9

THE ART OF WAR

THE LINE OF Reptiles is ominous, but it’s been an hour and they haven’t moved. We’ve summoned the remaining legion commanders and assumed battle positions at various posts within the dome. The first wave of Vectors has been reanimated and is ready to go. Hopefully, they’ll be enough. Staring at the seething line of snarling Reptiles, I’m not so sure. War, at its core, is a numbers game, and the odds aren’t in our favor. I calculate roughly six Reptiles to every soldier—human and Vector—in this city.

Sauer puts a rectangular-shaped device to his eyes. I telescope my vision outward, the nanobes in my retinas working to magnify the landscape. Shimmering bands of gaseous rivers undulate on the scorched red earth. The heat of the mid-morning sun is already a blistering one hundred twenty degrees and rising. And yet, the creatures aren’t even attempting to find shelter. No living creature—including the androids—willingly takes on a Neospes sun at full mast, not when daytime temperatures can soar high enough to melt metal. But there are at least a few hundred Reptiles braving the heat. I can see them pawing the ground and butting into each other. They’re chomping at the bit, as if waiting for some signal.

None of this makes sense.

“Have you ever seen this many Reptiles?” Caden asks Sauer, making me jump. He’s standing next to me on the lookout point, his face tightly drawn, sword in hand. He tugs on the titanium armor covering his chest and arms. It’s coated in Reptile fluids from the last time he defended the city. Caden looks entirely too comfortable in gore-spattered armor—every inch a king heading up the front lines.

“No, my Lord King,” Sauer replies.

“What are they waiting for?” I ask, my own gaze focused on the unmoving line. “They’re just sitting there.”

“I don’t know, but we need to be ready if, and when, they start to advance.”

Caden signals to Aurela. “Order the Vectors to line the perimeter. Fire up the lasers and prime the graviton reactor.”

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

Sauer stares at me. “Where you are going?”

“If they move, do not engage.” I swing myself down off the parapet.

Caden leaps down beside me and grabs my arm, pulling me around to face him. “I’m coming with you.”

“Your place is here. I’ll be fine.”

He eyes me suspiciously. “You’re not going to do anything rash, are you? Like confront that mess on your own?”

“No.” I hold his gaze, willing him to believe my lie. I’m not exactly going to confront the horde, but what I’m planning does slip into borderline-rash territory.

His mouth moves into a sardonic twist, and I sigh. So much for being convincing. Caden jerks his head in Sauer’s direction. “Go with her. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

“You do know that I’m not a child, right?” I say drily.

“Yes, but you’re stubborn and have crazy ideas. We need you here.” Caden pauses, clearing his throat. “I need you… to stay alive.”

His soft words ignite something in my chest, but I keep my tone blasé. “You know that I’m part robot and can take care of myself just fine. I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Hey,” Sauer says, insulted.

“No offense, but you’ll just slow me down.”

“Riven—” The sound of my name on Caden’s lips halts me in my tracks. His face is pure steel, and holds an expression I haven’t seen before. Unyielding. And undeniably hot. I suck in a breath and shake my head to clear it as the warmth in my chest detonates. Seriously, we are on the brink of annihilation, and all I can think about is dragging that unbending, autocratic face down to mine until neither of us can breathe.

“Fine,” I say in a ragged voice, pointing to a stern Vector waiting at the stone steps. “I’ll take that guy.” This is why love gets people killed. They can’t focus on anything but the other person, even in times of crisis.

“I’ d prefer you take the commander.”

“And I’ d prefer you let me do my job,” I say sweetly.

This time I don’t wait for Caden’s reply. If he insists that Sauer join me, I’ll have to temporarily incapacitate him, and I’ d rather not do that.

“Stay close,” I command the Vector as we race through Sector Seven.

The streets are empty—most of the citizens have been evacuated into temporary underground shelters. Aurela isn’t taking any chances, not after what happened in the other sectors.

I catch up with her at the surveillance post and ignore the thunderous look on her face. She already knows—via Sauer or Caden, or both. “Where are you going?” she asks, hands on her hips, blocking the entrance to the Peaks.

“I need to confirm something.”

“Riven, I am not moving until you explain what you are doing and where you are going. Caden may be intimidated by you, but I most certainly am not. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” I say, my mouth twitching. She is my mother, after all, and Shae used to say that I got my stubbornness from her. “When we everted earlier, a Reptile attacked me. I need it.”

“That’s going to be long gone.”

“Not where I left it. It would have been brought down by the electromagnetics from the Peaks, and nothing else will come close to retrieve it.”

“Why?”

“A hunch. I think these things are receiving orders, and we need to find out where they’re coming from. That’s where we should focus our attack. We don’t have the numbers to hold off this many.”

She studies me, her forehead creasing. Her gaze drifts to the silent Vector at my side. “You know that thing’s not going to work near the Peaks.” It’s not a question. I nod. “Take Arven and Rafe, then.” She nods to two men a few feet away.

That’s two more backs I’ll have to look out for. I shake my head. “It’s too dangerous. I need five minutes. I’ll be fine alone.”

“I don’t like it.”

I grasp her shoulder and squeeze gently. Her fingers slide to rest on top of mine, the soft touch releasing a swell of emotion. “I know, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you—those things are unpredictable. Everything we know about them is no longer accurate. And there are so many.…”

“I’ll be careful.” I swallow and do something completely out of character for me—I give in. Maybe it’s the fear I can feel beneath her fingers. Something about the look on her face tugs at me—she’s already lost one daughter, and she doesn’t want to lose another. “Fine, I’ll take your men if it will make you feel better.”

“It will. Wind at your back, my daughter.”

“And at yours.”

In the next moment, I’m racing into the underground tunnels that lead to the caves beneath the Peaks. As anticipated, my inner circuitry shuts down, but the rest of my body works just fine. I grin, and enjoy the feeling of the hard, dusty earth beneath my soles and the harsh cadence of my breath. Sometimes, it’s nice not to feel so superhuman.

I run as fast as possible, glancing behind me just once. Arven and Rafe have no trouble keeping up with me, which is a credit to them both. Even without my extra cyborg advantages, I’m pretty swift on my feet. After a mile, the underground terrain shifts and we start to move upward. I can feel it in the muscled tension of my calves.

At the entrance, I can make out the faint outline of the Reptiles, but they are too far away to get to me. The one I’ d left is still there, a shiny metal dot laying on the barren landscape. I nod to the men behind me. Arven and Rafe both have weapons drawn—long-range crossbows loaded with electromagnetic arrows—just in case.

“Cover me.”

After a deep breath, I take off at a full sprint toward the remains of the creature. I can feel the collective consciousness of the line of Reptiles center on me, but, to my surprise, they don’t move. That’s a first—normally they’ d be rushing toward anything that looks like prey. Things are getting stranger and stranger, but I don’t have time to dwell on it. I heft the metal skeleton in one hand. The frame has been picked clean by the carnivorous nocturnal worms that live in the Outers. They’ d have no use for tech parts, and the Reptiles couldn’t get close enough to sift through the remains.

I make it back to the Peaks, where I study the prize I’ve collected. There’s no movement. Like me, the creature’s circuitry is disabled.

“How far is the Peaks control room from here?” I ask Rafe.

“Not far.”

We retrace our steps to Aurela’s central command room—the one with the working communications—and I feel the nanobes in my blood start to reboot. But they’re not the only thing rebooting. The head in my hand quivers, two red pools of light flaring. Repeating the process I’ d seen Danton use earlier, I find the coin-shaped disk in the creature’s head. “This won’t be pretty,” I warn a stoic-faced Rafe.

I reach around the back of my head and use a scalpel from Aurela’s connecting lab to cut away the flesh. Wincing at the sharp sting, I feel my way to the panel and slide in the disk. I blink against the sharp pressure and the rush of data flooding my brain. Complex processes and jumbled data stream in front of my eyes. My stomach sours. Although I can’t translate the code, it’s exactly the same as the last Reptile.

Exactly the same.

“Come on. Let’s go,” I say to Rafe after removing the Reptile’s brain and destroying it. “I have one more thing to do.”

We take off again into the shadowy darkness of the tunnels but, instead of veering right to the path that leads to the interior, I go left, heading away from the mountain range. Once more, my cyborg senses become sedated by the power of the underlying rocks so that I have to rely on an innate sense of direction to make my way toward a small pocket of clefts high in the ceiling. Caden and I had fallen into one of these the first time he everted to Neospes. It seems like an eternity ago. The image of Caden’s grim face on the parapet flits across my thoughts. The boy he’ d been then is long gone.

So is the girl who brought him here.

“Where are we going, General? The path to the city is behind us.” Arven pants, hooking a thumb in the opposite direction. We’re standing in a large underground area with multiple offshoots. These tunnels web for miles. You could get lost in them and never be found.

“I know. I want to get a closer look at the Reptiles and what they’re doing. Maybe we can see through one of the fissures.”

Arven nods. He’s a seasoned soldier—Aurela’s second-in-command. He was the man who’ d caught Caden and me unawares our first time in the tunnels. His mouth purses as if he’s weighing the odds of following me against heading back to Aurela. But then he kneels and runs his fingers through the dirt. His eyes are closed; his body is still, as if he’s listening. I frown, but remain quiet. From what Aurela has told me, Arven was born an exile and knows these tunnels like the back of his hand—he has no need for holographic subterranean maps. Everything he does is based on instinct.

“How far out do these tunnels run before reaching a fissure that’s wide enough for me?” I ask as he stands, dusting his hands on his tunic.

“A few hundred paces that way.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

With a deep breath, I follow him and sprint down the narrowing tunnel until he stops, peering upward. My skin tingles and a rush of nanobe-blue sweeps the darkness of the tunnel. We’re far enough away from the mountain’s magnetic rock, which means I’m back to full operational power. The panel of my suit flickers and turns on. I consult it—we’re about a mile away from the Peaks, which should put us close enough to see what the Reptiles are doing… and to figuring out why they’re not attacking.

I pull the hood of my suit up, feeling the sharp snap as it connects to my brain. Algorithms and data flicker through my vision as the suit calibrates to my biometrics.

“Give me a boost, will you?” I say to Rafe. He nods and braces himself against the wall, making a bracket with his hands for my foot. With a grunt, I push up off his hands and then his shoulder, wedging myself into the narrow opening. The smell of sulfur and heat seep down into the cooler air of the tunnel.

I inch upward, hauling myself onto a ledge before leaning down to swing Arven up, and then Rafe. The crack is just wide enough for our bodies to fit through, but not by much. I feel the sharp push of rock against my back. Placing my finger on my lips, I switch the hologram to display the surface topography.

I bite back a gasp. The black line of Reptiles on the holo is at least ten bodies deep. There are far more of them than we’ d guessed. I need to get a closer look—we won’t have this opportunity again. The Reptiles are far enough away for me to slip unnoticed out of the fissure. Nodding to the two men beside me, I pull myself up and out, rolling to my stomach and bracing myself against the blast of heat.

Pulling their hoods over their faces, Arven and Rafe do the same. They’re covered head to toe in protective gear similar to my suit, but not as technologically advanced. They’ve been trained in stealth; we barely lift a cloud of dust from the ground. My suit immediately mirrors the burnt-red color of the landscape. The thermometer on my sleeve indicates that it’s a balmy one hundred thirty degrees. If I didn’t have my suit’s protective covering, water would be evaporating from my eyes as quickly as I could blink.

I zero in on the Reptiles, confirming what the hologram had displayed in the tunnel: there are thousands of them. My eyes rove toward the middle, my enhanced vision providing a clear view of the different shapes and sizes. Some look more animal, with visible flesh parts. Others are metal husks. I swallow bile—there are even a few human-looking ones among the mass. My stomach sours as my gaze falls on what looks like a small boy, until I see the wiring around its rib cage and the half-rotted brains leaking out the side of its skull. It’s the head of a small boy mounted on a metal spike. Rafe gags beside me. I’m not far from doing the same.

Focus.

I take a deep breath and reassess the line. There are runners, hunters, and trackers, all standing together… all working together. I’ve never seen the likes of it. My gaze snaps to what looks like a tall human standing in the very center of the column. The other Reptiles are a foot or two behind him. For a second, recognition flickers in my brain and I blink. When I look back, the human is gone.

Seeing the young boy earlier has made me paranoid. I must have imagined it. There’s no way a human could survive out here, so what I saw couldn’t have been a person at all. The rest of its body is likely metal just like the child’s.

A slow, measured touch on my leg makes me inhale quickly. I meet Rafe’s eyes. They are wide with fear and focused on a point over my left shoulder. Moving slowly, I twist backward and come face-to-face with two Reptiles that look like huge scorpions hovering over us. Before I can move a muscle, Rafe is snatched up and ripped into several pieces by the two creatures.

Blood and gore splatters us, and Arven and I dive out of the way as one of the Reptiles hurls its spiked tail right where we’ d been lying. I face off against the closest one. It’s standing above the crack, and the only way back down is past the enemy. I grit my teeth and draw my ninjatas from their sheaths.

Offense, I command the suit. It hardens against my body just as an iron-spiked limb crashes into my side. The force of the strike knocks me flat on my back, but I vault to my feet, lashing out with my blades. Black fluid spurts from the creature’s severed leg, and I dodge another attack from the thing’s barbed tail. A shivery sensation prickles my skin as I glance over my shoulder.

We’ve drawn the attention of the Reptiles closest to us, and unlike last time, they’re advancing. Swearing sharply, I look to Arven who’s handling the smaller Reptile with a finesse born of years of training. He’s gotten in a couple good hits with his crossbow and, although the Reptile is still moving, it appears to be blinded. Arven hefts a cleaner—a golf ball–sized detonation device—in his hand and leaps onto the thing’s back.

Dodging another strike from the scorpion facing me, I skid under the Reptile and slide my swords along its belly. Black ichor gushes out and the thing shrieks, drawing even more attention from the advancing horde, before collapsing onto its side. Seizing the opportunity, I slash my blades across its tail and chop it off before lodging a second stab deep into the thing’s skull. Without stopping to think, I slit my finger and jam it into the creature’s skull. The nanobes rush forward, propelled by my command and wirelessly join with the creature’s command center.

Everything in my brain goes blank as I sync with the creature twitching beneath me. I gasp. Turns out it’s not just with this one—I’m wired into every Reptile in the Outers. I feel their collective hunger and sense their communal mission. They’re going to destroy the dome. A command snaps into my brain and I go rigid.

HOLD

Something flickers in my memory—another voice issuing commands—one so similar, but so foreign. I recoil against it. The creature spasms beneath me as my human eyes register that the line of Reptiles breaking toward us has fallen back. They are connected to one entity—the one giving the commands. The wireless order morphs into a second directive that makes every cell in my body shudder.

YOU CANNOT WIN… RIVEN

My body is numb, and I can’t breathe from the excruciating weight pressing upon my chest. I rip my finger away from the Reptile as the echo of mocking laughter resonates through my brain.

“General! We have to move.”

My mind feels sticky as I disconnect from the scorpion. I nod numbly at Arven, who is precariously perched atop the second Reptile. He yanks on the arrow lodged in its eye before tossing the cleaner into its gaping jaw and leaping down.

We slip into the crack, the explosion shaking the earth above our heads. Bits of red rock crumble around us as Arven tumbles past me. Vaulting into the narrow chasm beside him, I see that his leg is broken and blood is dribbling from another injury at his temple. I grab his body and run, using every bit of tech at my disposal to get us out of the rapidly collapsing tunnel. Before communication winks out, I send a message to Aurela telling her to meet me in the control room.

By the time we get back, I’m winded, and an unconscious Arven falls from my grasp. He is whisked away by a few of Aurela’s men.

“What happened?” she asks, her eyes flashing fire as I stop to catch my breath. Sauer looks concerned, as does Caden. I frown in his direction—I didn’t ask for either of them to be here. But I’m sure they would have seen our little scuffle in the Outers.

“Turn on the holo,” I grind out. The table comes to life. I close my eyes and push the data from my brain into the hologram’s receiver. The wireless transfer is swift, and images pop up in the middle of the table. I step forward and use my fingers to adjust the image, zeroing in on the line of Reptiles. “There are more than we anticipated. They’re organized. They’re being commanded, and they plan to attack.”

“Commanded?” Sauer repeats in a disbelieving tone. “By whom?”

I filter through the image, my thumb and forefinger separating the holo into a fragmented starburst. Any number of people in Neospes had known me, knew who I was. The owner of the voice could be anyone—I’ve exiled enough traitors to the Outers.

I find what I’ve been searching for—the man I thought I saw. I tap on the image, bring it into focus. There he is staring boldly at me, crossbow in hand, with a smirk on his very human lips. The only difference is the shiny metal that now brackets half his body. My gaze flicks to Caden’s.

The silence in the room is deafening as we stare at the leader of the Reptiles.

Cale… the fallen prince of Neospes.