by Kyla Stone
He wiped the blood from his eyes, wincing at the shards of agony spearing through his skull. His throat throbbed where Bale had strangled him. Gently, he probed his face. The skin around his cheekbone and right eye was raw, puffy, and swollen, caked in blood. The cuts were deep, but no bones seemed to be broken.
Molten pain seared his side. A cracked rib likely. Deeply bruised, at least. An incredible weariness stole over him. He swayed, held himself up against the railing. “How’s your head?”
“Okay, I think. I’m dizzy, but that’s nothing new.”
“Where did you get the scalpel?”
“From the med-bot. I broke it off one of its arms.”
He pressed his hand over the wound in his shoulder. Blood leaked between his fingers. “You should have run. I told you to run.”
She lifted her chin, her eyes sparking with defiance. “Then you would be dead. And Bale would have hunted me down and killed me, too.”
He couldn’t argue with her logic. He’d thought the same thing. He’d been desperate to save her. And he had. But she had saved him too in the end.
“I wasn’t going to leave you,” she said. “I couldn’t.”
He fought the urge to push her hair behind her ears, to draw her close and pull her into the safety of his arms. He wanted to lean down and kiss her, release all the pent-up emotions he shouldn’t allow himself to feel, but still did.
Instead, another wave of dizziness struck him, and he faltered, nearly losing his balance.
She narrowed her eyes as she pulled an auto-injector out of her pocket. “The med-bot had adrenaline stims in one of its compartments. It’ll keep you on your feet until we can get you to a doctor.”
He nodded, and she injected his arm. He barely felt the sting. He did feel the flood of ice-cold adrenaline streaking through his veins. He stood up straighter. “We need to go. We have to get back to the battle.”
She nodded mutely. Gabriel looped his arm around her waist. She was holding him up as much as he was helping her. They ran as best they could, Gabriel hissing each breath. They reached the stairwell and hobbled down six flights of stairs. They stumbled across the polished floor of the lobby, steering well clear of Bale’s body.
They skidded to a halt ten yards from the glass front doors. Amelia gasped.
Outside BioGen, the square was in ruins. The sky had darkened like a stain. Thickly falling snow mingled with the smoke and ash. Snow coated the rubble and the twisted, mangled metal of fallen drones.
Everywhere he looked, he saw bodies. Some wore Coalition uniforms. More in the dark clothing and combat fatigues of the resistance fighters and New Patriots.
So many dead.
“Gabriel!” Amelia pointed, drawing his attention to the center of the square.
Their paltry Patriot forces had been overrun. The hundred or so survivors were pressed into a bloody circle surrounded by hundreds of Coalition soldiers bristling with rifles and pulse guns. Armored drones glided menacingly over the prisoners’ heads.
They’d lost. After everything they’d suffered and sacrificed, they’d still lost. Despair clawed at his throat. “We can’t go out there,” he said numbly. “They’ll kill us. It’s over.”
“No!” Amelia seized his arm. There was no fear or defeat in her expression, only an iron, resolute determination. “We’re not giving up.”
She pointed at a tiny metallic ball he hadn’t noticed before. It hovered in the air several feet behind them, trailing Amelia like a trained puppy. She snapped her fingers and the hovercam flew into her left hand. “We can show them the truth. It’s not over.”
“I don’t think so.” A guard sprang out of the shadows of the stairwell alcove. A white girl in her early twenties, average height, her dull brown hair yanked back in a tight ponytail. She clutched a pulse gun in both hands, arms straight and level, the barrel swiveling between Amelia and Gabriel.
Amelia stiffened. “Harper.”
30
Amelia
Harper trained her gun on Amelia. “I have them, Madam President,” she said into her comm.
Across the lobby, the elevator dinged. The doors slid open, and President Sloane stepped out, daintily smoothing a wrinkle in her white silk blouse with one hand. In her other hand, she held Bale’s pulse gun loosely at her side. She smiled when she saw them. It wasn’t a kind smile.
Harper’s gun swung in Amelia’s direction. “What are your orders, Madam President?”
“Take them out to the square,” Sloane said. Her eyes glittered with triumph. “We will execute them like the terrorists they are.”
“Harper, you need to let us go,” Amelia said urgently. Her throat burned with a searing fire, but she forced the words out. “President Sloane isn’t who you think she is. I know what you did to us. I know you betrayed us. But it’s not too late—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Harper snapped. “Your people attacked us first.”
“What about your people?” Amelia asked, edging closer to Gabriel. The searing pain in her head made her thoughts slow and sluggish. She shook her head, clearing her mind. She had to stay sharp.
It was the only way she and Gabriel might live through this. The only way any of them might live through this.
“Do as I command, Harper,” Sloane snapped. “Shut them up and get them outside. Now.”
“You heard the president.” Harper gestured at them with the gun. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“She drugged everyone, Harper,” Amelia said. “Your people. She dosed them with a compound identical to Silk to make them docile and malleable. She used the monthly anti-viral shots. Anti-virals are useless in the healthy. They don’t do anything. She knows that.
“She deceived the survivors and fed off their fear. She made them believe the outside was even more dangerous than it was. That they needed the anti-virals to live, but their only purpose was to keep the people under her absolute control.
“She’s a tyrant, Harper. She turned on her own people a long time ago.”
Harper’s gaze darted to President Sloane. The gun wavered slightly.
“All lies to deceive you,” Sloane said. “She’s just like her father. Harper, you are an elite secret service agent. I hand-selected you. Your duty is to your country. Your duty is to obey the orders of your commander-in-chief. Anything less is treason!”
“Your duty is the people,” Gabriel said. “Not to the woman who slaughtered them by the billions.”
Harper’s gaze darted from Sloane to Amelia and back again. Her hands were shaking. She was a good, dutiful soldier. The thought of betraying her president was likely almost too much to bear. Almost. But there was a kernel of doubt in her expression. Amelia saw it.
Harper wasn’t stupid. She’d seen and heard plenty. She’d likely harbored her own secret misgivings for a long time, even if she hadn’t been willing to act on them. But she needed to act on them now. Amelia had to help her see the truth, or everything was lost.
“The soldiers and security agents receive different anti-virals, don’t they?” Amelia’s voice was steady and soothing, like she was calming a wild horse.
Harper looked to President Sloane again, eyes widening. In the uncertainty flitting across Harper’s face, Amelia saw her confirmation.
“She needed your senses sharp,” Amelia said. “Soldiers are trained to obey orders without questioning. She didn’t need to drug you. But the people were scared. They were devastated and angry. They wanted answers. They might have turned against her, rightfully believing the government hadn’t protected them as promised. So she had to keep them dull and placid, keep them under her thumb.
“She had you perfectly positioned to manipulate the situation and use the resistance to trap Declan Black. All the while, she was the true mastermind, the true enemy of the people.”
Harper stiffened. “You—drugged everyone? You killed all those people? It was you?”
“Harper!” Sloane cried. Her eyes bulged wit
h barely repressed fury. “I am the president of the United States of America! Defy me now, and so help me, you’ll suffer the consequences for your treason.”
Harper shook her head. She lowered her gun. “I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”
Relief flooded Amelia. She held out her hands. “I know. I understand. I—”
A gun went off.
Harper sank to her knees, a stunned expression frozen on her face. A pulse blast had struck her in the belly. The sizzling energy savaged skin, muscle, organs, intestines, spine. She toppled to the floor, already dead.
Amelia looked at Gabriel in horrified shock. His hands were still in the air. It wasn’t him. Then who—
“Such a waste. But it had to be done.” Sloane straightened. The pulse gun she’d just used on Harper was now aimed at Gabriel. “I served six years in the Air Force. You think I wouldn’t know how to defend myself? How to defend the Sanctuary? All I’ve ever done is serve and protect this country.”
Gabriel grimaced. “You’re so full of bull—”
“Enough. Now move. I’ll see you hanged as terrorists and traitors for this. Both of you.”
Panic seized Amelia’s insides in an icy vise. Her legs trembled. White spots flitted in front of her eyes.
She struggled to fight it off, to be smart. There was a way out of this. But right now, they had no choice but to obey.
With Sloane behind them, her gun pointed at their backs, and their hands up, Amelia and Gabriel stumbled across the foyer and through the glass doors.
They halted at the top of the marble staircase. Below them, their friends stood slump-shouldered and defeated—surrounded by enemies, awaiting their fate. Drones circled overhead like carrion eager to pick the bones of the dead. She searched for Micah and Silas and Hogan, but couldn’t find any of them in the huddled circle of dirty, bloodied survivors.
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 Hogan 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 abou
t 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, Hogan. 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.
Hogan 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.
