The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (49 page)

“Look… imagine that green outside. And the trees have white bark, some of them anyways.” Like my habit of showing Killian bright colours I pointed to the hills. Before switching over to a page I’d saved with my thumb, of a bunch of kids enjoying a water park. “And that. Hey, Jade, does Skyfall have a water park?”

The pet glanced over at the magazine and chuckled. “No, it’s nothing like the magazines, but Skyland does have green parks and rivers, so does Eros. We have flowers too.”

Flowers? I had only seen flowers in Perish’s lab, besides maybe dandelions. It was a strange concept knowing they still existed, not to mention ones that grew out in public. If we had ever had that in Aras they would’ve been picked and probably eaten by Reno or Miller.

Like the king had thrown away the green and blues of our now grey world, I closed the magazine and tossed it onto the garbage pile, and with that gesture the three of us continued to look for a map.

It was tedious and messy work, as the sounds of fluttering paper continued to fill the hall I found myself growing more frustrated. Every tossed pamphlet, magazine, and flyer seemed to taunt me. How can this city once hold thousands of people not have a single damn map of the area?

“I found a city map…” Jade sighed and held up what looked like a transit schedule; it unfolded in front of him, browned on the edges and wrinkled. I could see a small map with coloured lines going in all directions.

“Alright, I’m done with this… city maps aren’t going to get us anywhere.” I tossed the last pamphlet onto the heaping pile and as I had done every several minutes I watched the light beaming through the window. “Let’s go back; we’ll try another place tomorrow.”

With the dog ever obedient we made our way back to the manhole cover. Jade pandemically wiping the dust off of his hands and arms, and Killian with his nose in a stack of magazines he had put aside for himself. My eyes were on the open windows of the structures around us, hyper alert to pick up any movements and smells that would signal the kreigers were waking up for their nocturnal search for food.

In the dark the city was theirs, but once daylight came it belonged to another type of darkness: me.

Suddenly though my nose picked up something; it was faint but it was here… and out of place.

I stopped and said under my breath to Jade, “Do you smell that?”

It was loud enough for Killian to pick up; he lowered the magazine and smelled the air.

His face paled, and in the same moment Jade’s did as well.

“That’s cologne…” Before the last syllable left the cicaro’s lips we all quietly sprinted to the side of a building, all of our eyes picking apart every inch of the area.

Immediately I grabbed the dog’s collar and told him to stay put. His nostrils flexed but he didn’t growl, the scent seemed to confuse him, and it did me as well.

“Could it be Perish?” Killian whispered.

Jade shook his head and as I tuned my hearing away from the desolate city around us, I realized his heart was racing inside of his chest.

“No, only a chimera would be wearing cologne and only cocky ones at that. I recognise the smell, but I can’t put my finger on who it is. We… Reaver we can’t go back to the cistern until we know they’re gone. If it’s King Silas he’ll have a key card.”

“Either way, I need to check it out.” I nodded, feeling a liquid jolt of energy inflame my veins. I wanted to run and find the source, but I had two anchors on me right now that I had to keep safe.

Jade couldn’t be seen with us, there was just no getting around that. Jade was supposed to be in the greyrifts apartment pretending to be injured; if one of the chimeras saw him it would be traced back to Elish.

And I couldn’t leave them to find a place to hide, no way I trusted the boys to do that. There was only one place I could think of, one place where I might be able to stash them and the dog. Then I could quickly zip underground and grab Perish. I wasn’t leaving Perish to the fate of whatever Silas had in store for him. Even if he acted like he was on our side, I didn’t trust him to stay strong through Silas’s coaxing. He loved his master, any praise from Silas and he would be jelly in his palm.

“I’m taking you two to that library we found welded shut. Find a way to get it open then find a room you two can hide in. Don’t go anywhere else, alright?”

Jade looked down at the map. “I can get me and Killian there. Fuck, I want to go with you…”

“No, I’m taking you there myself just so I know for sure you made it. While you’re in there look for some atlases, you might as well. Killian, if anything goes wrong toss one of those grenades to alert me, alright?”

The boy put on a brave face, but when I leaned down to kiss his cheek goodbye I saw his lower lip disappear inside his mouth. “Don’t let them take you… just promise me that.”

At least the kid knew we had to make sure they didn’t find Perish, our mission was counting on what we could dig up in Perish’s brain. Elish’s laptop holding the downloaded information was good, but with what the cicaro had been able to uncover in Perish’s mind was invaluable.

My heartbeat rose with anxiety over having to leave the boys. I didn’t like being in this situation; I didn’t just have one kid to protect I had my boyfriend and Elish Dekker’s little husband. At least Jade, from the stories he had told me, was more than capable of taking care of himself, and Killian had come a long way. But still, I didn’t trust them on their own, there was too much that could go wrong.

But one hundred percent safety was a luxury we didn’t have, something we never had. With our sneakers barely touching the cracked pavement and even the dog with his head lowered, we crossed the street and ducked behind a tipped over mini-van.

Jade checked the map and pointed to the left, we continued on.

Another noise came, this one made my teeth grind.

It was the confirmation I needed that the smell was no random occurrence, nothing that could be justified by some outlandish excuse like we were near a perfume shop. It was a plane, louder than the Falconer, that carried a low rumbling sound on it that bounced off of the tall buildings.

To my confusion Jade’s heartbeat shifted.

“That’s a military plane,” Jade explained when I made eye contact with him. “This could be normal patrol but I won’t bet my life on it, just put that in the back of your mind, Reav. All military planes are marked with the Legion’s cougar emblem.”

I could steal that fucking plane… I might not know how to drive it but Perish and the pet could. Though no doubt military planes were hooked with tracking devices; we would practically be gift wrapping ourselves for Silas.

Time went quickly as soon as we started moving again. I was impressed at Jade’s stealth; the way he could land his boots without a sound rivaled mine. He had his attributes that was for sure, perhaps that’s where he got his middle name: Shadow.

The library came back into view, a large building that before the Fallocaust had floor to ceiling windows and an umbrella-like roof. Now the windows were large sheets of metal and the roof its own death sentence. It was surrounded by flat ground though and trees big enough they could climb and reach the roof if needed be. It wasn’t perfect but it was all we had.

We ran past what had once been a metal sculpture and ducked behind it, when my hearing picked up nothing but heartbeats we closed the rest of the distance and started checking out the welded sheets of metal.

“Give me ten minutes I can have us in there.” Jade stuck his fingers in between a sheet and the brick and pulled. Sure enough, with a shifting of material he was able to pry the weld apart

That’s all I needed, though imposing and fortress-like from the street it had its flaws on closer inspection. Welded or not the sparse rains we did get had weakened the hold, and because the kreigers were too stupid to even realize this was a building, it had remained free of their presence.

With a quick check to make sure the boys had enough ammo, food, and knives, we quietly parted ways. Killian licking his lips out of nervousness and Jade adopting a look of calm control I had seen on myself on many occasions. This kid might’ve been a serial killer in Moros, literally armed to the teeth, but the greywastes were a different story; at least that’s where Killian could fill in. With both of their brains at work they would be able to survive, this wouldn’t take long anyways.

But just in case… they had food and weapons. No matter what happened to me, they would be okay.

There was no justifying the looming cloud over my head though, the cloud that made me trust no one but myself with the people I liked and loved’s safety. Even if I was trusting them with their own safety, no matter how much I tried I couldn’t put faith in them being able to hide in the library without harm coming to them. I wanted to be there.

But what choice did I have? There was no choice, just the lesser of two evils.

My feet automatically took me towards the sound of the plane. My heartbeat background music to my straining ears as I struggled to hear any sound telling me I wasn’t alone. The engine had cut out though, so I headed towards where we had walked past some parks, that and a hospital parking lot were my best bet as to where they’d touched down.

Tension was in the air around me, though my greywaster blood was enjoying the feeling of some fire in my veins, bringing me back to my many excursions in the greywastes, most vivid in my mind when I had rescued Killian from the factory.

Apprehension and adrenaline went hand in hand then too. It seemed they were both devils sitting on my shoulders, trying to convince my chimera-wired brain to feel one more than the other. Needless to say though their whispers didn’t fall on deaf ears I was able to push past the emotions and focus on the mission at hand.

And the first thing I needed to do was find out who I was dealing with.

Then I smelled one of my targets; the one with the cologne. I followed my nose and ran from alleyway to alleyway, car to car, until I spotted him.

He was dressed in a legion outfit but he wasn’t a grunt… his armor was black and grey, and he was wearing a blue cape with the cougar scorprion chimera thing on it. At this point I froze, and listened, not even daring more than a shallow breath.

That was a chimera.

He was walking with his assault rifle in his hand, a dangerous looking one with a scope as good as mine. The man had a swagger to him I didn’t trust, even with no one watching he was walking with confidence.

His black hair was slightly curly, that I could see… his hands looked young, possible a teenager or in his early twenties.

I thought for a minute, eliminating all of the chimeras’ photos I had seen from Elish’s files. He had made me memorize every single one of them and their abilities while we were in the greyrifts, even going as far as to quiz me at random moments.

Though I didn’t need a photo for this one, I realized I had seen him in Aras. I had seen his metallic eyes, like liquid mercury.

Caligula.

A chimera that technically belonged to the same generation as Jade and me. He was the adopted chimera son of Kessler and his non-chimera husband Tiberius.

Advanced hearing and sight, tough as nails, military trained though he had grown up in what chimera terms would deem a ‘normal family’. Kessler had a soft spot for his family it seemed.

Which made the kid a viable option for kidnapping if it came to it. Caligula was mortal. I had already learned the hard way that Silas didn’t negotiate with kidnappers, but Kessler might and he controlled the Legion.

“Dad?”

I jumped into an open door and slunk into the darkness, knowing he would be blind to the inside of these buildings unless he was staring right at me. I observed him hitching his assault rifle behind his back. He then bent over and to my grim surprise he grabbed one of the sewer covers and scraped it off of the hole in the side of the street.

Then Kessler came out, thick-necked, burly body, with a buzz cut and an expression that permanently looked like he had thorns in his heels.

The Imperial Commander rose to his feet before grabbing a water bottle from his kid. “Nothing down there but rat shit. I really don’t give a fuck what that king says, the entire lab is burnt, no one could be hiding in it.”

So they were looking for the entrance to the lab? Perish had known where it was but it looked like no one else did.

“We’ll keep looking, then we can tell Silas for sure that Reaver and Perish aren’t there. It was probably just a random energy pulse or a shortage in the monitoring system. We had that once in Shockrock and it ended up being rats chewing the wires,” Caligula said.

They had monitors to alert the Legion when electricity was turned on? I didn’t even consider that.

“You’re right, we’ll keep looking. I have Gale and Willis on the east end and Tick looking around the old hospital,” Kessler said with a soured look on his face. “Once it gets dark we’ll break out the torch lamps. I think Perish once said the paint they used was reflective but I’m still guessing they replaced the cover.”

Well, that was the only information I needed. Leaving them to their back and forths I started to sprint in the other direction, towards the cistern and hopefully to where Perish was sitting unaware.

Mentally my mind was playing an internal video game, mapping out the time I had until sunset and the important things we had to grab before we left to get Killian and Jade. Perish had no personal items anymore and Jade kept his neurotically folded and packed, awaiting quick exits like this. Killian’s stuff was mixed with mine in our bedroom but that was just clothing and his guitar. The ammo bag was packed as was our knapsacks of tact and water.

The smell of cologne dissipated the further I got from Caligula. No other legion members seemed to be around but that didn’t make me any less careful.

With nimble fingers and way too much noise than I was comfortable with, I slid down the manhole cover and to my inner genius I put it on upside down to hide the Skytech emblem on it. Sure Kessler was aware that we might have done that, but it still would make it less obvious.

When I slid the card through the door and ran in, I immediately tripped over our bags. When I looked up Perish was just lowering the gun he had pointed at me.

“You have cameras up there too I guess?” I said hurriedly. I checked inside me and Killian’s room but he had cleared it out. “Did you grab the hard drives?”

Perish put on our ammo bag and picked up several new bags he had packed. He nodded and motioned me over, his eyes shifting back and forth and his movements more jerky than ever. “I got everything, we have to go. Where is Killian and the pet?”

“I hid them in a welded shut library. We have to get them and get the fuck out of this town, it’s going to be dark soon.” Without a second glance the metal door with the small green light closed behind us. I followed Perish into the cistern and to my surprise he led us in the opposite direction.

“What about Elish? We’re supposed to wait for him…” Perish said apprehensively. He was moving fast, going from one direction to another in a way that made me believe he knew where we were going. I wanted to go out where we came but I guessed this location would bring us closer to the library.

“We have two options right now: we meet Elish in Skyfall because Silas caught us, or Elish finds our chewed up bodies when he comes back with Reno. We have to get the boys to safety, once we’re out of the city we can find out what the fuck we’re suppose –”

I almost hit the back of Perish when he stopped dead in his tracks. I paused as well and listened.

Fuck, I knew that noise…

“Perish… where the hell are you leading us?” I hissed. I squinted my eyes but the sewer stretched out into darkness. Since my night vision was unable to make shapes out of nothing it just seemed like a wide open black hole.

“I… well, this was a shortcut to the road the library was on… but um… I think this is a nest now. Let’s turn around, okay?” Perish stumbled, his feet quickly stepping backwards.

But I didn’t turn around; I got out my gun and continued forward. If it was a nest we could rain a few clips into them or just cut the bullshit and pull a grenade.

With Perish grabbing at my jacket and making noises like a nervous mouse I continued ahead.

I thought at first I had entered a large room covered in white mould. It was wide open full of pipes as thick as truck tires and cisterns broken and leaking mucky water.

The echoing was what Perish heard and I could hear it too, like crickets chirping. A sound so low it itched your ears and at the same time automatically put you on edge.

White mould and… giant maggots? Curious more than I was wary I stepped into the vast room, the crickets and the dripping water creating the oddest of melodies. My inquisitive nature brought me to one of the piles of maggots and I nudged it with my foot.