He tilts his head up to a tree where Mom clings to a thick branch like a frightened kitten. The black armor on his back gleams in the artificial sunlight, and the fabric between its metallic plates ripples as he shakes the trunk.
Byron’s heart beats so hard that I feel its reverberations on my chest. “Don’t attract his attention,” he whispers. “Your mother is perfectly safe up that tree.”
“We’re going to get her.” I shift my weight to the left and turn the board in a wide circle over the water.
“You can’t,” Byron hisses. “This glider can only support the weight of two adults. Add another, and the motor will fail.”
“Right, then.” I stretch out my arms for balance and tilt the board to the side.
Byron screams and drops into the water with a massive splash. I glide up and around the tree and steel myself against Byron’s screams for Scorpio to stay away.
Roots crack beneath us, accompanied by the frantic gasps and the wet smacks of hands slapping a hard surface. Scorpio growls, something else cracks, and Byron falls silent.
I focus my gaze on Mom. Wet, blonde hair clings to her pale face, and her mouth is twisted with terror. Byron is another lost life on my conscience, but I can’t think about that until my family is safe.
Scorpio grunts, and his heavy, cracking footsteps approach us from below. Mom squeezes her eyes shut and whimpers.
I drift close to the trunk. “Mom.”
Her eyes bulge. “What are you doing here?”
“Can you take my hand?” I stretch out an arm.
She shakes her head. “You’re not strong enough to hold my weight. If you can get away on that thing, save yourself.”
“It’s alright.” I drift as close to the tree as possible and hope its leaves and branches don’t catch on the glider’s motor. “They fed us well in the palace, and I’ve built up my strength. Trust me. I won’t let you fall.”
Mom peers down at my board, nods, but doesn’t release her branch. For the next few seconds, I coax her into stretching out an arm. Even when Scorpio’s shaking and crashing against the tree shifts it back and forth by several feet.
I finally get Mom to move her foot toward the board, when Scorpio uproots the tree.
“Zea!” Mom flies out of the branch in an arc and crashes into another tree. Her arms thrash at the branches, but she lands on her back into a tangle of roots.
“Mom!”
I shift my weight to the right and charge toward her. Several feet below, Scorpio stomps over the roots, cracking them with each step. His panting breaths fill the air as we race to reach her first.
Buzzing reaches my ears, and my muscles stiffen. It sounds like jimson wasps. Something white creeps into the edge of my vision, and metallic talons scratch at my back.
I twist around. A drone swipes at my face with robotic arms and nearly catches my eye. I swing a punch at the contraption and knock it out of the sky. The drone swoops down over the water, but another rises up through the trees.
Scorpio reaches Mom first. His massive body covers hers, and I can’t tell what he’s doing to her.
I charge down and thrash at the drones clawing and swiping at my arms and legs and back. They’re a distraction. Mom can’t get hurt. She can’t die.
Scorpio raises Mom off the roots with his pincer and throws her back onto the roots. She rolls into the water, drifts downstream, but gets caught up in more undergrowth. I glower at his broad back, where colored lights flash on and off at the seam between his arachnid exoskeleton and silver helmet.
“Get away from my mother!” I scream.
The monster ignores me and lumbers toward Mom. I charge down on the glider with the electroshocker outstretched. Blue lightning sparks from its tip, and I point it at the metal crest of Scorpio’s helmet.
His roar rings through my eardrums and makes the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Scorpio lashes out and elbows me on the side of my head, turning my vision white. I surge upward, not knowing if I’ve made his armor malfunction. I don’t care. I don’t wait around to see if he’ll fall or regroup.
Scorpio’s armor whirrs and clicks. He stands so still that I wonder if he’s also some kind of drone. Now that I’ve disabled him, I can search for Mom.
She isn’t in the roots where I last saw her. My gaze sweeps upstream, where the water turns a sharp bend. She’s not there, either. My pulse thunders in my ears, and I glance from left to right and along the roots. Some resemble cages of tall stilts and others are so thick and tangled that they make a walkway.
“Where are you?” I try to keep the tremble out of my voice. If she’s hiding behind the tree, she would answer. “Mom!”
The current could have dragged her into the undergrowth of any one of those plants. With her beige Harvester uniform darkened with the water, I’m not sure I’ll find her.
Scorpio grunts and stomps away from the water and into the thick growth of mangroves. I bite down on my lip and soar over the canopy. Someone probably told him Mom’s location, and he’s taking a shortcut. I’ve got to get there before him.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t reply.
Anxiety twists my stomach into knots. Whatever Ambassador Pascale gave me is either wearing off or he didn’t account for the horror of losing one’s mother. A drone swoops overhead and swipes at my face, and another slashes me across the back with a metallic claw.
With a scream, I arch my spine and snatch one of them out of the air. I glide from side to side, but the second drone continues attacking from the rear. No matter how many times I swing at the thing, it always ducks out of reach. This is another distraction. They want Scorpio to reach Mom first.
When I glance down through the canopy, Scorpio is gone.
Mom’s shriek pierces the air, and my heart soars. I command the board to rise, fly over the trees, and cut across the bend. A figure floats with her upper body slumped on a thick log that’s racing down toward a waterfall.
“Mom!”
As I cross the canopy, I find Scorpio running ahead along the bed of roots. I swoop down toward him.
“Hey,” I shout.
Without breaking a stride, he turns his head. The visor covering the upper part of his face is too dark for anyone to see his eyes or machinery, confirming my suspicion that he’s a drone.
I hurl the drone at his helmet. “Eat this.”
Scorpio snatches it out of the air and growls. I dart to the left and hover inches above the water. He grabs the second drone and smashes them together.
The thunder of the waterfall fills my ears, and my heart thrashes against my ribcage. Mom’s log speeds toward the precipice. She breaks away from it and swims against the current, but the water accelerates and carries her away.
As I surge twelve inches above the water, her head disappears beneath the surface. Mom stretches out her arm. I crouch on the glider, plunge my hand into the freezing water, and pull her up by the wrist.
Our combined weight tilts the board to the left. Once I position her at my front, the glider steadies, and I turn us back toward the trees. Scorpio stands on a bed of roots with his head tilted toward us.
Mom shivers, and I wrap my arms around her shoulders.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur into her hair.
“It’s them, not you.” Mom finally raises her head.
My throat dries. This is the first she’s ever spoken out against anyone. Even after Mr. Wintergreen’s death, she said that systems couldn’t always stamp out evil and that bad people existed in every society.
“They’re listening,” I whisper.
“They’ve already taken us from our homes, threatened our lives, and thrown me at the mercy of that monster,” she says. “I used to think if a person kept to the laws and contributed to the society, they could live peacefully in Phangloria, but that’s not true.”
I hum my agreement.
“The Princess Trials are only meant for one Echelon.” Bitterness laces Mom’s voice. “A
ll the recruitment and challenges you all faced was Montana giving the nation false hope.”
“Not just Montana,” I mutter.
We drift over the water and away from Scorpio. Even if I had been a regular Harvester girl like Emmera or Forelle, the queen would have unearthed a reason why I couldn’t marry Prince Kevon.
Another drone rises from within the trees but doesn’t attack, making my muscles tense in anticipation. They’ve had enough time to bring in reinforcements, so why are they just watching us? In the Detroit Depression challenge, they came at us with a cassowary, locusts, and acid rain.
Scorpio follows us along the roots at a steady jog. Where they become too thin to support his weight, he disappears into the undergrowth.
When we cross a patch of roots that sprawl over the water, he doesn’t reappear, but the hum of machinery beneath our feet sputters.
Mom stiffens. “What’s that?”
I drift down toward the water’s surface. “The glider’s going to fail.”
“What if that man returns?”
I press the electroshocker into Mom’s palm and arrange her fingers around the trigger. “Protect yourself with this.”
“Zea, no—”
“I have an idea.”
We drift closer to the roots, and the engine continues to make gentle explosions. “Let’s find the exit.”
Mom turns her head from side to side, seeming to take in the scenery. The trees are a lush green we don’t get to see outside the crop fields. Where the artificial light hits the canopy, its leaves appear golden. The water, which has now calmed, is a transparent turquoise that reflects the tall roots.
“Are we in the Botanical Gardens?” she asks.
“Somewhere far more sinister,” I reply.
There’s no sign of Scorpio between the trees. He has either run out of power or has been recalled. I steer the glider to a carpet of roots, help Mom off the board, and step down. The glider’s engine stills, but I tuck the board under my arm anyway. It’s long and thick enough to serve as a shield or a weapon against whatever decides to attack.
As we continue on foot through this endless forest of mangroves, Mom peers up at me through her lashes but doesn’t speak. A dull ache forms in my ribs, along with the ghost of a pounding headache. If I don’t find a way out of this stadium soon, the drugs will wear off and render me as helpless as Prunella Broadleaf.
Dappled light streams down through the thick canopy of green leaves, and the cameras embedded in the trunk blink on and off. My throat spasms. Nothing has attacked us for several moments, which means they’re either going to leave us here to starve or drown, or they’re working up to something big.
When I spot Mom glancing at me for what feels like the tenth time, I ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Are you sure the prince loves you?” she murmurs.
“Why do you ask?”
“How could he let something like this happen?” Her brow wrinkles into a frown. “First, the guards and then the abductions, and now this. What kind of leader can’t protect the woman he supposedly loves?”
“It’s complicated,” I say with a sigh.
“Your father—”
“It was different for you when you were marrying Dad. Grandma didn’t wield one percent of Queen Damascena’s power, and she was actually sane.”
Mom purses her lips, but I ignore the disapproval. Some habits are hard to break, but even she can’t deny that this is the most deranged method of rejecting a daughter-in-law.
The lights turn off, encasing us in the dark. My senses become alert. I knew they would do something
“Zea.” Mom grabs my arm. “Stay behind me.”
A tight fist clenches at my chest. She can’t protect me from what’s coming.
“We’ve got to get in the water,” I whisper.
“Why?”
“If Scorpio has heat-seeking goggles, we can escape him by lowering our body temperatures.” Mom inhales a sharp breath, presumably to ask how I would know this, but I speak first. “We don’t have time.”
She grabs my hand, and I grope my way down through the trees and to the water’s edge. It’s cold, but this could be our only means of escape. We link arms and cling onto the roots. I keep the board tucked under one shoulder, and Mom accidentally grazes the shocker’s trigger and sets off a tiny spark. It’s not enough to attract anyone’s attention… I hope.
Leaves rustle overhead, along with the whirr of drone propellers. I slow my breathing and focus. Focus on the sounds beyond the drone and the trees and the stream. Focus on the cold seeping into my heart. Focus on the approaching snap, snap, snap of distant roots.
“He’s coming,” Mom whispers.
I gulp. Scorpio sounds less than twenty feet away.
His growl rolls through my ears, making my heart rate spike, but an idea shoots into my brain. I remove the board from under my arm and hold it inches above the water.
“Put the electroshocker in your mouth and grab my wrist,” I whisper to Mom.
“What?”
“My glider can float.” I inject my voice with confidence. If I’m wrong, we’ll drift for a few feet and get tangled in the roots.
“Zea,” Mom says from between chattering teeth.
Scorpio growls again, only this time, he sounds like an arm’s-length away. I raise my head and meet the flashing lights of his collar.
Mom grabs my wrist, just as Scorpio’s arm smashes the roots. I wrap my fingers around Mom’s arm and launch myself away from the roots and into the current.
Scorpio roars and enters the water with a huge splash. I move our joined hands to the board, Mom releases me, grasps the board, and we both float forward. Our frantic breaths drown out everything except the pulse hammering in my eardrums.
Cold water pummels us from both sides, jerks us up and down, but nothing can stop us.
“I can’t hear him.” Mom’s voice mingles with her gasps.
“His armor is made of some kind of metal,” I say between gasping breaths. “He must have sunk.”
Several minutes pass. We continue through the cold water, around the streams bends and twists until I’ve worked through the painkillers, the strength enhancers, and the mind-altering drugs. Now, I’m just as wretched and wracked with pain as I felt when I awoke. Worse, because Mom’s silent sobs tear through the fibers of my soul.
I’ve never seen or heard her cry, and I want to lash out at everyone, starting with myself. What on earth was I thinking when I agreed to this mission? What on earth possessed me to believe that there would be no repercussions on my family?
Dim lights shine from the distance, making it look like the first rays of sunlight peeking out from the horizon. We drift through a narrow stretch of water flanked by spindly trees with trunks that grow straight out of the water and create no walkways of roots. They’re so densely packed and form an impenetrable canopy over the water that we have no choice but to drift through them.
Whoever is viewing us is probably bored by now, and something else is about to happen.
“Has the challenge finished?” Mom whispers.
My brows furrow, and words dwindle in my throat. They probably didn’t show her Prunella’s execution. My legs drift uselessly in the water as I focus on a less alarming way of presenting the truth.
“I think they’re escalating.”
“Oh.” The resignation in her voice is like a blunt knife to the heart.
As we travel around another bend, a dark figure stands at the edge of the water, backlit by the dim light. A dark figure with a scorpion tail.
“Is that him?” Mom’s voice shakes.
The current pushes us to the left, giving me an inkling of hope. “If we stay in the middle of the water, the stream will bend again, and he won’t reach us.”
“But we’re headed straight for him,” she replies.
Before I can explain, a motor roars into life, and Scorpio rushes toward us.
Mom makes a whimpering sound in the
back of her throat.
“He’s on a glider,” I snarl. They’ve evened things out, and now he can follow us anywhere.
The current changes direction and pushes us toward Scorpio, who swoops down and plucks us both out of the water with his claws. I pull at his fingers, punch at his arms, but it’s like trying to fight a vehicle.
Scorpio floats to the bank and throws me aside. I roll over a mass of hard roots and crash face-first into a tree. Pain explodes across my skull, my pulse thrashes in my ears, and white spots appear before my eyes. I push myself off the trunk and scramble on my hands and knees toward Mom.
His low, satisfied hum rumbles through my eardrums. Scorpio kneels over Mom and traps her forearms in his pincers. The artificial sunrise illuminates the exoskeleton of his broad back, making him appear monstrous. Mom clicks the shocker over and over, sending out bursts of blue sparks, but the power doesn't reach his armor.
I stumble to my feet and stagger toward Scorpio, whose tail lengthens and curls toward Mom. Droplets of liquid glisten off the tip of his stinger, looking like he’s going to kill her with poison.
Panic lances through my chest. I leap onto Scorpio’s back, snatch the stinger and plunge it into the gaps between his exoskeleton.
He throws his head back and roars.
Scorpio falls onto Mom and convulses. Mom screams and thrashes underneath him. I roll onto the roots, snatch the electroshocker from Mom’s fingers and shove it into Scorpio’s neck. Power erupts from its tip, and Scorpio stiffens.
With a final, pained breath, he falls onto Mom.
“Zea?” she whispers.
“Are you alright?” I drop to my knees, wrap my hands around his pincers, and heave them out of the ground.
Mom makes a pained moan and wriggles underneath the monster’s weight. My muscles strain as I roll Scorpio onto his side, and she pulls herself free.
The lights turn on, and Scorpio makes a whirring sound, followed by clinks and clanks. I scramble to my feet, and pull Mom to my chest.
“Is it over?” she sobs.
“I…” The answer is no. There will be another Scorpio, another stadium, another way to torture my family and me. “Please, don’t ask.”
The Princess Games: A young adult dystopian romance (The Princess Trials Book 2) Page 32