“It’s all self-contained. There’s an irrigation system that runs underneath the dome, cycling the water through a series of reservoirs and filters. It can’t actually rain down here, so that’s how the grass and trees get their water. The sunlight doesn’t really come from the sun, either. There are UV lights built into the ceiling panels. This entire biodome was created to simulate the outside atmosphere. I suspect that this complex was built to monitor and observe it, hence all the windows.”
“And you know all this how?” I ask skeptically.
He gestures toward the computer sitting idly on the table. “It’s amazing what a little research will get you,” he says flippantly.
I glare at him. “So what are you doing here, really?”
“I already told you, I’m exploring. I’m on a… a fact-finding mission. I came down here to do some research and I just happened to find this place.”
“So what, you’re like, a scientist? You work for the Tribunal?”
“Something like that,” he says. He looks away, suddenly fixating his gaze on a spot just behind my head. I turn to see what he’s looking at, but my eyes meet the blank wall.
I walk over to an overturned chair and pull it upright. My eyes are fixed on Adam’s face, trying to figure out what he isn’t telling me. As I bend to sit down, the backs of my knees hit the seat and it rolls out from under me. I yelp as my backside connects with the hard floor.
“Graceful,” he says with a laugh.
“Shut up.” I pull myself up into the chair, my cheeks blazing. “What are you looking for? With your research, I mean. It must be pretty valuable intel for you to be willing to live down here for it.”
Adam swivels nervously in his chair for a moment before answering. “I wasn’t originally meant to stay. It wasn’t supposed to just be me. There were four of us on the research team. We all came down together but… I got separated from them.” I can tell he’s trying to make it sound casual, but there is emotion behind his words.
“You got lost,” I say, repeating his words from earlier.
Adam nods.
“Why hasn’t anyone come to find you?”
“It’s a long-term mission. Job’s not done.”
“So they just left you here,” I say, unable to keep the disapproval out of my voice. Now those are the kind of skydwellers I know—the kind who just pick up and leave when things get rough.
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Try me.” Why would the Tribunal bother sending a research team down to the ruins now? If there was some kind of valuable technology or research here, I’m sure they would have retrieved it long ago. “I can handle it,” I add.
Adam looks at me for a moment and exhales. He slowly lifts his arm, then flicks his wrist toward his face. I feel the soles of my shoes scrape against the floor as my chair glides toward him, through no effort on my part.
I let out a surprised shout and jump out of my seat, kicking the chair away from me. It hits one of the desks with a clang, leaving the table askew. “Okay, that! What the hell was that?”
“It’s just something I can do,” Adam says calmly. He holds his hands up in front of him, palms out, like he did when we first met. I have to remind myself that was only a few hours ago.
“I knew it. I knew that you did something to the branch.”
He shrugs that infuriating shrug.
“Right. Telekinesis. No big deal.” A tense silence fills the space between us. “Can everyone do that? Up there, I mean? Is this just another thing you all get that we don’t?”
He pauses for a moment. “No, not exactly. Not everyone,” he says finally, smiling before he adds, “Still feel like you can handle it?”
I hop up onto the table behind me and cross my arms defiantly, leaving my legs dangling off the side. I force a casual expression onto my face as if to say,
Bring it on.
Adam gets out of his chair and picks up the tablet computer from his desk. I can’t see the screen from my perch, but after a few moments of tapping, he turns it toward me. Words and numbers scroll across the screen, too quickly for me to read.
“Data,” he says matter-of-factly. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small metal square that he plugs directly into the side of the tablet. “Thanks to you, I was actually able to net a lot of information from the raiders.”
“Uh, you’re welcome,” I reply. Ryk’s face suddenly pops up on the screen and I scoot back in surprise. “Wait, how…?”
“It’s just data I collected after… after you were safe,” he says, putting the tablet down on the desktop next to me, so I can see more clearly. Upon closer inspection of the image, I see that Ryk’s eyes are closed and his head hangs to the side.
“So this is what a ‘subdued’ raider looks like, huh? What did you do to him?”
“Gave him a bad headache to wake up to, is all. Then I scanned his image, jotted down some notes, and took a couple of samples.”
“Samples?” I say skeptically.
Adam reaches back into his pocket and pulls out a silver cylinder, identical to the one already on the table. He flicks open the top, revealing a stack of slides inside.
“I told you, I’m here on a research assignment. Fact-finding. So I’m finding facts. That includes ones about the people living down here.”
“Are you going to take samples from me, too?” I eye the cylinder suspiciously.
“Only if you want to give them to me.”
“You didn’t ask the raiders for their permission.”
“Well, they didn’t really give me a chance to ask nicely, did they?” Adam picks the tablet back up, unplugging the drive. “I could use a picture, if you’re willing.” Before I have a chance to object, a flash emanates from the little square in his hand. When my eyes refocus, Adam has a wide smile plastered on his face.
“Hey! No, no way. What do you think you’re doing? Delete that.”
“Okay, okay, sorry.” He plugs the drive back into the tablet. A second later, my own startled expression is staring out at me. He runs his fingers over the screen and my image disappears. “There. Gone forever. Happy?”
I suddenly have a hunch as to his intentions during our interrogation: asking about my age, my family situation, Sixteen. He was mining for data. The realization makes me angry, though more at myself than at him. It’s not as if anything I told him is top-secret, after all, but I’m not exactly eager to get my personal info in the hands of the Tribunal. Plus, I’m irked by the way his questioning had made me feel. Did I honestly think he was interested in getting to know me?
Silly girl.
“You sure have a lot of stuff for someone who was stranded down here without the rest of your team,” I say, surveying the various tools still laid out on the table. Adam lifts his head and follows my gaze.
“Not really,” he says, turning his eyes back to the screen in his hands. “Just the basics. Scanning equipment, water filters, nutrition bars, and a sustenance generator. Odds and ends.”
“Sustenance generator?”
Adam is lost in the data flowing across his tablet. I stare at him in silence for a moment, hopeful that the admittance of his abilities is an indication that he’s more open to my questions.
“It’s back there, in the pack by the bed,” he says without looking up. “Along with a few other things. Feel free to check them out if you’re so fascinated.”
I trot to the back of the room to survey the rest of Adam’s impossible wares. Aside from an array of nutrition bars and empty wrappers dotting the floor, there isn’t much. I can’t help but wonder where he got the undershirts, blankets, and pillows. They’re way too big to fit in the silver “pack” that sits near the foot of his improvised bed. Rectangular and thin, the two straps on one side are the only things that make the pack seem remotely bag-like. In fact, with the stiff set of its open flaps, it looks more like a large book. If it weren’t for the strange-looking box laying half-inside the pack’s open mouth, I wouldn’t even believe it could hold anything. The box is just slightly larger than the palm of my hand, with a wide slot in the middle surrounded by metal teeth.
“What’s this?” I ask, picking up the small metal mouth and showing it to Adam.
He looks up for a split-second before returning his gaze to the screen. “That’s the sustenance generator. Put any organic matter in there and it’ll churn out the nutrients in edible form. I haven’t had to use it yet, but I’ll be glad to have it when I run out of bars.”
“Huh,” I murmur, intrigued. “
Any
matter?”
“Sure, although obviously plant-based tends to be preferred.”
“You skyboys have it even better than I thought. I guess a sustenance generator wouldn’t do us much good anyway, though. You may not have noticed, but it’s not
quite
as lush on the surface as it is down here.”
“You never know. Tree bark, rocks… you’d be surprised what that thing can shake out. And worst comes to worst, there’s always hair. Tastes awful, but you’d be surprised what you’re willing to stomach in a pinch. Just don’t put your finger in there,” he cautions. “I know more than one person who’s made that mistake before.”
My face screws up in disgust and Adam laughs. “I’m joking,” he says. “Lighten up.”
Annoyed, I kneel to replace the generator in Adam’s pack. I’m about to stand back up when a glint of shiny metal catches my eye, just off to the side, half buried underneath the corner of a pillow that’s flopped onto the floor. It’s a bit bigger than I remember, but there’s no mistaking it.
The machine. Just like the one I found in the Dead Woods.
Just like the one that began all of this.
Chapter 9
I reach out and pick up the machine, testing its familiar weight in my palm.
“And this?” I call back to Adam, trying to keep a tone of indifference to my voice. “What’s this?”
He looks up and his eyes meet my mine for a split second. I quickly look away.
“Oh, that’s nothing really,” he says, returning his gaze to the screen in his hands without missing a beat. “Just part of an old biostatic conversion unit. It’s broken, I meant to trash it.”
“Oh,” I say, turning my back to him. I know it’s wrong to take it, but explaining my interest in a piece of broken skyworld technology might elicit too many questions from Adam, and I’ve given him enough information for one day.
There’s another 3,000 credits attached to this. That would be enough for Mica—it’d have to be. It’s trash to Adam anyway, he said so himself…
My mind goes through a list of justifications as I slip the machine into my pocket. It causes the fabric to bulge out so noticeably that I might as well have a sign attached to my leg. I quickly stand and head towards my backpack, hoping to put the machine inside, but the movement draws Adam’s attention and I can’t make the switch. Instead, I hold the pack in front of my leg in an attempt to conceal my swollen pocket.
“So, look…” I say awkwardly, “I really need to get going. This has been fascinating, but I think I’m about maxed out on crazy underground technology and lost skyboys for today. I’ve been gone a long time and I don’t even know how far I am from home, so… I need to get back to my brother.”
“Right,” Adam says. He stands up and pushes a button on the side of the tablet. The screen goes blank. “Let’s go then.”
“Um, what?” I say. “You’re not coming with me.”
“Why not?” he says. “You need me to show you how to get out of the dome, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but—” I look around the room before settling my eyes back on his face. “Why would you even want to go to Sixteen?”
“I don’t intend on living down here for the rest of my life. I need to continue my research and now that I have someone who might actually know where to go once we’re up top…” He looks at me as if he’s trying to decide if that’s the case. “It’s win-win, Terra. I get you out of here, you get me to Sixteen. What better way to conduct my research than with a local guide?” He finishes with a lopsided grin.
“I can’t just bring you home with me. How would that look? I don’t need to give people any more reasons to keep an eye on me.”
“What do you mean?” Adam says, his expression suddenly curious.
I mentally curse myself. The last thing I want to tell Adam about is my recent fortune. Questions about the payout might lead to questions about what I was paid out for. And that will lead right to the machine I’m currently trying to smuggle in my pocket. “You would just stand out too much, a skyboy like you, slumming with us. How am I supposed to explain how we even met?” I say in an attempt to divert his attention back to the matter at hand.
“I think the truth makes for a pretty good story,” Adam says with a smirk.
“Ha. Right. Whilst scavenging in the middle of the night, I was chased by raiders over the quarantine line and had no choice but to touch contaminated material while I was trying to escape. Then I found a friendly telekinetic skyworld scientist in a magical underground forest. Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over real well with the guardsmen.”
“I think, technically, I’m the one who found you.”
“Whatever. You probably have some kind of Tribunal-signed permission slip to be here, but if they find out that I’ve been in the ruins this long… It’ll be isolation, observation, and decontamination for me. Who knows when, or if, I’ll come back from that. I mean, I guess there is a chance I
could
be infected but… I don’t feel plague-ish. Do you?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” Adam says, patting himself down.
“But you see my point, right? It will be a lot less suspicious if I go back on my own.”
“I disagree.”
“Well, you’re fully entitled to. Regardless, I need to go.” I shift my weight as I move to leave, trying not to draw attention to the awkward way I’m still holding the backpack against my leg.
“What if I gave you something? In exchange for taking me back with you,” Adam says suddenly.
“Like what?” I say guardedly, already heading toward the door.
“I don’t know. A water filter, maybe.”
I turn back to face him. “You already gave me one of those, remember?”
He lifts one of his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize that was a gift.”
I feel heat in my cheeks. Of course he would want it back. And I’ve already taken something that isn’t mine. I squirm a little, unsure of how to respond, but the smirk on Adam’s face has already been replaced by a kind smile.