Slowly, the net tightened, constricting her movements. It became tighter and tighter, as she struggled to move, and, eventually, breathe. What once appeared as a safety net became a prison.
Beyond the gossamer glow, the faces of her friends were replaced by the faces of Sasha and her cohorts. The yellow net turned red and squeezed tighter. When her diaphragm constricted, Keryn could no longer find the air to breathe.
Darkness crept into her vision, as spots of light danced before her eyes.
Keryn awoke with a start, her body bathed in sweat. Sitting upright in bed, she found herself within the comforting darkness of her barracks room. From the far side of the room, she heard the comforting Iana’s deep breathing.
Climbing from bed, Keryn stumbled to the bathroom, her body aching from phantom exertion. She closed the door and turned on the light. The reflection that stared back was clearly hers. The doppelganger Voice was gone, replaced by the authentic Keryn. Her disheveled hair was matted to the side of her head with sweat. Remembering her dream, she absently rubbed her burned hand and looked at it. Callused but unmarred skin met her gaze.
Wiping sweat from her brow, she struggled to remember the details of her nightmare. Her body was drenched as if she just ran through the Academy’s burning halls. Since she was awake, the nightmare was already fading, slipping through the recesses of her mind like sand through an hourglass.
Angrily, she turned off the light and walked blindly back to bed. By the time she lay down and pulled the blanket over her stomach, most of the dream was lost. All her subconscious held was powerful imagery and emotion. Whether by her own accord or by some scheming of the Voice, she remembered the deep-seated message carefully concealed among the troubling images.
Lying in bed, Keryn smiled softly into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sun cast broken rays of light through the patchwork metal plates screwed over the windows. Squinting, Vance looked up at the beams, as they fell over his face. He stretched, trying to relieve the pain that settled into his lower back.
He spent most of the night in the hall outside the control room, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Vance let the sound of the Seques’ howls and clawing against the building’s exterior soothe him into a trance. Sleep hadn’t come, though he wasn’t sure if he would’ve welcomed it even if it were possible. He fought the yawn that intruded and rubbed drowsiness from his eyes.
Casting a look into the control center, he saw Yen and Decker hard at work, deciphering pages of text buried in the computer files. Their bleary red eyes and slouched facial expressions told Vance what he already suspected. Neither of the soldiers slept all night. With the adrenalin purged from their systems, the aches and pains of fleeing the Seques the previous night settled uncomfortably in every joint and muscle.
Shaking free the pins and needles coursing through his calves and feet, Vance walked through the outpost to check the other survivors. Most huddled against walls, weapons clutched protectively against their chests. Living through a night of fear left their faces drawn and sunken. Their haunting eyes followed him, as he passed. He wasn’t sure what their reaction would be if he approached. All were on edge, waiting for a single Seque to discover a weakness in their defenses and slaughter them all. If Vance made a sudden move toward any of those soldiers, there was a strong chance he’d be shot.
Lost in his thoughts, Vance ignored his surroundings and kept walking. The one thing he never wanted was to carry the guilt and heartache of losing more soldiers. His team relied on him to carry them through every hardship. Most of them were dead, and his heart was hardened to the two who survived. Even if inadvertently, their actions caused countless deaths.
Still, he wondered if his hatred was misplaced. Eza and Yen made a dangerously poor decision to open the disk, but Captain Young was the one who destroyed them. He sent them into a trap and executed Aleiz. Vance’s desire for vengeance returned, surging through his blood. He would find a way off the planet if for no other reason than to exact that revenge.
“How long do you plan to ignore us?” Eza called from behind.
He was so lost in thought, he walked past the Wyndgaart without noticing him.
Vance paused, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Ignoring you seems like the best course of action, especially in our current situation.”
Eza slid from the table on which he sat and walked up beside the Pilgrim. “Yen and I screwed up. We both know that. Don’t you think we feel enough guilt already for what happened here?”
“I don’t know.” He turned toward Eza with a stern stare. “Do you feel guilty enough for all these soldiers’ deaths? Do you feel guilty enough for Nova, Ainj, Tusque, and Ixibas? How about for Aleiz?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he said with a sigh, “it isn’t. You made a mistake, but you didn’t intentionally betray us like Captain Young did. You’re just the outlet for all the anger I feel right now.”
Vance raised an eyebrow in confusion and became lost in concentration.
“So how long do you plan to stay mad at us?” Eza asked.
“Shut up,” Vance hissed.
“That answers that.” He threw up his hands in disgust.
“No. I mean stay quiet! Listen.”
Eza strained to hear whatever Vance noticed, but all he heard was silence. Nothing seemed to be moving. “I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s the point. I spent all night long sitting against a wall, listening for the Seques to finally claw through a window or door….”
“…and now the noise is gone.” Eza finally realized what Vance meant.
Vance heard nothing—not the growling, howling, or clawing at the walls. The city was as silent as when they arrived. “How long has it been like this?”
“I have no idea. Help me move this shelf.”
Vance and Eza hurried to a metal shelf that had been pushed in front of one of the plated windows for extra protection. With a loud screech, the shelf moved aside, letting sunlight cascade into the narrow hall.
Vance peered between two slits. The window looked out across a grassy field toward a row of warehouses 800 feet away. The grass had been trampled, grinding the green stalks into the ground and churning the earth into muddy soup. Footprints filled with dirt, filth, and drops of green blood were visible, but no Seques remained.
Eza took a turn at the window, scanning carefully for any sign of the monsters. Finally, he stepped back and met Vance’s inquisitive eyes. “Where’d they all go?”
Vance wordlessly ran through his options. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’d love to find out. You interested in joining me for an early-morning walk?”
Eza smiled for the first time since arriving in the city. “I’d be delighted.” He pulled his ax free from his belt.
They walked through the hall until they reached the control room. Others, noticing their silence, fell into place behind them, their determination evident to all they passed. The rest of the survivors yearned to hear the answers the two apparently possessed.
Vance stopped at the entrance to the control room and caught Decker’s eye.
“I’ve got good news,” they said in unison.
“You first,” Vance said.
“We’ve been scanning the computer files all night. Without the mainframe, we can’t do any comprehensive searches. We had to search file by file, which is exhausting and monotonous.”
“I thought you had good news.”
“I’m getting there,” Decker said defensively. “When Yen started checking the automated defense systems—turret guns, automatic locks and shutters, and emergency beacons—he found a common thread. Someone input a virus that disabled the entire defensive matrix.”
“I thought you said you had good news,” Vance said slowly.
“It is good news. We think we can bypass the virus and send a distress beacon. What automatically responds to any distress
beacon by sending a signal of its own?”
Vance smiled. “Every Alliance ship within range.”
“If there’s a ship on this planet, we’ll find it. It’ll take time to bypass the virus and reconfigure the beacon, but we should have it up and running sometime today.”
“That is good news.” A glimmer of hope returned. “My turn. Every Seque outside is gone. I don’t know where they went, and it could be a trap, but if you can find me a ship, and the Seques are hiding, we could very well leave this planet today. Eza and I are going outside to check. If it’s a trap, we’ll know pretty quickly.”
“I don’t trust it.” Yen looked up from the screen. “It’s too convenient.”
“Don’t you think there’s a better way to find out if it’s a trap?” Decker asked.
“Probably,” Eza said, “but we’re awfully bored. Nothing like imminent death to get the blood flowing back to the extremities.”
Eza and Vance slid extra magazines of ammunition into the pouches on their body armor and adjusted the plates that covered their shins and forearms. Yen stepped away from the console, as they finished, his eyes burning from strain and a headache throbbing behind his temples from the sound and smell of the generator.
He approached Vance, as the Pilgrim stuffed another grenade into his backpack. “Sir, I….” A plea for sympathy showed on his face.
“Don’t. I can’t say you didn’t do anything wrong, but my grudge is with Captain Young, not you. If you want to gain my favor again, find me a way off this rock, so I can let Young know how my barrel tastes before I send him straight to hell.”
Yen nodded, a look of relief breaking across his furrowed brow. “I won’t let you down, Sir.”
“Not again, you won’t.” Vance joined Eza at the entrance to the room.
The pair checked each other’s equipment and weapons one last time before moving toward the sealed front door.
It hadn’t been welded shut as most of the other doors and windows. Instead, massive piles of furniture and shelving units lent tons of pounds of support to the battered door. Even through the extra protection, the metal door showed wear and dents from its nightlong abuse.
The survivors helped Vance and Eza move furniture for nearly an hour. Beneath their heavy armor, sweat ran down their backs in rivulets, but neither complained. They savored the manual labor and the pain it caused, glad for a reason to be moving instead of hiding behind the outpost’s thick walls.
Finally, the warped door stood naked before them, lined on either side by recently displaced furniture.
“You know this has to be a trap, don’t you?” Eza rested his hand on the door’s locking bar.
“Probably, but I’d rather face my death head-on than starve to death inside this outpost.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Straining, they moved the heavy bar aside. Though it screeched in protest, the handle turned and granted them access to the muddy field outside.
Rifle barrels jutted from the sills on either side of the door, as the survivors hurried to provide covering fire against any threat the pair might encounter. As the door opened, they faced only sunshine and silence. Muddy footprints showed on the walls and door exterior. The shuffling of massive bodies was evident on the stone walkway that led to the outpost’s main building.
Viscous green blood was smeared in waves, running down the gentle hill to the street, but, as it was when they first entered the city, there were no bodies. The piles of Seques cut down by the turret guns had been hastily removed. Dark blood marked the spots where Dallis and the others fell near the entrance to the outpost, but their corpses were gone, too. The survivors were again alone in the city.
Vance and Eza jumped, as the door crashed closed behind them. They allowed themselves a soft chuckle, as they heard the heavy metal bar being replaced, but they sobered up quickly when they realized they were locked out. If anything happened in the silent city, they had to face it alone.
“I don’t get it.” Eza covered his eyes with his hand, as the glaring sun reached its zenith. “Twelve-foot monsters don’t just disappear.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Vance ran his hands through his tangled mess of dark hair. He left his helmet behind, knowing it would offer little protection against a Seque’s enormous claws and teeth. Even the body armor seemed superfluous, but he wore it as an easy way to carry extra ammunition.
“This is way too easy.” Eza’s rifle barrel panned back and forth, as he waited for an ambush that never came.
They stared at the city in silence. Sunlight reflected brightly off the windowed skyscrapers a few dozen blocks away, the light broken only by the dark voids of shattered windows. The city settled and returned to the state in which they found it the day before.
For over an hour, they scoured nearby city blocks, eager to find any signs of life. The sun beat down on the backs of their necks, draining them and reminding them of the exhaustion they staved off. Their search revealed nothing new, so they returned to the outpost in disappointment.
As they approached the front of the building, Eza and Vance shook their heads in confusion. The watchful eyes on them relaxed, and gun barrels withdrew from the windows.
“They’re actually gone,” Eza said. “Not gone, gone. I can feel them here somewhere, but not here.”
“I hope that’s just dehydration talking, because you aren’t making much sense.” Vance laughed.
He sat heavily on the ground before the outpost’s main door, wiping sweat from his brow. Eza, winded from the exertion, slid down beside him. Though Vance’s anger was genuine when he blamed Eza and Yen for their mistake, he was glad to have his old friend at his side again. They survived too many close encounters to die on that distant planet.
Still, concern gnawed the back of his mind. “I wanted to put this off awhile.” He squinted against the bright sunlight. “It’s time you told me what was on the disk.”
“Does it matter, anymore?” Eza asked breathlessly.
“It matters to me. It doesn’t matter how many missions I’ve been on. I always want to know what I’m fighting and dying for.”
Eza shrugged. “It had only two things of real value that we could find. One spoke of genetic experiments. I’m guessing we’re seeing the results of that—the sharp teeth, thick hides, long claws, and intelligence. They aren’t natural for a Seque. I can only imagine what other experiments the Terrans have in store if this is a taste of what’s to come.”
Vance nodded. “If we get off this rock, we’ll have to deal with the Terrans before they can do this to anyone again. Trust me—they’ll answer for their crimes here. The other thing on the disk?”
“It had an odd-sounding label, something toxic or toxide. I can’t really remember. I’m guessing that was the name of the task force the Terrans sent, since everything in the file talked about an advance Terran Fleet invading Alliance space. I didn’t notice a timeline. For all I know, while we’re trapped here, the Terran Fleet is already on its way.”
“All the more reason for us to find a way off this planet.” A chill went down his spine. What if the Terrans were already in Alliance space? The Terran Fleet could be wreaking havoc on unsuspecting worlds, slaughtering civilians, and the High Council might not know. They had to survive and warn someone.
The chill, however, came from the thought that somewhere in space, there was another colony of superintelligent Seques—or something worse. There were already many deadly creatures in known space. If the Terrans genetically altered one of those, the result would be damn near unstoppable.
He looked up toward the sun, which had reached its peak and was sliding toward the distant horizon. “How could you live on a planet with such short days?” he asked, watching it creep lower.
“Let’s go back inside and see if Yen and Decker found anything yet,” Eza said. “I won’t find anything to kill anytime soon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ixibas led his group through the wi
nding streets. Tusque lumbered behind him, still favoring his damaged leg, and Pateros and Hollander moved to the far side of the street, using the soft shadows for cover. With the sun still hanging in the sky, they didn’t expect much interference from the Seques, who spent the day in hibernation. The short days on the planet left them little time to escape before night returned, bringing with it the monsters that brutalized their group.
Keeping his natural form, Ixibas extended his claws until they jutted nearly one foot from his fingertips. He regretted not carrying his rifle, as the other three did. During the night, he was fine using his natural weapons, but during the day, he felt exposed and unarmed.
Their march through the city took longer than anticipated. Getting Tusque to his feet and moving despite the nearly unbearable pain in his body took most of the morning. Moving through the maze of intersecting streets, they saw the sun starting to dip past high noon and drift lazily toward setting. The closer it came to the horizon, the more they felt their time slipping away like grains of sand in an hourglass.
Many of the roads ended in dead ends. Buildings had been intentionally collapsed across narrow streets, making natural chokepoints. They climbed the first two only to find themselves, after fifteen minutes of wasted time, facing yet another collapsed building or pile of furniture. To their chagrin, they found themselves following a preordained path through the city. It cost them extra time but led, in a roundabout fashion, to the edge of the city.
Reaching a main thoroughfare, Ixibas halted the group. He peered around the corner, not expecting to see movement, and he wasn’t disappointed. Though he was sure the Seques wouldn’t come out during the daytime, a heightened sense of danger kept him on edge.
As he scanned the rest of the road ahead, he was surprised to see no obvious obstructions. Aside from crushed cars and shattered glass, the way was clear. In the distance, still a decent walk away, green hills and crop fields rose from the city limits.
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