"Could be. But what happens if they aren't ready when the Swimmers roll in?"
"Then they're fucked. But we aren't. For our team, it'll be just another day at the office."
"You think?"
"We've spent two years minimizing their population. I don't think they have much left to throw at us. I bet this is a last ditch Hail Mary." Tristan stopped at a break in the buildings. A pathway led down to the churning sea. "You know what else I think? We should go swimming."
Ness scowled. "Santa Monica Bay is full of sharks. Anyway, it's freezing."
"Then I guess we'll have to find a way to get warm afterwards. Got any ideas?"
She was already jogging down the steps to the pale beach below. After a second of internal grumbling, Ness grinned and started after her.
* * *
As he came within view of the cabin, Lowell stopped, breath catching in his throat. For an instant, he was dead certain the front door would fly open and unleash a laughing seven-year-old.
The door stayed shut. He blinked. Those quiet, strangely pleasant days after the plague had run its course, they were long gone. Cut short by the arrival of the ship. The world had changed since then. So had he.
He moved on. A curtain rustled. The door opened. Randy walked out onto the porch. "How'd it go?"
"I got her word." Lowell stopped in the yard. "Ready to head back to Catalina?"
"What for? Do they need our help?"
"To bring you home."
Randy's face hardened. "I don't want to go back."
"Come on, kid. He's your dad."
"Is he?"
Lowell set down his pack. "You calling your mom a liar?"
"Most people don't even have blood families anymore. They get to choose who's family. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do the same."
"That's not how it works."
"He doesn't own me, Lowell." Randy walked down the steps, boards clunking. "He's wrong about me. I can survive on my own. That's what I'm going to do."
"I think you should go home," Lowell said. "But you're right. You'll be fine. I can't make you go."
The boy lowered his eyes. "Do you want me to go somewhere else?"
"Isn't that what you just said you wanted?"
"I don't want to go home. That isn't my home." Randy's throat bobbed. "But I don't want to leave."
A pang tapped through Lowell's guts. Ought to send the kid away. There was no replacing what had been lost. Even trying was wrong—it implied that Garrett could be replaced. As if the boy had waded into that lake and, five years later, stepped out on a farm on Catalina, waiting to be found. Didn't work that way.
Yet he knew that, didn't he? He knew that. He also knew that, in its way, everything he'd done in the last five years had been a search for the one thing he couldn't have back. You couldn't replace things. People. Shouldn't even try.
But if you were careful, maybe you could accept new things for what they were.
"You sure?" Lowell picked up his pack and headed for the porch. "Los Angeles isn't the only place in the world. We can go wherever we want."
* * *
As part of the districting process, Raina traveled to each of Anson's settlements to meet with those who lived there. She didn't understand why he had isolated his groups in this way, and made some effort to convince them to consolidate, but mostly, she went to listen to how they wished to be a part of the new order.
She allotted two days to these visits, then headed back to the Dunemarket, accompanied by a small band of warriors. The city was always quiet, but it felt unusually so, as if it were resting after the turmoil. Perhaps it was the quiet of someone anxious about what the next day will bring.
As they neared the market, one of the scouts loped ahead. She returned looking mildly concerned.
"Mauser's waiting for you in the Dunemarket," she said. "He says it's urgent."
Raina stepped over a fallen palm frond. "What about?"
"He wouldn't say. But I think we should approach from the south entrance. It rained while we were gone and the northern entrance is all muddy."
Raina smelled a rat, but she agreed to the detour, which was only a matter of blocks. They circled around the hills of the Seat and came into the market from the south. The road jigged through the hills, then straightened out as it descended.
Below her, hundreds of people thronged the street. Raina's heart jolted—had the aliens come? Were they preparing to flee?—but instead of carrying guns, they bore signs and brightly colored clothes. And nearly all were smiling.
Seeing her, they cheered and threw flowers into the air. Children battered each other with cardboard swords. The adults broke into a song she'd never heard, a tale of a girl who cast down a giant. Raina walked downhill in a daze. Georgia emerged from the crowd, grinning, her knights arrayed around her—she hadn't gone home yet after all. The air whirled with the smell of roasting chicken, potatoes, and grilled fish.
Mauser strolled forward, an orange poppy sticking from the zipper of his leather jacket. "Why, Raina! What are you doing here?"
Raina threw her hands wide. "What is this?"
"Well, I know you haven't spent much time around humans, but this is what we call a 'celebration.'"
"Yes, but what for?"
"What do you think? For you! For uniting everything!" He bowed low. "May I welcome you to our very first Parade of the Queen."
She stopped in the middle of the street. "I refuse to go any further. This shouldn't be about me."
"Come on, Raina. This isn't really about you. It's a community-building exercise. Not to mention a test of our new emergency evacuation system. In fact, the real crime would be if we hadn't summoned the entire empire to our bitchin' party."
"Then call it… Angels Day. The day in which we remember those who died to give us this city."
Mauser sighed theatrically. "Agreed. Angels Day it is. Now can we get to the feasting and drinking?"
Raina gazed down on all those who had gathered for the occasion. There were far more of them than had faced off in their recent battles. It was more people than she had seen in one place since the plague. Together, they looked to be so many, so strong—and yet they all fit into this single stretch of street.
Never before had she understood in pure numbers how vulnerable their future was. Yet rather than frightening her, this only hardened her resolve to protect them.
She entered the cloud of smiling faces. Hands reached out to touch her. She reached back. Her stomach lurched; they were lifting her, passing her along like a leaf in a stream. For once, she let herself be the one who was carried.
* * *
It felt like Ness had barely gone to sleep, but some asshole was pounding on the cabin door. He curled on his side, pillow clamped to his head. Tristan swore and got up.
Light spilled into the room as she opened the door. "What?"
"Don't hit me," Sprite said. "Just come outside."
"I have an alternate proposal: tell me what's so important, then I will go back to sleep."
"Guys! Do you really think I like busting in on your sweaty little love nest? Just come outside."
There was something up with his voice. Something Ness didn't like at all. He swung out of bed. "We'll be right out."
They dressed and headed up the ramp to the top of the sub. It was dawn and the entire world was ash gray. Sebastian was already there, along with Sprite and Sam.
Ness didn't have to ask. His knees went funny. If Tristan hadn't grabbed his arm, he would have fallen off the side of the ship.
* * *
Randy had been right: he quite probably could have survived on his own. The kid was a good worker. He'd picked up a lot of things at the family farm. Sharp mind, too. Could use some more confidence in himself, but that didn't stop him from experimenting with the crops and cobbling together the tools and equipment he needed to kit out the cabin.
For the time being, they'd decided to stay. It seemed that Raina had unified just abo
ut the entire L.A. Basin. He doubted any other cities in the country were as safe as the one beneath them.
Besides, the L.A. weather had made him soft. It was early morning in mid-January, yet it was almost fifty degrees out. After the sun had had a few hours to do its thing, he wouldn't even need a jacket.
He hiked out to the ridge. These days, it wasn't about checking on the city, but just to watch it be there. Somehow, it made him feel calm.
This time, when he came to the top, he froze. His breath caught in his throat. He knew he needed to move—to get Randy, grab their gear, and run—but all he could do was stare.
* * *
As it turned out, Angels Day wasn't such a good name, either—in whole, it lasted not for one day, but four.
As Mauser had wished, there was feasting. Drinking. At night, they built bonfires and launched fireworks. To the crowds, Mia told stories she'd seen and heard on the road during her years as a tom. Many of the people stuck with those they knew, but some, emboldened by drink and cheer, circulated among those they didn't. More than once, Raina heard people swapping stories of the war against Anson. It wasn't just her own people reminiscing, but also former members of the Sworn, eager to give their side's account and add it to the history of their new nation.
It was so new it didn't have a name yet. Raina was in no rush to give it one. Names were of great importance. In time, the land would utter a name for itself.
But when the fifth day of the celebration came, and she saw what the dawn had brought, she doubted the land would ever have the chance.
* * *
For Walt, the last few months had not been his favorites.
He and Carrie had had big plans. First, obviously, was to kill that son of a bitch Anson. Then, partly out of spite, and partly because it was the right thing to do, he intended to liberate the captives who were still on the mothership and see about leading a little slave rebellion up in the Heart.
Then, as he and Carrie had been scouting around the hills above their stupid little fortress, he'd slipped on a rock and broken his ankle. It was ridiculous. After all the crazy shit he'd pulled off, he'd been put out of commission by walking wrong. As he rested up—tended to by Carrie, who took great amusement in his helplessness—he had three months to dwell on this most recent reminder that life was absolutely, overwhelmingly, and undeniably unfair.
The silver lining was that all this time off gave him time to reconsider his course of action. It made a lot more sense to come at Anson and stir up his people after Walt had liberated the ship and (hopefully) recruited its prisoners to his cause. Preparing for this took weeks. Not only did he have to find a way to scout the ship, which had required an absurd combination of cunning and luck, but he then had to put together enough guns to arm his would-be army. After years of being turned over by the survivors, the pickings were slim.
In time, though, they were ready. He and Carrie made their way to Manhattan Beach, set up their base of operations… and discovered the assholes had closed up the underwater tunnel to the ship.
He was ready to march straight to the Heart, vault over the walls, and throttle Anson in his sleep, but Carrie convinced him to wait. Either the People of the Stars would reopen the tunnel, or the two of them would come up with a different way to get out to the ship.
They'd been on the verge of solving that problem when all hell broke loose in the Heart. As happy as he was to see the People of the Stars driven before their enemies, he was equally infuriated when he returned to their Manhattan house and discovered the boat they'd organized to retrieve the slaves had been stolen.
His response to this latest setback was to get good and drunk. For once, his plans went off without a hitch, so he celebrated his success by getting drunk for three more nights. Feeling refreshed, if dreadfully hungover, he and Carrie traveled to the Heart to see if the new management wanted to give them a hand with the mothership.
There, they were told the land's leader—who, insanely, was apparently a teenage girl—held her court in San Pedro. By the time they got there, they were told they'd just missed Raina, who was now gallivanting around L.A. on some kind of victory tour.
All the while, Carrie had been battling a bad cough that just kept on getting worse. Walt made the executive decision to return to Manhattan, dose her up from their stash of antibiotics, and try again once she'd recovered.
She slept a lot. To kill time, he broke into beachfront houses to see how the millionaires had lived. The answer: well-decoratedly, and with shitloads of TVs. He found the odd item of value, though, and with no way to watch any of those glorious TVs, looting was the best entertainment he had.
With her coughing, Carrie tended to wake him earlier than he liked, but there was something nice about strolling around the beach during first light. That morning, he got up to do just that. Halfway down the sloped street, gazing out to sea, his brain went into vapor lock. His foot missed the ground. He crumpled and fell. A distant part of him was afraid he'd reinjured his ankle, but he was far too distracted to notice the pain.
Was he drunk? Nope: he'd just woken up, and had only had a single drink the night before. Was he hallucinating? Philosophically, you could never really be sure, but he hadn't taken any other drugs and everything else felt normal. Too normal to be a dream.
He wished very hard that he was drunk, stoned, or insane. Because if he wasn't—if he was operating on the plane of clear-headed reality—then that meant the second gigantic ship now hovering above Santa Monica Bay was real, too.
FROM THE AUTHOR
Hello everyone! RELAPSE may be over, but the Breakers series isn't. There's just one book left to go. If you want to make sure you know when it's out, please sign up for my mailing list (http://eepurl.com/oTR6j). The only emails I send are for new releases. No spam, and the list will never be shared. My word as a gutbrother.
MORE BY ME
I've started writing the far future of the Breakers series, too. Want to check it out? Start with REBEL. My other books, including space opera and epic fantasy, can be found here.
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Table of Contents
I: DAYS OF GOLD
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
II: DAYS OF SILVER
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
III: DAYS OF STEEL
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
EPILOGUE
Relapse (Breakers Book 7) Page 41
