Cloud Rebel (R-D #3)(70)

"Sir, there's a firefight going on at the Phillips estate," I heard clearly through the phone.

"No surprise," Matt said. "We'll be there soon." Opal hit the gas, forcing the car to lurch forward. Horns honked all about us that night—the night World War Three actually started.

*

Corinne

When Val and I arrived at Phillips' compound, half of it was destroyed and the other half was burning, the flames fed by an unnatural source and licking high into the sky. The roar of it joined the noise in my head, amid desperate attempts to reach Ilya in mindspeech, which were peppered with the images of a country hit by the very bombs they'd stockpiled to destroy others.

Except that's not how it would look when all was said and done.

Blame would be laid elsewhere—by design.

Treaties and agreements would be ignored or blatantly tossed aside, as fingers began to point. Ilya—there was no reply from him. That terrified me.

Those who'd taken the bombs away to drop them on unsuspecting targets would find more nuclear weapons and attack more countries. They wouldn't be forced to rebrand the next round of bombs in order to spread the lies of where the attack originated—it would already be written on the missiles themselves.

While some might be shot down—if they could see past the technology and wizardry concealing them—there were too many to be eradicated completely.

All this raced through my mind as we frantically searched for Ilya, Jen and Brett. Wherever they were, a Sirenali hid them from us—we couldn't find them anywhere by Looking. In desperation, I attempted to contact Jen. After all, Maye had mindspeech.

Still nothing. Forcing rising fear and panic down again, Val and I snuffed the flames of the fire. He cooled the heated remains well enough that we could walk among them. We scanned every inch of Phillips' compound that night, and found nothing. I feared we'd find bodies of those who'd gone in with Ilya.

There wasn't so much as a fingernail left behind.

Wherever Ilya was, he was either dead or incapacitated. He'd have answered me if he were conscious—or himself.

A terrible dread came over me, then.

Phillips was Sirenali.

What had he done?





Chapter 15

Corinne

Earth doesn't sleep after an event such as this. After the initial shock and silence ends, voices rise in a demand to know why. And, in this case, who.

At first, satellite images of the bombing sites were all anyone could see. Radiation levels were off the charts across Iraq; clouds of radioactive dust moved with the winds while surrounding cities and nations did what they could to prepare for its arrival.

Medical teams converged on the borders of Iraq, waiting for refugees to spill over as they ran from the bombsites. Images of dying children, carried by unidentifiable personnel dressed in white protective gear, became common.

Still, there was no word from Ilya.

Auggie and Matt were practically living at the White House—I hoped Granville had enough sense left to realize what a colossal mistake he'd made, but I wasn't counting on it.

James was torn between wanting to go back to D.C. and staying as far from the troubles as he could. The U.N. had launched an investigation into the bombing, as well as the sarin-carrying drone strikes.

They'd find exactly what the Lyristolyi wanted them to find.

The villa was supposed to be ours—Ilya's and mine—filtered into my thoughts. I stood, a familiar cup of coffee in my hands, on the villa's terrace, gazing across the landscape. Houses and villas were strewn across the land, and in the distance, the town where we'd had our honeymoon dinner.

Everything appeared so peaceful. Benign. Somewhere, not really that far away, people fought for their lives and died, victims of an invisible enemy known as radiation poisoning.

Fuck Earth.

That phrase returned to haunt me.

Of course, many rallied to the defense of those responsible for the bombings—in their minds, it was justified retribution for the sarin gas killings.

They merely had no idea that those they pointed at as responsible actually had nothing to do with either.

Lies come back to haunt you. If it weren't so tragic, the fact that the insurgency accepted responsibility for the sarin attacks in the beginning was almost laughable.

It was too late to admit the truth of it now—that they had no idea who was responsible.

Frankly, too, alerting the media that aliens were in their midst and creating chaos on Earth would be met with skepticism and ridicule at this point. Everybody had a known enemy to blame, and was currently doing just that.

Blaming.

While it was something people usually did, the ramifications this time could destroy all of them, with or without help from the Lyristolyi.

Sales of guns and rifles were skyrocketing, too, as if a bullet could stop sarin gas or a nuclear weapon. Or a plane or a tank or any one of a thousand other bigger, badder things.

I cursed the drug, then, and those who'd created it. The foul substance was at the root of all these deaths and destruction.

I understood, too, why the Lyristolyi wanted all of it gone.

The drug could end up killing all of us, in one way or another.

*

Notes—Colonel Hunter

Amelia Sander's funeral was postponed for a second time, due to the chaos after the Iraqi bombings. I worried that the former President would never get her just due, because Earth would be destroyed beforehand.