The Exodus Towers (16 page)

Belém, Brazil

3.MAY.2283

H
E HAD THE
dream again.

The same one he’d had before the Japan mission, of falling from a great height toward a vast engine. A machine that spread from horizon to horizon, pistons firing, massive metal gears turning, all laced with a maze of circuits upon which electrons raced.

As in the previous vision, he sped toward the apparatus and braced himself for the impact with it. Last time he’d punched through the surface like it was tissue and continued to fall, but he flinched and braced himself nonetheless.

This time, though, an iris opened before him, revealing a warm, pulsating glow. He fell into it and hovered. The energy seemed to snake toward him, tendrils as thin and fine as the Elevator cord itself, lacing out from the greater field and worming their way into his ears, eyes, and nostrils.

A flood of memories came to mind all at once. Clear and yet eluding any attempt to focus on their specifics.

And then the light vanished. The memories disappeared with it, and he fell once again, punching through the machine in an explosion of parts.

He flipped over in the air to look up at the damage, and found that the machine was just the other side of the sky.
Now
he fell toward the ground, the endless jungle with its dark heart.

Skyler felt the evil lurking beneath the canopy again and resolved to face it this time. His pace slowed toward the end, and the leaves at the greatest height began to tickle his arms.
He ignored them, brushed them aside. Someone stood in a clearing directly below. A person wearing a suit of black. Black like the Builders’ material. Red light sizzled along the fine lines in the surface, gradually coalescing into what might be called eyes.

The branches grew thicker as he fell toward the being. They slapped at Skyler’s face, and he frantically tried to shove them away to see below.

In the clearing, the being looked up, arms outstretched, and waited to catch him.

Skyler woke with a start and sat bolt upright.

Next to him, Ana knelt, her hand still held out from gently slapping his cheek.

“You were dreaming,” she said.

Skyler nodded and rubbed his eyes. They’d camped within the mansion he’d found, the one he’d scavenged the motorcycle from. A third-floor master bedroom with a grand balcony that overlooked the southern district of the city. From that viewpoint they had line of sight on the encampment at the base of the Elevator, and Skyler knew the home was relatively safe, given that it had not been looted or soiled by subhumans.

“Is it my watch already?” he asked.

Ana shook her head. “There is talking on the radio. Come and listen.”

She tiptoed back across the opulent room and out the balcony door without another word. Skyler could see Davi already standing out there, leaning against the railing, a pair of binoculars trained in the direction of the colony.

Crawling from his sleeping bag, Skyler stretched and threw his jacket over his shoulders. He glanced at his watch, 3
A.M
., and took a healthy gulp from his canteen before joining the twins outside.

Ana sat cross-legged on the Spanish-tile surface of the wide balcony, holding the radio in both hands like some kind of holy relic. She dialed the volume up slightly when Skyler took a seat next to her.

The first voice he heard was Karl, and a flood of relief coursed through him.

“… water supply. And these we placed to gain access to the hospital.”

Skyler closed his eyes and pictured the control room, set up inside a modified cargo container. He imagined Karl standing before the map of the Belém on the wall, tracing a finger along the aura roads.

“And you cannot travel beyond these … auras?” A new voice, thickly accented.

“Gabriel,” Ana said, distant and cold.

“Not without a protective suit.”

Silence followed. Skyler heard a tinkling sound, like a spoon rattling against a teacup.

“So, the suit contains some of the aura? It can be bottled like wine?”

“No,” Karl said. “As I said before—”

“Never mind what you told me before,” Gabriel said, his tone light, conversational. “I want to hear it again.”

“The aura puts the disease into a kind of stasis. If you bottle air within an aura, and pump it into a special suit, the disease will stay asleep. It’s only when it comes in direct contact with the live disease that it will wake up again.”

“Fascinating,” the other man said. Another long silence.

“Please,” Karl finally said. “
Please
, let us ship air and water up to orbit.”

Gabriel chuckled. “We’ll discuss that tomorrow. I’m tired.”

“You’ve said tomorrow four times—”

The
smack
made Skyler jump. Ana did, too, and Davi turned from his vigil.

Another
smack
. Then the distinct sound of a person toppling to the floor.

“And I’ll say tomorrow as long as I wish,
pendejo
. Take him back to his tent.”

Sounds of rustling, grunts of men hefting a body. Skyler gritted his teeth when he heard the scraping of feet across the floor of the room. Then a door slammed shut.

Again came the sound of a spoon stirring tea. Then a new voice, a woman’s, in Portuguese. Skyler looked to Ana and Davi, who both shrugged. They didn’t understand the words, either.

Gabriel replied in turn, and the door opened and closed once again.

No one spoke for a minute. Then two. Skyler motioned for Ana to turn the volume up again, and soon they could hear the sound of someone sipping a hot beverage. Then chewing.

When the door opened again the new arrival spoke in Spanish.

Gabriel replied and a quick exchange occurred.

“Gabriel asked for a status,” Ana said, “and the other man, Carlos I think, said the scout team still hadn’t reported in.”

“Those must be the men we fought,” Skyler mused.

Ana held up a hand to quiet him as more conversation spilled out of the radio’s tiny speaker. “Carlos wants to lead a search party at dawn, but they’re arguing about how they’ll watch all the prisoners.”

She listened to their words, her eyes dancing back and forth. Then she glanced at Davi and her eyebrows arched.

“What is it?” Skyler asked.

“Carlos said if they don’t have enough people to watch all the newcomers, they could start the trials early, which would reduce the population.”

“Trials?”

Ana shook her head. Then, “Hold on.”

A long back-and-forth between the Gabriel and Carlos followed. There was laughter, as well as periods of serious tones.

Their conversation continued but grew quieter; then Skyler heard the door close and they could no longer be heard. “What were they saying?”

“Carlos noted excitement about the start of the trials. But Gabriel urged patience. He said when the trials start the
incerto
will panic, and they’ll need everything ready. Then he said he wants someone to go out to the lodge first thing in the morning and bring the others back.”

“What trials?”

Ana shrugged, her look apologetic. Whatever Gabriel was planning, he expected it to cause panic among the colonists, and that meant nothing good.

“Tell him,” Davi said to Ana.

Skyler glanced at him, then at the girl. Her eyes were downcast.

“Gabriel said it’s critical that the ‘rogue’ be captured or killed before then. That he’d prefer you be taken alive so that he could try to talk to you, but because you had killed some of his own family—he refers to us as his family—he realized you may have been among the
incerto
too long, and will never claim your place within the new society.”

“Incerto?”

“It’s like … uncertain. Or, untested.”

Skyler stood and went to the railing. He stared at the horizon, in the direction of the Elevator, trying to see any sign of the camp in the darkness. Davi offered him the binoculars but Skyler waved them off.

A second later he changed his mind, took the glasses, and studied the buildings closest to the encampment.

“What are you looking for?” Ana asked.

“High ground,” Skyler said.

“Why?”

“We need to get moving,” Skyler said, otherwise ignoring her. “We don’t have much time.”

“An attack now is suicide,” Davi said. “The deal was that we would free our friends, then—”

“I know,” Skyler said. “The lodge he mentioned, is that where your people are being held?”

“My heart says yes,” Davi answered. “We can’t know for sure until we look.”

Skyler handed the binoculars back to him. “That’s why we need to get moving. He said they were going to ‘bring everyone back,’ so we need to act before that. When the sun comes up they’re going to send someone to this lodge, and we need to track them. Follow them there, and rescue your friends. We can’t do that unless we see which road they take out of the camp.”

“High ground,” Davi repeated, understanding.

“Pack the gear,” Skyler said to them. The twins set to work immediately.

Later, as he rolled his sleeping bag and tied it, he tried to
pinpoint when he’d become the leader of this little group. Only the night before Ana barely trusted him to go to the bathroom unsupervised. Considering his track record as captain of a crew, Skyler resolved to look for a way out of the position as soon as their goals were accomplished. They were kids, after all, and people under him didn’t have the greatest survival rate.

By the time the three of them began their trek toward the camp, the sky in the east had become a purple stain, growing brighter with every minute. Skyler set a hard pace and showed them how to move between cover positions so that one of the three was always still and vigilant.

Moving through the dark streets, he weighed the situation. No air or water had been delivered up the cord in a week, and supplies had already been strained before that. From what they’d overheard on the radio, he guessed Tania was still in the dark as to the situation in Camp Exodus. Who knew what was going through her mind right now?

Whatever happened, Skyler realized, when he finally attempted to retake the camp, if all else failed he must clear the base of the cord so that climbers could come down again. At least then Tania and the others who huddled in orbit would have an option. A choice, if they wanted it, that wasn’t to turn tail and head back to Darwin.

If he only accomplished one thing, Skyler would give them that.

Above the Atlantic Ocean

5.MAY.2283

I
N THE DEAD
of night an aircraft dipped into the atmosphere high above the Atlantic Ocean. Heat generated by friction with the air made the underbelly glow bright orange, and the fighters inside clutched their harnesses with white knuckles against the bone-shaking turbulence.

The aircraft, a long-range paramilitary troop carrier originally built for the Thai army, began to turn in a wide circle once the violence of reentry ended. It set itself on a course for Belém and began to drift lower as the coast of Brazil approached.

A small device, installed in a cavity behind one of the instrument panels in the cockpit’s ceiling, transmitted telemetry information sapped from the ship’s computer to a relay in orbit. The relay, bolted to the top of a small inspection robot, sent the information to a terminal in Alex Warthen’s office on Gateway Station.

No one aboard knew about that, though. They’d searched, twice in fact, but not to the point of dismantling anything. Even Tania had poked around when the vehicle first arrived, looking under seats and inside every storage compartment. The urgency of the situation didn’t allow for diligence beyond that.

The crew were all in back, slipping out of their jump-seats and pulling on their gear. Ten men and two women all armed to the teeth after a carte-blanche rummage through “Room 17,” the armory Neil Platz had stocked inside his secret station.

Environment suits went on first. Much debate had gone into whether the bulky protective outfits were needed. The aircraft, programmed to land between the colony and the reservoir to the east, would set down in a clearing that fell within the “aura road” set up to link the two locations.