Aegis Desolation: Action-Adventure Apocalyptic Mystery Thriller (Aegis League Series Book 4)

by S. S. Segran

  “Has this happened before?”

  “Twice, many years ago. But it is incredibly rare! You must believe me, Dominique!”

  The Sentry finagled Ajajdif out of his chair and laid him on his back. She cushioned his head with her thighs so it wouldn’t hit the floor as his body jerked and contorted. He fought for breath, gargling on whatever air he managed to inhale. Dominique could only watch helplessly.

  Don’t die. Don’t die. Please don’t die.

  After what felt like hours, the spasms began to abate. With a last shudder, Ajajdif expelled a deep sigh, remaining unconscious. Dominique looked up at Butumbi, relieved.

  Then Ajajdif went completely limp in her hold. She stiffened, hands out at her sides, afraid to touch him. “Butumbi, what is this?”

  The shaman frowned. “I’m not sure.” He prodded the man with his walking stick, then stopped. “Dominique, check for his pulse. Quickly.”

  The Sentry wriggled free and placed two fingers on Ajajdif’s throat. When she felt nothing, she checked his wrist. Still nothing. She hastily moved to his side. “No. No, no, no.”

  She rested her hands on his chest and started compressions. “You are a despicable man,” she muttered, “but you are not allowed to die yet. We’re not finished here.”

  Steeling herself, she supplied Ajajdif with a few rescue breaths and returned to counting compressions. Butumbi orbited around them, his concern palpable. Dominique continued her attempts to resuscitate Ajajdif until her arms started to ache. A glance at her phone on the ground indicated that she’d been at it for nearly six minutes.

  “I’m not giving up on you,” she told him ferociously. “But if you give up, I will follow you in the afterlife and haunt you for all eternity.”

  Two and a half minutes later, Ajajdif’s eyes peeled open. He coughed and sputtered weakly. “What . . . did you . . . do . . . to . . . me?”

  Dominique sat back on her heels, head hanging low. “Butumbi,” she said, “please tell Jean Paul to get the doctor from the next village here. I had to crack a few of his ribs during the compressions and I want to make sure none of them injured his organs.”

  The shaman left without a word. Dominique lifted her gaze so she could observe Ajajdif. He stared up at the ceiling, blinking slowly, saying nothing. They waited for nearly half an hour until Jean Paul and the other guards stepped inside with a short woman—the doctor Dominique had called for. They moved Ajajdif onto a stretcher and into an old Jeep, then rode with him out of sight, heading to the village a few miles away with a semi-decent hospital.

  Butumbi came to stand beside Dominique as they watched the vehicle grow smaller in the distance, leaving puffs of dust and exhaust in its wake. “What will you do when they bring him back?” he asked.

  “I need answers,” she said. “But I know that using the smoke a third time greatly increases the risk of death. And after what just happened . . .”

  “If those answers are as important as you believe they are, then perhaps it needs to be done.”

  Dominique resisted the urge to tug at her braids. This is beyond infuriating. We don’t have time to spare, but to do it again is too risky. It isn’t an option. She hesitated. Or is it? He’s the enemy. In the end, whether or not I get what is needed, if the third attempt goes south then that is one less person to deal with from Reyor’s trusted group.

  She chased the thought away. No. Absolutely not. Unless it comes down to my life or his, I cannot and will not try this again.

  Unlocking her phone, she reread the information Ajajdif had given about the Sanctuaries. Better get these out to the League. The sooner we can comb through these sites, the sooner we may find Jag.

  “Well?” Butumbi prompted. “What do you plan to do upon your captive’s return?”

  Dominique slid the device into her pocket. “I will confine him to the hut again, but I think this is the end of your work. I don’t believe it’s a good idea to continue, and I already have some leads to work on. Thank you, though, for coming back all this way.”

  The shaman didn’t smile, but his tone was calming when he spoke. “That is wise of you, Dominique. And after your help with the raiders a decade ago, you know you can always call on me should you require my assistance.”

  They clasped hands and Butumbi wandered westward, opposite of the direction the Jeep had gone. As Dominique stared after him, she murmured, “Let’s hope this path will provide all we need, and that I’m not wrong for refusing to use the Smoke of Truth again.”

  “Over a billion people dead now. Billion! In the span on four months. I can’t believe this.”

  “Marshall, don’t. You all rushed the cure to the CDC as fast as you could. It’s unfortunate that they took longer to test and trust the cure than you and the others thought they would.”

  Marshall Sawyer dug furiously into his lunch, glaring from behind his sunglasses. “It wasn’t good enough.”

  The woman across from him smiled kindly, cherry-red lipstick matching her dyed hair. “Then, please, tell me what else you could have done to speed things up.”

  He didn’t reply. She was right, of course, but that did not stop the guilt.

  Around them, the hawker center teemed with people. He had to hand it to the Malaysians; it didn’t matter what was going on in the world, they were determined to plow on with life, most notoriously when it came to their food. Despite many vendors closing shop due to lack of produce or their untimely demise—leading to ludicrously expensive meals—the complex was active, as though the locals were living in defiance of everything Reyor was doing.

  As Marshall watched them go about, cooking and ordering food and chatting with others, his eyes landed on a dark-haired teenager standing head and shoulders above the locals with his back facing the Sentry. Marshall surged to his feet, ready to sprint over. Then the youth turned, and he crumbled into his chair, ignoring the questioning look of the woman with him.

  Not Jag.

  It felt like he’d been seeing the seventeen-year-old everywhere he went. He hated that he wasn’t part of the rescue operation, but he would not argue with the Elders on their decision—or rather, argue further. Despite having been the first to volunteer organizing search teams, Nageau had told him he would be needed elsewhere once the cure was delivered to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  That somewhere ended up being Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world. The havoc caused by the virus had left the government in complete shambles. Its struggle to stay in power over an archipelago nation of more than seventeen thousand islands was quickly losing life. Without sufficient means to effectively deliver the cure from the air, it fell to the United Nations to fill in the gaps. But even their resources had been depleted over the past month. That was where the woman across from Marshall came in.

  Dr. Nadia Dekker, a Sentry specializing in virology and a former pilot in the Indonesian Air Force, had been working with the World Health Organization to distribute the cure around her home country, sometimes by hand for the far-flung locales. The agency had fallen into ill-repute a few years prior but reformed with better hands at the helm; it was the only reason she had agreed to work with them. Her first colleague had been killed when several women from an infected village attacked; she’d barely made it out herself. With every other Sentry in Southeast Asia grappling with the fallout of the virus, she reached out to the Elders for aid. After assuring them that the WHO could be convinced to bring aboard someone from the outside, they decided Marshall was the best fit.

  Marshall knew that was not the only reason he’d been sent halfway across the globe. The Elders had grown concerned about his attachment to the Chosen Ones, and he couldn’t quite refute them. He had, after all, run out into enemy gunfire in blind recklessness, nearly getting himself killed to get to the friends.

  Now Victor had replaced him as their guardian Sentry. Marshall clenched and unclenched his hand, turning the notion over in his head. Though the Elders had advised keeping co
ntact to a minimum, the friends would sometimes update him telepathically about their progress. They weren’t synergizing with Victor, which wasn’t surprising. Even before his downward spiral, he hadn’t been known to be easy to bond with. But Marshall could admit that being less emotional and attached to the Chosen Ones probably did make him a better fit for the task.

  Something hard suddenly hit his ankle and he jumped. “Ow!” He pulled his leg under the safety of his plastic chair. “What was that for?”

  “You’re spacing out again,” Nadia chided. “And you look like an angry dumpling.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I know how easy it is for the mind to go places when we’re not moving. The plane should be ready in about an hour, so I’ll fly us back to Jakarta and you can continue pouting thousands of feet in the air instead of on land.”

  Marshall shoved a spoonful of mee goreng into his mouth, reveling in the taste. “I am not pouting.”

  Her lips curved into another smile, a playful one. “Whatever you say.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Nadia fiddled with a napkin, then leaned forward. “So. What was it like?”

  Marshall looked up from behind his sunglasses, busy chewing. “Hm?”

  “Dema-Ki. You got to meet all the Elders, see the village and our brothers and sisters from the valley. We’ve been running around a lot so I didn’t ask earlier, but we have a bit of time now, so . . .”

  Marshall sat back, replaying his visit to the village. Just thinking about it flooded him with unanticipated elation. “It was surreal. I kept saying it while I was there, but it really felt like I was returning to a home I never knew I had. You’d think there’d be some disconnect—Sentries live in this world and integrate with it while Dema-Ki is secluded. But everyone was so excited and open. No walls, just warmth. It’s kind of what we have with the League, only more concentrated.”

  Nadia nestled her cheek in a hand. Her watch caught the glint of the sun, brightening her face. “How do you mean?”

  “The League is spread out all over the world. Not everyone has met, but the moment we do it’s with the same level of connection as if we’d known each other all our lives. Personalities differ but it doesn’t matter. There’s a level of trust that’s readily there, where in other situations it would have to be earned. In Dema-Ki, it’s the same thing, except there’s more people you see all at once. And there’s an indescribable aura in the environment and the community that invigorates you. I wish every Sentry could get the chance to visit, Nadia. Words don’t do it justice.”

  Longing shone in Nadia’s eyes. “Hopefully we can, when this is all over and we’re still alive.” She tutted at him after a pause. “You’re making that face again.”

  Marshall was embarrassed. “I don’t even realize it anymore.”

  “I understand. I wouldn’t want to be doing this job either. It’s not pretty.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m happy to be here, really. I want to help. It’s just . . . it stings. There’s this ache, and all I can think about is being with the kids.”

  “You’ve become very fond of them.”

  “I have. And I feel awful about what happened to Jag.” Marshall stared down at his food. “And about what happened to Danny. And Gwen, and everyone else who might have been caught in the crossfire. Danny wasn’t a Sentry but he took Jag into his safe house when I asked. He didn’t even hesitate.”

  “He was the military friend you mentioned before, yes? From Israel?”

  “Yeah, and one of the genuinely best people I’d ever met. We knew each other since we were kids. Now he’s just . . . gone. One day you look someone in the eye and less than a week later, they’re dead. I don’t even know what happened to his body, if it’s still in the middle of the Negev Desert, if Phoenix took it, if they respected his remains or desecrated it.” Marshall inhaled slowly through his nose, long and trembling. “I got him into this. I got him killed. I—”

  Nadia slid her hand over his, and he fell silent. A sharp tingle in his face warned of the incoming deluge of emotions. He pressed the fingers of his other hand under the lenses of his shades. Nadia rubbed her thumb in small, slow circles against his skin. Amidst the surrounding chatter, she murmured, “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  Marshall didn’t like grieving in public, much less in front of someone he hadn’t known long, but for some reason he was powerless to stop the dampness trailing down his face.

  “If it weren’t for the lathe’ad,” he whispered, “I’d take Reyor on with my bare hands. All the pain and devastation caused by one person. All the lives stolen, the loved ones lost . . .”

  Nadia’s grip tightened. “I think many of us would do the same. But that job belongs to the Chosen Ones, and only them. All we can do is provide some cover and help clear the enemies in their path.”

  A minute passed until Marshall pulled his hand back and dried his cheeks. Nadia glanced at her watch, then rose to her feet and retied the knot of her baggy t-shirt at her waist. “I think we should start moving. It will take half an hour to get to the airfield.”

  Marshall forced down the remainder of his meal and together they headed out into the hot, sunny afternoon. His cotton shirt fluttered in the humid breeze. He wrinkled his nose. Though he enjoyed the warmer weather, even this was a bit much.

  It’s almost as bad as Sudan, he thought. An image of Kody and Tegan bemoaning the heat as they travelled up the Nile River popped into his head, and a bittersweet chuckle escaped him. He had no clue what it was about those kids, but somewhere along the way they had completely won him over. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he would go to the ends of the earth to keep them safe.

  Nadia jabbed her fingers into his ribs. “Stop spacing out, or I’m going to start calling you bad things that would make my grandmother smack me with her slipper.”

  Marshall tried to jab her back but she twirled out of reach. “Nice try,” she sang before flouncing ahead.

  He marveled at her as he caught up. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “We only met three weeks ago so we’re still getting to know each other, but how are you this . . . I mean, how can you be so—”

  “Easygoing when the world is falling on our heads?” she finished.

  “. . . Yeah.”

  “I decided a long time ago that I don’t like stress and negativity, and I wouldn’t let life pull me down. It’s the only way I can keep going, especially now.”

  Marshall tried to choose his words tactfully. “Does that mean you isolate feelings? Or that you don’t . . . I’m not sure how to ask what I want to ask.”

  “Let me help,” she said, without a trace of hostility. “It makes me so angry, what Phoenix has done to the world. It hurts when I see bodies of families being taken out of their homes by the government. It hurts when I see a young girl who looks fifty years older than her mother. And when I heard about the roundups and killings that happened when the infected became too violent, I locked myself in my room and cried until I threw up.”

  Marshall listened quietly, wondering if he should have even broached the subject. But Nadia continued to speak candidly as they got into their car parked near the hawker center. “Some people fight through negativity with teeth and claws and determination. I can’t do that. But if I let the negativity get to me, I become completely useless. So I smile and I try to do good. And no, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything. It means I’ve learned how to cope with pain and grief on my own terms.”

  “That’s admirable,” Marshall said as they pulled onto the road. “I just try to push everything aside and let it ambush me later.”

  “I’ve heard that before. I think many people do it. Early last year, a Sentry from Canada came here on a case. It was a late night, we were exhausted, there were no filters, and he poured his heart out. Poor man had a lot of troubles.”

  Marshall squinted. Only one Sentry from that part of the world had been in Southeast Asia in that timeframe th
at he knew of. “Was his name Victor, by any chance?”

  Nadia couldn’t hide her surprise, but she still hesitated to answer.

  Marshall huffed out an incredulous laugh. “I’m sorry, did you say he poured his heart out to you? How long have you known each other, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “That was the first time we met. We wrapped up the case within a few days. As I said, late nights, tired, no filter.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t talk to anyone about his problems. The only time I ever got close to wrangling anything out of him was when he used to go on benders.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to vent to someone you’ll never see again. Or at least, not anytime soon.”

  “That’s true.” Marshall looked out the window, tracking motorcyclists as they haphazardly weaved their way through the noisy traffic without a care for their surroundings. Above, a drone zoomed by, violet mist descending upon the populace in its wake.

  “You know each other well?” Nadia asked.

  “Something like that. He was more tolerable before he went off the reservation.”

  “Mmhm. He mentioned that, too, about how hard it was to assimilate with the League when he returned.”

  Marshall bristled. “He said that?”

  “That’s not what happened?”

  “Other Sentries and I reached out when he came back. We tried to be there for him.”

  “He did talk about that. But I think he meant that it was his fault, not anyone else’s. Apparently he has a habit of dealing with problems by throwing other people out and putting himself in a corner.”

  “That’s not news.” Marshall removed his sunglasses and rubbed his face. “Agh, jeez. I’m sorry, I usually never complain about my problems with new friends.”

  Nadia tugged on her earlobe. “See? Friendly ear you’ve just met.”

  Marshall leaned against the passenger door and studied her, watching the way the light sloped across her features as he tried to puzzle her out. “How many people have done this with you?”