Jarek tilted his head questioningly in the direction she’d come from.
She swallowed, gave a shaky thumbs up, and crawled over to their corner.
“They’re almost past,” she mouthed, the tiny traces of the accompanying whisper only barely audible to Fela’s sensors.
Jarek nodded, preparing to subdue a stirring Michael once again.
True to her word, the heart of the cacophony, while well within earshot, seemed to be drifting away southwest now. From the sound of it, though, there were plenty of stragglers still below.
Chambers watched the process of Michael’s subduing with clear concern and took a careful peek out the closest window.
“I think maybe it’s okay now,” she whispered, glancing uncertainly down at Michael. “As long as he doesn’t scream or anything.”
Jarek wasn’t about to hold his breath on those chances, having no actual understanding of how wide this furor net was spread right now or what was even happening beneath Michael’s dark, curly locks. But, that said, he also wasn’t eager to give Michael permanent brain damage from repeated strangulation—assuming he hadn’t already.
So, cautiously, Jarek held off on the strangling and shifted Michael so he could see his face as the younger man began to stir again.
Jarek held his breath, waiting.
In the distance, the horde continued to recede.
“All clear below,” Chambers whispered.
Michael’s face scrunched in a kind of flinch as if he was having a nightmare.
Once. Twice.
Jarek raised a hand to Michael’s throat.
Michael’s dark eyes snapped open.
“Crap,” Michael hissed. “Oh crap—I didn’t …” He looked around, taking in their tense looks and, after the fact, Jarek’s hand at his throat. “Uhh … Did I miss something?”
Jarek let out a relieved breath, patted Michael on the chest, and leaned back to relax against the wall. “Oh, you know. Bloodthirsty horde—sorry, congregation—rolling through. Tense struggles to keep certain parties quiet.” He frowned in the direction of Mosen’s half of the building. “Stubborn assholes who are probably already blaming all this on the two of us.”
“You forgot half the grown men and women in this building shitting themselves in terror,” Chambers said, still glancing out the window every few seconds, “but yeah.”
Michael was opening his mouth to say something when approaching footsteps drew Jarek’s attention to Fela’s auditory sensors.
Halfway down the hallway already. Headed their way with cold anger Jarek could almost feel pulsing from each violent boot fall.
Three guesses who.
Jarek detached his legs from Michael and pulled them both to their feet, unruffling Michael’s clothes and sliding the blanket into the corner behind them with one foot.
In response to Michael’s baffled look, Jarek just held a finger to his own lips and turned to join Chambers at the window.
The hallway footsteps stopped at the threshold of their room, drawing Chambers’ attention.
Jarek deliberately watched the fading horde for another second before turning himself to find Mosen watching them with hard accusation in his eyes.
“What are you two doing?”
Jarek didn’t have to act too hard to come up with an irritated frown as he hooked a thumb at the window as if to say, What the hell do you think we’re doing?
Mosen ignored him and stepped into the room like a hound on the prowl. He paused when he caught sight of Michael, who, admittedly, looked pretty ruffled, and not a little bit guilty.
Instead of grilling Michael, though, Mosen whirled on Chambers—who he must’ve figured was less likely to be in cahoots—and skewered her with a look that could’ve wilted a tree. “What’s Carver doing here?”
Jarek’s stomach sank at the thought of what came next when their story unraveled.
But Chambers only looked from Mosen to Michael and back again, her slight confusion either genuine or masterfully acted. “Is there someplace else he’s supposed to be?”
Something about the look on Mosen’s face flashed Jarek straight back to the first time he’d ever seen Rachel. The time when he’d found her on the floor of the Red Fortress’ brig with Mosen’s hands wrapped around her throat.
He tensed, the vivid memory begging him to attack right then and there.
But Mosen let out an aggravated huff and broke his tense glare before things escalated any further. “Whatever.” He turned a cold stare on Jarek. “You still running off to Pittsburgh like a blind old lady?”
Jarek held his gaze, unflinching. “Why? You feeling spry?”
The glint of red that crept into Mosen’s eyes, coupled with his cold, unreadable expression, was an unnecessary reminder of just how much time the man had spent under the thumb of his raknoth masters.
Finally, Mosen turned for the door and spoke without looking back.
“We should leave tonight.”
Things could have turned out a lot worse, Jarek decided as Mosen left, considering that it’d been death by furor horde and possible civil war they’d been dealing with.
Lucky for them, Chambers had been ready and willing to hold her shit together under Mosen’s creepy scrutiny.
Jarek shot her an exaggerated thumbs up as they listened to Mosen’s stomping footsteps fade down the hallway.
For a moment, a small grin split her face. Soon enough, though, looking back and forth between him and Michael, the grin began to fade, replaced by a look that suggested she was wondering what the hell it was she’d just signed up for.
4
Whether it was the lingering tension of having almost been spotted on the bridge or just par for the course, Rachel couldn’t help but think the air along the riverside path was unnaturally crisp and still as they trekked quietly toward the stadium.
Probably just a healthy dose of the too-damned-close call nerves.
They’d jumped down to the narrow pedestrian underpass as soon as they’d reached the northern end of the bridge, not eager to spend a moment longer than necessary out in the open. Rachel had helped Johnny down with telekinesis. Drogan, unsurprisingly, had refused her aid—and gotten it anyway.
It wouldn’t do to kick off their stealthy city prowl with a heavy raknoth thudding down to the ground.
Now that they were on their way, though, Rachel was having trouble giving much worry to whatever ears might be listening nearby. Her attention was far too focused on the eastern skyline, and the ship she was half-sure would come racing back at any moment, having only been feinting its failure to spot them on the bridge.
It was a silly fear, she kept reminding herself.
If the rakul had seen them, she highly doubted they’d feel the need for caution or trickery. They would have descended on them without hesitation. Right?
She shook her head at her own fretting and glanced over at the others.
Johnny, as she’d come to expect in these situations, had shed his nearly chronic grin for an expression of disciplined vigilance, the systematic scan of his gaze and the precise way he handled his odd rifle reminding her that he’d been a trained soldier back on his planet.
Drogan, on the other hand, seemed to be listening and smelling as much as he was watching, his skin tinged with the subtle flecks of green that told her he was still every bit as apprehensive about their near miss on the bridge as she was.
They passed alongside a huge white building whose outer curve matched the wavy way of the path and a small amphitheater that stretched from the path down the bank to the river’s edge.
It was the exact kind of sight that never failed to make Rachel pause and try to grasp exactly what life had been like on this planet before the Catastrophe. Sure, growing up in Unity had been a much better approximation than what most kids—like Jarek—had experienced. And she had plenty of “normal” memories from childhood, too. But none of that could really hold the shiver of surrealism at bay.
Lo
oking down at that old, abandoned amphitheater, it was impossible to deny that Earth had been violently robbed of its future.
But that didn’t mean they couldn’t take it back.
Rachel scanned the scene ahead and reached for her cloaking pendant as they cornered the large building and Heinz Field drew into view. On second thought, she dropped her hand from the pendant, opting to wait until they were closer before she started sweeping with her senses.
As far as she knew, all the men with Nelken would either be personally cloaked or hiding within the effect of one of her and Haldin’s cloaking field generators anyway.
“That’s a lot of cars,” Johnny said quietly.
He wasn’t wrong.
Whether or not you wanted to call it stealing, cars had largely become fair game to be taken for use or parts after the bombs had fallen. God knew most of their owners weren’t coming back for them.
Even so, the two enormous lots between them and the stadium were still surprisingly full of vehicles, most of them looking exactly like they’d been sitting there for the past fifteen years.
Maybe it had been a game day when the bombs had fallen.
She pushed the thought aside and tilted her staff at the stadium. “Let’s move while we can.”
“Do we really think they’re staying in there?” Johnny asked.
Drogan’s sniffing was audible this time, and when she looked, his nose and mouth had begun to shift green and slightly elongate.
He noticed her looking and shook his head. “Not inside the stadium, I think. But close.”
Johnny opened his mouth to say something, his usual grin returning.
Drogan silenced him with a raised hand, still staring at the stadium. “Save your pitiful jokes, Flame Head. Follow. Quietly.”
With that, Drogan started across the closer of the parking lots, sniffing all the way.
Johnny watched him go with a long frown. “It wasn’t even gonna be a joke.” As he spoke, he held up one hand as if to shield his face from Drogan’s turned back and shot Rachel an exaggerated pair of winks.
Rachel patted him on the back as she passed to follow Drogan. “Don’t worry, Flame Head. They’re not all pitiful.
“Sweet Alpha,” he murmured, falling in beside her, “if this is gonna be a thing, can it at least be a cool nickname?”
“You want Captain Flame Head?”
Johnny thought about it and shrugged. “Moving in the right direction, at least.”
They trod on quietly after Drogan, letting the raknoth have space to run point with his sharpened senses. The stadium loomed up as they drew closer, another bizarre reminder of the kind of things the world had chosen to place value in when day-to-day survival hadn’t been on the table.
They were halfway past the expansive structure when Johnny snapped into a shooting stance. He moved so fast it took Rachel a moment to realize Drogan had likewise stiffened ahead, as if something had reached out and slapped him.
It took her another moment to realize the jolt of surprise shooting through her was not solely in response to their reactions. There was something else there, tickling at the edge of her awareness, right where her physical senses gave way to their extended counterparts.
Something she shouldn’t be able to feel with her cloaking pendant dialed to short range unless …
Ahead, Drogan turned to face her, eyes glowing with soft red light, his hand drifting to the cloaking pendant at his neck as if by its own accord.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “It’s them.”
Drogan, hearing the whisper even twenty yards away, curled the hand into a fist and lowered it with deliberate effort as Rachel and Johnny hurried over to him.
He hadn’t talked about it much aside from the occasional passing gripe, but it seemed like wearing the cloaking pendant was uncomfortable for Drogan—effectively cutting off one of his sensory modalities.
And given that it was rakul messengers whispering at the edges of their cloaks, she couldn’t say she blamed him for wanting that particular sense back right now.
“How close?” Rachel whispered.
Drogan’s cocked head and glare were all the response he gave, but she didn’t need further explanation.
They wouldn’t be able to tell. Not without flipping off their cloaks and lighting themselves up like lighthouses to any nearby rakul.
“Guys?” Johnny said, glancing between them. He wasn’t a telepath, but he caught on quickly enough by the looks on their faces. “Shit. Messengers?”
Rachel nodded.
Johnny looked expectantly between them again. “Well, should we maybe move, then?”
Damn straight they should. The question was in which direction they should do it, and they all knew it.
“Bridge still looks clear back there,” Johnny said. “If we back out and regroup we can—”
“We won’t find them again,” Rachel said. “Not without the Net. Not soon enough for it to matter.” She swallowed, looking at Drogan and the stadium beyond. “Assuming they’re actually here somewhere.”
“I smell someone,” Drogan said.
Johnny traded an uncertain look with Rachel. “What are the chances those someones are furor puppets?”
Drogan shook his head, fiddling with his cloaking pendant again. “I detect no signs of a horde. Yet.”
Whatever they did, better sooner than later, and if Nelken and his people decided to blow town now …
They had to make the rally point—had to find out if Jarek and Michael had made it, or hold out until they did.
“I say we go,” Rachel said before she could talk herself out of it.
Drogan turned back from the east to consider her. “I agree with Rachel Cross.”
Together, they turned to face Johnny.
“Shiiit.” Johnny shook his head and gestured to Drogan. “Lead the way then, Sniffs.”
Their pace moving forward was decidedly more urgent as they attempted to cover ground as quickly and quietly as possible. Once they’d passed the stadium, they struck out across the next parking lot and down the next strip of buildings, following Drogan’s busy nose. When Drogan perked up again, Rachel assumed it would either be good news or bad.
Instead, the raknoth waved them on. “Keep moving. I require better vantage.”
Then he crouched and leapt fifty feet to the top of the building on their right.
“Aye, aye, then,” Rachel grumbled.
She prowled down the street beside Johnny, dialing her cloaking pendant out to give her extended senses some room to explore.
With the additional sensory information at her disposal, it was only all the more startling when the pair of figures sprang out from the narrow alley on the left, rifles at the ready and aimed straight at Rachel’s and Johnny’s faces.
Johnny had his weapon trained before Rachel could even think about pointing her staff or reaching for energy to channel. She didn’t quite get around to either before the face of one of their attackers registered in a swirl of surprised relief.
“Lea?” Johnny held up a don’t shoot hand and slowly lowered his rifle. “Hey, fancy seeing you her—”
Lea lunged forward, wrapped Johnny in a hard but brief hug, and broke away. “We have to get off the streets. Now.”
Her partner, who Rachel recognized as a Resistance fighter but not by name, was already backing toward the alleyway with an air that suggested they’d all better follow if they wanted to live.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked as Lea pulled her into an equally brief hug that segued into a pull toward the alley.
“We just lost our northeastern scout,” Lea said. “Right after he told us—”
A crimson-eyed Drogan slammed down to the asphalt just ahead of them, eliciting startled jumps from all of them and a strangled growl of “Jesus Christ!” from Lea’s partner.
“A horde approaches,” Drogan said, ignoring their reactions. “Quite a large one, from the sound of it.”
“Funny timing,�
�� Lea’s partner mumbled with a dark look at Drogan.
“Adams …” Lea chided. Then, to them, “Did you guys see that ship?”
“Oh, we saw it,” Johnny said. “Thought it had skipped right over this fair city, though.”
“We need to get back to base,” Adams said. “They’re probably already starting evac.”
A twinge of panic gripped Rachel. “Evac?” She grabbed Lea’s arm. “Michael? Jarek?”
Lea licked her lips, the hesitance and sympathy in her expression all the answer Rachel needed.
Lea shook her head anyway.
She might as well have punched Rachel in the gut.
It wasn’t that she’d been expecting anything else. The chances of Michael and Jarek beating them here had been slim at best.
Rachel just hadn’t realized how desperately she’d been hoping they would pull it off anyway.
And if evacuation was on the table right now …
By some gentle combination of Johnny’s pushing and Lea’s pulling, they were all moving down the alleyway before Rachel could tell herself to pull it together.
Up on point, Adams and Drogan weren’t bothering with any attempt at moving quietly now. The rest of them followed their example, and they all rounded out of the alleyway and set off across another large parking lot at a hard run.
Under an overpass. Across yet another lot.
Rachel ran, mind racing too fast for her thoughts to amount to anything more than white noise.
In the distance, the first horrible scream split the air.
Adams and Lea were angling toward the building on the right—an old hotel, from the looks of it.
Rachel caught sight of a few tense-looking shooters posted in the windows higher up. Then the doors were open, and they were all whisked into a hotel lobby that probably would’ve felt a lot larger if it weren’t crammed full of men and women speaking in hushed voices and rushing about with packs and weapons.
There were dozens of them, many whose faces Rachel didn’t recognize but plenty more she did, including one face she thought belonged to the non-scaly form of Al’Brandt, the raknoth from the temple in the Himalayas. He tipped a small nod her way a second before her extended senses confirmed her suspicion.
Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series Page 4