Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [101]
Hard to say if that’s a statement or a question, but I’ll try to know some useful thing if it keeps us alive a little longer. “About what?”
“Close Broken gate.”
“Take us to it. Maybe we can fix it.” That’s quite a gamble. But honestly, we can’t worsen our plight at this juncture.
More rumbles and croaks, so that I lose the meaning. Vel doesn’t seem to be having any better luck processing the group discussion. Eventually, I make out one word from the elders:
Go.
Please let that mean we’re going to the gate.
“Follow,” the warrior female orders.
I comply, not only because she’s jabbing her weapon between my shoulder blades. From here, I move out of the assembly mound and out of the village. It’s a forced march, probably less than two kilometers from the village. The gate sits atop a hill like some kind of ancient temple, and unlike the pad where we came through, the structure’s intact, including arch and crystals. The bottom is paved in the same black stones I noticed on Marakeq.
“Near Broken gate,” she says, pointing at it with a flourish.
But it doesn’t look busted like the first one we saw here. Keeping an eye on her weapon, I edge a little closer for a better look. Yeah, it’s the same in every respect, and I cast back to when we fell through. What the hell happened, exactly?
“Do you remember how we activated it?” I ask Vel, low.
Depressingly enough, he shakes his head. To the best of my recollection, I just stepped on the pad while Vel was examining the crystals. Which we haven’t done yet. The lights in the crystals are still dim, so I guess that means we’re not close enough. The lights came on first, before anything more interesting happened.
If this gate works like its twin, then our proximity and weight on the pad should activate the mechanism. I’m guessing it recognizes something in our DNA. Big if. The question is, will she-with-the-gun shoot us if we step onto it? I motion Vel toward the crystals, and he gets it at once.
After taking a deep breath, I step forward as he moves into the position, and the crystals click to life, one by one, a dazzling glow even in daylight. The Mareq warrior behind us croaks out a protest:
“Broken!” she insists, even as the lightning kindles between the upthrust arms of the arch. She seems to have forgotten her weapon, wide mouth hanging open.
“Not for us,” I say.
Violet energy ebbs and flows madly, creating the pocket maelstrom that sucked us through before. I hope to Mary these gates don’t have multiple stops. Come on, right back where we came from. Come on.
The universe grants my wish in a violent twist, dissolving my being in a fashion that’s now familiar to me. Sickness swirls through me, though I lack any sort of a body to encompass it. I can’t feel my hands anymore, and the last thing I see with eyes that aren’t eyes any longer is the strange Mareq female fighting not to be pulled into the vortex. But she falls, as we do, into the endless darkness.
Numbness ripens into pain when I land, hard, on the other pad. I recognize this one. We came from here. Thank Mary. Oh, thank you. We made it back.
The crystals flicker on our arrival, but they don’t power up. I guess they know the difference between coming and going. Just to be safe, I crawl off the pad as soon as I can control my arms and legs again, then collapse against the wall. The way out is pretty simple, and I think I can find the Mareq village. This time, Vel shakes it off faster than I do, bless his adaptive Ithtorian physiology, but the alt- Mareq female makes a noise that sounds like weeping, low and hopeless and without end.
I try to comfort her, but she slaps me away and shoots me in the face. Or, at least, she tries to. She doesn’t realize that the gate fries technology, a serious drawback in any transportation system. So it leaves her weapon clicking in her hand instead of killing me like it’s supposed to. In absolute rage, she hurls the thing at my head, and I slide sideways.
Soon enough, I climb to my feet. Just a little farther, and we’ll be done with this fragging