Illumination

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, as did the next day. Jack and her friends had all gotten leave from classes for the rest of the week due to “emotional trauma” and “they need to rest”. Robin was successfully able to postpone their therapy session with the General (they didn’t want to accidentally arouse suspicion before the trip, or even at all) to the next Friday, and so everything was set in place and ready. All day, Jack pushed down the butterflies that were jumping around in her chest and decided to focus on her mom. She’d been assigned to take care of her for the day and was busy folding laundry in the makeshift room.

“Jacklyn, that’s not where it goes,” Dana snapped somewhat angrily, lying in a mountain of pillows and IV tubes. “Put the shirts in the basket labeled ‘shirts’. It isn’t that hard.”

Jack sighed. Her adoptive mother insisted on calling her by her full name, instead of the nickname she’d given herself to rebel from her biological parents. “Sorry, mom. I didn’t see the label.”

Dana shook her head to clear it and said, in a more cheerful voice, “Is your head feeling better?”

“Yes, I’ve been putting new bandages on it. It’s mostly stopped throbbing by now.” Jack chose her words carefully; one misstep and her mom could swing from a depressive low to a manic high within seconds. Just like Sierra.

“Good,” Dana answered, leaning back into the softest pillow, her head almost completely enveloped. Unlike most colonists, who slept in small sleep pods powered by Illumination, she had opted for a larger, normal bed because she couldn’t move her legs. “What day are you back at school again?”

“Next Monday, so six more days.”

“That long? I’m surprised.” She looked up at the ceiling with a numb, helpless expression on her face. There were slight bags under her eyes and red marks on her cheeks from where she’d been scratching at them. The doctor had clipped her nails short and told her repeatedly not to cut herself, but her mother, whether out of absence or anger, never listened.

Jack took a deep breath as she folded the last set of shirts that was set on Dana’s bed. “Where do you want the socks?” she asked, gesturing to the last laundry pile left. Her mother raised one bony hand to point, and Jack dumped all the socks into the selected bin.

“Thanks, honey. That’s all I have for you today,” Dana said, turning to look at her with a sigh. “Go check on Robin and Sierra, okay?”

“I will. Don’t worry. Oh, and I might head out with them and a few of my friends for a...um...courtyard party this evening.” Jack felt awful lying to her sick, paralyzed mother, but it was almost 5:30 and she didn’t want to worry Dana.

“Alright, then. Say hi to your friends for me.”

“I will, mom.” Jack leaned forward and kissed her mother on the forehead before detangling the IV tubing and stepping out of the room.

Once Jack was out of sight, she dashed to her own bedroom and hurriedly dressed in full uniform, wrapping a bandana around her mouth. Jack pushed aside all thoughts of rule breaking and summoned an image of her father to her mind. This is all for him. The General and the others can’t know. Act like Bailey! But she just couldn’t—part of her wanted to tell an official and get help. But would they actually help us? You’re nineteen…almost an adult. Jack shook her head angrily and put her helmet on, glancing at the clock. 5:32.

“You ready?” Sierra asked from behind her. Robin was standing next to his sister, helmet tucked under his arm, a grin on his face. Underneath his other arm was a slightly smashed-up box.

“Yeah...what’s in the box?” Jack pointed at Robin’s cargo.

“Chocolates,” he explained, popping open the lid to show her. “In case anyone doubts that we’re going to a party.”

“You’re evil,” she muttered as he closed the lid again. “Pure evil.”

***

A few minutes later, they were jogging through the frigid courtyard to the garage, where they planned to take a buggy to the Archives. A few people approached them and attempted to offer condolences, but they pushed them aside with a few nods and hesitant smiles. Not just because they were late, but because they didn’t want to hear people they didn’t know apologize for things they weren’t responsible for. The only one to blame here is Ben, Jack thought bitterly as they entered the main atrium.

Bailey and Liam were already waiting for them on a bench. They waved and the three siblings ran over to join them. “Did you get the key?” Sierra whispered when they were all sitting together, eating artificially-warmed chocolates.

“Yeah. It was hard, but I pulled it off,” Bailey said pridefully, opening her non-chocolate-covered hand to reveal a skeleton key. “My dad won’t be back for about two hours—he has an emergency meeting that he has to go to! I overheard him talking about it with his colleagues. This is great news.” She grinned in delight, then proceeded to swallow a chocolate malt ball whole.

“Alright then, let me go to the garage. You guys finish the chocolates off. I’ll let you in when you knock at the door—you all know where it is, right?” Robin asked, standing up. They all nodded and he left them, taking a fistful of malts with him.

There was a moment of silence, almost a truce, as the four of them finished the chocolates. When they were done and stuffed beyond even thinking about dinner, Liam threw the box in the recycling bin and then headed off after Robin.

They reached the garage, which was at the bottom of a flight of stairs and barred by a security gate. “Codename Victory requesting access,” Liam said into the microphone that stood at the gate.

“Victory, this is Bird. I hear you. Coming now,” Robin answered on the other end, holding back a chuckle. The door rumbled open and the four of them stepped in.

“Nice place you got here,” Bailey commented. “This is the new garage, right?”

“Yeah,” Robin said. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and was the only buggy driver in the whole garage. It was a huge, echoey space filled with buggies lined up in front of the garage door, which led out into the world. There was a booth for mechanics to work in as well as a loading dock for new buggies, both abandoned. It almost felt creepy being in there in the near-dark. Robin flipped some more lights on, explaining, “I kind of like it when it’s dark and quiet. It’s a break from the usual, blinding lights of the colony.” He cleared his throat and gestured to the nearest buggy, which was just big enough to fit all of them inside. “Sorry, but this is the only one that’s not under repair of some sort, at least according to the records. It won’t be missed, at least for a while. I mean, I’m hoping that nobody even comes in here until the nightly guard sweep. And the night guards won’t even check the roll to see if all the buggies are here.”

Liam frowned, looking around as if reconsidering the rebellious plan. “Now we have to disable the gate log. If we try to exit the garage, it will be marked in a digital log.” He stepped up to the large, metal gate and began working at the cover panel on the monitor. “Do you have a screwdriver around?”

Before Robin could even respond, Jack had pulled the tool out of her bag and handed it to the boy. She glanced up at the ceiling as he worked on disabling the monitoring feature. One of the ceiling lights was flickering and it bugged her so badly that she had to look away.

After a few minutes that felt like a few hours, Liam handed back the screwdriver and smiled proudly at the work he’d done. It didn’t even look like the monitor had been touched at all. “That should work,” he declared, heading back to where the group was standing next to the buggy. “Are we all ready?” Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Then let’s get this illegal party started,” Robin joked, running to the driver’s booth and flipping a switch. With a slight groan, the garage door rumbled open, revealing a passage big enough for three buggies to fit through side by side. At the end of the tunnel was yet another door, this one blocking them from exiting. Jack’s brother sprinted back from the booth and got into the driver’s seat, while the others clambered in beside him. Once again, Jack was stuck between Sierra and Bailey in the middle seat, which she thought was unfair since Sierra was actually smaller. But she didn’t object as Robin flipped on the radio and put the buggy into gear.

“Let’s roll!” Sierra called with a grin and they rumbled past the first gate into the passage. Jack, unfamiliar with the second-door concept, prepared for Robin to stop and get out to open it, but the door opened automatically as the buggy drove up. Jack squinted as all the light left them and there was nothing but black, crystalline darkness.

The headlights of the buggy automatically switched on, illuminating the icy plains ahead, but Robin dialed them down until it was barely more than a white mist. “Can’t have anyone spotting us and running over to do a security check,” he explained, also turning down the radio. Soon, it was so dark and quiet that Jack marveled at the fact that Robin could still drive. Normally, there’d be a full caravan of bright lights showing the way to their destination and a radio blasting rock and roll. It felt almost scary. But Robin was trained, and he grimaced through it as he drove through the evening towards their unfamiliar destination, which Bailey had programmed onto the holographic map.

After twenty minutes, Jack saw the silhouette of a building appear in the distance, faintly highlighted by the headlights. She gasped as its features became more discernible.

The Archives was a rectangular complex that seemed to stretch on endlessly, towering over the buggy. It almost looked like a prison—there were bars on all the windows and no light shone from inside, save for an Illumination generator whirring up against a window and casting its light across the plains. Jack shivered as they approached, the engine sputtering as they entered more treacherous terrain.

“We’re here,” Robin called from the front. “I don’t wanna park in the garage since we can’t disable the monitor from the outside. Everyone’s got their helmets, right?” At the confirmation from the rest of his group, he continued, “Then I’ll park here and we’ll walk to the entrance.”

Robin powered down the engine and turned off the lights. The side doors slid up and opened with a low hiss that penetrated the silence. Outside, it was so quiet that Jack heard every crunch of her boots in the snow and every breath that she took.

“Let’s go,” Bailey said, holding the key up grandly and leading the way towards the Archives. Jack and the others followed, occasionally glancing back to where the buggy was parked, silent and unmoving. “The entrance is over here.” She gestured towards a set of tall, imposing doors, almost as big as the ones in the solfect rooms but made of cold metal instead.

“Hope this works,” Sierra muttered, her breath fogging her helmet visor as Bailey fiddled with the lock. She twisted the key every which way, but it wouldn’t fit in. Jack bit her lip and glanced around them anxiously, almost expecting something to pop out and scare them.

Finally, there was a tiny click and the lock slid aside to reveal a door handle. Bailey opened the door and peered inside. “Looks safe,” she commented, leaning in halfway. “Come on.” She pushed it open all the way and the others joined her in the hall.

As they exited the security hall and entered the main building, Jack couldn’t help but gasp. They were in a large, open space filled to the brim with thousands of objects—books, statues, holographs, and all sorts of whirring machines. Everything was packed together so tightly that it was almost overwhelming. Jack didn’t even know where to look. She glanced up and saw a stuffed statue of a giant, bat-like creature suspended from the ceiling, locked in vicious battle with a snow snake. She turned to the right and saw a series of glass jars on a mahogany table, each filled with eyeballs. Jack gagged and looked away.

“Alright, do we want to split up to cover more ground?” Liam asked, turning around and around in a futile attempt to look at everything at once, bad leg dragging on the ground. There were so many artifacts just lying haphazardly against shelves or in boxes.

“Sounds good,” Jack said, facing Bailey. “You’ve got the map. Robin and Sierra will come with me to look for clues about 186, right?” Her siblings nodded in agreement, drawing close to her. “Just point us in the right direction.”

“Well then, we’re looking for the strange symbols?” Liam wrinkled his nose in confusion and pointed at Bailey. “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re the only one who knows what they look like, Jack.”

“Anything that isn’t English,” she snorted, already walking away. “It’s a bunch of strange lines jumbled together. You’ll figure it out.”

“Straight to your left, take two rights, look for the sign that says 100s,” Bailey called out as the three of them headed off. Jack gave a thumbs up before they disappeared behind a bookcase.

***

As Jack walked through the twisting maze of aisles, she couldn’t help but marvel at all the objects that had been kept secret for so long. Taxidermy of long extinct creatures snarled at her from the shadows. Books hovered in beams of preservative light, protected from decay by solitary rays. A giant bone of some animal sat on a pedestal surrounded by dried up mordew flowers. A 2D holopad labeled a “cellphone” sat among other, multicolored companions, the screen cracked and dusty. This is amazing. I can’t believe all this is classified!

They reached the aisle (less of an aisle, more of a pathway through the piles of artifacts) labeled “100s”. Robin and Sierra started at the other end while Jack began to slowly walk down , looking back and forth for anything with “186” in it.

She found a book hovering in preservative light with a golden, glossy “186” on the cover, but, on looking closer, saw smaller text below that added, “Ways to Redo Your Home”. Jack chuckled and reached out to brush off the dust, but there was an invisible laser that singed her finger when she tried to remove the book. Should’ve known that there’d be more security here than just a lock and some hallway scans.

“Jack, over here!” Sierra called from the end of the aisle, twenty feet away. She and Robin gestured excitedly for their sister to come. “Take a look at this.”

Jack strode over to where the others were and examined what they were talking about. It was a big, dictionary-sized book, new enough to not need preservative light, and bound in multiple, heavy chains. “We found it hidden under a bunch of stuff. Apparently, the staff doesn’t want it to be seen. Look at the cover.”

“186: The Mystery of the Solfect Colony,” Jack read aloud, running a hand through her hair and the other across the chains. “This could be it. But what does ‘solfect colony’ mean?” She grunted in frustration as she turned the book over, trying to find a padlock. “How do these chains come off?”

“It’s a microlock,” Robin informed her, adjusting his helmet and pointing at a tiny scrawl on one of the chain links. “Learned about that in flight school class, before I, y’know…”

“Yeah,” Jack finished awkwardly. She bent down and trained her Illuminator on the tiny, black figure. It looked like the number 3. “How do you unlock it?”

“Tap on it the number of times specified then breath on it. It captures your heat signature and fingerprint data to prove that you’re human and a member of a registered colony.” At Jack’s worried glance, he added, “It doesn’t register who, just checks that you’re cleared by security. But I guess they only expected high-ranking officials, not a bunch of college kids.”

“Guess so,” she agreed, doing as he told her to. The microlock clicked and each chain disconnected into two parts. Jack pushed them off onto a nearby nightstand and sat down on the floor with the book in her lap. Sierra and Robin also kneeled down next to her. “186: The Mystery of the Solfect Colony.” Jack took a deep breath as she opened up the cover and looked at the inside.

“Woah, written in 2984. Not that long ago,” Sierra said. “Well, over two hundred years ago.” Robin shot her a stern look and she quieted down.

“Author’s Note: This book was initially published in 2971 but banned due to the mass panic that resulted from its contents. The author has obtained permission from the High Committee thirteen years later to reprint it for educational and documentary purposes. This copy is for display in the Archives only. Removal and publication of this book to the public will result in a five year jail sentence or a 3000 bit fine,” Jack read out loud with a frown. She turned to a random page in the middle and continued, “The infected soon exhibited symptoms such as white goo streaming from their eyes, foaming at the mouth, slight stuttering, and jerky motions. When taken to the colony’s doctors, the infected were diagnosed with bubular fever and sentenced to three weeks of quarantine. But they didn’t get better. In fact, they got worse.”

“Those symptoms...the white goo...wasn’t Ben doing that before he turned into the alpha?” Robin mused, leaning over Jack’s shoulder.

She ignored him and continued, “One of the most peculiar cases of this group was of an eighteen year old boy named Benjamin, a recent transfer to the colony. He had been one of the first ones infected by the solfects and seemed to take it harder than the rest. Colony records show erratic behavior before the symptoms fully emerged, such as pacing, hysterical laughter at no one in particular, and a tendency to enter a room, look around, leave, but return a few minutes later to do the exact same thing. He would ramble about how ‘his friends were doomed’ and how ‘he needed to save them from the Sun dust’. Ben’s teachers made notes of him in their journals that were recovered shortly after the colony was abandoned by scouts. These notes said things such as ‘special classes’ and ‘needs extra care’. But they didn’t realize until later what was happening.”

Jack paused a moment to catch her breath, her mind reeling. The others seemed just as confused as she was. “How is this possible?” Robin growled to himself, standing up and glancing around. “Ben would have to be hundreds of years old for this to work! The book says he’s eighteen, yet he’s eighteen now! Or nineteen...either way, it doesn’t fit!”

“He’s the alpha. Of course none of this fits,” Sierra complained, throwing up her hands helplessly. “Maybe solfects age differently than humans?”

“Let me finish,” Jack said, biting her lip. She leaned back against a shelf to support her and continued reading until the end of the chapter. “Eventually, when Ben’s friends began exhibiting similar symptoms that escalated into the physical ones described above (and see Chapter Eight for more medical information), he and the other infected were quarantined. But there was always one infected person. The General and her advisory staff couldn’t figure out how their colonists kept getting infected with this strange ‘madness’ disease. So they ordered a lockdown of the entire building for safety. But this just created smaller spaces—which was perfect for the alpha solfect who was secretly infecting the colonists one by one with the strange, white goo. Eventually, Ben and all the others began to change. Long limbs sprouted painfully from their torsos, ripping shirts and causing much panic among families on lockdown. Their cheeks folded up over their eyes in thick knots, their tongues swelled up and lost color, and their skin became cracked, dry, and leathery. It was a truly hideous transformation that took a few weeks to start but finished within a few seconds. A witness who managed to escape the brutal massacre alive commented, ’I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared of anything in my life. When [the transformation] was done, my friend wasn’t recognizable at all. He was a completely different being...a monster. And he was babbling nonsense about how he ‘couldn’t control it’, stuff I’d never heard from him before’ It was unlike anything in the history of the colony. (The author should make a note that the ratio of infected to normal colonists was very small, 1 : 18 at the time of the transformation).”

Jack turned the page and finished, “The General and her advisors were terrified of these creatures that they now had rampaging throughout their halls, not attacking anyone yet, just causing chaos. She, in an act of cowardice, fled the colony in the middle of the night along with her fellow officials, carrying nothing but spare sets of clothes and lowly ration packets. The colony was left in disarray, and by the time some survivors were able to mobilize and also abandon Colony 186, the others had all been infected. 186 will forever be known as a number of infamy; the number that started the great solfect attack on humanity’s way of living. And all because of the mysterious, white goo” She closed the cover of the book, her head swimming with all this new information.

“What do we do now?” Sierra asked, her cheeks reddening and her eyes shimmering. “You heard the book. The solfects are gonna infect our dad.”

“We don’t know that,” Jack said, setting the book down on the floor next to her and stretching her legs. “Wouldn’t Ben have infected him already if so?”

“Maybe is the key word here,” Robin said, taking up the book and leafing through it. He sighed and suggested, “Maybe we should take this with us. Read it later.”

“No, there’s no way we’ll get away with it. Besides, you read the author’s note,” Jack said, shaking her head. “Our family doesn’t have that kind of money. But then...that’s it. All I know is that the alpha wanted me to ‘go to 186’ and ‘remember the pillars’. That’s all.” She shrugged and stood up, tucking the book under her arm.

“Go to 186...like maybe the alpha meant literally go to the colony. Go to the abandoned ruins of Colony 186. But why?” Sierra mused. She blinked slowly, realization dawning on her face, and snatched the book out from under Jack’s arm. “Give me that!”

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Jack’s little sister muttered, already buried deep in the pages. “Okay, I found a map.” She held out the book to show Robin and Jack. “Look at where 186 is marked.” Sierra pointed to a tiny X on the edge of the map, right next to what looked like a frozen ocean. “Now look at where we are.” Without lifting her fingertip from the page, she slid it over to a small, inky rectangle etched onto the map of America. The Archives. “We’re only a few miles from the colony!”

“A few days by buggy,” Robin commented helpfully. “Look, I don’t think we should talk about this without Liam and Bailey here. They’re a part of this too.”

“A lesser part,” Jack grumbled, but let him head past her out into the main aisle.

After a bit of wandering, the three of them made their way back to where Liam and Bailey were. The two others were standing in a short alley of statues, nestled in tight, reading from a series of books that were strewn across the floor messily. Liam was busy trying to organize the stack while Bailey poured over a page of text. “Oh hey,” the boy said as Jack, Robin, and Sierra approached him. “We haven’t made much progress, but we found a book with illustrations. Take a look at this”

Liam handed Jack a thin booklet bound with red leather, and while she read through the chapter he’d tagged, Robin told him and Bailey about the 186 book.

The chapter was mostly text, but there were hand drawn illustrations in some of the margins, slightly smudged by age. Unusual symbols looped up and down and threaded between the lines of regular text, inked in pen. This is less of a book and more of a journal, Jack thought to herself, banishing the disturbing thoughts about Colony 186 for the moment. She sat down next to Liam, opposite Bailey, and began to read, tracing her finger along the chain of symbols. Most of the squiggles weren’t recognizable due to the aged quality of the ink, but Jack was able to discern some of the characters she’d seen etched into the ice pillar. She remembered them well. It had been a momentous day for her.

These symbols were first discovered scratched into the ground surrounding the unfortunate Colony 186, a few months before the infections began. They are believed to be the language of the solfects, used to mark objects for further notice or inspection. No one has been able to decipher the text as it belongs to creatures that we know almost nothing about. Some connections have been made between the verbal language of the solfects and the Apexes’ growling form of communication, which suggests a possible evolutionary tie. But that is still up for debate among the scientific community, Jack read to herself, shifting uncomfortably against the makeshift chair of a statue. Shortly after the language was first seen etched on the walls of Colony 186, the solfects invaded it, thus associating the symbols with disaster. I warn you, reader, from a friend to a friend, to stay away from any place containing this writing and report it to your General immediately. “Not happening,” she muttered out loud, setting the book down and letting out a slow sigh. So many things were running through her mind frantically that it tired her out.

Jack leaned back against the statue and looked up at the ceiling, which was made of transparent, ythafone-fiber glass. Through it, she could see nothing but blackness and little drifts of snow piling up on the edge of each, sheeted pane. It was almost peaceful, but not quite.

“So what do you say?” Robin was asking Liam and Bailey as she snapped out of her daze.

“I’m up for it,” Bailey said with a shrug. “My dad doesn’t really care about me anyways.”

“He cares about whether you’re breaking the rules or not,” Liam said pointedly, resting his head in his hands and ruffling his light, caramel hair. “I’m not sure how I feel about this…I’m happy to support you but I don’t want to break the rules. I mean, I don’t know about you guys but I know that I want a good job. I want to ascend the social ladder.”

Bailey snorted and informed him, “You won’t be ascending the social ladder once word comes out that you broke into the Archives, one of the biggest collections of ancient artifacts in the whole New Earth!” Liam’s face drained of all color. “Poor you.” She smirked a little as she pushed aside a pile of books and stood up.

“W-what do I do?” Liam’s face flushed red with anger. “I shouldn’t have agreed to join you guys. You do realize how this’ll impact my rep—”

“For once, be quiet,” Sierra snapped. “This is about my dad now, not about some half-baked respect that you think you have!”

“Sierra!” Jack exclaimed, grabbing her sister by the arm, who then pulled away and backed into a tall bookshelf. “Let’s just...calm down,” she forced herself to say to the other four. “If we’re too loud, the guards will come.”

“Speaking of guards, whatever happened to those new interns who you said were gonna be on duty tonight?” Robin asked Bailey. “Did they fall asleep on the job or something?”

“Actually, they heard a bunch of people arguing and came to investigate,” a voice said from behind them. Liam and Bailey’s eyes widened and the other three turned around to see two burly men in coats standing in the aisle, blocking the exit. Jack gulped and readied herself for a fight. “Hmmm...what an interesting bunch. The rebel,” one of the interns said, pointing at Bailey. “The wimp...and three Amundsens.” Both the guards sneered as they spat the last word. Stay calm, Jack told herself firmly as her blood began to boil.

“You both have no charge against us,” Liam began, starting forward with his hands raised in a gesture of peace. “We have and never have had any intention to remove anything from the Archives. This is a mistake!”

“Stealing or not, you still illegally broke into this compound,” one of the interns noted, licking his cracked upper lip with the pleasure of a cat batting around a mouse. “That merits some discipline, don’t you think?”

“We’re going to have to run for it,” Bailey whispered as the five of them backed up against the wall of statues that now encircled them. “On my count, Liam and I will take the guard on the right and you three will take the guard on the left.” She pointed at the biggest and more muscular guard. Jack gulped and said a silent prayer to whatever deity might’ve been listening at the moment. “Now!”

The five of them ducked down and rushed forward, catching the guards by surprise. Jack tackled the first one by the legs and Sierra and Robin pulled him down to the ground. Liam and Bailey (but mostly Bailey, as Liam just stood and looked on in horror) did the same. Jack leaped up from the ground and pushed past the two interns, who were wriggling on the floor in a futile attempt to get back up.

“Come on!” she cried as the others joined her, pounding down the aisle and turning the corner. Their footsteps echoed off the tiles and the yells of the interns faded behind them as they ran.

The five of them ducked into a new corridor to hide as the guards dashed past them, speaking into a holopad radio. Jack turned her head and saw that she was crouching beside a large glass tank, in which floated a strange, scaled creature with a long tail and a fanged snout. It flashed a menacing, gaping smile at her as it dove down to the bottom of its tank. Jack gulped and turned away. “What do we do now? We can’t head back to the colony—the guards probably saw our uniforms!” She pointed to the numbers sewn hastily on their sleeves, over the number of their old colony.

“We’ve got to get to the buggy—we can’t let them find it sitting out there. I—I’ll figure something out once we’re out of range,” Robin decided. The others nodded as they inched forward to the end of the aisle and peeked out. There was no one there, though the five of them could hear the sound of footsteps receding to the right and someone talking. Soon, it was all quiet again.

Jack stood up and stepped out into the open. Liam hissed at her and tried to pull her back, being the closest, but once he saw that the interns weren’t coming, he let her hand drop.

“Let’s go,” Sierra said firmly, joining her older sister and leading the way towards the nearest exit. The rest of the group soon followed.

***

They made their way out of the Archives and out into the blackness, boots smacking against the slick ice drifts. The buggy was sitting in the field where they’d left it, a silent silhouette in the night. As Jack and the others dashed towards it, a tiny sliver of grey light pierced through the dark and reflected off the headlights.

“Get in, hurry!” Robin cried, though no one was following them as far as they could tell. Jack could see no beams of Illumination swinging after them, yet her heart still raced as if Apexes were hot on their heels. She clambered into the back and Sierra—thankfully—took the middle for once, leaving Jack a window seat. “Everyone in? ’Kay.” Robin punched the ignition button and, while the engine was still spitting to life, rattled the shifter around until it found D.

The five of them sped off across the plains, sending a spray of loose snow in their wake. Jack turned around and pressed up against the back window, seat belt cutting into her neck, but she couldn’t see anything except the dark outline of the Archives fading away into the gloom.

“I’m taking us somewhere safe. We can rest there,” Robin said tersely, gripping the wheel like it was a weapon. “Once we get there and stop, we can program the coordinates of Colony 186 onto the map.” Jack was too tired to argue. She leaned her head back against the ythafone cushion and glanced sideways at her companions. Sierra was already on the brink of sleep, long eyelashes fluttering in an effort to suppress yawns. Bailey was clasping and unclasping her hands, tapping her ice-crusted boot on the ground with an impatient air. She caught Jack’s gaze and held it until the latter looked away.

The buggy rumbled on, slow but still steady as ever. Jack folded her arms and watched Robin at the wheel until her eyelids drooped and finally closed. Sleep overwhelmed her and lapped at her feet like the water of the unfrozen river she’d encountered on that one, fateful day. It tugged gently at first, but then crashed down upon her head in a swift tidal wave, washing away the ache in her side, the worries about the next day, and the images of her father’s terrified face. Soon, Jack was fast asleep in what felt to her mind like a warm embrace.