by Bec McMaster
"I can't do this," she moaned, resting her forehead against the wall.
"Well, you're almost three-quarters of the way up, so it's closer to the top than it is to the bottom. Come on. One rung at a time."
Eden gritted her teeth and set her hands back on the bars. Water splashed over them, which didn't help, as she took another step.
"When's your birthday?" he asked her, letting her track ahead again.
She looked down. "What?"
"Figured now's as good a time as any to get to know each other." Johnny hauled himself after her, straining under the weight of the wet pack. It was made of oiled canvas, so at least everything within would be dry, but he swore it was getting heavier.
"June tenth," she called back down. "What about you?"
"The eighteenth of September."
"Are you telling me this so I can bake you a cake?"
Johnny looked up in surprise and copped a faceful of water. Swearing under his breath, he wiped it away. "Not a big fan of cake."
She laughed as she hauled herself up. "Cake in particular, or my cake?"
"Dare I eat your cake? Isn't it supposed to be my birthday? I thought they were meant to be pleasurable days," he teased. Not that anyone had ever offered to make him a cake anytime recently. He could vaguely recall his mother doing so once, but that had been years ago. Hell, the most he ever treated himself to was a swig of whiskey.
"Fine," she called back down. "I'll get Maggie to make the cake, just so you don't choke on it. I'm in charge of the present. And I'll warn you: I've got ideas."
"Sexy ideas?"
"Maybe."
Pleasure radiated through him. He'd been trying to distract her—and maybe that was all this was—but she was speaking in terms of the future as if she imagined he'd be in it.
Despite the brief salvo, she fell quiet again.
They climbed for another few minutes, and he could sense her slowing down. She paused again, resting her head on the bars and trying to take the tension off her arms.
"Nearly there," he called. It had been a long day, and the strain was starting to show in her. Stars glittered in the sky above them. They weren't as bright as those you saw in the Wastelands, probably due to the proximity of the city.
Pushing up behind her again, he looked up. "Five more rungs, Eden."
A head appeared, outlined by the velvet dark sky.
Arik.
"Need a hand?" he called, over the roar of the water.
It was drier here, near the top, with the sluice gates below them. Mist clung in the air. Johnny nudged Eden up one more rung. Her hands shook with the effort.
"Lean on me," he offered, crawling up behind her legs.
Step by step they reached the top. Arik helped haul her over the lip, where she collapsed on the ground in a panting heap. They were in another tunnel that branched off toward the city. Lincoln hauled himself over the edge behind them.
Eden groaned. "You might have to go on... without me."
He could just make out Arik pressing a finger to his lips up ahead.
"Easy now, darlin'," Johnny whispered, stroking her hair as he squatted beside her. His thighs ached too. "We're getting closer to the surface. Got to keep your voice down."
The other two wargs vanished into the darkness, and despite the fact he and Arik were getting along like two cats trapped in a burlap sack together, he was actually grateful they were there.
Gave him the grace to look after Eden, rather than worrying about what was out there in the dark.
Eden sat with her head bent, her entire body trembling, and her forehead resting on his thigh. She didn't look like she could move.
"You got any more water?" she asked. "I've got a headache."
He put his pack aside and handed over his flask. "Not long now, angel. Night's falling, which means we can get some rest."
"Where?"
"That's what Arik's seeing to."
She slumped against him after she'd drunk her fill. Johnny rubbed her shoulder. A part of him didn't like seeing her in so much pain, but he was helpless to do anything about it. Just had to keep telling himself all she needed was rest.
Footsteps sloshed in the tunnel. Johnny sighed in relief as he turned his head. "It's about damned time—"
He broke off abruptly as a shadow loomed in the mouth of the tunnel, clad in an array of high-tech body armor. A tall figure with a shaved head, and warg-silver eyes that shone in the faint moonlight. Every inch of him looked hard and well-fed, and his boots gleamed in a way no Wastelander's ever had.
Oh, shit.
"Who the hell are you?" demanded the stranger.
Shoving Eden behind him, Johnny reached for the knife at his belt and threw it in one smooth move toward the stranger's throat. "Stay behind me, Eden!"
The stranger flung up a defensive hand, the knife glancing off the black gauntlet on his arms. He pressed his fingertips to some sort of earpiece, and Johnny suddenly realized he couldn't let the bastard alert his friends.
Driving to his feet, he started sprinting.
JOHNNY SLAMMED into the other warg, and Eden went down on her knees as the rope between them jerked. She wrenched forward, scrabbling to grab something as she was hauled across the floor after them.
"Arik!" she screamed.
The two wargs tumbled over each other, Johnny getting the upper hand and slamming the soldier’s head into the concrete. A pair of claws slashed up and jammed into Johnny's side as the stranger bucked beneath him, and he went flying over the stranger's head.
Eden grabbed the rope hooked from her harness to Johnny's and jerked it up sharply just as the stranger made to leap over it. He went flying forward, thrown off balance, and Johnny managed to get to his feet, black spatters of what she suspected was blood splashed across his jeans.
They slammed together.
Over and over, wrestling and punching. In the dim moonlight, she could barely make out who was who. She saw her shotgun strapped to her pack, and scrambled over the floor toward it, jerking it free and—
Freezing.
Arik had cautioned them over and over against making any loud noise. The dam would be lightly patrolled, but all it would take would be one mistake to have the entire Confederacy raining down on them.
The rope around her waist jerked.
Eden's knees went out from under her, and she lost her grip on the shotgun. The pair of wargs rolled toward the lip of the hollow tower they'd just climbed, and Eden's eyes widened as Johnny shot her a sharp, panicked glance.
Then they vanished over the edge, his claws lashing out helplessly for grip.
And failing.
Gone. He was gone.
The rope snapped taut, and the sudden slam of his weight against her harness nearly bowed her in two.
"Johnny!" she screamed, yanked toward the edge.
Jamming her feet out, her boot heels locked against the inch-high lip of concrete that circled the ledge. She pitched forward, almost upright, her arms windmilling—
"Got you!" Lincoln bellowed, hauling her back against his chest.
The harness cut into her skin, and Eden screamed in pain as Johnny's weight swung like a pendulum from her waist. Then Arik's fists wrapped around the rope, easing some of the strain. The pair of them fought to haul her away from the edge.
The rope jerked.
"Kick him off you!" Arik bellowed into the emptiness, and Eden finally realized she wasn't just holding the weight of one man.
"Son of a bitch." Lincoln's arms were almost crushing her ribs.
Eden threw her head back, forcing every inch of willpower into her straining thighs, as she choked back another scream. The rope jerked, and Arik almost lurched forward.
Eden grabbed his shirt. If he went, they'd all go.
A sudden cry echoed up through the tunnel, and the rope suddenly slackened.
The three of them collapsed back on the ground.
Eden grabbed the rope, hauling it hand over hand—
/> No weight.
Nothing.
One of them must have cut it.
"No!" She scrambled toward the edge, leaning over it, her heart squeezing in her chest. "Johnny?"
Her voice echoed through the hollow core.
Nothing moved.
Only an endless splash of water that vanished into the darkness below. Her heart jacked into her throat, her eyes darting—
And then a hand locked around one of the rungs of the embedded ladder, water spraying off a dark shoulder.
"Please, please, please, please, please," she prayed, as the figure hauled himself up out of the shadows until she could finally see his face.
Johnny.
It was Johnny.
Eden collapsed onto the ground, panting for breath. Safe. He was safe. Tears of relief burst out of her, and a hand squeezed her shoulder as Arik stopped beside her, and peered down.
"Is he dead?" he called softly.
Johnny ground his teeth together and kept climbing. Slowly. "Put my knife in him," he growled out. "Hopefully the fall did the rest."
The second he made it to the top, Arik hauled him up to safety. Eden wasted no time. She threw her arms around him, wincing at the sharp ache as the harness's straps cut into bruised flesh.
"Oh, my God," she breathed. "Are you okay?"
There'd been blood on his jeans. And it washed in thin rivulets of watery gray down his face. Eden pulled back, hauling his shirt up and examining the claw marks there. "I need more light!"
"I'm fine," he murmured, capturing her hands.
"You're bleeding—"
"Just a scratch." Johnny gave her a faint, tired smile as if to remind her of the last argument they'd had about "scratches".
"That had better be a joke."
"It is. Nothing a night's sleep won't heal."
Capturing her face, he pressed a faint kiss to her lips. Eden grabbed his wrists, and kissed him back, her heart still pulsing like she'd run a race.
She'd spent days pushing him away and telling herself nothing could come of this.
She'd almost lost him—this time for real.
And suddenly she realized none of it mattered.
Not Adam. Not the threat to her heart. Not even the past.
She broke the kiss, trying to catch her breath. "Don't ever do that again."
"Fall off the top of a high building?"
"No! Put yourself in danger. Get hurt. You almost—" She couldn't say it.
"It's okay," Johnny said roughly, his eyes dark and wondrous as if he saw exactly what she couldn't put into words. "I get it, Eden."
She hugged him tightly, resting her head against his chest and just listening to his heart beat, as he wrapped his arms around her.
"You scare the hell out of me," she whispered.
Because he'd been right.
There was something growing between them, and it had the ability to rip her heart clean out of her chest if something went wrong.
Johnny stroked her hair. "Right back at you, angel."
Eden slowly looked up.
"We'd better get moving," Arik called softly, hauling his pack over his shoulders. "Best-case scenario—the bastard's dead, and his superiors don't notice him missing until morning. Worst-case scenario? Well, I'm not sticking around to find out."
"READY?" Arik whispered. "We're directly under a suburban area. It's just a quick climb, and then we should be able to haul ourselves out through one of the stormwater grates."
Johnny helped Eden to her feet. "Nearly there," he promised. "Then you can get dry and crawl into your bedroll."
She'd begun flagging badly, and though she wasn't limping, he'd seen the marks on her skin where the harness nearly jerked her over the edge with him.
They staggered through the dark, Arik leading the way. No time for the torch now.
Pausing beneath a stormwater grate, he watched Arik vanish through it. Then Lincoln. Johnny lifted Eden, and Lincoln reached down and hauled her through the opening.
Leaping up, he caught the edge of the grate and hauled himself out into the fresh air. A moon hung swollen in the sky, casting soft light down over the city below them.
Arik crouched in a squat, lifting his water canteen to his lips. "Welcome to Cortez City."
Before them stretched a landscape the likes neither of them had ever seen before.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"HERE WE ARE," Arik whispered. "We made it."
Eden stared about herself in wonder. Lights glittered as though someone had put the stars themselves on earth. She couldn't escape the size of the city.
She'd been pushing herself all week, focusing on getting to Cortez. A tiny part of her hadn't believed they'd make it.
But they were here.
Buildings pressed together, all glittering steel and panes of glass that stretched so high into the sky Eden could barely see the top of them. Wide roads spanned below them, strangely empty. The roads were wide enough to drive a herd of a thousand cattle along them, and they were perfectly straight. In fact, everything was laid out into neat grids, and every building was square or rectangular. Thousands of little windows loomed in the side of each building, like a spider's eyes.
She couldn't escape the impression she was being watched. Maybe that was the point; Henry Chin had spoken of yearning for freedom, after all, and despite its glory, its technology, there was a creepy feeling of eyes boring into her back, no matter which way she turned.
But the thing that surprised her the most was how clean everything was.
Everything bore the stamp of the Confederacy; a half sun in the center of a circle, its rays radiating outward like a new sun rising from the ashes of a former empire. All the roads seemed to point toward the center of the city, where a massive building towered over everything else, comprised of a tiara of five towers built adjoining one another, with the one in the center spearing toward the heavens.
"That building looks like it's giving the middle finger," Johnny mused. "Do you think they realize they're saying 'fuck you' to the rest of the city?"
"Pretty sure," Arik muttered. "That's where the general will be, along with all his boot kissers."
She was staring at a world she could never in her wildest dreams have imagined. The sheer scope of the technology astounded her. Enormous square screens were mounted to the walls, flashing in bright colors in the night. They looked like a bigger version of her datapad, and images of people flickered over them. A scene of thousands of people in an enormous square appeared, waving dark green paper ribbons as a parade of cars drove along the narrow space in the center. A man in a crisp white uniform waved at the crowd with a dignified expression. White and green. The Confederacy colors.
"That's a general," Arik muttered. "Don't know which one, since it's been a while since I was here, but they rule the Confederacy with an iron fist. Each general rules a territory, and virtually owns his own city. Seven generals; seven territories. There was a coup about forty years ago, and ever since the military overthrew the leaders of the time they've been in control."
"There are so many people," Eden breathed, watching the screen.
"Yeah." Arik scrubbed a hand over his face. "They like to play their clips over and over. The military controls what people see, which means they can dictate what sort of information gets out. Expect to see a lot of parades and crowds cheering. But nothing real. You won't see the grimy underside, or the people who disappear just because they broke some imagined law."
All the people on the screen looked so clean. Their clothes were sleek, and everywhere she looked the men were clean-shaven, and the women wore their slicked-back hair in neat buns or braids. Military-style clothing seemed to be in fashion, with most people wearing varying shades of gray, black, or Confederacy green.
She felt very small, and dirty, and ragged. Every inch of her clothes had been repaired multiple times over the years, and her boots were scuffed, the soles thin. Dirt edged beneath her nails. It was something she'd nev
er thought about until she walked into this place.
They'd never be able to blend in here.
"Cortez City's just a military outpost," Arik murmured. "This is nothing compared to the enormous city-states further in the interior. The Confederacy considers Cortez to be out in the sticks."
"What would they think of us?" Eden whispered, staring from one end of the city to the other. Despite her aches and pains, the sight was enough to distract her.
"Most people don't know much about the Wastelands to the west," Arik replied. "Like I said, information gets filtered. All they hear about are the monsters and the reivers. Nobody goes outside the walls. If you do, then they say you might get contaminated. Who knows what's out there? Radiation. Disease. Wargs and revenants. Ghost forests filled with mutos. Better to stay within the walls, where the military can protect you." He sounded disgusted. "They used to show a program in the warg camps about how lucky we were to be taken in. They've given us so much, so we should give back. It was our duty to play cannon fodder, because we were serving a bigger cause. Worse, some of the wargs believed it."
Thunder rumbled overhead, thick boiling clouds rolling in across the Wastelands. All three wargs looked up.
"Time to find some shelter," Arik muttered. "That storm's probably going to help. If the enforcers have wargs out on patrol, then they won't smell us if the rain washes away the scent. This way. We'll bunker down somewhere, then plan our next move on Radisson-Meyers."
BUNKERING down somewhere consisted of housebreaking. They'd discussed simply tying a family up and leaving them in the cellar, but Eden didn't approve—at all—so she'd insisted on them finding a place that was empty.
The house was four times as large as her home in Absolution, and looked like it had been vacant for a while, though the rooms were sparsely furnished. Sleek furniture, and polished concrete floors. There was little ornamentation though, and a certain efficient coldness to the interior. Despite all the accessories, she much preferred her home.
