“Where’d you find her?” the soldier says as he scrambles forward.
“The Beezway. The Alameeda destroyed the west end of the transfer tunnel. We just made it out,” Trey answers honestly.
The sentinel activates a hatch door beneath my feet, causing me to fall into a chute when the ground gives way beneath me. My arms are flung above my head. Air propels me rapidly through a cylindrical tube, forcing me under the barrier. I emerge on the other side of the doors, but I’m trapped within a clear gerbil-style cage. My gasping, frantic breath fogs the transparency of the walls as I press my hands against the box restraining me.
Trey is left standing on the platform outside the door. His eyes search for me immediately. “Let me in!” he insists with a troubled frown from his lone position outside the gate. “I’m dead if you leave me out here!”
“I’ve been ordered not to admit unauthorized personnel. Most of our detail has been relocated by the Amber Code,” the Brigadet explains unapologetically. “We’re operating on lockdown here.”
From behind Trey, a firework of blue light explodes. His shoulders round while his hands come up to protect his head. Laser fire ricochets off the once-steel-looking screen that separates Trey from the sanctuary of the detention area. At the other end of the tunnel behind Trey, Kyon and several other Alameeda Strikers with Riker jet packs come into view; they show no fear of the defensive guns that automatically return fire upon them. Blue bubble-shields that look to be made of light form around the Alameeda Strikers, deflecting the lethal Brigadet laser light from penetrating their targets, acting as a force field against it.
Trey turns and fires on them too. Finding his efforts useless, he backs away from the onslaught of Alameeda. Pounding his hand against the barrier, he screams at the guards, “Open the gate!”
Confusion shows on the Brigadet’s face, but he acquiesces, moving to the console on the wall again. The floor beneath Trey opens, sucking him into it before the hole evaporates once more. Next to me in a separate, transparent cage, Trey jets upward, filling the space like sausage meat. “Let me out,” Trey urges them. “You need my help to defend against them.”
The Brigadet moves to release Trey from his hollow pillar prison. The moment the tube surrounding him retracts into the floor, Trey raises the weapon in his hand and fires a shot at the Brigadet. Electricity pulses in yellow light over the guard’s body, driving him to his knees before he falls forward on his face. Trey immediately lifts his gun to the other two soldiers; before they can react, he pumps them full of energy that makes them fall to the floor, twitching like fish out of water—tased but not dead.
Running to the panel near my restraining tube, Trey deactivates it. The cage retracts into the floor, allowing me to leave its claustrophobic atmosphere. Breathing deeply, I jump down from the platform that separates me from Trey. I look toward the barrier, and Kyon is there, watching me. He lifts the mirrored visor on his navigation helmet, showing me his piercing blue eyes. I shiver at their intensity.
“Stop,” I whisper. “Please.”
No, Kyon mouths back before he gnashes his teeth. His eyes search the barrier for a way inside.
Trey doesn’t notice our exchange. He clutches my shoulder, forcing me to turn away from Kyon and follow him out of the open door on the opposite side of the admission area.
We emerge onto a grate-floored catwalk, our footsteps echoing in the cylindrical hivelike arena surrounding us. All of the aisles join together in star formations. Amid each star, there are hundreds of mirror-reflected shiny orbs; they’re moored above an abyss of prison levels that go on for miles beneath us. Thousands upon thousands of stacked hexagon cells form a grim honeypot.
Jax, Wayra, and my other Cavar bodyguards are in those cells, but which ones? I wonder, as we make our way over the grated bridge toward a large metallic orb. Emerging from a sliding door in the mirrored orb chamber, a soldier lifts his weapon to defend his position. Trey is a better shot; he drops the soldier with a stunning burst of electricity.
Jumping over the incapacitated soldier, Trey enters the chamber of the orb through its open door. Another Brigadet rises from his seat at a holographic panel of controls in order to ward off Trey’s attack, but he’s dropped to the floor in short order by a blow from Trey’s fist.
Once we’re inside the orb, the controls and holographic screens indicate that the orb is a craft of some kind. Trey drags the unconscious soldier out of the control room and onto the catwalk. When he returns, he goes directly to the holographic console and gazes intently at the screen of readouts in front of him. Within moments he says, “I found them.”
“How’d you do that?” I ask in awe and disbelief.
“I’m a Cavar,” he replies with hubris. “They’re on level four ipsacore in section twenty-two.”
“How do we get to them?”
Trey scans the hologram, sliding moveable icons around a gridlike screen. The door of the control orb closes. The catwalks that attach to the orb retract, unmooring it. The orb falls from its position at the top of the hive. Descending several stories, the orb slows and fits itself through a narrow, silver tunnel of light to the left. Like a silver ball in a pinball machine, we glide along to another sector. Shooting out into a separate stack of cells, I notice the mark of section 22. The orb floats to the middle of the sector and hovers there. Grated catwalks expand from bridgelike walkways that line the fronts of the cells. When the star pattern of bridges moves to connect to the orb, Trey slides the door to the orb open.
“Which ones are they in?” I ask.
His hands rapidly conduct an orchestra of information on the holographic screen, pulling out its secrets from within the control module. Wayra’s face flashes up on the screen, and then Jax’s. I feel tears sting my eyes.
“That’s them,” I exhale.
“They’re all clustered in the same area—south.” He points behind us. “You need a slipshield to help me unlock the cells. Here.” Trey finesses more holographic buttons. A small panel in the control console opens and emits a clear sticker that resembles the symbol on a USB port. He takes the small patch and peels it from the backing like one would an electrode. He grabs my hand, turning it palm up before sticking the tattoolike symbol to the skin over my wrist. I examine it: it’s created from a gel-like substance with wires embedded in it. “That slipshield will unlock the cell door when you scan it. The system will consider you a guard.”
The silver orb transport pod slows until it hovers in the open-aired space beyond the grated catwalks. After Trey manipulates more icons on the holographic screen, a docking catwalk slides out to our transport, attaching itself to the lip beneath the door. Trey rises from the control seat and takes my hand. He leads me to the door and opens it. He scans the area outside for Brigadets, but there seems to be no one about at the moment. He tugs gently on my hand, and we exit the pod through the open door. Trey takes the catwalk that leads to the southern grated walkway. I follow him, running with my face turned toward a row of empty cells as I scan them one by one, looking for my friends.