by Vanessa Muir
She filled him in on the Council and what Herod wanted, the apparent operatives that would help them find Nathaniel and the ambassadors.
“We already know where they are. Heading out toward the airport in shuttles. There are roadblocks and Delirious to slow them down, but they’ll leave soon. It’s not finding them that’s the problem, it’s getting to them,” Levi said as he pressed the blade into her flesh.
It burned, and droplets of blood streaked over pale skin.
“Why?” she managed. “Why can’t we get to them?”
He dug the blade in, then lifted it and extracted the chip. He pinched it between two fingers, then dropped it to the floor. He stepped on it with the heel of his boot.
“Levi, why can’t we get to them?” she asked.
“Because it would be a suicide mission. Going in without coming out.” He shook his head. “The only way I’d let it happen is if it was me going. Me alone. I won’t risk the others. Either way, Black Mars is done.”
“Done?”
“At least in this iteration, Charlie. We’re not going to be the resistance once this is over. We’ll be the people who rise to replace those above. We’ll be free.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Charlie asked. “Let’s go. You and me. Let’s go find one of these ambassadors and get the information out. Cole said there was a contingency plan. He said—”
“Me alone.”
“You’re not going on your own,” Charlie hissed and grabbed his hand. His fingers were slick with her blood. “I won’t let that happen. I’ve been involved in this from the start. Nathaniel… if it’s going to happen, it will be by my hand.”
He stared at her, long and hard. Finally, he opened his mouth.
A thump shuddered through the concrete beneath their feet. Screams started up, deeper into the sewers.
15
“It’s happening,” Levi said.
“What is?”
Another thump followed the first, and dust dropped from the concrete above. It scattered down the back of Charlie’s shirt—the very same she’d been forced into by Ink. Prison garb.
“They’ve found us.”
“The Council?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know, probably not. My guess is Absalon.”
Screams followed his words, and Levi set off running, instantly, the blue light from his flashlight skipping across the wet stone. They ran along the gulley, through the drainage system, toward Black Mars. There were too many twists and turns. Had Charlie come down on her own and Levi hadn’t been waiting for her, she would’ve been instantly lost.
They sprinted.
Her lungs burned, but she pumped her arms back and forth, forcing herself toward the danger.
The sharp pop of bullets rang out and the noise reverberated through the sewers. They were closer. The flicker of light from beneath a steel door at the end of a tunnel drew Charlie on. Levi panted up ahead.
“Let me lead,” he said. “You’re unarmed.”
She didn’t argue.
Levi brought a gun out from under his shirt and clicked the safety off.
“You sure?” Charlie asked, after a beat.
“About what?”
“That you want to do that?” Charlie opened her palm to him. “I’m a practiced shooter.”
“I’ve got this, Spade.” Levi pressed the door open and led, gun out and aiming at…
An empty room.
One that was in tatters. They had come in at the far end of the sewer complex of Black Mars’ hideout, where the families slept. Where everyone slept, and the beds had been overturned. Clothing had been strewn across the room, and blood spatters were interspersed among them. A woman lay face down on a bed. Two mattresses on the other side of the room were on fire.
“Jesus,” Charlie whispered. “Jesus Christ.”
“Check her,” Levi said as he ran toward the other side of the room, peered through the gap between the open door and a wall.
Charlie walked to the woman, swept her hair to one side, and pressed three fingers to her neck. She was cool to the touch, lacked a pulse, and the sheets beneath her were soaked through red.
“She’s gone,” Charlie said and didn’t turn her over.
Charlie didn’t know everyone here, but she’d been getting to know them. If she put the name to the face, her concentration would be clouded.
“No time, Spade,” Levi said, beckoning her away from the woman. “We’ve got to move.”
SSG agents streamed through the hallways past the door, their guns out. They moved silently in groups, or alone, apart from the odd yelled command from an officer.
“What do we do?” Charlie asked.
“There have to be survivors.”
“Survivors? The attack isn’t even over yet, Levi.”
“Then we have to make sure there are survivors. Arm yourself if you can. Follow me. Stay close.”
Smoke plumed from the burning beds in the corner and billowed under the concrete ceiling, rippling as it moved. It reminded Charlie of… something alive. As if those fingers of smoke could reach out and grab hold of her, pull her back into the flames or lay her down on that bed next to the woman. Snuff her out, fast.
“Spade.”
She snapped her focus back to Levi. His eyes were wide, but filled with controlled rage. No fear.
“Keep it together, all right? I need your help. They’re moving through the place killing as they go. We have to stay stealthy and save who we can. You got it?”
She’d never hesitated before. Was it the after-effects of the damned drug Absalon had pumped into her system? She’d never held fear when it came to doing what was necessary, but it was seeing this, everything that they’d worked for burned or shot… There was too much stacked against them.
“Are you with me?” Levi breathed out and grabbed her hand, squeezed.
“I’m with you,” she said and returned the pressure around his fingers.
“Good. Let’s move.”
And they did. Through the concrete corridors, the gutters, the open doors, toward screaming where they could. Usually, they found bodies. Sometimes they found agents who held warm guns. But slowly, a crowd gathered around them. People from the underground who had escaped the clutches of SSG operatives and gunfire and used the twisting sewer network to their advantage.
This was her fault.
This would never have happened if Charlie hadn’t led them here. But had she really? Surely, Absalon had known all along that Black Mars was underground in the sewers.
They reached the central hub of technology and Charlie’s stomach dropped so hard, it might as well have penetrated the floor. The computers had been torn from their banks. Cole lay on the floor, covered in sweat, grasping at his arm. It was broken, hanging limp at the wrist.
“Man, am I glad to see you,” he said in a trembling voice.
“Where are they?” Levi whispered.
“Looking for you. They’re leaving some alive. Desperate to find you both.” Cole nodded to Charlie and Levi.
“What do we do?” Charlie asked, and once again, she hated that. She hated that she had to ask instead of having the plan herself. She was relying on them all, Levi in particular, where she had been set on solving this alone tonight. On getting that ambassador out and doing the right thing.
“Get Cole up and out of here,” Levi said, and two of the other survivors helped him up.
He winced but didn’t gripe too much about his injury. They’d have to deal with fixing it later.
“Follow me,” Levi said to the gathered remnant. “We’re getting out.”
Shots rang out and the thud of boot heels followed.
“The others will have to find their own way.” The pain of having to say that sentence was plain on Levi’s face.
They followed him through the maze of tunnels, putting distance between themselves and the violence, the collapsing of everything Levi had worked for and what Charlie had believed in, if only for
a short period.
Levi and Charlie lifted a grate together, and they emerged into Corden Prime, next to an old bakery that had long lost the smell of bread. Charlie recognized the place as one she’d gone to pick up a bagel or a tart on the way to SSG HQ, and it was surreal.
They hauled the grate back into place, then stood in the shadow of the building, the sun pinking the horizon.
“What now?” Cole asked.
16
The others had been sent to relative safety. To an emergency hideout in Corden Prime. There were several dotted across the sectors, just in case the State did find their underground hideout.
Charlie and Levi were alone again.
Alone and waiting in the shadows, watching the street, plotting their course.
“What do we have for assets?” Levi asked.
Charlie removed her silver cylinder from her pocket. “That’s it. And the map of the city streets. And your gun.”
Levi nodded. “The ambassadors might have already left. Cole didn’t have any Intel on how the ambassadors are moving, or how long it will take them to get to their jets. But he did have this.” He lifted the container of serum. “And the information too.”
“We have to try.”
The fact that he’d managed to hide the items on his person, that the SSG had been focused more on finding Charlie and Levi than the information, was sheer luck. And genius on Cole’s part.
It was a conversation they’d already had, though the words hadn’t been said out loud. It was in every look, every gesture. It was in the fact that Levi had already told her he had to do it. And that Charlie knew she would follow.
He would have to physically restrain her to stop her from following now. Following through, more like. Because that was what this was. A chance to finish what had been started… when she’d been born.
Before that, even. When her father had taken part in the rebellion that had overthrown the last power, and he’d helped establish Corden State.
“Let’s go,” Levi said.
“We’re not going to salvage anything else?”
“No time like the present.”
Charlie pressed a finger to her temple and brought up the map of the city streets. The airport wasn’t too far from their position, but they would have to move quickly regardless. Between here and it… the Delirious ran rampant.
The screams were nothing like the ones they’d heard down in the sewers. Those had been human, horrible as well. But these were of tormented souls who didn’t know themselves anymore, who lusted after nothing other than violence and death as a release from the illness that beset them.
Charlie tapped her temple again and placed the map as an overlay, so she could follow the red line from her position directly to the airport.
“Are you ready?” Levi asked.
“Follow me. I’ve got the coordinates put in.” She took a step out, but Levi caught her arm.
Footsteps rushed past in the street, followed by rough panting from a dry throat. One of the Delirious appeared, and Charlie and Levi sank back into the shadows of the emergency stairwell.
It was a man, or once had been. The jaw was broken, hanging loose, the teeth inside ripped free or peering out of raw red flesh. It blinked in the light of dawn, turning this way and that, like it was lost, now that it didn’t have something to attack.
Charlie didn’t dare breathe. Levi was tense beside her, still grasping her arm.
Finally, it ran off, its jaw shaking with every step, small whines escaping its throat.
Once it was out of earshot—she hoped—Charlie let out a breath.
“Do you think they feel?” she whispered.
“I don’t want to know, Spade.” Levi started walking.
She fell into step beside him. They kept in the shadows of the buildings, staying silent for the most part, unless it was to warn each other of the Delirious or to point out a hiding spot. Charlie would tap Levi on the hand, gesture to the path or roads they had to take next.
“Do you think…” Charlie whispered, then quieted, listening for steps or panting or screams. Nothing.
“Do I think what?” Levi asked.
“They could be cured? Do you think the Delirious could be cured?” Charlie asked.
There had to have been children who had paid Absalon’s price, too. It sickened her that they might stay as these things, these shells of people because of the serum.
“I don’t know.” Levi shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know, either.”
“Why?”
“Because if they can’t be cured, if none of this can be fixed,” he said and glanced over at her, the expression in his eyes softening slightly. “What was the point?”
Charlie licked her lips. “Levi. Thank you.”
“For what?” He shook his head. “For endangering you and everyone else in Black Mars? If I had let the status quo remain as it was, perhaps the outbreak, the poisoning, would never have happened.”
“No, it would always have happened. That’s just the nature of Shamood and… my father. You saved people. You did the right thing.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.” And she grabbed his hand, then. It was uncharacteristic for her, but she had to do it. She squeezed. “You saved me. You did. If I’d stayed at SSG, I would never have opened my eyes.”
“You were suspicious all along, Spade.”
“Yeah, but not suspicious enough to act on it. A part of me wanted to believe that everything was fine and that Nathaniel was on the level. I hate that I was indecisive. Imagine how much more I could have done if I had seen it from the start.”
“Everything played out as it should have.”
They were close to the airport now, close enough that they would hear once a jet took off.
Levi halted. He turned to her and cupped her cheek in one hand. “Charlie, you—”
The sound of a shuttle, zooming along the road, broke across his words. An airport shuttle appeared.
Levi dragged her into an alleyway, and they pressed their backs to the rough wall.
The shuttle swept by, and Charlie caught the briefest of glimpses of who was inside it.
Nathaniel and an ambassador, one unnamed to her—Cole had likely told her who it was, but she couldn’t remember the name.
“Let’s move.”
17
Charlie and Levi sprinted from their hiding spot the minute the shuttle had passed. The airport gate, usually heavily guarded, but now abandoned thanks to the unrest in Corden Prime, slid open to admit the vehicle.
The shuttle slid past the gate, cruising across the runway toward an airplane—sleek, silver, wingless, pointing directly upward—that would propel the ambassador back from where he’d come.
“Quickly,” Levi sputtered, his fists pumping back and forth as they sprinted for the gate.
It was already closing, a rattling metal sheet slicing toward the concrete. Levi slipped through the shrinking gap, thrust his hand back through for Charlie. She took it and he pulled her into the airport grounds.
The gate slammed closed behind them. A sound of finality.
Suicide mission.
No, she couldn’t think that now. She couldn’t believe it.
“Come on, Charlie.” Levi’s tone had hardened again, but he took her hand and they set off running again, toward the shuttle. It had parked next to the jet.
The doors of the sleek white capsule slid open, and Nathaniel stepped out, jerking on the plackets of his suit jacket. He turned, smiling, and peered back into the shuttle’s interior, then extended a hand.
“Can I help you, Ambassador Trent?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” The reply was curt. The man emerged, wearing a suit of his own, pinstriped and tailored perfectly. He was tall, tan, but with extra weight around the middle. Dark hair, and matching eyes that flicked back and forth as he took in the runway. That gaze reached Charlie first.
He blinked. “What’s this?”
Nathanie
l turned. His obsequious smile vanished. He opened his mouth.
Charlie and Levi stopped.
The leader of Black Mars brought up his gun and aimed it at Nathaniel. “Do anything and you die. A word to call for your guards, and it’s over. Do you understand me?”
A screech sounded from the entrance to the airport, followed by the frantic banging of hands against metal. The Delirious had followed the shuttle, it seemed, and they wanted in.
“What’s going on here?” Trent asked.
“It’s none of your concern, Ambassador,” Nathaniel said smoothly. “My men will deal with this intrusion.”
“Like hell, they will,” Charlie said, nearly growling it out. “Ambassador, we’ve come to give you the information you deserve. The truth about what’s happening in Corden State.”
“The truth?” Trent raised an eyebrow. His demeanor had changed from wary of the gun in Levi’s hand to intrigued. “I’d be interested to hear it.”
“They’re terrorists,” Nathaniel spat. “They’re not to be listened to. Look at them. They have a gun trained on us, right now.”
Trent stepped several paces to the side, but Levi kept the gun aimed at Nathaniel.
“It looks like I’m not the one under fire.” Trent was a politician, clearly, with the smacking of a European accent. He was intelligent and understood where his bread was buttered, it seemed. “What do you have to tell me?”
“It’s not so much what we can tell you,” Charlie said. “It’s what we can give you and show you.”
“I won’t let this happen, Charlotte.” Nathaniel’s gaze flicked from side-to-side. Weighing the options he didn’t have. “I will not let you ruin what I have worked so hard to maintain.” He turned toward Ambassador Trent. “Whatever they give you is false. It’s lies.”
Trent didn’t reply, but there was skepticism in his expression, and it gave Charlie hope.
“Give him what we have, Spade,” Levi said.
She walked over to Levi and removed the container of Serum mX from his belt, then took the hard drive from his pocket, as well.
