Sneak Peek - The Last Angel: The Hungry Stars, Chapter 35 (Patreon)

The lights went out.

Not those within the APC; those continued to shine a dull red and white. It was all the others. The street lights first. Then the buildings closest to the vehicle, moving farther away like the vehicle had become an epicenter of darkness. The only external illumination came from the distant glow of the burning starport.

Still held in the passenger’s seat with the barrel of Grace gun pressed between her breasts, the thing inside Echo had been silent for several seconds.

“Okay,” Lydia said in a hushed voice. “What the fuck is going on?”

Before Grace could answer, light came back, but it wasn’t from the buildings. It was a cone of white shining down on them from above, capturing the APC like a binding spell. Only moments later, a wash of reds and blues arrived, the police cars their prisoner had summoned once they’d realized what she was.

Lydia’s expression turned from worry to resignation. She closed her eyes, opening them slowly. “We’re fucked.” The young woman checked her pistol. Four rounds. She only needed two. She knelt by her son’s incubator. I’m sorry little man. I thought we’d get farther this time. “When you do it,” she advised the other two women. “Don’t miss.” Her voice was dull. “We don’t have implants, but you know what Red One can do with the dead.”

Grace bit her lip. Allyria’s tintas had gone slack. Had it really come to this? She looked outside. It had.

“It’s over,” she said, her tone matching Lydia’s. There wasn’t any fear in it. They were past that point. There was not getting out of this point. She looked up at Allyria. “I’m sorry. I thought we could...” she looked at the slumped form of Echo. They’d have to handle her too. I should have left her like she asked. We didn’t even get out of the city. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not over,” a fourth voice said. “Not yet.”

Grace looked down. Echo stared back up at her. “There’s still a chance,” the machine said. Her voice reverberated slightly as if her voicebox wasn’t working quite right. She wasn’t breathing, but she did blink. “It’s me again,” she said.

“Is it?”

“Give me thirteen seconds. If you’re not convinced then, pull the trigger.”

“What happens in thirteen seconds?”

“Eleven.” Echo noted. Her eyes fluttered, an affectation Grace had seen before. She did it when a connection to another system was difficult or required more effort than normal. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven...”

From above, the gunship crew bellowed, ordering them to step outside the vehicle with their hands up. A cordon of police officers moved forward slowly, preceded by two SWAT teams from the other APC.

“Four. Three. Two. One...”

The world went mad. Thunder erupted from overhead as the gunship exploded. More building windows shattered. This time, the vessel wasn’t left intact and pieces of hull and crew, none larger than Grace’s hand, crashed through skyscrapers, slammed into the road, battered the APC and turned anything they struck into ruined meat and metal. Hard on their heels came another series of blasts, much smaller than the first. They rippled up the road like skipping stones, tearing through police cars and people. The other APC folded in on itself like a broken toy. In only a handful of seconds, there was nothing left alive outside their stolen vehicle.