Beyond Ecstasy (Beyond #8)

by Kit Rocha

  “One more,” he shot back, waving the tablet insistently. “If this isn't it, I'll take a fucking nap.”

  “All right.” She lifted both hands in surrender and rose. “Let's check it out.”

  She took the tablet from him and accessed the last message, some unsolicited offer for a free trial to the latest time-wasting, pay-to-play game on Eden's network. Noah jabbed his finger down on his keyboard one last time and collapsed back into his chair.

  The cursor on his monitor blinked three times before spitting out several lines of text. Noah scrubbed his hands over his face and left them over his eyes. “I can't look. If it's not right…”

  “I know.” She leaned over to peer at the monitor, and all the shock and excitement that she'd shoved down before crashed through her. “...don't miss this amazing, exclusive offer—holy shit, Noah. Holy shit.”

  Noelle leaned over his other shoulder, her eyes wide. Her gaze skimmed to the end of the decrypted text, and she threw her arms around him. “You crazy bastard, I knew you could do it.”

  “That makes one of us,” Noah said hoarsely. He dropped his hands and blinked blearily at the screen. “So that's it. We have an algorithm now. I can start the decryption process—”

  “Or get some sleep,” Noelle interrupted.

  “Or get some sleep,” he agreed with a rusty laugh. “I just need...wait a second.”

  He sat upright and snatched the tablet out of Jeni's hands. A swipe of one hand brought him back to the list of incoming messages, while his other hand flew over the keyboard. Another list appeared on the monitor—gibberish subject lines with only the dates and times visible.

  Noah held the tablet up next to the screen. “There are messages missing. Incoming communications that we caught at the switch. Turner must have deleted them from the tablet.”

  “No wonder everything on it made for boring reading. Too boring for a spy.” Jeni nodded to the screen. “Can we retrieve the deleted messages?”

  “I already have them.” Noah shoved two of the large tablets cluttering the table aside and came up with a third, smaller one. “Give me a second and I'll decrypt them.”

  Noelle watched him, her lower lip caught between her teeth. As soon as he'd transferred the decrypted messages onto the smaller tablet, she laid a hand on his shoulder. “I can oversee the decryption. I'll wake you up if I run into trouble. But you need food and a bed.”

  Jeni knew it was bad when he didn't even argue. He rose slowly, passed Jeni the tablet, and started for the door with the too-careful steps of a man running on pride.

  “He did good.” And Dallas would reward him handsomely for it. “Now it's our turn.”

  Noelle flexed her fingers and slid into Noah's abandoned chair. “I'll have to decrypt this in chunks, then run the filter. We need some way to narrow down what we're looking for.”

  “May as well get started. Who knows what we'll find.” Or if they'd find anything. Jeni dropped into her chair again and opened the cluster of restored messages on Owen Turner's tablet.

  There were about two dozen missives to Paige, the girl who worked for Gia. They ranged from studiedly casual notes right on up to bad love poems. A few of the later ones had taken on an air of desperation, even of vague threat, and Jeni found herself wishing Hawk or Jas had found the motherfucker after all.

  There were more, some of Turner trying to flex on some small-time hoods in and out of Eden, and others asking for jobs, loans, even transport out of the sectors to one of the nearest mountain colonies.

  Then one message caught Jeni's eye—stark, terse, and nonsensical.

  By the way, we're out of sugar.

  And that was it. Not only was it phrased more formally than the rest of Turner's communications, but it seemed oddly domestic for a man whose apartment, by all accounts, didn't have a working kitchen. Beyond that…

  Who the hell says by the way when they haven't said anything else?

  She double-checked the time stamps, thinking that maybe it was meant as an addendum to a previous message, but there was nothing. Turner hadn't communicated with this address before or since.

  By the way, we're out of sugar.

  Something else about the message tugged at Jeni, prompting a flash of memory too brief and hazy to grasp. But she knew she'd seen these exact words before—in that massive pile of shit Noelle had given her to read through.

  “Can we run a search on something?” she asked softly. “Doesn't have to be recent. Everything from before the wall went hot is fine.”

  “Sure.” Noelle scooted her chair to one side and activated a second monitor. “What is it, a name? Phrase?”

  Jeni propped the tablet in front of her. “What do you make of that?”

  “Out of sugar?” Noelle made a face as she started typing. “Why would he even have sugar to...begin…” She trailed off with a frown, a deep furrow forming between her eyebrows. With a flick of her fingers across the monitor, the results of the search appeared on the wall in front of them. “Oh, my God.”

  Page after page filled the wall, pouring from the projector in a glaring, damning rush. All with those exact same words.

  It had to be a code phrase. What it meant, Jeni had no idea—maybe it was an update, or a way to ask for a face-to-face meeting with a handler—but its purpose was clear. To be innocuous, so mundane that no computer program would ever catch it. So that you'd never even see it unless you were already looking for it.

  Jeni walked toward the wall, everything numb and frozen but her galloping heart. She touched a page at the edge of the image, heedless of her body blocking out most of the rest of the projection. “This one was in the stuff you gave me. I didn't think twice about it because the lady owns a food stand in the market…”

  Owned a stand. Another memory burned through her brain—Tatiana's face crumpling into tears when Jasper told her that Mila had died, had killed herself—

  The numbness was nothing compared to the chill that swept through Jeni now. She almost stumbled back as she took in the names, trying to focus on them, to work them into some semblance of order while her mind whirled. “Anson, Ramirez, Schaffley—Noelle, do you see this?”

  “They're all dead. Jesus Christ, Jeni.” Noelle's face was pale as she rose. “I need to get Dallas and Lex.”

  She hurried out of the room, while Jeni kept staring at the wall until the names swam together. Those people weren't just dead—Hawk and the others had pried their corpses off the electrified wall.

  For weeks, they'd all braced themselves against finding another body, another person who'd succumbed to the stress and pressure of an impending war. It had become a distillation of their larger worries, only instead of waiting to see when Eden would attack, they were waiting to see how far hopelessness had dug its claws into the people of Sector Four.

  Suicide-by-Eden was sinister enough. This was something monstrous.

  By the time Dallas and Lex appeared in the doorway, disheveled and a little out of breath, Jeni's numbness had given way to a strange kind of furious calm, a rage so deep she didn't even know how to express it.

  Lex spoke first. “What do you have?”

  “Your spies.” Jeni barely recognized her own voice. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Give us the good.”

  Jeni turned to face them. “They're all dead. Electrocuted on the wall.”

  Dallas's expression hardened as he stared at the projected data. “Who'd they send the messages to?”

  “Throwaway IDs,” Noelle answered. “You can buy them in Eden in the illegal market by the dozen. Usually they get shut down pretty fast by the automated checks, but if you know how to avoid those, or if Security has a vested interest in keeping them active…”

  “Somehow I doubt they all got real guilty and marched out to off themselves in the exact same way,” Dallas said.

  “You know better, honey.” Lex had gone pale. “Our spies were murdered.”

  Dallas clenched his fists. “Ev
ery fucking one of them died on the wall, but so did people who aren't on that list.”

  “Then we have two options,” Jeni whispered. “Either people got wind of how they died and figured it was as good a way to go as any, or—”

  “Or,” Lex cut in, “they were killed along with the others as a cover. In case we started looking at things too closely.”

  “Shit.” Dallas's hands curled into fists. “They're some fucking sadistic motherfucking murdering shitheads.”

  “Worse,” Noelle said softly, her gaze locking with Jeni's. “They're Eden.”

  “They'd never pass up a chance to wage psychological warfare on the sectors,” Jeni agreed. “But they wouldn't kill their own spies to do it unless they'd been compromised.” Or outlived their usefulness.

  “Loose ends,” Lex whispered tightly. “The city's cleaning house.”

  “Which means they're about to move.” Dallas turned to face them. “Noelle, keep on the decryption. Figure out every other weird-ass email that's ever come and gone from those spies and see if anyone else was sending the same thing.”

  “Got it.”

  “Jeni?”

  “Yeah?”

  There was sympathy in Dallas's eyes. Pain. But also unbending, steely resolve. “Go find Hawk. It's time.”

  “I'll tell him.” Alya wasn't going to like it. And Hawk— Jeni's peculiar calm shattered in an instant, replaced by pain, by a regret too deep for words or even tears.

  Sector Four was his home now, but the farm in Six would always be a part of him. And now it was a part he had to destroy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hawk didn't argue when Jeni offered to come with him to Sector Six.

  He should have. A stronger man would have. He could have left her at home, snug in the heart of Dallas's territory—

  Except even that didn't feel safe anymore, not when they knew for sure there were Special Tasks soldiers outside the wall. Silent, invisible killers who'd been waging the cruelest, sickest kind of war on all of them. They'd sown desperation while cleaning up the city's messes, and some twisted part of Hawk couldn't help but admire their efficiency. They'd turned a handful of necessary, practical deaths into a spectacle of heartache and hopelessness.

  So it felt wrong to leave Jeni behind. But it felt wrong to bring her into the most likely path of an army that could already be preparing to march—especially now that she'd confessed how they knew about the spies and their faked suicides.

  The mystery tablet. She'd been nervous, admitting what she'd been doing with Noelle and Noah during all those long, secretive afternoons locked up in the tech room. No doubt she'd expected him to explode in a protective fury. But Hawk just nodded, because if there was one lesson he'd learned from watching Shipp with Alya all these years, it was to keep those explosions in check. Hawk couldn't protect Jeni if she didn't want to come to him with the truth.

  And now that he knew the truth, letting Jeni accompany him to Six was the only choice he could live with. If she was with him, he could keep her safe.

  He guided his car over the final rise and down the hill toward the farm. The moon and stars were obscured behind clouds, leaving endless darkness cut only by his headlights and the distant glow from a few of his family's windows.

  The children were probably already in bed. The adults would be gathered around hearths and tables, resting weary bones and sipping Big John's godawful liquor as they prepared for another busy day of spring planting.

  He was about to tear their placid little oasis to the ground and salt the earth beneath their feet.

  Jeni reached across the car and touched his hand. “I'm sorry.”

  The soft caress helped. “She'll survive starting over. Most of us did, at least once.”

  “That doesn't—” Her voice broke. “That doesn't make it okay.”

  Tears roughened the words. The same tears he couldn't let himself shed, because when the children tumbled from their beds, terrified, on the brink of losing the only home they'd ever known, he had to be there. Solid and reassuring, confident enough to convince them everything was going to be all right.

  Hawk twined their fingers together and pulled Jeni's hand to his lips for a kiss. “No, it's not okay. But I've got to go in there believing I can make it okay for them, or they won't believe me when I say they can do this.”

  “I know.” She swiped at her cheeks with her free hand. “What can I do?”

  “Help my sisters.” They reached the bottom of the hill, and Hawk used one hand to steer, pulling the car to a stop close to Alya's porch. “They might have questions about Sector Four that they don't wanna ask their brother.”

  “I can handle that.” Jeni squeezed his hand until he looked over at her. “Hawk, I'm here for them. But mostly...I'm here for you.”

  The kitchen light went on, proof Alya had heard his car and would be on the porch soon—probably with a shotgun. Hawk leaned in and caught Jeni's mouth in a quick, fierce kiss. Familiar sweetness washed over him—the way her lips parted so eagerly, the skill of her kiss. She could strip him raw with the honeyed glide of her tongue and the sharp scrape of her teeth, but she wasn't trying to tonight.

  Tonight she was building him armor.

  He broke away with a harsh sigh and pressed his forehead to hers. “This might get ugly.”

  She glanced at the kitchen window. “Do you need to talk to Alya alone?”

  “No. Shipp'll be there anyway. And maybe you can help, if she has any questions about what you found.” He pulled back with the best smile he could manage—lopsided and weak, but if he'd learned anything from the O'Kanes, it was this. Laughing at the worst life could dish out. “If she grabs the shotgun, dive for cover.”

  But Jeni didn't laugh.

  By the time they got out of the car, Alya was waiting for them on the porch, Shipp at her side. Hawk climbed the steps, the words he'd practiced for half the drive tumbling end over end in his head.

  Before he had a chance to say anything, Shipp sighed roughly. “Either someone died, or your son's come to give us even worse news, Alya.”

  Hawk stopped on the next-to-last step, putting him at eye level with his mother. She was barefoot, dressed in worn jeans and a tank top that showed off her lean strength. The years usually rolled off Alya as if they couldn't touch her, but the eyes he'd inherited from her were ancient, the lines around them deeper than he remembered.

  She knew. She'd kick and scratch and fight them down to the last minute, but Alya had seen too many bad days not to recognize one staring her in the face.

  Hawk said it anyway. “It's time, Ma.”

  She flinched. Squeezed her eyes shut. “Why? What's changed?”

  “We uncovered a network of spies in Four,” Jeni said softly.

  Shipp cursed. “Did O'Kane haul them in already?”

  “No. They're all dead. Staged to look like suicides. I guess…” She looked away. “I guess they'd outlived their usefulness.”

  “So that's it.” His voice was flat, but Shipp's hand was trembling when he touched Alya's shoulder. “Eden's getting ready to move.”

  “We don't know that,” she insisted, her voice like steel. But her eyes—Hawk's chest hurt. She was dying behind those eyes, begging him to reach out, to save her.

  And he had to shove her under the water and let her drown. “Are you willing to take the chance? They could be on the move already. Do you want to wait until the army's here? Do you want to tear the babies out of their beds and try to get them past a bunch of MPs who won't give a shit about shooting them in the fucking head?”

  Alya's hands curled into fists. “Do you want to burn their home down over a maybe?”

  “Yeah,” Hawk replied harshly. “Because we can rebuild a home, as long as they're alive to be in it.”

  “That doesn't have to happen.” Jeni looked around, taking in the cabin, the fields and houses beyond it, then focused on Alya. “Do you have people who would be willing to stay behind? Just a few. Enough.”

>   Alya hesitated, but some of the wildness faded from her gaze.

  “They can wait out the maybe. But they should know—” Jeni stopped, then started over. “You should know they might not make it out.”

  Alya's mouth was still pressed into a tight line when she nodded. “We'll start the evacuation,” she bit out, turning back to the door. “And no one lights so much as a damn match until I'm ready.”

  The door snapped shut with the force of her temper, and Hawk winced. “I fucked that up.”

  Shipp snorted. “There's no way to make something like that easy to hear.”

  No. Nothing about any of this would ever be easy. “Dallas wouldn't have sent us if he wasn't as close to positive as he could get. I trust his gut, Shipp.”

  “Settle down,” he shot back. “She'll do it. She won't leave anyone here to die, even if they jump at the chance. Even if they're ready and willing.”

  Hawk wasn't so sure—but he didn't need to be. He trusted Shipp's gut, too, and there was no doubt there, no hesitation. Just an understanding of Alya that went bone-deep, because they'd been together long enough to smooth away the sharp edges of uncertainty.

  In a decade, maybe he and Jeni would be that easy, too. Hawk would have to add that to his dreams, to the promise that kept him moving forward while his past crumbled around him.

  In spite of her objections, it was clear that Alya had been planning for this moment, maybe even for years.

  Alya gathered everyone and quickly explained the situation. No one questioned her, even though she'd just told them to uproot their lives, to take only what they absolutely needed and leave everything else behind. They simply moved to obey as she went on to delegate more tasks and give instructions regarding the animals and machinery.

  Jeni watched. She answered Shipp's terse questions as best she could, then soothed some of the younger children. She tried to keep them busy and out of the way, because it seemed like everyone knew what to do, had a job—

  Everyone except for her.