by Rebecca Rode
The officials around us had gone silent, watching our heated exchange with interest. The music continued, but my cheeks warmed as I realized half the room had heard Vance’s words. An ambassador arguing with her bodyguard must have been a rare entertainment indeed, but since it was the strange young teenager from a little-known country, we may as well have been circus clowns for the looks we were getting.
Augustus watched from across the dance floor with an arched eyebrow and a smirk.
“I’m not leaving yet,” I whispered. “This may be my only chance to convince some of these people to help us. I’m sorry.”
The simmering anger in his expression made my stomach lurch, and I almost wished I could take the words back. But I meant it. What was my life compared to the millions we were trying to save? Every minute we spent here was precious, and I refused to waste them hiding from invisible assassins in my room.
“We’ll discuss this afterward,” I told him. “Impressions are too important right now, and they already think I’m too young to be here. Just act like all the other bodyguards and enjoy the gala for a few more minutes, all right?”
“Forgive me for getting in your way,” he said, his voice strained. “I’ll tell Finley to take my place here.”
December 25, 2026
It’s funny. I didn’t know it was Christmas till I counted the weeks in this thing. Christmas Day. Last year at this time I was playing a video game on Dad’s new big screen. He stood over my shoulder and asked questions. I didn’t ask him to play—he refused to play the shooting games—but his presence there was calming, like everything was right with the world.
Now he’s dead.
It’s been eight days since our beaten group dragged ourselves back to camp after the raid. Two injured and four dead, including Anthony. Well, we think they’re dead since they never made it out. There’s only one I know is dead for certain—the one who mattered most to me.
It’s my fault. Stupid peaches.
Stupid everything.
Mom wouldn’t say much after I told her. She just kind of nodded as if I were telling her about my trip to the grocery store, then went into the tent and didn’t come out for two days.
I slept outside, shivering and staring at the same stars Dad saw as he faded away.
Everyone blames me. There’s not a person in camp who doesn’t know my name. There are variations on what happened, but most of the survivors claim I forced them to attack that house. It may as well be true. If it weren’t for me, those four men would still be with their families.
The truth of what happened doesn’t change the fact that our mission was a failure and two hundred people are on half-rations, slowly starving to death. We’ve sent out hunting parties every day since our return, but they’ve only come back with a few squirrels that feed three people each, if we’re lucky. They never offer their meat to me and Mom anymore, and half the time they steal our food while it cooks over the fire.
I don’t even have my hunting rifle. It’s with Dad, wherever he is now.
Biyu has avoided me since I got back. I catch a glimpse of her sometimes, but she never looks at me. She must believe the rumors.
To make matters worse, now Mom’s really sick. The weather has gone frigid and the ground is freezing itself hard, and I can see my breath in the evening and early morning. If it weren’t for the coat Dad traded for me, I’d be as stone-cold dead as everything around us by now. But even though Mom has a warm coat too, I think the cold’s gotten to her. Two nights ago she spent the whole night coughing, and yesterday I saw blood on her palm before she washed her hands in the stream.
When we woke up this morning she was burning hot and sweating. I ran to the cave entrance to get medicine from Lyman. One of the guards, a hard-faced woman with wisps of gray hair, went inside to fetch him. She came back alone.
“He said to tell you we have to save our medicine stash for emergencies,” she said.
“But he knows my mom,” I said, my stomach sinking. “Her name is Sarah Olsen Peak. Go ask him again.”
She rolled her eyes and went back. When she returned, her cheeks were red as if from some kind of confrontation. “He says sorry, but no special treatment. You need to go now.”
Mom’s not the only one who’s sick. At least eight others have the same weird lung thing. Pamela Snyder went full-on unconscious this morning, and a couple of kids aren’t doing so well. Lyman won’t give medicine to them either.
I saw Biyu the other day at the stream. I felt her eyes on me even before I got there, but I pretended not to see her. I just got water and trudged back to the tent. I don’t know how she feels about me right now. Probably hates me as much as everybody else.
So I spend all my time taking care of Mom these days, forcing water down her throat and trying to cool her down. I look up every time I hear footsteps, thinking it’s Dad and he’s finally here to make everything all right.
I’m going out of my mind.
If Mom isn’t better by tomorrow, I’m taking her new rifle and I’m making Lyman listen to me. Dad’s dead, Ally probably is too, and Jason may as well be. Mom’s all I’ve got. If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.
Merry Christmas.
I closed the book and removed my gloves. This wasn’t exactly uplifting bedtime reading. I made a mental note to look up Christmas, knowing I’d heard that word before. A holiday of some type? Maybe Britain celebrated it as well.
I rewrapped the diary and sighed. It was so late, and I needed the sleep, but my mind refused to stop processing the events of the evening. Augustus’s flattery and cruel words. Vance’s anger, abrupt exit, and absence the rest of the evening. A room full of people who avoided my gaze and left when I approached. Desperate, I’d even approached the ambassador from Mexico about accepting possible refugees.
“Your leaders approached us with the same request long ago,” he’d said. “Our president was wise. He told them it would strain our resources too much and positioned guards along the border. Since then a quarter of our land has been rendered useless by your water weapons. It required a fortune in displacement and restorative costs.”
“But—” I began, ready to remind him of the time that had passed.
“We’ve already suffered much grief from your people,” he said firmly. “No one from your country will ever be welcome in Mexico.”
The Canadian ambassador wouldn’t even talk to me. Probably had the same opinion anyway.
I should have been exhausted after the excitement of the past two days, but I just couldn’t relax. I rolled over in bed to check the time on the wall. 02:33. The screen seemed to work similarly to a techband, except there were multiple stations showing around the clock. Mostly news and political discussions—the last thing I needed right now.
I preferred the clock. Residents probably didn’t need that particular feature. Their eye implants told them everything.
As controlling as NORA techbands were, perhaps there were worse things—like being connected all the time. People were listening to every conversation, watching every move you made. There was absolutely no margin for error. Especially if those things could record what a person was seeing.
Augustus has those implants, I reminded myself. It was so easy to forget. He didn’t have to report my words to anyone—his government friends could watch me saying things with their own eyes. And I had danced with him, talking about how much I loved my country as though we were the only two people in the room. No wonder they saw me as an outsider.
I considered getting out of bed to check the tree chute again for a note from Chan, but Finley was guarding my door. If she knew there was a secret hatch beneath the giant tree, she’d tell Vance, and he’d launch into an overprotective rage again. Better to wait until morning.
The fact that Chan hadn’t found anything worthwhile during the gala was discouraging. Maybe Chiu was being careful not to verbalize anything important. Or maybe Guard Lady had warned him about my presence and h
e suspected something. Had they found the receiver?
I rolled over again and groaned. I’d be useless without sleep tomorrow. Pressing my eyes closed, I tried to force everything out of my mind, wiping it clean of thoughts. My breathing finally began to slow.
I’d almost drifted off when something clicked in the corner.
Awareness slammed into my mind again, and I sat up and scanned the darkness. “Vance?” Finley stood outside my door tonight, but maybe they’d switched and he was checking on me . . . while hiding in the corner?
I shoved away the visions of assassins carrying knives. I was letting Vance get to me.
“Lights on,” I ordered. The room became illuminated, and I shielded my eyes.
The corner was empty. No scary men, no giant knives. Just painful brightness everywhere.
I chuckled uneasily. Time to get some sleep before I lost it completely. “Lights off.” The room plunged into darkness. The gentle glow of the wall screen’s clock gave the room’s furniture a soft outline.
Something clicked next to my ear.
My instincts took over immediately. I plastered myself onto the edge of the bed just before a whoosh darted past me. A stunner blast, but far more powerful than anything I’d felt before. This frequency was created to kill. A black shadow the size of a dinner plate hovered above me. A drone.
It turned.
I yelped and began to roll, but it was too late. Hot pain burned through my shoulder with the second blast, and I gasped. Then the drone flipped upside down and looked at me again.
I kept rolling and hit the ground hard, wincing at the fire in my shoulder. I forced myself to breathe. A flying robot assassin. I could fight people—they had soft parts, sensitive parts. I couldn’t fight a machine bent on extermination.
You can’t lose it now. Focus.
“Finley!” It came out as a croak.
The click sounded again, right above me.
I shoved toward the door in one massive leap, reaching for the doorknob. Locked. Who had locked it? “Finley!”
A shot smashed through the door and left a gaping hole. I stared in shock. That was no sound-wave technology—it was true firepower.
I didn’t dare reach up again. The drone would expect that. Where was Finley? There was little in here to defend myself with. No lamp, nothing heavy. The diary under my pillow wouldn’t exactly do damage. Fine. If there was nothing hard, I’d have to make do with something soft.
I leaped across the room again just as another shot hit the wall where I’d just been. I scooped the blanket off my bed with my good arm and gripped it with both hands, ready for the drone to approach.
All right, then, little robot. A fight it shall be.
I watched the drone like I’d once done in my khel games, every muscle taut and ready. It seemed to meet my gaze, squaring itself as if accepting my challenge. You move first, it seemed to say.
I threw the blanket over the drone just as it discharged.
The shot blew right through the blanket, blasting past my ear, but I didn’t stop. I pulled the blanket tight around the drone and prayed it couldn’t fire downward at me. Its rotor blades struggled to spin, but I held the blanket firmly.
A series of shots blasted out from the circular form, scattering about the room. I yelped again but refused to let go. Several more smoldering holes formed in the blanket as more shots issued forth. Fates. It would break out in seconds.
With a yell, I swung it at the wall as hard as I could.
The drone smacked into the wall, then struggled even harder. The glowing time disappeared as the wall screen cracked, and then what little light there had been was swallowed by the darkness.
Another yell and a crash. Another, then another. A flurry of rapid-fire shots burned through the blanket, its now-glowing fibers barely holding the thing together.
The blasts’ vibrations buzzed in my ears until I heard myself screaming. The firepower was just too intense. Any second now it would blast free and take me out with its incredible firepower.
Firepower. If only there were a way to neutralize it. This thing was electrical, after all.
The washroom.
I sprinted toward it, pulling the flailing drone behind me like a balloon, refusing to acknowledge the unyielding fire in my shoulder. “Lights,” I commanded, and the room illuminated. I threw the drone into the bathtub, shoved it down with the wooden shower brush, and turned on the faucet.
The blanket was soaked instantly, putting out the smoldering fire singeing its fibers. The drone’s shots blasted at the porcelain, and the rotor blades struggled to begin again, but it was noticeably weaker. It clicked and flailed about under the water. Then the machine began to sizzle.
Soon the machine filled with water and sunk slowly to the bottom. Then it lay there, unmoving.
I dropped the shower brush and sat there for a moment, panting, not daring to move. Then I forced myself to stand and check my shoulder in the mirror.
An angry red burn plastered the skin. The shot had grazed the top of my shoulder. An inch lower and it would have torn through muscle and tendon. The realization did little to lessen the pain.
Alarm registered in my mind like a distant thing, as if trudging through mud.
Vance was right. Someone wanted me dead.
Now that the shooting was over, I could hear pounding on the door.
I made my way toward the bedroom, wincing at the movement. As I drew closer, I heard Finley’s shrieking. “Who locked this door? Ambassador, tell me you’re all right!”
I walked to the hole, which was still smoldering slightly, and peered through it at her panicked face.
I gave her a weak smile. “If you could stop pounding, that would be great. It’s giving me a headache.”
“So the drone was floating above your head,” Finley repeated, placing the bandage carefully onto my shoulder, “and then you turned around and ducked before it hit you, and then this happened.” She gestured to the room.
It was in shambles. The bed stand had been overturned at some point, and the bedding was strewn about. The most alarming part was the smoldering black marks in the walls. If I’d been asleep when the drone came in, that was exactly what my head would look like right now. I shivered.
“What I don’t understand is how it got in,” she said. She fastened the bandage in place and stood back. “Nobody opened the door after you closed it. And the windows here don’t open.”
I bit my lip. I knew how it had gotten in. Someone knew about the chute beneath the tree and had released the drone from downstairs, which required sneaking past Augustus’s guards. It would have happened during the gala and floated into my bedroom to wait. Somehow it had managed to lock the door from both sides as well.
But why the delay? It could have shot me the moment I walked in. And who was behind it? Chan still hadn’t notified me of any evidence from President’s Chiu’s feed. Maybe they’d found the receiver and connected it to me, then sent this as payback.
I went back into the bathroom, ignoring the guard’s protests, and peered through the water at the black mass, still half covered with the blanket. It lay still. I didn’t see any markings to indicate a brand or what country if was from, but that didn’t mean much. Chiu was too smart to leave his mark. My death would immediately cast suspicion on him. It didn’t make sense.
Finley’s sharp intake of breath made me jump. She stared at the drone with a horrified expression, then she muttered a curse under her breath and pulled out her handheld device.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“The Integrant—I mean your security captain. I have to report this.”
I yanked the handheld out of her palm and walked back into the bedroom. She growled and followed, but I’d already tossed it past the broken door and into the other room. It hit the ground with a thud.
“What was that?” she demanded.
I stood in the doorway to block her. “You can get it in a second, but right now I need you
to listen to me. Don’t call Vance. Not yet.”
She stared at me, baffled. “Why not? You two having a lovers’ quarrel or something?”
“Of course not.” Well, I didn’t think we were. But the way he’d acted last night, I couldn’t be sure. “I’ll tell him in the morning. But I know exactly what will happen. He’ll make us move to a different location—”
“Precisely.”
“—which I think is necessary at this point,” I finished. “But Augustus—I mean the prince—will take offense at that. I know he will. He’s the only leader so far who’s listened to me, and he’s our best chance of getting military assistance. I need to explain the situation to him before we disappear into the city like Vance wants.”
“Hawking will have my head if I don’t report this right away. If that thing got in here, anything can. A whole army of them could be headed this way for all we know.”
“I won’t be here. I’m going to talk to Prince Augustus.” Thanks to Jasper, I knew exactly where to find the man. The pub was only a ten-minute run from here.
“Now? It’s the middle of the night. Besides, we don’t know who was behind this. What if it was one of the prince’s guards? I’ve never trusted those guys—constantly sleeping on the job.”
She had a point. One of the door guards below could have easily slipped the drone into the chute. But what would the royal guard stand to gain? Having their charge murdered in her sleep wouldn’t reflect well on them.
What if Augustus had ordered them to do it? He had chosen this building for me, after all.
I racked my brain, trying to figure out why he would benefit from that. If the British didn’t want me here, why extend an invitation? Send an air transport with an escort? Station guards around me while I slept? Drive me around the city? And Jasper had said the people of Liverpool were as tense about Chiu’s visit as I was. We weren’t enemies of Britain. If they killed anyone, it would be Chiu.
I couldn’t think of a single motive Augustus would have for killing me. Only one person had anything to gain. President Chiu.