by Keri Arthur
Thankfully, the porthole’s glass didn’t appear to be as sturdy as the front windows. I glanced around, spotted a tool kit secured in a storage space to the left of the door, and pulled it out. Inside was the usual assortment of tools, including one rather large wrench.
I covered Raela’s face to protect her from flying glass then grabbed the wrench and swung it, as hard as I could, at the small window. It took three blows before the glass shattered.
By that time, it wasn’t just the flashing red lights telling me we were closing in on the cliff. I could actually see its edge.
I had to get out of here, and fast.
I dumped the spanner and then properly secured Raela’s sling around my body. Once she was safely tucked close, I grabbed the body armor and the pack, and then called to the darkness. Even as the power of it tore through the two of us, the barge’s treads rolled into emptiness and the vehicle’s front end tilted alarmingly.
Once again panic surged, threatening to overwhelm my control and halt the change. I braced my body against the ever-increasing decline, then closed my eyes and concentrated on nothing but becoming shadow. The second I was, I surged through the shattered porthole.
Just as the rear of the barge went over the edge and began a tumbling descent down the cliff face.
I got out of its way and then hovered in midair for several seconds, watching it crash through the treetops and come to a sudden stop upside down on the rocky ground below. The barge’s treads were still in motion and there was steam and smoke coming from the engine bay, but it didn’t erupt into flame. Maybe it wouldn’t—I guess it depended on whether the fuel tank had ruptured or not.
A light speared the darkness, almost catching me in its beam. I thrust away and glanced up. There were figures lining the cliff top, but the spotlights they were holding were so bright that they were little more than silhouettes behind it. It was impossible to tell whether they were friend or foe—although I seriously doubted they were the former. Even though I wouldn’t exactly call some of Nuri’s people friends, I doubted any of them would simply stand there if they’d thought I was in the vehicle.
And if Jonas had been up there, he certainly would have been scrambling down to check for survivors.
I surged upwards and discovered my instincts were right. They weren’t friends—they were wearing the sand base’s uniform. There was also at least thirty of them here—either Dream was overestimating my combat abilities or she was absolutely determined that I would not escape this time.
I rose higher to get above the cliff top’s tree line and slowly turned around. Given I’d been traveling for some time before I’d woken off course and in the middle of this forest, there was a good chance I was a whole lot closer to Central than I had been. If that were the case, then her lights should be visible, even from a distance.
And they were.
Or, at least, the night sky was lit by a glowing sphere of light some distance away to my left. Even if it wasn’t Central, I’d be able to find a means of contacting Nuri there, as well as a source of nourishment for Raela. Aside from the one bout of crying, she’d been amazingly quiet, but that wasn’t likely to last once her belly started to rumble. Even déchet babes had made it thoroughly clear when they were hungry.
Between those lights and us was a wide, wooded valley that swept up the foothills of another mountain range. The only mountains I could think of anywhere near Central were the Broken Mountains, where the few remaining nomadic shifter clans lived, and where the other military base we’d invaded was located. That would certainly explain why this entire area—and the desert I’d woken up in—was unfamiliar. I’d never been stationed beyond the Broken Mountains during the war, and I certainly hadn’t ventured very far from Central after it.
Movement caught my attention—the soldiers had begun to rappel down the cliff. It wouldn’t be long before they realized I’d escaped. Time to get moving.
I dropped to treetop level and arrowed forward as fast as I was able, desperate to put distance between those soldiers and us. Time passed, but the spherical glow of the city didn’t seem to be getting any closer. It was obviously a whole lot farther away than I’d initially thought.
Tiredness rippled through my particles, gently at first but gradually increasing in intensity, until it felt as if every part of me was afire. I might have rested and healed on the barge, but it had still been a very long day, and the protein bars I’d eaten weren’t really enough to fuel me for long. Not after everything I’d been through. I glanced over my shoulder to check the distance I’d put between the cliff and us, and decided to drop to the ground and resume normal form. I could always shadow again if necessary, but right now, it was better to conserve some strength. I might not be able to move as swiftly in flesh form as I could when shadowed, but I did have tiger shifter blood in me and could run a whole lot faster than most humans. And at least it didn’t tax my strength quite as much as maintaining particle form.
I dribbled some water into Raela’s mouth to keep her hydrated, drank a little myself, then stoppered the bottle and moved on. Though the forest was dark, it was far from silent. There were night creatures in this place, rustling through the scrub and scrambling up trees as I ran past. That at least meant I didn’t have to worry about a vampire attack. We appeared to be a long way out from any sort of human habitation, and those night creatures would have been the vampires’ only means of sustenance had there been an infestation here. All the forests close to Central had been stripped of life for decades; in fact, I hadn’t even seen any birds for a least twenty years, if not more.
The night rolled on and the moon rose ever higher in the starlit sky—something I could feel more than see, thanks to the thickness of the overhanging canopy.
My muscles—unused to running so fast for so long—were beginning to ache, but I didn’t slow down and I certainly didn’t rest. A niggling sense of danger was beginning to creep across my psychic senses and the need to be out of this forest was growing.
The ground started to slope upwards as we neared the foothills of the other mountain range, and my pace slowed. It didn’t ease the muscle burn. Nothing short of a good massage and rest would.
Then, from behind, I finally heard what my senses had been picking up on for the last hour or so.
The whine of engines.
They were coming at me, and fast.
But how in Rhea had they known where we were? Aside from the fact this valley was vast and there had to be more than one path through these trees, I’d traveled in particle form for at least the first hour and had left no trail for even the most experienced hunter to follow.
And yet they were behind me.
I could understand them locating the barge, as it was easy enough to trace a vehicle’s location via its GPS signal. Of course, Dream was not only one of the evil trio, but a witch of some power. I didn’t know a whole lot about witchcraft and the use of earth magic, but I did know that anyone who stepped on the earth could be traced by it. The minute I’d regained normal form, she could have pinned me.
But that thought was quickly chased away by another. I briefly closed my eyes and cursed my own stupidity. They didn’t need a witch. Not when I still had Banks’s RFID chip stuck over my own.
I slid to a stop, sending a spray of small stones and dirt scattering through the darkness, and pushed up my sleeve. The false skin covering the RFID chip was visible thanks to the grime now lining its edge. I slid a nail under one side and peeled the entire thing away from my arm. The RFID chip clung to the fake skin like a limpet, and gleamed brightly in the darkness, as if mocking me. I dropped it onto the ground and stomped on it, and then glanced down at Raela. While I’d blown up the labs, it was still possible they were aware that one of their test subjects was missing, especially if she’d been chipped. Most déchet had been implanted with a tracker or a control device—in some instances, both had been used. Their handlers had not only needed to know where they were at all times, but had also
required a means of control if their charges flipped out or started attacking the wrong targets. Not that the chips had always worked—one of the reasons we lures had been installed into the nurseries as guards when not in service was because a déchet soldier had gone berserk and killed a number of déchet children before he could be stopped.
But could I afford to waste the time checking her?
Could I afford not to?
I glanced over my shoulder, trying to guess how much time we had left before they found us. The hum of the pursuit vehicles was definitely closer than it had been only minutes ago, but there was little point in running if Raela did have a tracker in her.
Besides, if she also had a control chip in her, they might well decide to take her out rather than risk her falling into the “wrong” hands.
I moved across to a fallen tree and carefully unwrapped her. She giggled lightly and waved her hands at the sudden freedom, making me smile even as I caught one of her arms and gently checked for implants.
It wasn’t until I reached her feet that I found the chip—it had been embedded into the heel of her right foot.
And that meant I'd have to cut it out. There was no other choice—not if we wanted to escape. I took a deep breath to gather my courage and then lightly placed a hand on her chest. I'm about to hurt you, little one, and I'm sorry. But bad men are chasing us, and there is a device in your foot that is leading them to us. It needs to come out.
She should have been too young to understand either the words or their import, and yet her happy expression melted into one of solemnity, and the old soul I’d glimpsed before once again shone from her eyes.
She placed her hand over mine and the size difference oddly reminded me a grain of sand against a rock. And yet that grain was offering me both strength and courage.
She couldn’t—wouldn’t—go back to any sort of military or governmental organization or lab. I might not have been able to save either her companions or even my own little ones, but I would do everything in my power to give her the one thing they'd never had: the chance of a real life.
I pulled my hand from under hers then swung the backpack around and pulled out both the small medikit and the knife. If I’d had anything smaller, I would have used it, but I didn’t. The blade’s tip was fine, but even so, against Raela's tiny foot, it looked like a carving knife.
There was no deadening spray in the kit, only a sealing antiseptic, so I simply located the chip in her heel and pressed the knife's point against her skin. Then, with another of those breaths that didn't do a lot to calm the turmoil inside, I pushed it deep.
She screamed. I closed my heart to the sound and sliced sideways until the edge of the chip was revealed. Then, using the tweezers from the kit, I carefully grabbed it. In the past, heel-inserted control chips had often been connected to small vials of quick-acting poison. They could be detonated from a distance, and killed the host quickly but not exactly painlessly. We lures had been designed to be immune to all sorts of poison, so they'd used a different system on us—a miniaturized but extremely powerful incendiary device buried under our ribcage. It was no longer in my body, of course, but I hadn't destroyed it, as tempting as it had been at the time. In those early years after the war, when I'd been so uncertain as to what was happening in the world above our bunker and whether another attack would come, I'd thought it prudent to keep hold of every weapon I could.
As I drew Raela's chip free, I saw the wires and swore. They were the same sort of wires that had been in me and meant this little girl was basically a flesh and blood bomb.
“I'm sorry, Raela,” I said, my voice barely audible over the sound of her sobbing, “but I've got to get the rest of it out.”
I dug the knife deeper, and again she screamed. The blade tip hit something solid, but the welling blood meant I couldn't tell if it was bone or whatever device had been placed in her.
I swabbed the blood away then used the tweezers against the edges of the wound to widen it. That's when I spotted it—a small silver tube.
Though it was microscopic in size, it nevertheless looked to be the same type of device that had been used in me. I carefully pulled it free from her body then threw the entire thing as hard and as far as I could. It eventually buried itself in the leaf matter that was banked around an old elm's feet, lost from sight but not from memory.
I quickly sprayed the sealer onto Raela's foot to stop the bleeding, then wiped away the rest of the blood and hugged her close. Even as I whispered words of comfort, I hurriedly reattached her sling and the body armor. Crying or not, we had to move. The pursuit was now close enough that I could hear the different engine notes of the various vehicles; if I delayed much longer, they'd be on us.
I snapped the water bottle, guns, and remaining ammo clips to my utilities belt and then slung the rifle over my shoulder. As Raela's sobs quietened to hiccups, I set the remaining RTX and walked back to place it at the base of the old elm. Between it and the incendiary device, they should not only bring the old tree down but also start a fire big enough to cause problems for those who chased us.
I wrapped my arms around Raela and once again called to the darkness. It surged through me, but its force was muted, a warning I was very close to reaching the limits of my strength.
It didn't matter. Nothing did, as long as we escaped.
I flowed on through the night, keeping very close to the ground just in case my strength went. The old road grew ever steeper and narrower, and the roots of the trees that lined either side crept across its surface like thick wooden fingers. I had no idea where this road had once led, but it very obviously was no longer in use. Even the old barge, with its thick caterpillar tracks, would have had some trouble traversing the ever-growing wildness.
On and up I went, but the tiredness was growing and my particles were once again beginning to burn. I’d never really pushed myself to the utter end of my strength in this form—I'd never dared, as I'd always feared doing so would simply mean a loss of coherence. That rather than reforming and becoming flesh—as I did whenever light hit my shadowed form—my particles would simply unravel and float away, leaving me without the possibility of even a ghostly form.
Then, from behind, came a whoomp, and an orange glow suddenly lit the night sky. The RTX had just exploded. I spun around but couldn't really see anything through the thick scrub surrounding us, so I pushed up past the treetops into the starlit night.
To discover a huge swath of forest was now on fire.
The combination of the two bombs had obviously created a force far greater than I could ever have hoped for, and it surely would have taken out at least a good portion of the pursuit.
Would it be enough?
The pessimistic part of me said no.
I dropped back down and became flesh again, but my leg muscles gave way and I dropped to my knees, grunting as pain rippled up my spine.
Rhea help me, everything hurt.
I sucked in air, trying to at least ease the burning in my lungs. One thing was becoming very obvious: I couldn't go on for much longer. I just couldn't. Not without help.
I closed my eyes and called, with everything I had, for Cat and Bear. I had no idea if my two little ghosts would hear me from this distance, but I had to try. Though it was highly unlikely they’d provide much of a front against whatever force was still pursuing us, they could at least contact Jonas and get him out here. Ever since he and I had gone through the rift together, he'd been able to hear, if not converse with, them.
Raela somehow wriggled a hand free from the confines of the sling and armor, and gently patted my face. Once again it felt like she was comforting me—telling me that everything was going to be all right.
I smiled down at her. Saw her answering smile.
And knew in that instant I would not release her into the care of anyone else. That it had, indeed, been a foregone conclusion from the moment her tiny fingers had grabbed mine.
Somehow, someway, I would raise her.<
br />
If we survived the current situation, that was.
And that didn’t mean just this pursuit, but the whole matter of tracking down Ciara Dream and dealing with her mad scheme to give the wraiths and vamps light immunity. Until we found and destroyed both that final lab and her, her evil scheme was still very much in place and active.
I drew in another of those deep, somewhat shuddery breaths that did little to ease the pain or give me strength, and then pushed up and on. Progress was slow, though, and not just because of my weariness. The road was now so bad that I had to watch every step lest I stumble or fall.
The night rolled on. For a long time, there was little sound other than the chirruping of insects, the rustle of animals through the undergrowth, and the harsh rasp of my breathing. Raela was asleep, but she’d now gone quite a long time without any sustenance, and the fact she remained so quiet was beginning to worry me.
I trudged on, forcing one foot in front of another when all I wanted to do was stop and rest. But the stars were at least growing brighter and the scrub around me was beginning to thin, which meant that even though I couldn’t see the mountain’s ridge, it had to be getting closer.
Then, once again, came the sound I’d feared.
The hum of engines, closing in fast.
I cursed their persistence but didn’t call to the darkness or even increase my speed. Given the incline and instability of the road, I didn’t dare the latter, and I simply couldn’t risk using the last of my strength on becoming shadow until it was absolutely necessary.
I trudged on, keeping my eyes on the ground but acutely aware of the rising rumble behind me. If that noise was anything to go by, they were no longer just coming directly along the road but had spread out, possibly to cut off any prospect of a double back.
