by K A Riley
I’m determined to do what it takes to make it as hard as possible for them to hunt my friends down, even if it means dying.
I get ready to turn and face the armed, advancing men, my eyes already filling with tears at the thought of being shot, of falling to my death, of failing my friends.
Then, in a flash, I feel Render in my head.
Fly.
It’s more of an idea than a word. A command, not a suggestion. And I know I need to obey.
Right now.
I’m suddenly filled with the ability and understanding of two minds, two souls. No time to think. No time to weigh the pros and cons. Turning back toward the impossibly wide breach between the Halo and the Theta Cube, I take a single step back, then a single step forward. I barely bend my knees as I leap out over the abyss. The deep green space below passes under me in a blur. Unlike Brohn and Manthy, I don’t kick my legs or swing my arms for momentum. It’s more of a glide, like I could go forever, clear any space between me and my friends.
With the wind whipping around me, I seem to coast through the air to an easy landing with both feet on the receding skybridge before stumbling forward into Brohn’s and Manthy’s waiting arms.
“How?” is all Brohn says, his mouth open, eyes wide. But I don’t have an answer to give him, and we don’t have time to figure it out. He gives me a quick, surprising kiss on the lips before we spin around, my heart racing now for more reasons than one.
The bridge has fully withdrawn, and the three of us hop up onto the landing in the Theta Cube. Across the way, five men, their guns drawn, slide to a stop on the Halo side of the expansive gap. They fire at us across the distance, but we’re already around the corner and sprinting down the hall to the staircase that will take us back down to ground level. I duck anyway at the sound of bullets striking the walls behind us.
We dash through the bleak corridors of the Cube and scurry down the stairs. With Brohn leading the way, we skip half the stairs on each level, bounding to the landing below and then down the next flight of stairs. As we leap down the last steps, Cardyn, Karmine, Kella, and Rain are running up at the same time. We all practically collide into each other.
“What happened?” Karmine asks. He’s as out of breath as we are.
Cardyn asks if I’m okay. “Not even close,” I say. “It’s the Order!”
“What about the Order?” he asks.
“All of this is a lie!” I shout, pointing back the way we came and then at the whole building around us. “The war, the training, everything. The Order doesn’t exist!”
Brohn shouts, “Come on!” as he and Manthy start heading towards the main door leading back outside, but Cardyn, Karmine, Kella, and Rain don’t budge.
“Are you saying they’ve been defeated?” Rain asks. “Has there been a breach? What do you mean?”
“There’s no breach,” I snap at her. “This place is the Order!”
“Just trust her,” Brohn barks. “We’ve got to move!”
Rain takes a tentative step forward. “Where?”
“The woods,” I say. “It’s our only chance. If we stay here, we die.”
“We can’t leave without Terk!” Rain says. “He wasn’t in the Eta Cube. We looked everywhere. There’s no one in there. Not even guards.” She’s clearly overwhelmed and on the verge of tears.
Brohn shakes his head. “We don’t have a choice. We don’t know where he is. If he’s even…”
He glances at Manthy and me and doesn’t have to finish. The three of us know the truth: Terk belongs to the other side now. If he’s even still alive, that is.
“We need to go,” Brohn says. “We don’t have time to look for him. Did you find any supplies?”
Rain points to a small canvas backpack she’s got slung over her shoulder. “Like I said, place was empty. But we grabbed what little we could find. A few medical supplies and a bit of food.” She holds up two small hand-guns. “Oh, and these might come in handy. No extra ammo, but at least they’re loaded.”
Brohn frowns but nods and then leads us through the Theta Cube’s main door. We dart down the fenced in corridor, under the empty guard turret, and out onto the edge of the Agora.
“How do we get out of the Processor?” Kella asks. “The guards and the fences…?”
“I can get us out,” I say. “There’s a blind-spot over there between the Zeta and Eta Cubes. And a gap in the fence out back they don’t know about. If we’re careful and follow just the right path, we can slip past the cameras and motion-detectors and be out of here in two minutes.”
Rain is still reeling. “How do you know all this?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But Render does. He dreamt it for me.” With that I gesture toward the sky.
Above us, Render swoops down on cue and leads the way along the edge of the Agora, past the Eta Cube. On the far side of the Agora, lights start springing to life in the other Cubes and in the guard turrets. A squad of scrambling men starts to charge across the large field in our direction.
With Render’s sleek black form gliding effortlessly in front of us, we run as a group, the Halo looming ominously above. Instead of its slow rotation, it’s now deadly still. Instead of pure polished chrome, it has a strip of red lights running along its underside and blinding spotlights activated around its edges. It may be night-time, but the Agora and the surrounding Cubes are suddenly lit up like the mid-afternoon sun.
With all of us packed in tight, we zip between the Zeta and Eta Cubes, out of the intense white light, and down the same dark alleyway I saw in my vision. Render darts left and right ahead of us, fluttering slowly and beating his wings hard to stay aloft as we scramble to keep up. Brohn has stepped to the side to let me take the lead.
We run single-file, careful to follow Render’s path exactly until we’re safely behind the Zeta Cube with nothing but a massive electrified fence and the dark woods in front of us. After a mad dash between a nearly invisible gap in the razor wire fence, we leap into the woods and skitter down an embankment. The ground is crunchy under our feet. The earth is dry and lifeless, and the black trees lean in dense clusters around us.
Ducking and running along blindly in the gloom of oncoming night, we arrive at a clearing where thirteen people—ten boys and three girls, all with Special Ops badges—lie dead in shackles along a long, raised stage. Their arms are chained into a series of pillories, their bodies are slumped over, blood pooling below them and dripping off the edge of the platform to soak the ground below.
Standing over them are Trench, Granden, and one other figure we all recognize in a sickening instant of shock: Terk. He’s dressed in the same military fatigues as Granden and Trench. He’s as big as ever, but his long hair is gone, and two deep scars run along either side of his shaved head. Coils of wire run from his temple and down the side of his neck before disappearing into his left arm, which is now an immense assembly of steel plates with long black metallic tubes snaking down from his shoulder like iron tendons. More braids of wire run down his wrist to a three-pronged black metal vice where his hand used to be.
Trench quickly overcomes the shock of seeing us outside the Processor. He hops down from the stage, whips his Sig Sauer from his holster, and starts blasting away at us.
We dive for cover, our arms over our heads, and huddle behind a cluster of dried tree trunks. With deafening cracks, bullets blast chunks of bark from the trees. Clouds of wood shards burst into the air around us.
In the moment it takes for Trench to reload his weapon, Brohn gives a nod to Karmine and Kella who take off in opposite directions, ducking low as bullets swarm again in the air around us like angry bees.
Outflanking the men at the foot of the stage, Karmine and Kella fire the two small guns Rain found at Granden and Trench, and both men crumple to the ground. Karmine runs over to Terk before Kella can stop him.
“Terk! It’s us! We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouts.
He’s answered by a violent swing of
Terk’s metal arm that strikes him hard in the chest, sending him sprawling back, confused, horrified, and grimacing in pain.
I leap over a fallen tree trunk and shout across the clearing to Karmine. “Kar! Get out of there! He’s not one of us anymore!”
Karmine is crab-walking away from Terk, his feet scrambling and slipping on the dry ground. As Terk advances on him, Karmine grabs Trench’s gun that’s lying on the ground just beside him.
“Don’t make me do this!” he shouts at Terk, training his gun on our big friend.
Terk lumbers forward, and Karmine fires.
Terk deflects the bullet with his metal arm. Karmine fires again, but the gun’s bolt has slid back after the last round. The chamber is empty. Terk takes two giant steps forward and grabs Karmine by the arm. Karmine tries to pull away, but Terk has him in a vice-like grip, his metal pincers locked around Karmine’s wrist.
“Terk, No!” Kella shouts as she bursts into the clearing. She lunges at Terk, leaping onto his back with her arms in a stranglehold around his neck.
But Terk doesn’t seem to register anything. It’s not just his arm that’s changed. It’s like he’s all machine now. Unfeeling. His eyes are black and unfocused. With his human arm, he slings Kella off, sending her flying across the dry glade. Even for him, his strength seems unworldly and off the charts.
He turns his attention back to Karmine and slams him hard to the ground. Stunned, Karmine is just trying to get to his knees when Terk swings the weight of his prosthetic arm up hard in a huge arc. His metal forearm smashes into the side of Karmine’s head. Through a spray of blood, Karmine slides twenty feet across the clearing and lands up against a large rock, his head tilted on his neck at an impossible angle.
Terk turns his attention next to Brohn, Cardyn, and Rain, who have jumped over the fallen log and darted over to where Karmine is lying, twisted and still.
From the safety of our cover, I grab Amaranthine hard by the arm. “His circuitry—can you tap into it?”
She’s shaking, her eyes wet with oncoming tears, her breath a series of uneven gasps. But she reins in the panic attack and manages a series of quick nods.
I tap my implants and connect with Render who swoops down around Terk’s head. Distracted, he drops his guard, and Brohn and Cardyn are able to charge him and tackle him to the ground. He lashes out with his metal arm and sends Brohn flying through the air to the far side of the clearing. Brohn smashes back-first into a tree and slumps to the ground. It takes him a few seconds to push himself to his feet.
Cardyn delivers a straight punch to Terk’s jaw, but Terk shrugs it off and lumbers to his feet. He drops Cardyn with a back-fist strike with his human arm. He raises the mechanical one, prepared to deliver a killing blow, but the arm freezes above his head. Next to me, Amaranthine has her eyes shut tight. She’s trembling with the effort of connection. I know how it feels. I’ve felt it with Render—the feeling of being one with an energy other than your own. It’s a shock to the system.
But right now, it’s a shock we can’t live without.
Rain has grabbed Granden’s gun from the ground. I call out, “Now!” and she fires off a shot that hits Terk a glancing blow across the temple. Terk goes down in a heap just as a mass of lights and alarms explode in a chaotic storm from the woods behind us.
Amaranthine and I leap into the clearing to join Brohn, Rain, Cardyn, and Kella. We’re just running out of the clearing and into the tangle of woods leading away from the Processor, the lights, and the sound of dozens of soldiers on the hunt for us, when someone latches onto my arm. The grip is tight. The voice in my ear is urgent, but gentle and weak at the same time. “Follow Render.”
The voice is Granden’s. A search light passes over us, and I can see his face. It’s roughed up and bruised with blood seeping down his cheek from a bullet-wound above his eye. “I’ll keep them off of you for as long as I can,” he says. His eyes dart left and right before landing on mine. He’s shaking. “If I don’t see you again, Kress,” he says through what sounds like a sob, “you have my apologies. It’s been an honor. You’ll make a fine leader.” He lets go of my arm and stumbles away into the dark tangle of branches around us.
Cardyn calls back to me. “Kress! Come on!”
Catching up with the others, I spot Render perched on a branch down a small path leading between banks of black and broken trees.
Dashing past the others, I grab Manthy by the hand and call out to Brohn. “This way!”
In a mad scramble, we dash down a thin path, which quickly disappears, and we duck into the thick of the woods. We might not know where we are exactly. But we know this type of terrain. Because of our lives in the Valta, surviving in the woods has practically become second nature to us.
Now that I think about it, surviving, itself, has become second nature to us. We’re survivors. What’s more, we’re a Conspiracy. And we have family to fight for, friends to avenge, and an enemy to take down.
To do all that, we need to live.
Flushed with adrenaline, we sprint along, dodging and weaving through a maze of black tree trunks with Render flying low just up ahead. He stops from time to time to alight on a branch so the rest of us can catch up. Then he’s off again, a black glistening shadow slicing through the darkness of the devastated forest.
The thunder of the men’s boots behind us grows dim until it fades away completely. We hear men’s voices calling out to each other, but they’re far off now, heading in the opposite direction. Granden must have misdirected them. I don’t know why he helped us, but I hope we all live long enough to find out.
The six of us slide down a ravine and navigate our way through a series of enormous root systems. The branches and vines form a tangled maze with razor sharp brambles and thorns slicing at us, cutting through our clothes and skin as we run. Arriving at another steep drop-off, I lead us down into a dried river bed. Just behind me, Brohn loses his footing and slides past me before coming to a stop at the bottom of the slope by my feet.
Render circles overhead. He cries out a series of “all clear” kraas.
“So we’re safe?” Brohn pants, as the others stand behind him, all eyes on me for an answer.
Nodding, I reach out a hand and help him to his feet. “For now, at least.”
End of Book 1
Coming Soon!
Book Two, Render, will be out in February! You can pre-order at the discounted price if you get it in the next couple of months.
Having discovered a terrible secret, Kress and Render lead the others on a dangerous journey. But nothing is ever quite as it seems, and danger lurks behind every corner...
Also by K. A. Riley
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Resistance Series:
Recruitment
Render (Coming Soon!)
Rebellion (Coming Soon!)
Athena’s Law Series:
Book One: Rise of the Inciters
Book Two: Into an Unholy Land