Annihilation ARIA by Michael R. Underwood

Author:Michael R. Underwood [Underwood, Michael R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science
Publisher: Parvus Press
Published: 2020-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-eight

Lahra

The top half of the palace was obliterated. Lahra and Max picked their way through shattered rubble for twenty minutes until they found a door at ground level. Her ancestor’s song had told of a different door. Perhaps the wreckage had shifted over the years. Or others had come on their own search, their own reckoning with the Genae’s past.

A semicircular arch cupped a three-meter-tall layered steel door. Max failed to brace properly and landed hard against the wall. But he made it. She’d been engrossed by the door, by the promise it held, hadn’t even noticed him coming in.

She’d put Genos and her mission into the distance, assumed it was so far-off it might as well be impossible.

But now she was here, and she didn’t have to wait.

Lahra traced her gloved hands across the door, searching for the code pattern. She leaned in, face just a breath away, only her visor between her and the door.

There. They were so faint, worn down over the years. There, the seal of her caste from her mother’s books, and inside it, the circular banner of her family.

She evaluated the door, looking for a control panel or a secret switch.

Two spheres popped out of the wall above the doorway. Lahra pushed Max back, covering him with her body as red lasers swept across her, top to bottom.

Like the Atlan, the Genae used solar panels built into the sides of buildings, and so the palace still had some power even after hundreds of years.

“What was that?” Max asked.

The spheres receded, returning to the door without a trace.

The door shook, then slid open like the wings of a beetle taking flight.

“Genetic scanner.”

“Ah.”

If it had scanned Max, she’d need to apply an override code. “Human” was not a species known to the Genae, and the results of such an error would have been lethal.

“Since it scanned only me on the first pass, my presence should continue to open the door, even with you here.”

“Should? This won’t, like, activate traps or something because I’m not Genae?”

“We hosted honored visitors. Never Terrans, but I hope that the scanners won’t trigger a lethal response once we pass initial clearance.”

“Good to know. You first?” Cheer and hope were back in his voice.

His chem-torch would light the world, and the brightness of his spirit kept the shadows of doubt at bay.

“I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” Lahra said.

“I thought that was my distractingly charming good looks?”

Lahra cracked the barest hint of a smile, still visible through her helmet. “That’s the reason why I let you talk.”

Max was the light beyond the shadow, the curiosity that kept boredom at bay. He was the best kind of trouble, and there was no one alive she would rather have with her on this journey home.

If her mother or grandmother still lived, she would wish to share this moment with them, would sing together as they witnessed the history they’d only learned of from afar.

Max chuckled, tapping through several commands on his wrist panel.

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