Darklandia (14 page)

The corridor darkened the further we got from the darkroom until we were in near total darkness. He opened a door labeled BOILER ROOM and pulled me toward a staircase leading into what looked like a dark basement. I held my ground in the doorway as Nyx attempted to yank my hand again.

He gawked at me. “What are you doing?”

“Who took her? Where is she?” I demanded.

The sound of boots pounding the floor assaulted my ears and there they were. A gang of angels at the far end of the corridor rallying toward me. For a moment, I was mesmerized by the way their feet pounded the tile in unison.

Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

Nyx yanked my arm again and I stumbled down the first steps, twisting my ankle. “Sorry, but we have to hurry.”

“They’re going to purify her!” I shouted, as we barreled down the last steps into a concrete room saturated in the stench of oil smoke.

“Listen to yourself!” Nyx shouted back, as he pulled me toward another door labeled DATA. “She’s not going to be purified. She was detained.”

He shut the door behind us and secured an old-fashioned lock above the door handle. I marveled briefly at the rows and rows of computer racks covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

He spun me around to face him. “What did your father say? Tell me the exact words.”

The way he grasped my arms made me think of the way he pushed me into the pod on Level 17 and a spasm of fear told me to run. But that wasn’t real. He didn’t really do that.

“You’re eighty-seven light-years ahead of them. You’ll make it.”

“Eighty-seven light-years?” he replied, glaring at me with such intensity I thought I might melt under his gaze. “Are you sure he said eighty-seven? And those were his exact words?” I nodded and he released me just as something crashed against the door. “Help me.”

Together we heaved three computer racks in front of the door. “How are we getting out of here?” I shouted over the incessant banging on the door as Nyx made his way to a crack of light in the ceiling. “Where is that light coming from?”

He rolled another rack under the light. “Hold this steady.” I held tightly to the computer rack while he used it as a ladder. His legs wobbled as he climbed the final two tiers and reached for the crack in the ceiling. A loud boom at the door startled him and he quickly leaned forward over the rack to keep from toppling backward. It didn’t help that the wheels of the rack kept sliding. I couldn’t hold it stable under his weight.

He steadied himself and reached for the ceiling again. His fingers glided over the crack where the light streamed in, casting flickering shadows across the data room. My heartbeat thumped through every inch of my body as the crack of light stretched into a bright shaft of light and the battering against the door ceased.

Nyx jumped down from the rack and pointed up. “You go first. I’ll hold the rack.”

I climbed the rack as he held it much steadier than I had. Standing on top of the rack, my head and shoulders peeked out onto a small concrete courtyard surrounded by battered glass storefronts.

“Hurry up!” he shouted at me and I quickly pulled myself onto the concrete. Within seconds, Nyx was at my side and pulling me toward the far corner of the courtyard.

We entered an old café and I followed him as he raced past the counter toward a back door.

“Aren’t we going to get Darla?” I asked, as we zipped around the ancient food prep stations in the café kitchen. “We can’t let them take her to the detainee facility.”

Without answering my question, he squeezed between two large steel cabinets, which I thought were once used as refrigeration units. He pressed on the wall behind the larger unit and a light came on inside the kitchen.

“They discovered us. We can’t go back to the Darklandia headquarters,” he said, as he extracted himself from between the two machines. “Do you understand what that means? It means I no longer work for the Department of Felicity. I can’t get into the data center anymore.”

I fell to my knees; my hands splayed on the grimy floor as the anguish overwhelmed me. “How can you say that?” I cried. “How can you just leave her there?”

Nyx knelt in front of me, pulled a lumen out of his back pocket, and began typing furiously. “We’re not leaving her,” he said. “I only told you that to let you know that we have no choice but to break in now that I’m banned.”

“Banned?” I glanced at his wrist. “Why didn’t our sec-bands flash?”

He stuffed the lumen back into his pocket. “I just deactivated them.”

The back door of the café burst open and my fingers scraped the floor as I scrambled backward.

“It’s okay,” Nyx assured me, as a hulking man in a Guardian Angel uniform, minus the helmet, rushed through the back door.

“I heard someone was panicking,” the man in black said in a deep silky voice.

“I hit the panic button,” Nyx replied, as he stood and offered me his hand. “Sera, this is Jock. Jock, this is Sera Fisk.”

Jock cocked his head as he watched me rise from the floor and wipe my hands on my tunic. “Anyone ever tell you you look just like your dad?”

I shook my head as I took a deep breath and tried to calm my racing pulse. “Never.”

“We have an emergency,” Nyx said, as he and Jock moved toward the open back door. “They detained the other girl and I’m locked out. I need you to get in touch with Hispa and tell her I’m invoking a code black.”

I followed Nyx and Jock out into a dark alley where Nyx pointed to a ladder hanging from a fire escape. “What’s a code black?” I asked, as I grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder. Jock grabbed my waist and lifted me until I got my foot on the bottom rung.

“Code black means my identity’s been compromised,” Nyx replied before he heaved himself onto the ladder beneath me. “Hurry up and get in there.”

I climbed over the railing onto the fire escape and found the window already open. I clamored inside into a spotless apartment filled with gleaming white furniture. A bowl of real fruit sat on an impeccable steel countertop in the kitchen. In the corner of the living room stood a single white pod, not a speck of dirt on the blue silicone neuro-gel pads. I should have been outraged; instead I found myself terrified. We didn’t belong here.

“This is my apartment,” Jock said, noting the expression of horror on my face. “When I’m not working to save the citizens of lower Manhattan from being brainwashed, I’m detaining them for resisting the brainwashing. It’s sick, I know, but I’m a Guardian Angel and this is how we live.”

Jock’s face contorted with remorse as he moved tentatively about the apartment, shutting the window, adjusting the blinds, centering the bowl of fruit on the counter; anything to distract himself, and maybe me, from the sordid truth.

“Hispa’s formula didn’t work when we plugged it into the existing framework,” Jock said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nyx replied. “We have the algo.” He smiled at me the way my father smiled at me when I danced in the rain.

Jock gawked at me as he loosened his white tie. “Are you telling me she… On the first try?”

“On the first try.”

“And the masters?”

“Not yet,” Nyx replied.

“What are you telling him?” I asked Nyx.

He shook his head as he sat on the edge of the seat inside the Darklandia pod and glanced up at the lid as if he expected it to close on him. “It’s not important. Right now, we have to regroup at the village to decide how we’re going to get inside the data center without my sec-band.”

“And get Darla. Don’t forget we have to get her.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

Jock grabbed a fruit I recognized as a red apple from the fruit bowl and tossed it to me. “Here. Enjoy your first apple.”

“Don’t eat the whole thing,” Nyx said quickly. “And drink your ration with it or you’ll get sick.”

“You’re awfully concerned, Nyx,” Jock remarked with a grin.

“Of course, I am. I told you she hasn’t touched the masters yet.”

“You said you would tell me about the masters,” I said then I took my first bite of an apple.

My teeth cut through the skin then the crisp flesh sliced into my gums and the roof of my mouth. I spit the fruit into the palm of my hand. The half-chewed chunk of apple was tinged red with my blood.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you to take small bites,” Jock said. “Your mouth is too sensitive for solid food.”

Nyx stood from the pod and came to me. He held out his hand and I placed the apple in his palm. “Not the apple. What you just spit out.”

I glared at him unable to comprehend why someone would willingly touch something as disgusting as a piece of half-chewed fruit. “Is there a garbage chute somewhere?” I asked, glancing around the room at the white walls.

Nyx grabbed my hand and forced my fingers open. “Stop being so afraid, Sera. Remember: You’re eighty-seven light-years ahead of them.”

“You’d better explain all of this at the village,” I threatened him, as I wiped my hand on my tunic and took another smaller bite of the apple. The sharp chunks of fruit still hurt as they scraped my gums and the insides of my cheeks, but it tasted too good to stop. The juice ran down my chin as I tried to coordinate the chewing motion with the swallowing.

Nyx watched in wonderment as I devoured the apple one tiny bite at a time. When I was done, he took the apple core from me and tossed it to Jock then he reached for my face. I flinched and he laughed.

“You have some on your chin.”

My stomach clenched as his hand drew closer until it made contact with me. He swiped his thumb softly across the left side of my chin and a swooping sensation eased the knots in my stomach. I leaned into his hand and his smile disappeared as he pulled his hand back.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“We should head back to the village…. Drink your ration first.”

By the time I took my seat on the subway, the tension had eased between Nyx and me, but he insisted on standing and staring at his feet as Jock spoke to him.

“Eighty-seven,” Jock whispered wistfully.

I wanted to ask, but I knew Nyx would just tell me to wait until we got to the village. Instead, I stared at my feet, trying not to let the rumble of the subway car lull me to sleep as I attempted to mentally piece together what I had learned so far.

They didn’t expect me to wake up inside Darklandia on my first attempt. The bots detected my awakening and deployed a clone of Nyx to frighten me. The number eighty-seven held some significance with the rebels.

I was one of the rebels.

And now Nyx had to attempt to break into the data center at the Darklandia headquarters while also saving Darla. Surely, this was an impossible task, but Nyx seemed excited. Was his excitement the foolish optimism of someone who finally got his hands on the one piece of information he had been chasing for years? Or was this mission actually possible? Could they really hack into Darklandia and feed everyone the truth?

14

The walk through the underground tunnels to the village was much less harrowing with the food and rations in my belly. In fact, compared to yesterday, I felt like a new person. The pain relievers had taken away the twisting pain in my stomach and the apple and ration had restored my energy.

We passed through the greenhouse and strolled right past the purification room where I was nursed back to health last night. A fragrant aroma filled the corridor as we approached the last door on the right. When we entered, I found the source of the smell.

Three tables had been pushed together to form one very long table that ran the length of the conference room. The table was piled with stacks of plates and bowls, platters of cooked vegetables, terrines of steaming liquid, and jugs of water. The concrete walls were covered in maps and aerial photographs of places I recognized from Darkling History; places like China, Europe, and South America. Each country had at least one red dot marked. The map of Atraxia had at least twenty red dots. At a glance, I knew that each dot represented a city where Darklandia had spread. Many of the red dots in Atraxia and a few in Europe were also circled in blue.

“Felicity is like a virus that’s infected millions of people all over the country—71 million to be exact—and Jane Locke is patient zero.” Hispa’s voice sounded tired as she approached the map of Atraxia and pointed at the red dot over Los Angeles, also circled in blue. “Those cells are infected. The security algorithm is the virus’s DNA and now, with the information you retrieved, Sera, we’re going to genetically engineer the cure.”

“Is this really all over the water?” I asked, still unable to believe that such an intricate lie could be built and maintained just so the government could conserve water.

Hispa shook her head at me. “Forget what you know about lower and upper Manhattan. There is no safe side or darkling side. The line was only drawn to keep the sleepwalkers away from the water reservoirs.”

“But why would they do that? Why would they make us drink the rations and apply for wash privileges if there’s enough water?”

“There’s not enough water for everyone, but that doesn’t mean you or your mother or your best friend deserve to live like pigs, lying in your own filth and being fed the same slop day in and day out. And I’m not just referring to the rations.” She heaved a long sigh before she clapped her hands together and turned to Nyx. “Where is everyone? We need to eat before we start planning?”