Prophet's Journey, page 18
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
An opening between the slabs looked big enough for an adult to squeeze past.
“Lady Twitter, please tell Kye Althea is coming,” whispered Paama in a reverent tone.
“What?” asked Althea.
“Grandma says she is the goddess of messages. She carries them to anyone you want if you ask.”
Ooru stopped at the seam in the concrete floor, not entering the hall, and whispered, “This is the sacred temple entrance. We can’t go any farther.”
Both kids radiated genuine fear, strong to the point it verged on terror.
“I’m not sure you should either,” whispered Paama.
“Why are you whispering?”
“It is the sacred temple.” Ooru bowed his head. “Royals come here to endure the trial of leadership. Anyone not a royal will die. The gods will be angry if we even walk up to the door.”
“Then who put all that stuff in front of the door?” Althea pointed at the offerings.
“The new king or queen when they come to take the trial,” whispered Paama. “The gods would let us go to the door if we had an offering, but not inside. We don’t have an offering now so we can’t even enter the passage.”
“Are you sure you want to go in there?” Ooru radiated worry. “I don’t want you to die.”
“You shouldn’t go in.” Paama shook her head. “If Kye didn’t survive, that means she’s not really a royal.”
“What if someone goes in there who doesn’t even know your people or your gods exist? The door’s open.” Althea pointed at it. “Those raiders we saw could’ve gone in there.”
“And they’re dead.” Ooru folded his arms.
Althea sighed. “The wheelbot did that, not gods.”
“The Silver Men work for the gods.” Paama bowed her head.
“How do you know that?” asked Althea.
“It is what the elders say.” Ooru tugged on her arm. “Let’s go back and tell them we couldn’t find Kye.”
“Did you hear the machine say they were sent here to cleanse the Badlands?” Althea looked back and forth between them. “People made them. The machines came out here and they broke. They’re not doing what they were supposed to do. They have the stupid.”
“We’re scared. We don’t want you to die.” Ooru squeezed her hand.
Althea stared at the door, trying to get a feeling about going in. Nervousness simmered in the pit of her stomach, though she couldn’t tell if her clairvoy ants warned her it would be risky or if all the creepy writing on the walls merely unsettled her.
“I will be okay. I promised the council I’d look for Kye. It is bad to break promises, and bad to lie.”
“She must be royal at least.” Ooru pointed at the healed line down his chest. “The gods will let her go in.”
Paama released her hand. “All right. Please be careful. We will wait here for you.”
Althea hugged them together, then advanced into the sacred hall.
Her friends hovered at the end of the hallway, throwing off fear and concern.
She padded along, looking around at all the painted figures of people, random squiggles, and others resembling the wheelbots. A few resembled a small bluebird, one an apple with a little bite out of it. A bright yellow M appeared here and there as well as a blue sphere formed from lines. She had seen some of the same symbols on buildings in the Lost Place, ancient ruins deep in the Badlands that hadn’t changed since the Before-Time. The sour smell of rotten vegetables filled the air at the bottom. Althea scrunched her nose and twisted around to look at her friends, neither of whom had stepped one toe over the seam in the concrete floor.
“See? I’m not dead.”
“Shh!” rasped Ooru. “This temple belongs to the gods. Don’t make them angry.”
“Right. Sorry,” whispered Althea.
She slipped past the gap in the armored door, entering a clean, white corridor that reminded her of the fancy things in the bad city. Frozen speech on the wall spelled out, ‘Ancora Medical Corporation.’ Below it, smaller letters said, ‘Advanced Research Facility.’ She sounded it out, furrowed her eyebrows, and huffed. She didn’t exactly know what that meant, but remembered Officer David had told her about corporations. They somehow hurt people with something called money instead of guns or blades. She stuck her head back out the doors to stare at her friends.
“This place was made by a corp’ration, not the gods.”
Ooru blinked. “What?”
“Be careful,” said Paama in a warning tone.
“It’s right on the wall.”
“What is a corp’ration?” asked Ooru.
“Umm. Like a tribe, I think. Just big ones. There might be bad city stuff in here that’s dangerous, but it’s not magic. Umm… teck know lodgie.”
“Teck know lodgie?” Paama glanced at Ooru for a second, then back to her. “What is that?”
“Technology?” asked Ooru. “Ell-Gee said that before.”
Althea pointed at her. “The gun you picked up that makes blue light. That.”
“It’s gods’ magic.” She patted it. “Strong enough to hurt the Silver Men.”
Ooru gawked. “You hurt one?”
“They’re only machines!” shouted Althea. “You’re not gonna be punished.”
“Shh!” rasped Ooru and Paama at the same time.
Althea slapped herself in the forehead. “You guys should have the forgetting. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
She ducked into the hallway, sighing in frustration. Her friends didn’t understand this ‘temple’ was only a place from the Before-Time, or maybe not quite so long ago, that had modern stuff in it like all the things the Zero police brought to Querq to ‘make life easier.’ Electric lights, datapads, that motor that could open the city gate easily… months ago, she would have been frightened of those things, too. Blush warmed her cheeks at the memory of being terrified of hovercars, thinking them monsters that would eat her.
“I’d still be scared of all this stuff if Archon hadn’t kidnapped me and taken me to the bad city.” She frowned, staring at her feet. If he hadn’t come after her, she would probably still be locked up with Vakkar’s harem. No, six months went by. She definitely would’ve been taken by at least two other raiding groups in that time. Aurora started a war at Vakkar’s camp that forced her to do the unthinkable: actively run away from someone who had abducted her. She had to… to save the women. But they, too—at least Zhar—then wanted to abduct her. So she’d run away from them, even if she did like Rachel.
And after wandering the Badlands, searching for the courage to protect herself, she’d found a home with Father and Karina. In some crazy way, she felt thankful to Archon for giving her a family, even if it had been the furthest thing from what he’d wanted of her.
However, her two new friends waited for her outside in a highly dangerous place. She could feel sad about Archon later. Nothing in here should be scary at all. Merely technology—though, admittedly, she didn’t really like technology much either. Ooru and Paama overreacted being terrified of it, but she agreed with them that she’d rather avoid it.
A long, white hallway stretched off into the distance, lit by weak but functional ceiling lights. Much colder air in here than the outside chilled her to shivering, her toes numb upon the steel floor.
She clenched her jaw, determined to find Kye, queen or not, and get the heck out of there as fast as possible.
19
Royal Pain
The air grew even colder, swirling around Althea’s legs as she padded deeper into the facility. This place didn’t frighten her out of any worry of it being sacred or connected to any gods; however, its similarity to the bad city unnerved her. The clean white surfaces reminded her of places the Zero police had called ‘hospitals.’ Despite the overwhelming negative emotions given off by the people in that city, the hospitals had felt reasonably safe. Except for the frightening dead people who still moved and had no emotions or thoughts in their heads, the others who she met there had all been concerned for her.
She examined the floor, but Kye left no visible footprints, which seemed odd since Althea had left a quite noticeable trail of dirt and blood. When she came to the first door on the right, she approached, looking around for a knob. The door opened by itself, emitting a soft hiss of air while sliding sideways into the wall. She jumped back with a startled squeak, shot an annoyed glare at the doorway for scaring her, then peered into a modest-sized room where twelve blue chairs surrounded a large silver table. No one sat in any of them, and the room had no other exits.
“Did a ghost open the door for me?”
When no one answered, she shrugged and crossed the hall to the next door. This time, she expected it to open, and didn’t jump. That room also had chairs around a table and no people.
Faint whirring came from the hallway behind her. She glanced to her left at motion along the floor. A silver disc the size of a dinner plate, about three inches tall, glided along, following the trail of dirt she’d left.
“Contaminant detected,” said the little disc, before aggressively rolling back and forth across a particularly dark footprint.
Oh no! It’s gonna kill me!
She sprinted down the hall to the next nearest door on the left, which also opened for her, and leapt into a large room containing several desks with partition walls between them. Thin carpeting offered a somewhat warmer surface to walk on, though she didn’t care about that as much as wanting to get away from the killer machine that drew inexorably closer.
“Destroy all contaminants,” said the small disc-bot, managing an almost victorious tone in an inflectionless voice.
“Eep!”
Althea darted into the room, running around two desks before swerving left down another aisle and crawling under the last desk farthest from the door. She curled up on the floor behind the chair, arms wrapped around her legs, face half hidden behind her knees. The whirring continued in the hall, though far enough away to suggest it hadn’t seen her.
She shivered in place, listening.
The whirring came closer.
“I am the destroyer of contamination.”
The tiny horror sounded exactly like the wheelbot. Her mind ran away with itself trying to imagine how something so small would kill her if it found her. Maybe needles? Maybe it had a blue-light gun. It might even fly up off the ground and sprout sharp blades around the outside, spinning to cut her head off.
She whimpered, shivering. Go away!
When the door to the room she hid in opened with a pssht, she nearly screamed.
“So many contaminants,” said the little robot. “They will not win.”
Althea tried to press herself into the wall, but couldn’t back up any farther. The closer the whirring came, the more she trembled. When the flat, silver disc eventually rolled into view right in front of her, she screamed, cringing away from it.
“Please don’t kill me!”
“Contaminant detected,” said the disc-bot, then ran back and forth over a small smudge her foot had left in the carpet.
Althea screamed again.
The disc bot pivoted to the left, bringing a two-inch black strip on the otherwise all-silver housing to face her. A pair of green eye spots appeared, peering up at her. The bot crept closer.
She squeezed herself into the corner under the desk, trying to get away from the deadly machine.
A thin metal arm sprouted out of its side after it rolled up to her toes.
Braced for death, her mind lashed out with the same psionic detonation that had rewired Shepherd from a mindless killer to an overprotective big (massive) brother. The metal claw closed gingerly around her left ankle, tugging her foot into the air. Expecting to be dragged out from under the desk to her death, Althea grabbed at the desk, screaming.
The disc-bot sprouted a strange red cylinder from its front end, which began rotating at high speed. Petrified with terror, Althea couldn’t bring herself to move or do anything but watch as the slender metal arm pulled her foot closer. She cringed, expecting agony when the rotating engine of death touched her…
But it tickled.
Terror flickered to absolute confusion.
“Contaminant origin detected.”
The disc-bot maneuvered the spinning fuzzy thing up and down her sole… scrubbing her foot. Still clinging to the desk behind her, she couldn’t help but erupt in giggles at the sensation.
“Stop! That tickles!”
The disc-bot ignored her, continuing to apply the spinning fuzzy to her left foot for about thirty seconds before the narrow claw grip released her ankle. It pivoted and repeated the process with her other foot.
Althea squealed and giggled.
“Contaminant destroyed.” The machine played a short musical effect that sounded triumphant.
Both the spinning fuzzy and the slender arm retracted into the flat, round robot. As if pleased with itself, it spun away and drove off. Althea blinked, staring at the spot of carpet where it had been. It took a moment for her bewilderment to fade. She pulled her foot up to look at the sole, as clean as if she had just taken a bath. It smelled kinda weird though… like oranges. She tasted the bottom of her foot, but recoiled at a bitter sourness totally unlike the smell.
After spitting a few times, she crawled out from under the desk, not quite sure what to think of the small machine.
“It sounded like the other one, but this one didn’t kill me?”
Her heart still racing from her near-dirt experience, Althea made her way out into the corridor, and continued deeper into the facility. She peered into offices and storage rooms, not bothering to examine any of the strange technology for fear of hurting herself. Eventually, she reached an intersection in the hall where a strong bad feeling about going straight ahead or to the right stopped her short, the same sort of bad feeling that made her jump out of the flying machine.
She warily eyed those corridors. “It would kill me to go there. Oh, I hope Kye didn’t take that way.”
Since only one option didn’t fill her with mortal dread, she headed to the left. Doors along that hall led to huge rooms. The first two each had about twenty beds, the third contained long tables full of strange objects. She assumed them to be some manner of technology, but other than recognizing display screens, buttons, and wires, had no idea what any of them could do, especially the giant glass box with rubber gloves hanging from one side.
Frozen words near the door read, “Level 3 Protection Required – Biohazard.”
She stared at the last two words, not even sure how to say them much less what they meant. Protection, she knew, was what Father gave her. But it could also mean armor like the raiders and some of the Watch put on.
“Oh… I think I know. I need to wear armor to go in there.”
The room didn’t have anyone in it, so it didn’t matter she had no protection.
Another corridor led off to the right up ahead, but a strange clicking came from that direction. Althea crept up to the corner and leaned out only enough to peer around.
Two strange men walked along the hall, moving away from her. Both appeared to be made of white and silver plastic, quite a bit flimsier than the CRP wheelbot. Though neither carried any obvious weapons, she suspected they would try to hurt her. Like the dead people in the city hospital that moved and talked, they didn’t have emotions or thoughts. However, these things didn’t pretend to look like real people. She wondered if the moving dead back at the city might have been robots, too.
Althea didn’t like robots. They made her feel small and weak, like an ordinary child.
Not that she had any desire at all for power, but if a monster like that hurt her, she couldn’t continue helping people. Neither robot appeared to notice her watching them. She didn’t move until they disappeared around a distant corner. From the look of it, she suspected they had gone into the part of this ‘temple’ that had given her the danger feeling. Perhaps those robots would hurt her.
I shouldn’t let them see me.
They walked with a fairly stiff gait, so she hoped she could outrun them if need be. That would work unless they had guns hidden somewhere in their bodies. This place had lots of long, open corridors with nowhere to hide. If she ran straight, she’d have to swerve back and forth to avoid being shot. If she hid in a room, that would trap her.
Neither choice sounded like fun.
I gotta find Kye and get out of here fast!
She crept past the corridor to keep quiet. Once out of sight from the robot hallway, she sped up to a jog, hoping the patter of her feet on the hard floor didn’t attract danger from far away. She checked doorway after doorway, finding more small offices, rooms with big tables, and one enormous area with many round tables and chairs. A counter at the far end stood under a row of bizarre pictures. She had no names for the images, but they all appeared to be some kind of food.
Still, no people in there, so she kept going.
Two hallways of empty rooms passed in a blur of panicky running.
Althea jogged around a leftward corner into a surprisingly cold corridor, and nearly slipped on her butt. A thin layer of water coated the smooth, metal floor. After recovering her balance, she continued at a slow, careful walk over the slippery surface. Her teeth chattered. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, really wanting to have the furry blanket she’d slept under instead of her thin dress. Or maybe even both of them at once.
A nudge of her healing ability sent extra blood into her feet to keep her toes from going numb. She made her heart-shape go faster to warm her up. A metal door on the left didn’t open when she stepped near it, nor could she find any way to make it move. It had no knob, just a small black square on the wall beside it. Touching the square didn’t do anything.
