The Plague Forge [ARC] (4 page)

The hammering of rain on the tent suddenly subsided, and then vanished altogether.

“You shoulda heard the twang of the cord when you picked that object up,” Karl said. “Damnedest thing.”

“Tim’s coming down. Just to help manage things here, until you’re up and about.”

“You won’t hear me complaining—
Fucking hell! Ow!
”

His leg had slipped off the stack of books that propped it up, landing with a thud on the thick canvas cot. Skyler winced, stifled a laugh without much success, and helped him get resettled.

Chapter Two

Platz Station

22.MAR.2285

“How do you feel?”

“Like … like vomiting.”

And so she did.

Skyler had imagined a number of reactions Ana might have on her first visit to space, her first time in weightlessness. This hadn’t been his preferred outcome. Still, he’d prepared, had a plastic bag handy for her to use. He even had a handkerchief ready, and by the time they reached the climber port on Platz Station, Ana wore a wide grin and her eyes sparkled with an almost adolescent delight.

She bounded through the airlock with too much enthusiasm, drifting across the wide space beyond until she finally landed halfway up the far wall. He watched her drift in the microgravity, and laughed with her.

Ana pushed off with better aim on her second attempt, and he caught her, clasping a hand on her forearm as she did the same to him. She landed and slipped her other arm around him.

“This is better than swimming,” she said.

“I prefer the water.”

She punched him playfully on the shoulder. The motion made her body try to drift away, saved only by the fact that her other arm was around his waist. Skyler gave her a tug and pulled her back to the floor. She met his gaze, a silent thanks passing between them. Then he glanced down at the hard-shell case they’d brought up.

“I should probably—”

Ana spoke over him, saving him from an awkward conversation. “I think I’ll stay in here for a while, if they’ll let me. Learn how to, er, swim. Come get me when you’re done.”

When I’m done. Right.
He didn’t know if that day would ever come, but one thing he did know is that they would have to talk through the more complicated aspects of their relationship sooner than that. Skyler sighed and kissed her on the forehead. With that she pushed off the floor again and floated up to the ceiling.

He watched her for a few seconds, stalling, admiring her lithe form and the way her hair looked all tucked back in a tight ponytail. Finally he lifted the hard plastic case from the floor with one finger and pushed it ahead of him toward the cargo bay’s exit—an alcove in the wall with a lift that went “down” to the outer portion of the station’s central ring. He tucked the case under an elastic blue netting at the back of the lift to free his hands, then hooked his foot under a metal loop on the floor by the activation button. He tapped it, and waved to Ana as the cargo lift drifted slowly outward. He watched her perform a spiraling dive across the room and chuckled to himself.
A dancer at heart, no different than the first time I saw her
.

“Excellent work, Skyler,” Tim said as Skyler approached the infirmary. He must have heard about the climber’s arrival, as he seemed to be waiting.

“Thanks, Tim,” Skyler replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be headed below to fill in for Karl?”

“I’m taking your climber back down.” Tim nodded once toward the case. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Can I go and visit?”

Tim’s gaze lingered on the black container for a moment, then met Skyler’s. He held Skyler’s stare for a few seconds, then nodded and stepped aside.

Skyler couldn’t quite decide why he treated the younger man with such blunt formality, such distance. Maybe it was just that Tim had an easy life up here, and unless Skyler was mistaken he’d yet to volunteer for any activity that would put him in harm’s way. A desk jockey, through and through.

It’s none of my business,
Skyler thought as he pushed past the lanky man and into the medical section. He forced himself to think of Ana, somersaulting from wall to wall in the cargo bay. He’d made his choice, for better or worse, and Tania’s heroics, as insane and remarkable as they were, wouldn’t change that.

Dr. Brooks took one look at Skyler and pointed toward a curtained section at the end of the room. “Keep it to fifteen minutes,” she advised after he’d passed her.

“Okay.”

At the curtain he cleared his throat. He was about to call out when Tania drew the fabric aside.

She looked impossibly tired, her face thinner than he remembered. Had it been just a week? Ten days? Her raven hair hung loose and unkempt about her shoulders, a look he’d rarely seen, and it seemed to frame her face in a shadow that only served to accentuate her tired appearance. A pale blue hospital gown draped from her shoulders to her knees. Her feet were bare.

“I look that bad?” she said.

Skyler coughed once, rubbed the back of his neck. “No, no. I just … I’m glad you’re awake.”

“I look that bad.”

“Awful,” he said. “Awful … and, somehow, never better.”

Her eyes brightened at that, the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Skyler pulled her into a gentle embrace before she might catch any stray emotion in his own gaze, then let her go when he caught the scent of her hair. A slight hint of vanilla and cinnamon there that reminded him of their first meeting. She’d been disguised as a maintenance worker then, and full of the kind of confidence that can only come from almost total ignorance of what lies ahead.

She held him by the arms, studying his face. For an odd, uncomfortable second he thought she might be expecting him to lean in and kiss her. Instead she tilted her head, one eyebrow arching slightly. “Say something; this is getting weird.”

“Um.”

“‘Thanks for saving my life, Tania’? ‘Thanks for the air’?” Her eyes narrowed slightly at his continued silence. “‘Glad you’re not dead, Tania’? ‘How’s the food in this place’?”

Skyler shook his head. “I would have given you my air, had I known how to do that. Nice trick, by the way.”

“Well, for once I was the one who had a survival technique up their sleeve.”

“I …” He paused, trying foolishly to find the perfect thing to say. “You shouldn’t have done it, Tania. I’m nobody. It was more important that you make it back.”

“Stop,” she said with a perfect mix of strength and finality. “First, that’s bullshit. Second, what I did I’d do again without hesitation. You would, too, if you knew how, so if you’re mad that I beat you to the idea …”

“I just …” He chewed his lip. “If you’d died—”

“I didn’t, though. Okay, okay, technically that’s not true.”

“See?”

“Moot point; they found us in time.”

“Barely.”

“The fact remains. Dr. Brooks says I need to take it easy, and by that I think she means not to have conversations like this. So we’ll table it, all right?”

“Okay,” Skyler said. Absently he rubbed his shoulder. Old wound, old habit. “Well, um. I’m glad you’re not dead. How’s the food in this place?”

She laughed, and a bit of the vigor he’d seen so often before returned to her cheeks and her eyes.

A few seconds of silence passed. Tania sat there, studying her hands. Then she closed her eyes. At the same instant, her hands clasped together. “I have to tell you something, and there’s no easy way to do it.”

“This always leads to a fun conversation.”

“Just … listen. And try to withhold judgment.” She took a breath, exhaled, and looked at him with absolute sincerity. “There’s only one more Builder event.”

He’d expected, well, anything but that. “Pardon?”

“After this ship’s arrival, there’s only one event left in this … sequence.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because,” she said, and paused. Another deep breath.

Skyler felt a tingle ripple across his scalp and down the center of his back. The room seemed to go totally silent.

“It would seem,” Tania said, “that Neil Platz knew more than he was letting on.”

The tingle became an outright chill. Before he could ask the next question, she held up a hand and went on.

“He sent a note to Zane, just before he died. Literally, as Warthen’s men were storming Platz Station. We only found it recently. According to the letter, Neil knew all along. Neil and my father.”

“He—wait, your father?”

She’d closed her eyes again, and nodded solemnly. “Listen for a moment. I’m tired.”

“Okay.”

“All the note said, all I know, is that they knew. Somehow, they knew, because something happened
before
the Darwin Elevator arrived. An earlier event that, at least at some level, explained what was going to happen.”

Skyler felt a flood of realizations pour into his mind from every angle, as if everything that had happened since the moment he left Amsterdam were disconnected pieces of the same puzzle, and Tania had just shown him a glimpse of the picture the pieces were supposed to form once joined. “He fucking knew?”

“Don’t judge—”

“Don’t
judge
? He knew about the Elevator and built an empire around it? Nightcliff and the water plants and all that. All those aerospace companies he bought up. He, Jesus, he fucking knew about SUBS and didn’t warn anybody?”

“Stop.”

Her voice hit him like a whip, snapping his mouth shut.

“You’re not just talking about Neil: You’re talking about my father. And we don’t know what exactly they knew, except the number. Six events, Skyler, and we just experienced the fifth.”

He had more to say. A lot more. But the look in her eyes, and the memory of her brush with death, pulled him back from that precipice. He stared into those eyes, the deep brown with flecks of gold, and felt one final revelation, one more piece of the puzzle, click into place. All of that business in Japan and Hawaii had been bullshit. Neil had already known what they would find; he just didn’t want to expose that fact. No other explanation made sense. Which meant he’d sent Tania into mortal danger, and Jake to his death, to keep his secret. He’d known. It was, quite possibly, the most brazen example of insider trading in history, and like so many bankers and politicians before him, Neil had clearly gone to great lengths to cover it up. Only when faced with certain death or capture had he bothered to tell anyone. Despite the plea in Tania’s eyes, Skyler couldn’t bring himself to suspend judgment. He knew better than to tell her that, though.

“Thank you,” he said, “for telling me. It makes things easier.”

“How so?”

“A light at the end of the tunnel.” Tania didn’t look convinced, so he tried a different tack. “Can you imagine if Neil had said ‘there’s eighty-seven events, just eighty-two more to go!’ No offense, but I probably would have thrown up my hands and walked away.”

She was nodding as he spoke. “And I wouldn’t have blamed you, Skyler. You’re right. Knowing this somehow makes the task ahead seem worth the blood, sweat, and tears I fear will be required. It’s like …”

“Like the surge of energy you get when you know the end of the race is just over that next hill.”

Tania grinned at the analogy. “I’ve never run a race,” she said.

He laughed.

“I was going to say it’s like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, when you reach that moment where suddenly the pile of remaining pieces seems … manageable. A narrowing of possibilities.”

“Your analogy is better,” he said. Her smile at the compliment carried something more. An implied thank-you for swallowing his opinion of Neil. Skyler decided then that he’d keep his revelations to himself. It wouldn’t do any good to point out to Tania what he now understood. She knew it, too, probably, and had enough on her mind already. Neil was dead. What was done was done.

“I brought you a present,” Skyler said.

“Chocolate?”

“Er …”

“I’m kidding. A little. What’d you bring?”

Skyler stepped aside and watched her reaction as she saw the black case just behind him.

A split second of confusion crossed her face, then her eyes darted back to Skyler. “Is it … which one?”

“The red one. Belém. The triangle.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “And you’re lecturing me about reckless behavior?”

“There was nothing reckless about it.”

Tania rolled her eyes. “How’d you do it?”

“We just went in and asked. Nicely.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There may have been some explosives involved. A lot of explosives, actually.”

“Perhaps you can share the details another time.” She patted the sheets next to her.

Skyler sat, and they both stared at the case for a long moment in silence.

“I’ve been racking my mind,” she said finally, “trying to imagine what possible motive lies behind all this. What the Builders are up to, I mean really up to.”

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Skyler said. “They’re a race so advanced the only amusement left for them is to pull elaborate pranks on their neighbors.”

She elbowed him. Then she stood and walked to the case. She ran a single finger along the surface of the thing, as if trying to feel some energy from the object within. “I supposed the more pressing question,” she said with her back to him, “is what do we do now?”

“Tania,” Skyler said, heat rising around his collar.

“Is it wise to install these things in the ship the moment we find them?”

“Tania.”

“Or, should we hold on to them until we know more about their purpose.”

“Um, Tania.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“Your gown is open at the back.”

A high-pitched yelp rang out across the room. Tania whirled, clutched the garment tightly at her spine, and returned to her seat, all in the span of a heartbeat.

Skyler stared at the curtain next to the bed for a long moment. He studied the ceiling, estimated the sizes of the various pipes that snaked across it.

“Would you give me a minute?” she eventually asked.

He stood and walked away, heard the sound of the curtain drawing closed behind him. Skyler grimaced, stifled a smile, and crossed the infirmary to where Dr. Brooks leaned against a table, studying a slate. Skyler introduced himself formally and shook the woman’s hand.