Torn Sky (Rebel Wing Trilogy, Book 3) (Rebel Wing Series) (22 page)

In the Colorado Mountains

The Corridor portal glinted in the sunlight. Melting snow dotted the ground, echoed by the white-capped peaks in the distance. Maintenance workers and Corridor Guards milled around the base of the portal, readying an aid shipment for the Second Earther refugee camps on the other side.

As I walked, my ankle boots sunk into the slush, splattering my jeans. The Corridor observation area was nearly deserted this afternoon—the weekly shipment of medicine and food rations wasn’t much of a draw—but I had work to do. I took out my Panel, unfolded it, and pulled my research notes up on the screen. Then I settled into a seat in the second row, and glanced up at the portal.

Control towers rose up all around it in tall pillars, housing the computers, wiring and monitoring equipment that promised to keep us safe from the portal’s vast stores of energy. Fusion reactors churned quietly from underground. They generated enough power to keep the Corridor running—a permanent gateway between our world and the parallel universe we’d dubbed Second Earth.

Inspiration, inspiration
, I thought, tapping my Panel against my forehead. But my mind was quiet, as still as the portal.

Not good.

The application deadline for the Multiversal Physics Institute was only three months away, and I still hadn’t come up with a thesis for my advanced study project. I needed something that would impress the admissions committee. But somewhere in the last seven months, since graduation from Corridor Prep, my progress had stalled. I’d grown up here at the Corridor Facility, and my father was Chair of the Facility Administration, so a project relating to the portal had seemed like the obvious choice. Even scientists like my dad knew so little about how the Corridor actually worked, so coming up with a research question should have been easy for me.

My Panel dinged with an incoming call. I held it up, eager for a distraction—until I saw who was calling. I groaned internally. My finger hovered over the image of my best friend Lissa’s face. I’d known since this morning that this call would come, and still I had no clue what to say. Might as well get it over with. I tapped the screen and her picture came to life as the feed connected.

“Estele.” Lissa pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head. She had on a shimmery green bikini top, and I could see breaking waves in the background. But the expression on her face didn’t match the rest of the idyllic scene. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and her lips were pressed together in a thin line. “Where are you?” she asked, her voice thick. “Why’s it so bright there?”

“I’m at the Corridor. The sun’s actually out today.” I nodded toward the portal. Its rounded surface shone faintly blue, like a layer of glacial ice. It was deceptively peaceful without the usual storm clouds gathering above it. But the electrical storms would roll back in eventually. They always did. “Lis,” I said gently, “are you okay?”

“I need—” Her voice skipped in her chest as she breathed in. A wave crashed into the shore behind her. “I need you to talk to him for me, Estele. Please.”

I swore under my breath. A Corridor Guard glanced at me from a few feet away, his gloved fingers tapping the butt of his rifle. “You know I can’t do that,” I whispered, not wanting the Guard to overhear. It might get back to Justin. “He’s my brother. When the two of you got together you both promised me that—”

A low hum interrupted me, buzzing like a faraway swarm of insects. The portal’s skin rippled slightly, as if disturbed by the noise. It felt like the sound had slipped beneath my skin. I shivered, rubbing my arms to try to banish the sensation.

It’s probably nothing
, I told myself.
Just your imagination.

The crew working on the Corridor’s control towers didn’t seem concerned, and the Guard had gone back to watching the delivery truck.

Lissa’s platinum blond hair stuck to her damp cheeks. “When I left after graduation, Justin said he was fine being long distance until I got back from my trip. So I don’t understand why—” She paused. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, it’s nothing.” I rubbed at the skin by my ear. “Justin is . . . he’s really upset about this, too. But . . .” That humming noise had moved up along my spine and settled inside my skull. “Lis, do you hear that? Some sort of hum?”

“Hear what?” She angled her head. “Just tell him to message me back. I would ask my mom to do it but that would just be weird.”

“Very weird.” The awkwardness would be unbearable if Lissa dragged her mother, Sam, into this. Sam worked closely with my father, and had for years. And Justin adored Sam—she was trying to help him get a promotion to lieutenant in the Corridor Guard. She was practically our surrogate mother. Which would make Lissa and Justin essentially siblings, a comparison that Justin really had not appreciated when I’d pointed it out last year.

Justin had told me this morning that he was going to end it. A year apart while Lissa traveled the world was just too long. And secretly, I was relieved. This turmoil would soon pass, and we could all go back to being a family again.

“Lissa, I hate that you’re hurting right now. But it’s for the—”

I swatted at the air as if I could wave the buzzing noise away. Instead, the hum intensified, breaking into layers and harmonies of sound. It was coming from the portal itself. The workers on the control towers had stopped, and were looking around with alarm. So they’d finally heard it, too. It sounded almost like . . . music.

The Corridor was singing.

“The Corridor . . . It’s . . .”

I dropped my Panel onto my lap, and it slid off my knees to the ground. “Estele? What’s going on?” Lissa’s voice was so small, so far away.

It’s glowing.

The rest happened in seconds, but felt like a slow-motion slideshow. Light kindled inside the portal, sparking like a fire. Electricity crackled in the air.

My dark brown hair rose from my head and stood on edge. My body subtly vibrated, teeth chattered and ears rang with the noise.

Then my entire world ignited.

My vision blanked out—white tinged with pale blue—as fire ripped through me. Pure, vivid agony; a single brief moment that held an infinity of time. I was the fire, burning from the inside out in bright blue flames.

Then, suddenly, I could breathe.

I was on the ground, gasping, wedged in between the first and second rows of seats. A sharp, metallic taste coated my tongue. Shapes started to emerge from the haze around me. People from the Corridor maintenance crew were running toward the portal. And Corridor Guards dropped their rifles as they rushed to help.

“Get back,” someone yelled. “It was a surge! The containment field is shot—nobody touch the Corridor!”

I pushed up into my seat, cradling my arms against my stomach. My fingers bent inward, frozen into claws. I couldn’t open my hands. I held them up, looking for burns—my skin still felt hot, but the sensation was quickly fading. The skin wasn’t even red.

My boot knocked against something; a blackened, twisted lump of plastic lay at my feet. My Panel—or at least, it used to be. Lissa’s image was long gone from the screen.

The maintenance crew clambered over the control towers, pulling out fried dysprosium circuit boards as the Guards looked on helplessly. They’d all been standing right next to the Corridor when it happened, and yet no one else seemed to be hurt.

But it couldn’t have just been me.

With all the confusion, no one seemed to notice me. All I could think of was Dad—had anyone told him about the surge? Somehow I had to get home. I stumbled over to the light-rail station that connected the Corridor area to the rest of the Facility. All the overhead lights were out. The adPanels lining the walls usually flashed in bright colors but now they were dead and black, smoking at the edges. The light-rail was probably down. I was stuck here.

Every joint in my body ached. I looked around for a place to sit, but broken glass was everywhere. I crouched at the edge of the platform, staring down into the train tunnel. My eyes strained in the dark.

There was light coming from somewhere. Faint at first, but then it started to build. A train? Had they already fixed the light-rail?

The platform around me began to gleam, light dancing among the shards of glass. I tripped backward, trying to figure out where it was coming from.

“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone there?”

I held my hands out in front of me, still backing away from the edge of the platform. Then a blinding burst of light swallowed me up inside it. In a split second, the whole train station had disappeared. Instead there were trees. Suddenly—impossibly—I was standing in the middle of a forest.

Icy wind tugged at my hair and stung my cheeks. Snow fell from the steel-gray sky, dusting my shoulders with white. My body shivered in the cold; the temperature had somehow dropped thirty degrees in one moment.

“Hello!” I screamed. “Help!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, positive I was hallucinating. Whatever the Corridor had done to me—it scrambled my brain.

I wandered through the trees, searching for something familiar. It looked like the woods beyond the Corridor Facility, but overgrown and wild. I couldn’t find the Helix—the thirty-story tower at the center of the Facility that could usually be seen for miles around. It was almost as if I’d stepped through the Corridor and ended up in some other place. Some other world. But this wasn’t Second Earth, I knew that much.

Where was I? And how did I get there?

Then I noticed my hands.

A pale blue circle of light glowed inside each one of my palms.

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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Torn Sky © 2015 by Tracy Banghart

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First edition August 2015

Cover design by Elaine Damasco
Author photo by Regina Wamba
Map design by Natalie C. Sousa
Map illustration © Robert Adrian Hillman under license from Shutterstock.com
Cover photo © MNStudio under license from Shuttershock.com

ISBN 978-1-939106-53-7