25

PROTOTYPE

THE GIRL CADEN saved is young, around twelve. She’s dressed in military gear, odd if she’s a trainee in my father’s lab, but maybe she’s a soldier and was here on rotation.

“Are you hurt?” I ask Caden.

“No,” he says, giving me a crooked grin. “My life flashed before my eyes, but what’s new, right?”

I don’t smile back. “That was close… too close, and for what? A girl who probably won’t survive, anyway? We can’t afford to lose you. Neospes is too vulnerable without its king.”

“I know, Riv, but I couldn’t just leave her. What kind of king would that make me? Everyone matters.” Caden pushes the light-colored hair from the girl’s face and offers her a sip of water from his pouch. She sits up, disoriented.

“Where am I?” the girl asks, staring at us with wide, blue eyes.

She looks more like a doll than a soldier. I frown at her. “What’s your name? Your rank?”

“Rila,” she says. “I don’t have a rank. I was trying to get out when the floors started collapsing. A piece of rock must have hit me on the head.” She touches her hand to her temple and winces.

“Where is everyone else?” I ask.

“They were evacuated to the Peaks,” she says slowly. “Danton only kept a skeleton crew here after the Reptiles breached the dome.”

“Why? Why were you here?”

“I was on patrol duty with someone else, my CO.” She pauses, her voice cracking slightly. “He didn’t make it.”

“You’re coming with us,” Caden says decisively. “Do you have anything to defend yourself with?”

Rila opens her jacket to show a line of thin, weighted darts—all lethal, I expect—along with a selection of spindly blades. She’s a throwing expert. I look at her with new respect—it’s one of the toughest weapons skills. Most soldiers choose other specialties. Shae had been an excellent thrower and even she had squeaked through the final evaluation.

“Let’s move.” I stop just inside the door, expecting to see Bass and Matias clearing the way, but no one is in the room. “Where are Bass and Matias?”

Inka shakes her head. “They went to look for rope. Neither came back.”

“Maybe they’re scouting up ahead,” I say, but I don’t have high hopes. Matias has his own agenda, and none of us, not even Inka, are part of it. Bass probably went after him because he’s a hothead. “Let’s go find them before they kill each other.”

Pull them up on the holo, I tell the suit and breathe a sigh of relief when I see that they’re only a few hundred feet in front of us. But the relief is short-lived. Their images on the holo are engaged in a deadly dance.

We take off at a run, dodging falling cables and mountains of overturned, broken furniture. Rila keeps up well despite her injury. It’s kind of sweet watching Caden’s solicitous manner with her, and a bit humorous, because she could probably kick his ass. Still, it makes me smile. Times of war almost always entail a loss of humanity. It’s nice to see that Caden hasn’t lost his.

By the time we reach the other side of the room, we can hear the sounds of a vicious scuffle. Matias is on top of Bass, pummeling his face with both fists. They’re both covered in blood and breathing harshly. I run toward them just as Bass kicks Matias off with an upward lunge and staggers to his feet. Matias turns to me, a desperate expression on his face, and starts to say, “You must—”

Bass’s backhand catches Matias squarely in the jaw, making him spit crimson onto a nearby wall. He growls and rushes his opponent, producing a knife out of nowhere and pressing the blade into Bass’s throat.

“Matias, no!” I shout, but I’m already calculating the odds of getting there in time to stop that strike—they’re not good. A thin seam of blood appears, and Bass’s eyes go wide. Any movement will end the same—a slashed-open throat. “Matias, please.”

He glares at me, his hands firm against Bass’s throat. “You don’t understand. They’re—”

Suddenly mid-speech, Matias’s fingers separate from the knife, the severed ends falling to the floor as he lurches back, keening and clutching his spurting hand. I look over my shoulder just in time to see a second dagger fly past to embed itself into Matias’s forehead, right between the eyes.

Rila’s face is troubled. “He wasn’t going to stop.”

“He wasn’t yours to kill,” I snarl. “I wanted to know what he was going to say, and now he’s dead because of you.”

“Riv,” Caden says. “She was only trying to help.”

“Well, she shouldn’t have.” I glance at Inka, who also had her bow notched, trained on her fellow Avarian. She hadn’t trusted him, either.

“She saved my life.” Bass’s words are quiet. I look at him and see the crusting red line across his neck. I nod, swallowing hard. If the price of Matias’s intel is Bass’s life, it’s not a cost that any of us would willingly pay. Least of all, me.

“Next time, kid,” I say in a grudging whisper, “wait for my order.”

“Copy.”

I shake my head and toss Bass a medkit from my pocket. “What happened? You took off after him, and he attacked you?”

“Yes.” Bass grimaces as he spreads the salve across his wound. “You know how shifty Matias was all the time. When he saw I was following him, he came at me.”

I throw my arm around him. “No more taking off on your own. From now on, we stick together. We have no idea what we’re up against, and I don’t want to lose anyone else, not even shifty, weird Avarians. No offense, Inka.”

“Got it,” Bass says with a smile.

Inka inclines her head gracefully, and replaces her arrow in the harness on her back. She’s a woman of few words, and yet, for some reason, I trust her… in battle, anyway. I swallow hard. At least Caden will be in good hands.

A sour feeling fills me at the thought of her hands anywhere near him.

“Come on, let’s keep moving,” I say in a sharper voice than I intend. “Cale is up here.” When we come to the wide titanium doors at the far end of the next hallway, my breath hitches, and Inka’s sharp inhale breaks the silence.

“What is this place?” she asks wide-eyed, taking in the vast, icy gallery with its glistening metal tables stretching before us like a horror landscape.

“It’s where they decontaminate the Vectors before they’re prepped for the nanobes,” I say. The space is empty now since all the Vectors are reanimated and fighting up top, but it’s still disturbing. “My father’s research lab is over there in the left corner.” Right where I’ d seen a Vector get decontaminated up close for the first time. Bass and I exchange a look. He remembers, too. “That’s where Cale is, and he’s not alone.”

The room is beyond freezing. Inka looks confused. “It’s for the bodies,” I explain, bringing up the holo on my wrist sensor. I switch to camera mode, showing a feed from the office. Cale is sitting in my father’s chair, staring intently at something—or someone—on the other side of the desk.

Suddenly, something else comes up on the holo—six figures hustling along the right side of the structure. “That’s Sauer,” I say.

“We should split up,” Bass suggests. “I’ll get Cale and you take the Lord King to Sauer and the others. Inka and Rila can come with me. He’s safer with you.”

I shake my head. I’ll have no leverage with Cale, not if I have to protect Caden. “No, you take Caden. The Vectors will go with you. Get him to Sauer, and keep the Lord King covered.”

Bass nods. “Will do.”

“Inka, you and Rila go with them,” I say.

Inka frowns. “If it’s all the same, I will stay.”

“Me, too,” Rila says. “I know these floors—you’ll need my help.”

I nod, surprised. “I’m grateful.” I don’t watch Bass and Caden as they disappear around a low wall—the less I let emotion in, the better. I inhale sharply. “We go in hard and fast. I need Cale alive. Or as alive as he is these days. Destroy any Reptiles.”

We move swiftly down the corridor until we’re crouched outside Danton’s office. I hear low, angry voices, but I can’t quite decipher what’s being said. Without preamble, I lunge into the room, decapitating the Reptile stationed there. Inka takes out two more with her arrows. The stars and darts that Rila’s throwing are a blur as Reptile after Reptile fall at her deadly strikes. Scowling, I dispatch a couple more, bringing me closer to the desk… and closer to the despicable person sitting opposite Cale.

Closer to Danton Quinn.

“You goddamned traitor!” I seethe. “Is there anything that you won’t bargain away to save your own skin? Illegal vaccines, AI tech, robotics research? Me?”

“Everything has its price,” he says in a gravelly voice. “And Cale, too, has his.”

I tighten my fists around the hilts of my blades. “If you give Cale what he wants, the Reptiles will take over Neospes. Is that what you want?”

Danton shrugs. “I find that I’m better suited to the climate of the Otherworld. I care little what Cale decides to do with this one.”

“And me?”

A haunted expression crosses his face. “A man should always have a few regrets, shouldn’t he? Sadly, you are one of my very, very few.”

“You’ d bargain me away to Aenoh, just like that?”

Danton laughs hollowly, making the hairs on my neck stand at attention. “I gave you the suit, didn’t I? Aenoh was simply a means to an end.” I can feel Inka bristling beside me. She’s new to my father’s chess game and the clever, insidious way he plays people like pawns. I should know—I’ve been one all my life. But now it’s time for the pawn to make a move to challenge the king.

I rush forward, only to hear gurgling beside me that halts me in my tracks. Despite her diminutive size, Rila has Inka on her knees in a choke hold. A garrote dangles loosely from one of her knives, looping around the princess’s neck.

“What are you doing?” I snap.

“What she’s programmed to do,” Cale says coolly.

Rila’s eyes flare blue and I take a step back, realization dawning as the light flickers down her arm. No wonder she’s so fast with knives—no human could be that fast or that accurate. My eyes narrow at the flush in her cheeks and the brilliant blue, distinctly not milky irises. She’s no Vector, which makes her…

“No,” I whisper, turning to my father. “She’s your test subject for my DNA strain,” I say in a dull voice. Caden hadn’t just stumbled upon her in the stairwell—we’ d been meant to find her. “You couldn’t just leave it alone, could you?”

“Riven, you have to understand what I’m trying to accomplish here.”

“What? Mass genocide?”

He sighs. “Of course you would see it that way.”

“What other way is there to see it?”

“She’s the future. You are the future.”

“She’s a thing,” I snarl. “One you tried to make into me. I’ll kill her if I have to, and then you’ll have nothing.”

Danton stares at me, a hint of madness glimmering in his eyes. “And what would that achieve? The testing is already complete. There’s nothing you can do to stop any of this. Killing her would be futile. You never understood, did you, Riven? This was always about you—everything I have ever done has been for you. Did you notice her name? I named her for you and your mother.”

I hadn’t noticed, and if he intends to make it more difficult for me to take her out, it’s not working. It wouldn’t make one iota of difference if he had named her Riven II. “Release her,” I command Rila. “Or you will regret it, I promise you.”

In response, she wraps the wire around her wrist, pulling it tighter against Inka’s throat. I nod just once and raise my ninjatas in fighting stance. In a blur of motion, Inka head-butts Rila in the hip, forcing her to loosen the wire enough so that she can roll out of the way. I don’t even have time to think before four darts come flying toward me. I easily flick them away with my ninjatas, then lift the blades, daring Rila to toss more my way.

“No matter how fast my DNA makes you, I will always be faster,” I say.

A cold, doll-like, smile graces her lips as she pockets her garrote nonchalantly, but Rila’s more than ready—I recognize it in the set of her shoulders and the tension around her mouth. Her hand flutters above the lethal display of knives, throwing stars, and darts at her waist.

My father and Cale are mesmerized as if seated in the front row at the Winter Games. I grit my teeth. If they want a show, they’re going to get one. I exhale slowly and sink into a crouch. To my right, Inka notches her arrow and releases it, but it’s not meant for Rila. It flies directly at Cale, who ducks in surprise, the arrow missing him by inches.

Inka sets another arrow and fires it at Rila, but the girl catches it in her hand and snaps it in two. There’s no denying her skill. Inka’s bow is loaded before I can blink, and then I’m rushing forward, fending off dart after dart, with my blades producing a shower of sparks as I get closer to Rila.

I’m inches away from reaching her when a huge aftershock rips through the building, causing plaster to fall in large chunks. Danton and Cale dive for cover under the large metal desk as I flatten myself against a central wall. When the dust settles, I scan the space. Rila has been trapped for the moment beneath one of the structural columns, and there’s no sign of Cale. I find Inka covered in debris, but otherwise unharmed. She nods and we advance together, weapons drawn.

Squinting through the thick cloud, I catch sight of a pair of steel doors sliding shut. I should have remembered my father’s private elevator. But as another violent tremor rocks the foundation, I shake my head. There’s a good chance that the elevator will go into shut-down mode, if it hasn’t already, and I’ d rather be stuck out here than in there. It’ll take a miracle for Cale, or any of us, for that matter, to make it to the surface alive.

I turn to Inka. “We need to go.”

“What about her?” she says, staring at Rila’s slight, pinned form.

I shrug. “She’s a casualty of war.”

Inka frowns. “But she’s human.”

“Mostly human. And she’ll kill us the minute we help her. Her loyalties are to my father and Cale. Not us.”

“So, change her loyalties. It’s your DNA, after all.”

My eyes meet Inka’s and I pause, considering her suggestion. Can it be done? I ask the suit.

Yes. It’s simple reprogramming.

It’s worth a shot. And if it doesn’t work, we can always leave her behind. Squatting beside Rila, I feel her cold eyes focus on me, and I take a breath. Engaging my suit, I use it as a conductor and place my fingers against her temple. Pushing forward, I connect to the nanobes firing in her system. They feel like foreign entities, but eventually, I force them to comply with the process synchronization.

You must reboot for the changes to apply.

Reboot? How do I reboot a human?

Partial human. For a second, I wonder if my suit is mocking my earlier words, but then it speaks again. Reboot the nanobes and when they confirm the sync, you can shut them down.

It won’t hurt her?

T he odds of her survival are fifty percent.

Wonderful. But it’s the only option I’ve got. Focusing carefully, I shut down the robotics in her system. Rila’s body jerks wildly as her human organs start failing. I hold her head so she doesn’t injure herself.

“What’s happening to her?” Inka whispers urgently.

“I’m shutting down the nanobes. They aren’t part of her genetic code, like they are with mine. They’re an accelerator—an artificial transfusion to give her an extra boost. My suit says she has fifty percent odds of survival.”

Inka crouches beside me. “We don’t have much time,” she says as ominous cracks start forming along the walls.

It’s not working!

Please stand by. After a few seconds, the suit instructs: Place your hand on her chest and defibrillate.

Inka helps me to remove the pillar laying over Rila’s inert body. The nanobes had done well to protect the girl when it fell—if she were a normal human, she would have been crushed. I do as my suit commands, and flash an electric pulse into her, jumpstarting her heart. It takes a couple of tries before Rila sits up, gasping. Her eyes, so brilliant before, are now a shade of pale, unassuming blue.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“What did you do?” she asks, flexing her fingers as I pull her to her feet.

“I deprogrammed you,” I say. Then in a gentler voice, “Stay close. The nanobes don’t define how strong you are. That’s in here.” I point to my chest, and then my temple. “And in here.” I pause, handing her a few fallen darts. “One more thing. Don’t mistake my help for weakness. You mean nothing to me, and I won’t hesitate to kill you next time. In fact, you owe your life to Inka. If it were my choice, I would have left you.” Rila nods, swallowing, and I continue. “Once we are out of here, you’re free to go.”

T he building is unstable. Evacuate now.

The elevator?

Sebba has deactivated it, but there is a staircase a few feet to your right.

I’m starting to really hate that clone.

“Over here,” I yell to Inka and Rila as I take off racing in the direction of the stairs. I check carefully—it seems intact, but appearances can be deceiving. “Run, and whatever you do, don’t look back. Inka, you take point—I’ll follow behind Rila.”

We take the stairs two and three at a time, our breathing harsh. “Not far now,” I pant. “We have a few more flights to go. Looks like we are coming up to the fifth floor.”

“Riven,” Inka says, halting. “It’s blocked up ahead. Completely caved in.”

“Let’s see what’s past that door. Maybe this floor has another way through.”

We enter the access door to Five. Acrid smoke is thick in the air. I pull my visor over my head and tell Inka and Rila to do the same. What good is getting this far if we die of asphyxiation?

“Be careful,” I warn as we inch around the perimeter of the burned-out room. “We don’t know how stable this floor is.”

Structural foundation is at fifteen percent.

Thanks for the good news. Where’s the other staircase?

But before my suit can respond, a massive explosion at the center of the room blasts a wave of heat toward us. I crouch, feeling the hot blaze on my cheeks as a wall of flame flares up to the ceiling, completely encircling us. We can’t go back and we can’t go forward.

We’re well and truly trapped.