The Crucible- The Complete Series

by Odette C. Bell

  “You’ll run out of 78. I don’t care how many Omega weapons you get your hands on – there won’t be enough. And when you run out,” his voice became singsong, though still cloyingly desperate. Like a man trying to laugh at his impending doom but failing.

  Now she stopped.

  “A day. A day,” he screamed. “You’ll need more and more. And when it runs out,” he ended his sentence abruptly, trying to throw a box at her head.

  The box slammed into the floor by her feet.

  But she stopped relentlessly following him.

  She just stood there.

  She even let the bullets that had spun around her dissipate in flashes of energy.

  “Don’t listen to him, keep fighting,” I screamed.

  If she heard me, if she believed me, she made no sign.

  “You’re a liability. You stay with the resistance, you’ll pull them apart. You’ll run out of 78, then you’ll shatter everything.” He began to laugh. The most hateful noise I’d ever heard.

  “Alyssa, it will be fine,” I promised.

  She didn’t move.

  F’val started to become more confident. Instead of cowering against the wall, he pushed forward, more light spreading over his hands. “You’re only option is to come back. You’re nothing but a ticking time bomb now.”

  He walked towards her.

  She didn’t do anything. She didn’t back away.

  “No, don’t give up,” I pleaded.

  Despite my injuries, I started to throw myself forward. Though my movements were jerky, though my boots slipped on my own blood, it didn’t matter.

  I threw myself towards her. Locking my eyes on her stiff form. “Alyssa, please,” I begged, determined to do whatever I could.

  There were no guns anymore, but I found a large enough piece of twisted metal that I could use it as a weapon.

  Theoretically.

  In reality, I would have no chance against F’val.

  Did that stop me?

  No.

  I kept jerking towards her, my injured arm limp at my side.

  “You’re going to kill everybody, Alyssa,” F’val’s voice kicked up on the word everybody, echoing through the room. “You’ve got no choice but to come with me. You run away to some planet, and it won’t matter. You’ll never get that far. You will tear through any ship, rip through any help. You’re helpless now.”

  I watched her hands slowly go limp at her sides.

  F’val suddenly jerked the gun up again and fired.

  A bullet sailed towards her face.

  Just as my heart threatened to shatter in my chest, it stopped. That pulse of light stopped just a few centimeters from her face.

  I watched her slowly tick her head up to look at it. Finally I was close enough to see her expression. Her eyebrows were peaked, cheeks pale and slack, eyes locked on that blast of light.

  … No. I knew what she was going to do.

  No.

  I kept throwing myself forward.

  “You’ve only got one option,” F’val hissed as he took a menacing step forward.

  “Yes, only one option,” she said in a dead voice as she tilted her head back and stared at the bullet.

  “No,” I screamed.

  She was going to kill herself. To her, that was the only way out.

  I wouldn’t let her.

  I finally reached her. Despite my damage, I somehow pushed past it and threw myself forward.

  I reached Alyssa and slammed into her, wrapping my good arm around her middle, trying to pull her off her feet and out of the path of the bullet.

  I watched her eyes draw wide, her hair shift up around her face as total surprise shook through her.

  Despite my screams, it was as if she’d forgotten I was there.

  It was as if she’d concentrated so fully on the thought of ending it all, that she’d drowned out the rest of the world.

  But the rest of the world was still here, and so was I.

  I managed to pull her off balance, and she fell to one knee, that bullet zipping past her shoulder and slamming into the floor.

  She locked her gaze on mine. Eyes wide. So wide I could see right through to her soul.

  Time would have slowed down if it could.

  It didn’t have the option.

  F’val reached us. “You want the resistance to live, Alyssa, you’ll have to come with me. No options anymore. No options,” he repeated with a scrap of that victorious smile pulling his lips wide.

  “Don’t listen to him,” I roared, finally tearing my gaze off her as I span around. That shard of metal still in my hand, I swung it towards F’val, even though the rest of my body exploded in pain at the move. I was lightheaded, there was a terrible ringing in my mind, and I knew I was seconds from falling unconscious.

  I didn’t give up.

  I had no chance. But that wasn’t the point.

  F’val brought up a hand, caught that twisted scrap of metal, and slowly brought his face down to mine. His lips pared back across his teeth, his nose crumpling, his eyes narrowing in focus. “You should have been more like your father,” he hissed.

  “Sorry,” I said. Finding the power from somewhere, I brought my knee up and jammed it into his chest.

  He mustn’t have been expecting the move. Considering how bloodied and broken I was, my knee connected to his ribcage, and just for a second, he was forced back.

  Then he snapped towards me.

  I crumpled.

  My face slammed against the floor, and as a groan broke through my lips, I felt my body being ground into the floor plating. It was as if a ship had landed on my back.

  I had just enough breath, just enough control to whisper her name.

  And that was all it took.

  The fear, the horror, it fell from her gaze.

  Alyssa stood and slammed her hand forward.

  The pressure pushing me into the floor stopped abruptly.

  I twisted my head to watch her bring two hands up and spread her palms.

  F’val froze. Midway through a move, his arms were drawn down to his sides.

  She stood there for just a moment, both her hands spread wide, her gaze locked on him.

  Again it was as if I could stare right into her soul.

  I knew what she wanted, knew what she needed, knew what she feared.

  “I won’t let you take my hope again,” she growled.

  She spread her hands apart.

  Something happened to F’val.

  The light from his implants concentrated around his elbows.

  He screamed, mouth jerking open in pain.

  Two objects came shooting out from his arms.

  Blood splattered everywhere, scattering up the wall behind him and down across the floor in an arc.

  Just for a second, just for a second she stood above him, her gaze as cold as steel. I worried she would kill him. She had every right to. Yet still the fear at such brutality wound around my gut.

  She didn’t.

  She took a step back.

  F’val suddenly fell to his knees. He rolled onto his side and clutched at his elbows. He shifted his gaze towards her. “I have more implants,” he hissed through white lips. “Finish me off. Take them all,” he goaded her. “If you have the strength. Which you don’t,” his lips jerked around his words as he stared at her, “you might have more power than me, Alyssa, but in the end it will count for nothing. You don’t have the mental strength to do this. To be the special one. In the end, you will die screaming too.”

  I thought she’d snap.

  She didn’t.

  Instead she turned away.

  Then I heard something. A strange whirring noise pickup through the hangar bay as if someone were trying to pump the atmosphere out.

  Just before I could fear that was what was happening, I smelt a strange scent in the air.

  F’val suddenly stiffened, a gasp shooting through his throat.

  His body became rigid, convulsed, then lay
still.

  I watched Alyssa twitch. She swiveled her gaze towards me. “I trust you, Shepherd,” she said, “don’t let me down.”

  Then she took a step and fell to one knee, then the other. With her gaze still locked on me, she fell face first into the floor.

  Her body jolted for a few terrible seconds before she lay still.

  I stared at her. Stared at her for a full minute before I heard people running my way.

  Don’t let me down. Don’t let me down. Those words echoed in my mind as the Chief reached me.

  Her movements were jerky, and by now it was clear that two of her arms were completely out of action as they lay limply at her sides.

  Not too far behind her was the Captain and several security guards.

  They reached us.

  “What happened?” my voice trembled.

  “I recycled the air from F’val’s brig into the hangar bay, reasoning whatever he’d used to stop Jenks could stop them both,” the Chief answered.

  I swallowed, tearing my gaze off the Chief to stare at Alyssa and F’val once more.

  She lay face down, arms spread at her sides.

  My heart practically bled for her.

  Ignoring the fatigue that swirled through my body, I jerked my head around to stare at the Captain. “What… what now?”

  The Captain took a step back. She shifted her gaze from me, to F’val, to Alyssa, then over her shoulder to the Ra’xon.

  As the silence spread, the anticipation stabbed through my heart.

  “We have to do the right thing,” I pleaded.

  Finally the Captain’s gaze returned to me then dropped to Alyssa. For a few seconds she said nothing. “Don’t worry, Shepherd. We will.”

  Thank you for reading Episode Two.

  Episode Three

  Hell’s Gate

  Chapter One

  Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd

  So this was it.

  Nothing would be the same again.

  The things I’d seen… dammit, I couldn’t wipe them from my mind.

  Alyssa had the power of a god.

  A trapped god.

  She could fling a man across the room, she could cause an earthquake, but she couldn’t stop herself from shaking. She couldn’t prevent the tremors from crossing through her body, the sweat from drenching her brow, and the fear from curdling through her heart.

  Maybe once or twice as a kid I’d imagined what it would be like to have incredible powers. Now I knew the truth.

  And the horror.

  …

  Alyssa Nightingale

  I didn’t wake. Not properly.

  I drifted in and out of awareness. My consciousness felt like it had been spread thin.

  I was only vaguely aware of my surroundings. But there was one thing I did know. I was still on the resistance base. Every now and then through the haze of faces and shapes and colors, there was one thing I recognized.

  Nathan Shepherd.

  Even though I could barely hold onto my thoughts, I couldn’t push away my fears. I still remembered the fight, the fact I’d revealed my powers, and far worse than that, what F’val had told me. I would now need more compound 78 to survive. So much, that I would soon blow through the massive supplies of the resistance.

  Through my diffuse feelings and thoughts, one emotion settled deep in my gut. Dread.

  I may have won against F’val, but the real battle was still ahead of me.

  …

  Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd

  “We have to do something,” I insisted as I pressed the white protruding knuckles of one hand hard into the desk before me. I stared directly at Lady Argoza. Sitting alongside her was the Captain, J’lax, and several other key members of the resistance. “We can’t leave her like this,” my voice began to crack.

  It felt as if I’d barely slept in days. Though I’d hit the sack, my dreams were too wild, too torturous. Every time I closed my eyes I would see flashes of F’val’s sneering face. Of the power cascading off his arm. And it would all remind me that the galaxy I’d once known was not the one that now lay before me. For years, for my whole goddamn life, I’d been living in a bubble. Now the walls had shattered and I was lying there exposed and alone.

  “We are doing something, Nathan,” Lady Argoza said in a soft gentle tone.

  There was once a time when that tone alone would have calmed me, let alone the tender look she gave me.

  Now it did nothing but twist the nerves further and further around my gut, tighter and tighter, as if someone was tying a noose around my middle.

  Ever since the incident, as we were calling it, a growing anxiety had swelled within me. It wasn’t just at the prospect of the damage F’val had done as a double agent. It was at the fact that we were standing on a precipice, and none of us – not one goddamn person – knew how far we would fall.

  “Keeping the both of them sedated is the best course of action for now,” Lady Argoza said as she tilted her head to the side, her startling eyes locking on me as she spread her hands on the table before her.

  J’lax, who was sitting to her left, hadn’t moved a muscle the entire time. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, every muscle tense as they protruded against the fabric of his black tunic. His expression, as always, was one of barely disguised hatred.

  “We can’t keep them sedated forever,” my voice shook. “It’s not safe. Plus, we have no idea what the long-term effects of using that chemical are. We need to face that we have no idea what’s going on here.”

  The base’s science team had been able to replicate the chemical F’val had used to suppress Alyssa. We were currently using it to keep the both of them sedated. But if you asked me, it was tantamount to murder. We had no idea what that chemical would do to them. Though the base’s scientists, assisted by the Ra’xon’s medical team, were trying their hardest to study it, their revelations couldn’t come quickly enough.

  “Please, Nathan, we’re doing everything we can. We all understand that this is a difficult situation,” Lady Argoza began.

  “Difficult?” my voice rang within incredulity. “This isn’t difficult, Lady – it is beyond us. F’val,” I pointed a stiff finger at the desk, “has been spying on the resistance from the beginning. Who knows what secrets he has shared? The Star Forces will know everything he did.”

  “That’s why we’re leaving.” The Captain shifted back in her seat, shooting me what should have been a cautioning look. But as she kept saying, she was hardly my superior anymore.

  “Not quickly enough. It’s been a day and a half. We should have dropped everything and run the first day.”

  “The Chief has almost finished the repairs to the Ra’xon. We will be evacuating the base within the next 12 hours,” the Captain said.

  “That’s not good enough,” I spoke through gritted teeth. “Have you forgotten who we’re dealing with?”

  “None of us have forgotten the brutality of the Star Forces,” Lady Argoza said, a slight shake to her tone.

  “I’m not talking about the brutality,” I didn’t even bother to look at her. Instead I locked my attention on the Captain. Maybe once upon a time the quality of my gaze would have been considered insubordinate. I honestly didn’t care anymore. This resistance was fracturing underneath itself. There were too many opinions, too many goals. They were allowing themselves to be pulled in every which direction, when the only thing, the only thing they should be concentrating on was destroying the Star Forces.

  “What are you talking about?” The Captain did not blink once as she held my gaze.

  “I know my father,” I said, voice suddenly dipping low, registering barely above a whisper, “it’s not brutality you have to worry about – it’s efficiency. The Star Forces aren’t gonna hunt us down and chop our heads off. They’re going to choose the path of least resistance. They never waste resources. And we need to face it – currently the easiest way of destroying the resistance, is letting us des
troy ourselves.”

  Lady Argoza recoiled from my comment. J’lax actually growled. The Captain, however, didn’t make a move. Not one twitch. Not one blink. “I realize you have certain misgivings about the way the resistance is currently being run,” she began.

  “Why the hell are we listening to this guy?” J’lax suddenly snapped. “He said it himself,” he turned on me, gaze cold, every muscle in his neck tense as he twisted around to face me, “he’s the son of Admiral Shepherd,” J’lax spoke through clenched teeth, flashes of white enamel visible between his white pressed lips.

  Tension snapped through me. I could feel it pull up my back, squeezing every muscle until I was as tight as a coiled spring.

  I felt them – everybody’s eyes lock on me.

  It was my turn to pull my lips slowly back from my teeth. “And? What’s your point?”

  J’lax’s gaze could have burned brighter than any star. “That you’re about as trustworthy as your old man. We shouldn’t be listening to him.” J’lax turned from me and faced Argoza.

  For her part, she looked lost as she stared between the both of us.

  “Nathan Shepherd’s lineage is of no particular concern,” the Captain said in a measured tone, exactly the same kind of authoritative but calm tone she might use on a wayward recruit.

  I was surprised when it actually appeared to work on J’lax. Or maybe it wasn’t her tone – maybe it was the massive imposing woman behind it. J’lax may have been from a warrior clan, but my money would always be on the Captain.

  “Nathan Shepherd has already proved his loyalty. It will do us nothing to continually revisit these questions. If we wish to succeed in our fight against the Alliance – and we must succeed,” her tone dipped low, reverberating through the room like the beat of a drum, “we must put aside our differences and work together.”

  I thought the Captain’s patriotic speech would work on J’lax, then he slid his gaze back to me, and I saw that exact same flare of anger.

  Sooner or later, I was sure we would come to blows. And considering the exact level of enmity behind that stare, it would likely be sooner.

  Let it come, I thought bitterly as I narrowed my eyes and glared right back at him.

  “This isn’t helping,” Lady Argoza said as she shifted back in her chair and arranged her hands neatly on the table in front of her. Though her movements were always graceful and well-placed, the expression she wore was strangely frazzled. For someone as well-kempt and as composed as her, it was an unnerving sight. It made me wonder how terrible I looked. Still, better to look like hell than be dead.