“Are you sure you’re okay doing this without me?” she asked Troy. Maybe she should stay here and investigate the storage unit later. “Because Larish is a thinker, not a fighter.” She glanced at Larish in the backseat. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Larish said absently while using a handheld electron tracker to scan the area. “You’re right.”
“I’ll be fine.” Troy cocked his pistol and surveyed the area though his window. “This is what the Marines trained me to do. It’s actually better if you’re not here. It’ll be easier to focus if I’m not worried about keeping you safe.”
“Hey.” She objected to that. “I can hold my own, you know.”
He smiled and tugged her braid, then stepped outside. “Yeah, I know. But still, go on. Find out what’s in that storage unit. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
“If you need me, buzz my sphere,” she called to Troy as he and Larish strode across the parking lot. “I can be back here in just a few …”
She trailed off when it was clear they weren’t listening. With her lower lip caught between her teeth, she sealed the doors and lifted into the air once again. But this time, she hovered there for a few beats, feeling as if her ankles were tethered to Troy’s by an invisible rope. It wasn’t until she watched him break into the building’s rear entrance that she found the strength to veer south and punch the accelerator.
The flight to upstate New York didn’t take long, but unlike the deserted fertilizer plants she’d left behind, Sherzinger Self Storage bustled with activity. She floated above a small city of storage sheds, arranged in dozens of rows across the fenced-in property, and watched movers unload furniture and boxes from trucks and U-Haul trailers.
Because she didn’t have the luxury of waiting until closing time, she checked the inscription on the key Larish had given her—unit number 113—and landed at the end of the corresponding row, making sure to stay in the blind spot of the nearest security camera. After ensuring no one could see her exit the craft, she slipped out the door and used her fob to raise the cloaked shuttle ten feet into the air.
She kept her head down and the brass key in her hand as she jogged to unit 113. Up close, she found the shed was smaller than she’d expected, about half the size of a single garage, with a similar style sliding aluminum door. She unlocked the door and slid it up just high enough to duck beneath it, and once inside, let the door fall to the ground.
Darkness surrounded her, and a chill brushed her skin, raising the hair on her arms. She knew some of the units offered air conditioning, but this one seemed too frigid, like the inside of a meat locker. She felt along the wall for a light switch, and as she did so, her fingers slid along the surface as if frost had formed there. She grew colder and colder, and by the time she found the switch, her body was trembling.
She flipped on the lights and blinked her eyes to adjust to the brightness. At once, she noticed tendrils of smoke curling and rising around the room, obstructing her view of the floor. Her heart jumped, and for an instant she thought a fire had broken out. But then she realized the substance was more of a water vapor, the kind produced by dry ice.
She didn’t see any ice. In fact, she didn’t see much of anything at all. The entire space was vacant except for one large, rectangular box at the far end of the room, near the wall. Dark and metallic, it was raised off the floor by two wooden supports, and when she looked more closely, she saw an attached power cord that stretched to the middle of the floor and disappeared into the fog.
Curious, she crept forward, careful not to kick anything hidden by the swirling vapors. Her breaths clouded into fog in front of her face. The icy puffs came more rapidly as her pulse ticked in anticipation of what lay ahead. Something heavy congealed in the pit of her stomach. Her instincts told her to turn back, but her feet refused to obey. More than ever, she wanted to know what was in that box.
She reached the spot in the center of the room where the power cord disappeared and crouched down, waving her hand. The fog parted and revealed a volleyball-size chrome sphere that Cara recognized. She’d seen others like it at the colony. It was a L’eihr energy sphere, a battery pack designed to provide months of power.
She stood and glanced at the rectangular box. A hint of familiarity tingled at the back of her skull, as if her subconscious had already made the connection but the rest of her mind hadn’t caught up yet. She inched across the smoky floor until she stood close enough to the box to make out the tiny temperature gauges and pressurization readings displayed along its side. Then a new shiver rolled over her, one that had nothing to do with the temperature.
She knew the purpose of this box.
A layer of frost had covered the small window located on the lid. Using the hem of her shirt, Cara scrubbed away the ice. There, beneath the thick glass pane, lay Private David Sharpe, frozen in the eternal slumber of his cryogenic tomb.
Aelyx crouched in the bushes outside the factory’s northern-facing wall, trying to listen for the approach of an overhead engine but instead hearing the mental echo of Cara’s furious final words to him. I love you more. There had certainly been no love in her voice, though in all fairness, he hadn’t showered her in affection either.
He hated fighting with her. Such occurrences were rare, but they always left him feeling disoriented, as though he’d misplaced something very important, but he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be searching for. It was a horrible sensation.
Before meeting Cara, he’d had no experience with love. It never failed to amaze him how many unexpected tortures the emotion could generate. Missing her caused a suffocating pain directly behind his breastbone; wanting her created an ache low in his core; the fear of losing her was so acute it manifested in every one of his nightmares. And then there was jealousy, a phenomenon that defied logic but tormented him nonetheless each time he caught another male admiring her.
Make no mistake, the suffering was worth it. He would sacrifice his sanity on a thousand separate occasions for one night in Cara’s arms, but that was no comfort to him now. He thought back to what Syrine had told him earlier about running out of time. What if the worst truly came to pass and his last exchange with Cara was one of anger?
Maybe he should call her …
Except he couldn’t. He’d used his sphere to create a three-way connection with Elle and Syrine. They had to keep it open to communicate from their various stations along the building’s perimeter.
“Anything?” called Syrine’s voice.
“Nothing on my end,” Elle said.
Aelyx shifted aside to take the pressure off his knees. In doing so, he earned himself a shrubbery-poke to the eye. “It’s better that we arrived too soon than too late. They’ll be here. I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe one of us should go inside,” Elle suggested again.
“There’s no reason to,” Aelyx reminded her. He prayed to the Sacred Mother, the gods of L’eihr, and even a handful of Cara’s earthly saints that Jaxen came to this plant and not the other one. He’d waited a long time for a second chance to put that fasher in the ground. “They won’t make it that far.”
“Are you sure we should kill them?” asked Syrine. “Maybe it would be smarter to interrogate them and learn more about the Aribol.”
Aelyx scoffed. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew—” how David died. He cut off just in time.
“If I knew what?”
“Nothing. I’ll tell you another time.”
“Tell me now.”
“It’s not the right—”
“I know it’s about David,” she interrupted, “because you’re treating me like an infant. So stop it. Whatever this is, I have a right to know.”
Aelyx hesitated. It was only Syrine’s refusal to use Silent Speech that had allowed him to hide the truth for this long. Perhaps he should tell her. She would find out eventually.
“All right,” he began. Then he told her everything—how David had been diagnosed with a fatal deg
enerative disease, and Jaxen had offered him L’eihr drugs. The medication had worked temporarily. But instead of providing the entire cure at once, Jaxen had doled out small doses according to his whims. Next he’d required David to perform tasks for him, sabotaging alliance efforts. Then he’d given David an ultimatum: In order to receive the final lifesaving dose, he would have to kill Aelyx. “He didn’t want to do it, but by that time, he’d fallen in love with you. He said you’d given him a reason to live.”
Syrine didn’t respond.
“In the end, he couldn’t go through with it,” Aelyx went on. “There was another man with us who was working for Jaxen. David turned on the man to save me, and they shot each other. His last words were begging me not to tell you—I don’t think he understood how Silent Speech works—but you deserve to know what happened.” Aelyx ran a thumb over the iphal holstered at his hip. “And why Jaxen deserves to die.”
There was a long pause, followed by, “What about Aisly? Did she know?”
“Yes. But I don’t think she was involved directly, if that matters.”
“It doesn’t,” Syrine said in a flat voice. Aelyx worried he’d overwhelmed her, until she finished her statement. “But my opinion still stands. They might have information we can use. We should question them first. Then kill them.”
“She has a point,” Elle added. “The Aribol are a mystery. We can’t fight an enemy we don’t know.”
Aelyx scratched his jaw and weighed their logic against his own. On the surface, capturing the hybrids might seem like a good idea, but interrogating the pair wouldn’t necessarily yield the truth. “I think it’s too much of a risk to let them live. If I get a clean shot at either of them, I’m going to—”
A low rumble interrupted him, originating from somewhere high above. Aelyx flattened his back against the wall and nestled into the bushes for more concealment. “This is it,” he called through the sphere. “As soon as the ship lands, report its position. Then disconnect and go silent.”
But as it turned out, they never had the chance.
The ship remained cloaked and didn’t land, instead hovering above the factory for several long seconds. Aelyx heard light plinking noises, like hail falling onto the roof, and then Jaxen’s amplified voice called out over the whirring engine.
“I’m disappointed, but I can’t say I’m surprised.” The voice boomed from all around, menacing and almost godlike in its effect. Aelyx’s stomach clenched because he realized what this meant. Jaxen knew. Somehow he knew they were waiting for him. “I gave you a chance to return where you belong, so don’t let it be said that I’m not reasonable. This is the outcome you deserve.”
Still invisible, the ship’s engines roared, and it jetted into the distance, leaving a warm gust of wind in its wake. Aelyx jumped to his feet as understanding dawned. He yelled, “Run!” at the top of his lungs and sprinted away from the building, pumping his legs as fast as they could carry him. He’d barely made it halfway across the parking lot when a surge of blistering energy came from behind and swept his boots off the ground.
He was flying, hurtling through the air with dizzying speed toward the wooded acreage beyond the lot. He flailed his arms and watched in horror as a thicket of tree limbs rose up to meet him. He saw bark, rough and patchy, and shut his eyes. In his last moment, there was no reflection or regret, only fear of impact as he tensed his muscles for the blow. Then his body collided with unmoving timber, and the earth went dark.
Cara was already in the shuttle when her brother called. “I’m on my way,” she told him.
“No rush. The ambush was a bust.” As if anticipating her next question, Troy quickly added, “Don’t freak out. I’m fine and so is Larish.”
“What happened?”
“Aisly was here,” he muttered darkly. “I fired on her as soon as she stepped out of her shuttle. Hit her too, but she’s slippery as sin. She ran around the other side and climbed back in before I could catch her; then she was gone. She didn’t have a chance to blow up the factory, though, so there’s that. Maybe she’ll come back.”
Cara slouched in her seat. They’d lost the element of surprise. “Not alone, she won’t. Any word from the other group?”
“No. They’re not answering their spheres. I don’t like it.”
Cara didn’t need to hear any more. She veered east toward Aelyx’s location. “I’m going to check it out. Find someplace to lie low until I can come and get you.”
“Hey, Pepper?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you can hold your own, but promise you’ll be careful, okay?”
“Promise,” she said absently, and disconnected.
Her mind was already reeling with terrifying explanations for why Aelyx hadn’t answered his sphere, and it didn’t help to see a turret of smoke rising in the distance where his factory stood … or had once stood. She’d seen smoke like that before, and she knew what it meant.
She pushed the accelerator to the limit, occasionally glancing at the roads below for emergency response vehicles. She didn’t see any, which told her the explosion had just happened. As she approached, her fingers trembled on the controls, her grip so sweaty that she overshot the destination and had to turn around.
The demolition was noticeably different from the site in upstate New York. Instead of a pile of rubble, half the factory walls remained standing, as if the building had been detonated from above. The ruins were engulfed in flames, so she hovered close to the ground, below the smoke, and scanned the rubble for Aelyx.
She had to keep wiping her clammy palms on her jeans and reminding herself to breathe. Each time she came up empty, she fanned farther and farther out from the building. As she continued searching without any sign of him, it began to occur to her that his group might’ve been inside when the structure collapsed. Her eyes watered, and she roughly scrubbed them clear.
She couldn’t afford to think that way.
Movement from her periphery caught her eye, and she whipped her gaze to a line of broken trees adjoining the property. A petite body rolled over to face her. It was Elle. Cara landed the shuttle so abruptly her skull rattled. In an instant she was by Elle’s side, shouting in a rush, “Are you all right? Where’re the others? Where’s Aelyx?”
Panic had tunneled Cara’s vision, so it took a moment before she noticed the blood seeping down the side of Elle’s shirt. She searched for the source of the wound and discovered a six-inch sliver of wood protruding from Elle’s shoulder.
Elle used her other arm to push into a sitting position. Half her face was blackened. “Is my med-kit in the shuttle?”
Cara nodded. “I’ll get it.”
“No.” Elle gripped her sleeve. “Help me inside. I’ll start treating my wounds while you look for the others.”
Cara wrapped an arm around Elle’s waist and gently lifted her to her feet. Soon the shuttle was airborne again. While Elle rummaged through her medical kit, she told Cara that each of them had been stationed at a different wall before the explosion. Cara glided south, and soon afterward, she spotted Syrine rocking back and forth on the ground, cradling a broken ankle. Cara helped her into the shuttle, too. As she returned to the pilot’s seat, she detected the distant wail of sirens and knew it wouldn’t be long before the authorities arrived and proceeded to blame her for this, assuming they didn’t shoot her on sight.
She had to find Aelyx, fast.
While scanning the area for him, she remembered an advanced function in their com-spheres that allowed one user to track another. She called over her shoulder into the backseat, “Someone track Aelyx’s sphere.”
Syrine whimpered in pain but did as she was asked. She pointed a trembling finger north. “Go that way for three hundred yards.”
The signal led to a dense expanse of trees, the tops of which had been blown off during the blast. Below the scorched tips, enough leafy branches remained intact to block Cara’s view of the ground, so she landed as close to the woods as possible and hit
the grass running. She followed the tracker to Aelyx’s sphere, buried beneath a pile of leaves, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Aelyx!” she shouted, turning in a clumsy circle.
The only reply was a chorus of sirens, growing louder by the second.
She ran deep into the trees and called out to him. Her eyes burned from the haze of smoke in the air, but she forced them open as she pushed a trail through the underbrush. She grunted in frustration, slowed by low branches that slapped her arms and face, until a familiar gray shirt came into view, and her heart turned over in her chest.
She’d found him, crumpled on the ground in an unnatural position that sent a surge of panic through her veins. She skidded to a stop beside him and dropped to her knees, instantly checking his face for color. He seemed to be breathing, but her hands shook too violently to check for a pulse. She lightly slapped his cheek and said his name.
He moaned and slurred something she couldn’t understand.
Instincts took over. As if operating independently of her brain, her eyes scanned the lacerations on his face and the angle of his limbs to assess his injuries while her fingers gently probed his spine to determine whether it was safe to move him. She didn’t feel any irregularities, but she was no expert. “Can you move your legs?”
He answered with a groan and shifted his feet.
That was good enough for her. She stood up, grabbed him beneath the arms, and began hauling him back the way she’d come. He struggled to maintain consciousness, lifting his head and then letting it fall back. At one point, he opened his eyes and asked in his native language if she was real.
“I’m real,” she panted, stumbling across the scorched, littered landscape. “Try to wake up. Keep talking to me.”
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” he slurred in L’eihr.
Neither did she. She couldn’t believe she had ever cared who was right and who was wrong. She didn’t want to be right. She only wanted him to be okay.
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