“How did they get a message here so quickly?” Noemi hurries down a flight of metal steps, and Abel follows close behind.
“Only one conclusion is possible—the Queen and Charlie pursuing us put their ship into overload as well.”
“What are we going to do?” she says, pushing her dark hair back, away from her forehead. “We can stay hidden, maybe, but they’ll impound the ship.”
“Maybe not. If the Queen and Charlie had known which ship was ours back on Kismet, they would have confronted us there, the one place we were guaranteed to return to no matter what. Our fake ID held there; it may hold here. I changed the ship’s display name to Odysseus. The great traveler of myth. It’s not an uncommon name for vessels, or it wasn’t, so that should help conceal us as well.”
Noemi takes a deep breath. She can be volatile, but she can center herself so quickly, so profoundly. Abel wonders if it is a meditation technique taught on Genesis. Finally she says, “Okay. We stay hidden, we find a thermomagnetic device, and we take it from there. Do you happen to have Cray’s layout memorized, too?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Then let’s pull up a map.”
A low-security computer panel nearby allows them to project a small holographic map of the immediate vicinity. Abel focuses his attention on areas with high concentrations of technology. These are the likeliest places to locate what they need. But they’re too close to the surface still, far away from the supercomputer core areas—
The emergency exit opens behind them. He and Noemi freeze at the sound of footsteps.
Is this a regular maintenance team? Or did someone recognize him and Noemi after all?
They can’t afford to find out. He and Noemi take off running into the tunnels, racing into the unknown darkness. The air echoes differently, more strangely, every second, changing from a hush to a dull, indistinct roar.
“Are they following us?” Noemi gasps at one point.
Abel finds it difficult to filter the sound now that the dull roar is growing louder. “I’m not sure. But I think they may be.”
With that, Noemi grabs his hand and goes for a smaller side door. He lets her pull him through, onto a metal platform in near-total darkness. The loud rushing noise is almost deafening.
Over the sound she yells, “Are you waterproof?”
Abel thinks he’s going to regret saying yes.
19
NOEMI GRABS ABEL’S HAND, TOWING HIM WITH HER AS she jumps off the platform—
—and into the underground river flowing beneath them.
The frigid water’s not very deep, but it’s enough to break their fall. Noemi pushes up with her feet to the surface and discovers the river only comes to her shoulders. Grinning, she dunks her head backward to get her hair off her face and wipes droplets from her eyes and cheeks. Abel surfaces next to her, blond hair now plastered down over his forehead, clothes sodden and stuck to his body, and his expression so completely disgusted that it reminds her of the way the Gatsons’ cat sulks when it gets caught in the rain. Noemi laughs out loud before clapping one hand to her mouth; the sound of the gentle current flowing past them should muffle any noise their pursuers could overhear, but it might not.
Still, her shoulders shake with the giggles she’s trying hard to suppress.
Abel doesn’t like being laughed at any more than a human would. “Did you know there would be water down here?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t have jumped otherwise. It was clearly marked on the map; this river flows into the water purification systems for this area.”
He goes silent, and she realizes he’s reviewing the plans in his mind. Considering the perfect memory Mansfield has given him, he can probably study the diagram in as much detail now as he could when it was projected in front of them. “Of course,” he says, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I concentrated on areas of tactical importance. You took in details that should have been irrelevant but were instead useful.”
She’s not going to rub it in, even if he was acting so superior with her at first. But she can’t help wanting to show off a little more of the “irrelevant” information that’s currently saving their asses. “It’s also marked as an emergency shelter. So I knew we’d have room for us to stand, plenty of air for us to breathe. It looks like it leads right into the center of their operations. But we’ll have to come up later on, check out another map.”
“You’re suggesting that we walk through the river?”
“Why not? It gets us where we want to go, or closer at least, and there’s almost no chance anyone’s going to find us down here.” Noemi can’t help smiling wickedly. “Unless you’re scared of getting your hair wet again.”
Abel retorts, “I would last longer submerged in water than you would.”
“You’d sink, wouldn’t you?” She doesn’t like the idea of having to tow Abel up from the depths.
But he shakes his head. “I’m designed to float.”
“Yeah, well, so am I. Let’s get going.”
Together they begin sloshing through the river, heading downstream. Their journey is a shadowy one, illuminated only by yellowish emergency beacons dangling high overhead, and those beacons are spaced out widely. Walking through water is hard work, but Noemi’s glad of it. The river’s chill is matched by the cool air above; if she weren’t exerting herself, she’d be too cold to function.
The warmth flowing through her doesn’t only come from the exercise. She’s energized by the quick thinking they’ve had to do. By the thrill of knowing she’s outwitted their pursuers. Even by the danger, now that they’re out of it for a while. For the first time—except for one split second when they entered the Kismet Gate—her journey through the worlds of the Loop feels like the adventure she always dreamed of.
Her grief for Esther lingers, a dull inner heaviness. But for the moment, Noemi can bear it. She knows it will be harder when—if—she returns to Genesis and goes to the places they used to go together, when she sees Esther’s empty room, when she has to tell the Gatsons how bravely their daughter died. When she has to break the news to Jemuel. But Noemi can move forward now.
This mission is the most important thing she’ll ever do. It’s also the one chance she’ll ever have to travel through the galaxy. Noemi doesn’t want to lose sight of either of those things, not for one second.
“Obviously the river’s only a temporary solution,” she says over the sound of rippling water around them. Drips and drops echo along with her voice. “But if we found one platform, we’ll find others. One of those might turn out to be a safe place to wait until nighttime. Wait. Cray’s cities are underground. Is there a night here?”