“Can I?” I scooted forward in my chair to get a closer look, fingertips tingling. “That’s approximately six inches of plutonium. Cobalt handle. Magnum D-57 locking mechanism.” I grinned. “Might as well have asked me to break open an egg.”
Two quick taps on the keypad in front of me and … “Done. Give that a try.”
He jiggled the handle. The door didn’t budge.
“Should I say a magic word? Open-please-says-a-me!”
“Try kicking it,” I suggested. He did, and the door opened with a creak. “See? Evelina should give me a raise. In you go.”
Elio took a few steps into the crypt, the screen on his comm darkening until he was just a shapeless blob on my monitor. “Hey, do you think my new body can have a mustache? I’ve always wanted a mustache.”
“You can have whatever your little synthetic heart desires.” I checked the live feeds from the cameras in the cemetery, searching for any possible intruders, but I found none. Well, I might as well get some work done while I waited.
Swiveling in my pilot’s chair, I dug through my bag for the faulty pieces of my visual enhancement device. If I fixed it and we managed to bring back a good haul … then Evelina might actually smile at me today and mean it.
“I think I want a goatee to go with my mustache,” Elio prattled on. “And I’d prefer a body that’s really tall. Oh—okay, I’m going down a few steps here.” His figure bobbed on-screen. “Oh, yikes, a lot of steps. This place is really dark.” He flicked on a flashlight built into the palm of his hand. “That’s better.”
A crackle of static shot through the screen, and Elio’s voice and image cut out for a second before reappearing.
“—oor?” was all I heard him say.
“What?”
“I said, ‘Can you get the next door?’ It looks the same as the last one.”
He was deep in the crypt now—or at least that was how it looked. White walls streaked with something black that I really hoped was just dirt bracketed a wide archway. No signs of royal dead people, but maybe they would be in the next room.
I unlocked the door with a few quick keystrokes, and Elio headed inside.
The video feed from his comm flickered again. A spark shot out the top of my own comm as the screen went black.
“Elio?”
I could still hear his voice, far off, like he was shouting across a valley. “I found them. They’re encased in glass. They look like they’re sleeping.” He beeped. “Cora … they still look alive. They’re not alive, right?”
“Formaldehyde,” I said, distracted by the black screen on my comm. Was my connection bad, or was his? More importantly, why did it seem like everything I touched lately was malfunctioning at the worst moments?
“Formaldehyde,” Elio repeated. “Right. Sorry, I’m nervous. It’s creepy down here. Can I come back now?”
“You can as long as you don’t come back empty-handed.”
“No worries there. This place is full of gold. I think I can open the glass and get one of those bones you wanted too.”
“Excellent. Just make sure you…” My words died as quickly as the comm link in my hands. As quickly as the monitors on my control panel, which blinked out one … by one … by one …
An icy feeling crept over my shoulders, one I was positive had nothing to do with the unfortunate weather patterns on this awful planet.
“Elio?” I gripped my comm tight enough to break it. The power button was still lit. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe everything on his end was fine. “Are you still there?”
“Cora?”
I sighed in relief. “Yeah. Hurry up. I want to get home before someone spots us.” I stopped any nerves from leaking into my voice. I didn’t want to scare him even more.
But he didn’t hear me. “Cora? Cora, are you there?”
“I’m here. I—”
“Something down here doesn’t feel right. I don’t think I’m glitching. It feels like—”
The line went dead.
“Elio!” I shook the comm, resisting the urge to throw it at the wall. “Elio!”
My heart slid into my throat as the power in the pod ship went out with a groan, leaving me in the dark.
Elio.
The dark I could handle. Cold I could not, but I didn’t stop to think about it. I pulled down on the emergency release to open the hatch, and then I was racing through the snow, up the hill to the cemetery, my hat blowing off in the harsh winds. Damn my surveillance to the edges of the universe, I shouldn’t have let Elio go in there alone.
The crypt had even more stairs than he said, and I stumbled down them in the pitch black, cursing myself for not bringing a flashlight as I shouted Elio’s name. When there was no response, I had to pinch myself so I wouldn’t panic. Were there guards down here? Something I had so easily overlooked? Evelina was right: I wasn’t ready to lead a job like this.
I hit the bottom of the stairs, almost slipping in a puddle. The arch that I’d seen on Elio’s comm loomed in shadows cast by a soft light in the room beyond, which glowed inside the glass prism containing the Vaotin queen. The lid of her tomb was pushed open a crack where Elio had attempted to get inside.
I found him collapsed on the dais beneath the tomb.
“Elio!” This didn’t appear to be a glitch. He wasn’t rigid, frozen in time. He was limp, as if he’d just had enough for the day and powered down. It was exactly what I always imagined would happen if his memory core really did die.
“You’re okay. I’ll fix you.” I refused to let myself panic as I hauled him up. Shifting him underneath my arm, I reached out to the tomb to brace myself.
My fingers dipped through the crack Elio had made, hooking around the ice-cold arm of the dead queen inside.
It happened all at once.
The door to the room slammed, shaking the walls, rattling the heaps of gold and jewels piled in the corners. There was no handle that I could see from the inside. No way out. The temperature plunged well below freezing, so cold that the breath stopped in my lungs.
Water began snaking out of cracks near the ceiling. The air should have been cold enough to freeze it instantly, but it barreled onward, gushing hard enough to cover the floor and creep up the steps to the dais in a matter of seconds.
I took a step back, bumping into the queen’s tomb and consequently sending another wave down the walls and across the floor. Elio’s body sagged against me. I couldn’t keep a hold on him. I couldn’t even keep a hold on myself.
My mind went silent as the water climbed higher. Soul-crushing, world-darkening silence. For all that Cruz and Evelina had taught me—how to pick a pocket, how to build a bomb that would destroy half a city—they never thought it was pertinent to teach me how to swim.
I was going to die.
Today. Here. Now.
I pulled Elio closer as the water hit the edge of the dais, washing over the toes of my boots. Only then did I feel the lump against his side—the shape of a blaster and a pocket full of some of my most powerful explosives.
Either I could risk the crypt collapsing on top of us, or I could drown in this room. An explosion, at least, seemed like the quicker way to go.