by Kyla Stone
Dark clouds crouched heavy and low over the horizon. Snow gushed from the gray sky, pelting her face. The wind whipped her hair.
Sloane’s smile was bright and sharp, victorious. “It’s over.”
Amelia felt her body growing heavy, the taste of copper in her mouth. Her vision flickered, shimmered.
No. Not here, not now.
She refused to give in. She refused to give up. They could take everything from her, and then take more, and she still wouldn’t stop fighting. Not for herself, but for her friends, for a future that meant something.
“Madam President!” someone yelled. A dozen soldiers bounded up the stairs to surround them, their weapons trained on Gabriel and Amelia. Sloane dropped her own gun. It was unseemly for the president to do the dirty work herself—but she had no qualms about ordering others to do it for her.
“This dissident conspired with her father to destroy the United States of America,” President Sloane shouted, her face glowing with righteous indignation. “These insurgents—these terrorists—colluded with her to infiltrate us, the last sanctuary of the American people—with the intent to destroy it, destroy us.”
Sloane’s steely gaze swept the square before them, landing on the exhausted, bloody, defeated resistance fighters. Her expression hardened. “Execute them all.”
31
Micah
Micah stared down the barrel of the pulse rifle one of the Coalition soldiers pointed six inches from his face. At least three hundred more soldiers surrounded them, their guns all pointed at the paltry remains of the resistance.
Black clouds hovered above them like a funeral shroud. Snow whirled down, needles of ice stinging his face. It was over. They had lost.
Theo was on one side of him, Fiona the other, their faces dirty and panic-stricken. The soldiers had flushed them out and rounded them up with Cleo’s squad, along with all the Sanctuary citizens who’d committed to fight with the Patriots—those still alive, anyway. Micah and Logan had been separated in the chaos of their capture. And Silas—Silas was dead.
Thirty yards away, Gabriel and Amelia stood at the top of the stairs, their arms raised, a dozen weapons pointed at their chests.
Micah sank to his knees. It seemed hopeless.
But Micah couldn’t give up hope. It wasn’t in him. He would have faith until the bitter end—even if that bitter end came in mere moments.
He closed his eyes and prayed. He prayed with every ounce of his waning strength. He prayed for an end to the bloodshed, for peace, for all their lives to mean something, for a better world than this broken, ruined one full of broken, ruined people.
“Are you praying?” Theo asked.
Micah nodded mutely.
“Why?” Fiona asked, her hands hanging limply at her sides, her face streaked with soot and tears. “It’s hopeless.”
“Because hope is never truly gone,” Micah said. “Hope is everything.”
From the north came a deep, distant rumble. Thunder? But no, not thunder. It was a low, rhythmic sound, gradually building in intensity, like huge fingers drumming on a table.
Micah opened his eyes. Several fighters paused, looking up anxiously, searching the darkening skies. The thrumming intensified, trembling the air all around them.
Small dark shapes appeared, flying in formation, thundering toward them over the northern hills. They descended, their lifting blades furiously beating the air, the whirlwind battering the grass, dirt, and mounded snow in a widening circle. The air thrummed around them.
The lead airjet was so close he could make out the co-pilot—a short, chubby girl with unruly black hair, choppy bangs, and a fierce expression on her face. She grinned as she saw him, her hand lifting in a joyous wave.
Willow.
His heart surged. A cacophony of questions crashed through his mind—who were these people? What did they want? If Willow was with them, they had to be friends. Was this the answer to his desperate prayers? Were they saved?
The cannon. His stomach plummeted. Had Silas managed to take it out? The weapon hadn’t fired since, but the Coalition soldiers had overwhelmed the Patriots moments after Silas’s death. The Sanctuary hadn’t needed to use it anymore.
“Go!” he screamed, waving his arms. But the jets only swiveled the barrels of their massive guns at the Coalition soldiers.
He cringed, expecting the last cannon to blast the jet out of the sky.
It never came.
Silas had done it. The relief was barely stronger than the sorrow clawing his chest.
President Sloane pointed at Gabriel and Amelia. “Kill these terrorists!”
“President Sloane is the real terrorist!” Amelia shouted, her voice ringing out over the whir of the airjets. “Surrender! Admit to your crimes against humanity, and let the survivors work on building something new.”
“If you think—”
Amelia gave a twist of her hand. A small sphere rose behind her and flitted in the air above her head. “Hovercam thirteen-sixty-one, please play back the last five minutes recorded. Plug into the network feed.”
“No!” President Sloane shrieked. “Kill her! She’s a terrorist! She consorted with the enemy! She breeds lies and dissension! Shoot her. That’s a direct order!”
But the barrels of the airjet were pointed at the Coalition soldiers. The soldiers didn’t move.
The hovercam began to play. President Sloane’s face projected on every holoscreen, wallscreen, holo-ad, and Smartflex in the city. A thousand echoes of Sloane’s voice rang out in the sudden stillness. The people needed a savior…Coalition did what we had to do…The Hydra virus was a means to an end…There are always unexpected consequences…
The Coalition soldiers shifted, disbelief flitting across their faces. Then betrayal. Then anger.
They had all lost family members. Every single person alive had lost at least one person they loved to the virus. Most had lost nearly everything and everyone. Today, they’d fought and bled for the woman who’d conspired to kill her own citizens, who’d unleashed a plague like nothing the world had ever seen.
In the end, it was all about control. The chip, the drones, the checkpoints and barricades, the promise of the cure. Make the people afraid and then promise them safety: then they’d give you anything, even their own souls.
“This girl is a terrorist!” Sloane shrieked.
Four soldiers—two of them her own secret service agents—trained their guns on their president.
“We know who the real enemy is,” Amelia shouted. “And it isn’t each other!”
“Put down your guns,” Gabriel said. “The airjets won’t shoot you. They want to put a stop to this senseless killing, same as you do.”
“All we want is a fair chance at life, just like you,” Micah said, stepping out from the circle of soldiers. They parted to let him pass. “Peace and happiness and the pursuit of liberty. All the things the government promised us. Their promises—Sloane’s promises—were empty. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. But we’re going to have to make it ourselves.”
“And we can!” Amelia’s face echoed over a thousand holoscreens. She was so bright, she was almost glowing. She didn’t look afraid of anything; not of the airjets, not of the soldiers, not of Sloane. “We start today. We start now.”
“Ceasefire!” one of the Coalition soldiers shouted. Micah recognized Amelia’s former guard, Logan. The man had his arm slung around a fellow soldier, propping him up, the chunk of shrapnel still lodged in his thigh. Though he looked pale and sickly, his voice was deep and strong, carrying over the entire square. “Lower your weapons!”
“Ceasefire!” General Daugherty growled from the top of the steps.
“Ceasefire!” resounded on every holoscreen.
Logan was the first to drop his gun. A dozen Coalition soldiers lowered theirs. General Daugherty lowered his. One by one, others followed, slowly and then all at once.
The war was over.
32
Gabriel
Gabriel watched as the Coalition soldiers and Sanctuary guards dropped their guns. Slowly, the Patriots and resistance fighters lowered their raised hands. They stared at each other uneasily as the airjets landed on an open patch of ground forty yards away.
He scanned the crowd, his heart in his throat. Micah was there, covered in dirt and blood but unharmed. Theo and the redheaded girl high-fived each other, faces rapt with awe and triumph. He recognized several other Patriots fighters in various states of health. He didn’t see Silas.
Gabriel’s chest tightened. Cleo was there, surrounded by a cluster of her men. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring up at Sloane, rage and loathing burning like brands in her dark eyes.
He made his way down the steps toward her—warily, but still. If he could talk reason into her, calm her down. It was her grief that had made her say the things she did.
The Patriots had won. Surely that changed things.
“Willow!” Micah’s voice drew his attention. Willow and Finn were striding down the ramp of the nearest airjet. Micah ran across the snow-and-blood-trampled ground and embraced them.
Another man exited behind them. Gabriel recognized the thick silver hair and confident gait of Senator López.
Gabriel didn’t have the energy to marvel at the sudden appearance of a man he’d thought long dead. Today was a day of miracles, as his brother would say.
López strode purposefully across the square and up the marble steps toward Sloane. The soldiers parted before his confident air of authority. “I am Enrique López,” he announced to the crowd. “A former U.S. senator for the fine city of New York. General Daugherty knows me well.”
The general nodded gruffly and gripped López’s hand in a firm handshake. López clapped him on the back and murmured something in his ear. General Daugherty nodded.
López turned back to the crowd. “I have no plans to attempt to take over the leadership of the Sanctuary. In fact, I suggest we set up a new system of governance altogether—one based on community, not power and tyranny.”
He gazed at President Sloane, who stood between four guards, her shoulders slumped, her hair a tangled mess. She’d aged ten years in the last hour. “Amanda Sloane, you are removed from your duties as president of the United States. Please arrest this woman and read her rights.”
General Daugherty twisted Sloane’s hands behind her back and slapped her in handcuffs. “You are under arrest for crimes of war committed against your own people.”
Gabriel was only a few feet from Cleo now. He pushed through the crowd. “Cleo.”
She spun. Her face contorted in grief and rage. “You.”
“Sloane will get justice,” he said. “We’ll make sure of it.”
She stared, her eyes unfocused, almost not seeing him. She was trembling, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “That woman planned the Grand Voyager attack. She released the Hydra Virus, slaughtering billions. My mother is dead because of her. She doesn’t get to live. I won’t let her live.”
Jericho had promised to bring Gabriel to justice once, no matter what. Jericho had believed in the law, not revenge. So had Nadira. So did Micah. They believed in a better way. Gabriel did, too. He had to. “She’ll be tried and convicted for her crimes. She’ll never see the light of day again, I promise.”
“That’s not enough!” Her eyes flashed with fury, her scar contorting the right side of her face, her lips twisting. “I won’t wait that long.”
He reached for her arm. “Cleo!”
But she jerked from his grasp and surged forward. She slammed through the crowd, heading for the marble steps, for Sloane. Gabriel shoved after her, jostling the bodies barring his way. He barely felt them. His only thought was stopping Cleo.
Behind him, he heard Theo shouting, his voice edged with dread. “Cleo! Stop!”
Two of the soldiers flanking Sloane noticed Cleo stumbling toward the steps. One of them shouted. The other lifted his pulse gun.
Cleo didn’t see them. Or if she did, she was so blinded by rage that she didn’t care. She yanked her blade from its sheath at her thigh and lifted her arm, about to fling it at President Sloane’s chest.
A pulse blast shattered the marble at Cleo’s feet, gouging a smoking crater the size of a soccer ball. Cleo faltered. The knife clattered to the floor. A second shot rang out.
The crowd gasped in shock and alarm.
“Cleo!” Theo screamed.
“NO!” Gabriel didn’t think. He didn’t hesitate. He launched himself at Cleo. He enfolded her in his arms and wrestled her to the ground.
“Let me go!” She fought him, punching with her elbows, flinging her head back, writhing and howling with the caged fury of a mountain lion. Tiny explosions of pain erupted across his battered body as her fists and elbows hit their marks.
He refused to let go.
“I’ve got her!” he cried desperately to the soldiers. “Don’t shoot!”
General Daugherty lifted one hand, halting the soldiers. They kept their guns leveled at them, but the crack of a bullet didn’t come.
They sank to their knees together. Cleo was strong and ferocious, but he held on, crushing her to his chest. She was filled with an unquenchable rage, willing to destroy anything to sate it.
Hatred destroyed from the inside out. It was a rot. A cancer.
He’d been there, too. But he’d found a way back Through the grace of God and man, through friends like Nadira who’d cared for him when he least deserved it, through Micah and Amelia, who’d managed to forgive him and love him through everything.
“Once, someone did this for me,” he murmured into her braids. “Now I’m doing this for you.”
“No!” She stiffened, every muscle going rigid. “I have to do this!”
“There’s more to you than this!” He gripped her tighter. Cleo was a flame searing the night sky. She was a fierce adversary. She was also his friend.
She deserved life. She deserved a chance to change, to learn, to grow, to become something more. To build something better.
She deserved the chance to find out who she was now.
Theo wheeled up beside them. He was shaking, his pallor ashen. Tears mingled with the snow wetting his face. He reached over and placed his hand on Cleo’s shoulder. “You’ve done enough, sister,” he said, his voice raw. “It’s time to be done. We won. It’s over.”
Finally, she yielded. Her taut limbs went limp. She sagged against Gabriel. Her face went slack, her expression soft and impossibly young. Snowflakes landed on her nose, her cheeks, her eyelids. He glimpsed the child she’d been before the pain and the abuse and the hatred.
“It won’t be easy, but you’re strong enough. I know you are.”
She stared at him, her eyes glassy. He didn’t know how much she understood, or if she ever really would. He hoped she would.
Wetness slicked his hands. Melting snow, he thought for a moment. He pulled his hands from Cleo’s sides. His fingers were stained red. He looked at Cleo, his heart sinking like a stone.
Theo stared at Gabriel’s hands in growing horror. “Cleo! Where are you hurt?”
She touched her stomach. Blood oozed from a tiny hole in her lower right side. The second shot. It had struck her after all. “I’m fine,” she murmured, her teeth gritted. “I’ll be fine.”
The wound was from a bullet, not a pulse blast, or else she’d already be dead. It probably hurt like hell, but it wouldn’t be fatal—as long as she received medical treatment immediately.
A wound like this would have been a death sentence out in the ruins of America, anywhere outside the safety of these walls.
But this was the Sanctuary. There were medications, electricity, med-bots, surgeons. She would be okay. She would live.
“She needs a doctor!” Theo cried.
General Daugherty nodded. “Take her to the hospital,” he ordered his men.
Two soldiers descended the steps to escort her into custody. Gabriel released
her. She pulled herself to her feet on her own, her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, her chin held high though she was trembling. Theo refused to leave her side.
Before the soldiers led her away, she turned to Gabriel and pressed her closed fist over her heart in the New Patriot salute.
Gabriel put his hand over his heart—but an open palm, not a closed fist. Not for war, but something more, something better.
He’d done his best to reach her. He’d tried to bring her back with him, to save her the way Nadira had saved him.
But the hard part was up to her. Because in the end, she had to save herself.
Then Cleo smiled. A real one, without bitterness or malice.
He watched her go, his ribs and head aching. Another set of soldiers led Sloane across the square, presumably toward the Sanctuary prison. Her head was bowed, her shoulders slumped in defeat.
His body throbbed with a bone-deep weariness. Everything hurt. And yet, he felt somehow lighter, buoyant. He gazed across the square, the reality of the moment finally sinking in.
Victory was theirs. They had won. They had really done it. Joy and relief and triumph flushed through him. The Sanctuary was free. The cure was free. They could save all the survivors. They could save everyone. They could—
“Gabriel,” Amelia said from far away.
He looked up at her, a half-smile still on his face.
She stood at the edge of the marble stairs above him. She swayed slightly. Her face was white. Too white. Her eyes met his, wild and terrified.
Alarm pierced him like an arrow.
It was only then that he noticed the fresh blood at her temple. It stained the crown of her head and leaked down the left side of her face. “Gabriel, my head. I think I’m—I don’t feel good—”
