A roof covered in conifer branches and pinecones lay beneath her, about ten feet away. There was no other choice than to push her entire body through the window and hope that the leaves and branches would miraculously catch her fall. She held on for as long as she could, thinking skinny thoughts as she wiggled her hips out the window, until finally succumbing to freefall. She pushed off the window with enough momentum to change her position in the air so that she’d land butt-first instead of head-first. The blanket whooshed behind her as her rear landed on the hard metal surface.
“Oww.” Emery opened her eyes and wiggled all ten fingers and toes to test her mobility. After they responded like they were supposed to, she stood up. She wobbled over the pinecones that had broken her fall and carefully ventured to the edge of the roof to gaze out into the distance. I’m definitely on a mountaintop.
For miles and miles, all she could see were trees and mountainous terrain, branches swaying violently as harsh gusts of wind made their way through the wilderness. She sat on the edge of the roof, contemplating a safe way to scale down the mountain. There weren’t many options. Her eyes landed on a hefty pine tree standing just a few feet away from her. With a running start, she could probably jump and grab hold of one of the thicker branches, then work her way down to the ground. She observed the area in its entirety before deciding it was the best course of action.
She glanced back up at the window she’d just climbed through. No alarms were sounding. No voices
were yelling. I’m still safe.
She took a few steps backward to allow enough room for a running start, but paused as a rustling noise made itself known on the west side of the building. Her first instinct was to hide, but seeing as she was on a roof, completely out in the open, that wasn’t an option.
Her ears on high alert, she mustered up the courage to walk toward the noise, squinting as something came into view. At the far end of the building was an entrance to what looked like a cave. A shadowed figure stood in the middle of the cave’s entrance, beckoning her to approach.
It could be a trap. What if it’s Novak? Or one of his soldiers? This is it, the gig is up.
As much as she wanted to turn and run the other way, her gut told her not to. With caution, she drew closer. An outline of a female formed, one that was wearing a headset and holding a tablet.
Emery could hardly believe her eyes.
It was Naia.
24
The joy Emery felt as soon as she laid eyes on Naia was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She held her arms out for a hug and wrapped Naia in a tight embrace. “It was you all along,” Emery whispered into her ear. Tears pricked her eyes, threatening to fall. “You helped me the whole time. You saved me. You saved us.”
Naia gave her another squeeze before letting go. Her hair was even shorter than last time and was styled into an angled bob. Her face was chapped from the cold weather and Emery wondered how long she’d been on the mountainside. Does Novak know she’s here?
“Come on, we’ll talk about all that later. It’s freezing out here. Let’s get you inside,” Naia said as she pulled Emery inside.
She kept close to Naia, following her into the darkness for what felt like an hour. In reality, it was probably only five minutes. It was shocking just how far back the cave went. They finally reached an area that looked like a living room, bedroom, and kitchen, all in one, like a studio apartment. Or in this case, a studio cave. A wall at the end of the cave separated the main area from whatever was behind it.
“Have a seat,” Naia said, gesturing toward a makeshift chair made of pine branches and needles. “I am so relieved to see that you’re okay. I’m guessing you put the pieces together and figured out it was me helping you all along.” Naia’s face lit up as Emery nodded. “I knew you would.”
Emery sat down, wincing as pine needles poked her in the back. “I had a hunch, but it was actually the omega pendant that confirmed everything.”
Naia tilted her head, eyes blazing with questions. “Do tell.”
Before answering, Emery’s eyes swept the cave. She noticed that the only source of light came from a few tablets that were meticulously set up in each corner of the cave. “Before I do, I have to ask—how are those able to hold a charge?”
Naia shifted her gaze, quickly picking up on the items in question. “Oh, the tablets are charged wirelessly from the signal given off by President Novak’s Chamber,” she explained as she swatted a gnat from her face.
Emery froze. “You’re using the signal from the chamber?” Her cheeks burned crimson. “What if Novak finds out? What if he knows you’re here?”
Naia laughed. “Calm down. Everything here is encrypted. We’re completely off the grid.”
Emery bit her lower lip and shook her head slowly. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“Trust me. You’re talking to the person who manipulated your training without Novak or anyone else in the FCW knowing. I’d say that gives me loads of credibility.” Naia gave a reassuring smile. “So, as much as I want to learn more about what happened with the omega pendant, I’ll be a good host and ask the question: are you hungry?” She nodded toward a SmartMeal machine that sat adjacent to her. “The signal isn’t as strong as I’d like it to be, so it takes awhile for the food to get here, but it’s well worth the wait.” She grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “You look hungry.”
Emery smiled back. At first, she’d thought Naia had been roughing it on the mountainside. Fortunately for her and her grumbling stomach, this wasn’t the case. “I’ll take whatever will get here the fastest.”
“I’ve had a lot of luck with pizza. How does that sound?”
Emery nodded graciously as Naia placed the order with SmartMeal.
“It should be here in about ten minutes,” she said as she turned back around. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Better than being locked in a prison cell for god knows how long,” she muttered, shivering at the thought.
“You poor thing,” Naia cooed. “I hate that you were taken captive. If I could have prevented it, I would have.”
“It’s okay, you’ve done more than enough and I am forever grateful.” She gave Naia a warm smile.
“Okay, so start from the beginning. I want to make sure I understand everything.”
Emery paused for a minute to gather her thoughts and reflect on everything that had happened since she’d last spoken to Naia. All she wanted to do was believe everything the omega pendant had revealed to her in her flashbacks, but what if they were wrong, or worse, been tampered with somehow? What if Naia couldn’t be trusted?
Emery could feel Naia sensing the apprehension in her eyes. “How about I start? Right out of the gate, you need to know that I was never one of them, Emery. I’ve worked for the Seventh Sanctum all along. The Commander—your father—sent me to watch over you. It wasn’t an easy feat getting in with the Federal Commonwealth, but I managed.” She shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice. I had to.”
“So this whole time . . . you’ve really been one of us? On the 7S side?”
She nodded. “I was the one who coordinated with Torin to have him reach out to you. I couldn’t leave Dormance to show you the real world myself—it was too risky. We would have been caught. But I was able to travel back and forth to retrieve the pendant and put it somewhere you would find it. I also knew Torin would lead you to the right conclusion and that you’d switch sides to fight for the right team.”
Emery smiled at the thought. “That was probably the most confusing time of my life, but you were right because he did. If it weren’t for him . . .” Her words caught in her throat. She lowered her eyes to the floor as a fountain of sadness welled inside of her. Where is Torin?
“What exactly did the omega pendant reveal to you?”
Emery welcomed the question—anything to keep her from thinking about Torin. She snapped her eyes up from the floor. “In the flashback, I saw that y
ou were the one who dropped the spherical device into my boot, and that you meticulously placed the capsules and my mother in the training, and that you put the very last capsule of sanaré into the vault for me to find. I watched it all from your point of view,” Emery explained. “It was almost as if I were there, experiencing everything in real time with you. If it weren’t for you, we’d all probably be dead.”
Naia beamed at the recognition. “Everything the pendant revealed to you is the truth. I’m so happy it chose to reveal my actions.”
“How does it work? I mean, how was I able to go back in time and see everything from your point of view?”
“Your mother is a brilliant woman.” A fleeting look of sorrow passed over Naia’s face. “What you experienced is something called the Order of Omega. When you activate the Order, the pendant pulls you back in time and reveals whatever information will benefit you most.”
Emery thought back to the day of her first flashback. She’d been distressed over Torin and Mason, and her conflicting feelings for the two, but when she really thought about it, there had been an underlying issue—something she hadn’t wanted to face at the time, but it was the one thing constantly eating away at her. The one thing that kept her up every single night: Who can I trust?
“You didn’t know who to trust,” Naia said, as if reading her mind.
Emery nodded. “Now I do.”
“I’m happy that you know now. I really am.” Her smile slowly started to fade. “But what I’m still trying to figure out is what happened after deployment. There was a glitch in the system and my monitors went blank, causing me to lose connection with the 7S world.”
Emery brushed a stray hair from her face. “Well, it was all a blur, really. Theo unleashed the lethargum bomb, so I countered with the sanaré, that I now know you hid in the control room. I sliced the wire connecting Theo’s pod to the mainstation, as well as the eleven other pods, before deactivating Dormance, but I guess it was only a temporary deactivation.” She hesitated for a moment, contemplating how to word the next part of her story. “I, uh, pulled a gun on Theo and the others.”
“You shot them?” Naia gasped, a look of bewilderment in her eyes.
“You have to understand,” Emery added hurriedly, “they had a gun to Mason’s head. What was I supposed to do?”
Naia considered this, then sighed. “Go on.”
“Well, since I disconnected their pods, the sanaré didn’t save them. Theo and his soldiers are dead.”
Her last words hung in the air, thick and heavy.
Naia nodded, a solemn look in her eyes. “Theo was my friend, but he was also working for the enemy. You did what you had to do—for the greater good. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you.” She reached over and patted her on the shoulder. “So what happened after that?”
Emery sighed. “I found out that my mom was in charge of creating Alpha One.”
“Ah, yes, the simulation program used to train soldiers in a safe environment,” she recalled, a twinkle in her eye. “I remember it well. Very impressive.”
“Obviously it fell into the wrong hands. Do you know about the keys?”
Naia nodded. “I know them well. I also know that President Novak needs to destroy both the alpha ring and the omega pendant so he can remain in power and control the world as he wishes. Where are these keys now?”
“Novak has the alpha ring.” A coy smile crossed her face. “And he thinks he has the pendant . . .”
Naia chuckled. “You clever girl. What did you do?”
“I gave the real pendant to Torin.” She grinned, wider this time. “My mother left me a decoy pendant and that’s the one Novak has.”
“Bravo,” Naia commended. “I’m impressed with not only your mother, but also with you. But, like I said before, I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Parkers.” She abruptly turned her attention to the cave’s entrance. “Did you happen to get a grand tour of President Novak’s chamber and if so, what exactly does he keep in that monstrosity of a fortress?”
Emery shuddered, thinking back to her mother’s pod. “The bodies,” she whispered. “All of them.”
Naia’s eyes grew wide. “The dormants’ bodies?”
Emery nodded.
“But how?”
“They’re in an underground lair—it’s like a storage center for human beings and all the bodies are preserved with these strange electric currents. It’s disgusting.” She shook her head, trying to clear the image from her mind when a shuffling noise from behind the cave wall interrupted their conversation. “What was that?”
“I was so wrapped up in your story that I almost forgot to tell you . . .” Before Naia could finish, a burly man emerged from behind the cave wall. His face was scruffy and he had dark circles under his eyes, dried blood caked across his chin, but there was no mistaking who he was.
“Dad!” Emery cried out in astonishment as she ran toward him.
He looked surprised to see her. “Em?” He wrapped her up in a bear hug and squeezed her tight. “Thank god you’re alright,” he breathed, his voice full of relief.
Emery turned her gaze from him to Naia, then back to him again. “But how? I saw you . . . lying there . . . in all that blood . . .”
“Sanaré,” Naia stated simply. “I had an emergency syringe hidden in Theo’s desk. I brought it with me, just in case.” She stood up from where she was sitting and walked over toward them. “I must have left Dormance just in time, right before you temporarily deactivated it. I teleported to the 7S world and stayed at a hotel, fully undercover, but I had no idea what was going on. Eventually, I found an opportunity to go visit your father, but when I walked into his office, he wasn’t breathing.” Her eyes dropped to the floor. “I actually took him for dead. But I used the last syringe on him, hoping that it hadn’t been over twenty-four hours since the incident—”
“—otherwise he’d really be dead,” Emery finished. She looked up at her father, eyes brimming with tears. “I thought I’d lost you again.” She leaned in for another hug, his brawny arms covering hers.
“That bastard,” her father reproached. “I don’t know how Novak did it, but he found a way to control me. I was a prisoner in my own body.” He lifted his arms as his eyes locked with hers. “You never have to worry about losing me again. I’m not going anywhere.”
Emery hugged him again, the scent of pine and ash filling her senses. It reminded her of home, of a happier time, so she took another deep inhale.
“Any word from your mother? Your sister?”
Emery dropped her arms. The question was unexpected and immediately made her stomach turn. “They’re inside,” she whispered, nodding her head in the direction of the chambers. “Novak has them trapped in pods like the others.”
Byron furrowed his brow, looking determined. “Not for long. Novak better prepare himself. This storm is one he’ll never see coming.”
Emery trained her eyes on her father, trying to absorb the confidence that was radiating from his entire being. For the first time in a long time, she felt like maybe there was a chance, and that maybe, just maybe, they would come out on top after all.
25
Mason trudged along the stone floor, trapped in movements that weren’t his own. It was tiring, willing his body day after day to listen to his mind but never receiving a response.
He made his way toward Emery’s cell, 082, completing the necessary security measures before attempting to open the door. At first, he felt a jolt of panic as his eyes searched the empty cell, but then his heart warmed at the realization. She wasn’t there. She’d escaped.
The first thought that came to his mind was how long he’d be able to keep this information to himself. If there was ever a time he could gain some control of his mind, this was it. Mason walked further into the empty cell, examining the area before him. How had she gotten out? No trace of escape tools existed. It was like she’d vanished into thin air.<
br />
Just as he turned to leave, the window at the top of the cell caught his eye. He smiled. That had to be it. But where did she go after that?
What was on the outside of President Novak’s Chamber was a mystery, but he was certain it wasn’t all daffodils and daisies. He commanded his body to move closer to the window, but instead, found himself turning away from the cell and walking out the door. He marched down the long hallway and made a swift right turn at the end.
No, no, no.
He knew exactly where he was headed and it wasn’t good. If only he knew exactly how long ago Emery had escaped. He wished he could give her as much time as possible to get away, but as he approached President Novak’s office, he knew this wouldn’t be the case.
He commanded his body to stop moving—to turn around and go back to his chambers. But, of course, his body and mind wouldn’t sync up. He stepped into the President’s office, his gaze fixed on the back of the evil dictator’s head.
Novak spun around in his chair, his eyes landing on Mason. “What is it, boy?” he huffed. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Fury ignited in Mason’s stomach. Don’t say it. Keep quiet. “Cell 082 is empty.” It pained him to hear the words come out of his mouth, to rat out Emery like this, but the choice wasn’t his to make.
Novak narrowed his eyes. “Warren!” he bellowed.
Warren appeared, running full-speed into the office, as if he had a pit bull nipping at his heels. “Sir?”
“I’ve just been informed that Cell 082 is empty,” Novak snarled. The glare in his eyes was borderline lethal as he drummed his fingers on the desk.
“Th-that’s impossible,” Warren stuttered as he searched for his handheld monitor. He flipped through a number of screens on the tablet until he landed on Emery’s cell. His eyes grew wide as he realized that the cell was indeed empty. No movement. No sounds. No Emery.
The Order of Omega (The Alpha Drive Book 2) Page 13
