Wild-Side
The garage buzzed with activity. Piper adjusted the strap on a rifle featuring a traditional stock and grip but missing the usual long, thin barrel. She focused intently on the chunky rotary assembly situated halfway down the stock. It was a grenade launcher with a six-round capacity, courtesy of the forward-facing, 40-millimeter chambers arranged in a ring, reminiscent of a classic six-shooter. Activating a lever, she released the cylinder and set it on the table. A replacement was close by, the previously empty slots now filled to capacity.
Lacy picked up the discarded cylinder and started dropping thick shotgun-like rounds into the chambers. The task took just seconds, and when she finished, she set the speed loader on the table alongside seven others like it.
Piper turned the mounted loader smoothly around one and a half rotations beneath the launcher’s barrel. She was careful to keep her finger away from the trigger and repeatedly checked the position of the safety as she worked. “This is a crazy idea,” Piper said, not taking her focus off the weapon’s preparation. “We should take our time with this. Rushing seems hazardous.”
Gray pushed a third of Lacy’s speed loaders into a saddlebag. He strode quickly to the Airbike, stepped onto the frame, and slung the bags on either side of the saddle seat. “Breslin is losing his mind like never before. If we’re going to take advantage, we need to move now.”
Wiping sweat from her brow, Piper exhaled and looked up in frustration. “Rushing is a mistake.” She appeared worse for wear, her hair in a tangled ponytail and perspiration causing her tank top to cling in a way Gray would have found distracting under other circumstances.
“Is Tripp in position?” Gray asked, glancing at Lacy.
“Almost,” she confirmed. “He promised to be ready.”
Piper’s gaze shifted between Lacy and Gray, noticing that Lacy wanted to say more.
“What is it?” Piper asked.
Lacy wiped her face, paused, then shrugged. “You should let one of us help. What was that phrase you used originally—lots of moving pieces?”
Already shaking his head, Gray corrected, “That was before Tripp built this bad lad.” He collected the grenade launcher from Piper and gave her a wink. Crossing back to the bike, he snapped the weapon to the airframe beneath the handlebars, just forward of where his knee would normally rest. “This,” he said, “and those,” he nodded vaguely toward the saddlebags, “mitigate my concerns.”
Piper circled to the other side of the Airbike and began double-checking the magnet securing the gun before confirming that the saddlebags were secure. “Every time I hear you using big words, I know there’s something you’re not telling me,” she said with an amused glance over the rear of the Airbike, deliberately pulling on a strap he’d missed on the second bag. “This kind of rush leads to mistakes.”
“I’m poking a hornet’s nest,” Gray said, starting to clip the rings of his expanding armor into place at his knees and ankles. “Timing is a critical component.”
“Survival is more important,” she replied.
Lacy observed the exchange and appeared increasingly uncomfortable by the minute.
The last ring clicked into place around Gray’s neck as he activated the suit. The nanoparticle material enveloped his body. “It’s a good plan,” he said with more conviction than Piper could see in his eyes. Their survival is more important.” He shot a glance at Lacy, likely as an example of the Seeley people. “Keeping the Elend away from our world,” he paused to visibly swallow his frustration. “We’re playing for the biggest of stakes.”
Piper was about to offer a counterpoint when Doctor Cormac burst through the swinging doors and into the room. “The latest telemetry is encouraging,” he said, waving his hands in the air. His gestures activated a pair of AR displays featuring geographic maps, one labeled North and the other South. Thick tree cover quickly obscured both displays and was followed a moment later by dozens of red dots. The crimson markings covered both maps. “The Elend are converging on the dig, en masse.”
Cormac poked a finger in the air, and a progress bar spanned the bottom of both maps. The animation began, and while the bar moved from left to right, the dots on the southern display shifted rapidly to move north. Zooming out on both displays, Cormac explained what they were observing. “They’re converging,” he said as a blue rectangle appeared on the left side of the southern map and the right side of the north.
“Closing on the dig site,” Piper added, sounding weary.
Cormac threw an accusatory glance at Gray. “Just as you said they would.”
Gray nodded. “Breslin’s pissed. Angry people make foolish mistakes.” He grabbed a pack that had been leaning against one of the table legs and slung it over his back before quickly climbing onto the seat of the Airbike. “Plus, with his predatory instincts? It’s time to introduce him to the Hotel California.”
Feeling uneasy about the plan, Cormac stepped forward. “What if you’ve misjudged Breslin?”
Gray affectionately slapped the grenade launcher with his palm. “I’m going to motivate him to act on instinct.”
Piper shook her head slowly as Gray spoke, though she knew no one noticed. Her whispered words were similarly unheeded. “Or die trying.”
With a glance in her direction, she realized Gray had noticed her lack of enthusiasm. Judging by his expression, he wouldn’t be swayed. “You’ll coordinate with Tripp.”
Piper mentally pushed her misgivings to the back of her mind. Gray practically buzzed with confidence and enthusiasm. The sparkle in his eyes was contagious.
As she stepped onto the airframe, Piper leaned forward and kissed him deeply. Then, leaning back for one last look at the face she could only hope to see once this was all over, she nodded. “I’ll be in your ear every step of the way.”
I closed in quickly on the teardrop-shaped lake, approaching at an altitude that kept me out of reach of even the most high-flying Elend. The skies were mostly clear, and visibility was outstanding. Additionally, Tripp and Doc Cormac had added a new display to the handlebars of the Airbike. It measured five inches by three and featured an ever-updating display of the terrain beneath me. Since flight was new to the Seeley, the maps of their geography were crude, clearly not matching their advanced level of technology. It was a deficiency they were eager to fix. A softball-sized sensor array had been attached to the underside of my bike. It captured telemetry detailing the continent in minute detail as I crossed the wilderness. The expanse of the sensor coverage improved the higher I flew, so this trip back to the lake would generate valuable data, even if the reason for making the trip offered no new insight into the plight of Our-World.
The mesh of drone coverage now sweeping across most of the continent continued to expand the map Cormac was developing, though the drones were primarily intended to track the Elend population. The mapping technology had apparently been added to the drones as an afterthought, and since the drones could detect Elend activity over a vast distance, the range of the motion sensors was substantially wider than the mapping array’s field of view, countless blank spots remained in the accumulated high-resolution map.
I descended rapidly as I approached the lake from the northwest. The lake’s surface was a pristine mirror reflecting the few clouds in the sky. Staying north of the water, I navigated to the pin I had dropped on my last visit. Although the bunker entrance was hidden from the sky, the data collected by my gear during my last visit marked not only where I had landed but also the route I used to enter and exit the facility.
Faded lines became visible on my HUD as I drew nearer. They marked my ingress and egress paths. The route I had taken to make my escape zigzagged through the wilderness to the southeast, vaguely toward the lake, with clumsy scribbles indicating where I had paused to engage the Elend that had attacked me.
I ground my teeth on the approach as I scanned the path of my escape. It had been a close call—more Elend than I’d seen in one spot, at least until then. They had nearly taken me out.
This time, I was better prepared. Two drones were already positioned at the lake’s edge, closing in on my location from the south. They appeared as tiny dots on my HUD. A half dozen more drones were approaching from various directions, redirected by Tripp to assist me. The Elend wouldn’t catch me off guard this time. Although the area seemed clear based on the telemetry collected by the Airbike as I approached, the drones would keep watch while I was on the ground.
The plan was straightforward, at least in theory, and inspired by the squirrel I had observed outside Derek Smallwood’s Winnebago. Part one of the two-stage initiative had been more successful than I had hoped. While I intended the attack on ATG’s flagship office to show Breslin he wasn’t safe on Our-World, we had somehow shocked him into bouncing back to Wild-Side. Stage two needed to build on that success. I would strike the Elend hard, kick over the nest, and provoke them into a predatory frenzy. All natural predators turn aggressive when confronted or threatened. Combine that with a hive-like mentality, and my strategy was sure to be a success.
Things went more or less according to plan. There were a few unforeseen deviations, but no plan survives contact with the enemy right?
Closing in on the gash that the Elend had torn into the wilderness, I ascended to fifteen thousand feet and slowed my approach. The creatures had exceptional hearing, and their eyesight was perhaps even better. By moving slowly and at altitude, I was confident that I would have surprise on my side.
“Oh, wow,” Piper said over the comm channel. “It’s a full house.”
A small map appeared in the corner of my HUD. The dig site was at the center of the image, and the ground around it was a blur of indistinct movement for at least a hundred yards in every direction. When the image pulled back, I saw at least two dozen pale red dots converging on the tunnel entrance.
Piper, Cormac, and Lacy monitored my progress through video and telemetry from over twenty drones stationed between the dig site and my intended destination.
Cormac entered the conversation. “This is your last chance to pull the ripcord.” Unmistakable concern tinged his tone.
A grin spread across my face at the Doc’s use of the idiom.
“I’ll second that,” Lacy added.
“You know my vote already,” I heard Piper murmur, in a low voice.
I put the Airbike into a hover and leaned back to unzip both saddlebags. Standing from my seat, I pulled the grenade launcher away from its position near my right knee. Quickly glancing at the yellow ring on the side of the chambered rounds, I confirmed that I had the correct ordinance.
Leaning to the right, the ground came into view. The surface below appeared fuzzy and indistinct due to low-hanging patches of cumulus clouds. The moon was three-quarters full, and between the two, I could barely make out the orange-yellow glow radiating from the entrance of the wider cavern over two and three-quarter miles below me.
“Piper,” I said. “Activate targeting.”
Silence filled my ears.
“Piper? Do you read?”
Something between a growl and a huff buffeted my ear, followed by a few muttered words I don’t think I was meant to hear. The night vision in my helmet lens activated and the magnification snapped forward by a factor of three.
Trust me, three times magnification at that distance didn’t clarify any single figure on the ground below. However, it did make the dark, wooded terrain easily recognizable. I could see the cleft in the wilderness floor and the impressive tangle of cleared tree coverage stacked to the northeast of the dig. I also noticed a fair amount of movement. There was very little activity to the north and northeast of the tunnel, which meant I didn’t need to delay the attack.
“Doc?” I said.
“The number of converging hostiles has diminished to a trickle. Unless you’ve come to your senses, this is your opportunity.”
The view in my visor turned monochrome, and eighteen green dots appeared in the same arrangement as the number seven, just to the right of the rig. I shouldered the grenade launcher and pointed it roughly toward the leftmost dot. Once my targeting was close enough, an orange line extended from the aiming reticle and arched to the first target.
The moment the sights met the target on my screen, I squeezed the trigger. A dull, low-toned whoop echoed as the gun’s stock gently bucked against my shoulder. As soon as the first round was fired, the target indicator to my right moved sharply into focus and brightened. I adjusted my aim to compensate and squeezed the trigger again.
All six rounds were fired in less than twenty seconds. Down on the ground below, the projectiles embedded themselves up to a foot deep. The detonation wouldn’t happen until later. A sensor system mounted on the belly of the Airbike enabled the targeting display to pinpoint areas of earth, helping me avoid stone and exposed bedrock. Rock wouldn’t negatively affect the overall objective, except that it would be noisy and could compromise my sneak attack.
It took less than five seconds to replace the grenade cylinder. I fired six more rounds before swapping out the magazine two additional times. After firing the last of the yellow-marked rounds, I switched to the red ammunition in the opposite saddlebag. I snapped the launcher into its holster and settled back into the seat.
“Status?” I asked.
Cormac was slow to respond. “A couple of latecomers paused before entering the tunnel,” he explained. “I thought they might have heard you. None of them seem to be investigating. Whatever they’re doing underground seems to be the priority.”
That priority meeting was my biggest concern. I was nearly certain Breslin had Crossed back to Wild-Side under his own power for the first time. This meant he was a significant step closer to controlling his Transition. If we didn’t stop the Elend now, the balance of power would shift here, putting Our-World at greater risk.
Yawing the Airbike on its axis, I turned southwest and lost altitude.
“It’s game time,” I said. Banking back to align with the cave, I gunned the throttle. The motor pitch screamed in response, unmistakable even two miles away. I reduced my altitude to eight hundred feet just as the target came into view.
“You’ve got their attention,” Piper said. “There’s no turning back now.”
She wasn’t kidding. Dozens of Elend spilled from the mouth of the wide cleft.
I grinned. “Initiate.”
One by one, with only a second delay between detonations, the twenty-four rounds trigger sequentially, the left angle and the base of the 7 shaped firing simultaneously, while the progression of the sequence converged along the horizontal and vertical lines until the pattern met at the shoulder of the numeral.
The whole time, I methodically swept the attack site from west to east, maintaining my position two hundred yards south of the southernmost detonation. Taking myself out as collateral damage would have been an irreparable kink in the larger plan.
The surface beneath me instantly devolved into chaos. The remaining Elend swarmed up from underground. The forest seemed to quiver and crawl with a shimmer of undulating, scaled figures. The first of the Jays took to the air and vectored directly toward me, making it evident that I’d been spotted.
“Giddy up,” I laughed as I feathered the throttle.
I catapulted to seventy miles per hour in less than two seconds. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that at least six Jays were airborne and in pursuit. The ground forces followed as if controlled by a single mind. I couldn’t see most of the action, but from where I flew, I could spot the streak of movement through the dense canopy. A line in the tree cover became instantly visible, marking the progression of the ground-based Elend.
“Oh my God,” Piper exclaimed, clearly observing the same trail of disrupted—and occasionally fallen—trees in my wake. “I’d say you kicked the hornet’s nest. Run, squirrel, run!”
With a laugh, I pictured the young squirrel back in the woods of Kentucky. I wonder if the squirrel fared any better than I did when all was said and done.
The Airbike could outpace the fastest Jay I had encountered yet, but losing the tailing force would be counterproductive. Since the Elend were intelligent, it was crucial to keep them motivated. Sooner or later, one of them might realize I was deliberately leading them on a merry chase, and good sense might triumph over bloodlust. To that end, Tripp and Cormac had rigged a small gas canister to the back of my airframe. A little smoke and me haphazardly playing with the throttle should have been enough to keep them motivated.
It turned out that there was no need to pretend about the mechanical issues.
An alarm blared over the comm channel, with Lacy saying something unintelligible. “—ck, Gray— back door!”
Back door?
Admittedly, the phrase thrown at me out of the blue was more confusing than it perhaps should have been. My mind first went to Piper’s objection to the material I’d smuggled from home for the Seeley. I wondered why Lacy was thinking about sex at a time like this. Then I thought, good for you, girl—before questioning whether Tripp would be similarly motivated once she got her hands on him.
Of course, this was not what she intended to convey. It likely reveals more about me than anything else that such thoughts come to mind, even in a life-or-death situation.
“Six o’clock!” Piper corrected with a shout. “Mind out of the gutter! She means there’s contact at six o’clock. Move your ass!”
That didn’t make sense. Tripp had added a proximity sensor array to the flight system. It was untested, but the idea was to prevent Jays from sneaking up on me while I was in flight.
I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see a Jay pull within thirty yards of me. My breath caught, and I twisted the throttle. The distance between me and the Jay suddenly extended to fifty feet in an instant. That quick acceleration also saved my life in a way I had not intended. The moment I assessed the gap between me and that closest trailing Elend, a prickling sense of foreboding slid down my spine like an icy finger. I looked up to see a Jay half again larger than the biggest I’d ever seen. Its eyes gleamed, and its gums pulled back from hungry teeth as it dove at me like a runaway missile.
I spun the throttle to its stop, pressed my left foot pedal down twenty percent, and yanked back on the handlebar with a fierce tug. The Airbike rolled ninety degrees and the props howled as the nose pitched downward. Since I was halfway through a roll when I pulled back on the stick, I essentially executed the most aggressive left-hand turn imaginable. G-forces pinned me to the seat. The seat’s restraint system engaged, the toggle lines snapping into place with my belt, even though this was perhaps a situation where I couldn’t have fallen from the machine, even if I wanted to.
My nuts were in my throat, pushed there by a saddle seat that suddenly felt suboptimal for these types of maneuvers.
A string of profanity was just about to reach my lips when something smashed into the rear of the airframe. My high-speed half roll instantly transformed into a barrel roll—more than one, I’m pretty sure. I leveled off with the treetops, which were suddenly less than two dozen yards below me. Pushing myself away from the handlebars, I immediately understood that the armor had saved me from multiple broken ribs. The touchscreen at the center of the bars was dark and a mess of shattered glass.
The backend of the Airbike sagged as if burdened by a heavy load, so I immediately goosed the throttle to compensate. Pulling back to a thousand feet and scanning my surroundings like Chicken Little, I quickly noted three things. First, the nearest Elend was about fifty yards to my six o’clock position. Second, a hole had been punched through the tree canopy a quarter mile back. The treetops surrounding it were still swaying. This marked the ultimate destination of my dive bomber. I promptly named the aggressive sonofabitch Barron, after the Red Baron, out of respect for his resourcefulness.
Then, third, I noticed smoke coming from my rear left prop. A thick gash marred the rim of the prop’s duct. A chunk of something tumbled away in the air as I assessed the damage.
“Was that—” My throat was dry, and my voice sounded like I hadn’t spoken in weeks. I didn’t know how to continue.
“A severed talon,” Piper confirmed. “It doesn’t get any closer than that.”
“What happened to the proximity system?” That was all I could think about in response.
“Ah, yeah,” Cormac uttered with what seemed to be an uneasy chuckle. “I forgot to activate the sensors.”
Silence filled the channel.
“They are active now,” Cormac confirmed. “It now has my full attention.”
Again, I was at a loss for words.
“The price we pay for a rushed plan,” I said before Piper could share her thoughts. “I know. It’s all good.”
But it wasn’t all good.
The same prop slowed, and the Airbike shuddered in response to the unexpected deceleration of the fan. Before I could look, a shriek echoed behind me. I knew instantly it wasn’t the attack cry of an Elend. Worse, it was the sound of tearing metal.
A glance at the rear prop made the cause of the disturbance impossible to overlook. The mesh of carbon fiber, designed to keep debris—and me—from falling into the props, was damaged by the impact with the Jay.
Cursing aloud this time, I watch the sheet of screen slap the surface of the spinning fan blade. The craft shuddered once more.
“The nearest airborne hostile is now just forty yards away,” Cormac confirmed.
Great, now he’s paying attention.
A quick look at my handlebars confirmed I had an associated problem. “My dashboard is crushed,” I said. “Piper, can you lock in my speed and heading from your end?”
“All set. You’re locked in. Is this still part of your plan?” There was a rye levity in her tone.
I manually activated the release of the restraints on my belt. “Just a little inflight repair.”
Stepping from the foot tray on the left side of the seat, I put my right foot on the frame spanning the cockpit at the center of the four spinning props. The vibration of the frame was nonexistent when sitting in the seat. With my foot positioned on the airframe, the consistency of the oscillation made it difficult to maintain my footing.
Leaning forward, I prepared to gab at the small corner of the flapping screen the next time it rebounded from the prop. It was a good thing I was exactly where I was at that moment because the screen flapped the surface of the spinning blade as I expected—but when it rebounded, the screen tore away from the frame to create a flap almost three times larger than it had been a second before. The flap bucked into the air, and I sunk my fingers into the wide mesh. The mesh reached the top of its arc and was headed back to the blade with only me to stop it. The loose screen caught the air and rebounded with more force than I expected. My knee impacted with the leading edge of the duct as I levered all the strength in my right arm.
The far edge of the screen hung loose and dangled about two inches above the surface of the propeller.
Leaning back and extending my leg fully, I tore the rest of the mesh free and tossed it into the open air. My eyes followed its trajectory, widening as the carbon fiber net struck the nearest Jay, causing it to pinwheel from the sky.
Piper gasped. “Sweet fuck! Was that intentional?”
I twisted and slipped my legs back around the saddle. As my weight shifted, I was reminded of the beating my balls had taken in the high G turn.
“Of course,” I replied, my voice squeaking manfully. “I can turn anything into a weapon.”
There was no time for levity, as it turned out. I sensed that my speed had slowed. My HUD confirmed it; I was down to eighty-three miles per hour.
“The left rear prop is unbalanced,” Lacy confirmed. “The flight controller can adjust for pitch, yaw, and roll—but it will cost you in efficiency.”
“By that, she means speed,” Piper corrected.
“Yes, you will experience a significant decline in maximum speed—and likely struggle to maintain a velocity higher than your current level for a prolonged period.”
Just then, Cormac chimed in. “Proximity alert! Vectoring from your four o’clock.”
I grabbed the pistol from my hip and lifted it just in time to see the Jay closing the last twelve yards with its jaws wide open and the wind hissing through its long fangs.
He was close enough that I didn’t technically need the targeting reticle that appeared in my HUD to confirm my shot. I squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession, the double tap puncturing the left eye and then the right.
Its head dipped, wings sagged, and it caught the air clumsily. The last I saw of the creature was a tail snapping in response to the Elend’s sudden earthward plunge.
“Now you’re just showing off,” Piper said, her tone lacking any playfulness. I could tell she was on the edge of her seat, filled with stress and worry.
I noted three additional Jays approaching from offset vectors.
“Can you get me to one-ten?” I asked, holstering the pistol and unslinging the pack from my back.
Lacy cautioned about the consequences of increasing speed. “That will compromise the airframe.”
“Will it hold together long enough?” I asked. I’m fairly certain I interrupted Piper before she could pose the same question.
“No way to tell,” Lacy said, her discomfort clear.
The three Jays were closing in, and I could see more figures in the darkness behind them. A glance at the ground revealed the shimmering line of treetops. I was pretty sure the entirety of the Elend army was close behind.
“She will hold,” I told both women. “Raise it to one-ten.”
I unfolded the collapsible stock on Tripp’s version of an AR-15 and closed the chamber with a heavy mechanical thunk. The Airbike picked up speed, and I felt the airframe shimmy angrily in response. Spinning to sit backward on the seat, I felt the seat restraint system engage in protest.
“Piper, you’re driving,” I said as I raised the rifle. Sharing control of the machine remotely was proving vital to my survival. With a squeeze of the trigger, I sent another Jay tumbling from the sky.
“Gray?” Piper said.
I waited.
“So much for rigging your machine to look like it had taken damage.”
I laughed.
Enough parts of my hastily designed plan had gone awry. It was a relief when the dense forest cover transitioned to desert-like terrain and patchy scrub brush, indicating that Garwin was within reach.
Then, the Airbike sagged and yawed counterclockwise. I wrenched the handlebars to compensate, but there was a distinct loss of thrust. The machine’s forward pitch, which resulted in speed, instantly became less aggressive, and I knew I was in trouble. I looked back just in time to see that the problem prop had seized in its duct and was now completely motionless.
“Shit,” I muttered just as I saw the straining motor explode in its housing.
“What the hell was that?” It was Piper over the comm channel.
“Houston, we have a problem,” I deadpanned and got to work squeezing as much speed as I could from the remaining motors. They struggled to compensate, and my airspeed had fallen, fluctuating intermittently between seventy-one and seventy-three miles per hour.
Cormac entered the conversation. “It wasn’t a Jay. The closest is just over a quarter mile behind you, but it seems to be closing the distance.”
Thanks, Doc.
“Tripp,” Lacy said. The Airbike just lost the rear port-side prop completely. It’s totally frozen.”
I was pleased to see everyone monitoring the machine and my progress to the best of their ability. “The motor just… well, it basically exploded,” I added.
“Exploded?” Tripp said, joining the conversation for the first time. There was a pause, and I suspected he was consulting his own diagnostic feed from the machine. “Wow,” he responded with what I assumed was a chuckle, as it matched the amusement in his tone. “That must have been something to see.”
I glanced back to see bits of metal scattered across the left saddlebag. “Yeah, it was cool.” There was no humor in my voice.
“Airspeed is dropping while altitude remains stable,” Piper said. “The air pursuit is closing in quickly.”
Dawn was breaking, the sun just beginning to crest the horizon behind me. Looking back, I saw a small swarm of Jays in pursuit. Too many to count under the circumstances, but I estimated a little over a dozen. I noted fatigue in the labored strokes of their mighty wings. Dozens, certainly more than a hundred of the Elend ground force had just emerged from the tree line at the end of the arid terrain and were keeping pace. They looked a little worse for the chase, but pressed on. The now legitimate smoke streaming from the rear of my Airbike seemed to revitalize their predatory instincts.
“I’m shutting down power to the damaged motor,” Tripp said. “It would be unfortunate if you caught fire and crashed so close to the finish line.”
I was glad to see that my predicament hadn’t affected his mood. It wasn’t worth telling him no motor was left to shut down, but he decided against it. He must have figured I was kidding when I said it had exploded.
“No need for that fake smoke show after all?” he added.
A pin appeared on my HUD two miles away. It indicated the entrance to the underground city.
“Doc,” I said. “How many of my pursuers did I lose along the way?” I knew he was tracking the attacking force. If we didn’t lure the bulk of the Elend into the trap, this wouldn’t be the decisive victory I’d promised.
“Some of the Crawlers are struggling to keep up. They may be late to the event. I’ve identified sixteen that are unlikely to reach Garwin in the time required.”
“Sixteen?” I said, tone incredulous.
“Sorry,” Cormac came back.
Sixteen?
If I could get all but sixteen, that would be a win in my book, as long as we got Breslin with most of his force. “Track the outliers if you can. I’ll take care of them on the trip back to Portland.”
Someone on the channel laughed, perhaps thinking I was being humorous. Maybe they simply knew I was making premature plans.
“New problem,” I said. “Flight control is erratic. I can manage my heading and speed for the most part, but precision flying is out the window. I can land, but I can’t make the entrance as planned.”
The idea was to cut throttle, roll, and more or less dive into the underground city’s entrance. Flying the Airbike the length of the tunnel was the only way I could keep ahead of the attacking horde. It was a maneuver I was confident in…before I lost a quarter of my prop control.
“Worse than that,” Cormac intoned. “By the time you reach the entrance, your lead will be gone. I estimate you have twenty seconds to get to the vent—assuming you maintain your current speed.”
“Won’t matter,” I said. “If I can’t fly through the tunnel, it only matters if I lead them underground.” I omitted the part everyone already understood. I wasn’t getting out of this. For the plan to succeed, my trap would activate with me inside it.
Piper viewed things differently. “Then we’ll change the plan. We’ll close the vent the moment you make it underground.”
The louvered grate at the mouth of the geothermal tunnel had been replaced with a single retractable door that was eighteen inches thick. Tripp and his team had begun working on the impromptu retrofit as soon as my plan was outlined. I intended to lead the Elend force into the underground tunnel and then close them in. The underground shaft leading to the lava vent stretched just over four hundred yards long. It was enough to accommodate the enemy force, but only if they entered the tunnel aggressively. I had fueled their primal instincts. The attack on their hive had instilled a bloodlust that drove a chase over more than a hundred and twenty-five miles.
My next words were calm and measured. I had genuinely accepted this outcome when the Airbike was first damaged. If I could make it to the tunnel, the closer the Elend force was, the better. “We stick to the plan,” I said. “It’s too late in the game to change it.”
Piper said something, but I couldn’t grasp the words. Her anguished tone conveyed it all.
“It’s alright,” I said, but with the writing on the wall, I felt at a loss for a proper goodbye. There was so much more to say, and no time for it. The pin floating on my HUD was growing closer by the second.
“Save the goodbyes,” Tripp said. “I have a backup plan.”
The channel went silent, likely with everyone consumed by the same thoughts. If they were thinking like I was, WTF summed it up perfectly.
“If you’re going to share, now is the time,” I said quickly.
“Sorry,” Trip said quickly. “I’m just doing some last-minute calculations. I can get you to the escape hatch in time if you can reach the tunnel.” His tone grew less certain. “I’m just not sure you have time to land. It’s going to be close. I mean, really close.”
I glanced back at the airborne Jays. They were now about fifty yards away.
By instantiating a screen in the air above the handlebars, I allowed the computer to handle the workload. Moving my fingers and waving my hands as fast as I could, the speed and trajectory of my flight were overlaid in relation to the vent on the surface beneath me. I was flying at eleven hundred feet. The display represented the Airbike as an orange dot and the upcoming ground vent as green. A red line arced between the Airbike and the vent.
“The Airbike can’t make that,” Cormac shouted, clearly seeing the same screen as I was.
“You’ll crater if you try to enter at that speed,” Piper said.
“It can’t be done with the quad,” Tripp said. “For this to work, you’d need to—”
Without hesitation, I stepped off the Airbike’s foot rail, placed one foot on the narrow step between the front and rear ducts, and launched myself from the machine.
Either the comm channel went quiet, or I was too focused to notice further conversation. I concentrated entirely on the pair of orange and green dots, perhaps more on the orange line connecting them. The curve of the connecting line adjusted in real time with up-to-the-second calculations. The diagram shrank and shot to the corner of my HUD, and an arc marking my required trajectory filled the center of my view.
I simply needed to follow the steep curve of the line to reach my target, and i had done this before.
I thought it would be easy and hoped that a molar wouldn’t crack under the pressure of my clamped jaw.
My downward, arrow-like plunge put me on target, but the red speed indicator on the screen warned me I was going too fast to survive the landing. Throwing my arms and legs wide, I pushed my belly earthward in the classic stable position that skydivers use. As my descent speed adjusted, the number changed from red to yellow and finally to green.
There were only two problems. First, a tingling sensation on the back of my neck and basic common sense warned me that the leading Jays were closing the gap quickly. I was in a race, and I had no chance to glance back and see how close my pursuers actually were. A look over my shoulder would send me tumbling into an uncontrolled fall just in time to crater. Second, the projected line connecting me to the target had split into two lines. One was the optimal trajectory in dotted red, while my current trajectory was in solid red, deviating from the curve by what I could only assume was an unacceptable margin.
Closing my left fist quickly three times, I felt the nanofabric webbing extend between my elbows and ribs. Similarly, I realized a paper thin sheet of material now connected my legs, stretching from my crotch to my ankles.
I had never had a chance to test the squirrel suit modifications, but it was my only hope at that moment.
The solid red arc shifted. With minor adjustments of my arms and legs, I aligned the red line with the dashed line. I had just thought to check my altitude, with the earth’s surface rushing toward me, when I noticed the three similarly shaped shrubs surrounding the modified vent. I observed the black maw at the vertical face of the cavern, and my chute deployed automatically. The sound of the deployment was fiercely aggressive, the chute part of the automated system that adjusted the size of the canopy in response to my rapid descent and the indicated drop zone.
Tucking my knees for a landing too fast to be painless, I plummeted through the opening of the underground vent. The lines leading to what must have been a seriously undersized canopy detached automatically, and I felt the steering toggles disintegrate in my grip. The nanomaterial of the chute, risers, and toggles had been designed by me and Tripp for an emergency scenario I never believed I would see in real life.
When my feet hit the bottom of the cavern, my HUD indicated I was traveling at eleven miles an hour. It felt like a hundred. I impacted and executed the tuck and roll that was part of standard skydiving training. If it hadn’t been for the technology in my body armor, I know I would have shattered both legs and possibly my spine.
If I said the landing was textbook, it would be a lie. My so-called standard crash landing attempt turned into a bouncing tumble that ended with me face-planting and the visor of my helmet smashing against the floor.
Words cut through the fog in my mind. “—the cart,” Tripp was saying. “Get down on your belly and stick your hand through the loop on the forward grip. Don’t try to sit up.”
Clearly, I’d missed some of the instructions. I shot to my hands and knees just in time to see a flat, horizontal sheet of what looked like carbon fiber. It was mounted between four wheels that seemed to have been adapted from some sort of wheeled cart. A tubular rail extended perpendicularly from the carbon fiber platform, presumably acting as a handlebar with no controls. A loop of black rope was placed like a grapefruit-sized O at the center of the bar.
I had no idea what I was looking at. An animalistic shriek, far too close for comfort, reminded me that the Elend were mere seconds behind me.
I threw myself face down on the contraption and shoved my hand through the rope loop. The frenetic world around me suddenly seemed to slow. I heard Tripp’s voice over the channel. “This is going to hurt,” he said. “Just try to hold on.”
His plan was just beginning to take shape in my mind when I saw the rope tighten around my outstretched wrist. My eyes widened, and I slapped my free hand against the rail at the end of the cart. The line connected to my wrist pulled tight, and it felt as if my arm were being ripped from my shoulder socket. My free hand convulsed into a death grip as the wheeled cart raced down the tunnel as if it had been launched from the end of a canon.
I saw nothing of the surrounding tunnel; I just felt the platform beneath my belly rattling and hopping violently as the cart traversed the uneven floor of the tunnel at what must have been a staggering speed. I thought about checking the speed indicator on my HUD a fraction of a second before the ride came to a sudden and instant halt.
Unfortunately, I didn’t stop.
Inertia carried me forward, and I crashed through the horizontal bar that had been my improvised handle. The rope around my wrist remained taut but yanked me suddenly skyward. The rope must have been made of programmable nanomaterial, like my chute, because it vaporized abruptly from around my wrist. My sudden vertical ascent stopped, and I dropped a yard back to the cavern’s floor.
“Move it or lose it!” Tripp bellowed as I saw him kneeling at the bottom edge of the door to the underground city, a dozen feet above my head. His focus wasn’t on me, though; I suddenly realized he was watching the advancing horde of Elend as they closed in on my position.
I set a new speed record, clambering up the wide ladder leading to the door and Tripp. I flung myself across the threshold, feeling Tripp’s tug on my shoulder as he helped me. A whoosh of air behind me signaled the forceful closing of the vault-like door. I was still tumbling across the floor when I heard the hammering of the leading edge of the Elend line as the crates slammed into the door with powerful blows.
“Too damn close,” I heard Tripp mumble as I felt a slap on my back.
Tripp cringed as he gazed over Gray’s scraped and gashed body armor. Grabbing his hand, he pulled Gray to his feet. “I didn’t think it could be damaged like this,” he said, poking at a finger-wide divot that crossed Gray’s shoulder and stretched nearly a foot down the length of his back. As he observed, the nanomaterial shimmered and reformed into its pristine, original body-contouring shape. “Ah, there you go.”
Gray rolled his head, producing a popcorn-like series of thunks and snaps from his neck. “That can’t be good for you,” he murmured under his breath.
At least two dozen impacts hit the far surface of the vault door almost simultaneously, causing both men to cringe as they stepped back in the opposite direction.
Piper’s voice came through the comm channel, her tone filled with near panic. “Now?”
Tripp had just created a display in the air between him and Gray. It showcased a tiled array of camera feeds from devices positioned at over twenty points along the length of the now-infested tunnel. The pitch-black space was illuminated with a dusky hue that rippled with movement. The mass of Elend forms writhed, rippled, and flowed with the forms filling the standing-room-only space.
“Light them up,” Gray said calmly, his expression radiating confidence.
A deafening whomp struck the far side of the door, signaling what Tripp recognized as the concussive shift in pressure within the tunnel caused by explosive charges detonating at and around the surface of the magma pool at the tunnel’s deepest point. The camera feeds went instantly dark, replaced a moment later by a grid displaying a single repeated message: signal lost.
In his mind’s eye, Tripp saw the stream of molten stone rocket toward the surface along the length of the tunnel. Dust from the stone ceiling was released at the same moment that a hairline fissure formed on either side of the vault door, halfway between the floor and the ceiling.
“Is this going to hold?” Gray asked, his voice suddenly less assured.
With a swipe of his hand, Tripp cleared the now useless feeds from the destroyed cameras. A single view filled the screen. It displayed the surface of the vent Gray had used to enter the tunnel just moments before. The face of the heavy metal plate at the center of the rock formation had just adjusted to a louvered shape to withstand better the pressure building underground. Two-inch wide slits suddenly appeared every two feet across the panel as flames and acrid smoke shot twenty feet into the air.
“Whoa!” both men whispered in response.
A cheer erupted from the opposite end of the comm channel, a chorus of overlapping voices expressing relief and triumph. Among them, Piper’s unmistakable laugh rang out. “I can’t believe that worked,” she said, either to herself or to someone else in the room. “Gray, are you alright?”
Tripp watched as Gray’s gaze shifted from the screen to the splintering crack that had just stopped spreading across the walls surrounding the door. He nodded slowly. “Tell me we got them all?” he asked, his tone cautious.
“There were a few stragglers,” Lacy said over the channel. “Ten or twelve that we can see from the drone feeds. The only survivors will be those who couldn’t keep pace with the pack.”
“I have an update from Doctor Cormac,” Piper said. “He has the artifact and is heading back.”
Confused, Gray looked at Tripp for clarification. “Artifact?” He hesitated. “Back from where?”
Tripp’s face started to ache from what was likely the widest smile possible. His gaze shifted from the external vent’s feed, where plumes billowed from the slats, then caught the wind and rolled across the barren terrain. A tiled series of camera feeds hovered beside the vent display. Nine small boxes played back a recording from inside the tunnel, showing the movements of the suddenly captive Elend in the moments before their incineration.
Piper began to speak, but Tripp interrupted her. “Wait…” he muttered in a low, slow tone. With a wave of his hand, he rewound the footage once again. The synchronized feeds slowed to one-tenth of their normal speed. He sent the feed back to Lacy and Piper.
“What?” Gray replied, positioning himself squarely in front of the floating AR display.
The roiling mass of Elend was evident on every tile. Dark forms stood shoulder to shoulder in the narrow confines of the space, and those leading the charge halted suddenly when confronted by the vault-like door, confused by Gray’s abrupt escape. Figures further up the tunnel crashed into their peers and bristled aggressively when stopped. About halfway down the length of the passage, figures turned almost in unison when the entrance slammed shut, extinguishing the daylight. The tunnel became immersed in darkness, and the cameras scattered along the ceiling of the shaft instantly switched to night vision mode, providing clarity as if spotlights illuminated the room.
Tripp adjusted the video, and a pair of camera feeds replaced the nine tiles focused on a large figure wider at the shoulders than any of the Elend surrounding him. He also stood a head and a half taller than the crowd, making him impossible to miss. Breslin’s head suddenly turned from the tunnel leading to the surface. The camera feed jiggled, likely due to the explosive detonation in and around the magma pool deeper down the shaft. Breslin’s massive bat-like wings expanded from his back, stretching over his shoulders. The figures surrounding him were flung away as the wings unfurled, swung wide, and enveloped Breslin’s torso, wrapping him in a leathery cocoon. Breslin’s head ducked and vanished under the folds of his wings just as the tunnel’s depths erupted with a burst of light, forcing the camera feeds to adjust exposure aggressively.
The flash of light was blinding, and the camera went offline just a second later.
“What?” Gray said.
“I don’t see it,” Lacy said over the channel.
Tripp rewound the pair of feeds, dismissing one view so the last remaining one filled the screen. The footage was slowed to one-thirtieth of real-time, and Tripp’s finger directed Gray’s attention to the shape of Breslin, as his wings enveloped his torso in what would surely have been a futile attempt at self-preservation. “There,” Tripp whispered.
Perhaps half a second before the wash of light expanded from deeper in the tunnel and destroyed the cameras, a pulse of light appeared as the feed reduced to one-sixtieth of real-time. A pair of pulses seemed to emanate from inside Breslin’s cocoon. His entire form vanished from the tunnel a fraction of a second before the feeds went dark. The camera closest to Breslin seemed to quiver in response to his disappearance, its shaking causing the focus to blur for just two frames before the space went dark.
Tripp felt the blood leave his face. Gray cursed under his breath with a creative string of harsh expletives.
Lacy’s voice came through the comm channel. “Did he just…” she said slowly.
“He crossed back,” Gray said through gnashing teeth.
“That couldn’t have been intentional,” Piper said. “He doesn’t have the control to do that.”
Gray shook his head. “It wasn’t. As we thought, when he panicked during the attack back home, he crossed back here.” He began to pace slowly in the small lobby facing the cracked wall between him and the tunnel beyond. “Dammit,” he whispered.
Our-World
A flash of light filled Breslin’s view, and his entire body shuddered as if he had hit the ground from a great height. His ears ringing, he blinked as a slow, raspy breath escaped his lips. Cautiously, he folded away the tip of one wing, confused when fiery chaos wasn’t visible behind the blanket of darkness within the fold of his own wings.
Breslin took another deep breath and then folded his wings fully away.
It was night, and a three-quarter moon hung high in the sky. Rough, clumpy soil surrounded his feet, with freshly plowed earth forming soft, parallel ridges that extended in all directions. A massive farm implement sat just before the tree line several hundred yards away. A gentle breeze brought the only sound for miles.
Farmland?
This wasn’t Wild-Side, Breslin recognized immediately. But as his gaze shifted to view his thick, scaly arms, his reptilian lips curled into a satisfied grin. For the first time, he’d crossed while maintaining his natural form.
