Invaders

by Bella Forrest

  “Open your third eye!” Orion demanded, as Ezra removed the strip of cloth and held Stone’s head in place, preventing him from catching them in his field of vision. To my horror, Stone did as they asked, his third eye blinking open. Ahead of him, the whole battlefield froze, both on the ground and in the air. Evidently, he was having some effect on the pilots, prompting them to bring their ships to a hover. He couldn’t see us from where he was kneeling, but I took Navan’s hand anyway and pulled him farther back into the trees, using the cover of shadow to stay hidden. If Orion saw us, he’d demand that Stone freeze us. I wasn’t willing to risk it.

  “Use your powers to create a dome above us!” Orion bellowed. “I have seen you do it—do it again!”

  Stone had no choice but to obey. More rebel soldiers had come out onto the lab’s roof, flanking the ambaka to protect him from anyone outside his gaze. They were also there to ensure he did as he was told, as a particularly burly coldblood took over from Ezra, gripping Stone’s head firmly in place, making sure his eyes were cast forward.

  With a visible sigh, Stone raised his bound arms, and the shielding light of his many nudus surged skyward. I panicked as the blue glow rose above the rebel base, knowing we’d be locked out if we didn’t get inside it. Navan seemed to have the same idea, as we glanced at each other, before making a run for the side of the alchemy lab, tucking ourselves in behind one of the old dome’s towers. Fortunately for us, everyone on the rear side of the building was too engrossed by the sight of the shield going up to notice us sneaking past. Now, we just had to keep out of the way of Ezra and Orion, who were prowling around the edges of the lab’s rooftop, scouring their frozen and unfrozen quarry.

  Minutes later, the shield was complete, the new dome of blue light cutting off any ships that had strayed beyond it. I noted that none of those ships were rebel ships; all of their people were safely inside the dome.

  Orion ceased his prowling and strode to the edge of the rooftop, grinning. From my vantage point, I could see him clearly, and my anger spiked at the look on his horrible face.

  “Soldiers of all factions, I address you as leader of the rebels,” he bellowed, his voice carrying on the wind. “I am calling to instigate a ceasefire between my fellow Vysantheans, no matter whom you fight for. We must stop shedding one another’s blood—a single drop cannot be lost. Now, those of you fighting for Queen Gianne and Queen Brisha, I ask that you pass on this message to them. I know they are hiding amongst the grounded ships, out of harm’s way.” He paused, letting the words float across the eerie silence. “I wish to speak with both of you—you daughters of Vysanthe—so that we may come to a suitable agreement about how our people should progress. It might not seem like it now, but you will find that we are on the same side, despite everything.”

  I turned to Navan. “He doesn’t know Brisha is dead.”

  Before Navan could answer, Orion spoke again. “I invite both of you, twin queens of Vysanthe, to come to the front door of my alchemy lab. My soldiers will allow you in, though they will not tolerate any misbehavior from your soldiers, who have so rudely stationed themselves in front of my property.” Another pause lingered in the air. “Fed agents, however, are fair game for killing. In fact, I actively encourage you to see that they don’t make it out of this dome alive. Let’s kill the vermin, shall we?”

  As the last word drifted across the frozen battlefield, I watched Orion lean in to say something to Stone. The ambaka was still holding the nudus shield up, though he’d lowered his hands back down to his lap, his body slumping a little. I couldn’t hear what Orion was saying, but I could guess. Undoubtedly, he was telling Stone to release everyone as soon as he and Ezra had gone inside, the rebel leader and his right-hand man retreating to safety.

  Sure enough, as soon as they disappeared back into the alchemy building, Stone blinked and released the battlefield back to its former state. For a long time, nobody moved, shocked by what had just happened. Then, all of a sudden, the tide turned, the Vysantheans focusing their attention on the Fed agents who remained. I looked on, unable to do a single thing to stop it, knowing all the while that it was going to be a bloodbath.

  Our most powerful weapon had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and I had no idea how we were going to get him back.

  Chapter Five

  With the cluster of the queens’ soldiers still guarding the rear entrance into the alchemy lab, we’d have to find a different way in. I’d thought about scaling the wall, but we couldn’t do that without every Vysanthean faction trying to shoot us down. I scanned the exterior of the building, trying to pick out an entry point that wasn’t manned. The battleground remained in eerie stillness, but it wouldn’t be long before the spell of confusion broke.

  “This way,” I whispered.

  “The vent?” he asked.

  I nodded. The two of us ducked out from behind our hiding place and headed for an air vent in the side of the alchemy lab. It looked like part of the panel had been dented by one of the nearby blasts, causing the sides to rupture away from the outer wall. Navan made quick work of the rest, yanking the bolts free and pushing the grate to one side before hoisting me up into the ventilation pipes beyond. He joined me a moment later, after fitting the grate back into place, and the two of us crept through the gloom for a while before we reached a crossroads in the pipes.

  “We need to head for the roof,” I rasped, wiping the sweat off my brow.

  Hot air swept down through the tunnels, drying out my throat and making my eyeballs feel like they were coated in sandpaper. Echoing behind us, through the pipes, I heard the roar of the battlefield raging once more in a clash of metal, fists, and bullets—it sent a horrible shiver of dread up my spine. All I could think about were those poor Fed agents, forced to run through the shield and risk losing the base or stay dutybound to a massacre.

  “You want to make a break for Stone?” Navan’s eyes peered into the dimly lit tunnels to either side of us, evidently trying to figure out which one might lead us up there.

  “We need to get him back now. If we wait, we might never have the chance again.”

  He brushed back a strand of my damp hair. “Great minds think alike, Mrs. Idrax.”

  “They do indeed, Mr. Idrax. Now, which way do you think we should go?”

  “I say we follow the heat,” he said, after a moment. “Chances are it’s coming from one of the main chambers in the lab, so even if it doesn’t take us directly to the roof, it’s a start. We can work our way up from there.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me. And no watching my ass on the way through these pipes,” I teased, wanting to calm my nerves by lightening the mood a bit… even though that seemed impossible with everything going on outside.

  He flashed me a comforting smile. “I can’t make any promises.”

  I set off down the right-hand tunnel, following the relentless heat pumping through the pipes, away from whatever machinery was causing it. After a few minutes of crawling along as silently as possible, I noticed a strange smell—it was metallic and organic, making my stomach churn.

  “What is that?” I hissed, pinching my nose to keep out the stench. It was so strong I could almost taste it in my mouth, the foulness somehow clinging to my tongue.

  Navan grimaced. “I think it might be rotting human. I know what your fresh blood smells like—this seems to be human blood when it’s gone really bad.”

  “I suppose it was only a matter of time…”

  I guessed we were getting close to whatever “chamber” the hot air was being sucked out of, though now that we were nearing it, I was starting to wish we’d gone in a different direction. I remembered seeing the rust-red plumes coming out of lab chimneys; I didn’t particularly want to see how that billowing red smoke was made.

  Still, right now, the only goal was to steal back Stone and get him to safety. It might have sounded cruel, but nothing else mattered—not the humans being harvested, not the vulnerable Fed agents, not the missing
shield-bearers, not the offer Orion had made. If we didn’t have Stone back in our ranks, standing at the front of our force with his ambaka powers ready to freeze our foes, we were already on the losing side. He was our edge, our advantage over Orion and Queen Gianne. This was the only thing we could do to help, and even if it meant trudging through piles and piles of human sludge, I wasn’t going to give up.

  Tearing off a strip of my suit sleeve, I wound it across my nose and mouth before pressing on down the tunnel. My only comfort was the sound of Navan crawling behind me, guarding my back.

  “There’s another grate here,” I whispered, as the pipe came to a sudden end. A large extractor fan whirred just ahead, attached to a bulky piece of machinery. There was a grate beneath it, which led down into a room below. I noticed there were no ladders or rungs going down, just a sheer drop.

  “It looks like a long way down,” I muttered. After all, I didn’t feel like breaking my legs in the middle of a rescue mission.

  Navan squeezed in next to me, peering through the slats in the grate. “I’ll go first, then you jump down, and I’ll catch you.”

  “What if you miss?”

  “You think I’d drop precious cargo like you? Not a chance.”

  “Can’t you fly?”

  “My wings are too conspicuous. If there’s anyone patrolling down there, they’ll notice. Even if they don’t see them, they’ll hear them flapping. I’m not as smooth a flier as I used to be.” He reached up the length of his back, where the tip of his injured wing poked through the fabric of his military suit, to prove the point.

  “You better not drop me,” I said, shuffling back as he reached for the grate and pulled it out. A scrape of metal on metal cut through the air, sending a shudder through my nerves. I was sure someone must have heard, but when Navan ducked his head a little way out of the open gap, he surged back up.

  “There are a few guards patrolling, but they’re mostly on the far side of the room. We need to be careful,” he warned, maneuvering himself over the open hatch. “See you at the bottom.”

  He drew his legs in and plummeted through the gap. I rushed up to the hatch and looked down, my heart racing, only to see Navan make a cat-like landing on the ground. His feet barely made a sound as they touched the floor. Heaving a sigh of relief, I flashed him a thumbs-up, waiting for him to return the gesture before maneuvering myself into the same position I’d seen him use—an awkward, almost comical squat across the hatch.

  Let go, Riley. Just let go. He’ll catch you, and if he doesn’t, you won’t have to worry about it because the guards will capture you and kill you. So it’s a win either way, I told myself grimly. Shaking off the last few doubts, I tucked in my limbs and felt myself fall. For barely five seconds, the air rushed up to meet me, before strong arms caught me, my body jolting on impact. Still, at least my legs weren’t broken.

  “Good?” he asked, his brow furrowed with concern as he set me on my feet.

  I stretched out. “I think I bit my tongue.”

  “I’d offer to kiss it better, but we don’t have time right now.”

  Just then, I heard guards approaching. They were chatting casually, their boots thudding on the ground. Without another word, Navan took my hand and dragged me down a narrow passage between several rows of enormous vats. I had no idea what they were supposed to hold, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to find out. Some of them had stained trails of rusty red streaking the sides, where something nasty had sloshed over the top and trickled down.

  We were almost at the opposite end when two more bands of soldiers appeared. One set had materialized on a walkway above our heads, while the other set was heading straight for us. Fortunately, they hadn’t noticed us yet, all three of the guards too engrossed in their conversation. I figured they had a lot to talk about with all the fighting going on outside.

  This time, it was my turn to grab Navan and pull him through a doorway up ahead. The door was halfway open, allowing us to slip easily inside, though I made sure to close it slowly behind us.

  As I turned to look at the room we’d entered, I clamped a hand down hard on my mouth to stop from screaming out in shock. Humans on hooks were being tugged along an overhead chain, their bodies limp like chunks of meat in a slaughterhouse. The first stop on the production line was a large container. I watched as a body was dipped in, only for it to emerge a moment later with the skin sloughed away. In its place, there was a hard, almost plasticky coating that was keeping the blood from escaping; I could see it building up inside the shell. Undoubtedly, when the shell was cracked, it’d release everything it had collected.

  “Don’t look,” Navan said firmly, taking my face in his hands, forcing me to turn away from the horrific sight.

  “We need to… keep going.” I choked on my words, forcing them out.

  He kept his arm around me as we pressed on through the first stage of the blood extraction process, through a door in the back of the room. If we were going to get up to the roof, we needed to find a set of stairs—preferably ones that weren’t guarded by rebel soldiers.

  The horrors only continued as we kept moving through the facility. In the next room, it became clear that the previous room hadn’t quite been stage one. Here, there were filthy cages with human prisoners inside, though they were stacked too high for me to reach any of them. Even if I’d been able to, I wasn’t sure I could’ve made a difference—they all seemed to be half-conscious, lolling about on the dirty floors of their cells, their eyes rolling and their mouths drooling. Evidently, the rebels had given them something to keep them quiet.

  Another scream rose up my throat as I watched a machine tip a cell up. The inhabitants rolled out onto the ever-moving stretch of a conveyor belt, where an automated hook came rattling down. Barely missing a beat, it sought out the fleshiest part of its human victim before the sharp tip of the hook sliced through the fragile skin, trapping them in the most awful way. Again, I could see the strange glint of the plasticky coating as it poured out of a hidden canister to cover the entry wounds, so no blood was lost in the process of hooking.

  Efficient, yet terrifying.

  Determined to keep moving, I tucked my chin to my chest and pressed on toward another door, hidden away below the wall-mounted cages that held the humans. Navan did what he could to shield me from the sights that surrounded us, but, frankly, I wanted to take it all in, so it could add fuel to my rage. Orion had done this to my people, and he would not get away with it.

  We were halfway across the floor when I noticed something dangling off the edge of the conveyor belt. The limp body of a woman had rolled to the side, one leg and one arm hanging off, just above our heads. To reach the far-side door, we had to walk beneath the conveyor belt. This was one image of horror that I couldn’t stand back and ignore.

  “Can you get her down from there?” I whispered to Navan, gripping his arm.

  He frowned. “I think so. You keep an eye out. If anyone comes along, let me know.”

  Breaking away from me, he hurried along the ground toward a set of ladders that led up to the conveyor belt. He sprang up them two at a time, before coming to a halt at the top. With his arms outspread, he teetered along the edge of the conveyor belt, moving quickly toward the spot where the limbs were dangling. I didn’t want to admit it, but there was a good chance they didn’t belong to a whole human anymore.

  A few moments later, Navan crouched and gathered the woman in his arms. She looked to be in her late thirties, with brown hair that had matted into knots. Gazing down at the floor below him, he gripped the woman tighter before leaping down from the ledge. He landed gracefully, the woman listless in his arms.

  “Let’s get her over there,” I suggested, gesturing to the shadows beside the doorway, a short distance from the underside of the belt. There were large urns, each one twice the height of Navan and three times as broad, tucked away to the side of the door, with the human cages looming overhead. I had no idea what was inside, but the tops were open,
and a rancid smell was drifting out.

  With Navan still carrying the woman, we sprinted over to the relative safety of the shadows. He lay her down gently, while I shook her shoulders to try to wake her from her stupor. There was no telling how long she’d been up there, stuck to the side of the conveyor belt, but her entire left side was covered in bleeding friction burns from where it had brushed past her.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked, as her eyes blinked open. “You need to trust us. My husband will carry you as far as he can. If soldiers come, we might have to hide you somewhere, but we will get all of you out of here as soon as we can. Do you understand?” I knew we didn’t really have time to save her, but we could at least put her somewhere safer until we could set the rest of the humans free. With Stone back on our side, it would be easier to pick up where we left off in gaining control of the base.

  The woman stared at me blankly, then turned her gaze toward Navan. As soon as she set eyes on him, she lashed out, scrambling to her feet, her eyes wide in fear.

  “I don’t mean you any harm, miss,” Navan said, but she was clearly too delirious from her trauma to listen to a word he had to say. After all, he looked just like the people who had done this to her.

  Before we could stop her, a scream of pure horror tore from her throat, and she ran in the opposite direction, the echo resonating long after she’d disappeared. I felt sick, but I knew we couldn’t risk wasting any more time going after her.

  However, just as we moved to exit through the doorway by the urns, gunshots ricocheted from the room beyond, holding us back. I looked up at the urns and pointed to the open lids at the top, silently urging Navan to hoist me up into the container. He grimaced, but did as I’d asked, before clambering up after me. I’d been expecting something sludgy and disgusting within the urn, but as we landed with a gentle thud, it looked like we’d managed to find ourselves an empty one. Even so, the smell of whatever had been in here remained, and it wasn’t pleasant.