Stronger (23 page)

Ty chuckles and slaps his friend on the back. “Show them how it’s done, Lex.”

“Sure,” I say, swallowing a giggle. I whistle as I pick up the carrier and hoist it onto the hoverbus. It clangs loudly as I set it down and take my seat.

Ian passes me wearing an amused grin and sporting hot pink cheeks. “Showoff.” He ruffles my hair in a brotherly way before taking the seat across from me and peppering me with questions about the mission. All of the Vals lean closer to listen.

Ty slides in beside me. “So proud of you, Lexie,” he whispers.

His words mean more to me than he’ll ever know. Being born a Deb, I was never sure I’d ever earn such praise from my family. I recline into my brother and continue sharing the details of my mission as we head back toward headquarters. To home.

Bryant is sitting outside the bunker when we get back. He jumps to his feet and wipes off his butt as we descend the hoverbus stairs. “How’d it go?”

“Perfectly.” My dad brushes past Bryant, calling for a cart to bring the metal inside. “Let everyone know we’ll have a group meeting as soon as I give this to my wife. We need to move fast now. I’m not sure how long it will be before they notice the missing thorocium. Especially since Carter ID’ed Lexie.”

“You think he told anyone he saw her there?” Ian asks. He and Ty are hefting the carrier between them.

“It’s a possibility we can’t overlook.” My dad takes the straps Ian was holding, and helps Ty set it onto the rolling cart. “He could have watched her leave and tried to follow. Hoverbuses don’t leave tracks, but there are other ways to figure out where we went.”

“Is that why we didn’t take the direct route back?”

My dad nods.

“Carter?” Bryant asks. “From school?”

“Yeah.” Ty grimaces. “The guy who broke Lexie’s bones. He’s now a full fledged warrior assigned to the warehouse.”

“He stopped me, but let me go.”

Bryant sticks his hands in his back pocket. “No other problems?”

I give him a sunny smile. “None. We got it.”

My dad leans against the carts handles. “She trained hard for this, was there really any doubt?”

“Of course. Last time Lexie was the main operative, she managed to get caught and experimented on,” my brother says. “So, yeah.”

There’s a serious undertone to his voice, letting me know how worried he really was. I can see the same pain in the way my dad’s eyes cloud over, too. I don’t want the memories of my imprisonment to ruin this moment. I need to fix it.

“Shut it.” I playfully jab at his shoulder, forcing a laugh. “I came through this time.”

“Come on. Let’s get these to your mom,” my dad says. He and Ty and the other Vals leave Bryant and me alone.

As soon as they’re gone, he wraps in me in a hug. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Aw, did you miss me?”

“So what if I did?” He gives me a little squeeze. “I used to miss Starburst, too.”

I stiffen and try to shrug off his arms. “Do we really need to talk about her?”

“Yeah, we kind of do.” He holds me tight. “It is different with you.”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, I know. Less perfect.”

“I missed talking to you, holding you. With her it was just this need to see her, to please her. It wasn’t… natural. Or real.”

“Let’s make sure we establish again how I’m not Starburst. Am I perfect?” I ask with a sigh.

“No. You’re too stubborn and you’re a little too short.” He rests his chin on the top of my head. “Though that does make you a decent resting spot for my chin. But you’re too beautiful.”

My body softens. “Do you mean that?”

“I do. But you’re perfect in one way.”

“How’s that?”

He kisses the top of my head. “Perfect for me.”

“Really?”

He cradles my cheek in his palm. “Yeah and that’s the real difference between Starburst and you.”

The door to the bunker swings open and we pull apart but he refuses to let go of my hand.

Ty strolls out. “Why are you guys still out here? The meeting’s about to…” His eyes zero in on our interlocked hand. He raises an eyebrow. “All these years you have hundreds of girls throwing themselves at you. You finally find a human chick and it has to be my little sister?”

Bryant sighs. “I didn’t plan this.”

“When did this happen? Before or after you turned her in?”

Bryant flinches. Ty crosses to us and shoves Bryant back. “Do you remember what happened in there? How they experimented on her? Broke her bones one at a time? Poisoned her? Then let her heal and did it again?”

Bryant gives a jerky nod, letting go of my fingers. I try to slide between them but Ty won’t let me.

“That is all on you because you were such a good lap dog to the Orions. All of her pain? Every thing they did to her? That was you.”

“Ty, that isn’t fair.” I grab my brother’s arm and drag him away from Bryant. “You know that wasn’t really him.”

Ty works his jaw. “Yeah, I know, but I can’t forget he was the reason you were there.”

“Believe me, I can’t either.” Bryant frowns. “I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself.”

Ty crosses his arms and glances over his shoulder toward the bunker. “I’m really not sure I’m okay with this. It would be hard enough having my best friend be into my sister but after what you did? I just don’t know. How can you forgive him, Lex?”

“Because he was brainwashed, Ty.” I put a gentle hand on my brother’s shoulder. “I’d like you to be okay with the idea of Bryant and me, Ty, but I don’t need your permission.”

“I’ll try.” His arms fall to his side, his hands flexing and unflexing. “We better get in there.”

The three of us find seats in the back of the packed room. My dad gives a shrill whistle and the talking stops. “We just returned from the warehouse. The mission was a success. My wife is already in the lab processing the metal, turning it into the tool we’ll need.” My dad claps his hands together. “This is the first time we’ll be meeting with our allies so I want to prepare you.”

“What allies?” Bryant asks.

The door swings open and in walk two of the largest animals I’ve ever seen. Then I get better look at them and notice they’re walking on two legs. They aren’t animals; they’re humanoid, at least partially. Musks.

Each has a pair of horns sprouting from his head above a snout-like nose and mouth. Thick, matted fur covers their entire bodies from their broad, muscled shoulders to their two-toed, almost hoofed feet, except for on their greasy-looking faces. Their hands also look like hooves, divided into two broad fingers and a thumb covered in a thick, hard shell. They walk hunched, but when they stand they’re half again as tall as the biggest Val.

There are startled gasps and a few people flee the room. When the scent of the Musks reaches me, my eyes water and my hand covers my nose.

I knew we were aligning with the Musks, but I never thought I’d see one with my own eyes.

“Thank you for letting us speak with you,” the one covered in gray fur says. His voice is deep and heavily accented, but clearly understandable. He raises a hand and the fingers that looked so stiff open and close as he talks. “We wish an alliance with the humans.”

My dad holds a piece of fabric over his nose. “I have a few questions for our allies.”

“Is that okay Sul’Von?” Uncle Charlie asks, entering the room behind the last Musk.

The Musk nods his giant head.

My dad taps his fingers against his thighs. “What made you decide to work with us?”

“We have faced you in battle for many years, but we believe you are not the enemy. Long ago, our people were enslaved by the Orions. They twisted our minds, as they do to your people now. The only way to end this war is to stop the Orions. We have fought them before, and we have learned much about them. Already we have shared with your scientists our knowledge of their worship idols and how to destroy them. We have defeated Orions in battle, and will share with you what we know.”

Applause breaks out among the resistance, but not everyone’s clapping. A few are still eyeing the exit.

“How do we know you’re on our side?” my dad asks, voicing the concerns of others. “Can we trust you not to betray us to the Orions, to gain their favor through revealing our rebellion?”

“The Orions destroyed our planet, used us as their slaves, and then turned against us.” His hard fingers ball together, sounding like bones breaking. “It will be our pleasure to help you kill them. Our fight was never against you. They put those orders in our minds. Only after they turned on us and tried to kill us were we free to think for ourselves again.”

Charlie claps his hands together. “I like that answer.”

Sul’Von grunts, I think in agreement. “In battle, do not let them touch you. Their compulsion is much stronger this way. And avoid their wings, they’re sharper than swords.”

“Thank you.” My dad peers into the audience. “Any other questions or concerns?”

Ty stands. “I’ve got one. You said you know secrets to defeat them. What kinds of secrets?”

“There’s a bundle of nerves at the base of their wings.” He turns his shoulder and points to a spot on his back. “If you press there with enough force, it will paralyze them for several minutes. We have seen it in battle. Now they keep their distance from us.” An expression, a smile I think, creeps onto his face.

That grin might give me nightmares.

“You told me earlier that if you stun one, you stun them all,” Charlie says.

Sul’Von nods. “They are connected in some way. The others will be stunned also, but not as completely.”

“And can they be killed?” a voice near the back shouts.

“They heal quickly, but only when they have their idols. If those are destroyed, they cannot heal.”

A cheer erupts from the crowd. “Well,” my dad says when the noise subsides, “that will be our strategy.”

The meeting ends quickly, probably because of the smell.

It takes my mom and her team almost a week to process the metal and finish assembling the pneumatic battering ram. It doesn’t look like anything special, just a jackhammer resting sideways on a sturdy tripod. The thorocium has made the tool so heavy that it’ll take four people to move it and support the kick it has when it impacts.

“I’m worried about the fifteen seconds it needs to recharge between each blow,” my dad says, when it’s unveiled at our meeting.

“There isn’t a way to make it go faster?” Spencer asks.

“No, it’s too heavy; the motor needs time to build up the pressure,” my mom says.

“Those of us protecting the Square from the Orions and their army will have to find a way to give those inside more time,” a Val with a huge scar down his right cheek says.

“OORAH!” The Vals all shout.

After the meeting, I find my dad in his lab, where he’s adding the final components to the oxygen bomb. It’s even less impressive in appearance than the ram, just a jumbled mass of tanks, hoses, and electronics. I recognize most of the parts from all the times I’ve had to change out the containment tanks in the greenhouse.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I ask my dad when he carefully closes the lid of the trunk they’re carrying the bomb in.

Dad straightens and wipes his hand on a rag. “We’ve divided everyone into three teams. There will be those outside guarding the entrance to the dome, a second wave inside protecting those using the ram, and then the four operating it.”

“Makes sense,” I say letting my fingers drift over some of the various instruments on his worktable.

“Ty will be part of the second wave. Bryant’s part of the force outside.”

“They’ll be great.”

Dad crinkles the rag in his hand and drops it. “Like I said, we’ll need four people to carry and operate the ram. Charlie and I assigned three of the people already: Zac, Spencer, and Eddie. Charlie wants you to be the fourth.”

The honor of that assignment isn’t lost on me. I don’t even hesitate. “I’m in.”

My dad won’t meet my eyes.

“Do you think I’m not up to the mission?” I ask, trying to ignore the stab of hurt.

My dad throws his wrench against a wall and curses. “That isn’t it at all. I agree with him. We need you in there. You might be the strongest Val we have.” He visibly swallows, his eyes glimmering with tears. “But I don’t want you to go. You’re my baby girl and I just got you back. I want you to stay here away from the fighting. I want to keep you safe.”

“Dad,” I say, in a watery voice before rushing to him and throwing myself into his embrace. “I have to go if they need me.”

He sighs. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Thank you for caring.” I breathe in his scent. He still smells like the same shoe polish I used to help him apply to his boots. “For years, all I’ve wanted was to know you loved me.”

“So, so much.” He kisses the crown of my head. “Be safe, Lexie. Please survive this. Your mother and I need you too.”

“I will,” I promise, wishing I had the power to guarantee such a thing. I have so much to live for now.