Luminescence Read online

  "Has she been pestering you like she has me?" I smiled, trying to signal that it was forgiven.

  "Maybe." He laughed, sounding more confident than nervous. So my hunch was correct. She had basically orchestrated this whole thing, which I had to be at least a little thankful for. "Can I ask you one question?" He switched gears again, leaving me no time to adjust to the intensity of my feelings.

  "I guess so," I said, "Is it going to hurt," I joked to diffuse my anxiety, but he ignored it.

  "Did you really think I didn't care about you?" His eyes were slate and steel, but his question almost put me off balance.

  "Well, it's not that exactly..." I hedged, giving myself time to think.

  "It was more that I didn't know how you cared about me. You can be kind of mysterious sometimes." I tried to keep the sarcastic tone out of that last comment.

  "Well I'm sorry for your confusion, but let me clear it up for you. Lane Everly, I like you, a lot. I might even..." He was almost going to say something else and then he backtracked. "I like you."

  My heart hadn't stopped pounding from the moment he'd kissed me, and if I didn't know any better it was going to beat right out of my chest.

  "I like you too," I said, I cleared my throat so that he wouldn't hear my voice crack.

  He pulled me down an Alleyway so that we could go back a different way, without an audience.

  "Well now that that's settled," he made his tone ironically serious.

  I was sort of hoping that he might kiss me again before I realized that I felt something small hit the back of my head, a drop of water.

  "Oh no," I mumbled. The sky looked clear now, but it was only a matter of time. It didn't take long for things to shift when a Threshold event was coming. I saw Adam reach back to brush the side of his head. He must have felt it too.

  "It might just be a regular rain shower," he suggested somberly, though not seeming to believe it himself.

  "Yeah, or it might be something worse." I was sounding like a pessimist today. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't good, so we hurried along, almost jogging to get back to the Resistance Base. By the time we got back, the sky was darker but mostly due to the sun setting. There was a flurry of activity all around the camp, as the rain picked up. People were stowing away belongings, packing up supplies, and binding down tents. It was probably going to be a long night. I stared at the tent that Carrie and I shared. It was heavy canvas, painted with a waterproof resin that held most storms at bay, but would it hold up to a true Threshold event. I felt fairly certain that the answer was no.

  "Don't you think this would be a good time to start looking for those Chambers?" Adam suggested, blinking through the rain.

  "Let's go," I answered, jogging toward the entrance to the caves on the far side of the encampment. I knew the people had used these caves for a long history. Wouldn't someone have remembered if there were secret bunkers of some sort inside them? I had to push the doubt away as we ran to the entrance of the cave system. It wasn't going to help me, so I just had to keep trying.

  The caves were dark, but Adam pulled out a flashlight, and I did the same. We knew these caves were used by the tribe the moment we first saw them. The damp walls were covered in many of the same designs and patterns that were on the walls in the lower part of the Shell. This tribe was the same tribe that was in Sector 4. There had to be a significant connection there.

  "Do you remember anything about what these chambers look like?" Adam questioned, "Anything that might help us find them?"

  I thought for a moment. My dream had a very strong feeling attached to it, but it had been low on the visual details. I tried to picture the place. The only thing I could think of was that there was a sort of eerie light.

  "There was light there, perhaps some kind of bioluminescence," I theorized as we crawled deeper into the depths of the cave. We walked a little way before Adam stopped me.

  "Hmmm, something like that?" He pointed to a far wall on the opposite end of the cavern.

  "Actually, that does sort of look like it." I felt hopeful once again. There on the other side of the room was a slight tinge of greenish-yellow light.

  "Is it some sort of moss?" He pondered.

  I shined my flashlight on it to get a clearer view. "It sort of looks like some sort of luminescent amber." I guessed. "I don't think it's a plant." I reached out to touch the substance and found it to be solid, though it crumbled somewhat easily to my touch.

  "It's some sort of early-stage crystalline structure, I think," I took note of the texture of the substance as I rubbed it between my fingers. How strange? A glow in the dark crystallized resin?

  "Look here's more," Adam called out, walking farther down the wall. Now that I knew what we were looking for, it was strange that I hadn't seen it earlier. It was all over the cave wall as we moved further down the side of the cavern. I noticed quickly that the line of the substance followed a marked pattern. Each instance was evenly spaced out along the wall. It was too organized to be natural. Had somebody put it there on purpose? We followed it all the way to a place where the chamber began to split off, leading down a tunnel. Of course, it was some kind of marker, to show the way. The farther down the tunnel we walked, the stronger the glow from the luminescent crystal became until it was covering most of the wall.

  "I think this would pretty much account for the light that I saw in my dream," I remarked to Adam, in awe of the strange glow around us. "Do you see what I mean? It seems like Vos is trying to communicate with us."

  "You think she put this here?" He said.

  "Well, unless you have any better ideas," I quipped.

  We followed the tunnel for ages, long enough for my legs to grow tired, though we had walked a long way today already. When the path began to slope downward more sharply, I felt relieved. Was it close?

  When we got to the end of the tunnel, I was confused. There were no doors, no tunnels, nothing. We had walked all the way down this path for seemingly no good reason. But I couldn't believe that. There had to be something. It felt like we had been led there. I searched the walls frantically, hoping we had missed something but there were only. more strange carvings and a wall covered in glowing dust.

  Adam seemed just as disappointed, but he didn't say so.

  "I'm sorry-" I mumbled, "I thought for sure..."

  "It's alright." He said tiredly. "I'm ready to go back though."

  "Me too," I said, hearing the defeat in my voice. It helped that Adam grabbed my hand, lacing his fingers between mine on the walk back. "We don't want to be late for dinner." Diego and Lucia ran a tight ship. There was usually hell to pay if people weren't where they were supposed to be, and for good reason. The world was a dangerous place and they wanted to keep track of all their resistance fighters. We managed to make our way back to the base soon enough. I awkwardly dropped Adam's hand on the way back in, uncertain if he wanted to make our newly formed relationship public yet. He didn't say anything.

  We were only a few minutes late, not enough to be noticed and Carrie and Ellis slipped us into the back of the line. We ate that night like we were starving and bedtime came not a minute too soon.

  Three

  When I woke up the next morning, the camp was in shambles. There were people scurrying around, dragging tools and equipment. It was absolute chaos. I tried to find a familiar face and landed on Ellis. I hurried over trying to weave through the crowd.

  "What's going on?" I shouted over the ruckus.

  "Look down," She gestured toward the ground. There were large shining shards of some type of glass littering the ground. I reached down to pick up and examine one of the shards. Ellis was waving her arms to stop me, but I didn't catch her meaning until it was too late. The sharp edge of the glass cut right through my finger. It was so sharp, that it didn't even register in my mind that I'd been hurt. I just saw the red drops of blood and felt a rush of confusion. I dropped the shard once I realized what had happened. I fumbled, looking for a rag or bandage t
o apply to the cut. I applied pressure and it became clear that it was a pretty deep slice.

  "I tried to stop you," Ellis groaned.

  "Thanks for stating the obvious," I muttered. I realized looking around that everyone's tent including my own was in tatters. These razor sharp shards had seemingly fallen from the sky and completely butchered the camp. Now we really needed to find those chambers. Carrie and Adam saw us at the same time and both asked nearly simultaneously what happened to me.

  "It's nothing," I shrugged. "Do you have a bandage?" I said to Adam.

  "Let me see," He cradled my cut hand gently in his own and the other two exchanged looks. I tried to ignore it. "This is a pretty clean cut." He sounded mystified.

  "It was from that," I pointed at the shards. "I'm going to take one for a sample, now that I've given it my blood offering," I joked bitterly. Adam continued to examine my cut before swabbing it and wrapping it up in a piece of clean linen. My blood bloomed through the white fabric almost immediately and he tied it tighter for greater pressure.

  "We need to go talk to Diego and Lucia today after training," He stated not adding any tone or inflection. He knew as well as I did that we didn't need any more attention than necessary on the task ahead of us.

  "Okay, I'll meet you after training then, by the waterfall." He nodded and we agreed.

  "Wait, more thing," He said seriously. I turned back around and he quickly pressed his lips to my forehead. I didn't see how that would ever get old.

  My training that morning was with Marci. She was tough, but I really liked her. I think part of it had to do with the fact that she was training me in the use of blades. I felt much more comfortable with knives and daggers than I did with the guns that Adam wielded with ease. I wanted to take my bandage off so she wouldn't ask me what was wrong all over again. I pulled back the stained fabric and peered at the area of wounded skin. It was so strange. I ripped the bandage off to find that there was no longer even a cut. It had completely healed up, however, there was a strange substance on my hand. It was jutting out from the place there should have been a wound. The only description was that it looked like tiny crystals had grown out of my palm. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I touched it gingerly with my other hand, careful not to somehow cut myself again. It was a bright greenish-yellow, quite like the substance we had found all over the walls of the cave. What was the connection? I tried to rebind my hand, covering up the strange anomaly until I had time to examine it.

  Marci was brusque as usual, but I knew she liked me. I was a quick study. We practiced throwing and aiming, which was quickly becoming easier for me. It's like I could feel the trajectory of the blade as I threw it as if it were a part of me. I hit the bullseye almost every time.

  "Good," she said simply. This was high praise coming from her. "We'll move on to sparring." I hid my grimace. It's not that I didn't enjoy this part of the training, but she was a hard master and I was left almost gasping by the end of the session each day. She tossed me a small sword and I caught it by the handle, more gracefully than I expected to, although that was likely due to sheer luck. We stood opposite each other and began to duel, thrusting and parrying across the practice field. I was sweating hard, but she was barely even exerting herself. I kept at it, feeling my feet grown lighter. I was trying to feel a rhythm, to align myself with her, and use her energy to my benefit. It started to work at one point, and though she still made it look easy, I was gaining some ground. Perhaps if I could just keep her at bay, then I could simply tire her out a bit and her form might become weaker. I didn't really think that would happen, but it couldn't hurt to hope. By the time the training period had ended, Marci had one again, but I still felt triumphant. I had improved, and now I stood a fighting chance.

  I went to the waterfall that Adam and I had agreed upon. While I was waiting I admired the scenery and splashed water on my face. I unwrapped the bandage from my hand and began to examine the strange crystal. It was definitely a crystal, the growth pattern could only fit a crystalline structure. If it was possible, it seemed to have increased in size since I last looked. What on earth could cause a crystal to grow from your skin?

  I knew this had something to do with the spiraline. It just had to. Somehow everything seemed to come back to the spiraline in the end. The spiraline resin was crystalline in nature, the shards that fell from the sky could also be crystals, and the strange wound on my hand also appeared to be growing crystals.

  "How's the hand?" I heard Adam's voice from the trail and I knew he must have seen me examining it.

  "Well, a little odd," I admitted. He walked over to me and looked at the hand that had previously been injured and which was now home to several well-developed crystals.

  "That seems to be somewhat of an understatement." He said poring over the mysterious abnormality. "I'm going to try something, so just hold on for a moment." He gripped a small amount of the crystal testing its strength. I could feel a slight pressure but it did not hurt. The crystal was brittle and fragmented easily, crumbling to dust. Underneath was only bare uninjured skin. It had truly been quite a deep wound before.

  "So What do you think, doctor? Am I going to live?" I said, only semi-joking. A part of me did worry about what this meant.

  "We'll have to come back to this," He said, his attention quickly diverting. "We have to go talk to Diego and Lucia, now. My guess is that the Threshold event is going to come sooner rather than later." He said, eyeing my hand.

  "I think you're probably right," I agreed. I pulled out a small specimen bag from my backpack along with a pair of tweezers. I gently extracted the crystal from my hand. Again, there was slight pressure, but no pain. I dropped the crystal fragments that I managed to salvage into the bag and threw it into my backpack. NO time to waste.

  "That's one way to do it," He remarked casually.

  "Let's get on with it," I said, not looking forward to the task at hand.

  Adam and I approached Diego and Lucia before noon, and after explaining to them the details of my dream, they seemed curious. We may have left out some of the details about our search for the Chambers, but Lucia raised her eyebrow and said, "I have heard stories say that there are some strange rooms within the ancestral cave system. Rooms that only certain people can reach. I wonder if there might be some truth to the stories?" They were both more receptive than I imagined they would be.

  Diego added, "If this is true what you say, there may be some advantage to us in it." He seemed to be developing an idea.

  Adam and I nodded, giving him our attention. He continued, "If we have a way of knowing where the storms are going to hit, we might be able to lure Alliance troops into the storm, by creating the impression that we let our guard down."

  I thought about this idea. It hadn't even occurred to me to look at it from this angle. I understood the impulse to want to destroy the Alliance, but the idea was difficult to get used to. I had only recently become a member of the resistance. Many of the soldiers were not bad people, they simply didn't have the right information. There were people like Ellis, who until recently had no idea what the Alliance was capable of.

  "There will be more soldiers," I said before I could stop myself. "They'll keep coming, they have an endless supply of people who they see as disposable. And this plan, this would really only work once. Once they Global Peace Alliance realizes we tricked them, they won't fall for it a second time. So it would have to be all or nothing really. We would need to guarantee the highest level members of the Alliance were there."

  Diego studied me, seeming to approve of my sudden strategic plan. "You may be on to something there." I could see the fire in his eyes. This was his true skill. The various complex mechanisms of the rebellion seemed to flow through his mind, but he seemed to hold back for a moment. He turned to me, a glint in his eyes, "So Lane, What would you have us do?" His tone was not sharp, but he clearly expected an answer. He was testing me, sizing me up.

  "I guess...." I felt myself straigh
ten up, and rise to the challenge, "We'd have to find something they want, something they really want. They have to want it bad enough that they'd risk everything to stop us from having it. Then we have to dangle it in front of them." He smiled as I finished.

  "Yes, that's exactly what we need to do." Diego was pleased with me, but I wasn't sure I was going to like his plan. What did the Alliance really want anyway? That was the trick.

  Lucia spoke up then, "Here's what we need to do. Before we can do anything we need to search for the location of these underground Chambers and then find a way to evacuate everyone into them." She pointed at Adam and me, "You two go search and take Ellis and Carrie, they'll want to be a part of this. Diego and I will deal with the Alliance."

  "Thank you," We both nodded in agreement, "We'll head straight there," I said.

  Adam and I found them in the crowd of those waiting for lunch. Ellis was holding a needle and thread, looking very uncomfortable with it, as she tried to patch a tent. It would've been funny if she didn't look so distressed. Carrie was making much better progress, having already repaired our tent and moving on to help others. I broke in with a grin, "I know this is absolutely riveting work, but I have orders from Lucia to get you both to help me find something." They looked up, Ellis in such pure relief I had to stifle my laughter.

  For the third time, I explained my dream. Carrie had a much easier time believing me than Ellis, but I think they were both happy for an opportunity to get away from the base camp for a while. We agreed to head out after lunch. Hopefully, with the added light of midday, we would be able to make more progress.

  Four

  After lunch, we began the real work of finding the ancient and elusive chambers. As we made the hike to the cave, I tried to go over everything in my head, piecing together the fragments of information that I had. Everything was related in some way to the process of crystallization. My guess, if I had a lab I could have tested it, was that all the different crystalline structures were one and the same, simply in different forms or stages of crystallization. It was the active ingredient, the spiraline, that had become isolated and begun to form a structure. Once it crystallized, it began to emit some sort of luminescence. I had originally thought that the luminescent markings on the cave walls were signposts or markers leading the way, but their regular ordered pattern made sense in terms of crystallization. Once we reached the cave, I tried to look at it from a different angle, opening my eyes to luminescence all around. At first, I didn't see anything useful.