by Kyla Stone
“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Micah said, awe and dread in his voice, “but it wasn’t this.” He adjusted his glasses as if that might somehow change the forbidding view before them.
“More drones.” Amelia pointed toward the plasma wall. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of armored nighthawks patrolled the wall, some as large as small cars.
“The New Patriots were right after all,” Silas said. “No way in but through the front door.”
Before Jamal left them several miles back, he had shown them the maps the Patriots had managed to cobble together of the exterior defenses and terrain of the Sanctuary. There was no section undefended. To breach the five-mile radius anywhere but the main entrance road meant death. According to Jamal, over the last several months, more than a dozen Patriots had been killed by drones, mines, or captured by Sanctuary soldiers to be interrogated and tortured, never to be seen again.
A secondary access road was two miles northwest. It was used by Sanctuary contractors, suppliers, and soldiers, but those soldiers’ orders were “shoot first, don’t bother with questions.” Silas was right. There was no other way in. Not without a tank or an army. And even then, the Sanctuary appeared well prepared to defend itself.
Dread filled Amelia like lead in her bones. She’d heard the Patriots’ warnings. She had clung to the faint hope that they could sneak in undetected, that she could find the scientists without the Coalition ever knowing her true identity. But that was a pipe dream, wishful thinking, a foolishness she couldn’t afford.
She straightened her shoulders. “Let’s go. Stay on the road.” As if any of them needed the reminder.
They headed down the hill, passing several craters in the ground so large a truck could fit inside. Someone had tried to attack the Sanctuary. It hadn’t gone well for them.
“How are you feeling?” Micah asked softly as they walked.
“As well as can be expected.” That part was true, at least. She hadn’t had a migraine—or even a headache—since her last seizure during their escape from the fire at the mall in Atlanta. Was that two weeks ago? Three? It was easy to lose track of time when every day felt like an eternity, when everything could change in an instant.
Another seizure could take her at any time. She was never safe.
Micah didn’t touch her. He never touched her without asking first. But he was close, close enough that she felt the brush of his shoulder against hers, felt the warmth radiating from his body. He was here. He wasn’t going anywhere.
She smiled at him.
“What’s that for?”
“For coming with me when I know you’re worried sick about Gabriel.”
“Of course.” She could tell he was biting the inside of his cheek. “We just have to trust him, right?”
“We don’t have a choice.” A shiver ran through her as she remembered their last meeting, the kiss. “He’s changed. I believe he has.”
“So do I,” Micah said.
“Then we trust him.”
Silas snorted behind them. “Good luck with that.”
“Not helpful, Silas,” Amelia said.
Ignoring Silas’s jab, Micah turned to Amelia. “What do you think the Sanctuary will be like?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t explain the knot of fear, hope, dread and determination tangled inside her. What if the guards refused to let them in, no matter who she said she was? What if her father was inside those plasma walls? What if the Coalition imprisoned or tortured her?
Worst of all, what if she really wasn’t the cure? The Hydra virus would shatter what remained of the world, piece by desperate piece. Those with immunity would just keep killing each other, fighting over the scraps of a dying civilization. The thought broke her heart.
“What if all this is all for nothing?” she whispered.
“It’s not,” Micah said with conviction. “I have faith, Amelia. This is all happening for a reason, for a purpose. What we’re doing here—what you’re doing—is important. It’s everything.”
Without hope, without a future, there was only survival. And survival wasn’t enough. Micah had taught her that. Amelia touched her charm bracelet beneath her jacket. “Tell me something beautiful.”
He considered for a moment. “There is something good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
“Who said that?” She always knew when he was quoting something.
“Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.”
Of course. His favorite book. She glanced at him. “Is that what we’re doing? Fighting?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. But I’m willing to if we have to, if that’s what it takes.”
She kicked a stray rock. The winter air felt suddenly colder. She was grateful for Micah’s steady strength beside her. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Are we strong enough? Am I strong enough?”
“We are,” he said. “You are.”
Silas rolled his eyes. “You two make me physically ill. Have I ever told you that?”
There was no bite to her brother’s words, no cruelty in his smirk. He was as tense and nervous as they were. Amelia smiled grimly. “Once or twice.”
Silas had been slightly more subdued since the Pyros, since Jericho’s death and their night in the Pyro prison, when he’d finally opened up to Amelia for the first time in years. He was still Silas, but maybe he wasn’t quite as acerbic, maybe his armor wasn’t quite as thick.
They crested another small hill. The plasma wall loomed over them.
“Stop right there!” someone shouted. “Hands in the air!”
Adrenaline shot through her. She, Micah, and Silas halted and lifted their hands. A dozen soldiers marched out to them, as many drones zooming over their heads.
The soldiers leveled plasma guns, their eyes hard above the clear masks fixed over their noses and mouths. They wore helmets and sharp, charcoal-gray uniforms with a patch over the right shoulder—a white triangle with a rippling American flag behind a sword.
She blinked hard. Looked again. The emblem was the same. These were Coalition security agents.
This was exactly what her mother feared. But it didn’t matter now. The only option was to obey orders. She felt the cold metal of the charm bracelet against her skin beneath her clothes. It gave her no comfort.
A figure in a hazmat suit stepped forward to meet them. Amelia glimpsed nut-brown hair and a round, feminine face through the hazmat visor. “Nice and slow, please reveal your right wrist,” the woman said to Amelia. She held a wand-like object in one hand and a holopad in the other. “We need to verify your identity.”
Amelia carefully pulled back the sleeve of her jacket and tugged down her glove. Her wrist was slim and pale, mapped with thin blue veins. “I don’t have a Vitalichip. Neither do my friends.”
The soldiers were standing outside the ten-foot infection radius, but they still tensed. Their fingers tightened on the triggers of their pulse guns. Amelia felt the same tension coiling inside her own body.
The woman scrutinized her suspiciously. “We cannot immediately determine your infection status without a chip. Without a specified infection status, you are automatically registered as potentially hostile under safety regulation code 221.5. I am required to inform you that 99.6% of persons seeking asylum are unqualified and refused entry. I am authorized to direct you to the nearest regional FEMA medical center for help.”
Silas snorted. “We need FEMA like we need a shot in the head.”
Micah gave him a warning look.
“We aren’t interested in FEMA,” Amelia said evenly. “We need to speak to someone in authority inside the Sanctuary.”
“Identify yourself and state your intentions.” The woman swiped something into her holopad and held it out for Amelia to scan her thumbprint. Amelia knew the drill. A retinal scan would follow. The two biosignatures combined would confirm her identity.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage. This was it. Whatever waited for them—salvation or destruction
—it started now.
She peeled off her glove and pressed her thumb to the glowing digital handprint on the scanner. Her name would either save them or doom them. There was only one way to find out.
“I have information of utmost importance to national security,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “My name is Amelia Black.”
9
Gabriel
“Stop moping around, Rivera,” Cleo said to Gabriel. She finished loading supplies in the back of the transport and slammed the door shut. “Let’s move.”
It was just past dawn, the orange glow of the sun barely creeping above the tree line. The sky above them was still the deep purplish-gray of a bruise. Gabriel wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck. His cheeks and ears stung in the chilly air.
Amelia, Micah, and Silas had left yesterday. Jamal Carter had returned last night, reporting that he’d dropped them off just outside the perimeter without incident.
Now, the New Patriots were departing on their mission to secure the Phantom. They took two armored, all-terrain Jeeps. General Reaver, Colonel Reid, and several other Patriots took the first transport. Cleo, Gabriel, Jamal, Cerberus, and two other Headhunters rode in the second vehicle. Gabriel rode shotgun.
Cleo punched in the GPS coordinates to the town nearest the location Cerberus had given them and sat back, letting the auto-drive sensors take over. “Pay attention,” she said to Gabriel. “The auto functions get a bit jittery from all these hills.”
The dirt and gravel roads were mostly clear. Up here in the mountains, they weren’t obstructed by thousands of abandoned vehicles.
Thoughts of Micah and Amelia filled his mind. Anxiety roiled through him. What were they doing now? Had they made it inside? Were they safe? He tried to focus on something else. “Does your mother come on every mission?”
“Only the most critical ones,” Cleo said. “The Phantom is a game-changer. She wants to see it for herself—and ensure we don’t mess anything up,” she added with an edge of resentment.
She glared at Cerberus in the rear-view mirror. He was a hulking giant hunched in the back seat, his meaty arms crossed over his chest, the white wolf pelt bristling across his shoulders. He looked for all the world like some futuristic Viking lost in time.
“You better not be lying to us,” she spat, “or I’ll gut you myself.”
“You’re welcome to try.” Cerberus sneered. “It would be my pleasure to school you in the proper attributes of womanhood.”
Cleo gave a mirthless laugh. “You Headhunters are probably thrilled the world’s gone to hell. You can bring us all back to the stone ages with you.”
Cerberus shot her a stony-faced glare and refused to answer.
Gabriel clung to the side door as the Jeep roared over the pitted, overgrown access road. They swerved around a fallen tree blocking the road, the vehicle angling dangerously near the edge of a steep ridge. Two hundred feet below them, a glittering river twisted at the bottom of the gorge.
With his other hand, Gabriel grasped the butt of his holstered gun. He had his handgun, his rifle, and his hunting knife. Plenty of weapons to defend himself—and to kill. He felt Cerberus’s presence behind him, a dangerous, barely restrained predator. He loathed every second of it. The Headhunter was unarmed at present, compliments of General Reaver’s command, but Gabriel didn’t doubt the man was deadly with his bare hands.
Gabriel was dangerous, too. Nadira’s scrap of blue cloth burned like a brand in his pocket. Silently, he vowed to kill Cerberus at the earliest opportunity, Cleo and her mother’s orders be damned. Then, maybe some of the guilt he wore like clanking chains around his neck would fall away, finally freeing him. Maybe.
The hours passed in silence. He kept his gaze on the forest whipping by outside the windows, his jaw clenched. He tried not to think too much about Amelia and Micah heading for the Sanctuary. But he couldn’t dispel the tightness in his chest, the terrible helplessness washing over him. He was separated from the people he loved at exactly the time they most needed his protection.
But neither Micah nor Amelia was helpless. Micah had grown stronger, both physically and mentally. He could fight when he had to. He would kill to defend their people. Gabriel didn’t doubt his brother’s will or his loyalty.
He didn’t doubt Amelia’s determination, either. She wasn’t the same girl from the Grand Voyager. She hadn’t been weak then, but she’d lived in shame and fear for so long she didn’t recognize her own power. Now she did. She was a force to be reckoned with—strong-willed, confident, beautiful.
The memory of their kiss flushed through him. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it. He’d told her he wasn’t sorry. And he wasn’t. He would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. But some part of him had whispered that he might never see her again, that he’d regret this chance not taken for the rest of his life.
Whatever happened next, he wanted Amelia to know he loved her. Even though she couldn’t love him back…he would always love her.
The transport shuddered to a halt. Cleo shoved the door open and jumped out. “We’re here.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Gabriel said.
Cleo unloaded a large, industrial-sized hovercart and looked at Cerberus. “How far?”
Cerberus just shrugged with a lazy, predatory smile. “Soon.”
A three-mile hike over rough, rugged terrain later, they crested a small hill to find a mid-sized town sprawling in the distance. A hundred yards to the north stood a huge concrete block of a building topped with a blue metal roof. Gabriel recognized the big-box store brand emblazoned in bright, candy-apple red on the front of the building.
“It was a restock warehouse for commerce drone delivery,” Cerberus explained.
With their guns in the low and ready position, they cleared the area. They found several dead bodies and a few infected wildlife—which they promptly dispatched—before entering the warehouse through a side entrance. The lock had already been bashed, the door pried open and squeaking on its hinges.
Gabriel flicked on the light attached to the scope of his rifle. The towering shelves were ransacked. Plastic wrap and torn cardboard littered the cement floor. He kicked aside several empty, discarded boxes.
The stench of rotting flesh filled his nostrils. He adjusted his mask over his mouth and nose. The others did the same. It did nothing to staunch the foul, rancid odor, but he hoped it would protect him from any bodies infected with the Hydra virus.
A rat squealed and scurried out from beneath an empty beer crate. Gabriel shot it with a shudder, memories of the rat-infested sewer flooding through him. “Be careful of those things. They’re cunning little beasts.”
“Back here,” Cerberus said. He led them through the labyrinthine rows of shelves to a metal door in the back wall. Brown streaks smeared the door. Dried blood. Four bodies dressed in army fatigues and combat gear slumped in front of it. They were bloated, decomposing. No blood leaked from their eye sockets. Their veins weren’t a dark topography spidering across their rotting, corpse-white skin.
They weren’t infected.
“They were all knifed or shot,” Cerberus said. “Two of them in the back. We dragged them against the door to discourage looters. Figured most folks would decide it wasn’t worth the risk to scavenge an office when there was plenty to plunder out here.”
Jamal covered his masked mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. Coughing, he used a crowbar to push and prod the bodies out of the way. He pried open the locked door. Gabriel and two others cleared the office quickly.
The rest of the New Patriots crowded into the office.
It was unremarkable. Two integrated computer desks, a holoscreen, a couple of moldy-smelling sofas, a dusty coffee bar, an employee-only bathroom in the back.
“Here we go!” Jamal gave a low whistle as he crouched behind one of the sofas.
The Phantom was hidden between the sofa and the wall. It was huge, about six feet long, and sinister. It reminded G
abriel vaguely of a gun-shaped torpedo.
“Someone was lugging it around,” Cerberus said. “Ex-airmen who took it from their abandoned base. They stopped here for supplies, got ambushed. Whoever took ‘em out didn’t know the value of this thing, figured it was too big and heavy, and just left it.”
General Reaver stood with her arms crossed over her chest while two of her soldiers examined it. Cleo stood next to her, watching nervously, her expression tense.
“It’s legit,” one of them reported.
“What exactly does it do?” Gabriel asked.
“You know what an EMP is,” Jamal said.
“An electromagnetic pulse,” Gabriel said. “North Korea used a nuke like that to decimate part of Japan, set them back a hundred years. That’s why we nuked them in return.”
“An EMP burst fries electronics within a certain radius,” Jamal said. “But it takes out everything. The Phantom is a HERF, an EMP gun that fires an intense, controlled electromagnetic pulse that takes out a narrow target.”
“Won’t everything in the Sanctuary be hardened?”
“Not necessarily,” General Reaver said in her deep, throaty smoker’s voice. She squatted next to the weapon, stroking its sleek black side with her free hand. In her late forties, she was a tall, stern-faced black woman with hard, shrewd eyes. Gabriel didn’t doubt she shared her daughter’s single-minded dedication to the cause, no matter the cost. “The Phantom is future tech. It’s stronger than anything we’ve seen. It can burn right through Faraday cages and lead shields three inches thick.”
“We can’t penetrate the plasma wall without neutralizing their cannons first,” Cleo said. “That’s what this baby will do.”
“Can’t they just repair it?” Gabriel asked.
“Of course.” Cleo flashed a wicked grin. “But it will take time. And a little time is all we need.”
