Damien bent and scooped Master Aki up into his arms, causing me to sob louder. I followed him as he set my old friend on Rodger’s back and told him to fly him home. Everything was slow motion, I was so numb. How was this really happening?
Next, he grabbed me, and I fought him a little at first, as we climbed onto Dawn. When we took to the skies and Damien started to rub my back in small circles like my mother would when I was younger, I lost it. Full sobs racked my body as I carried the weight of my most cherished friend’s death with me. I never should have allowed him to come. He all but told me he would die and I let it happen! I should have been faster, should have protected him when the breeder threw the knives…
I was vaguely aware of Damien slipping a helmet onto my head, clicking the strap under my chin. Then he tilted my face up to look at him. “Kit, I’m so damn sorry about Master Aki. When this is all over, we will mourn him together.” His crystalline blue eyes cut right through me. “But right now I need your help. The world needs you. We have to finish this.”
I whimpered, wanting to stay in that numb place I was lost in.
“I don’t think I can,” I told him honestly, wiping my eyes.
He shook his head. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met. You can do this. You have to link into the breeders’ minds, then Jeremy will use the helmet to call them to you. We are so close to ending this.”
I looked at the sky, the patches of blue seeping through. A horrifying thought came over me then. If I didn’t do this right now, the breeders who probably felt their queen mother’s death might get in their ships and go, only to come back another day. I didn’t want to live with that fear.
“Okay.” My voice was stronger, less shaky. My tears had dried, and although I felt hollow inside, I somehow still felt that strength within me. I was born a fighter and I’d have to fight now.
Taking a few deep breaths, I expanded my awareness and searched for that sickly strong current that was the breeder hive mind. Or what it used to be. What I felt now was frantic, enraged, and hurting. They were no longer one cohesive energy but multiple fearful strands. Pushing my awareness out, I latched on to as many as I could find.
‘Come get me, bitches,’ I told them. A surge of anger spiked at my connection with them, and then an outpouring of hate. They scrambled to connect with my mind, but as they were no longer one, they were weaker than before.
“I’m calling as many as I can. They no longer have a hive mind,” I told Damien.
He was tinkering with something on his wrist. A breeder tracker no doubt. “That’s okay. It’s working. We’re going to funnel them into this valley and the army will light them up. Then you do your thing and collapse the Dream War.” Damien was in battle mode and I was trying, but my thoughts kept going to all the blood on my hands and pants.
Red. Human. Master Aki’s…
He’d taken a twelve-year-old girl and turned her into a survivor, a warrior.
At that thought, I straightened my shoulders. I needed to do this for him, or his death was in vain.
We flew for another thirty minutes, me wearing the helmet and keeping the breeders at bay in my mind and Damien consulting his tracker watch.
“Okay, we’re close. Dawn, over there!” He pointed to a small valley between two hills. The perfect spot for an ambush. I recognized this area. Just beyond it was the gateway that led to Trillium Lake on Earth.
Dawn set us down at the mouth of the valley, but we didn’t dismount. Damien and I stayed on her as the first of the breeders came into view. The army couldn’t be seen, but I knew they were there, watching and waiting. This entire valley was probably rigged with explosives.
“Dawn, hold our position until the last moment, then fly us through to the gateway,” Damien told her, and she nodded.
Dozens of breeders ran full force at us. The vision of them running with an animal’s gait and hate in their eyes was haunting. The ground shook, and for a moment I wondered if it was me again until I saw the giant come around the corner. Next was the sentries. Then the grunts. It was a full battle attack.
Shit.
Damien held the walkie talkie up to his mouth. “Are you seeing this?”
An instant reply came from the president herself: “Loud and clear. Stay the course.”
The first breeder was a hundred feet from us. I couldn’t help but smirk and wiggle my fingers in a little wave to taunt her.
“Hold,” Damien told Dawn as I clenched my thighs around her to prepare for her takeoff.
Twenty feet.
“Hold.”
The breeder jumped into the air and Damien screamed, “GO!”
Dawn burst from where she’d been crouched and extended her wings. The breeder just missed us as Dawn flew low across the valley. The breeders were right on our tail, funneling everyone into what I assumed was the blast zone. Damien had a firm hand on my shoulder, keeping me rooted to the spot, and for the first time since this adrenaline rush battle began, I actively started to feel pain at my hips where that queen breeder bitch had clawed me. No doubt her poison was working into my veins. I felt warm and dizzy, but decided not to focus on it as there was nothing I could do about it at the moment.
Once we were clear of the valley and had come out the other side, I could see dozens of army personnel. We flew by them quickly and I turned around just in time to see
