Chapter 65
KALI
Ignoring the aches blooming in my joints like flowers in spring, I swiveled, blocking a large fist seeking my jaw. My forearm screamed as it sustained the hit.
“Coward,” the nameless soldier hissed at me, his insult as heavy as the gates Sadira and Ryder were controlling remotely. We had seconds left before they slammed shut.
And once they did, our tech team wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Everyone who’d managed to slip through the gates would become locked in, the band of them serving as our entire force.
Nowhere near enough. Not without the support of the city folks who opposed the regime the Head of Ilasall imposed.
“If the price of freedom is fear”—I kicked the soldier’s knee, and the satisfying creak of his bones as they gave way vibrated up to my toes—“then yes, I’m a coward.”
He fell, his uniform too synthetic and thin to cushion his fall. “Bitch.” Holding on to the wall of an apartment building, he slowly rose back up. The street stretched behind him, flooded with our people pouring through the gates.
“Having a rude mouth doesn’t make you better than me.” I ripped the gun out of the holster attached to my thigh. I still had one round of bullets left.
The rest of my supplies had assisted me in leaving a sea of dead near the gates when the first wave of us had breached Ilasall’s wall. I didn’t need to look to know a shower of scarlet bathed the road.
“The likes of you should be punished for turning away from us.” The soldier scrambled to find a weapon—knife or a handgun—but the two sheaths secured across his chest were empty, like his holster. “We should throw you into a cage, free for all to use until you get pregnant.”
My molars ground at the visual he’d conjured. The belief people were worth something only if their genitalia functioned properly, and even then, that it was all they were supposed to do with their lives, shaved my nerves, flaying them layer by layer.
“You’re wrong,” I said, crossing the few yards between us, my boots sticking to the asphalt from the drying blood. If I glanced down, I suspected I would find the black leather shiny. The puddle of red liquid I’d tripped into less than a minute ago had splashed my pants up to my knees.
I clicked the safety off. The weight of the semi-automatic handgun tested my muscles as I aimed the barrel at the throat of the man before me. “People are not toys for your government to play with.”
An abrupt, scratchy laugh punched me as the long-faced man balanced on one leg, the other bent at an awkward angle.
“You can’t see it, can you?” He clutched the concrete wall of a dwelling housing black-banded.
“This”—the soldier waved to indicate the mayhem around us, the groans and bellows, the collapsing bodies and reverberating gunshots—“it’s not going to work.
Instead of wasting our time, you should be doing your duty.
” Spit accompanied his words, and a splatter of wetness struck my mouth.
Nauseating warmth coated my lips as his saliva dribbled down my chin.
Pressing the muzzle still warm from the last shot under his jaw, I purred, “And what exactly would be that?”
“Having children,” he spat out. “Helping us to survive.”
That was the single thought Ilasall had drilled into the minds of its citizens—avoiding the extinction of our species by any means, at any cost whatsoever.
According to them, either of the two paths you could take—becoming black- or green-banded—was worth enduring merely to ensure new souls saw the light of day.
“Then survive a bullet up your ass.” I aimed the barrel lower, squeezed the trigger—
Thunder knocked on my eardrums as the bullet pierced the man between his legs.
His eyes bugged out, and the shouts and grunts, the screech of tires as the unaffected-by-the-poison military arrived, and the clash of steel all disappeared.
The soldier stared at the stain spreading across his crotch, his black cargo pants soaking in the blood rushing out of where his balls had used to dangle.
Finally, he screamed. Slumped down. Curled into a ball on the sidewalk. Trembled in red pooling underneath him.
All the while I…just watched.
“This is how it feels to have no rights.” My boot smashed into his hands covering his groin, and his choke imbued me with renewed vigor. “No ownership over your body.”
With another kick, I sent him on his back. His neck strained as he howled his pain.
“No value other than your ability to conceive offspring.” I stomped on his wound, but only with a fraction of my full strength. Didn’t need him passing out and floating in the heaven of unconsciousness.
“How does it feel, huh?” Crouching down, I shoved his arms away and dipped the muzzle into the mush between his thighs, rejoicing in his second scream.
“Do you like it?” I asked, drawing a line of scarlet up his dark green shirt, the fabric turning reddish brown from his blood. “Does it feel right?”
“We,” he ground out, “will eradicate you.” Hatred poured from his hiss, as venomous as a snake’s.
As I exchanged my handgun for one of the knives Zion had gifted me, the wrinkles across the man’s forehead deepened. He thought I was going to shoot him.
Such a cute little boy, a mindless soldier toy.
The city had forgotten to teach him there were ends worse than a quick death. For example, having the backs of his ankles sliced and his abdomen stabbed, both of his kidneys punctured in specific locations.
Zion and Eislyn had taught me a thing or two about human anatomy.
“Have fun living.” Using the soldier’s pants, I wiped my blade clean. Less bacteria would ensure he suffered for longer.
“Behind you!” a familiar voice warned me, and I rolled aside, my shoulders shrieking from abrasion, the concrete sidewalk tiles an unforgiving surface.
In a string, a row of tiny lead cylinders chipped the wall where my head used to be. The roar of bullets accompanied the torrent of dust raining down on the mutilated soldier.
My hands automatically strayed to my weapons, but it was Tarri who shot the military puppet who’d attempted to kill me in cold blood.
One blink, and a hole appeared above his right eye. The next, and crimson dribbled down his blond eyebrow. The third, and the ground welcomed his corpse. The black helmet strapped under his chin bounced off the asphalt, the hit drowning in the bubble of clangs and roars and cries.
“Are you okay?” The short waitress, who’d befriended me on my first day at Vice, jogged over to me. “I know I’m not supposed to protect you, but my partner…” The crimson streaking her blond strands told me the rest of the story before she did. “Lucia is dead.”
The no-nonsense owner of a shop specializing in leather and steel works. The person who’d crafted my collar, Zion’s chains, his nipple piercing, and my full-body sheaths.
The one Gedeon and Zion had spoken so highly of.
The one I’d put off meeting, telling myself I would do it later.
Another person I didn’t get to know because of my failed promise.
My fist struck the sidewalk. “FUCK.” I saturated my scream with all the rage storming in my muscles. The damage I rained on my throat diverted my attention away from the sting emerging in my split knuckles.
“I know.” As Tarri extended a muscular arm toward me, the wisps of mist parted, revealing a deep gash in her limb. “But we don’t have the time. We can’t afford any breaks.”
Using one of the six knives I still had with me, I tore the hemline off my shirt. “You’ll bleed out.” Refusing to acknowledge her objections, I wrapped the synthetic fabric around the injury to staunch the bleeding.
She didn’t so much as flinch while I secured the knot, too focused on scrutinizing our surroundings. “Shit, I don’t know where the Spire is,” she cursed.
Gedeon had cornered me this morning, growling his demand for the three of us to meet at the highest glass building in the city if we got separated.
Which had happened less than a minute after we’d stormed the west gates. The water droplets had formed a soup so thick we’d waded through the fog unseeing, our enemies as invisible as our friends.
I could only pray that neither Gedeon nor Zion had experienced the type of luck Lucia had.
Willing the lump in my throat to dissolve, I surveyed the street. A large part of Ilasall’s military had been incapacitated, but enough of the brainwashed soldiers still stood.
Somebody had either cautioned them about the water—another traitor who’d slept in our beds—or they’d figured out the cause for the mysterious and untreatable sickness quicker than predicted.
Dressed-in-green-and-black marionettes mingled with our people, the clash of weapons and fists overfilling the street thirteen blocks from the Spire.
Holes with jagged edges marred the public transportation and personal vehicles of the green-banded.
Bullets had distorted the silver metal, soiling its shine and smoothness.
Citizens wearing both green and black wristbands either stood their ground against the government or cowered in their apartment buildings as gray as the fog, ten stories tall, built to spin your mind and confuse your sense of direction.
“I know where we need to go,” I yelled to Tarri, and we jumped back into the chaos.
Squeezing the trigger again and again, I swept the barrel through the helmet-clad mass of heads. Except I targeted their chests. As long as their lungs collapsed, I counted it as a win.
A shallow pop signaled the last bullet had already left the chamber, and I tossed the empty handgun aside. The toy forged from metal and plastic clattered on the asphalt as I plucked out my two knives and slit the carotid artery of a soldier Tarri was tackling.
“That way,” I shouted through the tumult, gesturing toward the adjoining street.
If we apprehended the seven Heads ruling the city and broadcasted our message across the city-wide network, we might be able to sway more of the hesitating citizens to take our side.
Seeing the projection of their leaders on their knees, their mouths gagged and their hands cuffed behind their backs, could make anyone reconsider their choices.
“Go!” Tarri snapped a petite soldier’s neck, one of the few women allowed to join their military’s ranks. Ilasall was truly throwing everything it had at us. “I’ll cover your back.”
A nod, and I was sprinting toward the crossroad, using the silvery cars as covers whenever lead cylinders tried to adorn me with craters, hacking my way through anyone who dared to throw me a challenge.
Every dozen steps, enemy blades caressed my skin, and before I could realize it, my torso burned from the open wounds.
Kicks rattled my bones and painted my flesh with hundreds of bruises.
Sweat dripped into my eyes, lighting them on fire, the blaze as hot as the one fueling me.
My chest heaved as oxygen played a dance of evasion, staying just out of reach instead of filling my lungs.
Yet I persisted.
Drenched in bodily liquids, mine and my opponents’, I invited the murkiness obstructing my vision to chill my blood.
Instead, it heated it. Brought it to a simmer.
And Tarri’s cry boiled it.