Helene Island Geocache #4

Shel,

I don’t know where you are. I made it back from the mainland to find you and you were gone. Whatever happened here…I can’t stay. I’m going to find a boat and go to Dione Island. If you find this, please, come there. I promise I’ll be there. I just wish it wasn’t so dark. I love you.

Jen.

Relief blossomed in my chest. He knows I’m alive. Being inside him, feeling the void I’d left behind, was like walking naked into a desert storm, stinging shards of memory and loss peeling away my skin then my flesh then even my bones, until nothing was left.

What would he do now? Please be smart, Tor. Play along, wait for us. As drugged as he was, I didn’t think he had many choices. It had been difficult to understand his thoughts through the haze of sedatives at first, but the rawness of his emotions had been painfully clear.

“Is Tor okay?” Cindra asked. She’d rolled over onto her side and was watching me, her head propped on her hand.

“Yes… No… But at least he knows I’m alive.” What would be worse for him? Thinking I was dead, or knowing I was purposefully walking into a trap. For him.

She let out a long breath. “I’m glad, Ailith. I… It was awful when he brought you back. I’ve never seen anyone as broken.”

I didn’t want to know. The thought of his grief was almost more than I could bear. Tor and I had had only each other in the beginning, and that had bound us as tightly as our encoded bond. A world without him was not something I could understand, and he would feel the same.

Oliver and Fane still huddled by the bunker, Oliver rubbing his forehead as though trying to open the door with his mind.

“Where’s Pax?”

“Over there.” Cindra tilted her head toward where Pax sat idly playing with some of the twisted grass. He gazed far off into the distance, into another time and place.

“It must be so strange for him, traveling down all those future paths,” Cindra remarked. “I wonder what it’s like. Do you think it’s like when you see the past?”

“I don’t think so. I see…almost ghosts, I guess. Fragments of images of things that were there or that happened. But I see them outside of myself, like pale holograms. Everything Pax sees happens in his mind.”

Although Pax and I shared a unique two-way link, I’d only ever seen one of his futures, and then, only when he’d remembered it for me.

Different emotions flitted across his face as we watched. Wonder, fear, understanding.

“Yeah, I bet it’s incredible. It’s just a shame it’s not a bit more concise,” I grumbled.

“He feels bad about it, you know,” she said.

“Bad about what?” I’d always tried not to put too much pressure on Pax to use his ability to guide us—the variables simply evolved too fast, and there was nothing he could do to change that.

“About not being able to help you more with making decisions or telling you what’s going to happen and so on. I know he feels responsible for some of the things that have happened. And guilty, although he’d never want us to know.”

“He shouldn’t feel that way. And I hope I haven’t made him feel that way. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have unpredictable abilities. I never fully understand what I see either.”

“That’s odd,” Oliver said.

“What is?” Cindra and I stood, pulling out blades of grass that had twisted their way into our clothes.

“Well, it’s a Cyborgist code signature, but it looks like it’s been tampered with.”

“What do you think that means?” Cindra asked.

“I have no idea.” He looked troubled, unusual for him.

“Can you open it?” I asked.

“We already have.” Fane gave the wheel an experimental turn, and the locking mechanism groaned and slid in response. A series of rasping movements later, the seal on the door gave way with an exasperated grunt. “Are you ready?”

No. If I never went down into a bunker again, it would be too soon. I could tell from the others’ faces that they felt the same.

Fane didn’t wait for a response. A hiss and a whoosh, and the door opened into darkness.

***

“At least my bunker had stairs,” Oliver grumbled as we descended the ladder cautiously, our hands slick on the smooth rungs. The air was stale but held no other odors, and I allowed myself to relax a little. After we’d all cleared the ladder and stepped onto the pressed concrete floor, a sound echoed from somewhere down below, so faint it was nearly inaudible.

“Can anyone else hear that?” I asked. We all held our breath. Nothing but cold silence and the sensation of the earth pressing all around us.

And the rumble of Pax’s stomach.

“Sorry,” he whispered. There was a rustle as he pulled a packet from his pocket.

“Pax!”

“Sorry,” he mumbled again, chewing with exaggerated slowness. Fane suppressed a grin. My nerves were so tightly strung I wanted to knock their heads together.

“What did you think you heard?” Cindra asked.

“It was music,” Fane said. “I heard it too.”

“Should we make some noise or something? What if we spook William or whoever else is down there?” I asked.

“Yeah, but do we really want to give them a heads up?” Oliver challenged. “It might be better to catch them off their guard.”

“Not if we want him to trust us. William is one of us, Oliver, and we are looking for allies,” I reminded him. “He might be more inclined to become one if we don’t go sneaking up on him. The man’s been down here for years.”

Oliver gave an irritated sigh. “Suit yourself, then.”

The faint echo began again.

“William?” I called. The echo stopped.

“He knows we’re here,” I whispered.

At the end of the domed tunnel was another door. A keypad similar to the one outside was mounted on the wall next to it. “Shit. Do you think we’ll need another code?” The thought of waiting here in the tunnel underground while Oliver fumbled with another lock pulled my nerves even tighter.

Oliver typed in a combination, and the lock clicked back. “Nope. It looks like the internal code is the same as ours.” Surprise warred with the smugness in his voice. “Ready?”

We’d let whoever was on the other side of the door know we were here and given them a chance to prepare. Whoever William turns out to be, I hope he’s willing to listen first. Maybe Oliver was right. It was too late now.

“Let me go through first,” Fane said.

Oliver bowed and stood aside as Fane opened the door and stepped into the room. For a couple of heartbeats, we heard nothing then Fane said: “You may as well come in.”

We filed through the doorway and into the main room of the bunker. The space was small, similar to the ones the others had woken up in, except for one thing.

The bunker was pristine, as though no one had ever been there. And maybe no one had. The room was empty.

“What the fuck? There’s no one here,” Oliver said, all smugness gone.

“William?” I called again, louder than before.

“What? Like he’s hiding under the bed?” Oliver asked snidely before shrugging and dropping to his knees to have a look.

I checked William’s thread—it was there, brighter than before.

“He’s definitely here,” Pax and I said at the same time.

“Well, where is he then?”

“It doesn’t look like this bunker’s been used. Could it be a fake, like the mineshaft at the compound?” Cindra asked.

Oliver shrugged “It’s worth a try. Fane? Any super-robot powers? Infrared? Sonar?”

“No. Unfortunately, they made me as human as possible. In this situation, I’m as completely incompetent as you are.” His smile as Oliver glared at him was benign.

We started searching for another door, tracing our fingers over the walls and the floor, looking for anything that seemed out of place. Nothing.

“It’s a tiny room. How could we miss it?” I asked Grace as she stood next to me.

“You…the others…you lived in a place like this? For years?”

“Not exactly,” I replied. “We were asleep. Pax, Cindra, and Oliver woke up in theirs, but they escaped shortly afterward. Tor took me out of ours long before I ever woke up.”

“Tor stayed with you? Even though it was dangerous? He could’ve left you, and he didn’t?” Her voice was wistful.

Yes, he did. “He’s a good man,” I said.

“I wish he…that I knew a man like him,” she replied.

“I’m sure you will, one day,” I said. Awkward.

She looked at me for a long moment then started to speak. “I—”

A crash from the closet cut her off.

“I think I found something,” Pax called.

Grace flashed me a half-smile and looked away.

Pax was right—the back of the closet was false. After some yanking and cursing from Oliver, we slid it aside to reveal a long, sloping hallway. Motion lights flickered along the floor at intermittent points, guiding us to yet another door at the far end. A sealed door. Oliver’s shoulders slumped.

“Let’s try it the old-fashioned way this time,” I said. I knocked on it. “William? Are you there?” No answer. I changed tack. “William, we know you’re there. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re like you.” I looked at the others, getting only shrugs in return.

I tried again. “I’m Pantheon Modern Cyborg Program Omega, cyborg number O-117-9791. Hello?”

“Hello?” A tentative voice spoke from the other side of the door. Not William’s voice. I shook my head at the others.

Oliver didn’t get the hint. “Yeah, are you William? Look, mate, we—” He stopped as I waved my hands.

There was a faint hissing, and we stepped back, expecting the door to unlock and swing open.

Instead, my face began to feel strange, like I was wearing someone else’s skin. I reached up to touch it and couldn’t feel my fingers. Around me, the others were doing the same.

It was a trap.

“Get out. Get out!” I pushed Grace back the way we’d come. Fane reached the door first, yanking on it so hard I thought he would tear it off its hinges.

It didn’t move. Fane looked down at his hands with an expression so bewildered it would’ve been comical in another situation.

The hissing continued over our heads through a small vent near the top of the corridor. “There!” I pointed. “That vent. Something’s coming through. We have to—” I staggered. “We—” Something. We have to do something. My hand slid uselessly off the wall as I fell to my knees. “Pax—”

“It’ll be okay, Ailith. We have to go this way. We have to—” His eyes rolled back as he passed out.

“Why does this keep happening?” Oliver muttered as his head dropped to his chest. “Why—”

The last thing I saw was Fane’s terrified face in an all-too-human struggle not to submit. He lost the struggle, and so did I.