by P. T. Hylton
Firefly started talking immediately, before he even consciously registered the question. “We can’t take Agartha. Their city is built into the side of a mountain. And they have one hundred vampires.”
Aaron burst out laughing. He put a hand on Firefly’s shoulders. “You goddamn idiot. We have three hundred vampires.”
A chill went through Firefly. That was why they’d come here and turned the Resettlers instead of just feeding off them. They’d wanted an army.
“Point is,” Mark said, “that hunger is only going to grow stronger. If we don’t feed in a few weeks, every one of us will go Feral. But we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen. We might be your masters, but you’ve gotta start believing we have your best interests at heart. We want you to feed.”
“Enough jawing,” Aaron announced. “We leave for Agartha in five minutes. Get your weapons.” He looked at Firefly. “You follow us.”
As the newly turned vampires hurried to gather their weapons, Firefly followed Mark and Aaron outside. Though the attack had been in full swing when he’d last been out there, seeing the prison yard was still a shock. With his improved vampire sight, he could see everything perfectly even though every light had been torn down and destroyed. The yard was filled with what had to be hundreds of Ferals. They slammed into buildings, smashing supplies. Firefly realized they were being driven wild by the residual scent of humans, a pungent, honeysuckle smell Firefly felt arousing his own hunger.
To his left, a group of five Ferals fought over a spot of blood-soaked ground, battling for the best position from which to lap at the dirt.
The Ferals ignored Mark, Aaron, and Firefly as they passed among them. Firefly’s shoulder even brushed up against one, but it didn’t react.
Mark shook his head. “These poor bastards will be holed up here for months, unable to ignore the lingering scent of the humans. This place will have a thousand Ferals and not a damn thing to feed any of them.” He turned to Firefly. “Before we go, we wanted to have a little chat with you.”
Firefly said nothing. His eyes were fixed on a guard tower on top of the wall. One of its sides had been ripped off and it stood empty. He wondered what had happened to the man who’d been stationed up there. Had he been turned or had he fed a Feral?
“As you’ve already figured out, you can’t disobey our orders,” Mark said. “It’s best if you don’t even try. It won’t work and it’ll just stoke your hunger.”
“If I can’t disobey, then why are we even having this conversation?” Firefly asked.
Aaron glared at him. “Because we’d prefer you to proactively help us rather than just obey orders. Once we take Agartha, there will be leadership positions available. If you want one of them, now’s the time to get on board.”
Mark nodded. “We’re going to take Agartha, but it won’t be easy. We’ll start by taking out the railguns mounted around the city. Then we’ll take out their nightly patrols. Then we have to figure out a way past the doors. Point is, there will be a lot of moving pieces. We need a few people we can trust to actively help us figure things out.”
Firefly opened his mouth to speak, but Mark held up a hand.
“Don’t answer now. Think about it on the way to Agartha. We’ll be there by morning.”
Firefly felt his mouth click shut.
He took another look around Fort Stearns. All this destruction was his responsibility. He’d let down so many people. All because of the fantasy that he was Garrett Eldred, the great leader. But he wasn’t. Not really. He was Firefly, the warrior. If he wanted to help his people, he needed to embrace that fact.
He thought about what Mark had just said.
“How are we going to get to Agartha by morning?” he asked.
Aaron grinned. “You’re a vampire now. That means you’re fast as hell and you don’t get tired. We’re going to run.”
2
Sarah fixed her gaze on Fleming as he paced back and forth from one end of his office to the other. The man was making her nervous.
He was always full of energy, and yes, sometimes he expressed that energy by pacing. But even in his most fidgety moments, Fleming displayed an air of excitement and confidence. It was as if he was moving because the ideas and optimism inside of him couldn’t be contained behind a desk. It was part of what she loved about him, part of what had led her to take a bullet for him.
But this was something different. He wasn’t pacing out of excitement.
“Colonel Brickman,” he muttered. “Jessica. Brian. Three of the greatest minds in New Haven. And all of them disappeared. Probably off sowing discontent in my city.”
Colonel Kurtz glanced at Sarah, and she saw the unease she felt mirrored in his eyes. He’d just betrayed CB, one of his oldest friends, for Fleming. It had to be disconcerting to see him like this in what should have been a moment of triumph. “We’ll find them, sir. We’re on a ship. There’s a limited number of places to hide.”
“Yes,” Fleming agreed, “and Jessica knows every one of them.” He ran a hand through his unkempt hair, then he turned toward Kurtz. “I want your best men guarding this building. No one gets in or out without your guys checking them and making a record of it.”
Kurtz nodded.
Sarah drew a deep breath. She knew speaking meant risking getting her head bitten off, but she had to try to calm him down. “Sir, let’s not let this minor hiccup cloud an otherwise beautiful sky. We did it. You did it. Resettlement is real. When morning comes and we re-establish contact with Fort Stearns, the people aren’t going to care about three fugitives. As much as the people love CB, he’s yesterday. You’re tomorrow.”
Fleming nodded slowly. “You’re right. Still, I’m not going to underestimate them again. CB has access to half the weapons on this ship—”
“Had access,” Kurtz corrected. “We deactivated his security card two hours ago.”
“Fine, but who knows what he might have stockpiled somewhere. And with Brian on his side, they might not need our weapons. That guy could probably make a cannon out of an old pair of socks and a doorknob.” He turned to Kurtz. “It’s time for us to activate the faceless GMT.”
Kurtz was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “I’ll make it happen.”
Sarah looked back and forth between the two men. Clearly they knew something she didn’t. “What’s the faceless GMT?”
Fleming turned to her and smiled, a bit of that old confidence back now. “I’m sorry, Sarah, I didn’t mean to hide anything from you. I wanted to keep this from Garrett, though. He has strange loyalties to the GMT.”
“Okay,” Sarah said slowly.
Fleming leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms. “One problem we’ve had from the beginning is that people love the GMT. They’re heroes of an almost mythical level. For a while, I tried to use that to my advantage, like when I brought Alex on my citywide announcement. But I realized I’ve been going about this the wrong way. We need the GMT, but we don’t want the people idolizing them.”
“How do we do that?” Sarah asked.
Fleming nodded to Kurtz. “Tell her.”
“Fleming asked me to form a new GMT,” the colonel said, “but to do it in secret. There are thirty-six of them, and we cycle them in and out.”
“So no one gets to be the face of the GMT,” Sarah said, starting to get it.
“No one but me,” Fleming chuckled. “Tell her the rest.”
“Your ‘no one gets to be the face’ comment is righter than you know. They’ll wear masks and go by call signs, referring to each other simply by a number, reassigned each mission. They won’t even know each other’s names.”
“Damn,” Sarah muttered. She wasn’t sure if the plan was brilliant or crazy.
“The GMT was always meant to be a tool,” Fleming said thoughtfully, “nothing more. Now they can selflessly serve their city. The way it was meant to be.”
The rest remained unspoken, but Sarah understood. If the people of New Haven wanted a he
ro to look up to, Fleming would make sure his was the face they had to see.
In the ventilation ducts far below the surface of New Haven, everything echoed. Even though Jessica had assured them the chances of anyone overhearing their conversation were infinitesimal, CB still found the reverberation of his own voice disconcerting. He spoke quietly when he had to speak at all.
“Hold still, I’m almost done.” Brian had finished cleaning the wound in CB’s shoulder and was now redressing it. “How’s that feel?”
“Like I got shot in the arm.” In truth, the bullet had only grazed him. He had full movement and the pain was minimal. He hoped that as soon as Brian stopped fussing over the injury, he’d be able to forget about it altogether.
“So what’s next?” Jessica asked. “As much as I’d enjoy living down in these tunnels for the rest of my life with you two boys, they’re going to find us eventually. There’s only so much real estate on this ship.”
CB pulled his shirt back on, wincing as the cloth grazed his wound. “Now we figure out how to take back New Haven.”
He saw weariness in his friends’ eyes. He could relate. Even though he’d only been on the run for twelve hours, it felt like he hadn’t slept in days. But he also knew they couldn’t rest. Fleming certainly wouldn’t. The man had already started the campaign to publicly discredit CB with his citywide announcement, and he wouldn’t ease off until he found them and eliminated them.
“We’re fighting a two-front battle here,” CB said. “We need to take the city back from Fleming, but we also need to figure out how to combat the lies he’s spreading. It won’t do much good to take down Fleming if the people consider us traitors. We need a way to get the word out.”
Jessica thought about that a moment. “I know where the communication lines run underneath the agricultural sector.”
CB turned toward Brian. “Think you could find a way to splice us in? Hack our way to a citywide broadcast of our own?”
Brian scratched his chin. “It’s possible. Without access to my equipment in the lab, it’ll be tough. I might be able to pull it off.”
CB put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re in the GMT now, son. We don’t try; we get it done.” He turned to Jessica. “You two head to the agriculture section and see what kind of magic you can make happen.”
“What about you?” Jessica asked.
“While you two are fighting the information war, I’ll be working on the other one. I’m going to find the weapon that just might give us a chance.”
3
Firefly raced across the snow, aware of the cold air rushing past him, but not feeling its bite.
When he’d woken in Fort Stearns to his new life as a vampire, he’d been confused, disgusted, and terrified. Now, he felt something else: wonder.
He’d been sprinting for hours, yet he felt no fatigue. Despite the effort, he wasn’t sweating. There was a heavy deadness in his chest where his heart should have been pounding, yet a cold strength emanated from every muscle. He felt invincible.
It was nearly sunrise. He knew it even though the eastern sky was still dark. There was a smell in the air that almost burned if he sniffed too deeply, and it was growing more powerful by the moment.
What a strange new life, to be able to smell the approaching sunrise.
“Here!” Mark called. “Hold up.”
Firefly felt himself stop running before his brain had even processed the command. He looked around and realized they were nearly at Agartha. He’d been so deep in the experience and the new sensations that he hadn’t noticed.
The three hundred vampires around him halted, and Mark and Aaron conferred a moment. Though they were thirty yards away and speaking at almost a whisper, Firefly had no trouble hearing every word they spoke.
“We’d better hole up for the day,” Aaron said. “How do we approach this thing tomorrow night?”
Mark sighed, his eyes fixed on the distant entrance to the city. “It’s not going to be quick or easy. We have to be patient if we want to get this done.”
“Heh,” Aaron chuckled. “We waited one hundred fifty years in the snow. Patience I can do.”
Mark nodded absently. “We’ll need to take out the automated railguns first. That’ll make them nervous. If all of them go offline at once, hopefully they’ll think it’s a system malfunction of some kind. We’ll have snipers waiting outside every entrance to the city. Jaden will send a few of his idiot disciples out to check on the guns. When that happens, our snipers take them down.”
Aaron glanced at him. “You think that’ll work? They’re not going to send all one hundred vamps out one at a time for us to headshot like it’s a video game.”
Now Mark turned toward Aaron. “You played video games back in the day?”
Aaron grinned. “Call of Duty was my game. X-Box.”
Mark grimaced. “I was more of a Destiny guy. PlayStation.”
“Heh, of course you were. My friends and I would have kicked your ass so hard in COD. Then we would have put another bullet in your head two seconds after you respawned.”
“Can we focus on the task at hand?” He paused a moment. “You and your squad of twelve-year-olds wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a Destiny run.”
Firefly listened to the odd conversation, wondering what they were talking about. He didn’t understand the context but it seemed trivial compared with the attack they’d just been discussing.
His stomach twisted at the thought of what was to come. He and the other Resettlers were going to be forced to attack Agartha, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d be made to fight, forced to kill. He’d caused so many deaths already. How many more would he add to that toll tomorrow night?
Mark continued in his near-whisper. “Eventually it’s going to come to a straight-up fight. We already have Jaden’s vamps outnumbered three to one. Our goal with the snipers is to increase those odds even more. Then, when they send out the rest of the vamps, we stomp them. How’s that sound to you, Firefly?”
He said the words in the same quiet voice, his eyes still fixed on Aaron.
Firefly was so surprised that he stood there frozen, unable to answer.
“That’s right, I know you’re listening,” Mark said, turning to look at him. “Get over here. Now.”
To Firefly’s surprise, his body didn’t immediately obey as it had to other orders. He remained standing where he was.
Mark grimaced. “I gave you an order. Get over here!”
Still Firefly remained frozen.
A slow smile crept across Aaron’s face. “Ah, I see what’s happening. Firefly, get over here!”
This time, Firefly immediately obeyed, moving to Aaron’s side as quickly as his feet could get him there.
Aaron nudged Mark. “I turned him.”
Mark scratched his chin. “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. We need to remedy this situation. We can’t have half following you and half following me.” He raised his voice and addressed the former Resettlers. “Listen up. When Mark gives you an order, I want you to follow if as if it came from me.”
“Let’s see if it worked,” Aaron said. “Show me one of yours.”
Mark pointed to a tall, thin man who couldn’t have been more than twenty.
“You!” Aaron shouted to the thin man. “Shoot the guy next to you.”
The young man immediately drew his pistol, turned to the wide-eyed man standing next to him, and fired.
The man who’d been shot cried out in pain and clutched his stomach where the bullet had entered.
“What’d you do that for?” Mark said, the annoyance clear in his voice. “This is our army.”
“Relax, he shot him in the stomach. He’ll be fine.”
“Okay, we’ve proved we can assign master powers to each other. Your turn. Tell your people to obey me.”
Aaron just grinned. “I don’t know. Not sure I want to share my army with a loser who games on a PlayStation.”
Mark took a step to
ward him. “You want this army to have only one leader, we can decide that right now. I’ll kill you so fast you won’t even realize you’re dead till you’ve been in hell for five minutes.”
Aaron held up a hand. “Relax, I’m fucking with you.” Then, in a louder voice, “Same as what he said. Any order Mark gives is the same as if it came from me.” He turned to Mark. “Happy?”
“I’ll be happy when Jaden is captured, and we have a nice supply of human necks to feed on. For now, let’s get our people into place. Then we’ll have them burrow under the snow for the night.”
Firefly stood next to them, waiting for his orders, the knowledge of what he’d be forced to do tomorrow night eating away at his heart even as the growing hunger reverberated in his bones.
Alex managed four hours of sleep in the cramped room they’d provided her before she gave up and left her room. She spotted Ed leaning against the wall, looking bored.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Everyone says me and my brother are so similar, but Patrick could sleep in a war zone. Me, not so much. I have a hard time turning off my brain.”
“I can relate,” Alex said. “I’m headed to the transport area to see how George’s preparations are coming. Want to come?”
Ed shrugged and fell into step alongside her.
When they reached the transport area, Alex was unsurprised to find Owl harassing George as he prepared vehicles for that night’s journey to Denver. They were standing on an eighteen-wheeled vehicle with a wide, flat area on the back of it.
“The thing you’ve got to remember is you’re dealing with a piece of precision machinery,” she said insistently. “Forgive me if I’m a little concerned about a bunch of super-strong vampires manhandling it onto…whatever the hell this is.”
George continued organizing supplies, not looking at her as he answered, “It’s a flatbed truck.”
“Okay, fine.” She took a step closer to him. “The point is, if one of those undead weirdos squeezes a little too hard and bends the hull, we’re talking major performance issues. I’ve already lost one ship in these mountains. If I lose another—”