PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
CONSORTIUM TRAINING CENTER ALPHA, ALBANY CITY, NEW TRITON
478.3.1.04
My leg wobbled as I pushed myself through strangely empty streets, and Jordan and Hodges passed me, Max and Eric at their heels. Alec, Cam, and the marines tore after them, but Nate remained at my side, with Kyleigh and Tia behind us. We were not halfway there when my leg gave out. Nate caught me before I fell.
“Leave this to us, sweetheart.” He kissed my forehead. “Stay safe.”
He was gone, and I protested to their backs. “This was my home. These were my brothers and sisters.”
Kyleigh caught my arm, as a blur of blue hair streamed past. In long, easy strides, Zhen disappeared after Nate and the others.
“Nate was partially correct,” I said. “You should—”
“Not on your life,” Kyleigh said. “I’m not leaving little kids to those murderers. You should stay with Tia.”
Tia’s face was flushed, and her hand held her belly, but she glared at us. “It could have been my baby in there.”
Unable to dissuade them, I kept pace as they turned the final corner onto the tree-lined boulevard. My breath caught. The Training Center’s gates had been shattered. I hobbled faster, but Tia gave a sharp cry and doubled over.
Kyleigh crouched before her. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, but it hurts,” Tia gasped. “Not like those practice contractions I told you about.”
We led her over to a bench, and Kyleigh met my eyes over Tia’s head. “She has five ten-days to go.”
The gates were but meters away. “Do you have a communications link?”
Kyleigh paled. “Stars above. I left it on Thalassa.”
“We must get Tia to a medical facility.” The gates gaped behind me. I could almost feel their shattered teeth at my back. “I cannot remember—”
“I saw one a few corners back. You stay with her. I’ll go get help.”
“No. This is the sole egress. Should we fail to stop these people, they will leave through these gates. After the attackers murder my people, who knows what else they might do. You cannot be in their way.”
Kyleigh’s face went ashen, but she nodded and smoothed stray hairs away from Tia’s sweaty cheeks. Another grimace warped Tia’s expression.
“To safety,” I said, and Kyleigh finally nodded.
I touched her hand, then leaning heavily on my cane, limped into Training Center Alpha.
The quiet was deafening. No children, no weapons’ fire, no shouts, merely my own uneven steps and my cane’s tap on the walkway. Defunct drones, smashed down on their sides, some with smoke creeping from panels, were scattered across the lawn and strip of pavement, but the only movement was the trees’ gentle dance and the nodding of plants between the low, grey buildings.
“Where are you?” I whispered into the unnatural stillness.
Only circulation fans answered me.
I paused and closed my eyes, walking through the Center in my mind. The power plant, the Elders’ housing, nursery and dormitories, clinic, gymnasium, refectory, Scriptorium, library, and under it all, the tunnels leading to the Hall of Reclamation and the medical processing laboratories.
The safest place would be underground. I limped to the nearest building with access to the tunnels, and I found the first people I had seen. Unmoving Recorders, red seeping through their grey uniforms, blocked the path. Were their drones all on the lawns? My feet slowed. There. A chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven gasps.
I dropped to my knees beside the man and set my hand on his bare head. “Recorder?”
Brown eyes flickered open. “The children.”
“Help has come,” I soothed, though the death around me made my heart sink.
“Tried . . .” He blinked, focusing on my hair, then my face. “Citizen?”
“Sister.” Two tears fell from my lashes to spatter his cheek. I wiped them away.
“Trust,” he said. “Scriptorium. Go.”
His eyes closed, and I touched his cheek. “Peace be with you.”
I braced myself with my cane, stood, and ran-limped to the door, which opened easily.
The darkness threatened to crush me, but I found the wall with my fingertips and followed it down and down, allowing tactile memory to guide me when reason failed. I kept my right hand on the wall and felt ahead of me with the cane.
Distant weapons’ fire and shouts echoed.
I pressed on. When I reached a corner, chemical-blue safety lights flickered, illuminating my path. I moved more quickly, stepping around drones and bodies in grey, but when I turned the corner, sound and light hit me full force.
The pillared chamber under the Scriptorium was utter chaos. Recorders writhed on the floor. Marines and citizens fought hand to hand, and people I did not know dodged out from behind the structural supports to fire weapons into the room. Nate—where was Nate? Jordan?
The air in my lungs seemed to solidify.
Near where I stood, a woman in dull gold spun from behind a pillar and aimed a sidearm. A sharp crack, and a familiar marine fell. She ducked back and moved to fire again. She raised it again at . . . Zhen.
Rage shattered my paralysis, and I lunged forward, swinging the cane against the woman’s torso as hard as I could. She screeched as she collapsed. Her sidearm skittered across the floor, and I dove for it.
Zhen spun at the noise, and I pushed the sidearm toward her. Without waiting to see what Zhen did, I bound the woman’s hands with my blue scarf, ignoring an additional surge of anger—this was the woman who had stolen Kyleigh’s suit. Though she struggled, I patted her waist and legs, finding two knives and a box of what I assumed to be ammunition.
“Zhen!”
She glanced over. I shoved the small box across the floor, and it slid to a stop at her feet. She took it. I grabbed my cane, but when I put weight on it, it cracked. I stowed it behind another pillar and cautiously moved from hiding place to hiding place, searching the melee for my friends. Though, what could I, damaged and unarmed, do?
I saw James first. He grappled with an unarmed man, and Jordan wrested a knife from another. She struck him hard with the hilt, and he dropped.
Beyond them, Max knelt by the fallen marine—Ken Patterson?—attempting to staunch gushing arterial red.
A headache sharp as a blade pierced my temples. Panic flared. Please, no. Not again, not now. My perception of my surroundings jumbled in my mind, like pipettes dropping, shattering across the floor. Then, mercifully, the pain vanished as quickly as it had struck, but time blurred.
Seemingly in slow motion, a man moved from behind the pillar, his knife raised, his focus on James. I shouted a warning, the sounds distorted and warped as seconds stretched past their allotted length. Max’s head came up. The knife-man paused and met my eyes.
Adrenaline surged. Despite my leg, I bolted across the open floor, knocking James and Jordan down. Max jumped as the knife flew. The blade bit into him, and he collapsed. His skull hit the floor with a dull thud.
The world exploded into real time as a cry tore from Jordan’s throat. She sprang to her feet. Again, I hurled myself at her back, and we tumbled to the floor. Another blade flew over us.
Blood streaked through the plasma oozing down her forehead, and an unfamiliar light burned in those golden-brown eyes. She hated that man. Perhaps, at the moment, she hated me, too.
“I brought you knives.” My words seemed bizarre, like offering pastries and tea, but I pulled out the sheathed blades I had stolen.
Jordan took them and rose to a crouch. A hiss of air escaped between set teeth. “Get Max and James out of here. Ken, too.”
Eyes blazing and knives in hand, she sprinted toward the man.
James had crawled to Max, so I scooted toward the young marine who had raised the kittens. He no longer breathed, and his eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
Somewhere beyond me, a man screamed, and the sound compelled me to abandon Ken Patterson.
Get Max and James out, echoed in my ears even over the din. I scooted over to James, and together we dragged Max away from the fight. Polished concrete glistened slickly red in our wake.
Once in the hall’s pale-blue light, noise receded. James sat against the wall and cradled Max’s head in his lap. Blood saturated his pants, staining them near-black.
His silver gaze met mine. “I think . . . I think he was my father.”
“Is.” I placed a palm on Max’s chest. Shallow breaths barely moved my hand. “He is.”