Chapter Seventeen

 

The rock hung in midair between Pandora and the wall, quivering under the strain of an opposing Push and Pull. The tendons in her neck stood out as she exuded every effort to keep the object aloft. The constant readjustments to ensure the rock didn't spin away under the pressure of counter-forces left a damp sweat on her forehead.

Her entire class watched from the sidelines as she passed the one-minute mark. None of the other sapphires, except Instructor Irina, had reached this mark. But Pandora was a long way from the record of five minutes, which the Iron Bitch held.

"Come on, Pan," cheered Choo-Choo, receiving severe looks from the instructor.

Pandora's whole body was attuned to the hovering rock. Her sapphire radar radiated outward like dense webbing, where she was the spider at the center, reading the vibrations. The effort was making her jaw hurt. She was in the middle of readjusting her Push when tremors came through the outer walls of the cave, an unexpected sensation that distracted her from the task. The rock spun out of control as her Pull overrode the Push, and she had to throw herself to the ground as the rock sailed over her head to tumble down the path, nearly hitting the instructor, who never let a single muscle twitch in anticipation or fear.

"Did you feel that?" Pandora asked from the crouched position.

"This is no time for excuses," said Instructor Irina. Her ponytail was extra tight, which raised her eyebrows into a permanent surprised look. "Until you learn to use your stones without resorting to physical effort, you will continue to fail." She raised her head towards the class. "This is the same for all of you. Razor would wipe up the lot of you, just like that boy did to Pandora last year. None of you are worthy of the title of waku, because you do not lean into the pain. If my hands weren't being tied, I would show you what real training means, but until that time you'll have to overcome the weakness of our Academy on your own."

"My apologies, Instructor, I did not mean to imply an excuse. But there was some shaking, like a tremor or something else."

She had a good idea what the something else was, but didn't want to voice the idea, fearing it would make it true.

"I heard it," said Hector. "I was running my amber, trying to see her sapphire like that Razor did in the duel. It came from the main area. Like an explosion."

The word brought fear to their faces. Pandora felt it as well.

"Enough of this panic. You are waku. You do not fear, but even the earth and rocks should fear you," said Instructor Irina.

The sound of soles slapping brought their heads around as a runner approached. She pointed back to the main settlement, speaking through breaths.

"Someone blew up the processing building. They need an opal bad."

The announcement brought the class off their feet, led by Instructor Irina, who propelled herself ahead using her sapphire. Pandora's first thought as she ran after the others was to check the safety of the explosives she'd taken from Garret. Her second thought was that she was going to drop him off the edge of the canyon of ghosts if she learned this was him. Then her third was the remembrance that Triana was probably working this moment, a fact that Choo-Choo knew as well. She glanced back to see the dread in his eyes as he careened down the path, desperate to catch up with only an amber stone.

Smoke roiled from the collapsed structure upon arrival. Pandora saw old men, women, and kids wandering around with soot-smudged faces in a daze. Small fires continued to burn near the rubble. It looked like the building had been knocked down by the hand of a giant.

"Where's Triana?" she asked a kid who was standing along the path staring into the destruction. When he didn't answer, Pandora shook his arm. He was in shock. She left him in search of other answers. If she could find out the truth before Choo-Choo maybe she could shield him from the worst of the pain.

People were milling everywhere. Someone was screaming near the building. Instructor Irina was crouched over an old man with a glazed look in his eyes. Pandora slowed long enough to see the instructor shake her head at the bystanders, a signal that her healing energies had come too late.

The longer Pandora went without finding Triana, the worse she knew reality was going to be, because if she was alive, she'd be helping the others. That she was nowhere to be found meant the worst.

"I will kill them all," she muttered under her breath, not even understanding who she meant.

Smoke drifted into her eyes, reminding her of past days. A thousand primes drifted into her vision, none of them worthy of being counted. No. She didn't want to avoid the pain. Pandora leaned into it. Rage. That would be her fuel.

"Pan!"

The voice cut through the fog. A woman's voice. Triana. She waved from the other side of a fallen water tank, blood splattered across her jaw. Relief flooded into her system, followed by a strange wetness at her eyes, which she wiped away before it was spotted.

Upon arrival, Pandora saw the problem that Triana wanted her to solve. A timber lay across an older woman with nut-brown skin, soot-covered dark hair, and a grimace that spoke of the pain she was under.

"It's too heavy for me to move. Fila's stuck."

Pandora hesitated. She wanted to throw her arms around Triana and tell her how happy she was that she wasn't dead, but the old woman needed her help. She carefully analyzed the arrangement before attempting to use her sapphire. The stone required linear directions. She stood at the end of the fallen beam and Pulled the top of the obstruction toward her, careful not to yank too hard and let it fall on her. As the beam lifted, Triana and two men carried Fila out of the way. Pandora let the beam down when she was free.

"Come on, there are others trapped," said Triana, leaping towards the collapsed building.

"You're hurt," said Pandora.

Triana waved her away. "It'll stop on its own."

"What happened?"

Triana led them to the pile of timbers and crumpled corrugated steel. She crouched on her heels and peered through a gap.

"I think there are others in here. Someone said they heard voices," said Triana with pinched lips.

Pandora was about to comment that she needed more than herself to move the pile when Choo-Choo, Navos, and a few other waku appeared. Choo-Choo's face cracked with relief upon seeing his mother, but he pushed away the fear that had haunted him the entire run and focused on Pandora.

"There might be more inside," Pandora told them. "We have to lift this pile without causing a collapse. I need the sapphires with me for the major lifting, and the topazes ready to catch falling beams or haul people out if we reach them."

The flat expression from Choo-Choo had her adding, "I'll need you to watch and listen with your amber. You'll have to guide us as we work to reach them."

He stared back as if he hadn't heard.

"Choo-Choo?"

"Yeah, got it," he said, swallowing, then when she glared, added, "Got it."

Pandora set herself before the destruction. It looked like a haystack with timbers and other support beams sticking out everywhere. As she analyzed it to find the order that they needed to remove them, a part of her recognized a scene from her past, which made her adrenaline race into the stratosphere until she dug her fingernails into her palms. The smell of smoke, the creak of steel, and the crunch of glass threatened her hold on the moment until she rallied and pushed it back.

"Okay, sapphires, we're going to lift these beams off the pile. You need to crouch down here to get leverage. Navos, I want you on the opposite side making adjustments as they fall, making sure nothing disturbs the main pile."

The exhaustion from the long trials in class was trivial compared to the need. Pandora found reserves to spare, the collective effort adding fuel. The first beam came away easily. The second, fifth, and tenth weren't difficult either, but as they had to disentangle the twisted pieces without threatening the integrity of the entire structure, it required multiple Pushes and Pulls at different angles to work through the pile.

"Stop!" yelled Choo-Choo, holding his arms out. Even though he was only using his amber, sweat gleamed on his bald head. "I hear voices." He crouched nearby for a moment and then the twitch of hope appeared on his lips before he clamped it back. "They're still alive. I hear them. But some are injured. They need out soon."

"Then let's get them out. Everyone ready for one big Push on this sheet metal? I think we can use it to lift the rest like a lid. Topazes, be ready to support and everyone else to haul them out when we can see." Pandora positioned herself at the center. "Okay, on my count. One, two, THREE!"

A long day of training and then the removal of the beam had left Pandora with little remaining energy to give. The sheet metal quivered upward, groaning and clicking as the remaining pile shifted. The sheet wasn't thick enough to hold the weight and started bending, so Pandora shifted herself beneath and used her sapphire Push to hold the weak spots. As the lid lifted, a hole formed in the back where lights flashed out. No self-respecting clan member was ever without their emergency kit.

Choo-Choo threw himself down by her, reaching into the hole and yanking out a young boy covered in dust and blood, a wound on his forehead. The boy was handed over to the team of opals ready to heal the wounded.

As the pile lifted further, the hole became large enough for the other survivors, but the weight was making it hard to maintain.

"No higher!" someone yelled. "If you shift it any more the water tank might slip into the crawl space."

Pandora had hoped to flip the sheet metal over, but when that possibility was taken from them, she said through gritted teeth, "Get them out quickly."

Choo-Choo hadn't stopped working during the adjustment, helping an older woman with a halo of gray hair around her head. The others came one at a time, but not fast enough for Pandora, who felt her jaw and stomach threatening to spasm from the effort. The instructor's earlier words came to mind about using her physical body to aid what should have been her sapphire force only. She tried to relax her muscles, but the metal sheet bent, and trash fell into the hole, slapping across Choo-Choo's back.

"Sorry," she grunted and reapplied her effort.

As the minutes went on, she didn't think she could hold it any longer. A migraine was brewing at the base of her skull. Spots formed, pinpricks of light surrounded by shadow, forcing her to clamp her eyes shut. She feared she was having a stroke, but then the strain reduced and she peeked out, finding the sturdy frame of Duro along with three other older waku standing with her, holding up the pile.

When the last survivor was pulled from the hole, the waku slipped out from under and let it crash with a resounding clang. Dust flung up in all directions, making people cough and sputter until it dissipated.

Pandora collapsed to the ground, her side seizing with a cramp from the effort of holding up the pile.

"Do you need assistance?" asked Duro, but she waved him off.

"Heal the others."

As she shuddered in the aftereffects of using her sapphire for ten minutes straight, Triana appeared with a cup of water, which she drank greedily. Pandora couldn't even make the effort to speak when Triana kissed her on the forehead.

"You did good."

"What happened?" she rasped out.

"It would have been worse had it happened a minute before. Most of us were on break outside the building when it blew."

Pandora pictured dropping Garret from a ledge and hearing his screams as he flew down the cliff to crash into the rocks below. She hoped it wasn't him, but how could it be anyone else?

"How many...?"

"Only three. Two caught in the collapse and the other died from injuries. All three were much older. None of the children."

Three. It could have been so much worse. Pandora nodded.

"I'm going to check on the others," said Triana, leaving Pandora alone, leaning her elbows on her knees.

As she stared at the wreckage, it wasn't Garret that haunted her thoughts, but the Mod. Her mother. She'd been behind the attack. The purpose was obvious. They wanted to start a war between Razor and the Drops. She couldn't imagine how it wouldn't happen now.

Pandora stared at the grime on her palms. There was no blood on her hands, but she didn't feel that way. This attack was as much her fault as her mother's. When she'd been sent to infiltrate the clans and help soften them up for a takeover, she'd been willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. But now as she stared at the destruction around her, doubts crept in.

Who am I? When she'd arrived in the Undercity, she thought she knew the answer. But now she wondered if that person was just who she'd been trained to be from an early age. The ties she felt to her mother were frighteningly thin. Click. Click.

The sound of footsteps was followed by the heavy frame of Choo-Choo taking a seat next to her. His mouth twisted with anger.

"I want to kill every last one of them. I know it was Razor."

The answer the Mod wanted her to give was poised on her lips but she saw the hurt in his eyes, pain reflected in her own soul. A fight between warriors was one thing, but killing old men and women, and children?

"We don't know that," said Pandora.

"I thought you were on our fucking side, Pan."

The tendons in his neck were at attention. Sweat dripped from his nose.

"You remember the first time we fought?"

He leaned back. "When I kicked your ass?" She raised an eyebrow, which made him add, "With Navos' help. Like all my scraps, I remember it well. No self-respecting waku forgets a single punch."

"Then you remember when I set you up with those leg kicks, two of them, and then on the third, flipped you on your back and almost ended the fight there, until Navos intervened."

His shoulders sagged.

"I should have seen it coming."

"Now you have your chance. Someone is setting us up," she said. "Don't fall for this trap."

Choo-Choo leaned down and ripped away a piece of dusty plant material that had gotten trapped under a beam. He folded it in his hands as he contemplated her words.

"You can't know that," he said.

"Know? Without proof, I can't say for certain, but it seems more likely than Razor. Do I have to remind you that I've won every game of Undercity we've played?"

"Or you're trying to deflect away from them," he said harshly.

A knot formed in her chest. Before she could speak, he said, "I'm sorry. I'm just so fucking pissed. If that Kuma was here, I'd punch a hole straight through his skull."

Pandora put her hand on his massive bicep. "If you must fight, then fight, but don't let someone push you into unnecessary battle, especially when other enemies are on the horizon."

Choo-Choo chuckled, raising an eyebrow. "You sound like some sort of bullshit guru, or maybe you've not always been honest with me about your past. Sure, you know krav maga, but with everything you've done, it's gotta be more than that."

"You're right. There were other teachers. I had a chance encounter with a very, I don't know, wise isn't the right word, maybe cunning teacher. He set me on the path to finding myself even as I failed in his teachings."

A shadow passed over them, which revealed itself to be Duro. His hands were covered in blood. Choo-Choo quickly vacated the area and Pandora started to rise, until Duro held up a hand. She returned to sitting.

"You did good."

"I did what was necessary for the clan," she said, inclining her head.

"I see a lot of myself in you."

"I'm not a tenth of the warrior you are."

Duro chuckled. "This is true, but even our terraces weren't built in a day. You're like a strike right to the target, powerful and true, without consideration for yourself. This is the way of the waku."

She said nothing, because nothing should be said. Eventually he touched her on the shoulder.

"Come see me in a few days. I have something for you."

"Yes, Shadowmaster."

In other circumstances, her thoughts would have chased the possibilities of what he meant down a thousand dead ends, but she was exhausted and there was something she needed to verify first.

She found the old cave near the ceiling. The emergency at the processing building had pulled all resources for the recovery, leaving her free to investigate. Pandora shimmied up the wall without resorting to her sapphire, fearing a return of the migraine. She pulled herself up into the mouth, clicking on her headlamp to reveal an empty hole. Drag marks in the dust showed where someone had grabbed the satchel and yanked it out.

Back on the cavern floor, Pandora cupped her hands around her mouth. She didn't think Garret had taken the explosives. There was no way he could climb the wall without stones of his own—his arms were toothpicks. That meant there was another spy in the Drops, one that had followed her and Garret during the exchange, and then to the cave. There was no way anyone would have randomly found the satchel. They'd probably been following Garret to make sure he finished the job and that's how she'd been spotted.

Pandora remembered very clearly checking the area with her sapphire for observers, which meant that whoever had taken them must have other ways of observing, or was a powerful waku. She craned her neck in all directions, looking for cameras or other methods of spying, but the space was clear.

Next, she visited the maintenance building. Oriana, one of the older ladies who'd been working for Elani for a long time, was gathering supplies in a duffle bag with a tool belt hung over her shoulder.

"If you're looking for Elani, she's already at the site," said Oriana.

"Have you seen Garret?"

Oriana wrinkled her forehead as she slung the sagging duffle bag over her other shoulder and headed past Pandora.

"Dunno. Check the map in Elani's office and you should be able to find where he's at."

The entire building was empty. Everyone who'd been available had been sent to the scene of destruction. Elani's office was neat and organized, with labeled notebooks on her desk and a map of the settlement with marks and lines indicating the power, water, and sewage lines that crisscrossed the area. A pin with a red head and a tag with the name "Garret" on it was in the back region near a secondary generator.

Pandora was about to head out until she noticed a crumpled satchel in an empty wooden box. She pulled it out, noting that it was the same style and brand of bag that the explosives had been contained in. There were no obvious markings that suggested it was the same one, but even if it wasn't, it'd come from the Mod's store: The Rush. It didn't necessarily mean anything, since the shop had mining and maintenance supplies, which Elani needed for her projects, but the coincidence was suspicious.

She set the satchel back in the box and continued to the back of the Pajot, where she heard music playing long before she saw Garret. His back was to her as he worked inside the generator, humming to himself, his head bobbing with the music. Her blade was against his neck before he knew what was happening.

"Hey—"

"Shut up, and you might live past the next few minutes. I'm going to ask some questions. Answer quickly and truthfully." She let the blade part his flesh, releasing a trickle of blood. Garret inhaled.

"Have you been back to the Mod?"

"No. I did like you said. I pissed myself when she asked me to go back."

"And the drugs?"

"The first week was awful, but I'm over them now. Elani thought I had the stomach flu when they found me near the pit toilets covered in my own vomit. I wanted to die. Like really die."

It was possible to go cold turkey, but she wasn't sure she believed him. Menya was a powerful drug that created hard-core addictions. If he'd been able to break the link, he'd be in rare company. She spun him around and looked into his eyes.

"You look entirely too fucking healthy. How do I know you're not using now?"

She pointed the blade at a spot near the generator. "Sit."

When he did as she said, Pandora grabbed his tool belt, rifling through it until she found a plastic baggy full of little blue pills. His hands went up and he started sobbing.

"I wanted to stop taking them, but I had a stash. It's enough for another two weeks, and then I'll be clean. I swear. I tried for a few days, but I couldn't. It hurt too much."

"What about the explosives?"

He screwed up his face in a believable manner. "You took them from me."

"You didn't find them and take them back and set them at the processing facility?"

"What? No."

She studied him, looking for clues to the truth, but he was unreadable.

"Why?" he asked eventually. "Did something happen?"

"Someone did what you failed to do."

She held up her arm, which was covered in dirt and soot. His face broke with emotion, the lines of his face dripping with sadness.

"I didn't. I swear. I don't even know what you did with them," said Garret, on the verge of tears.

"Fuck. I don't know how I can believe you, not when you lied about the drugs. I should cut your throat right now, just to be sure."

His eyes darted towards his path of escape.

"Try it. We'll see how far you get."

Garret broke into a sob, followed by a stream of tears. Her nose caught the whiff of piss.

"It's not gonna work on me," she told him, but he continued to cry openly, not even trying to hold back. He started mumbling about wanting to be a better person and give up the drugs, and how big of a mistake he'd made. A puddle of piss formed near his ankle.

Pandora paced away. He was a liability, that much was for sure. The safe thing to do was to cut his throat and dump him in the canyons for the critters to feast on his body, but on the other hand, she'd been seen in Elani's office asking about his location. She could claim she never found him. Given what she'd done to save lives at the processing building, she'd probably be given the benefit of the doubt. Plus, she was a powerful sapphire waku and Garret was a maintenance tech of middling importance.

If she was her mother, she'd have already cut his throat. It was the only thing staying her blade. Pandora was already doubting the path she'd been set upon. It didn't help that the Mod had said she'd have to clean up her mess. A part of her feared that her mother had manipulated events to force her to kill Garret. If only to remind her of who was in control.

Click. Click.

"Shut up."

"I didn't say anything," said Garret as he wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand.

Pandora took the baggie of pills, dumped them onto the hard ground, and ground them into dust beneath her heel. Then she poured Garret's thermos of soup onto the dust and kicked sand and dirt on top. The empty devastation in his gaze was a portent of things to come. She left him in his puddle of piss, knowing that she needed to have a word with the Mod on a very near timeline.