Ignis Page 5

  The black stretching out before us quickly turns to a translucent white haze, then a solid white sheet. I start to struggle, to reach out for something, but there’s nothing there. After another second of this, it feels like the air around us thickens to the consistency of water, and we slow down. I grip Liam’s shirt and look up into his eyes, which are deep blue, also just like Liddick’s. His dark brows flinch, making the scar through the left one jump. He nods twice to me, apparently trying to make sure I’m done screaming. I nod back at him, and he removes his hand. He wraps his arms around me to contain my flailing, and I eventually stop when we slow down a little more. He pulls a finger to his lips and looks around frantically when we…land?

  Vox’s wild hair is the first thing I see when she takes a few steps toward us. She starts to laugh, then say something, and Liam immediately covers her mouth too.

  “Ow!” he hisses and yanks his hand back, then swears. “Did you just bite me?”

  Vox shrugs and whispers back at him. “Where are all your criminal friends?”

  Liam rolls his eyes and pulls in a long, slow breath. “Follow me, and keep your mouth shut.”

  I can’t see anything in any direction except solid white with patches of more translucent haze where it looks like the clouds have just descended on us—the thickest fog that has ever been. It reminds me of the fog that enveloped us in the last biome underneath the ocean floor, and the thought of this makes my heart hammer in my chest.

  I grip the back of Vox’s coat so we don’t get separated.

  Do you want me to hold your hand? she thinks, then snorts in my mind.

  Stow it. Why did you just jump? You could have died!

  Awww. I didn’t know you cared, sand dollar.

  I close my eyes for half a second and just shake my head.

  You’re going to get us all killed one of these days.

  The haze starts to dissipate the second we start hearing conversation and music. After a few more seconds, people start taking shape. Some are sitting at a long counter, and some are talking with green-haired women along the side walls. Some are doing more than talking…

  “Whoa,” I say under my breath, and Liam gives me a warning look. Vox smirks at me and shakes her head.

  You’re so precious, she thinks.

  Just stop talking to me.

  “Well, look what the droids dragged in,” a woman’s sharp voice says from somewhere. “You must be Liam Wright.”

  “And you must be Dot,” Liam says.

  We keep walking through the last of the haze until we see a green-haired woman sitting at a small round table with a few hazardous-looking men. She’s wearing a stark white jumpsuit like all the others, except for the extremely tall women along the sides of the room, who are barely wearing anything under their draping, white coats.

  The people at the table—at all the tables, as I look around—are tapping away and swiping at holographic keypads hovering over the tables. Others at the long counter are exchanging what look to be metal pieces of machinery. To our left, a buzzing sound fires to life as a bright light flashes. After a few seconds, someone who wasn’t there a second ago walks off the round, silver platform on the ground, then heads straight to a table.

  “Last I heard you were a lap dog for Eros Styx,” Dot says, looking Liam up and down. She looks at me, then does a double take when she sees Vox. “Who are the puppies?”

  “These are my brother’s friends,” Liam says as we get closer. Dot raises an inky eyebrow and pushes her thin, red lips to one side. She clicks her teeth disapprovingly at Liam.

  “Lyden didn’t say you’d have company.”

  One of the oily, tattooed men sitting with Dot pushes out of his chair and crosses to Vox, grinning.

  “This one looks like my type,” he says, reaching to grab her face. She catches the base of his thumb and jerks it to the outside just like Cal did to Tieg back in the Vishan tunnels. He drops to his knees.

  “You’re not my type, skod…” she says, then knees him in the nose. He falls backward, bringing his hands up to his face. They fill with blood as he tries to get to his feet, but he apparently doesn’t care since he drops his hands and advances on her again. Liam steps in front of her, but Dot shouts them both down.

  “Get me a drink, Web!” She blows out a breath and rolls her eyes. “And clean yourself up before I tell everyone this little dragonfly broke your face.” Dot gets to her feet and dusts the shoulders of Liam’s coat, then grips the lapels gently before looking directly at him. She runs her thumb over the scar through his eyebrow and smiles. “Now…what can I do for you, Liam Wright?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Pit Stop

  Arco

  The controls on this ship are almost the same as on the Leviathan, especially the yoke that sits in the middle of the wrap-around control panel. I stare into the never-ending black through the window and pretend it’s the sea, which at least helps me have an excuse for this heavy feeling—like it’s just the miles of water pushing in and down, holding me in place like a bug under somebody’s thumb.

  “You got the hang of this pretty quick,” Eco says, trying to make nice as we coast. I can’t even look at him.

  “A ship is a ship.”

  “I’ve been to the slip link—the Slide,” he says, but I just keep looking out into the black. “It’s not as bad as Skull and Jack think. People keep to themselves unless they have business with each other. You can be a ghost there.”

  I give him a side eye and decide that he’s going to be chatty. “People from Lima,” I manage to say, then wonder why I’m talking to him. I liked him better when he was a condescending know-it-all. “Why are you even here?”

  He just shrugs as the lights in his cheekbones blink red. I don’t have the energy to get into a conversation to find out the real reason, and I don’t actually care.

  “Skull said you were a pilot at Gaia.”

  “He seems to think so. It was all just simulations.”

  “Perception is reality.” Eco doesn’t turn from looking out the wraparound window in front of us. Maybe that’s why he’s here. Maybe he wants to see if the reality matches his perceptions from all his test runs in the virtuo-cines.

  “How do you know how to fly this thing? Alpha-channel testing?” I ask, then remind myself I don’t care. He nods.

  “I’ve been many, many pilots and have flown many, many ships. Though this is a little more complicated without the widgets in my peripherals.” He laughs to himself.

  “You have widgets in your vision?”

  “Right here,” he says, holding out a hand to the left of his face. “Pause, Review, Log, Enter. I always catch myself trying to tap a button in real life… But you can’t pause real life.”

  I never thought about how much easier my life would be if we could do just that…what I would do if I could just freeze time to think before having to make a decision. If for once in these last idiotic months I could just stop the world and plan.

  “Fortunately for everyone,” Tark says, walking onto the small deck behind us. “We already know what we know—doubting that is what gets people killed.”

  Eco forces a huffed laugh. “Analysis paralysis…”

  “Indeed,” Tark replies, walking in behind us and slapping Eco on the back. “We need to make a pit stop before we get to the Wraith. Make sure everyone below is secured,” he adds. Eco raises an eyebrow at him, waiting for more explanation, but it doesn’t come.

  “Skull, I wanted to…apologize for—“

  “No need. Calyx told me you spoke. I’m glad we’re back on the same page.” Tark claps Eco on the shoulder again, and the seatbelt dissipates from his shoulders in a scatter of black particles as he gets up, just like the seatbelts on the Leviathan. Once he goes below deck, Tark drops into his vacated chair and starts pushing buttons.

  “What’s the pit stop?” I ask, checking the grids on the gauges in front of me to see what Tark did. All the stars have disappeared from the map.
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  “I need to see a man about a fog.”

  I feel my face pinch, then glance over as he changes more settings on the floating control panel in front of him.

  “You mean about a dog?”

  Tark drops his chin at me like I’m a champion mollusk. “Mr. Hart, what would we do with a dog on this airship?”

  I roll my eyes. “So we’re going to get a fog? That’s what you said? Because that makes more sense?”

  Tark’s white smile peels across his face. “Yes. It’s a fundamental ingredient in the mutation you know as a zephyr,” he says, like it’s some kind of lingo thing—like maybe I just call it a bubbler or a pooler…or a split, flesh-eating wind! I gape at him.

  “Zephyrs? From the tunnels? Those things killed Joss, and you want to go pick one up?” I fight to keep my voice level.

  Tark nods solemnly, then adjusts another setting on the digitized, floating control panel to his left.

  “This one will be more amenable,” he says, finishing his button pushing. He meets my eyes. “Mr. Ripley and his father will be programming it for us. We need to buy a little time.”

  I close my eyes in a long blink. Why can’t anyone here just spit out what they’re talking about all at once!? I take a deep breath through my nose, slowly, then hold it for a second until I’m sure I’m not going to blast him.

  “And why do we need to program killer wind, exactly? Where are we even going to get it? Those things are miles under the seafloor in the Rush.”

  “The port-cloud has been draped in a security layer sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Phase Three must be on alert. We need a diversion that can be investigated, but not detected. At least not right away,” Tark answers.

  “And a zephyr is supposed to—never mind,” I say, shaking my head. “Fine…so, where are we supposed to get it?”

  “We’re not going to get it, Mr. Hart.” Tark smiles. “We’re going to make it.”

  I shake my head at him, then push my hands through my hair in exasperation. I lean my head back against my chair and close my eyes. This whole thing is impossible.

  Suddenly, the Sojourner picks up speed, but then seems to drop all at once. My ears pop, and my stomach jumps into my chest like I’ve just fallen over the edge of a solar coaster.

  “Hey! Where are we going?” I grip the yoke in front of me and feel it vibrate in my hand.

  “Down…” Tark laughs, pushing his yoke all the way forward, and the Sojourner dives.

  “Tark!”

  “Keep her straight, Mr. Hart. This won’t take long.”

  “Where are you trying to go? There’s nothing there!” I shout, scanning for something, some destination on the grids, but there’s nothing on the scopes.

  “Then we must need a little more speed.” Tark laughs again like some rabid brush dog, then pushes another button just beyond his yoke. The Sojourner surges, and my ears pop again. After a few seconds, a huge mass appears on the floating, green grid in front of me, and I nearly swallow my tongue when I see we’re heading right for it.

  “Obstruction! Correct course—“ I start, then see the numbers juxtaposing in the corner of my vision. Sevens kicking out ones, decimals jumping between numbers, then disappearing all together. “Forty-seven degrees starboard; span twelve seconds!” I say, but I don’t know how I know what to input…I just say the numbers.

  “Override system command!” Tark shouts over me, his teeth barred in a psychotic smile, his wide, yellow eyes blazing like he’s about to rip the throat out of something that he’s finally chased down. “What do you see, Mr. Hart?”

  “What!? That’s mass, man! Can’t you see it!? We’re going to crash right into it!”

  Tark rips out another laugh. “Not if we don’t speed up!” He pushes the far button again, and the Sojourner begins to whine as another surge pushes up from somewhere below us, and my stomach dives.

  “Stop! Abort!” I shout through my teeth. “System authorization override: six, seven, nine! Hart, Arco! Protocol: seven blue, remove instructor Skellig Tark for operations!”

  For a split second, everything in my head is quiet—just for that one second when the thrusters disengage, but the inertia breaks have not yet kicked in…before the hull almost groans with the relief of slowing momentum. Everything stops except my breath hitting the bottom of my lungs and the periodic, distant cannon fire in my chest. I look up, and the sky is littered with stars.

  The mass on the grid still isn’t visible until we coast a few more seconds, but then I see it in the reflection of the ship lights. It looks like the walls of the Vishan Lookout Pier—long, smooth, black shards of glass all pressed together into a massive platform of some kind. A chill runs down my spine when I register what that thing would have done to us. “We’d have been ripped in half…” I whisper, still only partially back to reality.

  “Glad to see you’ve been sharpening your skill set, Mr. Hart,” Tark says with a chuckle in his voice like this has just been some split training simulation. Everything about him right now is almost painfully stupid to me. I squeeze my eyes shut, like that’s going to distill it somehow, then just shake even the image of him out of my head.

  “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “Not at all,” he says, letting a grin hook the corner of his mouth. “But if I were, isn’t it nice to know you wouldn’t think twice about stopping me?” He lets the other side of his mouth tack up, then gives me a knowing look.

  “Are you telling me you just bluffed all that? You just put my whole team at risk to play a game?” I say through my teeth again, trying to keep my voice in check so no one below can hear what’s happening. I push to my feet, catching the scatter of black seatbelt particles falling away in the corner of my vision.

  “A game you needed to win if we’re going to have any chance of keeping everyone alive for the next level of the mission, Mr. Hart.” He stares straight into me, and I can almost feel the hole drilling into my chest. “Don’t think. Act. Trust your vision. Trust your gut,” he adds with a nod. “Because now you know you can.”

  The drill biting into my chest stops stinging, only to be replaced with prickles running up the back of my neck and down my arms. I did stop him…and I didn’t think about it. I look out onto the floating slab of black that’s glinting in the distance, then notice a series of lattice lines catching the light from our ship as we slowly drift toward it. I look back at Tark.

  “There’s a dock in there?” I ask, then nod, answering my own question before sliding back into my seat and grabbing the yoke. All right. I can do this. I already did this… “System command, six, seven, nine…Hart, Arco. Resume trajectory at two percent original speed. Sojourner class auto align. Take us in…”

  CHAPTER 9

  CEO

  Jazz

  Liam gently folds his fingers around Dot’s wrists and smiles, then leans in just a little.

  “Well, since you asked,” he says, winking, and I am mesmerized once again.

  He’s just like Liddick. Like, exactly, I think toward Vox, but don’t hear so much as a snort in reply. I tear my eyes away from Liam and Dot, but I don’t see Vox anywhere in the room.

  “What seems to be the malfunction with your little pet?” I hear Dot say behind me as I push through the crowd scanning for Vox.

  “Jazz!” He grips my arm, but I pull loose.

  “Vox is gone. We need to find her.”

  Liam swears under his breath, then abruptly nods. “There…” He starts walking with purpose to our left, where the crowd of people is the thickest. A very dark woman takes out one of her eyes, shakes it, then puts it back in and blinks furiously. A young man next to her takes out a tooth, then unscrews the bottom of it. He taps it until a small metal square falls out, which he then hands to yet another man who deposits the square into a small incision that he pulls open just under his eye. When he removes his hand, the incision completely disappears again. What the? We need to get out of here.

  When we finally clear
through most of the people, I see Vox standing over a wiry man leaning backward in his stool so far that his head touches the counter. Vox is standing over him with some kind of knife that she’s using to…mark his face?

  “What are you doing?” I ask once we finally get close enough, but from the looks of it, she’s giving the man the first of an arrow tattoo just like hers over the bridge of his nose.

  “He asked how I got mine. I told him. He wanted some. Here.” She tosses me a little bag. “Hey, what’s your name?” Vox stops inking and asks the man.

  “Frenchie,” the pale, skinny man says, looking up at her like she’s some kind of divine being. I feel the bubble of pre-roarf nausea rise in my stomach, then distract myself by looking in the little bag.

  “French-Fry gave me those,” Vox informs me.

  “Biochips?” Liam says, and the man laughs.

  “You got your sub six automators, some Skyboard biochips, a few tracker bots, some—“

  “Hey, stow it and be still, or you’re getting a unibrow,” Vox scolds, but the man’s whole face just melts right back into an adoring smile.

  I look up at Liam and hand him the bag. He shrugs, then shoves it in the pocket of his long, white coat.

  “Vox, we need to go,” he says just as Vox wipes her pick knife on the man’s shirt, then slides the little bowl of ink away from her. She spits on a napkin, then wipes it over the fresh tattoo. The man winces until Vox moves her hands to her hips and admires her work.

  “There you go, Stretchy. I only had time for the two arrows.”

  “Frenchie…” the man corrects, holding an imager disk under his chin until an exact holographic copy of his face appears in front of him.

  “Whatever,” Vox mumbles as she walks back toward us, leaving Frenchie to admire himself. He pokes at the two chevron style lines on the bridge of his nose in his holographic reflection. Both he and the hologram flinch. “Are we done yet?” Vox asks, falling into stride with us.