The Far Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

companies?”
    â€œSounds kinda familiar.” I tried the steel door handle, but it was locked. “Do we knock?”
    There was a pleasant ding of a bell from inside, and a click from the door. I tried the handle again and it opened.
    As soon as we were through the door, lights flicked on. We were in a small room. Leather couches lined the walls to either side. A cabinet of glassware and dusty liquor bottles against one wall, an ornate deep-red carpet over the middle of the hardwood floor. In another corner was an area of kids’ toys, neatly stacked. Ahead of us stood a desk beside a massive steel door that looked like a bank vault.
    The walls were adorned with pictures of people, all healthy adults, some with children, smiling out in the sun, playing golf, or dancing in a club. Another showed two people wearing slim jet packs and arcing through the sky, hand in hand. Someone riding on the back of a dolphin, another with his arm around an old guy with wild white hair.
    â€œIs that Einstein?” Lilly asked.
    â€œI think so.” These were activities you could do inside this holotech world. There was a slogan on the wall between two photos:
    VISTA: The Good Life, but Better!
    Another ding sounded, this time followed by the humming of machinery. A final click, and the vault door yawned open.
    â€œSomebody knows we’re here,” I said.
    â€œThis way!” urged the haggard male voice that we’d heard in the vortex. It hissed from unseen speakers. “Hurry!”
    I started forward. “Wait,” said Lilly. She lugged the desk chair, a heavy wood-and-leather thing, toward the door. “This has lock us in written all over it.”
    â€œGood point.” We wedged the chair in the doorway.
    The next room was larger, still square but with a higher ceiling and clean white walls made of rectangular panels that were slightly convex. It was empty except for a single glass case, a cube about a meter tall, floating in the middle of the room, suspended on about twenty red wires that extended out to hooks on the walls and ceiling. The wires vibrated with our footsteps, absorbing the shock so that the cube stayed still. Inside it was a crystal cylinder with pale white light glowing from the center. The only sound in the room was the humming of air conditioners.
    â€œAre you here?” Each time the voice spoke, there was a click like a microphone being activated.
    â€œWe’re here,” I said.
    â€œYou heard my signal?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHow? How did you hear it?”
    â€œWe were passing by,” I said.
    â€œPassing by . . .” One of the wall panels suddenly flicked to life as a video screen. It showed a distorted image of Lilly and me standing there. I looked up and spied a single camera eye in the ceiling above the cube.
    â€œYou two . . . I’ve seen you. In APB reports from Eden. You are the fugitives wanted for murder.” His voice lowered. “ The Threee . . . ” He sounded excited, almost hungry. I felt my mistrust growing. “But where is your third?”
    â€œDead, in Desenna,” I said.
    â€œAh—” His voice was cut off by an eruption of static, then a buzzing. He moaned. “Sorry, I need to relocate. Be right back.”
    The microphone clicked off, leaving us in the humming stillness.
    I saw Lilly looking back at the door. “Let’s make it quick.”
    The mic clicked on again. “Okay.” He sounded out of breath. “Where were we?”
    â€œWhat’s your name?” I asked.
    â€œYou can call me Moros,” he said. “A name that means—”
    â€œIt’s the Greek god of doom,” said Lilly, almost bored, but also eyeing the glass cylinder suspiciously. “I know my myths. That’s not your real name.”
    â€œWell, no . . .” Moros’s voice faltered. He was still breathing hard. “It is my name in