ACROSS STARS AND BLOOD (The Malaki Series Book 1)

by L. A. MARIE

  “It’s was a while ago, kid. Years. Anyway, this maneuver allows you to defy gravity. Hence the Flight part.”

  “How?” Sten asked. “Earth’s gravity is a bitch.”

  I nodded. It really was.

  “You use momentum, force, and sheer strength. Both of body, and of will.”

  Sten’s eyes widened.

  “You see, the Rec Area has corners. If you take a running start, and use the walls to kick off, right in the corner, you move up. If you keep going, and you have enough speed and force, well…”

  I wanted to see if he would figure it out. I could see him putting two and two together. His face lit up. And then the brightness faded again.

  “It’s three stories high.”

  “It is.”

  “Malaki stories, not human stories.”

  The Malaki were so much taller than the humans, the sizes of our buildings differed.

  “I know,” I said. “But if you do it right...”

  “You’re going to climb the walls,” Sten said. He was getting what I was throwing at him. It was all a lie, dammit, but he was going with it. And when he shared it with anyone else, they would be too fucking dumb to know that it wouldn’t work, either. I didn’t know what it was, but thugs were so dumb. Not stupid, they could do a great deal and many didn’t get caught. But there was a very big difference between dumb and stupid.

  “I just need to get out of here, man,” I said. “I can’t live in a cage.”

  “Will you show me how?” Sten asked.

  I frowned. “How am I supposed to do that? They’ll shoot us if I try in our rec period.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Sten said. “I just thought I could do it when you do. And then maybe get out, too.”

  “You want to escape,” I said flatly.

  “Well, yeah…” Sten swallowed, looking like he felt foolish. “I don’t really like this place either, you know. And you’re so serious about getting out, so confident in yourself. It makes me think that maybe I can do it, too.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not going to get yourself in the Shoe by trying like I might, Sten. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  Sten frowned. “What makes you better than me?”

  “I have nothing to lose,” I said.

  “And you think I do?”

  I nodded. This kid had everything to lose. He still had hope. He had friends and family. He had a life to get back to. I didn’t have anything like that. My last shot was going back home, where the memories of my mom had been left behind. And maybe I could rebuild, make something of this piece of shit hand that I had been dealt. But I didn’t have anything to lose. If they shot me, well, it would all be over. The nightmare would finally be finished. And if I got out, I was just running headlong into the next ordeal that was probably going to spit in my face.

  The last thing I wanted was for Sten to get hurt because he looked up to me, or something. I was the last person anyone should look up to. In fact, I was the perfect example of what not to be.

  Did that mean that I cared about Sten? Fuck, no.

  Or maybe… I just didn’t want the kid to die.

  So, what?

  Chapter Six

  Emori

  Naira was getting worse. It was happening so fast, I felt like I was just watching her die. It was only a short while ago that she had argued with me about seeing Lena. That seemed like a lifetime ago when I looked at Naira’s frail body, buried under a pile of blankets because despite the heat, she couldn’t keep herself warm. She had already been in bed for two days and I doubted she was going to get up when the sun rose.

  It was early, too early for the sun to be up. The darkness was suffocating tonight. Usually, I loved the darkness. When the world was asleep, it felt like the pain and suffering was postponed and there was time to breathe.

  But despite the darkness, despite the daybreak being an hour or two away, still, I felt like time was slipping through my fingers. Death didn’t await the sunrise.

  She was asleep, but it was good. She needed rest. What I was planning while I stood there watching her wasn’t anything, I was going to be able to tell her, anyway. She was just going to tell me not to do it, argue with me about it.

  If she still had the strength.

  God, those were the things I had taken for granted. It was always like that – you didn’t know what you had until it was gone. Naira was headstrong, stubborn. When she argued with me about everything – and I mean everything – I wanted to scream. Now, I wished she would be strong enough again to fight with me, to give me uphill battles over everything and then some.

  I just wanted Naira to be safe. I wanted her to be healthy. I couldn’t lose her.

  When I stepped out of her room, I covered my face with my hands and let myself fall apart. One, that was all I was giving myself. Because if I didn’t reel it back in, I was going to break. And I couldn’t afford to break.

  Naira couldn’t afford for me to break.

  In my minute, I cried. Tears ran over my cheeks and I shuddered. I couldn’t lose Naira. It had hurt like hell when we’d lost our parents. We had watched them die, unable to do anything. Medicine hadn’t helped, the hospitals had been too full, there had been nothing left to do but say goodbye before it was too late.

  If I lost Naira, I didn’t know how I would be able to get through it. Not alone. She was all I had left, and I relied on her. I was strong, and she was just a kid. But she was my everything.

  I wasn’t going to let her die. I took a deep breath, pulled myself together again, and wiped my cheeks. A steely resolve settled inside me, and I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

  Naira had asked me to promise her I wasn’t going to go after that tech. But she wasn’t going to be able to tell me no. She was too sick.

  And I wasn’t going to let her die because I was holding onto a promise.

  I worked fast. Naira would be asleep for a while still, but I wanted to get out of the house and to the city before the sun rose. As soon as day broke, I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. I needed the cover of the night.

  When I was ready, I checked on Naira one more time. I kissed her on the head. Her skin was boiling hot against my lips and I squeezed my eyes shut, sending a prayer to whoever was still around to listen to spare me the loss of my little sister.

  I left the house silently and moved through the darkness, stepping into the circle of dim light on Lena’s porch. I knocked on the door until she woke up.

  “What’s wrong, child?” she asked when she pulled the door open, a knitted shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her gray hair in a long braid over her shoulder.

  “She’s sick, Lena,” I said. I struggled not to cry. Tears stung my eyes. I swallowed a lump in my throat – my minute for falling apart was long over. “I’m going to the city to do something about it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that. Will you just keep an eye on her?”

  Lena nodded. “I’ll go over at sunrise and stay there until you come back.”

  My heart melted. I stepped forward and hugged Lena. When I pulled away, she looked surprised at the spontaneity.

  “I won’t be long,” I promised, and left the house.

  The trip to Pheonix – Nenthemar, I should say – was only half an hour. The tech the Malakus had introduced to us was only a pathetic shadow of the hyper drive technology they used to traverse the universe. But it worked like a charm and as long as the distance could be covered by car in less than a day, the tech could be used to cover the distance much more quickly.

  I landed safely in the city, appearing at one of the spots where the hypertravel systems dumped out everyone who used it.

  The city was quiet. It never truly slept, but there were barely any cars about, and no one on the streets.

  Slowly, I moved through the city. The lab I was looking for was only a few blocks away, on the edge of a neighborhood that had been for
gotten by its human occupants.

  Since the Arrival, the Malakus had taken over the cities, driving the humans out to the more rural areas in the country. Buildings had been renovated, and the face of the major cities all over the world had changed drastically.

  Gone were our shimmering high-rises with mirrored exteriors that shimmered in the light. The Malaki buildings were tall and narrow, with fewer windows because they didn’t crave the sunlight like we did. The city looked sleek and modern and incredibly uninviting.

  The lab was the same, with sleek lines and few windows. But the building was long and flat, covering more ground, rather than thin and tall.

  I hid in the bushes at the edge of the property and scanned the building, watching the only door that opened onto the parking lot.

  This was the first time I had scoped out this building. I had heard about various kinds of tech and I had thought about stealing something, before. I’d never been brave enough to go through with it.

  I wasn’t brave now, either. My stomach was a knot of nerves and I felt like I was going to throw up. My legs were numb, as if I’d been standing in the freezing cold. I wasn’t brave enough to do this at all.

  But I was desperate.

  I counted to three in my head and on three, I started toward the door. I had watched it for a while and there had been no movement. It was now or never – the sky was already coloring with the warning of dawn and when it was light it would be too late.

  I reached the door without difficulty and unlocking it was easy enough – I had picked up a few skills since my parents had died and lock picking had come in handy more than a few times.

  As soon as I was inside the building, I closed the door behind me and strained my ears for a sound. But everything was deathly quiet. The silence was almost eerie. There wasn’t even the hum of generators or air conditioning. Everything the Malakus created ran so quietly – their technology was far more advanced than ours.

  The lab I was looking for was at the far end of the corridor. I hurried down it, looking out for cameras. I couldn’t see them, but they could be hidden. It was a chance I had to take.

  I pushed the door to the lab open. It didn’t make a sound, and I crept into the white room, lined with shelves filled with tech. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I tasted my heart in my throat and heard my blood rushing in my ears. At least that drowned out the creepy silence.

  The tech was all labelled. The Malakus were such giant nerds. For once, I was glad about it. I read the labels, relieved to see that the words they used were plain English. It was probably for the sake of the humans that worked along with the Malakus in these labs.

  Some of the tech I found dealt with translation. They had some kind of program that allowed them to speak and understand any language that had ever been created. It was how they communicated with us, how everyone always knew what was going on.

  On the table, a little apart from the rest, I found something that looked like a disc, with hooks on the edges, and a large orb in the middle. The orb glowed a faint green, pulsing like a heartbeat. On it was a label that simply read “healing” and I hoped to God this was it. It didn’t take long to figure out how to disconnect the tech and I carefully put it in the bag I had brought along.

  I would figure out how to use it, later.

  I crept toward the door, down the corridor, and finally to the door that led outside. I was surprised it had been this easy. Just one door, and then I would be out in the open. And nothing had gone wrong. It seemed to good to be true, but after everything that had gone wrong, I was willing to take it.

  I had barely completed the thought when alarms sounded. Shrill, high-pitched sounds sliced through my skull and I pressed my hands over my ears, an involuntary reaction.

  Shit!

  I let go of my ears, wincing at the sound, and ran for the door, shoving it open. I didn’t know how I’d tripped the alarm, what had gone wrong, but the moment I shoved the door open and stepped outside, a bunch of Malaki guards spilled from all directions, running toward me.

  I headed for the bushes, running as hard as I could. The backpack with the tech on my back jolted from side to side and I hoped the device could handle it.

  I reached the bushes first, but the Malakus had longer legs – they were much taller than us – and caught up easily. But I knew this city better than they did. The Malakus had taken over, but that didn’t mean they knew the back alleys, holes in fences, abandoned warehouses. I had used them so many times to move through the city on my quests to steal food.

  The distance between me and a hole in the wall not far off seemed impossibly large and the Malaki on my heels was gaining on me. I couldn’t afford to get caught. If I was taken to jail, Naira would die. Without me, she wasn’t going to make it, whether she healed or not. She was almost the age I had been when our parents had died, but it wasn’t the same.

  The guard was so close now, I could hear his breath leaving his body in explosive gasps. His feet pounded on the pavement behind me and he shouted something in a language I didn’t understand.

  I could see the hole in the wall. It was small, so small I would have to squirm to get through it. But he wouldn’t fit. It was the only way I was going to get away.

  I skidded on the floor the last couple of feet, and forced my body through the tiny hole. I would have been claustrophobic under any other circumstance, but this was about life and death. Literally.

  The backpack caught on the wall and I couldn’t get through. I was halfway through by my legs were still out and I scrambled and kicked and cried out. I yanked hard and heard something rip. And shot through the hole. The guard’s long, sinewy hand grabbed at my foot, got a hold as I pulled myself through, but his grip wasn’t good and I yanked myself free, kicking him off me.

  I got up, breathing hard, disbelieving that I had gotten away.

  A loud thump against the wall made the earth tremble. The Malaki was just going to barge his way straight through it.

  I turned and ran. It would take him at least three more knocks. I had to put as much distance between me and him as I could before then.

  Chapter Seven

  Thane

  I lay on the bed in the infirmary, my ribs black and blue. When I breathed, it hurt like a bitch. The Malaki sewing up the gash in my arm didn’t even look at me – I could have been dead for all she cared.

  But I made it. I was in the infirmary. And those windows right there were the escape to freedom.

  “Ah, dammit, watch your stitch!” I cried out. She hadn’t done a great job of sedating the area. But what did I expect? It was a prison for murderers and rapists, the people who had committed unspeakable crimes ended up here. They weren’t going to bother relieving a little pain.

  She didn’t even respond when I cried out and writhed in pain. I gritted my teeth, trying my best to keep still. The more I moved, the more it hurt my ribs. I was lucky they hadn’t been cracked. But I knew I was going to be okay. I just needed to breathe through it, steel myself against the pain.

  And get the hell out of Dodge.

  The first part of my plan had worked perfectly. Baiting Agai in the cafeteria had been easier than counting to three. And Sten had helped me. He hadn’t known why, though. And when he found out I had escaped, not doing the whole rec area wall-run like I had pretended I was going to do, he was going to be pissed at me.

  But I had wanted to throw him off my trail and it had worked. And when I had started with Agai, Sten had jumped in with a few insults, enough to really get Agai’s blood boiling.

  The fight had been brilliant. I had gotten in a few punches, but I’d let the fucker win. He probably thought he was the shit now, standing among the prisoners, boasting about his skill.

  Whatever, let the sad sack think he was worth something. None of them had anything else to hold onto in this hell hole. It was worth it, if my escape worked.

  But it was going to work, I knew that. There was no way it couldn’t work.
r />   The nurse finished with my arm and walked away, not giving me another glance. I looked at the windows. They had bars on the outside, but they were close to the wall that surrounded the prison. Razor wire was looped above the walls, and guards watched the perimeter with guns. But that was it.

  The Malakus had tech that could stop prisoners from escaping without any of that – with the help of force fields and waves that numbed the prisoner’s wills, they could keep prisoners in a paper room if they wanted to. But my father was stingy as fuck and kept all the good shit to himself.

  Lucky me. I was going to get out of here because my father figured no one was going to challenge the system.

  Well, he was wrong. I was here, challenging every damn rule. Why? Because I knew where the weak points in the system were. My father had made a mistake putting me on the Council in order to keep an eye on me.

  All I needed now was a distraction. I lay on the bed, flexing my arm, testing my hand to see if I could still use it. Agai had used a shank – I hadn’t realized he had one. I had wanted to make one of my own, but I hadn’t been able to. He’d whipped out that thing and sliced me up before I could think twice. The guy had clearly been planning some kind of revenge after I handed his ass to him the first time.

  Whatever, it worked, I had ended up where I needed to be. I could swallow my pride if I had to.

  Before I could think of a way to cause a distraction, one of the other patients grabbed the Malaki nurse’s ass. She squealed and swatted at him, but despite being sick he was much stronger than she was. He pushed her against the wall and the other patient – there were only three of us up here – started cheering. He was going to do terrible things to do that nurse. I knew that. But it wasn’t my problem.

  Alarm bells went off, guards rushed in. Two of them. They tried to pull the patient off the nurse while she screeched at the top of her lungs.

  I didn’t have to be told twice that this was the distraction I needed. I ran for those windows and threw myself through them as hard as I could. I hoped that what I knew about the bars were true – that direct force on the bolts would rip them free. It was the weak spot. The bars were strong, but the walls they were bolted into, weren’t.