Chapter Four

 

 

We found the crater about half an hour later.

I blessed the fact that these killing machines could move so quickly. The super long legs and the fact that we stood about forty meters off the ground helped us see for a distance around us, even if fog obscured much of it.

In fact, we didn't just see the crater. The new cylinder rested in the middle like some tilted metal monolith, but two human figures, small from up here, milled around on the bottom of the pit.

The walker lurched as we hit something. I watched the two figures run around the cylinder and disappear. They felt threatened. I couldn't tell if it was Winnie or Lin or Blake (probably not Winnie) and I hoped that none of them would try to deploy the black vapor. Still, I understood the need to be careful.

I grabbed onto my seat as we caught our balance. "I think this area used to be a neighborhood," Matt said, cranking the lever back to stop us. "We might have hit an old house. We might need to walk through the rest."

Then I saw. The ground here consisted of rows of large, rectangular lumps, all covered in reddish vegetation and hard to see. It looked as if we had stumbled on an ancient neighborhood, long ago buried by the encroaching life. It wasn't safe to get any closer to the crater, which had formed in the center of the old living area. I wondered what this place had looked like before. Neighborhoods like this had begun popping up hundreds of years ago, and many of them had persisted until the Great Council wanted everyone to live in cities, away from the wilderness. It might have even been a place like Rockville. Under these scarlet plants, there were layers and layers of history--an entire rotting world where people had lived out their lives, not knowing what was lurking underneath them.

And they also hadn't known their original home. I wasn't sure which thought was worse.

"I think you're right," I said. "We can't afford to trip." We had hurtled to the ground in one of these things before, which resulted in Matt getting a broken arm due to his bones getting screwed up on Mars. The lumps that might have once been houses were dense here, denser than my old neighborhood, as if whatever city had created this place had meant to cram a bunch of identical homes in together as quickly as they could.

I opened the hatch and pulled my pollution mask over my face. "I'll go down first," I said, tucking my heat ray inside my belt. It hung on my hip, glowing and dangerous. I hoped that my friends had learned that the heat rays were harmless to them.

I climbed down the ladder, knowing full well that shouting from this distance would be worthless. I didn't want to feed the Grounder plants with sound waves. It looked as if they were already thriving. I reached the ground, which I realized consisted of a mixture of dirt, roots, and cracked pavement. An ancient road. Matt landed beside me. The Grounder plants weren't as high here, probably because they had to push through the concrete to grow, but the ones on either side of us were.

We were in an old neighborhood, all right. Small houses stood on either side of us in rows, covered in red vines and creepers. Some of the doors lay open, revealing darkness within each old dwelling, and many of the houses had caved-in roofs and collapsed walls. There were ruins, all right.

I wondered if Rockville now looked like this.

So I kept my gaze trained ahead, where the road had once been, and I followed Matt closer to the cylinder. Even on the street, the plants remained so thick and tall that I couldn't see the edge of the crater until we got within meters. Then I climbed onto the displaced dirt, and the ground plunged far below, to where bare stone lay exposed and swarms of nanobots roamed. My friends had activated them already. Fiona must have been able to give instructions while the Identity wasn't looking.

"Hello?" I called, knowing that my words would travel in the otherwise bare crater. It echoed, and some plants on the perimeter trembled as they sucked up my voice.

Nothing happened, so I repeated my greeting.

"They must be inside," Matt said. "Should we risk climbing down?"

"They must know it's us," I said. "Fiona would have told them that the walkers are on their side."

"We can shout as we climb down," Matt suggested. "If they know we're not Grounders and we're here to help, then they might not try to kill us."

I knew how Matt and I had reacted with the Grounders and the pulse cannon before. Winnie was paranoid. Lin was too fast to act. Blake was, well, Blake. He had guts, and he had proven that back in Space Port Nine.

It might not be the best combination. Part of me hoped that Matt had asked about my friends because we might have to confront them.

"It's me. Tess!" I shouted, sliding down the crater wall.

The crater was steep, like the others, and I only just realized that this one would be hard to climb out of once I reached the bottom. It must have been a dune at one point or even a beach.

I reached the bottom and shouted again. "It's Tess!" I yelled. "Don't kill me. I'm not a Grounder. I'll sing to prove that to you." I hoped that it didn't come to that, but I didn't think that Grounders could sing. I tried to imagine it, but the thought was so funny that I nearly laughed.

"I've never heard you sing," Matt said as he landed next to me. He had the heat ray out as if that could do us any good down here.

"I might have to," I said, dreading the thought. I began with a horrible rendition of Jingle Bells, even though it was nowhere near Christmas when I heard the cylinder door open.

"Tess!" Lin shouted, running towards me.

I almost didn't recognize her at first. It had been weeks since we had seen each other, and we had both been across millions of kilometers of space in the process. Lin had lost some weight already, which made her look almost gangly, and her skin had turned the color of washed-out moss. She might be only half as green as Matt, but she was getting there, and it reminded me of my injection.

Lin wrapped me in a hug that was still strong. The Red Planet hadn't sapped her strength yet. She hadn't been there long enough to get its worst effects. I let her stand there and embrace me for what felt like minutes. So far, Lin seemed healthy and happy (other than the change in her skin), and she was back home.

"Lin," I breathed.

"How did you get back here?" she asked, holding me out at arms' length. "That Fiona lady told me that she'd blasted you back to Earth, but she didn't have time to tell me how you found her, or why she sent you, or--"

"Calm down," I said, unable to hold back a smile. "We'll tell you the whole thing as soon as we get inside. This guy here is Matt," I said, nodding to him.

Lin didn't freak out at his color. She had probably seen enough green people already. I was the one who stood out now. I glanced at my arm to see that it still looked completely normal. Matt was right that it took a couple of days to start showing up.

A strange look came over Lin's face. "I have to warn you. We have a squatter here. Someone was living in one of the houses here, and he came down a few hours after we landed and knocked on our door."

"Someone was living here?" Matt asked, looking up at the homes.

"Yes. Young guy. He says there are canned foods up in the houses up there. I can't imagine them tasting any good, but apparently, he's been living on them for days." She lowered her voice. "He's annoying. You'll see."

I was tired of crazy people. This war was doing strange things. Lin let go of one of my arms, keeping the other in a tight grip. She dragged me closer to the cylinder, which had of course cooled by now. We stepped over a small stream of nanobots, who were busy going to and fro from an outcrop of rock. I guessed that my friends were in the phase where the tiny bots would build the bigger mining bot. After that, the walker would rise.

"Annoying?" Matt asked.

But before I could protest, Lin pulled me towards the hatch, which was open.

I glimpsed him before I could pull away. I spotted the black Enforcer uniform, now torn and burned in places, along with the shiny helmet and a young, crazed face with a nasty, crusty burn on his cheek.

Calvin had survived Celeste's attack.

And he knew that Matt and I had left him to die.