The Preston Six Collection: (Book 1, 2 and 3)

by Ryan, Matt

“What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Hank said.

  The aircraft was smaller than the one they stole from MM to get off the island the first time. It was built to fit four people. Lucas climbed up to the front passenger seat.

  “Shotgun,” he said.

  “Whatever,” Hank replied.

  Harris pushed a button and the craft hummed with power. In a minute, they were flying over the ocean.

  AN HOUR HAD PASSED AND they were flying over the white snow of the South Pole. Harris glanced at his Panavice and did a double take. “Oh no.”

  “What is it?” Lucas asked.

  “MM’s sending troops to Sanct.”

  Hank jumped up from his seat. “The girls are there.”

  POLY TAPPED THE GLASS WINDOW with her fingernail. The city below moved with cars and people. It had a different life to it in the morning. The mystery of the darkness was pulled away by the bright morning sun. The Citadel in the middle of the city looked dull, losing its glow in the daylight, but the rest of the city felt right to her. She even had a new dress to wear.

  She held the dress Travis sent over this morning; a strange, heavy black dress with white lace, like a funeral dress. Nothing like the fun outfits he’d sent her every other day. She laid the dress over the chair and was glad for her day clothes, consisting of black pants, black shirt and a jacket. He had made them special for their fighting exercises.

  She looked forward every morning to their sparring sessions. Travis had a stunning knowledge of every kind of weaponry. By day, they sparred; and the nights were spent running around the city to the various clubs and restaurants. Travis seemed to know every person in the city, and they knew him. She felt the small white pill in her pocket, rolled it on her fingertips, careful not to crush it. She wanted to save it for tonight.

  “I think this thing’s broken,” Julie clanked the door of what looked like a microwave.

  Poly turned to face Julie, her head felt foggy as she walked toward the couch. “Just get something from the pantry.” Poly sat on the couch.

  “There’s nothing but weird bars and bags of chips left,” Julie said. She opened the tall pantry door in the small kitchen and rummaged around the various snacks lined up on the shelves.

  “Be careful, they might charge a fortune for a bag of peanuts,” Poly said.

  Julie plucked a blue bag and carried it to the white couch in the center of the family room. She sat in a heap next to Poly.

  “What’s wrong?” Poly asked.

  “Nothing.” Julie opened the bag and pulled out what looked like a square cookie.

  Poly sighed and leaned back in the couch. She knew something was bothering her, but she didn’t have the effort to get it out of her. “Lucas?”

  Julie glared at her and then softened her look and pulled another cookie from the bag. “I’m just tired.”

  “Sorry about that,” Poly said.

  For the last few nights, Poly woke from horrible nightmares, screaming. Julie would run into the room each time and spend time calming her. She couldn’t even remember the dreams, but the terrified feeling hung with her.

  “No, it’s not you. I’m tired of running, hiding. Tired of being hunted, tired of barely knowing what’s going on around me.” Julie set the bag of cookies on the glass coffee table and stared into Poly’s eyes. “Do you ever ask, how did we get into this? Is there even a way out? Or will this just be our new normal?”

  Poly had thought of those things, but to have the question hang in the air made her uncomfortable. “We’re here to save Samantha and Joey, put an end to MM, and get revenge for Nathen, Compry, and Almadon.” She said Paul in her head, but left them out for fear of explaining what happened on Mutant Isle.

  Julie lowered her head. “A month ago, we were swimming in Preston Lake.” She stopped there. Poly was sure she had more to say and waited. “We’ve killed zombies, we’ve world-hopped, been stranded in the ocean, had our friends stolen from us . . . found out how our parents were killed.” Julie paused. “It’s just that us, in here. . . .” Poly waited as her friend struggled to find the words. “For the first time, we have a moment to relax and I feel guilty for letting it happen. I mean, look at this place. Look at how we are living right now, the things we get to do here.”

  She too felt the guilt. How dare she have fun, while her friends suffered? She lied to herself saying it was all for the mission, but that wasn’t true. She wanted an escape. She wanted to get the visions out of her head of what she had seen and she felt terrible for wanting it. Julie gazed at her with those intelligent eyes.

  “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known,” Poly said. “You tell me what we should do today?”

  Julie shook her head. “I don’t know.” She chuckled. “I’ve been talking online with someone.”

  “What? Like a guy?” Poly was shocked. Julie was so happy with Lucas, she never really thought about her with anyone else.

  “No it’s a woman, Alice. She’s some kind of AI.”

  “AI?”

  “Artificial Intelligence. But MM banned all advanced AI’s. Yet, there she is.”

  “What does it want?”

  “I hacked into her system back at the bunker and she appeared to me on my screen, I nearly pissed myself. At first, she seemed angry, but now she just wants to talk about coding and what I think about optimizing bandwidth.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah, well, I caught her back-dooring me.”

  “This sounds kinky. Where’s Lucas when you need him? He would just die to hear the details.” Poly grinned.

  “Not that, you nerd. She tried grabbing info from me and I caught her. I blocked her from me now . . . but she keeps pinging me.”

  “What do you think she’s after?”

  “That’s it, she only got into my contacts and my pictures. I think she wants to know who we are.”

  Poly shrugged. “So some computer AI is back-dooring you to get to know you better?”

  Julie rolled her eyes. “It’s like Lucas is here.”

  Poly couldn’t help but push it a bit further. “Just tell her your hips don’t lie—you’re in a relationship and you don’t swing that way.”

  “She scares me, Poly.” Julie blurted out, wiping the smile off Poly’s face. “She knows us, knows who we are. I feel like she’s stalking me.”

  “What do you think she wants from you? You have some top secret stuff you’re hiding?”

  “I don’t know. Wait, I’ve been messing with that sound shield design I got from Travis. I think I might be onto something.” Julie walked to the kitchen and picked up her Panavice from the black granite countertops. “Oh no.”

  “What?” Poly stood and looked at Julie’s panicked face.

  “Harris sent me a message, I had it on silent mode.”

  “What did he say?”

  “MM troops were deployed to Sanct.”

  “You think Travis turned us in again?”

  “The way he is with you, I’d be surprised.”

  “Call him.” Poly walked to Julie.

  Julie typed into her Panavice and handed it to Poly. “It’s ringing.”

  Poly held it against her ear, listening to the quick beeps.

  “Travis Denail’s Office, Gladius speaking.” Gladius’s bubbly voice bounced out of the speaker.

  “Gladius, I need to speak to Travis,” Poly said.

  “Is this Poly?” Her bubbly tone changed to venom.

  “Yes, it’s very important I speak to him.”

  “Yeah, well, one of my friends sent me a picture of you and my dad dancing at club Grease.”

  Poly winced. “He was just showing us the city.” She knew how it looked, but she couldn’t tell Gladius she was just using her father to get to Joey.

  “Oh, come on. You think you’re the first pretty little thing that caught my dad’s attention?”

  Poly didn’t know how to respond to that remark. “I really need to talk to him, please,” she final
ly uttered.

  “The last one even tried to get me to call her ‘Mom.’”

  Poly closed her eyes and tried to come up with words. She badly wanted to tell Gladius the truth. “I swear, I’m not like those other girls.”

  “Whatev’s.”

  A few clicks and Travis’s voice appeared. “Hello?”

  “Travis, its Poly. Did you call MM on us again?”

  A pause. “No, why would you think I would do that?”

  “There’s a MM group on its way to Sanct as we speak, and it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”

  “That was before.” He sounded hurt. “Yeah, it’s the fifteenth. MM comes every fifteenth. They usually poke around for a few days and are gone. Nothing to worry about.”

  Poly glanced at Julie who gave her a questioning look. “Let me call you back.” She pressed the end call button on the screen.

  “Can you see if MM arrives here on the fifteenth of each month?” Poly handed Julie her Panavice.

  In a few minutes, Julie found it. “Yep, like clockwork.”

  Poly breathed in and extended her hand for the Panavice. Julie plopped it on her palm.

  “Another day of fun with Travis then?” Julie’s tone seeped with contempt.

  “Harris said, get close,” Poly reminded her.

  “How close? And to what end? Have you even pushed him about what we want him to do?”

  “I only want to get Joey and Samantha back.” She would push him, the timing hadn’t been right yet. Push too hard or too soon and he’d never find the answer on his own. Travis needed to think it was his own idea to help.

  Julie sat back on the couch and leaned back. She let out a long sigh. “I see you each morning and night, looking out those windows. I see the way you are in the clubs, it’s like you turn into a different person.”

  Poly looked away and felt the small bump in her pocket. She felt embarrassed about it, but when she took the pill, she could temporarily forget everything she’d seen. She could let it fall off her shoulders and have fun. Besides, the red pill became a quick reality dose when the time came.

  “I’m just doing the job I was sent here to do,” Poly said, still not able to look Julie in the eyes.

  “I hope so. You have people counting on you.”

  Julie threw a fifty-pound bag on her back. Poly could bear the weight, if only for a while longer. She looked out the window to the tops of the skyscrapers forming a circle around the city.

  Poly pushed the call button. This time Gladius put her straight through.

  “We trust you,” Poly said.

  “Good, because today is one of the biggest holidays of the year, I would have hated for you to have missed it,” Travis said.

  “What holiday?”

  “Dead Day,” Travis said in a matter of fact tone. “And make sure you two wear the outfits I sent.”

  Poly groaned and glanced at the black dress she laid over the chair. It wasn’t as much wearing the dress, it was pretty in a strange way, but it also meant she wouldn’t be training blades today. “Fine.”

  “Meet me at the car in thirty minutes.”

  TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, THEY MADE their way through the front doors of the building. Poly adjusted the lace reaching to her chin. A few people walked down the sidewalk in front of the building with similar morbid garb. Glancing at Julie, she was glad not to have a large black hat covering half her face. The building’s double-glass door slid open and Travis strode out.

  Poly saw a man behind him, but he stopped and moved from her sight. She had seen the man several times, lurking in the background. She wondered if he was part of Travis’s security.

  “You look lovely, ladies,” Travis said. He wore a slim black suit and with black paint on his face, like fingers reaching across his face.

  “Is this like Halloween?” Poly asked.

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  They climbed into the limo. Travis smiled and she saw he was in a good mood. Was he excited about the Dead Day stuff? Julie elbowed her and she shot her a scowl.

  “Travis, while we appreciate the hospitality, we ultimately came here to get your support,” Poly said in her most diplomatic voice.

  Travis’s perfect smile faltered. “Oh come on now, let’s not talk biz on a holiday.”

  “I’m sorry, but our friends need us. Time is of the essence.”

  “Fine,” Travis let out. He straightened his shirt and sat back in his chair, looking out the window. “What can I do for you ladies?”

  “You have a senate meeting with Marcus in a week,” Poly said.

  Travis shook his head. “Yeah, I can’t believe that guy is back.”

  Poly braced herself. “We need you to have a plus one for that meeting, make it your bodyguard or something.”

  “My bodyguard? I don’t need anyone to guard me.” He laughed.

  “It won’t be an actual bodyguard, it’ll be Harris.” He didn’t laugh this time. His usual light smile fading, as his eye’s narrowed. He leaned forward and Poly felt for a knife at her side where she’d cut a small slit in the dress.

  “You think I’ll let Harris go with me, anywhere?”

  “We have to get close to him, there’s no other way.”

  “Harris walked right through the front door not too long ago.”

  Poly clasped her hands together. “This is for our friends. It isn’t right what he’s doing.”

  “Welcome to Vanar.” Travis rubbed his chin and stared at a man in tattered black clothes. “He controls us, you know. If we stray too far, we get cut off.”

  Poly’s face crunched up in a question, and Julie stepped in to respond. “But you make it here.”

  Travis raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “Orange, you make Orange.”

  Travis gaped at Julie. Poly moved her body closer to her. She felt the heat Travis sent their way, a knife was hidden somewhere in that black suit of his.

  “What makes you think that?” Travis whispered. Poly didn’t need Julie’s data to know she was right.

  “The MM deliveries, they deliver the key ingredient each month, the fifteenth,” Julie said.

  “Clever. But I’d keep that information to yourself.” Travis leaned back in his chair and relaxed his posture as he shook his head. “You can’t beat him, you know.”

  “Who, Marcus?”

  “Yes,” Travis said.

  “He’s human, he can be beat.”

  “You don’t get it, he’s everywhere. He sees everything. His intelligence is off even our highest charts. His physical abilities have no equal. And now that he has your boy, he will be at full capacity.” Travis stared at the buildings as they moved by.

  “We can try,” Poly said.

  “And you will die.”

  “Better to die in defense of the ones you love, than sit in self-induced ignorance,” Julie said.

  A smile crept in on his face and he shook his head. “The joys of having a short life, you don’t have the time to appreciate it.”

  “Don’t you want to see him gone?” Poly asked.

  Travis turned to face Julie with a heated look of anger. “I want him dead more than any man.” He slammed his fist on the black leather. “He killed my girls.” Tears built in his eyes, his chest heaved up and down as he breathed.

  “I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Poly looked at Travis as he withered, with a mixed emotion of anger and sadness. She respected the emotion, it was a thicker layer on a man that she had only seen as thin.

  “Everything is closed today for the holiday, we’ll have to make plans tomorrow,” Travis said in a distant voice.

  “Sure, we can make plans tomorrow,” Poly said with an elated feeling building inside her. She’d done it.

  The limo turned right, Poly leaned in her seat, feeling the strange sensation of moving a different direction. She pushed the clear button on her arm rest and the ceiling became see-through glass. Large buildings on each side of the limo c
ast a shadow over them. It stopped and a guard holding a rifle waved them on. She’d never seen a checkpoint before, never a guard for that matter.

  They traveled between two skyscrapers. Were they leaving the inner circle of the city? They’d never traveled beyond its confines before. The car lurched forward. The buildings changed as they left the shiny interior of the city, everything became dulled, a paste smeared on windows, dust tossed on walls.

  “Where’re we going?” Julie asked.

  “To the stadium, I got you private box seats.” Travis spoke as if he was mentioning the sky was blue today.

  Poly looked ahead and saw the large square building with a filled parking lot surrounding it. The limo passed a man with an ax in his back, he walked with one leg dragging. Her eyes went wide before seeing the rubber ax bend as he walked and the makeup on his face. People in similar costumes lined the parking lot as they pulled in.

  “Would you mind if we go dark?” Travis said as they approached a crowd of people.

  “No, go ahead,” Poly said.

  The limo went to dark privacy mode. The dark tint on the windows gave the morbidly dressed people a more sinister feel.

  “Like Halloween,” Julie whispered.

  Poly nodded, but didn’t completely agree. Halloween had a mixture of super heroes, comedic, scary, and skanky. This just had death. Each person was dead in some way, like pretend zombies.

  “These people would love Ryjack,” Poly said.

  Travis chuckled while looking out the window. “The stadium’s right up here.”

  The car drove into a tunnel under the stadium and parked next to a man in a black suit. He opened the door.

  Travis stepped out of the vehicle. He poked his head back in. “You coming?”

  Poly and Julie shuffled out of the car. An elevator took them to level sixteen. Travis walked quickly down the tiled path and opened the door to a room sixty-four.

  “It’s just for you two. I have to put on the show, but I’ll be back later.”

  Poly stared at him as she entered the open door. “What kind of holiday is this?”

  “Our world’s become obsessed with death, it’s the taboo. All year they suppress it, terrified of it, but today, they let it out.” Travis closed the door behind him.