The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set

by D J Edwardson

  Adan glanced back towards Raif, unsure of what to say. He wanted to ask about the extractor then and there, but it didn’t seem wise to confront Bryce in front of his friends out in the middle of a ruined street.

  With the ship destroyed and the wounds he had suffered, he didn’t see what choice he had but to go with these men. At least he had found Bryce. Once they got out of the storm, Adan would find a way to talk to him about the extractor.

  “Thank you,” Adan said at length. “But there were actually two of us on the ship. The man traveling with me has to be close by.”

  “Strange. We only picked up a single zoetic signature,” Raif said, confused.

  “What do you mean?” Adan asked.

  Raif held out his arm so Adan could see the screen on his wrist. “My variance modulator would have picked him up if he was there. It can detect zoetic sources, bioseines, all sorts of things.”

  “Couldn’t it have malfunctioned? I mean, maybe the storm disrupted the signal.”

  “I suppose you’re right. It’s kind of a hacked together piece of equipment. For a while I did actually lose the signal,” Raif said. “But look, it’s working right now.”

  Adan glanced at the screen and saw five red dots in the same arrangement in which all of them were standing.

  “He was probably killed in the crash,” Bryce said. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to look for him now. We’ve been out for too long as it is. Somatarch patrols run all over the city. Either you come back with us now or I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you to look for him alone.”

  The other Sentients shuffled nervously, waiting for Adan’s response.

  Adan scanned the surrounding area one last time. He couldn’t see much. The only thing that was moving were the swirling dust clouds. Perhaps Bryce was right. If the modulator didn’t pick him up, then Nox must have died in the crash. “All right, then,” he said, “Let’s go.”

  As much as he’d been hoping to get rid of Nox, this was not the way he wanted to do it. But the decision had been made. Adan hobbled down the street along with the Sentients, a mix of conflicting emotions swirling inside of him. In death, as in life, Nox was an enigma. If anyone deserved death it was him, but somehow dying in a crash like this did not give Adan any sense of peace or closure.

  It soon became obvious that the boot they’d thrown together was not going to be enough for the long walk back. Von came alongside him and Adan put his arm around his shoulder. He found he could keep up a decent pace with the extra support. In his other hand, he still wore the cutter. It gave him a small measure of assurance since he was not entirely ready to trust these men until he knew what Bryce was up to.

  Raif pointed to the device on his forearm. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  “It’s a cutter.”

  “Well, sparks and smoke,” Raif said, admiring the banged up tube, “I didn’t think anything like that was still around. That’s vintage, man. Vintage.”

  “It belonged to a friend,” Adan said.

  “The one you lost in the crash?”

  “No—I…” Adan found himself unsure of how to answer. His thoughts vacillated between telling him about Will and saying nothing. Bryce’s presence scrambled his thoughts. He must have had some connection to Will since he’d been in the compound, but Adan had no idea how much he knew. “It belonged to someone else,” he said, avoiding Bryce’s gaze.

  “I used to collect old technology when we were, well, you know, part of the Collective. Where’d you get that ship, by the way?”

  “I sort of borrowed it, I guess you could say.” Adan gave him a nervous smile. “What was it like, being in the Collective?”

  “What do you mean? Weren’t you part of it too? Or did they erase that from your memory?”

  “I don’t know,” Adan said. “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. I’ve been out in the Vast for a while, but I was here before the storm hit. I got out just before Oasis was destroyed. How did you survive anyway?” Adan studied Raif’s face, exhilarated to actually be able to talk with someone from the Collective. He could already sense this man was different from the scientists who ran the city. There was an alertness, a curiosity to him that was almost infectious. Adan could tell he was eager to learn and fill in the missing gaps in his knowledge.

  “Dumb luck, I guess,” Raif said, “Some of us woke up in the middle of the storm, some didn’t wake up until it was all over, some didn’t wake up at all. But those of us who did think for ourselves now—and that’s what matters.”

  “Things haven’t been easy,” Von said, his gritty tone contrasting sharply with Raif’s animated manner. “But none of us wants to go back to the way things were.”

  Whatever Bryce’s view was, Adan couldn’t tell. He kept his thoughts to himself and Adan was too distracted trying not to aggravate his ankle to get a sense of what he felt.

  Who are you? Adan wondered. And what are you doing in Oasis?

  At that moment Bryce gave him a stern look. Adan didn’t think he had been listening in on his thoughts, but after his experience with Nolan, he could not really be sure.

  Twelve

  Many Kinds of Wounds

  “Get down,” came Raif’s sudden warning. Adan dropped awkwardly to one knee along with the others, behind a pile of rubble.

  They were walking through the hollowed out ground floor of what had been one of the massive skyscrapers of Oasis’ central district. Though the floors were now little more than a twisted lattice of metal beams, some of the ceiling on the ground floor still clung to the framework. It was one of the more intact buildings left and gave them some measure of shelter from the storm.

  “What did you spot?” Bryce asked, glancing at Raif.

  Raif looked up from the modulator on his wrist and pointed into the billowing haze outside the building. “Hollow men. Two of them.”

  “Hollow men?” Adan asked, puzzled by the unfamiliar term.

  “Somatarchs,” Bryce said. “Everyone, get ready.”

  Bryce motioned for them to split into two groups: Raif and Nance in one, Bryce, Adan, and Von in the other. Adan’s group hurried over to a section of support beams that were still standing, each of them taking up position behind a different beam. Raif and Nance ducked down behind a large pile of rubble about twenty paces away.

  Adan clenched his fist around the handle inside the cutter, terrified by what was about to come out of the storm.

  “You better take one of these,” Bryce said in a low whisper and handed Adan a pinion.

  Adan took the weapon without noticing what it was at first. When he felt the rigid metal in his hands and realized what it was, his first impulse was to toss it away. Seeing it brought back memories of the slaughter he had witnessed in the Viscera. The first time he had seen someone die was from one of these weapons.

  “Aim for the heart, otherwise you’ll only slow it down,” Bryce told him.

  Adan swallowed the lump rising in his throat. The cold smooth metal slid back and forth beneath his sweaty hands.

  “What if the somatarchs have oscillathes?” Adan asked, remembering the battle at Virid Ridge and the hundreds of Waymen who had died there at the hands of the somatarchs.

  “Don’t worry, Raif will take care of their weapons.”

  “But—”

  Bryce signaled with his hand for Adan to keep quiet.

  At that moment Raif popped up from behind the pile of debris and tossed a small black ball towards the wall of dust blowing through the streets. Adan saw nothing at first, but as the ball hurtled towards the street it grew in size until it was at least twenty paces in diameter. Then it burst in an explosion of white light.

  As the light faded, from inside the billowing dust, a white-robed figure rushed towards them. It held a small silver oscillathe, but instead of firing, it simply slid the weapon into a clip on its belt and sprinted forward. It closed as though borne on the wind. Bryce hurled his pinion. Von’s shot followed. Both of them had good aim, bu
t the somatarch dodged Bryce’s pinion so that it lodged into its left shoulder. Then, using Bryce’s pinion, it deflected Von’s stroke with the weapon already impaled in its body.

  It happened so fast, Adan had no time to react. The somatarch only slowed down enough to yank the pinion out of its shoulder before rushing on. That was enough for Bryce and Von to get off two more pinions. Adan hurled his as well, but the somatarch swatted Bryce’s down with the spear as before and both Von and Adan’s throws went wide to either side.

  By then the creature was upon them. Discarding the spear, it slammed into Bryce’s body, pinning him to the floor.

  The wound to the somatarch’s shoulder seemed to have robbed it of the use of its left arm, otherwise, it might have gone worse for Bryce. As it was, all he could do was fend of its attacks with one arm, while simultaneously trying to shove the creature off him with the other.

  Bryce could not deflect all the blows, though. The somatarch landed two quick jabs to his head before Von could reach him. When the creature landed a third blow to Bryce’s temple, his head dropped to the ground and he went still.

  Von was going to suffer the same fate if Adan didn’t do something. He rushed towards the somatarch as it rose to face Von. Adan forgot all about his ankle and closed the distance in three stuttering steps, arriving just as Von dove towards it.

  The creature shrugged off Von’s attack and sent him tumbling to the side. His head connected with one of the intact vertical beams and he rolled onto the ground, dazed.

  The somatarch regarded Adan with empty, dead eyes as he pulled up in front of it. For a moment his mind went blank. He had no idea how to fight this creature. He had been so focused on what was happening to Bryce and Von he was completely unprepared for the somatarch’s blow.

  All he saw was a blaze of light and the world turned upside down.

  A thunderous boom shook through his senses and his vision returned. He thought he was looking back out across the building to where Raif and Nance had been, but there was nothing but dust and debris drifting down from above.

  He whipped his head back around and saw Von fall to the ground from a vicious blow to the back of his neck. The somatarch who gave it was bleeding from another wound in its side, but that didn’t stop the creature from finishing Von off.

  The Sentients immobilized, the creature turned its lifeless gaze towards Adan.

  Adan hobbled to his feet, hoping the creature’s wounds would slow it down enough for him to have a chance, or that Raif and Nance would appear from somewhere to help.

  As the creature stepped towards him, Adan remembered—the cutter!

  He flipped the controls to extend the blade and swung it in a wide arc. The somatarch twisted away, but it was too close. The beam of light passed right across the center of its chest.

  The creature paused for the briefest of moments, glancing down at its own body in a detached way. There was no sign of any damage. That was when Adan noticed that the cutter’s blade had been set to yellow—it would only cut non-living things. Adan had missed his one chance.

  Before he could switch it to red and swing again, the somatarch knocked him to the floor with a crippling kick to the abdomen. Adan went pinwheeling backwards, landing hard in a heap of rubble next to another one of the support beams.

  While Adan scrambled to rise, a loud crack reverberated overhead. Looking up Adan saw the ceiling start to cave in.

  The last thing he saw before the building came down on top of him was the support beam next to the somatarch slamming into the ground, cut clean in two by the cutter’s brilliant yellow blade.

  Adan was lying on a bed of rubble. Voices, low and serious, hovered somewhere nearby. Light seeped in around the corners of his vision. As his eyes came into focus, he could make out dark figures leaning over him.

  “He’s coming around.” It was Raif’s voice. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure,” Adan said. Since he felt no pain, he checked his bioseine and saw that he had two cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken collarbone. Besides his internal injuries, he had a finger-sized gash on his upper arm, but someone had already wrapped that up. His bioseine had been able to stop any internal bleeding, but he would need serious medical attention.

  Adan informed Raif of the extent of his injuries, wondering privately if this ragtag band of survivors would even be able to help him now.

  Raif leaned down so Adan could see his face better. It was still covered by his scarf, but it didn’t look like he’d been injured in the fight. “Well, it looked like half the ceiling fell in on you. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Von was kneeling beside him. “I don’t have the resources to deal with these kinds of injuries in my field kit, Raif. We need to get him back to the shelter fast.”

  “Right. We’ll have to jerry-rig something to carry him on.”

  “Just hurry. Another patrol could come at any time.” Bryce’s voice came from somewhere off to Adan’s right. He glanced in that direction, but it was too dark to see more than the outlines of two figures standing in the shadows.

  “Did everyone make it, then?” Adan asked.

  Raif nodded in response as Von disappeared back into the shadows.

  “How did you stop them?”

  Raif gave him a satisfied smirk. “A little recipe I cooked up. One part energy disruptor to disable their oscillathes and another part chemical frag bombs to finish the job. My signature move. I brought down half the building and it looks like you brought down the other half.”

  A few moments later Von returned with Nance and they began to wedge a makeshift pallet underneath him. It was made of a large piece of silvery scrap metal. Raif lent a hand and through careful effort, they managed to slide Adan onto it.

  Von and Nance grabbed the pallet at either end and lifted him off the ground. They trudged slowly through the rubble so as not to jostle him too much, but Adan couldn’t keep himself from sliding around on the rigid metal sheet.

  Neither Nance nor Von looked like they’d been seriously injured, but when Adan finally got a look at Bryce, the effects of his clash with the somatarch were clearly visible. His kaff was ripped and dangling from his head so that his face was now exposed to the elements. Scratches crisscrossed his skin in patches like threadbare fabric. Dark red splotches sprinkled one side of his face. Despite this, he marched resolutely ahead, showing no signs of pain.

  Masking it with his bioseine, Adan thought.

  They left the building and made their way onto the debris-filled street. Explosions echoed off in the distance.

  When Adan asked what it was, Raif answered, “Another Sentient cell fighting the somatarchs, probably. There are four other cells scattered across the city that we know of. We stay separated to keep ourselves spread out. We’ve been fighting the Administrators ever since the storm destroyed Oasis.”

  The Administrators. That was what the assessors called the Developers. “Do you have any idea where they are?” Adan asked.

  “The Admins? Not a clue. But I suppose if things keep up the way they’re going we’ll all end up there soon enough. They capture some of us every day, seems like. We’ve lost close to half our cell already.”

  “Why don’t you just leave this place—go where the somatarchs won’t find you?”

  “We’ve been trying to,” Raif said, “but the storm hasn’t let up since the day the city fell. Today’s one of the few days we’ve even been able to move around on the surface. The only thing we can do for now is try to survive and find out where they’re operating from—find out a way to stop them. So far we’re not doing all that great at either.”

  The storm hadn’t let up since Adan left? That had been twenty-three days ago. He’d never heard of a storm going on that long.

  “We’ll find the Admins,” Bryce stated confidently, “and stop them for good this time.”

  The winds picked up as they made their way down the street. The further along they went, the more anxious Adan
became about Bryce. He needed to talk to him, to find out about the extractor, but he was afraid what his reaction might be. He seemed like a person it would not be wise to cross. If he really was associated with Nolan as the Reeve had suggested, that might be doubly true.

  By the time they arrived at the shelter, the winds were blowing so hard Von and Nance could barely keep the pallet from tipping over. Raif and Bryce had to come alongside to keep it steady. They lowered Adan into a depression, shutting out the winds. Continuing down, they brought him into a dimly lit tunnel. A thick, round door shut behind them and the wind’s roar finally died away.

  They placed Adan on the floor and Raif informed him that someone would come soon and take a look at his wounds. The passage they set him in was a long shaft with two circular doors, one on either end. Both had a large wheel-latch mechanism to keep them shut, but the one Raif and the others went through, opposite the one they’d come in, stayed open. Voices conversed in low tones on the other side.

  A woman dressed in a tattered jumper entered through the open door. A plastic bottle hung from the belt she wore, and she was carrying a large bowl of water as well.

  “Hello there,” she said in a quiet voice. “You don’t look so good.”

  She knelt beside Adan and looked him up and down, studying his injuries. Her clothes were covered in dust, but he could still make out the original pearl blue color of the fabric. Her fine brown hair came down to her chin and she had a thoughtful, concerned look in her gray eyes. Adan’s mouth fell open as he stared at her.

  “I know you,” he said.

  She stared back at him. “You what?”

  For a moment, Adan could not bring himself to respond. He was too overwhelmed by the fact that he was looking at the woman who had been his handler at the Institute. Though they had met only briefly, she had left an indelible impression on him, the one person in all his time there who had treated him with some measure of kindness. Her hair was longer now and her face looked sadder, but there was no mistaking it was the same woman.