THE GOLDEN ORDER
Heidi Tankersley
THE GOLDEN ORDER
By Heidi Tankersley
Copyright © 2017 by HET International, Inc.
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Illustration Copyright © 2017 by HET International, Inc.
Book design and production by BB eBooks, bbebooksthailand.com
Author photograph by Edwin Flores, webflodesignlab.com
For my dad.
Thank you for always loving me.
I love you.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Free Book Offer
1: Sage
2: Beckett
3: Jack
4: Sage
5: Beckett
6: Sage
7: Sage
8: Beckett
9: Imogen
10: Sage
11: Jack
12: Beckett
13: Jack
14: Jack
15: Imogen
16: Beckett
17: Sage
18: Beckett
19: Sage
20: Jack
21: Sage
22: Jack
23: Sage
24: Imogen
25: Sage
26: Jack
27: Beckett
28: Imogen
29: Sage
30: Beckett
31: Imogen
32: Sage
33: Jack
34: Beckett
35: Sage
36: Imogen
37: Sage
38: Beckett
39: Imogen
40: Beckett
41: Jack
42: Sage
43: Imogen
44: Sage
45: Beckett
46: Sage
47: Beckett
48: Sage
49: Beckett
50: Sage
51: Beckett
52: Sage
53: Jack
54: Beckett
55: Sage
56: Sage
57: Sage
58: Imogen
59: Sage
60: Beckett
61: Sage
62: Beckett
63: Sage
64: Jack
65: Sage
66: Imogen
67: Beckett
68: Sage
69: Sage
70: Beckett
71: Sage
72: Imogen
73: Jack
74: Beckett
75: Imogen
76: Sage
77: Sage
78: Jack
79: Sage
80: Beckett
81: Jack
82: Imogen
83: Sage
84: Jack
85: Sage
86: Sage
87: Sage
88: Sage
89: Sage
90: Sage
91: Beckett
92: Sage
93: Jack
94: Sage
95: Jack
96: Sage
97: Beckett
98: Sage
99: Jack
100: Sage
101: Imogen
102: Sage
103: Beckett
104: Jack
105: Sage
106: Imogen
107: Sage
108: Sage
109: Sage
110: Imogen
111: Sage
112: Jack
113: Sage
114: Jack
115: Beckett
116: Jack
117: Imogen
118: Sage
119: Sage
Acknowledgements
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Other Books by Heidi Tankersley
About the Author
1
SAGE
I can’t believe I did it. I really did it. I pushed Jack’s hand off the helicopter landing skid and sent him plunging toward the ocean.
For a half-second, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake—that his backpack wasn’t a parachute at all.
But then, the parachute opened, red and billowing in the sky below me, and Jack began floating.
Down, down, down ….
Dr. Adamson dragged me inside the helicopter and slammed the door shut. He yanked me up from the ground. I didn’t fight against him this time. I was too numb.
For a moment, the helicopter hovered, the two pilots waiting for orders from Dr. Adamson.
“Just go!” he shouted. The helicopter tilted, the blades slicing through the air as the pilots turned us northward, and we sailed up, high above the ocean. Dr. Adamson shoved me toward a chair, and my body dropped into a blue cloth seat.
Jack was gone. Really gone. My mind replayed the moment over and over.
I’d never forget the look on Jack’s face.
When he realized I planned to push him off, his eyes pleaded with me. But then, after I did it—at the moment he started falling—his expression shifted. And that’s the look I’d never forget.
Vacancy.
Jack’s soul retreated inward and his emotionless veil slid into place. He donned the mask that kept his feelings hidden from the outside world. Yes, his physical body fell toward the ocean, but it was that mask, and our severed trust, that I mourned the most.
“You can stop looking out the window now. Your friends are long gone.”
Dr. Adamson squatted in front of me, his lemon scent enveloping us both. He clasped the seatbelt together at my waist and cinched it tight with a jerk of his hand. I winced.
The doctor spoke in a regular voice. Even with the chop of the helicopter blades, he didn’t need to talk any louder. I’d hear him even if he whispered. I could hear his heartbeat, right now, there in his chest in front of me, through his slightly wrinkled button-down shirt. I could hear the air moving in and out of his lungs at a heightened pace. I could hear the two pilots breathing up front in the cockpit. I could hear everything.
My own heartbeat pulsed fast in my chest, still responding to the adrenaline flowing through my system. My black t-shirt clung to me, the material wet from the misting rain we’d run through on the island.
Dr. Adamson secured my wrists into another set of handcuffs (Jack shot a bullet through the first pair), and locked the cuffs to the arm of my chair. I clenched my jaw but didn’t fight him on this. With the click of the metal, a new wave of confinement pressed down on my chest.
I willed my eyes to see through the gray of the early morning. Jack would have landed near the island somewhere in the water far below, but clouds shrouded my view. I knew the others were out there, too: Jack’s fraternal twin brother, Beckett; my
brother, Finn; and my new friend, Imogen. They’d all been left on the landing pad when the helicopter took flight, and they were still down there somewhere, fighting on the island for their freedom from the Vasterias Corporation.
“I said, stop looking.” Dr. Adamson pushed my head back against the seat.
I gritted my teeth. “Those are your sons down there,” I said. “You could pretend you care about them.”
Dr. Adamson’s lips barely moved when he spoke. “Jack and Beckett have always been fine without me.”
The doctor settled into the chair across a small aisle. He swiped a hand through his thick, dark hair and adjusted in his seat, sitting taller, attempting to center himself, to slow his breathing. It didn’t work …. I could tell that Jack’s escape had ruffled him.
“Won’t be too long of a trip,” he said. “We’ll arrive in New York by the end of the day.” His voice sounded weighted, like the humidity in the air. The moisture blanketed everything—the metal floors, the bright blue cloth seats, the back of the pilots’ necks in front of us. Already, the smell of four bodies—at least two of us wet and sweaty, and one smelling like lemon—snuffed out any remaining scent of the fresh ocean air.
I refused to let the doctor detect my terror at what was coming—both for myself and my friends.
But there was a new-found reality even more painful than my separation from the group; a pain so great it blotted out the sacrifice I’d have to make soon. And it was this: my father didn’t want me. He only wanted the code inside of me.
My head dropped back against the seat, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the wetness from my eyes. My father only wanted the science I represented. He didn’t care about me, his actual daughter. I wasn’t good enough on my own. This reality, razor-sharp, cut a pain across my heart and left me aching.
I closed my eyes and let the steady vibration of the helicopter drown out the pain.
2
BECKETT
The helicopter rose from the concrete without us, a large black mass retreating into the gray sky. It was Dad inside. I knew it was. He tricked us all.
Sage was on board, and Jack jumped higher than I’d ever seen him. He caught hold of the landing skid, fifteen feet up in the air. Of course, he’d been sprinting across the pavement, so his velocity helped with the height, but still, it looked impressive—and after living with Jack since the day we were born, it took a lot for my brother to impress me.
As Jack climbed inside the helicopter, I stood frozen on the concrete landing pad, helpless, thinking that maybe Jack would somehow save her.
The helicopter rose higher.
Across the sand, a hundred feet from me, the ocean tide rolled in. The rhythmic timing of the waves clashed against the roar of the rotor blades, polar opposites grating against each other.
The helicopter flew out over the ocean. And then, Jack was dangling outside the helicopter, Sage still inside.
I couldn’t breathe. It felt like a body slammed into me and knocked out my air. Panic washed through me.
Jack would not fall without her. He wouldn’t let that happen. This was Jack.
I saw Sage’s arm reaching for him, and I held my breath, waiting for a miracle.
Something. Anything.
I couldn’t make out what happened from there. I only knew the exact moment my heart stopped: Jack was falling, dropping from the helicopter without Sage. A wave of horror washed through me, my entire body immobile, paralyzed in shock.
Jack failed at very few things in life. Why did Sage’s rescue have to be one of them?
A red parachute opened as he catapulted toward the ocean, and it slowed him to a painfully leisure descent. The helicopter lifted with Sage still inside. It hovered for a few seconds, and then it rose higher, flying farther and farther away, until it was only a dot against the gray sky.
I hardly noticed the ten guards that surrounded us on the pavement. Imogen lowered Finn’s legs, no need to carry him any further in his unconscious state—our ride had already left without us. Or actually, our real ride, the one provided by Dr. Cunningham, had never arrived.
And now Dad had Sage.
And Jack just landed in the Pacific Ocean.
And Dad. Had. Sage.
A guard raised his gun and shouted at me from a few feet away, but I couldn’t hear what he said. Because without Sage, I wasn’t myself. Without her, I lost everything. Without her, none of it felt real: the farm, my life in Kansas, my connection to the real me. Without her, that stable guy inside me disappeared, and I didn’t want to be anyone else. I hated the uncertainty in my life before I met her, and I hated who I was without her.
The guard shouted again.
I glanced toward Finn’s giant, mutated body—the boy who I’d considered a brother for the last three years—unmoving by Imogen’s feet, the cloth around his arm stained with blood from his bullet wound.
Imogen looked at me, her eyes willing me to snap out of my momentary paralysis, to overcome my lack of ability to fight back. Maybe it was my crazed state or the near dozen guards in front of us, but she recognized the futility in fighting. She began to raise her hands in surrender, pausing only long enough to clench her curly red ponytail in two hands and growl in frustration, angry at the idea of giving up, or perhaps at utterly failing our mission. Finally, she pressed her lips together and raised her arms all the way.
The guard leveled his gun at me and shouted again.
Sage was gone. Everything was gone. My body felt hollow.
Numbly, I lifted my arms.
3
JACK
I landed a mile out from shore. The saltwater burned my three half-healed bullet wounds, injuries Dad delivered to me only yesterday. The helicopter hovered in the sky, no doubt my dad debating whether or not to come for me.
Come on. Come get me, you bastard.
But then, it turned away, the helicopter blades beating the air, sending the aircraft in the opposite direction of the island. I slammed my fist against the surface of the water and shouted in frustration. Small waves rolled over my neck, my chin; the taste of saltwater trickled into my mouth. Rage rippled through me at my defeat.
I hadn’t gotten Sage off the helicopter. I failed her. So she’d felt forced to push me off that landing skid.
We both knew my dad wanted us in the same place; we both knew it wouldn’t be good if he got his way. And so, she pushed me off. The look in her eyes when she did it—determination, resolve, a headstrong belief that it was the only way—sent a wave of pain through me. And in that moment, I knew.
I loved her.
I loved her for her stubbornness and her bravery to go on alone. I loved her because she didn’t give up on me on the island.
I loved her because she was my salvation.
Because of her, for the first time in my life, I could think beyond killing myself at the end of all of this with Vasterias. Sage, and that code inside her, provided a way out. She would live, and because of that, so could I.
Her gift to me, given unknowingly.
And how did you repay her? You didn’t get her out of there.
I jerked apart the clasp that ran across my chest, and the backpack and attached parachute sunk down into the ocean, disappearing into the abyss of dark water, slipping away from me, just like Sage inside that helicopter.
By the time I swam to shore, only minutes later, twenty-two guards braced themselves in a semi-circle, all guns aimed at me. The sand squished beneath my boots, my body still submerged in ocean water up to my waist. The faces of the guards told me they would shoot if needed.
Before, I would have gone for it. To hell with it all, let’s just see how many I can take down. I bet at least half would fall before I did. I felt like doing that. I wanted to unleash the anger that radiated through me.
But now, because of her, I didn’t want to die.
And for the very first time in my entire life, I didn’t have to die.
The code was in Sage, and I had a se
cond chance.
So I suppressed my fury. With slow, deliberate movements, I lifted my hands and strode out of the water, hoping they’d take me somewhere near the others so we could make a plan to get the hell out of here and get Sage back.
4
SAGE
Almost two hours passed. My clothes were nearly dry. The skin around my wrists was rubbed raw from the handcuffs. The cloud cover increased as the morning progressed, and a storm hovered in the sky to our north. Our helicopter was close enough now that I could distinguish the sheets of rain pouring from the clouds at a sharp angle.
I pulled my eyes away from the window, forcing them to stop searching the ocean water, as if Jack might miraculously appear. He wouldn’t even be a speck in the horizon by now anyway.
My hair had fallen from its ponytail in the struggle to jump from the helicopter. Loose strands hung in my face, and I tried to ignore the way they itched my skin, but grateful, at least, for the curtain of hair between Dr. Adamson and me.
The vow I made to myself back at the island loomed over me. A couple of hours ago, killing myself seemed like the best idea, especially when I had the adrenaline coursing through me and Dr. Adamson’s words ringing in my ear, telling me he would take my eggs and change the world.
But the burning resolve to actually do the act diminished further with every mile the helicopter traveled from the island. Now, all that was left was a dead, dull weight at the center of my chest.
I was a weakling. A sorry excuse for a human being—especially if my cells were something exceptional.
Jack and I just needed one of us to die.
Just one.
That’s all we needed to end this.
But when I’d pushed Jack from the helicopter and resolved to kill myself and end the madness, my brain had overlooked a singular fallacy: Finn.
One of the pilots turned then, glancing back at me and Dr. Adamson.
“Hold tight, we’re heading into the storm,” he said.
As if in answer, the rain began pounding the outside of the helicopter, and a dark gray blanket enveloped our aircraft. The smell of the storm flooded the seams of the helicopter, whispers of an irrepressible wildness pouring in. The helicopter dipped, tilting to the right, tossed by the wind. My stomach lurched.
The Golden Order Page 1