The Extinction Trials(94)

Cara opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. Finally, she said, “I... did not see that coming.”

“The question becomes what to do now,” Owen said. “I think it’s safe to say The Alliance can track this helo. And I have to wonder if The Union let us go a little too easily. I’m sure they can track us now that we have the mesh. I bet The Union is hoping we’ll lead them back to The Alliance. And I think it’s a risk to lead them to Garden Station.”

“Assuming,” Maya said, “we can even get to the station. We’re on a helo, not a submarine.”

“It’s a fair point,” Owen said. “But I believe we have exactly what we need right here.”

He pointed to the oxygen tanks connected to the suits. “Clearly, the environmental suits and controls are built for normal atmosphere. I doubt they’ll work underwater, and I certainly don’t want to risk it. But the tanks will. We just need to disconnect them from the suits and take them with us.” He motioned to the cans of smoke. “We’ll use these to help weigh us down.”

Maya swallowed. “I don’t like this plan.”

Owen reached out and took her hand. “It’s the best option we have.”

Gently, he moved his thumb up to her forearm and pressed there. As Owen pulled her sweater back, lines began forming on her skin.

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“Do you feel any different?” Owen asked.

“No. Not yet.”

“Did Darius tell you what the mesh will do to you?”

“Yeah.” Maya glanced out at the sea. “I know time is running out for me, Owen. But what if the station is too far down? As in only accessible by submarine? What if we keep falling in the sea and get crushed by the pressure? And what if the coordinates aren’t exact? We’ll be walking around on the ocean floor—or more likely a ledge with survivable pressure—until our oxygen runs out.”

“It’s a risk,” Owen said. “To be exact, it’s a leap of faith. I’ve done a few of those—out of burning buildings. It’s how I saved your sister. And I think we have to take this one. For everyone’s sake.”

Maya nodded and squeezed his hand. “Okay.”

“The only problem I see,” Owen said, “is that even if we survive, The Alliance and Union will likely come after us. They’ll find Garden Station.”

In the cockpit, Cara held up her hands. “I have a solution to that.” She nodded to the medkits. “The strange thing, the thing I just realized, is how completely we fit together. This can’t be an accident. It has to be by design.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have a role to play here,” Cara said. “Before, I thought it was to get Maya to The Alliance and cure the Genesis Virus. Now, I see the truth—the bigger picture. I know what I have to do.”

Cara told them her plan then, and Owen had to admit, it was brilliant, one he couldn’t have seen himself.

And it just might work.





Chapter Seventy-Two





Maya winced as the needle entered her arm. The helicopter’s subtle movement didn’t help matters.

Cara drew the blood into one of the tubes, then capped it and drew another tube full. There was a pile of blood-filled tubes on the floor of the helo now. Owen was busying himself with taping the tubes to the cans of smoke and other detachable heavy objects in the helicopter, readying them to be deployed.

Their plan made a big assumption: that the mesh was in the bloodstream. They knew it was in the brain fluid, and the mesh could obviously change the pigment of the skin on their forearm, so it served to reason that the technology flowed in the bloodstream. They were betting their lives on it.

Cara had programmed a series of coordinates into the helicopter’s nav system. At the first stop, she opened the cockpit door and dropped a canister with two tubes of blood tied to it—one from Maya and one from Owen.

At the next three stops, she did the same.

At the fourth stop, the helicopter hovered near the water, and she turned back to Maya and Owen, each of whom had oxygen tanks between their legs and weights tied around their waists.

To Maya’s relief, the tanks that connected to the suits had a mouthpiece at the port—just in case they needed to be disconnected and used without the suits in an emergency. And this was that emergency.

“You could come with us,” Owen said to Cara.

She smiled and shook her head once. “We all know I can’t. This is the only way.”

“If we find help down there,” Maya said, “we’ll come for you.”

Cara nodded. “I know you will. But I’m pretty sure this is goodbye. And I’m okay with that. As I said before, I think this is what I was meant to do.”

“We’ll never forget you, Cara. Or what you did here,” Owen said.

“Likewise,” Cara replied. She nodded to the sliding door. “You better get going. If the stop is longer than the others, they might get suspicious.”

Maya glanced out the window, then pulled back the arm of her sweater one last time and pressed her thumb into her forearm, and waited as the lines and words formed there.

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