I jog down the hallway, deeper into the labs. We leave Dr. Albatur on the floor. I hope the bark of the alarm gives him terrible dreams. The horizon of my brain is dark and vacant: I reach out inside it, groping with an invisible hand, searching for anything. Alma jogs behind me, silent. We reach a fork in the hallway, one corridor continuing straight and another branching to our right: it’s long and blank, no doors, no observation windows.
Pausing to look down the empty expanse, my consciousness immediately sparks. Something on the edge of my awareness, a flutter of blue. I stop jogging to focus on that smudge, and push the sound of the alarm out of my head. I reach out for the blue, try to wrap the fingers of my mind around it. It’s not an animal, I know. This is different. The buzzing spikes, the attention of the thing turns toward me, sensing me too now. It’s weak—tranquilized—but it feels me.
“I feel something,” I shout, grabbing Alma’s arm and dragging her down the hallway to the right. I rush forward with Alma in tow, my grip on the blue presence in my mind growing stronger. Any part of these white walls could be an entrance in disguise. Help me find you, I say. I can’t find you.
It tries to reach out: I sense the energy spike toward me. At first I think it’s too weak, but it glows brighter, pulses, and comes into the tunnel.
“It’s him,” I whisper.
I see him as if he’s standing before me: the spotted man. Adombukar. He’s nearby, and very weak, asking me to come. The glowing chain that links us feels brighter, and I walk quickly along it. I pass blank wall after blank wall, feeling their emptiness, looking for him. And then I reach one place on the featureless wall, as blank as the rest, but different somehow. Adombukar is there behind it, his presence in the tunnel flickering as he struggles to maintain the connection. I raise my palm to the wall, press my fingertips against it.
“Enter, Dr. English.”
The wall slides open to reveal a small, dim room, devoid of exam table or research equipment. The only things in the room are a desk, diagrams, and a cage. Adombukar is inside it.
“Come on!” I shout, and pull Alma into the room. The door closes behind us. The alarm is quieter in here, muted by the wall.
“Do you think they know where we are?” Alma says. Her eyes are glued to Adombukar in a mixture of wonder and fear. “What we came to do?”
I don’t answer, instead moving quickly to the cell and shoving my hand through the bars. It’s made of the same white clay as everything else in the compound; thick bars the width of my arm contain him. Adombukar lies inside, tranquilized, his large body on its side and curled slightly. My hand hovers hesitantly over him. Would he want me to touch him? I slowly lower my palm and rest it gently on his shoulder.
He blazes through the tunnel into my mind, stronger with the physical contact. He only shows me one concept: Hurry.
“He’s okay,” I say, yanking my hand away and out from between the bars. “But we have to move fast.”
I reach into the pocket of my skinsuit and draw out the blue wand that I took from the room with the dying rahilla. How had Dr. Depp used it on the kunike? I remember him placing it against the animal’s neck. I examine the instrument, my hands shaking. I don’t see any levers or controls, so I push my hand through the bars again, angle the wand toward the side of Adombukar’s neck, and gently bring it into contact with his body.
He stirs immediately.
Adombukar, I tell him in my mind. Are you okay?
Behind me, Alma has backed away to the wall. She says nothing, just watching.
The cell is too small to permit him to stand, so Adombukar slowly rises into a crouch. He’s much bigger than Rasimbukar, but he has the same deep brown skin, the pattern of spots covering his body like circular patterns traced in soil. This close, I see they’re slightly raised. The spots on his forehead seem to wander, as if he’s trying to find his bearings.
“We must go,” he says out loud. His voice is deep and resonates in his chest, with the same strange wooden timbre as Rasimbukar.
“Yes,” I say. “We just have to figure out how to get you out of this cell. There’s no door that I can see.”
“Oh, stars,” Alma murmurs from behind me, and I whip my head around at the quake in her voice, expecting to see a whitecoat appearing from thin air. But she’s staring at a screen on the wall above the desk: the light from it bathes her face in a white glow.
“What? What is it?” I snap.
She can only point, and I close the gap between us in two quick steps. On the left side of the screen is a diagram, being projected from a slate propped on a nearby shelf. I look quickly, scanning the projection with my eyes: a humanoid figure, its skeleton illuminated—many sketches, words, formulas. On the right side of the screen, another diagram: a tower, tall and angular, a platform at its pinnacle, bars around its perimeter. A structure like a metal tomb in the center, the size and shape of a person. The tower’s spiny construction is familiar; even if the way I’ve seen it is incomplete, the image in my mind not quite as tall, no platform yet. . . .
To the side of the diagram a word catches my eye: “Solossius,” I whisper.
“Sun. Bones,” Alma says softly, covering her mouth. She peers at the sketches, finally understanding. “The tower. They . . . want to harvest energy from . . . from his bones.”
“They’ve been building it this whole time.” The truth of it crushes me, as if I’ve woken from a dream and found myself in the jaws of a dirixi. The diagram seems so simple and harmless. A figure on a screen. A sketch of a machine. Floating numbers and equations. But when I jerk my eyes away, forcing them to take in Adombukar, crouched in his cell, the horror of it sinks into my lungs, coating them in what feels like ash.
“Like the salamander,” Alma says. “The Faloii make their own energy, and Dr. Albatur wants to harvest it with the towers.”
“Right out in the open,” I continue. “Right in the middle of the commune where the sun is bright. No wonder Albatur has been so focused on making everyone believe the Faloii are dangerous! He doesn’t want anyone to say anything when he starts using them for energy!”
“But energy for what?” Alma cries. “We have energy!”
I stare hard at the diagram of the tower, the last few weeks swirling in my head, rearranging.
“The Vagantur,” I say. “Remember? My mom said there’s a power source that’s precious to the Faloii—that it’s what Dr. Albatur wants to use to power the ship so he can leave the planet. And my dad is helping him.”
The room seems to be pulsing, but I know it can’t be. It’s my mind. Emotions flood my brain, tidal waves of fear. It takes me a second to realize some of the fear is coming from Adombukar, who stares at me hollowly from his prison.
“We have to get him out.”
I rush back to the cage and inspect the bars, looking for a hinge, a fault line, anything. Nothing.
“Did they ever take you out?” I ask.
“Yes.” He nods weakly. “But I was unconscious.”
“Damn,” I say. We’re wasting too much time. The guards are probably mobilizing as we speak. By now the Council surely knows of intruders in the labs—sending reinforcements to protect their secrets.