Oracle--Solar Wind Page 21

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We need to land,” Ret blurted out. “Now!”

  “What? Why?” Dusty asked.

  “They’re sending out a scout,” Ret explained, “and if we don’t cooperate, then they’re going to shoot us down.”

  “How do you know?” said Leo.

  “I tuned into the radio signals,” Ret told them. “All of the stations on the ground are communicating with each other.”

  “Wait, this can’t be,” Paige interrupted. “Antarctica is politically neutral, sanctioned for peace. There’s not supposed to be any kind of military action here.”

  “Not anymore, apparently,” Ret said, almost certain the exception to international law had something to do with Lionel.

  “Where do you want me to land?” Dusty pressed.

  “As close to the South Pole as possible,” Ret said.

  Dusty immediately began their descent. Moments later, the promised scout arrived, flying a plane that was far more advanced than their own. It pulled up alongside them, as if to get a look inside at the unresponsive invaders.

  Ret heard the pilot report, “Small plane. Two male riders, maybe more. No obvious firepower.” Ignoring the scout, Dusty maintained a steady dive. “Descending fast, may be attempting to land.”

  So it was true: Lionel truly was in league with the nations of the world to stop Ret from filling the Oracle. Ret shook his head. Given the level of surveillance, he knew his goal of collecting the element would be greatly hampered—if not thwarted altogether—unless Lionel and his aides were certain of their trespassers’ capture or demise. Ret could either cooperate and be detained for an indefinite length of time or he could fool them by staging their own destruction. It was an easy choice.

  “Are there any parachutes on board?” Ret said urgently.

  “I think so,” Dusty replied, scouring the ground for a level place to land. “Look behind the backseat.”

  “Here’s some,” Leo announced, retrieving them one-by-one from the rear of the plane. Then, with a grave tone, he said, “There’s only four.”

  “Perfect,” Ret said. “When I give the word, I need all of you to jump out of the plane.”

  “Are you crazy?” Ana exclaimed. “I’m not jumping out of—”

  “Okay,” Ret rolled his eyes, “then you can stay here and give your parachute to me.” Realizing the alternative to jumping was dying, Ana gladly put on her parachute.

  The white ground of the frozen plains was getting ever closer. The scout pulled away from the side of the floatplane and fell behind it. Then it fired a few flares, obviously trying to scare the unidentified persons into submission.

  “These guys aren’t going to leave us alone unless we’re either quarantined or dead,” Ret detailed amid bright bursts of light from the flares. “If we cooperate, it’ll be practically impossible for us to get the element.”

  “So we need to die?” Ana jumped to conclusions.

  “No, you four are going to escape.”

  “What are you going to do, Ret?” Paige asked with uncertainty, strapping the parachute onto her back.

  “Once you all jump,” he said, “I’m going to stay with the plane until it’s eventually brought down.”

  “You’re going to jump, too, right?” Paige urged.

  “I don’t know yet,” Ret admitted, much to everyone’s dismay. “Dusty, where is the South Pole?”

  “We should be flying directly over it right…” Dusty watched the map, “…now!”

  “Okay, time to jump!” Ret yelled.

  Knowing the skydivers would need some cover-up, Ret sent a powerful burst of wind toward the scout on their tail. The sudden turbulence sent the high-tech plane into a dizzying barrel roll, ensuring its pilot would not see the floatplane’s occupants make their escape.

  “Ana—go!” Ret shouted, seeing her hesitate.

  “You go first,” Ana begged to Paige, refusing to open the door. With a mighty gust, Ret blew the door off. With a scream, Ana was sucked out of the plane, followed by the other three.

  As soon as the plane had been emptied, Ret seized the controls. He purposely caused the plane to pitch and yaw in the most brazen manner in order to make it look like he was trying to evade his pursuer.

  “No cooperation,” Ret heard his pursuer report.

  “We gave them plenty of chances,” Lionel rationalized. “They’re obviously up to something. Take it down.”

  His decoy successful, Ret waited for the imminent explosion.

  Meanwhile, his four friends were falling speedily to the earth. Although the hardest thing about parachuting may be the ground, Ana might say it was finding the ripcord. With her hair being blown all over her face, she frantically searched for anything she could pull, tumbling erratically amid the chaos.

  One by one, the three others each successfully deployed their chutes, transforming their frigid free fall into a gentle glide.

  But Ana’s cries for help filled the freezing air. In her struggle to pull anything and everything, she somehow managed to pull the whole parachute off her back. Paige looked on with horror, her best friend falling like dead weight toward the white land below while the parachute, her only hope for survival, flittered out of her reach.

  Then Paige remembered Ret. She knew he could save Ana. In search of their hero, Paige scanned the sky with optimism. In seconds, she spotted the pair of planes, still in pursuit like predator and prey. Then, with utter terror, Paige saw the scout fire a single missile that, in a direct hit, blew the little floatplane to smithereens.

  CHAPTER 18

  NOT YOUR AVERAGE GUARDIAN

  In the blink of an eye, the floatplane was blown to bits. With a bright flash and a loud bang, a vicious fireball consumed the small aircraft, sending up smoke and raining down shrapnel. The scout passed by without remorse and then flew onward out of sight—mission accomplished.

  Still descending in her parachute, Paige was experiencing the early stages of hysteria. Ana was plummeting to her death, and Ret was nowhere to be seen. Even if Ret was still alive, Paige saw no reasonable way for him to rescue Ana in time.

  Then, against all odds, she saw something. Just before the flaming wreckage of the floatplane crashed to the ground, an object came charging out of it, traveling exceptionally fast along the frozen plain. When it passed under Paige, she could see it was a person, but not just any person—Ret! He was flying on a self-blown wind, speeding to save Ana.

  With her screams getting louder by the second, Ret alighted on the plot of ground where Ana was likely to make landfall. Then he gathered the mass of moving air behind him and channeled it vertically, pushing it upwards with enough force to counteract the pull of gravity on Ana. When the wind met her, it quickly slowed her fall. Ret gradually lessened the strength of the wind and gently lowered Ana until she was levitating in the air just a foot or two above the spot where she should have splattered. Though the danger was over, she was still screaming, her eyes shut tight in anticipation of her impending doom.

  After a few moments, realizing she should have died by now, Ana went quiet and looked around. Ret was standing in front of her with a smile on his face. Then, not far away, Ana’s parachute finally made it to the ground and, upon impact, deployed.

  “Did I have you worried?” Ret said playfully, setting his sister on the snow.

  “Oh no, not at all,” Ana pretended, glad to feel the ground underneath her feet again. “Why would I be worried?” She shot him a ruffled glare.

  “Sorry,” Ret told her.

  “Thanks for saving me,” she said with a sigh of immense relief.

  Dusty landed a few yards away, the ice crunching beneath his feet. Next came Leo, whose legs weren’t quite prepared for the abrupt landing. He collapsed on the frozen ground, the breeze dragging him in the snow until he detached himself from the chute. Ret looked around for Paige, and, as she approached, sent up a gentle wind to soften her touchdown.

  The five youth huddled together,
teeth chattering and bodies shivering from the biting cold. Despite the sunny skies, the weather conditions were inhumanely harsh, made worse by the perpetual wind. Leo reckoned the temperature was many degrees below zero, and Dusty claimed some of his toes were going to fall off. Paige kept close to Ret for warmth, and Ana feared it was going to take weeks for her to fully thaw. The bone-chilling cold was unlike anything that any of them had ever experienced or wished to experience again.

  If they were to survive, the first order of business was to get warm. The task clearly fell on Ret’s shoulders. He lit a fire in the center of their cluster, which immediately brought welcome heat, but he knew the group wouldn’t be able to walk very well in a circle.

  In the distance, Ret saw a faint pillar of smoke rising from the remains of the floatplane. From far away, he rummaged through the debris and found a large piece of the plane’s metal siding. He summoned it to him from across the plain and suspended it above the group’s heads. Then he spread their small campfire underneath the metal, which distributed the warmth like a patio heater.

  While defrosting, the party surveyed the area. They found themselves in a great valley. Profoundly flat and totally barren, it was encircled by a wide ring of mountains, a few of which still looked very large despite being way off in the distance.

  There was only one thing that defied the uniformity of the plain. From far away, it appeared to be little more than a pile of snow and ice. Just looking at it, however, sent a numbing sensation throughout Ret’s left palm. Although he wasn’t sure if the feeling was caused by the wind barb scar or by the heater rescuing his hand from frostbite, he set off for the site anyway.

  The rest of the group followed, marveling at how much more enjoyable the situation had become now that they weren’t freezing to death. The scenery was breathtaking—bare as a bone, yes, but still attractive in its own way. Pure and pristine, nearly every square inch was of the most exquisite whiteness, practically untouched by man. Perhaps, then, there was wisdom in the extremely cold conditions of this continent, preserving it from the problems that haunted inhabited ones.

  Soon, it became clear that they were being followed, not by people but by penguins. A dozen or so emperor penguins were approaching from behind, waddling after the canopied crew. It was Paige who heard them first, the snow crunching under their little feet.

  “Aw,” Paige’s heart melted at the sight.

  “Ah!” Ana screamed as soon as she looked back. She darted ahead to hide behind Ret.

  “It’s just some penguins, Ana,” Ret laughed.

  “Don’t let them come near me,” Ana pled.

  “These guys are pretty far from the coast,” Dusty pointed out, wondering how a pack of penguins had wandered so far inland.

  “I reckon they’re lost,” said Leo.

  “Oh, they must be hungry,” Paige observed with compassion.

  “Don’t you dare feed them, girl,” Ana threatened.

  Ignoring Ana’s overreaction, Paige stepped toward the flightless fowls, which were about the size of a grade-school child. She took from her pocket a package of crackers. Although she knew a penguin’s diet consisted mostly of seafood, she figured they would eat her offering if they were hungry enough. Like ducks at a city park, the black-and-white birds gathered around Paige, scarfing the crackers and leaving crumbs on their tuxedo-like plumage.

  “Great,” Ana grieved, “now they’re never going to leave us alone.”

  Ana was right. As soon as the humans resumed their journey, the penguins followed. With a fearlessness brought on by hunger, the creatures came close at times, sniffing for food. Still wary, Ana spent more time looking behind than ahead.

  In time, they arrived at the mass of snow and ice, although now they saw it for what it truly was: a massive glacier. Each step toward it gave them a better perspective of its colossal size. It loomed overhead like a multi-story office building, some spots catching the sun like great glass windows. Its color was a mix of white and blue, with jagged sides and a bubbled top. Of course, their observations were based on the small portion of it they could see.

  Ret bent their course toward an opening he saw along the base of the glacier. Compared to the rest of the oversized iceberg, the opening looked like a small crevice but turned out to be a large cave. They stopped at the mouth and looked inside. Mostly dark, they were unable to see the end of it.

  “Well, this looks familiar,” Paige remarked.

  “Yep,” Ana agreed nonchalantly. “Next we go through this mysterious hole in the earth and stumble upon some secret operation. Then, while Ret finds the element, the rest of us almost die—either from a civil war or Lye’s little helpers. The usual.”

  “I think I’ll wait out here,” Dusty said after Ana’s dismal outlook.

  “Dusty’s right,” Ret instructed. “I think it’s best if I go in alone.”

  “While the rest of us stay here and get pecked to death by penguins?” Ana remarked, shooing one away.

  “You know what happens when I collect an element,” Ret argued. “The whole place implodes.”

  “But what if Lye is ready for you again?” Paige remembered.

  “I’d feel better if at least one of us went with you,” Leo added, recalling the crucial role he had played last time in helping Ret escape the collapsing pyramid.

  They had a point.

  “Okay,” Ret obliged, “but only one of you.”

  “I’ll go,” Paige immediately volunteered.

  Sensing a bit of disappointment from Leo, Ret told him privately, “I need your help in a different way this time. Now that the floatplane is history, I need you to think of a way out of here. If things get too dangerous before Paige and I get back, then take the others and leave without us. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leo accepted.

  Standing side by side, Ret and Paige stared into the darkness of the cave. Then they looked at each other and, holding hands, stepped into the unknown together.

  “What should we do to keep warm?” Ana called out to Ret when the flames of his heater started to flicker.

  “Snuggle with the penguins,” Ret joked, knowing he had left Leo with that charge.

  The pair hadn’t gone far when they needed a flame of their own, both for warmth and for light. Ret maintained a flare-like glow a few yards in front of them, illuminating the path ahead like a floating light bulb. The place was as beautiful as it was cold, a natural ice museum with slick curves and quick chips. Long icicles hung from the ceiling while frosted crystals lined the walls. Every kind of formation was represented: round-edged, razor-toothed, water-worn, puddled-up. Frozen and refrozen, a million snowfalls lay in a thousand shapes, the product of sublimation and compaction. In fact, the ice had been compressed so densely over the years that even the tiniest of air pockets had been forced out, turning the ice a rich, royal blue color.

  The further Ret and Paige went, the more obvious it was that they were traveling through a tunnel, one with a generally downward slope. The path was quite narrow in parts, and the slippery floor proved a constant challenge. Paige frequently leaned on Ret for support and came to enjoy falling because she knew Ret would catch her in his arms. Ret never lost his balance but occasionally lost his footing, causing his legs to stride and split at random, which always made them laugh. In some parts, the ice was so smooth and sleek that they could see their reflections in it, looking quite distorted and (therefore) humorous at times.

  The tunnel forked on numerous occasions, splitting off in many different directions. Eventually, they came to somewhat of a clearing. Its domed ceiling and flat floor gave it the appearance of an ice rink, which was precisely what it was. Within the glacier, a small pond of water had accumulated and frozen. Ret leapt out onto the ice and began to slide. Paige followed, counting on Ret to catch her. After getting the hang of it, they skated on the ice together, without much gracefulness but with plenty of laughs. Once, Ret attempted a jump but didn’t quite complete the spin a
nd wiped out—all in good fun.

  It was like being in a winter wonderland, just the two of them, gliding on the ice. Then, when they reached the other side of the frozen pool, they pressed forward in search of the element.

  Meanwhile, back at the mouth of the cave, the pack of penguins was getting quite cozy with the three teenagers—well, with the two boys, at least.

  “Get your beak out of my hair,” Ana demanded, pushing away one bird’s snout. Then, to another, she said, “And why are you so obsessed with my feet?”

  “Maybe it likes toe jam,” Dusty jabbed. He was petting one of the penguins who had laid its head in his lap.

  “You’re not helping,” Ana sneered. For protection from the pesky penguins, she was sitting between Dusty and Leo. The trio had their backs against the piece of the floatplane’s metal siding, which was still giving off some heat despite its rapid cool-down.

  “How long does this usually take?” Dusty inquired, new to this whole Oracle business.

  “A while,” Leo said.

  “How will we know when they’ve found the element?” Dusty asked.

  “Oh, we’ll know,” Ana answered, pulling her leg away from a penguin that had decided to settle in next to it.

  “Just be patient,” Leo recommended.

  “Yeah,” Ana concurred, “maybe they’ll run into Superman down there.”

  All of a sudden, the penguins rose up in alarm. Then, with one accord, they scurried away as if spooked by something, flailing their fins and squealing with fright.

  Leo and Dusty exchanged confused glares.

  Ana smiled, “Finally.”

  But Ana’s contentment turned into concern when a noise emerged from within the cave. It was the sound of a small piece of ice being knocked off and falling to the ground. Dusty leaned forward while Leo protectively held out his arm in front of Ana.

  “Ret? Paige?” Leo yelled into the darkness. “Is that you?”

  The only reply was another sound—this time louder, closer.

  “Hello…?” Dusty asked, his voice trembling. “Is someone there?”