by K A Riley
I do my best to concentrate, but my mind is a swirling storm of anger, helplessness, and frustration—all mingled in with a whole lot of embarrassment over having gotten caught in the first place.
The three guards stationed in the lab are trying to look professional, but they keep exchanging amused looks and swapping smiles at my frantic and pointless attempts to escape.
Seeing the smug looks on their smarmy faces makes me want to get out of here even more—even if it’s just to rip their bloody heads off and juggle their disembodied skulls right out the front door.
One of the men leans back against the wall and starts talking to the woman. The other man doesn’t look too pleased, and I’m in the middle of processing what the relationship might be between the three guards when a voice from out in the hallway catches my ears.
It’s a girl’s voice. A voice I know.
Sara?
“She’s going to betray you.”
Yes. It’s definitely Sara’s voice. But how…?
“You’ve seen the doubt in her eyes. You’ve heard her hesitate. She’s manipulating you.”
The two male guards swing around and face the female guard, whose eyes go wide with terror.
“She’s going to betray Epic,” one of the men says, drawing an old-style handgun from his holster. “She’s going to let the girl go.”
His partner nods his agreement and draws a brown-handled, fixed blade knife from a sheath on his belt and begins to advance on the woman.
She takes two full steps back until her back and both palms are pressed to the wall.
The man with the gun fires his weapon twice. The first shot pings into the wall right next to the woman’s head. The next shot strikes her square in the thigh.
She cries out and clamps her hands to her leg as blood burbles between her fingers, seeping into the fabric of her pants.
“She’s trying to help the girl escape!”
It’s Sara’s voice again, and the man with the gun repeats it word for word.
With the desperate, feral eyes of a cornered cat, the woman lunges at the two men.
Swinging and flailing wildly, the three guards go crashing into one of the smaller lab tables. Together, the two men and the one woman fall into a rolling, tangled knot of kicking and punching bodies on the floor.
Shielded by the commotion, two figures slip into the room.
I can’t help saying their names out loud. “Sara! Ignacio!”
Sara rushes over to the bubble while Ignacio turns his back and does something I can’t see to the input panel on the wall.
The bubble lowers to the floor and peels open like a transparent clam shell.
Sara reaches in, grabs my wrist and hauls me out.
“Wait!” I cry. “Haida!”
I sprint to the table where Haida is bobbing her head under the shimmering green dome of energy.
Taking her from under there could hurt or even kill either one of us. But there’s no choice and even less time to figure it out.
Thankfully, I’m able to slip my arm under the green hood and slide Haida safely into the crook of my arm.
Dashing over to the door where Ignacio is hurrying us along, we skirt around the three guards who are now clambering to their feet—apparently oblivious to our presence—and slashing at each other with long steel military knives.
The woman guard is still bleeding badly from her leg, and her hair is a mess of matted sweat and blood. She’s got her back pressed up against one of the standing lab tables with one of the guards brandishing his own knife while their partner, the third guard, lies dead on the floor between them.
That’s all I have time to take in as Ignacio throws his arm around me and together, he and Sara drag me out of the room in a full sprint.
39
Run
Together, the three of us dash full speed down the corridor, through an open doorway, and up a narrow set of stone stairs.
Along the way, we sprint past glass-walled rooms filled with lab tables and all kinds of diagnostic equipment.
There are cubbies, lockers, and closets along the wall on one side of us and a railing looking out over a dark courtyard on the other.
The floor is an uneven combination of polished stones, natural rocks, and very old bricks.
It’s like an older, more beat-up version of the Academy!
I turn to Ignacio as we bolt down the next hall and around a corner. “How the hell did you—?”
“Long story!” he shouts back.
“I’ll take the short!” I call out over the din of alarms and the thunder of boots coming from overhead, down the hall, on the stairs behind us, and basically all around.
“Let’s just say they underestimated our girl Sara here!”
Sara waves off the compliment and shouts, “We’ve got to get to the others!”
“Others?”
“Libra, Mattea, and Arlo!”
I’m about to head up the next flight of stairs when Sara shouts out from behind me. “Wait! Our weapons!”
I turn back to see Sara and Ignacio huddled in front of a glass door leading into one of the labs.
Ignacio slaps both hands to the input panel embedded in the rock wall next to the room and slams his eyes shut.
The input panel and most of the rocks and stones around it burst into a crackle of blue flame. It’s not hot, but the cave-like wall still blisters and turns black before our eyes.
Ignacio’s hands drop to his sides, and Sara and I catch him as he stumbles backward.
“I’m okay,” he mumbles.
Regaining his balance, he bursts into the room and over to the wood-topped table where our weapons are lined up in a neat row.
In a flurry of motion, he passes the weapons back to me and Sara, one by one.
Sara slides her bandolier and its arsenal of throwing darts over her head, and I slip the holster and my Serpent Blades around my waist.
Ignacio tucks his twin shillelaghs into his belt and tosses Libra’s sledgehammer, Mattea’s bear claws, and Arlo’s long-handled scythe to me and Sara.
We tuck the weapons into our belts and under our jackets as best we can….and then we bolt from the room and run like hell.
Dashing up an inclined walkway, we cut over to an open doorway leading to a dark, narrow stairwell.
Shouts of “This way!” and “They’re over here!” echo around in the long, low-ceilinged corridor behind us.
The doorway to the stairwell is low enough so even I have to duck down to get through. In front of us, the stairs are old, gray, and brittle with several of them missing.
We bound up anyway, leaping over chasms leading down into a very bleak darkness I’d rather not fall into.
At the landing, Ignacio shouts for me and Sara not to fall behind as he thunders his way up the next flight of stairs—this time a wide set of stone steps leading to a wide wooden door with daylight streaming between its crooked slats.
Ignacio slams his shoulder into the door, sending it smashing outward and halfway off its hinges.
Holding my hand over my eyes against the blazing sun, I’m braced for a firing squad of Epic’s guards. Instead, we’re greeted by toothy smiles and happy hugs from Libra, Mattea, and Arlo.
From her perch on my forearm, Haida belts out a series of gurgly barks.
Leaping over, Libra hugs me hard enough to crush me and Haida if she’s not careful.
“The family reunion’ll have to wait,” Ignacio barks as he hauls Libra off of me. “Did you find transportation?”
“Over there!” she cries and then dashes off to where a small fleet of military mag-jeeps is parked on grav-pads next to a windowless bunker-like building.
Sara and I distribute everyone’s weapons as the six of us pile into a battered green jeep with Mattea sliding into the driver’s seat.
“It won’t start!” she cries, her hand pressed hard to the starter on the glossy black access panel.
“Is it the parking pad?” Arlo asks.
“Are the mag-locks engaged?”
“No!” Mattea yells, “I deactivated them!”
Libra leaps from the vehicle, tearing away from Ignacio who tries and fails to hold her back.
She drops to all fours and dives headfirst under the mag-jeep while behind us, one of the Sentinel guards bursts from the doorway we just came through and fires wildly in our direction.
By the time I jump down and crouch to the ground, bullets whizzing over my head, Libra has already rolled out on the other side.
“Let’s go!” she hollers.
I dive halfway into the jeep with Sara and Arlo hauling me in the rest of the way by the seat of my pants.
With Mattea at the controls, we speed off, bouncing over a barrier of steel angle-iron before hurtling up onto a long, curving road of hard packed dirt.
Behind us, their three-wheeled dirt-bikes kicking up a storm of dust, the Sentinels are in hot pursuit.
There’s no time for calculations or risk-assessment. Even with our training and weapons, we’re no match for whatever battalion of Epic’s Sentinels are bearing down on us.
Mattea steers our jeep off road toward a distant tree line. The ground under us is a combination of pebbles, sand, jagged stones, and long cracks in the dry terrain. Not exactly the best conditions for a high-speed getaway.
We’re all bouncing high enough to go flying out of the jeep and onto the ground if we don’t hang on.
After another mile of bone-rattling, tooth-jarring flight, the jeep clunks to a pathetic, grumbling stop in the middle of a stretch of land in between two long heaps of human remains—some skeletal, some only partially decomposed.
The smell of death and decay washes through the open sides of the jeep in vomit-inducing waves.
The Unsettled have been here. Which means we need to be anywhere else.
Ignacio hops out of the passenger’s seat and sprints to the back of the jeep.
He slides to a stop, his boots kicking up a spray of red dirt. He stands, legs planted and shoulders squared, facing our pursuers.
I leap out after him and grab his arm.
“We can’t make a stand here! They’ll kill us!” I tug his arm harder and point off toward the distant tree line. “We have to make a run for it!”
Instead of following me, he plants his boots even more firmly into the ground. Reaching out toward the fleet of Sanctum Sentinels, his golden-amber eyes flicker and glow.
In the distance, every Sentinel vehicle is bathed in a crackling blue light followed by an explosive, blinding flash of white.
Reeling back, I feel like my eyes have been flash-fried.
When the haze of white clears, Ignacio takes my hand and starts sprinting back to the jeep.
“What did you do?” I shout.
“Just disabled their jeeps,” he calls back over his shoulder.
Mattea vaults herself from the driver’s seat and lands gingerly on the ground with Arlo and Libra leaping out after her.
“Branwynne’s right. We have to run!”
“I’m sorry!” Libra sobs. “I thought I fixed it!”
“You fixed it enough to get us out of there!” Mattea says, grabbing her by the hand. “Come on!”
Haida bursts into the air, banks hard, and glides out and over the distant treeline.
The rest of us bolt along over the uneven ground after her.
As we sprint off, I look back, expecting to see the Sentinels trying to chase us down on foot.
Because of my renewed connection with Haida Gwaii, my senses are jacked up ten times over.
But I don’t need our amplified telempathic bond to see the piles of charred bodies behind us or to hear the last screams of the remaining Sentinels as they die.
40
Savior
We’re in a panicked, full-on sprint across a large patch of barren desert before finally closing in on a long stretch of black trees leading up to some gradually sloping cliffs and rocky foothills.
My head spinning, I scramble with Ignacio and the others up a hill of red dirt and sparse, dead grass and dive through the tree line. The dried vegetation from the bushes and slanted trees flakes away and crumbles into finger-sized clumps of charcoal and puffs of wispy ash as we go crashing through.
Seeing more hills and high overhanging cliffs of red stone in the distance, none of us is prepared for the steep drop-off into a deep ravine on the other side of the tree line.
Arse over elbow, we go tumbling down the ravine, crashing into each other and smashing against every razor sharp stone and boulder on the way.
Raking across jagged shards of rocks over what feels like a mile, I skid to a stop at the bottom of the chasm, the skin on my hands, wrists, and forearms shredded and bleeding.
If this were a cartoon, I’d have cute little stars dancing around my head. Instead, I lean over to the side, blood pooling at the corners of my mouth, and throw up.
I drag a sleeve across my face, spit, and try to snap the world back into focus.
A few feet to either side, the other members of my Cohort are moaning and checking themselves for cuts, sprains, and broken bones.
The front of Libra’s once-white shirt is a patchwork of orange dirt and scarlet blood.
Through my blurred gaze, I see Mattea roll to her side and hand Arlo his scythe. He braces it against the ground as he pulls himself to his feet and returns his hood to its usual position over his head.
Sara coughs and sits up as Ignacio calls out to me, asking if I’m okay.
I spit again and tell him I think so, as I look up at the cliff edge high overhead. “But I could have done without the three-hundred-foot fall.”
“Speak for yourself,” Libra jokes through a strained groan. “That was the most fun I’ve had all day.”
The world around me is just shifting back into focus and I’m contemplating which way we should run when I’m startled by the unexpected intrusion of a shadowy figure standing inches away.
Hovering over me, a teenage boy reaches out a hand, offering to help me to my feet.
I follow the crisp black army boots up to the gray canvas cargo pants and to the striped red, white, and blue heat-resistant compression top.
The boy has dirty-blond hair, longish and swept back on the top with the sides cropped close. His thin beard is trimmed on a sharp angle to match the long slope of his defined and tapered cheekbones.
Under dark, downturned eyebrows, his eyes are glassy: somehow sad and bright at the same time.
And they’re green.
Emerald green.
Neon emerald green. And I’m pretty sure they must glow in the dark.
Squinting up at him, I work out the stiffness in my aching jaw. “Matholook.”
I catch a teasing glint in those glistening eyes as he says, “Branwynne.”
It’s been five years, but I remember him like it’s been five minutes. He’s the boy I spent a week together with once when we were both twelve years old.
I was with Kress and her Conspiracy when we stopped at his compound, the home of the Cult of the Devoted.
During our stay, Matholook kept me company when I felt edgy or alone. I was a long way from home, after all.
Sneaking from building to building and shadow to shadow, he showed me around New Haleck, the compound where the Cult of the Devoted settled when they got kicked out of Sanctum. He showed me their school, their church, their armory, and some of the meeting rooms where the adults had strategy sessions and made decisions on behalf of the community.
We had a weird, instant bond that surprised and excited me as much as it scared the hell out of me.
But that was five years ago when he was vaguely interesting, a little exciting, and sort of cute.
Now, five years later, he’s tall, chiseled, and…gorgeous?
Get him out of your head, Branwynne. There’s barely enough room in here for you.
Matholook grins and thrusts his hand forward again. “It is Branwynne, right?”
“U
h…”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Five years.”
“You’re safe,” he assures me. “You and your friends. But we have to go. Now.” His eyes flick back up the steep rock face before turning back to me, full of desperation and pleading urgency.
I’ve read enough fairy tales to know this is how it’s all supposed to happen: Girl gets in over her head. Danger ensues. Girl teeters on the brink of death. Dashing heroic boy with hypnotic green eyes swoops in to save the day.
So, according to the myth, everything’s going according to plan.
There’s one problem, though: It’s not my plan.
I swat Matholook’s hand away and push myself up to one knee, brushing dirt off my pants and pushing up the sleeves of my red leather jacket in the process.
“I don’t need help,” I snap.
Matholook throws his hands up and gives me a cheeky grin that makes me want to kick him in the head. “Wouldn’t dream of helping an invincible warrior such as yourself. I just thought you might prefer leaving with me rather than getting hunted down by them.”
He points back up the towering cliff toward the top of the rocky plateau and the desert beyond where we just escaped with our lives.
“Don’t worry,” I groan, glancing over toward Ignacio and Libra. I marshal every ounce of strength I have to push myself the rest of the way up. “We took care of them.”
“I saw. That was…impressive.” Matholook crosses his arms and lets out a pretend, casual yawn. “But did you think that little platoon is all they have? There’s a whole other battalion that’ll be here in about two minutes. If you don’t believe me, just listen. You can hear them.”
He’s right. The rumble vibrating through the air is impossible to miss.
And so is the dusty red-hued cloud rising up in the distance and blocking out the sun.
“We can be polite and wait for them down here, where they can easily pick us off from up there on the ridge,” Matholook says, “or else we can be smart and, you know, run like hell.”
Dabbing at her badly cut lip, Libra tugs on my sleeve. “You know this guy?”