The Sunai’s expression darkened. “How do you know?”
The words spilled out. “I saw it.”
Soro’s other hand grabbed Kate’s hair and forced her head up. Her bangs fell to the side, revealing the silver in her eyes.
Soro hissed.
“It’s not what you think,” said Kate, but Soro wasn’t listening. Their grip vanished from her hair, and she tried to twist free, but the Sunai still had a hand on her collar, and it was stone.
They tapped their comm. “This is Omega calling Flynn.”
“Listen to me—” started Kate.
“Be quiet.”
“Sloan has the Chaos—”
Soro’s fist slammed into Kate’s ribs. She doubled over, gasping for air, as red light flickered across her skin. One knee buckled beneath her, and before she could get up again, a strip of cloth was cinched tight over her eyes, plunging everything into black.
Alice rose to her feet, spitting blood on the floor.
“They taste off,” she said with a grimace, but it hadn’t stopped her from slaughtering the remaining Fangs, staining her clothes and limbs red.
Sloan drew on a pair of gloves.
Death was fresh on the air, the corpses still warm, but already the shadow in the cage was losing its substance. Soon it would be smoke again, thin enough to slip through the gap in the gold curtain, and Sloan couldn’t let that happen.
He reached out and took hold of the shroud.
Even through the gloves, the gold burned—his skin began to blister and his blood to began to boil as he drew the sheet tight over the monster’s cage.
He pulled back, hands singed.
Alice glanced at the cage, then looked pointedly away, and Sloan realized with a measure of delight that she was frightened.
She turned to go, but he caught her by the shoulder, and he twisted her back toward the cage. “What do you think of my new pet?”
“I think,” she said, “you should have killed it.”
His nails dug in. “Are we ready for tonight?”
Alice wrenched free of his grip. “You stay here and play with your new pet,” she sneered. “Leave tonight to me.”
August got back to the Compound just after dark.
There was an energy to the building that night—there was always an energy, with so many people—but the usual rhythm had shifted, fallen out of sync, and for once, the feeling hadn’t followed him in—it was already there. In the whispers, he heard Kate’s name.
He went straight to the command center in search of her, but as soon as he stepped out of the elevator, he knew something was wrong.
Emily was waiting for him. “August.”
And when he asked about Kate, a shadow crossed Em’s face. “What is it?”
“Come with me.”
“What happened?”
“There’s been an incident.”
His mind flashed across a dozen possible scenarios but instead of dwelling on any of them, he turned and marched toward the surveillance room.
“August,” said Em on his heels. “She was infected.”
And he almost said I know, but caught himself.
“Ilsa,” he called. “Show me where Kate is.”
But his sister was already waiting, knees drawn up before the wall of screens. She shot him a look but he didn’t stop to read it, looking straight past her at the screens—eleven of the twelve were cycling, but there, in the center of the grid, a single camera held its shot.
The first thing he saw, the only thing he saw, was Kate.
Kate, on her knees in the center of the cell, hands cuffed to the floor and a swatch of black over her eyes. Just like the soldier.
Ilsa’s fingers tightened on his sleeve in a wordless apology.
“What happened?” he asked, when what he really meant was how did they find out?
Ilsa tapped the keys, and Henry and Soro appeared on a second screen—the viewing chamber.
Another tap and sound streamed into the room.
“. . . wasting time,” Kate was saying. “I told you, Sloan has the Chaos Eater.”
August’s heart lurched, but no one else seemed to react to the news. Soro stood silent, arms crossed, while Henry paced.
“And you know this,” he said, “because you saw it.” August thought he heard a hitch in the man’s breath, but it might have been static. “And you saw it, because you have been infected.”
Kate was shaking her head. “I’m still in control.”
“You attacked an FTF soldier,” said Soro.
“He attacked me,” snapped Kate.
“You told us what this monster does,” said Henry. “That it infects human minds. And you have brought that infection into my house, into my ranks.”
“No,” protested Kate.
“You put this entire Compound in danger—”
“No.”
But Henry’s voice was cold. “Do you even know what it is, this connection between you? Do you know how far it goes? If you can see through this monster’s eyes, what’s to stop it from seeing through yours?”
Kate opened her mouth, but said nothing. August had heard enough. He turned toward the door, but Emily barred his path.
“Did you know?” she asked.
He swallowed. “She wanted to help.”
Emily’s face hardened. “August—”
“She’s our best chance of hunting that thing.”
On the screen, Henry began to cough. Soro took a step toward him, but he waved the Sunai away. “Tell me again,” he said to Kate, “what you saw—”
But he was cut off by a sudden, blaring siren.
The noise tore through August’s head as the wall of screens went dark, and the lights around them flickered, and a second later, all the power in the Compound went out.
Kate’s head snapped up.
Even with one bad ear and the blindfold over her eyes, she knew that something was very wrong.
Alarms crashed through the concrete room, rebounding on every wall. Henry’s voice was there, somewhere underneath all the noise, and so was Soro’s, but the shapes of their words were lost.
And then they were gone, and Kate was alone in the cell, painfully aware that she was still chained to the floor. She bowed her head toward her hands and dragged the blindfold down. No one ordered her to stop. That was the first sign of trouble. The second was that the world beyond the cloth was just as black.
For ten long seconds there was nothing but sirens and darkness, and then, just as suddenly as the alarms started, they switched off, leaving only black space and the ringing in her head.
An emergency power source kicked in, rendering the cell in a bluish half-light.
“Hey,” she called to the plastic insert in the wall, but no one answered.
Kate tried to stay calm as she bowed her head, fingers sliding around to the back of her neck. Along the collar of her uniform, she’d slipped two pins. The first bit of metal came free in her hand and she set to work on the cuffs.
The ground shook, a tremor running through the concrete. The power faltered again, and the pin slipped from her fingers, skidding out of reach. Kate swore viciously and freed the second pin, forcing herself to slow, and her fingers to stay steady.
After a few seconds, the cuffs released, and Kate shot up from the ground, but the cell door was locked. From the outside. There wasn’t even a handle, only a plate drilled into the steel.
She turned, looking for another way out, which was ridiculous considering the room was six slabs of concrete and a strip of shatter-proof plastic. She had no weapons, nothing but a pair of pins and the clothes on her back. Her boots. They had metal in the soles, maybe with enough force she could—
The power guttered a third time, and the lock inside the door clicked off. Kate threw herself against it, the steel falling open before the generators came back up. She was out.
The hall beyond was empty, lit by the same bluish glow, and the ground trembled again beneath her
feet, like the faint aftershocks of an earthquake, as Kate surged up the stairs.
There was too much noise.
The sirens echoed through August’s head even after they were shut off, and the command center was a wall of soldiers talking over the buzz of the emergency power and the voices on the comms as reports came in and orders went out.
Someone had attacked the transformers.
The metal towers that routed power to the Compound and the surrounding barracks. The metal towers located south of the FTF’s buildings, far from the Seam. In six months, the Malchai had never ventured that far, hadn’t made a concerted strike—
Until now.
“Squads One through Eight report to the power block,” ordered Phillip.
“Ten through Twelve report to the Seam,” said Marcon.
“Thirteen through Twenty take the UVR strip,” added Shia.
“Twenty-one through Thirty, evacuate the barracks,” instructed Bennet.
August was already moving toward the stairs, already issuing orders to his own squad. They had a plan for this. They had a plan for almost everything. But plans and realities were different things. Plans were crisp, clean—the stuff of paper and drill—and realities, August had learned, were always, always, always messy.
Soro appeared, supporting Henry, who was white as a sheet and still coughing. This time he couldn’t seem to stop. The cough became a retch, and then a spasm, and Henry was fighting for air—and then Emily was there, calling for a medic, and Soro was pulling August away.
“We have work to do, brother.”
And August knew that they were right.
“I’ll be okay,” gasped Henry. “Go.”
So August went, plunging down the stairs with Soro at his side. Leo’s voice was a stream in the back of his head, a smooth and steady current of orders, and August let himself lean into the efficiency of his brother’s thinking. He hit the ground floor and for an instant he thought of going down instead of out, but Kate was safer in a locked room than up here, whether or not she would agree.
Harris, Jackson, and Ani were already in formation by the main doors.
“Alpha team.”
They saluted him, Harris grinning as if they were on their way to a party. Harris was always happy about a fight. Ani looked grim but determined. Jackson looked like he’d been caught in the middle of a shower, his wet hair plastered back.
A line of jeeps idled on the strip, their high beams up. The grid was only three blocks away, but with the power being diverted to the main facilities, it would be three blocks of solid black.
“Let’s go.”
Kate took the stairs two at a time, trying to scrub the last of the dried blood from her face as she reached Sublevel 1.
The armory was an exercise in organized chaos. In the low light, soldiers bustled, suiting up while team leaders issued orders and subordinates talked around and under each other.
“—an attack on the central grid—”
“Transformers one through four are down—”
So they’d gone after the power. Darkness was a dangerous thing in a place like Verity, which made power the most important resource, the only thing that kept the monsters at bay. Sloan was upping the stakes. Bringing the fight to them.
“The first wave is en route—”
“—some kind of explosive—”
Was that what she’d felt?
“—reports of Malchai on the scene—”
Kate’s mind reeled as she fell in with the current of soldiers.
She was still dressed like an FTF, and the half-light of the emergency generators cast the same muted glow over everyone, erasing details and reducing the soldiers to shadows in FTF suits.
The corridor was lined with armored vests and—not helmets, exactly, more like modified sparring gear with visors that shielded the eyes and left the bottom half of the face exposed. They made her think of the Wardens, of Liam’s attempts to design a proper suit, something that would protect her.
She was reaching for a vest when she realized—this was her chance. She could take advantage of the chaos, suit up, and slip out.
They knew about the sickness now, and when this was over, they’d probably throw her right back in that cell. She should run. But she thought of Ilsa, helping her at every turn. Of August, almost certainly on his way to the grid.
She could go.
Or she could stay and fight.
Show them she wasn’t a monster.
Someone pushed a gun into her hands, and her blood sang, vision narrowing as her thumb slid over the safety. Her finger drifted toward the trigger.
Kate ejected the clip and holstered the weapon and ammo separately.
She longed for her spikes, but settled for a baton coated in iron, a pair of knives, and an HUV beam, and followed the stream of FTFs up to the lobby, pulling her helmet on as she went. She knocked the visor down over her eyes and trailed the soldiers out, past the doors and onto the dim stretch that had, hours before, been a vivid line of light.
Jeeps were peeling away toward the site of the attack—marked against the dark skyline by gray smoke and the flicker of fire. Her father’s tower loomed in the opposite direction, a beacon of shadow.
Sloan, whispered the darkness in her head.
He had the Chaos Eater, and the urge to go after them both sang through her like madness. But that’s just what it was. Madness. Because she knew she couldn’t kill them both, not alone.
Kate took off toward the last of the jeeps.
The convoy tore a strip of light through the dark streets as it made its way to the transformer grid, Jackson at the wheel.
August didn’t have his violin—not when there were so many soldiers involved—and the absence felt wrong. He took a baton from the utility kit, just to have something to hold, even though its surface made his skin prickle and his stomach turn.
Jackson swore when they rounded the corner and the FTF’s central power structure came into sight.
It was on fire.
A blast had taken out a chunk of the transformers, the remnants hissing and sparking in the dark. The FTFs set to guard the station lay scattered at the base of the nearest support building, their bodies—what was left of them—twisted, broken, Corsai already swarming the remains. August leaped out of the jeep before it stopped, and Soro jumped down from the next with inhuman grace, flute-knife out and ready.
“Get the lights up!” ordered August.
The vehicles circled, spinning their high beams toward the wreckage, and the Corsai scattered as technicians hurried to isolate and resequence the remaining power.
Severed lines hissed and skated across the ground, and one of the support buildings looked like it was about to collapse.
And then it did.
It took out another transformer as it crumbled, and a block away, a line of buildings went dark.
Kate leaped down from the jeep and found a world on fire, the air electric and the whole block plunged into chaos. The FTFs were clearly used to fighting small battles—and so was she—but whatever was happening at the power station, it wasn’t a fight. It was a set of dominoes being knocked down.
But Kate’s first thought wasn’t about the power—it was about the number of FTFs standing in the road.
We’re exposed, she thought. She craned her neck, scanning the rooftops, and caught sight of a pair of burning red eyes right before a blast went off, not on the transformers, but on the street.
The ground shook violently, and nearby the pavement cracked and gave way, plunging a cluster of soldiers down into the dark. Shouts went up as another blast went off.
And another.
And another.
All around her, the road was crumbling.
Kate sprinted for cover, drawing her baton as the ground shuddered and split under her boots. She got her back to a wall just in time to see another section of the street collapse, swallowing two more soldiers.
The blasts were coming from the tun
nels below.
“Get off the ground!” she called, her voice lost in the fray before she remembered the comm hooked to her vest. She punched the button and shouted into the mic.
A few of the soldiers straightened, but too many were still weaving through the wreckage, trying to help the wounded. Idiots.
The night was filling with smoke and dust and debris, and Kate hauled herself a few rungs up a fire escape and squinted through the haze, searching for August. Instead she saw a shock of silver hair moving through the fray. Soro.
A massive blast rocked the night and the Sunai staggered, covering their ears, as the ground nearby split, cracks racing toward them along the street. Soro couldn’t see them, but Kate could.
She called out to the Sunai, and Soro’s head shot up, eyes narrowing.
“Move!” shouted Kate, an instant before the road beneath the Sunai gave way. Soro moved just in time, lunging out of the path.
Kate climbed another rung, scanning the chaos. She saw August down the block, covered in dust and holding up a wounded FTF.
At the same moment, he looked up and saw her, raising a hand just before the ground exploded at his feet.
The world went white.
One second August was standing on the street and the next, he was engulfed—he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel anything but force of the explosion.
Is this what it feels like, he wondered, to be unmade?
But then he hit the ground.
He landed hard, the fall knocking the air from his lungs. His head rang from the blast, his hearing swallowed by the high white noise.
The world was dark around him, but at least the darkness seemed to be a shallow thing, somewhere in front of his eyes, instead of behind them. High overhead there was a hole and, beyond that, the smoky night, the far-off haze of headlights. Judging by the vaulted ceiling, the long echo, and the metal bars beneath his back, he’d landed in a subway tunnel.
The wounded FTF lay nearby, his body twisted unnaturally atop the rubble. When August tried to move, he realized he might not be hurt or broken, but he was stuck, one leg pinned beneath concrete and rebar.
Our Dark Duet Page 24