“Yep,” Jonathan said. “Give me a minute.”
“Received,” Olivia said.
He took a long breath, swallowed, then walked up to Rylee. He retracted his helmet and visor, and after looking back at him for a moment, she did the same.
Leah’s face, Rylee’s gaze.
“I know that look,” Rylee said. “Don’t think I won’t knee you in the nuts, in front of your boys.”
“Why would you need to do a thing like that?”
“Because you’re just dumb enough to ask me to go hide somewhere safe,” Rylee said.
“Oh, no . . . I’m not brave enough to ask you that,” he said.
“Then why are you staring at me like that?” Rylee asked.
He stepped closer, his hands going to her waist as he pulled her close.
“Thought we could both use some luck,” Jonathan said.
She stared at him for a moment, eyes blazing as brightly as his, then—
“Oh,” Rylee leaned into his lips as though she didn’t want him to take credit for her idea. His arms tightened around her. The kiss went on a bit long, until they both heard it.
Throats being cleared. A few loud whistles. The obligatory, “Hey, Brings the Rain, ya want to get a room, already.”
Finally, the distractions were too much and they laughed. Smiled at one another as they stepped apart.
Jonathan turned to his soldiers, and said, “Alright, you all know what to do. Anyone needs to go to the bathroom, crap your pants or hold it.”
They were tired, but they cheered like they wouldn’t ever let the enemy see it, their helmets all clamping down as they began to chant. “We don’t bend. We don’t bend.”
Jonathan turned to where the Ferox were amassing. “Go for it, Bodhi.”
The kid’s fist came down on the big red button.
Over the next few seconds, Jonathan found himself recalling a conversation with Paige. She’d asked him if he ever just let Mr. Clean play music for him.
He’d shook his head and asked, “No, why?”
She’d shrugged. “Let’s just say Bose doesn’t have anything on the Borealis Audio.”
The building they stood on began to tremble. It vibrated along with the sounds flowing out of the building around them. Jonathan’s helmet reacted as though a flash grenade had just gone off at his feet and muffled the sound as the building became a beacon.
Then, he actually heard what was being bull-horned out in every direction.
He turned to Rylee, his head slowly tilting in suspicion.
“Yeah, okay,” she said, over the comm. “Leah knew your roommates were planning this.”
He shook his head and smiled. “They expected to be standing beside me all the way.”
“Not sure I follow,” Rylee said.
“They wanted to see my face,” Jonathan said. “They wanted one last laugh, just in case.”
Malkier stepped across the threshold, he stood at the bottom of a hill. He looked up at a sky turned so green with gas it seemed otherworldly. Rubble surrounded the conduit, Heyer’s resistance army had demolished every building near the opening. Forced the Ferox to dig their way in multiple times to make way for more of their kind to come through.
To each side of him, his people knelt as their prophet began to ascend the steep slope of wreckage. When he reached the peak, he looked down onto a city flooded with Ferox. They had followed orders, were now clumped together nearly shoulder to shoulder to make room for the invasion force he would use to wipe out what remained of his brother’s army. They filled the streets as far as he could see into the green haze, clung to the sides of buildings that remained standing.
A path parted for him down from the peak, his people staying low as they moved aside to make a path. From within his helmet, each breath in and out sounded like a rhino with sleep apnea. Every few steps, this was followed by a sharp hiss as the armor pushed used air out through exhaust pipes and filtered the intake of the next breath.
Coming to this plane, he would take no chances of his weakness being exposed to his people. So, the armor not only ensured his invincibility, but took every precaution not to leave his clever brother any means of introducing a jolt into his system. The air he breathed, the vibrations that reached his ears, the grounding of his entire body, any imaginable way in had been reinforced. Even the suit itself was connected to his implant, and could step in to regulate the charges of his body in the event he had missed some way in.
He truly was invincible, even in The Never, in a suit that nothing short of a Borealis AI could remove against his will.
He could feel Brings the Rain. The man was not far to the southwest. He wasn’t on the ground, but somewhere higher—standing in one of the humans’ remaining buildings.
He wasn’t moving, his signal was clear and still.
He is watching, Malkier thought. Watching the Ferox pour through in numbers that he cannot possibly defy. Yet he does not retreat.
He spoke, reaching out to his people through the portal stones they all had within. “Scouts. Find me Brings the Rain. He is southeast, observe do not engage.”
The prophet wasn’t waiting long. Soon a band of female Ferox came running up the path, the horde parted at their approach. The females all took a knee before him.
“Prophet, he waits atop a structure,” the leader said.
“Alone?”
“The abominations that follow him are at his side.”
“They wait? Nothing more?” the prophet asked.
The scout looked about nervously. “The abominations’ eyes are turned toward us, they watch our numbers increase. But they do not move.”
Malkier stared down at her for a long while. Knew she was not able to give any greater insight, she didn’t understand humans well enough. He was about to dismiss her when sound erupted from the southeast.
It was loud enough to carry through the remains of the city. While not particularly unpleasant, the nature of it was peculiar to the Ferox. His people had a primitive concept of music, the tribes all engaged in forms of rhythmic fist pounding and feet stomping that accompanied moments of celebration or tradition.
Mankind’s music had evolved to a far greater complexity. While Ferox turned toward the source and heard a highly unnatural flow of sound that seemed to never end, the prophet heard far more. The timbre drifting through the air, the intense pounding of drums, the driving low frequencies of the bass, the shrill distorted sounds of a guitar’s cords, and the singer’s voice. The prophet could also understand the words being sung and found he could not be certain if Brings the Rain was goading him somehow. Openly mocking him while his invasion force knelt around him none the wiser.
Back on the roof of the convention center, just as Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time played its titular chorus, Rylee fixed her gaze on Jonathan.
“You better know what the hell you’re doing. I didn’t come back to life to have Cher cover me on the way back out.”
He shrugged. “My roommates . . . could’ve been worse, be happy it wasn’t the Back to the Future theme.”
The music only played long enough to ensure he had the entire city’s attention. The volume slowly faded out, and Jonathan’s voice boomed through the Borealis sound system. The words being spoken weren’t ones he’d ever recorded, Mr. Clean had translated the message so that all the Ferox would hear it. That said, he made sure to use words that every Ferox would understand.
“You know my name. You enter my arena. I seek the false prophet. The one who claims to be the Borealis made flesh. I seek my challenger. Ends the Storm, will you deny me combat?”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR
HEYER HAD GONE unnoticed amongst the Ferox in the pit, but now he was getting unwanted attention. The opening to the tunnels was in the opposite direction of the ramps that led into the conduit. This had made him the lone Ferox moving against the flow. He was already drawing the eyes of those he moved against, but if his brother chose that moment to look
down on the crowd, Heyer would be as hard to miss as a car going the wrong direction on a freeway.
He turned to follow with the rest, carefully working sideways. Finally, he managed to step out of the throng and hide himself amongst supplies that had been staged along the platform walls to aid in the invasion. This forced him to lose sight of his brother and what was happening around the conduit, making Grant his only eyes.
While he waited, the population of the pit grew sparse. A thousand Ferox must have crossed into The Never. Yet, this gave him an unobstructed view of the gateway fields around the pit’s perimeter. Strange, none showed any activity outside sustaining the conduit. Ferox were streaming in overwhelming numbers, but human soldiers dying inside had stopped all together.
Two possibilities came to him. The Never Army had so few soldiers left, they were on the run—retreating or hiding. He didn’t believe that—it would mean they had already lost. If that were the case, well—The Never Army would have gone out with a bang.
No, more likely, something had Malkier convinced that the humans had played all their cards. That there was no unknown fear on the other side and the time for caution had passed. That meant all these Ferox were amassing on the other side, a force too large for the human army to resist.
But, would the prophet want to lead that final charge?
Grant’s voice spoke in his ear—as though answering the question.
“Heyer, your brother, he stepped into the conduit,” Grant said. “I think . . . I think it’s time.”
Heyer slowly patted his shoulder once and turned his gaze to the tunnel opening. The crowd was tightly gathered on the other end of the pit now and his brother was no longer present on this plane. So, he headed for the tunnel with a direct certainty, as though he were carrying out an order for the prophet himself.
He only needed a moment to be standing at the entrance, peering down into the darkness that descended beneath the platform. There was more to these tunnels than a quick path to Cede. The prophet had something going on below, as both he and Grant had noticed too many Ferox coming and going. What they had yet to figure out, was why they had been almost entirely female.
He took a long breath and stepped inside.
“You still hear me down there?” Grant asked.
Heyer grunted in reply, still thinking it wise not to speak in a human tongue unless their necessity demanded it.
He didn’t run into Ferox in the tunnels, but as he went deeper, he realized he’d begun to smell them. There were a lot, more than a single tribe’s worth below—but there was a quality to the scent of them. Something his Ferox host picked up on as though the smell was communicating something. Language he had some grasp of, but Heyer had little experience in translating Feroxian smells.
There was something different about most of the individuals gathered down here. It wasn’t their sex. In fact, he had smelled this before, while he travelled with the tribe on the pilgrimage. He’d just never paid it this much attention, the scent had never been so concentrated that he felt the need to single it out for explanation.
He took a few sharp turns down, switchbacks heading deeper into the tunnel systems, and the smells became such that he knew he was coming close to a gathering where many were clustered closely together. He was careful when he knew he was drawing near, began to hear them talking to one another around the next switchback.
Finally, he reached a tunnel with a mouth that widened as he came toward a larger cavity within the cave. There were at least fifty adults inside, and as soon as he saw the occupants they had with them; he knew what his instincts had been telling him.
Yes, all the mature Ferox were female, and as he looked at them, he saw that most were pregnant, others held newborns or were surrounded by young.
There wasn’t a single male in that room that wasn’t too young to be parted from its mother. If Heyer tried to walk inside with this host, he would stick out like a candle in the dark.
There were two females toward the mouth of the corridor. They seemed to know he was coming. As though they had been waiting for him. At first this made his anxieties grow, but . . . of course, he realized, a single male’s scent down here was probably like a beacon. Everyone in that room had likely smelled him coming for some time.
The two stood like guards at the opening—though what a human thought of as guards would be misleading. The Ferox did no harm to one another. The guards would turn him away, but they had no expectation that violence would be necessary to achieve it. They wouldn’t act like guards unless a human came charging toward that chamber.
Given what a human would have to come through to reach them, it wasn’t likely at the top of their concerns.
“You’re lost, brother?” the first guard asked.
Heyer’s passing for Ferox without creating suspicion was a matter of engaging as little as possible. He knew the language, but not on a nuanced level. He was about as passable as an exchange student. The only way to hide his inadequacy with the language and the strangeness to how he spoke it was to use as few words as possible.
“Why are you gathered here, Sister?”
They looked at him curiously—though he didn’t believe with suspicion.
“You must swallow the red glow to hear the prophet’s words, Brother. Have you been given the stone?”
“I have not,” Heyer said.
“Well then,” she said, “the prophet spoke wisely. The battle for the promised land is no place for infants and those not yet born. His tribe has volunteered the remains of their tunnels to the safety of the child-bearers and young. It is only until the prophecy has come to pass and the Promised Land is ours.”
Heyer was left without words.
A Feroxian maternity ward lay between him and Cede. This was not the sort of obstacle he was prepared to deal with. How could they have predicted that the prophet would place the most vulnerable of his people . . .
Where he believed they would be safest, Heyer realized.
This meant two things. The first would have come with great relief had it not been for the second. The prophet truly had no idea what was coming. All the effort and paranoia with which Jonathan had guarded their plans had been worth the effort. But... if Heyer didn’t do something, he would not only fail to reach Cede, but all these females and young would die.
“Brother, are you not listening?” the female asked, as though it weren’t the first attempt.
“I am sorry, what did you say?” Heyer replied.
“The battle for the promised land is not here, brother, but above, let me take you to the stone forge so you can serve the gods along with the rest of our people,” the Ferox said.
If he didn’t reach Cede, the outcome of the battle was already decided.
He needed to leave, keep with the pretense that he had simply wandered into the wrong place, but he was at a loss for a plan. He let his eyes take in the room beyond them, trying to see all he could before his lingering become strange to them. Unfortunately, he caught sight of two females he recognized. The first was Burns the Flame—but she was changed. Her red skin had begun the change, crossing the threshold to Alpha, but he knew her. And for the first time, Heyer felt something like what his Brother must have when he looked upon her. A small taste of what Malkier had resisted all those years.
Burns the Flame did not notice him, but the one she spoke to did—her daughter. Heyer looked away the moment they made eye contact, not wanting the consonance to wage another attack on his consciousness.
“No. Thank you, Sister,” Heyer said to the guard. “I see my error.”
Quickly, he turned to leave.
The guards watched him as he retreated around the corner. He knew something about the interaction had made them curious, but whatever nuance of behavior he had forgone was not known to him. He had to hope it would be overlooked, which seemed to be the case as they only eyed him but did not follow.
So many thoughts crashed through his troubled mind as he put distance be
tween the maternity ward and himself.
The worst of which was a suspicion he knew couldn’t possibly be true. A notion that Malkier had done this on purpose. That he’d expected Heyer might try to reach Cede but had assumed that if the attempt came, Heyer would do so in a human host.
He felt he was being tested. As though his brother did not believe he would slaughter his way through pregnant females and their young if it was the only way to reach Cede.
Was Cede meant to carry out defensive orders if the females were endangered? Cede would not attack him if she realized he was Borealis. But until his device was uncloaked to her, she was a serious threat to his host. He had to get very close before he let that cloak down.
Yet, Cede’s ability to apply lethal force remained the problem down the line.
He’d turned a few corners before he felt safe with the distance between him and the chamber. He needed a simple way around them, something that wouldn’t cause alarm.
He could attempt to lie. Give them some story about Malkier authorizing him access to the lower tunnels. Except, he just told them he hadn’t taken a stone and could not hear the prophet in his mind. Given his command of the language, he didn’t see himself explaining how so much had changed so quickly.
If he tried this and it failed, would he force his way through? If he did, would they—try to hold him back or restrain him? Would they attack him? Would he have to fight them?
Answers to these questions came on him suddenly. A feeling like being singled out by the universe for torture. He felt his host growing ill. At first he thought it a lingering human emotion, the sort of pain one feels when they worry over a tough decision—but the more he imagined what might happen if he forced his way through the females and their young the more unbearable it became.
He tried to ignore it, reminded himself what was at stake.
I have no choice, he thought.
His insides turned violently against him—as though his conscience had powerful claws and could rack and twist his insides. Bile rose as his stomach convulsed. Heyer fell to hands and knees and wretched.
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