Rapa Nui.
It was only a speck of land, with a molehill of a volcano that spread across the western side of the island. Lea quickly checked her range. The ship had closed half the distance already, proximity alerts urging her to slow down. She reduced her velocity, banking toward a more southerly vector, laying down a swath of passive sweeps as she went. This close, any sentries the Inru might have posted on the beach or atop the mountain should have lit up the infrared—but everything remained in the black, whitecaps breaking against a rocky, windswept shore.
Where are you, Avalon?
Lea routed navigation to her display, taking one last look at the map for her approach. An inlet at the southeastern corner marked her objective—a bitch of a climb to get on the island, but cover enough to keep from being spotted. Thermal imaging turned up clean, which was no surprise. Max, experienced smuggler that he was, had picked the spot as the least likely to have a regular patrol.
Great, Lea thought. Now comes the tricky part.
She eased the ship into a perpendicular course, bleeding off speed until she arrived on a straight line that pointed directly at her target. Ventral jets nudged Lea into a hover, crosswinds knocking her from side to side as she tried to maintain position. She reached for a lever on the right side of the cockpit, forcing it down with a heavy thunk. Hydraulics engaged in the belly of the aircraft, opening up the gear panels—and extending the long, bladelike hydrofoils that would keep the ship afloat.
Here goes nothing.
Lea throttled back the jets, watching the altimeter tick off to zero. Swells licked against the foils, bouncing her around as she killed all power. The ship then splashed down into the water, so deep that Lea felt a momentary panic at going under—until just as suddenly, it bobbed back up again. A surge of ocean rushed in to displace the fading whine of the engines, overwhelming Lea with dizziness before she could make the adjustment from air to sea. She gripped the sides of her chair, and somehow the craft stayed upright—exactly as Max had advertised.
“Son of a bitch works,” she muttered.
Leaning forward, Lea rubbed fog off the window. Just beyond, a few kilometers away, Rapa Nui emerged from the predawn gloom. Switching over to the hydrodynamic drive, she fired up the impellers and tried to maneuver. The ship responded smoothly, a stone skipping across the surface of a pond.
Lea headed in.
The inlet was narrow, shielded from above by a weathered outcropping choked with dense vegetation. Lea retracted the wings before she slipped inside, proceeding at idle as far as she could go. Then she dropped anchor and shut down, unbuckling herself and popping the canopy open. Cool air rushed into the cockpit, carrying with it the sounds of the island—a cacophony of lapping waves and hissing steam, underscored by a constant, wailing wind. Missing from all the noise was any indication of life. Even the seagulls were gone, adding a stark loneliness to a place that had seen its share of misery.
Just like Chernobyl.
Climbing out, Lea shivered against a chill that bit right through her flight suit. She stayed low while she shimmied onto the top of the fuselage, holding on tight wherever she could. A merciless gale pounded her the entire way, threatening to blow her over the side—but somehow she made it to the end of the starboard wing, near the steep face of a craggy wall. She reached out, barely touching its surface before the tide moved the ship farther away, almost toppling her before she regained her balance. This was going to be even harder than she thought.
It’s still easier than going for a swim.
Down below, the seething water told her that wasn’t even an option. Okay, she told herself, planting her hands and feet against the surface of the wing. Let’s try that again. This time she waited for the ship to inch even closer, avoiding an impulse to lunge at the wall. Then, all at once, a single swell almost slammed her into an overhang. Lea ducked to keep from smashing her head, then watched in panic as the ship started to retreat again.
She jumped.
Her fingers dug into the porous volcanic rock, tearing out clumps that fell into her face. Scrambling blindly, she hoisted herself far enough to swing her legs up and get some footing—her boots digging in, jamming their way into a fissure. Dangling there, she looked back down in time to see even bigger fragments plunging into the water—a drop far enough to dash her to pieces if she fell.
Don’t think about that. Just keep going.
Muscles aching, she groaned into a swirling wind. With one hand she probed farther up the wall, stretching until her joints popped, and grabbed the first hold that didn’t feel like it would break. She then did it with the other hand, wriggling as far as she could go before releasing her feet. Gravity swiped at Lea, dragging her into a painful scrape before she could stop herself—but by then, she had firmly wedged herself in.
Releasing a breath, Lea began to climb.
She went slowly at first, testing out every ledge, only moving faster as she reached the top. Lea eased her head out into the open, squinting against the frigid maelstrom that blew across the desolate landscape. She retrieved a small pair of binoculars from her pocket, scanning the immediate area for signs of recent activity. In the dirty gray light, everything appeared leaden—drained of color, vitality, and substance, a shadow play of reality. A short distance away, the prison complex stood behind a perimeter of sagging fences, corroded piles of razor wire curling under the old guard towers.
Lea zoomed in on each of them in turn, looking for human silhouettes among the jagged debris. Nobody was watching, at least that she could see, though the lack of obvious security had her worried. Her instincts told her this was all wrong, that it had the feel and the smell of a trap—but Lea wasn’t here to take the Inru by surprise. If they captured her, that was fine—just as long as they took her to Avalon.
Assuming they don’t blow your head off first.
Wary of that possibility, she surfaced with her hands in the air. Lea remained that way for a couple of minutes, standing out in the open and making herself a target, waiting for the spotlight or a flash of pulse fire to find her—but the Inru didn’t rise to the occasion. A squeak of sheet metal dancing in the wind sounded an eerie call, but under that was only silence. If the Inru were out there, they meant for Lea to come to them.
She set out for the prison.
Gravel crunched beneath Lea’s feet, marking some old road carved out by the smugglers who used to call this place home. It wound its way inland from the shore, past the moai—giant stone faces carved by the island’s original inhabitants, their expressions worn by time and erosion, lonely sentinels to the passage of centuries. They stood in mute witness to the depredations of human occupation—everything from the ancient evils of disease and starvation to the unthinkable cannibalism that followed, a history of violence that paled in comparison to the horrors unleashed after the Zone Authority arrived. Only after the prison doors were closed and the last inmate shipped off did Rapa Nui finally find some semblance of peace—but it was restless, haunted by a past that seemed to cry out from every darkened corner.
Lea stopped in the shadow of the moai, one in a line of six that lay in ruins just outside the prison grounds. She climbed onto the toppled sculpture, scouting the area again from a higher vantage point. Morning quickly seeped in from the east, improving her visibility, but exposed no hidden dangers. The path ahead looked secure, leading up to the wire and directly toward the warden’s house. Behind that, a few meters farther, the dilapidated shell of the inmate dormitory stared back at her through broken windows—its main entrance hanging wide open in a crooked welcome.
Lea put the binoculars away, suddenly aware of how naked she felt without a rifle in her hands. She had chosen to come here under a banner of truce, but now that the moment arrived she regretted it—enough for her to check the stash she had packed before leaving Santiago. At first, she only planned to bring her integrator—but Max had insisted on something with a little more punch.
Take it from an old wiseguy, th
e hammerjack had told her. You never walk into a deal without some backup.
“Your lips to God’s ears, Max,” Lea whispered, feeling around the hidden compartments under her arms. One held a flat canister of Pollex explosive, which Max had rigged with a contact fuse. The other concealed a single-shot hand cannon with an armor-piercing, gas-expanding round in the chamber. Neither one of them evened the odds against an all-out fight, but at least they would give her cover long enough to get the hell out of there—if it came to that.
And those things have a tendency to happen, Lea thought, reaching for the last weapon she carried—the only one she trusted in real combat. The quicksilver hummed in her hand, its blade contained within a magnetic sheath. Bringing it to a meeting with Avalon entailed considerable risk, given their recent history—but the woman probably expected nothing less. Whatever else she had become, Avalon was above all things a warrior. To arrive completely unarmed would only betray weakness on Lea’s part—a mistake that would end this negotiation before it even began.
Assuming Avalon even wants to negotiate.
Lea put the quicksilver away, then slid down to the ground. Making a run for the wire, she waited there for a short time with her back against the fence, catching her breath while she searched for an easy opening. She found a spot where the chain link had turned brittle from rust and kicked a hole straight through. Her efforts raised a terrible racket, making Lea cringe—but nobody stormed out of the guardhouses to meet her. For all she knew, she was the first person to set foot on this island in years.
Keep telling yourself that.
Crouching to her knees, Lea peeled the fence apart, then crawled underneath. The warden’s house was closest, so she checked that building out first. She darted around the outside, stealing glances through windows, catching a few half glimpses in the filth that choked the cracked and pitted glass. Winding her way toward the back, she cracked a door open and poked her head inside. Anything that might have remained after the prison closed had long since been looted, with only piles of squatters’ slag and fading graffiti left behind as a reminder.
A thick layer of dust also covered the floor. Lea looked for footprints but found no signs of any recent disturbance. Either the Inru employed ghosts to do their dirty work, or nobody had been here in a very long time.
Still lots of places to hide.
Especially the dormitory, which loomed over her like a ruined fortress. Lea took out her integrator, scanning for the same signals she had detected from the air. A faint trace revealed itself—enough for her to get a tenuous fix. She pinned it down to within fifty meters, a fixed position that never moved. Somewhere in that building, the source waited.
Lea moved in.
She proceeded more deliberately this time, crossing the wide-open space at a slow clip. Walking toward the dormitory, she watched for snipers, alternating between the rooftops and the entrance. The doors banged sporadically in a stiff wind, plastic tarps flapping over broken windows—a myriad of sounds that seemed to come from everywhere. Lea whipped her head around constantly, making sure that nobody approached from behind. When she finally reached the building, she ducked inside the opening and froze—heart pounding, senses overloaded, crazy with anticipation about what might lurk in the places she couldn’t see. Her surroundings replied with an inscrutable quiet, daring her to go farther.
Keep it together, Lea.
She took a minute to bring herself down, then stepped across the threshold. The howling outside faded into the distance, light filtered through a soiled prism that cast a pall over everything. Moist rot rose between the crevices, the reek of organic decay. None of the odors seemed fresh—just accumulated decomposition, the stench of years—which made Lea wonder how many of the prisoners might still be here, skeletons in their cells.
She took in the scope of the small room. The place had been stripped bare except for a vacant chair standing upright in one corner. Past that, a security station protected by a barrier of Plexiglas guarded the single point of entry—a vaulted door rolled halfway open.
Lea walked toward it, the cavernous space beyond expanding in her vision as she drew closer. Peeling cobwebs away, she leaned inside. Her gaze followed the long rows of cellblocks, stacked one on top of another, reaching six entire levels up to a skylight ceiling cross-hatched with thick, reinforced bars. Bleached red lines, still visible on the concrete floors, marked the routes that inmates were allowed to walk—a strict code enforced from the narrow gun galleries above, sealed cages from which guards could open fire on anybody making trouble. As she entered, Lea walked that same line—past the individual cells, looking through those flaking steel bars, the doors still shut after all these years. Compared to the Collective gulags, Rapa Nui was positively medieval.
Typical Zone mentality, Lea thought in disgust. Always doing things on the cheap.
But there was more to it than that. Reducing men to a primitive state had been the entire point of this enterprise—and so the Zone Authority built a dungeon to accomplish that task. Therein lay the brutal efficiency of the place, and the conditions that led to its demise. That the Inru should stake themselves out here seemed more than appropriate.
It felt like fate.
The signal pulse on Lea’s integrator grew stronger, sounding rapid-fire beeps from her hand. She reduced the scale on its tiny display, keeping the device pointed straight ahead, directional indicators twitching like a compass needle—but always on the same heading. A few meters later the readings abruptly jumped, surging through a secure corridor on the other side of the cellblock. Lea stared into that darkened hole, an electric tingle prickling her own senses—but only a suggestion, not the wave upon wave of neural energy she expected.
Lea approached carefully, listening for another presence. She heard only her own footsteps, dry echoes bounding down the corridor ahead of her. Stopping at the gated entrance, she wiped a layer of grime off a sign posted next to the door. Within the swipe of her handprint, bold letters spelled out with sinister intent:
MEDICAL WING AND INFIRMARY AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY
She tried the door. It opened with a sharp creak.
And near the end of the corridor, light bled into the darkness.
It flickered like a candle, urged on by a static discharge. Lea waited for a human form to materialize out of shadow, her right hand making a reflexive grab for the quicksilver. When that didn’t happen, she slipped inside—her eyes fixed on that one spot, her back pressed against the inner wall. One step in front of the other, she pushed herself to keep going, anxiety building up like steam pressure in her veins. The shocks grew louder, spitting ozone into the air, sparks infusing the oppressive decay with a taste of copper—a barrier that dared Lea to cross. As she neared the infirmary, she shuffled along and edged herself closer and closer to the open doorway. Perched at the edge, she then peered around the corner, the room beyond sliding into her line of sight.
Faded green tile, riddled with chips and cracks, enclosed the featureless space. It seemed more like a morgue than an infirmary, a cracked halogen fixture dangling on wires from the ceiling. Lea expected to find equipment stacked from floor to ceiling—but all she saw was an empty chamber, draped in a cascade of shadow and light.
With a small box at the center of the room.
At first Lea thought it was a bomb, the green LED on top blinking steadily on a countdown to zero. She quickly focused her integrator on the device, running an active scan to confirm her suspicions, but detected no explosives—only sporadic waves of the same energy she had detected outside.
It’s a goddamned emitter.
Lea turned the integrator off and stormed into the infirmary. She circled around the box, her anger building as she stared at the thing—bait to lure her away while the Inru made their escape. The proof of it lay scattered everywhere: bits and pieces of fresh debris, cryohoses and power lines, all oriented around scuff marks that led directly toward the exit—indications that something big had been haule
d out recently. Lea checked a series of depressions in the floor and immediately recognized the dimensions. They were the exact size and shape of extraction tanks.
The hive had been here. Now it was gone.
And Avalon with it.
“Dammit,” Lea fumed.
“Missing something?”
Lea spun around at the sound of that voice, back toward the doorway where the devil waited. She was just as Lea remembered, only more vivid—a nightmare vision in black.
Avalon was alone. Nothing stood between them.
“You’re a hard woman to find,” Lea said.
“You’re all too easy,” Avalon replied. “No army this time?”
Lea tasted anger. “You saw to that,” she said. “What about your Inru?”
“You’ll see them soon enough.”
Avalon circled around slowly, a predator stalking prey. Lea matched her move for move, maintaining an even distance.
“I came here to talk,” she said. “Just you and me.”
Avalon continued to prowl, boxing Lea in. “I have some questions of my own.”
Lea crouched, combat ready, assuming a defensive stance. Both of them held back, at least for the moment, probing each other for clues and weakness.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Lea promised, “but I don’t have the answers you want.”
Avalon ejected a stealthblade above her prosthetic wrist.
“Then I’ll have to settle for your head.”
The quicksilver thrummed in Lea’s pocket, pressed tightly against her arm. There was a slim possibility that she could reach it before Avalon buried a stealthblade in her skull—but there was also the Pollex, with enough explosive to take out the entire room. A single flick of the detonator cap would do it, putting an end to this here and now—no second chances, no escape. The lure of it was almost too powerful to resist. Lea had no wish to commit suicide, but she also couldn’t allow Avalon to walk away—not before she accepted the truth.
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