by Kyla Stone
Willow shoved her hair behind her ears and groaned. “Is something in the water? Has some new brain-altering pathogen been released into the air? Wasn’t the apocalypse enough? Amelia has her very weird, very unhealthy love triangle with Micah and Gabriel, even though none of them will admit it. Now Cleo the sociopathic cannibal has a thing for Celeste?”
“You hate her with the fire of a thousand suns?” Finn said, trying to distract her from the fact that his red knight had just knocked out her second bishop. The mounted knight’s horse reared in triumph. Her bishop crumpled to the checkered board, grabbing his throat and gagging dramatically before disappearing in a puff of glittering blue mist.
Finn had already taken out ten pieces to her three. He was unfairly good. Or maybe she was just that bad. She rubbed her neck. The burn had started to itch like crazy. “I wouldn’t use that particular phrase, but hell yes, I do. That psychopath branded me!”
“To be fair, she was undercover.”
“Yeah, but to be fair, she enjoyed the heck out of it.” She prodded at the burn, wincing. It was going to leave an ugly scar. She didn’t care about the scar as much as she loathed the person who’d inflicted it. Cleo was manipulative and petty, cunning and cruel. She was hardly better than the Pyros, undercover or not. “I don’t know what her problem is, but I bet it’s hard to pronounce.”
Finn grinned. “Yeah, she’s mad as a bag of cats, alright.”
She glanced back in time to see Cleo saunter across the yard toward Celeste. Celeste looked at her, a tiny smile on her perfectly symmetrical face. Celeste was all softness and elegance and beauty, while Cleo was solid muscle, battle-scarred, and tough as nails.
Finn was right, as always. In a bizarre sort of way, they made a good pair—as long as Celeste kept Cleo away from the cigars.
Finn swiped his massive hand through the tiny holos hovering over the game board. “There’s something to be said for physical things you can hold in your hand. My dad used to have a board with real ivory pieces.” He sighed dramatically. “We can’t always choose our allies, Willow.”
“How can you say that?” She checked the field, where Benjie and another little girl his age were sitting in front of the ragged soccer goal, their heads bent over a pack of playing cards. Benjie was overjoyed to have a devoted fan, eagerly teaching her every magic trick he knew.
Past the field, a handful of soldiers clustered in a circle near the barracks, laughing raucously. She couldn’t believe Amelia and Micah were trusting these people. New Patriots. Terrorists. Thugs and criminals. Willow didn’t care what they called themselves. “You know who these people are. What they are.”
“They didn’t create the Hydra virus.”
Amelia had finally told the rest of the group the truth about her father, Declan Black, the chairman of the Unity Coalition. He’d turned out to be as power-hungry, malicious, and wicked as Willow always suspected. The elites had all the power, influence, and wealth they could ever need, and still they craved more. Their greed had destroyed the world.
But none of that changed the fact that the New Patriots were still violent radicals, plenty capable of taking innocent lives if it served their own agenda.
She shook her head. “They’re the same people who attacked the Grand Voyager. I don’t care if they say they weren’t a part of it. They’re the same. And I don’t care whether they planned to kill little kids or not. It happened. Your dad is dead because of them. My mom and sister—”
Her voice broke off. Her throat thickened. She blinked rapidly. The New Patriots had killed Zia. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t actually these people. For that, she would hate them with every fiber of her being for as long as she lived.
She didn’t trust them. She didn’t like them. She wanted to get as far away from here as she could.
She swiped her finger over the board to pull her rook out of Finn’s reach. The lights in the castle tower flickered. Finn moved swiftly, barely fluttering his fingers as he captured her extravagantly-gowned queen with his bishop. She hadn’t even seen it coming. The tiny queen shook her fist up at Willow, muttering incoherent curses. Willow gave her the middle finger. The queen burst into blue mist.
“And now they’re allying themselves with the Headhunters,” she continued. “The murderous psychos who killed Nadira. I mean, what are we even doing here? I know what Amelia is doing, what Gabriel is doing. But what are we doing?”
Finn looked at her, his expression turning serious. “What do you want to do?”
Willow shifted restlessly, unable to contain her frustration. She wanted to get away from the New Patriots and never have to see Cleo’s savagely cunning face again. She wanted to protect the people she loved. To find a way inside the Sanctuary and make a safe place for Benjie to grow up. She wanted so many things, all of them outside her grasp. “I don’t know! But I can’t help feeling like this is all some kind of elaborate ruse. The most dangerous predators are the ones that draw you in.”
“Like the Venus Fly Trap.”
“Do you have to ruin every analogy? Plants aren’t remotely scary.”
Finn shrugged with his left shoulder. He still winced. The meds the New Patriots doctor gave him weren’t enough to dull all the pain. “To flies, they are. I thought it was quite apt.”
She destroyed one of his foot soldiers with a flick of her finger, her blue knight galloping across the squares and spearing the red soldier in the chest. “You thought wrong. Didn’t we learn our lesson at Sweet Creek Farm? Nobody does something for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing,” Finn argued gently. “They want the cure from Amelia. She, Micah, and Silas are risking their lives to smuggle it out.”
“And what if they don’t get it? What if she doesn’t have the cure in her blood after all? What will the New Patriots do to us then? The Headhunters? The Sanctuary? Hell, the Pyros are still out there somewhere. Let’s throw them in the pot, too.”
Finn narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve got an idea rattling around inside that head of yours, don’t you? Out with it. Before it drives you crazy.”
The idea was half-formed, half-baked. She felt silly even saying it aloud. But the more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t ignore the insistent, unsettling buzz in her gut.
Finn took out one of her soldiers. She took one of his. “I’m not sure. But maybe while Amelia’s off saving the world at the Sanctuary, we need to do something, too.”
He studied her face. “You want to find Raven.”
She looked at him sharply, startled. She kept forgetting how perceptive he was, how well he knew her, like he could read her mind. Lately, she had been thinking about Raven and her enormous, half-tamed wolf, Shadow.
Raven had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a thunderstorm, sending Shadow to save Willow from the infected stray outside the warehouse. Raven and Shadow had helped them again at Sweet Creek Farm, herding the rabid dogs in a surprise attack against the Headhunters.
Maybe Raven could save them again.
Willow pulled out the wooden bird carving which Raven had given to Benjie. She had carried it in a cargo pocket of her pants all this time. She ran her fingers over the smooth wood. “I doubt we could find Raven if we tried. But we could make it so she finds us.”
Finn nodded. “And then what? You don’t want to bring her here.”
The Sanctuary was dangerous. The New Patriots were dangerous. But maybe they didn’t have to choose between them. Maybe there was a third option. “She talked about a place called the Settlement, remember? She said they were good people. When Cerberus was negotiating with Cleo, he mentioned the Settlement, too. He said they had airjets and other weapons the New Patriots would want. I think it’s the same place. I think maybe they could help us.”
She half-expected Finn to laugh at her. But he didn’t.
He grinned mischievously, his eyes glinting. “Maybe a quest is in order?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He p
ushed away the holo game board—it didn’t matter, she was losing horribly anyway—and cleared his throat, his expression abruptly grave. “Wherever you go, I’ll be right there with you.”
She tilted her head, masking her suddenly hot face with a curtain of her hair. “It will be dangerous.”
Finn’s gaze slanted beyond Cleo and Celeste toward two Headhunters stalking the perimeter of the rec yard. One was a hulking beast in a German Shepherd pelt, the other tall, skinny, and draped in the sleek black fur of a panther. They paused, hands on their gun holsters, watching Benjie and the little girl playing.
Willow started to rise, outrage burning through her. What did those idiot thugs think they were doing, watching her brother like that? Were they thinking of stealing him, too? Selling him? She’d kill them both before they even took a step—
Finn gripped her arm. “Not now.”
Slowly, she sank back down onto the bench. She didn’t relax or take her gaze off the two Headhunters until they moved on, headed for the training center.
“It may be dangerous out there,” Finn said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not just as dangerous in here.”
Willow nodded with a huff, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “The New Patriots aren’t just going to give us guns and supplies and let us waltz off into the sunset. You know that, right?”
“Gee,” Finn said, “if only we could find someone clever and quick-witted and sneaky. Preferably short. Yeah, short is definitely on the list of requirements.”
She kicked his shin beneath the table. “So you’re not totally against it.”
“I’m saying we should do this.” He leaned forward and grasped her hand in his good one. Tingles sparked in her fingertips and shot up her arm. She tried to jerk her hand away, embarrassed, but he was too strong.
Finn was too intent to notice her sudden discomfort. “We were made for this. A crippled giant, a dwarf, and a kid with an ace up his sleeve: a trio of misfits wandering around in a strange and wild forest in the middle of winter.” He flashed her his goofy, lopsided grin, revealing the adorable gap in his front teeth. “What could possibly go wrong?”
8
Amelia
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Silas muttered.
“Do you ever?” Amelia shot back.
Silas managed a tight grin. “Touché, big sister."
They stood atop a large hill along the two-lane road leading to the Sanctuary. Jamal had brought them to the five-mile perimeter with a military-grade, off-road vehicle via an overgrown national park access road.
For the last four-plus miles, they’d trekked on foot. There was no way to determine the exact distance, since she’d turned off her SmartFlex to avoid identification.
They had passed a dozen old-fashioned “no trespassing” signs and holos auto-repeating, “Nuclear waste facility. Hazardous material. Intruders will be shot on sight.” Within minutes of entering the Sanctuary’s safe zone, two sleek black drones had materialized on either side of the road, halting them in their tracks.
“Nighthawks,” Micah said. “Military-grade, armored, weaponized.”
The drones hadn’t shot them, though several gun turrets swiveled in their direction. They simply hovered within ten yards, watching them, likely capturing them with invisible, embedded lenses and sending a live vidfeed back to Sanctuary command. The drones followed them silently, only the soft whirring of their lifting blades betraying their presence.
Finally, Amelia, Micah, and Silas had reached the Sanctuary. A valley spread before them, mountains bristling with old forest rising steeply to either side. In the distance, a shining band of river wound like a twisting snake. Nestled between the mountains, a pristine city gleamed beneath the winter sun.
The first thing Amelia noticed was the buildings. They were several stories and made of some sort of engineered white quartz, some domed, some spired, others circular and multi-terraced.
She sucked in her breath as her gaze lowered to the wicked purplish-blue plasma wall surrounding the city, thirty feet tall and crackling like lightning. At regular intervals, the walls were mounted by guard towers bristling with enormous cannons large enough to take out any aircraft stupid enough to invade the city’s airspace. The barest hint of movement flickered; soldiers patrolled along the ramparts.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Micah said, awe and dread in his voice, “but it wasn’t this.” He adjusted his glasses as if that might somehow change the forbidding view before them.
“More drones.” Amelia pointed toward the plasma wall. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of armored nighthawks patrolled the wall, some as large as small cars.
“The New Patriots were right after all,” Silas said. “No way in but through the front door.”
Before Jamal left them several miles back, he had shown them the maps the Patriots had managed to cobble together of the exterior defenses and terrain of the Sanctuary. There was no section undefended. To breach the five-mile radius anywhere but the main entrance road meant death. According to Jamal, over the last several months, more than a dozen Patriots had been killed by drones, mines, or captured by Sanctuary soldiers to be interrogated and tortured, never to be seen again.
A secondary access road was two miles northwest. It was used by Sanctuary contractors, suppliers, and soldiers, but those soldiers’ orders were “shoot first, don’t bother with questions.” Silas was right. There was no other way in. Not without a tank or an army. And even then, the Sanctuary appeared well prepared to defend itself.
Dread filled Amelia like lead in her bones. She’d heard the Patriots’ warnings. She had clung to the faint hope that they could sneak in undetected, that she could find the scientists without the Coalition ever knowing her true identity. But that was a pipe dream, wishful thinking, a foolishness she couldn’t afford.
She straightened her shoulders. “Let’s go. Stay on the road.” As if any of them needed the reminder.
They headed down the hill, passing several craters in the ground so large a truck could fit inside. Someone had tried to attack the Sanctuary. It hadn’t gone well for them.
“How are you feeling?” Micah asked softly as they walked.
“As well as can be expected.” That part was true, at least. She hadn’t had a migraine—or even a headache—since her last seizure during their escape from the fire at the mall in Atlanta. Was that two weeks ago? Three? It was easy to lose track of time when every day felt like an eternity, when everything could change in an instant.
Another seizure could take her at any time. She was never safe.
Micah didn’t touch her. He never touched her without asking first. But he was close, close enough that she felt the brush of his shoulder against hers, felt the warmth radiating from his body. He was here. He wasn’t going anywhere.
She smiled at him.
“What’s that for?”
“For coming with me when I know you’re worried sick about Gabriel.”
“Of course.” She could tell he was biting the inside of his cheek. “We just have to trust him, right?”
“We don’t have a choice.” A shiver ran through her as she remembered their last meeting, the kiss. “He’s changed. I believe he has.”
“So do I,” Micah said.
“Then we trust him.”
Silas snorted behind them. “Good luck with that.”
“Not helpful, Silas,” Amelia said.
Ignoring Silas’s jab, Micah turned to Amelia. “What do you think the Sanctuary will be like?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t explain the knot of fear, hope, dread and determination tangled inside her. What if the guards refused to let them in, no matter who she said she was? What if her father was inside those plasma walls? What if the Coalition imprisoned or tortured her?
Worst of all, what if she really wasn’t the cure? The Hydra virus would shatter what remained of the world, piece by desperate piece. Those with immunity would just keep killing each other, fi
ghting over the scraps of a dying civilization. The thought broke her heart.
“What if all this is all for nothing?” she whispered.
“It’s not,” Micah said with conviction. “I have faith, Amelia. This is all happening for a reason, for a purpose. What we’re doing here—what you’re doing—is important. It’s everything.”
Without hope, without a future, there was only survival. And survival wasn’t enough. Micah had taught her that. Amelia touched her charm bracelet beneath her jacket. “Tell me something beautiful.”
He considered for a moment. “There is something good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
“Who said that?” She always knew when he was quoting something.
“Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.”
Of course. His favorite book. She glanced at him. “Is that what we’re doing? Fighting?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. But I’m willing to if we have to, if that’s what it takes.”
She kicked a stray rock. The winter air felt suddenly colder. She was grateful for Micah’s steady strength beside her. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Are we strong enough? Am I strong enough?”
“We are,” he said. “You are.”
Silas rolled his eyes. “You two make me physically ill. Have I ever told you that?”
There was no bite to her brother’s words, no cruelty in his smirk. He was as tense and nervous as they were. Amelia smiled grimly. “Once or twice.”
Silas had been slightly more subdued since the Pyros, since Jericho’s death and their night in the Pyro prison, when he’d finally opened up to Amelia for the first time in years. He was still Silas, but maybe he wasn’t quite as acerbic, maybe his armor wasn’t quite as thick.
They crested another small hill. The plasma wall loomed over them.
“Stop right there!” someone shouted. “Hands in the air!”
Adrenaline shot through her. She, Micah, and Silas halted and lifted their hands. A dozen soldiers marched out to them, as many drones zooming over their heads.