Aurora Dawson's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The green jewel sat on the table in the courtyard habitat, ringed by tubular modules. Aurora had told the story once by the shuttle. Now she told it again, slower, so everyone heard the whole thing. Dominic stood beside her. Cole leaned against a doorway. Laezah crossed her arms. Arik, the tech who ran the colony's computers, tapped notes into a pad. Dr. Marie Giovanni, the biologist who had cleared the deep-sea plants as food, listened with her goggles pushed up her forehead. "The entity said there were more relics," Aurora finished. "Ice, fire, deep water. This jewel came from deep water." She turned it in her hands. "The next one is under the ocean too. But the ocean is huge. I could dive for weeks and find nothing. Every dive burns air. Every dive can kill you." She looked around the ring of faces. "I need to know where to look." Laezah uncrossed her arms. "I wish we'd been with you at the cliff," she said. "We could have flown you straight down to the Green Sea. But we had orders. We took Arik and Dr. Giovanni north to the volcano, hunting geothermal power." She glanced at Arik. "We got split up up there. He wandered off." Arik looked up from his pad. "I found a cave," he said. "In the volcano's flank. Hot air pouring out. I went in maybe thirty meters." He shrugged. "Dead end, I thought. There was a slab in the back. Carved. Lines of it, glowing faint orange." Aurora's chest went tight. She whispered to Dom, "A slab. Carved. Glowing." She set the jewel down. "Fire. The entity said fire. A relic hidden where the world burns hottest." She glanced at Arik suspiciously. Dom whispered back, “You think it was another relic in that cave?” "I think it was." Aurora's mind raced. She had been staring at the wrong ocean. The fire relic was already found. Arik had walked past it and called it a dead end. Giovanni set down her cup. "If it's real, we can't leave it in a live volcano," she said. "Heat like that could crack it. Or trigger it." "And anyone else from the colony could stumble in," Dominic said. "If Arik hasn’t already." Aurora picked up the jewel again. It was warm in her palm. She had wanted the sea. Now the mountain called louder. "Then the ocean waits," she said. "We go north first. To the volcano." She looked at Cole and Leazah. "Can you take me back to that cave?" Cole’s jaw tightened. He did not want to go back. But he nodded. "It’s dangerous up there, but I can find it." Cole pushed off the doorway. "I'll fly you." Laezah was already reaching for her flight jacket. Aurora closed her hand around the jewel. The wide, empty ocean had scared her. This did not. Now she knew exactly where the next relic sat, glowing in the dark, waiting in the heat.