Part 2 (1/2)
”I needed you sane and I need you to be on my side. I saved your mind over the years because I can't do what needs to be done alone.”
”What if I refuse?”
”We've gone down that road many times before. It never ends well when you choose Nathan over me.” Lucas's gaze was steady. ”There's too much at stake, Sam. We both know that. Surviving this fight starts here.”
She looked away, seeing their reflections in the mirror. They were both a mess, but still alike in their resolve.
”What's in it for me?” Samantha said.
”Your life and the ability to live it in a changed world.”
”Never knew you were such a humanitarian.”
”We aren't human, Sam.” Lucas pa.s.sed his hand over the control panel to open the door at his back. The sound of everyone else's conversation filtered inside. ”I won't be anything less than what Aisling promised.”
”And that would be?”
Lucas didn't answer as he stepped out, but she didn't need him to. If the Sercas had one thing in common, it was their belief in themselves and what they could accomplish. Samantha lifted a hand to scratch off a tiny flake of dried blood she had missed in her was.h.i.+ng. She flicked it off her finger, wondering how much blood she would end up losing to reach her brother's goal.
THREE.
AUGUST 2379.
LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY.
Longyearbyen lay north of the arctic circle, a frozen graveyard of a time when almost every last coastline in the world had communities thriving with people, even a tiny, wintery archipelago. Currently, the town center was surrounded by buildings eaten away by the cold and disuse, time having made inroads on a place only twenty people inhabited on any given day. Richard Cuellas had spent the past five years on sentry duty in the far north, drinking his way through gallons of coffee and whiskey. It was a lucrative, if boring, post.
Richard was one of those who didn't mind the isolation, along with the rest of the people a.s.signed with him in the north. Up here at the top of the world, there was s.p.a.ce to stretch out, land that wouldn't kill you if you stayed too long in one place, and air that smelled better than in any other place on earth. Their mission was to monitor bioscanners and a security grid that encompa.s.sed a quarter of the island. The computers could do this well enough on their own, but the government still required a human mind to interpret the data that ran across the vidscreens.
Sipping at steaming black coffee, Richard tilted his chair back on two legs, balancing there as he called up the log for the past ten hours. It was s.h.i.+ft change, and despite its being a post where nothing ever happened, they stuck to protocol. The government expected full protection of what was buried in the ice and volcanic rock of Plataberget. Neither he nor his compatriots knew what was so important up here, and they weren't stupid enough to ask. Their mission was to guard Spitsbergen. In the entire time that the government had manned the island-250 years and counting-no unauthorized person had ever set foot on it.
That morning, the long-standing record was broken when Richard saw the image of a civilian girl on one of the security feeds in a place she shouldn't be.
Choking on his coffee, he let his chair fall back to the floor and swore as some of the hot liquid splashed over his bare fingers. He set the cup aside and reached for the controls to magnify the security feed, but the girl had disappeared. Richard swore again, wondering if the madness that came from being cut off from society was finally getting to him after five years of duty. He commed the rest of his quad.
”Graham, get your a.s.s up here, I need a second sign-off,” Richard said as he leaned forward and squinted at all the various angles he could call up on the security feed.
He found no sign of the girl, and replays of the feed didn't show him a d.a.m.n thing. It was as if she'd never been there. Five seconds was a long time for it to be a glitch, and he knew for a fact that the last s.h.i.+pment of entertainment bodies had all been dumped in the water a month ago. It wasn't some government-supplied wh.o.r.e.
The door behind him slid open a few minutes later. Richard looked over his shoulder at the man who came into the control room, his second-in-command, bundled up against the cold. The environmental system kept the place warm, but heat could stand up against the elements for only so long before the arctic chill seeped into everything.
”I'm on break,” Graham said irritably.
”Yeah, and I don't care.” Richard stabbed a finger at the vidscreens. ”Got a glitch. Security feed showed some blond-haired girl outside.”
Graham frowned and leaned over the console to bring the feed up in a quick loop, showing him every angle of their tiny settlement. All he saw was barren land and decrepit houses that were once part of the ancient town. The airfield a kilometer away was empty and the waters of Isfjorden were placid against the icy sh.o.r.e.
”You drink too much at last night's poker game, Rick?” Graham asked as he let the security feed revert to its default circulation mode.
Richard scowled at him. ”Do I f.u.c.king look hungover? Do a recon of the area with the others. I want it cleared by a live report.”
”You're kidding, right?” Graham laughed. ”h.e.l.l, there's no one up here but us.”
”If there's no one here, it shouldn't take you long to confirm that fact, right? Now get out there.”
”a.s.shole.”
Graham left the control room. Richard didn't doubt that the other man would follow orders, but Graham was a lazy son of a b.i.t.c.h who'd been packing on weight over the past two years. He'd take his sweet time getting it done.
Sometime later, Richard could see Graham and some of the other soldiers posted up here wandering around outside on the security feed-along with a shuttle that dropped down out of vertical, coming within camera range nearly on top of the small outpost. Richard didn't recognize the make, and it was completely off schedule. He flipped open the plastic cover that protected the emergency b.u.t.ton and slammed his hand down on it to trigger the alarm. The piercing sound nearly ruptured his eardrum, catching everyone's attention in the connected buildings.
”We've got a breach!” Richard yelled into the system's local comm frequency before moving to switch it into an outgoing uplink.
The press of a gun barrel to the back of his head made him freeze.
”No bioware net.” The voice sounded young, her words riding on a soft laugh. ”They should have given you one. Hands up. Turn around.”
Richard complied. He came face-to-face with a tall, thin teenage girl who smiled wide enough to show all her teeth. Her bony face was dominated by gleaming dark blue eyes, and her smile made Richard's skin crawl. The girl stared at Richard over the barrel of her gun, and Richard thought about reaching for his own weapon, but he couldn't remember why he needed it. Standing there, breath coming in rapid bursts, he tried to remember his duty, but it was difficult to think around the fear flooding his body.
”Who-,” Richard choked out, one hand clutching at his chest. His heart was beating so fast it felt as if it were going to beat right out of his body.
She lowered the gun, smile still in place. ”What.”
Scared to death wasn't how Richard wanted to die, but Kristen didn't give him a choice. She dug her power into his emotions, twisting them beyond anything he'd felt before. Fear, yes, but also pain, both of which incited panic. The body could be made to feel anything, and what Kristen made Richard feel stripped him of all control. His heart burst seconds later, the sound a m.u.f.fled pop in his chest.
Kristen pulled the body off the chair. Taking the dead man's place, she spun around a few times in the chair before finally settling down to face the monitors. The security feed was framed in every vidscreen, showing her the entire outpost. Empathically, she could sense everyone's position, and she put faces to psi signatures using the security system.
Outside in the cold morning air, Threnody's body was already regretting this plan of action. Breathing heavily, she took shelter behind a crumbling foundation wall slick with moss, teeth clenched against the pain she was feeling.
Stay low, Quinton said through the psi link. It was a tenuous connection, all that Lucas could provide. I've got your back.
He lay on top of the shuttle, teleported there by Jason and spared the heat from the fuselage by a thin telekinetic s.h.i.+eld. Rifle in hand, aiming through the sight scope, Quinton shot once to get a read on the air current, purposefully missing his oncoming target, watching where the bullet hit to check wind speed and distance. He adjusted the angle of his rifle slightly, curled his finger over the trigger, and pulled it between one breath and the next.
The soldier was thrown backward to the ground, blood spraying out of his chest as the bullet hit home.
Go, Quinton told Threnody. I don't see anyone in that hallway.
She scrambled to her feet, throwing herself forward, eyes on the door the soldier had come out of. Threnody skidded inside, glancing up at the security feed embedded in the wall.
I'm your eye in the sky, Kristen said cheerfully into her mind on the psi link. Two soldiers coming your way at fifty meters and closing, second intersection down the hall. One is a Warhound.
Cla.s.s? Threnody said.