by K A Riley
Kress!
43
Cavalry
Stepping out from the laneways spoking out all around us, Kress and her Conspiracy appear as if by magic, and I wonder if I have some sort of secret Emergent ability even I didn’t know about that enables me to summon a savior—or, in this case, seven saviors—with nothing but a thought.
Or maybe—win, lose, or draw—Kress just works hard to be in the right place at the right time. And who knows? Maybe that’s exactly what makes her and her Conspiracy heroes.
Dressed in black tactical combat gear with white piping, Kress is a human bird of prey. Render, onyx-black and just as fierce, loops around her in banking, protective circles: the world’s deadliest guardian angel.
He kraas! a warrior’s battle-cry into the sky as he plunges, talons-first, into the chest of one of Epic’s guards. The man swats at the air and staggers back, dropping to the ground and shuffling in a terrified, scrambling crawl underneath a nearby Septic Tanker.
Surging forward, Kress slaps the heels of her hands together, and the full set of five-inch, razor-sharp blades snaps out in a curving arc over each of her fingers on both hands.
She’s got her talons buried in the exposed neck of one of Epic’s Sentinels before he even knows she’s there.
And then, in half-a-heartbeat, she’s already moving on to her next flailing, bewildered target.
Only a step behind her, Brohn leaps onto the hood of a disabled, half-burned and flat-tired pickup truck. Landing with the grace of a gazelle and the power of a Belgian stallion, he’s got his knee down and his arbalest primed, raised to his shoulder, and firing all in one single, impossible motion.
Four of the personal guards from Epic’s team dive for cover but not before two of them spiral to the ground, taken down by Brohn’s deadly bolts.
He tags the third Sentinel—a woman with a perfect black braid of hair extending down from under the back of her helmet—right in the meat of her calf muscle. Gasping for breath, she drags herself by her fingertips to find shelter with her fellow Sentinel underneath the Septic Tanker.
Fanning out from behind Kress, Rain slides to the ground while firing a swarm of tiny silver barbs from the Dart-Drivers strapped to her wrists. Most of the razor-tipped quills plink against the guards’ armor, but enough find their mark to send a bunch of Epic’s men shrieking and falling over each other in their disoriented scramble for cover.
Towering over everyone else in the clearing, Terk swings his morning star in a swooping arc. The Sentinel closest to him is nearly as tall as Terk but about half his weight and a fraction of his intensity. The tall man stands frozen and wide-eyed. His Kevlar vest is technically bullet-proof. He’s finding out Terk’s massive Medieval weapon is deadlier than any measly bullet. The heavy spiked ball at the end of the chain embeds itself into the man’s chest, and he goes flying back with five blood-red holes in his bullet-proof vest.
With lethal, pinpoint accuracy even most machines could only hope to possess, Kella fires her Desert-Tech bolt-action sniper rifle from what feels like ten different positions at once. Her blond hair tucked under a black bandana, she’s a blur of motion. She seems to be behind the four-foot-high treads of an armored bulldozer, crouched down between a cluster of sage brush, and laying down cover fire for the rest of her Conspiracy from behind Terk’s piston and gear-filled body…all at the same time.
Decked out in a chainmail vest underneath thick, armor-plated battle gear and a helmet with an impact-resistant ballistic face-shield, War charges in to take on three of the Sentinels, who are regrouping and reloading their weapons. Tossing the Sentinels aside as easily as I throw blankets on my bed, War is somehow even bigger and more superhumanly strong than I remember.
Put a set of treads on him, and he’d fit right in with one of the bulldozers of the Army of the Unsettled.
In a blurry crouch behind us, Mayla slides past, slicing off our zip-cuffs with a pair of laser shears.
My Asylum and I are desperate to jump in, but Libra stops us. Not because we’re unarmed and outnumbered. And not because we’d probably just be getting in the way if we tried to help our teachers.
No. She stops us because of the ravens.
Dragging me into a crouch and barking at the rest of our Asylum to “get the frack down!” (as she so politely puts it), Libra points to the small storm swooping out from a low-hanging dust-cloud and descending down on the clearing.
Except that it’s not a storm.
“Ravens!” I shout.
Because that’s what they are. Five ravens. And I recognize them instantly. War and Cheyenne are oily-black. Apache is mottled with a striking black-and-white cheetah pattern. They’re accompanied by two white ravens, Arapaho and Shoshone, with one more white raven—a streaking missile who also happens to be their mother:
Haida Gwaii!
I shout her name, and I don’t know which shout is louder: the one in my head or the one bursting from my mouth. Either way, the presence of my oldest friend has flipped me—with just a few beats of her powerful white wings—from helpless to completely and totally empowered.
A group of ravens is called a Conspiracy. I’ve known that since I was old enough to know anything. Growing up in the Tower of London with a pair of Ravenmasters for parents made knowing everything about ravens second nature.
I don’t know what the term is for a single family of ravens, all of them working as a coordinated unit, swarming with the ferocity of a school of piranha on a capybara, and dive bombing the holy hell out of Epic’s startled, scattering soldiers.
Including Render and Haida, there are only seven ravens in all. But, in terms of pure ferocity, seven angry and overprotective ravens might as well be a pride of lions.
My internal cheers are interrupted by the shouts of another platoon of Sentinels, who come charging out from behind a line of stalled excavators.
“Here!” Mayla shouts from behind War. “We thought you could use these!”
Unslinging the bulging sack from her shoulder, Mayla dives down into the bag and starts hauling out our weapons.
It takes some effort, but she heaves Libra’s sixteen-pound sledgehammer to her. Standing as she catches it, Libra beams a shiny-toothed “Thanks!” and bounces the hammer in her hands, reveling in its heft.
Arlo does the same with the long-handled scythe Mayla lobs to him. Without his signature hoodie, he doesn’t look quite as much like the Grim Reaper as he usually does. But it’s a start.
Mayla calls out, “I think these belong to you!” and slings a leather bandolier loaded with throwing darts over to Sara, who catches the harness, slips it over her head, and buckles it across her chest in one deft motion.
Next, Mayla tosses Ignacio’s twin shillelaghs underhanded. He catches them on the run, already spinning them with helicopter intensity as he charges at our enemies.
And, finally, my Serpent Blades. The twin weapons spiral through the air from Mayla’s hands and land in my waiting, open palms with a satisfying smack.
Standing over the empty bag, Mayla holds up Mattea’s set of Bear Claws.
Pausing for a split second before entering the fray, I skid to a stop in front of Mayla and shake my head. “Mattea didn’t…”
Over a blast of gunfire and Ignacio’s squeals of glee at being able to fight, Mayla tells me, “We know” and tosses the weapons to Matholook. “He’ll have to do the best he can!”
And just like that, we’re an armed army again. We’re few in number, and Matholook and my Asylum are still far from trained and battle-tested like Kress and her Conspiracy. But together, at least we stand a chance against Epic, his eight Hypnagogics, and his band of Sentinel bodyguards.
Haida and her offspring dodge, barrel-roll, climb, and divebomb the Sentinels in choreographed waves. Their claws and kraas! intimidate a handful of the Sentinels into bolting for cover. A few more of Epic’s guards try to make a brave stand, but it’s like they’re firing and flailing at ghosts. With Render joining the f
ray, that’s seven angry, determined, and deadly ghosts to deal with, and Epic’s men don’t stand a chance.
Practically before we even know what’s going on, Kress and her Conspiracy have already taken out half of Epic’s Sentinels and nearly all the Devoted escort soldiers.
“We can’t let them have all the fun!” I shout.
I sling one of my Serpent Blades at the Sentinel bearing down on Brohn from behind. The spinning blade glints in the sunlight, its curved steel talon nicking the man in the neck just under his ear.
It’s not a kill shot. It’s not supposed to be. Just enough to distract the guy while Brohn unleashes a flurry of bolts from his arbalest. The razor-tipped arrows lodge six inches deep in the man’s chest. The soldier staggers back and smashes to the ground, kicking up a cloud of desert dust.
Brohn gives me a salute and calls out “Thanks!” before pivoting back around to rejoin the battle.
In the scrum, Matholook and I stay close. I do the first-order dirty work of spinning and slashing my way through the Seninels, and Matholook cleans up by finishing off the stragglers with Mattea’s Bear Claws.
He’s nowhere close to skilled with those things, but to get out of here alive, we don’t need to be pretty or even accurate—just desperate.
Which we are.
A hand clamps onto my shoulder, spinning me around. I’m about to launch a ferocious attack with my Serpent Blades when I realize it’s Libra. Her eyes wide, she points over to where the eight Hypnagogics have broken out of whatever daze they’ve been in and are starting to walk, with the casual leisure of someone strolling through a park, into the clearing to join the battle.
We’ve seen them in action from the safe distance of a crane’s elevated cab. The last thing we need is to see them in action up close.
Lucky for us, we don’t get the chance.
Epic barks out for his guards to protect the eight mysterious hooded and orange-eyed teens. “They’re all that matters!”
Breaking away from Kress’s Conspiracy and my Asylum, the remaining Sentinels—as yippy as a team of border collies—surround and wrangle the eight Hypnagogics into a tight cluster.
Despite their powers and their obvious delight in using them, the Hypnagogics are unexpectedly compliant. Following the orders quickly and without question, they let themselves be turned back around and herded toward the BearCat.
When the dust settles, Epic’s remaining Sentinels are a bloody mess.
But he climbs into the huge transport rig, along with Aubrielle, Micah, and the eight mysterious, orange-eyed Hypnagogics.
From the opposite direction, an entire company of uniformed, heavily-armed Devoted soldiers—at least a hundred men and women strong—barrel toward us.
“Uh, oh,” Ignacio says. “They’ve sent reinforcements.”
Brohn grabs me by the back of my jacket hard enough to lift me clean off the ground. “Let’s go!”
With Render, Haida, and their five offspring streaking ahead, Kress and the rest of her Conspiracy shout out for us to follow them to the Terminus.
“Come on!” I urge Sara, who’s lagging behind.
She trots a couple steps toward me but then stops.
“What are you doing?” I cry out as I try to take her by the hand. “We need to get the frack out of here!”
She tugs her hand out of mine and takes a full step back. “I believe in Epic’s mission.”
“He’s going to try to take over the whole bloody world!”
“Someone’s got to do it,” she shrugs with a sad smile. “And I can do things, Branwynne. I can do things that’ll help him succeed.”
Gunfire explodes around us and turns the door of a nearby jeep at the edge of the clearing into Swiss cheese.
Sara and I both drop to a knee, ducking under a second volley.
“Don’t worry,” she smiles, her pale blue eyes locking onto mine. “We’ll meet again.”
It’s not an abstract hope or wishful thinking. It’s not even a promise. And it’s definitely not a declaration of undying friendship.
It’s a threat.
Hopping to her feet and with her head down as she dodges the incoming gunfire from the Devoted reinforcements, she sprints off in the opposite direction after the lumbering BearCat. I watch in horror as the huge truck slows down with a grinding crunch, blasting up a cloud of red dust.
With a metallic clank and a pneumatic hiss, the armored rear door swings open. Epic reaches down, his marbled hand latching onto Sara’s, and he hauls her into the boxy rig.
In my head, Haida’s voice says, “Run!”
But I’m already sprinting, almost flying, as I bolt away from the Devoted, away from Epic, and now, away from Sara and the big BearCat that go disappearing into the distance.
44
Revelations
Kress drags me by the arm and frisbees me into the Terminus.
Splayed out and spinning, I crash to a stop against Matholook and Libra, who scramble to disentangle us before clambering up to help me to my feet.
Render and Haida blast into the rig to join us, while their five offspring bank hard and high and soar off toward the mountains.
Rain slaps a palm to an input panel in the cabin, and the thick steel door of the rig grumbles shut and locks with a metallic gasp. Flashes of gunfire from outside light up the small, shielded windows on the side of the truck.
“What the hell was that?” Libra squeals, her hands clamped to my shoulders. “Where’s Sara? Why didn’t you bring her with you?”
“I tried,” I insist, choking on the knot of confusion and anger in my throat. “She wouldn’t come.”
“Wouldn’t…?”
At a loss for words or for an explanation, I settle for just shaking my head. When I do try to talk, I can feel my voice breaking, and I try to sound strong. I was never a big fan of Sara, but she was an Emergent and an Academy student, which made her someone I cared about, whether she was a friend or not.
But then, twin senses of sorrow and failure overwhelm my defenses, and I can feel the sting of tears in my throat and behind my eyes.
Staggering, I drop down onto one of the bench seats with Libra and Matholook, unable to stay standing in the surging Terminus, falling into the seats on either side of me.
A fully armed beast of a machine, the Terminus is too fast and too powerful for any of those Devoted soldiers back there to follow on foot or even in their smaller escort jeeps that can’t handle the terrain like our top-of-the-line truck. But I wonder how long it would take for them to mobilize their entire army and try to track us down.
After a day of being kidnapped, tortured, tested, and taken on a tour, I take some comfort knowing that at least we’re back in good hands for a change.
As reliable as my own heartbeat, Kella and Mayla are up front in the cab. Terk and War, by far the two biggest members of our little Emergents family, are squeezed into the cab’s second row of seats. With Mayla at the navigational helm, Kella steers the Terminus at top speed over a sea-sized stretch of land wrinkled with rocks and ridges.
Back here in the cabin, the rest of us throttle against each other and hang onto the grab-bars bolted to the walls around the benches and passenger chairs.
Apparently unaware, immune, or just used to the motion of the Terminus Kress, Brohn, and Rain sit across from me and my Asylum looking calm and stable despite the bumpy ride.
“We lost Mattea. And now, Sara,” I sob. Matholook slips his hand under my ponytail and slides a supportive arm around my shoulders.
“We didn’t lose Sara,” Kress corrects me. “We never had her.”
“I don’t—”
“Sara’s a Hypnagogic,” Brohn explains. He works himself out of his combat jacket and drapes it over his knees. “She has certain abilities she never told you about.”
“Because she might not know the extent of them, herself,” Rain adds.
“What abilities?” Libra asks in a muted whisper.
“Yeah,” Ignacio
echoes from where he’s planted in one of the rig’s middle swivel seats. “What abilities?”
I know why they’re asking. Sara has always been a mystery but never more so than when it came to discussing her Emergent abilities.
Kress and Brohn exchange a look, and Brohn nods for her to go ahead and tell us. Kress clears her throat. Twice. “Sara can get people to do what they secretly want to do but know they can’t or shouldn’t.”
“She’s a brainwasher?” I ask.
“No. Not exactly. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Things like brainwashing, blackmail, torture, coercion…those are oppressive actions forced on a person from the outside. Sara’s abilities are what we call ‘reactive and prescriptive.’ She helps you react to your own desires and allows your brain to prescribe a way to satisfy them.”
I realize my mouth is hanging open, so I close it. If what Kress is saying is even remotely true—and I have no reason to believe otherwise—the implications are, well, jaw-dropping.
I first met Sara five years ago. And I’ve been at the Academy with her for the better part of a year. How much of what I’ve thought, felt, and done since then has been me, and how much of it has been her?
I risk asking my three teachers that exact question. I expect them to laugh it off, shrug their shoulders, or dismiss my stupid inquiry with a casual wave of their hands. They don’t do any of those things.
“All of it’s been you,” Kress says softly.
“Whether it’s been the you you think you are or the you you know you are but try to hide…,” Brohn starts to say.
In my head, I will him to stop talking. He doesn’t listen.
“She may have allowed certain things to happen, certain…feelings. But she doesn’t create anything. She’s a facilitator, not a manipulator. But that doesn’t make the potential she has any less dangerous. We thought maybe we could help her, teach her how to control her abilities.” Kress gives him a little elbow nudge to his arm. “But it looks like her abilities have come to control her,” he finishes with a heavy sigh.
