“Listen closely, boys.” Angels walked through the main passageway, checking the restraints on each of the precious passengers. “The city has been destroyed. We have to take you to safety in the outer. You’ll be reunited with your families once we’ve reached safety and the invaders have been dealt with.”
It was a lie, of course, but Hunter wondered if he was the only one of the boys who had seen the waves of flak tear apart the remaining adults outside of the Complex. Anything without shielding would never have withstood that attack. And from the rocking and swaying of the vessel in the launch pipe beneath the complex, it would appear that the attack was still in progress.
There were many empty seats in this passage. Hunter wondered how many boys had been killed before they could get to the Complex for evacuation.
“Hold on tight, little soldiers. We’re about to depart.”
Phased fuel engines rocked underneath the vessel. The sound was deafening. Hunter held tightly to the metal frame before him, with memories of the carnival, the merry-go-round that his mother preferred that he ride and the faster amusements that his father had taken him on long ago.
Engines screaming, little boys screaming. The angels dissembled and they were left alone in the torrent of sound.
Hunter tried to remember his father’s face, but he couldn’t. And when he remembered his mother’s face, all he could see was the smoking hole in her chest, the redness of her bloody mouth and the two lines of tears that slid from her eyes.
He held on tighter. He did not cry.
Light stretched. Everything stretched. The vessel phased and tore from the
launch pipe underneath the complex. Lily hung languidly in her restraints. The bubble was at the center of the vessel, surrounded by massive amounts of physical and phase shielding. She sensed the others on board, felt the touch of maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of terrified minds. Boys. That’s what they were. The vessel was filled with children, but she was special. She was in the bubble at the center.
She could see it, somehow, the Complex retracting and the vessel emerging from underneath, tearing through an atmosphere filled with enemy fighters, through an orbit filled with enormous enemy worldships and siege machines, through a solar system that would soon be dead, into the black between systems. She saw it from eyes that were not her own, yet somehow were.
Just a little girl in that innate blackness.
She saw
She
she
She knew very little, but she knew beyond a doubt that she loved chocolate milk.
A LOSS SO DEAR
“Hunter?”
Nine spun around, his face a mask of horror. He clutched his chest, rapidly dissembling from the EM slug. His mouth opened to form her name, but it was too late. Nine flashed from his illusion in a burst of silver.
Zero ran to Fleur, her crumpled form leaking a steadily-growing puddle of red onto the hardpan. “Lilith…Oh no. No. Oh god. Lilith.” The weapon dropped from his hand, clattered to the ground.
She smiled, mouth moving to speak, but there was no time. No life. The slug had passed through Nine and torn through the right side of her chest. Struggle to breathe, struggle to hold on to Hunter, Hunter, not Zero. Not that person at all anymore, or ever again.
“Lilith?” he sobbed, stroked her face, so white now. He didn’t look at the fine mist of crimson on her neck. He pushed the unruly curl back behind her ear, touched her face, the life draining from her skin, the silver crawling just underneath the surface.
“Let her go.” Maire stood over them, her black robe whipping in the breeze, hair untied and dancing to the song of the wind, hands still bloody. “There’s nothing we can do now.”
Hunter reached out and grabbed the weapon before Maire could stop him, raised the barrel to target, just inches from her forehead. The child didn’t flinch.
“Do it. You know you want to.”
Lilith slumped in his arms. Silver ran from her eyes.
“You know you have to.”
Hunter cried out in frustration, in grief. He pulled Lilith’s limp form closer, keeping his weapon trained on Maire.
“If I don’t—”
“Do it.” She took a step closer to the tip of the weapon. “End it now.”
He closed his eyes, saw the image of her face burned into that perfect darkness.
“End it.”
Hunter Windham pulled the trigger.
“Did you actually think it would work?”
The interior of the cell was neither dim nor cold, as she had supposed it would be. If anything, it was the brightest and most welcoming room she’d seen in
in
how long?
She cleared her throat but gave no indication that she desired to communicate with her interrogator. The way he stood on the other side of the shield, hands clasped behind his back, chin up, staring proudly down aquiline nose…He embodied every reason she had carried out her plan. He was a symbol of that which she had struggled so valiantly for years to destroy.
“Don’t answer, then. Might be the best thing for you.”
She slumped into one well-lit corner of her prison, wrapped arms around knees, stared back at the man with a gaze that was beyond cold, beyond emotionless. He didn’t flinch.
“Do you have any questions before I leave?”
She brushed the unruly curl from her forehead, reflexively tucking it behind her left ear. “When is the trial?”
“No trial. Just sentencing. That will come soon enough.”
She exhaled slowly, audibly. “Goodnight.”
He was concerned. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I—”
“Goodnight.”
He turned and walked, gazing at floor and nothing else. “Goodnight, Maire.”
It would be a night without sleep.
“Orders coming through.”
Task swam over to join his co-pilot at the controls. The screen flickered with distortion for a moment, resolving into a static-filled image of Hannon.
“Find anything else today, boys?”
“Nothing. No survivors so far.”
“The sentencing is at the end of the week. Gather as much feed as you can, focusing on the major cities.”
