With that insight, Alex struggled against her rising panic. Instead, she focused on getting out of there alive, blinking furiously to combat the blinding explosions of light. Just a few feet away from the door, she heard the loudest CRACK yet and knew they had but a few seconds before their luck would run out and they would be burnt to a crisp.
“Hurry!” she yelled, taking a running leap directly through the doorway, noting with relief that Bear and D.C. were right on her heels.
She came to a sudden, messy stop when she soared straight into a mud-filled pond. Bear and D.C. managed to avoid the pile of dirty sludge, but Alex was elbow deep in the muck and covered from head to toe from the splash of her landing.
“Eww, gross,” she said, pushing up and wiping a hand across her face, only smearing the mess further.
She heard a muffled snort and whipped her head around to see a wild-haired D.C. with her uninjured hand over her mouth, her eyes sparkling with humour. It was the liveliest Alex had seen her since Jordan’s Claiming—even if it was at the expense of Alex’s own dignity.
As for Bear, his hair was standing on end, and half his face was streaked with what looked like charcoal—the effect of a close call with the lightning—but he, too, appeared to be struggling to hold back laughter as he took in Alex’s muddy predicament.
“Not a word,” she said with a warning glare.
D.C. and Bear were shaking with silent hysterics, but they swallowed back their hilarity with pressed lips and quick nods.
“Johnny, please tell me we’re close?” Alex called, deliberately ignoring his muffled chuckle when he noted her appearance through the ComTCD.
“Just get through this last room and you’ll hit the skywalk,” he said, eyes dancing with mirth. “There’s a guard still patrolling your side of the tower, so you’ll have a straight path along the corridor from there.”
Finally, some good news, Alex thought.
“What are we dealing with in here?” Bear asked his brother.
Glancing around, Alex noted that it appeared to be some kind of plant-filled greenhouse.
“The schematics say it’s a terrarium,” Johnny answered. “You shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Just follow the path and take a right at the fork. You’ll hit the next door soon after. I’ll have it ready for you.”
Walking through the quiet of the plant-strewn terrarium would have been almost peaceful, but Alex was too preoccupied with swatting away the swarms of insects wanting to feast on her flesh. All too soon she was covered in itchy welts and desperate to escape the incessant creatures.
While slapping at the bugs, Alex, Bear and D.C. managed to avoid three more large mud ponds before arriving at one that was bordered by a forest so dense they had to squelch their way through the grunge to get to the other side. Alex was already covered in the filth so she didn’t care so much, but neither Bear nor D.C. were thrilled about suctioning their way through the knee-high mud.
They took a right at the fork as directed and continued on until the door came into view.
“That wasn’t so bad, comparatively,” D.C. said, scratching her bites as they approached the exit.
When Johnny gave the go-ahead, they stepped out of the room and into another identical hallway.
Alex could clearly see the boundary of their side of the building, since the walls came to an abrupt end, yet the hallway continued through a glass-enclosed tunnel joining the two towers of the facility.
“Hope you guys aren’t afraid of heights,” Alex said, approaching the skywalk.
D.C. swallowed. “I’m not a huge fan of them.”
“Nothing is as bad as the Meyarin’s Valispath, right?” Bear said, reminding them of the invisible rollercoaster that was the Eternal Path. “You managed okay with that.”
D.C. sent him a disbelieving look. “I didn’t have much choice at the time, if memory serves.”
“Unless you want to get friendly with the guard, you don’t have much of a choice now, either,” Alex interjected. She nudged D.C. and offered her a quick, teasing grin. “Suck it up, princess.”
Laughing inwardly at the face D.C. pulled, Alex stepped out onto the skywalk, closely followed by her friends.
Bear was right; it was nothing compared to the sheer terror of riding the Valispath. But they were quite high, and Alex had to make a concentrated effort not to look down. She only just managed to bite back a smile when she heard D.C. whispering to herself something along the lines of, “I’m going to kill Jordan for this.”
That’s the D.C. I know, Alex thought, happy to see some of her zest and spirit returning, even if the cause of it wasn’t exactly ideal.
When they safely reached the other side, Bear informed them that they had less than fifteen minutes to get into the server room and out of the facility before their access codes would be invalid. Alex knew then that it was not only a foolish mission, but it was also an impossible one. But they’d come this far. And there was no turning back now.
Hurrying straight down the thankfully clear corridor, they headed directly towards the surveillance room. Bear opened the doorway by repeating the TCD handprint and retinal scans, and as soon as the three of them flew into the room, he called his brother back onto the screen to ask, “What now?”
“Turn your Device around and show me what you see.”
As Bear followed Johnny’s command, Alex looked around the bright, circular room. Standing in the centre of the otherwise empty space was a large golden globe that glistened against a pearlescent, nearly glowing floor.
“See the TechSphere?” Johnny said. “Press your hand against it to activate it.”
When Bear reached his arm forward to follow Johnny’s order, his brother cried out, “No! Not your hand—the hand I gave you!”
Alex let out a quiet huff of laughter at the absurdity of their situation—or perhaps more at the nearly identical frustrated expressions on both Bear and Johnny’s faces.
After accepting the scanned handprint clearance, the TechSphere lit up, and with it, so did the rest of the room. The previously blank walls were now buzzing with energy as if ready and waiting at attention.
“Now input the codes I gave you,” Johnny instructed, and Bear did so using quick finger swipes too complex for Alex and D.C. to follow.
Johnny’s complicated guidance began to fly over their heads and blur into gibberish, but thankfully Bear was able to keep up and he cried out a triumphant, “I’m in!” when the system unlocked.
“Awesome,” Alex said, moving up beside him to peer at the bunch of letters and numbers within the Sphere, all written in code. “Do you know how to find—”
“Just a sec, Alex,” Bear distractedly interrupted. “I think I’m… There! I think I’ve got it! Johnny, can you confirm?” He pulled the Device close and spun it around, showing the TechSphere’s code to his brother.
Johnny’s hologram squinted at the sequence of random symbols and he nodded enthusiastically. “That entry was definitely hacked in the not-too-distant past. A dodgy job too, since whoever it was didn’t clean the feed or wipe clear their tracks. I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re after, guys.”
Needing no further prompting, Bear input something into the Sphere’s server and one wall of the room instantly came to life, like a massive television screen. The footage that began playing was grainy and the poor quality degenerated further as the feed dropped in and out, but Alex could still recognise the same room they were standing in on the screen, with very few differences. The main one being the young man shown in the video.