The Arctic Code

  First, she changed the alignment of its roots so that it ceased the gathering of telluric currents. Then, to shut it down, she killed the squirming, fragmentary awareness embedded in the Concentrator’s machinery. It was easy, like pulling a grub out of the grass and crushing it between her fingers.

  Her connection with the alien device collapsed, and the oil slick over her mind cleared away, the Concentrator a lifeless monument to the inscrutable force that had created it.

  Eleanor opened her eyes.

  “It’s done,” she said.

  Her mom blinked. “How . . . ?” She looked at the console. “You were working the controls. It responded to you.”

  “I shut it down,” Eleanor said.

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t know why she was able to sense the hum, why she saw the dark planet, or why the Concentrator had obeyed her. But she was, she did, and it had.

  A loud cracking sounded overhead, close enough to thunder that Eleanor thought of lightning. She glanced up. A seam had appeared in the cavern’s ceiling, and as she looked, it spread, like a chip in a windshield.

  “Mom?” she said.

  “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  They ran from the crater, up the hill to where Kixi stood grazing.

  “What’s going on?” Eleanor asked.

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “The energy from the Concentrator must have been sustaining the cavern. Now it’s gone.”

  A second crack appeared, larger than the first. Chunks of ice rained down from it onto the tundra. Kixi’s eyes rolled, looking everywhere, her small, flappy ears twitching.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” her mother said. “We have to run.”

  Eleanor nodded and tugged on Kixi’s fur. “Come on, girl. You have to come with us.”

  The mammoth took a few uncertain steps and then broke into a trot, following Eleanor and her mother as they ran across the tundra toward the canyon. Before they’d even reached the village, three new cracks had appeared, joining up with the first, dropping boulders and icebergs that shook the ground when they struck.

  Kixi trumpeted, batting at Eleanor with her trunk.

  “I know, girl,” she said.

  They were still a distance from the canyon, and even if they made it, they would have to climb the crevasse, and Eleanor worried about its stability with the ceiling caving in.

  A chunk of ice the size of a car landed on one of the mammoth-bone huts right next to them, crushing it and splintering its massive bones. Kixi bellowed but kept to Eleanor’s side, even though the mammoth could have run faster. Kixi had charged Skinner with overwhelming speed, but she was staying with Eleanor and her mom, as if waiting for them.

  Up ahead, the canyon opened. Next to it was Amarok’s other sled. The sight of it gave Eleanor an idea, and she ran for it.

  “Kixi!” she said. “Kixi, come here! You’re going to help us, okay?”

  The mammoth followed her, and Eleanor gathered the coils of leather cord that normally harnessed a team of ten wolves, then asked her mom to help. Together, they tied the ropes around the mammoth’s waist. Kixi stamped her feet a little but let them do it, and a few moments later, Eleanor and her mother climbed onto the sled.

  On the far side of the cavern, a whole section of the wall sloughed off, like the shelf of an iceberg falling into the sea.

  Eleanor grabbed onto the sled. “Okay, Kixi, run!” she shouted, but the mammoth stood rooted in place. “Kixi!”

  “Here,” her mom said. She picked up Amarok’s whip and gave it a swing over her head, but it took a couple of tries before it cracked near Kixi’s rear end.

  The mammoth’s legs quivered with a startled little jump, and she lurched forward at a trot, dragging the sled behind her.

  “Faster, Kixi!” Eleanor said.

  Her mom cracked the whip again, and the mammoth broke into a gallop, straight into the canyon, the crevasse barely wide enough for her enormous frame.

  Up they rose, climbing as fast as Amarok’s wolves. Behind them, they heard the cracking and thunder continue as the cavern came down. It seemed the whole thing would collapse any moment.

  “Good girl, Kixi!” Eleanor called in a voice she used for puppies. “Faster! Faster!”

  The mammoth trumpeted, galloping upward, sometimes breaking right through the sides of the canyon with her broad shoulders when it became too narrow. The minutes and the distance passed slowly but steadily.

  At last, Eleanor sighted a slice of sky overhead. “We’re almost there!”

  She and her mother put on their masks, and soon they burst onto the surface. Kixi stopped abruptly, the sled careening to the side, almost spilling Eleanor and her mom. In the distance, they saw the silver spheres of Polaris Station, while Amarok’s people, his wolves, and the station crew raced toward them in an indistinct mob.

  Just then, the ground shook with a tremor, and a few minutes later, the first of the runners reached them. Eleanor had to smile at the look of shock on the faces of the station crew when they passed Kixi and kept going, fleeing the weakening ground. Soon, Eleanor spotted Finn, Julian, and their dad. Between them, they supported a wounded Amarok, who could barely keep up.

  “Finn!” Eleanor shouted. “Bring him here!”

  “What’s going on down there?” Dr. Powers asked, out of breath, as they reached the sled.

  “The cavern is collapsing,” Eleanor’s mother said. “Eleanor shut down the Concentrator.”

  Dr. Powers nodded, appearing somewhat confused as he helped lay Amarok down on the sled. Then they all climbed on, Eleanor’s mother gave the whip another crack, and Kixi pulled them forward.

  “Skinner?” Finn asked.

  “Dead,” Eleanor said. “He was messing with the Concentrator.”

  “But a mammoth got in his way,” her mother said.

  Kixi hauled them a short distance, and a minute later, the cracking sound behind them grew frantic and deafening. Eleanor looked back to see plumes of ice and snow shooting hundreds of feet in the air, the spheres of the station beginning to sink, tipping inward against one another with the squealing of tortured metal. Then the ground opened up with a boom that seemed to ripple the ice beneath the sled, and the station vanished with the rest of the ice sheet into a gaping hole a mile wide.

  No one said anything. They just stared. Tears had started down the side of Amarok’s cheek but had frozen there along the way, and Eleanor grieved with him. In an instant, he had just witnessed his entire world buried under a mountain of ice.

  After the ground had settled, Amarok’s people regrouped near the edge of the crater, tending to their wounded and their dying, reverent at the grave of their village and those who had been caught in the collapse. The hired hands of the station crew had collected some distance away and seemed to have lost all interest in their former captives.

  Eleanor and her mom told Finn, Julian, and Dr. Powers what had happened in the cavern with Skinner, but when it came time to explain how Eleanor had shut down the Concentrator, she couldn’t find the right words. To describe it would’ve required a language she didn’t know.

  “The Preservation Protocol?” Dr. Powers asked.

  Eleanor’s mom leaned over Amarok, pushing aside his devoted wolves so she could tend to the warrior’s wound. “That’s what he called it.”

  “They can’t hide it forever,” Dr. Powers said. “It’s a planet.”

  “They’ve kept it secret so far,” Eleanor said. “And look at the damage they’ve caused already.”

  “True,” Dr. Powers said, then turned to Eleanor’s mother and gestured to Amarok. “How is he?”

  “The bullet passed clean through,” she said. “It didn’t break any bones on its way. I think he will heal, especially if the effects of the energy linger with him. Though I can’t say the same for some of the others. I should help tend to them.”

  She got up to leave, but Amarok took her hand, which was covered in his drie
d blood, and squeezed it. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “But I am so sorry about your home.”

  He closed his eyes a moment, nodded, and then said, “You go. Night soon.”

  He was right. They were in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from Barrow, without shelter or supplies, none of their suits had power, and they didn’t possess Amarok’s resistance to the cold.

  “Sam,” Dr. Powers said, “do you still have the Sync? Could we contact Barrow?”

  “Possibly.” Eleanor’s mother dug into a pocket in her suit and pulled out Eleanor’s device, but her body sagged when she looked at it. “Oh, no.”

  “What is it?” Eleanor asked.

  “The cell signal is dead.”

  “I thought the Sync could communicate anywhere in the world,” Julian said. “Isn’t that the point?”

  “Only with the quantum twin,” her mother said. “For normal connections, it used regular cell towers and satellites. Polaris Station had its own relay, but now that’s gone. I have no way to reach Barrow.”

  “It’s okay,” Dr. Powers said. “It’ll be okay. Someone from Barrow should be here soon. They had to feel that—it was practically an earthquake. They’re going to want to know what happened.”

  He was probably right, and that reassured Eleanor. But what did that mean for Amarok and his people? Where could they go? What would they do?

  She looked down at Amarok and found him smiling at her from the sled. “Make new home,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. Then, in his own language, he called his people to him, and they gathered around the sled. He spoke to them for several moments. Many of them wept openly, but under the influence of their leader’s voice, their shoulders rose and their backs straightened. When Amarok finished, they moved with determination and purpose. A few of them untied the sled from Kixi, then harnessed up Amarok’s wolves. There were only six of them.

  Before long, they’d assembled together, some of the wounded on the sled with Amarok, others limping along with help. Amarok smiled at Eleanor’s mother and the others. “Good-bye,” he said, and with one last glance at Eleanor, “Make new home.”

  Then he and his people marched forward as one, away from the crater, toward the horizon. Eleanor watched them diminish in the distance until their individual silhouettes merged into a single moving shadow, Kixi a shuffling bulge in the middle.

  “What’s going to happen to them?” Finn asked.

  “Whatever it is,” Julian said, “it’ll be on their terms. You gotta respect that.”

  He had a point, but Eleanor felt something else. Watching that wounded, beleaguered village marching across the ice, diminishing with each step, she thought of what Skinner had said, the future he had described. Tribes like Amarok’s, gone. Cities like Phoenix, gone. Whole cultures and civilizations, erased. Humanity reduced to a small group of survivors, chosen by the G.E.T., eking out an existence on a barren, frozen planet for as long as they could, with no real hope.

  Well, those were not Eleanor’s terms. That was not the future she wanted.

  In the next moment, Amarok’s people were gone, swallowed up in the empty vastness of the glacier, lost to the ice once more.

  CHAPTER

  24

  THE COLD DESCENDED ON THEM RAPIDLY. BUT AFTER everything they’d been through, Eleanor wasn’t about to let it win at the end. She gnashed and growled inside, fighting back the cold with her mind, even as her body weakened and went numb.

  They had all gathered together, forming a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder, to conserve body heat, teeth chattering, clapping hands, stamping feet. Off in the distance, the crew of Polaris Station did the same. But soon they mustered and moved, setting out over the ice in the direction of Barrow, and a short while later they disappeared.

  At one point, Eleanor’s mother leaned in to Dr. Powers. “I’ve been monitoring my symptoms. Hypothermia will set in soon,” she whispered.

  He put his arm around her. “Someone will come. Hang in there, Sam.”

  But as the afternoon sun fell closer and closer to the horizon, and Eleanor lost feeling in her feet, she began to wonder if the cold had finally been given the time it needed to take her and all of them. Its waiting game had paid off.

  “Perhaps we should start walking, too,” her mother said. “Toward Barrow.”

  “No,” Dr. Powers said. “Here, near the crater, is our best chance of being spotted.”

  That made sense, but Eleanor felt the cold robbing her hope. She remembered all the times it had assaulted her—in the tunnel, and after she’d run from Skinner. She realized it had only been running her down, exhausting her with its lethal strategy.

  Just then, the distant sound of an engine whined along the ice toward them. They all looked at one another, then leaped to their feet, scanning the horizon and the sky.

  “Do you see anything?” Julian asked.

  “Nothing,” Dr. Powers said.

  But the sound was real, growing louder, getting closer, and a few moments later, Finn pointed up in the sky and exclaimed, “There!”

  It was a small plane, with runners along its belly, able to land and take off on the ice. As it neared the crater, it dipped low, and Eleanor and the others began to jump, flail their arms, and shout at it.

  “Hey!”

  “Down here!”

  “Help us!”

  The plane circled a couple of times around the crater in a lazy arc, showing no sign that its pilot had noticed the people stranded down below, and Eleanor began to worry that any moment, it would head back to Barrow, leaving them to die. But in one last pass, the pilot took the circle a little wider, flying almost directly over Eleanor and the others. They jumped and screamed at its belly, then its tail.

  “Did they see us?” Finn asked. “Did they?”

  “They had to,” Dr. Powers said, and he was right.

  The plane swung out far and banked, lining up for an approach, then came in for a landing very close to where Eleanor and the rest stood waiting. As soon as it reached a stop, they all rushed toward it.

  As Eleanor approached the craft, the door opened, and a familiar face appeared, covered in stubble.

  “Did you guys make that mess?” Luke asked, pointing at the crater.

  Eleanor couldn’t believe it. How was he here? How did he know? “We did,” she said as she boarded the plane with the others. “Are you impressed?”

  “Very,” he said, and pulled her into a quick, backslapping hug. “Good to see you, kid.”

  “Good to see you, too,” Eleanor said.

  When they were all onboard and seated, Luke closed the main door and returned to his open cockpit. “I take it these two are Dr. Perry and Dr. Powers?”

  “We are,” Eleanor’s mother said. “And you are?”

  “This is Luke Fournier, Mom,” Eleanor said. “If it wasn’t for him, I would never have found you.”

  “Then I am very grateful to you, Mr. Fournier,” her mother said.

  “Just Luke,” he said, facing forward for takeoff. “And if it wasn’t for your daughter, I’d probably be kicking back with a warm drink in Phoenix right now. So let’s get going.”

  A few moments later, airborne, Eleanor was able to see the full scale of the crater. It looked as if a meteor had struck the ice sheet. The open pit, wider than a football stadium, dropped hundreds and hundreds of feet from the surface to a jagged field of icy rubble at the bottom. In shutting down the Concentrator, Eleanor had left a terrible, gaping wound on the ice sheet from which it would not easily heal.

  She found a measure of satisfaction in that.

  On the short flight back to Barrow, Luke explained how he had ended up at the crater, circling. It turned out the whole town had felt the impact of the cavern collapse, just as Dr. Powers had expected they would, and several pilots had wanted to investigate. But the G.E.T. had seized the airport and grounded everyone.

  “Whatever had happened out there,” he said, “they did
n’t want anyone to see it.” He turned around and looked back into the cabin with a crooked grin. “Which naturally meant that I had to. So I, uh, borrowed this little girl and got in the air as quick as I could. Bit dicey at takeoff, though. Bastards actually tried to shoot me down.”

  “We are very grateful you risked it,” Eleanor’s mother said.

  “I admit,” Luke said, “I wasn’t expecting to find you all alive.”

  Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Thanks a lot.”

  “The G.E.T. won’t show any of us mercy, going forward,” Dr. Powers said, and a somber silence took hold of the aircraft.

  He was right. They were outlaws now. The G.E.T. might even try to hunt them down for what they knew, to ensure their silence and maintain the UN’s so-called Preservation Protocol. They would have to go into hiding somewhere.

  Eleanor grabbed her mother’s arm with a sudden panic. “We need to warn Uncle Jack!”

  “As soon as we get to Barrow,” she said, nodding.

  “So what happened down there?” Luke asked.

  Eleanor and the others just looked at one another, not sure where to start. But Eleanor took the lead, explaining everything, aware of how impossible it all sounded. But Luke just kept nodding along, occasionally glancing back at her. His eyebrows stayed pressed together, except the few times his eyes widened, but he seemed to be taking it all in. Maybe it was the fact that there were four other people, two of them scientists, nodding along in agreement.

  When she finished, Luke rubbed the whiskers on his chin for a solid minute, thinking. Then he said, “So there’s aliens up there on some planet? Right now?”

  Eleanor thought back to her vision of the dark world. Its terrible surface had felt . . . dead. Long, long dead. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think the planet and the Concentrators are running on their own. Automatically.”

  “So where are the others?” Luke asked.