the doors descend, sealing us inside.
I examine the vehicle’s interior, stunned at the opulent details: a small bar, complete with crystal glasses. Several holo-screens displaying picturesque views outside the Arc. Off to one side is a small set of drawers, and when I pull one open, I’m met with a series of silk ties and elegant masks like the ones the Aristocrats wear to social functions.
One of the ties is emblazoned with the Directorate’s gold rose held in the talons of an eagle, rendered in exquisite detail.
“Rys,” I say, my throat parched, “whose vehicle is this?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he chuckles.
He starts up the engine, which is virtually silent, and we begin to glide as if floating on the air.
To my surprise, we don’t cruise up an exit ramp. Instead, Rys steers us toward a plain white wall at the far end of the garage, accelerating as he goes.
“Uh…Rys?” I stammer nervously as we speed toward an inevitably fatal collision.
“It’s okay,” he assures me. “A little trust?”
I sit back and swallow hard. He’s right. I owe him a little trust…
Still, I reach out and grab Finn’s hand, holding on hard as I stare death in the face for what feels like the tenth time today. Finn squeezes back, but somehow he feels too calm, too complacent, as if he knows something I don’t.
Just as my mouth shoots open to utter a cry of terror, the white wall slides open and we go tearing up a steep, cylindrical tunnel just barely wide enough to accommodate a vehicle of this size.
As if he’s done it a million times, Rys steers the car expertly along the narrow passageway, its lights dim orange and disorienting.
We glide along for what seems like an eternity before Rys finally says, “Brace yourselves. The really dangerous part is coming up. But by my calculations, it’ll be tons of fun.”
I pull the cloaking fabric away from my face for a moment, turn to Finn and smile, easing back in my seat.
Once again, we’re taking our lives into our own hands. But by some miracle, I feel…happy.
10
On the Outside
Blinding and sharp, the sun’s piercing rays shoot through the windshield like daggers as we leave the tunnel’s darkness. Still, Rys seems calm and collected when he hits the accelerator.
When my eyes finally adjust, all I can see ahead is a broad, open highway that was once populated by thousands of tourist-filled cars. A sea of trees and mountains surrounds us, but I’m all too aware of the open sky overhead, of how visible we must be to every camera on this side of the Arc. We’re a fast-moving silver bullet shooting away from a fortified dungeon the likes of which the world has rarely seen.
“We’re too vulnerable,” I mutter, twisting to look behind us as we distance ourselves from the monstrous structure known as the Arc. Thanks to some clever visual tricks by its designers, it appears to float weightless several stories above the ground—an illusion intended to make it appear impenetrable from the outside.
“I wish we had a stealth vehicle,” I lament.
“Me too,” Rys replies. “But at least this one’s bullet-proof. And kind of explosion-proof.”
“What?” I pull my hand away from Finn’s and lean forward, pulling the silver fabric from my face. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“Rystan,” Finn growls, clearly as nervous as I am. “Exactly whose car is this?”
At first, Rys doesn’t answer. I peer at the rearview mirror to assess his smiling eyes. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s driving at what must be close to two hundred miles an hour, I’d seriously consider punching him.
“Rys!” I shout. “This isn’t funny! Tell us!”
“Fine. It may belong to the King. It’s not his prized possession or anything, but…look, he has dozens of cars. He won’t miss it.”
“Please, for the love of God, tell me you’re not serious right now.”
“I…can’t.”
“Even if every camera on the western side of the Arc wasn’t watching us right now—didn’t it occur to you that the Directorate would notice someone stole the King’s freaking car? You don’t think a convoy of drones will come after us any second now?”
Infuriatingly, Rys shrugs. “I’m counting on it.”
“That’s it!” I bark. “Pull over. Hide the car in the trees, I don’t care. We’ll hike the rest of the way.”
“Nope,” Rys says. “You know as well as I do they’d track us down and kill us in the woods before we get anywhere near the Pit. Some of us can’t vanish into thin air like fancy-pants magicians, you know.”
I twist around in my seat to look through the back window.
“What’s your plan if drones chase us down in this stupid car?” I ask.
“I don’t exactly have a plan for that,” Rys confesses. “Look, I can’t be a genius all the time.”
“Well, you’d better think fast,” Finn says, gesturing behind us. He’s out of stealth mode now, his face exposed to reveal an expression of rage. “Because they’re coming.”
I turn around again to see that he’s right. At least five large, armed drones are soaring in a V-formation from the direction of the Arc’s upper stories.
I glance over at Finn, who looks far calmer than I feel, considering we could be on the verge of losing one another again.
Feeling suddenly desperate, I close my eyes and beg some unknown entity for mercy.
Please…don’t take him away from me again. Not yet.
As the drones descend to close in on us, their gruesome buzzing—like that of a swarm of giant insects—grows so loud I’m convinced the leather seats are vibrating under us.
“Here it comes,” Rys says, his giddy enjoyment palpable on the air. “Like clockwork.”
“Here what comes?”
My question is immediately answered when a robotic voice booms out from somewhere above us.
“Driver, stop the vehicle. It is the property of the King, and has been taken without authorization. Failure to comply will result in incarceration and eventual death.”
“Well, the good news is that Ash and I have been through both of those already,” Finn says. “I don’t suppose you plan to obey their orders, Rys?”
Rys shakes his head.
“Pull over immediately!” the drone-voice calls out, louder now. “You have exactly thirty seconds before the Type-Alpha Drones open fire.”
Rys lets out a sigh and shakes his head. “They’re so predictable, aren’t they?”
“Why aren’t you taking this seriously?” I snarl.
“Because I know how drones work.”
“Drones kill people, Rys.”
“Not very often. See, the thing is, the Directorate’s drones are programmed to assume people will comply. When people don’t obey their commands, they get confused. More often than not, they malfunction and freak out.”
“That voice doesn’t sound confused. It sounds like we have thirty seconds before we’re blown all to hell. Actually, more like ten now.”
Instead of replying, Rys just continues to drive, stone-faced and fearless.
No, not fearless.
Reckless.
I’m shaking now, trying not to count the seconds down until the assault begins. But I know it’s coming, and I know he’s not planning to do a damned thing to stop it.
When the first shot hits, it feels and sounds like an explosion against the vehicle’s silver exterior.
“Oops, I guess I was wrong. They’re using blast shells,” Rys says with a shrug. “They blow apart on impact. A direct hit from one of those turns a person into hamburger meat.”
I let out a shriek when the second slams against the back window, mere inches from my head.
“Rys!” I cry. “Do something!”
“Like I said, it’s okay. This car belongs to the most paranoid psychopath in the Arc,” he responds with a chuckle. “Nothing can take it down. But if it makes you feel better, I can make the drones disappear. It’s a favorite magic trick of mine.”
“Whatever you’re going to do,” Finn growls, “I’d suggest you do it now. Stop playing these stupid games.”
