The Lost Code Part 15

"Making a new species," I said, filling in Lilly's theory.

"Right," said Aliah, "except, it could be worse than that. What if we're not the new race? What if we're just the test subjects? You know, like the animals in cages that they test the NoRad lotions on, when the results are actually for someone else."

"For them. them." Marco waved his hand dismissively toward the glow of the city.

"The privileged few," said Aliah. "So Lilly thinks we should try to get out, find the Nomads, to expose what Eden is really up to."

"We don't know if we're part of the project or what," said Evan, "but it would be stupid to try to break out because, A A, the Nomads are savages-"

I was about to say something to refute that when Aliah jumped in.

"Oh whatever, that's just what you've heard on the EdenNet news, and who makes that news? EdenCorp does. Lilly says the Free Signal isn't like that at all-"

"And," Evan said over her, " Evan said over her, "B, there's no way out of here anyway! That's my point! Even if we wanted to, how are you going to get out? The main entrances are completely guarded. That's why I keep saying we should just go to Paul and ask him. What reason would he have to lie to us? People are going to find out about our little fish club here eventually. We could work together."

"And end up like Anna?" said Aliah.

"We don't know what happened to Anna!" Evan was shouting now. "Why do we have to a.s.sume that something terrible happened to her? What if it's true that she really is at the hospital over in the city? Maybe they're trying to figure out why she has gills. Maybe it would help them figure it out if they could study more of us."

Aliah glanced over at me. "This is why Lilly took off."

"Which is fine, because I'm getting tired of her whole crusader thing anyway. She's going to go getting us killed by savages over things she doesn't even understand."

"Like you do," said Aliah.

"This isn't good," Marco muttered. "We should be sticking together."

"Do you know where she went?" I asked.

"Oh, what are you gonna do, go find her?" Evan was peering at me. "You gonna try to make your move now, Owen? Little scrub gonna try to score with the CIT?"

"Evan..." Aliah rolled her eyes.

I felt like turning and diving in, getting out of there, but I stayed. "No, that's not it."

"n.o.body even wants you here!" Evan stood up. "And Lilly's still mad at you about whatever you pulled last night, anyway, so why don't you just go back to your baby cabin?"

"Evan, that's enough, buddy," said Marco.

Evan walked out into the middle of the raft. I felt another urge to run, but instead I stayed where I was. I thought I might fall over but somehow I held my balance as he loomed over me. I was shaking and it wasn't from the cold, but I was not running from this. If I had to stand here and get slammed by Evan for Lilly's sake, then fine.

Evan glared down at me. This was going to hurt. So, let it hurt. Enough from these kings, Evan, Leech...

"Not cool, Ev," said Marco.

Still staring at me... then Evan looked over at Marco and Aliah. "All right, fine, screw you guys." He turned and dove into the water. A minute later he emerged on sh.o.r.e.

"Sorry about him," said Aliah.

I shrugged. "It's okay." I looked around. "So, where did Lilly go?"

"To her special place," said Marco.

"Her-"

"Sometimes she just takes off on her own." Aliah pointed out toward the mouth of the inlet. "That way."

"Oh."

"Go ahead," said Marco as Aliah snuggled into his shoulder.

"What?"

"We usually let her come back on her own. But go ahead and find her if you want."

"Yeah? Um, I'm gonna go do that."

"Have fun," said Aliah.

I nodded, not knowing what else to say, and dove off the raft.

I headed out of the inlet, breaking the surface now and then to check my bearings. I waded ash.o.r.e at the flashlight point but Lilly wasn't there, so I swam out into the wide, main lake. To the right, the city and the Aquinara glowed, their lights reflecting on the water. A few lights blinked closer, people out on their yachts. To the left, the water stretched into a wooded bay where the lake ended, Mount Aasgard a dark silhouette above it.

I headed toward that bay first. As I swam, I watched for the blue light of the siren, but didn't see it. If I didn't find Lilly, maybe I'd head back to the Aquinara and try to check out that fissure again.

I swam into the middle of the wide bowl of water and poked my eyes above the surface. The forest was dark. The moon wasn't up yet, but the MoonGlow lights were on, frosting the tips of the pines. There was nothing over here.

The water undulated with swells, increasing down the long channel of lake from the city. Northeasterly winds. Almost ten knots tonight Northeasterly winds. Almost ten knots tonight, I thought, and again wondered where a thought like that was coming from. Now I noticed a shadow. Above, some disk-shaped clouds were cruising overhead, blotting out the SimStars. They seemed thicker than normal.

I took one last look around, about to head up the lake, when I saw a small flicker of light. If it hadn't been for those cloud shadows, I might not even have noticed it. It was to my right, near the far side of the lake.

I ducked under and swam close. The bottom rose to meet me, and I surfaced to find that the light was flickering through the trees of a tiny sliver island, a little way from sh.o.r.e. The island was narrow, maybe seven meters wide and like twenty long. It was covered by a grove of wispy birch trees, the MoonGlow flickering through their small leaves, which rustled in the night breeze.

I stepped out of the shallow water onto soft, spongy dirt, crisscrossed by thick roots. I slipped between the slender trees, getting closer to the little light, and stopped at the edge of a tiny clearing.

A large birch trunk had snapped off a meter from the ground. Above, a hole was open to the sky. A tiny circle of gra.s.s had taken advantage of this. Near the center was a flat slab of rock, and on it flickered three candles set in old aluminum food cans. The upper halves of the cans had holes punched in them in geometric designs. There was a station for making those at Craft House.

Lilly sat beside the rock, wearing a baggy hooded sweatshirt, a blanket over her shoulders, her wet hair falling down her back in thick strands. She seemed to be checking out something in her lap. I watched her, heard her breathing.

She lifted her head. "It's okay to come out. I know you're there."

"Oh, sorry," I said. I stepped out, crossing my arms. "Um, hey."

She didn't turn around. I walked over to her. She held a small device in her hands. A mini computer pad. There was a window open on it, showing a connection bar and a tiny graphic of a satellite. Soft static hummed from the pad and a message blinked: SCANNING FOR SIGNAL...

I thought about what to say. Maybe I should just start by apologizing for last night and trying to explain all that, but it didn't seem right. Besides, Lilly seemed busy. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Trying to find the Nomad signal," she said. "My parents left me this. You only get one storage box when you're a Cryo. They mostly filled it with mementos I'd kept, stupid stuff like dolls and knickknacks, and some photos. But my dad put this in there, too. It's an old model but it has the gamma link for satellite connections. You can't get these in here-only the ones that work on the EdenNet. It's like he knew I might want to get more sides of the story than just Eden's. Problem is, not many of the satellites work anymore. And most of the ones that do are encrypted. The Nomads hack one now and then to send their signalcast, then they pa.s.s the code around to their sympathizers. I have a friend over in the city who gave me a code before camp started. I think it might have changed, though. I haven't heard anything for a few nights."

"My dad said that most of the shooting stars we see these days are dead satellites," I said.

Lilly glanced up. "Can't see 'em from in here. I've never seen a real shooting star. They're probably beautiful."

"Yeah, they're pretty cool."

"Kinda poetic too, our trash raining down on us."

"Yeah." I wondered what to say next. "I'm glad I found you. Evan was just going on again about how he thinks the Nomads are savages."

"Evan is full of roach s.h.i.t."

I laughed, but only a little, trying not to show how much I enjoyed hearing her say that. "What do they talk about on the signal?"

"Lots of things," said Lilly. "Trade, where to find supplies or spots where agriculture or fisheries are working. The Alliance works co-op. They talk, too, about the insurgency against the ACF, about getting into the Eden Domes, though mostly they don't want any part of these places anymore. They know the domes are failing. They say the DI is way lower than Eden will admit. And they're worried about this Project Elysium. They say, too, that the ACF, the People's Corporation of China, even the Russian Kingdom are all pressuring Eden to reveal what they're up to, but they won't."

"Do the Nomads have any theories on what Project Elysium is?" I asked.

"They don't really know, but they say the domes are placed in specific locations for a reason, and that EdenCorp is looking for some kind of technology or something. But their specifics are sketchy. One broadcaster thinks they're looking for a s.p.a.ceship, another thinks it's some secret lab or something. n.o.body really knows. All they know is there's something."

"A couple of the other domes are near landmarks, like the Pyramids and Stonehenge."

"Ancient sites," said Lilly. "Yeah, the Nomads think that's intentional."

I thought about the vision of the pyramid and the skull. "Maybe they're looking for something old?"

"Maybe." Lilly swiped her finger over a bar graphic, scanning satellite frequencies, but there was only the whispering static of dead air and s.p.a.ce junk. She sighed and flicked off the pad.

She put it on the rock by the candles, and I noticed a photo frame there. It showed Lilly standing in front of two adults, a man and a woman. The man in a suit, the woman in a sari. There was a tall, older-looking boy beside them. "That's your family?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said softly. "Mom, Dad, and Anton. All dead now."

"What happened to them?" I asked.

"Life," said Lilly with a shrug. "Anton died in Bangladesh. My parents had tried to get him in here, too, but he didn't want it. He was sixteen, old enough to say no. He said, with the world in such bad shape, it was wrong to just hide away when we could be helping. And then he ran off and joined a relief group to help climate refugees. I was only ten at the time, stuck doing what my parents said. Then, six years after I was Cryo'd, Anton drowned in a ferry accident.

"And my parents, I guess after they froze me, they kept trying to get into the ACF, but they never could. The HZ had filled up. They ended up staying in Calgary in the Borderlands. It wasn't as bad there back then, but it was still bad. Mom died of the plastics cancer. One of the super-pneumonia epidemics got Dad."

"I'm sorry," I said, not knowing what else to say. "Those got my grandparents, too."

Lilly went on like she hadn't heard me. "You know what's creepy is that there are vid chats, from my parents, that they made me throughout their lives. I guess they made one each year so I'd know them. There's a few from Anton, too...."

She sniffed. "They called me Tiger Lilly, their little princess-warrior. I have the files here with me, but I've never watched them. I started the first one once, but... it was too hard. I know they wanted the best for me, to save me from the chaos. Now I'm here, and I don't want their big sacrifice to be just so that I end up as some experiment."

She glanced up at me. I saw rims of tears beneath her eyes. "Have a seat."

I moved to sit across from her, but she raised her blanketed arm like I should sit beside her.

I sat down in the gra.s.s and was careful not to touch her, in case that would seem too forward or weird, but then she scooted over and tossed the blanket over my shoulder. Her smooth bare thigh touched mine, her sleeve against my arm.

I saw she was looking up at the stars, so I looked up, too. "My mom left when I was seven," I said.

"Where'd she go?" Lilly asked.

"She didn't say. She left a note, but all it said was that she had to find her place, and that she was sorry she couldn't be happy with us. She left with a medical caravan and we could never track her down after that."

"That stinks."

"Yeah. Mostly 'cause I would've liked to go with her. She got to go off to find herself, and Dad and I were stuck at Hub, living like moles."

"You could have gone after her."

It didn't surprise me that this was Lilly's first thought, and it made me feel lame for never really considering it. Well, I'd thought of it, but not in any real way. "I didn't want to leave my dad," I said. "He's kinda sick. And he likes having me around."

Lilly shook her head. "Parents." I thought she'd say something else, but she didn't.

"How'd you get this stuff out here?" I asked, nodding to the candles and radio.

She pointed behind us with her head. I saw that there was another red waterproof bag lying against the tree trunk. "I brought it out awhile ago," she said. "That way I can come here whenever. Have some s.p.a.ce to think."

"Tiger Lilly Island," I said, trying out a smile as I said it.

Lilly c.o.c.ked her eyebrow at me. "Corny," she said. Then she punched my shoulder, "Just kidding, O. I like it."

She liked it. That was all I thought about for a few seconds.

An owl called in the distance, lonely, searching. There was no answer. I pictured it out there somewhere, looking for another of its kind, except then I remembered that it might not even be real.

"They told me you want to try to break out," I said.

"Tsh," Lilly chuckled. "You probably heard how that went over."

"Yeah. Do you really think we're part of Project Elysium? Or in danger from it, or whatever?"

Lilly turned and gazed at me. It was too dark to tell what she was thinking. "First, you tell me why you ran away from me last night. Then I'll tell you what I think."

"Oh, yeah," I stumbled, not knowing where to start. "You mean... the siren?"

"That's what you said last night." Lilly's eyes narrowed. "You mean like the s.e.xy mermaids that drown sailors?"

"Well, no, but-I don't know what else to call it. And it looks like a girl. Well, sort of, it-"

"It's okay. I know," said Lilly, rubbing my arm. "I saw it."

"You did?"

She nodded. "Yeah, just, not at first, not when you started talking all crazy and took off. But as you were swimming away, I saw it. I tried to follow you, but you had too much of a head start. You've gotten fast, by the way."

"Oh, thanks."