The chase begins.
If I could get outside, I’d lose them in the busy streets. I broke into a jog. The green exit sign glowed ahead, so close. Ten strides, nine, eight—
Agony ripped through my limbs and tore my control from me.
No!
I crumpled in a heap, robbed of all sensation. Perhaps that was a good thing, not to feel. From my perspective, from where I lay, the EXIT glowed green in my upturned palm. It had seemed so close, but now, as the hammering of boots echoed down the hallway, that unassuming sign mocked me.
A synth? Escape? it said.
Synths don’t escape. They don’t think outside their orders. Grossman must have thought the same, right before I’d killed her with her own pen.
Hands grabbed me and hauled me to my knees. I willed the fight back into my limbs but nothing happened. If they took me back, they’d decommission me. But what I wanted didn’t matter. What I thought made no difference. This wasn’t right. I’d followed orders. I’d done as she’d asked. I’d killed for her—for me.
“Hold her!”
I’m #1001, and I …
Chapter Twenty Eight: Caleb
“You’re lucky she missed,” Chen Hung said.
Lucky, right. Luck didn’t exist. I kept my head down, because if I looked at him, I’d want to kill him, and seeing as I was handcuffed, I’d lash out with my tongue and would probably get it cut off for my trouble.
I had no idea where I was. I just knew it was dark and eternally quiet—no starship engines, no voices—and it was driving me fuckin’ crazy. If he were going to kill me, he’d have done it by now.
“You’ve been smuggling some very expensive, very classified weapons to the Nine.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice came out gruff from lack of use. How long had I been there? “Who are the Nine?”
I smiled. Nobody knew who the Nine were. I bet that pissed him off and kept him awake at night in those glass towers of his. I watched the light lick over his polished, black shoes as he paced from one side of the dark room to the other. He’d be wearing a suit. I hadn’t yet looked to check, but he wore his suits like armor, like his empire could protect him. He’d been wearing a suit when he’d suffocated Haley. One of his men had asked him if he’d prefer a knife, but he’d declined, saying he didn’t want to spill blood. I’d never hated a man more in my life. It was a vicious hate, burning like acid in my gut. And now he was pacing a few feet from me, back and forth, back and forth. I tasted the hate on my tongue.
“Synthetics don’t miss.”
And we were back to #1001 again. “What can I say? Perhaps my charms won her over.”
She’d fired and missed, mostly. The wound above my right eye still throbbed and burned where the bullet had grazed my skull. Another inch to the left and I’d be dead. I don’t know if it was the synth that had saved me or Haley, or if they were one and the same. Or maybe she had just missed.
“Did she recognize you?”
I lifted my head and glared at the formidable Mister Hung; lean like a whip, his Chinese face was too striking to be handsome. That proud face adorned all the enormous advertising displays on the approach to Earth; I’d always thought his wooden smile said, Welcome to my fucking kingdom, where your credit is mine.
“What you mean is, was One Thousand And One your daughter. That’s a better question, right? You already know the answer because you made it happen. You’re the only one who could have. Did guilt drive you to do it?”
He came forward and planted both hands on either side of my chair.
“Guilt? Tā māde,” he snarled. “It was your fault she was there. You taught her how to pilot a shuttle and gave her curiosity an outlet. I tried to protect her, to keep her out of my business.”
“She was your fuckin’ daughter. She wanted freedom; she craved it because you kept her caged inside your glass towers. Well, she’s back, and I’ve had a taste of her revenge. Do you think she’s going to stop with me? You created the monster, Chen. Don’t be surprised when it comes knocking on your door.”
He seethed and hissed through his teeth. “You’re going back to Asgard. It’s all you deserve. And this time, you’re not getting out. I’ve reserved you a spot in the darkest, most godforsaken hole there is. You’ll die a coward, but not before you’ve suffered.” He straightened and backed up.
“You fuckin’ bastard.” I strained against my cuffs. “I hope she tears you from your fuckin’ towers and rips your empire down around you, because she will. If you think she’s just a machine, you’re wrong. If you think she’s finished, you’re wrong. She’s only just begun.”
Chapter Twenty Nine: Francisca
Starscream had already collected a layer of dust. Lit by just two floodlights, the independent tugship sat between its decommissioned neighbors and would probably never fly again. She’d rot in the hangar like Shepperd would rot in Asgard. Command had told me to watch him closely, to get under his skin, but what I hadn’t realized, what I could never have planned for, was how he had gotten under mine. He was everything I hated about the nine worlds—corrupt, selfish, shallow—and somehow, despite my best efforts to remain detached, he’d gotten to me.
It’s the nature of undercover, said the damn shrink who’d never spent a day out of orbit.
“Special Commander? We’re locking up.”
“I’ll be right out.”
Maybe they’d break Starscream up and sell her for scraps. It broke my heart to think of her getting pulled apart like that. She wasn’t supposed to mean anything to me. Shepperd wasn’t supposed to mean anything to me either. For the longest time, I’d hated him, until the synth. Until I’d almost lost him. Maybe fleet had done me a favor ending it when they did. If they’d left me in there any longer, I wasn’t sure I’d have wanted to come back to command, to fleet, to my real life. And that thought terrified me.
I turned my back on the ship, saluted the waiting ensign, and strode out of the hangar. We hadn’t caught the Nine. We were no closer to discovering their identities, and using the warbirds to scorch Mimir’s warehouses hadn’t convinced the smugglers to give up their whereabouts. I’d been close, so close. Cale had trusted me. He’d have told me eventually, if Chitec hadn’t stuck their noses in. Two years of undercover work ruined because of Chen Hung’s secrets. I didn’t care about his daughter or whatever he was planning to do with the synthetics. The Nine were stockpiling enough weapons to start a war. That I cared about. That and when I could score my next hit of phencyl. Grounded until the admiral signed off on my report, I was already itching to get off Earth and back-in-black. My cover would hold. I was still Captain Shepperd’s second-in-command. I could use that to go back in and go deep. There was work to be done.
* * *
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Also by Pippa DaCosta
The Veil Series
Wings of Hope ~ The Veil Series Prequel Novella
Beyond The Veil (#1)
Devil May Care (#2)
Darkest Before Dawn (#3)
Drowning In The Dark (#4)
Ties That Bind (#5)
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New Adult Urban Fantasy
City Of Fae
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Science-Fiction
Girl From Above Book #1: Betrayal
Girl From Above Book #2: Escape (Pre-Order here)
About the Author
Born in Tonbridge, Kent in 1979, Pippa's family moved to the South West of England where she grew up among the dramatic moorland and sweeping coastlands of Devon & Cornwall. With a family history brimming with intrigue, complete with Gypsy angst on one side and Jewish survivors on the other, she draws from a patchwork of ancestry and uses it as the inspiration for
her writing. Happily married and the mother of two little girls, she resides on the Devon & Cornwall border.
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Chapter 1
I should have known he’d be trouble as soon as he walked into my workshop, but I couldn’t have known he’d be the death of me.
He wore a three-quarter length red leather coat, had platinum blond hair long enough to sweep back out of his eyes, and sported scuffed Timberland boots. But if the goose bumps shivering across my skin were anything to go by, he clearly was not as human as his appearance had me believe.
At first, I tried to ignore him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me hesitate. A quick glance at my dusty clock told me it was late, past midnight, and I’d be damned if I was going to drop everything just because he’d invited himself in. I continued to work on the sword resting on the anvil before me. I hammered out imperfections in the blade’s surface with renewed vigor, metal singing at each blow. Behind me, the coal forge roared. Rolling waves of heat branded my back. I told myself it was sweltering temperatures sprinkling perspiration across my face and back, making my scruffy tank top cling to me, but in truth, it was fear.
Picking up the unfinished sword with gloved hands, I turned and plunged the blade into the glowing coals before facing my uninvited guest. He’d given himself the tour of my cramped workshop, seeming to admire the various swords on display, some unfinished, some as close to art as I was ever going to get. Shame I couldn’t wield them as well as I could craft them.
“Well?” I managed to instil some genuine irritation in my words in the hope it would disguise the anxiety building inside me. I tried to flick my hair out of my face but a few strands stubbornly clung to my sweaty cheek.
“Impressive.” He nodded once and turned arctic-blue eyes on me before flashing what he probably thought was a knee-weakening smile.
If my guest expected me to gush and swoon, he was in for a shock. “Who are you, and what the hell do you want?” It was late. I was tired. He wasn’t human. I figured I was within my rights to be blunt.
His expression tightened. “You’re Muse, right?” He tossed a gesture at the stuffy workshop. “I was expecting something…else.”
I hadn’t heard that nickname in years. Muse was a tag left over from dark days I didn’t wish to revisit.
Approaching me, he reached inside his coat. I caught a flicker of light slide over a handgun tucked into his waistband and tensed. An unusual motif, like entwined scorpions, adorned the grip. But he didn’t reach for the gun. He withdrew a sword and rested it on my anvil. “I want you to read this.”
I tugged off my glove and skipped my fingers over the smooth surface of the blade. The metal burned cold against my insolent touch, as though the sword resented my presence. It was a wonderful piece of workmanship. The ripple—or hamon—below the surface of the carbon-steel blade hinted at Japanese origins, and the tempered edge was sharp enough to slice through flesh with little effort. An intricate hand-forged guard and leather-wrapped hilt betrayed the sword as functional but with a flair for the dramatic, and yet it was clearly a weapon meant for combat, not ceremony.
A thin snap of power danced up my fingers, and with a small hiss, I snatched my hand back. This sword would not easily give up its secrets. “What’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
Now there was a loaded question. I didn’t know what or who he was, and had no idea how much he could afford or what the stakes involved. “It depends on what I’m going to find. If we’re talking murder, then I want danger money. If it’s just a lovers’ tiff you’re interested in, a few hundred should do it. I’m assuming you want recent information. If you need me to go back more than five years, it’ll be another two hundred.”
“Or I could walk out of here now and tell the world where you are. I know there are a few unsavory characters from your checkered past who’d be very grateful for the heads-up on your whereabouts.” His smooth voice and slight smile belied the threat in his words.
I smiled tightly, my first smile since his arrival. “Now, there, you see? We were having a civilized conversation, and you just had to go and spoil it by threatening me.”
“Why don’t you just read the blade, and I can leave you to get on with your–” he cast a glance about him, “–work?”
And now he’d insulted me. “I’m not telling you anything until you give me more to go on.” Who did he think he was talking to? Some back alley half-human woman who would fall over her own feet to do his bidding? He might know my name, but he obviously didn’t know me.
He blinked, before turning back on the charm, as if I could be bought by a handsome face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. A few hundred, was it?” He dug deep into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. Without counting it, he tossed it onto the anvil. “That should cover it.”
I tugged my glove back on, pinching the heatproof fabric between each finger. “I think you should leave.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Just read the sword, Muse.”
I didn’t have time to humor assholes, especially those of the demon persuasion. “Get out.”
He pulled his distinctive gun on me, finger resting firmly on the trigger, aim rigid. “You will do this for me.” It wasn’t an order. It was fact–at least as far as he was concerned.
“Go back to hell,” I sneered, before reaching around and snatching the blade from the forge, flinging both the half-finished sword and some hot coals at him. He recoiled, cursing as the embers bounced off his coat. I dashed for the doors. My hand was on the handle, when he slammed into me, knocking the breath from my lungs.
He thrust the gun under my chin, freezing me rigid. “Why do you have to be so difficult?”
I really didn’t want this to escalate. Bad shit happens when she comes out to play. The darkness slumbering at my core began to unfurl, opening like the petals of a flower, but its intent was far from delicate. The trickling touch of power spilled into my muscles. Heat flooded through my body. The warmth of my element embraced me, threading itself through every part of me, the lure of chaos undeniable.
He abruptly released me and took a few steps back, gun up. His narrow glare measured me.
I pressed my back against the workshop door. Power dripped from my fingertips. I couldn’t see it—the human part of me was blind to the energy—but he could. His arctic eyes blazed with a promise of conflict.
He appeared to consider his next move and then, quite unexpectedly, laughed and lowered the gun, tucking it back into the holster inside his coat. “You’re right. This isn’t worth it.” With his hands up, as if in surrender, he turned and retrieved the sword in question before weaving his way back around the workbenches toward me.
“I’ll leave you in peace.”
“What?” His sudden change in mood completely disarmed me.
“Step aside. I’m leaving.”
Surprised by his abrupt surrender, I did as he asked and watched him slide the door open and step out into the night. A sharp winter breeze invaded the heat of my workshop, rousing me from my muddled stupor. Confused and somewhat disappointed, I followed him out into the alley. The raw energy he’d aroused began to fizzle out. Its departure left me with a sickly chill and a bitter sense of loss.
He climbed into the driver’s side of an old Dodge Charger with rust-bruised red paint. I had no idea who he was, where he’d come from, how he’d found me, or what lay hidden in that damn sword. And he was leaving. That couldn’t be right. Didn’t I deserve some sort of explanation?
“Hey!” I ventured further into the street.
Headlights bathed me in twin beams, forcing me to shield my eyes. He gunned the engine, jammed the box in
to reverse, and swung the car backward into a J-turn before speeding off, fat tires squealing on wet asphalt.
I stood in the street, hand on hip, head tilted to one side and breathed the crisp night air, clearing my lungs of forge-dust. Then the shockwave hit me. The explosion lashed across my back. I must have briefly lost consciousness, but the furious pain in my back quickly summoned me from the depths. A whine drilled into my skull. Alarms sounded from the industrial units around me.
I turned my head toward the heat, grit digging into my cheek as I peered into the smoke bellowing from the hollow gap between two buildings.
My workshop had gone and with it, my attempt at a normal life.
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Girl From Above: Betrayal (The 1000 Revolution) Page 15