Aegis Desolation: Action-Adventure Apocalyptic Mystery Thriller (Aegis League Series Book 4)

by S. S. Segran

  As Nadia raced ahead, Marshall spun around, pulling the pistol from his waistband and firing as the creature gained ground. But the monstrosity was not to be deterred. It bounded over decorative rocks, each stride closing the distance.

  An engine rumbled to life. Marshall faced front, bursting forth to slide over the trunk of an old beige car that Nadia had found. He slid into passenger seat and she took off, smashing through other vehicles until she got clear. The Scourger gave chase, unwilling to let them escape.

  Nadia pushed the car as fast as it could go. “Where to now?”

  “Do you know where the airbase is from here?” Marshall asked. “If we can find a working plane there—”

  “Understood!”

  Marshall twisted to look through the rear windshield. “That thing’s not letting up! And it doesn’t look like it’s tiring!”

  Nadia’s hair was a frightsome mess around her head, and her dark eyes held equal portions of fear and determination. “This is going to be a rough ride! I hope you don’t get carsick!”

  They blazed outward from the city, forced away from the jammed main streets. Marshall, trusting Nadia to know where to go, checked on the laptop and the queen. The laptop refused to turn on and he wanted to strike it against the dashboard. At least the queen was safe for the time being, untouched by water.

  Nadia looked at the rear-view mirror. “It gave up! It’s heading back to the city!”

  Marshall groaned, holding a thumb up as he sagged in his seat.

  It took an hour weaving through different routes to reach the general vicinity of the airbase, at which point they had to pay close attention to road signs. At last, they pulled up on the same tarmac they had left earlier. Razif emerged from the hangar, waving to them in surprise.

  “What happened?” he asked as they got out of the car.

  The Sentries looked themselves over. They were covered in dirt, their clothes stiffened with dried lake water and blood.

  “We lost our plane,” Nadia said mournfully. “And almost everything else we had.”

  Marshall held up the queen’s cage. “But not what matters most. We’ll still need to find a way to get this to our contact, though.”

  Razif snorted, then smiled. “You’re at an airbase. There are a few planes here that should still work. There’s a Beechcraft King Air in the hangar that is fueled up.” He nodded at Marshall’s arms; the swim had washed off most of the blood and now he could make out several lacerations on his skin. “Maybe you should take care of that first. Where is that magical remedy of yours? Also lost?”

  “Unfortunately,” Marshall said.

  “There are first aid kits here, and also fatigues. You can take them if you can find them.”

  “Thank you,” Nadia said. “You don’t intend to stay here, do you?”

  Marshall saw a fog of emotions cloud the man’s face. He’d be going to an empty home. But he can’t stay here, either.

  Nadia must have realized that as well. She tossed Razif the key to their car. “You’ll have better use of this, sir.”

  The colonel caught it and stared at it for a moment. “There is a place I could go . . .” He looked back at them. “But I should stay with you until—”

  “It’s alright,” Marshall said. “We won’t be here long. And we’ve survived everything so far.”

  “Yes, you have.” Razif shook their hands and got into the vehicle. “Be safe, friends. May Allah protect you.”

  The Sentries saw him off, then stood in their spots for another minute in silence. Nadia was the one to break it with a declaration: “I am so very exhausted. I might pass out.”

  “Me too,” Marshall said. “But we should probably take care of our injuries before they get infected.”

  “I’ll go find us some new clothes, then we can get going.”

  “Nadi, let’s rest. It wouldn’t be safe for you to keep flying.”

  She sighed, doubling over with her hands on her knees. “You’re right. We can take a nap in the plane.”

  As they trudged toward the hangars, Marshall let out a long, weary exhale. What a day, he thought. And it’s only noon.

  The Lodge was silent.

  Victor, Deverell, and the friends had made it to the safe house three and a half hours past midnight. They’d been drained and no one spoke during the entire ride. The moment they got through the front door, the Sentries looked over the team’s injuries in the spacious basement-level medbay before the teenagers dragged themselves up to the main floor and locked themselves in their separate rooms.

  Gareth, Deverell’s twin, had awoken to greet them and the brothers headed into the kitchen to fill each other in on what had occurred while they’d been apart. Then they, too, retreated to their own quarters.

  That left Victor alone in the open-concept living room on the third floor, sipping water from a glass as he stared out of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. The city wasn’t visible from the Lodge’s location in the French Alps, but the glowing aurora was. It had started to fade out at the edges and would most likely be gone altogether in a day or two.

  He unconsciously cupped his free hand around his throat, recalling the fangs that had nearly carved into him.

  And the elderly couple they couldn’t save.

  Sometimes he pushed away gruesome images he had seen firsthand. Other times he played them over and over, pausing or taking the memory apart frame by frame. This was one of those times.

  He lost track of how long he’d been standing in place, and only came to when something tugged at the back of his jeans. Looking down, he found a wide-eyed girl gazing up at him, black hair mussed from sleep. Using sign language, she said, “Welcome home, V.”

  He slowly crouched so they were at the same level, thankful as always that the girl’s mother had taught her American sign language along with the Russian and Indian varieties. He signed back. “Hello, Anya. How come you’re awake?”

  “Bad dream.”

  “About what?”

  She frowned for a few moments. “I can’t remember. But it was bad.”

  “I have those dreams too. You wake up feeling misaligned.”

  “Mis . . . aligned?”

  Victor sometimes forgot that, although she was advanced in communication for her age and highly intelligent, Anya was still just six years old. “Like something doesn’t feel right. Like your insides are going in different directions.”

  She nodded vigorously, then pointed at the long cuts on his hands. “What happened?” she asked, finally speaking. Her voice, as sweet as it was, came out so small.

  Victor continued to use his hands since, upon inspection, he saw that she wasn’t wearing her hearing aids. “I fought monsters earlier. They scratched me a bit.”

  “Is it the monsters my mommy made?”

  He reeled back. “What?”

  The girl shied away from him. He quickly tempered his reaction. “Did Gareth tell you?”

  “Yes. I wanted to know when she would come back.” Anya must have seen a coldness seep into his eyes because she hastily added with her hands, “I kept asking when he didn’t tell me. Please don’t get mad at him.”

  Victor searched her face, then rubbed his own and sighed. “Was it difficult to learn about your mom?”

  “I don’t know. Uncle G said she did things that hurt people, but that she was in pain too. And that sometimes pain makes people do bad things. But I really love her.”

  “I’m sure she really loves you too.”

  A sheen edged into Anya’s brown eyes. “G says I can’t see her again but he won’t tell me why.”

  Victor stared at her as one of her tears fell, then another. The next thing he knew, a memory spiraled sickeningly out from the depths of his consciousness. A car, totaled and on fire. He saw his twelve-year-old hands pulling two younger kids in the backseat to safety before he started running back for the adults.

  The car exploded. The force threw him back and he hit the asphalt rolling, everything a blu
r. Gasping, he got his unsteady feet under him and looked back toward the vehicle. He heard himself screaming.

  There was nothing left but a husk, the bodies inside charred beyond recognition.

  Anya sniffled, drawing him out of the memory. Not quite realizing what he was doing, he put his glass on the floor, hesitated for a moment, then gathered her into his arms and stood up. He turned back to the window, throat working to quell emotions he wanted to keep buried.

  Anya settled against him, head tucked on his shoulder with her forehead pressed to his neck, little hands clutching his shirt. He let her rest that way for a bit, then made her look at him. With some difficulty he used one hand to sign, “One day we will tell you why you won’t be able to see your mom. But tonight, you should sleep.”

  Her gaze drifted away before retuning to him. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said, then settled against him once more and looked out the windows.

  The snow had started to fall again, wreathing the peaks around the Lodge in a fresh layer of powder. The frozen lake below mirrored the full moon overhead. Within minutes, Anya’s breathing had evened out as she slipped into a slumber.

  Victor tentatively touched his nose to the crown of her head, closing his eyes. What now? Where do we all go from here?

  * * *

  Only one living being was up by noon. Chief snuffled Victor’s face, eliciting a groan from him as he tried to push the wolfdog away. “Not now. Please.”

  But Chief would not have it. He seized the man’s wrist firmly in his jaws and tugged. Grumbling, Victor forced himself upright on the mattress that rested on the carpet of his loft bedroom. “Okay, okay! Fine! Let’s get some food in you, jeez . . .”

  His foot bumped against his bag as he was pulled toward the stairs and a large vial of violet liquid rolled out. He hastily toed it back into its hidden space. Chief growled, and Victor growled back. “I’m coming! Just don’t need anyone sneaking up here and finding something that isn’t meant for them.”

  Once they descended to the third floor, Chief padded past the kitchen and went down two more flights of stairs. Still groggy, Victor followed the wolfdog into the basement and was surprised at the sight before him.

  Tegan lay curled up on the practice mats in sweats and a t-shirt, white hand-wraps wound around her closed fists and a punching bag hung from the ceiling close by. As Chief retreated upstairs, Victor knelt on one knee and shook her elbow. Her head twitched but her eyes didn’t open. He shook her more forcefully. She eased awake, apparently confused to see him, then looked up and noticed the punching bag. Grunting, she pulled herself up and scrubbed at her eyes. “Sorry. Must’ve fallen asleep.”

  “When did you come down here?”

  “After you put Anya back to bed and went to your room.”

  Victor raised an eyebrow. Tegan shrugged, then grimaced and grasped one of her injured shoulders. Blood had seeped through the gauze. Victor jerked his head toward the medbay and headed over. She followed him to the far end of the basement and sat on a padded examining table, sullenly undoing the strips of cloth around her hands as he gathered some supplies. Setting them down beside her, he got to work treating her wounds without a word.

  Tegan stared off, gaze unfocused. “We’re lucky this place still has power.”

  “Thank whichever paranoid Sentry decided to build a Faraday cage into the structure decades ago,” he said.

  They slipped into silence again until Victor finished re-dressing her shoulders. “So, why did you come down here to punch things when you’re in no shape to strain yourself?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I reached out to Marshall but he wasn’t able to chat. Something about running from a Phoenix site with an important laptop and some kind of a creature.”

  Victor filed that bit of information away for later retrieval. “Still not hearing the why.”

  Tegan deflated, looking for all the world like she was about to topple to the floor. Victor stood ready to catch her, but she held herself up. When she spoke, she sounded alarmingly close to tears. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Everything feels off. If Jag was here, he would’ve done more in Geneva.”

  “Having his abilities would have been a big help.”

  “It’s not that. Not just that. We’re on opposite sides of this . . . this spectrum of emotions. He’ll usually throw himself in headlong to protect at least a few people, rarely thinking twice. I’m too pragmatic. Too fixated on the bigger picture. People are gonna die anyway, right? So what’s a few more if the rest of us, the ones who are supposed to fulfill the prophecy, can live to fight another day? I shouldn’t be thinking this way, I know. But that’s the truth.” She scrubbed at her eyes again. “A person could go crazy trying to work this out.”

  A deeply unsettling familiarity knotted Victor’s stomach. He knew what she was talking about, but she was far too young to be having such thoughts pollute her mind. Pulling a side chair toward her, he sank into it and rubbed his forehead.

  “You’re not—” he started, then cleared his throat. “It’s not unusual to think that way. The pragmatism part, I mean. It does take effort and time to mitigate away from the extreme. But the extreme feels safe, I get that. It lets you think clearer. Work easier. Sometimes at the expense of others.” Tegan turned her head toward him but didn’t meet his eyes as he continued. “You’re also leader pro tem. That kind of responsibility can be too much for most people.”

  “It was a deal I struck with Jag. I really thought I could handle it.” She snorted, pressing her fingertips to her closed eyelids. “Arrogance.”

  “If you were really arrogant, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’re aware of your actions and thoughts. And it’s eating at you. Arrogance doesn’t talk with the level of realization you do.”

  “I feel like—I know this would work out better if all five of us were together. Jag and I could balance each other out.”

  “Maybe. But he’s not here. You need to find balance on your own.”

  Tegan seemed to fold into herself at his words. “I’m just afraid that if I move away from logic, I’m gonna get crushed from the weight of everything. Working without emotions is what’s helping me put one foot in front of the other.”

  Victor twisted the silver rings on his middle fingers, fighting to keep his pulse even. This should never have been their war to fight. You don’t put the weight of the world on kids when they still haven’t figured themselves out.

  But who was he going to fault, the Elders? You don’t shoot the messenger. The universe, some higher power? Good luck getting that number.

  He looked back at the teenager slumped in front of him, dark locks covering her face. A touch of sadness whispered to life somewhere in the depths of his chest before he extinguished it in the next breath.

  On the floor above, people had started to awaken. There were footsteps and mumbled exchanges of words, and one unnecessarily loud yawn that Victor recognized as Gareth’s. Tucking the chair away, he faced Tegan and inclined his head to the side. She pushed her shoulders back and down, got off the examination table, and trailed him up the stairs.

  The eight of them had their breakfast, a simple meal of scrambled eggs and the last of their bread, toasted. Chief devoured kibble from his bowl, the cracking and crunching the only sound filling their ears. When the satellite phone had rung, they’d all froze until Victor tentatively answered. Much to everyone’s relief, it was Kenzo—he’d grown concerned when he was unable to reach the Sentry. Once the SONEs had been informed by their Head of Sanctuary about the goings-on of the wider world, he’d decided to sneak a call from one of the phones on site that shared the same satellite network that all Phoenix communication lines used.

  Then, as the friends entertained Anya for a while, the Sentries moved off to the meeting space and stood around the large table.

  “I dusted off the ham radio before going to bed,” Gareth said, ruffling his shaggy sheaf of chestnut hair with both hands as though trying to wake himself up mo
re. “It’s in the tech room if you want to give it a listen, Vic. From what I’ve already gathered from a few dozen other hams, the story is that metropolitan and other high-density areas are crippled completely. There must have been at least a dozen high-yield, high-altitude blasts like the one you saw. Nuclear is the only viable conclusion, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to knock out the entire planet’s power and communications infrastructure. There’s talk going around that there were possibly hundreds of portable EMPs set off at strategic locations around the world. Emergency backup generators will keep some essential services going, as long as the fuel lasts. Immediate loss of life was mostly limited to air travel, but even that’s been thankfully minimal since most flights were already grounded.”

  Deverell lowered himself to rest his forearms on the table. Shadows circled his eyes. “This has quickly become an impossible situation.”

  “The timing of this attack can’t be coincidence,” Gareth added. “Just when countries started rebuilding their food distribution and supply lines, they’re struck down with EMPs. We’re staring down the barrel of another round of famine, and this time it might actually be worse. Aerial distribution of the cure will be affected and we could see another wave of the pandemic.” He struck the table with a fist. “Phoenix is always a step ahead! We thought we had the upper hand, but they played their card before the authorities could look into the cargo ships at the ports. Bastards.”

  “Speaking of the devil,” Deverell said, “their new beasties are all over the world, along with these abominations that come from the sky. No one has been able to get a good look at one and live to tell, so there’s not much information.”

  “They’re death-bringers,” said Kody behind them. “And they’re a whole ’nother level of creepy.”