I roared off in the Cruiser on my way to Omega. I wasn’t thinking. I was working on blind fury, the kind that ate up every other emotion and spit it back out, leaving a red-black rage in its wake.
A pinging on my D-P made me ease back on the gas. It was a message from Darwin. Seemed our little mole Raine had had the forethought to sneak back and cut the brake lines on both vehicles.
Oh joy.
I tested the brakes, and sure enough I got no traction in return. I added that to the latest Oh shit crisis. Looked like I had no option but to keep up my headlong, breakneck speed. Shame.
Coming up on the now wide-open gates of Omega, I spied a nice little parking spot off to the left—aka a hilly sand dune. I took my foot off the pedal and braced myself in my seat. This was going to hurt.
The car slowed in the troughs of deep sand, enough to lessen the impact to a mere body-rattling, teeth-clattering crash when I collided with the dune hood-first.
Leaving the vehicle behind in a heap, I plugged Shehu’s coordinates into my D-P and raced off.
* * *
The city hadn’t slept since the Quad had been repurposed and the old rule kicked out. I slithered through high-lit streets, which were teeming with revelers who would be put to better use organizing their militia.
I located Shehu and my prey on the rooftop of a vacated building in S-4, where the quietness was pronounced after the heaving atmosphere of the inner city.
Raine was quiet, too, an improvement on his usual chatterbox.
He didn’t look scared enough to satisfy my kill-him-dead urges, though. In fact, he leaned casually against an upended crate, puffing on a cig.
He blew a smoke ring up to the pitch-black sky. “I expected you sooner. The fierce warrior and all.”
Before I could retaliate, Shehu smacked him on the side of the head with a hand as big as a brick. The blow made Raine cough, and his cig dropped to the floor. I stomped it out on my way to getting in his grill. Standing over him, I wasn’t just a fierce warrior. I was a harbinger of death.
“That was for your insolence,” Shehu coldly commented.
“And this is for your ignorance.” I slammed my fist into his gut, causing another round of coughing and hacking. “You know, smoking will kill you. But not before I do.”
Spluttering and shaking in his sandals, Raine looked to Shehu for support that wasn’t coming. He started in with the begging, but Shehu remained stoic and unmoved.
“I’m one of your tribe!” Raine wailed.
Shehu spat at his feet in a gesture of disgust and disownment. “I do not know you. You are no more than a rat in the streets.”
Not two seconds passed before the slippery shit made a run for it.
“Fuck!” I pounded after him, Shehu at my heels.
Raine leaped across a gap between the tight buildings, falling to his knees as he landed. He punched right back to his feet and took off in a zigzag.
I briefly appraised the four-story drop between one roof and the next and then went airborne behind him. My landing was a little clumsier, but I was in much better shape than my pot-toking, cig-smoking quarry. I just hadn’t taken his familiarity with the city into account.
One rooftop led to the next. Clotheslines, potted plants—even people in pretty little terraced gardens got in my way. As far as the Territories went, Omega was nice. I felt bad that I didn’t have time to sightsee or say sorry, especially when I knocked over a table laden with food.
By the time Raine drew me into a mazelike menagerie of live exotic animals, my patience wore thin. The animal part would be okay if it were simply parrots or monkeys or other nonlethal vertebrates, but no. I almost fired off my Smiths when a lion reared up in its cage, rattling the bars and roaring at me from two paces away.
“Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me.”
I bolted away from the only other predator that was bigger than me. I was gaining on Raine. Finally, I cornered the traitor in the heart of Omega. There was no escape. No other roof to jump to, no ladder down. Raine was huffing and puffing in near exhaustion, and his hair stuck in thick, sweaty clumps to his face.
Shehu came up behind me, and then he sidled past. He was pissed, judging from the sharp copper emotion he gave off and the sharp metal machete he brandished in his hands. His long braid swung down to his hips. He was bare-chested apart from two crisscrossed leather straps on his torso and a boatload of scars that marked him as a man of action.
Not a dude to mess with.
The flat rooftop overlooked the city and the desert. It was secluded, and the only sounds carrying to us were Raine’s whistling breaths and the susurrations of the breeze.
“I will contain him,” Shehu said, his teeth glinting like the metal of his weapon.
“How?”
The blow from the butt end of his heavy machete to the side of Raine’s head was enough to rock Raine on his feet, but not enough to knock him out. Torqueing Raine’s elbows behind him, Shehu forced him to his knees with arms high above, pulling painfully at his shoulder sockets.
“That is how.”
Grasping Raine’s hair in my fist, I hauled his head back. I couldn’t wait to fuck him up so badly that even the devil in hell would take one look at him and turn him away—but first I wanted answers to my questions.
“Let’s start, shall we? What was the real deal with Colt?”
Raine was keeping his mouth shut for once, so I helped loosen his lips with a swift knee to the jaw.
He spat blood to the rooftop with a whimper. “Colt was gonna talk. He’d helped with the cure because he thought it was for a good cause. He’d followed all of you Revolutionary assholes since Cannon’s first speech to the masses.”
“That doesn’t tell me why he had a gun to Leon’s head.”
“I drugged him, messed with his mind, and made him think Leon was out to get him.”
“You evil little cunt.” My lips curled in disgust. “What else?”
“When he found out I had no intentions of giving you the real cure, Colt threatened to tell you. No amount of opium could keep him quiet.”
“Back the fuck up for second. You mean you staged the whole Amphitheater night?”
Raine’s face shot up in defiance. “Yeah. Colt needed to be silenced. Leon needed to die. I’d planned on killing two birds with one stone that night, without even lifting a finger. Once you found your pretty boy dead at Colt’s feet, you’d retaliate.”
“Too bad your plan backfired. So that’s why you killed Colt.”
“I had to plug the leak before he came to his senses and told you the truth.”
“With a bullet.”
He shrugged.
“You threw us off the scent and solidified your position as a good guy by murdering an innocent.”
He smiled. “One of my finer moments.”
“This is one of mine.” I grabbed him by the neck, cutting off his air. “This is what Leon felt when he hanged himself.”
I watched his mouth gape and his eyes bulge.
“Darke, we’re not finished with him yet,” Shehu cautioned when the traitor’s face turned purple.
I relented and stepped back. Raine’s breath exploded from him.
“Give me the real antidote.”
“I can’t. I sold it to the highest bidder.”
“Who?” My fingers clenched, aching to be wrapped around his windpipe again.
I received no answer.
Shehu swiftly splayed Raine’s right hand on the rooftop. His machete swung down with a whistle. It sliced through three fingers, unleashing spurting blood and bloodcurdling screams.
“You won’t be needing those. A shaman would never sell out his brothers. You have brought shame to your calling.”
He kicked the dismembered digits aside.
“Cutler,” Raine said through wheezing breaths. “I sold it to him in return for sanctuary. I’m the only one who discovered an antidote to rival the one he had cooked up in the chem labs.”
Cutler had struck once again. And didn’t this sound exactly like Taft’s excuses for turning tail, selling out Sebastian…and giving up Leon. The only difference was, in the end Taft had died with some semblance of honor. The same would not be said of Raine.
I pressed my boot heel down on Raine’s mangled hand, deaf to the sound of his caterwauling. “Why the setup with Leon? Why did you send us to the field hospital?”
Sweat dripped down Raine’s face when he glowered up at me. Between panting, pain-filled breaths, he gasped, “It was part of the bargain, another one of Cutler’s mind games. He wants to invade your psyches, and since he’s not close enough to do it with his usual pharmaceutical methods, he’s getting creative.” He cradled his stumpy hand to his chest when I let up. “He wants you all broken down before he puts the bullet in your brains, or before you’re infected. So you know with your last dying breath he has won. And I had to get you out of the way. You were plastered to Leon’s back night and day.”
“What about Leon?”
“The CEO wanted to watch him crumble, see his will break, then watch you fall to pieces. Worked, didn’t it?”
He had just enough stupid pride to pull off a defiant glare.
Defiance I happily knocked off his face with my fist.
“On the contrary, you worthless piece of shit. Leon’s alive, he’s well, and he’s going to live to tell the truth. Whereas you will not.”
Shock overtook his smugness. I paced slowly back and forth, making sure to mash his missing fingers beneath my boots to his long, low whimpers.
“Quite the little acolyte, aren’t you?” I teased.
“I prefer entrepreneur.”
“How about you interpret this?” I jabbed his unprotected belly, then pulled his wounded hand from his chest. I punched the meaty, bloody mass over and over again while Raine writhed on his back.
“Wait. Wait!” His voice weakening in the wake of my violent outburst, Raine started to cry. He looked to his chieftain.
That time Shehu didn’t step in. His lips lifted off his teeth in a feral snarl.
“There’s more.”
“This better be good. Where the fuck is Cutler, and where is the cure?” I leaned over Raine.
“The unholy trinity, the triumvirate of evil—”
I gripped his neck and snarled in his face. “Fuck off with the word games.”
“Dr. Val, Denver, and Cutler are all in Delta.”
Fuck. Delta was on a totally different continent, a small island in the northern seas. Formerly known as a big city by the name of London, pre-Purge Delta had been home to places called Piccadilly Circus and Canary Wharf. Now I nearly smiled, listening to Raine sing like the yellow-bellied canary he was.
“When you get to Delta, say hi to my old lover for me.”
“Who?”
“Cutler’s henchman. Denver.”
Denver. The man who told us to locate Raine. The one who knew all about Leon’s abduction. Then there was the lovely Doc Val, who had not only brainwashed Liz’s father years ago but had masterminded this entire germ warfare against Leon and all the others infected. Raine would be the first to pay for the pain he’d put Leon through, but he wouldn’t be the last.
My hands closed around his throat once more. Now it was his neck in a noose; one I tightened as rage coursed through me.
He grabbed clumsily at my wrists. He flailed at my feet.
Shehu watched dispassionately for half a minute before lowering into my line of vision. “He has more to say.”
I dragged in deep breaths before I broke my hold. “This better be worth it.”
I was glad the marks of my strangling fingers bruised Raine’s neck. He deserved to die in so many horrific ways I’d lost count.
He could hardly whisper after my assault. “Leon’s going to have an InterNations-wide target painted on his back, thanks to his broadcast, once word gets out he’s still alive. And it will, now that I’ve leaked the location of your stronghold.”
“What did you just fucking say?” I yanked his head back by his hair.
“You heard me. Cutler wanted you flushed out. I already made sure that’s gonna happen. I leaked your location to some anti-rebel groups.” Beaten up and on death’s door, Raine watched me with the last ounce of glee he’d ever feel. “Turns out you’re on a lot of hit lists, Darke.”
“Bullshit. Cutler wanted us out in the open. Instead we’re going to land on his doorstep.”
“He will win, you know.”
“Too goddamn bad you won’t be around to see just how motherfucking wrong you are.” I lifted Raine to his feet, delivering him to Shehu’s arms. I had all the intel I needed from him. There was only one thing more I wanted. I withdrew my knife from its sheath at my hip.
Finally sensing the end, Raine started sobbing.
“You tried to take my lover from me. For that I will take your heart.” I looked to Shehu for permission.
“Yes. It is just.”
“Please don’t,” Raine cried. “I’m sorry! I—”
Raine’s wheedling was cut short when the knife pierced his chest. Shehu caught him, silencing his gurgling with a merciful hand suffocating the last breaths. He kissed Raine’s temple and laid him down. “I will take care of the remains.” The devastation of this night finally showed on my mentor’s face in deep lines.
“Will you bury him?” Everyone deserved finality in this war.
“He will receive last rites.” Shehu rested his hand on my shoulder. “Godspeed, brave warrior.”