Akaela (6 page)

“Lukas,” I
whisper, my hands flat on the floor as if they could actually steady me. “Do
you see what I see?”

“Holy
smokes,” Lukas says. “It’s a factory! The Gaijins built a factory on the other
side of the mesa! No wonder the fire would never stop burning.”

Dad’s in trouble
, I think.
It’s just a fleeting thought and I really don’t know where it comes from, yet
as Kael surveys the place, I instantly know I have to go there.

“Kael
should turn around, now,” I say, willing Kael to return even though that’s not
what I taught him in training. I wish I could take it back now that I see the
danger I’ve put him through.

“Let me
get a sense of how big the place is. Right now he’s flown twenty-two miles from
the Tower and I’ve got five sniper droids scattered mostly within a two-mile
radius of the factory.”

“Five?”
Crap
. And the distance to the
firewall—the factory—is farther into the mesa than we’d originally
thought.

Kael
emerges out of the smoke and the factory comes into full view, its metal
skeleton traced by blue and yellow lights dotting the night. I hold my breath,
struck by how huge the whole structure is, a city sprawling along the brim of
the mesa.

“Wow,” Lukas
whispers.

“It’s enormous,”
I say.

Another jerk
and this time Kael dips down and
dodges
the metal
fence by a hair while circling the perimeter of the factory. I see flashes
coming in rapid succession. I can almost hear them in my head even though only
my eye is there with Kael, not my ears. Yet I feel the pain and the screeches
and I can’t help but scream, “Get outta
there
Kael,
now!”

Kael is
wounded, I know because he’s struggling to take off again.

Come on
,
buddy
.
Come back
,
come back
!

“We’ve got
to get him back!” I say, struggling to stand up. “We can’t just stay here and
watch.”

Lukas
blinks. “But we…”

I can’t
keep my balance with one eye dangling off Kael’s ankle, so I turn it off then
regret losing the connection and turn it on again. And as I stand there, my thoughts
reeling, unsure of what to do, I hear steps at the other end of the floor.
And a mew.

“Athel?”

Ash comes
trotting to me and rubs his side against my legs, purring.

I squint
at the silhouette emerging from the darkness. “Dottie! How did you—?”

“Ash woke
me up,” Akaela says. “You weren’t in bed, and when I leaned out the window I
heard screaming.”

My
attention strays back to the images from my right eye: I see branches snapping
and droplets of blood. Kael’s hopping on the ground now, my eyeball bouncing
off a rugged terrain covered in twigs and dead leaves.

What the hell is he doing? Why can’t he take
off again
?

And then,
just like that, Kael flaps his wings and he’s airborne again, snapping off
branches as he frees himself from the shrub he’s fallen into. He’s swallowed by
smoke again. Below, the lights of the humongous factory grow smaller, the smoke
thicker, and it all fades away as if it were a bad dream. I push the control
key on my arm flap and my vision shifts back to my other eye. The empty darkness
of the sixtieth floor of the Tower envelops me. Lukas is still sitting on
the
ground, his legs crossed and his data feeder on his
knees, and Akaela is staring at me, eyes bulging and alarmed.

It wasn’t a dream.

There’s a factory out there and it’s as big as
a city.

Dad is in danger
.

Chapter Nine

Akaela

My brother’s an idiot. Had I known
what he was putting Kael through I would’ve stopped him. What was he thinking,
sending him out into unknown Gaijin land, at the mercy of sniper droids? I
don’t care that the firewall turned out to be a factory. I don’t care that Lukas
now has a map and we can use it to go find Dad. I would’ve gone to find Dad
anyways. It’s Kael I want back now.

Alive and unharmed
.

I’m so mad
I want to punch Athel in the face except I’m dead worried about Kael that I
can’t waste any time with him. As much as I have no fear for myself, I can’t
stop worrying for the beings I care for, and Kael’s one of them. I run to the open
ledge, ready to jump into the night. Athel tugs my shirt and pulls me back.

“Don’t do
anything stupid, Dottie,” Athel says. “There’s no way you can cover twenty
miles with your glider alone. We need a plan, let’s think first.”

He stares
at me with one eye, his right lid caving in over an empty orb. The sight makes
me cringe and seethe at the same time. “You’re the one who did something stupid,
Athel,” I snap. “What the heck were you two thinking, sending Kael out there?”
I stretch my hand out and raise a finger to scan the direction of the winds. I
know it’s dangerous to jump from the Tower, especially on a flat night like
this one. After blowing ashes all day, the wind has finally died out. Without
enough lift, I could slam back against the wall. It’s not my own safety that
concerns me, but Kael’s. If I can’t ride the air current on my first jump,
chances are I damage the glider and waste even more time.

Athel
doesn’t let go of me. “We have a map to the factory now. We can go rescue Dad
and the other men. Kael showed us the way, and it’s all recorded on Lukas’s
data feeder.”

I scowl.
“What makes you think Dad’s not coming back? Every time Mom asks Tahari, he
says he’s been sending regular updates…”

“I don’t
trust Tahari,” Athel says with a fierceness I’ve never seen in my brother
before. “I don’t trust anyone.
Dad’s
in danger. What I
saw while Kael was flying over the factory… you have to see it, Akaela! That
thing is immense, guarded by sniper droids. We need to act now.”

Ash comes
mewing at my feet. He senses the tension between Athel and me, and he doesn’t
like it. I want to jump. I’m mad at my brother and I just want to go get Kael.
But I know that jumping with no wind would get me nowhere. I step away from the
ledge and pick up Ash.

Without
ungluing his eyes from the screen of his data feeder, Lukas gets on his feet.
“Uh—guys? Kael’s flying back,”
Lukas
says. “He’s
back over the mesa.”

“Let me
see!” I say.

We spend
the next two hours cheering Kael back home and plotting out a plan to get back
to the factory. Lukas shows us the map he’s been able to reconstruct from the
video recording through Athel’s eye. He claims the factory extends at least two
miles out from the bottom of the mesa and it’s at least another two miles long,
with sniper droids posted along the perimeter.

“What
about the gorge? Do you think they might be deployed along the gorge, too?”
Athel asks.

“Hard to
tell,” Lukas says. “Kael followed the line of the gorge but never went down. If
they have radars or transmitter detectors they would’ve seen him, but it could
be that he was too far.”

Ash climbs
up my shoulder and plays with my hair. I watch Athel close one eye and check on
Kael’s progress.

“How’s he
doing?” I ask.

“He’s
tired,” Athel murmurs. “He’s slowed down quite a bit.”

I want to
snarl at him again but I hear the regret in Athel’s voice and for once I keep
my mouth shut. “I can try and glide over the gorge as a look-out.”

Athel
rolls his one eye. “We’ve been over this already. You know you can’t glide that
far. We’ll take Kael with us.”

“And risk
getting him shot again? No way.”

Lukas taps
on his data feeder, taking notes. “We’ll need to bring equipment,” he points
out. “First-aid kits and tool boxes. You guys, maybe we should tell one of the
adults—”

“No,”
Athel interjects. “The adults do whatever the Kiva Members tell them. Their instructions
were clear: they sent off the ambassadors and ordered the rest of us to sit and
wait.”

 
“Ow.” Ash is pulling my hair. I gently
bring him down to my lap, but he climbs up again. “How do you know all this?” I
ask Athel.

“I
eavesdrop on them. I have a way.”

“You never
told me!”

“That’s
because you’ve got a big mouth!”

We start
bickering again. “You guys,” Lukas interrupts us. “Kael’s almost here.”

I turn
toward the broken walls. The vines sway gently and beyond them the faint light
of dawn peeks through.

“He’s over
the waterfall now,” Lukas informs us, following Kael’s path on his data feeder.

Both Athel
and I run to the ledge. Athel activates his right eye and whistles, stretching
out his gloved arm. I cup my hands around my mouth to call him, but Athel stops
me.

“You’ll
wake up people!” he says.

All
windows in the Tower have turned into open holes, the last glass panes
shattered during the Gaijins’ bombardment, the year I was born. Temperatures haven’t
dropped below zero in decades, so the only problem having open windows causes
is lack of privacy. Athel is right. I bite my tongue and squeeze Ash to my
chest, eager to spot Kael’s black silhouette gliding toward us.

The
rim of smoke blanketing the horizon turns pink, the night quickly fading away.

“I see him!”
I shout.

As the
nascent light turns the sky red, the outline of Kael’s tired wings makes its
way toward the Tower, slowly growing bigger and bigger. I jump up and down in
excitement. Concerned, Athel pulls me away from the ledge. Ash wriggles away
from my clasp, which is okay, because now I can open my arms wide to greet Kael
back.

“Kael!”
Athel whispers, raising his arm.

Kael
approaches and my excitement turns into anguish. His left eye is covered in crusted
blood and two of his left talons are gone. He veers to the Tower and lands,
letting out a long squeal of distress. Athel and I jump on him and hug him,
cooing and crooning as if he were our baby. Athel is so happy to see the falcon
back that he even forgets about his eye still dangling from Kaels’ right ankle.

Kael hops
and trips. He looks at us with his one eye, his beak hanging open as if to ask,
Why
? Tears roll
down my cheeks.

“Darn it,
he’s a mess,” Athel says.

“We should
take him to Uli,” Lukas mutters.

I pick up
Kael and examine his wounds. I’m not sure if he lost one eye, but two of his
left talons are gone for sure, cleanly severed at the junction.

“Oh,
baby,” I murmur, checking his other foot. The makeshift camera is still
attached to the ankle, but there’s something else stuck between Kaels right
talons.

Athel
scolds Lukas for even mentioning Uli. “How are we going to explain this?”

“What?
You’re gonna risk him getting an infection?” I say, trying to pry the small
object from Kael’s talons.

Lukas gets
to his feet. “In case you haven’t noticed, the sun’s almost out. If we don’t
get back now, we’ll have a lot more to explain than just an injured bird.”

Athel
stoops down to pick up Kael. I look up at him, my fingers clasped around the tiny
object I just retrieved from his talons. My brother peers at
me
and frowns
.

“What is
it?” he asks.

I swallow,
words failing me. “Dad,” I whisper, and show him the flap of metal Kael has
brought back. There’s a serial number engraved on one side, Z1633, one I’ve
memorized a long time ago. One edge is chipped and covered in dirt. And as I
brush my finger along the broken edge, the crust of dirt breaks into fine
flakes that waver down to the floor.

Fine red
flakes.

Dried blood.

Dad’s serial number encrusted in blood.

Athel was
right. Dad is in danger.

Chapter Ten

Athel

Day Number: 1,532

Event: We now have a map, but we need a
plan.

Number of Mayakes left: 431.

Goal for today: Meet at the stables and
discuss a plan.

Kael’s head flops to the side and
his legs give out. Uli lays him on a white sheet of paper and feels his heart.

“He’s
fine,” he says, “but he ate half his battery life.” He slides two fingers under
the scapular feathers at the top of the right wing and inserts the TCB charger
into Kael’s port. “The eye should recover in a couple of weeks. The two missing
talons on the left foot sadly won’t grow back. But I’ll disinfect his wounds
and increase the antibiotic release through his implants to avoid an
infection.” He drops his chin and stares at us. “Are you two going to tell me
what happened to him?”

Akaela and
I exchange a glance. “He came back like that this morning,” I say, before my
sister has a chance to reply. I rub my right eye and blink.

“And what
happened to your eye?” Uli asks.

Damn, why am I so bad at hiding things
?

“Nothing,”
I say, and rub it some more.

We’ve
rushed Kael down to Uli with no time to fix my eye. I plucked it out of the
makeshift camera right before leaving the sixtieth floor and popped it back
into my socket. Lukas promised to meet me as soon as I’m done with Kael so he
can solder back the wiring. In the meantime, the eyeball keeps moving in its
socket and I can’t refrain from rubbing it.

“Will Kael
be ok?” Akaela asks.

Uli
examines Kael’s left foot, where two of his talons went missing. “The implant
should prevent him from getting an infection. I wonder what happened to him.
This doesn’t look like an animal attack.” He stares at the two of us, both
sitting back-to-back on a recharging chair looking as innocent as we possibly
can.

Which is
not a whole lot.

I know Akaela
is dying to tell Uli the whole truth, especially about the piece of metal with
Dad’s serial number on it. Lukas examined it and, with his usual lack of
empathy, stated that the piece of metal came from the shoulder socket of Dad’s
robotic arm. He explained that shoulder sockets are connected to the bone
through reinnervated nerves, and therefore the piece of metal couldn’t have
come off naturally. So yes, something bad happened and our fathers are likely
in danger, Lukas concluded. And then, as he handed us back the piece of metal,
I saw a little emotion twinkle in his eyes.

Akaela
almost ran to Mom that instant. I had to make her calm down and think, make her
swear to keep it secret.

Yes, Uli
could help us with our plan, but he would tell Mom, too. And if Mom finds out,
she’ll never let us go forward with it. Provided they would believe us, they’d first
assemble the Kiva. The Kiva Members would discuss and cast a vote, wasting
precious time while we could be looking for Dad and the others instead.

No. We
need to act in secrecy. I’m not even sure I can trust Akaela to keep her lips
zipped, but at this point she knows too much to leave her out of it.

Uli covers
Kael with a cotton sheet, then leans against the countertop, crosses his arms
and stares at the two of us. “Guys, I know what’s going on.”

“You do?”
Akaela blurts out.

I elbow
her in the ribs, cold sweat trickling down my back.

Uli nods
gravely. “Your dad’s been gone—what, now? Two weeks? Your mom’s a nervous
wreck and you guys are dead worried. Did you try and go look for your father
with Kael?”

 
“We did not,” I say, my face as unmoving
as the darn eyeball that keeps shifting inside its socket. I squeeze against
Akaela, slide a hand behind her back, and pinch her.

Don’t say a word
, I
message, and then regret it. Not even messages are safe. Any Mayake has access
to our wireless network and can tap into it.

I jump to
my feet and drag her up with me. “We need to go feed the horses. When can we
come back to pick up Kael?”

Uli tilts
his head and gives me the hint of a smile. Maybe he’s better at outguessing me
than I give him credit for, given that he’s known me since I’ve come to the
world, butt naked, blind, and free of implants. He turns to the table, where
Kael is still resting,
the
LED indicator on the TCB
charger next to him still blinking.

“I figure
it’ll take another hour or so to recharge,” Uli says. “Come back once you’re
done with the horses. I’ll feed him and take good care of him.” He winks and
then adds, “In the meantime, you two stay out of trouble. Your father’s going
to be fine, I promise. The Ambassadors set off for no easy task, but they know
what they’re doing. You’ll be hugging your dad again sooner than you think.”

I
nod,
nervously wiping my hands against my jeans, then start
to the door.

“And
Athel,” Uli adds, lowering his voice. “Remember what happened to Skip. Be
careful.”

I open my
mouth to say something but then refrain.

Skip was murdered.

I do remember
.

“Thanks so
much, Uli,” Akaela says softly.

I grasp
her arm and pull her out of the office.

“Did you
have to play the victim like that?” I snarl, once we’re out of earshot.

She
wriggles her arm away from my grasp. “What are you talking about?”

“You kept
glaring at me and looking at Uli as if you were about to spill the beans.”

She stops
in the middle of the hallway, her face flushed red and her fists balled. “I am
going to tell him, Athel. This secrecy you’re insisting on makes no sense. We
need help and we need it now. You’re acting like you’re the sole mastermind who
can save the world. Get real, brother. Dad and the others are in danger, and if
we waste another minute—”

Not here. Not in a place where everybody can
hear
.

I press a
hand against her mouth. “Don’t make a scene here,” I hiss.

“Hey
guys!”

We both
flinch as Wes sprints by and darts down the hallway. That kid doesn’t walk, he can
only run—that’s what his flexible titanium legs are for. A thought
crosses my mind.

“Ok, Dottie.”
I whisper. “You say we can’t do this just by ourselves. I think you’re right.
And I know exactly who else to recruit
.
”

Her face
lightens up and for once she’s willing to listen to me.

Wait until you hear what I’ve got in mind
.

“Wes! Wait
up!” I call.

*
 
*
 
*

Wes looks at me dumbfounded. “You
think they’re dead?”

“No,” I
reply. “I think they’re in danger and we need to go help them. Nobody else is
doing anything about it. They’re all sitting around and waiting.”

He shakes
his head in disbelief. “I’m not sure, man. Tahari has been telling us they’re
fine. He got a message from them when they got to the other side of the mesa.”

“Tahari’s
lying,” I say.

Wes’s
forehead ripples with doubt. “Tahari—lying?”

“They’re
outside of our wireless zone. The only one who can communicate with them is
Tahari through a portable hotspot they brought along. There’s no way to check
that Tahari’s telling the truth.”

“This
is—crazy. We’re not supposed to—you know.” He shrugs, big eyes
bulging. “Have secrets and stuff.”

Damn me
for talking too soon. Wes may not be a good choice after all.
 

The horses
whinny nervously as soon as the four of us—Akaela, Wes, Lukas and
I—enter the stables.

“I’ll let
them out,” Akaela says. “They’ve been cooped up all day.”

She leads
Maha and Taeh out of their pens while Lukas flips open his cloth pouch with all
his tools. I sit on the floor against the bales of hay and pop out my right
eye.

“Make it
quick and painful,” I say, grinning.

“Actually—”
Lukas replies.

“Oh no.
Not another one of your ‘actually’ facts,” I protest.

Lukas
frowns, miffed at my comment, then starts soldering my eye back to the cables
I’ve pulled out of my empty socket. “Actually,” he iterates, “not feeling pain
in our electronic parts is one of the major drawbacks of our technology.
Really, if I had a lab of my own, I’d work on adding neural impulses for pain
and build them inside our implants and prostheses. It’d be a major
improvement.”

“The heck
I’d let you snip off my eye to make a camera if I had that.”

Lukas
hands back my eye and shrugs. “You have a point.”

I pop it
back into place and turn to Wes. He’s sitting in his corner hugging his knees,
an empty look on his face. He’s almost two years younger than me and still
immature, but the kid can run like a gazelle. I definitely want him on our
side,
I just have to find out how much I can trust him to
keep our secret.

“Wes,” I
say, startling him. “You’re either with us on this or not. If you aren’t
willing to risk your life for something this important, then I have to ask you
to leave now.”

He licks
his lips, eyes darting from me to Lukas, then back at me. “Our lives? We’re
risking our lives?”

Lukas
thumbs through his data feeder. “Of course,” he says. “You risk your life every
day. Your batteries have an average lifetime of sixty years, which means they
can die out as early as twenty and as late as one hundred, with the chance of
dying out increasing by one percent every day. Now, if you didn’t get new
batteries for starters—”

“Lukas,” I
interrupt.

“Sorry,”
he mumbles.

Wes rocks
his titanium legs. “Hey,” he says. “This could be our best adventure ever.” He
swallows and inhales, his nostrils widening the slightest bit. “I mean—no
way I’m going to let you guys down.”

I tilt my
head. “You sure about this, Wes?”

The kid’s
eyes bulge. “What do you want me to do?”

“The thing
you do best,” I reply. “Run.”

Akaela
comes back to the stable, leaving the door ajar. Taeh nudges it open with her
nose and follows my sister inside, tugging her shirt.

“Oh no,
Taeh, not now,” Akaela says, pushing her back out. “We’ll go riding in a bit,
okay?”

The horse
snorts and shakes her head. I hear her stomp behind the door for a few more
minutes, and then she reluctantly trots away. Akaela sits on the ground across
from me, dips her chin, and looks at me the way she does when she’s upset.
She’s still mad at me about Kael. The bloodied flap of metal with Dad’s serial
number troubles her, making her angry. And that doesn’t help.
 

“Wes is
one of ours,” I announce.

She
presses her lips together and scowls. “I want to know what’s gotten into your
mind, Athel. Why not talk to Uli? He could help us out, he—”

“He’s part
of the Kiva, just like everybody else. I heard them talk after Skip’s death.
They’re scared but they don’t want to do anything. And also…”

I inhale
and look at the three of them, unsure how much I should disclose. The heck with
it, if we’re in this together, they need to know. So I drop the bombshell: “There’s
a traitor lurking among the Mayake people. Skip was murdered.”

Akaela’s
jaw falls open. Wes’s eyes grow wider, while Lukas just stares at me. I know
they won’t believe me without evidence, so I provide it: “Skip’s battery had
been tampered with. Uli showed me.”

Remember what happened to Skip, Athel. Don’t
do anything stupid
.

Uli didn’t
want Akaela to know. They don’t want anybody to know.

“Until we
know who the traitor is, we can’t trust anyone. We can’t talk to anyone about
this, not even message one another. Our network is not encrypted. Any Kiva
Member can tap into it and read our messages as we type them.”

Akaela scowls
at me. “Athel, we can trust Mom and Uli.”

“We can’t
trust them to keep quiet, though. They’ll tell the Kiva Members. That’s what
Mayake people do. They do whatever the Kiva Members tell them to.”

Lukas
thumbs through his data feeder. “Let me show you guys the map I made with the
data I collected from Kael’s flight.” He taps the screen and a light on the
side turns on. He sets the data feeder on the ground and props it against his
satchel, projecting the map onto the white wall at the end of the stable.

“The
distances may be a little off,” he says, “since the falcon didn’t always fly in
a straight line. I estimate about twenty-two miles from here to the factory.
Might be a bit longer for us since we’d be getting there through the gorge,
which also doesn’t follow a straight line.”