by Joe Hart
ALSO BY JOE HART
THE DOMINION TRILOGY
The Last Girl
The Final Trade
THE LIAM DEMPSEY MYSTERIES
The River Is Dark
The Night Is Deep
NOVELS
Lineage
Singularity
EverFall
The Waiting
Widow Town
Cruel World
NOVELLAS
Leave the Living
The Exorcism of Sara May
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror
SHORT STORIES
“The Line Unseen”
“The Edge of Life”
“Outpost”
“And the Sea Called Her Name”
COMICS
“Last Sacrifice”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Joe Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477818084
ISBN-10: 1477818081
Cover design by M. S. Corley
To Jade, for all the reasons.
CONTENTS
START READING
BEFORE . . .
“Cleric Asher. Your . . .
AFTER . . .
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”
—William Shakespeare, Henry V
BEFORE . . .
“Cleric Asher. Your ward is here.”
Simon looked up from where Lee played with two colorful puzzle pieces, trying unsuccessfully to fit them together. For a brief second he thought he’d misheard Assistant Carter, who stood in the doorway looking as if he would rather be anywhere else.
“She is?”
“Arrived this morning. Follow me.”
Simon glanced around the large room he and Lee had shared for the last seven months. Lee stopped playing, wide eyes moving from him to the window and the soaring wall of the Advance Research Compound outside.
“I can’t leave my son.”
Carter wrinkled his nose and adjusted the god-awful green tie he was wearing. “Bring him.”
Simon scooped Lee up, clasping him to his chest as he followed the small, shrewish man down the hall. One of the guards, a Redeye, the nickname earned from the convertible infrared goggles they wore, swung into step beside Carter, barely glancing at Simon before ignoring him completely.
When they reached a locked set of doors, Carter keyed them through with his bracelet and they climbed a sprawl of stairs that switchbacked twice before emptying out on a landing and another hall. At the end of the corridor Carter guided them through another set of doors to a long room with a bank of windows lining one side. The top of the ARC’s wall was visible from this level, the early summer sun beginning to peek over its edge, coating the floor of the nursery gold along with the row of cribs.
Sixty cribs were crowded together at the far end of the room, their emptiness jarring no matter how many times Simon saw them. Only three, in the center of the nursery, were occupied. Carter moved to the last in line; the goggled guard stopped inside the door.
Simon carried Lee past the first two cribs, the boy leaning out to look inside each one. A girl barely more than two years old lay on her side in the first, deeply asleep, wispy blonde hair splayed across her pillow. Simon glanced at the paperwork hanging from the crib’s side, reading the name though he already knew it.
Halie.
The second crib held an infant girl lying on her back. She was asleep as well, tiny fists clenched tight above her head.
Terra.
His heart picked up speed as he stopped beside the last crib, unable to gather the courage at first to look inside. Here it was. The moment he’d been waiting for after volunteering for the program almost a year ago. All of the training, the psych evaluations, waivers, and countless exams had led to him standing here at last.
Carter shot him a look. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m . . . nothing.”
Simon stepped forward and looked down.
The baby girl was wide awake, eyes shifting to him as soon as he moved into view. She was tiny, barely three months old if he had to guess. The beginnings of dark hair curled in delicate strands from the top of her head and a line of drool shone at the corner of her mouth. She kicked her feet, making a quiet cooing sound so familiar from Lee’s recent infancy he couldn’t help but smile.
“Hello,” he said. The girl stared at him and one side of her mouth quirked up. Lee squirmed in his arms, pointing down into the crib.
“Bubby?”
“That’s right, baby,” Simon said. Lee grunted and he lowered him to the ground, making sure he was balanced before letting him go. Lee tottered around Carter and grasped the bars of the crib, steadying himself.
“Yes, well . . .” Carter said, glancing at the two children before adjusting his tie again. “She’s been freshly changed and fed. You’ll report to control to have your new bracelet fitted. It will open any door in the facility, save the elevator of course. From this point on she will be your charge, her safety and well-being your responsibility.”
“Have there been reports of any more?”
“None at this time.”
Simon nodded. “Where was she found?”
“I haven’t the faintest.”
“Parents?”
“Classified of course. Cleric Asher, you are aware of how the program works, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know the questions you’re asking me are exactly the things that are restricted for everyone’s benefit. Even the infants’.”
“Of course.”
“Yes sir.”
Carter surveyed him before giving a clipped nod. “Good. I have other matters to attend to. You can let yourself out I’m sure?”
“Yes.”
Without another glance he strode away, stiff and robotic in his movements, which, Simon decided, fit him to a T.
When the door closed behind Carter and the guard, Simon brought his attention back to the girl. Lee had reached through the narrow gap in the crib’s bars and was holding her hand in his own. She had turned her head to the side and was gazing out at Lee, who looked back without blinking.
How strange to be here now after so much time. For him it seemed the world had stopped the second he’d entered the ARC, but he knew things were growing worse even as he stood here. Initially he had been curious about the choice of having only men holding cleric’s duties and received a clipped reply from Carter about the fact that already women were becoming too sparse to employ, along with being “engaged in other areas of research.” Whatever that actually meant. But in the end his questions had come back around to why he’d volunteered in the first place, and he’d told himself it was the honor of being able to serve and protect and not the deeper yearning for a second child he and his wife would never have that had brought him here. But he couldn’t deny the sense of completion he felt at knowing the girl in the crib was his responsibility as much as Lee was.
Simon watched them both for a long moment before stepping back to read the paperwork attached to the crib. The urge to simply stay in the nursery and watch Lee and one of the last girls to be born—ever, if the National Obstetric Alliance’s scientists failed—was strong, but he would be expected soon in control. The obligations were endless in his position, but he was playing a part in helping humanity continue, even if the world outside the walls was tearing itself to pieces.
“Come on, Lee, we have to go.”
“Na.”
“We have to let her rest.” He gently picked up his son, drawing his arm from inside the crib. “We’ll come back to see you soon,” he said, smiling down at the girl again. She gurgled and kicked her feet.
Simon carried Lee across the room and stopped at the door, following his son’s gaze back to the crib before hugging him close and kissing him on the temple. “Something tells me you and Zoey are going to be good friends someday.”
AFTER . . .
1
The thud of the helicopter is in Zoey’s head, her body, vibrating the marrow in her bones.
They’re coming.
The words reverberate through her, tearing her breath away, paralyzing her. But what the NOA agent said in his last minutes overrides the building panic.
I’m the keystone.
I have a daughter.
Lee and I have a daughter.
I’m a mother.
She turns her head, surveying the scene around her even as everything slows. I’m in shock. But the realization isn’t enough to get her moving.
Merrill tries to push himself to his hands and knees but fails again, head resting in the dirt.
Chelsea and Tia have Eli sitting up, his face a definition of pain, one hand clutching the bullet wound in his abdomen.
Sherell and Rita are in front of her, mouths moving, but she can’t hear them over the helicopter. Over the slamming of her heart.
“Zoey!” Rita yells, and she feels a slight sting of pain as the other woman’s hand strikes her. She sucks in a breath as a thousand black moths flutter on the edges of her vision. “Inside!”
“We’ll be trapped in there,” Zoey says.
“They’ll run us down out here.”
Zoey moves to Merrill, shaking his shoulder and saying his name. He’s completely unconscious now. He’d saved her, once again, blocking the tranquilizer dart meant for her.
She’s still trying to figure out how they’re going to move him when he’s lifted off the ground. Newton hefts the larger man in his arms, eyes asking her a question.
“Inside. Go,” she says. Tia and Chelsea have Eli on his feet, supporting him as they move toward the facility’s entry. Zoey turns, scanning the black horizon, the cliffs and hills darker shadows below the sky.
There.
To the north two white strobes accompany the growing sound of rotors. As she watches, a spear of light stabs the ground less than a mile away, then a second, both igniting the dead grass of the clearing in phosphorescence.
Zoey runs.
She sprints to the open doorway, where Nell stands waving her inside. A lance of pain shoots through her lower back into her legs but she doesn’t slow until she’s past and Nell has shut the door. Even then she feels as if she’s in free fall, the floor speeding up to meet her.
“Where do we go?” Nell asks, catching up to her.
“Down.”
“Shouldn’t we try to go out the back? Through the garage?”
“They’ll be waiting.”
“Then where?”
Zoey blinks. “There’s another way.”
She hits the stairway leading to the lower level too fast and stumbles on the treads, catching herself on the railing before she plummets headfirst onto the landing. Then she’s rushing down the corridor to where the huddled group waits. Lyle stands, wringing his hands, outside the NOA storeroom. Seamus is beside him, his body rigid as he issues a loud bark. Newton leans over Merrill, who’s lying on the floor, while Chelsea wraps a large white bandage around Eli’s middle. It almost immediately begins turning crimson.
“How did they find us?” Sherell gasps.
“The dead man, he followed us. He was one of them,” Zoey says.
“What are we going to do?” Tia asks, her round face flushed and beaded with sweat.
“We have to go out through the tunnel that leads to the storage shed.”
“They’ll see us when we move from the shed to the fence. There’s no way we can go fast enough and hide with Eli and Merrill hurt.”
“I’ll hold them off,” Ian says, unshouldering his rifle, his lined face grim. “It might give you enough time to get outside the fence and away.”
“No. We won’t let you do that,” Chelsea says. Her normally pallid complexion is ghostly white as she struggles to keep Eli on his feet.
Zoey puts a hand against the wall in an effort to keep the entire corridor from rocking beneath her. There’s something in her hand: the black cartridge and vial of blood from inside the NOA agent’s fake arm. She pockets the items and takes two deep breaths but each inhalation is filled with the scent of blood and fear.
The muffled sound of the helicopters becomes softer, the beat of their blades slower, less powerful.
They’ve landed.
Only minutes, surely, until they’re inside. Minutes before the Redeyes come storming down the stairs and kill everyone she cares about. Minutes before they take her back to the ARC, to the fifth level, and begin their experiments.
No.
Zoey glances around, looking at each face. What she sees wrenches her heart.
Terror.
Despair.
Pleading.
Lyle, hands still fidgeting, jaw trembling below his haggard face, meets her gaze and in that brief contact an idea leaps to the front of her thoughts. She tries sorting through the ramifications but the last audible beat of the choppers shoves her past the barrier of rationality.
“Lyle, how long would it take you to reroute the missile you had ready for the ARC?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Five minutes? Maybe more?”
&nbs
p; “Do it.”
“Where do you want to reroute it to?”
“This building.”
The shocked silence is heavy. She turns and looks at the rest of the group.
“Zoey, what are you doing?” Chelsea asks.
“We need to get in the tunnel and out from behind the storage shed by the time the missile launches. If we make it beyond the fence before it comes back down we’ll be safe, but they’ll think we’re still inside. They’ll either get out of the way or die.”
They glance at one another for a long second before Ian nods. “It’s all we’ve got. Let’s go.”
Lyle hurries to the computer in the next room and drops into his chair, fingers already on the keys. Zoey follows him, stopping in the doorway as the others continue down the tunnel.
“How long will we have?” she says over the clacking of the keyboard.
“There’s a fail-safe in the missile guidance system. Two thousand feet of altitude is required before it will detonate. It’s so the missile won’t ever explode within the silo. I’d say it will take all of ten seconds to go up and another five to come down.”
“Fifteen seconds?”
“You asked.”
Zoey flinches as an amplified voice echoes from outside the upper floor. One she recognizes immediately. A chill runs through her.
“Zoey,” Reaper says. “You’re surrounded. Come out of your own free will and we’ll spare the people with you.” There is a pause before he adds, “You have bigger things to consider now, Zoey. You hold the key to humanity. And your daughter needs you.”
Her heart does a funny double beat and she fears she’s going to be sick. Lyle’s typing has stopped and he’s staring at the ceiling as if it will fall on him at any second.
“Hurry,” she says and his fingers fly back into action. “We’ll be waiting at the tunnel opening.”
Lyle doesn’t look up. “I’ll put a couple minutes’ delay on the launch, give us enough time to climb up and out.”
“How far away will we have to get?”
He stops typing and looks at her. “I don’t know.”
She jogs down the hallway as Reaper’s voice booms again. She can’t make out what he’s saying over her breathing and footfalls. She doesn’t need to. More lies and half-truths to get her to surrender.
I’m the keystone.
I have a daughter.