Illumination

The buggy drove on for several more hours through the ice plains. They passed several colonies, but never stopped for fear of being seen by a guard. To anyone watching from their apartment windows, they would seem merely like a patrol driving by, or perhaps a scouting expedition. No one would care to look at the number painted on the side of the buggy. No one would notice or even realize that the identification code was not from their colony, but a different one. Even if they did, they would soon forget among all the activities and classes going on at the colony. They didn’t know about the creatures rising up from the Sectors to claim New Earth as their own.

They don’t know, Jack repeated to herself solemnly as they passed yet another colony, this one marked with the numbers 328. They still had a long way to go before they reached Colony 186. They don’t know what I know. She envied the colonists going about their business, working, learning, and going out with friends, blissfully unaware of what was going on. Or maybe they do know. Maybe their General already told them, and now they are left in fear, just like us. Jack tilted her head up to one of the windows that overlooked the colony’s courtyard, the courtyard they were now driving through. She could see a little girl looking down at them, waving, and she waved back. Then Robin sped up the buggy and they rumbled on, past Colony 328.

After a couple of hours that were spent in tedious silence, they stopped so that Robin could check the map. Besides the holographic one that was built into their buggy, he’d also made a brief scan of the map that had been on the inside cover of the 186 book, before they’d been chased out by the guards. He then brought it up in 4D and held it up so the others could see where they were (via a little buggy icon on his holopad’s projection). Robin tilted it to the side and stared at their location in what seemed like numb confusion.

“What is it?” Liam asked, leaning against the armrest and eying his friend’s troubled expression. “Is something wrong?”

Robin nodded mutely, then forced himself to speak. “Well, yeah. According to the scan and the map, there should be a cliff here.” He rolled down the right window and directed the Illumination headlights to the right. There was nothing but empty blackness and the occasional snowflake that caught the glare of their headlights and sparkled.

“We can’t be lost,” Bailey muttered. “Gimme the map.” She nearly wrestled it from Robin’s hands and held the holopad in her lap, hunched over in curiosity. Jack sat back down and watched as the girl played with the 4D scan and stared at the holographic cliff that wasn’t there in real life.

Sierra asked, “How could we possibly be lost? We just passed a colony.” She pointed at a small dot on the map with glowing, blue text hovering over it that said simply 328. “So just see which way we’ve been driving. The colony’s behind us, right?” Jack’s sister turned and looked behind them through the window, clutching the headrest of her seat so hard that prints formed on the ythafone. It was too dark to see anything but the dark grey fog that lay close to the ground.

“Hold on, I’m going to get out,” Robin said, putting his helmet on and opening up the buggy doors.

A blast of frigid air prickled at the base of Jack’s exposed neck, sending goosebumps down her spine. She quickly put her helmet on as well to block out the cold and unfastened her seatbelt. “I need to stretch my legs anyways,” she announced, sliding out of the dimly-lit buggy and switching her Illuminator on. “You guys wanna come?” Bailey nodded, but Sierra and Liam decided to stay behind in the warmth of the buggy.

Jack joined her brother a few feet away from the buggy, sitting down and watching her breath wisp away into the night. “What do we do?”

Robin set his tools on the ground and began to pace and examine the map. “I don’t know. Maybe we’re not where I thought we were at all. We could also be here, or here, or here."

Bailey led Jack across the grounds to a more secluded area, where she sat down amongst the fog and picked up a chunk of packed snow. “Sit,” she commanded, teasingly throwing it against Jack’s leg, which caused the iceball to shatter into crystals.

“Whatever you say, your majesty.” Jack sat down reluctantly and leaned back so that the back of her helmet bumped against the ground. “What is it? This can’t be all you want.”

“You know me too well.” Bailey rolled over onto her right side so that her stormy, glistening eyes were looking into Jack’s. “What was Ben like?”

“What do you mean by what was he like?” Jack asked, turning to face the other girl and propping herself up on one elbow.

“Well...before he became the alpha. Like when he showed you the light grenades.” Her eyes were narrowed and glinted strangely in the dark. Bailey’s breath made a patch of fog on her helmet’s glass visor, cloaking the bottom half of her face. “What was he like then?”

“I...don’t know,” Jack admitted, trying to avoid the other girl’s gaze. “I usually don’t analyze personalities.”

“I do, a lot.” Bailey sat back up again and took her hand, the one that wasn’t supporting her. “You know, I look at your family a lot. You’re pretty dysfunctional, if I do say so myself.”

“Yeah, ‘say so myself’ is right. Have you taken a look at yourself?”

“What about me? Am I just too fabulous for your tastes?” Bailey mimed swishing an imaginary coat around her and frowned.

Jack took her hand out of Bailey’s. “I just don’t think you’re one to judge, considering our history. We’ve been fighting since preschool. Remember that? You brought your science fair project to the school to show us little kids and I accidentally broke it.”

“Let bygones be bygones, Squeak. I fight with you now because I don’t know what else to do. It’s not like I enjoy teasing you.” She paused, then added, “Well, maybe a little.”

“Well, you could’ve told me that earlier. Would’ve changed a lot…” Jack swallowed a lump in her throat that was rapidly forming.

“Nah, I don’t think so. Some things never change. If you suddenly realized that Liam was hot as a blazestone, would that change the fact that he’s stubborn and stuck-up at times?”

There was an awkward silence. Jack felt her face flush and she tucked her chin against her chest before her gaze flitted back to the other girl. Maybe she’s right. Not about Liam, of course. Something in her softened, but she pushed it aside, gritting her teeth. “Well, uh, what does this all have to do with Ben?”

“I was looking in your pack the other day—ssh, wait,” Bailey began, holding up a hand to halt Jack’s complaints. “And I saw that you still had a light grenade in it. One from Ben. Maybe you forgot to use it on the ice pillar when we were demolishing it, but either way, it was there.” She pointed at Jack’s backpack, which hung loosely from her shoulders.

“Let me look.” Jack brushed the strange conversation from her mind, got back onto her knees, and dropped the pack to the ground. She unzipped it and rummaged through with one hand, the other wrapped in the satchel’s drawstrings, which dug into her gloved palm. At the bottom of the pack, between an emergency ration kit and an Illumination flare, was a light grenade. This one was unusually large, conical-shaped, and glinted in the light of Jack’s Illuminator. I don’t remember this one being in here. At least not any that were shaped like this one, she thought, pulling out the light grenade and turning it over in her hand.

Bailey leaned forward expectantly and watched the expression on Jack’s face morph into confusion. “Well?”

“Huh, I guess I must’ve forgotten about it. Maybe it was a prototype. I don’t know when he had the time to put it into my pack before he became alpha, though.” She ran her thumb over the circular base and felt it brush against a piece of adhesive that she’d previously assumed was the detonation tab. “Weird...what’s this?” Jack flipped the light grenade over in her hand and held it up to the combined light of both the Illuminators. It was a piece of tape wrapped around the bottom of the grenade. There was writing in a strange, loopy handwriting on it, smudged but legible.

“For a little ‘Illumination’ in times when you are lost, ihl saemenstoff,” Bailey read out loud, slowly pronouncing each syllable of the strange word at the end of the message. “What does that mean? Is that some code between you and Ben?”

“No,” Jack denied, setting the grenade on the ground in front of her. “I don’t know what any of this means.” She let out a long sigh and watched as Bailey poked the tip of the conical light grenade experimentally. “Don’t touch that!”

“Why? I’m not gonna detonate it, Squeak.”

“No, I just...in times when you are lost. Isn’t that now?” Jack glanced back to the buggy, where Robin was leaning against the trunk, running his hands through his short, bristly, raven hair.

“Yeah, so you want to detonate it? Good idea.” Bailey grinned wickedly. “Let’s go tell the others.” She stood up and bounded away with sudden excitement, leaving Jack in the dust. I don’t know...this could be a trap. Why would this light grenade suddenly appear in my pack? Maybe the alpha planted it in my pack...but why? If so, it could be dangerous. Jack began to slowly make her way back to the buggy, clutching the light grenade carefully in one hand. What have I gotten myself into? She chuckled out loud and muttered, “Should’ve asked myself that long ago.

“Hey,” Robin greeted morosely as she approached. He clutched the holopad in one hand and ran the other along the uneven paint coat on the buggy. “Whatcha got there?” He watched as Bailey ran past them to tell the others. “Umm…what is going on?”

Jack held out the light grenade for him to see. Robin reached out one gloved hand and held it up to the light of his Illuminator, fingers lightly squeezing the point like a paleontologist examining the new bone he’d found of some ancient bear or lion. “What is this writing at the end?”

“You tell me. I don’t even know how I got this in the first place. I thought I’d used them all up during Project Illumination, what was supposed to be the project.” She laughed bitterly, scuffing her toe on the icy ground. The buggy rumbled in impatience next to them, forcing the siblings to step away from the engine. “Do you recognize that word at the end?”

Robin shook his head. “Nothing I’ve ever seen and I’ve studied many of the ancient languages. If anyone would know what this means, it’d be Li. Go ask him.”

“I’m right here, you know,” the Brit said, revealing himself to have been standing behind them. Jack yelped instinctively. “Sorry. I have bat ears.”

“I can tell.” She handed over the light grenade once again.

“I have no idea,” Liam decided. He shrugged and tapped the object before giving it back. “Should we detonate it? It wouldn’t hurt to try.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” Jack gestured for the others to crowd around her before adding, “We should probably step away from the buggy.”

The others nodded as they walked a few yards away from their vehicle, so that the headlight just barely lit up their surroundings and they had to rely on the Illuminators on their helmets to see. Jack took a deep breath and glanced around her. The other four stood in a circle, six feet apart from each other, trembling nervously but determined nonetheless. “Nothing will happen,” she thought out loud, trying to comfort them. “If the alpha wants us to reach the colony, he wouldn’t try to stop us. I think he genuinely wants to help.”

“Genuinely, yeah,” Sierra said bitterly. “If he really wanted to help, he’d stop holding our dad hostage.” She nodded, arms folded across her chest, and said, “Let’s do this.”

In one, swift motion, Jack whipped the tab out and threw the light grenade onto the ground. She turned away, ready for blinding light to fill her vision, and the others instinctively did the same.

When no haze of bright ivory filled the edges of their vision, the five of them each turned back and stared at where the light grenade had landed. “What the…” Bailey muttered at the sight in front of them.

Instead of bursting into metal fragments and sending plumes of white light outwards, the conical light grenade had partially buried itself in the ground, the base with the strange writing on it barely visible. It pulsed a mesmerizing, sapphire shade that rivaled the strength of their Illuminators. Sparks rose up from a tiny hole that was forming at the base as part of the grenade folded inwards. The sparks seemed to have wings—they flitted about and spread quickly, like some sort of pollen. Jack reached out her hand to touch one of them, but drew back with a hiss as red hot pain raced through her fingertip at the contact, burning through the glove. What is this? The others seemed just as confused as she was.

“Magical sparks? What are they supposed to do? Form a trail that leads us to Colony 186?” Robin asked sarcastically, throwing his gloved hands up into the air.

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Liam leaned over, placing his hands on his knees and watching the sparks fly rapidly out of the top of the light grenade. Most of them floated up past his face, but some sputtered and fell to the ground, igniting tiny snow crystals before burning out. It was like a faulty blazewok, dangerous and weird, but it still drew the eyes of every one of them.

Suddenly, Jack became aware of a strange, quiet, clicking sound behind her. No, it was all around, and rapidly growing louder. The sound was painfully familiar and played out like a code. Click...clickity click-click...click click clickity, it sounded, just loud enough for everyone to hear over the sound of their own breathing. Liam backed away to his previous spot, knees still bowed slightly, shaking. All of a sudden, they were locked in a tense silence, unwilling to break it for fear of attracting the solfects’ attention.

“It’s okay,” Jack finally said, more to herself than to the others. “It’s going to be okay. Solfects seem to like hiding in cramped spots or in areas with lots of camouflage cover. We’re safe.” Yet as the mysterious clicking grew louder, coming out of what felt like nowhere and everywhere at once, she didn’t feel so sure of that.

“W—what’s happening?” Sierra whispered, breaking the quiet to rush to Jack’s side. She pressed the crown of her helmet against her sister’s chest and looked around in fear, voicing everyone else’s thoughts.

“They’re coming. But how?” Liam asked, also drawing nearer.

Robin did the same, and soon Bailey joined them. The girl quickly rummaged through her pack, found the compact gun slider, and popped it open, letting the Quicksilver unfold into a long, sleek rifle. “For long distance sniping,” she explained, licking her chapped lips from behind the visor and shouldering the weapon. “We’ll need it.”

As the clicking intensified and Jack felt the earth tremble beneath her with slight footsteps, a horrible thought dawned on her. What if the light grenade brought the solfects here? What if...they can somehow sense the sparks underground? Is that why they attacked when all of us used the light grenades on the ice pillar? Because they sensed the sparks flying? If so, why didn’t they come the first time Ben detonated them? Is this all a trap? Her mind whirled with new, scary thoughts. Jack did her best to push them aside and keep her head in the moment, focused on one, core thought.

We’re under attack.