by Miles, Amy
I follow right on his heels and dive through the door into complete darkness. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. As they do, I begin to see the interior walls have been stacked with interlocking concrete blocks, just like those used on the outer walls, but the roof above is held up with only a few wooden rafters and poorly nailed down shingles. The floor isn’t even a true floor. It is nothing more than packed dirt with a ratty rug tossed over it.
It is crudely formed, like so many of the buildings that Drakon’s men have constructed in this area—temporary shelters, nothing more. I’ve mentioned my concerns to Kyan about this very thing, but each time he brushes me off.
I saw firsthand the skill and precision with which Drakon employed to clear away the City and begin to rebuild. Why be so lax now? It doesn’t make sense.
A sense of dark foreboding begins to sink into the pit of my stomach as I shove the door closed with my boot and breathe heavily. The air within is stale and laden with newly unsettled motes of dust. Two overturned tables line the far wall. Several chairs have been tossed haphazardly about the room with great carelessness. Four steel-framed beds, with covers torn and frayed draping off the sweat-stained, inch-thick mattresses. Papers litter the ground, trampled underfoot as if someone left in a great hurry.
Carleon glances out of the window, his back rigid as he cranes to see in both directions. “I don’t think anyone saw us.”
“That’s because no one is looking for us.” He glances back at me. “Doesn’t that seem a bit odd to you?”
“Well…” He frowns, scratching at the drying flecks of mud on his cheek. “Maybe we are just that sneaky.”
I point in the direction we just came. “I blew a hole in their wall. They had to have heard it, so why has no one come to check it out? Something just isn’t right about this.”
He looks thoughtful for a moment and then glances back at the empty yard once more. “So what do you want to do? Turn back?”
“No. Bring your gun over here.” I call him over from his post at the window. He thumbs the switch of his laser gun and warm green light spills over the dust-slick floor. I try not to breathe too deeply for fear of what might be growing on that rug.
I remove the map from within my jacket and spread it out below me, tracing my finger over the dampened paper. The edges have been rubbed clean, smeared in long, streaking black swatches. I search for any sign of this hut on the map but can find none. “I think we are getting close. The bunker should be about a hundred feet north of here. Can you see anything?”
Twisting his neck, Carleon peers through the opposite window. He sinks back down and shakes his head. “It’s too dark to tell. The clouds have covered the moon again. I can’t see any laser light either.”
I have a bad feeling about this. After that last big explosion, the fighting has mostly died out. That means either our soldiers have penetrated the front gates and are slowly moving toward us or they have lost, and… I force myself not to continue with that line of thinking. Eamon is fine. Nothing will happen to him.
But even I know our chances of winning this battle are slim. I can only pray that Kyan saw an opportunity present itself and he took it.
“What do you think is happening out there?” Carleon asks. My friend’s face is almost completely cloaked in shadow as he powers down his laser and I stuff the map safely back inside my jacket.
“I don’t know.” I crawl on my hands and knees to the nearest window. Broken shards of glass are scattered across the floor before me, creating a tangle of razor-sharp debris. I get as near to the window as I can and peer up into the sky. The clouds hang low and heavy but remain a dull gray. “Whatever has happened can’t be good. We need to move.”
No sooner do the words cross my lips than the ground begins to tremble beneath my palms. The glass rattles, tinkling against itself as the trembling rises, then fades. I retreat quickly to Carleon’s side. I can see the whites of his eyes, wide with fear as he grips his laser. “Spider drones?”
“No,” I whisper, raising a hand to silence him. The tremor comes again, harder and faster this time. Its rhythm is unsteady, unusual, yet something tickles the back of my mind, as if a memory is struggling to surface. “I think this is something else.”
Carleon kneels beside me, waiting. He is used to my freaky abilities and has learned to trust my instincts. If I say it’s not a machine, he believes me without fault. I only hope I am right. We don’t have time to face off with a spider drone.
My abilities seem to be changing with each day, morphing into new hybrids of powers that even Kyan struggles to keep up with, though my focus is horrendous and my control is pathetic at best. Toren and Eamon have been forced on more than one occasion to put out my fires.
“You feel something?” he asks in a voice hardly above a whisper.
I nod and close my eyes so I can concentrate. “There is someone out there. Someone powerful.”
“Drakon?”
I know the time Carleon spent as one of Drakon’s soldiers has given him a deep respect for the commander’s gifts, and his affinity for using them to torture innocent people, but even I’m surprised by the slight tremor in my friend’s voice. Shaking my head, I motion for him to fall silent. I need to focus.
It is difficult to still my mind with all of the fears and doubts flitting through like a runaway subway car. I worry about my friends’ safety, of being too late to capture Drakon, and of making a mistake that could cost men their lives. The weight upon my shoulders in nearly unbearable, but I know Kyan trusts me, so I must as well.
The soldiers fighting within these walls are not my enemy. They are simply doing the bidding of an evil man. If we win this battle today, they will be given the chance to throw down their arms and join us, or return to Kyan’s home world, Calisted, with the other prisoners. Most will stay. Those that don’t will not be harmed.
The thrumming of the ground and the sounds of Carleon’s breathing fade away as I search the unseen spaces on the other side of the base. I have felt strong minds before, but this one is different. It is not a mental ability that I sense, but a physical one.
“Do you know of a man who could create such tremblings…?” I trail off as my eyes widen with recognition. “Vikesh.”
Carleon cries out as the rafter directly overhead creaks loudly, splintering down the center. He raises his hand to shield himself as it tumbles down upon him. I grunt as I throw out my hands, catching the heavy beam only inches from crushing his head. I grit my teeth and toss the beam aside. The walls rattle and shake as the beam slams into the wall, splintering the concrete blocks along their mortar lines. I grasp Carleon’s hand and tug him to his feet. He coughs, beating his chest as he expels the cloud of dust he inhaled. “We have to stay out in the open. It’s the only way!”
My friend stumbles behind me as I yank open the door and surge from the hut. A tremor ripples through the ground and I cry out as a wave of dirt sends me flailing to my knees.
“Someone you know?” Carleon cries out as he fights to remain upright.
“Yes.” I scream and yank him out of the way as the building in front of me falters on its foundation. The roof groans loudly as the entire wooden slant slides from the top of the building and spills down on top of us.
I throw out my hands and focus with all of my might on creating a protective shield around us as three stories of stone and wood crumble down around us. I wince as each large chunk slams into the shield, draining on my strength.
“You can do it,” Carleon says with a shaky voice as he watches the debris connect with the invisible armor mere inches above his head. Instead of the oppressive weight, I try to focus on the terror in his eyes and the way the color has drained from his face. When I glimpse the slight tremor in his lips, I growl and toss away the biggest section of the wall. My arms ache as I lower them to my sides.
If my blasting a hole in their wall didn’t get their attention, tossing that building aside sure will!
It is ha
rd to breathe around the cloud of dust trapped within my shield. I cover my mouth, coughing wildly as I wave off the dome. Carleon follows right on my heels as I stumble forward, our footing unstable on the debris beneath our feet.
“Who is this Vikesh guy?” He coughs, wafting his hand before him to clear the air. Dust clings to his hair and cheeks, matted with the sweat that beads along his forehead.
“Do you remember the battle in Sector 14 last summer?” My voice sounds raspy. When I clear my throat, it feels raw and chafed.
I pause as I realize Carleon is no longer following me. I look back over my shoulder and see the droop in his shoulders and his open stare. “There weren’t many survivors left from that battle, were there?”
I don’t want to scare him, but he needs to know what is coming our way. If I know Vikesh, he will already suspect I am here and will be looking forward to our reunion. He is no average, run-of-the-mill Caldonian. “I managed to save twenty-three that day. We arrived with over three hundred men.”
His gulp is audible in the eerie silence that has fallen over the base. The night seems darker and the shadows deeper than before. A shiver works its way up my spine. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” he asks.
“Yes.” I dart a quick glance around, wondering from which direction the alien will approach. “Vikesh is a Rumbler. He uses vibrations to attack. It can be something as simple as an explosion, a tree falling upon the ground, a bird chirping, or even a footstep that unsettles the earth. Any sound, any move you make can be turned against you.”
“Then what does he do?”
I shake my head, swallowing roughly. “You don’t want to know.”
Sometimes at night I can still hear the men screaming, pleading for death as the ground opened up around them and swallowed them alive. Others were pummeled by falling stone, cut in half and left to slowly bleed out. Still others were caught in the fires that spread through the forest, searing their flesh as they spasmed against the ground with no end in sight. Vikesh seemed to take the most delight in making her men suffer as he sought her out, using their own rhythmic pulses of their hearts against them as the fist-sized organs imploded in their chests.
Only the men within my protective shield had survived, but I was drained from the battle and too weary to do anything more than defend those few that stood nearest me. I still blame myself for not saving more. Eamon knows of my nightmares, but we never speak of them. To do so would be to admit my fear and my inadequacy.
I thought I could handle the alien on my own. I learned a hard, terrible lesson that day, but that was half a year ago. Am I strong enough now to save Carleon and my friends?
Vikesh is the only Caldonian that I have ever feared, apart from Drakon. And now he happens to show up at this particulate base? That can mean only one thing. The intel was correct… Drakon is here.
As the ground begins to roll beneath our feet again, screams pierce the night air. My comm unit goes crazy. “Illyria? Where are you?” Eamon screams. I wince as I pull the earpiece from the inner drum of my ear, alleviating some of the blaring pain. “Are you all right?”
I fight back against my panic as a second wave ripples through the ground, faster and harder than the first. Am I all right? I don’t really know, I think silently, lost in a torrent of doubts.
“Illyria, answer me!” Eamon roars.
My annoyance with my boyfriend for breaking protocol helps me to see through my fear. “I am here and on target. Now stop shouting my name so everyone can hear! You are endangering my mission and our men,” I yell back and let the earpiece dangle beside my cheek.
Carleon takes a deep breath and waits for my order. I can see how white his fingers are against his grip on his laser gun. For the first time I see him truly terrified and rightfully so. “Let’s go.”
He follows behind me at a near crouch, moving with extreme caution and as little noise as possible. We leave tracks in the softened ground, but there is no time to hide them, and with Vikesh tracking us, there’s no point either. I watch as Carleon’s gaze darts toward every shadow, no doubt convinced the alien is sneaking up on us, but that is not his way. He doesn’t need to hide.
“So you think you can take this guy?”
My shrug does little to ease either of our fears as we pause against the side of the building I thought to be the armory. I rise up and look over my shoulder into the window and am struck by a mixture of disappointment and relief. Long rows of bench tables span the length of the room. This is the mess hall, not a storage locker of weapons. At least he won’t be able to blow us up with it!
“That’s the bunker over there.” I point to a single door that rises from the ground. An entrance rises in an arch that stands barely eight foot tall, plated with sheets of hammered metal. The roof of the structure disappears into the earth, as if the tunnel has been swallowed whole. “Drakon should be through that door.”
There is no telling just how many exits there are to this bunker, or how many soldiers lie in wait beyond that door. I can feel my heart thumping wildly in my chest as I peer out into the dark. Where has all of the laser fire gone?
The clearing between us and the bunker appears to be vacant, but looks can be deceiving. I take a calming breath and attempt to lower my heart rate. The last thing I need is Vikesh to use it against me.
But he wouldn’t want to do that. It’s not in his nature to end a foe so easily. No, he will want to make a public show of defeating me and he will want my friends to have a front row seat.
“Let’s go.” Silently, we dart across the clearing. Wailing cries suddenly rise from the other end of the base, tearing through the calm like a chainsaw gone rogue. I can feel Carleon hesitate beside me so I grab him by the arm and force him to keep moving.
“We can’t help them.” I know Eamon is alive, for the moment, but what about Toren or Kyan? I haven’t heard anything from them since the battle began.
An explosion from behind slams us to the ground. A scream lodges in my throat as I cover my head with my hands, feeling the fibers of my jacket begin to melt against the thin layer of my shirt. The intensity of the heat filters slowly away and I look up through a mess of tangled hair.
The forest all around the base has erupted into blue fire. The abnormal flames lick at the bark, scorching the barren branches. Like a hundred tiny flamethrowers, streams of fire shoot out from miniature cannons that have risen along the rooftops. Rebel and alien soldiers alike run amuck as they fling themselves into the mud to extinguish the flames that eat away at their uniforms.
“They’re killing their own men!” Carleon looks green as he watches the charred figures flail about in the distance.
“It’s war,” I say simply as I tug him on, knowing there is nothing we can do to help them. Carleon raises his hand to shield himself from the heat and I’m stuck again by how young he looks. Even though he physically appears a year or two younger than I am, he has already lived more years on Calisted than I have here on Earth. Time passes differently there. The beauty of youth is not stolen away quite so swiftly. “Drakon is our mission. If we go to help those men, then he might slip away in all of the chaos and their deaths will be for nothing.”
I can see how hard it is for Carleon to turn away, but he does so without a single protest. We all knew the risk in coming here. Death was inevitable, but I would have liked to have kept it to a minimum. Apparently Drakon isn’t playing by the same rules with his own men.
Movement from across the clearing catches the corner of my eye almost a second too late. “Watch out!” I shove Carleon back to the ground as the large oil tank explodes in front of us. The fumes burn my eyes and the blistering heat singes the hairs on the back of my arms. I choke on the thick smoke rolling through the clearing.
My lungs burn on the acrid scent that boils around us. Everywhere I look, orange and blue dances with deadly intent. I close my eyes and press my hand out to the side, using a gust of wind to expel the flames nearest us. My nostrils flare as I hal
t the movement of my lungs until the worst of the fumes passes by. I notice the black soot that clings to my hand as I pat Carleon on the back. “You good?”
“No,” he grunts as he rolls to his side, clutching his chest. His face is a coated with a similar tarlike substance. His eyes gleam whiter than usual in the dark. “I think I landed on my spleen.”
“At least you’re alive.”
“What happened?” he asks, rolling up to his knees. He clutches his side, his chest rising and falling in a rapid tempo.
“Vikesh,” I whisper.
“How can you tell?” He turns and freezes when he follows my gaze. I can see the shadowy outline of a man approaching from the south, his form unclear, rippling with translucidity. His gait is slow, unconcerned. He knows I will not run. If I do, everyone will die.
“Illyria.” His taunting voice carries on the breeze, deep and filled with mockery. I brush sweat from my brow and clench my fists at my side. I breathe a tiny sigh of relief as the blissfully chilled night air begins to seep back into the yard, combatting the blistering heat all around.
I can see Carleon from the corner of my eye. He looks paler than before, although I hadn’t thought it possible. His Adam’s apple bobs as he widens his stance beside me. I motion for him to be silent. He nods and shifts his weight to the side, unsettling the thin crust of newly heated dirt about his boot.
“Don’t—” My cry cuts off as a terrible rumbling rises from the earth. The ground writhes like an angry snake and a deep crevice appears before us.
“Jump!” I toss myself to the side as the ground under my feet disappears into a sinkhole. I land on the edge, teetering precariously.
Carleon cries out as his chest slams into the crumbling edge. He frantically digs his fingers into the shifting dirt, but there is nothing to cling to. “I can’t get a hold!”
His legs flail about as he begins to slip. I harness my energy, closing my eyes for a split second to focus, and fling him out of the sinkhole with my mind. He flops once as he lands hard on his stomach, his arm bent awkwardly beneath him. I’m just about to escape the hole myself when I hear a voice behind me, much nearer than before. “You seem to be struggling, Illyria. Are you sure you are up to the challenge?” Vikesh taunts.