As planned, they easily slipped through the fifth squad's security at the High Pass lab. Not long after, in the wake of much hugging and promises to return as soon as they were able, the other scouts drifted away and she, Porter, and Keko were on their own. It didn't take long before they entered the tunnel where Abriel and Porter met for the first time. Then it was on to only Porter knew where.
It was time to make good on her father's memory—the thought filling Abriel with excitement and fear. Anger too, at how long they'd been denied their birthright of living on the surface. For the first time in her life, she suspected she understood her mother's rage, and why she'd left the Crescent all those years ago. There was so much anger simmering inside her, it couldn't be contained. If she stayed in the Crescent, it threatened to boil over. And if that happened, Abriel wasn't sure she'd be responsible for her own actions.
"You okay?" Keko sent from where he trotted at Abriel's side. "I know leaving the squad behind was tough."
"They didn't seem particularly impressed when I told them to trust Meshodi."
"Yeah, they weren't your great last words, especially since you had trouble believing them yourself. They just want to make sure we're not storming off into a disaster worse than what we left."
"That's one way to put it." Aloud, she said, "Porter?"
"What?" he asked from where he walked on ahead, studying the tunnel.
"If I don't say it later, thanks for taking me to the surface."
"You're welcome, though you shouldn't have to thank me for what's always been yours. Still, I get the sentiment."
In the back of her mind, she could feel his warm presence surrounding her. It drew her in and it was all she could do not to throw her arms around him. She might have, if van Andel's needling words weren't echoing in her head. Fall into bed with him, indeed! As if Porter were just some exotic toy she was drawn to against her will! Or like she had no self-control and couldn't help herself. Stupid, irritating caveman! What an asscracker!
If Meshodi hadn't shot van Andel, I'd have done it myself!
Because Porter had lost his micro-tablet, he couldn't pinpoint the markers he'd laid on the way down. Instead, Abriel tweaked the optic spheres so they could track their electronic outputs. They would appear as blue blips in a sea of green. When, not if, they stumbled onto the right path, it would be simple to track the rest. Or so she hoped.
For the next several hours, they walked without finding anything. Porter explained about the holographic projectors and how they'd been used to keep the tunnels to the surface hidden—which enraged her further. It was Keko's duty to report in every time he pinged a fork in the tunnels. If they could see the fork for themselves, no good. But if they couldn't...
"Another one ahead. To the left," Keko sent. Even he was beginning to sound tired. She didn't blame him. But Porter didn't want to rest until they were through the first hologram.
Abriel looked at it with her optic spheres, then without. "Looks like a smooth tunnel wall to me."
"Perfect. Than that means we're in the right place," Porter said. "Come here."
He took her left hand and pressed it against the stone wall. Abriel's heart sped up at his nearness.
"Walk and let your hand drag along the wall," he continued, his mouth disturbingly close to her ear. "Don't let go. The holograms are visual, not tactile. You'll be able to feel when the wall ends."
She walked half a dozen feet with Porter less than a breath away. He was so warm, so solid, so touchable, it was all she could do to concentrate on her own hand. When it suddenly disappeared, sinking into the stone, it took a moment for her to register.
Her rage returned with fierce intensity. "I found it! I can't believe it was that easy! To think this was here all this time, hidden from us, and we didn't know...No, I can't go there mentally, or I'll scream."
"Sometimes I want to scream about it too," he agreed. "Then I tell myself if I keep shouting at how unfair it is, I'll never finish what I wanted to accomplish."
She took a breath and let it out slowly. "I wish I could be that calm. Sometimes I just want to shoot something to make myself feel better," she admitted.
Porter laughed. "I suppose violence has it place in the immediate, but I can't say it's ever helped in the long term."
"What now? Do we just walk through the projection?"
"More or less. You—Hey a second!"
Without really considering what she was doing, Abriel strode into the wall's image and stepped through. It took less than a second and once through the image, there was no change in air, smell, or temperature. A quick look around showed she was in a tunnel just like any other. She shook her head, infuriated. How could all be so stupidly simple?
A beat later, and Porter passed through the projection as well. She watched in amazement as his head, shoulders, torso, then legs and feet emerged into view. Keko followed, walking through as if he did such things every day. She might have tried slipping back through the image and into the original tunnel for sheer curiosity, but Porter looked so annoyed, she resisted.
"Next time we go through together," he said with irritation. "You have no idea what's on the other side. We need to assess the situation first before we jump into it."
"I just did. All clear. Besides, which of us is the better shot? If anyone should go through first, it's me"
Porter watched her a long moment before sighing. "Point taken. I'll remember that for the next five projectors."
"Speaking of which, where's the actual projector?"
"There," he said, pointing toward the tunnel ceiling. It was wall-mounted, about twenty feet up. It would have been impossible to see with the naked eye, but simple enough with optic spheres.
She withdrew a pistol and shot it down before Porter could blink. As it crashed to the tunnel floor in noisy spray of metal, Porter jumped at least a foot in the air.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Abriel re-holstered her pistol and eyed him. "We're not prisoners anymore. These need to go."
Porter stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. "Think about what you're doing first! Do you want someone from the Crescent to wander up unprepared?"
"If someone wanders this far on their own and survives, I say they're ready for whatever your people can throw at them. The point still stands—we're not prisoners anymore."
"You can't shoot everything in your way that's causing you grief. I know you're angry, but—"
"Porter, you have no idea how angry I am right now," she answered.
"Keko could show me," he said. "We could ask him to strip away the shields right now and just get it over with."
"No!" She shivered at the idea. She couldn't let him get that close. What would he think if he knew her every flaw and desire? "Absolutely not!"
Moments passed. Porter stared at her, face hard and unreadable. He looked angry and frustrated, as if words were beyond him. He was also, she suspected, conversing with Keko. Great. Now they were conspiring against her.
"Fine," he said. "Shoot it if you want. Shoot all of them. Just don't let them crash down on our heads."
Adjusting his optic spheres with one hand, he stepped over to the fall wall. Then he shone the light he'd carried on his hip into one of the crevasses, and pulled out a thumb-sized blip of blue light.
"Here we all. Say hello to marker number one."
She nodded, not sure whether to be thrilled or terrified. "Not long now?"
"No. Not long at all."
*
Though she was aware of time passing, she kept losing track of it. She felt frustrated by both the slowness and the speed at which it slipped away. Of course it all had to do with what she knew waited at the tunnel's end, and that ending impacted every waking moment. In the tunnels they camped, slept, and ate without rhyme or reason. Nothing resembled a normal day. Her patience frayed. She knew it was happening, saw it reflected in both Keko and Porter as well, but couldn't stop it despite her best efforts. They passed several hologram projectors, which she blasted to pieces. She checked the timescale inside her vest blinking away the seconds. How much longer until they reached the surface?
"Porter said to stop looking at that," Keko sent. "It doesn't measure time properly."
"I know, but it's all I have and I just want to be there!"
The time was wrong—one of many things bothering her. The planet he said they'd called Eos rotated on its axis at a slower rate than the time calculated in the Crescent, adding almost an extra hour each day. The year was longer as well. Technically, Abriel was younger than her Crescent logged twenty-four years. And while it might be night in the Crescent, on the surface it was day.
"Tell me what happens when we reach the surface," she said. "We've never talked about the hard details."
"I'm the Director of Population Logistics, which means I have some influence in Hope City. We won't be arrested or dragged from our beds in the middle of the night." He laughed, but it didn't sound like he meant to be funny. Then again, she didn't much feel like laughing.
"No jokes, Porter. What's going to happen?"
No answer other than feeling his thoughts close off. "Keko? What's with him?"
She sensed the shepherd's hesitation before he offered, "It's hard to describe. The thoughts are too nebulous and the concepts are...I'm not familiar with them, so I can't pass them along. He's anxious, excited...It's too much conflicting data all mixed together. Just let him tell you in his own time."
So, she waited for him to say something. And waited. And waited. And then wanted to shoot him just to get a reaction.
Porter?"
He started, as if woken from a dream. "Sorry. It's just...It's suddenly occurred to me that my original idea was so stupidly naive, and I'm annoyed with myself. I thought I could tell your people the surface world existed, everyone would be thrilled, I could bring up a delegation to meet with the Progeny Clan leaders, and it would be a done deal. Well, maybe not that simplistic, but something along those lines. Instead, I find a highly-militarized society underground and whether you realize it or not, you'll be perceived as a threat. You could destabilize the whole world, and destroy the idea—flawed as it may be—that we live in a perfect utopia."
"You think I'm too violent, don't you? That's it, isn't it? That I'm a bad example of Crescent society and if you parade me around, I'll ruin everything. That I forced you to bring me because of our bond with Keko," she said, trying very hard not to be offended.
"If I didn't want to bring you, you wouldn't be here," he said, sounding exasperated. "All I can say is things aren't as I originally planned and I'll revise as I go. I want your people to succeed and you have a right to the surface. The Progeny weren't meant to hold it forever, but some might think otherwise. You'll need land, housing, services, representatives to deal with the Progeny and other surface communities. I laid the groundwork before I left, but now I'm scared about what I may be unleashing on Eos."
She fell back, panicked. "What will happen if we're not what they expect?"
"If we want it to work, then it will."
"Not good enough."
He turned, catching her off-guard. He leaned so close, his face was mere inches from her. "It will work. It has to."
Abriel's throat went dry and it felt like tiny sparklers of light exploded in her brain as Porter's intensity hit her. No longer was he closed off. He was widen open and exposed—all his hopes and fears hitting her at once. Her knees buckled, forcing him to catch her. That made things worse as his gloved hands gripped her arms, and pressed her back hard against the jagged stone wall. His weight squeezed her, and in that moment, she wanted it to crush her. Wanted to feel the body she had lusted after move against hers. More than that, she wanted him to see her as something more than his first contact with the Crescent. She wanted to be more than a field project to him. Maybe it was just fear making her react this way. Or maybe once again van Andel was right and she wanted to bed Porter because he was too pretty and she couldn't resist. Or maybe she just wanted to connect with someone, anyone, to ease the pain of everything she'd lost.
"Sorry," he said, moving away. "Are you alright?"
"Never better," she answered, shaking herself and rubbing her arms, shoulders, anything to help dull the awful want suddenly coursing through her.
He was silent for a long time, looking at her. What was he thinking? Keko would know, but of course he wouldn't tell her even if she begged.
"I hate to be the one to say this now, but I have a concern," Keko sent.
She wheeled on the shepherd—mostly to stop looking at Porter. She watched him sit on his haunches, head lolling to the side, looking at her with his sightless eyes. A disturbing trick if you weren't expecting it. Nothing in his posture gave it away, not his ears, his tail, the erectness of his spine, or even the slightest raised hackle of fur, and yet...
"My kind has never walked the surface. I'm not sure we're meant to be there."
"What are you saying?"
"We are cave-dwellers, Abriel. We existed in the tunnels before you humans came to this world and gave it and all our kind a name. We searched you out because we found your thoughts interesting and you showed us things we could never have achieved ourselves. The underground is our home and here, we're equals. But on the surface, I don't know if that can be the case. I'll go because you want it and I love you, but I'm afraid."
"Oh Keko!" she breathed, rushing to his side to kneel beside him. "Why didn't you tell me this earlier?"
"Everyone has secrets. This just happens to be mine."
"Nice time you picked to explode the rockslide," she chided, throwing her arms around his neck. "We'll have to roll with what we find there. That's how it's always been for us."
"But wouldn't you be afraid if you were something the world had never seen before and were about to be unleashed on it?"
"You're worried the Progeny will exploit you," Porter answered.
"No way. They're not touching Keko," Abriel said, a hand dropping to one of her pistols. "If anyone so much as thinks about adding him into your genetic stew, I will kill them. I don't care about your laws or how important a figure they are in your society, I'll do it."
Porter stilled. It was impossible to read his face with the optic spheres hiding his eyes, but his stillness was so complete, she knew once again, he was studying her. In the back of her head, she felt his presence steady and strong and for that one second, Keko let Porter's feelings leak through. It almost undid her—the anger, the determination, and always the underlying current of want.
"I promise no one will touch Keko."
She swallowed and nearly strangled Keko in her death-grip as she tried to beat back the tide of Porter's feelings. She was going to drown in him.
"I've seen the Progeny's society through Porter's memories," Keko returned. "I still don't understand it. Do you think I should be reassured by a promise like that?"
Abriel ran her gloved hands along his sides and buried her face in the soft golden fur at his throat. "Keko, I promise if they do anything to you, I will hunt them down and make them suffer as much as I am able."
"And that's a promise I understand. It's all I ask." Keko nosed her and pushed her to her feet. From the warmth in his thoughts, she knew she'd said the right thing. And if Porter was appalled at her bloodthirstiness, he didn't say. "Come on. Enough time wasting. Let's get this over with. I want to feel the sun on my fur before the day ends."