Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

54. RHYDIAN

54

RHYDIAN

T he safe was in the factory manager’s office. According to my source, they had to put the code in manually with every new batch of collars. For that reason, the manager kept them close and personally oversaw the implementation of the codes into the manufacturing process.

So, whilst the others took up defensive watch on the perimeter, Jordry and I entered the factory with Rieka. It wasn’t that she was necessary for this part of the mission, not unless we were wrong about there not being any traps inside the building, I just felt calmer knowing where she was.

The inside of the factory was silent. Nothing but dead conveyor belts and sleeping worker stations. I tried to ignore the way my body reacted to the sight of the collars in the crates in the far corner. There were at least a hundred of them in the top crate alone, all carefully ordered and arranged in neat rows. I shut my eyes as I looked away, concentrating on my feet as we rose up the stairs to the landing of the manager’s office.

The door was unlocked. This told me one thing about these people, they believed they were invincible. Inside the room was like any other office. A desk in the centre with an overbearing armchair, numerous filing cabinets by one wall, and a long window to stare out at the factory floor along the other. The only thing that stood out was the safe. The two-by-two box was fitted into the floor of the office with a bio-organic scanner built into the door that prohibited anyone other than those authorized from accessing it.

Jordry immediately went to his knees. His hands hovered over the surface of the small door trying to locate the weakest part of the metal. The twitch in his expression told me he had found it. Rieka stepped close to me and watched as the Alchemist placed his hand on the surface of the door. I heard his heart rate elevate as he began to change the safe casing, turning the frame from steel to gold. Once he had accomplished that, he then caused it to turn into its liquid state and pour into the cavity where the safe frame had just been.

The molten liquid hardened and when he withdrew his hand, he held a piece of metal, a shiny iridescent silver disk.

“Can I see that?” Rieka said, looking at the object from over my shoulder. Jordry handed it to her. As she flipped it in her hands, running her fingers over the embossed surface she said, “It is definitely Gods’ Tongue. The pattern matches the one in The Control Room .” I forced my relief back down, buried it until we were back on the train.

“Are you sure?” Jordry asked her, returning to his feet.

Rieka seemed to hesitate before answering. “It looks almost identical to the one on the train.” She pointed to the circles carved into the metal surface. “But it isn’t missing any characters. This script is complete.”

“So we have it?” Jordry questioned, his tone teetering on the edge of astonishment.

“Yes. I believe you do.” She nodded, staring at the metal plate in her hand in utter disbelief.

“Rieka,” I stepped towards her and cupped her face in my hands, drawing her eyes from the Gods’ Tongue to look me in mine. “This is it. This is freedom.”

“Freedom,” she said as her eyes began to well with tears. Her head suddenly snapped towards the window, her eyes wide. “They’re coming!”

We made it as far as the courtyard, rain pissing down on top of us when a siren sounded. The night sky above us lit up with the spotlights of the Kensillan Aerial Core.

“YOU ARE SURROUNDED!” someone, likely their commander announced. “SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE MERCY OF THE CORE AND YOU SHALL LEAVE HERE WITH YOUR LIVES.”

Rieka, still beside me, squeezed my hand.

I looked up at the leader’s craft, and knowing that they would all be able to see me, I raise my hand in the air and invited them all to go and fuck their mothers.

“NOW!” I shouted.

The hovercraft at the far end suddenly collided with the one beside it as the air around us whistled, knocking it out of the sky. Below it, hiding behind a vehicle, Eleen jumped up and flung her hands back. The movement of the rain shifted, collecting into a single stream, a river in the sky. She slapped at the air and the river whipped out at the next hovercraft, crushing it like tinfoil.

The commotion allowed us to run for the fence line as Jae, having secured weapons in the security office, fired on the crafts to provide us cover.

I pulled the pin from my hair and looked at Rieka.

“Are you sure?” she asked, knowing it wasn’t just my secret to tell. But I had no choice, not here. Even if it meant my friends finally learned the truth, I had to help if I could help. When Rieka released my hand, I sliced into my forearm. My body immediately cried out from the pain of the cut, my taint forcing any trace of Jae’s blood out of me.

My blood ran from my arm like a serpent, coiling around my wrist until it pooled in the palm of my hand where it crystalised and lengthened into a crimson blade. The moment the blade had solidified, a shadow passed over the path before us and Rieka was ripped into the air. Her scream pierced the night and I watched in terror as she was flown upward. I knew what the Sky Hawk was going to do.

Dread filled me as Jordry pulled me for cover, his focus momentarily caught on the blade in my hand.

The moment I found Rieka in the sky, the Sky Hawk dropped her.

Her blood-curdling scream tore through my soul, ripping it from my body. I ran expecting to find her broken and lifeless on the ground. But when I reached the spot where she should have been, Rieka wasn’t there.

Mechanical whirring twittered above me and I looked up to see a creature made of metal carrying her.

No. Not creature. Saska with a pair of metal wings flittering on his back. The predator in her smiled down at me as she mouthed something to her saviour, and an equally terrifying smile appeared on his. Turning in the air he targeted the nearest hovercraft and threw Rieka at it. She landed atop the craft, rolling into a crouched position and then in a move so fast I only saw the after-effect, she’d smashed her arm through the window and had pulled the pilot right out.

Even without using her blessing, she was glorious.

As the craft fell, the pilot’s body discarded in the fall, Saska caught her again just long enough to drop her safely to the floor where she fell into a roll and disappeared into the chaos of the factory.

All around us dozens of Sky Hawks dove and swooped, each one linked to a hovercraft, forcing the Devo who wore the collar to obey their commands.

A high-pitched shriek pierced the night when a six-foot-tall Talon with a wing span of at least fourteen feet flapped in the air a few meters above me, the collar around its neck aglow.

Water struck out at it, the tether that connected it to the pilot flashing through the air like blue lightning. The wing Eleen had struck snapped sending the Talon crashing to the ground.

A second Talon launched at Eleen.

Blood misted the air as a bullet shot through the Talon’s head and his body dropped to the floor landing in a crumpled feathered heap at her feet. She gave Jae a quick glance in thanks and ran through a wall of fire that opened for her entry.

All around us, the Runners were fighting, striking at the hovercrafts and the brainwashed Devos who obeyed their commands in a desperate attempt to preserve their lives. The soldiers hadn’t expected us to be able to react so quickly with our taints. They likely had not expected the traps to have been destroyed, but the surprise would only last for a short time before they regrouped.

We needed to strike hard and fast. A well-oiled machine, the Runners fell into a familiar pattern, partnering up and targeting the closet enemy.

Jordry, the marksman that he was, drew the bow that was strapped to his back and began shooting at the aerial threats alongside Jae.

Across the yard, skidding in the dirt, Oric and Eleen came to a stop in front of a group of metal drums as Wade shielded them with a wall of solid air. They began pulling the lids off systematically. One after the other, thick black ribbons rose into the air like dancing serpents as Eleen wielded the fuel within, indicating to any Kensillan who saw her that she wasn’t any ordinary Current. Oric ignited them all. Tendrils of fire whipped through the air, striking at the crafts forcing the Sky Hawks to defend their pilots, leaving openings for Si’mon and Amida to attack. Anika with her light-manipulating wings, appeared and disappeared in the air as she used the spotlights of the crafts to vanish and sneak up on her targets, killing them before they knew she was even there.

With every hovercraft brought to the ground, three soldiers would emerge wielding Kensillan blast weapons.

When I found my target, I ran. They hadn’t seen me before the blade sliced through their neck. The next one lost an arm before my blade impaled in their chest. Another received my mother’s pin through the eye before being gutted.

I tried to keep my eye on Rieka, but she moved so fast, the predator in her more alert and aware than any I’d ever encountered. For every one of the enemy who met death by my blood, three had met it by her dagger. Black-handled Etrina was feasting tonight.

Talons fell to their deaths covered in burning oil, others were shot through with arrows. The unlucky ones faced an agonising death coated in the acid Amida spat if Jae didn't shoot them first. Whenever a soldier attempted to find a weapon they were crushed to death by Wade’s concussion wave.

The air was saturated in the enemy’s blood by the time the last hovercraft had fallen to the ground. Not a single Sky Hawk had been left alive.

We’d survived.

“That was only the first wave,” Malden saw fit to remind us when we all regrouped. Everyone was intact, a few cuts and bruises but we were all alive. No one said a thing about the blood-made blade in my hand. Though I didn’t doubt they would in time.

Oric took that as his signal and he ran back through the rain towards the factory doors and disappeared inside. A moment later smoke began to billow out, a red glow tinting the upper windows. We were going to burn this place to the ground.

Rieka walked up beside me, blood smeared on the leg of her pants as if she had wiped her hands on them, the hands that were now shaking slightly. I took one into mine and kissed it. The smile she gave me was intoxicatingly beautiful.

Behind us, an engine rumbled to life. From the driver’s seat, Jae looked up and smiled. He’d found us our ride home.

A wave of heat shot between Rieka and me.

Jae coughed, his smile vanishing as blood seeped from his mouth and he looked down to where the burn from a Kensillan blast weapon had struck him in the chest. He collapsed against the steering wheel.

“NO!” I whipped around and found the surviving soldier several meters away, the now empty weapon in his hands. Within seconds I’d found his heart and called on his blood. Clots formed; vessels burst. All colour drained from his face as the walls of his heart ruptured. He clutched at his chest as his legs fell out from under him. Another second passed. The soldier was dead.

I rushed over to the body, desperate to know why I hadn’t detected him. I rolled him over and found the small flat canister clipped onto the belt across his chest. They were kitting their soldiers up with Void vapour.

My body collapsed onto the ground, my blade now nothing but broken shards in the dirt.

I closed my eyes, hoping, praying for my taint to be wrong now too. But knew it wasn’t. Jae’s blood was silent.

Because Jae was dead.