Infinity Riders Page 4

  But Chris was nowhere to be seen.

  Far on the other side of Infinity, a second small landing craft skimmed the rocky surface.

  “Set down over there,” Siena determined. She pointed toward a craggy mountain range jutting up against the sky in the distance. She consulted the hand-drawn sketch of the planet’s surface that Colin had given them.

  “At the base of those hills, right?” Ravi confirmed.

  “Right.”

  “Is there going to be a door or something?” Niko wondered.

  “Probably just a hole in the ground,” Ravi said. “I’ll try not to set the ship down right in it.”

  “Yeah, let’s avoid getting stuck in a pothole,” Siena said.

  Silence returned to the Clipper landing craft. Premission tension. Everyone had their game face on.

  There were plenty of other entrances to the caves that didn’t require going through the Jackal compound. Colin’s map led to one of them.

  From there, they’d have to record their progress through the tunnels carefully so they could find their way back out. Maps were useless underground, Colin had insisted, since the tunnels changed so often.

  That’s why they could comfortably avoid the Jackals—and any difficult negotiations that might ensue. “Leave the diplomacy to the Alphas,” Colin had said with a hint of a sneer. “They’re all into teamwork, so there’s no chance they’ll dodge the Jackals. It’ll slow them down. Meanwhile, we’ll be in and out and waiting for them.”

  “The terrain is not as flat as I expected,” Ravi said. The landing craft skimmed along the textured landscape, approaching the mountain. “This might be a rocky landing.”

  “No pun intended,” Niko grumbled good-naturedly. Siena laughed.

  Ravi set the craft down with a bit of a jolt.

  “Are we there yet?” Niko joked as the ship’s frame rocked and settled.

  They trudged with heavy legs to the edge of the cave entrance. From the surface, it looked less like a cave and more like a gaping pit in the planet’s surface.

  The hole was deep. A pitch-black funnel into the depths of Infinity. Its edges were raw and jagged. Gray-brown dust came away in Siena’s fingers as she ran her hand along the rim.

  The trio set up their climbing ropes, securing them to a large rock near the mouth of the hole. They would rappel down into the cave one at a time.

  “Who’s first?” Siena asked.

  “I landed us here,” Ravi said. “You two duke it out.”

  “I’ll go last,” Siena suggested. “I’m the best at handling the climbing equipment.”

  They turned to Niko, who grinned broadly. “Like I was gonna let either of you beat me in there.”

  Ravi took hold of Niko’s safety rope to belay. Just in case.

  Siena stood by the rock, triple- and quadruple-checking the apparatus to make sure it was well in place. They didn’t know how deep the tunnel was, so Niko would rappel down a few feet at a time until he found bottom.

  “Here goes nothing,” Niko said. He tested the rope’s tautness against the rock one last time, then launched himself into the crater. His feet bounced against the side wall as he hopped downward, loosening and tightening his clamp on the rope with each jump. Soon he had descended out of sight.

  Ravi held Niko’s safety rope more loosely than Siena would have preferred. Granted, it was also tied to the giant rock, but still. She was going third for a reason. She would rather trust the rock.

  “This is totally creepy,” Niko’s voice echoed out of the hole.

  Siena checked the depth counter, which was tracking Niko’s descent based on a locator chip in his harness. “Fifty feet.”

  “I can’t see a dang thing,” Niko complained. “Just walls.”

  “Seventy-five feet.”

  “It’s pretty dry down here. And cool.”

  “Those chills are from fright,” Ravi called in a taunting voice. “Is somebody a little scared of the dark?”

  “Shut up,” Niko called back. “You’ll be crying for your mama when it’s your turn.”

  Siena watched Ravi’s hands tighten around the rope, then loosen again. “One hundred feet.”

  “We only dropped two hundred feet of rope in there, right?”

  “Yeah,” Siena said. “If it’s farther than that, then we have to try a different hole.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this deep,” Ravi said.

  “Tunnels change,” Siena reminded him. She glanced at the counter showing Niko’s progress. “One hundred thirty feet.”

  They stood in silence and stared down into the hole. The silence was remarkable. It was a far cry from what they were used to. No plants or animals to make noise. Barely a breeze. Too silent.

  “He stopped talking,” Ravi noticed.

  “Or we stopped hearing him?” Siena suggested hopefully.

  The climbing rope began to tremble and bob.

  “Oh no.” She barely breathed it.

  Ravi tightened up on the safety line…which turned slack in his hands. He drew it up quickly, yard by yard, until a frayed end appeared in his hand. He turned to Siena, alarmed. “Do you think he got eaten?”

  The climbing rope jerked more distinctly. Again. And again.

  “Wait, he’s pulling on the rope,” Siena realized, relieved. “He’s found bottom.” The counter had stopped. “One hundred and forty-five feet.” Siena reset the counter to track the depth of Ravi’s harness instead of Niko’s.

  “Okay, here I go,” Ravi said. He tightened the safety rope against the rock, then clipped his own harness to it and to the main climbing rope. He winked at Siena. “See ya soon.”

  Alone on the surface of Infinity, the silence felt even more profound.

  The place was neither desert, nor mountain, nor plain. Only rock and dust and stillness. It was hard to even believe in the dangers that lay below while she was surrounded by such utter lifelessness. It was especially odd to realize that at the moment she might be the sole living thing on the surface of an entire planet.

  When it was Siena’s turn, she sighed as she lowered herself into the hole. A few calm minutes, without tension and wisecracking, was a lot lately. It had felt strange, but good.

  One hundred and forty-five feet below the surface, the three Omegas regrouped and ventured into the tunnels. The wide, dark cavern was made only a little less dark by their flashlights, but if Colin was correct, there should be Stingers found easily nearby.

  The Omega crew didn’t need any help from the Jackals. They could do it all on their own.

  It was better this way.

  They’d get in and out, no problem, Colin had assured them. Quick and clean and, hopefully, unnoticed.

  “Where did Chris go?” Carly asked. The Weaver cavern seemed bigger and stranger all of a sudden.

  Gabriel shrugged. “We’d better find him.”

  They wandered up the hallway, back in the direction they had come. The empty labs seemed even eerier now, if possible. Other hallways spun off in many directions. Chris could have gone anywhere.

  “He can’t have just vanished,” Gabriel said.

  “Or so you think,” Carly said, trying to make her voice sound mysterious. It wasn’t hard in these surroundings. “Maybe he’s been concealing alien teleporting technology from us all this time.”

  “Ha,” Gabriel said. “You think he’s going to reappear, in a tuxedo or something?” He laughed and made jazz hands, shaking his palms out to the sides. “Surprise!”

  Carly laughed too. It felt like they needed to fill the silence. The quiet in the labs was too eerie otherwise.

  It was extra odd being just the two of them. Gabriel Parker and Carly Diamond, alone in the vastness of Infinity…The words echoed in her head like a movie-trailer voice-over.

  Carly took the opportunity to contact the Cloud Leopard. She raised her MTB and tried to radio Dash and Piper.

  No luck. The connection failed to produce even static.

  Chris had been ri
ght—the rock blocked all radio signals to the surface. Plus, the part of the Jackal outpost that was on the surface must have been relatively small. They were definitely deep underground now. The walls here appeared to have been carved straight out of the stone.

  “Hey, look at this,” Carly exclaimed. She entered one of the labs they hadn’t explored yet. It was mostly empty, except for a battered-looking metal safe the size of a mini refrigerator.

  The small safe looked like it had been dropped from a great height. It was all crinkled and crushed, like an empty juice box. The smashed metal door had rings for a padlock, but there wasn’t one. It didn’t appear to be locked—just so damaged that it had become impossible to open.

  Gabriel tugged on the door. It didn’t budge.

  Carly examined the safe from all sides. “There’s writing over here.” She tapped the MTB on her wrist and brought up their translation program. The crew had a special translator device, but as a safety precaution, Chris had downloaded the program to their MTBs too.

  “It translates to ‘tunnel navigation system,’ ” she reported. “Approximately.”

  Gabriel grinned, excited. “Wait…it says ‘approximately’?” he asked. “Why would you want to navigate approximately?”

  “I think it means it’s an approximate translation.”

  “Oh. That’s even weirder.” Gabriel took off his backpack and rummaged inside it for a minute. He pulled out a small black pouch.

  Carly knocked on the safe’s metal walls, as if hoping someone might open it from the inside. “We have to open it,” she insisted. “Maybe we can pry the door loose with a screwdriver?”

  “Yeah, I have one right in here—” Gabriel unzipped the black pouch. “Yahh!” he cried, jumping back in surprise. His padded Simu Suit loomed over him like a ghost.

  Carly laughed at his stunned expression. “Why’d you even bring that?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Gabriel said. “I thought it was my tool pouch. Shoot. I must have picked up the wrong one when I was packing.” They were both small black zippered pouches. He could easily see how he’d made the mistake.

  “Oh,” Carly said. “So we don’t actually have your tool pouch with us?”

  Gabriel rummaged in his bag. “I guess not. Sorry.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Carly said. “This place is pretty well stocked. We can probably find any tools we need around here.” She scanned the shelves while Gabriel set about refolding the Simu Suit. He squished the foam flatter and flatter and zipped it back into place. He returned the pouch to his backpack, still feeling kind of embarrassed over the confusion.

  Carly pulled a scraper from the bottom of a shelf. It had a flat metal head about two inches wide and a thicker blue plastic handle. “Here—why don’t we try this?”

  “That works.” Gabriel helped Carly position the lip of the scraper in the space along the edge of the safe door. He pushed all of his weight against it.

  The door inched open.

  The contents of the safe were…utterly disappointing.

  “It’s paint.” Carly said. Several stacks of fist-sized canisters. Except they were all the same pale yellow color. Barely yellow, more like a saltine cracker. Each can had a pair of hooks looping off the rim, like quotation marks. Or fangs. A stack of clean brushes accompanied them.

  “Well, that was anticlimactic,” Gabriel added dryly.

  “I guess they’ve repurposed this safe.” Carly poked at the lid of the paint can. “And it’s not even a good color.”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes jokingly. “Haven’t you heard? Neon pale is the new black.”

  “Like I’m ever going to trust your fashion sense,” Carly quipped.

  He grabbed three cans and started juggling them, only to watch them crash onto the floor and flop in all directions. “Whoa, that is some heavy paint,” he said.

  “Extra gravity, remember?” Carly reminded him.

  “Right.” Gabriel bent down and picked a can up by the fangs. He twirled it around his finger. It was heavier than swinging a ceramic mug.

  “Let’s go,” Carly said. “We have to find Chris.” She went into the hall. A minute later, Gabriel joined her. He was still messing around in his bag.

  “Careful,” Carly warned. “You got any other surprises in there?”

  Gabriel grinned. “I just might.”

  They walked past additional labs. Gabriel looked in the door of each, in case anything caught his eye. He felt torn between the creepy fun of exploring the labs, and the need to find Chris and get on with the mission. There might be other useful things to find, but they had a job to do here too.

  The corridor dead-ended in a T. The new hallway was wider than the others had been. There was a row of red bulbs mounted high on the far wall, but that was it. Several appeared shattered.

  “Which way now?” Carly asked.

  “I guess they stopped putting in lighting at some point,” Gabriel said. He flicked on his flashlight and pointed it both ways down the dark hall. Then he shrugged. “This way.”

  They turned left and made their way down the corridor. The sound of their footsteps became echoey. Beside them, the row of red lights blinked three times, then went out.

  “Huh,” Gabriel said. “Does this feel right to you?”

  “Maybe they’re on a timer.” Carly pulled out her flashlight too. The dual beams made it somewhat easier to see the path in front of them.

  “Oh, look!” Carly said. She hurried through the swath of light toward the thing that had caught her eye. “A flower. Isn’t it pretty?”

  She bent to examine it. It was hard to tell in the darkness what color it was. Lavender, she thought, or something close. It had a broad flat face, sort of like a daisy, but with thick, round petals that felt full, like aloe leaves. It grew from a flexible, four-stranded stem that curved out of a moss-lined crack in the wall.

  When Carly reached down and touched the stem, she wasn’t intending to pluck the flower. The stem strands severed seemingly of their own accord. They coiled around her index finger and thumb, gripping like a baby’s fist.

  “Cool,” Gabriel said.

  “Why is it growing indoors?” Carly wondered.

  “Um, it’s not…,” Gabriel said, coming up closer behind her. He swept the flashlight over the wall she was crouched near. It wasn’t smooth, as if cut by man-made tools. It was made of jagged stone.

  The realization dawned slowly. “We’re not in the Jackal building anymore,” Carly said. This tunnel was more than three times as tall as they were—at least fifteen feet high—and just about that wide. Like a circle. A circle chewed out by giant stone-cutting teeth.

  “These are the Sawtooth caves,” Gabriel said. He shone the flashlight back the way they had come. All jagged stone, as far as they could see.

  “When did it change?” Carly said. “Why didn’t we notice?” As she spoke, the flower tendrils coiled snugly, tucking deeper into the spaces between her fingers.

  “I don’t know. The difference must be subtle at first,” Gabriel said. “We were focused on finding Chris.”

  “Let’s get back. We should find him before we go farther,” Carly said.

  Gabriel agreed. “We need the maps.”

  “And the Weavers.”

  They started walking back the way they had come. The hallway seemed much longer and darker now.

  Carly was the first to hear the scraping sound. “Did you hear that?”

  “It’s nothing,” Gabriel said. “Let’s just get back to the Jackal compound.”

  The scraping sound grew louder. Or…closer.

  It was the shushing of leathery skin on stone. “Something’s coming,” Carly said.

  Whatever Gabriel was going to say in response was drowned out by the grind of stone-cutting jaws. A massive Sawtooth Land Eel slid around the corner in front of them, gnashing and slathering.

  Dash and Piper stuck close to the Cloud Leopard flight deck, waiting for communication from their crew dow
n on Infinity.

  So far, total radio silence.

  Dash stood at the screen and gazed out at the desolate landscape. The lifelessness of the place had a certain beauty. The gray rocks shone in the pale light of the nearest star. The planet had a rainy-day gloom about it that lifted gradually as the starlight peeked over the horizon.

  A sunrise in a distant world.

  It reminded Dash of a sunrise in the desert, when he and his mom and sister had traveled to the Grand Canyon when he was little. Then, and now, the view made him feel small, but also connected to something bigger than himself. The earth, the air, the universe. Something.

  His mom had held his hand that day, to keep him from getting too close to the canyon edge. Now he flexed his empty fingers and fought against the warm memory of that vacation long ago.

  It was strange to think of himself so far from home. He didn’t want to dwell on those thoughts. He couldn’t afford to let his mind slip into sadness, nostalgia, or fear. If he ever wanted to make it home again, he had to stay ready and keep the crew on task.

  Dash turned away from the view screen.

  “They should be checking in with us,” he said.

  “Give it time,” Piper answered. “It hasn’t been that long, really. We don’t know what might be going on down there.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” Dash informed her.

  Piper nodded. “I’m sure they’ll radio in when they can. Or when they need to.” The last bit carried an ominous echo.

  “No news is good news?” Dash said wryly, trying for a positive spin.

  Piper shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Dash turned back to the large screen. Clear sky. The stillness of rock. “Since when has a planet brought us good news?” he mused. Feelings of worry churned around in his belly.

  “They’re underground, remember?” Piper said. “Maybe there’s just no signal.”

  Maybe. Yet the nagging feeling in Dash’s gut still gnawed at him. “Something doesn’t feel right,” he said. “I should be down there with them.”

  Or me, Piper thought, although she knew Dash was speaking out of frustration. “Sometimes being part of the team means watching and waiting,” she said. “This is what they need from us right now.”