SAR ASCENDANT / Book 1: Incursion of the INDEN

Chapters 24 to 26

Chapter 24

The drone lurches and drops; Jona jumps. Thank you, Allgo. Jona fights to get past the edge of the netting. I cling to the top side of the net with one hand, reach through for him with the other. I implore, "Willow, help me pull him in!"

A moment's hesitation, and Willow puts his back into it. He is strong, and his arms are long. Jona scrambles to a position beside me, breathes in quick gasps. Willow looks at him, lips tight, eyes suddenly alive, and he nods at something far away in his thoughts.

"Brace yourselves," Hazel calls from the drone's control pod, and we again ascend, begin to accelerate, and suddenly stop.

"It is as I deduced. The odds were high they'd create an energy loop, and we are in it," Allgo says matter-of-factly.

We're not moving. We are just beyond the enclosure, forty feet from the ground, and Allgo is fishing through Twints, pushing one or the other toward Hazel. She examines, shakes her head. I imagine two pilots, caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole, casually looking through their flight manual, checking the distance to oblivion, flipping through Twints for an answer, again looking at the portal to the unknown. Not there, says one. Nope, says the other, fifteen seconds to the event horizon. Oh well. I want to shake them. Hard.

The door to the equipment enclosure begins to close. Reaper breaks through. "Look!" says Jax.

"Ah," says Allgo. "As he promised."

Hazel checks over her shoulder. "What's Reaper doing, Sar?"

"He's not alone. The other FarmBots are right behind him. They're moving in below us, in a circle formation."

"They're doing what they do in the fields," exclaims Jona. He is on his belly now, looking through the net. He's caught his breath. Quick recovery, I note. Good to know.

"What's that?" Willow, sounding genuinely interested.

"It's called pack cooperation," says Jax.

"Sure." Willow is suddenly engaged. "Predators used to practice it. Lots of extinct species, like hyenas."

"Except in this case, instead of a hunt formation, they're in a symbiosis," says Jona. "There is no individual need for expression, no need to cooperate for survival. There is only the good of the intention."

"Ants," says Jax.

Jona nods vigorously. "That's what the FarmBots do to harvest the crops. They pool their resources, extend their reach for the best outcome."

"What's the endgame?" I ask.

Allgo answers. "The FarmBots are looped too. They are part of the toroid."

"They can influence the other Bots," says Jona. "Their energy is like water. Indivisible."

"Yes? Where will that take us?"

"Odds are," says Allgo, "it will take us away from here."

I mouth a silent thanks to Jona, to Allgo.

Jax holds my hand.

I look in Jona's eyes, see a shadow of remorse. It evokes a memory. I am a girl and I have lived with Hazel for a few years, through the FlameOut, through the ViraPurge, through some good years too. But mostly, those years were years of caution, of sadness. They became something more after my father came to fetch me. I had to leave. He had the Order. The years with Hazel became nostalgia, my years of bittersweet memory.

I see that memory in Jona's face. It is the stitching of my life. Pain, and the fear of change. An immobility of the spirit. I realize we are opposite ends of the same magnet. Prisoners of attraction. I am the negative end. My family leaves me, and I am waiting for something, anything. Jona decides to leave his family. For me. Jona is here. With me.