Battle Born

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  He grabbed his comm pad and checked the time. 2:15. He sighed, listened to the constant pattering of the rain. He knew he wasn’t going to fall back asleep. Maybe he could have ignored the rest of it long enough to drift off, but not with the rain. Salome had told them about the potential for flooding a day ago. A lot could happen in a day.

  He kicked off the blanket and swung out of bed. He could get a hold of Salome on Saskia’s comm system. Ask if the shelter was still safe. The not knowing was gnawing away at the edge of his thoughts.

  He threw on some clothes and went out into the hall. The house was silent save for the rain. He took the stairs carefully, afraid they would creak beneath his footsteps. Let the others sleep if they were able.

  When he went into the kitchen, he was surprised to find the safe room door was hanging open, a narrow band of yellow light spilling out across the tile floor. Had they forgotten to close it up last night? Or maybe it was just Owen. Saskia had told him she didn’t think he ever slept, back when they were working together as partners.

  Partners. He really had been unfair to her. It was just that his thoughts got all twisted up around her, and the last thing he wanted was for her to abandon them, and him to have to hate her. So he’d started mistrusting her. Some kind of stupid defense mechanism.

  He pushed open the door. “Owen?” he called out.

  “Victor?” Evie’s head popped into the doorway at the base of the stairs. “What are you doing up?”

  Victor grinned. “Um, what are you doing up?”

  She vanished out of the doorway. Victor jumped down the stairs and found her sitting in front of the comm station, Saskia’s computer glowing beside it. The same computer she’d been using to work on the virus for Salome.

  She hunched over the keyboard, fingers flying. The holo-projection glowed with rapid-fire code. Victor could almost follow it, but she was too fast, and his eyes glazed over a few minutes in. “Looks like it’s coming along,” he said, not wanting to embarrass himself.

  She kept typing.

  “I kind of wanted to use the comm station.” Victor shifted his weight. “I was worried about the flooding, and that’s the only way to contact—”

  “I think I have it.”

  Evie spoke so softly Victor almost couldn’t hear her over the typing. “What’s up?”

  “I have it. The virus.” She stopped, her hands poised over the keys, the holo shining across her face. “I think.” Back to typing.

  “What?” Victor crouched down beside her, squinting up at the code. Still too fast. “Are you serious? What are you doing now?”

  “Adding some finishing touches.” She leaned forward and scanned her work. “I woke up about an hour ago, and I just—knew what I’d been missing.” She laughed, hit a key, leaned back in her chair. “I couldn’t wait till morning.”

  Now that the code was still, Victor could read it more clearly, more slowly. It was pretty elegant work, the way Evie’s code always was. Deceptively simple. A worm that could enter into Salome’s system and change a single piece of information: the Covenant threat risk.

  “Have you tested it yet?” Victor said.

  Evie shook her head. “I tried. But the comm station wasn’t connecting to her. The system’s too patchy. We’ll need to upload it at the town computer.” She looked over at him. “I’m glad you’re here, though. I wanted someone to check my work. Normally my dad does it, but—”

  “Sure,” he said. “And maybe I can get the comm system to work too. Maybe we won’t have to upload at that old computer.”

  Evie shook her head like she was doubtful, but she ceded her chair over to him. Victor read through her code as quickly as he could. It looked fine to him. Better than anything he could do, at any rate. But it would be so much safer to upload over the comm system.

  “Let me try to bring up Salome,” he said. “I bet I can do it.” He thumped the side of the comm station.

  “I really don’t think it’s a hardware issue,” Evie said. “Seriously, the comm system is just—down.” For a moment, she seemed to tremble. Seemed to draw into herself. “I hope the Covenant hasn’t noticed that local comm channel out here.”

  “Yeah,” Victor said. But he was already focused on the comm station, switching it on, fiddling with the switches on the side. Nothing was connecting.

  “I told you,” Evie said.

  Victor reached back behind the station. “Maybe if I can just turn it off—”

  He pressed a switch, and the entire room lit up, every overhead light flooding on with searing intensity. A siren wailed up out of the speakers in the station and from someplace set into the wall.

  “Warning,” said a dull, mechanized voice. Not Salome’s. “Warning. Warning.”

  Evie was shouting something, not that Victor could make it out over the racket of the siren. He hit the switch again, and the noise cut out, the silence afterward buzzing in his ears. The lights faded back to normal.

  Evie knocked him in the shoulder. “Way to go!” she laughed. “Waking up the whole house.”

  Victor grinned back at her. “I just wanted to bring them down here to tell them you got the virus ready.”

  She laughed again, shook her head. Her smile lingered, but there was a sadness to it. “Let’s hope it works.”

  Footsteps pounded overhead. A door slammed. Someone released a litany of curses.

  “Dorian’s up,” Evie said. She unplugged the computer and snapped it shut. “Let’s go find them before Dorian starts shooting up the place with Saskia’s guns.”

  “Dorian’s not that stupid,” Victor said.

  Evie made a face at him. “Dorian’s not stupid at all. You’re the one who activated a warning siren for no reason.”

  Victor bumped against her, knocking her into the stairwell.

  “Hey, Saskia!” Evie called out as she began to ascend the stairs. “We’re fine!”

  “Oh my god.” Saskia’s voice echoed as it rebounded down the stairwell. “I haven’t heard that old warning system in years.”

  “It was Victor.” Evie’s voice was far away, at the top of the stairs. Victor slunk into the stairwell, his face hot with embarrassment. Evie grinned down at him.

  “There’s the genius now,” she laughed.

  “You hit the switch in the back, didn’t you?” Saskia was silhouetted against the kitchen lights. Victor couldn’t see her face. “I should have warned you about it.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Dorian, marching shirtless into the kitchen. Victor sighed and clomped up the stairs.

  “Actually,” he said, breaking through the pack the others had formed around the safe room entrance. “I did it on purpose.”

  “I hate you,” Dorian said.

  “He didn’t really,” Evie said. “He was trying to bring up Salome.”

  Dorian and Saskia glanced at each other.

  “You should tell them,” Victor said.

  Evie smiled a little.

  “Tell us what?” Dorian asked.

  “I think I’ve finished the virus.” Evie let out a long rush of air. “I’m going to have to upload it at the town computer, but—”

  “Are you serious?” Dorian asked.

  Evie nodded.

  Dorian let out a whoop of excitement and threw his arms around Evie’s shoulders. She blinked in surprise.

  “We can get them out of there,” Dorian said. “Finally.”

  Evie smiled against his shoulder. He let her go and Saskia said, “Good job.”

  “And we’ve got your weapons,” Dorian said. “We know an entrance to use. We should go out now.”

  The others laughed nervously, but Victor didn’t think Dorian was joking. “We need to go at night,” Victor said. “Like we’ve been doing. And we need to tell Owen, anyway.”

  “Where is Owen?” Saskia asked.

  “Seriously,” Evie said. “That alarm should have woken him up.”

  Saskia shook her head. “He doesn’t sleep much. But I mean,
if he thought something was wrong—” She moved over to the kitchen window and peered out at the gray yard. Victor felt a twinge of jealousy.

  “Oh,” Saskia said, the relief audible in her voice. “There he is.”

  Victor and Evie and Dorian crowded up next to her around the window. Owen was cutting across the yard. He had his helmet on, which always made him seem inhuman. You had no idea what was behind that mirrored visor. You couldn’t help but feel a little bit afraid, even when he was on your side.

  “Tell him the good news,” Dorian said to Evie, sliding away from the others. Owen disappeared around the corner of the house. A few minutes later, the front door slammed shut. Victor and Evie and Saskia made their way toward the foyer, where they found Owen dripping on the tile. He pulled his helmet off.

  “Why are all four of you awake?” he said.

  “Evie finished the virus,” Dorian said. “Right, Evie?”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t test it,” she said. “We couldn’t get ahold of Salome on the comm station. But the code itself checks out. It should work.” She glanced around, and Victor saw that mask of anxiety she always wore before big tests at school. An overachiever afraid of failure.

  “It will absolutely work,” Victor said. “Evie’s the best comp sci student in the whole school. Even if she’s the one usually fixing the viruses, not making them.”

  Evie grinned at him, ducked her gaze away.

  But Owen didn’t look as pleased as Victor would have expected him to. Not that Owen ever truly looked pleased, but there was an extra grimness in his features, a glint of worry in his eyes.

  “I’m happy to hear that,” he said, “because I have some bad news.”

  Immediately, everyone seemed to slump. The sparkle of excitement went out of the room. Owen set his helmet on the expensive foyer table. The incongruity of the scene struck Victor. It was the sort of shot he always wanted to put into his films.

  “I was checking the perimeter,” Owen said. “Like I always do while you’re asleep. Making sure we don’t have any scouts encroaching on our position. And I found—” He paused, looked at each of them in turn. “There’s some pretty massive flooding out on the edge of the woods, heading into town.”

  Silence. The rain pounded on the roof. Victor hated it in that moment.

  “Where?” Evie’s voice was shrill. “Parts of town always flood, it doesn’t mean—”

  “Near Rue la Marde.” Owen was calm. “And Rue la Florêt. In the woods. The entire road was underwater.”

  Evie gave a little gasp and covered her mouth. Victor just tasted a sourness in the back of his throat. He couldn’t remember Rue la Marde ever flooding before.

  “What are you saying?” Saskia asked. “That we’re too late? That they’ve already drowned?”

  “No.” Dorian stepped forward, shaking his head. “No, the shelter doesn’t go out to Rue la Marde. But if it’s flooding there, that’s not a good sign.”

  “We need to act,” Owen said. “Get ready. We’re going out now.”

  “It’s still daylight,” Victor protested.

  Owen shook his head. “We don’t have a choice. The rain should cover us, and the flooding will likely impede Covenant movement as well. Suit up!”

  He barked out the last order, and it reverberated around the room. For a moment, no one moved.

  But then they erupted, a flurry of activity, all four of them bounding toward the stairs.

  They were going to take back their town.

  Owen held up a fist. They were trained well enough by now: All of them stopped. Evie didn’t even bump into Dorian, who was marching in front of her with the needler carefully strapped to his back, holding one of the rifles Saskia’s parents had kept down in the safe room—it was a strange-looking human rifle modified with Covenant bits. It didn’t look like a natural fit, but according to Victor it would do the job.

  “What’s wrong?” Saskia whispered in Evie’s ear.

  Evie shook her head, her stomach too twisted up in knots for her to say anything. It was the first time she had been out in the woods during the day since the invasion, and she felt exposed and vulnerable in the pearly gray light.

  Owen turned around, his own rifle in hand and Saskia’s railgun magnetically anchored onto the back of his armor. He depolarized the visor on his helmet, revealing his eyes. “We’re almost to the split point,” he said. “And I thought—”

  He squinted at some point in the distance, and Evie’s hand dropped down to the plasma pistol hanging from the holster on her belt. She’d take one of the Covenant pistols, but also had a large pistol-like weapon latched to her back with a thick cylinder where its barrel should have been. Saskia referred to it as a sticky detonator, capable of launching an explosive grenade from a safe distance. Saskia’s computer was sealed up in a waterproof pouch and tucked inside the bag slung over her shoulder. And inside that was the virus, the key to their entire plan.

  “When I was in training,” Owen said, dropping his gaze back down to them, “we did everything in squads. They wanted us to learn how to work as a team.”

  Green-scented rain tumbled around them. Evie pulled her hand away from the pistol. A pep talk, she thought. He was going to give them a pep talk.

  “Before a mission, my squad would always try to give us at least one piece of advice we could take with us into the field.”

  The four of them stood quietly, waiting.

  “It helped,” he went on. “It helped me. I didn’t trust the others at first.”

  Evie resisted the urge to look over at Saskia.

  “I didn’t think anyone could have known what I went through, before they found me. But of course they did, in their own way.” His voice was quieter, blending in with the rustle of the rain. “Just like the four of you. You’re scared for your families, for you friends.” He smiled—always a disconcerting sight. “For one another, I hope. That fear is a good thing. It means you’re alive. It means there’s still a chance you’ll survive this. Together.”

  Something flushed inside Evie. A sudden surge of strength. She looked at Victor, her oldest friend; at Dorian and Saskia, her two newest. All of them were pale and trembling. Dark circles ringed their eyes. The rain plastered their hair to their heads. They were a mess. But they were ready. They had to be.

  “I never gave these kinds of talks,” Owen said. “Not in training, not in service. I typically wasn’t the team leader.” He reached up, polarized the visor, concealing his face again. “So I’ll just tell you the truth. I know you can do this. All of you.”

  Maybe it wasn’t the kind of stirring speech that filled Victor’s holo-films, but Evie still felt her chest swell with pride. With hope. They were going to save the town.

  “Let’s go,” Owen said.

  They merged back into their single-file line and wove through the forest. The wet leaves, the squelching mud—it was the same path they had always taken but it felt unfamiliar during the day. Too many details Evie had never noticed before: the shape of tree leaves, the texture of the bark.

  And the flooding.

  She could see what Owen had described to them only two hours earlier, the glassy stretch of water creeping over the forest floor, strangled trees sticking out of it like wrinkled fingers. The woods tended to flood during the rainy season, everything turning marshy and thick. But she couldn’t remember ever seeing a lake spreading out across the undergrowth, swallowing up the land.

  The images came to her unbidden: the shelter where she had stood and listened to Dorian’s band play a million years ago now full of dark water. Pale, lifeless faces orbiting like planets in the murk. The entire town, drowned in the space that was meant to keep them safe. The place where she would have been if she hadn’t snuck out with Victor.

  No, she told herself. I won’t fail them.

  And then Owen stopped again. This time, Evie knew, speaking would be too risky. He turned around and gestured: two fingers to the western edge of town, one to the east, one
deeper into the woods. They all had their places to go. Their roles to play.

  Dorian glanced back at Evie and gave her a small smile. He hoisted up his rifle. “I’ve got your back,” he whispered, his words bleeding into the rain.

  Victor nodded in agreement. He punched Evie gently on the arm and gave her a thumbs-up, like they were just about to go in for a calculus test. Owen was already making his way to the west, and Victor and Dorian followed, heads bent down.

  “You ready for this?” Saskia whispered.

  Evie patted her backup. “I think so.”

  Saskia smiled. “Me too.” She looked shrunken in the rain, wrapped up not in her fashionable clothes but dark pants and a sweatshirt, her hair tied back in a knot on the top of her head. A plasma rifle was strapped to her back, a pistol and spare ammo hung from her belt. They had voted when they left: who would have the most important job. Who would bring the townspeople to safety.

  All of them had voted for Saskia.

  Without thinking, Evie wrapped her arms around Saskia and drew her into a hug. After a moment’s quiet pause, Saskia returned it.

  “See you soon,” Evie whispered.

  Evie cupped her comm pad under her hand, trying to block the light from the holo. Dorian had drawn up a map for her before they left, marking the way to the computer. With the comm systems down, the map couldn’t track her location, but at least she knew she was headed vaguely in the right direction—north-northwest.

  The path squelched beneath her feet, and mud splashed up around her ankles. Evie switched off the map and held her hands out to the side for balance, moving slowing over the saturated ground. Patches of water glimmered around her, shimmering reminders of her father down in the shelter. Her father, and everyone else.

  Something snapped.

  Evie froze, listening. Some distant thunder? A tree branch breaking in the wind?

  There it was again: crr-runch. She whirled around, fumbling for the pistol at her waist. Her comm pad slipped out of her fingers and landed in a patch of tall grass.

  “Crap!” She knelt down, felt around in the watery mud. Her breath came tight and short. There—her fingers brushed something smooth and metallic. She wrapped her hand around her comm pad and straightened up—