The Lost Code (18 page)

And I reminded myself that these Nomads weren’t the only victims of this place, of Paul’s Eden. There was little Colleen, and the other kids the CITs had talked about. Paul hadn’t kept them safe. And it was more than just me who was in danger now. There was Lilly. The Nomads mentioned a girl. Lilly was the only one who’d seen the siren, like me. I wished I could find her right now. She was the only one I could talk to about all this. The only one I could trust.

Paul’s hand lifted off my shoulder. “Listen, I have to clean things up here. In the meantime, I’m going to have you brought to my office. We’ll have a talk. It’s long overdue. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

I looked into his black lenses and wondered what to say, but there was really only one answer. “Sure.”

“Good.” He patted my knee. “Just sit tight. I’ll have some officers take you back.” He stood and left.

As soon as he was gone, I tried moving my legs. They were still a little like jelly, but I got my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I started to shake. From everything.

I watched Paul return to where the three bodies were now lined up. An officer handed him Pyra’s phone. I looked over to where Dr. Maria was tending to Evan. She kept glancing over at the bodies. Paul the liar. And Dr. Maria, the . . . what? What had that nod been before? And her tears about the Nomad . . . Maybe it had just been the sight of death, or was it something more?

I pushed up harder with my legs, my back scraping against tree bark as I stood. It took a second to center my balance.

Paul had moved out to the bridge. He and Cartier were inspecting the broken lock on the hatch door.

Sit tight
, he’d said. Right. Sit back and wait for the next thing to happen. For the next drowning, strange vision, veiled comment, for the next attempted abduction, the next death. All of these things that kept happening to me, with no explanation for why. And really, wasn’t it my fault, too? I’d been ignoring the dark questions about what was going on here, about my gills, all of it, focusing instead on nights with Lilly, on finally belonging to something. But I couldn’t avoid it anymore, not after this.

There was a tingling in my fingertips. I could feel my heart rate increasing, and my body shuddering more.

Ten meters away from me lay three bodies, dead because of me. And not far away was another body, Evan. He’d been trying to ignore the questions, too. And while any other day I would have been happy to see him flat on his back, not today. Would he be okay, or was he another casualty of me? And what if that had been Lilly back there in the game? What if they’d gotten her too? There could have been a stray bullet, a fall off the catwalk, she could be a still body on the pine needles now, too. . . .

I wanted to talk to her so bad. She’d know what to do. But, no, talking to her wasn’t an option right now.
I
needed to know what to do.

I leaned on one foot, then the other. Flexed my toes. Swung my arms.
All systems back online?
I asked the technicians.

Yessir, looking good
, they reported.

Then hang on
, I told them.

Paul and Cartier were still checking the hatch. Dr. Maria was bent over Evan with her penlight.

Everyone had their back to me.

I turned and ran.

Full on. Not looking back. Straight into the trees, tearing down the slope, my feet slipping in the orange needles. Once I’d covered some ground, I dared a glance back. No one was following. How long before they noticed? Probably just a few more seconds.

I cut left. Trying to retrace the path my captors had taken. Heading for that stream, heading for the lake. I wished Lilly was with me, but I had to fight the urge to go and try to find her. There was no time now. This was my only chance.

No more sitting around waiting. I wasn’t going to Paul’s office. I wasn’t letting anyone take me anywhere, anymore, unless they were ghostly blue and deep in my world only.

I was going to the temple.

I CAREENED DOWN THE HILLSIDE THROUGH THE
dark pine gloom, heard a familiar gurgling sound, and reached the tiny bridge where, some blurry stretch of time ago, there had been fists and darts and abductions. Remnants of the butterfly sparkled on the mud bank.

I jumped down off the bridge, landing in the shallow water. My ankle twisted. My hip cracked against a tall boulder. Already out of breath. Already feeling the screw-top twist of the cramp in my side. My lungs felt like metal cans that wouldn’t expand enough.

Behind me, something crashed in the woods. Were those voices?

Keep moving.

And now I was in water, the cold seeping through my socks and shoes, causing tremors up my calves and tingles in my gills. Water would be my savior, I just had to follow it. This stream babbled downward; it would lead to the lake. There were shallow slopes to either side but no trails, so maybe they wouldn’t think I’d gone this way.

I splashed rock to rock, fallen log to wet sand, slipping, hands out to steady myself.

The incline increased and the stream began to blur with bubbles, the water channeling through more narrow gaps, sometimes plunging under boulders. My run became more of a hop downward, palms bracing against rough stones. A knife edge of rock tore the pocket off my shorts.

The stream fanned out over steps of sandstone. I scrambled down them, but my feet slipped on the smooth rock. I started to fall to the right, threw myself back the other way, lost my footing, and toppled face-first into the pool at the bottom. I popped up, but now my throat was stuck. My gills, confused, had opened. I staggered, telling them to close, coughing at the same time, cramp knotting tight.

Then, ahead through the trees I saw the sun streaks on the lake. Almost there. Stumbling, just had to make it. My shoulder slammed into a tree, half spinning me, spots in my eyes, nothing working.

I staggered forward and reached a ledge of rocks, the lake lapping a few feet below, and I threw myself in.

My body slapped against the surface and I sank, emptying my lungs, letting go of everything. I felt the cramp ease, felt my gills begin to flutter, water through my mouth. The coolness relaxed all my burning muscles. My stomach gently brushed against the algae-slick rocks of the bottom. I spread my arms and pulled myself out a few meters to deeper water. There, I peeled off my shirt, shoes and socks. I pinned them beneath a rock on the bottom, so there would be no evidence of my escape. Then, I rose to the surface and peered around to get my bearings.

I was at the far side of the camp inlet. The boathouse was to my left, the trampoline raft straight ahead, the empty dock beyond that.

“So, now you’re trying to ditch me?”

I whirled to see Lilly standing on the rocks, hands on her hips, in her teal bathing suit top and red shorts, breathing hard. Marco and Aliah stood just behind her. Lilly’s gaze was stony, and I couldn’t tell if she was really mad or not.

I pushed my throat open. “I—”

She rolled her eyes. “Kidding.” She smiled, but then her face got serious again. “What happened to your face?”

I felt the swelling by my jaw. “Evan.”

“That—” She scowled, but didn’t finish. “And those were Nomads, weren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“We saw the aftermath up there. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, but”—I glanced past her into the woods—“I’ve gotta go, before they find me.”

“I thought they were all dead,” said Marco.

“Not the Nomads. Paul and the Security Forces.”

“You’re going to the temple, aren’t you?” Lilly asked.

I nodded. “The Nomads were talking about it. They sent a team there, to—” I stopped, looking at Marco and Aliah.

“I told them,” said Lilly, “About the siren that we saw, and how you had that vision.”

“Crazy stuff,” said Marco.

“I don’t get it,” said Aliah. “How come
we
never saw this thing?”

Lilly looked back at me. “There’s something different about Owen,” she said.

“About us,” I added. “The Nomads were after you, too.”

“Me?” Lilly’s eyebrows bunched up like she didn’t believe it. “How do you know that?”

“They said they were after a girl, too, and you’re the only other one who’s seen the siren.”

Lilly nodded slowly. “Oh.” She sounded unsure, or maybe overwhelmed.

“We have to find out what’s going on,” I said, “before more people die.” I looked at her as seriously as I could. “Come with me.”

Lilly’s eyes stayed on mine. She bit her lip. “Yeah,” she said. She turned to Marco and Aliah. “Can you guys cover for us? And see about that bastard Evan.”

“What should we say?” Aliah asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lilly, “tell them Owen and I sneaked off to hook up or something, that we can’t keep our hands off each other.” She shot me a slight smile.

I tried not to melt into the water. Of all the times for a girl to say something like that in relation to me, why did it have to be now?

Aliah laughed. “I think Owen liked that idea.”

I felt my face burn. “We should go.”

“All right, but where to meet up?” said Marco. “The raft?”

“Too obvious,” said Lilly. She tore at her fingers, thinking. “How about the ledges?”

I’d heard them talk about this place, up at the top of Mount Aasgard.

“Sounds good,” said Marco. “We’ll head up there after lunch.”

“Be careful,” Lilly said to them, then she turned and dove in.

“Thanks,” I said to Marco and Aliah.

Marco nodded and Aliah raised an eyebrow, but neither said anything. They were looking at me like this was all my fault. It gave me a heavy feeling. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet, they were right. This was about
me
, weird as that was to get used to.

I ducked under, sucked in water, and thrust out to where Lilly was waiting, gently drifting beneath the surface. As I neared her, I wished this was the moment where we were leaving, off to find our own ocean somewhere, with no danger of Nomads, where the only mysteries were what strange fruits and flowers we’d eat, and where we’d sleep.

‘Ready?’ I said to her.

‘Yeah.’ She reached out and touched my swollen cheek. ‘He had no right, Owen. . . .’

‘It’s okay.’ And then I felt a rush of nerves about what I’d just thought to say next, and somehow I actually said it. ‘It was because of you.’ I started to swim past her and added, in my fish clicks, ‘And it was worth it.’

Her hand clamped on my ankle and pulled me back, spinning me over so that I was facing the surface. She slid over me, silhouetted by green-tinted beams of SafeSun, her face in shadow, hair like a corona, and she drifted down until our bodies were touching, cold skin, contact from the tops of our feet to our chests.

She kissed me.

Somehow I was ready. Waving my hands to keep myself steady in the weightless water, craning my neck up as her face neared and our cool lips met. The strange gill currents made extra suction in from the corners of our mouths, and I tried to feel how her soft lips were moving and do the same thing she was.

I realized my eyes were shut tight. I opened them to find Lilly’s eyes open too, the backlight making them dark and almost predator-like again.

Then it was over. She pulled away. ‘Come on,’ she said with a gentle smile, and shot off ahead. How long had that been? A second? An hour? I felt like I had no idea. For a moment I just stared up at the blur of sunny sky. My first real kiss. With a girl I still could barely believe I got to be around. In spite of all that was happening, in spite of the way my nerves were ringing, I felt a sadness that it was already over. Would we ever have another chance? Why couldn’t this just last?

Owen. Find me.

The siren was one reason why. The dead bodies, the siren, the gills . . . I flipped around and swam after Lilly. As I caught up to her, I scanned the depths. ‘Do you see her?’

‘Not yet . . . ,’ said Lilly.

‘There.’ I pointed out to our right. There was the slithering, flickering form.

‘Oh . . . yeah, I see it,’ said Lilly. ‘Lead on, O.’

I kicked hard and we were off, skimming the lower edge of the sunbeams, out over the shipwreck and then across the open lake.

What is oldest will be new. What was hidden shall be unlocked. The secrets remembered by the true.
She stayed out ahead of us, always distant, and yet always in view, until we reached the Aquinara, where the rocky bottom rose up to the concrete wall, the intake and outflow tunnels doing their cyclical work.

The siren slipped down among the black rocks at the lake bottom.

We followed, diving deep.

Come home, Lük.

White light started to creep into my vision again, almost as if that vision of the city, and the crystal skull, had to do with proximity to whatever was down here. I saw the image forming again, like it was downloading into my mind—the pyramid, the ash sky, the kids kneeling on pillows, knives at their throats—but this time I concentrated on the water and rocks around me, on Lilly, the blue of the siren, and tried to keep that vision from overwhelming me.

There was a moment of stretching, almost like new spaces were opening in my head, and then I could see both things at once. It was like there were two screens in my mind’s eye, like at different depths, and I could slide back and forth between the two. Out in front, at the surface of my mind was the lake. Back deeper in my head was the boy Lük, skull before him, about to die.

Not to die
, the siren added, as if it could see this vision too.
To transform. To evolve.

As we swam down, the water pressure strengthened. I felt my sinuses compressing, my ears popping. I pulled deeper, kicked harder, first battered by the outflow water, then resisting the sucking of the intake.

And then we were beneath the currents and among the shadows and the brown-slicked rocks at the lake bottom. Ahead was the dark opening. The siren’s pale light flickered from inside. Lilly was off to my left, peering around like she’d lost sight of the light. ‘Over here,’ I called.

I swam toward the opening. It had looked like a random gap in the rocks from up above, but from down here I could see that it was actually more of a rounded hole, kind of like a tunnel. The edges were rough, like it had been hand-carved. The siren’s light flickered from a few meters in, and around a bend.

‘We’re going in there?’ Lilly asked.

I peered inside, where the ghostly light beckoned.

Come home, Lük.

I pulled back inside my head, saw the boy having his throat slit, his world becoming white. Then I pushed back out to the world of water.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We’re going in.’