Beyond Surrender (Beyond #9)

by Kit Rocha

  Mad had been a teenager the day they sketched his portrait onto the wall. An orphan. He'd imagined joining his mother and father someday, dying the way they had—as heroes.

  That hadn't been his dream in a while.

  So Mad didn't grieve for Riders who went down clearing a path to the City Center, but he didn't take the same risks, either. He had three very good reasons to live waiting for him back at the aid station—three people whose hearts would break if he came back broken into pieces they couldn't mend.

  His caution didn't blunt the advance. Eden's soldiers couldn't hold in the face of wild-eyed warriors who feared neither pain nor death. Zeke shot one of the Special Tasks soldiers trying to hold the line, and when the wounded man staggered back, Deacon snapped his neck. Exhilarated, Zeke spun around to find his next target with a laugh. Fighting the city that had tossed him out all those years ago energized him, and more than one soldier broke ranks and ran in the face of his laughter.

  Deacon wasn't laughing. Neither was Ivan, a second-generation Rider whose father had died protecting Mad's mother. Mad took down a second Special Tasks soldier with a head shot, then grunted when Ivan smashed into him, knocking him to the ground. A bullet dug into the road next to their heads—one that would have gone through Mad's heart.

  Maybe caution didn't matter if you were a Rios surrounded by Riders. They'd all die before they let him take a scratch.

  The soldier who'd fired on him was lifting his gun for a second shot when a blur of brown skin and black hair slammed into him. Reyes, the eldest son of Sector One's wealthiest family after Mad's own. He dispatched the soldier with a knife across the throat, then turned and threw the same knife into the neck of a second soldier.

  By the time Mad made it back to his feet, Zeke had broken through the ragged line of defenders. Three more Riders followed him, chasing the undisciplined soldiers back into alleys and side streets. Eden had always relied on the power of a bully—bigger guns, bigger bombs, bigger armies. The military police were accustomed to scared citizens who had never learned how to fight back.

  Now, faced with hardened fighters who'd grown up tough and mean in the sectors, the soft, spoiled bullies of Eden scattered like terrified children.

  "Come on!" Mad slapped Ivan's arm and gestured to Deacon. "The O'Kanes are right behind us. We're almost to the City Center."

  They fell in behind him, obeying him as readily as they would have obeyed Gideon. And as they pushed toward the center of the city, Mad spared one moment of grief. Not for the Riders who had fallen so willingly, but for the man who had sent them to die.

  Against his will, Gideon was confined to the aid station by lingering injuries from the assassination attempt that had almost killed him. They'd had a brief, vicious fight over the matter—for the first time in his life, Mad had lost his temper and screamed at his more powerful cousin. A man who still got breathless after a few minutes of strenuous activity didn't belong on a battlefield. So Gideon had stayed behind with part of his Royal Guard to coordinate the protection of the medical staff.

  And he'd sent his men to die without him.

  Gideon would be frantic. He'd grieve for every life lost. He'd cry for the men who had died willingly, righteously, even eagerly. He'd mourn, and he'd take more blame onto his shoulders than any mere mortal could carry.

  After they took down Eden, Mad would have to find a way to help his cousin forgive himself.

  Lex

  Pushing through to the center of the city was the hardest thing Lex had ever done.

  It wasn't just the fighting—she'd been prepared for that, for the danger and the carnage and the adrenaline. For the strange blankness that came from being so fucking riled up, but also having to detach yourself from the possibility of death in order to simply function. She'd been ready for all of those things.

  But leaving the wounded behind killed her. It didn't matter that every single one had been handed off to Dylan's well-trained medics, or that they were headed back to the best field care you could hope for in a situation like this. She didn't know whether they were going to be okay or whether they were drawing their last breaths, and it hurt. It hurt so goddamn bad.

  Finn took a bullet in the thigh three blocks out. Ace took his place in the advance, leading a ragtag collection of defectors. Twenty yards from the City Center, he jammed into her, knocking her out of the path of a bullet that hit his shoulder hard enough to spin him around.

  No. "Ace!"

  "I'm fine," he snarled. Lied. He smashed to his knees on the pavement and waved his uninjured arm at her. "Go."

  "Don't snap at me, Santana." She lifted his good arm around her shoulder. "I've got you."

  His fingers dug into her shoulder. "No, you've got to finish this. Nothing else matters, not even my glorious ass. So move it, sister."

  He was right. He was right, and that only made it worse. "Get back to the aid station," she told him. "I'll find you when it's over."

  She ran to catch up with Dallas, who fired his last bullet into an MP's shoulder. When his gun clicked empty, he whipped it across the man's face, driving him to the ground. "The Riders cut a path for Bren, Cruz, and Ryder," he told her as he stripped the man of his weapon and straightened. He fired absently at another man rushing them. "Reinforcements are coming now, though. I think the Council must have scared the cowards into running back at us."

  "We'll have to find cover and deal with them." They couldn't risk having enemy soldiers regroup—or, worse, surround them and cut them off from the others.

  "Right. Flag down Mad—"

  It was as far as he got. A man wearing the sleek uniform of a Special Tasks soldier whipped around the corner of a statue, a wicked-looking automatic rifle in his hand.

  Aimed at Dallas.

  She didn't have time to reach him. She didn't even have time to scream as the soldier squeezed off a burst of rounds, and Hawk slammed into her, driving her to the ground. She caught Six out of the corner of her eye, a blur of brown hair and leather followed by rapid gunfire.

  Then Six's voice, rough with worry. "Fuck—find a team with a doctor. Now."

  Lex didn't try to get up. She dragged herself from beneath Hawk, kicking when his weight held her pinned, and crawled across the smooth pavement, which was now littered with glass and spent shell casings and blood.

  Dallas's blood.

  Six had already torn open his shirt, and the world went gray around the edges when Lex saw the holes in his chest and stomach. She pressed her hands to them, but blood seeped sluggishly through her fingers and she couldn't do this.

  She couldn't do this.

  "Alexa."

  She met his eyes, and the world stopped. Everything ceased to exist but the way he was looking at her—like she was life, breath, all the things he'd always known he needed plus a few he'd never considered.

  It didn't hurt. This was something beyond agony, unthinkable and unlivable. But she managed to drag in a breath that turned into a sob. "Don't do this."

  His hand shook as he reached for her face, and his fingers slipped on her tear-slicked cheeks. "Everything good I am, everything good I've ever done... It's all you."

  He'd said it before, but she'd never told him that it went both ways. If she hadn't chosen him as a mark, if he'd gone out instead of staying in that night, if he'd never caught her stealing shit out of his personal safe, then she would have carried on with her sad excuse for a life—drifting from sector to sector, closed off from everyone around her. A thief with nothing and no one.

  That life stretched out before her again now, like a flickering image from Noah's fancy wall projector. She shrank away from it and buried her face in the hollow of Dallas's neck instead. "You can't leave me."

  "Never." His hand sank into her hair, but his grip was weak. "Always with you, Lexie. Love you."

  "I love you, too." It felt too much like goodbye, but she couldn't not say it, just in case this was it, the end of Dallas and Lex. Of Declan and Alexa.

 
Of everything.

  His hand fell away, limp and unmoving. Lex gripped him tighter, as if she could hold him to her through sheer need and force of will. She fought the hands that tried to pull her away, until a familiar voice murmured in her ear.

  "You have to let them work, Lex." Mad wrapped his arms around her and hauled her back against his chest. Dallas's fingers slipped from between hers, but Mad caught her hand before she could reach for him again. "This is Kora. She's the one who saved Gideon."

  "No." This wasn't real—all the desperate moments, the worry, the death. In her worst nightmares, she'd never imagined this, because this was impossible. Dallas couldn't die. Without him, she didn't exist.

  She clung to that as fiercely as she clung to Mad. As long as she was breathing, that meant Dallas was, too. Because surely the moment he stopped, everything else would, too.

  Ashwin

  The only thing Ashwin could still trust was the impersonal truth of numbers, so that was how he ordered his life.

  One hundred and thirty seven: the number of hours since he'd last slept. Even for a Makhai soldier, he knew he was pushing the outer edges of his stamina. If necessary, he could stay on his feet for another few days, but his ability to analyze and react to situations would become increasingly compromised.

  Two: the number of hours he'd spent watching Cruz, Bren, and the man from Sector Five as they quietly, efficiently rigged the wall around Eden with explosives.

  Fifty-seven: the embarrassing number of minutes it had taken him to extrapolate their plan and force his own fractured thoughts into a semblance of order and purpose.

  Three: the number of minutes it had taken him to find a weak spot in Eden's defenses to slip over the wall just before dawn.

  Eighty-three: the number of Special Tasks soldiers he estimated still survived, many of them men Ashwin had trained, whose skills he had honed while undercover in the city.

  Forty-eight: the number of Special Tasks soldiers he'd killed that morning. They'd been laughably easy to find, because Eden was predictable. Six of the seven remaining council members had retreated to their individual penthouses, and each one had requisitioned a Special Tasks squad for their personal protection. That was their fatal error. If they'd gathered in a single place, they could have set a nominal guard and charged the rest of the squads with halting the sector advance. But the remaining councilmen didn't trust each other, and they didn't trust Smith Peterson. So they scattered instead, and Ashwin had no trouble picking off their protectors, one squad at a time.

  Thirty-five: the number of Special Tasks soldiers O'Kanes' men might have to get through before they reached Peterson.

  That was the number that brought Ashwin to City Center. It suited Peterson's arrogance—instead of taking refuge in his own home, he'd chosen the center of government as the spot of his final stand. The government building thrust into the sky, towering above all of the other structures in the heart of Eden.

  It sparkled in the clear morning sunlight, beams dancing off glass and steel, too bright and clean for the slaughter taking place at its base.

  The sector forces were close to surrounded. They'd formed a wide, tight circle several people deep, and the outer ring fired on the Special Tasks squads closing in from all sides.

  It was irrational for them to stand their ground in the open when there were innumerable options for cover only a dozen yards away. Even as he thought it, he watched a blonde woman in leather take a hit to the gut and go down. Before another fighter surged to fill her place, he caught a glimpse of the center of the circle.

  A glimpse was enough.

  One: the number of seconds it took for him to process the sight of Dallas O'Kane on his back. Bleeding out under the hands of—

  He didn't count the men he shot as he surged out of the alley and crashed into the first soldier. He didn't count their deaths. He didn't count the number of bullets that grazed him, or even the ones that sank into his flesh.

  They were firing toward Kora.

  They had to stop.

  Now.

  After so many weeks of conflict, it was invigorating for his life to be so starkly, wonderfully simple. Ashwin glided from kill to kill, ignoring the blood on his hands and skin, reveling in the reduction of noise that followed each execution. Fewer gunshots meant decreased risk.

  It was the kind of math he could do without numbers.

  The final Special Tasks soldiers ran from him. It made them easier targets. When they slumped to the ground, the square went silent.

  Ashwin turned toward the circle, which seemed to draw together in front of him. The faces staring back at him were tight with terror, and they didn't shift aside as he approached them.

  One lifted a rifle.

  A part of him, a part buried so deep it felt like the echo of someone else's memory, knew he didn't want to kill the people in front of him. But he could feel Kora's presence beyond them, a tingle of awareness beneath his skin. It short-circuited the pain receptors pumping feedback about his various wounds, overlaying them with the agony of recalibration drugs.

  It hurt to think about Kora. And it hurt not to see her.

  "Ashwin."

  The clump of women in front of him parted to reveal a brunette with blood staining her hands and cheek. Six, the echo supplied. The leader of Sector Three, a member of Dallas's gang. She was watching him warily, her hand still gripping her pistol, but she gestured with one hand and the circle broke in front of him.

  Kora was covered with blood. A swift appraisal of her visible skin revealed no wounds, and her clothing showed no tears or bullet holes. Not her blood. Of course, it wouldn't need to be—Dallas O'Kane lay beneath her busy hands, pale as death.

  That mattered, somewhere. The echoes were even more distant now. All he could hear was her.

  "Kora."

  She glanced up, did a double take, and nearly smiled with relief as she turned her attention back to her task. "Lieutenant." She held out her hand, and one of the medics beside her placed a clamp into it. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

  A sickly discomfort crawled up his spine, and he wasn't capable of processing it. Unease? Dread? He didn't know what a normal human would call this feeling. All he knew was the action it demanded. Reinforcements could be arriving at any moment, and Kora was exposed.

  Unacceptable.

  "Come on." He stepped over Dallas's sprawled legs and reached for her. "You need to get to a secure location."

  She shrugged him off with another glance, this one incredulous. "I'm a little busy here."

  Kora wasn't capable of protecting herself. Because of what she was, and how they'd shaped her. She would stay here, in the face of certain death, driven to heal, to ease pain, no matter how hopeless. No matter how much it hurt her.

  She couldn't make the hard decision, so Ashwin did.

  He hauled her to her feet, his hands gentle but implacable around her upper arms. "Now, Kora. It isn't safe here."

  The sound of a pistol's safety disengaging drew his attention. He'd anticipated bluster from the O'Kanes, but time slowed to nothing when he turned toward the noise and found a wild-eyed Lex holding the weapon in one steady hand.

  Pointed at Kora's head.

  "I don't want to do this." Lex's voice wavered, but her aim didn't. "Don't make me do this."

  On any other day, he would have called her bluff. Alexa Parrino didn't have the cruelty inside her to shoot an innocent woman for the sins of a man. But the look in her dark eyes—

  Ashwin couldn't name the sick feeling churning inside him, but he recognized it. With Dallas bleeding out on the ground, Lex was capable of doing anything.

  Right now, so was Ashwin.

  It was a tragedy in the making, worse because he knew he could shoot her. It would be unnecessary and inefficient, and he disliked both of those things. But not enough to stop his hand from sliding toward the gun strapped to his thigh.

  Kora's blood-slicked hand covered his. "Stop. Please, Ashwin."
r />   She was shaking. Trembling in his grip, with terror filling her sweet, gentle face—and she wasn't even looking at Lex. Her fear slammed into his gut, more painful than all his bullet wounds combined, more agonizing than the drugs he'd pumped into his veins to wipe her from his psyche.

  Because it was him. He was hurting her, just like Cruz had sworn he would.

  His hands spasmed once on her arms and then opened. He stumbled back, and Six stepped between them, bristling with fury as she pointed her pistol at the center of his forehead. "Keep moving."

  He did, because two steps was far enough to afford him a glimpse past her, a last look at Kora's pale face. "I'm sorry," he whispered. But she was already sinking back to her knees, her focus on the man she was trying to save.

  They were both what their creators had intended. Perfectly formed tools meant for a single purpose. Trying to change that was a futile act that led to malfunction. He was proof of that.

  He was a weapon, meant for only one thing. It was time for him to go back to the Base and let them reforge him. A few months at the nonexistent mercies of the recalibration team would break him down into parts so small, nothing inside him would remember how good it had been just to be near her.

  He'd forget how to feel again. And she'd be safer without him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The administration building at City Center was a marvel of engineering. Ryder had never seen it this close before, but he'd studied the blueprints until his eyes burned. He'd memorized the layout, along with every point of access, every security feature, even the ventilation system.

  And, now, here he was.

  "Fuck," Cruz murmured, gripping his weapon tighter. "I hate this place. I always hated this place."

  "That's because you have a brain." Bren quickly cleared the alley that led around the side of the building. "Peterson has to be here. What's our approach?"