Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  Still, Piper’s feet shuffled beneath her, trying to glimpse what she’d seen a block ahead before her quarry got too far away.

  “Slow down, Piper,” Trevor hissed.

  “Why would he be here?”

  “They don’t know why he’s here,” Trevor told her.

  “Who doesn’t know?”

  “The Astrals.”

  Terrence, from behind Piper: “What are you talking about, Trevor?”

  “I just heard that word came down. They knew someone was outside, but not who or why.”

  “Well, he’s not outside now.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Trevor sounded baffled. “Dad said they seemed panicked. Like everyone had to rush to the gate and keep whoever was outside from coming in no matter what.”

  Piper kept hustling, something pushing her toward Cameron. She desperately needed to reach him, and soon. She hadn’t seen him since Moab, and even though her memories of Cameron were tinged with guilt, he’d been in her life when she’d been more innocent, less quietly complicit in something so terrible. Back then, Piper had been hiding from the Astrals and hoping to fight them. Today, they circulated in her house like guests while her family dined on fine china. Today, her husband was in charge of sending Reptars into the streets to hunt people who refused to do as they were told.

  “They let him in?” said Terrence, now almost running behind Piper.

  Trevor said, “Maybe someone else was outside.”

  “And Cameron just happens to be here, in the city? Right in front of us?”

  It felt like fate. Piper reached the corner and, with barely a glance for alien pursuit, turned to follow the departing man’s back. She had to reach him. She was meant to reach him. She’d been all over the city today; she’d hidden with insurgents; she’d seen those same short-time friends vaporized in front of her eyes. They’d barely dodged peacekeeper patrols from the church, then more peacekeepers after they’d turned toward the gate. Those near-misses had steered her group toward this inevitable reunion.

  That’s what fate felt like: inevitability.

  “Piper!” said Trevor. “Stay low!”

  She barely heard him. Instead, Piper pattered behind her old lover in a dead monk’s sneakers in the deserted street, finally raising her voice to yell after him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  When Meyer heard Piper shout Cameron’s name, he accelerated despite his empty lungs. The Titans had held him back for too long; he was lucky to have not lost his quarry. He almost had. Piper’s shout was a fortunate beacon. A good thing, considering that Christopher wouldn’t be here for minutes, and Meyer was on his own.

  He rounded one corner, then another, just in time to see Bannister turn, and for Piper to crash into his unabashed embrace.

  Meyer ran harder toward them, but was almost clotheslined by a new pair of Titans who stepped out from the shadows to stop him.

  He was still two blocks back. His target was ahead, mockingly visible as he clung to Meyer’s wife. They broke after too long, then Cameron embraced two others in turn: Terrence, whom Meyer knew had a history with Cameron … and, wrenchingly, Trevor. They were in the middle of the street, hugging, slapping backs and seemingly smiling (though that was hard to tell from a distance) as if they were merely reacquainting in a mall.

  Didn’t Cameron know he wasn’t supposed to be here? Didn’t he know the Astrals hated him? Couldn’t he feel the atmosphere’s creeping pall of negativity? Didn’t he know that the Titans, if they could stop holding back well-intentioned viceroys, were dying to wrap their giant powder-white hands around Cameron’s neck and squeeze until something snapped?

  But nobody was stopping this inappropriately joyful reunion. The four celebrants were in the middle of the goddamned street, hugging and shaking goddamned hands, smiling and practically goddamn laughing because this was all a big goddamned joke on Meyer Dempsey and the city under his command.

  And the Astral guards holding him back were letting it happen.

  “Let me through,” Meyer said.

  The Titans smiled like courtly bouncers.

  “Let me through! Don’t you see what’s happening down there? Right in the middle of the fucking street? Don’t you know who that is? Don’t you know who I am?”

  The Titans fixed Meyer with their infuriatingly accommodating expressions, as if waiting for him to tire himself out and stop his tantrum.

  “That’s Cameron Bannister! Benjamin Bannister’s kid! The people in the desert who keep working with the rebels to attack the city! You knew he was out there! You sent guards to stop him! He might be carrying a bomb! Are you really going to let him pow-wow with his man up there? Aren’t you going to send the peacekeepers? Aren’t you going to go after him? He’s an insurgent! He fucked my wife!”

  The Titan on Meyer’s left gestured at the street. They were still mostly hidden in the alleyway’s shadowy mouth, but he could plainly see the stone between their position and the others. At first, Meyer didn’t know what the alien was pointing at, then he saw a small stir of leaves — one of those whorls that get caught in the eddies wafting between city buildings.

  Except the swirling wasn’t leaves. Even from several buildings away, Meyer could see the objects in the vortex. They were tiny balls of metal, like the object the other Titans had shown him earlier.

  “I’m warning you,” Meyer blurted, wondering at his own mounting, spiraling anger. “If you don’t let me through, you’ll be very fucking sorry!”

  The Titan nodded pleasantly as if Meyer had wished him a good day.

  He couldn’t break through their muscular arms.

  So Meyer started screaming.

  Chapter Forty

  Cameron looked up at the sounds of shouting.

  He still had Terrence’s hand clasped in his, and the stubborn smile wouldn’t leave his lips even though his animal brain had already keyed his system to alarm. Piper’s expression was subtly different. Her joy shared other emotions. It was hard to believe it had been two years since he’d seen her. If his comrade and Meyer’s boy weren’t here, he’d probably still be holding her, refusing to let go.

  Their heads turned. Shouting was coming from a few blocks back, rolling down the middle of the wide-open street like floodwater.

  Cameron felt stupid, exposed, terrified. For himself, sure — but mostly for the others. Terrence was tough; he’d traveled with Vincent and knew peril like an old friend. But the boy was seventeen, if he remembered right, and had always struck Cameron as sweet and a little naive. Piper was almost as strong as Terrence, but she looked beaten by the intervening years, and Cameron couldn’t help wanting to leap between Piper and danger, to take its brunt and spare her.

  All at once, Cameron realized he’d been lulled into a spell. He’d emerged from behind that burned car on high alert, passing through the open, unguarded gates with the greatest of trepidation, his every nerve on fire. But time had passed, and it was hard to maintain vigilance for more than a handful of minutes. As one innocent block surrendered to another, he’d begun to subconsciously feel that maybe it was all a mistake. Heaven’s Veil had become a peaceful colony, open to all. Benjamin’s preparations and Ivan’s estimations had proved themselves paranoid. There were no guards. The gates stood wide for all who cared to enter, or leave in peace.

  But now they were surrounded by stirs of activity. Cameron could hear rustling down a dozen dead ends. Shouts stabbed the silence. Back the way he’d come, there was a tremendous banging and a crash, muffled by the distance he’d paced off like a man nearing execution.

  Heaven’s Veil’s sleeping defenses were waking.

  Starting with whoever was shouting.

  “I know who you are!” the shouter bellowed. “Motherfucker, I know who you are!”

  A deep voice. One Cameron almost recognized. Piper was staring, her huge eyes wide, her dark bangs far too sweet for mortal peril.

  She knew.

  Or rather, she saw.

&nbs
p; Cameron couldn’t tell who the man in the suit was, screaming profanities from two blocks away. But he could clearly see the white shapes of two enormous Titans holding him back.

  The second assault approached from the rear. Cameron turned in time to see that, too.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Raj wondered for two seconds — the precise interval between the onset of Meyer’s shouting and the loud noise from the city’s entrance — how he could summon assistance.

  Then he realized something that was both terrible and liberating: he was here alone, and the only one able to do a thing.

  The viceroy needed help, and the target of his displeasure was no more than twenty feet from Raj. But Meyer didn’t carry a gun.

  The Titans Raj saw holding Meyer; for whatever reason, weren’t willing to intervene.

  Raj had been able to issue a command to the Reptar patrols, but he wouldn’t be able to do so again. For one, technically speaking, that wasn’t his domain. And secondly, Raj had no idea if any were in the area.

  Christopher — who, Raj was beginning to feel certain, was some sort of a traitor — hadn’t arrived, if he ever would.

  Even if Raj had a line to the police like Christopher, the area had no obvious human patrols.

  It would have to be Raj. A blessing, considering how easy it would be.

  He’d been watching them for twenty minutes. Trevor had a pistol on his belt, but Raj had never seen the kid try to fire it. Terrence had some sort of a giant rifle, but it was on his back, and there was no way he could draw it in time. Piper didn’t have a gun unless it was in her panties. And Cameron? He had that big backpack. He could draw his weapon, but Raj didn’t think he’d do so smoothly.

  Raj unholstered his own weapon — a plain old lead slinger, same as all human peacekeepers wore. He felt its heft in his fist, fingering the trigger. He flicked off the safety and racked the slide, knowing there was little point in quiet with Meyer shouting his lungs out down the street.

  Given the awkward position of Terrence’s rifle, Raj only needed to worry about Cameron and Trevor. And if he shot one right away, it would be easier to disarm the other with confusion.

  He raised his weapon and stepped forward, heart thumping, ready to prove his worth to the Viceroy.

  Raj wasn’t a great shot, but he was good enough for this.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Too much happened too fast.

  Commotion at the gate hadn’t stopped. There had been that large booming noise, followed by more — a kind of crashing, shambling, chaotic hustle.

  Meyer was still shouting, his efforts in struggling against the two albino hulks finally bearing fruit. He was past one, now held only by the other. Piper could see his red face, thinking it strange. She’d seen him angry before, but Meyer swelled with silent fury. She’d seldom seen him lose his cool, be it to scream or panic or cry. But she saw it now. Everything he’d held inside bubbled to the surface, turning him into another man, foreign and frightening.

  Then a crack from the rear. At first, Piper thought it was a snapping stick — one of their party knocking something over in the confusion. Then she saw the uniformed figure marching forward, her mind having trouble slotting it into any parody of meaning: Raj, here, pistol in hand, his once-soft, now-often-petulant brown eyes focused, his bearing upright. Her mind caught the tiniest detail — a drift of white smoke escaping the pistol’s barrel. It was almost not there. But Raj had fired, all right.

  Cameron slumped into her. Something in Piper sprang to alarm. She grabbed him under the armpits, his front pressing into hers, his superior weight making her wobble, her inappropriate dress tugging its straps into her shoulders. There was a bloom of red on him — not in his center, thankfully, but in his shoulder, near his collarbone.

  Even in the next partial second as Raj came closer, Piper knew what had happened. She’d fired more guns since Astral Day than she’d liked and knew you had to grip with both hands and stand prepared. Raj, inexperienced and recently insecure, had fired one-handed like a cinema cowboy, surely flinching with the blast. If he’d been farther than ten feet away, he’d have missed entirely.

  Another half beat. Another sixtieth of a minute. Another one thousand milliseconds of eternity.

  Piper’s life didn’t flash before her eyes, but she had time in that second to see every nuance.

  Raj had shot Cameron without hesitation, almost literally in the back. He was already moving his sights from Cameron’s now-neutralized form to his right, toward Terrence. It was all happening in slow motion. She would need to take Cameron’s weapon. She would need to do what had to be done all over again because —

  Another flash of minuscule time. Meyer broke free, his feet pounding pavement at tenth gear, his tie flapping, his face red, his mouth open. Titans behind him began to move. One had a finger to his temple. Calling help.

  Raj coming. His gun hand swinging like a machine’s armature.

  His swing was too wide; there was movement as Piper started the impossibly slow job of finding Cameron’s weapon on his sagging form as it dragged her knees to the stone street.

  A blur of fabric. A new arm.

  Trevor dove between Piper and Raj, tackling him around the waist. A shout came from somewhere — possibly from Trevor’s lungs. A cry of fury. Almost desperation. Something from nowhere. And in the face of it, Raj didn’t stand a chance.

  But as Raj’s body smacked the ground, a new sound filled the air around them.

  Piper thought of the Titan with his finger to his temple. Calling the Reptars that must have been in the shadows all along. They sounded a block away, no more. Rattling purrs pricked her skin, Cameron’s nearly dead weight heavy in her sagging lap.

  Terrence had pulled the strange rifle from his back. Unsure where to aim it, he pointed at Meyer. Who skidded to a stop with raised hands.

  Trevor punched Raj in the face, twice. Piper whispered his name, and he looked up, his face momentarily crazed. His knuckles were red — with his own blood or the gusher now streaming from Raj’s nose and lip, she wasn’t sure.

  Time sped back to normal. Piper felt seconds ticking, seeing herself in the center of a frightening diorama.

  Meyer, still forty or so feet away, his hands raised in the face of Terrence’s drawn weapon.

  Trevor, kneeling half-on, half-off Raj’s chest, his right fist red and raised, Raj’s gun lying harmlessly on the stone three feet away.

  Cameron in her own lap as her hand paused on his gun, momentarily afraid to draw it.

  Titans leisurely approaching.

  And, around them in a ring, the shifting blue-and-black forms of at least twenty Reptars.

  Piper finally drew Cameron’s weapon. Remembering, she flicked off the safety. Cameron was still against her, but his weight was shifting away, allowing Piper to sight from her knees — though specifically on what, she couldn’t have said. She looked down at him. He seemed to be regaining awareness. The bullet had taken him in the shoulder, but blood was everywhere, as if spit through an artery.

  Wincing at his wounded shoulder, Cameron slipped off his backpack. It had come partially open, its zipper sagging in a plastic-toothed mouth. He came to his knees.

  “Terrence,” he whispered. “Help me up.”

  Trevor reached for Raj’s gun, slipped it into the back of his pants near his own weapon, and extended a hand to Cameron.

  “Terrence,” Cameron repeated.

  Trevor looked momentarily wounded by Cameron’s rebuke but straightened anyway. In his place, Terrence shifted the big rifle to one shoulder and used his free hand to grasp Cameron’s, palm on palm. He yanked Cameron upright … but as he did, Piper saw Cameron slide something into Terrence’s pocket.

  “Now hit me,” Cameron whispered.

  Terrence blinked, understanding seeming to settle in his eyes. Piper thought he’d hesitate, but he released Cameron’s hand, pivoted the big rifle to hold it longwise with two hands, and drove the heavy stock hard into the sid
e of Cameron’s head.

  “What the hell, Terrence?” Trevor blurted as Cameron went down.

  Piper swallowed, wondering what came next, then saw the new man arrive beside Meyer — the man Cameron and Terrence had apparently already seen: Christopher.

  He whispered into Meyer’s ear. The viceroy visibly calmed then tucked his tie back into his coat. Piper watched as Meyer whispered something indecipherable to one of the Titans.

  Beside Meyer, Christopher gave Terrence a tiny, barely there nod.

  Terrence walked toward Meyer then stood beside Christopher.

  Meyer pointed to Terrence and announced to one of the Titans, “This one is with us.”

  The Titans looked at Meyer, a less pleasant, more confused than normal look washing across their smooth faces.

  “On the viceroy’s order, you’ll take my son into captivity,” he added, wearing a look of disappointed, angry regret as his eyes met Trevor’s.

  Meyer looked around at the circle of Reptars, prowling like sharks. In turn, he locked eyes with Cameron, Piper, and Raj. He looked once more at the Reptars and finally back to the Titan.

  “The other three,” he said, glaring at Piper — a hurt, tortured strain of knowing in his eyes, “you may handle however you’d like.”

  The Titans moved to respond, but the alley’s mouth exploded in a hail of stone before they could, unleashing a new breed of hell.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Trevor stared at Terrence’s back, concentrating on whether he’d been inexplicably betrayed, when something massive crashed through a wall two blocks down. Or crashed through the alleyway … but because the alley wasn’t wide enough, there was no reason to let two little things like brick walls stop it.

  The crash was like a bomb exploding — which, Trevor thought once the intruder passed the dust cloud, might’ve actually happened. The thing was all thick steel plating, down to the wheels. There were wheels, but the vehicle was otherwise a twisted class of tank. It had four turrets around its revolving cap, and despite the ample dust and confusion, Trevor’s first random thought was to wonder what the things fired — or had fired, if explosives cleared the alley’s mouth. But his thoughts were lost as the street descended into chaos.