Beyond Surrender (Beyond #9)

by Kit Rocha

  Selfish disappointment that she wouldn't even get one last night with him.

  Their voices drifted back into wordless sounds as she pulled into herself. But instead of grief, something else was building. Something dark and angry that fed off Amira's pain and Lex's hope equally, something stubborn and proud and vast enough to swallow Eden itself.

  Looking down, Nessa rubbed her thumb over her wrist. Her O'Kane cuffs had been a part of her for so long, she barely noticed them. She'd grown to adulthood on a steady diet of fuck-the-world and protect-the-weak, as heady a cocktail as anything they served in the bar.

  And you needed both parts. Just the former, and you were nothing but an asshole. Some idiot swinging your fists around just because you could, without giving a shit who you hit. Just the latter, and you were too scared to stand up to the bullies. They'd run you over, and drive the people you were trying to save down into the dirt.

  Eden was the biggest fucking bully around. They were used to swinging their fists at people too hurt or fragile to swing back. And that was all tomorrow was, in the end. A big damn fuck you aimed directly at the most corrupt of them. The same kind of thing the gang had been doing since they'd formed up, only on a bigger scale.

  Nessa was a fucking O'Kane. She'd never been too scared to come back swinging. She'd never doubted they would win.

  So tomorrow she was going to do her part. Plant her steel-toed boot in Eden's metaphorical junk. She'd do it for Flash and Amira and Hana. For Tank. For Stuart. For the forty-seven people Ryder had lost. For Hawk's sister and for Shipp. Fuck, even for Noelle's asshole father.

  When it was over, she'd deal with Michael Ryder like an O'Kane. They'd end up crashing together or they'd crash and burn, but she'd face it head-on, either way.

  And he wouldn't know what hit him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sometimes, Ryder almost forgot that Bren Donnelly and Lorenzo Cruz had once been soldiers in Eden, mission-oriented and meticulously trained. But after staying up all night, watching them confidently assemble directed charges with the plastic explosives and detonators, he wasn't sure he'd ever forget again.

  They might be ink-wearing O'Kanes now, through and through, but the past was still a part of them. It informed every moment of their lives, and Ryder understood that. More than any of Dallas's other people, he felt a kinship with these two.

  Not that they'd thrown some kind of demolition-themed slumber party. They'd barely talked, all three intent on their shared task, as well as the battle ahead. When they had spoken, Cruz and Bren had told stories about Flash—funny and poignant and sometimes painful stories that filled Ryder with regret that he'd never had a chance to climb into the cage with the hulking man.

  Ryder finished placing the last of the charges in the spots Bren had marked along the wall. They'd saved the gates for last, simply because there was no way to hide their activities there from the assigned guards. Not that it would matter soon, anyway—with every able fighter in five different sectors gathering near the wall, it would take negligence on a criminal level not to notice that shit was about to go down.

  Gideon was the most impressive—and the least subtle. He'd left his Royal Guard back at the O'Kane compound to protect the noncombatants gathered there, but close to a hundred of his Temple guards were gathered in the open space between the wall and the buildings. And in front of them…

  The Riders. Forty-five in total, once Gideon and Mad joined them. They'd arrived on sleek, perfectly maintained motorcycles, all clad in black leather and carrying enough weapons to stock an arsenal. They stood easily, patiently, showing none of the fear of the Temple guards behind them.

  Nearly four dozen men who weren't afraid to die.

  Beside them, Six had gathered with her girls, every one armed to the teeth and decked out in even more leather and spikes than the Riders. They wore expressions Ryder recognized easily—they weren't eager to fight, not exactly, but they were ready. Battling for survival was second nature to them, a daily, never-ending struggle, and they weren't about to lose that fight now.

  Finn stood with the men from Five. They had always looked to him as a leader, and his defection to O'Kane's gang hadn't changed that. He spoke to them, even laughed with them, relaxing their worried, shell-shocked faces. Hector had brought in every last fighter who hadn't been killed or wounded in the sector battle, and an ache splintered in Ryder's chest at their diminished numbers.

  He embraced it. The best way to honor the fallen was to hit Eden hard. To win.

  Sector Six had even fewer people. Hawk stood with his mother, who had her long hair pulled back in a tight braid and an impressive rifle resting on one shoulder. A massive bear of a man stood just behind her, making final checks on his crew of smugglers as they waited with eyes burning with vengeance. A few dozen farmers huddled behind them, grim refugees armed with shotguns and desperation. But they straightened with purpose when Hawk walked into their midst.

  Every group counted at least one O'Kane amongst their ranks. That wasn't news—Jim had spoken of Dallas's recruitment strategy, noting with almost envious admiration how he seemed to be drawing powerful leaders from every sector into the fold, people who could rally those sectors to O'Kane's cause when the time was right.

  Ryder understood the truth now—Dallas simply attracted strong followers, and he didn't give a flaming shit where they were from. Far from being a calculated strategy, it was a bit of accidental brilliance, nothing he could have truly planned, and one of the many things that had elevated him to the point of leading this rebellion.

  Given the fact that Ryder had always been told that it was his job to lead the sectors—and the city—to freedom, he was surprisingly okay with it. Dallas had earned this, not through subterfuge and careful groundwork, but by sheer strength of character.

  Dallas stepped away from where Jas had gathered with the O'Kanes and their militia and strode into the open space between Ryder and the amassing army. He hopped up onto an overturned food cart and stood in silence, one arm raised.

  The murmur of voices faded. Heads swiveled, gazes shifted. Effortlessly, Dallas drew all focus, and held it through three long, slow breaths.

  "They started this war," he said, his voice loud and clear enough that the guards were probably listening from inside the gate. "They started it years ago, when they bombed the shit out of the factories in Three to teach us not to ask for fair treatment. They kept it going every time they hurt you just to prove they could, or took more than they needed just to keep you from having enough."

  There was a rhythm to his words. A cadence. He was gathering them along with him as he got louder, faster. Angrier. "But they never have enough. They wanted more from Sector Two. More money, more lives. And when the leader said no, they murdered helpless women and children. Because if they can't have something, they'll destroy it."

  The crowd murmured. One of the farmers from Six shouted in angry agreement, then another. Dallas's voice rang out over them. "But they made a fucking mistake this time. They got so busy taking, they forgot to keep us fighting with each other. And do you know what we can do when we work together?"

  He flung an arm out, pointing toward the city. "We're gonna tear down their fucking wall and end their fucking war."

  The noise that answered his words couldn't even be described as a cheer. It was something deeper, primal. Dangerous.

  Ryder arched one eyebrow at Dallas as he jumped off the overturned cart. "Nice speech."

  Dallas grinned, feral and furious. "I've had a few years to come up with it."

  "And everyone thought you were an impulsive caveman."

  "I am." He turned to stare up at the wall. "That's their real mistake, you know. I'd pretty much reached a point where I liked my life just like it was. Fighting and fucking and not worrying about what happened beyond my sector. I was content, and they could have let me be content."

  But they hadn't, and now it was too late. Bren joined them, a sleek trigger switch in one hand, wh
ich he offered to Dallas. "Want to do the honors?"

  Dallas took the detonator in one hand and cradled it. Then he looked back at Lex. She returned his stare, her eyes full of so much emotion that Ryder couldn't begin to untangle it, and nodded shortly.

  Dallas smiled slightly as he turned back to face Eden's pristine wall. "If we pull this off," he murmured, "I'm gonna sleep for a fucking week."

  Then he hit the trigger.

  For a moment, stillness. Then the silence exploded painfully, and the ground shook beneath them. The solid surface of the wall seemed to shudder, then cracks splintered across it in every direction.

  Another sound rose in the sharp morning light—alarm sirens, nearly drowned out by the rumbling roar as the wall broke apart and crumbled, raising smoke and dust in its place.

  A second roar rose, drowning out the sound of the collapsing wall. The Riders didn't wait for the dust to settle. They were already moving, charging toward the destruction without fear or hesitation.

  That didn't surprise Ryder. What did, even though maybe it shouldn't have, was the sight of everyone else charging just as readily, from the farmers who'd fled Sector Six to the merchants who ran stalls in Four's marketplace. In this moment, they were one, united in anger and wrath and mourning. There were no lives in the sectors that hadn't been damaged by the greed and hypocrisy of the city leaders.

  And they were ready to strike back.

  Jasper

  Jas had thought that the greatest challenge in their initial invasion of the city was bound to be the perimeter guards near the wall. They'd raise the alarm, then hit the rebel forces straight on.

  He'd been really fucking wrong. The bastards ran. They flipped on the goddamn sirens and then they ran.

  What the hell are they playing at? He motioned for the rest of his men to halt while he strained to listen for the sound of marching feet, shouted orders, anything to give him a clue as to whether the guards were cowards—or leading them into a fucking ambush.

  He got his answer when small projectiles sailed over the buildings in front of them, silhouetted against the morning sky.

  "Grenades!"

  Jasper didn't know who yelled out the warning, but everyone scattered for cover, including him. He vaulted over the half-wall that closed off the small courtyard of a building—

  And came face-to-face with a man and two small children.

  He pulled his young daughters behind him, facing Jas with bleak eyes. "Just let them go. Please."

  The words were so helpless, so hopeless, so rage-inducing that Jasper almost forgot why he'd ducked into the courtyard to begin with. Then the first of the grenades exploded out in the street. Neither child screamed, though the older one did clap her hand over the younger one's mouth.

  The heartbreaking sight of it startled him out of his silence. "Do you have a basement?"

  The man stared at him.

  "A basement," he repeated firmly. "Do you have one?"

  A second explosion jolted the man out of his shock. "The building has three maintenance sublevels—"

  "Go there. Now." Jasper grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. One of the kids uttered her first sound, a frightened whimper, and he tried to soften his voice. "If it's locked, get to an interior room, one with no windows. Stay there and don't come out."

  The younger girl pried her sister's hand away and stared up at Jasper. "Are you gonna come and kill us?"

  "Hush, Evie." The man prodded his daughters toward the door to the building, casting one wary look back over his shoulder, as if half-expecting Jas to put a bullet in his back.

  Fuck.

  Jasper popped up over the half-wall. The wave of incoming grenades had slowed, but people had started spilling out of their homes, drawn by the noise.

  He rushed out, keeping an eye on the sky, and grabbed the nearest fighter—one of Hawk's friends from Sector Six. "Watch their trajectory, and you'll see where they're gonna fall," he shouted. "We need to get these people back inside. Go!"

  The man hurried off, and Jas turned and waved his arms at a cluster of onlookers who were staring at him. Where was their fucking sense of self-preservation?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the grenades hit the edge of a roof and bounce toward him. There wasn't enough time to run, so he ducked around a narrow ledge of brick lining a shop window and covered his ears. The pressure of the blast made his teeth ache anyway, and hot prickles of pain shot up his unprotected side.

  He looked down. The frag from the grenade had ripped through his pants and jacket, leaving angry, burning scores in his flesh. Gingerly, he prodded the wounds, but every single one was a scrape, not a hole filled with hot metal.

  He'd take it.

  Hawk appeared around the corner, his gun gripped in both hands. Blood streaked his temple and cheek, but he ignored it as he assessed Jas's side. "You okay, man?"

  "Yeah, I'm good." He almost followed it up with a snarky remark about how the bastards would have to try harder than that to kill him, but it felt like tempting fate, so he bit his tongue.

  If he came back dead, Noelle would kill him.

  He slapped Hawk on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's go."

  Ace

  Once upon a time, Ace had enjoyed the adrenaline of battle. For all of his jokes about how he was a lover and not a fighter, he'd taken to the occasional violence of life as a member of the O'Kane gang easily and joyfully.

  That enjoyment faded after Rachel and Cruz had come into his life. Not that he couldn't still get shit done when the occasion required it—and he wasn't bothered by the need to kill—but the risk-reward math had skewed way out of control once he had something to live for back at home.

  And once Rachel turned up pregnant…

  This is the last fucking time, he promised as he shot out the knees of a soldier rushing toward him. Their body armor was pretty solid across the chest and protected the bulk of their heads, but the idiots had left their knees exposed, and no one could run with his knees blown out. He reached the man while he was still howling in pain and put a third bullet between his eyes, then abandoned his empty pistol and swept up the dead man's sidearm.

  The streets of Eden were fucking chaos. Ace had lost sight of Cruz seven dead soldiers ago, which meant the push toward the center of the city was working. Mopping up the strays was less dangerous work, but less was relative in a melee where bullets were flying as fast as fists and knives and clubs.

  And explosions.

  Ace lit the last of Nessa's Molotov cocktails and slung it toward a trio of guards peeking around a wall. The glass shattered, and the liquor splashed onto the pavement at their feet and splattered their pants with flames as the fireball erupted. They dropped their weapons and started slapping at their burning clothes, and Ace had all the time in the world to draw his gun and put them out of their misery.

  The dozen Molotovs he'd brought with him had proven effective at scattering Eden's resistance every time they managed to rally it. Something about a wildly laughing sector soldier chucking burning liquor at them fed all the nightmares they'd grown up on, the scary stories about demons and hell and the fire that awaited them if they thought bad things or touched themselves in places that felt good.

  Raining down literal hellfire was totally worth setting Nessa's precious liquor on fire—but he wouldn't tell her that.

  A soldier popped out from between two buildings, and Ace cursed and barely got his gun up in time. This one he shot at point-blank range, right in the face, and blood splattered back at him. The absolute last fucking time.

  "Nice shot!" Finn jogged toward Ace, a dozen militia fighters trailing behind him. He had a rough bandage tied around his upper arm and blood smeared across his face, and he swooped down to steal the soldier's rifle. "We need to push—"

  The shuffling of multiple footsteps around the corner tickled the edge of Ace's hearing, and he grabbed Finn's uninjured arm and pointed with the other hand.

  Finn nodded and gestured to t
he men behind him. They spread out, covering the space between the buildings, ready to deal with the dead soldier's backup. When no one appeared, Ace took a deep breath, whispered a silent apology to Cruz and Rachel, and whirled around the corner.

  Twenty terrified men stared back at him, their weapons gripped in shaking hands. They didn't even have half-decent body armor, just drab gray uniforms that wouldn't protect them from a stiff breeze.

  Conscripts.

  As soon as Ace thought the word, the man in front dropped his weapon and held up both hands. "We don't want to fight. We only came out because he—" the man gestured to the dead soldier, "—threatened to shoot us if we didn't."

  Finn stepped out next to Ace as more weapons clattered to the ground, every clack a credit to Markovic's pretty face—or Peterson's ugly words. Either the propaganda had worked, or the people of Eden were as miserable as their sector cousins.

  "If you want to surrender, kick over your guns—" Finn started.

  "Fuck that shit," Ace interrupted. "If you want to surrender, pick your guns the hell back up and come kill these motherfuckers with us. Take back your damn city."

  Finn only hesitated a second before nodding. "And take off those jackets so people know you're on our side."

  Fabric rustled as the men complied, stripping off their jackets to reveal threadbare clothing with patched holes. They looked hungry and scared, these people who lived inside the walls of paradise but had never tasted its riches.

  Time to change that.

  This is the last fucking time—but it's worth it.

  Mad

  The Riders were dying.

  They were good deaths. Righteous deaths. Eager deaths. Each one of his cousin's men took down dozens of enemies before they fell, and Mad wouldn't disrespect their sacrifice by crying for them. Back in Sector One, in a temple at the heart of his family's land, the outlines of their portraits had already been sketched onto a memorial wall. When a man joined the Riders, he accepted death. He faced it on that wall, knowing the priestess would paint in his portrait on the day he fell.