The Half-Life Empire 3 [Chapters 1-10] (Patreon)

Hey peeps!

Here are the first 10 chapters of The Half-Life Empire 3 (I had posted 1-6 earlier, but because I made minor tweaks, I decided to do this chunk instead).

The Half-Life Empire 2 will hit shelves Feb 20th! If you want any audiobook or signed copy, just message me.

Best,

Shami

Recap of Events

Long ago, three clans of aliens arrived on Earth—the Teth, the Vay, and the Frest. They allied themselves with human nations, and then fought for dominance over the planet. The Frest were killed off, the Teth allied with nations across North America, and the Vay allied themselves with nations across Asia.

To no one’s surprise, their fighting involved nuclear weapons. The resulting fallout created the “Forever Winter,” a period in history where the skies were blotted out with clouds, and the temperatures sank all over the globe.

Contrary to its name, the Forever Winter eventually ended, and the remaining humans and aliens struggled to create something from the ashes of the previous civilization.

Kita Yamasaki, a granddaughter to the great doctor, Benjamin Yamasaki, has lived in a post-apocalyptic North America for her entire life. After run-ins with the Iron-Blooded, a group of alien-worshipping cultists, and a Teth nest, Kita decided to make her home in a human settlement known as Richfield.

She relied on Bishop, the man she loved, Gascoigne, the woman who had once hunted her, and Crouton, her adopted daughter, in order to start a new life. As they were gathering supplies, Kita and the others ran afoul of the Iron-Blooded once again, but this time, they had advanced Mark-VI power armor.

Kita desperately wanted a suit of power armor for her own purposes. However, after stealing from the Iron-Blooded’s weapon factory, Bishop was taken captive. In a desperate attempt to get him back, Kita headed off to one of their bases of operation. On the way, she met a man, and one of the Teth, both who had lived in an underground facility their entire lives.

Brecht, the human, and Vega, the Teth.

Brecht was under the impression the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) was behind the devastation, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was unaware of what was happening on the “surface world,” but was familiar with the Teth due to his training. Because of that, Kita decided to take Brecht and Vega with her.

After regrouping in Richfield, Kita, Gascoigne, Brecht, and Vega infiltrated one Iron-Blooded facility after another in an attempt to find Bishop. However, after acquiring a suit of MARK VI armor for themselves, and shutting down several of the Iron-Blooded’s operations, they failed to locate Bishop. Kita, convinced he was dead, had almost given up hope.

Fortunately, the last location they searched—a mining facility—had several imprisoned individuals, including Bishop. It turned out the Iron-Blooded were gathering materials for their own massive improvement project, which involved gathering as much A-tech and skilled individuals as they could find.

When Kita rescued Bishop, she also found information for more underground sanctuaries—places the Iron-Blooded would love to raid. So, once Bishop was safe, they went north in search of one such facility—only to find Vay aliens in the woodlands around an old United States underground bunker.

After fighting off the aliens and securing the location, Kita took the fission battery powering Richfield and used it to give life to US Sanctuary Housing #4, known simply as “Sanctuary,” an underground bunker constructed before the Forever Winter. Inside, Kita not only found supplies for rebuilding a small civilization, but actual nuclear weapons.

Firestorm bombs. A-tech infused warheads capable of leveling an entire coast of a continent.

Kita also discovered a lone Winter Survivor in the facility—a scientist driven mad by decades of isolation. It appeared that US Sanctuary Housing #4 had been a site of experimentation, though it was unclear what exactly they had been trying to learn.

Determined to take advantage of the underground greenhouse, Kita and the others moved the one hundred and fifty residents of Richfield up to Sanctuary. During this process, the Iron-Blooded discovered their location. Equipped with her MARK VI suit, Kita and the others had to fend off an ambush intended to annihilate everyone in Richfield.

During the fight, it became apparent that the Vay were still in the area, and several aliens joined in on the fighting. Commander Dannik, of the Iron-Blooded, went for Kita’s power armor, but was unsuccessful at retrieving it.

Thankfully, Kita and her companions managed to defeat most of the attacking forces. The majority of the Richfield citizens reached Sanctuary, and now they face the daunting task of rebuilding.

This is where the story left off…

Chapter 1

I had been hit with shrapnel from a grenade, buried alive, and even irradiated, but nothing compared to the horror of my current conversation.

“We need more babies,” Gascoigne said, deadpan.

I sat at the computer desk at our underground facility, staring at the glowing monitor. Babies was never a problem I thought I would have to face. For most of my life, I had actively tried to avoid people—now I was supposed to try and make more of them? How did this fall to me?

“What do you want me to do?” I asked as I poked away at the old keyboard.

The whole machine was ancient, but it was made with alien technology—A-tech, for short—and constructed using some of the most advanced techniques and materials possible. Supposedly, this computer would last hundreds of years, powered by a fission battery.

Supposedly.

Gascoigne clenched her teeth. “Kita, you’re the one in charge, remember? The others aren’t listening to me. I’m just the bitch from Ex Cathedra. You have to be the one to tell them that we’ll die off unless these people start breeding.”

I swiveled around in my chair, my gaze distant. She was right—this was the role I had chosen. I couldn’t give up on it now that it was bothersome. I’d rather just sit here on the computer, though, and learn everything I could about our new home.

US Sanctuary Housing #4.

That was its official name. Everyone—including myself—just called it Sanctuary. And Sanctuary wasn’t going to make it unless we had higher population growth numbers, apparently.

We had less than one hundred and fifty people here, and half of them were older. Sanctuary could easily hold thousands without much effort, but unless we gathered individuals from the surrounding wasteland, we’d have to make our own.

And no one wanted that. The wasteland around here was filled with rail gangs, junk hunters, and the Iron-Blooded. Any of those lunatics would steal our A-tech and flee in the dead of night. They certainly wouldn’t help us build.

Gascoigne snapped her fingers, obviously attempting to get my full attention. “Stop playing with your machines and deal with the situation.”

Her appearance was as rough as her words. Despite the fact that she carried scars from both battlefield and butcher, Gascoigne wore them openly. She also wore a pair of tight black shorts and a white tank top over a black bra. I never would’ve had the courage for that outfit, but I also didn’t look like her.

Months of training—nonstop training—had left her rather muscled. The nanites in her blood, the tiny machines that repaired the body whenever it took the slightest injury, even microtears to the muscles, made it easier than normal to bulk up. And Gascoigne had taken advantage of that as her abs attested.

“Isn’t everyone still getting situated?” I asked with a nervous laugh. “Now might not be the time to bring up their failures to procreate.”

Gascoigne ran a hand through her short brown hair, her dark eyes glaring at me.

I spun in my chair and returned my attention to the monitor. “As a matter of fact, we should stick to the original plan. First, we clear out the first two warehouses, and then we get everyone their own designated home area.”

“It takes nine months for those babes to bake,” Gascoigne drawled. “We should be incentivizing it now.”

I tapped away on the keyboard and then stopped. It occurred me that Gascoigne was from Ex Cathedra. It was a country to the east of us, beyond the mountains, and made from the last remnants of the United States of America. Because of their military equipment and fortified bases, they were the best positioned to take advantage after the Forever Winter ended.

They had conquered all the nearby “independent” cities and rounded up stray gangs of people roaming the plains or hiding out in the woodlands. Ex Cathedra made slaves of anyone who didn’t swear allegiance to their cause.

I slowed my typing. “I take it forcing people to have children is a regular tactic where you’re from?”

Gascoigne had once been a judge—the military soldiers who wore power armor exoskeletons and acted as battlefield commanders. They were the worst of the worst, only because they were nearly impossible to stop. Well, if someone else had power armor, they could be stopped, but that was exceedingly rare.

I touched the back of my neck. Connectors had been grafted into my body, allowing me to inface with those marvelous power suits. Gascoigne had them, too, obviously.

Judge Gascoigne…

“Ex Cathedra makes it a big deal to have children, yeah,” Gascoigne casually replied. “And for good reason. They’re going to beat U-Cali in the coming war, and it’s all going to be because they have the numbers.”

To the south, below the mountains, a war raged between the two largest nations formed on North America. United California and Ex Cathedra were at each other’s throats. I wondered, briefly, if we could convince deserters to come to Sanctuary, but that was probably too risky.

“I’ll handle the situation,” I whispered. Even though I was staring at my computer screen, I saw nothing. My mind filled with images of a potential future, but I would need to start taking the first steps.

“Tch. Good.”

Gascoigne stomped out of the room, her footfalls echoing around the mostly metal and empty space. Sanctuary was hollow, really. It was a gigantic facility with five empty warehouses, some filled with useful tech, some filled with terrible things no one should have.

I stood from my chair.

This office… The walls were as white as untouched snow, their pristine surfaces reflecting the soft, ambient light that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once. There was A-tech lighting built into most corners and between metal paneling, to be both convenient and creepy.

Everyone currently in Sanctuary had complained it didn’t feel like home. Some said it didn’t feel livable—the air was so sterile it was if the very molecules had been scrubbed of all earthly taint.

At least no one had gone into the fourth or fifth warehouse, where it was a horror show of blood and weaponry.

I doubted anyone was ready for that…

Everyone here had come from Richfield, a small town to the south. They had lived a comfortable life of seclusion in the wasteland, with small farms, tiny homes, and a wall that only partially kept out the gangs. Sanctuary was almost the polar opposite. A huge place to live, safe from the elements, with vast underground farms…

I had thought they would be overjoyed for the improvement.

Obviously, I just didn’t understand people.

“Kita, it’s time,” I said to myself in a low voice. “You can’t make everyone happy. You have to just do what’s best for the future.”

The solution was obvious, even if I didn’t like it.

I walked to the far corner of my office, where a sleek refrigerator was built straight into the wall. The door had a mirror-like sheen that allowed it to blend with the perfectly white room. I grabbed the cold handle and pulled the door open. A waft of icy air rushed over me and I shivered.

While the refrigerator couldhold hundreds of items, it currently only had three things inside.

Three metal canisters with thick, glass windows on one side. Inside the canisters were leathery eggs the size of my arm. Each glass window had a bumpy plaque that labeled them in Teth language, Tethlite. It was a form of braille, since the aliens didn’t have eyes.

An architect egg.

A warrior egg.

An innovator egg.

These were Teth children of three different castes, suspended in blue cryostasis gel. Once the canisters were broken open, the gel would mix with oxygen and act as a resuscitator for the eggs.

I wrapped my hand with the long sleeve of my sweatshirt and removed the architect egg. Unlike humans, who, in theory, mated for life with one partner, and had children one at a time, and required nine months of gestation, the Teth operated on an entirely different system.

The architect caste could command other castes to mate and have children, sometimes at a shockingly high rate.

They would reproduce quickly. Our population would grow. And with the Teth’s intelligence, and human creativity, we could become an unstoppable nation.

Also, in theory.

“Hello, little one,” I whispered to the canister as I walked it over to my computer desk. “Are you ready for the world?”

I probably looked and sounded insane. The thing hadn’t even hatched yet.

I removed the other two canisters as well. Warrior Teth were strong and imposing, and the innovators were hyper intelligent. Normally, if Teth reproduced without an architect nearby, they didn’t create more of their caste—they created mindless drones that acted like animals. The architect was essential to the production process.

After a deep breath, I turned the handle on the top of the architect canister and broke the seal. It hissed as it opened, and oxygen rushed inside. The blue gel shifted to a light orange color as it brought the egg back from the brink of death. It was no longer held in statis.

Now it would hatch.

I did the same with the other canisters. They hissed, and the gel transformed in coloration, indicating that everything had gone correctly.

This meant we would have three Teth babies on our hands. Again, unlike humans, Teth weren’t in their “child phase” for long. Only two years, on average, before they were fully grown. And the drones had a shorter timeframe than that…

If the humans wouldn’t reproduce, the Teth would. It would solve our population problem in no time.

“Okay, time to get active.” I leaned down to examine the architect egg a little closer. It resembled a snake egg, with its odd wrinkly exterior. When nothing happened, I frowned. “I hope you’re not dead. I, uh, would dislike that.”

Everything looked like it had gone correctly, but strange things could happen with older A-tech. And if the eggs died, I wasn’t entirely sure how I would know that.

I had stolen the eggs from Architect Riven. What if I had accidentally harmed them in some way? It could’ve happened, and I never would’ve known. I had never seen Teth eggs hatch before. I had only ever seen what happens on videos or read about the process in articles written by my grandfather.

“Perhaps I should think of a name,” I said as I leaned my face ever closer to the canister glass. “What would be the name of an epic architect? One that will lead us into a new future of human and alien relations?”

No pressure.

I chuckled to myself. It probably wasn’t best to raise a Teth architect with such stresses. Probably better to raise it with solid values—and empathy—before telling it that it’s the most important creature in the whole facility.

Probably.

Then I thought of a great name. It was human in origin, and from a general who lived long before the Forever Winter, but that was fine. I wanted the Teth to have human names. It would help attach them to Earth, and to Sanctuary.

“What do you think about the name Agrippa?” I held my breath after the question.

The egg didn’t move.

And after saying the name aloud, I realized it didn’t sound very modernly human. It sounded ancient. No one was named Agrippa anymore.

I ran a finger up and down the glass of the canister. “Maybe Marcus… Or if we want to get really weird… Vipsanius.”

“Is this what you do when you say you’re very busy and need the office to yourself?” someone asked, startling me to the point my heart leapt into my throat.

I whirled around, about to keel over from a heart attack, when I realized Bishop was standing next to me in my office. When had he gotten here? Why didn’t I hear him enter? Had I been too busy thinking about the Teth eggs?

“I, uh, well, um…” My words abandoned me.

“Don’t worry, Kit-Kat—I won’t tell anyone you were slacking off.” He playfully patted my shoulder and then glanced over at the canisters. “Finally letting the eggs get some fresh air, I see.” Bishop then flashed me a smile.

I stared up at him, unsure of what to say.

Bishop was a good foot taller than me. I was short, though, so perhaps it didn’t mean much, but he always seemed like a mountain from my perspective. He wore a pair of cargo pants, all the pockets stuffed to the brim with odd things. Tools, plants, a whole handbook’s worth of paper—each pocket was different, but each pocket was equally full.

I was surprised he didn’t have a backpack or a coat. Instead, he walked around in a tank top that showed off his many tally mark scars. Each one he carved into his own body, but only after he killed someone.

Most of those tally marks were gang members or Iron-Blooded lunatics, but not all. I had been there when his junk hunter friends had turned on us, and when he had sliced up his arm to remember the occasion.

I shook my head, dispelling those thoughts.

Now that Bishop was here, I could speak with him about important things.

“Gascoigne thinks we should have more babies,” I muttered, my gaze falling to the floor.

“Oh, finally.” Bishop laughed as he unfastened his belt. “I’ve been preparing for this mission. I haven’t touched myself in three days.”

“N-Not us,” I said, my face growing hot. “I meant the whole of Sanctuary.” I placed my hand on his chest. “I don’t have time for that right now. You understand. I have this whole facility to look after.”

Bishop begrudgingly fastened his belt back in place, his expression aggressively neutral. “Right. We wouldn’t want to disappoint the facility now, would we?”

I sarcastically motioned to the three canisters filled with orange gel. “We should also set a good example for the children.”

Bishop quirked half a smile. Then he shrugged at the nearest canister. “Do the eggs hatch in those things? Or what?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Seems to me like you’d take them out, so they had room to stretch their six legs or whatever the hell Teth have.”

I nodded once, but I hesitated as I reached for the architect’s canister. What if I did this wrong? What if I removed the architect and that wasn’t correct? What if it died? It was the only architect I had—and the only one we’d probably ever find. They were the rarest caste, and extremely important.

Instead, I scooped up the canister with the warrior egg. I’d use this one as a test. If I removed the egg and it hatched outside of the gel, then I’d remove the others.

Hopefully, I wasn’t about to kill it.

Chapter 2

With my breath held, I moved my hand over the orange gel. Before I could reach in, Bishop grabbed my wrist. I jerked my attention upward, until our gazes met.

“Why don’t we invite Vega to your exclusive office?” he asked with a shrug. “Ya know—the one Teth we have living with us.”

“He was raised by humans in an underground facility.” And he wasn’t one of the architect caste. He was just a warrior. I figure he wouldn’t know anything, but that was probably me jumping to conclusions. Perhaps Vega did know something. “All right,” I finally muttered. “That’s probably for the best.”

Bishop smirked as he released my arm. “Good. Wait right here. I’ll be back in a jiff with our resident Teth.” He turned and left me in the white office with only my shadow as company.

The eggs didn’t move while he was gone. I know, I watched them closely, never looking away and rarely blinking. The Teth eggs were crucial to my plan. I had been telling the people of Sanctuary that we would be a human-alien civilization, and while there had been some resistance, everyone had agreed to the transition.

If the people here grew accustomed to the Teth, then I might have a chance of rescuing “wild” Teth from the wasteland. Additionally, the Teth of the wasteland were more likely to listen if I had an architect.

Everything was a cascade of contingencies.

I glanced at the innovator egg.

“You’re the smart one,” I whispered to it.

Then I squinted at the warrior egg.

“You’re the big sibling that needs to watch the others.”

My mind drifted back to the aspect of naming. Perhaps I could use all three of the names I had joked about earlier. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa had been an old-world general. Ancient, really—leading armies for a nation that was buried long before the nuclear fire.

But then it struck me. My grandfather was the man who really forged ahead to bring the Teth and humans together.

I grabbed the architect canister. “Your name will be Benjamin.” After my grandfather. Then I grabbed the warrior canister. “And you’ll be Joel.” After the man who left me his underground bunkers. Finally, I scooped up the innovator canister. “And you’ll be Tamura.”

My sister.

I rarely ever said her name.

I swallowed down my pain as the memories of her death washed over me. I had shot my own sister. It had been accident—but still. She had died because of me.

Now, I supposed I could honor her memory by giving her name one of my new baby Teth.

Tamura.

The door to the office opened and closed. This time I had been paying attention. I didn’t want to think of my sister’s death, and I was thankful for any distraction. I whirled around on my heel to find Bishop strolling in with one of the Teth.

This was Vega.

Since Teth were hermaphrodites, capable of switching their gender depending on the needs of the architect, most didn’t use pronouns. However, since living with the humans all his life, Vega had insisted we start using the “he” when referring to him. Which was weird, but it made the residents of Richfield feel better, so we all agreed.

Vega was one of the warrior caste, all right. They were the tallest and most muscular of all the Teth. Vega in particular was defined by the muscles that rippled across his body. He stood on two thick tree-stump legs and was nearly ten feet tall.

His skin was shiny black and glistened under the lights as though wet. Although, today he was wearing clothing. A tailored made pair of pants and a shirt that covered most of his broad shoulders and chest.

Like all Teth, Vega had four arms—two that were thick with muscle and ended in claws, and two that were small, thin, and capable of fine motor skills. The hands on the smaller arms had long fingers for manipulating things.

Those were his crafter arms. Innovator Teth used them to great effect, either as artists or scientists. The warrior caste had little need for them, since they didn’t have fearsome claws, but Vega used his while interacting with the humans of Sanctuary.

Vega held out a hand for shake. I awkwardly reached out and grabbed his slender fingers.

“Greetings,” he said, his English garbled since Teth mostly spoke with their tongue and not any lips.

“We should speak easier,” I said in Tethlite.

Vega nodded once.

None of the Teth had eyes—including Vega.

Since most humans made eye contact when speaking, or used their eyes for nonverbal communication, it was often difficult for people to make friends with the Teth.

I didn’t mind, though. Looking people in the eyes wasn’t my favorite pastime, either.

“Are you sure you two don’t want to speak something normal?” Bishop glanced between us. He still hadn’t learned Tethlite. “I mean, I think the little ones should primarily speak English—to get along with the humans.”

Vega growled deep in his throat. When he spoke, it was in cleaner and more precise English, as though he was focusing all his energy on getting each syllable correct. “I learned both languages when I was young. As did Brecht and the others. If we are raising Teth young, we should make sure they are exposed to both at all times.”

That wasn’t what Bishop wanted to hear. His groan response was nothing more than a groan.

“Vega…” I switched back to English so Bishop wouldn’t be left out. “Do you recognize these types of canisters?” I handed one to him, so he could feel the metal, glass, and name plaque.

After a brief examination, Vega placed the canister on the table and then snorted. “Yes. I’ve felt these before. The gel is a nutrient paste after its exposed to oxygen.”

“Do we take the eggs out? Or leave them within?”

“Leave them.” Vega lowered his fang-filled maw closer to me. I figured it was to be polite, since humans tended to conduct themselves in closer quarters, but I didn’t appreciate it. “Once most of the gel has been absorbed through the egg’s membrane, the young will emerge.”

“I see…” I touched the canister with the innovator inside. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Less than a week.” Vega stood straight and then rotated his large shoulders. “Will they be kin, then? Our family?”

I wanted to just nod, but Vega wouldn’t see that. The Teth always had to verbalize responses—or they touched one another. That was actually more common. They were touchy-feely with those they considered friends and family.

But I hated that, so I simply replied, “Yes.”

“Who made you that outfit, Vega?” Bishop asked with a smile. “You’re lookin’ fine.”

The hulking monster flexed his larger hands, his claws extending slightly. “Himiko made this for me. She has been designated as a tailor, it seems. She insisted I wear clothing.”

Vega wore a plain white shirt made of thick material that wouldn’t easily rip. Heavy cotton? I wasn’t certain. His pants were clearly a burlap sack, and it made me wonder if Himiko intentionally gave Vega a bizarre makeshift clothing or if these were really all she had to work with.

Bishop whistled. “You like it, right? I mean, I’ve seen you aliens wear clothes before. Just not… many clothes.”

“It limits my ability to feel the air around me,” Vega said with a growl. “But, yes, Teth have clothing, both for space travel and for planet-side living. I learned about them, but I’ve never worn any myself.”

I rung my hands together, my thoughts buzzing. My grandfather knew everything about the Teth. He taught me Tehlite, and how the caste system worked, and how the aliens read and communicate. But now I would need to raise them? Teach them things?

My nerves were getting the better of me.

“Vega,” I whispered. Then I switched to Tethlite. “Would you and Brecht be willing to help me raise the babes? I want them to be emotionally stable, and well educated. A-And they must love, or at least appreciate, humans.”

Vega tilted his head, his nostrils—which resembled a snake’s—flared slightly. “I am a warrior,” he stated. “I am not designed for such work. An innovator or a caretaker would be best.”

I wanted to sarcastically glance around, to emphasize that we didn’t have any of those here, but Vega wouldn’t be able to see that. Instead, I sighed. “I’ll speak with Brecht,” I said in English.

“Certainly.”

Then the Teth nodded his head to me—an acknowledgment of my authority over him. It was also a sign I had given a command. The aliens were very hierarchical. Like ants. They needed a chain of command, and they preferred to “stay in their lane” when it came to their caste.

Which was the exact opposite of humans. We tended to flit from one career to the next, ever growing and ever changing our horizons.

Raising Teth was going to be a harder challenge than I originally suspected.

“I’ll help you raise kids, Kit-Kat,” Bishop said, always smiling. “I’ll be a great dad.” Then his face lit up. “Wait. Let’s ask the doctor. She’s old. Very old. I bet she mingled with the Teth before the Forever Winter.”

“They say it takes a village to raise a child.”

Bishop snorted back a laugh. “My grandmother used to say that.”

I had been repeating a phrase Joel had written in his survival guides. Although I had lived many places, I had never known the sense of community found in a village. Richfield was the closest I had ever found.

And while we clearly had enough people here to raise the Teth babes, Vega shifted his weight awkwardly from one massive foot to the other. He tilted his head and then said, “There are Vay in the area.”

I nodded. “We fought some of the Vay when we came to Sanctuary, but I don’t know how many are in the surrounding area.”

“They have made it clear they intend to genocide the Teth, just as they did with the Frest.”

Vega’s words had been haunting and quiet.

Our new home was nestled in unfamiliar territory. While the surrounding area had been cleared, and many of the Vay dead, I knew it wasn’t the last of them. There were more. And if they knew we were hatching Teth eggs, I suspected they would get more violent with their attacks.

“For now, we’ll raise our little Teth indoors,” I whispered. “All right, Vega? I won’t allow the Vay to harm them.”

He bowed his head again. “Please, speak with Brecht on the matter.”

Chapter 3

While Sanctuary was our new home, it wasn’t really a home.

Not yet, anyway.

I walked around the first underground warehouse—everyone had dubbed it Section One—and I kept to myself as I observed the people of Richfield in their new environment. Brecht was here somewhere, and he had grown up with aliens, so he was the obvious choice to help me with the new babies.

Section One was gigantic, and had enough space to house at least a hundred families all by its lonesome. It also had greenhouse areas for plants, though people seemed less interested in those at the moment.

It was just… one big, long warehouse, that seemed to stretch on for some time. The walls were white, the ceiling gray, and the floor a series of artistically designed tiles. It appeared to be marble, but it was a sturdier, and more lightweight, material than that.

When I walked by, I kept my coat up to hide most of my face.

Everyone knew me, but it was still easy to hide. I was small. Short in stature, and barely a hundred pounds.

While I searched for Brecht, I wanted to gauge how everyone was doing, and be the “Sanctuary Leader” everyone had dubbed me. It didn’t feel right, though. It was like trying to use a glove as a sock. Maybe it could work, but it’d always be uncomfortable.

“Move that over there,” someone shouted.

Another person hauled a large aluminum shelf to the side, creating a makeshift wall. “Like this?”

“To the left!”

Everyone was engaged in making a living space for themselves and their families.

Then the screech of metal on metal filled all of Section One. It was worse than nails on a chalkboard—worse than the sounds of screams during a midnight raid.

The denizens of Sanctuary clamped their hands over their ears. They shot their glares and glowers to the very back of Section One.

There were two giant machine vehicles in the very back of the warehouse. They were here when we had arrived—construction vehicles that had clearly been used to build portions of Sanctuary. The vehicles resembled gigantic cranes, though they had the capacity to fold into themselves for convenient storage.

One was vibrating, obviously in use.

I headed in that direction, curious to see what was going on.

Two residents of Richfield, Westley and Grizzled Garret, had been assigned to deal with these vehicles, and sure enough—there they were. Ideally, Westley and Garret would’ve moved them out of the way…

“What’s going on?” I asked a man as I squeezed by him to get to the back end of Section One.

“They’re trying to build the fish farms,” the man shouted over the sounds of metal shrieking. “But the crane’s not workin’!”

I glanced around, surveying the area. The tanks for the fish were the size of small houses. Currently, they were stacked together, away from the new potential housing areas. The tanks needed to be positioned near the water pipes and drainage systems if they were to function properly.

Hence, the crane.

The goal was clearly to lift the fish tank up, move it to the pipes, and set it down.

The screech and groan of the crane filled all of Section One with unease, though. Obviously, these vehicles needed some maintenance. The vehicles probably hadn’t been touched in over fifty years, but due to the A-tech in their design, they were still capable of functioning.

I hurried over, curious as to the progress.

“Got-damn it, Westley, be careful with that!”

Grizzled Garret stood outside the crane, his calloused hands on his hips. He was the type of man who looked like he could wrestle a bear—or two. Thick. Muscled. But also stocky. He could hibernate, if he wanted.

That was how he earned the nickname ‘grizzled,’ after all. It was better than ‘old man’ since some of his hair was graying already.

Westley, inside the crane, yanked on a lever. The long arm of the crane moved to the left, the screech of metal-on-metal growing louder. Something was wrong, but it would be sarcastic than helpful to point that out.

After yanking a second lever, the crane stopped moving. Westley sighed. His seat in the vehicle was at least ten feet up, and the crane arm was another ten above that. Section One’s ceiling was only a foot or two higher—and I feared for Sanctuary’s integrity. What if they smashed the crane arm into the wall? Or lifted it so high as to punch a hole in the ceiling?

My overactive imagination wasn’t helping in this instance.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing,” Westley called down.

Garret huffed and waved one of his burly arms. “We did I tell ya? First the shifter, then the movement. The hunk a junk is strugglin’ but it should be able to move a couple things all right.”

“The tanks are mostly made of glass. Unless we can fix this shaking, I don’t feel comfortable moving them.”

“Don’t be such a ninny! Just get it done!”

Westley was the quintessential wasteland bookworm. He was wiry—lean with muscle, but also lean on the amount of food he had gotten over his life. He wore glasses, but they were the kind made from the back-alley lens crafters in the larger settlements. They helped, just not as much as you’d want.

He was intelligent, though. He could rebuild old computers or take them apart on a whim. Despite that, Westley sometimes struggled to navigate the complex circuitry of a casual conversation.

It didn’t surprise me that Garret’s shouting was flustering the man.

Westley never responded to the last shout. He just focused his attention on the levers in front of him.

“Got-damn it,” Garret muttered under his breath, glaring up at the wiry engineer. “He never listens.”

Westley pulled another lever, and the crane sputtered. The whole machine jerked as the arm of the vehicle swung closer to the fish tanks.

“Be careful!” I held up a hand as I ran over. “Wait, wait, wait.” I flailed both my arms to make sure Westley saw. “Turn off the machine.”

Westley flipped the engine switch, and the crane powered down after a long whirl that was akin to a soft sigh. He slid out of the crane cockpit and then climbed down the side ladder to the floor.

At least the screeching stopped echoing throughout Section One.

“K-Kita. Hello.” Westley had oily brown hair that remained slicked back no matter what he did with it. He combed his hair with his fingers as he approached me. “I think we can get the tanks in order. It’ll just take—”

Garret stomped over, every bit a grizzled old bear. “We’d you quit, huh? Why? This junk will struggle to turn on again, mark my words.” He wore a gun holster on his belt I hadn’t noticed until that moment. While it was common to carry weapons, the sight of it once again reminded me of my sister.

I needed to stop thinking of her.

“Listen,” I said, stepping between them. “Something is wrong with the cranes. I’ll look at them. Maybe it’s something I can fix.”

“How?” Garret barked.

He was more an angry dog than man in his current state.

“I’ve fixed a lot of A-tech machines in the past.” I rolled my hand around. “I’ve lived in a lot of bizarre places, and I studied a lot of the Tech designs.”

I even had to study a few of their mining cranes for when I broke into an Ex Cathedra silver mine. There was a piece of me that already knew the problem. The cranes used large gears and pistons, and occasionally something would get caught between them. The screeching usually indicated that.

“Do you have any tools?” I asked.

Garret huffed, grumbled some curse words, and then grabbed me a belt full of tools. He had basic things—like screwdrivers—but also more advanced things, like A-tech drills and an atomic battery.

I watched the belt to my waist.

Then I grabbed onto the ladder that led up to the driver’s seat. The rungs were well-worn. The crane was older. “And if this doesn’t work, I’ll still be able to move the fish tanks for you,” I called down.

“And how will you do that?” Garret shouted up at me, still grumpy.

“I have an exoskeleton.”

And while those suits of exoskeleton power armor are mostly used for combat, they were originally built with construction in mind. I could power my suit, pick up one of the fish tanks, and set it into place without much trouble.

Garret and Westley exchanged glances.

Then Garret huffed. “We can’t just wait for you to decide everything, girl. You wanted us to move? We did. But we have to have control over our environment. We can’t sit on our thumbs while you, personally, handle every damn thing.”

I pulled myself up into the crane’s cab. Then I glanced down at the man. “I apologize. It’s not my intention to be the sole person fixing thing—I’ll, uh, learn to delegate. But until then, we need this fixed now.”

There was a hatch that led into the engine of the machine from the cab. I leaned down near the floor, popped open the hatch, and slipped into the crane itself. Fortunately, a light flickered to life near the engine. Unfortunately, it was dim.

And I instantly knew the real problem—the battery for the engine was dying.

Thankfully, Garret had given me one.

Atomic batteries were a great boon back when they were first introduced to the world, right after the Teth arrived. They were shaped like a tuna can, basically, and just like the USB port, where designed to plug-n-play with most electronic objects.

I sifted around through the engine, found the old atomic battery, and carefully removed it using the screwdriver Garret had given me. Once I popped it out, the light in the engine died. The instant I popped in the new one, the light flickered back to life, twice as bright as before.

Atomic batteries could last a long time—upward to fifty years. Had this one just been in constant use?

“Is it working yet?” Garret shouted.

“Give me a moment,” I yelled, my voice echoing throughout the crane. “I need to check the pistons.”

“If one of the pistons is broken, we’re fucked!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get through this,” I shouted as I scooted through the crane. What would a real leader say to motivate this man? I tried to recall some great speeches throughout human history. “The, uh, human spirit has been tested throughout history and we’ve found its indominable, and—”

“What?” Garret yelled. “What kind of gibberish are you spoutin’?”

I reached the pistons and the main turning gears and frowned. Leaders were inspiring. I needed to be more inspiring. “I’m just trying to say we have a lot going for us! We should remain optimistic.”

“Oh, yeah,” Garret said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I have a lot going for me. My eyes are going. My knees are going. My back is going. If I wait for you to handle everything, I’m sure my memory will be going!”

I decided not to engage any further. Garret was in a mood. That was fine. I couldn’t let it fluster me. Instead, I poked around the crane. There were four pistons, and after I inspected all of them, I found exactly what I was looking for. One of the crane’s screws had come loose, and was stuck on one of the piston tracks, no doubt screeching every time one pumped back and forth.

The gears looked okay, and once I had cleaned everything up, I made sure the remaining nuts and bolts were all perfectly in place.

Then I scooted out of the crane’s small engine compartment, shut the hatch, sat up in the driver’s seat.

“Okay,” I called down. “It should work now.”

“What?” Garret seemed flabbergasted. “It’s fixed? Already?”

I nodded and then headed down the ladder. Once at the bottom, I unhooked his toolbelt from my waist and handed it back over. “I really appreciate the effort you two are giving Sanctuary. I’m sorry things aren’t perfect yet, but I’ll try to make sure this place is ten times better than Richfield.”

Garret slowly took the toolbelt from me. “Oh.”

“Thank you for finding this place,” Westley chimed in. “I know you’re trying really hard. And Dr. Claire said you’re always doing something. This was probably minor—we probably should’ve been able to handle it ourselves.” He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.

“If you ever have problems, you should come to me.” With a chuckle, I added, “Just mechanical problems, though. I don’t know anything about dating. Or personal drama. Or anything like that. Just… the machines. I like the machines.”

Westley smiled. “Right.”

Then he climbed up the ladder, slid onto the driver’s seat, and started up the engine.

The crane flared to life. And it purred—a glorious sound that made it seem like the vehicle itself was happy this ordeal was over. The pistons were no longer scraping against a screw. The screeching had stopped.

“Well, I’ll be got-damned,” Garret muttered. He rubbed his chin as he turned his gaze down to me. “Scrapyard Pete said he didn’t want to touch this baby because he didn’t know anything about it. I’m glad we got a resident A-tech expert.”

I forced a chuckle. “It’s nothing.”

But then understanding dawned on Garret. He glanced around to our surroundings. Our A-tech surroundings. When he returned his attention to me, his anger was gone. “Oh. I see. You have big plans.”

“I think this place could be much better than Richfield,” I said.

Garret hefted the belt and pointed to the pocket where the atomic battery had once been. “Not if we keep running out of supplies, though. That was our last one.”

“It was?”

Damn.

Sanctuary was old. Perhaps the others had been replacing batteries left and right. Thankfully, we had a fission battery at the heart—and that would last us hundreds of years. The smaller batteries, however…

“I’ll get more,” I stated.

That was what a leader did, after all.

Garret, the bear of a man, actually smiled at me. “Good.” He straightened his pants and then pointed to the crane Westley was operating. “And I’ll do my part here.”

I nodded, and was about to leave, but that was when Garret held out a hand. “Yes?” I asked.

“Sorry about… all that.” Garret half shrugged. “It’s been stressful.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get those batteries, and soon this place will feel just like home.”

Hopefully no one would mind that home also having a lot of Teth.

***

Instead of walking around and interacting with people—because I was clearly terrible at that—I sat in one of Sanctuary’s computer rooms. This was a place made with some of the greatest A-tech before the Forever Winter, which meant some of the best cameras I had ever seen.

Perhaps I could call Brecht on Sanctuary’s intercoms… I’d have to figure out how to work them, however…

Sanctuary had three total computer rooms, one situated right next to Section One, and one acting like a control hub for the entire facility. The room next to Section One was the worst, however. It smelled of sweat and urine, and I suspected it was because it was used as a house for the previous resident—the sole scientist who had live here before.

Dr. Jack Matthews.

He was a Winter Survivor, and had lived alone in Sanctuary for decades. He used this computer room liberally, it seemed.

Jack was currently being held as one of our “prisoners” which reminded me that I would need to deal with him at some point. I added his name to my mental list of ever-growing problems I needed to handle.

First, I had to fix those cranes. I told Garret I would get that done.

Second, I had to check the perimeter for the Vay. I promised Vega that our newest Teth babies wouldn’t be in danger.

Third, I wanted to speak with Brecht about the best way to raise humans and Teth in the same environment. Plus, I wanted to give him the title of caretaker. He was the only one I trusted with this task, now that Vega had turned it down.

Fourth, I needed to speak with that lunatic, Jack Matthews, about what his plans for the future were. Because that was the humane thing to do.

Lastly, I would definitely need to figure out what I was doing with the fourth and fifth warehouses in Sanctuary. They were filled with… dangerous things. Bombs. Weapons. Experiments.

If the others knew about the dangers here, they might honestly want to leave. The real key would be using them to our advantage. How could I do that?

The computer room was spacious, even if it was dull. There were several screens, five in total, with three being dedicated to the cameras around Sanctuary. Two of them were used for work, and both were honestly the size of a large window.

The keyboards were the type favored by the Teth. They were basically braille. You had to feel your way around them in order to get them to work. When the screens changed, the keyboards rippled to display the information in a way that could be felt, so that both humans with eye, and Teth with advanced tactile sense, could use the computers.

I tapped away on the keyboard, and shuffled through the computer cameras. Instead of interacting with the denizens of Sanctuary, I’d just find Brecht here.

It didn’t take me long to find his room. He had set up in a storage space off Section One. It was large enough for him and for Vega, since the two often shared quarters.

Unfortunately for him, I switched the security camera on right as he was rolling around in his bed. With Gascoigne. And none of their clothes.

Chapter 4

“O-Oh, sorry about that,” I said aloud, as though Brecht and Gascoigne could hear me.

Obviously, they couldn’t.

I fumbled with the keyboard, my hands shaky as I tried to shuffle to another camera. Instead, the image of Brecht and Gascoigne was just switched to another one of the monitors. The anxiety of the situation caused me to nervously chuckle.

They were rather aggressive with each other in a way Bishop and I weren’t. Pornography was commonly traded in all the major cities, but I had never purchased anything like that. I preferred books. The words allowed me to fall into imagination, and the secondhand embarrassment of watching other people—real people—wasn’t present in books.

So why was I watching Gascoigne and Brecht now?

“What’re you doing, Kita?” I asked myself. “Just don’t look at the screen and turn this off.”

But curiosity did get the better of me. Gascoigne wasn’t really the loving or caring type. And apparently, that held true in the bedroom. If they had been wearing clothes, I would’ve said they were wrestling—attempting to strangle each other—but given the circumstances, perhaps they just liked it rough?

Thankfully, there was no sound.

My face burned as I dragged my gaze down to the keyboard.

What was wrong with me?

Then the door to the computer room flew open and my heart lunged into my throat. When I glanced over my shoulder, and saw who had entered, I almost died of sheer embarrassment.

Chelsy sprang into my computer room. If it had been anyone else, I probably could’ve talked my way out of the situation, but Chelsy was only eight years old. There was no explaining this without also explaining a myriad of concepts that not eight-year-old should be mulling over.

In a desperate attempt to hide my shame, I leapt up onto the desk with the computer monitors. Yes, I physically threw myself up, sat on the desk, and practically hugged the offending screen to block the contents from view. It was… weird.

But I was weirdo, so this all evened out.

Chelsy stopped in the middle of the room, her eyes big, her smile fading into half a grin, as though she wasn’t certain if she should be happy or not.

She wore a white dress, large black boots, a backpack, and a pair of pink leggings. In one hand she held a pen, and in the other, she held her standard notebook. Chelsy had been born mute, and often used the notebook to communicate with people around her.

“Hello,” I said as I hugged the screen tighter.

Chelsy was my adopted daughter. I couldn’t—under any circumstance—allow her to see what I was doing. I was a role model. The leader of Sanctuary. The person Chelsy looked up to.

I didn’t want to ruin those images.

She had dark, lustrous hair that fell in gentle waves around her shoulders, framing her expressive, curious eyes that spoke louder than words ever could. When she glanced between me and the computer, she clearly knew something was up.

Instead of prying, Chelsy smiled and then held up her notebook. The paper already had a message. It read: Kita, look! They’re teaching me to speak with my hands.

Chelsy made some movements, curling her fingers into vague letter-shaped positions. I suspected she spelled out her name, but I wasn’t entirely sure. I knew English and Tethlite, but nothing else.

“Who is teaching you?” I asked.

Instead of using her hands, Chelsy grabbed her notebook, wrote a name, and then showed me. Himiko.

That was twice I heard that name. I knew her—she had lived in Richfield, with the rest of us—but I didn’t really knowher. For most of my life, I preferred to be alone, and it was only just recently that I was expected to be a leader of sorts.

“I’m glad she knows how to do that,” I muttered.

Chelsy, once again, glanced from me to the corner of the computer screen I was hiding. When I didn’t move, she grabbed her notebook and wrote something else. Her message was: Miss Himiko teaches the kids. She thinks they’re getting sick. Do you have more meds?

The town of Richfield had been stoked on antibiotics, but those wouldn’t cure the common cold. I shook my head. “What kind of sickness?”

Miss Himiko doesn’t know. We had to go home early.

I didn’t need this right now. For many reasons. I couldn’t allow the few human children we had to die, especially not right before we had new Tethlite babies. And in general, I just couldn’t sit by and let this happen. As the one in charge, I was supposed to have solutions.

“What did DC say?” I asked. My grip on the computer monitor loosened. I caught Chelsy attempting to sneak a peek, so I decided to end this.

I unplugged the monitor from the back. The screen flickered and then powered down. With a thankful sigh, I slid off the desk.

Chelsy narrowed her eyes into a suspicious glare. Then she wrote her next message with speed and intensity that betrayed some of her annoyance. She clearly wanted to know what I was hiding from her.

Too bad.

DC is with the kids now,Chelsy wrote.

DC stood for Dr. Claire, another Winter Survivor. She was old, but she had lived during humanity’s golden age, back when the aliens provided us with copious amounts of A-tech straight from their hyper-advanced civilization. She had implants in her body that practically stopped her from aging, and she was the only one in Sanctuary with vast amounts of medical knowledge.

Still, no amount of book smarts could eliminate a virus. Sometimes intervention was necessary.

“I need to leave Sanctuary to do a few things,” I muttered, more to myself than to Chelsy. “I’ll speak to DC before I leave to see if there’s anything she would need from outside.”

In theory, there were other human civilizations around. Dodge City wasn’t too far from here, and if we used a railroad, we could get even farther west.

But first I would search the surrounding territory. Vega was right—our enemies were too close. I had to make sure we were safe first. Then I could head out—get some atomic batteries for everyone around Sanctuary, and medicine for the children—and hopefully be back to Sanctuary before the end of the week, when the eggs would hatch.

I had a habit of disappearing into my own thoughts. I had even realized I was exiting the room, and leaving Chelsy behind, until she clapped her hands to get my attention. I stopped halfway through the door, frozen in place as I came to the realization of where I was.

“O-Oh, sorry, Chelsy. Did you have something else to tell me?”

The little girl frantically wrote another message. This time it read: Take me with you!

I caught my breath. Taking a small girl out on a dangerous mission seemed like a terrible idea. Why would I ever do that?

Then again, she had been stuck in Richfield without me for months. Now she would be stuck in Sanctuary—without me—for much longer than that. But what if there were Vay aliens out in the woods? What if I ran into rail gangers? Or what if the Iron-Blooded were planning another attack?

I didn’t want to put Chelsy, my little crouton, in danger.

“How about this,” I said, still in the doorway. “I’ll, uh, take you somewhere special when I get back from my errands, okay? And I’ll show you some Teth babies. You’d like that, right?”

If Chelsy had a voice, it would be bouncing off all the walls. Her face lit up, and she did a little twirl.

She liked the Teth, ever since she had seen one of the drones. They were incapable of speaking—just like her—and I suspected she thought of them as family because of it. Chelsy also really liked babies, and I suspected it was for the same reason.

They couldn’t speak.

Over and over again, Chelsey seemed drawn to those things and individuals. Now I would have Teth babies? I knew it was pulling on all her heartstrings.

“But you have to wait here for me.” I held up a finger. “And stay healthy. And do what DC tells you, okay? If you’re good, I’ll take you somewhere when I get back. It’ll just be us.”

Normally, I’d never do anything with just me. I was too awkward. But I suspected Chelsy was missing me.

She nodded vigorously to my proposal. Even without her notebook or sign language, I knew this was something she absolutely adored.

***

It wasn’t just the children who were sick.

I entered Sanctuary’s impromptu infirmary to a symphony of sneezes and coughs. At least a dozen individuals were waiting around on cots, each draped in a thin blanket, some with hot water bottles, and others clutching handkerchiefs like they were prized possessions.

The scent in the air was a bizarre cocktail of eucalyptus and menthol.

DC walked from patient to patient, taking their name and smiling like a saint. She even looked like one. Her golden hair cascaded over her shoulders like waterfalls of molten honey. Her heart-shaped face was free of blemishes and wrinkles. Even her clothes were white, as though somehow holy.

She was over seventy, but somehow looked younger and healthier than me.

“Dr. Claire,” someone shouted. “My nose is getting stuffed.”

She nodded in the person’s direction. “I’ll get to you shortly, Alan.”

No hint of irritation in her voice, just a chipper and upbeat tone.

I made my way into the infirmary, taking special care not to touch anyone. I couldn’t afford to get sick at the moment. I had too much to do.

“Do you think this is a plague?” someone asked.

“It’s just a cold,” DC replied in a singsong voice.

Everywhere I looked, someone needed reassurance. Yes, they had colds. No, it wasn’t anything serious. DC took down people’s names and how long they had been experiencing these symptoms all while people wrapped themselves in their blankets and self-pity.

The five children in the room were less dramatic. They were huddled together on the back cots, playing a game with their hands. I couldn’t hear them, but they occasionally laughed between wheezes.

I waited my turn to speak with her, standing near the door.

The infirmary was once an office facility in Sanctuary, but cots had been moved in so we would have a place for injured or sick individuals to recover. We only had a total of fourteen cots, and they just barely fit in the room. Some were pressed up against the others, and a couple were practically shoved into the far corner.

I was content to wait until DC was done, but she stopped halfway through her notes and walked straight me. I straightened my posture as she approached, sad I wasn’t as tall and athletic-looking as she was.

“Kita,” she said, smiling. “Are you feeling under the weather as well?”

“N-No. I came to see if you needed anything. I’ll be heading out to gather some materials, and I just want to, uh, see if I could find something for you.”

DC held up a notepad. She had written everyone’s various symptoms, as well as circled the time they had been sick.

“This is likely a virus.” DC chuckled as she said, “We once called it the common cold, though since you’re from Ex Cathedra, you probably call it Trench Cough.”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“The best treatment is rest, hydration, and perhaps some steam. Most people fully recover from the common cold within ten to fourteen days. Unless they develop complications from the illness, nothing permanently bad should happen. You don’t have to go out of your way for any sort of medications, but…”

“But what?” I asked.

“I believe the amount of illness is a sign that this underground greenhouse is home to airborne viruses.” DC folded her arms over her chest. “It’s not medications we need—but ways to filter the air. No underground bunker would be complete without an air purification system. I suggest you find Sanctuary’s and activate it until the particle levels are reduced.”

Damn.

I hadn’t thought of that.

She was right, of course. One of the biggest dangerous of these abandoned facilities was the air quality. I thought, since Dr. Matthews had been living here, he would’ve kept the place clean, but he was clearly insane.

I would need to handle this as well.

“Do you need anything else?” I asked.

DC glanced around. The infirmary did have surgical tools, as well as antibiotics, syringes, and a spectrum infusion pump. If DC needed, she could operate on people and have everything required on hand.

“This is a beautiful place,” DC whispered. But then her smile faded. “I think it’s important to make sure it’s secure. As soon as word gets out of the supplies that were hidden here, we’ll no doubt be inundated with trouble.”

I shook my head. “I intend to handle that while I’m out.” No one would bother us if they knew I piloted such an advanced suit of power armor.

“Excellent. Then, please let me know if you need anything from me.” DC placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’m here to help.”

“Thank you.”

But she couldn’t pilot the power armor—only individuals with the implants in their neck could do that. I rubbed the holes on my spine, just below the hairline on my neck, and I shivered.

I just had to handle all our enemies…

Chapter 5

Night within Sanctuary was tense.

Since no one had really settled into comfortable homes, there was a lot of noise at all hours of the evening. A couple of babies shrieked, some of the men continued setting up faux walls, and the scrape of metal-on-metal created a disturbing melody that echoed throughout Section One. The noises there could be heard from every corner of our underground facility.

Bishop and I shared an office in Section Three and treated it like a home. It was last office before the horror show that was Section Four, and allowed me to keep an eye on the place. Bishop and I were cleaning the labs before allowing the rest of the Richfield citizens into the area.

We had a desk, a computer terminal with several monitors, and a makeshift bed made of blankets and sleeping bags. Very fancy. And the place was tidy—because of me—and I sat at the computer searching through the information while all Sanctuary tried to settle themselves into a night of sleep.

Bishop sat on our bed. He had a mirror, a knife, and a bowl of water. He shaved the stubble on his chin, carefully brushing the blade over his skin.

“Kit-Kat,” he said while he worked, “are you tired yet?”

“Not quite,” I whispered.

The Sanctuary computer had a lot of information. I wanted to sift through it all, but during the day, I had other responsibilities. I could sleep when I was dead—right now, I needed to work.

Bishop finished his shaving, cleaned his blade in the water, and then stood. He tucked his knife into its sheath on his belt, and then after a loud yawn, he sauntered over to the desk. Then he stood behind me.

That…

Unnerved me.

I didn’t like people looming in areas where I couldn’t see them. Years of living across the wasteland had taught me to keep people within my sights at all times. Obviously, Bishop was trustworthy, but that didn’t stop my skin from crawling when he placed his hands on the back of my chair.

“You shuddered,” Bishop said. “You okay?”

I continued poking at the keyboard, my eyes glued to the screen. “Yes. I’m just… tense.”

“I can help with that.”

Bishop placed his powerful hands on my shoulders and dug his fingers into my muscles. With slow, and controlled, movements, he massaged the base of my neck, and then down my spine, between my shoulder blades.

It felt good, but I jerked out of his grip. Leaning forward on the desk, I muttered, “Bishop, please. I don’t want to relax.”

I had work to do.

“You don’t want to relax?” Bishop playfully asked. “I can also help with that.”

He unsheathed his knife and then brought it around to my throat. I caught my breath, my heart hammering. Before I could find my words—and demand to know what was going on—he lowered the blade, gently grazing it across my skin until he came to the collar of my shirt. Then he sliced the fabric with a clean and easy motion.

It was just a T-shirt, and he had only cut it so that it was now a V-neck, but it was so unexpected, I didn’t know how to act.

It was exciting. How did Bishop always do this? He had a gift for completely flipping the script—making me feel sexy, even if I never did on my own. I hadn’t been in the mood for anything other than work, but now…

Bishop ran his hand down my side, feeling me up as he went all the way down to my hips. My heart beat so hard, and my work was completely forgotten.

Then he brought the blade back to my throat. It was tilted in such a way that it would be difficult to cut me, but I still felt the cold steel against my skin.

Bishop leaned down until his mouth was close to my ear. “It’s been a while since we’ve done stuff,” he whispered, somehow threateningly, somehow playful. “A man can only wait so long… And you’re so very beautiful.”

My face was hot, and my heart just kept hammering.

I… didn’t know what to say.

How was he so good at this?

He was always so sexy. I wished I was more like him. Should I say something back to him? When Bishop brought the knife down a second time, he slowly cut more of my T-shirt. I tilted my head back, and then he moved his hand between my legs.

Bishop was confident.

That kind of self-assured and positive attitude was what attracted me to him in the first place.

When he cut through the front of my bra, I half gasped. It probably sounded like a yipe or a yelp—because I wasn’t the sexiest individual—but that didn’t matter to Bishop.

He chuckled into my ear, and in a sweet tone, said, “Tense enough, Kit-Kat? Because I’d love to help you relax now.”

I swallowed hard as he sliced through the rest of my shirt and tugged it from my arms. I shivered, because it was cold, but my body felt hotter than ever.

“B-Bishop,” I stammered. “I…”

He let go of me, stood straight, and then spun my chair around. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared up at him. The look in his eyes were a mix of hungry and adoring. After he put away his knife, he ran a hand through my black hair.

“You wanna do it on the bed?” Bishop whispered. Then he placed his hands on the armrests of my chair, posting himself above me. “Or right here? But you gotta pick fast, because I’m not gonna wait long.”

My face burned so much, I could barely look him in the eye. But I knew this was a kindness. Bishop understood I was particular about things. Fastidious. Cleanly. A few times we had done “stuff” in places that made me feel sullied afterward, and Bishop always went out of his way to never do that again.

We bathed together frequently—and it was probably the location we did most of our intimate activities.

“The bed,” I forced myself to say, though my words were barely a whisper.

Bishop chuckled. He was always easy to make laugh. Then he scooped me up in his arms—like I weighed nothing—and I leaned onto his chest. It was easy to be with Bishop. Effortless.

I loved him.

***

Bishop fell asleep promptly after everything was over.

But I wasn’t tired. I had too much to do, and my restless mind punished me if ever I attempted to take time for myself.

I had led people to Sanctuary. If I sat around, wasting my time with sleep, I was failing them.

My grandfather never slept, either. That was why his name was in all the history books. Why he was the one who first welcomed the aliens to Earth. The reason he was the first to learn their language, Tethlite, and teach it to others.

So, while most of Sanctuary’s denizens struggled to get a good night’s rest despite the symphony of irritations, I headed to our makeshift prison. I wore a new T-shirt and a pair of jeans, though Bishop had threatened to cut them up as well. I had told him no. I needed them. We didn’t have a lot of spare clothing my size.

Bishop didn’t wake when I left the bed. It was fine, though. I could handle people locked behind bars without an escort.

Thankfully for me, the prison was in Section Three, away from the others, and down into a deeper level of Sanctuary. It was colder there, and I suspected it had once been a basement storage unit for some of the bio material used in all the experiments.

I didn’t want to think about research that was once conducted here, though. That was a mystery I could solve after I had solved all the current fires.

With slow and careful steps, I walked down the metal stairway to the subbasement. The air here was heavy with the weight of silence, and each time I disturbed that with a breath or scuff of my boot, I tensed. When I reached the bottom, I stopped.

There had once been two alcoves with shelves that faced one another. Scrapyard Pete had welded some bars to the ceiling and floor, and every created a couple doors from sheets of silver tin. Everyone said Pete was our resident handyman, but I was starting to suspect he was our resident engineer. The cells of our prison were expertly crafted.

Each one mirrored to the other and was a world unto itself—a small, stark space where light dared only to trickle in, as if afraid of what it might reveal. The corners housed the darkest of shadows.

“Hello?” someone asked as I walked the small hallway between the two makeshift cells.

I turned toward the speaker.

Jack Matthews.

He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a white shirt—our prison “uniform” cobbled together from the leftover clothing inside Sanctuary. Jack had a brown and gray beard that was the longest I had ever seen on a person. It went from his chin all the way down to his waistband. The faint lines near his eyes said he was in his early fifties, but they were liars.

This scientist was a Winter Survivor. He at least a hundred years old. At least.

Jack kept his oily brown hair in a ponytail. He tugged on the end as he stood and stepped out of the darkness of his cell.

“Hello?” he repeated.

I took a deep breath. Then I mentally prepared myself. “Jack? My name is Kita. I’m here to ask you a few questions.”

“Are my plants okay?” he asked the moment I stopped talking. “Are they all in the same place? You haven’t touched them, have you?”

Jack rushed to the bars. He grabbed them with both hands and leaned his weight onto them. With wild eyes, he searched my expression.

“They’re still where you left them,” I said. “And we’ve been watering them.”

That was a lie. Most of them had, unfortunately, been moved or died during the process of getting the people from Richfield into the bunker. Thankfully, I was rather good at lying—it was the only real social skill I had—and the doctor relaxed a bit in his cell.

My third rule to lying: avoid contradictions and easily verified facts.

Since he couldn’t verify anything, all I had to do was avoid contradicting myself and it would be easy to maintain this charade.

I straightened my posture. “Dr. Matthews, I came here to speak with you. I’ve, uh, explored the facility and I’ve found some disturbing—and interesting—items.”

The man stared at me, unblinking.

I wrung my hands together and paused. While I was confident with my lying, and even had rules to maintain even an elaborate fabrication, I hated moments like this.

Jack Matthews wasn’t normal.

Iwasn’t normal.

That made for a terrible combination.

And when I said “normal” I meant in the interaction department. Most people could deal with this level of strange, but I felt myself butting up against a rock. With my breath held for a moment, I decided to push through.

“What were you planning to do with those items?” I asked.

“You’re not welcome here,” Jack said. “You should get out.”

After a sigh, I said, “Why aren’t we welcome here?”

“This is a safe place. My place. Away from the nuclear fire. Purifying flames.” Jack rubbed the bars, his eyes as wild as ever. “Miri made sure the world would burn, and he—or she, the aliens are a strange lot—gave me this place as a reward for helping. This is my place. Mine.”

“Miri?” I asked.

Speaking that name seemed to calm Jack down. He released the bars and nodded once. “Miri’Cova.”

That name was Teth in origin. I had heard it before several times. First, the name was used in a message to my grandfather that was from before the Forever Winter. Now, it was being used in conjunction with biological warfare that was being developed in this very facility. Both times, the name was tied to treachery.

This was a fifty-year-old mystery, though. I kept trying to ignore it, but the evidence continued to jump up and slap me across the face.

“Can you tell me anything else about this Miri’Cova?” I asked.

Jack chuckled, like this was an actually amusing topic of conversation. “The Teth developed the firestorm bombs. They made the technology. They’re not just nuclear bombs—they have staying power. Fire. Destructive forces made specifically to terminate life. The Teth were going to use them against the Vay, wipe them from the planet.”

While this was all disturbing, and Jack said every word as if it were a delight, I mostly knew that already. “That had nothing to do with Miri’Cova.”

“Miri leaked all that information to the Vay. He—or she, again, it’s confusing, they’re hermaphrodites—Miri gave them the research and the materials to make their own firestorm bombs. Then Miri tried to leave the planet on a one of the few remaining Teth starships.”

I nodded once.

A while back—more than a year ago now, perhaps more—I had found recordings meant for my grandfather. In those recordings, there were details about Miri’Cova’s escape, and about how his starship was actually sabotaged before it left Earth. Apparently, the engines wouldn’t work correctly, and it would float aimlessly.

Miri’Cova would be forced to consume his own children to survive. And probably eventually perish, once the food supply ran low.

A dark fate, but probably one appropriate for the traitor.

But again, I already knew this. “Anything else about Miri?” I asked.

Jack laughed once. “Miri was friends with the Vay. He, she, it, brought some of them to North America to start a secret nest up in the north, away from any of the major cities, or any detection, really.”

“Really? Where?” This was new information, and would explain why there were Vay in this area. We were much farther north than I had ever lived.

Jack shrugged. “I dunno. I never met them. And who would want to?” He smiled, flashing his yellow teeth. “I haven’t spoken to anyone in years, and I would’ve preferred that. My plants are all that matters now. Once the humans and aliens are all dead… It’ll be the plants that rule. And they’ll remember me.”

Why was he on the verge of being coherent? Perhaps this was all a game to him.

“What about the items here?” I slowly asked. “What were you going to do with them?”

“Items?”

I had been vague on purpose.

“The bombs,” I whispered.

But the moment the words escaped my lips, the person in the second cell stirred. Our other permanent prisoner was none other than Quern, a power armor pilot for the Iron-Blooded. Like me, he had connectors on the back of his neck that would allow him to control one of the exoskeletons.

I glanced over my shoulder. Quern was by the bars of his cell, his expression unreadable.

He was a muscular man, and the uniform we gave him didn’t quite fit because of it. His T-shirt was on the verge of giving up the ghost and tearing at the seams. His dark tan skin and light-colored eyes were striking, nearly beautiful. It was the intelligence behind his gaze that worried me the most, though.

He was also missing his left thumb—thanks to me. I had ordered it be removed so we could use his fingerprint to access Iron-Blooded tech. Now, Quern kept his mutilated hand mostly balled into a fist, and it was difficult to notice, but I always kept it in mind.

I didn’t want to discuss the specifics of the firestorm bombs with Quern nearby. Not unless we were going to kill him. He probably hated me with all his being.

And the Iron-Blooded could never be allowed to know we had bombs at this facility.

“The bombs,” Jack said, so loud his voice echoed throughout the room. “They’re ready to strike. Fully armed and operational—each with a fuel source that is hundreds of years from expiring. Miri said to keep them in case the purifying fire failed.”

“You have firestorm bombs?” Quern asked. Then in Tethlite, he added, “They’re the reason everything went to hell. You can blame the Teth, but after hearing that madman talk for hours on end, I’m convinced the humans pressured the Teth to make those weapons.”

Quern was… a bit fanatical.

All the Iron-Blooded were.

“Humanity has done nothing wrong,” Jack shouted. He spoke in English, but it was obvious he understood Quern’s statement.

I wondered if the two of them had been conversing with each other. They had nothing but time, after all.

“Quiet, old man,” Quern hissed in Tethlite. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s the aliens who are to blame. The Teth and the Vay—even the Frest—brought all their problems with them. Our planet, our plants… They were caught up in a war that wasn’t meant for them.”

Until the last few statements, I almost thought Jack had regained some of his sanity.

“Don’t talk about the Teth that way,” Quern whispered. “They’re our superiors. Better than us in every way.

Jack stretched his arms through the bars and then pointed at Quern. “I’ve got heartaches by the number,” he said in a singsong voice. “Heartache number one was when you left me, and heartache two was when you came back!”

I… wasn’t sure why he was singing. Was this his delusional way of ending the conversation? It was working.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering why I even bothered. Jack and Quern were both unstable in their own ways, and I probably should’ve left well enough alone.

However, interacting with both of them got me worried. I walked over the makeshift door of Jack’s cell and eyed the hinges. Then I turned around, walked across the narrow hall, and inspected Quern’s door, though I tried to hide what I was doing by panning my gaze over the entirely of his living area.

His door was thinner than Jack’s but it still seemed in place. I couldn’t get too good a look at it while hiding my actions, though.

Quern glowered down at me, never moving.

“When are you going to kill me?” he whispered in Tethlite.

“I’m not,” I casually replied.

My plan had been to release him back to the Iron-Blooded once we were secure here in Sanctuary. It was probably stupid of me—Gascoigne had advocated for Quern’s death many times—but I was trying to lead by example. If I wanted humanity to recover, I needed humanity to stick around. And Quern was a little more agreeable than most Iron-Blooded.

Just a little.

“You’re not going to get my hopes up by lying to me,” he said.

I shook my head. “Believe whatever you want to believe.”

“If you were smart, you’d end me now. And I know you’re the brains of this outfit. Do us both a favor and drop the charade.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I didn’t. Was he trying to convince me to kill him? I wondered why—but not for long. My mind was better dedicated to more pressing problems.

Like how this facility had had a purpose before the bombs went off. It seemed major players from before the Forever Winter knew about that mysterious purpose. That worried me. Winter Survivors could know about Sanctuary as well. I made a mental note to discuss that with the others.

I stared at Quern. He stood half in the shadows, half in the artificial lighting. He always had this intense look about him. I met his gaze, wondering what he thought about this whole situation—but I knew better than to ask him about it.

Quern loved to preach about the evils of humanity, and how we should hand over all control to the Teth. He would hate my plan to integrate Teth babies into our society. He would want them to rule over us—like they ruled over the Iron-Blooded.

“If you don’t kill me, you’ll regret it,” he whispered, almost threateningly.

That was a little surprising, but I wasn’t worried. I sarcastically glanced around and then shrugged. “I hate to break this to you, but it looks like I have the upper hand.”

Quern said nothing in response.

I didn’t usually like provoking people, because sometimes it gave them the motivation to do audacious things, but Quern was our prisoner. He had been locked away for weeks now. And he wasn’t saying he would get me, he was implying the Iron-Blooded would eventually get us.

At least, that was what I hoped he was implying.

I turned and headed out of the prison. “Thank you both,” I called out over my shoulder.

But neither Jack nor Quern replied.

That was fine. I had gathered all the information I possibly could from the interaction. Now I needed to get some sleep so I could patrol the perimeter tomorrow.

***

I decided to sleep in the computer room with the Teth eggs. Was it some sort of mothering instinct? I didn’t know. All I knew was that my imagination continually tortured me with visions of their destruction. What if an earthquake happened and the canisters fell to the ground? What if one of the eggs couldn’t absorb all the nutrient goo? What if they were too cold?

While most of Sanctuary slept, I gathered the eggs off the table and placed the floor under the desk. I was probably being insane. I knew that. But that was the only place that allowed my imagination to rest. If they were on floor, they couldn’t fall. If they were under the desk, nothing could fall on them. And if they were in a nice sheltered location, perhaps they wouldn’t get too cold.

“Goodnight, Benjamin, Joel, Tamura,” I whispered.

The orange gel containers didn’t move.

I liked to imagine they could hear me in their eggs, though. And since I disliked Tethlite so much, I was hoping they would learn English first.

Again, I knew I was crazy, but as long as there was no one around to see it, I could deny it until my dying breath.

With a sigh, I stood from the desk and paced around the quiet room. Pacing helped me think. And I needed that.

What could I use firestorm bombs for? Obviously, devastation on a grand scale, but what else? Ex Cathedra and United California were locked in a stalemate war. Could I be an arms dealer? Sell one side the tool needed for instant victory? What could they possibly offer me? People? Teth? Supplies?

Maybe all three.

But if I did that, they would use the bomb. And the bombs previous had been so horrific, humanity still hadn’t recovered…

The cost would take a toll on us all.

After a couple hours of mulling over the problem, fatigue took me. I pressed my back up against the metal wall and then slid down into a sitting position. It wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t care. As long as I was close to the eggs, everything would be fine.

So I closed my eyes and tilted my head back until it rested against the cold wall. I wished Bishop was here with me, though.

As I took some deep breaths, I found myself on the edge of sleep. Years of living in an underground bunker had prepared me for even the most rock-like of sleeping environments.

But then someone pressed icy steel against my throat.

I snapped my eyes open. To my horror, Quern was here in the office. He was knelling next to me, a knife held against my flesh, his gaze drilling down onto mine.

Chapter 6

I didn’t move, but my mind raced.

Bishop was in our office room. Gascoigne and Brecht had been together. DC was swamped with people in the infirmary.

No one who I truly trusted was nearby.

And the eggs… They were here, under my desk. I almost glanced over to them—I would give away their position if I did that!—but I stopped myself before I turned my head. Instead, I met Quern’s intense gaze, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Did he know about the eggs? What if he took them?

“I told you that you’d regret not killing me,” he said.

Quern was so close, I felt his hot breath on my chin, and smelled the boiled stew he had for dinner. The blade he had was one of the tools brought over from Richfield. It was some sort of woodworking knife, but the blade had been sharpened to a fine point. He kept it pressed against my neck, and I felt a line of my skin burning as the weapon slowly cut my flesh.

A small part of me thought it was statistically improbable that two different men, using two different knives, would be holding them to my throat in the same night.

I almost laughed.

Almost.

But besides wanting to voice the improbability of the situation, I didn’t know what to say, so I remain quiet. In my experience, it was always unnerving when the other person kept their motives hidden.

Quern grabbed my left arm near the shoulder and then stood, hauling me up in the process. Even though we had cut off his left thumb, he still had a nub that dug into my flesh. In one fluid motion that betrayed his years of combat training, he yanked me close and twisted me around so my back was pressed against him.

“Stay quiet,” he whispered in Tethlite. “Do what I say, and I won’t kill you.”

Quern kept his knife against my throat, while also maintaining a blood-choking grip on my bicep. I muttered and acceptance of his terms, but my heart was beating so loudly in my ears, I didn’t hear my own statement.

“Good. Now show me to the area with the bombs. Don’t disturb the others. The moment you alert anyone, I’ll end us both.”

I took a deep breath.

Quern wouldn’t hesitate to kill us both. This wasn’t an empty threat.

And even if he saw the bombs, it wasn’t like he would walk away with them. They were huge. They required a delivery system—a massive truck or plane or turret—in order to be functional. One man couldn’t carry them away.

So, with a shaky hand, I pointed to the door. Quern practically lifted my weight off the floor as he headed in the direction I indicated. We exited my office, and into the dark hallway. He shut the door with careful movement, mindful of the noise.

Thank whatever gods were left he didn’t see the canisters.

I was pressed so tightly against him, I felt every ripple of his muscles. Even his heartbeat wasn’t a mystery. He seemed calm, but tense. Quern had likely been thinking about this moment for a long time.

“Straight to the bombs,” he commanded.

I moved my head to the left, and we took off down the hall. My feet barely touched the floor, but Quern’s echoed through the hollow corridors, a lonely sound as we made our way away from Sections One and Two.

Section Three didn’t really have people in it—but maybe Bishop was awake and outside our office room. Unfortunately, while it was night, most of Sanctuary’s lights were dimmed. It was darker here, and my anxieties got the better of me. The sharp blade at my throat probably wasn’t helping things, either.

I trembled the whole way.

Bishop wasn’t in the hallway.

Once we reached a door, Quern loosened his hold on my arm—just slightly.

Quern opened the door and pointed in the direction we needed to head. Sanctuary was practically a subterranean labyrinth, and the deeper we got the more it was obvious the place hadn’t been cared for. Jack had lived here for decades, but the paint was peeling in some areas, revealing the cold, unfeeling steel beneath.

The air grew heavier as we neared Section Four.

It was also filled with the scent of metal and something else—something indefinable but ever-present.

“This is it,” I whispered as I pointed to the door that led to the warehouse used for lab research.

It was locked with a computer terminal. Instead of trying his hand at it, Quern shoved me close. “Unlock it.”

I placed my hand on the old keyboard. Without needing to look, I unlocked the door. Quern pushed it open and the hinges groaned the entire way. Cursing under his breath, Quern dragged me inside and then shut the door behind us.

The labs…

Abandoned equipment lied scattered around us, all left to the mercy of time. Desk were laden with sheets of yellowed paper, overturned chairs, and glass shards decorated the area.

Every wall was lined with cages, though.

On either side of the vast warehouse were dozens of glass enclosures. They were impressive, since each one had their own little environment inside, ranging from the deserts to the rainforests.

“What the fuck?” Quern asked as he eyed the zoo-like environment with a disgusted sneer.

The glass enclosures once housed animals. Now they just had corpses.

Animal carcasses filled with the lab, all of them in various stages of decay. It definitely explained the smell. Sanctuary had a life-support system, but DC was right. We needed to fix the air filtration system, because I was certain this massive graveyard of animals wasn’t helping anything.

Maybe…

This was why so many people were getting sick.

Bishop and I had cleared away some of the corpses, but since we were the only ones coming back here, it had been a slow process. Perhaps the stink was getting into the air vents, and the decayed material was floating on the air in the other sections.

Quern pressed his knife against my throat, bringing me back to the present. “What is this?” he growled.

“I was trying to ask Jack about it,” I replied. “But he was getting crazier with each question.”

“You don’t know?”

“He was a researcher…”

I was trying to formulate my words—to better describe what I had found here—when Quern tightened his grip once again, the nub on his left hand a constant reminder that he likely despised my very existence. He leaned his head down, his hot and angry breath on my ear.

“If you don’t want me to cut you up,” he said, his Tethlite rather thick and menacing, “tell me what they were researching here.”

“Illnesses,” I murmured, solidifying my earlier theory. “Specifically, for the Teth.”

“You’re planning on killing the Teth?” The anger in his words were enough to tell me that he was giving serious thoughts to killing me and then burning Sanctuary to the ground.

“No.” Quern pressed the knife closer, and a hot trickle of blood slid down my neck and then onto my collarbone.

I touched his wrist, silently urging him to restrain himself.

When Quern pulled back, just slightly, I managed to say, “It’s fifty-year-old research. Done by other people. I haven’t touched it.”

The corpses around the room vouched for my statement with their silence.

Quern didn’t move for a long time. Then, he slowly glanced around, as if taking everything in for the first time. I wondered what he thought of all this, but I wasn’t about to ask. The blood soaking into the collar of my shirt, though minor, was still at the forefront of my thoughts.

Thankfully, the tiny machines in my blood, the nanites that had been developed before the Forever Winter, stitched my skin back up.

“The humans here were trying to kill the Teth?” Quern asked in English, his voice gravely.

He rarely spoke English.

“I think Teth were involved, too,” I whispered. “The computers have most of their notes about it. I… I don’t know what they were going to do, because it seems everything was interrupted.”

Quern gritted his teeth. Then his presence of mind seemed to return all at once. “Where are the bombs?” he asked, switching back to Tethlite.

I pointed to a far door. “In the next section over.”

Quern didn’t speak. He hurried me through the labs, around the glass enclosures with the many bodies. I tried not to gag as we went by the worst of it. Quern didn’t seem to have trouble. His gut was an iron as his heart, his gaze locked on the far door, and his gait taking us there as fast as possible without straight running.

The computers here, the ones with the research data, were on. Quern did glance at one as we went by, and I felt the hesitation throughout his body. He was considering stopping, but he turned away and led me to another locked door.

Well, not any locked door.

It was something special. It was a vault door, one with multiple locks and a timed release. This type of door would have been very useful at stopping someone like Quern.

If I had locked it…

Instead, I had left the door open. I had wanted to do something with the bombs inside, and dealing with the hassle of the vault door seemed supercilious. We were the only ones here, after all, and in my head, I could’ve shut the door before our enemies got to it.

I hadn’t thought about the enemies within Sanctuary. I should’ve been more mindful. I should’ve dealt with them in a better manner than locking them away—pushing them out of sight and mind.

Quern slipped in through the crack of the open vault door and dragged me with him the whole way. Once inside, the lights flickered to life, humming until the illumination was enough for us to see everything in the fifth and final warehouse.

There were rows upon rows of large, industrial racks, each made of solid steel. They were anchored to the floor and covered in boxes, crates, and canisters of all sizes. I had opened most of them, when I wanted to make an inventory, but since it was just me allowed in this back area, half the containers were still closed.

At least Section Five didn’t smell of death. I took a deep breath and relaxed a little, thought Quern’s grip never allowed me to forget the peril I was in.

On the far shelf, in plain sight, was several firestorm bombs. They were an old-world warhead, the type meant for smaller operations. Even if they were tactically tiny, each was the size of a motorcycle.

All of them were sealed and covered in warning signs and hazmat symbols.

Despite the clear indictor of their deadly purpose, Quern glanced around, his eyes not really focusing on any one thing. When he spotted the warheads, he squinted, as though unsure of what he was looking at.

“That’s them,” I said.

Quern straightened his posture. “Those? I thought…” But he never finished his statement.

Unless someone had studied history—like I had—most people in the wasteland had no idea what a warhead looked like. Quern was probably used to the tiny square-shaped bombs that an individual could carry and plant.

But the firestorm bombs were nothing like that.

Had he been hoping to carry a bomb out of Sanctuary? Probably. That was likely why he had me bring him here.

Quern dragged me over to the warhead. He stopped in front of it and glared. With the knife still held to my neck, he leaned in close.

“Are the insides dangerous?”

I nodded once, careful not to cut myself. “They’re radioactive. See the casing? That shields us from the worst of it. If we unsealed these, we’d put everyone nearby in danger of radiation poisoning. Also, if the bombs are damaged themselves, they could premature explode.”

Quern leaned away and growled a curse under his breath. Then he exhaled. “You know how to use them?”

“I do. That’s why we can’t unseal them.”

The first rule to lying—tell them what they already believe first, then everything that came after seemed more plausible.

I did know all about the firestorm bombs, but I wasn’t sure if unsealing them would do all that damage. I just didn’t want Quern to even think it was a possibility. In my heart, I knew we should leave these bombs alone unless we had a good use for them—or we were going to sell them. If I attempted to open one, I had no idea the kinds of fallout that we would have to deal with.

“Very well,” Quern muttered. “We’re leaving. Show me the fastest way out of this hellhole. And quickly—before the whole place starts to wake up.”

Chapter 7

Quern dragged me out of Section Five, and then back into the room with the glass cages filled with animal bodies. He stopped at a computer, sneering.

Most people struggling to use computers with Teth keyboards. The tactile typing wasn’t suited for most humans. Quern had grown up with the Teth, though. He was one of their Iron-Blooded cultists—he probably preferred A-tech over human made tools and technology.

He quickly typed away, pulling up files until he reached the results of the research.

Then he moved away from the computer and yanked me over to Section Three door. I said nothing and didn’t resist. I was worried about my life, but I was more worried about the others. Quern was a trained military combatant. Most of the people of Richfield weren’t.

I couldn’t risk them putting them in danger.

So Quern led me through the dimly lit corridors, careful not to make much noise. When we reached Section Two, he tightened his grip on my arm, silently warning me. Again, I said nothing.

I had been in worse situations.

While my heart thumped in my ribs, I reminded myself I had lived through everything else—if I kept my eyes open for an opportunity to end this, I’d likely find something.

Quern took me to the walls. They were steel, cold, and mostly gray—a perfect reflection of my mood. While most people slept, we hurried into Section One.

It was here, that Quern hesitated. We brought him through here at one point, but it was obvious he didn’t recognize the place.

We had been busy building, after all.

“Do you need me to lead you out?” I whispered.

He gritted his teeth so powerfully I could hear it.

Instead of answering me, he made his way through the “paths” between proto-buildings. Everyone was setting up a home or an area to call home, but the walkways were always kept clear.

People were sleeping, but a few lights glowed in the “dwellings.”

Quern avoided them. And before long, he made it to the entranceway. There was a large door that led to a massive stairway up to the surface, that was both locked by Sanctuary’s computer system, but also held secure with a padlock on the handles. This was to prevent someone from hacking their way inside, like I had.

Quern shoved me over and grabbed the thick, steel padlock. It rattled against the handle.

Someone would hear if he kept that up.

He stopped, growled some sort of curse under his breath, and then fished through his gray sweatpants. He withdrew pieces of scarp metal from his pocket. One was sharp, one was thin and pointed, and another reminded me of a level.

A lockpick set. He probably had cobbled it together from the scrap that had been used to make the jail. Scrapyard Pete had probably been careless with cleaning up, and Quern capitalized on that.

However, it was nearly impossible to pick a lock with one hand. Quern, exhaled, and then shoved up against the door itself, the front of my body squished against the unforgiving metal. Then he leaned his weight on me while he attempted to unlock the first lock on the door.

Normally, I would’ve have been hyper critical of my captor attempting to do something, but since I had difficulty breathing, ever second felt like a minor agony.

Quern fiddled with the lock for at least a few solid minutes.

“Do you need help?” I whispered.

“Don’t patronize me,” he hissed in Tethlite. “I’ve been trained in escape operations. This is how’s it’s done.”

I waggled a hand back and forth. “I don’t know. I’ve seen this done better—but definitely not slower.”

“Shut up. This is just some fancy old-world lock. Anyone would have difficulty with it. Obviously, that’s why you’ve used it.”

His Tethlite came out flustered, and his work on the lock definitely suffered. I almost laughed. Was Quern easily unnerved, or had I injured his pride?

The lights would come on soon. It would honestly make me laugh if he took so long that he was just caught. On his own. Without me doing anything.

But I wasn’t that lucky. Quern, true to his word, managed to unlock that damn padlock with just his tools. That was impressive, given how complicated that lock had been.

“Now use the computer and get us out of here,” Quern commanded in Tethlite.

He gently set the steel lock on the ground, careful not to make any noise. He never took a hand from me, not even while he half knelt.

I scooted over to the computer terminal and easily opened the entrance. Wind from the outside swept into Sanctuary, and the tarps over some people’s dwellings rustled. Quern shoved me out before I could see if anyone awoke.

Then the door shut behind us with a groan and creak. A gigantic stairway led up to the surface. Since we were so far from anyone else, and with a wall between us, Quern dropped the stealth. He practically hauled me forward by my shoulder, his knife in the other hand and vaguely pointed in my direction as he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Once we reached the welcome entrance, I was sucking down air. Running up stairs wasn’t a skill I would’ve boosted about. Quern, on the other hand, was rather athletic. He jogged to the entrance door and pulled me along without much trouble at all.

Then we exited the building and stood at the edge of an asphalt parking lot covered in a spiderweb of cracks.

Pine trees stood like tall sentinels all around us. Small beams of moonlight pierced through the cloud cover, offering small pillars of illumination in the otherwise dense and dark forest.

Metal posts outlined the edge of the parking lot. A small road, still visible, was just beyond that. And standing between a few nearby trees was a sign that read: US Sanctuary Housing #4.

I thought Quern might stab me and then make a run for it, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he kept me close and ran forward. I held his arm tightly, trying to keep his pace. It was difficult, though. It was dark, and the ground was uneven.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked in English.

“Keep quiet,” he hissed in Tethlite.

That wasn’t helpful.

Instead of trying to engage with him, I tried to memorize our route. If I knew where we were going, perhaps I could deduce his plan. If he went south, I would know he was trying to get back to his Iron-Blooded friends. And it he went west, I would know he wanted to get into United California.

To my surprise, Quern headed east.

There wasn’t much to the east besides rail gangs. And if he went east enough, we’d run into Ex Cathedra.

What was his plan?

Pine needles rustled in the evening wind and our footsteps crunched the detritus underfoot. The air was cool and crisp. Perhaps too cold. My breath came out as a fog, though I kept warm from the sheer amount of movement we were doing.

This whole forest smelled of fresh pine mixed with an earthy musk. It was as though it hadn’t been disturbed in a long time.

In the distance, the howl of a lone wolf created a haunting melody that reverberated through the trees. Several owls hooted from their hidden perches.

The sound of wildlife eased my tension. If the Vay were close—or any of their mindless drones—the animals would’ve fled.

Perhaps Quern thought the same thing, because he started to run, his breathing heavier than before. He didn’t seem to care if we were making any noise or not.

“Where are we going?” I dared to ask again. “There’s nothing out this way. Not for miles.”

“I said to stay quiet,” he growled.

And he offered nothing else. So again, I kept track of our direction, and every slight shift Quern did as he took us deeper and deeper into the darkness of the woods. Occasionally, he had to slow down to get over obstacles. There were a surprising number of rusted cars we had to climb over. There had once been a road through this forest, but it was destroyed by overachieving trees, and now it functioned as a vehicle graveyard.

And Quern had no problem hoisting himself—and me—over each and every truck that stood planted in our way. He hefted me up, practically slung me over his shoulder, and then leapt down on the other side.

The road that was once here had been multiple lanes, and by the we reached the other side, it felt as though we had made it over a minor mountain.

“We shouldn’t go too far,” I said, the cold air stinging the tip of my nose. “There are gangs, and wild animals if you go too far into the wilderness. The radio DJ talked about bears pretty frequently.”

Quern shot me a glare. “I can handle a bear,” he said in English. “I told you to stay quiet. If you don’t fuck with me, I’ll let you live.”

“Why?” I asked, not because I wanted him to kill me, but because I didn’t understand his motivation. Was he taking me as a hostage? Was he going to bring me to the Iron-Blooded? Would he torture me for what we had done to him?

But Quern didn’t elaborate.

I had been held hostage by the Iron-Blooded before, and it had been a terrible experience. However, this time I was stronger. Better. My blood was filled with nanites. I could handle them.

I hoped.

With his knife still in hand, and his own hand firmly on my arm, Quern took me farther and farther east.

The sun started to rise, but the overcast skies made it difficult to see. Plus, the pine tree canopy above us was like nature’s roof. It remained dark, even as the morning approached.

But then we reached a dirt road. It was clean, and the tire divots told me it was used often. Quern stopped us before we took a step onto the dirt itself. Our footprints would be more noticeable if we walked along the road—even if that meant an easier time walking.

He eyed the length of the road, his gaze shifting from left to right.

“We shouldn’t mess with anyone using this,” I whispered. “We don’t have any weapons.”

If I had my power armor, I could handle anything that came our way. But that wasn’t a possibility at the moment.

Quern narrowed his eyes and turned so we were heading north along the side of the road.

Which was seriously the worst option he could pick. Because apparently the Vay were up north—and those war-hungry aliens would gladly rip up the both of us.

Chapter 8

For several hours, Quern took me north, waving a way through the pine trees.

By the time it was late into the afternoon, the wind was harsher, and my clothes sweaty. Quern finally slowed his pace, his own breathing heavier. Then he stopped, jerked to me a halt, and listened. A clanking sound echoed off in the distance, along with the crack of gunfire.

Dammit.

One of the things I loved about having lived in Richfield, and now in Sanctuary, was that hadn’t needed to deal with the darkness of the wasteland. It was nerve wracking to meet new people out in the open, considering there was no law here.

Quern and I had a single rusty knife between us.

It would go poorly if we ran across anyone with a gun.

“I’d love to know what we’re doing,” I whispered. “So that I wasn’t constantly confused by all of your decisions.”

Quern glowered down at me. Then he returned his sights to the road. “We need to find a working vehicle.”

In a playful tone, so that I wouldn’t anger him too much, I said, “I hope you’re not planning on taking us further north.”

“I hope you’re not hoping too hard,” he darkly quipped.

“The Vay are up there. We can’t—we shouldn’t—go anywhere near them.”

Quern yanked me down the road, never meeting my eyes. “The Davis Space Force Base is further north. That’s where we need to go.”

A space force base? From what I had seen, there were only half a dozen of those across all of North America. They were places to construct starship parts, or build weather satellite. Technically, I had been to the Thompson Space Force Base—that was where the Teth Architect, Riven, had been hiding.

Now a lot of things made sense.

If we managed to get to the Davis Space Force Base, Quern could likely communicate with the heart of the Iron-Blooded. He would probably tell them all about our firestorm bombs. And everything inside Sanctuary.

Another crack of a gunshot caused me to flinch.

“Stick close,” Quern muttered. “There are people ahead, but from what I’ve been told about the area, they’re likely not friendly.”

I appreciate he was speaking in English now, though I didn’t question why. Perhaps it was just to make me feel better.

He pulled me along as he picked up his pace. It wasn’t long before the road led to a clearing. Instead of walking out into the wide open, Quern took me into the trees. We crept through the shadows and the wooded area, but close enough to the clearing to get a view of where it led.

To my surprise, there was a large building in the middle of the clearing, and actual roads with asphalt that led away from it.

The building…

It was an old-world prison.

A group of people were living and working around it, their pace slow. The prison, with its rusted bars and weathered stone, was the perfect fortress. Sure, the iron gates had once meant to keep people in, but not that made for a perfect fortified entranceway.

Even from our spot in the woods, I could see that some of the cells been repurposed into living quarters, workshops, and storage spaces. There were at least a few dozen individuals going about their lives.

Although, it seemed some of them were still used as prisons. The windows were reenforced, and the courtyard beyond the gate was littered with chains and posts. If I had to guess, the people here probably took captives. Maybe even sold them off to others. It was a common practice in the backwaters of the wasteland, especially in overgrown woods or forests.

And each of people here were blatantly carrying a firearm, which only added to my theory. Most of them had handguns, but a few had rifles with leather straps. They kept the rifle close, slung on one shoulder, as they meandered throughout the prison.

These people were a gang.

Just beyond the prison, the skeletal remains of a highway system stretch like the veins of a forgotten megacity. A few vehicles were parked along the cracked asphalt near the prison, including some motorcycles and a large truck.

A couple of these gun-toting lunatics were actually in the process of fixing up a few smaller cars. As they worked, they made a clack-clack, clank sound, their tools cutting through the steel frames of the ancient vehicles.

The crack of gunshots came from a few individuals practicing their aim. They were taking turns shooting a few upside-down tin cans that were positioned on top of a chain link fence.

Quern and I observed them for a moment. One thug shot a can off the fence. Then another one ran forward to grab it, even though the first man was still taking shots.

If their collective IQ was channeled together into electricity, it might be able to toast a piece of bread.

Quern pulled me close. “You don’t want their attention,” he whispered.

“I know,” I whispered back.

He eyes me as he asked, “Is that why you didn’t immediately call for help?”

“In my experience, most people aren’t going to help you out of the goodness of their hearts. And this place… This looks like a hellhole.”

Quern darkly chuckled. “That’s my assessment as well.”

I didn’t see any women here. That was always a warning sign.

If they had been a coed group, I would’ve assumed they were a town, or a settlement attempting to carve a place for themselves in the wasteland. But whenever it was just men, all carrying guns, it was always because they were gang—and they wouldn’t be keen on just helping me.

I also didn’t see any farms or animals.

These people got their food from someone, and I suspected it was all stolen.

The open yard, just beyond the front gates, seemed to serve as the communal area. There were barrels with fires, long tables, and a few idiots who appeared to be boiling chemicals. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was to make a caustic substance they could use as a gas, or if they were just bored, but it seemed completely counterproductive to anything I would call “constructive.”

“We’re going to steal one of their vehicles,” Quern stated.

“With your little baby knife? Or do you have a real weapon hidden somewhere?”

Quern gritted his teeth. When he turned to me, his eyes were narrowed in irritation. Then he smirked. “Heh. And here I was thinking I had the perfect weapon—a distraction.” He unsheathed his knife and pointed it at me.

I opened my mouth, ready to make another quip, but then I swallowed my words before I spoke them. Quern wanted to use me as bait? How so? I didn’t even want to ask. I had no desire to get anywhere near the prison gangsters.

“I’m not going to be your distraction,” I stated.

Quern waved the tip of the knife around in a circle. “You’re not going to have much choice. Either, you help me get a vehicle—and we both leave this place. Or you trade one captor for a whole group of captors. And they don’t look as forgiving or intelligent, to be frank.”

Before I could protest, Quern grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked me forward. He took me all the way to the edge of the trees. In a harsh whisper, he said, “Keep them occupied.”

Then Quern shoved me with all his might. I flew out of the tree line and hit the dirt. I kept myself from shouting in pain—it was a habit I had developed when I lived alone, as making too much noise often led to unwanted attention.

But that didn’t prevent me from getting spotted.

“We got a visitor!” one of the rifle-carrying men shouted.

He ran over, with two others flanking him. They held up their rifles, but quickly pointed them to the ground once they got a good look at me.

I wasn’t particularly intimidating. I was barely over five feet, rather small, and had no visible weapons. As I stood, I kept my hands in the air, hoping none of them would get trigger happy. “I’m sorry,” I forced myself to say. “I got lost. Turned around. I didn’t mean to, uh, disturb you.”

The others around the old prison turned their attention to me. A man near the gate walked over, and the idiots with the tin cans stopped their target practice. It was a slow day, apparently, and everyone needed a good at the fresh meat.

“Where’d you come from?” the thug asked.

He spoke rather eloquently for someone who was missing half his teeth on his right side.

“I found a road, and I followed it. I didn’t know where I was going.”

My rules of lying always helped me out.

The men glanced between each other. Their attire was a patchwork of post-apocalyptic practicality. Many of them wore bandanas or makeshift hats fashioned from scraps of fabric. There was a lot of dust and debris in ruined cities, and having something to cover your face was essential.

The core of their outfits consisted of sturdy, long-sleeved shirts made of denim, now faded and frayed from constant use. Their pants are typically heavy-duty cargo or work trousers secured with thick belts they had likely made themselves.

I suspected they gathered most of this from the same place, since they were all matchy-matchy. Perhaps an old-world factory was nearby, or the prison itself had been packed with outfits meant for the people of a world long since dead.

“You’re traveling alone?” the man with the missing teeth asked. He stepped closer to me and then grabbed my arm and yanked me close. “No bag? No supplies?”

Two others surrounded me, preventing any sort of escape.

“I…”

Although I was mildly afraid, I tried to ham it all up. I choked back a sob.

The thug growled and then shoved the end of the rifle into my face. “Who’s with you, girl?”

“I got separated,” I said, my voice strained. “My sisters went after our horse, and he had our packs. I’m so sorry—I’ll just leave. Please let me go.”

Obviously, none of that was true. But since it was all plausible, and something they wanted to hear, I had their full attention.

The men shot each other side glances. Then they smirked.

After removing his rifle from my face, the man pulled me toward the prison. “We can’t let a cute little girl like you wander out in the woods all by yourself. You’ll stay here. With me—Jecket.”

“My sisters should be around here somewhere,” I said, trying to sound flustered.

Unfortunately, the doofuses who had been practicing their aim started to head back to the fence. And the thugs near the gate of the prison were a little more disinterested as well. I wasn’t a very good distraction if they weren’t focusing on me.

“Th-They could be in trouble,” I stammered out, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Because there was a bear. That’s what spooked our horse.” I threw out one of my arms, trying to demonstrate the size. “It was a man-killer. Huge. I… I think it’s nearby. My sisters are probably in danger.”

That got everyone’s attention.

The bears in these woods were monstrous. I assumed it was due to some sort of mutation caused by ambient radiation, but I wasn’t entirely certain. Radiation stayed low to the ground, and often fell into pits, caves, or crags and stayed there longer than other locations. Bears that hibernated in radioactive caves often gave birth to freaks of nature—if their offspring lived at all.

Jecket gritted what little he had left of his teeth. Then he glared at me, his eyes slightly bloodshot.

The smell of burnt chemicals lingered on the air.

And then it hit me. These thugs were making addictive substances—chems they would sell to others, or just take for themselves.

“There’s a bear, huh?” Jecket asked. “All right. You’re gonna help us find it.”

“What?” I asked. “But—”

“We can’t have no damn bear on the roads around here. We’re gonna have to put that fucker down for good. And you’re gonna help us.”

Chapter 9

I regretted every decision that had brought me to this point.

Lying typically got me out of situations, not create them.

Jecket whistled. A few men in the prison whistled back, their screeching bird-calls so shrill they hurt my ears. They were clearly communicating with each other, because a few more men from the prison came hurrying out, some slinging backpacks onto their shoulders.

“We’re goin’ on a hunt,” Jecket shouted. “Round ’em up, boys. We got a bear to skin, a couple girls to find, and a horse to corral.”

Hm. Perhaps I had lied too well. Or perhaps my impromptu story was too enticing to leave uninvestigated. Either way, these idiots were convinced there was treasure in the forest, and we needed to find it.

Was that distraction enough?

I hoped Quern would be able to capitalize on this.

When Jecket started hauling me toward the tree line, my heart pounded.

What would they do when they discovered I had been lying? There would be no horse tracks. No signs of a bear. Nothing. Would they become angry? Yell at me? Or worse? And if I was out in the woods, I wouldn’t be here when Quern finally managed to steal a vehicle.

I grabbed Jecket by his denim shirt. With as much anxiety as I could muster, I made my words warble. “W-Wait. I don’t want to face a bear! Please. I’m too frightened.”

Jecket grumbled something, his irritation on full display. Then he whistled again, this time harsher, and the call shorter. Another man exited the prison, this one older, his hair graying, his clothing stained with splatters of blood. He walked with a slight limp, and since I had lived with one for years, I could tell it was due to an old injury.

“Martin, take this girl. We’re goin’ on a hunt.”

Martin grunted as he picked up his pace. Once he was close, I took note of the beard that dominated most of his face. He turned his icy gaze down on me, one brown, the other milky.

“I’ll take her,” Martin said.

I didn’t protest. Even as he grabbed me by my elbow, and dragged me toward the prison, I remained on “good behavior.” In my experience, if I acted meek and dumb, everyone would assume I was meek and dumb. Then, when I found an opening, I could exploit it without much trouble.

Martin smelled of tobacco and chems. He walked me through the prison gate, and then across the ramshackle courtyard without saying a word. When he brought me to a large metal door, he glared.

“Don’t cause me any trouble,” he growled.

I shook my head. “Will they find my sisters?” I tried to act innocent, but it was more difficult than frightened.

Martin narrowed his eyes, and I wondered if he was suspicious of me. Instead, he said, “Your sisters will be fine.”

He led me inside, and I had to hold back a cough. Thick dust hung on the air. It smelled of broken stone and sawdust, and I wondered if they were constructing something. Martin walked me down a long hall, where there were barred doors on either side of us. The lights overhead were A-tech, and glowed with a soft white that was gentle on the eyes, but definitely highlighted the junk in the air.

As we walked, I saw a few workbenches with tools on them.

And a few atomic batteries. They were distinct and can-like—difficult to miss. I was surprised they weren’t locked away.

My gaze lingered on one for a long while as we passed.

Martin noticed.

He yanked my arm, shaking me out of my thoughts. “Don’t touch anything,” he said as he squeezed my arm. His grip hurt, and I grimaced as I felt my skin bruising.

“I won’t,” I said in a tiny voice. Then I stared up at him through my eyelashes. “I just haven’t seen a building like this before.”

“It was built before the Forever Winter. That’s all you need to know.”

But I barely heard the man. The instant he turned his eyes forward, I glanced around to take stock. Everything about this prison screamed minimalist design, maximalist survival. The gang obviously slept in a patchwork of salvaged mattresses, hammocks strung up between cell bars, and a couple of bunk beds with only a few springs missing. The color scheme? Early 21st-century rust.

I didn’t need any of that—but I was impressed by the fact every room had electricity. They probably had dozens of batteries.

Martin walked me by a large dining room. A cafeteria? The tables were an eclectic mix of whatever furniture survived the Forever Winter, and the walls were decorated with a charming collage of graffiti.

As we walked, I counted twenty-two people here, and that wasn’t including Jecket and the ten or so that went off into the woods looking for a bear.

Which was an impressive size for a gang out in the wilderness.

“What’s your name?” Martin asked. He turned me down a hallway and walked me through a security point, complete with a barred door.

“My name is Kita,” I said.

There was no point in lying. This man wouldn’t know who I was—and if he did know, he would probably let me go immediately.

I could only imagine what Bishop, Gascoigne, and the others were planning. They knew I was missing by now. They would come for me.

But Martin clearly didn’t recognize my name. “Kita is a pretty name for a pretty girl.”

And I didn’t like where this was going. Although I hadn’t dealt with much sexual aggression—since I had been a hermit for so long—I recognized the hallmarks whenever they showed up. I didn’t answer him. Instead, I glanced away and continued to count everything. The number of people. The lights. The steps we had taken since coming inside.

Which was beginning to really add up. How deep into prison was he going to take me? Would Quern even search for me in this part of the prison?

There was a chance Quern would just take a vehicle and go. Honestly, it was my preferred outcome. This prison was close enough to Sanctuary that Bishop was sure to find it before long. Or I could just escape and make it back to them. Either or.

Then Martin stopped.

He jerked me to his side and motioned to an empty cell. He dragged me in, and I tensed. There was just a cot bed and a tin bucket with a thin handle.

That was it.

“You’ll stay here,” he said.

Again, I didn’t answer.

Martin took two steps backward out of the cell, and then shut the barred door. It clickedinto place, the lock shutting fully.

“And you’re not going to hurt me, are you?” I asked.

“I’ll come by to check on you,” Martin said with a smile—though it wasn’t a friendly one.

“Do you have anything to eat?” What I wanted was more information. Where did they get their food?

“When I come back, I’ll bring some dinner. And we’ll what you’re willing to do to pay for it.”

Again, I didn’t like that—so I didn’t respond.

These thugs clearly took people against their will on the regular. If I had known they were so close, I would’ve taken my power armor out and paid a visit.

As it stood…

Martin chortled as he left me. He headed down the hallway, limping as he went, his gait rather awkward. I remained silent until I couldn’t hear him anymore. Instead of waiting for Quern—who I honestly thought might’ve left already—I turned around and faced the little metal bucket.

It was obviously meant to be the toilet. All I saw was a tool waiting to be transformed.

***

Most people weren’t aware of the metaphysical changes metal was capable of going through. Rust caused metal to expand, which was what caused it to be weak and brittle. Rust corrodes, and since this whole prison was one gigantic rusty mess, I knew the bars were nothing more than stale candy canes at this point.

I had removed the handle of the bucket and sharpened the end into a semi-fine point. Then I took the whole bucket and headed over to the rusted bars of my cell.

After a few hours, one side of the bucket was sufficient enough to chip away at the rusted bars, cracking through the layers of brittle metal. The noises I made were nothing to the construction and shouting from the thugs around me. If it ever became quiet, I took a break, and only resumed once all the raucous resumed again.

When night fell, the prison became a fish tank—the glow of lights here kept the darkness at bay, but everything could see in, and we couldn’t see out.

Quern had left me. That was the only explanation for why I was here for so long.

And while I hated every minute I was here, I knew I would escape soon. I just had to chip my way through one more bar.

But then I heard the strange gait of someone limping. I stopped my work and placed the bucket in the corner of the cell.

Fortunately, I figured someone would come by, so I had broken two bars down at the base, near the floor, where it would be difficult to tell that they were no longer connected to anything. If someone leaned on the bars, they’d instantly be able to tell, but I was banking on that never happening.

Martin came walking back with a plate half covered in hardtack—which was a kind of biscuit made out of the most tasteless substances possible. The only upside to hardtack was how long it lasted without rotting.

That was all he had, and made me wonder if the prison gang here actually ate well.

“Here’s your dinner,” Martin said.

“Did Jecket find my sisters?” I asked.

“No. But everyone is still searching.”

Wow. Dumb and persistent. I almost laughed.

Martin shook the tray. The hardtack rattled around. They had the consistency of rocks.

“You’re hungry, yes?” he asked.

I was. My stomach had been grumbling, but the pain wasn’t too bad. I’d feel it tomorrow, but now I could ignore the ache.

“You want this?” Martin stepped closer to the door. “Maybe you should come over here and get it.”

As casually as I could, I slipped my hand into the back pocket of my pants. The sharpened bucket handle was still there, waiting to be used as an impromptu weapon. I would only get one surprise attack, though. If I fucked this up, Martin would fuck me up—and I couldn’t afford that.

Sanctuary couldn’t afford that.

Martin banged the plate against one of the rusted bars of the door. “Well? You want it? Come over her, lamb. I won’t charge you much.”

“I don’t really have much to barter with,” I said as I sarcastically glanced over at the bucket.

“You can work off your debt.” He smirked, like he was so clever. “With your mouth.”

I exhaled. “Yeah, well, now I’m not even in the mood to quip around with you. Girls like a little buildup before they commit. I was hoping for some more repartee—but I don’t think you can handle that.”

A part of me thought it was funny that I had no troubles being frank, mean, or lying. But when it came to being honest, building real relationships and assuming the role of the leader, it felt awkward.

I blamed the wasteland. Living alone made it easy to develop antisocial skills.

“I don’t care what you’re in the mood for,” Martin said. “We haven’t had a girl stop by in a while, and you’re my responsibility. Either you get on your knees and ask nicely for the food, or you’re not eating.”

Chapter 10

I didn’t want trouble—but I definitely wasn’t going to get on my knees for the man. And if trouble or pleasing Martin were my only two options, I was going to pick trouble every time.

I clicked my tongue in disapproval and shook my head. “Do you have fat in your ears? Or maybe you’re so old that your hearing is going. I’m not in the mood. I’d rather be slowly consumed by the fleas that infest this place rather than touch your disgusting body.”

That was just the truth. I was hoping he would taunt me some more and then leave, but the man’s face was twisting into hatred.

Martin griped the sides of the tray until his knuckles were white. Then he tossed the whole thing, hardtack and all, onto the floor. When he came for the cell door, I backed into the corner and tensed.

I probably shouldn’t have been so harsh.

“I was bein’ nice,” Martin said, practically a whisper if it weren’t for his seething rage.

He pulled out keys and unlocked the cell door. Then he placed the keys back in his coat pocket.

Unfortunately for me, the man then dug into his jacket and withdrew a handgun. It was a 9mm thing, not the most powerful, but it would still do the trick. I pressed my back against the wall, almost regretting my decision to antagonize him.

Everyone knew it was idiotic to bring a homemade shiv to a gun fight.

He sauntered in, tall and confident.

“I think you owe me an apology,” Martin said. He stopped in the middle of my cell, his considerable bear-like body in between me and the exit.

I nodded as I hesitatingly stepped forward. “Y-You’re right,” I said, putting the quaver in my words. “I shouldn’t have been that rude.”

“Get over here and apologize properly.”

I stepped close. Martin lowered his firearm, though he kept it tight in his hands. Once I was next to him, I placed my free hand on his chest. He relaxed a bit and even chuckled, like this was going to be a glorious night.

And then I pulled the sharpened bucket handle out of my pocket and stabbed the man straight in the throat.

Not the side of the throat. Not with only half my strength. I went as hard as I could, directly for his windpipe. And I felt no guilt—the thug had imprisoned me and was going to force himself on me. Or worse.

Blood squirted from the puncher wound as he stumbled backward. He gurgled out a croak, obviously trying to shout. In his panic, he must’ve forgot he had a gun, because he just flailed his firearm around while grasping at the injury with his other hand.

In the confusion, I shoved my hand in his coat pocket and stole his keys. Hie eyes were practically bugging out of his skull, his face turning a dark red, and then slightly purple. I darted him around, leapt out of the cell, and then locked it behind me.

During that time, Martin regained some of his senses. He leveled the gun and fired.

The sound of the shot echoed throughout the prison, and I knew everyone was now aware of our scuffle. The bullet ricocheted off the walls. I flinched, and then tried to run.

Another shot.

Something burned my arm, and I yelled out in pain. Blood wept from my shoulder. The bullet had cut through me—cut through muscle, but not bone.

I ran as fast as I could, my body dulling the pain through copious amounts of adrenaline. Martin fired off six more shots, but the further away I got, the more useless all of his efforts became.

“What’s going on?” someone shouted down the halls of the prison.

Someone else called back. “We’ve got problems! That was gunfire!”

“Fuckin’ search this place!”

I remembered my way through the prison thanks to Martin. I turned down the hall, went through a security gate, and then slowed when I neared one of the workbenches. There were tools scattered across the top, including a screwdriver, and two atomic batteries. I grabbed the batteries, shoved them into my pockets.

“Hold it!”

I tensed and whirled on my heel. Some thug stood down the hallway from me. He held a shotgun in both hands, the butt of his firearm pressed against his shoulder as he aimed down the barrel.

I tried to lift both my hands, but my injured shoulder refused to cooperate. I lifted one hand and then half lifted the other, gritted back a sudden sting of pain. “Don’t shoot,” I breathed.

He stepped forward and glared. Something about the man screamed inbred. Maybe it was because his eyes were so far apart it was like they were trying to escape his face, or maybe it was his oversized forehead—I wasn’t certain. All I hoped for was that he wasn’t a trigger-happy inbred lunatic.

“I found the problem,” the inbred man shouted. His voice carried throughout the prison. “Someone get over here!”

Although no one directly answered, I knew others would be here soon. My heart pounded so hard in my chest, I wasn’t sure if I could breathe properly. My own blood soaked my shirt.

But then someone slipped quietly into the hall behind my inbred “buddy.”

The shotgun-wielding thug never turned around. He kept his firearm pointed straight at me, taking small steps forward, like he was cautious, but still excited to apprehend me.

The person behind him…

It was Quern.

With all the silent agility of a trained assassin, Quern snuck over to the man, yanked his shoulder so the man turned around halfway, and then ripped the shotgun from his grasp. In the next half second, Quern planted the barrel of the gun into the man’s jaw and pulled the trigger. The buckshot exploded through the man’s face, destroying a good portion of his skull.

He collapsed to the floor in a welter of blood.

With the shotgun still in his hands, Quern turned to me. Some of the inbred man’s blood was splattered on his white shirt, but Quern either didn’t notice or didn’t mind.

“You were supposed to cause a distraction and then run back into the woods,” he growled in Tethlite.

I honestly chuckled. “W-Well, it wasn’t like you articulated that to me. You fucking shoved me out in front of a bunch of gun-toting, drug-addled, thugsand—”

Someone else rounded the corner into our hallway. All I had time to do was point. Quern spun around and fired his shotgun. He struck the man in the chest with the full force of buckshot. The man crumpled backward, a handgun hitting the floor next to him.

I hurried forward, patted the man’s pockets with my one good hand, searching for anything useful, and then picked up the 9mm. This thug didn’t have any extra bullets—it was just what he had in the firearm.

But when I turned around, Quern slammed me against the wall.

More pain flared through my injured shoulder and I shouted. Quern ripped the 9mm from me, his expression icy. “I’ll hold the weapons,” he whispered in English.

“R-Right.”

I held my injured shoulder, trying to stop the flow of blood. The nanites in my system were already stitching me back up, but it would take a little while. Until then, I had to be careful.

Quern released me, and I took a moment to catch my breath.

There was more shouting, but it honestly was distant and rather confused. No one knew what the hell was going on. These were low level criminals, after all, not a hyper competent organization like the Iron-Blooded or the judges in Ex Cathedra. They didn’t even have a radio system in place to speak to other members of the prison in a quick and efficient manner.

Quern motioned with a tilt of his head. “This way.”

He took off down the hall and I followed him. The lights of the prison stayed illuminated, it made navigating the inside of the prison rather easy. When we came to the courtyard, however, it was a different story.

It was pitch black outside.

The lights for the courtyard were obviously damaged and inoperable. That didn’t deter Quern. He shoved the handgun into his pocket, and then grabbed my arm. Together, we ran out into the darkness. I spotted the silhouettes of individuals running around the inside of the prison, but they were still frantically trying to piece together what had happened.

In this chaos, there was no one to stop us.

Quern was clearly familiar with the layout of the prison, because he guided me through the gloom without problem. When we made it to the front gate, he slipped out and then dragged me to a nearby vehicle. It was still on, but the headlights were off. Only tiny lights near the driver’s seat were blinking, but it was enough for me to make my way inside. I sat in the passenger’s seat.

Quern had stolen a jeep, and the chair was surprisingly comfy. I belted up. Then I glanced around.

This vehicle didn’t have proper doors or a roof. It was open and exposed to the elements. The chill night wind whipped over us, stealing my warmth.

The back of the jeep was packed with a few bags, and even a box.

“Did you get all this?” I whispered.

“We needed supplies,” he said. Quern then hauled himself into the driver’s seat.

He had taken the whole day to swipe things from the prison gang? I was almost impressed—but since that gang was clearly deficient, I assumed these supplies were going to be subpar.

“Did you pick up any batteries?” I ran my hand over the bags, hoping I could feel some. It was difficult, though. All the bags were stuffed to the brim.

“Why?” he hissed.

I didn’t answer him. In my heart, I was planning for the moment I would escape, and then make my way back to Sanctuary. Any and all batteries I found I would take with me and hand over to the denizens of my new civilization. They needed them, and if I was going on a hostage-adventure, I might as well make good use of my stolen time.

“We might need them,” I forced myself to say—just to give him an answer.

Quern put the vehicle in reverse. “I got some.”

I exhaled and kept my hand over the injury.

Quern backed the jeep away from the prison, and then turned the vehicle onto the dirt road. Once facing away from the prison, he flipped on the headlights and slammed his foot on the gas. The vehicle lurched forward, the tires kicking up dirt. We sped away from the gang and their fortified base of operations.

The forest road was bumpy with branches and cracks. I gritted my teeth as the jeep jostled me around. The seatbelt dug into my injured shoulder. I sucked in air and then tucked the belt into my armpit. The cold air stung worse as it blasted through the unprotected jeep.

Quern didn’t seem to care. He kept going at the fastest pace he could muster, obviously trying to put distance between us and the thugs. He focused on the shattered road, staying on the cracked asphalt as much as possible, and only swerving to avoid some of the largest branches.

I thought we were going to make it without a problem.

But then the headlights shone over a group of people crossing the road. It was Jecket, and a few other thugs—the ones searching for my “sisters.”

“Careful,” I shouted.

But Quern didn’t lift his feet from the pedal. Instead, he turned the steering wheel slightly so that he was pointed directly at Jecket himself. The man stared with wide eyes, the perfect imitation of a startled deer.

I threw my good hand over my face and closed my eyes to avoid watching what was about to happen.

The jeep plowed into Jecket and the whole vehicle shook. The resulting crashwas enough to send a shudder down my spine. The crack, crack, crack of gunfire sounded afterward, and a ka-thunk echoed from the undercarriage of our vehicle as Jecket was tangled in the right-side wheel for a few rotations before coming loose.

I opened my eyes to see our hood was dented and coated in a fine misting of blood. When I glanced back, I just barely caught the silhouettes of the lunatics all crowing around their fallen leader.

With a shaky hand, I gripped my injured shoulder tighter. “You really didn’t like him, I take it.”

“Human waste,” Quern drawled. “The world is better now that he’s dead.”

I envied his conviction, but it reminded me I was dealing with someone so fanatical, anything in his way was just a dead body.

I needed to get away from him as soon as possible.