by R. D. Brady
But he was.
The women and children from the facility had been settled into one wing of the main building, along with a few of the guards. The children without mothers had been taken on by the other women. Riley had stayed away from them for the most part, but there was one child he made a point of checking in on: Gasira. As soon as he saw her, he understood why Miles had saved her instead of himself. Truth be told, Miles would have placed anyone, child or adult, before himself. But with Gasira’s missing half arm, the connection Miles would have felt with the child would have been immediate.
Riley felt a similar connection to the little girl. So he put up with the wary stares from the Unwelcome to check on her.
During the day, the two groups shared meals and roamed the same parts of the yard. But there was still tension between them. No one was ready to fully trust. But everyone had worked together, thanks to Arthur and Thor’s efforts. It was a good first step.
Together, they had rebuilt the fence, set up a working kitchen, hauled furniture from the basement, distributing it through the house, and even started turning over the ground for planting. It had made for busy days. At the end of which, Riley was pretty everyone had fallen into bed completely exhausted.
Riley had as well. But the physical work did nothing to tamp down the anger boiling inside of him.
He felt her before she even spoke. She’d been his shadow ever since they’d returned. He wasn’t sure if she had taken it upon herself to follow him or if Lyla had ordered it. He didn’t turn as he spoke. “It wasn’t worth it.”
Petra stepped up next to him, watching a small blue child toddle across the grass, followed by a tall blue woman. The child smiled, babbling happily as she reached for a flower. The woman smiled when the child looked up, but her expression was nervous, tense.
“I know,” Petra said. “But Miles wouldn’t agree. He would say it was worth it.”
Riley whirled on her. “Don’t talk about him like he’s dead. He’s not dead.”
Petra put up her hands. “I’m not saying he’s dead. But he would want the two groups to come together, especially now.”
Riley frowned. “Now? What’s so special about now?”
“I spoke with Arthur. You know how he’s been going through that book every chance he gets.”
Riley nodded. Arthur had been reading by candlelight. He’d tried to speak with Riley about it, but Riley wasn’t interested in the Naku history. He wanted to know about their present. “And?”
“And, the Unwelcome aren’t from the Naku’s home planet. They were taken from a different planet. A planet the Naku took resources from.”
Exasperation ran through Riley. This was why he hadn’t spoken with Arthur about any of this. Why did where the Unwelcome come from matter, especially now? It didn’t help get Miles back and right now, that was all he cared about. “Who cares?”
“Arthur does. Look, I’m upset about Miles too, but there are other things just as import—”
He whirled on her. “Just as important? Are you kidding? He’s being held captive! He’s being—”
“So are they! The Unwelcome are from Earth, Riley. They’re human.”
Riley stumbled back. “What?”
“That’s what Arthur has been trying to tell you. The Unwelcome are from Earth. They’re from here. Thousands of years ago, the Naku were here. They took humans as slaves when they left. And the descendants of those slaves are the Unwelcome.”
Riley stared at her. It seemed crazy, and yet at the same time, it made sense. Their size was the result of medical interventions. Their color was the result of silver in their previous environment. Without those two factors, they would look human.
Riley shook his head. “Why is that important? Why now?”
“Riley, we have to help them.”
“We have to help Miles. He’s what’s important.”
“Yes, he is. And as soon as we learn where he is—”
“We know where he is! He’s in that damned ship!”
Petra glared up at him. “Don’t you dare yell at me! You are not the only one hurting. You are not the only one—” Petra’s words cut off on a tremble. She took a breath. “He means just as much to me as he does to you. But I also know if we rush in there and get ourselves killed, Miles will never forgive himself.”
She was right. If Miles was in New City, they’d have a chance, but the mothership was an entirely different beast. Arthur had managed to download a schematic of the ship. If anything, that had only made the prospect of rescuing Miles seem that much more remote. The ship was huge. It was twenty levels deep and contained over two thousand different rooms. Without an idea where he was, any rescue was doomed before it started.
“We’ll get him back,” Petra said.
Riley nodded. “I know.” He did believe that they would get him back. But that wasn’t the worry that stayed in the back of his mind. “We’ll get him back. But who will he be when we finally do?”
10
The search of the camp revealed nothing remarkable. Alan hadn’t expected it to. It was the interviews that he believed would reveal the critical information.
And he wasn’t disappointed.
His first interview was with Sheldon. The man had no love for Frank, or for the previous leader of the camp, Lyla. Unfortunately Sheldon did not know where Lyla had gone. She had disappeared with a good portion of the camp and almost all of its guards.
The members of the camp he spoke with seemed to know nothing about the attack on the breeding facility. But then, Alan was pretty sure the individuals who’d left the camp were the ones involved.
The interview with Frank had been less than useful. He never admitted to knowing anything about the breeding facility or where the rest of the camp had gone or much about Lyla. Alan knew every word that came out of the man’s mouth was a lie. He just wasn’t sure how to get the information from him. He contemplated bringing him with him. The Naku would be able to get the information from him easily. But that would also indicate that Alan had failed. And he could not allow that to be the case.
So what he knew was that Lyla had been part of this group, that she had most likely been behind the breeding facility attack, and that she had not been seen back at Attlewood since then.
It was not much.
With a sigh, he stood up from the table and chair where he’d been conducting the meetings. The shack was a guard shack for bad weather. He stretched his back, the wooden chair having done a number on it while he had sat there and listened to everyone’s useless information.
A small knock caused him to turn around with a frown. “Yes?” he asked the man who hovered in the doorway.
The man stepped inside. His skin was darkened by the sun, with deep lines around his eyes and mouth and a head full of dark hair, lightly peppered with gray. “I was hoping you would have the chance to speak with me for a moment, sir.”
Alan perked up at the show of respect. He waved toward the other chair at the table. “By all means …”
“Oscar. Oscar Ruiz,” the man said as he took a seat. “I’m not a member of Attlewood. I am a member of the Old Kingdom run by Meg.”
Alan retook his seat, remembering his visit to Meg’s camp. She had her camp set up like a medieval kingdom. “Tell me, Oscar, what are you doing in Attlewood?”
“As you heard on your visit to us, we’ve had a bit of difficulty. We lost most of our crops. I was here to speak with Attlewood about a trade.”
“As I recall, the Naku made a very generous offer to you to help with that loss. You did not take us up on it.”
Oscar’s mouth shifted to a flat line. “That decision was taken away from us. A trusted member of Meg’s High Council took the Cursed from the camp without her knowledge.”
“And who was this traitor?”
The man all but spit out the name. “Lewis. He was Meg’s right-hand man. But it seems he has taken up with the group that you are now searching for.”
Excitem
ent tingled through Alan. “Interesting. And would you happen to know where this new camp is?”
Oscar shook his head. “No. Lewis has been very secretive and very careful when he has come to Meg’s camp.”
“Meg has allowed him to return to the camp?”
Oscar nodded. “They go back years, almost back to the very beginning. She was not happy that he removed the decision from her, but she understood. One of the Cursed was his daughter.”
“It sounds as if Meg was not going to hand the Cursed over.”
“She only needed a little more of a nudge. And with the food situation getting dire, I have no doubt she would have decided to accept your offer, had Lewis not made it impossible.”
Another waste of time. Alan started to stand. “Be that as it may, I’m not sure that you have any information that is helpful to me.”
Oscar spoke quickly. “What if I could find this new camp? What if I could hand you the leader, Lyla? What if I could hand you dozens of Cursed, would that be useful to you?”
Alan sat back down. “That would be most useful. Do you think you will be able to accomplish that?”
Oscar smiled. “I have no doubt.”
11
The speckled mount that Lyla rode upon swayed gently with each step of its hooves. Arthur was on the large Clydesdale behind her, and Riley was on a brown chestnut mare ahead of her. They had left this morning from the Gatsby to meet with Angela, Montel, and Max to find out what they had learned about the mothership.
And to see if that’s where Miles really had been taken.
No one spoke much as they made their way toward New City. Lyla had been the last to awaken. Arthur had made sure Maisy and Iris had breakfast and had all the horses saddled before Riley had woken her. She’d felt groggy and somehow even more tired after actually sleeping. But blessedly, she had slept dreamlessly until Riley had woken her. She had eaten in the saddle, not wanting to waste any more time.
Anticipation rolled through her. After three days of waiting, they might have some news.
The woods were quiet, although it wasn’t the warning kind of quiet suggesting danger was near. It was the simple quiet of the animals of the forest going about their everyday lives without concern for any predators in the immediate area. Back at the Gatsby, people were also going about their lives or at least trying to set up a normal routine.
But Lyla felt separated from it all. And the peace and fog that had covered her for the first hour of her wakefulness had been replaced by the avalanche of worries she’d been fighting off for the last three days.
Despite her fears, she couldn’t help but appreciate Arthur stopping her last night. In the cold light of day, she knew he had done the right thing. At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder and wish that she had just gone ahead and taken the veerfinah. Long shot though it was, maybe she could have succeeded. And if she hadn’t survived, at least she would have done something.
She sighed. But that was selfish reasoning. She needed to do something, but that didn’t mean that there were no consequences to what she did. If she went ahead with her plan, she would most likely have died. Maisy would once again be without a mother. Riley would once again be without a mother, and Miles … If Miles was brought back to them, the guilt he would feel over Lyla’s death would overwhelm him. So for those reasons alone, she was glad Arthur had stopped her.
But every other cell in her body still wanted to rush into that mothership and demand they give her son back.
Ahead, the mothership was just appearing above the trees. Lyla had never seen a structure as large as it. It was only slightly smaller than New City. The closer they drew to it, the larger it appeared. There was a tangible sense of menace surrounding it. Or maybe that was just how Lyla felt as she stared up at it. But the closer they got, the more hopeless the situation seemed.
Breaking into New City, though, that was a possibility. The city, although foreign in many ways to their everyday life, also offered the familiarity of rooms and stairs with windows and doors. The mothership? She had no idea what the inside of it looked like, no idea how to get there, no idea how to get out of there. She wasn’t even sure how to fly the veerfinah. But as soon as they got back to the Gatsby, she was going to make sure that she learned.
They crested the hill, and the Fringe spread out before them. It was a small city, more the size of a neighborhood, really. It existed just on the outskirts of New City. The people who lived in the Fringe had never taken a child to be sacrificed to the Naku. Instead they lived off the generosity of the Naku in exchange for working within the city. It was not as comfortable a life as the residents of New City experienced, but the people there did not starve.
And hopefully the people there would be willing to help defeat the Naku when the time came. If not, Lyla hoped they at least wouldn’t be harmed.
She felt no such sympathy when it came to the residents of New City. The price for admission was turning in a child. The Cursed were killed automatically, but other children were taken in and either handed over to other people to be raised or turned into slave labor. As far as Lyla was concerned, no one in New City deserved any empathy, save the children.
At the same time, she couldn’t help but be angered that it wasn’t just the aliens they had to worry about. Their own people had taken up arms against humans. They had willingly traded in a child in return for security.
And when the fight with the Naku came, all of them would have to choose a side. Because Lyla knew deep down that they had started something that was going to rage until either they were all free or they were all beaten.
It was strange to think that in that fight, it was not just the Naku they would have to worry about but all the humans in New City, the ones who couldn’t see beyond their own comfort to the damage and devastation the Naku were spreading throughout their world.
Or who saw it but just didn’t care.
Riley nudged his horse to the right. “There they are.”
Coming from the direction of the Fringe were Montel, Angela, and Max, all on horseback. Montel had been a Phoenix a few years longer than Lyla. He had also become her de facto second-in-command, ever since Frank had taken ill and had to stay at Attlewood. Montel had immediately volunteered to head to New City when he learned about Miles’s abduction. Lyla had wanted to go herself, but she was still wanted by the Naku, which meant her presence could cause more problems than it would solve. Besides, she hadn’t exactly been in the correct emotional state to quietly and efficiently gather intel. They needed people to slip in and gather as much information as unobtrusively as possible.
Angela was also one of the Phoenixes and one of the women Lyla called friend. And Max, he had lived in the Fringe for years, trying to figure out a way to get his grandson out of New City.
They had gone into the Fringe the night that Lyla had returned with everyone from the breeding facility. Their goal was to find out everything they could about the mothership and about Miles’s location. Lyla prayed that they had something for them, some sort of good news, any sort of good news.
But as they drew closer, the set of their faces suggested that whatever they had to share was not going to make Lyla happy. She pulled her horse to a stop when they were only a few feet away and turned toward a small copse of trees. There she dismounted, tying the reins of her horse to a tree. The rest of the group did the same as Lyla strode over to Montel. Montel was tall and strong with dark skin and eyes and hair that reached his jawline.
He was one of her most trusted and most skilled guards. And right now he did not look happy.
“What did you find?” she asked without preamble.
Angela crossed from her horse to stand next to Montel. Riley, Arthur, and Max joined them all as well as they made a small circle. Montel gave each of them a nod.
“We spent the first night on the hill outside of the Fringe. We took watch, kept an eye on the mothership, trying to discern any sort of patterns. Angela took a watch on the farther
hill on the opposite side to see if she could determine anything different.”
Angela took up the tail. “Veerfinahs travel to the mothership almost on the hour. We noted that they have eighteen landing bays that they always come from. From what we can tell, there’s also three supply ships that are run each day.”
“Are the supplies going to the mothership or from it?” Riley asked.
“To it,” Montel answered. “They rotate the Unwelcome on what appear to be eight- to ten-hour shifts depending upon what their duty station is.”
“All the Unwelcome are required to return to the mothership for rest and to take the Ka Sama. They never rest on the planet,” Max said.
Lyla gripped her hands together. “What about Miles?”
Montel exchanged a look with Max before Max began to speak. “I spoke with some of the people I know in the Fringe. I wouldn’t call them friends, but we’ve known each other for years. One of them, Susan, she cleans the research building. There’ve been no new humans brought to the research building in the last few days.”
“Is it possible she’s mistaken?” Riley asked. “Miles could’ve been brought to a different section of the research building, one that she wasn’t given access to.”
Max shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. But if someone was brought in, she would know. She’s responsible for cleaning all of the cells. Plus she talked to some of the other people that clean other parts of the building. None of them have seen Miles or any new humans.”
Lyla took a breath. “Okay, so now we know that Miles is most likely on the mothership, which is what we thought to begin with. So where does that leave us? What are its weaknesses? What are the possible infiltration points? Are there any humans you saw going up to the mothership?”
Montel nodded. “I managed to get inside New City one day, thanks to Max. We camped out outside the loading bay for the veerfinahs. There were some humans who went up to the mothership, but they went as liaisons.”