by Kyla Stone
Cleo spat on the road. “We know the Undergrounders. They’re too well-fortified to take anything by force. They’re not interested in playing ball, but they keep to themselves. They aren’t a threat or a resource. They’re nothing. So, if that’s all you’ve got—”
Cerberus licked his lips. “We know where a Phantom is.”
Cleo stiffened. Gabriel had no idea what Cerberus was talking about, but Cleo clearly did. She was startled, but she quickly regained her footing. “You have a Phantom.”
“We know where one is located. Rogue soldiers took it from Robins Air Force Base before being ambushed themselves. We found it and hid it with a transponder and GPS locator.”
“And you’re claiming you can get it for us?”
“Keep us hostage, if you must, while you verify it. You can go get it tomorrow. And I can offer more. I have fifty skilled fighters right here. I can summon two hundred more within the week.”
Cleo’s eyes narrowed. “And how do I know you’ll stand by your word?”
Cerberus spread his hands. “Like I said, trust but verify. We’re businessmen. We’re traders. It’s what we do. We have services to offer you, resources to trade. This is business. More, it’s the future. Someone in your position should think long and hard before throwing away something so valuable for a bit of revenge.”
A second conversation was happening between Cleo and Cerberus, a negotiation Gabriel wasn’t privy to. He knew the words but couldn’t discern the underlying meaning. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck.
“We’ve asked you before,” Cleo said.
Cerberus smiled, flashing white teeth. “Let’s just say the circumstances have changed.”
“Permission to engage,” Gabriel hissed between gritted teeth. “Why are we wasting our time—”
Cleo held up a hand, silencing him. She kept her eyes on the Headhunter. Her lip curled in distaste. “You will have to release your…resources.”
Cerberus flipped his palms skyward. His gaze flitted up the hill to Amelia, who stood with her arms wrapped around her mother, consoling her. “I’m sure we can negotiate mutually beneficial terms.”
“What the hell is he still talking for?” Willow stalked across the road and jabbed her gun in a Headhunter’s face. She glanced back at Gabriel, her features contorted in fury. “We don’t need her permission. It’s time to end this.”
“Stop, Willow,” Cleo ordered. “Or we’ll be forced to make you.”
Cleo gave a signal to the New Patriots standing at the tree line. Four of them shifted positions. The New Patriots weren’t just aiming at the Headhunters. They were aiming at Willow and Silas, too.
Anger surged through Gabriel. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Your men need to stand the hell down,” Cleo said calmly.
“Not until we’ve finished our business.” Willow was right. They didn’t need Cleo’s permission to do anything.
He refocused his attention on Cerberus, the man who’d murdered an innocent girl. Who had tried to kidnap Amelia and stole Elise. He was evil. And without courts or police or a government, the only justice was the justice they enacted themselves. “Control your men. Get their guns away from my people.”
“Don’t do this, Gabriel,” Cleo warned.
But Gabriel didn’t listen. “This is for Nadira. Be grateful yours will be a quick death instead of the one you deserve—”
Cleo lunged forward in a single, swift movement. Something cold and metallic touched the side of Gabriel’s head. “Do not pull that trigger.”
Dread knotted his gut. “Or what?”
“Or I will do whatever I have to do to stop you. Don’t make me order Jamal to take out Willow.” Cleo spoke with a cool indifference that sent a spear of certain fear through his heart. She would do it as easily as she had branded Willow with her cigar. To a girl like Cleo, the ends justified any means.
Gabriel knew that. He’d believed he could keep the situation under control.
He was wrong.
“Lower your guns,” Jamal said.
“Listen to him,” Gabriel said through gritted teeth.
Silas spat colorful obscenities and hurled his gun at Cleo’s feet. She didn’t flinch. “There’s been a change of plans,” Cleo said loudly so that everyone could hear. “We all have a common enemy. So, let’s put this little squabble behind us and look to the future—the only thing that matters. We don’t have to like each other—” she glanced pointedly at Cerberus and Gabriel. “Hell, I hate most of you. It doesn’t matter. If you want to live, if you want your kids to live, then we must work together.”
Cleo reached over, seized Gabriel’s gun, and wrenched it out of his hands. With her rifle to his temple, he had no choice. He let go. “Why are you doing this?”
Cleo ignored him and turned to the Headhunters. “Gentlemen, welcome to the New Patriots.”
3
Micah
Nineteen-year-old Micah Ramos Rivera hadn’t seen his brother so angry in a long time. Maybe since the Grand Voyager. That was five months ago; it felt like five years.
“What the hell is going on?” Gabriel snarled.
“I have something to show you,” Cleo said, nonplussed. She puffed a circle of smoke from her cigar. It drifted between them in the cold air. “Then we’ll talk.”
They had just returned to the New Patriots compound. The Fort Cohutta Detention and Rehabilitation Center was a self-sufficient, previously abandoned prison tucked halfway up Wildwood Mountain at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Cerberus and around forty of his Headhunters were already sequestered in the quarantine barracks to ensure none were infected. A handful of Headhunters had declined to join the New Patriots; Cerberus sent them back to their own headquarters to send more Headhunter reinforcements. For what, exactly, was still unclear.
Micah didn’t trust them. Neither did Gabriel. Not after what happened at Sweet Creek Farm. Not after Nadira.
Now, Micah and Gabriel strolled between several barracks, following Cleo and her right-hand man, Jamal Carter, as they entered the large, warehouse-like training center on the far side of the compound.
The whole place stank of stale sweat and bleach. Several people in sweatpants and T-shirts sparred on a moldy-looking mat. Others lined up at a virtual target practice module or jogged on the VR treadmills. A massive, bare-chested man fought a shimmering holographic assailant in the simulation combat ring. Still more lifted ancient dumbbells, sweating and groaning on bench presses, power racks, and smith machines.
There were over two hundred men and women, some of them heavily tattooed, all of them tough, muscular, and battle-scarred. Many wore camouflage fatigues without name tags or unit patches. Everyone watched Micah and Gabriel with closed, suspicious expressions.
“In here.” Cleo made a hard left, pressed her right palm and eye to a biometric and retina security scanner, then yanked open a steel-reinforced door. Harsh fluorescent lighting flickered as they stepped inside.
There were racks and racks of weapons. Shelves of ammunition. More racks bristling with mobile artillery, huge machine guns, rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and grenade launchers.
Micah swallowed hard. “What is this for?”
Jamal crossed his arms and lounged against a tall, metal gun safe. “Protection.”
Cleo cocked her head, appraising them frankly. “We have a right to defend ourselves.”
Gabriel’s jaw pulsed. “All this for defense. Why do I not believe you?”
Cleo tapped ash impatiently from her cigar and took a long pull. “Why do you think the Sanctuary contracted the Pyros to burn Atlanta and obliterate every other gang?”
“They’re clearing it of dead bodies, infection, and violence to make the city livable again for the survivors.” Even as he found himself doubting the words, Micah repeated what the leader of the Pyros, Tobias Moruga, had told them.
Moruga had hunted them through the burning ruins of Atlanta after Silas had ac
cidentally killed Moruga’s thirteen-year-old son. Moruga was a thug, a gang leader, and a violent criminal. He’d had his own reasons for distorting the truth.
Cleo snorted. “How adorably naive of you. That may be one small part of it. The other, larger motive? To destroy any potential rivals before they gain the strength to fight back or threaten the Sanctuary.”
Micah adjusted his glasses and stared at the rows and rows of guns. So much firepower, capable of so much destruction, so many lives lost. The puzzle pieces were slowly clicking into place, and not in a good way.
“Sooner or later, they’ll come after us, just like they’ve come after everyone else.” Cleo waved her hand through the smoke wafting from her cigar. “The Sanctuary is the enemy. They’d sooner destroy us than let us in. They don’t want to let us in. Even if they had miles and miles of uneaten crops and thousands of empty mansions. They’ll never give a damn thing to us.”
Understanding struck him like a punch to the gut. “Not unless you take it by force,” Micah said quietly.
Cleo’s expression hardened, but she said nothing. She stared at them with her shrewd, cunning gaze, as if impatiently waiting for them to figure it out on their own.
“That’s why you offered an alliance to the Headhunters,” Micah said. “You’re recruiting an army.”
Gabriel swept his arm toward the weapons arsenal, the training arena outside the heavy steel door. “You’re planning an attack. You want to take the Sanctuary for yourselves.”
It was true. Micah could see it in the coldness of her eyes, in Jamal’s grim smile. And Gabriel knew it too. His brother knew better than anyone the kind of people the New Patriots were, what they stood for, what they wanted.
They might not have released the Hydra virus, but they’d bombed dozens of government buildings. They’d hijacked the Grand Voyager, willing to risk innocent lives, even children. Now they were aligning themselves with known criminals and killers.
But that was the problem with the New Patriots: they saw every elite as the enemy. And they were willing to do anything to destroy that enemy. Anything.
There was a thin line between freedom fighters and terrorists, between soldiers and murderers.
Gabriel’s expression was stony, his jaw clenched, his eyes dark and ferocious. He took a step toward Cleo, towering over her. “I have the right to know what I’m sacrificing my revenge for. Tell me. I’m one of you.”
Jamal darted forward, about to come between them, but Cleo lifted a hand, stopping him. She raised her chin, her eyes challenging. “Are you really?”
“I’m one of you,” Gabriel said again, studiously avoiding Micah’s gaze.
Micah knew—he hoped, he believed—his brother was lying, ingratiating himself with these people to keep them all safe.
But Gabriel was so believable. Too believable.
Micah tried to read his brother’s face. What if it wasn’t an act? What if Gabriel was sliding back into his old self?
Gabriel had been full of bitterness and hate and rage. He had aimed a gun at his own brother. He had attacked a cruise ship and killed innocent people. Could Gabriel shed one identity for another as easily as a snake shed its skin?
He shook the thought from his mind. He hated doubting Gabriel, hating the tense, uneasy sense of disquiet settling in his gut. He’d just gotten his brother back. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing him again.
He had to trust Gabriel. He had to have faith.
Gabriel loomed over Cleo, his fists clenched. “If you’re planning an attack, I’m one hundred percent on board.”
Cleo stepped closer, until her scarred face was inches from Gabriel’s. Her eyes were cold and hard. “We aren’t waiting around for them to find and destroy us. When the time is right, we’re going to take the Sanctuary by force and make it ours.”
4
Amelia
Amelia sat on the small cot in the isolation block of the barracks at the east end of the Patriots’ compound, in the same place they’d waited out quarantine when they’d arrived only a week ago. It was a revamped prison cell—a narrow rectangle of concrete floor, a toilet, sink, and mirror, a cot with a mattress and a few blankets.
The room smelled damp and slightly moldy. But Amelia didn’t care. She was too filled with barely contained elation—she finally had her mother back.
Her mother huddled on the cot beside her. Though Amelia had brought her a thick, auto-warm cable-knit sweater, she was still shivering. Her mother was thin and haggard, her elbows knobby, her collarbone painfully sharp beneath her skin. Her cheekbones, always high and sweeping, were hollowed, almost cadaverous.
“I missed you so much,” Amelia whispered, her throat dry. She wanted to cling to her mother like a little girl—like she never had, even when she was a little girl—and never let go. But that wasn’t her family’s way.
Her mother’s narrow shoulders were curved inward, her shoulder blades sharp as wings. “I thought about you every minute of every day.”
“Did they—what was it like?” Amelia didn’t want to ask a question her mother wasn’t ready to answer. She knew too well what it was like to live through trauma, how it felt like you would shatter into pieces if you spoke the words aloud.
Her mother shook her head. “I was scared all the time. But they never laid a hand on me. Cerberus saw to that.
“Don’t get me wrong. They’re misogynist pigs willing to buy and sell anything, including women and children, but they live by their own distorted sort of code. They think women belong in the home as nurturers and homemakers, wives and mothers. They believe men are their protectors, their masters.” She brushed her tangled auburn curls back from her face. “It’s too complicated and backward. It’s over. It’s done. I never want to think about them again.”
Amelia bit her lip. The Headhunters weren’t going anywhere, but at least her mother wasn’t their prisoner now. Amelia didn’t want to leave her mother in this place, surrounded by enemies, but she didn’t have a choice. At least Gabriel, Willow, and Celeste would be here, keeping an eye on things.
She glanced at her Smartflex. “I have to go soon.”
Her mother flinched. “I know. I just…I want to keep you safe.”
“This is about more than keeping me safe,” Amelia said. “This is bigger than me. It has to be.”
“Of course. You are the cure. You are the future. I know you have to go in there…but you must stay safe.” Her mother stroked her cheek, her elegant brow furrowing. “If you can’t come back for us, it doesn’t matter. Stay inside the Sanctuary. Do you understand?”
Amelia blinked. Surely her mother meant something else. Surely, she wasn’t saying what it sounded like she was saying. “But what about you and—”
Her mother gave a sharp shake of her head, her curls tumbling around her shoulders. “Everything I’ve done for the last eighteen years is for you. If it would keep you safe, I’d go back with the Headhunters. Your safety is all that matters.”
Her stomach twisted. She could barely get the words out. “That would mean leaving you and everyone else behind.”
“It would be worth it. Don’t worry about me.”
Amelia swallowed. “The others—”
“No one loves you like I do,” her mother said without hesitation. “You are a million times more important than any of them.”
Amelia leaned back against the cement wall. The chill leached the warmth from her body. She felt the cold all the way to her bones. The thought of abandoning the people she’d come to love as her family—Micah, Benjie, Willow, Finn, Gabriel, even Celeste—it was unthinkable. “You would have left Jericho?”
Grief flashed across her mother’s face—deep and real and wrenching. Amelia saw it then, what she’d suspected all these months. Her mother had loved Jericho. Maybe she never would have admitted it, or maybe if Jericho had lived, they would have ended up together. The death of what might have been was evident in the sorrow and regret etched in every line of her mother’s
face.
Jericho had been a great man: practical and efficient, strong and courageous, an ex-soldier who chose to stay and protect them when he could have fled and survived on his own.
In Atlanta, Jericho had taken the punishment meted out by the Pyros’ leader, Tobias Moruga, after Silas accidentally shot and killed the man’s son. Jericho had claimed the blame. And Moruga had shot Jericho in the head like he was nothing more than a dog.
Amelia closed her eyes against her own grief, against the horrifying images that still plagued her nightmares.
“Jericho would say the same thing,” her mother said firmly. “He was pragmatic to a fault. All he ever did was protect us—protect you.”
“He wouldn’t be sitting here telling me to save myself and abandon my friends,” Amelia snapped. She took a breath, struggling to stay calm. She shouldn’t be angry—her mother was just trying to protect her, just like she always had, even when Amelia hadn’t realized it.
“Jericho protected all of us. We were his responsibility, his people—” Amelia nearly choked on the words, but forced her way through. “He didn’t separate the elites from the rest. He didn’t make some people more important than others. He could have left all of us and survived on his own. But he didn’t. Every single one of us is alive because of him. “He didn’t abandon anyone. Not even you. He was leading us through Atlanta to ambush the Headhunters before they reached the Sanctuary. That’s why we were in Atlanta—to rescue you.”
“You’re right. He was a good man.” Her mother dropped her gaze to the floor. She wiped daintily at a tear slipping down her cheek. “We will all miss him. But that doesn’t change the facts. Your safety is all that matters.”
“Mine? Or mine and Silas’s?”
“Of course,” her mother said, but not with true feeling behind it.
“He’s your son, too.”
“I’m aware,” her mother said too sharply.
Amelia recalled her conversation with Silas back in the Pyro’s prison on that endless night. How Silas confessed he didn’t believe their mother loved him. How Amelia had tried to protest, but the truth was there, undeniable.
