He was tired of waiting. Tired of thinking. He wanted to move, to lose himself in action. He wanted to destroy something, to channel the pain that he felt and give it to someone else, to make the world hurt as he hurt.
Mostly, he wanted to finish what he’d started when he shot Matthew in the chest with an arrow. He wanted to put a spear in Matthew’s gut and watch as the life bled out of his body. He wanted to look into Matthew’s eyes and see the exact moment when he died.
Finally, the sun set. A few minutes later, Xendr Chathe came out of his hut, an animal skin draped over his shoulders, a spear in one hand. He looked at Po across the camp and nodded.
Po stood and quickly found the eyes of the nine other Forsaken men he’d recruited, huddled nearby around a campfire.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Together, they fell in step behind Xendr and made their way across the plains.
71
kiva
“Sisters!” Kiva shouted, then paused to look back and forth at the crowd that had gathered outside her hut. After she was sure that everyone was listening, she went on.
“I have spoken with the Strangers, and I have discovered why they journeyed across the stars to come to our planet. They are looking for a new home. Their planet is no longer a place that will sustain them. So they’ve sent their scouts ahead to see if Gle’ah would be a good place for their people to live.”
“But Gle’ah is our planet,” came a voice off to Kiva’s side. Kiva turned. It was Kyne.
“The Strangers can’t be allowed to live here,” Kyne continued. “They must be stopped. We must kill their scouts before they can call their people.”
Kiva clenched her teeth. Kyne certainly didn’t waste any time. Kiva had expected Kyne to challenge her, she just didn’t expect her to do it so soon. No matter. Now was as good a time as any to deal with her.
“You need to get out of the village more, Kyne,” Kiva said, forcing a confident, dismissive smile. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how big Gle’ah is. There’s enough room on this planet for both of us—the Vagri and the Strangers.”
Kyne sneered. “Is that what they told you? You’re a fool if you believe that. The Strangers outnumber us. They’re more numerous than the blades of grass on the prairie, and when they come there will be enough of them to fill a thousand villages like ours, and a thousand thousand after that. They’ve ruined their planet. And they’ll ruin this one too.”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. Kiva felt herself losing the Sisters to Kyne. Her arguments were difficult to respond to—especially since, as far as Kiva knew, everything Kyne said might be true. Even so, Kiva couldn’t let Kyne take control. She couldn’t let the Vagri kill Matthew.
Kiva put on the most contemptuous face she could muster and made sure the Sisters saw it, made sure they saw how little she thought of what Kyne was saying.
“You seem to know a lot about the Strangers,” Kiva said. “Where did you learn all this?”
“The Ancestors told me,” Kyne said.
Kiva shook her head. “Come on, Kyne, no one believes that lie anymore.”
“I have a way of communicating with the Ancestors,” Kyne insisted. “The Forsaken showed it to me.”
Kyne turned and spoke directly to the Sisters.
“They call it maiora. They found it in a place beyond the plain, where it grows so plentiful that there is enough for every woman here. When you eat it, it gives you the power to communicate directly with the Ancestors. With the maiora and the cooperation of the Forsaken, we no longer need the Vagra. Now we all can have her power.”
Kiva felt the Sisters’ temptation at what Kyne offered, felt them gravitate toward Kyne’s vision of the future.
“Sisters, the maiora is dangerous,” Kiva said, trying to keep her rising panic from coming through in her voice. “Kyne isn’t communicating with the Ancestors. She’s hallucinating. What she offers you isn’t power, but slavery. Slavery to the maiora and slavery to the Forsaken, who control it.”
“No,” Kyne said simply and softly—and the moment she heard this single, simple word, Kiva knew that she was in trouble. She knew that there’d be no recovering from what Kyne said next.
“Sisters, the Ancestors have shown me many things today through the maiora,” Kyne said, moving in front of Kiva and speaking directly to the crowd. “I know things that the Vagra has chosen to hide from you. I know, for instance, that she had the opportunity to let one of the Strangers die, but she saved him instead.”
There was a rumble of disapproval in the crowd.
“I know that she performed the healing ritual on one of them after my brother, Po, put an arrow in his chest.”
The rumble grew louder.
Kyne turned to look at Kiva. “And I know that she has mated with one of them. With the boy who came to her hut yesterday.”
Kiva held her breath. A shocked silence had fallen over the crowd. She closed her eyes and waited for the Sisters to erupt in cries of outrage.
But the cries never came.
What Kiva heard instead was the sound of a weapon firing, and agonized screaming coming from the edge of the village.
72
matthew
Matthew pushed the speeder across the plain as fast as it would go, praying that they would intercept Sam before he reached the village.
But they didn’t. They were too late.
Matthew stopped the speeder at the top of the rise. Below, the village was in chaos. The bodies of a dozen Vagri men and children littered the ground near the edge of the village, some lying alone, others slumped atop each other, their limbs and necks bent at unnatural angles. One hut had burned to the ground; two more were ablaze.
“Where is he?” Matthew said. “Where’s Sam?”
Dunne, seated behind him on the speeder with one arm wrapped around his waist, reached the other over his shoulder and pointed.
“There.”
Matthew squinted and saw Sam. At the moment Matthew spotted him, he was throwing a grenade into a hut. Then he ran away, clutching his shotgun in his hands, scanning the village for a new target as exploding fire billowed through the door behind him.
“Go,” Matthew said to Dunne. “Help the wounded. I’m going to stop Sam.”
Dunne stepped off the speeder, clutching her medical kit under her arm. “How? You don’t have a weapon.”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”
He squeezed the throttle and zoomed down into the village.
kiva
Kiva ran toward the screams against a stream of Vagri men and children fleeing in the other direction.
If she’d had time to think about what she was doing, she might have asked herself why she was running toward a danger everyone else was running away from—but she didn’t. The only thought in her mind as she darted between the huts was that her people were dying and she had to stop it.
Then she saw him. Sam stood in a small clearing, a triangle of open space made by three huts built close together. His gun was nestled firmly against his shoulder, roving this way and that as he searched for something to kill.
Kiva saw a flicker in Sam’s eye and knew at once that he had spotted her. Her feet halted in the dirt at the edge of the clearing. The gun swiveled through the air to point directly at her. Time seemed to slow. Kiva looked down the eye of the shotgun’s barrel; above it, Sam’s eyes glinted with a mad, hateful glee.
Kiva knew she should run, but she couldn’t. Her body wouldn’t move.
Then, out of nowhere, an object rocketed through the air and slammed into Sam. It happened so quickly that Kiva could barely understand what her eyes were seeing, but in the blur she could make out the sight of Matthew straddling the object, which hovered above the ground.
The object struck Sam at the waist and bent him sideways. Then Sam’s body snapped straight again and he flew to the ground. His gun slipped from his fingers and soared through the air. It landed between two huts as Sam
writhed in the dirt in the middle of the clearing.
He didn’t stay down for long. Sam pushed himself up from the ground and swung another gun from where it hung on his shoulder into his waiting hands.
Kiva dove behind the nearest hut just as Sam pointed the gun in her direction. The gun made a loud rattling sound; flecks of dirt sprayed her ankles as she dove through the air. She tumbled onto the ground and leaned against the rough wall of the hut, panting.
She inched around the base of the hut, searching for Sam. He was still standing in the clearing, the black gun trained toward the hut where she was hiding. He didn’t see her—but if he came any closer, he would.
Kiva scurried back behind the hut, and as she did, something else caught her eye, motion just at the edge of her field of vision. She looked across the base of the clearing toward the other hut and saw Quint hiding there, waving her arms to get Kiva’s attention.
Kiva met her sister’s gaze and held her finger to her lips. Quint nodded frantically toward the ground between them. Kiva looked and spotted the gun Sam had dropped, lying in the dirt. Then she looked back at Quint, who was eyeing the gun feverishly.
Kiva shook her head and mouthed the word no. Sam was standing right there, waiting to shoot at anything that moved. If Quint went for the gun, he’d kill her—but Kiva might be fast enough to dodge his fire. If she could get a running start, roll to the ground as she grabbed the gun, and dive behind the hut where Quint was hiding before Sam had the time to line up his shot, then maybe …
matthew
Running into Sam had saved Kiva for the moment—but the collision had also sent Matthew flying off the speeder, rolling over the ground as the speeder crashed into a hut. Now, his ankle felt as though it were sprained, his ribs as though they’d been broken.
But he couldn’t give up. Sam certainly wouldn’t.
Matthew limped toward the triangular clearing, where Sam was stalking toward one of the huts, the automatic rifle in his hands.
“Sam,” Matthew said as he came into the clearing.
Sam wheeled around and pointed the gun at him.
“I don’t want to kill you, Matthew. I don’t want to fight you and them at the same time.”
“You don’t have to fight anyone. Put the gun down.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m done listening to you. You and Dunne. You’ve fallen under their spell. Her spell. I’m the only one who still cares about the mission.”
“Really?” Matthew asked. “Is that what this is about? The mission? Is that why these people need to die?”
“It is,” Sam said, his voice dull and dead. “It’s the only way to break the spell. To break their hold on you. The only thing I don’t know yet is whether you’re too far gone. Whether you’re going to need to die with them.”
Sam lifted the gun a little higher, his grip tightening around the stock, his finger pulling lightly against the trigger. Matthew saw all this, saw the tension building in Sam’s body, and felt certain that he was going to die.
Matthew held his hands out. “Look, I understand you’re upset. But there’s a better way. Just put the gun down and we can talk about a better way.”
An arrow came whizzing through the air and pierced the ground between them. Sam lifted his eyes from the gunsight with a look of bewilderment just as another arrow flew through the air and pierced his arm at the shoulder. He bellowed in pain.
Matthew turned to see who had shot the arrows.
The Forsaken were thundering down the hill.
Matthew ran and dove behind a hut for cover as a volley of arrows rained down into the clearing. He huddled next to the wall and turned back to the clearing, praying that Sam had been killed by the Forsaken’s assault.
But all the arrows had missed. Sam was still standing.
He seemed to be invincible.
Sam pulled the arrow from his arm and cast it aside as if it were nothing but a splinter. Then he raised the automatic to his shoulder once more and began laying down rifle fire on the hillside, his shoulder juddering against the butt of the gun as it rattled with each shot.
The rat-tat-tat-tat of the gun thundered in Matthew’s ears.
73
kiva
The Forsaken didn’t stand a chance.
Kiva saw it all from her hiding place—saw the Forsaken thunder down the hill toward Sam and Matthew, saw Matthew go for cover as Sam was shot by an arrow, then saw Sam turn and effortlessly mow down the Forsaken men on the hill.
Sam sprayed the hill indiscriminately, not even bothering to aim. One by one, the Forsaken fell, their spears and arrows dropping impotent at their sides.
Kiva had never seen anything like it. Who could stand a chance against weapons like these?
Kiva’s eyes darted toward the gun lying on the ground between her and Quint, then back toward Sam.
His back was turned. Now was her chance.
She ran for the gun and picked it up off the ground, then pointed it at Sam’s back. On the hill beyond the clearing, the Forsaken who hadn’t gone down were falling back or scattering into the village. Soon, Sam’s attention—and his gun—would turn back to Matthew or to her, looking for a new target. She had to act before it was too late.
Kiva aimed and fired.
The weapon screamed in her arms. It reared into the air and the back of the gun slammed into her chest. She flew backward, her spine crashing against the ground and her head tumbling back and hitting the dirt. She twisted in pain, her limbs sprawling, her vision swimming as she looked up at the stars. For a moment, she couldn’t take a breath.
Kiva gasped, pushed herself up, and looked into the clearing.
She’d missed. The shot hadn’t even grazed Sam—it had only alerted him to her presence.
Now, he towered over her and pointed his gun.
Kiva closed her eyes and waited to die.
matthew
“No!” Matthew screamed as Sam turned to aim the rifle at Kiva.
He ran toward Sam. His ankle throbbed with every step, but he pushed himself forward through the pain. He launched himself through the air and slammed into Sam’s back, wrapping his arms around his chest and trying to hit the rifle away as they crashed together to the ground.
The ribs he’d broken when he was thrown from the speeder blazed red in his chest. The agony began in his torso and spread through his body, twisting his limbs as he rolled in the dirt. He ground his teeth together, willing the pain away—willing his body to move.
Matthew pressed his fists against the ground to push himself up. And then, all at once, Sam was on top of him, pressing him back to the ground, squeezing the air from his lungs.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Sam said dully.
Matthew looked up into Sam’s eyes. They were completely empty. There was no rage in them, no anger. Not even hatred.
Sam’s eyes were simply dead.
Sam punched Matthew’s chest twice, once with each fist. The pain of his broken ribs shot through Matthew’s body like an electrical current, tensing all his muscles at once. His neck arched. He looked past Sam’s face and into the sky. Tears pooled in his eyes, but he didn’t scream. He couldn’t. He had no energy left to scream.
Matthew felt his arms being pinned back under Sam’s knees. Then he felt Sam’s dry fingers curl around his neck and squeeze tight around his windpipe.
His vision went dim.
kiva
Sam had his hands around Matthew’s neck. Matthew’s face was turning red; his mouth came open and shut as he tried to take a gulp of air.
Kiva stood and picked up the gun again. Quint came out of her hiding place and started walking toward her.
Kiva shook her head. “Stay back.”
Every part of Kiva was trembling. Matthew was dying. Sam was killing him right before her eyes.
But even though every cell in her body bled panic and screamed for her to hurry, she took her time. She breathed slowly through her nose, trying to still her quivering arms.
She carefully lifted the gun and pressed the back of it hard against her shoulder, as she’d seen Sam do.
And then, so quickly and so quietly that Sam didn’t have time to react, she walked into the clearing, put the gun to his back, and squeezed with her finger.
The gun roared. Kiva kept her feet.
And Sam slumped to the ground.
matthew
Matthew gulped air, his aching lungs filling with oxygen. His hazy vision began to clear. Things had gone dark there for a minute, but now the world was taking shape again around him. The sensations of his body returned one by one. Even the pain in his chest was a comforting sensation. He welcomed the pain, embraced it as if it were an old friend he hadn’t seen in ages.
The pain meant he was still alive.
Gradually, he became aware of his surroundings. Sam was no longer on top of him. Matthew glanced over and saw Sam’s body lying a few feet away—facedown, a pool of blood growing in the dirt around him.
Matthew turned over onto his hands and knees and vomited onto the ground.
“Shhh,” came a whisper next to him. “It’s okay. You’re here.”
He felt a hand resting warm on his back, rubbing softly back and forth. He looked away from Sam’s body and saw Kiva kneeling next to him, the ion shotgun resting on her knees.
“What …” He sat back onto his heels and looked to Kiva with rising panic.
“It’s fine,” she said, putting her hand to Matthew’s cheek and giving him a comforting smile. “It’s not your blood. It’s Sam’s.”
Matthew looked again at the gun across Kiva’s knees, and Sam’s bloody corpse on the ground nearby, and understanding washed over him. The air came out of his lungs in a rush.
“You saved me,” he said. “That’s the second time you saved me.”
“No.” Kiva ran her thumb lightly along the line of Matthew’s cheekbone. “We saved each other.”
The Exo Project Page 29