Chapters (48)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Copyright
I looked from one face to another: Rune and Cage, Mia and Alexei, Priya, Hallam, Jasper, Imani, Reed, Matt. Somewhere beyond our protective shelter lay my dad’s body, dead and torn, and Liam. And I couldn’t help Liam now, even if I wanted to.
But maybe, just maybe, I could save the rest of us.
I swallowed a whimper. “I’ll probably kill us,” I whispered.
With impeccable timing, the computer replied, “One minute to self-destruct.”
No one answered. There was no answer. There was no choice.
I closed my eyes and focused on getting away from here, as far away as possible, somewhere we maybe even had a hope in hell of beating these things, of saving humanity. Why not get greedy, since I was already pushing my boundaries?
I didn’t know where in the system I could take us, but I fixed the idea firmly in my mind: someplace we could survive, someplace we could help, someplace we weren’t about to die.
And I opened the door.
FORTY-THREE
I CAME TO IN A blur of noise and motion.
Confusion surrounded me. I stared up a long tube, sounds echoing without meaning, everything a nonsensical swirl of light.
And then, as if a camera zoomed in on the action, the end of the tube rushed toward me. Everything came into sharp clarity. Sounds became almost too clear, piercing my brain like spikes. I howled, clamping my hands over my ears, closing my eyes against the onrush of images.
Hands grabbed me, almost painful in their intensity, and I cringed away. They released me. I tumbled onto something that felt like sandpaper and screeched as it scraped my back.
The hands had me again, less violent than before, lifting me off the sandpaper and propping me up. Sounds slowly coalesced into voices. I focused on the most familiar, which turned out to be Rune: “What’s wrong with her?”
“Give her a minute.” That was Cage, close by.
Hands ran over my skin, and they weren’t violent at all. Something had oversensitized me to every little sound and sensation. It faded now, but for a moment it had overwhelmed me with pain and intensity like I’d never known, not even when Cage cut the chip from my arm.
I forced my eyes open, blinking against what I now realized was dim, shattered sunlight. I slumped in a pile of sand with Rune and Cage crouched nearby. Imani and Reed knelt behind me, Imani holding me up while Reed used his power on me. The sensation on my back—Reed’s hands, touching, channeling, healing. Strength and cooling seemed to flow from him, and I closed my eyes, embracing the awareness.