2. CHAPTER 2
Zayne
The Territories
Bluehaven, Antor
Adrop of rain landed against Zayne's eyelid. He gasped.
Gunfire rumbled like thunder from the town’s center, and distant explosions vibrated the earth. The stillness on his block closed in on him, blocking out all that war. The fighting moved on, leaving only the broken behind.
And his friend’s dead weight crushed his lungs.
“Edwards?” He rolled his tongue over the film of dust covering his mouth and coughed. “Hey… Edwards…”
No response.
“Come on.” His voice broke in a whisper. “Sara? You can't…”
Grief crushed him, even though only pieces of his mind caught up with what his body already knew and felt. He reached around his friend to check her wound, his palm sliding over loose clotters swollen with blood. The explosion must have dislodged them.
Though Zayne’s chest heaved with pain and panic, Edwards didn’t move.
Why? Of all the people in this division, why her?
He clenched his hand and pressed his fist against the gunshot wound, even though no blood flowed out. That silence ensconcing the block swallowed him up, dividing his mind between the chaos buried within and his duty with lethal efficiency.
He pushed himself up, but pain ripped through his thigh and flattened him on the ground.
“Medic!” Zayne scanned the surroundings for Brock, his heart hammering. “Medic!” If Brock hadn't made it—
No. No letting panic crash through that quiet in his mind.
Zayne held his breath and released.
He felt his mother's hand sliding over his, her warm voice filling his mind, reminding him not to waste energy fighting himself.
So, he allowed his thoughts to wash over him, of his squad and their families, of the sisters waiting for Corporal Sara Edwards back home. And then let their faces drift away until he felt everything and nothing all at once. Until everything faded into the background while his breathing slowed.
His mother’s church had taught her this form of meditation—the silence—and she’d passed it along to Zayne.
It wasn't a faith he shared, that of the Followers. They believed in the strands of fate tying them to the Old World and to the cycles of humanity. They believed in eternal justice that lived in the hearts of those who resisted tyranny. These tenets guided Mom’s life.
He’d only gone with her to a meeting once, and it horrified him that she'd put herself in danger by sneaking into an unsanctioned, underground church. Still, a few of their practices helped, like the silence. Except he didn't use it to replenish himself as they did. The opposite, actually.
Better to feel nothing. Think nothing. Be nothing.
To leave it all behind in the silence, every speck of his soul, so the war filled him up within whatever it demanded of him.
Right now, it demanded that he get his shit together.
First, observe, even if nothing felt real. Then take one action.
The initial shots pierced the air only a few minutes ago, and in that time the soldiers reduced the block to shattered windows, splintered doors, and blood-stained brick.
Two dead soldiers tangled like weeds in a wild field.
One body hung from a window beside him, another halfway out the closest door.
Most of the uniforms bore the gold stitching of his comrades, not the rebel United soldiers.
A massacre.
Zayne lay here, trapped, lacking the leverage to rip the shrapnel free.
And he couldn't leave Edwards behind regardless.
To get to the rest of his squad, he needed to take her with him.
Moving a person with her injuries was too dangerous, but that didn't matter anymore, despite that he refused to think about why.
Keeping hold of her with one arm, he anchored his other on the ground and threw his weight to the side. The metal twisted inside his thigh and seized him with the shock of pain. A frustrated growl rolled out from deep within his chest.
Normally, Zayne would be able to roll over with Edwards on top of him and rise with her easily. This was simply a matter of enduring the pain. And he'd be damned if he allowed that to keep him from his squad.
Unacceptable weakness. Completely unacceptable.
Zayne yelled for Brock again in a furious roar. “Medic!” If Brock didn't make it either… His mind shut down the thought, refusing to imagine losing his oldest friend.
He attempted the roll once more, right when a broken door swung open, and Brock burst out.
“Are you serious?” Brock dragged Graves after him with a scarlet hand wrapped around the new soldier's jacket. “Do not do that again.”
Zayne breathed out slowly, leg screaming with pain. For all that effort, he accomplished nothing but worsening the leg injury.
“Yeah, that's what you get,” Brock said. “I'm glad it hurt. Maybe you'll finally learn your lesson.”
The relief of seeing his friend and the new private rushed through him in wave after wave. “Don't take forever next time.”
“I had my hands full with this one.” Brock forced Graves to sit against the pale brick of the apartment building and pushed the kid's head up. “Stay here. You’re okay.”
“Is he hurt?” Zayne asked.
“He’s fine. Just scared.” Brock slid to the ground, grabbing for Edwards’ wrist.
“Her clotters—”
“I know.” After a moment, his friend laid Edwards’ hand gently against her belly, voice quiet but confident. “She’s gone.”
His hold on her wound tightened. Thoughts vanished into the silence.
Brows knit, the medic flourished a thin flashlight to examine the metal spearing Zayne’s thigh. “I think…” The light caught Zayne’s hands pressing into her abdomen. “You're straining your wound applying that kind of pressure to her.”
Zayne didn’t move.
What could he have done to save her?
Misery consumed Brock's eyes. “Edwards is dead, Sergeant.”
“I know. We have men near the dumpster. Check on them.” His voice remained level despite the intense hold he maintained on an injury that no longer bled.
Brock shook his head. “The projectile’s gone through her into your thigh. I need to extract it.”
“I know what’s in my own leg. I know Edwards is dead. I don’t know about our men burning in the garbage. I’m fine right here.”
“No.” Brock put on a pair of gloves. “With all due respect, Sergeant Riven, this is my call under these circumstances. As soon as you’re stabilized, I’ll go to them.”
If Brock thought there was a chance anyone remained alive, then he'd run to them first. Still, the dead deserved their care. “Brock—”
“No, Zayne. That's final.”
He clenched his muscles. Pain splintered through his leg, and he growled low. “Get this out of me then. Immediately.”
“I need a minute. Your skin melted against it.” Brock injected him with a red cap. He shouldn’t waste their pain medicine on something like this, not when there’d be soldiers with far more serious injuries.
Alcohol poured over his wound, and he dug his fingers into Edwards, clenching his eyes shut.
He hadn't even seen who shot her. Damn him.
Garbage smoldered.
Smoke drifted up.
No movement.
He pulled his hands away from Edwards as the rain picked up, sprinkling over them in drops of cold that wet his dry tongue.
Brock slid the scalpel into his skin. Pain burned away at his leg. Burned so deeply.
Now that was mercy.
The only mercy war cared to give.
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
Zayne jolted awake on the Rail, wrenching his leg in a flash of pain. The stench of blood clung to his senses, but he didn't remember his dream, only that he'd wanted to wake up.
He turned his forehead against the cool window of the train to remind himself he was home and not back on the battlefield with the five they’d lost and the two they never found.
That only thickened the guilt choking him.
It didn't feel right being back in Kallum, the capital, less than twenty-four hours after the massacre.
A stale sadness drained the color from the line of trees outside the window until concrete walls flashed by as the Rail approached Zayne's station.
Within an hour of returning to camp after the massacre, the Phaedra sent word that Zayne needed to come home ahead of his squad for a special operation.
His father waited for him at the prison, which sounded ominous.
Those were the only details he'd received.
It all must have connected to that classified letter.
The Rail slowed as it entered the military base, which circled the Phaedra’s tower in a gently cresting valley.
Tall concrete walls blocked off the rest of the city, while the Great Phaedran Range hugged the eastern side of the capital to form a natural barrier.
Acres of forest and highly secure government facilities filled the area between the two.
He’d spent more time here than in his own apartment, but today it felt foreign.
Everything felt foreign.
When the Rail lurched to a halt, he winced, his leg pulsating as he hauled himself up by his crutch.
Last night, he took a dose of what civilians nicknamed medicinal Pixi Dust, which wasn't too different from calling a lion a kitten.
The term infantilized the most powerful military-grade weapon in history.
While the Old World technology was pronounced Pixi, it stood for Protocol X: Isolation–PXI.
And when the Old Ones abandoned everyone on Earth to die, they left it behind not as a gift, but as impenetrable prison walls.
The nanobot technology destroyed any hint of the artificial intelligence necessary to travel to a hospitable world.
Meaning no one on Earth could ever find where the Old Ones migrated to and threaten their way of life.