I landed the Airbike in a park near the center of Oakland. After clearing the far end of the dead zone, I was able to open a channel and communicate with the city administrator. In this case, that was Sarah Hargrave. Short and thin, she looked somehow older than the other denizens, even though I knew that wasn’t possible. It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered Sarah, but her wizened appearance and an age that, at least visually, seemed to parallel Doc Cormac made me think for the first time that the difference in relative appearances might have more to do with one’s station in society than with conventional age.
“Gray,” Sarah said, extending her hand. It was a mannerism some had adopted from My World, and I recognized she was using it to break the ice. Sarah Hargrave had been one of the most vocal opponents of the point defense system I was working to implement on the perimeter walls of Portland. “You’re ahead of schedule,” she noted.
She was right. Once I discovered that Seeley tech worked in the dead zone as long as I was above 20,000 feet, I could reactivate my armor. This made higher speeds more comfortable, and I was able to more than make up for my lost time.
“Have you been able to reach Doctor Cormac?” I asked, trying to cut through the niceties. The ride had been a blast, but it was exhausting. Time was also limited. I needed to interview Mara and begin the return flight as soon as possible.
She shook her head. “The latest information suggests the storm front has settled in. It’s now stationary. There’s no reason to believe conditions will change anytime soon. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a Thonian weather front behave this way,” she said, looking uncomfortable with what she was describing. “We just hoped for the best, I suppose you could say.”
I followed Sarah across the park’s open green expanse and into a glass-covered greenhouse-like building while we talked. After that, we passed through a lobby and entered an elevator. She hadn’t yet explained where we were going, but I assumed it was the medical complex since she knew my reason for traveling to Oakland.
“You saw the video I forwarded?” I asked as we waited in the elevator.
Sarah didn’t respond at first. Her complexion suddenly grew more pallid, and she swayed on her feet. I watched her throat contract as she appeared to swallow something unpleasant with concerted effort. The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open, but Sarah Hargrave failed to move. After a few long seconds, her gaze met mine. She blinked away moist eyes, forced a smile, and led me from the elevator.
“Kind of you not to say, ‘I told you so,’” she said in a dry, husky voice as we treaded slowly down the next corridor. “That recording…” she almost mumbled. “They truly can fly?” She looked at me again and forced another smile. “If you can, I suppose, why not them?”
No one on Wild-Side really understood the concept of flight. Maybe that’s why it had been so hard for most to believe that the Elend could actually do it. I had been trying to explain the likelihood for so long, but the threat had fallen on deaf ears until I provided video evidence. It turned out Tripp had built a digital video recorder into the frame of the Airbike. It was another piece of technology based on the ‘backward and antiquated tech of My-World,’ as he put it. I’m sure he would have explained the feature if there had been more time before I left. But once my armor and HUD came back online, I had hours of flight to get more familiar with my gear. I found the recording and forwarded it to Sarah.
“You made me a believer,” she said. “The PDTs are being assembled to Tripp’s specifications as we speak. I started right after watching the video. I just hope we’re not too late.”
I knew she was thinking about how Fresno had gone silent before being found abandoned with no trace of the thousands who had lived there. Scratching at the open wound wasn’t necessary. She was finally in support of the Point Defense Turrets. The video should have the same impact on the remaining detractors. Anyone opposed to the plan once they saw how the Elend could snatch them from their previously protected streets was clearly just being unreasonable.
Sarah paused in the hall and gestured to a pair of uniformed guards standing at attention, one on either side of a wide door a dozen yards further down the corridor. “Mara is through there. Doctor Hiller is expecting you. He will ask you to keep the visit brief, but he understands you’ve traveled a great distance for the interview and that time is limited. Do what you can.”
Though she seemed like she had more to say, I wasn’t sure Sarah even knew what it was. I’d been in Oakland for less than fifteen minutes and had already upset her fragile worldview. She just looked at me with tired eyes and gave a sad smile. “Doctor Cormac speaks highly of you. He has great confidence, to put it bluntly. I sincerely hope he’s correct because…” Though she paused as if to continue, she did not. Finally, she closed her eyes for a long moment, then nodded her head slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I won’t be so quick to dismiss your advice next time. See to Mara, and I’ll expedite the deployment of our Point Defense Perimeter.”
I wanted to say something to ease her mind, but I was at a loss. Months had been wasted arguing over the defense system. I had Cormac on my side, and a small group of key players in Portland came with him. Other than that, I felt like I was ice skating uphill. Was it really as simple as forwarding one video to the administrators of each city?
I was far better at fighting monsters than bureaucracy.
“Once the contagion alarms went off, we followed protocol and requested backup,” Mara explained. Two additional Buses were dispatched. I was in our broken-down vehicle when the attack occurred. I lost contact with the team. It was either just before the assault or at the same time. I’m not sure we’ll ever know the exact sequence of events. The recording equipment the team carried was damaged too severely to restore, and they couldn’t transmit high bandwidth from inside the cave.
Mara lay semi-reclined on a high-tech hospital bed that hovered several feet above the floor as if by its own accord. Given the critical nature of her injuries and the coma she had been in since the events months ago in the cave, I had expected her to be connected to life-saving or at least supportive equipment. While she had been fully submerged in a tall, narrow transparent cylinder in the corner of her room when I arrived, it seemed she didn’t need to remain there. I was informed that the cylinder was infused with a kind of clear, nano-infused gelatin that was responsible for her physical rehabilitation. As soon as I arrived, the nursing staff took her out of the gel, bathed her, and placed her in the bed for the interview.
“When were you attacked?” I asked, worried that I might be bringing up a traumatic memory. She had only been out of the coma for a couple of days, so the events I was inquiring about were likely very recent in her mind.
Mara shrugged. This mannerism caused two things to occur to me. First, it was a gesture that reminded me a lot of home. I’d never been sure if this sort of thing was universal or if the people of Wild-Side had quickly picked up on my habits after being exposed to me. Best estimates suggest my first trip to Wild-Side coincided with the time Mara’s team was attacked in the cave. She’d effectively been on ice since then, so it was unlikely she’d adopted my habits, given that she hadn’t been exposed to me until this interview. She had spent time with people who may have shown her the mannerism, but that felt a bit like I was overthinking it.
Second, she made the move without showing any apparent physical discomfort. This indicated that her rehab was effective and that her time in the coma had less residual physical impact than I had expected. I hoped the same could be true for her memory of the events from that day. As far as we had been able to determine, the attack at the cave was the first instance of Elend-like violence against the Seeley. If the cave held significance, we needed to gather as much information as possible about what happened that day.
“I have no idea,” Mara said. Those four words shattered the hopes that had brought me all the way here.
I have to admit, I hesitated for a few seconds while searching for a question that could salvage the trip. I didn’t realize how much I had invested in this conversation until that moment. “What can you tell me about your attacker?”
Mara didn’t respond immediately. Seconds ticked by before she shrugged once more. “I don’t remember an attack. Just waking up with my suit torn to shreds.” I saw blood everywhere. I felt confused. It didn’t make sense that I couldn’t move, and the blood all over the compartment was mine.”
“You were in the Bus?”
She nodded. “I’ll never forget that much. I’d been sick and had spent a lot of time cleaning up the space. I was confused about why everything was trashed again. I remember thinking I needed to work, but I didn’t understand why I couldn’t move. I was still trying to sort that out when the medical team arrived.”
The doctor in charge of Mara’s treatment informed me that her recall was inconsistent. He asserted that it was a result of head trauma. When I inquired whether her memory would likely improve, he hesitated to make any promises. The nano-submersion treatments she was receiving were mainly intended to assist with physical rehabilitation, but the technology was also permeating her blood and internal organs. This tech would continue to repair both internal and external damage, but he warned that brain trauma couldn’t be completely healed through artificial tissue stimulation.
I leaned back in my chair and regarded Mara for a moment. By all accounts, she was fortunate to be alive. According to the report, the medical team evacuated her for emergency treatment while another group approached the cave to try to retrieve the rest of Mara’s team. Their point person got close enough to the cave entrance but couldn’t enter. The area was geologically unstable, and the team had triggered a rockslide near the cave. They were concerned about another collapse while approaching the cave mouth. A drone was sent into the cave, but it was lost when a rockslide covered the entrance. Ultimately, the drone was lost, and only preliminary footage was gathered. Unfortunately, that footage was enough to confirm that everyone on the team had been savagely attacked and succumbed to grievous fatal injuries.
“I’ve heard about you,” Mara said, breaking a prolonged silence.
I offered a slow nod but said nothing.
“Some say you’re here to save us from the demons.”
“Yeah?”
Her expression became more serious, though I didn’t think that was possible. “Some say you brought them here with you.”
Another slow nod. “I’ve heard that one too.”
The unasked question lingered in her quiet, expressionless gaze. So, which is it?
I leaned to the edge of my chair and spoke in quiet, gentle words. “I have no idea what brought me here, what these creatures are, or why they showed up at the same time.” I got up and walked to the edge of the bed. I put my hand on hers and looked her in the eye. “But I know how to kill them, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll kill every last one until they’re gone or until one finally gets me. If someone smarter than me figures out the rest along the way…well, that would be nice too.”
I’ll admit that I didn’t have a plan for what came next. The interview with Mara was the extent of my mid-term agenda. The primary hope was that she’d been aware enough for the interview, so I lucked out there. By the time I flew out to Oakland to speak with her, the details of her condition were outdated, and her health was as likely to deteriorate as to improve. If she could communicate, the hope was that she might offer some insight into what happened in the cave, the phenomenon that had transformed Breslin into who he was now, or—this was a distant hope that may have existed only in my imagination—some understanding of my connection to Wild-Side. By this point, I believe the Doc strongly believed in my connection to Breslin’s transformation, even if we couldn’t directly link the two events.
There was no way to know if Mara’s memory might return, either partially or fully. Her doctors agreed that, in time, a visit to the location of the attack could impact her recall. Considering the trauma she’d experienced, both mentally and physically, no one was willing to approve the trip. It was just as likely to hinder her recovery as to help it. Moreover, the Darks, the wasteland where the cave was located, were generally considered off-limits. Traveling there required approval from the Central Authority, a governing body comprised of two representatives from each of the five cities.
I’ve already explained that I wouldn’t consider most of the people from Wild-Side fans, so I wasn’t surprised when Mara recognized my name even before I arrived. Throughout the interview, I was grateful that what she’d heard about me didn’t influence her willingness to engage in the conversation. She seemed genuinely eager to share all she could about her experiences that day. Her inability to recall the events was an apparent pain that she seemed to endure almost physically. I believe that’s why she insisted on returning to Portland with me.
As unlikely as it was, five hours after my arrival in Oakland, I found myself back in the air and returning to Portland. This time, Mara was on the back of the Airbike, allowing me to make better time because I climbed straight to twenty thousand feet and locked my speed at one hundred eighty. Mara wore an environmental suit identical to the one she had donned in the Darks during the mission that had landed her in the hospital.
I didn’t realize how much the Seeley tech had changed my physiology until Mara noted how hard her suit worked against the constant cold. I had paid little attention to the temperatures associated with high-altitude flight. My gear was undoubtedly working to counter the cold, but her comment made me consider how little I’d noticed before my tech came back online for the first leg of the trip. The Thonian radiation would have kept the nanotech in my body offline in the same way it was affecting the Airbike; still, I wasn’t my old self. Even with my biotech disabled, I had maintained some degree of lasting protection from the cold.
I wondered what other ways I might have been permanently changed by my exposure to Wild-Side. It also made me think about the people here. It seemed the Airbike was literally the first flying vehicle of its kind. The entire concept appeared revolutionary, even to their most creative minds. The few who had seen the machine in action seemed horrified by the idea of human flight.
As I’ve mentioned, no one on Wild-Side had ever flown before, and the idea seemed to sour even the most stalwart of dispositions. So, I didn’t think the high-speed, high-altitude trip back to Portland would be well received by Mara… but, damn, was I wrong. I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty since she was sitting behind me the entire ride, but I don’t think she ever stopped grinning. It didn’t matter how fast or how high we flew; she just held on and soaked up the experience.
Piper worked through the literature that served as historical documentation for the Seeley people. She had read thousands of pages and still had tens of thousands more to go, but she was unsure how helpful it would be. It wasn’t historical insight into how she was accustomed to; certainly nothing like the historical accounts from back home. Given the Seeley people’s lack of narrative experience, their historical accounts were more like accounting records and shipping manifests. There was no interpretation of events, no examination from different perspectives or through varied cognitive lenses. Everything felt dry and clinical, leading to a sense of endless monotony.
Plus, these people were boring. Either they had whitewashed their history to remove all accounts of violent events such as war, or there had literally never been a conflict. There had never been more than an exchange of opposing perspectives, as far as she could tell—hundreds of years and no conflict at all.
It didn’t seem possible.
But then Gray explained how these people had no history of art, music, or anything even remotely creative. It felt as if the entire population was left-brain dominant. It was a statistical impossibility.
Then again, I am sitting on an alien world.
She put down the tablet and rubbed her eyes. Of the countless experiences over the last twenty-four hours, two still forced her to readjust her sense of reality. Eyeing the tablet on the bench beside her, she considered how quickly she’d consumed the reading material since arriving in Wild-Side. Though she hadn’t quantified the improvement yet, she guessed she was currently reading between eight and ten times faster than she could just a day before. Lacy explained that this was very likely thanks to the nanotech, which was optimizing her neural pathways. In time, she could expect better coordination and neuromuscular reaction time.
The second big change was her eyesight. Piper had worn reading glasses since she was fifteen years old. Obviously, they hadn’t made the trip with her during what Doctor Cormac and Piper called The Transition. Only something organic could cross the Vale, a term they used for the Brane, the layer of reality, or sub-reality, that separated Wild-Side from Our-World. Thankfully, her glasses were no longer needed. According to Lacy, Piper’s vision was now better than ever, thanks to the nanotech.
And I can speak another language without even thinking about it.
She eyed the tablet beside her leg and grinned. And read it, too.
Lacy walked into the room. “Gray just radioed.”
Piper wondered what the Delsh word for “radioed” really was. The seamless transition experience meant she thought in English but evidently spoke in Delsh so effortlessly that she didn’t even realize it was happening. It would be interesting to see an English-Delsh, Delsh-English dictionary.
“He’s alright?” Her words emerged in a hoarse croak, mirroring her anxiety.
“Alright, and on the return trip.” Lacy’s smile reflected a similar level of relief. No one liked Gray being out of contact and in the wilderness for so long. “Apparently, Mara is with him. They should be back in just under three hours. It’s still another forty minutes before they clear the dead zone.”
The comment confused Piper because, as it had been explained to her, Gray wouldn’t be able to contact them while traversing the dead zone. Lacy went on to clarify how Gray had been able to reactivate his tech once he reached a certain altitude. Additionally, once he was within a specific range of the perimeter, he’d been able to send a signal over the top of the Thonian distortion.
“You didn’t know he could do that?” Piper asked.
Lacy shook her head. “We had no idea that the radiation was only effective up to a certain altitude. Honestly, I don’t think it ever occurred to anyone to test for it. No one has ever…” Her voice trailed off as she pointed vaguely at the ceiling.
Piper snorted. “Right. No one flies.” She considered the new information. “You said twenty thousand feet?” She was already imagining Gray sitting on the back of the contraption that had only flown for the first time two hours before he left on that trip.
Brave, or insane?
