Chapter 37
“This is the grossest misuse of my skills yet. I got shot, it happens. I’m fine now. Assigning me to be a neighborhood gossip feels like a punishment.” - Decoded message from ILF undercover operative Nightingale to ILF handler Hiro Tanaka
Briar
Movement makes my eyes fly open with alarm. I pat my hip instinctively, trying to find my holstered gun there.
Nothing.
Someone’s descending stairs. I find my holster; it was on the ground beside me.
“Finally.”
That’s Nova, embracing Ellison. I exhale and sit up, my body ready for a fight, but my mind telling it to relax.
Pax comes down the stairs next, pulling the bunker door closed behind him. A torch in his hand lights up the small space.
“We need to get out of here,” he says. “We’ve got about an hour ’til sunrise and they’ll be all over this jungle when there’s light. They have heat sensors. They don’t know much about aromium, but they know the predators in our jungle are no fucking joke, so they’re getting strapped.”
“This might be the best place for us,” Amira says. “If they don’t know about it and they have heat sensors, we’re safe in here.”
Pax shakes his head. “All they’ve got to do is break one person who knows about these bunkers. Then we’re all fucked.”
“He’s right,” I say, my voice groggy from sleep. “We have to move.”
“Move where, though?” Nova says. “If they have heat-seeking equipment, they’ll find us wherever we go.”
“I know a place.” I get to my feet.
The torchlight sends shadows flickering over the faces of everyone crammed into the tiny space.
Nova and Ellison are standing with their arms around each other, Ellison wearing a large backpack.
Beside me, Amira gets to her feet. The pale skin of Olin’s face is streaked with dirt, his hair a wild tangle that resembles a campfire.
And Pax—my friend-enemy-ally— saved all of us a few hours ago.
I want Marcus back, but that’s not an option. These people around me are worth fighting for. They’ve all had my back, and I won’t let them down.
“We’re going to McClain’s cave,” I say. “It has thick flowering vines over its entrance and the smell of the flowers will cover our scents. There are bats in it, so no screaming.”
“Lovely,” Amira mutters. “I don’t suppose any of them are billionaire superheroes?”
“On this island, you never know.” Ellison smiles.
“You know the small waterfall near the field where we found the flowers?” I ask Amira.
She nods, serious now.
“The cave is close to that. Look for orange flowers.”
“We’re all going together,” Pax says.
“I know. But in case something happens to me, she’ll be able to find it.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Amira says, like she can will it into fact.
“Let’s stop talking and get there,” Nova says. “Pax is right, we’re sitting ducks here.”
We gather our meager possessions and leave the bunker. After getting some sleep, I’m more clearheaded. Less sad and helpless—more white-hot furious at Ingrid Voss for whatever she did to Marcus.
The inky shade of the jungle at night is already dusty gray. A single bird calls, asking the others if it’s time to wake up. Thick, post-storm air carries scents of decay and renewal: floral perfumes, rotting leaves, and the freshness of rapidly flowing water in a nearby stream.
“I’ll take the back,” Pax says.
I nod and meet Nova’s gaze, silently asking her if I can lead our group. She’s on alert for both herself and Ellison, who isn’t used to evading jungle predators, both animal and human.
Nova gives me the slightest nod, and I incline my head at Amira, telling her to take the position behind me.
She’s completed the transition from Olympic archer to primal one. Amira is lethal not only because her aim is flawless but also because she doesn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a second when she shoots.
A bow is like an extension of her arm. Her mind doesn’t have to go through as many steps as other people’s do when shooting arrows; it’s just part of her being.
I wish she had more arrows. But a genie with a lamp could stay busy around the clock here—we work with what we have.
“I need the switch,” I say to Olin.
With my aromium activated, I’ll be able to see better in the dark, hear anyone approaching from further away, and run faster.
Ellison doesn’t have her implant anymore, but the rest of us do. Amira, Nova, and Olin all tug down the waistbands of their pants so I can scan the spot on their hips where the implants are.
I do my own last, and when I do, something rushes through me. It’s like I just plugged myself into a hive mind. There’s a hum of oneness, the surrounding plants and trees becoming part of me.
“What was that?” Amira says softly.
“You felt it, too?”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t feel anything, but the leaves on the trees were shaking a little bit. All of them.”
“It’s because of me.”
She locks eyes with me. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“Back at you.”
Moving as quickly as I can, I try to adjust to the amplified sounds flooding my ears. I’m more aware of the way my boots touch the soggy ground and everything I see is sharper and clearer.
It’s good, but it’s also overwhelming at a time when I’m straining to hear footsteps or voices.
I’ll come back to you. We’re going to burn this shit to the ground.
Marcus’s promises to me were all the warmth I needed. All the sleep I needed. All the food I needed. It didn’t matter how hard all of this was or that just surviving was an uphill battle when I was doing it with him.
Those bastards are going to pay dearly. It is one of their own experiments that forged the sword that will behead their regime. With my mother’s DNA and my father’s training, I’ll end every one of them or die trying.
I stop, shooting my left arm into the air and drawing my handgun with my right hand. Everyone behind me freezes.
The fletching on one of Amira’s arrows whispers against another as she draws it. I hear the same sound again—definitely a voice.
Making a fist with my left hand, I move my arm out to the left and then back again twice, signaling to the others that someone is close.
Amira’s bow groans softly as she draws. My heart thuds as I wait for another sound.
It won’t be all of Ingrid’s soldiers at once. They’ll be spread out.
Carefully, I turn my feet so I’m facing the five people behind me. There’s enough light for me to make out their serious expressions now.
I hold up my hand and flash five fingers, then close my hand into a fist and flash my fingers again, doing it twice so I know everyone sees it.
That’s our signal for no guns. Whoever is nearby, we need to take them out as quietly as possible. It’s riskier because we have to get very close without being detected, but we can’t risk alerting Voss’s people to our location.
Olin relays the meaning of my signal to Pax through hand signals. Pax nods. He doesn’t even have a gun that I know of.
I hear footsteps now. They’re almost undetectable; it’s someone trained to walk quietly through the jungle.
Closing my eyes, I mentally reach into my mind. I won’t lose a single one of the people behind me. I’m not scared. Instead of worrying about someone else’s bloodthirst, I access my own.
They took Marcus from me. They might as well have killed him. They want to take everyone else I care about on this island. Other than Mae, these friends who are more like family are all I have left.
My veins flood. I don’t open my eyes because I don’t need to. A new sense has awakened in me, and the only way I can describe it is that I feel what’s happening. Beneath the ground, tree roots awaken. Above it, thick, thorny vines twist and wind around trees and across the ground.
I could control a four-piece string quartet before, but now that my fear is gone and I’m only calling on my rage, it’s an entire orchestra. I can conduct this earthy symphony with absolute precision.
When I summon the lianas—the heavy, woody ropes that spring from the soil and climb and loop around trees—their music is deep and heavy.
Even though some of them are as thick as a strong man’s forearm, they’re nimble.
They join the thorny vines, defying the laws of nature as they rapidly untangle themselves and mobilize.
Strangler figs unwrap themselves from around the ancient trees they were slowly suffocating, answering the rise of my invisible baton.
These trees and vines and even the leaves—from the tiniest bright-green sprouts to the massive elephant ears dragging on the jungle floor—have always been peaceful.
But I feel their fury, too: for the volcano that decimated them, for the storms that crack and ruin the branches they’ve lovingly grown over hundreds of years, but mostly for the people who came here and stole from them.
Humans stole their flowers, their trunks, and their water. They killed and maimed nature with no regard. Just like they see my rage, I see theirs.
Fight with us, they say. And fight for us.
My eyes remain closed, but I see Theron racing toward us.
He’s snarling, his eyes narrowed. Spit flies from the side of his mouth.
He’s wielding a huge axe, the end a stone knapped into a deadly edge.
He lashed the stone onto a solid branch for a handle.
With the weapon raised in the air and his thick, corded muscles flexing, he looks like hell itself about to drag us into its depths.
It’s not through my own eyes that I see the six people behind him, but through the vines. I don’t see them in a traditional sense, but I know. It must be the exiles who left Pax’s camp.
An arrow lodges in Theron’s chest. At his size, it’s like a pushpin. He pulls it out easily and casts it aside.
He’s not getting any closer to Amira. I dig as deeply into my mind as I can and send my command through the connection.
Attack. Protect us.
A deep hissing sensation floods through me. Lianas and vines lunge at Theron, pulling him to the ground.
A vine easily takes the axe from his hand. He bellows with alarm, reaching toward the people behind him as he’s dragged by the lianas, his lower legs tightly encircled.
My connection flickers, like a new message incoming and interrupting my flow.
There are more predators coming from a different direction. They’re close.
Energy is leached out of me as I try to focus on both groups of people at the same time. There are more in the second group. Closer to a dozen.
Ingrid’s soldiers. My frustration flickers like a hot coal. I don’t know how to send my defenders in two different directions at the same time.
The six people behind Theron are retreating. I want to finish him, but I don’t know how close Ingrid’s soldiers are.
I redirect my fury toward the new threat. They probably have guns, so I pull on every ounce of wrath inside me. A tsunami of rage and power floods through me, blinding in its intensity.
A dim light flickers somewhere. It fades. It’s going to darken without me.
I’m empty, though. I give in to the darkness.