Synnr's Hope

by Kate Rudolph

  Lena rushed back to the papers and looked through them. She found one in the pile that had been mostly burned. The edges were blackened, but the ink was still readable. “This is a map of the city center. I think they’re trying to hit Osais again.”

  The Apsyn stiffened. He didn’t laugh, and he kept quiet. But his body gave him away.

  Solan called it in. Major Ozar instructed them to take the Apsyn back to the house. The training facility could be used as a temporary jail if they gave the computer the proper instructions.

  “I want you two back in the city,” said the major. “Good work.”

  Lena scooped up the papers and they were off. They had a city to save.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THOUGH IT HAD TAKEN them hours to reach the training facility on their journey there, Solan engaged the hover mode on their vehicle and they were back in the city in a little more than an hour. For the first fifteen minutes, Lena had clutched the edge of her seat and tried not to imagine all the terrible crash scenarios she could, but eventually she grew comfortable. She knew what Solan was capable of and she trusted him not to get too extreme.

  The papers she’d recovered from the academy didn’t have a handy map with the bomb’s location marked with an X, but there was a detailed drawing of the city center. That was where they headed, and they were met there by Emily, Oz, Grace, Crowze, Ax, and Jori, who all had already been briefed about the mission.

  Lena thought she saw a look pass between Grace and Crowze. A look-look, not just a glance, but she turned away for a moment and by the time she looked back, they were all business. Was something going on there? She’d thought Grace and Zac had a thing going on. Or Zac and Crowze. Some variation. It didn’t matter, though; they had a bomb to find, and she wasn’t going to waste time worrying about other people’s potential romantic entanglements.

  The city center wasn’t large, and they all split into groups of twos to try and find the bomb. Lena wanted to sprint through their section, to get done as fast as she could to prove that the people here were safe.

  They had to move methodically, checking every shop and stall, giving every house and apartment as thorough an inspection as possible. Lena thought she found something in a stall selling electronic games and devices, but it turned out to be nothing and she wasted three minutes. The next red flag came from Solan, who found an Apsyn sitting outside a café and reading a book. But the Apsyn lived in Osais and was studying at the university; he was no infiltrator.

  She had thought the central city was small, but every step she took made it seem like it was growing by the second. This was a nightmare. She hoped the Apsyn had sent them on a wild goose chase, that there was no bomb, and no one in danger. But he had been way too confident for that to be true.

  People were starting to get suspicious, looking at her and Solan and then quickly gathering their belongings and moving away. Rumors were going to start, and murmurs led to panic. Someone needed to manage the public. And if there really was a bomb, they needed to evacuate the area. Soon.

  But that wasn’t Lena’s job, and she wasn’t worried about stoking the citizens. She was worried about protecting.

  “Where the fuck is it?” She was frustrated, and it was obvious in every word.

  Solan gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. “If there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”

  That had to be true.

  An abandoned shopping stall caught her attention. It was full of little knickknacks made of metal and wood, things that would be thrown far in the events of an explosion. Shrapnel. Where was the vendor? Why had he left everything unattended?

  She stepped close, but was cautious in her movements. She didn’t know if there was a motion sensor or timer or bomb at all. But each step made her more suspicious. If there was a bomb, this was the place to set it. They were close enough to the building behind it to do major structural damage, and right in the middle of the central street. It would be a massacre.

  “Whose stall is this?” She didn’t ask anyone in particular, but repeated the question when she saw a vendor two stalls down.

  He shrugged and shook his head. “That one’s new, I don’t know him.”

  Lena waved Solan over. This was it. It had to be here. “Call it in. I’m going to check it out.”

  “Wings out,” he cautioned. “Be careful.”

  Right. Wings. She didn’t need a bomb defusing suit, she had magic powers. She called on her spark and unleashed her wings, wrapping the energy around herself and walking towards the stall. She would be safe—well, safer—but it would do nothing to protect anyone around her. Could she use her spark to shield the blast? Sort of like throwing herself over a grenade? She didn’t know; she didn’t want to find out.

  She examined the stall, looking under the table and all around it. At first, a small metal box caught her attention. It didn’t look like it could do much damage, but she didn’t know how sophisticated Zulir bombs were. Wrapping her wings even tighter, she flipped open the lid and flinched.

  Okay, that wasn’t a bomb. Not unless a bomb suddenly looked like a cooler full of food.

  “What in Brazon’s name are you doing here?” demanded a young Synnr with bright green hair and a tattoo on his neck. “This is my stall. Are you stealing from me?”

  Lena held up her hands and backed up a step. “Why did you leave it unattended?”

  “Do you see a bathroom around here?” He scowled at her. “I have an inventory of everything here. I’ll report you.”

  “Sorry, my mistake.” She backed away and found Solan. “False alarm. The vendor went to the bathroom. The only thing that looked like a bomb was his lunchbox.”

  Her partner’s shoulders sank, and he nodded in defeat. “Let’s head back. Maybe the others have had more luck.” They walked slowly, still on the lookout for anything suspicious. But it was just a normal day in the city. A normal day with danger sizzling hot in the air.

  “Is there going to be an evacuation order?” she asked quietly. She didn’t know the protocol; that was another thing she needed to learn.

  “Not until we have a more specific area. If they try and evacuate the entire city center all of the streets will get clogged with traffic and the citizens will be more vulnerable to attack. As bad as it sounds, it may be the difference between a hundred deaths and a thousand.” He didn’t sound happy about it. Of course he wasn’t. He was a caring person, just as protective as she was. Neither of them wanted to lose anyone. But she understood what he was saying.

  “We’ll stop it.” Lena would do whatever it took to keep her new home safe.

  They made it back to the rendezvous point where Crowze and Grace were waiting.

  “Nothing?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Crowze confirmed.

  Lena put her head in her hands. This was bad. Two sections down with nothing suspicious. Would Ax and Jori or Emily and Oz come back empty-handed as well? She feared they would. Lena looked up, as if the sky could give her an answer. And it did.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of one of the spires that pierced the air around the palace. If a person was going to plant a bomb and wanted to do the most damage, taking out citizens wouldn’t be the goal.

  “The queen,” she said, horror dawning. “They want to take out the queen.”

  THE FOUR OF THEM RAN for the palace. Solan was a few steps behind, since he had taken a moment to relay her suspicion to his commander. They didn’t have time to wait for an order to move. If there was a bomb in the palace, the queen was in danger and they needed to save her.

  The guards at the gate waved them through and Solan could hear the alarm going up, the word spreading that there was danger. In the past they might’ve found the queen holding court in the great hall, but she had been injured in an attack several months before and was confined to the residential wing of the palace. Could the Apsyns get a bomb there?

  “Do we get her out of the palace?” asked Grace.

  “D
on’t be foolish, that only makes her more vulnerable,” Crowze pointed out, his tone unnecessarily harsh.

  Grace glared at him, then turned to Solan. “What’s our next move?”

  Solan took a minute to think. Rushing was just as likely to get them all killed as moving too slowly. “There’s no point in hitting the palace if they can’t hit the queen. If there is a bomb, it will be near her quarters.”

  “Wait,” Lena said, holding up a hand. “They could also be trying to cause chaos. If they couldn’t get a bomb into her quarters, they could still set one off and use the confusion to kill or abduct her. We need eyes on the queen. And the guards need to be ready in case we’ve got more Apsyns coming.”

  His Match had a point. “The master of her guard will be with her. Let’s go.”

  They were waved through to the queen’s quarters. Solan would have reprimanded the guards if they were his men. It didn’t matter that he had a noble name or that they were all serving the Synnr military.

  The queen’s quarters were big, multiple rooms where she could meet with her advisors while relaxing in style. But it wasn’t an advisor sitting beside her now. It was Zac, one of the humans who had been rescued along with Lena, Emily, and the others.

  He sprung to his feet when they ran in. “What are you doing here?” But he looked between Grace and Crowze as he asked, completely ignoring Solan and Lena. Interesting.

  “What are you doing here?” Grace shot back.

  Crowze was silent, but he looked between Zac and the queen as if he were mentally measuring out the inches and trying to discern the exact nature of their relationship. The queen’s consort had been killed in the attack that had injured her. Was Zac auditioning for the role? Solan doubted it, but he could see the question in Crowze’s eyes.

  He would be paying attention to those three; he wanted to know how that would turn out.

  “Your highness,” Solan addressed the queen with a bow. “We have reason to believe there’s been a bomb planted in the palace. Where is your master of the guard?”

  The queen was dangerously thin, with scars tracing up both arms, some of them still angry red. She had lost a lot of weight since the attack, but Solan was happy to see a hint of muscle appearing under her damaged skin. She was being seen to by the best medical professionals on the moon. If they couldn’t help her, no one could.

  She studied Solan for several silent seconds. He didn’t know if she recognized him, but whatever she was looking for, she must have found it. “Simon, come in,” she finally said. “Your presence has been requested.” A human man walked out of the side chamber and stood in front of the queen, just to the side of her so she could still view Solan and the others. It was a protective pose, but there was something else to it.

  No time. They had a bomb to find.

  “We have evidence that Apsyns have planted a bomb somewhere in the center of the city. We believe it is inside the palace. And we believe it could be a distraction. We need your guards on the lookout, both searching for the bomb and prepared for a secondary attack. Can you do that?” Simon was new. Solan had never met the man before. He had known the former master of the guard fairly well, but that man had perished along with the consort.

  Simon studied him silently before nodding. He pulled out a communication tablet and typed something into it. “You two,” he nodded to Grace and Crowze, “stay with the queen and her guest. You,” this was to Lena and Solan, “you have clearance to search the queen’s quarters. The rest of the guards will be on the lookout. Move.”

  They moved.

  “It’s easiest to get access to the outer rooms, right?” Lena asked.

  Solan agreed.

  “Let’s find an out of the way room. A closet, a guest room, something no one is paying attention to. That’s the first option.” It wasn’t the right moment, but Solan wanted to kiss her. He wasn’t letting himself think about what would happen if the bomb went off when they were still in the palace. He didn’t want to consider that he’d found her only to lose her right now. It wasn’t going to happen. He wouldn’t let it.

  They had to find this thing. Soon.

  “Let’s go.”

  They headed toward the outer hallway, the corridor that served as the barrier between the queen’s private quarters and the public part of the palace. The guards watched them work but didn’t interrupt. They cleared their way through three closets and two guestrooms, startling a pair of servants who were sneaking an intimate moment out of sight.

  Lena tested another door. “Locked.”

  Solan waved over a guard and they were let in. They entered the room and quickly searched it, but there was nothing. Then the door slammed shut. Solan ran over to it, but it was locked once more.

  “Accident?” Lena asked as he pulled on the handle.

  “Not likely.” The door didn’t want to give, but neither he nor Lena were going to stay in that room for long. And the combined use of their spark was enough to interrupt the locking mechanism and let the door spring open. The person who had locked them in had reached the end of the hallway. He wore a guard uniform, but when he heard the door open, he took off running.

  Solan and Lena chased after him.

  They caught up to him when he turned towards another guest room. He tried to slam the door, but Lena shoved herself against it before he could. The heavy wood slammed against her shoulder and she grunted. That had to hurt. But she didn’t show it.

  The guard sent a bolt of his spark towards Solan, but Solan deflected it with his wings and called on Lena’s power, using their combined sparks to slam back into the guard. It sent him flying. There was no defense against a Matched pair. They were the strongest weapon any Zulir military could offer. And Solan didn’t let up, using his spark to keep the man down while he approached.

  “It’s too late,” the man taunted.

  “You betrayed your queen?” Technically he hadn’t yet done anything more than lock Lena and Solan in a room. But he was trying to prevent them from finding a bomb. Had he planted it? Why would a Synnr do that?

  “Her throne is a lie. The only true royalty sits in the heart of Kilrym. I am loyal to my king.” Lightning danced in the guard’s eyes and Solan braced for another attack, but it didn’t come. The guard turned his spark in on himself, ending his own life before he could be used to gain any more information. “A traitor.” Solan turned to see what Lena was doing. Her face had drained of color and she was staring at something on the other side of the bed.

  “I found the bomb.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  OKAY, SHE COULD DO this. Red wire, no. Green wire, yes? Blue wire? They had bomb disposal teams for a reason. Lena wasn’t going to touch anything unless she had no other choice.

  “I don’t see a timer, do you?” In the movies, bombs always had timers. Of course, she wasn’t in a movie, and she wasn’t on Earth. Why would she expect the same rules to apply?

  “Of course there wouldn’t be a timer,” Solan said, confirming her biggest fear. “The Apsyns wouldn’t want us to know how long we have.”

  “Do you have any ideas?” Her hands were shaking, and she reached out and clutched Solan’s fingers. Normally she would hold off on PDA in the middle of the mission, but they were standing four feet from a bomb that could go off at any moment. She was going to hold her damn boyfriend’s hand.

  Solan got down to his knees and crawled up towards it, careful not to touch. “There’s a team on their way. We can leave. But if this thing goes off before they get here there’s no way to mitigate the damage.”

  She could feel her spark fizzing in her veins. “You told me to wrap my wings around myself when we thought there might be a bomb at that stall. Can we do that here? Wrap our wings around the bomb and keep it from destroying the palace?”

  He looked up and met her eyes. His were full of determination and sorrow. “We can do that, but we’ll be caught in the blast.”

  “There are at least one hundred people in this building.
Including our friends. How do we do it?” A strange sense of calm settled over Lena as she made the decision. It wasn’t really a decision. She couldn’t save her own life at the cost of a hundred others. Not like this. Not when she could do something. She didn’t think of the future. Didn’t think of the hopes that had been brewing for what her life with Solan would look like. If she did that, she would die full of regret. No.

  Her hands stopped shaking. She stepped around to the other side of the bomb and let her wings flare out as wide as they could before curling them in to meet up with where Solan’s wings were already waiting. They formed a halo around the bomb. If it went off before the team got there, they would absorb a lot of the damage. Not all of it. But maybe enough.

  Solan opened his mouth, but then he shut it and smiled. They both had a lot to say. Words they would never get to share. But holding their wings out and making sure they were covering as much of the room as they could took a lot of concentration, and they couldn’t afford the discussion.

  Lena closed her eyes. If she kept looking at Solan, she was afraid she was going to start crying. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. But if things in her life had gone how they were supposed to go, she would’ve never been abducted by aliens in the first place. Solan had only been hers for two weeks, completely and totally hers. Would she give that up for eighty years back on Earth?

  Not in a heartbeat.

  Something crashed through the door and Lena thought that was it. She braced for the blast, but it didn’t come.

  “Stand down,” a gruff voice demanded. “Get back. We’ve got it from here.”

  Lena opened her eyes and saw a team of heavily fortified soldiers standing around them. The bomb disposal squad. She pulled back her wings and Solan did the same. They backed up and were led by another member of the unit to a safe distance away.

  She couldn’t stop touching Solan. If they were alone she would have been doing a lot more, but as it was, she just clung to his arm. They were alive. They weren’t going to sacrifice themselves in a fiery explosion.