by Ramona Finn
“Get—get off.”
“Not till you say I win.” He dug his hips into mine, and I bucked up against him. A flush rose in his cheeks, and my breath came faster. I grabbed a handful of his tunic and twisted till it choked him. He flailed, rolled away, and I rolled with him. I unhooked my own blaster and crammed it in his mouth.
“Say I win.”
Lock made a wet sound, sort of a cough.
“Go on. Say it.”
“C-ca—”
“I don’t think he can say much with your muzzle down his throat.”
I jerked back, surprised to find Ben peering down at us. “That right?”
Lock freed himself with a grimace and spat in the sand. “Mm. Gun grease. Quit feeding me your blaster.”
“Quit letting me win.”
“I—”
“Look, I hate to interrupt your, uh... whatever you call that, but I’m ready when you are.” Ben cleared his throat, and I felt my color rise.
“We’re training,” I said. “Lock’s teaching me to fight like a Decemite.”
“If you say so.” Ben made a sour face, and I could’ve strangled him. He nodded back toward Stillwater. “I’ll be by the trucks when you’re done.”
I watched him go, fuming. Lock shifted between my legs, and I scrambled to my feet.
“I wasn’t letting you win,” he said.
“Right.” I snorted. “I’m more agile than you. Smarter, too. But since when could I pin you like that, and you wouldn’t—” The words died on my lips as Lock heaved himself upright. He was breathing hard, sweat beading on his brow. He swiped it away with a grunt, leaving his goggles askew.
“You’re tired,” I said. “Winded.”
“Little bit.” He unscrewed his canteen and gulped water, letting it dribble down his chin. I watched, fighting dread, as he caught his breath. “Jasper’s bots have their limits. I can’t push it like I’m used to, but it’s fine. I’m good.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“’Cause you’d worry, that’s why.” Lock bent to retrieve his blaster and jammed it back in its holster. “You’d hold back, go easy, and you wouldn’t learn what you need. But you’re not going to break me. I’m still me.”
“So I really did beat you all those times?”
“No need to rub it in.” Lock scrambled up the bank and bent to offer me his hand. “Seriously, if you’re worried about me holding my own in a real fight, don’t be. This is good for me too, training against you. I’m learning my limits, adjusting my strategies. When the time comes, I’ll be ready.”
“You’d better be.” I took his hand and let him pull me up. He did it easily and slid his arm around my waist.
“Off with Ben now?”
I glanced up at him. “Jealous?”
“Of you or of him?” Lock chuckled, gruff and throaty. “Nah. I’ve never been the jealous type. But I like this, out here with you. Feels like, sometimes...”
“What?”
“Like that last day in Sky, when we ran round town together. Like what life might’ve been if there was no Dirt or Sky, no war, no Lazrad. You know—fun.” He let me go with a sigh. “I think I’ll stay here a while, out where it’s quiet.”
“Okay.” I lingered a moment, though I knew Ben was waiting. I didn’t like the slump of Lock’s shoulders, or the heaviness of his tone. “See you for dinner, though? I’ll be back by then.”
“I might be late for that. Starkey needs a supply run—I’m headed up to the Nest.”
“After, then. I’ll save you some leftovers.”
“Sure.” Lock plopped down in the sand, long legs hanging down the bank. I trotted downriver, back to Stillwater. Ben was where he’d said he’d be, leaning on his truck with his mask perched on his head. He pulled it down as I approached and hopped into the driver’s seat.
“I’ve upped the challenge today,” he said. “Don’t forget to buckle up.”
“Oh, yeah?” I tugged my seat belt across my chest. “What’d you do?”
“Wait and see.”
Ben hit the gas and we were off, out the gates and upriver, past the last of the lampposts. We left the valley behind us, and Stillwater seemed to vanish, swallowed up by the terrain. Only the faint glimmer of purple betrayed the presence of its dome. Ben slowed as the road petered out, but he didn’t stop.
“Feel anything yet?”
I closed my eyes and focused outward, into the gathering night. I could hear the wind howling, the spray of grit on the windshield. Our tires churned the dirt, crunching, jolting. Gravel flew up and rattled against the undercarriage. I reached out beyond that with the sense I couldn’t name, the one beyond sight or touch or sound. I stretched my awareness to its limit—searching for static, that senseless, wordless signal that warned of the presence of advanced nanobots. Of Lazrad’s new weapons, with their deadly homing bolts. I could feel Ben’s blaster, buzzing at his hip. I could feel Stillwater’s stockpile, back the way we’d come. Beyond that—
“Myla?”
Something caught at my senses, off to the west. I felt it, just faintly, like an itch at the base of my skull.
“That way,” I said.
Ben spun the wheel, and we swung west. I squinted into the sunset.
“It feels far.” I closed my eyes again and frowned. The signal felt weak, like a radio tuned between stations. “What did you do?”
Ben smirked. “Give up?”
“Hardly.” My head pulsed and vibrated as the signal waxed and waned. Ben’s training regimen wasn’t half as fun as Lock’s, but I could feel my senses sharpening. Three weeks ago, I’d struggled to find a blaster hidden just outside camp. Yesterday, I’d dug up three of them, tracking their call up the mountain, into a mossy cave. Soon, I’d be living radar, a built-in alarm, should the Decemites come to Stillwater. Soon, but—
A horn honked, jolting me from my musings. Ben sketched a salute as a truck crossed our path. I frowned.
“Who was that?”
“Jay and Irina, out of Blackwell. You’ll meet them later.”
My eyes narrowed. “Will I? Or will I end up shut out again, out in the cold while you plan your war?”
Ben stiffened where he sat. “It’s not like that. It’s just—”
“Security, I know. The less we know, the less Lazrad can squeeze out of us if she decides to take prisoners. But I’m not just some soldier. Other than Lock, I’m the closest you’ve got to a Decemite. When Lazrad makes her move—”
“That’s not it.” Ben swerved past a boulder, tipping me off-balance. I swayed into his shoulder, and our heads bumped together.
“Sorry,” he said. “But, listen, we know you. We trust you. If it was just up to me—just my aunt, even, or Starkey—you’d be front and center, at the heart of it all. But folks like Jay and Irina, or the eastern leaders, all they see is a Decemite. They won’t talk in front of you, not about anything that matters.”
“Like what?” I gripped the dashboard as the static filled my head. “More to the north—no, northwest. Where that outcrop is.”
Ben steered northwest, slowing into the turn. “Listen, I get it. Echelon was your home. Your family’s back there. But our pact still stands. I’ll tell you if anything comes up, anything you’d need to worry about.” He reached out and patted my knee. “Right now, the talks are just about gretha—who’s got it, who needs it, how we’ll get our hands on some more. Boring, right?”
“Depends. If you’re raiding the vents again, yeah, that’s boring. If you’re going for the Dirt’s stores, I’d want to know about that.” I bared my teeth. “I just hate all this secrecy. I don’t get why they won’t use me. I spent my whole life in Echelon, both Dirt and Sky. If it’s a fight they want—”
“I know.” Ben let out a harsh breath. “I’m on your side, okay? I’m talking you up. It’s taking time to sink in, but now everyone’s here—”
I doubled over the dashboard, spine crackling with static. Copper pooled in my mouth—I
’d bitten my tongue. I swallowed and spluttered, pounded my fist on the seat.
“Stop. Stop here.”
Ben slammed on the brakes and I jumped out of the truck. All my senses were jangling, all my nerves firing at once. I spun in place, wobbling, like the needle on a compass. I could feel it now, under the earth, like a part of me gone missing, calling me to itself. I lurched toward it, legs weak.
“Here.” I dropped to my knees, scrabbling at the sand. Ben helped me dig. I could hear his teeth chattering, but I felt hot, the blood boiling in my veins. Close—I was close, and I scrabbled harder. My nails scraped something plasticky, the slick glide of vinyl. I pulled out a lead blanket and tossed it aside, plunged my hands underneath and sighed with relief. The static cut out as I closed my hands on the blasters. Ben got his arms around me before I could crumple.
“You okay?” He pushed my hair out of my face. I followed his palm, burying my face in its coolness.
“It’s intense,” I managed. “Opening myself up like that. Letting it all in. I think, with that blanket there—”
“It all hit you at once?”
I nodded. Ben was stroking me, running his fingers through my hair. It felt good, felt comforting, but with the static out of my head, other sensations were crowding in. The wind had picked up, flinging grit in my face. My shirt was plastered to my back, damp with cold sweat. My toes were numb, my fingers tingling.
“It’s freezing out here.”
“You’re just noticing now?” Ben’s laugh came out thin, the wind whisking it away. He draped his jacket over my shoulders. “Let’s get you back in the truck.”
Ben grabbed the blanket, and I gathered the blasters. We piled back inside, and Ben cranked the heat. I spread my hands over the vents with a sigh. It felt good to get warm, to be out of the storm. I shook the sand from my hair and felt it trickle down my neck. Something bit me, and I slapped it off.
“Sandfly?” Ben grimaced.
“Ugh. They’re the worst. These sandstorms, I swear—”
“Sandstorms?” Ben laughed. “This is barely a breeze. Once winter hits—”
I smacked my neck again, scratched furiously. The bite had already healed, but that itch, that itch—
“That was amazing, though.” Ben patted the blasters. “I thought I’d stump you for sure.”
“A week ago, you would have.” An odd paranoia gripped me, and I closed my eyes tight. I quested out again, casting my senses across the desert. Stillwater’s stockpile hummed, its signal faint with distance. I groped out beyond it, past the foothills, to the mountains. Nothing called back to me, no crackle of static. I exhaled through my teeth. “We should head back,” I said. “They’ll start dinner without us.”
“They wouldn’t dare.” Ben swung back toward Stillwater, but I gripped his arm.
“Promise you’ll tell me, if the talks shift to Echelon.”
Ben made a hissing sound, maybe laughter, maybe annoyance. “I promised that already. What’s wrong? Don’t you trust me?”
I watched the sand batter the windshield and swirl off into the night. “If you had to choose—”
“Don’t.”
“No, but after you promised me, if your aunt made you swear—”
“I said, don’t.” Ben slapped the steering wheel. “Either you trust me, or you don’t. I gave you my word. Now, are we good?”
My breath caught in my throat. Ben had gone tense, the tendons standing out on his neck. He’d always been honest with me, more than I’d been with him. He’d always been honest—but he hadn’t answered my question.
I slid my hand over anyway, till my pinky brushed his thigh.
“We’re good,” I said. “I trust you.”
Get your copy of The Skyseekers
Available May 12th, 2021.
www.ramonafinn.com
BLURB
The secret is locked in her mind—and they’ll do anything to get it.
Gererations ago, humanity was devastated by a virus that wiped billions from the planet. If not for AmeriGlobe’s rigid control over society’s remnants, and VaxWell’s immunity-boosting biomods, humans would’ve gone the way of the dinosaurs. But a sinister purpose underlies the need for adherence to the strict rules—and it has nothing to do with the ZERO Virus.
Lora Flannigan has sought to conform to the rules throughout her eighteen years, but now she stands on the brink of a prestigious pairing with a high-caste young man. Accepting the match will change her lower-class circumstances and also help her hard-working father, who’s sacrificed so much for her since her mother’s suicide.
But Lora never counted on the sparks that ignite when she meets her intended’s striking brother—the fact that he has secrets which are directly entangled with his brother and even her own life only makes him all the more intriguing. But before she’s managed to make sense of her feelings, he’s embroiled her in the rebellion underworld.
It turns out that Lora’s perfect memory is exactly what the rebels need in order to infiltrate VaxWell and discover their sinister purposes, and the rebellion itself may also be the key to the secrets mounting in Lora’s own life.
As Lora’s involvement in the rebellion deepens, more and more shocking discoveries emerge to challenge everything Lora believes.
And when still darker truths come to light, Lora realizes the purpose behind not only her advantageous pairing… but her very existence.
Grab your copy of The Pairings (The Pairings Book One) at www.ramonafinn.com
EXCERPT
You can do this one last time, I thought to myself while staring at the biomod kiosk station. Other teens rushed by me to get into the domed glass structure as quickly as possible. It was busiest after school, with kids as young as twelve wanting to check their ImmunoAlgorithms before their friends. Their obsession with the kiosks made my stomach churn. I’d tried to avoid them for as long as possible, but I couldn’t today. My score had to be as high as it could be by tomorrow.
I shoved my hair from my shoulders and then dug into the pocket of my navy pants for a bobby pin. There were always at least four of them in any given outfit—I needed them to tame my wild red hair. I twirled a particularly stubborn chunk off the side of my face and pinned it all back. Much better. Still anxious, I smoothed my hands over my shirt and sucked in a breath.
My best friend Jeremy Chan bumped my arm with his. “Are you just going to stand out here all day?” His thick black hair stuck out at all angles as usual. Even though he had the rumpled look down, he was rarely stressed or phased by much.
“Maybe,” I said to him.
The line already pushed to the sidewalk. And across the street, another had formed—as they did at most corners of the kiosk hot spots each afternoon. It didn’t matter if the location was an apartment building or a shopping center; they were the cornerstone of our young lives. The VaxWell corporation made them available to score our immune systems. The score determined how well our vaccines worked against Virus Zero, helping establish if we were worthy of a pairing when we turned eighteen.
“You don’t have to do, this, Lora,” he said.
We stood closer to the curb while the lines outside the station grew. I narrowed my eyes, noticing that frustrated teens were moving away from the docking stations inside—back toward the growing line. It looked like they were out of order; a blinking notice flashed on the kiosk screens.
“I do have to do this,” I said. “You know why.”
Jeremy snorted. “Since when do you care about the pairings?”
“I can’t disappoint Dad.” The only reason we were alive was because of the immunizations, and the pairings were a way to keep the virus from spreading and taking out the rest of humanity. My mother had committed suicide because she couldn’t stand the world we’d lived in since Zero had decimated the country. I had to work with the system instead of against it, or else my dad might fear losing me, too. The pairing would set me on the right course for the rest of my life.
“The paired sound like they have miserable lives anyway,” he said, hoping I would agree with him.
“Are you going to take the job at VaxWell?” I asked, changing the subject. It was all he could talk about since they wanted to hire him straight out of school. That was less than a month away. VaxWell was also coincidently the corporation that ran New Manhattan and administered the testing of the biomods.
“You don’t need to call me a hypocrite.”
“I didn’t,” I said, lifting my eyes to the clear blue sky above us. Jeremy rarely checked his score at a kiosk, never mind received a biomod injection.
He sighed. “The money is good. Really good.”
“You’ve mentioned that,” I said with a smirk. When Jeremy received the offer, he’d blurted out the salary. To anyone else, it would have seemed like bragging, but something like that was a serious factor for anyone in our level. “The waiver on your pairing helps, too, huh?”
“It is a perk.” Those working in certain areas of VaxWell could waive their pairing in order to dedicate their lives to the corporation. “The work on immunizations seems important, too.”
“Don’t forget about Sarah.” Sarah was Jeremy’s mentor there—a security officer who’d done his screening interview for the job. They’d hit it off right away, and she contacted him at least once a day to follow up on his decision.
“That’s true. At least I’ll have someone to talk to.” Jeremy gave me a wistful glance. Once I was paired, I wondered how often we would see each other. He was the only one I knew who shared my disdain for the system. He kept me sane, and I wasn’t sure if whoever I paired with—if I paired with anyone—would understand me as well as he did.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “We’ll keep in touch.” Those in front of us muttered to each other about the state of the kiosks. It seemed like only two of the kiosks were working now. At least I had an excuse to delay the inevitable.