Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy

by Melinda Crouchley

  Metal Heart

  Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy

  Melinda Jasmine Crouchley

  Copyright © 2016 Melinda Jasmine Crouchley

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Art Painter

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Audrey Luna Robertson. You can do anything you want and you can be anything you want.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Book 1:

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  A Sneak Peak at Tin Road, the Sequel to Metal Heart

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About The Author

  METAL HEART

  Book 1:

  The Metal Heart Trilogy

  By Melinda Jasmine Crouchley

  CHAPTER ONE

  COMBAT SIMULATION

  On Tuesdays we run combat SIMS from behind the front lines.

  My squadmate Rabbit Santiago and I are nestled securely inside a virtual tank, plopped down just outside of a bombed-out desert city. Our objective is to provide air support using our drones to scout ahead of the troops. The manufactured rubble strewn in front of us reminds me of the Afghanistan landscape and the rusted, broken signs are all scripted in Arabic.

  We monitor the drone’s visual feeds on our bands, routing information to the troops and tracking any movement we pick up on the battlefield. Reports are made to Corazon, our squad leader, via the mics attached to our helmets, in order to keep chatter off the waves. This is a routine simulation, on a routine Tuesday, at routine Fort Columbia in grey-washed Oregon and we’re tucked so far away from the danger of battle I've grown bored watching the shapes and colors morph on the virtual in front of me.

  None of this is real. This far away from the action, I sometimes question if we're even real. Right now it feels more like we're big kids with big guns. Fake soldiers playing at war while the world outside our walls is ravaged by the nano virus. We're the last, best hope for keeping the peace and ensuring survival beyond the virus. We're the final line between what's left of society and the terrorists. But why does it still feel like we're invisible?

  The only reality is mandatory national service. It's the reality and the lie. And the desire to escape this prison climbs and crashes in my body like the explosions outside our metal confines. But for me there's no return to a restful normal life again. Not after what I did. Not after what I've become. I pull in a deep breath of the tangy sterile tank air, breathing in the odd scent of bleach, sweat, and cinnamon that accompanies Santiago like a musk.

  I blow it out in a long weary sigh. Does he even know how his smell permeates the tight quarters, drowning out the blinking lights and breaking up my concentration?

  “Hold up.” Santiago sits up straighter, his helmet lightly bumping against the roof. “Garza, you see that?” He tilts his band awkwardly towards me.

  Santiago, who stands a foot taller than I do, is folded into the cramped space like a long-limbed paper crane, his beak nose grazing the tank wall in front of us. He barely has room to move without brushing against me and his arm veers dangerously close to touching mine. He stops just short, bordering on casual indifference.

  A slash of color pulses in the bowels of a building in the northeast corner of the map. I blink and the purple beacon vanishes, leaving a trace of radiant light bursts in its wake. I slip a gloved hand under my visor, wiping sweat from my brow. The bright colors dissipate, but a high pitched squeal picks up in their stead. I knock my fists against both sides of my helmet to shake out the sound. It wavers and then stops.

  “You alright over there?” Santiago asks.

  I shrug, and refocus on the map. “I don’t see it. I did, for a second. I don’t see it anymore,” I say.

  Our displays show nothing but crumbling skyscrapers and cracking towers. Innocent citizens fleeing before the sting of war. Their blurred images haunt across the screen like ghosts. It shouldn't have to be like this. We should have been able to stop this.

  But we're in the shit now.

  “Right here. A weird signature in this building.” Santiago points towards a squat white tenement with stone peeling off the walls.

  “Not human?” I squint. Maybe my eye implant is shorting out and feeding me bad information. In two years of perfect operation, this would be a first. I blink hard and bypass the visor again, pressing my fingers to the synthetic eyelid for a bio reset.

  When I blink my false eye back open, I catch Santiago staring. He clears his throat, diverting his gaze to the energy signatures I don’t see. It’s not the eye implant he’s drawn to, because Prothero constructed that to look as human as possible. They were eerily exacting in their work. What he’s staring at are the twinkling blue-green data chips and wires woven into the skin at my temple—the scars rumpling the skin on the left side of my face and neck and running down onto my collarbone. That’s what he’s really looking at. It’s not the first time I’ve caught him staring either, but he’s hardly the first person to stare. The thing is, we’ve been on the same squad for almost six months. You think he’d be used to it by now.

  Santiago clears his throat. “It’s some kind of missile system,” he says, rotating the building image. His drone jet hovers in the air above the building, collecting and transmitting the data. “I’m taking it in for a closer look.”

  “Careful.”

  He lowers the jet, angling it in broken windows, searching in rooms with holes blown in the siding.

  “There’s definitely a hot item, but I can’t get a good visual. It’s the same signatures of the missile system we saw two weeks ago in that forest SIM. You remember this deep purple color?”

  “Confirmed,” I say. But I can’t read the data on the screen he points to. I can't see anything inside the building. It’s just a grey, ugly wall. “Would you like assistance Raptor Two?”

  He cocks his head, suspicion warping his otherwise congenial features. Here we go.

  This behavior stems from my status as the top resident in the Aeronautics specialization. Santiago has played second string since I stepped out of the testing room. But it’s not like my privilege is unearned. I pilot Raptor One, have logged more hours in the flight simulator, and possess the highest grade in our Tech class. I’m smart and focused. I didn’t buy my way into service like Clinton Fuller, son of Senator Edmund Fuller, hailing from the great state of Texas. I didn’t volunteer like Rory “Rabbit” Santiago with his near perfect NEL score.

  Santiago has never acknowledged our rivalry, though tension formed between us the moment we met. The f
irst time we shook hands, a knot of anxiety tightened in my stomach. Now, no matter how much time we spend together, no matter how comfortable the silence—he makes me nervous. He’s the only one in our Academy specialization who even comes close to presenting as competition.

  Maybe it’s just that. Friendly competition. Someone to finally keep pace with the untouchable Eleni Garza. And maybe it’s not just that. Maybe it’s something else. I wouldn’t know the answer to that because Santiago is good at being hard to read.

  Like now. Despite his obvious annoyance, he’s reigned all his emotions in and ironed them over, like the tanks wheels grinding through the dirt, boiling everything up under a facade of calm.

  “I’m going to drop this building. Condor Five, do you copy? Can we move all friendlies out of the blast area?” Santiago requests.

  Corazon’s voice crackles over the speakers built into our helmets. “Do you have Raptor One for backup?”

  “Negative. I’m on this.”

  “I don’t think so. Garza, monitor the area for enemy combatants. Do you read?”

  “Copy that Condor Five, I’m moving into location now.”

  Santiago covers his helmet mic and turns, his nose literally brushing against the wall of the tank. “I’ve got this Garza.”

  I spin the jet around and aim it at the building Raptor Two hovers near. “Only doing as ordered,” I say.

  “Sure. Right.” He uncovers his mic. ”Condor Five, I’ve got Raptor One in-bound. Am I go ahead to deploy?”

  “Affirmative. Light it up.”

  Santiago grins at the visual projected from his band. The heat mark explodes like a luminous beacon on my read-out. It shudders on the virtual as my drone approaches. A second color blinks to life on the fourth floor of the building, pulsing just below the missile signature.

  “Raptor Two, hold your fire,” I say, zooming in on the image. It’s red, a human signature. There are people in the building.

  “We have a live target.”

  Live being a relative term. The SIM civilians aren’t real, but they are considered as such in field exercises. We wouldn’t sacrifice them outside of these doors, so we don’t sacrifice them during an operation. Those are the rules.

  “I’m not seeing it, Raptor One. I have go ahead. Delivering the package.”

  “It’s not all clear. Let me investigate first. There are humans in there!” I urge my drone jet faster.

  He scowls. “There’s nothing on my monitor except the explosive. Condor Five, can you confirm human presence in the building?”

  “I cannot. Raptor Two, hold your fire. Raptor One, show me what you see. Patch me in.”

  I exhale a trembling sigh of relief. Multiple human heat signatures now appear in the building. I tap on the band monitor, giving Corazon full access to the scans of my drone. She remains silent for a moment. It’s an uncomfortable, drawn out silence. “Raptor One, no visual confirmation. Garza, you’re seeing things.”

  I squint at the screen. The signatures are there, right in front of me, and if I angle the drone correctly, there’s an opening. I’ve gained a full view into the building. Humans are inside. A group huddles against a far wall and a young boy stands at the gaping hole, leaning out. He waves his arms in dreamy arcing motions, leaving traces of color and light trailing in their wake.

  “There’s a group of people on my monitor right now, women and children. Condor Five, Raptor Two, are you blind?”

  “Raptor One, is this a joke?” Santiago turns, studying my virtual with confusion.

  I zoom in closer, hovering so near the building the face of the young man leaning over the gaping expanse swims into startling clarity. It’s a face I’ve sketched on a notepad more than a hundred times. The face belongs to the author of the letters in a tin box I keep in my room, to a boy named Mateo. A freeze takes hold of me. Voices chatter over the headsets, the colors flash on the monitor, and faces swim in and out of focus, but I’m unable to will my fingers to move. A faint odor, like the greasy scent of melting plastic, fills my nostrils.

  “Condor Five, I’m gonna drop the payload. Can Raptor One backup?” Santiago asks.

  “Raptor One, back up. Back up!”

  “I—I can’t,” I say. On the screen Mateo’s long hair flaps in the swirling wind from the drone jets. He’s waving out of the opening, mouthing inaudible exclamations. I flick on the targeted audio in the drone. At first, the only sound is the scream and buzz of Raptor Two’s jet engine. I aim the mic in the direction of the building, straight at the opening.

  “Help us! Eleni!” the voices call from the radio. “We need your help. We need you!”

  The blood drains from my cheeks. My heart jack-hammers inside my chest.

  “Santiago, are you hearing this?” I ask.

  This can’t be happening.

  My trembling fingers push the signal over our helmets, so the entire squad hears the audio booming in their speakers. The volume is turned up so loud—it’s almost deafening.

  “Garza.” Santiago turns to me again, no longer indifferent. “I don’t hear anything. You OK?”

  Over the radio Corazon shouts, “Raptor One move now!”

  “You look sick,” Santiago says. “Are you gonna be sick?”

  He shifts over to grab my shoulders. Ordinarily I would try to stop him…but I just can’t. His comically large hands eclipse my upper arms. How is he even this big? I don’t bother pushing him away. It’s too late to stop him. He’s already hit the sequence on his band to destroy the building. Santiago’s drone shoots a bunker bomb through a sixth floor window. It explodes on impact. I can’t move. I can’t move my jet.

  I leave Mateo hanging out the opening, a group of women and children huddled in the room behind him, screaming for help. Calling for me. Horror grips and paralyzes me as the explosion collapses the building. The ceiling falls in on the group of people, taking my drone down with it. I watch the spiraling crash to the ground and the loss of signal as Raptor One blows apart.

  “Garza, what are you doing!?” Corazon shouts over the radio.

  I’m keenly aware of Santiago touching me, his giant hand pressed tentatively against my shoulder. I sense the uncomfortable proximity of his face to mine. The concern etched into his features. I shove him away and jump to my feet, ripping my helmet off and tossing it to the tank floor. I push the hatch of the tank open and clamber outside, gasping for air. I can’t breathe. My false lung is malfunctioning. I stumble off the edge of the tank, collapsing on the ground. My head spins.

  Santiago exits the hatch and jumps to the ground. “What’s going on?”

  I turn towards him, my vision blurring. “I saw people. I saw people in there.”

  “Yeah. You said that. Hey, you’re—you’re bleeding.” His finger touches beneath my nose, bumping against my top lip. Red smears across his finger. That’s not good.

  I touch my nose, my fingers also coming away bloody. Santiago blinks, studying me. He probably thinks I’m taking performance enhancing drugs, like Flash. I sniff some of the fluid back into my nose, rubbing at the rest staining my upper lip. I’m not taking Flash. Only idiots take Flash. My weakness is Salt. But drugs are not my problem right now. Drugs are the least of my problems. Why today? Why did this have to happen today?

  “It’s only blood,” I say.

  “We’re not supposed to bleed in here. It’s a SIM.”

  “People get hurt all the time. Luis broke three of his fingers a month ago. And Clinton always—”

  “Idiots who aren’t paying attention. You’re not an idiot.”

  Corazon arrives, her impossibly short legs hammering against the SIM terrain like engine pistons. A red sprig of braided hair pokes out of the bottom of her helmet. Our squadmates Clinton Fuller and Luis Kang saunter behind her, smirking.

  “Out,” Corazon orders, pointing towards the SIM entrance.

  “I didn’t mean to wreck the jet. I saw people. I heard voices.”

  “No, you didn’t. Get out,” Corazo
n repeats, another strand of her braided red hair slipping loose from the bottom of her helmet.

  “There were people in the building.” I pinch the bridge of my nose in a futile attempt to stem the crimson trickle.

  “Out! Before I remove you.” Corazon stalks closer. “Make me physically remove you. I would love to.”

  There’s no more arguing. Not with Corazon. I pick myself up and hobble away, unsteady on my feet. I’m almost to the door when Santiago jogs up holding my helmet.

  He pushes it into my open palm, his expression caught between discomfort and sympathy.

  “You really didn’t see those signatures? Those people?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “I believe you saw something.” The corners of his lips twitch into a brief, fleeting smile. “And it spooked you. Ghosts in the machine? You seeing ghosts?”

  “Not ghosts. I saw someone, Santiago. Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Garza,” he says, hesitating. His slightly too bushy brows are knit together with genuine concern. Like Corazon, a stray piece of his curling hair slips out from his helmet. Unlike Corazon, he pushes it off his forehead carelessly. We stand together in a long, drawn out silence while hot fluid drains from my nostrils and drips down over my chin. I’m bleeding and really should get out of the SIM before Corazon makes good on her promise. But Santiago’s gesture of kindness sprouts like roots from the ground, knitting me to this spot.