He didn’t catch anything. Perry put his ear to the wood. Fared no better. Swearing under his breath, he jogged downstairs. He entered a room on the first floor, bare save for a large painting that looked like accidental splatter, and the heavy steel door of an elevator. Perry punched at the buttons. Paced until the door slid open. There were no buttons inside. The steel box dropped to only one place. Marron called it the Navel.
Ten seconds in, he started to sweat. He continued to drop, deeper, deeper, imagining all the steps he’d taken to climb the mountain in reverse. The elevator slowed and stopped, though his stomach kept going for a moment or two. He remembered the feeling from his first visit. A hard one to forget. Finally the door opened.
A smell as damp and thick as breathing dirt came to him. He sneezed a few times, striding through a wide corridor toward the source of light at the end. Crates were piled high along the walls. Even on top, they were littered with odd things. Dusty vases and chairs. A mannequin arm. A thin paper screen painted with images of cherry blossoms. A harp with no strings. A wooden box full of doorknobs and hinges and keys.
He had explored every one of those crates the last time he’d come. Like everything at Marron’s, the bits and pieces stashed in the Navel had taught him about the world before the Unity. A world Vale had discovered years before him in the pages of books.
Perry followed the clutter to the end of the corridor, nodding to Roar and Marron as he entered a large room. A bank of computers took up one side. Most were ancient, but Marron had a few pieces of Dweller equipment, sleek as Aria’s Smarteye. There was also a wall-sized screen, like in the common room above. The image he saw on it was of the plateau they’d crossed before the final climb to Marron’s. The colors were odd and the image was murky, but he recognized the caped figures moving around tents.
“I had a microcamera set up,” Marron said from a wooden desk. He controlled the images on the wallscreen from a thin control palette. Aria’s Smarteye was on his desk on a thick black board that looked like a piece of granite. “It won’t last long with the Aether, but it’ll help us see what they’re doing until then.”
“They’re setting up to stay, that’s what they’re doing,” Roar said. He sat on the lone couch, his feet kicked up onto a small table. “Another ten added since the last count, I’d say. You’ve finally got a tribe following you, Per.”
“Thanks, Roar. But it’s not the kind I wanted.” Perry sighed. Would the Croven ever leave? How was he going to get out of here?
Marron guessed his thoughts. “Perry, there are old tunnels that run deeper into the mountain. Most of them are impassable, but we might find one that’s held up. I’ll have them explored in the morning.”
Perry knew Marron had meant to be reassuring, but it only made him feel worse for all the trouble he was creating. And tunnels? He dreaded to think of leaving that way. Just being in this room was making him sweat. But unless the Croven gave up and left, he couldn’t think of another way out of Delphi.
“What’s the news on the Smarteye?”
Marron’s fingers glided over the palette. The image on the wallscreen changed to a series of numbers. “By my estimate, I could have it decrypted and running in eighteen hours, twelve minutes, and twenty-nine seconds.”
Perry nodded. They’d have it sometime early tomorrow night.
“Perry, even if I can get it powered, I think the two of you should be prepared for any outcome. The Realms are even better protected than their Pods. Walls and energy shields are nothing by comparison. There may not be anything I can do to get you connected with Talon. Or to link Aria with her mother.”
“We have to try.”
“We will. We’ll try our best.”
Perry tipped his chin at Roar. “I need you.” Roar followed him without question. He explained what he wanted in the elevator.
“I thought you’d already gone to her,” Roar said.
Perry stared at the metal doors. “I haven’t. . . . I did, but I didn’t see her.”
Roar laughed. “And you want me to go?”
“Yes. You, Roar.” Was he going to have to explain that Aria talked to him more easily?
Roar leaned against the elevator and crossed his arms. “Remember that time I was trying to talk to Liv and I fell off the roof?”
In the cramped elevator car, he couldn’t escape picking up the shift in Roar’s temper. The scent of longing. He’d always hoped Roar and Liv would outgrow their crush, but they’d always been wrapped up in each other.
“I was talking to her through that hole in the timbers, remember that, Perry? She was up in the loft and it had just rained. I lost my balance and slid right off.”
“I remember you running away from my father with your pants around your ankles.”
“That’s right. I tore them on a tile on the way down. I don’t think I’d ever seen Liv laugh so much. Almost made me want to stop running just to see her like that. Hearing it was pretty good, though. Best sound in the world, Liv’s laugh.” Roar’s smile faded after a moment. “He was fast, your father.”
“He was stronger than he was fast.”
Roar didn’t say anything. He knew how it had been for Perry growing up.
“Was there a point to that story?” Perry stepped out as soon as the elevator doors parted. “Are you coming?”
“Fall off your own roof, Perry,” he said as the door slid closed.
The elevator dropped back to the Navel, carrying away the sound of Roar’s laughter.