Akaela (12 page)

Wes sits
on the ground and unwraps the blankets from around his titanium legs while
looking over Lukas’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“I’m
thinking levers.” He raises his chin to the horses standing by my side. “They
could be the pull.”

I shake my
head. “Forget it. You’ve got to come up with something smarter than that.”

Lukas
shrugs and returns his attention to his small screen. “I will,” he says.

Sometimes
I wish I had half of his confidence.

Chapter Fifteen

Athel

Day Number: 1,533.

Event: We left the Tower in search for
our fathers.

Number of Mayakes left: 431.

Goal for today: Reach the Gaijins’
factory.

I look up at the boulder blocking
our way. It’s big and solid and looms over my head just like Tahari loomed over
me from the stage in the auditorium yesterday. He stood there and looked down
on me. Throughout his speech I kept thinking, “I’m not afraid of you. I’ve done
nothing wrong. I’m not afraid of you.”

Ok, maybe
not exactly
nothing
wrong, but my
actions were dictated by necessity. Yet the Kiva Members wouldn’t listen to me.
They listened to Yuri and his brother, even though those two liars had been
spying on us.

I’m not afraid of you, Tahari.

And I’m not afraid of you, big stupid boulder
blocking our way
.

I climb
from the left this time, where a few shrubs have grown on the slanted terrain.
I study where to set my foot and crawl up, grasping the low branches until I
get to the base of the boulder. It juts outward, forming a ledge across the
gorge. I stretch my arms and grope for a nook or a protuberance to grasp. The
rock feels rough and brittle under my fingers.

If we had infinite time we could chisel the
damn thing down.

If we had infinite time we wouldn’t even be
here
.

I close my
fists around a bump in the rock and pull myself up, my legs kicking the air. My
grip slips and I fall back into the brush, sending dirt and pebbles all the way
down to the water.

“You
okay?” Akaela calls.

“Given the
color and consistency, I’m pretty sure this is sandstone,” Lukas says.

“Wow, Lukas,”
I reply, brushing the dirt off my hands. “That helps.”

He holds
his data feeder in his hands like a kid who doesn’t know how to swim holds a
lifesaver. “Of course it helps. It means that with a few tools we can carve our
way out of this mess.”

Wes points
to his shiny metal legs and beams. “I can use my feet as shovels!”

I reach up
to the boulder and trail my fingers along the nooks and crannies of the rock.
“Why don’t you get started and see how far you can get.”

I find a
solid handhold, and with a jump this time, I manage to swing one foot all the
way up to the top. I haul myself up, scraping my arms and hands, and finally
manage to crawl over the boulder. The edges bend down toward the walls of the
gorge. I squat and creep up toward the highest point. From up here, I can see the
other side of the gorge. In the deep shadows of an overcast sky a yellow glow
appears in the distance, a blade of light slicing through the tall walls of the
gorge.

The Gaijins’ factory.
It’s got to be the glow from the factory
.

I hear
a swoosh
of wings and soon Kael joins me on top of the
boulder. I raise my arm and he lands on the leather pad of my shirt, bobbing
his head in the direction of the glow.

“How much
longer, buddy?” I ask. But my buddy has no words for me, only a bob of the head
as the wind ruffles the feathers at the back of his neck.

A flash of
light whips through the thick blanket of clouds. Kael ducks his head, as though
he knows what’s coming next. Thunder blasts through the walls of the gorge, and
even though I know it’s not near, it makes the hairs on my back stand up.

The horses
whinny.

“Athel!”

I turn
around and carefully walk to the edge leaning out on the opposite side. Maha
looks distressed. She pulls away from Akaela and shakes her head, snorting and
stomping.

“Calm her
down,” I shout. “Lightning scares the hell out of her.”

“I can
tell,” Akaela snaps.

If I had
any doubt that we have to move forward, this wipes it out immediately. We can’t
leave the horses out here and we can’t go back.

We need to find a way to get us all on the
other side
.

Oblivious
to Maha’s distress, Wes and Lukas sit together at the base of the wall of rock and
stare intently at the data feeder screen.

“You two!”
I shout. “Can’t you help? If we’re going to carve a way out, I suggest you
start digging.”

Wes looks
up at me, his eyes strangely dazed. Lukas shakes his head in his usual
enigmatic way. “I’m afraid there isn’t enough time.”

I puzzle
at that. “We have all night, don’t we?”

The rumble
behind my back is furious this time. Kael squeals and flaps away.
I turn, confused.
I’m not seeing any lightning this time,
yet the thunder keeps getting louder and louder, as though it wasn’t just one
strike, rather…

“Athel!!
Get off that thing, NOW!”

The glow
at the other end of the gorge is gone, swallowed by a roaring blackness that
keeps rushing forward, slamming against the walls of the gorge like a ravenous
beast. It takes me a few seconds to realize what it is. And when I do, panic
grips me.

“ATHEL!”

Akaela’s
screams shake me out of my initial shock. I slide down the curved side of the
boulder, careless of the rugged rocks scraping my skin.

“Flood!” I
shout. “Down! Everybody get down!”

Both
horses are whinnying now, their instincts alerting them of the imminent danger.
I glimpse Wes and Lukas scrambling under the ledge offered by the boulder,
while Akaela struggles to pull the horses to shelter. They want to run, but the
surge of water is fast approaching, its black shadow looming high across the
gorge.

I swallow,
throw myself down the boulder, and run to help Akaela. I snatch Maha’s reins
and push her away. “Under the boulder! Now!”

She looked
puzzled, as though not understanding. Her only worry is the horses.

“Maybe if
we climb—”

“No! I’ve
seen it. It’s tall, way taller than the gorge. Run!”

Taeh,
who’s always been meek in nature, glimpses Akaela ducking under the boulder and
follows her. Cooing and crooning in her ear, my sister manages to convince her
horse to follow her into the niche under the overlooking boulder, hoping it’ll
offer enough protection against the incoming tide.

Maha wants
nothing to do with it. I pull her reins, but she jerks her head away and snaps
them off. She runs away from me, her hooves sinking in the mud.

“Maha!” I
dart after her, the rumble of the incoming water now so loud it’s deafening. “Maha,
come back, you stubborn idiot!”

Yes, she
is stupid. She’s going to die and she doesn’t know it.

I climb closer
to the wall, where the terrain is drier and allows for a faster pace as I try
to catch up with her. She stumbles on a rock hidden by the mud and gets stuck.
I grasp her torn reins, but that’s when the tide comes swirling down on us.

The black
wall of water crashes against the boulder and splits in two, the surge looming
so high it laps at the edge of the gorge. Hoping that my sister and friends are
holding tight down there, I snatch Maha’s reins and pull her to the side of the
gorge, seeking refuge against the stump of a tree. I don’t know what possesses
me. In a matter of seconds I manage to duck behind the tree and use Maha’s
reins to tie myself around it.

The roar
fills my ears. I catch one last breath of air before the freezing water
swallows me.

And then
the world turns black.

Chapter Sixteen

Akaela

Horses don’t like enclosed spaces,
yet Taeh senses the imminent danger and meekly follows Wes, Lukas, and me under
the boulder as the distant rumble of the water gets closer and closer. As we
all huddle together at the very back, I hug my horse and croon in her ears that
everything will be fine. I don’t know fear for myself but I can feel it through
every fiber in her body as she tenses under my touch, her large eyes bulging
with dread. Wes wraps his arms around his titanium legs and shivers. Next to
him, Lukas holds perfectly still, his hands tightly crossed over his satchel,
eyes and lips tightly shut. Waiting.

I stroke Taeh’s
nose and whisper in her ear that Athel and Maha are coming back. They will be
fine. They’ll make it back in time to be safe with us.

The impact
of the water as it slams against the boulder is furious. Wes screams, but it’s
short-lived, as all sounds are almost instantly engulfed by the tide enveloping
us. I watch it explode above us, a dark surge suddenly replacing the view of
the gorge. The ceiling trembles, pebbles rain down on us. Freezing water laps
at our feet and then surges up to our faces, submerging us. Taeh slides away
underwater and drags me with her, as I hold her tight, refusing to let go. The
water is murky. I open my eyes but see nothing, only the brutal force of the
tide pulling me down, away from the boulder. I squeeze Taeh’s neck and fight
against the current.

It lasts
seconds, maybe minutes, before the water finally recedes. I gasp for air, my
legs and feet buried in mud. Taeh struggles to pull out of the slosh, her dark
mane plastered against her neck.

Water
pelts down from the edge of the boulder so fiercely I fear another tide is
coming. I try to reach for Taeh before she runs away, my legs uselessly pulling
against the tide.

“Lukas!” I
yell, before realizing that neither Lukas nor Wes are where I last saw them,
cuddled at the base of the boulder. “Wes!”

Lukas
emerges from the mud
,
a zombie caked in slosh
.
He blinks at me and flashes a half smile as he fishes his satchel from under
his belly, the strap above it sealed in plastic.

“Waterproof,”
he mumbles, all proud of himself.

He must’ve
wrapped it while I was helping Athel with Maha.

The
thought sends a shiver down my spine.

“Where’s
Wes? And…”

Athel
.

What the
hell happened to Athel and Maha?

I stop
fighting the current and let myself slide through the water streaming from the
ledge of the boulder and out in the flooded gorge.

The view
is apocalyptic. The green walls of the gorge, overgrown with crawling plants
and brush, have been stripped clean by the surging tide. Overturned tree roots
and splintered branches clutter the trail. A constant flow of muddy water still
runs across it. I wade knee-deep into the mud and call out for my brother,
Maha, Wes. No reply, only a distant echo and the peal of water washing down the
rocks.
 

Taeh
staggers up and stands against the rock, bobbing her head and looking lost. Lukas
also emerges from underneath the boulder, a black ghost all covered in mud.

I plod
through snapped shrubs and twisted branches calling both Wes and my brother. A
squeal from the sky makes me hopeful again. I raise my eyes and spot Kael
gliding above us.

“Find
them, Kael! Please go find them!”

The sky is
gray and ominous. I press the inside of my wrist and learn that it’s almost 6
p.m.
Soon
night will fall. No chance to find them in
the dark, no chance to survive the freezing cold drenched as we are.

“ATHEL!” I
bellow
,
my voice cracked with desperation.

“Here!”

His voice
makes my heart skip a beat. “Athel!”

I trek
through the fallen vegetation and the thick mud, pleading with him to keep
talking so my ears can find him. Lukas follows me from a distance, his skinny
body struggling through the slosh. He keeps his satchel over one shoulder and
wobbles precariously as he tries to avoid rocks hidden deep in the mud.
 

I find
Athel stranded by a broken tree stump, Maha’s reins torn around his waist and
snapped at one end. Though covered in dirt from head to toe. And yet he seems
frantic, fresh tears lining his mud-caked cheeks. He’s on his knees, pulling
vines and weeds from the ground, muttering words under his breath.

I have to
climb around a rock to reach him, and when I do, I realize the mound of dirt
he’s trying to uncover isn’t made of dirt. Wes lies on the ground covered in
mud,
eyes wide open to the sky and a trickle of blood coming
down the corner of his mouth.

I hop over
the rock and kneel next to Wes, taking in the gravity of his injuries: his
right thigh is twisted backwards at the hip, the titanium implant torn away
from his knee, leaving a bleeding hump. A sliver of femur shows through his
torn pants.

“Freaking
Kawa, what happened?”

The sight
makes me cringe. His implants are grown directly into the
bone,
they don’t just break off like toothpicks. For a titanium blade to snap like
this, poor Wes must’ve been swooped away by the brutal force of the tide and
whacked against the rock. I feel tears in my eyes at the thought.
 

Wes looks
up at the sky, his lips blue and cyanotic, his hands shaking.

I place a
hand on his forehead and whisper, “We’ll fix you Wes. I promise we will. Just
hang in there, you hear me?”

He barely
nods. His lower lip starts trembling. He sputters mud mixed with blood out of
his mouth and stutters, “Hurts. Like—hell.”

Athel untangles
the weeds from Wes’s leg and then unknots the reins from his waist. Lukas
finally makes it around the rock and his jaw drops at the sight of poor Wes.

I look up
to him as he leans over the rock and plead, “Think of something, Lukas.
Please
.”

Lukas
quickly scans Wes’s torn body and nods. I read terror in his eyes, yet he
manages to keep himself together and sprint into action. He props his satchel
on top of the rock and unwraps it from its plastic shield. Athel slides the
rein underneath Wes’s injured thigh and then knots it above the stump to try to
stop the bleeding. Wes yelps in pain. His cries bring new tears to my face.

I take his
hand and squeeze it while helplessly staring at my brother.

“Put him
out,” Lukas orders, fishing his data feeder out of his satchel.

“What?”
Athel replies.

“Yes,” Wes
stutters. “Please. The pain—it hurts.”

“Put him
out,” Lukas instructs him again. “It’ll spare him the pain and slow down his
metabolism to a vegetative state. The bleeding will slow down, too.”

Athel
blinks. “What about the nanobots in his body? All the nanoelectric sensors
embedded in his flesh and immune cells are working to fight infection. They’re
probably already releasing serotonin and morphine into his blood stream. If we
put him out—”

“Please!”
Wes shouts
,
his face twisted with pain. “Ain’t
working, can’t you tell?”

Athel
bites his lip, slides a hand behind Wes’s neck and presses the deactivation
switch. Wes’s eyes instantly close and his body droops to a slouch. The hand I’m
holding goes limp, yet I don’t let go of it. My heart thumps against my chest.
My head is reeling.

“Now
what?” I ask, even though I know there’s no answer. None I want to hear, anyway.

Lukas
leans against the big rock and spreads the plastic sheet he’d used to keep his
satchel dry. He steps into a pool of clear running water, rolls up the sodden
sleeves of his shirt, and thoroughly rinses his hands. When he returns to the
rock, he dons latex gloves, pulls a couple of transparent bags with random
pieces of electronics inside out of the satchel and opens his pouch of tools.

“I can build
a temporary and rudimentary chip for his wound,” Lukas explains, fiddling with
his tools while thumbing through the screens of his data feeder. “I pulled the
instructions on the screen. Basically, it’s a chip that boosts and redirects
the nanobots from the immune system to the wound site. If I can line up its
signal with the nanoelectric wiring inside his femur, I can get it to start
regenerating tissue.”

“You sure
it’ll work?” Athel asks, watching his careful hands as they put together chips
and transistors. Not the cleanest place to assemble an implant, but at least
the device should be able to boost Wes’s immune system, too. Or so I hope.

“I’ve
never made one before,” Lukas replies, “so I can’t be one hundred percent
sure.”

Damn Lukas, I wish he could lie sometimes
.

“It may
not work to its full potential, but it will buy us time.” He freezes for a
moment and locks eyes with Athel. “Until we get help.”

Athel
swallows, the consequences dawning on him.

Our
journey has come to an end. The only way to save Wes’s life is to go back to
the Tower.

“What if
they refuse to help?” I say. I think of Tahari, the stern look in his eyes as
he condemned Athel to Wela. What we did this time calls for no forgiveness.
Niwang awaits us if we return.

“We’ll
talk to Uli,” Athel says. “We’ll tell him Wes isn’t to blame.” He stares at me.
“Or Lukas.”

I nod in
agreement. He and I will take the blame, so long as they save Wes. I drop my
chin and push through the wet fabric of my pants to touch Dad’s metal scrap in
my pocket. Too many conflicting thoughts tug at me. I want to go forward. I
long to see Dad again and knowing he’s in danger and in need of our help makes
me cringe with despair. Yet Wes’s pain is right here, right now, laid in front
of my eyes.

No. We can’t
leave Wes now. We may have failed to save Dad and the other men, but we can’t
fail Wes.

 
“Let’s hope we make it on time,” Lukas
says.

I gaze at
Wes’s wound, Maha’s reins tight over his torn pants. The bleeding has slowed
down to a trickle now, but it’s still drenching his already sodden clothes.

How much
time do we have?

“Where’s
Maha?” I ask, thinking—hoping—the horses can help us get back
quickly.

Athel
looks down and shakes his head. “Lost her. Stupid animal wouldn’t stay put. I
tied her and myself to the tree stump, but when she saw the tide she snapped
and tore the reins apart. Haven’t seen her since.”

My heart
sinks. Now that my eyes are off Wes’s horrid wound, I notice Athel’s torn
shirt, the mark of a horse bite on his right shoulder. Maha panicked and became
aggressive. If the tide was so brutal to tear apart Wes’s implant, it sure had
the power to sweep away a thousand pound horse. I look over to Taeh, quietly
standing by the wall.
My older and mellower Taeh.
She’s
still scared, still unwilling to move, but at least she was wise enough to stay
with me.

I watch Lukas
twist the copper ends of a piece of wire together and consider the odds. Wes is
unconscious, fighting for his life. The three of us are tired, our clothes
drenched. Soon night will fall and we’ll all be fighting the biting cold. All
we’ve got left is a horse and a falcon
who
’s watching
over us perched high on a rock.

The only one who could get back to the Tower
on time is Kael
.

Kael
.

I let go
of Wes’s hand and jerk back to my feet. “I’m going back right now.”

A deep
scowl crosses Athel’s forehead. “How?”

“With
wings, that’s how. The trail has been wiped out by the tide and littered with
debris. We’ve only got one horse left and night is about to fall. My sail is
all we’ve got left at this point.”

Athel
looks at me dumbfounded then exchanges a quick glance with Lukas.

Lukas
shrugs. “She’s got a point.”

I look up
at the looming walls of the gorge, now wet and stripped of all the vegetation. Up
high, the sky offers the view of fast-moving clouds.

“The winds
are picking up.” I point a finger up. “I can make it back to the Tower in less
than an hour.”

Athel
shakes his head. “It’ll take forever because you’re going to kill yourself.”

I narrow
my eyes. “Niwang awaits me,” I say. “I’ve got nothing to lose. If I succeed,
I’ll be able to bring help for Wes. If I fail”—I swallow—“nothing
changes except I don’t have to go through the humiliation of Niwang. ”

And once I
say that, neither boy has anything more to object.