place.
“Fins and flippers, we don’t have all day!” Hoku said. “I’ve already been attacked once. I don’t want to make it a habit.”
Dash sighed and nodded.
“Follow me,” he said. “I know a place that might hold the answers you seek.”
He looked at Aluna, his eyes challenging her to contradict him. She smiled and motioned for him to take the lead. Hoku scrambled after Dash, and Aluna took her place at the back of the line, closest to the sounds of the approaching men.
They quickly fell into a rhythm. Slower than the one she’d set earlier, but quicker than what Hoku seemed to want. The creature on his shoulder squeaked whenever he tripped or stumbled.
For the most part, she watched Dash. The horse folk intrigued her, and she burned to know Dash’s story. An Equian who wasn’t a horse from the waist down. How did something like that happen? Was that why he’d been exiled? His long hair swished across his back when he walked. She imagined it looked a lot like a horse’s tail.
The sun sank lower. After an hour or so of hiking, Dash stopped and pointed. “There,” he said.
The building stood several stories tall, a silvery monolith with a space at the bottom where an opening hatch used to be. Its walls shimmered and reflected the debris all around, making it almost invisible.
“What is it?” Hoku asked.
“It stands at the exact center of the dome,” Dash said solemnly. “It must be important.”
“I don’t understand,” Aluna said. “Why is it still here? Why haven’t the Aviars or the Upgraders scavenged it for parts? It must be a trap.”
“Trap or no, it might hold the answers you seek,” Dash said. “If we can save your people, is any price too high to pay?”
She was here, wasn’t she? She’d given up everything for the crazy idea that she could make a difference.
“What are you waiting for? Let’s go,” Aluna said.
HOKU HATED to admit it, but he felt safer now that Dash was with them. Without him, Hoku would either have to go first into the strange building or go last when there were possibly murderous thugs coming up behind them. The middle was a vast improvement.
As they walked through the narrow entrance corridor, he saw evenly spaced holes in the walls. They used to hold security cameras, he guessed, like the kind he read about at Skyfeather’s Landing. The cameras must have been easy pickings for the early tech scavengers. Too bad. He would have loved to take one apart.
The corridor opened into a huge room the size of the whole first floor. The room seemed hollowed out except for a clear tube in the center. He expected to see stairs, but there were none. Maybe it once held an “elevator,” like the one the Aviars had. Dead video displays lined the walls from the ceiling down to the smooth, molded work spaces that ringed the whole room.
Everything had once been shiny and silvery-slick. Despite the intrusion of garbage and the attempts to break everything breakable, very little damage had been done. He ran his fingers over the nearest workstation. Scratches and dings marred the surface . . . the result of hundreds of people trying to get inside the computer or destroy it for everyone else.
“Do you have torches?” Dash said. “It is too dark to see much.”
Hoku hadn’t even noticed the darkness. His eyes had adjusted. Dash’s people were probably more used to the sun.
“We can see just fine,” Aluna said absently.
Hoku heard Dash mumble something about mermaids, but Aluna, staring up the plastic tube in the center of the room, was too far away to hear.
“Can we get to the other levels?” she asked.
“I believe so,” Dash said. “That shaft goes all the way up, though whatever mechanism it used to house is long gone. I have scouted up five more levels. They all look like this. The top floor contains only tables and chairs and is overrun by squatters.” He wrinkled his nose. “Judging from the smell, they are not concerned with infiltrating the computer so much as drinking themselves into sickness.”
Zorro wiggled down Hoku’s arm and clambered onto the work surface. Hoku started to walk a circuit around the room, trailing his hand along the massive desk. It stayed dark and cold and silent, oblivious to his touch. Zorro hopped after him, pausing to sniff the wall or the desk at random spots.
“If this is the brain of SkyTek, then I’d say this dome is dead,”