ISR: Adamus?
AS: What, Ivan?
ISR: The General wants to talk to—Adamus, where in Ra's name are you?
AS: I'm tailing the strike team.
ISR: Who authorized you to break from position?
AS: General, with all due respect, it is not treason to break position. Plus, if the Grandmother and the PGT-1 are here, what better time to field test the tech?
ISR: You would risk your life only to prove your device works correctly?
AS: I'm trying to save lives. The more Üshaba the better, right?
ISR: Every vatborn we have, regardless of their origin, can be replaced. The same cannot be said about you.
AS: You're right. But until the Fleet arrives, let's keep from wasting…Aah!
U-a: General, I have apprehended a potential stowaway.
gAS: The Garde?
U-a: Negative, General. Mogadorian.
gAS: Hold on…Adamus?
AS: Please, let me stay, General. I will not fail you.
gAS: …Proceed with the mission.
ISR: …You let yourself get caught by a vatborn?
AS: Ivan, shut up and get off the coms.
U-j: General, we are coming up on a compound. One-story house, arena near the lake, pelts.
gAS: Any sign of the Garde?
U-j: Unable to confirm. Sending two units with Gorde and Drak to flank either side of the base. Will continue to update.
AS: The pelts are branded, General. These look like Loric symbols.
gAS: Let the strike team proceed, Adamus.
AS: …
ISR: What are you doing?!
AS: I'm introducing myself. It's supposed to be an old lady and her granddaughter. You really think they'll shoot me for knocking on the door?
gAS: Adamus!
AS: Nobody's home.
U-b: The base appears to be empty, indeed.
AS: My apologies, General. Still, we can investigate what's… Everybody away from the house! RUN!
gAS: Adamus? …By Ra. SON!
AS: I'm here! Are the warriors okay?
gAS: Soldiers, account!
U-j: Accounted.
U-b: Accounted.
U-a: Accounted.
U-g: Accounted.
U-d: Accounted.
U-l: Accounted.
AS: Can you see it from where you are?
gAS: I can see a giant hole in the ground where that base just was.
AS: Tunnels, I'm guessing. That must be what we were picking up months ago. They were ready for us…I have a signature.
gAS: Are they in the tunnels?
AS: No, I'm picking up something else…Soldiers, spread out! Move west toward that peak!
U-g: General?
gAS: I approve the order.
AS: If she's in the forest, the Grandmother won't be far behind. I'll radio you in five.
gAS: Adamus, are you seeing something I am not?
AS: I think this is what was wrong with the Boxing Day investigation. It wasn't there when—
gAS: Speak, boy.
AS: …
ISR: Adamus?
AS: …
gAS: Soldiers, report.
U-j: All accounted for, General, but half our radios are malfunctioning. We have not located the Grandmother or the Garde.
gAS: Is my son with you?
U-j: Sir… He is here, now.
gAS: Let me speak to him.
U-j: I'm sorry, Father. Another suspect located me before I could locate the epicenter of the sinkhole. I needed to use lethal force to defend myself.
gAS: Number One?
U-j: No, the description didn't match. Dark-skinned, maybe early twenties, no pendant or ankle mark that I could see. She had a power like One, though—did it register on the ELT? I couldn't tell because the tech stopped working when she hit me.
gAS: It did not, but…I am proud that you could handle the situation. Finally, you've got some blood on you.
U-j: I appreciate it, General. I'm proud the tech works, at least on Garde of Number One's power. Whoever these other creatures are, allies or sympathizers of the Loric, we can plan for them later. Finally, we've got the Garde in our crosshairs.
"Hilde," I wheeze, gasping frozen air into my tired lungs, "you are a fucking genius!"
Coughing in reply, she kneels down to catch her breath. We fled the house as soon as I felt the Mogs set foot on our road. The mountain we're on is about fifteen miles from Alder with no real roads—it took us less than twenty minutes to get here—but with my Loric eyes I can see the hole in the snow clearly. Despite all our aerobic training, Hilde's endurance seems to have gone down these past two years. She stands, hoists her bag over her shoulder.
"We need to—" she starts before another coughing fit.
"Get a move on?" I finish for her and she nods. "Where to?"
Hilde glances back down into the valley, back at our camp, at the sinkhole I created that hopefully killed every last one of those pale motherfuckers. "I'm done with this cold weather."
Me too. While I loved hunting in the summertime, loved the results my training demonstrated—with my Legacy of Terric I can produce shockwaves, levitate my own body with lateral repulsion, burrow underground without moving a muscle, and can generate earthquakes from miles away—I have no real connection to Alder. Earth is Earth, so it really doesn't matter where we go. "How's Malaysia this time of year?"
"In October? Wet and getting wetter, probably still recovering from that earthquake."
"What about…," I ask, trying to hide my excitement, "Nazca, Peru?"
She smirks. "They're on high alert now. No planes, no boats. You up for a long hike?"
I shove my hands into my pockets, but the rough, icy feeling against the knuckles on my right hand unnerves me, though I don't know why. "Through the U.S.?"
"Down the Rockies. Then the Sierra Madre Occidental, and eventually we'll get to the Andes."
So, we go.
We travel through the taiga until the land guides us to the town of Jasper. It's Halloween according to the calendar on the lodge wall. A blizzard has wiped everybody out of the streets, painting the afternoon world white. I don't know how long I'd survive hiking in weather like this, even with the kinetic dermis I've started wearing under my clothes. But there is no way that Hilde can make it much farther in her condition. So, we buy a night in the lodge. It's the first time we have showered, rested in beds, and checked the news in over three weeks.
The return to that latter delight is overwhelming.
Apparently, when I first developed Terric, the earthquake also started a series of forest fires up and down the west coast. Most of the northern hemisphere is dealing with it, but it's a lot more prominent up here, since the smoke isn't able to spread over the Rockies. I wonder if it'll get worse when we get on the trail in the morning. There's also some international news on the recovery in the Indian Ocean. The earthquake happened the day we left Wade behind. Even though Hilde says it's not possible I can't help but wonder if I maybe had something to do with that tsunami.
Hilde falls asleep before I do. She snores heavily, something that's become quite common these past few months. I sit by the window as the sky darkens, the snow roaring outside and smothering the mountains, the trees, the town, until it's like the whole planet is erased from existence. The heat is at full blast, but I still keep my hands tucked in my pockets. My knuckle grazes against the rough surface of the crystal I've been carrying. While it looks no different than charcoal now, I swear that when I dream that thing is glowing brighter than Loralite.
But that's just a fraction of the crazy shit going through my brain.
The Andes capped with stone citadels, faces of Loric elders carved into the mountainside, Garde using their telekinesis to transport heavier loads immovable even by the strong Inca people. I dream about that ancient, assimilated society almost every night. At first it was epic, being able to wake up and tell Hilde about what I saw, but then the dreams got a little too real. Children disappear from the streets, unable to be born into a hybrid society; arrows and spears fly through the air between neighboring nations; gunshots follow, and cannons, and armor-clad Spaniards. Thousands of my people hunted down, lynched, burned alive for trying to defend the Inca Empire. Every last el torre, as the Spanish called us, wiped out of the South American continent due to colonization.
One city survives—the citadel of Machu Picchu—because it's too high in the air. But the carvings on its sides, the ones that tell the history of our time on Earth, are worn away with time. My dreams accelerate this by showing me the million nights and days as my elders' faces melt off the cliffs. Pittacus Lore is the last to wash away.
In my dream tonight, his eyes open. Weathered by the Earth, they are sorrowful and red with tears, with rain that acts like acid on his stone skin. The carving sighs, breathes, until it becomes a face. Dark tan skin, a messy beard connected to disheveled mahogany hair. Cobalt blue eyes change to hazel and suddenly I'm not looking at Pittacus Lore. But after a year of being trapped in a pressurized chamber shooting through space with him, I'd recognize this face anywhere.
I'm in a truck, in a desert. It's night out, and the stars are more abundant than they have ever been before. The driver is a Cêpan from the ship, though I don't remember his name. Something with a dawn at the end of it. In the dream I start actively trying to remember, and I hear my own voice speaking aloud.
"Brag…don? Braydon?" I ask. "Bri…Brin…"
"Brun-dawn," the Cêpan pronounces, turning back to the desert. "Brandon."
"Brandon."
"Joãi," he replies casually. "We're here."
He parks the truck, grabs a shovel, and we get out. At first, I don't know what I'm looking at. There are long strips of the red material, like runways, that go on for almost a mile. In between some of the tracks are huge rectangular compartments. Most of them are closed, but there are some that are half-open like blast doors. Brandon leads me to one of them that's full of sand.
"Alright," he says, aiming the blade of the shovel at the sand, "let's go to China."
The instant he pierces the ground with his shovel, my vision is transported elsewhere. It is dark, loud, and I'm moving fast. As if I'm shooting through the earth. Light finally breaks and I'm back in my own body. Beneath a tower carved from sandstone is Mumbi, the girl from the grocery store. She's not dressed in the ratty sweater but layered in thin, beautifully-colored robes that appear to be made of jewels. Her hair is in beaded dreadlocks that fall below her shoulders. The crystal in my pocket glows brightly in her presence.
Brandon moves toward her, and I notice that the shovel in his hands is gone. In its place is a double-barreled shotgun. "The dead stay dead," he says. "Even their kind."
I try to use TK to rip the gun from his hands, but it doesn't work in my dreams. He pulls the trigger and the world turns to snow. When the gunshot clears, I'm standing in a pine forest. Mumbi lies in the frozen dirt, and I can see through the eyes of the asshole who put her here.
Mumbi's throat is grasped by white, skeletal fingers. A glowing dagger is stabbed into her belly, between her ribs, cracking bone as the blade twists over and over again. I have no idea why I'm seeing this girl getting killed, but somewhere my subconscious rages for her. My mind's borders shine an infernal orange as the dream begins to shake, the trees start to dance maniacally, and hundreds of tons of snow crash down the mountain.