Time thief, p.11
Time Thief, page 11
The potential of neural implants had been wasted and abused in so many ways, but this was perhaps the worst. An industrialized area hidden from the people and controlled entirely by one cruel man. Although, the palaces on the coast almost infuriated me as much. The most powerful people in the peninsula vacationed to these high-tech retreats, where they could indulge in the most luxurious of pleasures, and the nastiest to imagine. I’d heard of awful virtual reality rooms where the most faithful lived out their most depraved fantasies.
Perhaps we could have cured diseases that could wipe out entire villages, but no, we had to focus on weapons for controlling and pleasures for the pampered. The forbidden lands were cursed in my mind, but not for the reasons that others feared it. Our world wasn’t ready for this power, and we didn’t deserve it.
I sped up, wishing I could flee my thoughts. The guilt pawed at me, and with it the burning of the eclipse that had always haunted me. I could feel the flames burning my hands. See the Prophet’s inky eyes staring at me. Sense death closing in around me.
A shudder squeezed my spine, trying to wring the life from me.
I pressed on with the others until we rounded a bend and saw the first large factory building looming over us. Train tracks cut across the ground before it.
Nash was the first to slow. Leif continued further toward the building, and Wren came to my side.
“Do they have things like this on the mountain?” she asked.
I nodded. “Something like it.”
Ahead of us, Nash’s hands tightened into fists. “The bastard keeps this all for himself. What storm could tear down such a structure? Children could have better homes if the Prophet is capable of this.”
The words settled over us, resonating the same way a voice echoed in the mountains. Trains arrived and departed constantly to keep up with the Prophet’s expanding reach. One would come soon and we would have to be ready.
“Forbidden,” Leif said. “Forbidden to all but a few.”
A faint roar swelled behind us and then the rumbling of the ground began in weak vibrations. Leif twisted, as if ready to face off against an enemy, while Wren studied the possible threat from her war-painted eyes. I watched Nash and how his expression changed so subtly as the massive train charged toward us. For the first time, it occurred to me that having to serve the Prophet and live in his shadow meant Nash had seen things Leif and Wren hadn’t. And that, perhaps, shock did not come as easily to him as I expected.
There was no need for defense this far away from any villages and so deep in the forbidden lands. The train pulled to a stop right before a massive door that opened to the factory, where large crates traveled by overhead rails. Then, the train would creep forward, so the next car lined up with the door.
I motioned for my friends to follow as I climbed up the side of a car and hefted myself on top.
Leif clung to the edge when the train rolled forward, eyes wide. “I still do not understand.”
I had to turn my face away to keep from laughing.
Once the last car had been loaded, I rolled onto my stomach and held the edge like Leif had. “Don’t let go.”
The train moved forward, gaining speed every moment until it broke that of a horse, and soared beyond how fast anyone except for me would have ever traveled.
Leif screamed at the top of his lungs with his hair ripping back in the wind. “I don’t fucking understand.”
But Nash lifted onto his forearms, eyes bright as he looked over the side. My stomach tightened and I grabbed the back of his shirt, terrified he’d fall.
“Careful,” I said.
He looked into my eyes, laughing that exhilarated kind of laugh while the curls flew back from his face. “No land will be forbidden to me again.”
My heart caught. I gripped his shirt still, unable to let go with how close to the edge he rode. “You’re having fun?”
He scooted to the middle of the car and carefully crawled onto his knees, letting his head fall back, his arms raised, his tunic whipping in the wind. Exposed cliffs flashed around us as the train rushed ahead at full speed. Leif screamed in horror again while Nash laughed and unleashed a very different kind of roar.
Wren nudged me with her foot. She’d been so quiet and still, I hadn’t even looked at her. “Stop worrying so much.”
I bit my lip and looked back to Nash. It did look fun. Sighing, I crawled beside him and closed my eyes against the power of the wind. His arm slid around me, and Leif was too busy clinging for dear life to the edge of the car to notice.
“Does it go faster, Sharpshooter?”
“I think this is fast enough.” I laughed.
With the danger we were barreling for, I couldn’t believe I was feeling anything close to fun, but I couldn’t keep Nash’s infectious grin from spreading to me.
So I took the excuse to hold on to him, to let the wind take away my suspicion and fear, and enjoy the exhilaration of how each curve made us slide. Nash and I held on to each other tightly, laughing as we kept each other from toppling over. I could let myself have a short time with my guard down. It felt good to let go of all of my anxiety. It seemed to be something Nash had no trouble doing.
I couldn’t decide if he just didn’t have the good sense to be afraid. Or, if maybe he had the sense not to be.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We hiked through the foothills of the mountain after we reached the end of the train’s line. Along the way, I told everyone of the dangers that awaited us: hidden pits with sharpened stakes, a lethal army, perilous trails. The mountain guard would kill anyone who came or left without permission. No exceptions. The only reason I’d ever escaped was because in the earliest days of the school, the instructors had used their power to carve secret passageways into the mountain. None of them connected from the beginning to the top, but it offered reprieve for anyone who lived at the Sacred School if they needed to take an unsanctioned trip down the mountain.
Gentle slopes stretched into towering hills, the dark of fertile land now pocked with gravel and bright with rusty soil, bald here where the carpet of trees had thinned into dead grass and thorny weeds. The Valley was lush with vegetation, but the southeast side of the Mountain of the Gods looked as if someone had painted it in a brushstroke of red. A unique pocket of iron-rich hills and cliffs starved this swath of land. Soon, the inclines would steepen into small mountains that rolled like waves into the giant peaks, and there the cover of evergreen pines would shield us from the sun once more.
We were close. Close enough for the land to cool in the mountain’s shadow. As we hiked, the hours crawled by, and the mountain slowly grew above us, until its white peaks took up most of the sky.
“I want to know more about the mountain and the Sacred School.” Nash spoke quietly to me.
“I’ve told you what I can.”
“You hold the knowledge and power in your hands and feed me crumbs as you see fit.” He pounded his fist in his hand. “I won’t go from being the Prophet’s lackey to yours.”
Pain pinched my chest. “I never asked you to do that. If you don’t trust me, then go home.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I just want to know what the hell I’m jumping into.”
I wiped the sweat from my brow. “Chaos and torment. That’s what, Nash. Mysteries you’ll never unravel. Get used to it if you want to finish this journey.”
He huffed in frustration and walked on ahead of me. Fine. I steeled myself against his dissatisfaction and trekked forward.
I continued the rest of the way in silence, slowing when I reached the unseen barrier surrounding the mountain. Would the gods intervene? The instructors should not have been able to detect me unless I used my power, which of course, I currently couldn’t. But I had no idea what the gods were capable of.
I tensed my muscles as I took my first step over and waited for something devastating, like a fireball to shoot from the sky and incinerate me. Nothing happened, though. Another step and I started to hope that I might survive after all.
Nothing looked different over this barrier, not the cone tops of the trees or the dense shadows, but the air here was charged. Already, the warmth of my dormant power felt even hotter than normal.
From this moment on, we would be hunted if anyone caught even a hint of our presence. “We’re here,” I said. “Stay quiet.”
Nash, Leif, and Wren filed into a line behind me, copying my every movement perfectly, just as we’d discussed as we traveled. Harsh rock cliffs and broken patches of grassy land mottled the terrain. I stepped carefully across what looked like a worn path up a slope, but I knew hidden pits lined both sides, with only a thin patch of earth to travel across. I steadied my breath as I put one foot in front of the other.
“Everyone okay?” I asked and checked behind me.
They all nodded.
Once I crossed the path, I held my breath until Nash, Leif, and finally Wren made it to me. There wasn’t time to celebrate. Every moment out in the open risked us being seen, and the guards had radios. If I did manage to use my power, they even had detectors that picked up quantum energy so they could track us.
Why the gods had been willing to give such advanced technology to the guards when they claimed not to act in our world made my blood boil. The guards had a mandate from the gods, and I knew their communication and detection devices came from them. Dr. Henderson wouldn’t help children trapped at the school, but she would equip people to hunt us down.
I struggled to understand why the guards so fanatically fought to protect the mountain. Piercey had wondered if they were artificial intelligence. But the gods would want to replicate whatever they did here in physical worlds. What had they done to earn such fealty?
There were so many answers left to uncover. I had always wondered if that was the real reason Piercey refused to come with me. So he could unearth all the secrets on this mountain.
We navigated around pit after pit. Finally, we picked up our pace across steepening terrain until we stopped at the base of a towering hillside. Sparse trees grew out from the side, the roots bare where earth had slid away beneath rain and wind.
“We have to get to the top,” I said. “Watch the path I take.”
“There must be an easier way.” Leif gaped at the towering hill.
“Trust me. This is the easy path. Any other way, and we’ll have to fight the guards, which means we’d have to keep fighting our way up the rest of the mountain.” I gripped a tree root sticking out from the mud and hefted myself up. “Go slow.”
We picked our way up the dirt incline on our hands and knees. I tested the ground ahead of us, careful to veer away from any patches of ground that didn’t look stable. Leif climbed up right beside me with Wren and Nash not far behind.
Rocks broke loose from Leif’s grip and tumbled down the hill. He pressed his head against the dirt, breathing out slowly. “We’re all going to die.”
“We’re not going to die.” I dug my toes into the earth and climbed up another foot.
The ground vibrated against my hands; the mountain angry with my arrogance.
Beneath Nash’s hands and knees, a massive shelf of earth broke free of the hillside. In an instant, he was airborne.
Fear choked out my breath.
I launched myself down the hill with all my strength and drew my blade as I fell. I reached for the heat inside of me desperately, focusing on the power I felt from this mountain, and struggled to grasp what had been locked away. Traces of it burned inside of me and helped to drive myself faster than Nash tumbled, until he was within reach. But I needed more and I needed it now.
I slammed my sword through the falling debris for the cliffside. Nash caught the hilt of the sword with me, so I released my hold on it to grab him around his neck, fighting against the earth to lock my legs around him.
Nash grunted as he held on to the sword with both hands now, our bodies slowing just slightly more than the landslide. Still reaching for my power, I clawed at scraps of it to help us stop. I managed only to pull out a trickle of it, but it was enough to clear out the mud around us so the sword broke free to stable earth. It nearly ripped the weapon from his hands and me from his back. I wasn’t sure whether we held on ourselves or whether that was more power that had saved us.
We hung from the sword as the ground fell away beneath us.
“You’re …” Nash panted. “… insane …”
Looking up, I found Wren with her arm latched around a small tree while Leif pulled her over the edge of the newly formed cliff.
Dread filled me. The guards would have heard that landslide and I may have managed to use enough power for them to detect.
I released Nash and rolled as I slid along loose dirt. Nash dropped next and tossed the sword to the side. The mud nearly swallowed it whole.
“You could have died.” Nash stumbled toward me, covered in mud. Chunks of it hung from his hair, the weight flattening his curls. “What were you thinking?”
“We’re alive. It doesn’t matter.” I looked up at the exposed cliff. There was no way we were getting back up. “We’ll have to take the difficult route.” I sighed and backed up to see Leif and Wren. “The passageway is behind you. Travel up the stairs. We’ll meet you at the top by the morning. Do you see it?”
I focused on the rock wall, imagined it, and tried to carefully pry open the narrow slit that would allow them through. Damn it, though. It wasn’t working. Opening the passageway took so little energy. I had to find a way to access these passageways or we were dead, considering that we’d accidentally announced ourselves to the guards.
Breathing in deeply, I allowed my father’s voice from childhood to fill me. Though I tried not to think about him, he always made me angry, and anger more than any other emotion helped me to unleash myself.
“Feel the flame inside you. Let it grow.”
Energy flowed out from me, not as something I could see, but feel. Enough, I hoped.
Leif looked back down with wide eyes.
Yeah, he saw.
“Be careful!” he shouted.
“We have to go.” I nodded toward the woods. “Guards could be here any minute.”
Nash followed me as I sprinted for the wooded hill to our right. This led to an impassable rock wall with only a thin tunnel that was always crawling with guards.
“We’ll have to fight.” I drew my bow. “There’s no way around it.”
A tree splintered ahead of us. We both shot to the ground. I rolled off my shoulder and landed on my knee behind a tree trunk. Nash pressed against one ahead of me.
I spun out from my shelter. Immediately released my arrow into the chest of our attacker.
“Flank them,” I said. “Dead ahead there’s a tunnel through the cliff. Meet me there.”
Nash nodded, swords drawn now. “Be safe, Sharpshooter.”
I clenched my jaw, thinking of Elsie in his arms. “You, too.”
We broke away and sprinted in opposite directions.
The power escaping from the cracks within me might not have compared to what I’d once been able to do, but it energized me now. As I ran, I easily listened for heartbeats. There were five guards already in Nash’s path. I couldn’t leave all of them for him. My eyes fluttered as I aimed my bow and drove my arrow with my mind. It whizzed between trees, around branches, and flew straight into the heart of a guard headed for Nash.
Despite not being able to use power for so many years, what I could grasp came back to me naturally.
With my hearing attuned, I noticed the stomping of the guards as they all switched directions, running straight for me. They must have been watching their radars and I must have exuded enough energy for them to detect.
A group came into sight. They scattered between the trees, using them as cover as they wove through the woods.
I had to break through this seal on my power. These few hours on the Mountain of the Gods had helped me to regain far more than I had during years of training and struggle. Everything was different here. I could do this.
When Piercey and I had trained at the Sacred School, he had increased his powers by studying the science behind what we did and by actually understanding the code of our world. I’d always felt it, like water I could run my fingers through, or sand I could gather in my hand. It was the same as seeing the visible world versus reading a description of it. Without thought, I experienced it.
Together, we’d made a great team by combining those imperfect methods. I didn’t understand exactly why this mountain changed my access to my power, but as I reached for it, I felt as if I could actually touch it for the first time since it was sealed. If only I had Piercey with me to help me get there faster by seeing the world through his eyes as well as my own.
I could not allow anything to hold me back, though. Lifting my palms, I scraped down to the depths of my soul with my will. Everyone was counting on me. If I couldn’t do this, it wasn’t just Leif, Wren, and Nash who would die here. All of our warriors and innocents would, too. I had to let go of my past failures and my fear that I couldn’t do this. I had to kill the curse.
A wave of energy exploded out from me.
The guards flew through the air from the power of the hit. They slammed against their backs and slid across the ground, knocking into each other, into thick trees.
Wow. The rush flooded my body with energy. It was by far the most power I’d managed since losing mine. Even so, it was a pathetic shadow of what I’d once managed to do. I should have been able to instantly kill all of them.
I lowered my head. The burn of my power ate across my skin. This sting was only a taste of how bad it could get. I needed to get used to it again.
To my heightened senses, the subtle twitch of a guard turning his hand for his knife jolted through my chest like he’d slammed his fist into me. My eyes snapped to him.
I bound his hand with my mind. Turned his own weapon on him so the quivering tip pushed for his throat.
He clasped it with both hands. The veins in his arms and neck and face strained like massive worms thrashing to break free of skin.
