by Kyla Stone
“The murder of so many of our shining beacons of industry as well as several wonderful and dedicated members of Congress and their families is an unpalatable act. It will not stand unavenged. The murder of millions of American men, women, and children via a deadly biological weapon is a heart-breaking atrocity we shall never forget. This too, we shall avenge with the full force of our military power.
“We have reason to believe the criminals behind these acts are one and the same, the homegrown terrorist group known as the New Patriots. I pledge to you tonight that we will find each and every perpetrator of these horrendous attacks. We will show them the exact meaning of American justice.
“But tonight, we are a nation in mourning. You did not vote for me, but I am still your president, the leader of this magnificent country. I will not rest until we contain this bioweapon. We will not stop until our country is safe again.
“As my first act as President, I gathered an emergency session in Congress and oversaw the passage of the Safe and Secure Act. This bill empowers us to track down and capture the wicked persons responsible for these atrocities. The bio-identification Vitalichip will enable us to identify and help those who are ill and protect those who are not, saving as many American men, women, and children as possible.”
The President paused, staring out at the viewers with a stony determination. “Our hope and faith in the American dream is not diminished tonight. The world's prayers are with the United States. God be with us.”
The TV went dark. A second later, the room exploded into panicked confusion.
The hairs on the back of Amelia’s neck prickled. “That's not right—”
Her mother gripped her arm so tightly her nails dug into Amelia’s skin. “Shhh!”
An image of Gabriel flashed through her mind. Gabriel leaning over her, his face brimming with emotion, his dark eyes glossy with pain. “But it wasn't them—”
“Stop talking. Right now.”
She stared at her mother in shock. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her so fierce, her eyes filled with a desperate determination. “What—?”
Her mother leaned in close, her breath hot on Amelia's ear. “No one here knows what your father did. Not even Jericho.”
She stiffened. “Gabriel knows.”
“Then we pray he says nothing. Do you have any idea what these people will do to us if they find out?”
“No. I—”
“There are others involved, high in the government. You remember all those disturbing calls that agitated your father so much?”
“But it wasn't the New—”
“Keep quiet,” her mother said, iron in her voice. “Of course not. But it was someone. Someone with enough power and influence to organize a terrorist attack on a cruise ship full of powerful and influential people. Someone determined enough to poison a hundred thousand people and frame a terrorist group. The microchip contract alone will be worth billions. There’s more going on than we know. We're in an extremely dangerous position. Do you understand?”
Amelia nodded. Her brain buzzed with the implications of her mother's words. Her father hadn’t acted alone. But then, who was behind it? And what about the attack on the Grand Voyager?
Were they covering their tracks, tying up loose ends by destroying everyone who had any intimate knowledge of the engineering of the Hydra virus? And what would happen to her family if Gabriel revealed the truth about her father?
But her mind stopped there. It was too much to take in at once.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the woman in the hazmat suit said. “Our doctors will begin seeing you soon.”
“How long do we have to stay here?”
“We're not sick!”
“That boy is coughing! You locked us in here with the infected!”
“When are we going home?”
“Everyone will be tested!” The woman raised her hands. “You must remain calm.”
A shiver ran through her, a cold that reached deep into her bones. When were they going home? And the bigger questions, the words she could hardly bring herself to think, let alone speak aloud: Was there a home to go back to? And if there was, what dangers awaited them there?
And what about her medication? She only had one auto-injector and one month’s supply of pills in her mother’s purse. If her father was really, truly gone . . .
“It's the end,” Silas said flatly. “The end of the world.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t believe that. She wouldn’t. “No. It’s not.”
She remembered her mother's saying about glass, how it was beautiful but weak, but it could be strengthened by heat—made strong by fire.
They'd tried to break her. The terrorists. Kane. Gabriel. Her own father. But they couldn't. None of them could.
She hadn't shattered.
Whatever came next, she would face it.
They all would.
The End
Keeping reading for Falling Stars!
Falling Stars
1
Amelia
Eighteen-old-year old Amelia Black thought she knew how to survive. She was wrong.
The world had changed drastically in only a few short weeks. She didn’t yet know how—the unknown possibilities flickered constantly in her mind.
So many questions, and she didn’t have the answers to any of them. Until now. Soon, they would see the outside world for the first time in almost six weeks.
Amelia leaned against the wall of the military transport. The hard metal bench beneath her vibrated. People pressed on either side of her.
The truck slowed, bumping over potholes and ruts in the road.
“What now?” her brother Silas asked. He lounged on the bench across from her, his legs draped over a plastic-wrapped cardboard box labeled ‘Medical Supplies: Syringes’. Dozens of similar boxes were stacked along the front end of the truck and secured with rubber straps.
There were no windows. Air conditioning piped through a vent near the front, but the air still felt hot and stuffy. They’d been riding for hours since departing the naval base in Jacksonville, Florida, early that morning.
The brakes squealed as the truck rumbled to a halt.
“What’s going on?” Amelia asked, though she didn’t expect an answer.
Their convoy included eight transport trucks: four filled with medical supplies, two filled with canned goods, MREs, and bottled water, and two for transporting civilians.
Four camouflaged military jeeps took up the front and rear of the convoy, the soldiers decked out with combat gear and pulse guns.
“How much longer?” eight-year-old Benjie asked beside her.
Willow Bahaghari squeezed her brother’s hand and grinned. But her grin was forced, her eyes tired. She pushed her thick black hair behind her ears. “It’s probably just something blocking the road. This will all be over soon, I promise.”
Amelia sighed. If only that were true. It still felt strange not to be quarantined, trapped in the same small space day after day, surrounded by the white walls of a medical tent.
They’d been quarantined for eighteen days—four days on the naval ship that rescued them from the sinking Grand Voyager, then another fourteen days once they’d arrived at Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville.
Several high-value government officials and powerful CEOs had been airlifted to an undisclosed location the day they’d cleared quarantine. The rest of the one hundred and thirty-six survivors waited five more days for a supply transport to take them to Fort Campbell in Kentucky, a military base relocating the survivors of the Hydra virus.
“Can I have one of those?” Benjie pointed at the CDC epidemiologist sitting on Amelia’s other side. Dr. Martinez wore a bulky yellow hazmat suit, every inch of her covered by the suit, gloves, and a helmet sealed at the neck.
Dr. Martinez had taken bloodwork from them every day for the last fourteen days. She was in her mid-forties and spoke little, her expression always grim. She folded her
hands in her lap. “Personal Protection Equipment will be issued as needed when you reach your relocation destination.”
Benjie scrunched up his face. He was cute, with brown skin, large dark eyes, and black hair sticking up all over his head. “I don’t want a new home. I like my old one.”
Amelia’s gut tightened. She agreed with him. She missed her own sleep pod and her light-filled studio, where she practiced the violin for three hours every day.
But the world had changed drastically in the six weeks since they boarded the Grand Voyager—that much was clear.
She despised all this not-knowing. What was out there? What was happening? How many people were sick? Why wouldn’t they tell the truth?
“Why can’t I go home?” Benjie asked again.
Willow squeezed his hand. “Benjie, hush.”
Dr. Martinez pressed her lips together behind her helmet. “They’ll explain more once you reach your destination. Until then, that information is classified.”
Benjie sighed and clasped his arms around his ratty backpack. “That’s what everyone says.”
Dr. Martinez hesitated. “I am sorry.”
Willow shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve gotta pee,” she said under her breath. “How long ‘til we get to wherever the hell we’re going?”
Amelia shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It’ll take forever at this rate.” Willow gestured at the walls of the transport. “What do you think it’s like out there?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Amelia didn’t know how bad it was. None of them did.
The Grand Voyager survivors were all anxious and antsy, desperate to return to their homes, find their families, and figure out what the hell had happened.
Amelia knew what her mother would say. At least we have each other. Amelia had her mother and brother, which was more than most people.
Willow had lost her mother and sister. Willow’s friend, Finn Ellington-Fletcher, a giant black kid with a gap-toothed smile and a penchant for goofy humor, had lost his father. Others lost their entire families, gunned down by the terrorists, burned in the explosions, or trapped and drowned as the ship sank, consumed in smoke and flames and terror.
“I thought you might have a higher clearance or whatever,” Willow continued. “Seeing as you’re the daughter of Declan Black.”
The world knew her father as the founder and CEO of BioGen Technologies as well as the chairman of the Unity Coalition, a conglomerate of powerful biotech, communications, and defense corporations. BioGen had manufactured and distributed the universal flu vaccine to combat the raging bat-flu epidemic.
Only a few people still living knew the truth.
Her father had also designed the Hydra Virus, releasing it as an act of bioterrorism in a calculated attempt to pass his rights-reducing, citizen-tracking Safe and Secure Act. The new president blamed the attack on the domestic terrorist group, the New Patriots. Consumed by fear, the government had passed the Safe and Secure Act in an emergency session, just as her father predicted.
But the plan backfired. The virus, meant to kill one hundred thousand people deliberately culled from the disposable poor, mutated instead. It underwent reassortment, recombining with the virulent bat-flu to create a deadly, highly contagious supervirus.
Declan Black—though not the mastermind—had designed and implemented the entire thing.
An international terrorist syndicate had taken her father hostage. Was he still alive? Did she even care?
She did, in spite of everything.
She rubbed the diamond-studded charm bracelet on her left wrist, the one he’d bought for her thirteenth birthday. Part of her wanted to rip it off and throw it away, but for some reason, she couldn’t. Even though he’d betrayed her, betrayed them all.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t know anything.”
Willow shot her a dubious look, shrugged, and turned back to her brother. “Suit yourself.”
The truck started again, jolting forward. Amelia’s shoulder bumped the wall. She rubbed her shoulder and scanned the people in the transport—Enrique López, the Mexican-American senator from New York; Tyler Horne, the hotshot inventor of the RFID microchip VitaliChip; her brother Silas and her mother, Elise; and Micah Ramos Rivera, Gabriel’s brother.
Gabriel Ramos Rivera rode in the second transport truck, A prisoner in handcuffs guarded by a half-dozen soldiers and her father’s former head of security, Ed Jericho.
Gabriel. The guy she fell for against her better judgment. The enigmatic, brooding Puerto Rican hothead with the bronze skin, dark smoldering eyes, and irresistible smile.
The ruthless rebel and New Patriot who’d hijacked the Grand Voyager, taken her hostage, and betrayed her—who willingly and knowingly gave her up to Kane, a psychopathic terrorist who’d enjoyed killing. Who took pleasure in others’ pain. Who’d taken pleasure in her own.
Kane and his rough, scrabbling hands, his beady eyes, his vicious leer as he hovered over her. That asshole tried to break her. He almost succeeded.
Still, he invaded her nightmares every night. She always woke up gasping, her heart a wild, frantic thing in her chest, her thoughts a tangled knot of terror. Amelia closed her eyes, shoving those thoughts out of her head.
The truck slammed to a stop. Amelia crashed into Benjie and nearly knocked him off the bench. Across from her, Micah and Silas jolted awake, gripping the bench to keep their balance.
Outside the truck, someone shouted.
“What was that?” Benjie asked, eyes wide. Amelia and Willow exchanged nervous glances. Whatever it was didn’t sound good.
Dr. Martinez clutched her hands together in front of her chest. “I’m sure it’s fine. Just a routine checkpoint.” But her voice quavered.
Gunfire exploded outside the truck, somewhere to Amelia’s right. Shouting filled the air. “Get down!” Someone screamed.
Her heart squeezed, her breath stilling in her chest. Why had they stopped? Why were the soldiers shooting? What was happening?
Tyler Horne leapt to his feet, his perfectly coiffed blonde hair matted against his head. “We’re being attacked, aren’t we?”
Dr. Martinez said nothing as more shouting filled the air. Something struck the side of the truck. The wall shuddered. Amelia jerked forward.
“Tell us the truth, damn it!” Horne took an aggressive step toward the doctor.
Senator López stood and blocked Horne with his outstretched hand. “Let’s stay calm. Panic won’t help anything.”
A bullet punctured the left side of the transport above Horne’s head.
The passengers screamed and ducked, scrambling off the benches along the walls and crouching low. Amelia covered her head with her arms, the hairs on her neck standing on end.
Beside her, Willow pushed Benjie down and covered his body with her own. “Stay down!”
More shots rang out. Loud bangs and thumps shuddered the truck, as if people were shoving it from both sides. Maybe they were.
Angry shouts filled the air. It sounded like they’d surrounded the truck. The back doors clanged and jerked, but they didn’t open. They were locked from the inside.
“They want the supplies, don’t they?” Micah adjusted his glasses nervously. His brown eyes were huge in his boyish face, his dark wavy hair damp on his forehead.
“Why the hell won’t you say something?” Willow asked Dr. Martinez, her voice rising. “This can’t be classified, too!”
“Yes,” Dr. Martinez admitted, fear and defeat in her voice. “It must be an ambush. The roads are—dangerous. There are no hospitals, no stores. People are desperate.”
Amelia’s mind couldn’t focus on the words. No hospitals? That didn’t make sense.
Another bullet punched through the transport walls like they were butter. The attackers were using armor-piercing rounds. The next stray bullet would hit someone. “Maybe we should give them what they want.”
“She’s right,” Silas said. He had their father�
��s intensity, the same sinewy frame and lean, wolfish face. “Open the doors.”
Horne pointed his finger at Silas. “You’re insane if you think you’re going to let them in here. They’re shooting people!”
Silas bristled, his smoke-gray eyes glittering. “You’re not in charge here.”
“Give them the supplies, and they’ll stop shooting,” Micah said.
“You don’t understand.” Dr. Martinez twisted her hands. “We need those supplies for research and medical personnel at the base. We can’t just give them—”
“Screw this.” Silas leapt to his feet, crouching low and lurching over cowering bodies to reach the back doors.
Micah followed close behind. The truck rocked and they stumbled, righting themselves and lunging for the doors before anyone could stop them.
“Don’t open that door! You aren’t protected!” Dr. Martinez rose to her feet just as another bullet punched through the wall inches from her head. She shrieked and dropped to the floor.
Amelia craned her neck to watch Micah and Silas wrestle with the doors’ locking mechanism. Her knees ached from kneeling on the metal floor. A rivet scraped her shin, ripping a hole in her khaki cargo pants. The shouts and screams from outside the truck echoed in her ears.
A chill ran down her spine. Opening the doors might be a terrible idea, but they had to do something. They were sitting ducks, just waiting for the next bullet to kill somebody.
Someone gripped her arm. Amelia glanced up and stared at Dr. Martinez. Her mouth pressed into a grim line, her eyes hard and unreadable. “Whatever you do, don’t touch anyone.”
“How bad is it?” Amelia asked.
Dr. Martinez shook her head. “I wanted to tell all of you right away, but my superiors were concerned with suicide attempts and panicked rebellion. They thought you wouldn’t sit meekly in quarantine if you knew . . .”
