Lily thinks, then nods. “Truce, then . . . at least until we’re done talking. My team backs off a hundred yards, and I’ll meet you in the middle of the gap.”
I wait until Lily’s backed up, then look over at my three. “Stay low. And Lance . . . remember.”
Lance nods, and I give each of them a quick kiss on the cheek before stepping out from behind the boulder. Even though I know that I’m in no more danger than I was before, I feel naked, a quiver running down my spine as I look across the gap between me and Lily. Behind her, I can just see the Hunters reach their standoff point, two of them already down on the ground with their Gauss rifles ready in case I try anything stupid.
Holding my hands out, showing them to be empty, I walk toward Lily, who sits down on the grass as I approach. “Take a load off, Cerena. Let’s speak plainly.”
“Let’s. First, where’s Elizabeth, really?” I ask. “No way would she leave this to someone else, even you.”
Lily sighs, nodding. “We’d hoped to draw you out with that little trick. Truth is, though . . . Elizabeth’s dead.”
The words hit me like a punch in the stomach, and I raise a shaking hand to my mouth, covering it as tears spring to my eyes. “No . . . it can’t be.”
Of course it can be. The Elders, whether just cryogenically extended humans or demigods who drew power from Sulis, have been in charge of Solace since we came out of the shelter. Every human in Solace, from the lowest resident of Ringtown to the most respected families within the walls of Solace itself, has only known the Elders. We’ve marked our lifetimes by the Elders. You remember who was the Elder when you were born, when you fall in love . . . when you have children.
It’s been a perfect triumvirate, greater than any other in history. The aristocratic diplomat, the stern soldier, and the devoted populist. Each one balances out the excesses of the others. You know that, regardless of whatever might be going on that you don’t like in Solace, things would change soon enough.
Elizabeth’s reigns, while not personally warm to me, have always been times of relative peace and prosperity . . . and now she’s dead.
“What happened?” I ask, and Lily swallows. “And who did Tym see?”
“After you four busted out of Bane—quite the story, I heard—and then got back to Solace, Lucian Tsavo wasn’t in a good mood. While you were still in the hospital, he had his pack launch an all-out attack on the embassy in Bane. The Bane city authorities are calling it a riot, but the last reports we got back are that Elizabeth’s dead. The woman you saw was Stacy Redman.”
I nod, understanding Tym’s confusion. Each of the Elders has a body double, someone who looks enough like them that, if security calls for it, they can send an imposter to do a public appearance. Stacy’s not a spitting image of Elizabeth. Her face is far too open and friendly to ever fully replicate Elizabeth’s cool standoffishness, but she’s close enough for Tym to make that mistake seeing her at night through a monocle from hundreds of yards away. “So what’s the city government doing?”
“What do you expect? They’re warming up Edward now.”
“Edward?” I ask, fear gripping my gut. Dammit, they didn’t know. Of course they wouldn’t. Crassus only told me, and his betrayal was hidden until he said something to me personally. “Lily, about Edward, I—”
“Start from the beginning,” Lily says. “You got back to Solace, and everything was fine. I even stopped by your hospital room, but you were asleep. Then in less than a week, everything goes to shit, you’re arrested and broken out of jail, killing Crassus, by the way, and now have led me a lot further into the mountains than I’ve been in decades. Fill me in on what’s going on.”
It feels strange. Lily’s couches her request in calm, conversational tones, like she would when I would stop by her house or we’d meet up for lunch in the Academy dining hall. In the weeks since I sat down with Elizabeth and learned the truth, so much has changed. And yet, except for the three men about fifty yards behind me, nobody’s asked or cared what I’ve had to say.
“This is . . . going to rock your head,” I admit, taking a deep breath, “but when I got to Bane, I sat down with Elizabeth, talked with her. And you’re not going to believe what she told me.”
It takes me probably close to an hour, Lily asking pointed questions but listening the whole time, as I run through the story. By the time I finish, the sun’s already crested noon and started its descent toward the horizon. “So, those three . . . ?”
“Yeah,” I admit. I’ve never lied to Lily in my life, and I’m not going to start now. Not when it’s something as pure as what I have with those three, even if it’s far from simple. “I was arrested for having sex with them. Simple and plain. I’m not pregnant, none of that. But on the mission, I saw more man in each of them than Crassus, and he got pissy about it. And when we broke out, he told me the truth.”
“Which is?”
“He was part of the group that killed my parents,” I reply. “So was Edward. Crassus told me himself when he thought he was going to kill me. They’re in league with Bane.”
“Bane the city? Or Bane the god?” Lily asks before shaking her head. “Doesn’t matter. Do you have proof?”
“You mean besides Crassus slinging dark energy at me?” I ask. “Lily, it’s not like I recorded it, and after this long, there won’t be proof of their betraying my parents.”
Lily sighs, rubbing at her temples. “I . . . fuck. You know you’ve been the biggest pain in my ass in my life?” she asks, looking up at me with equal parts of pain and humor in her eyes. “All my kids, even my dumbass daughter Jaclyn who decided to become a farmer’s wife . . . and you’re my biggest pain in the ass. How’d that happen?”
I can’t help but chuckle, shrugging. “Guess I needed an older sister . . . or a surrogate mother. So, you believe me?”
“I saw the location of the fight before Security locked it down,” Lily says. “I was one of the first responders, since you decided to have your little duel there on Academy grounds. The Headmistress job does have some privileges.”
“What did you see?”
Lily raises her hands, just like she used to, and with an accuracy that would have me thinking she saw a holovid of the fight except she’s demonstrated this ability before, she walks me through the entire thing, from the first staredown to the final cut of my sword. When she finishes, she raises an eyebrow. “Now, I know your footsteps, and I saw the dark energy patterns, and they don’t match up. So did I get it right?”
“Minus a lot of smack talk and some monologuing by Crassus, pretty damn close,” I admit. Lily never has understood my incessant need to talk while fighting. But in that particular fight, I was doing more listening than talking. “So, what now? You can’t trust Edward, Lily. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were somehow involved with Tsavo and the other werewolves. I mean . . . did you know?”
Lily purses her lips, then nods slightly. “I suspected something wasn’t right. I have for awhile, and when I was made Headmistress, I poked around in the historical files. My job gets access to files and computer records that nobody outside the Elders has . . . and some things didn’t match up. Like why the shelter dwellers’ life expectancy nearly doubled in one generation. Not four, five years a generation, but the first generation underground lived like normal pre-war humanity, and then bam, their children were suddenly living a hundred and twenty years like it was nothing. And . . . time’s different.”
“Time’s different?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the computer that the Elders use is based on a pre-war atomic clock, and so is the mainframe that all of the historical archives are loaded into. They’re co-located down in the shelter. But . . . listen, my math may be off, you know?”
“Your math always held up for me,” I point out, tilting my head when Lily shakes her head. “What?”
“This isn’t basic math. It’s some pretty complicated stuff that I may have made mistakes on.
But I don’t think I’m this far off, and unless things are seriously wrong technology-wise, the average day is twenty-three old hours long, not twenty-four. And the year’s a little shorter, too. Not enough that anyone would notice if they cared to give a shit, but before the war, the year was three hundred sixty-five and a quarter days long. Now, it’s actually three sixty-five and three-quarters, in new hours. But it’s also changing, adjusting back out on a slow basis, like the Earth’s going back to its old orbit. It’s weird, unless some outside force has been screwing with the entire planet’s orbit. Which I guess a god could do?”
I purse my lips, considering what she’s just said. “And you never told anyone?”
“Who would I tell?” Lily asks. “Seriously, most people wouldn’t care, and unless someone were willing to believe me, they’d probably think I’m insane.”
“Good point. Still, that’s a head trip,” I say, changing subjects. “Can I ask, did you know about Crassus?”
“No!” Lily hisses. “God, I knew he was a power-hungry ass-kisser, but lots of women have gotten married to those. I figured that was why you were putting him off, but what he did? And Edward . . . Cerena, if you’re right and it wasn’t just Crassus talking shit, I’ve got a problem.”
“You can’t go back to Solace,” I declare. “We need to join up, have your Hunters and my guys—”
“They’re loyal to Crassus,” Lily says simply. “The city government just went through its recycle and is stocked with Edward’s appointees, as you know. They picked the team. If I tell them to join you, you and your men will be dead by nightfall.”
“Lily—”
She shakes her head and reaches surreptitiously into the pocket of her duster. “Here . . . take this,” she whispers, letting something fall to the ground as she pretends to wipe at her eyes with a handkerchief she also pulled out. “It’s very special, very powerful, and connected to one I have in my quarters. Don’t pick it up until I’m gone.”
I glance down and see it’s a small computer, one of the kind that I know can get a link back to Solace . . . if we’re in range. “About Bane. If he’s hunting for another vessel for his power, we have to stop him.”
“I know. I’ll see if I can get into the ancestral records, see if I can work it from our side. That’s if Solace is the only place this . . . Sulis?” Lily says, and I nod. “If ours was the only shelter or city she’s been involved with.”
“Be careful.”
Lily stands up, brushing off her duster. “You too. Listen, you’re going to have the Hunters out for you, but the werewolves are also out for you. But they also hate each other, and the entire city knows they’re responsible for Elizabeth’s death. I don’t care how much corruption or sway Crassus or Edward might have been able to work into the Hunters. I don’t know a single Hunter who’ll pass up a chance to take down any werewolf they see. So they’ll be fighting each other as much as looking for you. Use that to your advantage.”
“And you?” I ask, and Lily smirks. “That’s what I thought. You know, you should meet Lance. You’d like him. He’d remind you of certain pains in the ass that we know.”
“Maybe when this is all over, I’ll be able to,” Lily says, flashing a bit of the grin that tells me she’s fully aware of what I’m saying. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll think up some lie to get my team to pull back, give you a hole to the north to escape at night. In the meantime, I’ll make sure to leave behind a little goody bag for you, about a hundred yards past where my team is now on the north side rocks.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I protest, but Lily holds up a hand.
“It’s not going to be much, not even a full patrol pack. But Edward will be looking for you soon enough, and I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re going to need all the help you can get. Good luck, Cerena.”
Before I can say goodbye, she gets to her feet and walks away, the wind coming down the canyon making her duster bloom behind her and tugging her hair back. She looks like a gunfighter from an old video or some sort of warrior from the ancient days. Just as she reaches the line of Hunters, she glances over her head, giving me a slight nod.
I can’t help but pray that it’s not a final goodbye.
Chapter 8
Brandon
“So, that thing talks to Solace?” I ask as Cerena sits on the rock at the top of the hill, tapping at the small keyboard embedded into the device. It’s just slightly smaller than my hand, and while the interface is optimized for the small screen, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to type with.
It’s taken us nearly the rest of yesterday and this morning to slip through the gap Cerena said Lily left for us and climb this hill, but it seems to have been worth it. In front of us, a hologram pops up, and she whistles. “Well?”
“Yes, it does, and whoa,” Cerena replies. “Lily really trusted me with this.”
“Okay, I’m now lost,” Lance says, relaxing. “First, how are the computers connected?”
“It’s like the ancient Internet,” Cerena explains, looking around when none of us nod. “You guys . . . okay, never mind. Here’s the deal. Before the war, computers could link over long distances using a communications network. While the primary one was mostly routed over wires and cables that crisscrossed the globe, you could also use radio waves to route the signals as well. Our ancestors actually used satellites up in space to bounce signals all over the world. If your computer could talk to those satellites, you could communicate with nearly any computer anywhere in the world.”
“But there are no satellites any longer,” Tym says before realization strikes him and he nods. “Which is why you need line of sight.”
“Pretty much,” Cerena acknowledges.
“Huh?” I’ve obviously heard of radios somewhere, and I know what they’re used for, but I must not have any knowledge of how they work because I’m drawing a blank. “Line of sight?”
Tym clears his throat while Cerena keeps typing. “Radios can only work if the signal can reach both the sender and the receiver and be strong enough for the signal to get through. There are certain kinds you can bounce off the clouds, but it’s imperfect. So for a data signal like this, you need to be able to actually see your target. If you want to go further than that, you need something to boost your signal or bounce it off obstacles in your way.”
That makes sense, and I nod gratefully. “So we have a way to see what Solace knows.”
Cerena, who’s finished typing momentarily, nods. “It’s not perfect, but we can poke around . . . and Lily gave me access to the genealogical archives.”
“What would you want those for?” I ask, watching as the computer projects a list of family trees. “And can that thing be traced?”
“Yes, it can, which means once we look, we need to move,” Cerena replies. “But not too many people would be able to track it. In fact, Lily, Edward once they get done unfreezing his ass, and the Solace Council are the only ones with root admin access. Solace is still built on a lot of old-style high-tech equipment. They probably won’t think to track it geographically, but we can’t be too sure.”
“So, what can we do?” Tym asks, always the steady one. “To help prepare?”
“We could use some food,” Cerena mentions. “Our gift pack only had ration pellets.”
“And don’t forget ammo,” Lance says, holding up the two precious clips like they’re more valuable than anything else. Then again, considering those two clips just gave him thirty opportunities to inflict widescale death and destruction at long distance, maybe they are.
But I could use some real food. I wince, rubbing my stomach as it growls yet again, something it’s been doing nearly all day. I get it, ration pellets are super-concentrated fuel that gives us everything the body needs in a nugget about the size of my curled-up finger. But they look and, in my opinion, taste like shit, and worst of all, they leave my stomach feeling empty, churning constantly while it demands more to satisfy what it thinks I need. I can only drink s
o much water to try and cover that gap before I have to piss like a horse.
So her suggestion of doing a little scrounging helps. Even if it’s just some greens, maybe some of those nuts that we found the other day, or better yet, mushrooms that might be safe enough to help fill our bellies, it’s better than little brown balls that taste like shit.
“Come on,” Tym says to me, tapping me on the shoulder. “We can check around while Lance stays for security. And just security, Lance?”
“You know me,” Lance says with a chuckle, waggling his eyebrows, but I doubt even at his most distracting, he could get Cerena out of the computer right now. She’s too intensely focused, her eyes filtering over family trees, searching for something.
Tym and I make our way down the slope of the mountain, hunting carefully. I honestly don’t know much, but Tym’s an experienced woodsman, and I’m sure he’s brought me along for a reason.
“So, what do you think?” he asks as he kneels by a plant and pulls off a leaf, taking a small bite before spitting it out, waiting, and then taking another bite. “Here . . . check one leaf per plant like what I just did. If it tingles or tastes bitter or burning in any way, skip it. It’s either mutated, not good, or in some other way not worth the risk. But these particular greens are good when we can get them.”
I kneel, filling my pocket with leaves from one of the plants while I consider my answer to his first question. “I’m not sure. It seems that we’re getting roped into another mission.”
“We did discuss this over the past three weeks. We need to stop your . . . ancestor.”
I growl, finding another plant and taking a small bite, finding it clean before stripping the plant. “He might be, but I didn’t choose him,” I rumble, standing up. “Even when he’s kept trying.”
“Trying?” Tym asks, standing up as well. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve been having dreams,” I admit, taking a deep breath. “Scary shit. Bane isn’t happy that I’m not being his little puppet right now, and he’s trying to tempt me back to his side. Let’s just say he keeps sending me visions of Apocalypse Part Deux, and I’m constantly caught in the middle. Each time I tell him to stuff it, he unleashes hell.”
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