by L O Addison
Adrien ground his jaw back and forth as he considered this. Finally he said, “We’ve been hearing the stories for weeks. Alien ships have been spotted all around the city.”
“What kind of ships?” Kaylin asked.
The boy roughly thrusted his rifle toward her. “You tell me,” he snapped.
Kaylin sighed in frustration. “Look, we’re definitely not aliens. Do you really think aliens from another planet would speak English with an American accent?”
The boy considered this for a moment, his head tilting to the side. Then he slowly said, “It could be part of a disguise.”
Kaylin shook her head. “If I was an alien who was trying to infiltrate your city, why would I learn English for a disguise, and not French? And if I was trying to disguise myself, why would I bring along a pet that’s obviously alien?”
The boy’s eyes narrowed as he considered this. Then he slowly nodded. “All right. I’m willing to believe you’re not aliens. But I still don’t buy that you’re scavengers.”
Kaylin raised her eyebrows. “And why’s that?”
Adrien lifted his chin. “These are my streets. I know who belongs here and who doesn’t. And you most certainly don’t.” He gestured to their surroundings. “The buildings on this side of the city have been totally picked over for years. There’s nothing left. Any true scavenger would know that.”
Beck looked the boy up and down, struggling to understand just who exactly he was. Adrien didn’t just speak English fluently—he spoke it intelligently, as if he had been well educated. And there was something strange about the way the boy carried himself. He walked like a wolf, both elegant and supremely confident, which was far different from the slinking gait Beck had seen in most street orphans.
Kaylin kept her voice calm as she said, “So if we’re not scavengers, then who do you think we are?”
Adrien frowned as he considered this. “I’m not sure.”
Kaylin gave a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, that’s because we’re sc—”
Adrien held up a staying hand. “Stop. I don’t want to hear any more of your lies. I only want to know one thing.” He straightened his shoulder and gave each of them a hard, calculating look. “Are you friends of the Wardens?”
Kaylin glanced over at Beck, and then back to Adrien, her eyes wide with uncertainty. The wrong answer could be a death sentence. Beck swallowed hard and opened his mouth, preparing to say “yes.” The Wardens owned huge swathes of this city, and it made sense they would also own Adrien’s loyalty.
But then he thought of the gentle hand Adrien had laid on the orphan girl’s shoulder, and of the adoring way she’d stared up at him. It wasn’t the admiring stare that a soldier would give a general. It had been softer than that, warmer, like the loving gaze of a sister looking up to her brother.
“No,” Beck said, shaking his head as he looked Adrien straight in the eye. “We’re not friends with anyone who indoctrinates kids and forces them onto a battlefield.”
Adrien’s harsh expression didn’t change, but his shoulders relaxed slightly. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, lowering his rifle just slightly. “I didn’t feel like shooting anyone today.”
Relief flowed through Beck, although it was quickly followed by a cold chill. If he had slipped up and claimed to be friends with the Wardens…
Beck took a deep breath, struggling to clear his mind, and decided to take a gamble. Revealing their actual mission was dangerous, but Adrien was obviously not a friend of the Wardens, and he might be willing to help them.
“The Wardens have stolen an extremely dangerous weapon,” Beck said. “That’s why we're here. We want to infiltrate their base and take it back.”
Adrien frowned. “You’d be a fool to try that. The tunnels leading to their base are guarded better than most prisons.”
“We know,” Beck said. “That’s why we’re here today. We’re trying to scout out a way into their base.”
Adrien cocked his head. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re obviously not friendly with the Wardens, and you’re familiar with this city. I’m betting you have plenty of info about how someone might break into their base.”
Adrien barked a sharp laugh, his teeth flashing in a smile that looked like a snarling wolf. “Sure, I can give you some info,” he said. “You’re probably not going to get past the guards at the entrance to the tunnels. At least not alive. And if you do somehow manage to get inside, you won’t get further than a kilometer before a guard or a trap finishes you off.”
Beck’s heart thudded in his chest, but he kept his expression carefully composed. “We have to try anyway. We don’t have a choice.”
“But I do have a choice,” Adrien said. “And my choice is to tell you to consider yourself lucky for not getting killed by me, and to get the hell off my territory.”
Beck gritted his teeth. “You don’t understand how deadly this weapon is. We need to get it out of their hands, and we need to do it immediately. If you help us, you’d be saving lives.”
“Eighteen,” Adrien said.
Beck raised an eyebrow. “Eighteen?”
“That’s how many orphans are under my care. How many lives I’ve already saved.”
Beck nodded. “That’s a lot.”
“Too many,” Adrien corrected, his voice suddenly bitter. “I don’t have the resources to take care of this many. But I do it anyway. I find a way.” He jabbed a finger toward Beck. “Without me, these kids would have no one. So there is no chance in hell I’m going to risk my life and theirs to give you information. The Wardens don’t take kindly to snitches.”
“We’ll pay you,” Beck insisted. “Generously. You can buy food, clothes, shelter. Anything you need.”
Adrien stilled for a moment, considering this. Then his lips crept into a slow, slim smile. “Resistance fighters,” he said. “That’s who you are, aren’t you? I can’t think of any other Americans who would be cocky enough to march into a ruined city and brag about having enough money for a good bribe.”
Beck winced a little, realizing how ignorant he probably seemed. Beck had experienced hardship and danger during the Syndicate War, but it was nothing compared to what Adrien was living through. Tossing around the offer of money so flippantly was practically an insult.
Adrien nodded, seeming to take Beck’s silence as confirmation. “Can’t say I was ever expecting to see anyone from the Resistance around here,” he said, making a vague gesture to his surroundings. “Your people have always given the Wardens a wide berth.”
“Times have changed,” Beck said.
“Apparently so,” Adrien said with a nod. “But my answer hasn’t. You can take your bribe and shove it. There’s no point having money if we’re all dead.”
“He’s right,” Kaylin said, her voice quiet but firm. She looked over at Beck with a fierce expression, as if daring him to disagree. “We’ll have to find another way to get info about the tunnels. We can’t put them in danger.”
Beck gritted his teeth, but he nodded, knowing they were right. “At least tell us the safest path from here to the entrance of the tunnels,” he said, looking back to Adrien. “Then we’ll leave your territory and never come back.”
Adrien inclined his head toward the end of the street. “I’m going to escort you to the border of my territory, and you’re going to leave, and no one is going to get hurt. That’s already generous enough. Don’t ask anything more of me.”
He didn’t give them any chance to disagree before he waved them forward with his rifle. “Now come on. Get moving before I change my mind and blow your brains out.”
22
Kaylin
Kaylin collapsed at the table in the meeting room, her feet throbbing and mind spinning. Beck sat next to her, sighing heavily as he settled in the chair. Their journey into the city had been a success. Technically. In reality, it’d done nothing but confirm their fears and add a few more new ones.
They’d managed to g
et to the entrance of the tunnels, only to find it swarmed with guards. At least a dozen of them had patrolled the area, and those were just the ones Kaylin and Beck had spotted. It was far worse than the five or six guards Matteo had warned them of, which could only mean one thing:
This was war. The Wardens were expecting retaliation for attacking the Resistance base, and they were ready to violently repel anyone who dared to try entering their base.
“You okay?” Beck murmured to her.
The room was empty except for the two of them and Red, who was dozing at Kaylin’s feet. The others who had been invited to the meeting were still on their way. But Beck still spoke quietly, as if hesitant to ask the question out loud. Or maybe just hesitant to hear the answer.
“We’re screwed, Beck,” Kaylin replied. Her voice sounded strangely calm, and she realized she was just too damn tired to sound anxious. “Totally screwed.”
“We’ll find a way in,” Beck said, although he sounded far from confident.
Kaylin just shook her head as she thought back to the tunnel entrance they'd scouted out. Before the war, the entrance had obviously led down to the subway, and there were still battered signs in French asking pedestrians to please watch their step and stay off the tracks. But the entrance to the subway had crumbled, barricading off most of the entryway with concrete rubble, leaving only a small gap that was barely big enough for a single person to pass through. The guards had stood right in front of the gap, their weapons ready to fend off anyone who dared get too close.
Matteo had told them this was one of the most lightly-guarded entrances in the entire city. And if he was telling the truth...
“There’s no way we can get in there,” Kaylin said. “Not without a full-scale invasion.”
Beck shook his head. “That would take weeks to plan. Months.”
“It doesn’t matter how long it’d take,” Kaylin muttered. “It wouldn’t be an option, even if you could send in an army tomorrow.”
Beck nodded gravely. At least four of the guards they'd spotted had been teenagers, and one of them couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Kaylin had struggled to focus on anything other than the youngest guard. Despite being a kid, she’d had the hardened stare of a trained warrior, although she’d flinched every time the other guards spoke to her and tensed when they got too close.
It was one thing to hear about the street kids who’d joined the Wardens, and an entirely different thing to see them firsthand. It made her disgust toward the Wardens turn to pure, burning rage. If her brother had survived the war, he’d have been right around the girl’s age. Still just a helpless, naïve child.
The thought of the Wardens manipulating kids in that way, of forcing them to choose between a slow death on the streets or a bloody death on a battlefield… It was sick. Just sick.
A warm hand covered hers. Kaylin flinched, ready to jerk away. But then she looked down to see Beck’s hand resting gently on top of hers, and she went still.
He stared at her with somber brown eyes. “We’re going to do everything we can to avoid fighting with them. We’re not going to just launch an invasion into their base and risk getting a bunch of kids killed.”
Before Kaylin could reply, the door slid open. Matteo stepped inside, his hands cuffed and a guard marching along behind him. The guard was a tall woman who carried a rifle slung over her shoulder, but she looked more bored than cautious as she ushered Matteo to sit at the far end of the table. Matteo looked more alert than he had when Kaylin left him, the last of his fatigue gone. But he also seemed more nervous, and his gaze kept flicking around, trying to take in everything at once.
Beck looked up at the guard. “You can go. I’ll handle things from here.”
The guard hesitated. “I was told to stay with him,” she said in a heavily accented voice.
“And now you’re being told differently,” Beck said, suddenly slipping into a deep, commanding tone. He straightened his shoulders, giving the guard a hard stare that made it impossible to forget that Beck far outranked her.
The guard gave a quick nod and a salute, and then she strode back out of the room. As soon as the door closed behind her, Matteo relaxed just slightly, although his gaze stayed nervously locked on the pistol at Beck’s waist.
Beck gave a slim smile, trying to reassure him, but Matteo just flinched under Beck’s gaze.
The door slid open, and Lio and Marin stepped inside. They also seemed to have recovered from their exhaustion, and both of the Rhuramenti officials were once again wearing impeccably clean clothes and walking with perfect grace.
“Good evening,” Lio said, nodding to each person in the room.
“Evening,” Beck replied with a nod of his own, even though it was already eleven at night and far past evening.
Commander Duval strode in behind Lio. Kaylin had met him earlier in the day, before she’d left to scout the city with Beck, and it’d hardly been a friendly encounter.
Duval settled in at the table and addressed the small group. “Good evening, everyone,” he said. He nodded to Beck. “I’m glad to see you’ve returned safely.”
“Thank you,” Beck said. “Although I’m afraid we didn’t bring back good news.”
“Give me a full report,” Duval commanded.
Beck immediately launched into the report, giving every useful detail he could remember. Sometimes, Kaylin forgot why exactly he’d been promoted through the ranks so quickly. But it was impossible not to notice just how smart he was when he gave reports. He noticed and remembered everything, including small details Kaylin had completely missed. Like the fact that several of the guards had been drinking coffee, suggesting they had either just started a shift and were trying to wake up, or were ending a shift and trying to stay alert. And the fact that several of the guards had been carrying blaster weapons that looked brand new, as if they’d just gotten in a new weapons shipment.
Duval nodded along as Beck spoke, tapping out notes on a digital tablet. When Beck was finally finished, Duval turned to Matteo, a scowl on his lips.
“Twelve guards is far more than you told us to expect,” Duval said.
Matteo looked down, avoiding the commander’s angry gaze. “I’ve never heard of that many guards being stationed there,” he said. He swallowed hard and then hesitantly added, “I think they’re expecting a full-blown attack from you.”
“Of course they are,” Duval said darkly. “After their attack on our base, they’d be fools not to.”
“I think the alien sightings are part of it, too,” Matteo said quietly. “It has them on edge.”
Beck raised his eyebrows. “Do you think those are real? Not just rumors?”
Matteo nodded. “We’ve been hearing about it for weeks. Sightings of strange ships and people. We all thought it was just rumors at first, but if the Wardens actually have a trade deal going on with aliens, that means there probably have been alien visits."
"Wait," Duval said, holding up his hand to stop Matteo. "What's this about the Wardens working with aliens? I wasn't informed of this."
"It's pure speculation at this point," Beck said. But then he turned and gave Lio a hard stare. "Although I'm hoping Ambassador Lio might be able to clarify."
Lio cleared his throat and looked down at his clasped hands. "I'm unsure how much I can share with you about the Ascendancy," he said, his words slow and careful. "I would need to request permission from my Council."
"We don't have time for this sort of bullshit," Duval snapped. He glanced toward the door, making sure it was closed. Then he turned back to Lio and said, "We know the Virtue is a weapon of mass destruction."
Lio's pale skin went even paler. "Who informed you of this?"
"You," Duval said wryly. "Just now. Beck heavily suspected it, and you just confirmed it."
An embarrassed flush crept across Lio's cheeks, and beside him, Marin muttered something exasperated under her breath.
"I had a feeling you might put the pieces together," Lio s
aid to Beck.
"It was kind of hard not to," Kaylin said. "As soon as you told us that the Virtue is connected to that Fragment thing you used to heal Matteo, it was pretty obvious you're not chasing after some harmless old relic."
Lio sighed and ran a hand over his face. Then he gave a small, tight nod. "Yes. The Virtue of War can be used as a weapon, and it has the potential to be incredibly powerful." His gaze narrowed slightly as he looked around the room. "But it's not a weapon humans would be able to use, so please don't even think of trying to utilize it."
Duval's shoulders slumped with relief. "That's fantastic news," he said. "If humans can't use it, the Wardens won't be able to launch an attack with it."
"It's not the Wardens we're concerned about," Lio said. "It’s the Ascendancy. We’ve received intel that they’re working with some groups of humans to chase after the Virtue.” He turned toward Matteo. “You believe the Wardens might be one of these groups?”
Matteo nodded and quickly repeated the explanation he’d given Beck earlier: the sudden influx of money from a mysterious coalition, the alien weapons given to the Wardens, the sightings of alien ships over Paris. With every word Matteo spoke, Lio’s expression grew darker and darker.
“This was exactly what we’d feared,” he said grimly.
A feeling of dread struck Kaylin in the stomach. “So you agree it’s the Ascendancy working with the Wardens?”
Lio nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Duval frowned. “But why would the Wardens willingly work with the Ascendancy? They hate aliens. They’d never do business with them.”
“The leader of the Wardens is convinced they’re not aliens,” Matteo said. “He thinks they’ve gotten all their alien tech from scavenging.”
Duval turned to Lio. “And you don’t think that’s possible?”
Lio shook his head. “It’s incredibly unlikely.” He turned back to Matteo and said, “You said this supplier visits the Wardens’ base regularly. Do you know if they follow a schedule?”
