Salvation

by Caryn Lix

  “That lying, cheating dirtbag,” seethed Mia, who’d obviously followed my gaze.

  I ground my teeth so hard pain ricocheted through my skull, and I willed Eden to meet my eyes. Was this why she’d led us here? For whatever the hell was in those boxes? Were we her sacrificial lamb, here to distract the aliens? Was this what Rune meant when she told us to get out?

  Eden didn’t look my way, not then, not when she shouldered the final box, but she hesitated in the doorway. Turn around, I willed her. Turn around and face us and for God’s sake, help us.

  But she didn’t.

  She slipped through the exit and was gone.

  Mia was whispering what I was sure would have been a screaming storm of curses if she’d had the freedom to shout, and everyone else seemed at a total loss. We were on our own. No help was coming. I wasn’t naive enough to think that Eden would return for us, not anymore. We’d served our purpose.

  The aliens were almost close enough to attack now. “Do we shoot?” I whispered.

  “Not sure we have much choice,” Cage replied softly.

  Matt jerked his head toward the exit. “Clear a path,” he said. “All we need to do is get through that door.”

  “And if they follow us?” Mia snarled.

  Matt shrugged. “Then we shoot them down as they emerge. Or we run. Eden said they didn’t like the heat. Either way, it’s better than staying here.” He didn’t mention it, but it would also mean leading the aliens straight to Eden and her people—and I had to admit, a vengeful part of me welcomed that idea.

  “All right.” Cage pressed against my back, and his arm tensed as he slid his finger over the trigger. “On my count. One … two …”

  One of the aliens let loose a horrific howl and leaped six feet straight into the air, flying at Mia. A burst of gunfire jolted through the room, so loud it made me cringe, and the creature screamed, collapsing on the ground.

  As if that was a signal, the aliens exploded into motion, snarling, lunging, attacking. Within seconds I couldn’t see the exit. I lowered my gun, some form of automatic laser rifle similar to ones I’d seen in Omnistellar, and opened fire.

  My first burst tore through the aliens like butter, shredding their insides. They screeched as they collapsed, but almost immediately another wave took their place. My second shot seemed to hurt them too, but not as badly; they fell to the ground and writhed for a while before they died.

  “They’re already shielding!” Mia shouted. The need for stealth was gone. “If we’re going to move, we’d better do it now!”

  “I’ll cover you!” Cage bellowed in return. “Let’s go! Run for the door!”

  I didn’t much like the idea of Cage lingering to cover us, but I also didn’t have time to argue. Alexei’s huge form charged into the crowd, firing his gun, seemingly at random. We’d all deliberately chosen different types of weapons in an effort to slow the speed at which the creatures adapted, and that strategy seemed to be working. We’d already killed at least a dozen and we were moving—slowly, but moving.

  Suddenly agony laced along my right arm. I collapsed with a scream as white-hot pain stabbed through me. Cage spun and caught me, hauling me to my feet and firing in the same motion. His bullets missed me by inches, leaving a ringing in my ears as he shot down the creature who’d slipped past our fire and attacked me.

  I took in our hopeless situation and groaned as the truth dawned on me. This was going to hurt. “We have to run!” I shouted at Cage.

  He shook his head frantically, squeezing off another shot. This one barely seemed to faze the monster he was targeting. “We can’t carry the others, and we can’t leave them!”

  “We can clear a path!” I insisted.

  He gaped at me. “Are you crazy?”

  “What other choice do we have?” I reached for Cage’s power, a shimmery mess of gold and green. I wrapped myself in its familiarity and warmth. “Let’s go!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mia screamed as I pushed past her. She’d tossed her gun aside, clearly deeming it useless, and drawn a long, wicked-looking blade, her face set in the grim expression of someone planning to do as much damage as possible before she died.

  “Follow us!” I ordered in response. “As fast as you can.” I turned to Cage and took his hand. “Ready?”

  “No!”

  “Good. Let’s go!”

  THIRTY

  CAGE AND I DUCKED OUR heads, squared our shoulders, and took off at the speed of sound.

  We instantly smashed into alien bodies, but our speed had rendered them incapable of tracking our movements, and we hit solid muscle, not claws. It was enough to stop us momentarily, but we lurched into motion again, barreling through the crowd with Cage’s power.

  Each time we collided with a creature, it was agony, like slamming into a brick wall. Even with my head bent, my arm shielding my face, my body quickly began to scream. I felt like I’d been tied to a post and beaten with a stick. Still I tried again. When I floundered, Cage caught me and pulled me up, and I did the same for him. Over and over again, long after I wanted to give up and lie down, we pulled each other forward, putting on a burst of speed, clearing the crowd.

  Finally I stumbled against the wall, half collapsing with Cage at my side. I could barely breathe, every inhale like a forced draw against an angry fist. I was one aching bruise, blood dripping from my torn arm, dizzy and on the verge of unconsciousness.

  Cage didn’t look much better. He, too, was bleeding and one of his eyes was puffy. But we were both standing, and when we turned, the others were behind us, having threaded their way through the aliens to our side.

  “We need to get out of here,” Mia snarled, grabbing the door Eden had exited through and yanking it open.

  We found ourselves gaping at a flight of stairs and a lift. The lift was clearly broken, but I suspected the stairs led right back to the surface. Sure enough: an escape.

  But the aliens were right behind us. We slammed the door, and Alexei and Matt threw their combined weight against it, holding it as it bucked and heaved under the alien onslaught. “What now?” Matt growled through gritted teeth. “We can’t just walk away! They’ll be on us before we get twenty feet.”

  “We haven’t used fire yet,” Alexei replied grimly. “I can blast some of them before they adapt.”

  My comm device crackled. “Kenzie!” Rune shouted. “Where are you?”

  I tapped it to activate it. “We’re outside the lower level trying to keep the aliens inside. Rune, don’t trust Eden. It’s—”

  “I know.” Bitterness laced her tone. “You guys need to get up here.”

  Alexei and Matt lurched against the bucking door, and Cage and Mia joined their weight to the boys’, their muscles straining as they held the barrier. “Whatever we’re going to do,” Mia shouted, “we’d better do it soon.”

  I shook my head. “We can’t lead them upstairs! Rune and the others are there. The aliens will tear them apart, and that’s after they finish with us.”

  “There has to be a way out of this!” Cage shouted. It was a relief to raise our voices, to give vent to the terror and tension we’d been fighting since we’d descended that ladder. “I refuse to accept defeat. Not here, not now, not after we’ve come through so much!”

  I looked to the stairs, and to my friends. “Rune,” I said quietly, “I think you’d better gather everyone and head back to the city.”

  “What?” she shrieked so loudly she almost splintered the bones in my ear. “Not until we have you!”

  I lowered my voice further, but even with the aliens pounding against the door, I knew the others heard me. “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

  “The hell you’re not.” Mild-mannered Rune’s voice adopted a core of pure steel. “Get your ass up here, Kenzie, or I’ll come down there and get you myself.”

  “Do you have a way to overload some systems? Maybe lock some doors?”

  She hesitated. “No.”

&nb
sp; “Then trust me when I say there’s nothing you can do.” I expected to feel more now when I was finally about to die, but only emptiness surged inside me. At least I’d die surrounded by my friends. And then, who knew? Maybe I’d see my mom, my dad, my fallen comrades.

  “Kenzie.” Rune’s voice took on a pleading note. “Listen.”

  “Take care of the others. Find a way home,” I told her, and I cut the comm.

  The door bucked so hard all four of its protectors lurched forward, although they quickly slammed themselves back into place. “We can’t keep this up much longer,” Matt gasped.

  “It won’t matter if they run.” Cage was staring upstairs, his face fixed in an agonized mask, the least collected I’d ever seen him. “They won’t make it. Not if these creatures chase after us. We have to hold them as long as we can, give the others as much of a head start as possible.”

  They’d die anyway. Rune wouldn’t run any more than I would have, any more than Cage. All we could do was buy them time. I swallowed. “What can I do? I can use any of your powers. Tell me what will help.”

  The door lurched again, sending Mia flying into me. We both collapsed to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

  A clawed arm tore through the crack in the door. It slashed at random, catching the side of Alexei’s face and tearing huge bleeding chunks through his skin. Alexei bellowed in pain but dug in his heels, and all three boys turned their shoulders to the door, struggling against the creature’s might.

  I only had a second to act. Mia, dazed, dropped the wicked machete-like blade she carried. I snatched it up, flying through the room with Cage’s speed and bringing it down with every bit of my strength. It sliced halfway through the alien arm and stuck fast. The alien screamed its shrill, vicious scream, so loud it almost physically staggered me. I wrenched the blade back and forth, struggling to free it from the creature, to retreat or advance or anything other than leave it wedged through the thing’s arm as its strange, oozing fluids coated my hands.

  “Move!” Mia shouted. I obeyed without thinking, ducking as she leaped onto the stair rail and launched herself over me, landing with one foot on either side of the blade, balanced precariously on the creature’s arm.

  Her weight accomplished what my strength had not, driving the blade the rest of the way through the creature and severing its arm. The door slammed shut on its howls as Mia hit the floor, letting out a cry of her own as she collapsed in a much less graceful heap than she’d originally managed.

  Matt kicked the alien’s severed arm aside in disgust, and it skittered across the hallway. We had almost thirty seconds of silence, barely long enough to hope the aliens had retreated, before the door lurched under a renewed assault.

  “There’s only one way out of here,” said Alexei grimly, “and we all know what it is.”

  Mia staggered to her feet, clearly unsteady, but still managed to jab a finger in his direction. “No.”

  “Mia mine, we are out of options.” He looked to the rest of us, his gray eyes flat and calm between the bloody gashes that shredded his face but, miraculously, missed his eyes and lips. “The fuel source inside. I can clear a path through the creatures with fire and then incinerate it. You’ll have to run as fast as you can. I can’t guarantee how long I’ll distract them.”

  “Absolutely not,” Cage snapped.

  But Matt hesitated. “Do you have another idea?” he asked at last, almost gently.

  Cage and I exchanged glances.

  “It doesn’t matter if there’s not another idea,” Mia snarled. She grabbed Alexei’s arm, the two of them jolting together as the aliens hit the door.

  “Mia. I can’t let everyone upstairs die to buy myself an extra five minutes.”

  She wavered, and I waited, breath bated, not daring to speak as emotion warred across her face. “Fine,” she snarled at last. “Then I’m coming with you.”

  Alexei sighed. “Mia …”

  “I’m not letting you go in there alone, Lex, and that’s final.” She jammed her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “Besides, you need me. You can’t make it through there by yourself.”

  “I don’t …” Alexei appealed to each of us in turn. Then he muttered a Russian curse under his breath, grabbed Mia, hauled her against him, and kissed her. His blood ran between their faces, and neither of them seemed to care as they locked in an embrace that made me look away in embarrassment and maybe something else, a huge lump rising in my heart and threatening to choke me on my own fears.

  A sound drew my attention as they broke apart. “I love you, Mia mine,” Alexei said.

  And then he caught her by the back of the neck and spun her around, locking her in the crook of his arm, his other hand behind her, rendering her immobile. Mia choked, snatching at his arms, but Alexei muttered something and held tight, collapsing to the ground beside her.

  I was too shocked to move, too scared to speak.

  A moment later Alexei straightened, Mia in his arms. He passed her limp form to Cage, who was gaping at him like he’d never seen him before. “Get her out of here,” he said.

  Cage faltered, then swallowed hard and nodded. “All right.”

  “No,” I whispered. “No, we can’t do that. Cage …”

  Alexei offered me a faint smile. “You’ll be okay, Kenzie. Take care of Mia. She’s not as hard as she seems.”

  “You can’t—”

  The door lurched again, and this time they barely managed to hold it. Alexei spread his arms wide, knocking the other two off balance. “Go,” he ordered. “I’ll hold the door as long as I can, and then I’ll keep their attention on me. If I can make it to the center of the room, I’ll take this whole place out with me. If not, I’ll still buy you some time.” When none of us moved, his eyes narrowed, his chin jutting to an aggressive point. “Why the hell are you still standing here? Go! Now, all of you, run!”

  A split second of agonized indecision crossed Cage’s face, and then he was gone, a rush of air passing me, and it was only me, Matt, and Alexei in the room.

  Matt grabbed me and pulled me for the stairs, but I couldn’t move, my legs locked in place. “No,” I repeated. “We can’t … Alexei, please.”

  He smiled. The door bucked behind him and he sank his feet into the cement, just barely managing to hold against the heaving, roiling mass behind. “It’s been a privilege being your friend, Kenzie.”

  Somehow, I made my legs move. Somehow, I retreated a step, and then another. Matt grabbed my arm and spun me, shoving me up the stairs ahead of him, blocking me as if frightened I’d try to retreat. Every time I turned for a last glimpse of Alexei, Matt’s bulk shielded my view, and he pushed me forward, urging me on.

  We rounded the corner, and I skidded to a halt. What were we doing? I was not leaving someone else to die at alien hands, especially not Alexei, especially not now. “We have to go back.”

  A burst of wind almost knocked me off balance, and I staggered as Cage materialized in front of me. “Let’s go,” he gasped, trembling and out of breath and maybe even on the verge of unconsciousness. “Kenzie, help me carry Matt. Between us we might be able to drag him. Anyway, we have to try.” He frowned at Matt. “Sorry, buddy. This might get uncomfortable.”

  A slight smile touched Matt’s face. “It’s hardly the worst you’ve ever done to me.”

  “Kenz.” Cage shook my arm. “Come on!”

  “We have to go back!” I screamed, my voice echoing through the corridors.

  The boys exchanged glances. “And do what?” Matt snapped, his voice suddenly losing all trace of kindness, becoming the Silver Oni he’d been on Obsidian. “Get ourselves killed while making sure Alexei dies in vain? Get your head in the game, Cord. Stop being so goddamn selfish and do Lex the courtesy of giving his death some meaning.”

  Selfish? Was that what I was being? I looked between them and swallowed hard. “Okay,” I whispered, my voice barely audible to my own ears. Reaching out, I wrapped myself in Cage’s power. I didn’t
dare let myself think too hard about what I was doing. I didn’t think at all. I went into Omnistellar mode, shutting off my brain, and then grabbed Matt’s hand and ran.

  I couldn’t lift Matt for long, and neither could Cage, but Matt helped where he could, scrabbling against the steps as we dragged him upward. We ran in bursts and stops, giving him time to collect himself and ourselves a second to breathe before we took off again.

  We reached the top of the stairs and slammed through a metal door into the warehouse we’d seen before. We’d done a number on Matt’s legs; they were battered and bleeding through his torn pants, and we had to support him as we ran across the room.

  We’d barely reached the door when something rumbled beneath my feet. I half turned, expecting the worst, bracing for an explosion, but nothing happened.

  And then the ground began to shift.

  As the warehouse disintegrated, we lurched forward, scrambling into the hot midday sun, our fingers and feet gaining purchase in the sand as we crawled away. When we finally reached a place where the ground wasn’t slipping and sliding, we dropped there. I rolled over to watch the warehouse collapse into the sinkhole of sand. Every trace of the base vanished, taking the last hope of Alexei with it.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I LAY THERE IN THE sand, riveted on the place where the warehouse had stood. Nothing remained but a crumpled heap of metal and brick.

  On the other side of the building, the rest of our crew huddled in a group: Eden and her soldiers surrounded by a large pile of boxes, Hallam and Rune, Jasper and Priya, and Reed and Imani, who seemed to be healing people. Mia lay unconscious at their feet, her skin still bright with Alexei’s blood. “Kenzie,” Rune gasped, taking half a step forward. “What happened? We heard a sound, felt a rumble, and as soon as we left the warehouse …”

  My eyes met hers, and I staggered upright, switching my focus to Eden. A murderous rage swelled in my chest, blinding me in a sea of red. Rushing filled my ears, and my heart beat so fast it shook my chest, making my breath come in unsteady gasps. I was half dead on my feet, but still I lurched in her direction.