by Presley Hall
“Good. Keep going. The supports shouldn’t be electrified, but be wary. Don’t get too close until you’re certain you’ve found the right one…”
He keeps talking, guiding me along the fence, suggesting which supports to pay more attention to, until I finally locate one with a blinking light and a small compartment.
“I think this is it!” I exclaim. “No. I’m sure it is. This is the fuel cell.”
“Pull it out, then, carefully.” I can hear the tension in Ren’s voice as he calls softly over the wall. “Once it’s disabled, I’ll climb up and come over to your side.”
Getting closer to the buzzing electric fence sounds like the worst idea in the entire universe, but I force myself closer to the support that leans toward the thick fence, ignoring the skin-crawling sensation of the electricity humming over my skin. Quickly, I push the button next to the compartment and grab the exposed cell, pulling it out in one smooth motion.
The electric charge in the air vanishes abruptly, and I let out a shuddering breath.
“It’s off,” I murmur, feeling a little dizzy from the rush of tension leaving my body.
Ren appears less than five seconds later, quickly scaling the fence with impressive athleticism. He lands beside me with his knees bent in a crouch, then straightens and nods.
“One challenge down,” he says, his jaw tight with concentration as he jerks his head toward the facility. “Let’s go.”
The tower is wide and massively tall, made even taller by the thin spire that rises up from the top. It’s the only thing inside the fenced perimeter, set about fifty yards back from the fence and made out of dull gray stone.
I keep hold of the fuel cell I pulled from the fence’s support beam as we approach the tower, not wanting to leave it in case there’s anyone patrolling who might reactivate the fence. It’s not heavy, but it is cumbersome to hang on to as we run up two flights of stairs on the outside of the tall tower to a heavy metal door. It’s locked, of course.
“Fuck.” I look at Ren. “What do we—”
“Leave it to me.”
He rears back, kicking the door hard. A heavy, metallic clang rings out in the cold air.
It’s loud, which I hate, but his strategy is effective. I can see the door starting to give just from the force of that first blow. He kicks it twice more, putting all of his weight behind it, and finally, the door gives way, the metal lock breaking.
Ren pushes his way inside, and I quickly follow. My heart begins to race as I look around the interior of the building.
It’s barely lit, the large space dim and forbidding—but we’re here.
We’ve made it this far.
21
Ren
The interior of the facility is as tall and cylindrical as the outside, with catwalks running along the curved wall leading up, and crisscrossing through the middle at random intervals. I can feel my pupils dilating as I look around the dim interior, trying to pick out every detail that I can before we make our next move.
There’s a core running up the center, and at the very top, crackling electric energy supplied from that core connects to the top of the building and to the spire on the outside of the facility.
We’ll need to either find an override for the surveillance system or disable the power source in some way, but I know neither of those things will be easily accomplished.
“Follow me,” I murmur quietly to Felicity.
We begin making our way through the tower, first on the floor we’re on and then moving up the catwalks, stopping anytime we see a blinking panel of lights or anything that might resemble a place to fiddle with the surveillance system that monitors this part of the planet.
But there’s nothing immediately obvious.
Slanch. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but as we make our way up farther, worry tightens my chest. I can’t see any external way of disabling the system. Finally, when we reach a large panel with multiple blinking lights, I flip open part of it, revealing another line of lights and a drawing of the central core, with a marking on it halfway up.
“There!” Felicity points to it just as I see it, her eyes lighting up with faint hope. “Maybe there’s something there we can use to shut it down. Like a breaker box.”
Although my translator chip struggles with a direct translation for the term she just used, I don’t bother asking her what she means. I can understand the gist of it, at least.
“Let’s go look,” I agree, and we follow the nearest catwalk across the tower, heading toward the core.
As we near it, I can see that the catwalk ends in a large platform surrounding the metal cylinder, with ladders leading up to the next level. Sure enough, there’s a control panel on the cylindrical core, with a display of buttons and blinking lights below it, along with a lever.
“This must be it,” Felicity whispers, her voice taking on a tinge of excitement. “We should be able to shut it off from here.”
I flip open the control panel, searching for some sort of key, but it’s just a screen of digital readings. Frowning, I look down at the display next to the lever.
“These buttons look like overrides,” I tell Felicity, scanning them. “If we start the override process and pull the lever, it should shut down the entire system.”
“Are you sure?” She chews on her lower lip worriedly, her gaze flicking from the display to the large lever next to it.
“No,” I tell her honestly. “But it’s the best I’ve got. I’ve spent plenty of time flying ships, and this looks like an override sequence to me. I’m guessing pulling the lever finalizes it.”
Felicity looks up at me. “Then do it.”
“Something bad could happen. It might trigger a self-destruct, might lock us in here, or worse. There’s no telling what it might do, if it’s a security measure and not an override.”
“Do you have any other ideas?”
I shake my head in frustration. “No,” I admit.
“Then we have to do it.” Felicity’s gaze meets mine, full of a bravery that I know she’s struggling to maintain. “We came all this way. At least if it blows up or something, it’ll disable the alarms, right?”
She laughs, but I can tell her heart isn’t in the joke.
I take a deep breath. I know she’s right. If I were alone, or even with a few of my other warriors, I wouldn’t be hesitating. This is what we do. It’s a part of our mission, our sworn duty, our purpose. But the thought of Felicity dying on this quest somehow feels like too much to bear.
But she’s here. She volunteered, and I can’t treat her any differently than I would anyone else or even myself, regardless of how I feel about her.
No. Because of how I feel about her.
She deserves to be treated like my equal, because she is, in every way possible.
“You hit the override sequence,” I tell her. “I’ll pull the lever once the last one is engaged.”
Felicity nods, pressing the buttons quickly in order and flipping the switch on the bottom of the display. The moment the switch is flipped, I grab the lever, hauling it down until I feel it catch at the bottom, then we both step back, watching the control screen.
It flickers—and then goes black.
All the blinking lights on the walls switch off as well.
“Oh my god,” Felicity whispers. “I think it worked.”
I can barely believe it myself. It feels too easy. Too simple, for something of such great importance to the solar council.
Maybe they just assume no one can get past the mountain’s many traps and the fence without getting killed, so the complexity of the system inside doesn’t matter, I think. But I’m not quite sure I believe that. Is there something we’ve missed? Something—
As if in answer to my thoughts, the screen starts to flicker, data running down it in a wave of blue and black.
“Akhi!” I curse aloud, gritting my teeth. “The system is rebooting.”
“Shit,” Felicity hisses with equal feeling, an
d a heartbeat later, anything else she might say is drowned out by the sound of alarms blaring.
Slanch.
Doors open in the walls all around us, once-hidden panels sliding up to reveal small robots. They’re several hand-spans tall, with spindly metallic limbs and glowing red sensors on all sides. The machines spill out from their hiding places, angling toward us as they converge around the platform we’re on. They’re equipped with blasters, and the moment they lock onto us, they start shooting, sensing our presence and immediately attacking.
I curse again, grabbing Felicity and dragging her down to lie flat on the platform beside me. Ducking the fire, we crawl behind the tower’s core. But I know this cover won’t last long. It will only take moments before the mini bots converge on us here, and we’ll be overrun.
Now, not only do we need to disable the surveillance, but we need to do it before we’re killed by blaster fire, or before the solar council notices the alarm and sends someone down to investigate what’s going on.
We have to figure out a new plan.
I have to do something.
Felicity’s blaster still has some power left, thank all the gods, and she uses it well, shooting back at the robots and knocking any within reach off the platform as she dodges their attacks. I do the same, using my dagger to deflect a few bolts that get too close. But we can’t keep this up forever. There’s no telling how many of these bots there are—potentially endless amounts of them, and they won’t grow tired.
I duck again, swiping four robots off the edge of the catwalk and sending them plummeting to the floor below. Whirling in a circle, I scan the tower desperately. As I glance up at the crackling energy above us where the core meets the ceiling and connects to the spire, a sudden idea springs into my head.
It could work.
But it’s risky.
Most likely deadly. There’s very little chance I’ll survive it.
For the first time, I feel myself hesitate in the face of potential death. I’ve never had a death wish, but in the past, I’ve always accepted it as a possibility, making peace with the fact that a part of my mission in life is the chance of dying before my natural time. But looking at Felicity as she fights off the robots with the same ferocity she displayed when she attacked the snow beast with me, I feel a tightness in my chest that I’ve never felt before.
I don’t want to die. I want to live, and I want a life with her. I want more than what I’ve allotted for myself.
But I also want to get her off of this planet in one piece, with or without me. And I want that more than anything else in the universe. Even more than my own life.
I have more to live for than ever before. But now I have even more that’s worth dying for too.
“Stay here!” I shout to Felicity. “Keep holding off the bots. I’ll be right back!”
Without waiting for a response, I snatch the fuel cell she’s still holding in one hand, then turn and plow forward in the other direction, barreling through several bots and wincing as a blaster bolt grazes me, singeing my skin.
I duck the next shot, leaping forward to kick the bot away. Once I’m past the thickest cluster of the slanching things, I start running up the catwalks, toward the electric stream of energy near the top of the building.
22
Felicity
I don’t quite know what Ren is doing or what his plan is.
But I trust him.
I keep fighting, holding back the robots as best I can, knocking them off the platform a few at a time and doing my best not to get hit by the bolts they’re firing at me. One shot is too close to avoid, and it hits my cloak, burning through the fur and leather and leaving a raw patch on my shoulder that makes my eyes water with pain.
There are so fucking many of the little attack bots, and even though they’re little, they’re difficult to fight. If I didn’t have the blaster Ren gave me at the beginning of this mission, there’s no way I’d be able to hold them off—as it is, I’m barely surviving.
I can’t afford to take my focus off them for more than a second, but I glance upward quickly, trying to figure out where Ren went.
When I see him racing up toward the energy beam at the top, the fuel cell gripped in his hand, it all clicks in a single moment.
I know what he’s planning to do.
Oh, fuck. No!
“Ren! Don’t!”
Still dodging the bolts, flailing wildly at the robots now, I scream his name. Terror floods me as I see him run straight toward the crackling stream that feeds the spire on the outside, the fuel cell held aloft.
No. No, he can’t do that.
I have to get to him. I have to stop him. But there are too many robots surrounding me, practically crawling over each other as they fight to reach me. I can’t get through them.
A harsh scream is still pouring from my mouth, and I’m not even sure what I’m screaming anymore. I only know that I can’t stop. I’m on autopilot now, hardly able to tear my eyes away from Ren long enough to keep fighting off the attack bots.
I don’t want to watch him die, but I don’t want to lose sight of him either.
I catch a glimpse of him as he reaches the upper catwalk where they cross over the empty space in the middle of the tower, near the spot where the crackling blue energy is emerging from the core. I manage to clear a swath of robots just long enough to watch him shove the fuel cell into the energy stream, gripping it tightly as his hair stands on end.
Blinding white light shoots outward as he forces the cell deeper into the stream.
A grimace of pain and exertion warps his face, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl as he clenches his jaw.
I’m sobbing with fear, my entire body wound tight. I drop to the platform, the blaster still clutched in my hand, watching as sparks and light fly outward from the core. The energy is being disrupted, and something is gathering in the air, a charge that my entire body seems to reject. My skin tingles with it and my hair stands on end all over again.
He’s shorting it out. Overloading it.
More robots stream toward me, and I can’t watch. I duck down, letting their blaster fire go over my head, and before they can adjust their aim, I fling myself toward them, shooting more of them down.
Now I’m not just afraid. I’m angry. The awful solar council that built this place is going to take the man I love away from me. There’s nothing I can do to save him. No way to stop this now.
Tears stream down my face, a primal scream pouring from my lips as I attack the bots with everything in me. And then—
BOOM!
I look up just in time to see the stream of energy pulse, flashing outward in a bright surge of light that makes my eyes burn and ache. I stagger sideways, nearly falling off the catwalk as pain sears through my skull.
But even as my vision wavers and my ears ring, I cling to the catwalk and force myself to keep looking up, my gaze glued to Ren.
The force of the explosion knocks him backward, and as he flies through the air, the crackling blue light sputters out. The energy stream is dead, overloaded by the power cell.
There’s just enough dim light filtering in from the opening at the top of the building for me to see Ren fall through the air. My throat closes up, and I lean over the edge in time to see him land hard on one of the lower catwalks, his body splayed in a way that sends cold fear rippling through me.
Silence falls suddenly, so cold and sudden that it’s as if sound no longer exists.
The robots have all stopped shooting and gone still. They must’ve shut down when the power source went out, fueled by the same energy that fueled the surveillance system.
A few backup lights flicker on at different points on the walls, but everything else stays still and quiet, from the control panel, to the alarms, to the robots.
Ren doesn’t move.
My heart feels like it’s stopped. The surveillance system powered by this tower is off—we’ve succeeded—but I can’t take any joy in that.
/>
Pressing up to stand on shaky legs, I race for the catwalk where the big Voxeran warrior landed, running down the walkways that wind around the side of the tower as fast as I can. Every thought in my head is only for him. I’m not thinking about the burns and scrapes that pepper my body from the fight, or how long it will take for the solar council to notice something is wrong, or anything other than the fact that he’s not moving.
He’s not moving.
He’s not fucking moving.
Finally, I fling myself onto the catwalk where he’s landed, sprinting toward him and falling to my knees beside his crumpled form. I lean over his prone body, searching for any sign of life as I burst into tears.
Trails of blood seep from his mouth and nose, and even from one of his ears. He’s unconscious and limp, the chiseled lines of his face gone slack. I smooth his silver-streaked hair back, my tears falling onto his face as I drag my fingers lower to search for a pulse, wishing I could wake him up from sheer will-power alone.
He has a pulse. But it’s faint. Too faint. I can barely feel it, and a terrified part of me thinks I’m just imagining it, refusing to face the fact that he’s gone.
“You can’t leave me,” I sob, stroking his face, his scars, clutching his face in my hands. “You can’t. Please, Ren. You can’t! Because I’m your mate, and I didn’t get a chance to tell you. I’m your mate, and you’re mine. And I knew it, I knew it the first night we were together, but I was so scared—”
I’m shaking with sobs now, hardly able to breathe.
I feel the bond between us down to the depths of my soul, along with everything it means. Not just love in the sense that I’ve always thought about it, although I know I’ve fallen in love with him. But more than that. He’s my soulmate, my other half. A true partner, someone I can reveal the darkest parts of myself to, and hear his, and know that we’ll stay by each other’s sides no matter what.
“I’m not scared anymore,” I whisper, even though fear for him still throbs like a second heartbeat in my chest. But even though loving someone means risking losing what you love, I realize now that I was a fool to try to guard my heart by keeping up walls between us. “No matter what happens, I’m yours, and you’re mine. And I’m going to get you out of here so I can tell you that to your face, you stubborn, infuriating, incredible man.”
