As he knelt down beside her, her eyes fluttered open and met his. She looked shaken, but not in any serious pain.
“Are you okay?” he yelled.
She nodded feebly.
“Come on,” he said, not bothering to yell this time, speaking more out of habit. He gathered her up in his arms and helped her to her feet.
The untethered end of Sierra’s cord followed limply behind her, only coming to life at the occasionally stronger gusts. It must have snapped from the force of the wind. Adan scanned the ever shifting dunes they had crossed, hoping to spot some sign of Tarn and Trey, but all he saw was a sandy void. As time wore on and the winds continued to surge Adan realized that if they didn’t make it into the city soon, he and Sierra would be lost as well. Waves of numbness seized his insides as he realized that Tarn and Trey had been swallowed up by the storm.
Adan and Sierra were alone.
Adan slumped against the outer wall of Hull.
If only I hadn’t kept pushing, he thought. We should have waited out the storm like Tarn wanted.
Why hadn’t he recognized the danger in time? He pounded his fists against the gravelly sand. The mission had barely started and he had already lost half his team.
Sierra said nothing, but he read in her eyes that she wanted to go back and search for the others. Surveying the swirling dunes, Adan saw nothing but his own helplessness in the face of the beating winds. The sand storm had already cost them valuable time, forcing them to arrive at Hull almost a full slice later than they had planned. They only had half a day to find all the prisoners and organize the evacuation. But even setting all that aside, he knew it would be almost impossible to find Tarn and Trey out in that mess. And if he did go back he risked losing Sierra as well.
Adan returned her gaze, shaking his head slowly. By the crushed look on her face he knew she understood his decision. He wished he could say something to console her, to let her know how difficult it was for him to go on, but the storm raged on, claiming his voice just as it had his friends. He swallowed the bitter taste in the back of his mouth and powered on the cutter in his glove. A yellow diamond shape flickered into existence at the ends of his fingers. Shielding the light with his body, he carved out a small hole in the wall, just large enough for them to crawl through on their bellies.
They had little trouble passing through to the other side, emerging beneath some dilapidated scaffolding at the end of a debris-filled street. They gathered what scrap they could and piled it in front of the hole to hide the breach.
Inside the walls, the storm lost some of its force, but the buffeting blasts still raged overhead and sand eddied along the ground. Bioseine communication was still scrambled, but at least it was quiet enough to speak. Sierra opened her mouth to say something, but Adan quickly placed a finger over her lips. There was no telling how their voices might carry along the street. He gestured up ahead and, taking her by the hand, led her out from under the scaffolding into a narrow alley between the half-finished framework of two buildings. Both structures rose three stories high, the panels clinging to their skeletal walls, weathered and beaten and barely adequate to resist the unceasing winds.
Memories from his time in Hull came rushing back to him, his brief encounter with Senya, his time in the pit, and his interrogation by Nolan. Of all the danger the streets of this city held, he feared the Reeve more than anything. Waymen at least could be fought, but fighting someone who could break into your mind was another matter. Hopefully he would be in and out of the city before the leader of Hull ever knew he was there.
But the mission had hardly gone according to plan so far. Casting a glance back into the street, Adan fought back a fresh wave of grief. Thoughts of Tarn and Trey lying dead in the desert overwhelmed him. He found himself breathing hard, trying to keep from giving in to despair. He realized that he could not go on like this. He sunk to the ground in the alleyway, tears rushing into his eyes and forcing him to pull the lentes from his face.
Inside the cramped lane the howls of the wind dulled to the point that they could no longer mask the sounds of Adan’s sobbing.
Sierra wrapped her arms around him tightly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, so near that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheeks.
Though he did not believe her words, her arms around him gave him strength in the midst of his own internal storm. He was about to thank her when he caught the sound of footsteps at the end of the alley. Adan hurriedly wiped his eyes so he could put his lentes back on, but only managed to gouge them with bits of sand which clung to his fingers.
Sierra turned to see what had startled him and let out a cry.
“Adan, it’s—” she started to say but then took off without finishing.
Adan blinked away enough of the sand to be able to reattach his lentes. When his vision returned he could make out a figure approaching at the end of the alley.
Sierra cried out again as he rose to his feet. Then she threw her arms around a man whose tearstained face glowed with joy. It was Tarn. He had pulled down his kaff and removed his lentes because he too found it impossible to cry with the lenses in place.
Adan ran to join in their embrace. The three of them holding each other in the confined space meant that their bodies were squeezed uncomfortably against the walls on either side, but it did not matter. Tarn was alive. Everything else melted away.
“Tarn! What happened?” Adan babbled, barely able to get the words out from all the excitement coursing through him.
“The storm,” Tarn said, wiping away the last of his tears. “I went flying into the air and I must have taken Trey with me. The wind snapped Trey’s cord on both sides. When I came down I blacked out for a time and when I came to I…I couldn’t find him, I couldn’t find any of you.”
Tarn’s words blindsided Adan. He had been so overjoyed to see him he hadn’t noticed that he had come alone.
So Trey was gone after all.
“I’m sorry,” Tarn said. “I did my best, but the storm…a curse on this desert and all its fury.”
Sierra placed a hand on Tarn’s shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done. If you had kept looking for him the storm would have taken you too.”
“Sierra’s right,” Adan said. “You did the right thing. And as much as it hurts, we have to move on and pray that Trey finds his way to us. If you found us, then there’s hope for him, too.”
Tarn straightened himself up tall in the darkness. Pulling a clean rag from his garrick, he rubbed away the dampness around his eyes.
With heavy steps, Adan led his friends back out into the dim, dusty streets of Hull.
Nine
Scrap in the Scrapyard
Adan peered out from behind one of the dilapidated carts which littered the street. Tiny stalls made of poorly soldered sheet metal huddled together up and down the thoroughfare, trembling in the wind. If a single one of these shaky constructions were to fall, it would probably bring down the rest of them with it.
He had not come this way the last time, but from his bioseine he knew they were headed in the right direction. They needed to find the food tent where Adan had met Senya the last time he was in Hull. Her living quarters would hopefully be nearby. That was the idea anyway. It was never the strongest part of their plan, but at least they could search for her under cover of night.
They padded through the deserted streets, hitting dead ends once or twice and doubling back, but they met no one out on the stormy pathways. At last they arrived in the part of the city where he expected to see Senya’s tent, but there was no sign of it. Instead, a jumbled barrier of fused wire loomed a span and a half high at the end of the street. Beyond the makeshift fence were piles and piles of scrap. A gate consisting of a single, battered piece of corrugated metal provided access into the scrapyard, but it was guarded by two Waymen. One of them had his head bowed and appeared to be asleep. The other looked less concerned with watching the street than he was about shield
ing his eyes from the debris-filled winds gusting around him.
“We need to get through that gate,” Adan told Sierra, grateful the storm had dwindled enough for them to be able to communicate via bioseine.
“Couldn’t we just go around?” Sierra suggested.
The two of them were hunkered down beside each other behind a sizable cart that must have blown over in the wind. Tarn crouched just inside an alleyway on the opposite side of the street, waiting to act on a sign from Adan.
“No, we need to get into the scrapyard. If we cut through the fence, someone might spot the opening, and it’s likely that whatever other gate we find will also be guarded. This is our best shot, especially with only one guard awake. If we knock them out whenever they wake up they will just think they dozed off.”
“Okay, but are you sure the tents you are looking for are in there?” Sierra asked.
Adan eyed the massive piles of debris beyond the fence. It certainly didn’t look like there were any tents in there, but they might be hidden on the other side of all the scrap. Several of the heaps towered well above the fence.
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find it after we get past all those piles. We at least have to look.”
Sierra gave her mental assent and Adan motioned for Tarn to follow.
“I’ll hit the one who is still awake,” he told her. “You hit the other to make sure he doesn’t come to.”
Adan and Sierra pulled out their oscillathes and crept forward. They advanced down the street, edging closer to the guards. Sheets of sand cascaded around them and swirling winds masked the sound of their approach. Adan’s hands coated the grip of his pistol in sweat.
You’re only going to stun them, he told himself, but his mind still recoiled at the thought of actually firing one of these weapons. He had seen so many people die from one of their evanescence blasts.
They pulled up behind an empty stall in front of one of the buildings. Mentally syncing their shots, Adan and Sierra ducked out from behind their cover and fired at the same time. Two invisible, crackling blasts blanketed the two figures beside the gate, sending both to the ground.
The team rushed the gate. Adan knelt beside the man he had downed and rifled through his garrick. Within a few moments he found a short stick of metal with several prongs on one end. He hoped it was the key to the dingy-looking lock securing the gate, but when he inserted it into the keyhole it wouldn’t budge. After several anxious moments, and worried that someone might come by, he asked Tarn to give it a try. Though smaller in stature than Adan, he applied considerably more force in his attempts and, after a couple of failures, the lock snapped open and the door swung free.
The three of them darted through the gate, Tarn clicked the lock in place behind them. The mountainous heaps formed a maze of discarded oddities around them, but a single clear path meandered through the mess ahead. The wind rattled through the mounds of junk, threatening to topple them over, but they held together despite the constant battering. Like the rest of the cast off material which littered the Vast, Adan recognized none of what he saw. The only thing he could tell for sure was that a tremendous amount of work must have gone into collecting and hauling so much scrap into one place.
After passing a dozen piles of debris, they arrived within sight of a clearing at the base of a hill. According to his bioseine, this was where Senya’s tent should have been, but, as with the other tents, not only was it gone, there wasn’t even room for anything like it. The whole space had been converted into one giant scrapyard.
Morning light threatened to peek over the city walls soon and they were no closer to finding Senya than before. Once people began stirring it would be much harder to move about the city. Adan was about to suggest they head off to search the streets before the populace awoke when Tarn nudged him, pointing to a shack on the edge of a cleared out area up ahead.
The structure’s walls braved the wind at different angles, none of which were plumb. A weak light flickered between the cracks around its flimsy metal door. Though the shack had no windows, Adan and the others ducked around a pile of scrap on the outside of the clearing on the chance that someone might come out the door.
A terrible scream split the night. It came from inside the shack.
Adan peeked through a gap between two pieces of scrap to see what was going on. The door burst open, nearly flying off its hinges. A figure came hurtling through the opening. The crumpled stranger landed in the dusty clearing like a pile of trash that had just been tossed out. It was a man dressed in tattered robes. His unfurled kaff lay beside him. He did not stir or even moan in pain. Another figure stormed out of the shack, but this one came on his own power, kicking up clouds of dust wherever his feet stomped the ground.
The second figure’s appearance startled the fallen man into action. He scurried to his feet, looking like he meant to defend himself, but his wiry frame and lack of height meant he was no match for the thick-bodied brute advancing on him. The second man wore a newly-stitched garrick and kaff. Two men dressed in similar fashion strode from the shack behind him, their pitiless eyes intent on the hunched figure in the middle of the clearing.
“No, please,” the frail man pleaded. “I was half-asleep. I didn’t recognize you Sunder Rak! I’ll go rouse the others. We’ll start back to work at once—”
Whatever else the poor, cringing figure meant to say was cut short by a backhand to his face from Rak. The blow spun him halfway around, and he landed heavily on his knees. Blood glistened in the weak half-light in splotches on the ground. The fallen man breathed in great, stuttering gasps, his eyes darting between his attacker and the men to either side of him as if wondering from where the next blow would come.
“The storm take you for all I care, Barlo!” Rak bellowed. “I give you an extra wink of sleep and this is how you repay me?”
The sunder grabbed a wad of Barlo’s tattered collar and yanked his head upright.
“B-but the storm is still…” Barlo gestured feebly at the swirling dust around them.
“I don’t care if all the sand in the Vast dropped on your head. Orders are orders.” Rak slapped him again. “But you won’t have to worry about disobeying me again. I’m promoting Othan to foreman. You work for him now.” He dropped Barlo unceremoniously into a heap.
“But—what about…?” Barlo begged, pawing at the hem of the man’s coat.
Rak kicked at Barlo’s groping hands. “Clean up this mess, shivs,” he commanded, gesturing to the other two Waymen. “This swedge isn’t worth the time and effort it would take to gut him. I’ve got shipments coming in at dawn. I’ll see you back at the docks.”
The words only set off another, more desperate round of entreaties from Barlo. He begged Rak for his life, promising to work himself ragged, but the burly Wayman paid him no heed. The other two figures moved swiftly to descend upon him.
Adan could read in their eyes even from this distance what they meant to do. Though he had watched the scene in shock and outrage up to that point, he now realized that he had to act. All thoughts of the mission fled his mind as did any sense of what the consequences might be. He dashed out from behind the pile of scrap and charged headlong into the clearing.
“Wait, what are you doing?” came Sierra’s incredulous question as he charged out from his companions and the safety of their hiding place.
“I’ve got to save him,” Adan replied.
He sensed Sierra’s confusion, but he didn’t give her any further details because, at that moment, he wasn’t even sure he knew what he was doing himself.
One of the Waymen bore down on Barlo, lashing out gleefully at the trembling figure. Barlo raised a wiry arm to ward off the attack, but at that moment Adan barreled into his assailants, knocking both of them off their feet.
A cry of confusion turned into one of rage and then somehow Adan was on his back, staring up at the furious Rak. “Who in the Vast are you?” he shouted.
Landing on his back shook Adan to his senses. H
e was in over his head.
Rak reached down to grab him, but Adan shoved the man as hard as he could and scrambled backwards, putting some distance between himself and the vengeful sunder. One of the Waymen Adan had knocked down leapt up and punched him in the small of his back. Adan doubled over in pain, clutching his sides. He tensed up, bracing for another blow, but instead several crackling blasts went off nearby.
All three Waymen dropped to the ground, instantly unconscious. Tarn and Sierra rushed towards him, Sierra’s silvery oscillathe in her hand.
“Adan, why did you let these men see you? If we leave them here, they’ll come looking for you the moment they wake up,” Sierra reprimanded him as she rushed to his side. Frustration, mixed with fear, fought for control of her face.
“I’m sorry,” Adan replied. “I thought they were going to kill him.”
“We saw it too, but what about the refugees? How are we going to find them now?”
“Please don’t hurt me,” came Barlo’s shaking voice as he wobbled to his feet, wincing in obvious pain. “I don’t know who you are, but if the Reeve sent you—”
“We’re not from the Reeve,” Sierra said, holstering her oscillathe.
“Wait—you’re a…you’re a woman?” Barlo gasped.
“We’re here to help,” Adan said, gritting his own pain to regain his feet.
“But—but…What thral are you from? You’re not from Hull.” A panicked look gripped Barlo’s face. He looked more terrified of his rescuers than he had been of Rak.
Tarn stepped up and gave Barlo a curt nod. “We’re not from here and neither are you. You’re Welkin, aren’t you?”
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 76