by M. Van
Getting too close to the lift and our only escape route, I couldn’t risk the damn thing following us. Without another thought, I fired the weapon again and again. I kept firing until it clicked empty.
This time I didn’t have to wait for the heads-up to inform me of the situation because I could already feel the heat at the back of my neck before a shockwave took hold of my body and flung me forward. With a bone-crushing sensation, I felt my body slam into the back wall where the lift used to be. A quick thank-you raced across my thoughts as I figured that Reece and Riffy must have been tinkering with the door to keep it open.
As gravity took hold of me, I could only hope that my suit had enough integrity to protect me from the fall, because that lift had gone down a lot faster than I would have liked.
Chapter twenty-six
Reece
The massive explosion overhead wasn’t hard to miss. Neither was the loud thud as something landed hard on the roof of the box. For a second, I allowed myself to wonder, or hope, that the thud we’d heard wasn’t what we all probably knew it to be. I couldn’t even register the faces riding down with me on this lift as the box started to shake and groan before I felt a moment of weightlessness. A loud hum followed by a whooshing sound suggested that the magnetic field used to put the lift into motion had failed.
I did register the oh-shit looks going around and Riffy’s yelp as the box we occupied plummeted to the ground. Fortunately, we had covered most of the distance down, and even our lesser versions of the enforcer suits managed to withstand the force that our bodies had to endure as the box crashed. Without feeling the need to check if the others were okay, I shouted, “Riffy, door!”
The landing had unhinged the door, and Riffy needed to pry it open. Knowing he would get it done, I reached up and unlatched the trapdoor to get access to the roof of the box. It took a few tries, but with some brute force, I managed to get it open. All the while Saera kept an anxious eye on me.
Looking up, I couldn’t see Maece or detect any movement. Straightening my back and bending my knees, I nodded at Saera. Without hesitation, she planted her foot on my thigh and pushed herself up to reach the opening.
As she climbed through, I stole a glance at Riffy, who had the door open a crack. On the watch for more bad guys, he slowly eased it open. The thought that Kelle was still out there, camped out inside that Hymag crossed my mind, but then loud cursing caught my attention, and I looked up.
The sound of footsteps reverberated down as my eyes found Saera moving over the opening. Soft words I couldn’t decipher had me worried. The heads-up flew down at me, which nearly hit me in the head, only fueled the bad feeling that stirred in my gut.
“Riffy,” I said as I grabbed the heads-up. He had barely turned my way before I tossed it at him. With a clumsy move, he managed to clutch the device to his chest and threw me a questioning look. “Take that and go check on Kelle.”
“She should be fine,” Riffy said. “I’ve dose—” I cut him off with a kill gesture while simultaneously Saera spoke up.
“Reece,” she said as she looked to be pulling a heavy load.
“Nothing,” I replied as if it had been programmed inside my head.
“What?” she asked as she poked her head over the opening. Her face looked even paler than usual, and the wild look in her eyes sobered me up quickly.
“Can you ease her down?” I asked, not even bothering to ask how Maece was doing. The look on Saera’s face told me enough.
As Maece appeared hands-first through the opening, I shot Riffy an urgent look.
“Go see to Kelle,” I said in a loud whisper. Riffy turned and climbed out of the crashed lift box.
“Riffy,” I called after him as I reached up to catch Maece.
“Yeah?”
“Use the heads-up,” I said. I didn’t watch him place the device on his head. By then Saera had eased Maece down, and I held her in my arms. She looked like hell. The sturdy suit still covered her body, and I could only imagine the damage underneath but hoped the remaining integrity had been enough to protect her.
Unlike her body, her face showed the mess she was in. Blood seeped from a cut on her head down her face and matted her hair. Beside massive bruising, it also seemed as if her jaw was broken.
I shifted her in my arms to get a better hold of her and felt a need to utter soothing words, but I feared my voice would break and let loose a whole bunch of emotions I wouldn’t be able to contain. I still needed to focus; we weren’t out of trouble yet, and I needed to keep it together.
As I climbed out of the box, Saera landed behind me with a thud. Glancing around the large space, I didn’t notice any movement. Riffy stood on the Hymag platform, surveying our surroundings with the heads-up sitting on his head. With Saera on my heels, I started to make my way to him.
“Why haven’t you started it up?” I shouted. Riffy threw up a hand in exasperation as we neared the entryway to the Hymag.
“Because it won’t start.”
“What do you mean it won’t start?” Saera said. Crossing the empty space between the lift and the Hymag platform, she had stayed close by my side, keeping a careful eye on Maece, but at Riffy’s declaration, she pushed past him into the transport.
I followed her closely, but I was stopped in my tracks and nearly bumped into her with Maece still in my arms. Instead of heading straight to the pilot’s cabin, she rushed to the bench, where she found Kelle lying motionless with her eyes closed.
“She’s okay,” Riffy quickly piped, in what sounded like damage control. We both knew this Hymag wouldn’t be big enough for us to hide if there was anything more than a scratch on Kelle. I just hoped Riffy’s drugs had done their part and had healed most of that crater of a wound that had been left behind on Kelle’s arm.
Maece groaned as I placed her on the bench across from Kelle.
From what I could tell, Saera took a quick inventory of Kelle’s condition—checking her pulse and pupil reflexes. She moved fast, and Maece’s head had barely touched the seat before she shoved me aside.
“Get this thing running,” she said without sparing me a glance. My eyes lingered on Maece’s bruised face for another fraction of a moment before I turned and made my way to the pilot’s cabin. If we didn’t get out of here. it wouldn’t matter what shape Maece was in because we’d all die if they caught us out here.
“Riffy,” Saera called out just before I reached the cabin, “Maece needs you—switch.”
I heard their footfalls behind me while Saera took Riffy’s spot guarding the exit and I slipped into the pilot’s seat. It didn’t take me long to figure out something was wrong. Everything seemed frozen in place—not even a single light blinked as my hands came down on the buttons. Finally, I rammed my fist into the console.
“Son of a…” I started to say but stopped myself and glanced around the cabin. I drew in a breath in the hope of a calming effect. Letting frustration take over wasn’t going to help us get out of here.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw Riffy hunched over Maece’s unmoving form. “Dammit,” I muttered and slipped out of the seat.
“What’s wrong?” Saera asked, standing at the Hymag’s exit. Sparing a glance at Riffy as his hands worked on Maece, I noticed Kelle had awoken and eyed me wearily.
“Hey, you,” I said and reached to touch her leg. She looked groggy, but gave me a half-smile, and coming from Kelle that said a lot. It told me she’d be okay.
“I can’t get the damn thing to start,” I said and recognized the frustration in my own voice. I moved to the back of the Hymag where Saera stood at the door. Her brows furrowed while her eyes remained fixed on something outside the transport. Before I could ask what was wrong, she raised her weapon and dropped to a knee.
“You better think of something fast, because we’ve got company,” she said in a loud voice so it would reach over the sound of her weapon as it discharged. In a reflex, I hunched down, although I knew the Hymag to be impervious to the standa
rd rounds of any weapons fire. It wouldn’t stand long against those special rounds that enforcers carried, but then I didn’t think that whoever had assembled outside would be that desperate yet. Besides, I figured they’d want us alive at first.
I glanced outside and saw several figures clad in black and gray taking cover behind the large pillars. Saera was a good shot, and she’d be able to keep them at bay for some time, but it seemed as if the word had spread around about us, because more officers carrying heavy armory filed into the room.
“Son of a…” I muttered as I turned to give the controls one last try. In my gut, I already knew the chances of me getting this thing moving were zero to none, but I had to try something. Handing ourselves over wasn’t something anyone in this group would consider, and the only alternative would be dying inside a metal cylinder that refused to do what it was made for. I didn’t consider that an option either.
“Riffy,” I said as I passed, “we’ve got trouble. Prepare to help out Saera.”
He glanced over his shoulder in Saera’s direction as he asked, “Why aren’t we moving?”
“If I knew that we’d be doing it already,” I said. I couldn’t help the agitation in my voice. I flinched at the impact of a high-powered projectile weapon against the hull of the Hymag, but it was Maece’s voice that stopped me in my tracks.
“Reece,” she said in a hoarse voice, “I can help.” One of my hands had balled into a fist and hovered in the air midstrike, with the intention of striking an unsuspecting wall panel. I withdrew my fist, turned back, and rushed to where Riffy was still kneeling at Maece’s side. Kelle had shifted into a sitting position and watched Maece with the same wide eyes that I’d caught in Riffy’s gaze.
“Reece.”
This was the second time in a short period that I’d heard my name called out with a sense of urgency, but this time it was Saera. She ducked behind a door panel, and weapons fire ripped through seats at the back of the craft. I tapped Riffy’s shoulder and pointed a finger at Saera.
“Go,” I added. Without hesitation, Riffy got up, drawing his weapon, and as he headed to the back to help Saera, I took his spot at Maece’s side.
To see her like that would have taken me aback anytime, but it was Maece who refused to let me linger on her bruised and blood-covered face. She grabbed my arm and started to pull herself up.
“Baby, wait,” I said. The words were out before I could even think about it, and if there had been more time I might have scolded myself, but it didn’t seem Maece had heard. Besides, screw the idea of letting her figure things out by herself. If I were about to die here in this tin box, I wanted her to know how I felt about her.
Maece pushed herself up on the bench and grabbed one of my shoulders for support. She squinted against the light, and I realized she wasn’t wearing her heads-up. I found it on the floor where Riffy must have left it. Picking it up, I showed it to Maece and she nodded.
“Help me,” she said, her voice sounding groggy. It was obvious it was hard for her to form the words with a jaw that couldn’t be anything but broken.
“To do what,” I asked, sounding as surprised as the look I noticed on Kelle’s face.
“Get me…up front,” she said before a grown escaped her mouth. Leaning heavily on me, she got to her feet. Her head shifted to take in the action at the back of the vehicle before her eyes landed on Kelle. The tiny woman’s eyes nearly jumped out of her sockets as Maece pulled a hand over Kelle’s cropped hair. The gesture, as familiar to me as it would have been to Kelle, raised several questions that I knew had to wait.
Maybe Maece remembered some enforcer way to unlock this Hymag so we could get the hell out of here. As fast as her body allowed me, I moved her down the aisle until we reached the pilot’s cabin.
By the time I had her seated, sweat covered her brows. Her dark skin had acquired a ghostly white sheen as her eyes shot across the controls. Behind me, I heard Saera shout something incomprehensible. The fact that I saw Kelle slide off the bench and struggle to find her footing while holding a big gun in her hand that still functioned didn’t seem like a positive sign. The state she was in, Kelle probably shouldn’t have been moving, but apparently, the enemy forces were more than the others could handle.
“Eh…do you even know what you’re looking for?” I asked as I helped Maece with the heads-up.
Maece’s hand reached out to one of the screens, and she started typing. Numbers flew across the screen as she said, “I need…to access the main system…to grant…permission for transport.” Her words came all broken up as if they needed to be put together like some sort of puzzle. She grimaced, and it looked as if it cost her quite a bit of effort to be doing whatever it was what she was doing.
“That is not possible,” a hesitant voice reached my ear.
“Nice of you to join us, Kyran.” I had nearly forgotten the people that had supposed to be our eyes and ears on this mission, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard them.
“We’ve been working on the problem on our end, but there is just no way to reach the Hymag system—it is not connected to the grid,” he said as lights started to blink on the console. Maece’s fingers still typed away on the different keypads, and my eyes widened as I saw the main screen light up with the command codes I’d been looking for.
“You did it,” I said and glanced over my shoulder. It wasn’t too late yet. The Hymag hadn’t been breached, and Saera, Riffy, and Kelle held their ground. Just as I turned back, Maece’s head lolled forward, and I caught her in my arms as her body slumped. Trying to support her head, I removed the heads-up and felt something solid and cold on her neck just under the base of her skull. My hand came back soaked in blood as I eased her back into the seat.
I forced myself not to think about the piece of metal that seemed to sit lodged inside Maece’s head. At this point, I had no way of telling whether something had struck her or whether the fall down the lift shaft had dislodged the device implanted in her head.
The fact that she had known how to activate the Hymag made me lean toward the latter, but there was no way to be sure, and now wasn’t the time.
“Leaving,” I shouted over my shoulder as I set the controls from the copilot seat. It took some effort because I wasn’t used to handling the controls from the right side of the cabin, but I managed.
Behind me, I heard loud sighs as the exit door slid closed.
“It’s about time,” Saera muttered. “Where the hell is Maece?” I didn’t wait for her to get up to the cabin or for any of the others to take their seats. The explosions of magnetic rounds increased against the hull, and it wouldn’t be long before someone might decide to pull out the big guns. I throttled the engine and punched it. The Hymag launched itself into the tunnel, and within seconds the sound of explosive rounds impacting on the hull faded as we picked up speed.
Chapter twenty-seven
Maece
Frantic voices pulled me out of the darkness, and I wondered what was going on. It was hard to open my eyelids that felt as if they were glued together. I forced them open, but as the light hit my pupils, I squeezed them shut. Someone had removed my heads-up, making everything seem brighter than it should.
I sensed that my body was in motion, as if someone were carrying me on a stretcher. My curiosity stronger than the light annoying my eyes, I opened my eyelids again. Peering through half-open slits, I saw the backs of two men. Above me, I recognized the domed roof of the cavern where Saera had first brought me to meet Harp.
A jolt sent a sharp pain through my body, and I expected to hear a scream rising from my throat, but no more than a groan exited.
“Watch it, you idiot.” The words were clearly spoken by Saera, and I searched for her. I tried to say her name, but the effort made me cough, and I tasted blood in my mouth. A face blocked my vision, but instead of Saera, the balding doctor came into focus. The doctor who had removed my memory pain eyed me with a grim expression on his face.
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��Stop,” he said in a loud voice, “she’s awake.” The moving sensation halted. I opened my mouth to speak, but the doctor planted his hands over my face and then shined a bright light into my eyes. I closed my eyelids and wanted to swat the light from his fingers, but I couldn’t move my hands. I tried to lift my head to see if my hands were tied down, but I couldn’t manage that either. I wanted to fight against the restraints, but my body hurt too much. My voice didn’t work either, but it didn’t stop me from trying to find out what was going on.
“Shh…it’s okay,” Saera’s voice entered my ears. She had to shove the balding doctor aside before I saw her. “You’re hurt, but you’re already starting to heal, just try to relax.”
“We have to get her into Subterra,” Harp said, “now!” I couldn’t see him, but Harp’s commanding voice was distinctive enough. Saera had told me I was healing, so why did I sense the urgency in Harp’s tone? The stretcher started moving again, and I noticed we were heading toward the Hymag. Traveling inside the Hymag, which could reach speeds up to a thousand miles per hour, would get us to Subterra in a couple of minutes.
“Kyran, call ahead and make sure the bioprinter is available,” Harp said.
The edges of my vision blurred as I tried to make sense of Harp’s words. I tried to search out Saera’s eyes in the hope of finding answers, but she looked straight ahead as she helped maneuver the stretcher. I felt sure that Saera wouldn’t have lied to me when she said I was healing, but then my injuries weren’t all that was wrong with me. I still had that device stuck in the back of my head, and Harp’s mention of the bioprinter sent a shiver down my spine. As I tried to juggle my thoughts, my mind was getting fuzzier, and memories I couldn’t place seemed to rack my brain. In the end, I couldn’t keep my eyes from closing.