"The who?"
"Each Atlantean has a purpose: there is the Mariner, who can locate the Heart of the Terra; the Medium, who can speak to it; and the Aeronaut, who can get you all there."
"Which one am I?" I ask.
Luk looks at me for a moment, then he glances up.
I follow his gaze. "What?" All I see are the heavy cloud bottoms, dark, raining ash.
But then a light. A craft drops down out of the black, arcing on the wind. It is large, triangular, with sails billowing off its central mast. It reminds me of a bigger version of the craft outside the skull room. A blue light glows from its center, like a power source.
"Wait, you guys could fly?" I ask.
"You don"t map the earth and build a worldwide culture by boat," said Luk. "That would take ages. Now, look at the ship and tell me: Why is he listing like that?"
"He"s battling probably a thirty-knot crosswind from the southeast," I answer immediately. Then it occurs to me that I knew that, just like I"d been sensing winds the last few days.
Luk is smiling.
"I"m the Aeronaut," I say.
"There is a craft in this temple," says Luk.
"Wait, you"re telling me I"m going to fly fly that thing?" that thing?"
"Yes, but I will help you. That"s why I"m here. I trained to be an Aeronaut. And that learning will awaken inside you. Now that you"ve connected with the skull, I will be able to join you in your mind."
"Like you"re going to download into me?"
"More like I have always been there, like memories you didn"t know you had. Other things will happen, too. More effects of your awakening."
"Oh," I say, "more of that. that."
"Yes, but what"s important is that we can work on your training without the skull present."
"Yeah, about the flying... ," I say. "I know you can read my thoughts, so you might want to picture what I"m thinking about right now."
Luk closes his eyes, then frowns. "That looks like some sort of giant dome structure."
"Yeah. It"s going to be kind of a problem."
"I"m afraid I won"t be any he-wi..."
Luk"s mouth is still moving, but his voice is cutting out.
The world around us flickers from dark to white.
"Hey," I say to him.
"Y..." His mouth moves. "To make th-"
The world around me brightens. I brighten. The vision is fading. I am leaving the skull.
Everything turns to white, but then suddenly to black.
I feel myself returning, and time and s.p.a.ce begin to solidify.
So does pain.
Chapter 18
I LANDED BACK INSIDE MY BODY, FILLING ITS s.p.a.ces, feeling my heart pumping, my feet on the floor, my hand burning, and my breath- s.p.a.ces, feeling my heart pumping, my feet on the floor, my hand burning, and my breath- Stopped. Pain around my neck. Tension. Everything squeezed tight.
My eyes opened and the room was dark except for light beams. Flashlights. In their sweeps I saw Lilly, held with an elbow around her neck by one of the two Security Forces guards we"d seen earlier.
There was an arm around my neck too.
The lights caught the skull, but its inner glow had gone dark.
"This is fascinating." Cartier appeared. He walked over and picked up the skull, holding it in both his gloved hands, making little bouncing movements with his arms like he was testing its weight. "Mr. Jacobsen will be very pleased to know about this." He looked at his officers. "His orders are to bring these two and the skull to his lab. Let"s go."
I glanced over at Lilly. Her face was red. There was no way we were breaking these holds. I tried to say to her, with my glance, It will be okay It will be okay, or something like that, even though I didn"t know how it could be.
But even though we were caught, I felt fuzzy, only loosely connected to the outside world after my time inside the skull. I could barely make sense of my limbs to walk, couldn"t quite pay attention. Despite the danger, it felt like my brain was busy with other things.
Gather round, everyone, a technician was calling, waving his arms. The yellow suits cl.u.s.tered around a bank of consoles, looking at screens full of spiking meters. You know those data vaults we"ve always wondered about? You know those data vaults we"ve always wondered about? There were murmurs among the others. There were murmurs among the others. Well, they"re coming online. Well, they"re coming online.
I shook my head, trying to focus. Through the brain fog, at least a couple things were clear from all that had just happened.
The Nomads had been after the skull, and me. Did that mean they knew that I was an Atlantean? And they wanted to get me away from Project Elysium. So, was that what Luk was talking about? Was Project Elysium the thing that was going to destroy the Heart of the Terra, if we didn"t protect it?
My captor loosened his grip and pushed me through the narrow back-and-forth pa.s.sage. I came out on the walkway above the little airship. He grabbed me by the arm, moving me ahead.
They marched us up the spiral stairs, back to the map room. There, Cartier pulled the jacket off the dead Nomad. When he yanked it loose, her arms flopped. Her head thudded on the marble floor. He took the jacket and wrapped the skull in it.
We climbed up the ladder, back into the mine tunnels, up and up until we were in the long hall with the concrete floor.
Ahead, I saw the side tunnel where Lilly and I had entered. Beyond that was the next ladder, the one that would likely lead us up into the Aquinara, and right to Paul. As I pa.s.sed our tunnel, I thought halfheartedly about making a break for it, but I could barely process how to do that, and I was so tired, the exhaustion of the entire week overwhelming, and on top of that was this fuzzy-headed way my mind seemed to be so distracted.
Lilly, though, had all of her energy, and she had something I didn"t.
Her captor suddenly shouted in pain.
My guard was already spinning around as I did, and there was Lilly, holding out the Nomad"s knife, its end glistening in blood. Her arm was extended toward the next guard, but it also seemed like she was trying to get the knife as far away from her body as she could. Her eyes were wild, looking as scared by what she"d just done as fierce because of it.
I had to move. I slammed my hands into my guard"s back, doubting what good it would do, but it sent him face-first into the nearby wall.
"Gah!" he shouted, collapsing to his knees and grabbing at his nose as blood poured out.
My eyes locked with Lilly and we spun and sprinted into the side tunnel. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cartier rushing back toward us, but his careful grip on the skull slowed him down, and then we were flying down the dark pa.s.sage.
"Have to get to water!" Lilly shouted, her voice at a higher pitch than I"d heard before.
Shouts and footsteps behind us. Lilly was getting ahead of me. I told my legs to go faster, but they didn"t seem to get the message. Again, it was like all of my circuits were busy.
Lilly turned back. "Come on!" She grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me, and I barely kept my feet underneath me. Down the hall, around the wall at the end, into the chamber. I could barely see in the dark, needed the siren, but Lilly"s memory was true. She kept pulling me and running and then our feet splashed into icy water and we dove. Air out. Water in. My skin seemed to scream at the cold, and it shocked me back to reality. Kick. Pull. We shot through the tunnel, two fish finally thrown back into their sea.
We jostled through the listless koi and reached the opening and were back out into the green of the lake. We angled up and caught the push of the outflow current. Swimming, owning the water, and it was amazing to me that it was still daytime. How long had we been in there? It had felt like days, years maybe. I"d gone in looking for answers, trying to understand what I was. Now I felt like I knew more than I could even grasp.
"Owen!" Lilly shouted as she waited for me to catch up.
"I"m trying," I said, kicking harder, because even though we were in our medium again, everything still felt off, slow, like my body was trying to do two things at once.
"Where are we going?" I asked Lilly.
"Don"t know yet." She was kicking furiously.
I noticed that she was still gripping the knife in her hand. The water had washed off the blood, and now the blade snared and respun little shards of sunlight with each of her swim strokes.
We stayed deep, crossing the lake. Then, there was a new sound. We looked up and saw the bellies of motorboats sliding by above, two together.
"They"re looking for us," said Lilly.
"We have to go deeper," I said, starting to pull down into the darker layer.
"Not good," said Lilly. Above, the boats were circling. She pa.s.sed me. "Faster, Owen!"
"I am," I said, but something was wrong. I was trying to swim, trying to go harder and faster than I ever had, and yet I was falling behind again.
Wow, look at that... , said one of the technicians, like there was brand-new equipment suddenly in place. , said one of the technicians, like there was brand-new equipment suddenly in place.
Well, this is unexpected, said another. The whole group of them were ignoring their usual posts.
And meanwhile I was slowing down. Everything felt weak. My arms were coming to a stop, my legs hanging loose, and my lungs starting to twitch- Wait. The fluttering in my neck... There was stillness where there had been movement. I tried to swallow water, but the flow had stopped.
"Hey!" Lilly looked up at me from the deep shadows.
My gills weren"t working, and I was just hanging there in watery s.p.a.ce, nothing happening... except now a tickle in my throat, a heaving feeling, something was coming up, out. Oh no...
I coughed out that little bubble of air from my lungs. Suddenly they were awake, and wanted to breathe, to take over. What had happened to my gills?
I grabbed at my neck, pressing on the folds, causing stabs of pain, but still nothing worked, the flesh soft, dead. And I was drowning again. Thrashing and trying to move, and down was up and I couldn"t understand what had happened or why now, after everything I"d been through, all I"d learned. Now I just needed air, air... air air!
Lilly was coming toward me, but it was too late. My mouth opened. I was swallowing water and there was that cold again, the icy pain searing out from the inside. That feeling of safety, that comfort of water"s pressure, like this was my world-all of that was gone. The freezing liquid poured down my throat, into my trachea, and the pain and the cold and the dying happened all over again.
I tried to move. There was no moving. I tried to scream or close my throat, but nothing worked, nothing, all systems off-line, sinking. Lilly was fading into a blur of green, and it was all going to black, and even as I clawed weakly at the liquid-final desperate movements-the technicians were still huddled around something new, mumbling with fascination, like they didn"t even notice what was happening to me, like they barely even cared.
PART III
And should the time come again,When masters seek to bend the Terra to their will,Then the three will awaken, to save us all.
Chapter 19
YOU WOULD HEAR THEM FIRST. VIBRATIONS IN OUR walls, making the coffee mugs dance on their perches above the stove. walls, making the coffee mugs dance on their perches above the stove.
Mom counted the seconds; the closer together the booms, the stronger the storms. And the bigger they were, the more excited she seemed to get. They usually came at night, when I"d be lying in my bed, the one lamp in our single bedroom buzzing low because of the power rationing. I liked to sleep with my back up against the wall, and when the walls rumbled, I"d feel it in my spine.
"One... two... three... four..."
Another rumble. Mom looked over at me, and maybe my six-year-old eyes looked scared, because she smiled and said, "Here comes the giant." She got up, putting down the reader tablet, whose weak charge she"d nearly used up reading to me. She shrugged off her fleece shawl and made big steps around the room. "Boom boom boom," she said.
A message blinked on the desk monitor. Mom stopped and slipped on her gla.s.ses to read it. "Ooh," she said softly. "Owen, they"re here. Want to go see?"
No, I thought. I didn"t really want to go see. I wanted to stay in bed. "I thought we were supposed to stay inside because they were dangerous?"
My mom smiled at me in a way that was maybe supposed to make me think I was being silly, except it also always made me feel like she was disappointed in me, in my caution, my fear. Dad wouldn"t have wanted to go out either, but Dad was at work. He worked a lot of nights, managing the battery storage of the geothermal energy charge. The batteries were always having problems.
"Nah," my mom said, still smiling. "We"ll be fine." She looked away as she said it. I"d seen her do that when she was talking to Dad, like having to deal with someone as fearful as me was trying for her. I got the feeling that, if I resisted anymore, she"d start to get frustrated. And with Mom, it always seemed like if you made her too mad, or disappointed her too much, she"d tune you out. Those moments scared me, as if even at that age I could sense that they were little auditions for when she really would leave us.
"Okay," I said, and slipped out of bed.
She handed me my jacket. I put it over my pajamas and wondered if she"d notice and tell me to put clothes on, but she was too busy finding her camera and putting on a scarf and a cowboy hat, like she was getting ready for a night on the town. Mom always did that, as if every place she went was a stage.
We left the apartment and walked up the main cavern road through our neighborhood. The booming sounded again. Dust drifted loose from the cavern walls with each concussion. I put up my hand for Mom to hold, but at that moment she was busy waving to a few neighbors.
A small crowd had formed in the street, heading in the same direction as we were. In a way, everyone had been waiting for this moment for over a year now, even while we"d hoped to avoid it. There were other kids walking with their parents. Some carried flashlights and blankets to sit on. So my mom wasn"t the only one who felt this urge that I didn"t share. That only made me feel more inadequate.
The elevators up to the city concourse were closed for power rationing, so we had to take the stairs. The narrow metal flights switched back and forth up the rock wall. They shook and whined with the crowd of people on them.