by Kyla Stone
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 accidentally 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 goin
g 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.
“You don’t act like it.”
Her mother’s full lips contorted. She kept her gaze on the floor, refusing to meet Amelia’s eyes. Her hand fluttered to the hollow of her throat. “Of course I love him. He’s my son. I’m his mother.”
Amelia said nothing, allowing the silence to thrum with tension. Before all this, she would have dropped the subject, tried to smooth over the strain with charm or demure acquiescence.
Not anymore. The truth was more important.
“He’s so much like his father.” Her mother spoke so softly Amelia had to lean forward to hear her. “I’ve tried, but…”
“Try harder.” Amelia grasped her mother’s hand. “He’s not his father. He makes his own choices just like the rest of us. He’s not lost yet.”
“He’s not like you, Amelia—”
“I don’t care,” Amelia said firmly. “We have to be better than we were, better than we are. All of us. He needs you.”
“I’ll try,” her mother said.
“We don’t get second chances and do-overs in this world.”
“I know.” Her mother shifted uneasily on the cot. Her gaze drifted to the charm bracelet hanging from Amelia’s neck. Something shifted behind her eyes. She stiffened.
“What is it?”
“Your father,” her mother said dully.
Amelia’s stomach twisted into tighter knots. “What?”
Her mother pulled away from her, both hands hovering at the hollow of her throat. “What if he’s there? What if he’s in the Sanctuary?”
“Then I’ll face him,” Amelia said with more conviction than she felt.
“If the Coalition is there, they might kill you just for being his daughter. Just to cover their tracks.”
Before the world collapsed, Declan Black had been the infamous founder and CEO of BioGen Technologies as well as the chairman of the Unity Coalition, a conglomerate of powerful biotech, communications, and defense corporations more powerful—and corrupt—than even the government. They were the true power, the ones behind the checkpoints, increased surveillance, and the ID-tracking Vitalichip bill.
Amelia’s mother believed that there was no way Declan Black acted alone. That the Coalition was also behind the bioweapon, releasing it as an act of bioterrorism in a calculated attempt to pass their rights-reducing, citizen-tracking Safe and Secure Act.
But their plans had backfired. The virus, meant to kill a hundred thousand people culled from the disposable poor, had mutated instead. It underwent reassortment, recombining with the virulent bat-flu to create the highly contagious Hydra supervirus.
“Amelia, this is so incredibly dangerous.” Her mother stared at her, her beautiful face stretched taut, her eyes glassy with fear. “What if it’s not worth it?”
Amelia thought of everyone she loved, of everyone she might be able to save. “It is, Mother. Even if the worst happens. It’s worth it.”
5
Micah
“There are innocent people behind those walls,” Micah said to Cleo, reining in his own anger. He felt sick. “Women and children. You can’t hurt them.”
Once, Gabriel would have grabbed Micah’s arm and pulled him back, embarrassed by his moralizing. He would have lectured Micah, forced him to shut up. But Micah wasn’t shutting up anymore. And Gabriel didn’t try to stop him.
“I don’t know why gender makes a difference in matters of innocence,” Cleo said coolly, “but those people ceased to be innocent the day they closed the gates and refused to open them. And why the hell are you even here? You’re not one of us.”
Micah refused to be intimidated. “Not for the pleasant company, that’s for sure.”
Gabriel t
ook a step back. His fists unflexed, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. He still wouldn’t look at Micah. “My brother is smart and level-headed. You should at least consider what he has to say.”
“As far as I’m concerned, every single one of you except for Miracle Girl and you, soldier boy,” Cleo thumped Gabriel’s chest with her finger, “are consuming our food and sleeping in our beds and contributing nothing. You’re parasites. And as such, your opinion means jack-squat to me.”
The armory closed in around him, all those gleaming weapons, all the death and destruction and horror they were capable of wrecking upon the remaining survivors. Micah’s gut roiled.
Jamal let out a bark of laughter.
The muscle in Gabriel’s jaw jumped. “Did your mother teach you to treat people this way?”
“She taught me how to rip my enemy’s throat out with my teeth.” Cleo flashed a savage smile. “And that’s exactly what I’m planning to do. Anyone who can’t stomach that is welcome to leave.”
“What about Amelia’s cure?” Micah asked.
“We’re months from an assault,” Cleo said. “She’ll be in and out long before that. With the cure, we can increase our recruits tenfold. We can scavenge for supplies in dangerous, plague-ridden areas. We can trade for the weapons we need.”
She turned to Micah, her lip curling. “Whatever moral high ground you think you have, you’re wrong. We don’t turn away anyone who’s not infected. We take in women and children and the elderly. We’ve made a safe place for families. Don’t you dare judge us for wanting to keep what we have, for wanting to make a safe place for others, too, instead of allowing the elites in the Sanctuary to take what’s good and destroy everything else.”
“How many people can you house?” Gabriel asked.
“Less than two thousand, and we’re gaining new recruits every day,” Jamal said.
“So you can’t hole up here forever.” Gabriel’s voice lost some of its edge. She was winning him over.
