by F. T. Lukens
“Good. Now follow me. Keep your eyes open and your mouths shut. Ezzy, take the rear and make sure your weed of a brother stays out of trouble.”
Jakob glared, but kept his lips pressed together so hard they turned white.
They crept across the open countryside that surrounded the towering walls of the citadel. The stone was stark against the wispy snow clouds and the occasional sliver of blue in the sky. It didn’t seem safe. Ren swore he was being watched, and his skin prickled with the sensation.
He reached out, searching for weapons or energy signals, but his power balked. His senses fuzzed out as his star twisted and writhed, tangling up. His head buzzed, and his vision went blue. Static overwhelmed him and tingled through his body down to his toes. He tasted electricity and colors and smelled sound, and the citadel vibrated in his bones. He clapped his gloved hands over his ears and hunched forward, gritting his teeth—none of which quelled the all-consuming whine of white noise invading his head.
Ren let out a whimper. Despite being invaded, he felt hands on his shoulders, someone pulling him up, then fabric against his cheeks.
He didn’t realize he had clenched his eyes shut until a voice asked him to open them. He did, and Asher’s face took shape: a blurry impression amid the blurred lines of blue and black and white.
“What’s going on?” Asher said.
Ren furrowed his brow, not able to speak as his power went haywire. Ren flinched, but the action made everything worse, and he realized fighting or hiding wasn’t going to work. Instead of withdrawing from the signal, he opened to it. He engaged with it. His star was a throbbing pressure in his chest. His body shivered and shook, his muscles tensed, his joints locked. But despite the assault on his senses, the more Ren succumbed to it, the clearer it became.
Vos’s voice. Repeating a warning in Ren’s head.
Asher shook him, and Ren’s teeth clacked. “Ren? What is going on? Are you okay?”
“Do you hear it?” he asked, his voice far away, blunted, barely a sound in the noise.
“No. No, we don’t hear anything. What do you hear?”
Stay away. Stay away. Not safe. Report to other base. Leave.
“A warning,” he managed to grit out. “From Vos. A signal.”
“This is why we need comms,” Beatrice said. “I bet we would pick it up on those.”
Asher ignored her. “Can you block it out?” His touch was gentle on Ren’s face. “Ren?”
Ren scrunched his eyes shut, but the message was insidious. It overran his mind and echoed through his thoughts.
Stay away. Stay away. Not safe. Report to other base. Leave.
Except you.
Ren shivered. The last words were softer, an intimate whisper in the shell of Ren’s ear, an invitation. Abiathar’s voice was a caress; his power of suggestion was present within the sound, and Ren was certain those words would not be picked up on any comm system. Fear crept down his spine as the phrase appeared again in the static.
Except you. Come in.
No. No!
Ren wrenched from Asher’s grip and broke away from the group. He ran, kicking up snow behind him, and sprinted across the wide-open area toward the stone.
He had to shut it off.
He had to shut it off.
He had to—
Come in.
9
Ren had no idea what he was doing, but he knew he had to push Vos and Abiathar out of his head. He got to the shadows cast by the towers and blindly felt along the stone edges. Not finding what he needed, he pulled off his gloves, ignored the shouts of the others behind him, and ran farther, trailing his hand along the citadel’s wall. The stone was cold and it scratched his palm, but he had to find it, had to find the source. He had to shut it off.
Come in. Come in.
“No!”
Ren stumbled to the castle gate. The portcullis was propped open and the heavy doors swung wide on broken hinges. The force field wasn’t active but the system was enough.
Ren slammed his power into it and raced through the wires and the circuits, up into the stone, through the courtyard, into the keep. He climbed and climbed, hopping from system to system, until he found the communications. Set in the highest tower, the beacon blared, alerting stragglers of Vos’s empire to their orders. It must’ve run for months, since Vos had left and Abiathar, his lead general, took the army to the drifts.
With a surge, Ren cut it off. He silenced the bleating repetition of words.
One second, the static consumed him, and in the next, it was gone. Ren was flesh and bone, weary, breathing hard from running. He sagged against the wall and slid down. Sitting in the snow, knees bent, he waited for the others to catch up.
He had outrun them all, and the group approached, weapons out and at the ready. Ren didn’t miss the fact that while Asher, Jakob, and Ezzy had their pulse guns and prods pointed outward, Beatrice’s stunner was aimed squarely at Ren.
Ren’s chest stung from the cold, and his hands bled from a few scratches. He warily eyed Beatrice as they approached. Though he could disable the weapon with a blink, she didn’t know that, and he didn’t know if he could stop her if she chose to pull the trigger with no warning.
The massive wooden door that Ren had walked through almost a year ago banged against the stone wall in a gust of the bitter wind. It sounded suspiciously like come in, but Ren shook his head, clearing away the clutter of words.
“What the stars was that?” Beatrice barked. “Are you trying to get us killed? If there were any birdmen around they would’ve picked you off for sure. Are you addled?”
Ren pushed his hair from his eyes.
“Your eyes are blue.”
“My eyes are brown.”
“She means you’re glowing, Ren,” Jakob said.
“Oh. I’m detangling.” Ren’s consciousness was stretched from the entrance to the tower, and he slowly contracted, pulled himself out of the remnants of the castle systems.
Ezzy’s eyes were bright, and her mouth was slightly open. “What did you do?”
“I turned off the signal,” Ren said. “I had to. It was… too much.”
“Are you okay?” Asher knelt, placed his hand on Ren’s shoulder, and squeezed.
“Yeah, I’m all right.” Ren tugged and he slotted back into his physical self. He took stock, counted his pulse, and wiggled his fingers.
Come in.
“For good measure, can you ask me an impossible question?”
Asher narrowed his eyes. “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”
The question chimed sharply in Ren’s mind. “Paradox.”
“Good.”
Beatrice heaved a sigh. “Well, any cover we had was blown as soon as you took off running. We might as well go in.”
“Any cover we had was gone the minute we stepped out of the floater,” Asher said. He stood and slid his pulse gun back into his holster. “If anyone wanted us dead, we would be. But that doesn’t mean we should throw caution into an air recycler.”
Beatrice raised an eyebrow. “Wind.”
“What?”
“Throw caution to the wind. Why would you throw caution into an air recycler?”
“I… what?”
“Weeds, you’re a drifter, aren’t you?” She pointed her finger at Asher’s chest. “That’s why you have such a problem with the truth about the Corps. You’re spoiled drifter trash.”
His jaw clenching, Asher visibly restrained himself from commenting. Ren rested a hand on his arm before rolling his eyes and sharing a commiserating look with Jakob. Ren stood, and Jakob shouldered between Asher and Beatrice.
“Can we finish what we came here to do? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to spend the night here. Let’s go.” Jakob brushed through the center of the g
roup, breaking the tension.
“I’m leading,” Beatrice said. “And you three better start paying attention or you’re going to end up dust.”
They inched toward the opening to the courtyard. They stepped around the heavy wooden doors, and then ducked under the portcullis, which was pried open so its slats rested on a tower of pilfered stone. Beatrice led, checking around corners, with her weapon out and ready. Asher moved in tandem with her, inspecting corners and passageways. Beatrice remained stone-faced, but after putting together that Asher was a drifter, and the way he moved and handled his pulse gun, it was only a matter of moments before she figured out he was Phoenix Corps.
But Ren had bigger things to worry about for the moment.
Come in.
Past the threshold, the entryway split. The left led to the keep. The right took them to the courtyard.
Beatrice eyed him. “We’ve already picked the courtyard clean, and so has everyone else. We need to go into the keep.”
“We can get into the keep from the courtyard and then into the barracks. Jakob knows the way. So does Ren.”
She huffed. “Fine.”
The group moved to the right, quietly, on edge.
The courtyard was eerily silent. The sun was high; the walls cast shadows. The raised platform stood in the middle, looming over the closed-in area. Ren swallowed the lump in his throat, and Jakob crowded close to Ren’s side as he stared at the wooden structure.
“I died there.”
Ren cautiously touched Jakob’s shoulder, remembering when the soldiers had tortured Jakob in front of him for attempting escape, how Jakob’s cries had echoed through the courtyard, how his body had hung so limply. “Don’t look at it.”
“Hard not to.”
“I know.”
Ren looked at the corner where he’d spent his days. The bench was there. The buckets of broken tech were turned over and rooted through. He hefted the container onto the wooden board that used to be his desk.
“That stuff is junk,” Ezzy said, coming to stand at his elbow. She had her prod leaning on one shoulder.
Ren shifted the broken pieces and in the bottom he found a comm. It was indeed broken, but, with a flash of his star, he fixed it. He handed it to Ezzy. The small green light around the rim indicated it was on and working.
“Whoa,” she said. “You fixed it.”
“Yeah. It’s working now. We only need to find a few more and tune the frequencies.”
“You’re amazing,” she said, cheeks red.
Ren laughed. “Not really.”
“Yes, you are. I noticed, even when we lived in the village, before everything.” She cleared her throat. “I used to watch you work. I could see the fields from my window and the livery.”
Ren’s eyebrows shot up. He ran a hand through his hair and laughed.
“Aren’t you… uh… young to… uh…” Ren cast a helpless look around the courtyard, but the others were busy. Beatrice stood watch, while Asher and Jakob looked for tech in any of the mess left behind. “Notice people?”
“I’m thirteen,” she said.
“Oh. We should find more tech.” Ren walked away to join Asher. His limbs moved awkwardly, and he felt heat in his cheeks.
Asher handed Ren another comm. “Found it in the dirt. Can you fix it?”
Ren nodded. Distracted though he was, it flared to life in his palm, and a voice came across loud and clear.
“Fox, you see anything? Over.”
“Saw a group go in through the front. Not birds. Didn’t see if they went to the stone or the dirt. Be careful. Over.”
“Okay. Might be friendlies. We’ll be careful. Over.”
“Comm if you need me. I’ll be watching. Over.”
“In the tunnel, heading in. Radio silence for now. Out.”
Ren and Asher exchanged a glance. “Someone’s coming!” Asher said, harshly. “Come on. Under the arch.”
Beatrice, Ezzy, and Jakob ran to the shelter and crowded in. It was the arch Ren had walked through every morning and night of his captivity and it only offered minimal shelter. They could hide, but only if the group didn’t walk directly in front of them. Pressed against the stone, in the shadows, Ren held the comm in his fist, while Asher peeked out. The sun lit a slant across Asher’s features. The tension in the small corridor was thick as the group held its collective breath.
“What’s happening?” Ezzy whispered.
Jakob shushed her, and she made a face and opened her mouth to retort, but Asher waved her quiet.
“Weapons ready,” the female voice from the comm said. “Fox saw a group. Not birds, but we’re not taking any chances.”
Jakob went still, then he pushed away from the wall where he had been squished between Ezzy and Beatrice.
“I know that voice.” Jakob stepped toward the opening.
“Jakob, no,” Asher said. He reached out to grab Jakob’s sleeve, but Jakob was too quick. He pulled his arm away and ran into the sunlight.
Ren watched as Jakob put his hands up, and he felt the weapons charge, heard the loud hum of the energy, and smelled the slight ozone tinge of the air. Ren gathered his power and waited, body coiled as a spring, ready if he needed to defend Jakob.
“Wait,” the voice said. There was a charged moment, and then a timid, “Jakob?”
“Sorcha,” he said.
Sorcha!
Ren’s body unlocked, and he vaulted from the wall and into the sunlight. He skidded to a stop next to Jakob.
The sunlight blinded him for a brief terrifying second, but then he found himself staring at a ragtag group of dusters with Sorcha at the lead. Her white-blonde hair was cut short; her blue eyes were large in her round face. She had her head tilted and her weapon pointed to the ground, but the group behind her had their stunners trained on the pair of them.
Ren ignored the cursing coming from the tunnel and grinned at her. He belatedly raised his hands in surrender, and that had Sorcha’s lips twitching into an amused smile.
“Ren,” she greeted.
“Sorcha.”
“Is it really you two?” she asked. She took a step forward, her boots crunching in the snow.
Jakob trembled. “Is it really you?” His voice shook, and Sorcha’s expression softened. “I’ve been looking for you,” he continued. “We came back for you. I came back for you.”
Sorcha dropped her stunner. It fell to the snow, and she gave up any pretense of caution. She threw her arms around Jakob’s neck, and he grabbed her, threaded his gloved hands through her short hair, and held on.
“I thought you were dead,” she said, words thick and muffled by Jakob’s coat.
“I thought you were dead,” he replied in kind.
“We went to the village,” Ren said. “We saw and we didn’t know if…”
She lifted her head from Jakob’s shoulder, and met Ren’s gaze. She held out an arm. Ren leaned into it and she embraced both of them, then clung to them.
“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you both so much.”
Ren closed his eyes and sighed, happy to be with his friends, the two people who had started the journey with him. They were together, though in the place they didn’t want to ever see again.
Sorcha pulled away. “Where’s Asher?”
There was an annoyed sigh, and a shuffle of footsteps.
“Right here.”
Sorcha beamed at him. “You’ve taken care of him. Good job.”
“It’s been difficult,” Asher said. “I’m glad to see you,” he added sincerely.
Sorcha laughed. “I’m glad to see you too, Ash.”
Their reunion was cut short when someone behind them cleared their throat. “Sorcha?”
“Oh.” She turned around and addressed the group of five behind her. “They’re friendlies. No
worries here.”
They relaxed and holstered their weapons. “So what are we doing?”
“We’re going to scavenge like we came to do. But we might be staying the night. What do you say to that?” She looked to Jakob.
“Yeah. We are too.”
“Since when?” Beatrice asked, stepping out of the alcove.
“Since now.”
Jakob glared at her, daring her to protest, but she didn’t. Her gaze dropped to Jakob’s fingers laced with Sorcha’s, and she acquiesced with an annoyed grunt.
“Fine.”
* * *
Beatrice and Ezzy disappeared into the keep with Matt, one of Sorcha’s men who knew the way. He was another teenager who had escaped with Ren and Asher the last time they had been at the castle. Asher, Jakob, and Sorcha ventured into the barracks and tunnels that led to the kitchens and dungeons.
Ren set up his old workstation and inspected tech the others brought. He fixed what he could and junked what he couldn’t.
Between the two groups, Ren fixed several comms, which allowed everyone to be in touch. He helped Asher and Jakob pry the force-field tech out of the stone at the siege tunnel. With three points of contact, Ren was certain someone mechanically inclined could set it up at the entrance of the encampment. Not him, though. He wasn’t going back to the Laurels, to his family. He was certain of that now.
Ren worked, and the others worked, and soon they had a pile of tech that would be of good use. They also had clothes, rugs, and pots and pans. There were some dried stores in sacks. There was a single prod, which Ren managed to get to spark.
As night began to fall, so did the temperature, and the groups agreed to take respite from the cold inside the keep. They hauled their bounty inside and assembled in a large room with a fireplace. A rug that was too big to move lay on a stack of rushes. The doors were intact and they closed. Sturdy chairs were dragged in front of them to provide protection, however inadequate.
Ren wasn’t worried. He had Asher, Jakob, Beatrice, Sorcha, all equipped with weapons, and all hardened by their experiences.
They started a fire and gathered around it. Jakob stayed close to Sorcha’s side. They shared provisions from their packs and from the stores they had found in the kitchens. As in the farmhouse, Ren was surrounded by stories and ghosts, the echoes of the people who had been here before him. He could feel them in the electricity in the air, in the systems in the walls, in the lights which glowed, and in the reflections in the glass of the high windows.