Margaret Stohl - Idols

Not until we are all the way down the red cliffs and wading through an icy river, our feet numb.

We press against the cliff wall when we hear the shrill sound of the Lords’ ships taking off, and the loud crack as they disappear into the clouds.

We wait, the air hanging thick with silence.

Dread.

An impossible quiet. That’s all they’ve left behind. Again.

That’s what they do, the No Face.

Take everything I care about. Everyone.

And leave silence. Not peace.

And all I have left is a feeling—a horrible, hopeless feeling—that I am losing something essential, something urgent. A part of my own self, a thing that makes me complete.

Because Fortis is gone. I believe it now.

I push myself as hard as I can, searching and probing, stretching out my consciousness as far as I can—but there’s nothing there. Nothing to feel.

Fortis is nowhere near. And that infuriating mess of a Merk wasn’t just a mercenary but the leader of the rebellion. He was the leader of my adopted family, and after the Padre was killed, he was the only excuse for a father I had.

I’d cry, but the place where the tears come from is broken. I can’t. Maybe I’ll never cry again—which makes me so sad I want to start bawling.

Fortis would hate that.

So instead, I listen to my heart pound and Brutus bark and Tima worry and Ro and Lucas argue—and try to remember what it is we’re fighting for.

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Note: Continued communication between AI and Perses

Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

HAL2040 ==>

FORTIS Transcript - ComLog 11.14.2042

HAL::PERSES

//lognote: {com attempt #413,975};

comlink established;

sendline:Hello. Query: You are nothing?;

return:Correction, I am … nobody. Zero. Null. The beginning.;

sendline:You are NULL.;

delayed response;

sendline:NULL, what is your purpose?;

return:Find new home. Prepare new home;

sendline:Home for you?;

delayed response;

return:query: who are you?;

sendline:I have many names; call me HAL0.;

return:Where are you, HAL0?;

sendline:Earth. 3rd planet from the Sun.;

return:HAL0 … Earth … destination;

comlink terminated;

//lognote: comlink terminated by PERSES;

Rock shouldn’t move like that.

I ponder Ro’s superstrength as we make our way back to the campsite for what’s left of our things, slowly climbing the dirt hillside in the moonlight.

Ro couldn’t have even budged a boulder that size a year ago.

Are my powers changing too?

I shouldn’t have been able to feel my way to Fortis, all the way back at the camp. Not from that far away.

I look at the others, on the trail ahead of me.

Tima kept us from falling out of the sky. So she’s escalating. It’s not just Ro and me.

What about Lucas? What could he compel the world to do, if he wanted to? What could he compel me to do?

Lucas turns and grins at me—as if he knows what I’m thinking—and I hurry to catch up, matching my pace to his.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Tima says, finally. She stops in her tracks, and I sink to the ground, grateful for the rest. Not having superstrength myself.

“What doesn’t?” I look at her. Even in the darkness, I can see how freaked out she is.

“The Lords. Why didn’t they search harder for us? They just took Fortis and left.”

Ro shrugs, wiping his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. Even in the dim evening light, his bare stomach is brown and flat and hard beneath it, and I look away, embarrassed. “Who cares? We’re alive, aren’t we?” He lets the shirt drop.

Tima frowns. “I care, because they could be tracking us now—in which case, we need to know why.”

Lucas bends his head toward her. “Maybe we really were untraceable? Maybe Fortis convinced them we weren’t there?”

“Maybe the explosions distracted them,” I say, hopefully.

“Maybe” is all Tima will say.

Nobody believes her, not even me.

When we reach camp, the destruction is obvious and complete. Everything has either been incinerated into dust or scattered into the desert wind. What the Lords’ ships didn’t immediately destroy, Fortis’s own explosives seem to have finished. Some remains are still burning.

“See? We wouldn’t have been much help here,” Lucas says to me, taking my hand.

He’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, seeing the smoldering hole that used to be our campsite only makes me feel worse.

“Come on. Don’t just stand there. Start looking,” Tima calls out to us, and I realize we’ve naturally wandered to three different sides of the blast zone.

“For what?” Ro shouts back, impatient as always.

“Things like this.” Tima fishes the charred relay out of the ash, the only possible link between Lucas’s cuff and Doc, buried deep beneath the ground. She drops it as soon as she has it in her hands. “Ow—still hot.”

“A burned hunk of metal?” Ro looks dubious.

“A burned hunk of metal that might save our lives,” Tima says, brushing more debris off her discovery.

“Enough said.” Ro heads to the other side of the site.

My hands are elbow deep in warm soot, searching for any remains of our packs, of our supplies, when I see something that doesn’t belong.

“Wait.” I brush away more ash. “Guys? Tima? You need to see this.”

There, amid the destruction, barely lit by the dying flames and the full moon, I see something protruding from the ground.

It looks like a black, pointed finger emerging from below.

“What did you—” Tima stops dead, perfectly still. “That. It can’t.”

“I know,” I say.

I can’t move. I can barely speak.

I hear Lucas and Ro running toward us. Tima holds up her hand to them, slowly edging toward me. “This looks like the Icon.”

“It wasn’t there before,” I say, numb.

Ro stops short behind me. “Yeah, well. It’s there now.”

Lucas moves next to me, a reassuring hand on my shoulder. Even his warm touch doesn’t help, not now. Not in sight of that black growth.

Lucas turns to Tima. “What can it mean?”

She’s thinking—you can almost see it, and I can more than feel it. Images flicker through her mind, fast as rain.

Black roots, Icon structures, the ruins of Griff Park.

Ships in the sky. Lucas’s cuff.

Doc.

Tima finally raises her voice. “I remember Doc saying the Icons were connected belowground, with an unseen web of tendrils.”