The Rogue World

  “Let’s try it,” Eleanor said.

  “No,” Uncle Jack whispered. “Please, don’t do this.”

  “I need to,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Thank you.” Watkins let out a long sigh before rising. “Thank you, Eleanor.”

  Uncle Jack labored to his feet. “You bastard. If anything happens to her—”

  “If this situation turns against us, I will get Eleanor out safely, even if that means I do not.” Watkins showed no emotion as he said this. Eleanor saw no kindness or bravery in his face. He was simply stating fact. “Does that appease you?”

  Uncle Jack seemed a bit taken aback, but he nodded. “A little.”

  “Good.” Watkins turned to Eleanor. “Then let’s go. We don’t have time to waste—”

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Yes?” Watkins said.

  The door opened, and a G.E.T. agent walked Luke into the room.

  “Mr. Fournier?” Watkins said.

  “Luke!” Eleanor said.

  “Hey, kid.” Luke’s smile was quick, and then gone. “Listen, Watkins, you need to clear everyone out of here. Now.”

  “Really?” Watkins said. “And why is that?”

  “Because an avalanche is about to bury this place.”

  Eleanor thought at first this must be some kind of ploy. A plan to help her and Uncle Jack escape. But when Luke looked directly at her, she didn’t see any sign of that. No wink or nod. He looked afraid.

  “An avalanche?” Watkins frowned. “How do you know this?”

  “Dr. Von Albrecht,” Luke said. “He’s seen the signs up on the mountain. You may not trust my judgment, but I bet you trust his.”

  Watkins pursed his lips. “Unless you’re lying.”

  “I’m not,” Luke said. “And I’m willing to bet your men know about that . . . thing up in the hills, too. And the other avalanches in the area.”

  “What thing?” Eleanor asked. Was he referring to the creature she had heard?

  Watkins simply nodded, looking even paler.

  “Trust me,” Luke said. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Then we must hurry,” Watkins said.

  “Right. I’m glad you—”

  “Eleanor, this way.” Watkins stepped toward the door, motioning for Eleanor to follow him. “We need to get started.”

  “Wait.” Luke looked around the room. “What’s going on?”

  “If this installation is about to be buried,” Watkins said, “we need to act quickly.”

  “And do what?” Luke asked.

  “They’re trying to shut down the Concentrator,” Uncle Jack said.

  “What?” Luke’s eyes swelled. “But—”

  “Luke, it’s okay.” Eleanor knew she would be safe from an avalanche, there underground. And even if an avalanche buried the facility, blocking the way out, she knew there were caves through which she could find her way. “But you should take Uncle Jack and go.”

  “What?” Uncle Jack said, clutching his side. “I’m not leaving y—”

  “Where is Badri?” Eleanor asked Watkins.

  “You mean Grendel?” Watkins said. “Locked up.”

  Eleanor folded her arms and planted her feet. “Release her. Now.”

  Watkins hesitated, as if trying to decide whether this was a battle he wanted to fight in that moment, and in the end, he decided not to. He nodded toward the guard who had brought Luke in. “Go and fetch her.”

  The guard left, and after he’d gone, Luke stepped into the doorway to block it. “Eleanor, what is this?”

  “I know what I’m doing,” she said. “But you need to get Uncle Jack and Badri to safety. I’ll be okay.”

  Now Uncle Jack stepped toward her. “Ell Bell—”

  “We don’t have time for this!” Eleanor said. “If there’s an avalanche, I know my way out. But I don’t know what’s going to happen if we don’t shut that thing down. I don’t know what will happen to you. You’re connected to it, too, remember? I want you to get far away from it. You’re already hurt.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re hurt.” She turned to Luke. “Please. Do you trust me?”

  Luke’s mouth hung open. Whatever plan he’d brought into that room no longer seemed to apply. “Of course I trust you.”

  “Then get everyone out of here.”

  Just then the guard returned with Badri. She looked tired but unharmed, and if she felt any surprise at what she found in that room, she didn’t show it.

  “I need someone to update me,” she said.

  “According to Luke, this whole place might be buried in an avalanche at any moment,” Eleanor said. “You need to get out of here with him and my uncle. Watkins and I are going to try to shut down the Concentrator. We have another way out.”

  The guard looked at Watkins, and Watkins nodded. “Give the order. Evacuate.”

  The guard turned on his heel and left, and Badri seemed to finally look past Eleanor, through the window, toward the dark branches. Her eyes opened wider, and she nodded. “Come on, you two.”

  That seemed to be what the men needed to hear. Badri moved toward the door, somehow pulling Uncle Jack and Luke with her by force of her will. But both moved with slow and hesitant steps.

  “Hurry, please,” Eleanor said. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Luke stopped and turned to Uncle Jack as they reached the door. “I could just pick her up and carry her out of here.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Eleanor said. “This is the mission. This is why we came here.”

  “Ell Bell . . .”

  Badri tugged on them by the arms. “Come.”

  “Go!” Eleanor shouted, angry at them now, angry at them for making her feel that way while saying good-bye. “I’ll see you later.”

  The two men let Badri pull them through the doorway, and Eleanor followed them out with Watkins. But while Uncle Jack and Luke kept going down the corridor, Eleanor and Watkins turned through a doorway and entered the chamber of the Master Concentrator.

  “Good-bye,” she whispered to herself.

  Then she sighed, and that sigh threatened to turn into a sob, but she pinned it down until it subsided. Watkins led the way through the coils of conduit toward the trunk, a much slower route than hers had been crawling under them. As several moments passed, the writhing branches grew larger and nearer, somehow more disturbing for their silence.

  “I’ve never had the opportunity to talk to anyone else about the connection process,” Watkins said as they walked. “Do you lay your right or left palm on the control panel?”

  She hoped the others were out by now. That they had enough time. “Yes,” she said, hoping that maybe Dr. Von Albrecht was wrong about the risk in the first place.

  “Eleanor.”

  “What?”

  “If we are to do this, you will need your full concentration.”

  She nodded. But thought she heard a thud. A few of them. Like something banging against the mountain above them.

  “We will fail otherwise,” Watkins said.

  “Fail?”

  “Yes.” He stopped walking, and his voice grew angry. “You must concentrate, or we will fail.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about them.”

  “They’ll be all right,” he said. “They—”

  “Do you hear that?”

  But just then the banging stopped.

  “I hear noth—”

  A loud rumble filled the chamber, distant and yet everywhere, and the walls shook. The rock at Eleanor’s feet vibrated like Consuelo during takeoff. Stray tools and equipment clanged against the floor around her. The avalanche had started.

  Had that been enough time for Luke and Badri and Uncle Jack to get out? She feared it hadn’t been, and Eleanor wanted to race from the room, down the corridor, to find them. But before she could, Watkins grabbed her by the arm.

  “There is nothing you can do,” he said. “We are safe
in here. I’m sure they made it to safety out there.”

  “But—”

  “This is the mission,” Watkins said. “This is why you came here. Remember?”

  Eleanor blinked at him. Her body had gone numb, and her voice had failed. But she knew he was right.

  CHAPTER

  11

  IT FELT LIKE SOMEONE HAD TIED FINN’S SHOULDERS INTO knots, and then lit those knots on fire. His back felt the same way, but he kept digging. And digging. And digging.

  “You’re sure this is where you saw it?” Betty asked.

  “Yes,” Finn said, for the fifth or sixth time. “It’s here somewhere.”

  “How deep do we need to go?” Betty asked.

  Dr. Von Albrecht scanned their surroundings. “Two to three feet. If we haven’t found the top of the transport that far down, we should probably try a new spot.”

  Finn had already dug five such holes. Betty had dug three, and Dr. Von Albrecht two. They’d been at it for at least thirty minutes. Maybe an hour.

  “How much oxygen do you think they have?” Betty asked.

  “That’s impossible to estimate,” Dr. Von Albrecht said. “It would depend on how many people got inside.”

  If people got inside. But Finn left that unsaid, because it wasn’t useful, and he didn’t like that thought at all.

  While Betty and Dr. Von Albrecht took turns with the other shovel, Finn worked without a break. He dug down, then drove the handle of the shovel even deeper into the snow, and when it didn’t strike something hard and metallic, he moved a few feet away and tried again. This went on for another thirty minutes or so, and he started wondering if he had been wrong. Somehow he had gotten turned around, or maybe the radio tower had broken from its foundation and moved far away from the transport. There were other towers, too. Maybe he’d gotten them mixed up—

  He heard the ring of something metallic.

  “Over here!” Dr. Von Albrecht shouted from his hole.

  Finn raced over, and together they dug until they could see the roof of the transport.

  “That’s it,” Finn said. He banged his shovel on it, hard, hoping that if someone had made it inside, they could signal them.

  A moment later, they heard a faint banging in reply.

  “Someone’s in there,” Betty said. “You were right.”

  It wasn’t the kind of you-were-right Finn took any pride in. He felt only relief.

  The next step would be to find the transport’s main hatch, so they had to dig away enough from the roof to locate the middle of the vehicle, and after they’d done that, they dug down the side, trying to clean enough snow to open the hatch.

  Sometime later—Finn stopped trying to keep track, because no matter how quickly he dug, it felt like too long—he stood in the bottom of a white bowl, its rim over his head, throwing snow away from the door. Betty or Dr. Von Albrecht scooped and threw that snow up and out, one with a shovel, one with gloved hands. The top half of the hatch lay exposed.

  “We’re almost there,” Finn said.

  Every once in a while, he stopped and banged on the door, just to make sure, and then waited, holding still, until he heard a bang in reply from within.

  The sun was up now. Its light struck one side of the crater, while most of the bowl remained in morning shadow. That shadow slowly shrank, and the light inched toward Finn until it was only a few feet away, and that’s when he got to the bottom of the hatch. Dr. Von Albrecht and Betty climbed down to join him, and Finn pulled the lever to open it up.

  There was a slight hiss of air-pressure release, and the hatch lifted like a wing. Luke stood inside the doorway, squinting and shielding his eyes with his palm.

  “That took you long enough,” he said.

  Betty shook her head. “We stopped for coffee a few times.”

  Then she stepped toward him and they hugged each other hard, briefly. Finn felt every muscle in his body clock out at that point, and he dropped the shovel in relief. He had been right about the location of the transport, and right to hope it was Luke. But who else was with him?

  “Mind if we come in and sit down?” Betty asked.

  Luke stepped aside. “What’s ours is yours.”

  Finn followed Betty inside the transport. The bus-sized interior held rows of seats, and by the soft glow of the emergency track lighting, and the sunlight from outside, Finn saw Eleanor’s uncle Jack clutching his side, looking pretty pale, and Badri sitting next to him. But no one else.

  “Where’s Eleanor?” Finn asked.

  Luke shook his head.

  “We left her behind,” Uncle Jack said, his voice sounding strained. “She’s trying to shut down the Concentrator.”

  “What?” Betty said. “But the avalanche—”

  “She’s safe in the cave,” Jack said. “And there are other ways out.”

  “You just left her?” Finn said, his mouth dry.

  Uncle Jack closed his eyes. “Believe me, it wasn’t our decision. It was hers.”

  “So what do we do?” Betty asked.

  “We wait,” Luke said. “And hope they do the job and make it out.”

  “They?” Dr. Von Albrecht asked.

  “Eleanor and Watkins,” Luke said.

  “Eleanor is working with Watkins?” Finn would not have thought that possible. Ever. “How did—”

  “I’m still trying to work that out for myself,” Luke said.

  “Watkins isn’t in control anymore, and he knows it. He’s agreed to Eleanor’s plan to shut the Concentrator down.” Jack winced in pain.

  “Are you okay?” Finn asked.

  “No, he isn’t,” Badri said. “He cracked a few ribs, and I worry there may be some internal bleeding.”

  Betty stepped toward Jack’s seat. “Let me see. And, Professor, there has to be an emergency medical kit somewhere in this thing, right?”

  “I’ll look,” Dr. Von Albrecht said.

  Luke tapped Finn on the shoulder. “I’m going to need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “With Jack injured, we can’t exactly walk back to the plane. We need to dig this transport out.”

  Finn’s back twisted up in complaint at the thought. “You think it’ll run?”

  “I fired it up when the avalanche first trapped us in here. I shut it down to save on power, in case we needed it later, but yeah. It’s got enough juice to get us back.”

  Finn sighed and nodded. “Guess we better start digging, then.”

  Before they went back outside, they searched the transport for extra equipment, and found a storage compartment with better shovels, pickaxes, and equipment for deicing. The discovery would hopefully make the job a bit easier. Dr. Von Albrecht had also found an emergency medical kit, and they were able to give Jack some painkillers and wrap up his chest.

  “He needs a hospital,” Betty said.

  Badri agreed. “I can take care of him once we’re back in Mumbai.”

  “We’re not going anywhere without Eleanor,” Uncle Jack said.

  “Don’t worry.” Finn strode toward the hatch. “We won’t.”

  He and Luke went outside with their shovels, closed the hatch behind them, and climbed up and out of the hole. The radio tower now cast a latticed shadow over them, and Luke stopped, looking stunned.

  “Good Lord,” he said. “That’s a lot of snow.”

  “You got lucky.”

  “Thanks to you. The G.E.T. agents all ran for the helicopter, but I remembered what you said about the transports. I tried to call for anyone to follow me, but they didn’t listen.”

  “Some of them got buried, but it couldn’t have been everyone who worked here.”

  “Lots of G.E.T. agents are probably still inside the facility.”

  Finn’s question caught in his throat, like it wasn’t quite ready to be asked. “Did you—was my father in there?”

  “I don’t know.” Luke paused, frowning. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Finn nodded, trying to
believe that.

  “Hey.” Luke clasped his shoulder. “I’m sure of it. Your father and brother weren’t in there, or we would have seen them.”

  Finn hoped that was true, and let out a sigh before turning toward the front of the transport. “We better get moving.”

  “Right.” Luke pointed and drew two parallel lines in the air in front of them. “We’ll dig out a ramp here. I’m hoping the transport has enough muscle to climb it without taking the time to dig out the sides.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Finn said.

  So they set to work, carving out slices of snow with their shovels. Some patches they dug felt light, the top powder that the avalanche had turned under. In other places they hit chunks of old, compacted snow turned almost to ice. When that happened, Finn and Luke spread out deicing chemicals and hacked at it with the pickaxes until they could clear it out of the way.

  Hours went by. Around noon they stopped and found some emergency food and water rations inside the transport, but they also discovered there wasn’t enough to last them more than a day or two. When Finn and Luke grew exhausted, Betty, Badri, and Dr. Von Albrecht took shifts. Jack wanted to help also, insisting the painkillers were working, but Badri refused to let him get up, and he wasn’t really in a state to argue.

  Eventually, they uncovered the nose of the transport, and by later afternoon the ramp stretched down under it to the front treads. Finn looked up and thought the climb might be too steep for the vehicle to make it out, but they would have to try to know for sure.

  Betty had the most experience with Arctic vehicles, so she took the driver’s seat. Luke closed the hatch, and everyone buckled in. Finn felt the engines rumble, and then Betty woke up all the electrical systems. Lights came on and warm air circulated.

  “Here we go!” Betty said from the cockpit.

  Finn looked over at Luke, who did not seem comfortable in the backseat while another pilot had the wheel. He gripped the armrests on his seat and leaned into the aisle to get a look ahead.

  The transport jounced but didn’t move forward, and Finn heard the squeal of metal outside. For several moments, the walls to either side trembled as the vehicle tried to break free of the snow encasing it.