The room was the same she’d seen in the comms, small with a low sofa, a single table, and two chrome chairs. On the table sat three glasses of water. And on the couch . . .
Tia ran to her father and collapsed at his knee. He looked so old, so frail. He ran a trembling hand over her hair. Next to him sat Milo, with her mother on the other side. She’d done it. She’d done it. Tia bent over her father’s knee and wept.
“There, there.” Her mother patted her head awkwardly. “It’s alright, doll. We’re all together now.”
Tia’s breath froze, confusion cutting through her relief. Her mother had never called her “doll” a single day of her life. Eyes still damp, Tia raised her head. She stared into Milo’s eyes. The boy was crying, but his expression was wrong. He didn’t look happy to see her, or even angry. He looked scared.
She glanced over her shoulder at the soldier who’d brought her to this room. He had his back to her, staring out into the hall. She returned her gaze to her family.
“What is going on?” she asked, so only they could hear.
Her mother’s bottom lip trembled, but she didn’t answer.
Then Tia saw it.
The small, heart-shaped birthmark on the woman’s neck, half-hidden by her lank hair.
Tia’s mother didn’t have a birthmark.
Tia swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. No. A deep, physical ache began in her gut and traveled slowly to her chest, constricting her lungs.
“Where’s my family?” she whispered.
The old man’s rheumy eyes weren’t even the right color, now that she looked more closely.
The woman’s tears slipped down her face without a sound.
“I was the one who brought them food,” she said, softly enough that the guard wouldn’t hear. “The old man got sick. The air’s poor down in the cells, and his lungs couldn’t handle it. One morning I came with the food trays and he was on the floor, the other two weeping over him.”
Tia’s breath shrank to panicked gasps. Her father . . . her father had died.
“My mother and brother?” The words ground against her throat like broken glass.
The woman shrugged, her face so familiar and yet so painfully wrong. “I don’t know. Your brother tried to escape twice after your father died. After the second time, they took me and did some tests, and then they put a disk on my neck and threw me in a cell. The boy was there, and the old man. They looked just like they had, only . . . only . . .”
Tia stared at the boy, hoping against hope . . .
But the eyes looking back held no recognition. Only terror.
“When . . . when was this?” she asked, her voice breaking.
The woman bowed her head. “Months ago, shortly after they arrived. I’m . . . I’m so sorry, doll.”
A great heaving darkness pressed in on all sides. Tia tried to breathe, but the old air wouldn’t leave her lungs to make way for the new.
All this time, everything she’d done . . .
And they’d been dead all along.
Tia slumped forward, her heart cracking open, jagged and raw. Tears burned her cheeks. Her grief scorched everything else until she became a wasteland, an empty desert of broken dreams.
She sobbed into the knee of the stranger who looked like her father and prayed that when she opened her eyes, somehow it would be him. That this would all be a nightmare from which she could wake.
But nothing changed. The people were imposters, her family dead.
The Safarans had lied. They’d killed her family, and they’d kept using her. So why reunite her then? Why bring her here, where surely she’d soon figure out the ruse?
The truth settled into the grief, as inexorable as a boulder sinking to the bottom of the sea.
They were going to kill her. Probably the poor people who’d been forced to masquerade as her family, too. If not now, then later tonight or maybe tomorrow. But soon.
A new emotion flowed in to mingle with the despair threatening to choke her.
Fury.
Her good hand tightened into a fist against her chest, catching against the hard corner of something in her jacket pocket. She sat back on her heels, her fingers locked around the small, rectangular disk within. Slowly, the threads of a plan knit themselves into her mind, strung with hate and tightened by the shame that had haunted her for months.
She glanced again at the soldier in the doorway. He should have closed the door. He should have stood guard outside. But it was easy to dismiss the skinny girl who wanted nothing more than a reunion with her family. It was easy to discount her as weak. Stupid.
Pathetic.
Without a word to the people on the couch, who still wore the faces of her dead, Tia slipped the utility knife from the sheath at her calf. Back at Spiro, no one had wanted to fight her in hand-to-hand when they’d realized she was a woman.
But they forgot—everyone forgot—she’d spent nearly a year as a male soldier. Nearly a year learning how to fight.
How to kill.
And no one had ever really appreciated how good she was at her job.
Chapter 34
As Dysis trudged toward the secret monitoring station, she couldn’t get her mind to focus on anything beyond the horrifying knowledge that Pallas was a spy, that she was going to expose their plans for saving Aris and Major Vadim, and that they’d lost their one link on the inside. Alistar had been shot, right as she listened.
“I’m sorry,” Calix murmured as he trotted beside her. “I shouldn’t have gotten in your way. I didn’t realize . . . I thought I was helping.”
Dysis wanted to be angry with him, but he couldn’t have known any of it. And her anger had a more deserving target. This was her fault. She’d let Pallas get away.
She didn’t slow down. “It’s done. Now we have to fix it.”
Dysis and Calix reached the monitoring station just as Dianthe arrived.
“What’s happened?” Dianthe asked. “I came as quickly as I could.” She took in Dysis’s expression and shooed Calix away, before pulling Dysis into the room.
Inside, Commander Nyx was pacing, and the last few minutes of the feed were playing over the speakers. She paused when she saw Dysis. “Did you get her?”
Dysis shook her head and slammed her palm against her thigh. Her stomach burned. “She . . . somehow she could tell that I knew. She ran. I tried to apprehend her, but she made it into an invisible wingjet. I’m so sorry.”
A vein bulged along Nyx’s temple, and her eyes turned sharp as razor blades. Before she could reply, the final gunshot echoed in the room, and the feed went dead once more.
Dianthe stood by the monitor, her own expression filled with venom. “So, we’re completely blind.”
The room vibrated with silence. Dysis looked at the monitor, but there were no sound waves. Just a solid, straight black line cutting the blue in half.
Commander Nyx stared at the screen as well, her expression unreadable.
Dysis fought the tears burning at the back of her eyes. She couldn’t lose it. Not in front of these women.
Finally, Nyx straightened. “Move up the timeline. The mission begins now.”
“Not all of the diatous veils are complete,” Dianthe said.
“I don’t care,” Nyx replied. “We have enough.” She turned her gaze to Dysis. “Go find your brother and get him up to speed. I need to inform Ward Nekos of the change in plans. Remember, Latza: Every second that passes, our window closes.”
“Yes, sir,” Dysis said, and she went to find Jax. There was no point in apologizing again. Pallas was gone. All she could do now was make sure they got Aris back.
***
Calix watched Dysis pull on her body armor, his expression a mixture of concern and sadness. They were in her bedroom, alone for the first time since their kiss. “It wouldn’t
make a difference if I told you not to go, would it.”
“You already know the answer to that,” Dysis replied. “That’s why you didn’t ask.”
She was due on the landing pad in five minutes. As soon as all the troops were assembled, a small squadron of invisible wingjets would leave. Their job was reconnaissance first, then, once the rest of the force was on its way, they’d land and begin the rescue attempt, veiled as Aris for misdirection. If all went well, S and R would be on the ground just after midnight, and the rest of the troops, including Castalian reinforcements, would arrive before dawn. If they were lucky. With the schedule moved up so much, no one knew if the Castalia reinformcements would arrive in time.
Dianthe didn’t get a chance to finish Dysis’s diatous veil, so she’d be skipping the disguise. But when Jax had suggested she not be part of the initial rescue team at all, she’d laughed in his face. Calix had held his tongue . . . until now.
“You might have reinjured yourself today with all that running.” He stepped closer to her and slipped his fingers along her lower back, under the armor. “You should let me examine you.”
She stared into his eyes, letting herself really look at him. She could appreciate the beauty of his full lips, the vibrant green of his eyes, his strong jaw.
“What are you thinking?” He drew her closer, until her armor pressed against his chest. Still, she didn’t touch him.
“I’m thinking about the end of the world,” she said softly. Her gaze dropped to his lips and clung there. “And how we’re supposed to share that moment. You said we’d be there for each other at the end.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “That was our worst-case scenario, you know.”
She closed her eyes. “That’s what makes it the most likely.”
“Then you’d better get yourself back here. Don’t leave me hanging, okay?” Before she could answer, he tipped up her face and pressed his lips to hers.
Her arms wrapped around him, pulling tighter and tighter. And for just a second, she embraced all of the fear she tried so hard to deny.
Chapter 35
Aris spent her last hours with Milek holding his hands through the bars of her cage. He’d worked one eye open, and he stared at her as if memorizing every tiny detail of her face.
“Don’t do it, Aris,” he said again, for the hundredth time. “I’m not worth it. They’re going to kill me anyway.”
She wanted to tell him that she knew that. That she had no intention of dropping the bomb over Panthea. That she was going to sacrifice him—and herself—to destroy the weapon instead. But there’d be no chance for that kind of honesty tonight. Soldiers stood at attention outside their cages, well within earshot.
“I love you,” she said, sticking to the truth she could share.
He squeezed her hands tighter. “Please, Aris.”
She wished he could see what she meant to do just by looking at her. Leaning her forehead against the cold bars, she closed her eyes and listened to the dance of their ragged breath.
“Tell me what you wish for our future.” She wanted their last moments together to be as precious as they could make them.
Milek sighed. After some thought, he said, “I wish for a small house in one of Atalanta’s crazy raised villages,” he began, a rasp in his voice. “A couple of wingjets and a pretty place to fly, so you’ll be happy, the sky there for you whenever you need it. I wish for a child, maybe two. A placement as a town protector, where I help old women home from the park or find someone’s lost pet. A life that is quiet and serene.”
Aris forced back tears and smiled at his lies. He didn’t want that kind of life, not really. It would be boring for him, small. But that’s what he thought she wanted, and he wanted to give her peace.
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I wish for—”
With a clank, her door slid open. Vik stomped in with two guards. “It’s time,” he snarled.
Aris tightened her grip on Milek’s hands and tried not to let her grief show. He could barely move, and she wasn’t sure he could recover from his injuries, even if it were possible to get him to a mender.
“I love you, Milek,” she said, her heart straining against her chest. She could barely hold back the sob. “I’ll be back soon.” She tried to make it sound like she meant it, but he could see through her lies, too. He knew, as she did, that there would be no coming back. Not for either of them.
“I love you, Aris. I always will,” he said, his voice breaking.
Then he let her go.
***
Aris didn’t let Vik touch her as they passed through the endless dank hallway toward the lift. She walked with her head held high. This was her final act for her dominion—she would meet her fate with pride. Still, she threw in a whimper now and then. She didn’t want them to suspect she had a different plan in mind.
The lift sped upward, crowded with Aris, Vik, and her two guards. She could smell their sweat, the faint scent of the fried fish they’d had for dinner. She’d been offered nothing to eat since the morning. Instead of making her hungry, the thought of food sent nausea roiling through her. Finally, the chrome box slowed and bounced on its cables. With a shiver and a clank, the door slid open.
There was a flash of green. Before Aris’s brain could catch up to her eyes, one of the soldiers slumped to the ground, his throat pouring blood. Vik grunted as he tried to yank his gun from its holster. The green-uniformed figure whirled and the second guard fell, coughing and gasping as he bled to death, throat slit just like the first.
Green uniform . . . an Atalantan soldier.
Before hope could buoy Aris, she got a good look at the soldier’s face: pale skin, haunted blue-gray eyes, high cheekbones. With another graceful whirl, Pallas disarmed Vik and turned the gun to his head before anyone could say a word.
“What are they making you do, Aris?” Pallas asked. Two spots of pink spread across her cheeks. Her eyes glittered, almost feverish. When Vik shifted, she swung her elbow in a crushing arc at his face. He grunted, hands up to stanch the blood that flowed from his nose.
Aris stood there, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish.
“Tell me. Quickly.” Pallas stared at her, and Aris couldn’t find any hint of her former friend in the girl’s too-bright eyes.
“They . . . they’re making me fly the flaming scorpion over Panthea. It’ll kill everyone,” Aris admitted.
Pallas slid Vik’s gun into her waistband and jerked him out of the lift, her knife pricking his throat. “Find Major Vadim if you can and get the hell out of here. I’ll worry about the bomb.”
No. Pallas couldn’t get away. Aris grabbed at her arm, but the girl was already moving, one hand holding the knife at Vik’s throat, the other rooting in her pocket. In desperation, Aris said, “I wasn’t going to do it. I had a plan.” Aris made her voice as strong as possible. “I can’t let you drop that bomb.”
Pallas stuck something on the back of her neck, and when she turned back, her face was Aris’s, though her complexion was still too pale. “I’m not going to drop it on Panthea.”
Confusion froze Aris in place for a heartbeat too long. “Then what are you going to do?”
Before she could answer, Vik made his move, ducking and trying to sweep Pallas’s legs. She twisted away and buried her knife behind his ear. He sank to the ground, eyes wide, blood pouring from his mouth.
Aris watched, horror etched into every line of her face. The first time Pallas had ever held a solagun, she could barely lift it, her hands were shaking so badly. Was that all an act? Had she been this stone-cold Safaran operative all along?
Pallas stepped over Vik without looking down. “They killed my whole family,” she said, her voice flat. “And they made me into a monster. They did this.” Her eyes focused on Aris for a single, terrifying second. “No. Ward Balias did this. And he i
s going to pay.”
Then she was through the door and running across the tarmac toward the wingjets, and Aris was left gasping, with three dead men at her feet.
Chapter 36
The flaming scorpion was already secure within the invisible wingjet. Tia had watched from a hidden spot at the edge of the landing pad as they replaced one of the jet’s missiles with the weapon. No one seemed to be looking for her, or concerned about the soldier who was supposed to be watching her.
Tia’s plan had been to use one of Aris’s guards to get her across the tarmac to the wingjet. But she was grateful the last man had made his move before they were in sight of other soldiers. As it was, she sprinted from the cover of the building to her recon just before the alarm was raised; her borrowed face and the darkness were confusing enough that the first men to notice her didn’t react in time.
She flew through the warm-up sequence, noting that the wingjet’s comms had been tampered with. No messages back to Atalanta, even if she’d wanted to send one. She glanced out onto the landing pad as she lifted off, unnerved to see the soldiers standing still, watching her go. Why weren’t they shooting at her? Or running for their own jets to try to overtake her?
It didn’t matter. Nothing did, except getting high enough to drop the payload. Ward Balias was still here at the prison, still alive in his broken kingdom. And Pallas was going to fix that.
Suddenly, the controls in her sweaty palms jerked. The nav lit with a curving red line. And a voice filled the cabin. “Well done, Aris. You’ve had a last little rebellion, and now you’re ready for your destiny.” Ward Balias’s voice made Pallas want to scream. She couldn’t communicate back to him, not with outgoing comms down, but she couldn’t turn off his slippery, smug voice either. Just like she could no longer direct the wingjet. “You’ll notice the wingjet is not in your control. It’s in mine. Your course has been set, and the bomb’s been armed, in case you were planning to play the hero. Panthea will fall whether you wish it or not. And right now, your scared eyes are plastered across all five dominions on every news vid, so we can watch as you destroy your own people.”
Torn Sky (Rebel Wing Trilogy, Book 3) (Rebel Wing Series) Page 17
