by Kyla Stone
“Enough,” she said. “Talking won’t take down the Sanctuary. Come on, let’s go.”
5
Amelia
Amelia was exhausted. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt more weary. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since the night she’d arrived, three days ago. Whenever she thought of her mother’s betrayal, what the possible consequences might be, who could get hurt or killed because of it, her throat closed like a fist and her insides burned with anger.
The damage was done. And there was nothing Amelia could do about it. She could only wait and watch as she spent her days wearing pretty dresses and smiling pretty smiles and acting exactly how the elites of the Sanctuary expected her to.
When she wasn’t needed in the lab, she whiled away the hours playing the violin on her terrace or wandering the halls of the capitol, hoping to hear an update about her father or snippets of news about riots, insurrections, political blowback over the Coalition’s role in the Hydra virus—anything.
She hadn’t heard a thing. Harper hadn’t relayed any further messages. Amelia was completely in the dark. And she was tired of it. Every hour and day that passed felt like a screw turning tighter and tighter.
She needed answers. And she knew who would have them. It was time to do something.
Amelia straightened her shoulders and turned to Hogan, who had yet to leave her side during the day for anything but using the restroom. A different set of security agents guarded her quarters at night. “I want to see my father.”
Hogan glanced down at her, surprise in his green eyes. In his early thirties, he looked every inch the soldier with his broad, straight shoulders, pristine gray Coalition uniform, and angular, clean-shaven face. His skin was a deep olive tone, his dark brown hair shorn close to his skull. “What?”
“I wish to visit Declan Black.”
She’d planned to ask Harper, but she was in a private meeting with President Sloane and the other Coalition members. Probably planning the details of Declan Black’s public execution.
Her stomach twisted at the thought. Even though she’d assumed he was already dead all these months, the thought of his death now—visceral, violent, right in front of her eyes—sent fresh waves of shock and grief roiling through her.
She needed to speak with him one last time before the end. He was still her father. In spite of everything, she wanted this. She couldn’t help it.
He owed her that much.
Hogan glanced uneasily down at his holopad. “We need to get permission through the proper channels. President Sloane—”
“Has already given permission,” Amelia said quickly in her most authoritative voice. She knew she was taking a risk in trusting Hogan. Harper had warned her not to trust him. He was a member of the president’s private security detail, here to spy on her for the president as much as to protect her. But there was something about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. While he appeared strict and stoic, there was nothing cruel about him.
Besides, she had no one else. If she wanted to see her father, she had to take the risk.
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t see it here—”
“Please.” She grazed his arm with her fingertips and gave him a shy but dazzling smile. She hated how easily she slipped the mask back on, how quickly the skills of charm and charisma—and manipulation—came back to her. She knew how to enchant a man into bending to her will. Before, it had always been her father’s will, not her own. “President Sloane is very busy. I’d rather not bother her again.”
Tears—real ones—glistened in her eyes as she gazed imploringly at Hogan. “He’s my dad. I know what he did. He’s going to die for it. I just—I want to say goodbye. President Sloane was going to have Harper take me, but then they both got called away. I’m—I’m running out of time.”
Hogan raked a hand over his skull and sighed. He was clearly tired of babysitting duty. “Oh, all right. But stay by my side. And we must be back for your appointment with Dr. Ponniah. She had some more questions for you pertaining to your bout with the Hydra virus.”
Amelia ducked her head demurely, fluttered her lashes, and gave him her most winning smile. “Of course. Thank you.”
Five minutes later, they were in a transport. Hogan punched in the coordinates and the cloud took over, automated by the vehicle’s AI.
The sky was slate-gray. A few snowflakes spiraled down, but the dark clouds overhead promised much more, and soon. Amelia shivered, wrapping her wool coat tighter around herself.
She watched the people huddled on moving sidewalks, hurrying in the cold to get to wherever they needed to go. The holoscreens on the sides and fronts of the buildings alternated ads with government promos. A beautiful brunette with shiny white teeth spoke silkily, reminding people of curfews, best hygienic procedures to avoid spreading illness, and repeating the Coalition’s motto: Unity through might. Freedom through strength. Peace through safety.
Another Coalition broadcast switched on. A second beautiful woman, this time a blonde, announced the mandatory attendance at Unity Square in front of the capitol steps tomorrow evening at six p.m. for a critical presidential address. A twenty-second videofeed of Declan’s confession and arrest looped several times.
People paused to watch the broadcast on the screens or their Smartflexes. When it was over, they continued with their day. They didn’t understand, she thought dully. Did they really think that Declan Black had acted alone? Did they really believe the rest of the Coalition had nothing to do with it?
Did she?
Most of the Coalition members had succumbed to the virus. Maybe the other co-conspirators were already dead. Maybe it was Senator Steelman. Or General Daugherty. Or Selma Perez or President Sloane, or maybe it was all of them. Or her father really was the only guilty one left alive. She’d been at the capitol for weeks, and she still didn’t know.
They passed the hospital. A few hundred people were lined up outside the glass doors. Teens clustered in groups, wearing dark coats and colorful scarves. Mothers clutched their children’s hands. Workers in different-colored uniforms shuffled their feet and checked their Smartflexes impatiently.
“What are they doing?” she asked.
“Getting antivirals,” Hogan said.
Amelia frowned, confused. “But you don’t have anyone infected inside.”
Hogan shrugged. “President Sloane says it’s necessary. Every citizen receives an injection every month. The soldiers get something a little different. They inject us separately, anyway.”
“But antivirals only work if you have a virus,” Amelia argued.
Hogan gave her an exasperated look. “The doctors said we might get sick if we don’t take them. So we take them. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Two guards stood at either side of the hospital doors, pulse rifles in their hands. A terrified toddler buried her head against her father’s leg as an armored drone glided past, black and menacing. Further down the street, a smaller surveillance drone dipped low over one of the moving sidewalks, its camera shutter blinking furiously as it took hundreds—thousands—of photos and vids.
“Why do you need all this?” she asked. “Martial law. Curfews. Soldiers and drones everywhere. It seems…excessive.”
“President Sloane’s first priority is safety.”
“But you’re safe now.”
“Maybe,” he allowed.
“What about your rights? Your freedom?”
He glanced at her, his face impassive. “President Sloane promised to remove martial law when the time is right.”
“And when would that be? It’s been months. You’re just going to keep putting up with this?”
“What choice do we have?” he said finally, blowing out a breath. “If we want a place inside, we follow the rules, just like everyone else. It’s the only option.”
“There are other options.”
“What? To go outside and risk the Hydra virus? The chaos of gangs an
d thugs?”
“There’s a middle ground between rights and rule, between freedom and safety. But this isn’t it.”
“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Hogan said. “Things have been going this direction for a long time.”
She knew that. Her own father had been the rule of might’s most ardent crusader. She sighed and leaned back against the plush leather seat. “Where were you, when it happened?”
His jaw tightened. For a second, she thought he might not answer. But he’d already broken his stoic silence. “I was a Marine. When it all fell apart, I was assigned to Grady Memorial Hospital, ordered to assist with hospital evacuation missions inside the quarantine perimeter. Then I was stationed at a FEMA medical center outside Atlanta. It was this massive, hastily constructed tent-city, a quarantine ‘detention and disposal facility’ inside the Infection Zone. The Infection Zone pretty quickly escalated to include the whole city, then the whole damn country. The things I saw…it’s better in here, trust me.”
The transport pulled up to an unnamed, nondescript one-story building along the northern perimeter of the plasma wall. The wicked purplish-blue plasma wall was thirty feet tall and crackled like lightning. At regular intervals, the walls were mounted by guard towers bristling with enormous cannons. Soldiers carrying large rifles patrolled the ramparts.
“You have reached your destination,” the male AI said, startling Amelia from her thoughts.
Hogan escorted her through the front door. The walls were blank and gray, the floor just bare, ugly cement. Two soldiers lounged behind a desk against the far wall. Four more sat around a table playing digital chess. One of them, a thin black woman with an afro and an eyebrow ring, rose to greet them, holding a holopad and a handheld scanner. “State your rank and orders.”
Hogan held out his wrist for the scanner. Amelia did the same. “Lieutenant Sam Hogan. President Sloane’s security team. We’re here on an unofficial Coalition matter.”
The guard scanned their chips, then perused her holopad, skimming the incoming stream of data. “You’re cleared,” she said, moving aside.
Metal doors clanged. Amelia barely noticed passing through a long, dingy hallway. And then she was in a small room bisected by a wall of diamondglass. Tiny holes clustered in the center of the glass allowed sound to pass through the wall.
Hogan shut the door behind her.
With a deep breath, Amelia stepped inside her father’s prison cell.
6
Willow
“We’re here,” Raven said.
After three endless, excruciating days, they’d finally reached the Settlement. Willow thought her legs were going to fall off from exhaustion. Her thighs ached. Her feet were blistered. She was tired and hungry and filthy, but they’d made it.
It would have been far worse without Raven. At night, she’d set snares, capturing three squirrels and a couple of rabbits, which they roasted over their campfire and devoured, their bellies still rumbling with hunger even as they licked the grease from their fingers.
To avoid detection, Raven had built their fires inside a two-foot hole she’d dug, along with a tunnel leading to a second hole, allowing oxygen to feed the fire like a chimney. It also served to dissipate the smoke. The girl was some kind of genius.
“This better be worth it,” Willow muttered as they broke through a thick copse of trees into an overgrown clearing. A large hill rose before them, bristling with boulders and jutting rocks.
“I don’t get it.” Finn glanced around, shielding his eyes from the sun reflecting off mounds of snow. “What am I missing?”
“Where is the Settlement?” Benjie asked.
Raven pointed down at her feet. “Underground.”
Willow squinted. She’d thought they lived in caves or something. But she didn’t see anything like that here. “Where’s the entrance?”
Raven jumped off her board, took a few shuffling steps, and shoved aside artfully positioned underbrush to reveal a set of steel doors set into a sheer rock face. The doors were stenciled with a strange combination of letters and numbers. “Right here.”
Willow tried the door. Locked. She tried the biometric scanner. Access denied. She banged on the metal. “Hello!” she shouted.
Raven waved at a nearly invisible security camera hiding beneath the branch of a leaning pine tree. “They know we’re here.”
“What now?” Willow asked impatiently. They’d come all this way. Now that they were here, she wanted in. Who knew what was happening at the Sanctuary right now? Her friends needed her help.
“We wait,” Raven said simply.
Finn and Raven slid off their backpacks. Finn kicked an area free of snow and sat against a slim birch tree. Benjie snuggled up next to him as he passed out their last granola bars.
Shadow appeared on a ledge about ten yards above the metal doors. He edged along the narrow ridge before leaping from boulder to boulder on the way down the hill.
“Can I pet Shadow?” Benjie asked around a huge bite.
“You don’t pet wolves who don’t know and trust you,” Raven said sternly. “They aren’t dogs.”
Benjie’s face fell.
Raven’s expression softened, but only slightly. “You have to earn his respect. It takes time. But if you sit very still and very quiet, he might decide to investigate.”
Benjie nodded vigorously. He plopped down on the ground, legs crisscrossed, hands folded primly in his lap, and froze.
“Shadow isn’t like a regular wolf. He was raised in captivity, and he’s half genetically engineered, so he acts somewhat different than his wolf cousins, but the same advice works for him, too. Stay low when he’s first getting to know you. It’s a gesture of submission, and an invitation to trust you. Move slowly. Never approach fast. Never hold out your fingers; that’s a good way to get nipped. Let him smell you first.”
Benjie’s gaze fixed on Shadow. He looked like he hardly dared to breathe.
“Be careful,” Willow warned.
Raven sat next to Benjie and made a sound like a low whine in the back of her throat. Shadow circled them again and again, sniffing the air, drawing in close before ambling away, only to draw in close again. After several minutes, he came in close enough to brush against Benjie’s shoulder. He could have easily knocked Benjie flat, but he seemed to be taking great care, like he knew Benjie was a child, a pup.
Willow stiffened as Shadow bent his head and pressed his muzzle to Benjie’s cheek. She tried not to think about those teeth, how close they were to her brother’s exposed jugular…
Shadow licked Benjie’s face. Benjie grinned in delight. “He likes me!”
Willow let out the breath she’d been holding. It shimmered like a pale cloud in the chilled air. The wolf turned and ambled back toward the woods. He paused to lift his leg and leave his mark at the base of a gnarled pine before slipping off between the trees.
“What’s he doing now?” Benjie asked.
“Marking a territory so predators will know to stay away. He’s protecting us.” Raven limped several steps to lean her hoverboard against a tree, wincing as she walked. Willow hadn’t really noticed before, but she had a definite limp.
“How’d you hurt your leg?” Benjie piped up.
“A mistake.” Raven’s tone was sharp, clipped. She didn’t want to talk about it. Did it happen before the world broke, or after? Had the Headhunters done it to her?
But it was none of their business. Raven would tell them if and when she wanted to. Willow shook her head at Benjie. He didn’t ask any more questions.
A half hour of waiting turned into an hour, which slipped into two. Raven remained alert, leaning against a tree facing the way they’d come, her whittling knife carving another bird out of a block of wood. Shadow flopped down next to her, his huge head resting on her knee. Finn dozed off, snoring lightly. Benjie fell asleep in his lap.
But Willow couldn’t sit. She couldn’t rest or relax. She paced in tight circles until she wor
e a path in the dirt and snow.
After more than three hours, Willow had had enough. What the heck could possibly take so long? “Maybe whoever’s monitoring the camera took a sick day. There has to be another entrance somewhere.”
“This is the only one they’ve brought me to,” Raven said. “We stay here.”
“I’m gonna have a look around.”
“These people are touchy,” Raven said, a warning in her voice.
Willow had to do something or she’d go crazy. This was what she’d risked Benjie and Finn’s lives for. It had to be worth it. She had to make it worth it. She touched the gun holstered at her side. She was armed. She was prepared. “Got it. I’ll be back in a few.”
She clambered up the steep hill, her muscles screaming in protest, her boots slipping in the wet mix of snow, clay, and rotting leaves as she grabbed skinny tree trunks and branches to haul herself up.
The top of the hill was a massive, flat clearing. Instead of more woods like she expected, a cluster of old buildings nestled around a paved tarmac, with a small runway stretching off into the distance. It looked like an abandoned airport. Regional, probably.
Her hand on the butt of her gun, ready to draw at any suspicious sound, she went to investigate. The first building was empty of everything but birds’ nests, raccoon droppings, and spider webs. It was a large warehouse space with a concrete floor, metal roof, and three bay doors along one side. It was a hangar for small airplanes or hovercraft.
Something creaked behind Willow.
Adrenaline rocketing through her, she spun, instinctively flinging her arm out. She hammered her assailant in the face with a satisfying crack. She dropped and kicked, sweeping his legs out from under him.
He fell with a grunt, his gun clattering to the concrete floor.
Willow pulled her own gun and lunged for her attacker. She knelt on his chest and pressed the muzzle of her gun to his forehead.
