Brock strode along the interior of the massive track that Big Crunch had built and studied every nook and cranny. His ostrich head swivelled this way and that, the long neck poking into every compartment and corner.
“This? I am supposed to give this to bad Zern. A pipe?” Jazzy asked Big Crunch.
“Yes. Give it to him. You’ll see what it is. Maybe it will work,” Crunch said.
“I can hear voices,” the drone spoke, its lights pulsing. The drone sat on the metal decking of the interior of the track. “And did you find that ro—”
“Shud-up. There is talking. You interrupt,” the secretary bird said from its place between the woman and the large lizard man. “And no rope. We don’t find rope!”
The smaller bird turned to the ostrich, who was deep in the shadowed metal corridor of the track machine and yelled, “He is driving me crazy! ‘Oh, it’s so wet in here… Not getting any drier in here…’ Come on guys.’ Boo Hoo. Well, you know what? I’m bird now, pretty bird, but still bird. So Darius must wait! There is no rope.”
Darius floated inside the water tower. He had absolutely no idea what Nova was talking about, but it sounded like she was pretty mad, so he did shut up. He floated on his back. Relaxed. It had been worrisome inside the water tower at first, but once he realized Brock and Nova couldn’t get him out that easily, he decided he would just relax and wait. They would get him out, eventually. He found if he kept his lungs fairly full of air and kept as still as he could, he could drift lazily on his back. His feet hung down below him, his back naturally arched to keep his face above the water and his eyes looking up at the square rectangle of light.
He had no idea what was going on out there.
The warm water had long filled every pore of his being. His skin felt waterlogged with it. His clothes had swelled. He had long since kicked off his shoes. He didn’t know if they were buoyant and floating, just showing a hint of lace at the surface beside him in the darkness or if they had sunk slowly away below him.
Brock and Nova would get him out of here. He was sure of that. Then he thought it had been a bad idea to slip his shoes off; he may actually need them again, and he didn’t think he could ever get them if they were down in the deep water.
“You don’t need your shoes, Darius.”
“Badrik? Is that you?” Darius called looking up at the patch of light above.
“You don’t need your shoes. And Brock and Nova can’t get you out.”
“They are helping me…”
“Your complete consciousness has been locked inside that chip since the moment the explosion washed through the pool deck. You need to make the transition.”
“What transition?”
“You’re not wet. You’re not in water. I want you to try to float up and look out the hatch now. I want you to look outside. See what is outside. You need to allow yourself to see, Darius. Transition away from what you’re mentally holding on to as your physical body.”
Jazzy, Brock, and Nova had climbed inside the track with Big Crunch. He had shown them how it was supposed to steer. The inside was fairly dark. Brock thought the heavy plates that Big Crunch had welded on between the tracks made it feel like a submarine. Big Crunch spoke to them from outside the exit hatch.
“You sure this will work?” Jazzy asked.
“Nope. Not at all. Never tried it. But I thought when someone finally came to get to the top of the fallen Central Tower, this would be the best way to do it that I could come up with. This is like a moving vault. The track floats on magnetic plates. It’s very heavy, and once it runs down the slope and down the terrace of the mine, it will have an incredible amount of momentum. Just make sure you steer it up the ramp and through the opening in the canyon wall. After that, it should coast all the way to the tower. The lady that spoke through the drone, her or the staff, or both, should get you inside.”
“And what if…” Jazzy began.
“You know the answer to that, Jazzy,” Big Crunch said.
“We go,” Nova said. “We here for reason. This is reason. I not bird for no reason.”
“Ok, Big Crunch. You better let us go then,” Jazzy said. “And thanks again for everything. Thanks for keeping the vault for so long. Guarding it. I hope what we do here next changes things.” She glanced at the two birds doubtfully. Brock and Nova caught that look she gave them.
“I was just one of us, Jazzy—one of the team. One of the ones changed that night. I guess we were more given a purpose than anything else. If it hadn’t been for that, maybe I’d still be standing behind some bar, someplace, wiping out mugs and smoking a cigar, talking about what the music on the flat disks might mean—thinking about the past instead of trying to make the future better.” He looked in at the birds. “All the best, you two. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I wish we did, too,” Brock thought to himself.
The hatch slammed. They were plunged into semi-darkness that was broken by bands of light shining through joints in the metal plates. Brock turned and strode to the opposite end of the track.
“Like walking down the inside of a metal caterpillar,” he thought to himself.
He stared at the thick steel cable that had been run through an opening and ended in a loop. It looked like something a huge ocean liner would be tied up with. A rusted metal loop as round as a small tree trunk was pinned into a metal block. The pin was a section of steel beam.
“Lizardman said you were strong enough to pull pin, like him, your arms strong.”
“Ok. Jazzy, Ma’am Camps, you take that side.”
“The left side?” She walked to a lever in the floor that stood beside a spool of chain.
“Port side,” Nova said.
“I don’t know how you remember that stuff,” Brock said. “Port. Starboard. Red…”
“It easy. Port, left, red, all short English words. Starboard, right, green, all long English words. Short words on one side. Long words other side. If you learn English, you reminder.”
“You remember.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Never mind. I’ll stay on the… starboard side over here and run this brake. Ma’am, you got that brake. Nova, you’re in charge of Darius.”
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Darius floated on his back, looked up at the storm and listened to Badrik.
“We told you there was no future for any of you beyond the explosion in the harbour. There was luck, there was chaos, and the final place you could exist was only if that chip was inserted into your cheek the day before so you could link with the drone. The drone went into the pool…”
“We’ve got to get him out of there,” Brock said quietly, more to himself, but Nova heard.
“That’s right, bird brain. So pull pin.”
Brock reached down both crane arms, grasped the bolt, and heaved.
The pin came out with the groan and peel of rusted metal, the cable disappeared through the side of the track, and Brock felt the weightlessness of the track being released.
“Whoa,” he said, and stepped backwards, downslope, and turned. The track had come to life like a ship in a stormy sea. It tilted one way and the next as he stumbled down the tilting deck towards the right-hand anchor lever. As he ran, he pointed to the flash of light in the front of the track. He realized what it was immediately.
“Nova! The window! Get to it and give us steering directions!”
She turned and, lugging the heavy drone in both arms, ran downhill, and the drone crashed into the steel plating at the front of the track.
Boom!
“Hey! You guys better not be hitting balls!” Darius called. The boom echoed through the water tower.
“There is no water tower.”
“Ya. Ok, Badrik.”
“You remember sending the drone inside the armoured limousine and into the pool. That’s where I told you to send it. The last thing that was ever spoken to your old form.”
Brock knew how the window worked. Just a hole cut into the interior of the track, and as they plunged down the slope and gained momentum, the treads spun around them ever faster, and more light would pass through from the breaks between the tracks, almost like an old-fashioned movie projector.
So they could see where they were going.
“We about to crash through…”
Clang!
The track bashed through the tall metal doors and was outside, racing through the trench across the canyon floor. The speed they had gained was incredible, and they were across the canyon and streaking up the ramp of piled stone. Brock felt that weightlessness again—that upward lift of a roller coaster.
The ground flashed by below them as they rode the stone ramp higher and higher.
“We at the top. We going off…”
Weightlessness. Everything was tumbling. Brock grabbed onto the anchor handle as his feet left the ground, and then he let go of it in fear of accidentally letting go of the anchor.
Nova and Jazzy were in the air, thudded into each other, and then clung on to each other. Brock didn’t know what way was up, and the drone spun by him. They struck the ground with a massive crash, and everything came thudding back to the steel deck. Blinding and choking dust filled the interior. Brock couldn’t see and tried to brush the dust from his eyes but instead scraped his goggles.
Right, I’m an ostrich with hands like a metal crane wearing goggles…
Then the track leaped off that terrace of stone, dropped to the next, and the next, as it crashed and leaped down each stone terrace of the mine. Each drop was a crash followed by a sudden weightlessness. They all held on and braced themselves for each successive crash.
Brock saw Nova had her bird head thrust towards the flashing window. A strong wind was coming through it, blowing away the dust and allowing her to see.
“Pull starboard rudder!” she was yelling. “Pull starboard rudder. Right! Pull right lever!” Her yells had become screams of urgency. Brock ran forward and wrenched on the lever. Something thudded on the outside of the track, and the spool beside him came to life. A blur of chain and a steely whine filled the air. And then all the chain was out, and the big spool slammed to a stop. The chain froze, its taut links vibrating with strain and Brock and Jazzy were thrown to their left to crash against the plating.
“Let go of anchor!” Nova yelled at them. “Let go of anchor now! Too far right turn!” Brock pushed himself off the wall and collided with the lever. He had no idea what to do, so he pulled it back in the opposite direction. The taught chain erupted into a living thing; a live snaking chain blurred around him, and he was thrown to his right. The chain buzzed beside his head like the blade of a chainsaw and tangled onto his crane arm.
He was jerked down hard and crashed into the wall. All he could feel was the weight of the chain as it slammed his head against the side plating and then pulled him down to the deck, pinning him. He was glad he couldn’t feel the pain in his arm because he was sure it was bound and crushed by the chain.
The drone rolled past him on the tilted decking.
“Hey, guys?” He could hear Darius calling. “Can you guys see the water tower? Or are we somewhere else?”
“NO! Darius! No more water tower! You are drone now!”
Darius floated up out of the water. He wasn’t aware of it, but he wasn’t in the water anymore. He was moving as his drone would, as if he saw from the lens of the drone as it moved up closer to the top hatch of the water tower. The noises from the outside were really starting to worry him. He wanted to see out. He peered out at the storm, and the small square of sky above grew larger. The sky was getting closer. Over the rush of noise outside, he could hear Brock and Nova yelling at each other …
“Pull left. Too much right. Pull left or we crash into rock wall! We almost at stair bottom. Need to go through opening. Pull left now!”
Jazzy had been coming over to help Brock, but she turned and yanked the lever on the left side instead. She was thrown off her feet and landed on Brock as the entire track jerked to the left.
Nova hadn’t taken her eyes off the window. It swung back now and aligned perfectly on the rock cut they needed to clear. “Ok. That good! Stop left turn!” She watched as the track slowly turned and went past the opening in the rock wall ahead. “I say no more left turn! I yelling no more left!”
Jazzy tried to push herself up to help Brock, still pinned to the deck, the anchor chain wrapped around his crushed arm. Jazzy tried to stand, and as she did, the left-hand chain lever and the anchoring spindle tore away with a shriek of metal and disappeared. The track bulkhead on that side was gone, and she stared through the open wall at stone and desert that was a blur of speed.
“See! That good job. Good steering on your side, lady. Better than Brock steering. He no good steering!”
“Can you get up?” Jazzy called to the ostrich. She tried to help it stand, but there was no way. The bird brain’s arm was half torn off and pulled out through the anchor hatch by the trailing chain. The big bird’s neck harness held it to the steel plating, and as Jazzy pulled his other arm, she felt like she was trying to tug against a ton of brake chain that was dragging out behind them. Brock didn’t think things were going too well. In fact, things were pretty bad, actually. He had a lot of scrapes in his short semi-pro ball career, but nothing like this. He didn’t think he was going to make it out of this one.
“Get back!” the ostrich yelled to Jazzy, the voice loud from the neck harness. “I’m stuck!” The metal plates below the bird buckled and gave way. It dropped about a foot into the wider gap and was held there. Stone dust kicked up around them from the desert floor as it streaked by close below.
Jazzy turned, snatched up her staff that had been skittering across the deck, grabbed onto a metal cross beam with her other hand, and held on.
“Can you see how much farther?” she called to the little bird up front through the blinding dust, the lurching floor, the whine of metal, and the crash of rocks around them.
“I don’t know. We are through cut in rock. Now we across flat rock desert. We go very fast right into big scary storm!” The drone rolled by Brock and Jazzy, coming from the darkness at the rear of the track, and rolled and bounced to the front. It struck Nova in the back of her bird legs, knocking her feet out from under her, and she sat down hard on the drone, pinning it to the deck...
“Hey, guys? I think the storm is getting worse! I can see it!” Darius’ voice called from the drone.
Darius could see things that were definitely larger than tumbleweeds and dirt flashing across the open hatch above.
“Rocks? Were those rocks? Steel plates? The deck of a ship, or a tank?”
“Yes. Storm is bad now, and Darius, I telling you. You not in water tower. You. You mind inside drone.”
Nova looked back to the window as the track plunged into a towering black storm wall. Rocks struck the side of the track. The metal plating boomed and shuddered. And things hit the track even harder—metal-on-metal sounds against the steel plating. A large section of square plate disappeared from the right front of the track, beside where Nova sat. The inches-thick foot square of metal was gone. A blur of something flashed through the interior and with a loud “boom,” sunk itself into the wall beside Jazzy.
Metal beams broke away from the interior all around them. Brock tried one last time to pull himself free of the chain, but the chain and the collar around his neck held him fast.
Pinned here hard and fast. This bird is done for…
Brock strained to take one last look at Nova to see how she was doing and laughed. She looked like a chicken sitting on a metal egg. He thought it was strange to be laughing at a time like this, and that thought finally did have him laughing through the roar of wind and the squeal of tearing metal.
“Nova!” he called to her. The metal plating was disappearing from around the front of the track, where Nova sat like a bird on an egg. “Nova!” he yelled again. He watched as the decking below her disappeared to become rock and boiling sand against his goggles. He watched the bird that was Nova and the drone that was Darius until they were gone.