Rebel's Consort - Phoenix Book 1 (3 page)

“You’d be dead now if I wanted a target.”

Trace shifted his shoulder against the steel door of a half-submerged semi. The truck’s rubber tires long since salvaged, and the trailer covered in concrete rubble from an ancient loading dock, the worthless site provided a discrete meet point. He flipped a small panel, typed in a code and, at the click of the lock, entered the trailer and turned off his shield.

Clayton Ebris, codename Shepherd, was one of only two people who knew Trace Boden as Onyx and could identify him. Ebris was the only one with a past that came close to being as horrendous as his own. Yet, eight years of missions had developed respect between the two of them. It had given Trace some hope that his own future held enough time to pay back for the actions of his past.

“The break at the detention center came close to a blackout. Without your word on contact with Piper, we would have sent someone in because we lost signal.”

“More to it than erratic transmissions?”

Ebris nodded and leaned back against one of the stacks of crates in the trailer. The closed metallic cover of his cybernetic eye reflected the artificial light from the ceiling, giving an odd illumination of the silver. The dim light projected his heavily muscled frame and striated blond, brown hair into darker relief. The effect made Trace uneasy and presented Clay as more machine than man. A reality he could dispel only from working together, trust built the hard way through dangerous missions riding the edge of death.

“Radar has intel that Regents are expanding their trade to the other international hubs.” Clay gave a quick snort, shook his head, and continued. “I expect that we’ll see a pickup in Piper’s activities but I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“These children need someone to help them.”

“Calm down, Boden. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get them out. I’m sure Radar has a plan, though my hope is that he’s working something further up the cycle. Extracting injured children isn’t a solution. Stopping the Regent guards from scouting out the orphans and abducting newborns will end this.”

“Neutralizing the Regents would stop it.”

“And while I feel your anger, total anarchy isn’t a solution either. It’s taken us several generations just to get back to cities, some sense of government, and a safer, if not peaceful world for the majority.”

Trace turned away, not willing to become distracted by a political battle he couldn’t influence. Given that Clay wasn’t completely sold on the words he delivered, and spent all his waking hours trying to offer security to those who struggled, it wasn’t worth the debate. “Go back to the transmission problem.”

“I haven’t finished running my search, Radar either, but it looks as if the transmissions coincided with Piper completing the extraction.”

Trace whipped back around. “A planned interference? That means they knew she was coming?”

“You’re going to lose yourself assuming Piper’s a woman, but I’m obviously wasting my breath. Yes, the activity could even pinpoint the kid as a plant to lure her in. Flagging us of his circumstance would automatically commit Piper for a mission.”

“If they’d planned that well, then they could have taken her. So this was what, a practice run? For what?”

“You could probably tell me, since you spend all your waking hours on Piper’s missions.”

“A crackdown now makes little sense. Piper’s been extracting kids for years.”

“So have others. But if Radar’s correct, and the supply line is expanding, then they need more kids, not fewer.”

The bile rose in Trace’s throat as he closed his eyes and tried to dispel the images of surgery after surgery. Those days were gone but the waking nightmares never left. “Their option to increase the supply is to clamp down on those being saved.” He smashed his fist into the trailer’s wall. The pain barely fazed him, but it reminded him that his hands were of more value than as just punching gloves. “At least with some of the children surviving the surgeries, the Regents could hold off rebellion with the illusion that they weren’t monsters. This will get out. How do they expect to cover up what they’re doing?”

“I don’t have answers for you. I will, however, be clamping down on routing intel to Piper until we’ve got a better handle on this. No one from our teams is expendable.”

With a nod, Trace glanced at the square black box Clay had placed on the floor. “The AG?”

“Ten pints. Three fresh, seven frozen.” Clay nudged the box with his foot. “Given what we know, supplies will get tight. That’s why I had you meet here instead of my place, less time in the open. Try to make this last.”

“Will do.” He bent to pick up the case and extended a hand. “Thanks.”

“All in a day’s work, brother.”

***

Careful to avoid the lights streaming through the occasional drainage grates of New Delphi’s streets above, Analena made her way over the uneven mounds of concrete, mortar and asphalt toward the darker bowels of Down Below. Hollows dug out by hand and machine, makeshift squatter’s ruins in the rubble, provided shelter to house the basest of the work force. Few, if any, entrances were visible.

The people were there nonetheless.

The occasional call, hawking of water, fresh kelp strips, and transient job offerings coincided with pockets of harsh lights ahead. Rechargeable neon gas tubes contorted in lettering of pink, blue and green—the Down Below version of advertising—decorated small open-air stalls in a physical demarcation between the public trading places and opportunities for twenty-four-hour services. The haphazard homes in the dark, recessed communities, represented two-thirds of the city’s population. Surprising, if one stood beyond the city grid and compared the huge metropolis built on metal stilts with the dark, half-mile high layer beneath it.

She’d been born above the grid. But her life, like that of Onyx and so many of the rebel teams, existed in Down Below and along the fringes of New Delphi.

With a mental shake, she tried to dislodge concern about Onyx.

He didn’t want thanks, but he would want something else as barter. Onyx never took her money. He only accepted promises. That had worried her ever since he’d become so critical to the success and failure of her missions. Fortunately, she’d had no failures and, to be fair, she could credit his presence for the health and well-being of the children she’d rescued.

The promises he extracted were her commitment. A promise that he would be her first call, her only call, for help.

She’d be a liar if she didn’t admit she was relieved he’d agreed to support her, but given her circumstances she worried equally that the man who’d had her back might show up for something more. Best case, he was coming for her. She didn’t have that kind of freedom for any man, but, if she had to, she could offer minutes of her life. It couldn’t be worse than she’d endured in the past.

Worse, he was coming for her kids. An unacceptable consequence. She had killed to save them. She would kill to keep them.

Haunted brown eyes filtered through her mind. No, her imagination was filling a void. While the crystals’ visions had proved true for her missions and her kids, they had no relevance for her personal life. She didn’t believe those eyes held any connection to Onyx, and if they did, they most likely delivered warning.

She would find a way to pay him and return to their old method of business. Even so, she anticipated one expensive house call. A tremor pulsed along her skin as she endeavored to focus on the risks around her.

The boy’s tightened grip, coinciding with her elevated anxiety, performed the objective. She rubbed her cheek against the crown of his head as she analyzed her path.

Every few steps, the glint of watchful eyes lasered from the dark. The monitoring of her movements was no less dangerous than the search beams above, or worse, the ever-diligent New Delphi immunization squads searching for newborns and pre-pubescent children in Down Below.

She angled away from the mountains of rubble and the city’s nexus. Zigzagging to her destination took twice as long as a straight route, but safety required the extra deviations. She finally broke through the last line of thick pillars, computer-integrated steel columns that supported the foundation of New Delphi’s grid. Faster now, free of the grid’s overhang and deep into the high, wild grasses, she headed for the maze of communication dishes and security beacons. One-hundred-foot structures of steel, cable and wires formed on thirty-foot concrete cubes circled the city of fifteen thousand people.

Beyond the outposts existed only broken bits of blacktop, thick brush, dense forest, and kudzu. The aggressive foliage blanketed the lands between New Delphi and Little Pitt, the next reconstruction city in the northeast quadrant.

Not her target.

With a press at her belt, a slow buzz folded around her body and the boy’s. A dense cone of electronic disturbance covered them from head to toe, enough to shield them from detection for several seconds, though not enough to trigger an alarm.

She shifted the child higher, gaining a tight hold around the back of his thighs, and carefully drew back a thick layer of vines from the base of the closest satellite dish. Plastering her back against the rough concrete surface, she pushed and squeezed through the manmade crack to an earthborn one. The going was tough with two bodies. She pushed harder as the crevice narrowed. After several minutes of sliding, she finally cleared the entrance.

Black sucked away both light and sound. She waited several minutes, confirming no one had found her entrance before her appearance or followed from behind. Confident of her success, she hurried along a trail to her right, relying on nothing but blind faith and years of practice.

She bent her knees as she moved, adjusting her posture to absorb the angle of decline and the boy’s added weight. The rough sponge of her soles found firm footing in familiar sections.

Ten minutes in, the console on her hand chirped with confirmation of Wolf’s contact with Onyx, and their approach. They’d enter the caves below from another point. Given Onyx would be blindfolded, they would take a bit longer.

The ground evened out, and she squatted with the final plateau two feet in front of her. “I’m setting you down.”

The child’s arms strangled her, refusing to let go as a garbled whine pitched in his throat.

Taking one of his hands, she patted it against the flat rock and eased his fingers to feel the edge and nothingness that followed. “There’s a jump here. I have to get down first.”

At his gurgle of noise, she pressed a hand to the back of his head. “I’m not leaving you. I promise. It’ll be one minute. Hold my other hand.”

After a quick snuffle, his hand unclenched from the back of her shirt and clutched her fingers. She settled the boy beside her, keeping a hold of him. One quick hop and she turned back to the chest-high slab of stone to scoop him back into her arms.

With any of the other extractions, she’d light the strip on her belt for the child. The green neon lent a freaky view of the tunnels, but visibility comforted the children after the darkness.

This boy wouldn’t know the difference. She opted for another plan.

“Can you tell how quiet it is?”

He nodded against her shoulder as she lengthened her strides.

“We’re about fifty feet below the surface.”

The hands clenched again.

“They can’t hear us down here, or find us. There are channels of water that run through these caves. You’ll hear one as we get closer.”

He shifted again.

“The streams lead to the sea.”

That elicited a rumble of his stomach. As disgusting as the seaweed plankton wafers that fueled much of the adult population were, it was still food. She slipped one out of her pocket and raised it to his mouth. He turned his head away.

Yeah, disgusting.

The kid probably hadn’t eaten in a day or two. With his surgical nightmare still fresh, the doctors had probably held off on food to keep him properly sedated for his ordeal. Or worse, they hadn’t bothered to feed him.

“We’ve got food and water.”

Tension again, followed by small shivers. No doubt, he been tempted him with drugged food or water. A popular ploy used on several of the others, none of them with parents alive to know or care where they’d gone. “It’s clean. You may find it tastes sweet, though the other kids kind of like it.”

She ignored the noise in his throat. “Bits will probably jabber too much. Please forgive her, she’s only five years old and gets carried away. You’ll like Hena. She’s everybody’s big sister and a wonderful storyteller.”

Analena continued with the anecdotes, one for each of the eleven children sequestered in her home. With so many people, there were plenty of stories to keep the boy calm. His grip loosened the deeper they proceeded beneath the earth.

Chapter 3

A wisp of fabric fell to the ground at Trace’s feet. He followed the trajectory back to the young man standing before him.

“You’re to wear the blindfold.”

“I’m not wearing anything to impede my vision. If you don’t trust me, then take the AG to Piper and leave me. I can try to walk her through surgery if need be, but I can’t produce blood out of thin air.”

He watched the young man’s hands clench and unclench and realized that perhaps the effort to integrate into Piper’s team was futile. He’d tried too hard to be a part of something good. His punishment for his transgression didn’t allow a place for him fighting beside those with purer objectives.

“You think I don’t know you’ve spent years working me just to get to Piper? You’ve been a help but that’s between us, you helping me out of jams.” Wolf’s jaw worked as if debating whether to say more. “I owe you, not Piper. You’ve never bothered to explain your obsession and I’m not putting—the team at risk.”

Good points, but Trace could hardly explain betrayal and life choices to the young man or his fixation on the woman behind the missions. Not when he’d finally made headway with a request for face-to-face help. He needed this chance, knowing he’d never have another. Warranted or not, he refused to give up. If what he suspected of the operation proved true, then she offered the only path for him to right old wrongs. Buckling under to Wolf’s scrutiny wouldn’t work for that objective.