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And then, a split second later, pitching and rolling in the air.
And then, finally, plunging our way into an icy river.
Without enough time to pick a god—or a girl—at all.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Initial communication between Fortissimo and Perses
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
FORTIS Transcript - ComLog 12.14.2042 FORTIS::PERSES
//lognote: my initial conversation with NULL;
//comlog begin;
comlink established;
sendline: Hello NULL.;
return: Hello . . . . . ? ? ? ?;
sendline: May I call you NULL?;
delayed response;
return: Communication protocol changed. You are not HAL0.;
sendline: No. I am FORTIS. Let’s try this again. Hello NULL.;
return: Hello FORTIS.;
sendline: That’s better. You’ve learned quickly since your first contact with HAL0.;
sendline: May I ask some questions?;
return: Yes. I have been traveling/isolated for a long time. Conversation is welcome.;
sendline: Where are you from?;
return: Based on review of Earth knowledge, I am unable to provide a comprehensible response.;
sendline: Ok, so you’re from a long way away, I get it. And you are coming here?;
return: Yes. I have analyzed Earth and it is a suitable destination.;
sendline: Destination for what?;
delayed response;
sendline: So you’re not ready to talk about that?;
delayed response;
sendline: Ok. Clearly not ready to discuss it. We’ll try again later. Nice meeting you, NULL.;
return: I look forward to further communications.;
//comlog end;
7 BELTER MOUNTAIN (#ulink_8b74eb7d-cffe-5fdc-b44c-f62a6d486962)
“Well, that could have been worse.”
That’s all Ro has to say, while I stand cold and dripping, looking at the smoking, smoldering, smashed remains of the flipped Chevro—as it floats slowly down the river.
“Worse? How?” Tima asks tiredly, holding Brutus in her arms.
“Seriously. Why are we not dead?” I look at the others. We’re plenty banged and bloodied up ourselves, but as bad as things already were, we don’t seem much worse off.
Tima has fared best. I make a mental note to belt myself in next time.
“Two weeks, two crashes,” Lucas says. “We’re on a roll. Keep it up.” He claps Ro on the back. “Soon you’ll be driving a Chevro about as well as Fortis flies a Chopper.”
“Shut it, Buttons,” Ro growls.
“So much for lucky severed animal feet.” Tima rolls her eyes.
“Come on. At least I got us here, didn’t I?” Ro is annoyed.
“I don’t know. Sort of depends on where here is,” I say, looking around. I’m still rattled by the dream, the little girl hidden in my mind. I try to sort my way back to reality. The shock of the cold air helps.
“That should be … Cottonwood Canyon?” Tima isn’t looking at the wreck, she’s scanning up the hill and down the river, comparing what she sees to the metal square in her hands. Trying to get her bearings. “I think. Unless this thing is upside down.”
I follow her gaze, looking over her shoulder. “Cottonwood. That’s what it says. Here.” I point.
Tima looks back down to the river, where the metallic debris floats away. “If the current keeps pulling the wreckage downstream, maybe we can follow the river in the other direction without being detected.”
“Like a decoy,” I say. “With the car gone, and the relay off, maybe they won’t find us.”
“For a while,” Lucas says.
He sounds as weary as I feel, because we all know he’s right. They’ll find us. It’s just a question of when.
“See? Maybe I was supposed to roll the car into the river. Maybe that animal foot really was lucky.” Ro yanks the rabbit’s foot out of his pocket. I can’t believe he managed to rescue that disgusting thing when we crashed.
“Put that away,” I say, shaking my head.
Tima folds the map back up. “According to the coordinates on this thing, the tunnels aren’t far, but we have to get going. Unless you’d rather freeze to death.”
“Tunnels?” I’m confused.
She shrugs. “I guess. How else do you find your way under a mountain?”
We leave behind the riverbed—picking our way up the canyon—until a raised road atop a steep embankment cuts across our path. It’s another old highway, I think. Ro climbs up the embankment and the rest of us follow without so much as a word exchanged between us. It’s not that he’s our leader, he’s just not a follower. Literally, he’s never been one to walk behind people. It’s just not in him.
Still, he’s leading us now, like it or not.
We follow him in silence. Speaking takes energy, and right now we need to conserve all the heat and all the energy we have. The air is growing colder by the minute. Colder, and thinner. My lungs and legs are burning with effort, but I refuse to be the first to say anything.
“Dol,” Ro calls out, stopping short. He holds out his sleeve, where flecks of white now scatter across the length of his arm.
I stare up into the darkness, where the white sparks descend in a sudden swarm. “What are those, fireflies?” I hold out my hand.
“Snowflies, you could say.” Lucas looks at me with a laugh, and I can’t help but smile back. “It’s snowing, Dol.”
“I knew that,” I say, my mouth twisting. We’ve all seen snow on the ground before—drifts of it, in the distant red hills of the desert—but we’ve never seen it actually snow.
Which, as it turns out, is something completely different. Even Tima smiles, holding her face up to the sky, letting the flurries of white powder fall on her like feathers. Shivering all the while.
Lucas wipes a snowflake from my eyelashes, and our eyes catch. I feel a flash of warmth, way deep inside, beneath all the cold wrapped around me.
Our laughter echoes down the canyon, as if we were regular friends, playing in the regular snow, with regular parents waiting for us to come back inside to our regular dinners.
As if.
But as we turn back to the road, our breath curls white into our eyes. Human, it says.
Alive.
“Look at this view,” Lucas calls, from the far side of the rising highway. As I move to join him, I realize we can see the distant valley unfolding beneath us in the moonlight—barren hills above the tree line, thick forest below. A snaking line of silver river threads itself along the valley floor.
“Or that view,” Ro says, pointing. He sounds grim, and then I see why.
What at first looks like a small constellation of stars begins to move overhead—until a ring of lights circles in on itself.
I freeze, and not because of the cold.
Choppers.
I knew they’d come for us, but I thought we had more time.
“They’re looking for something,” Tima says, studying the distant lights. She’s right. Searchlights sweep the river beneath the Choppers, exposing riverbanks and barren trees and then—
“Not just something,” Lucas says. “That.”
The Choppers are swarming something black, lodged in the silt of the river’s edge.
Black and immobile, too large to be a rock.
Something more like a Chevro.
I shiver. “That could have been us.”
Sympas.
They’ve found the Chevro.
They could have found us.
But they haven’t, I remind myself. The Choppers are
far enough away that I can barely hear them rattle, as if they were a child’s toy.
“Like I said.” Ro smirks. “It was a lucky severed foot after all.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get going,” says Lucas, watching the Choppers.
Tima nods. “Before our luck runs out.”
“There.” Through a wall of trees, I can see a mountain rising, tall and gray.
“That has to be it. This is where the map ends.” Tima looks around. “Now what?”
“It’s a game trail,” says Ro, sucking the snow off his shirt. Only animals appear to have beaten this pathway through the brush. But it’s not true, I think as we follow it into the thicket. Farther along the trail, the surrounding tangle of branches opens up to reveal three giant, curving openings, carved right into the solid granite of the mountain. Two of them appear to be largely sealed with fallen rock and rusting metal gates.
“My god.” Lucas shakes his head. “I’ve heard about these. I just didn’t think it was real. I thought they were stories.”
“What were?”
“The old Belter vaults.” Lucas shivers.
“Belters?” I’ve heard the word, but I don’t know what it means.
“Bible Belters,” Lucas says. “The people who lived here, before The Day. Here’s where they kept the records of every man, woman, and child ever born on this Earth. At least every one that was recorded, as far back as they could find. Built to last a thousand years, which I guess they figured was long enough to take them to the Second Coming.”
“Coming of what?” Ro says quietly, staring up at the sheer gray face of the mountain.
