Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(16)

Crunch.

“Great Maker,” Fin breathes.

Crunch.

“Kal, stop,” I whisper.

Crunch.

Kal stands up when he’s done. Purple blood dripping from his knuckles. Spattered across those prettyboy cheeks. The woman looks at him with triumph.

“There he is,” she breathes. “There’s the Kaliis I know.”

He takes a step toward her. In a flash, she draws a disruptor pistol from her belt, pointed right at his chest. It doesn’t take a Tank to know from the hum that the weapon is set to Kill.

“Don’t,” she warns.

“You won’t kill me, Saedii,” Kal says.

“True.” She turns the weapon on Fin and me. “But them?”

“I am not going with you,” Kal says. “I am not going back.”

“Oh, Kaliis.” The young woman sighs, looks down at his hands, dripping purple blood on the deck at his feet. “You never lef—”

The impact throws her backward, arms pinwheeling, black hair streaming about her face. Her posse is thrown back too, spit and blood, tumbling through the air. I watch a sphere of translucent force surge outward, crushing the ships around us like paper, peeling the deck, popping the swarms of drones above us like bugs on a windshield. The floor shakes beneath us; the air around us crackles with static, greasy and warm. Every hair on my body is standing to attention.

I turn around and see Aurora wobbling on her feet, hand outstretched. Her right eye is flickering with moon-pale light. Her hair blows like there’s a wind, white bangs twisting, almost aglow. Blood spills from the split in her brow.

“Auri?” I manage.

Like someone switched off a light, the glow in her eye dies and she sinks to her knees again, blood spilling from her nostrils. Kal catches her as she sags, pulling her up in his arms. Impossibly gentle, where a moment ago he was anything but.

“We …” Auri swallows hard, wipes her lip.

“Be’shmai?” Kal says.

“We need … to g-get out of here,” she says.

“AURORA IS RIGHT,” says Zila, pulling off her mask. “Security will be coming.”

I look around us, chest still aching, struggling to breathe as I crawl to my brother’s side. He’s only semiconscious, groaning softly.

The Unbroken are scattered like kids’ toys, comatose, swept aside with a wave of Aurora’s hand. But the dock and ships around us are likewise totaled. The Opha May is a smoldering paperweight and we don’t have the passkeys to any of the other ships at dock.

Our plan to get off Emerald City is in the toilet.

“We need t-to hide,” Aurora says. “Deep and dark as w-we … can.”

I can hear incoming sirens.

“Okay,” I say. “We have to move.”

“Here, hold on to me,” Fin says, helping me to my feet.

“Kal, c-can you grab Ty?” Auri asks.

Our Tank complies, hauling Tyler up. “On your feet, Brother.”

Kal supports Ty; Fin and I support each other. Zila leads the way with her disruptor drawn. And quick as we can, we’re hobbling across the ruined loading docks, the buckled decks, smoke still billowing around us, alarms blaring, groaning Unbroken scattered like fallen dominoes.

We reach the transit station, and Fin’s consulting his uniglass, stabbing in a destination with shaking hands while we wait for the pressure inside the tube to equalize. Thankfully, Aurora’s shock wave knocked out any SecDrones, so the station authorities might not be able to track where we’re headed. If we reach the Emerald City’s underbelly, we might be able to find a place deep enough to lay low.

Aurora is looking back across the docks at the downed Syldrathi, blood in her eyes and on her lips. My stomach flips as I see Madam Badass trying to rise to her feet.

“You two know each other,” Auri says, pawing at her bloody nose.

“Yes,” Kal replies.

“Lemme guess,” Finian says, glancing over his shoulder and stabbing with renewed vigor at the tube controls. “Evil ex-girlfriend?”

“No.”

I glance at Auri. “Evil current girlfriend?”

“Worse.”

“What could be worse than that?” Zila asks.

Kal sighs as the tube doors open. Glances back as he steps into the flow.

“She is my sister.”





4

ZILA

Aurora confirms that our hiding place is deep and dark enough to comply with her vision.

The squad is pressed together, all six of us crammed into the junction between eleven different transport tubes. It is a precarious position, every wall at a different angle, obliging us to brace ourselves simply to stay in position. A moment’s inattention would mean a considerable fall through a gap.

Finian managed to halt our progress long enough to open an emergency access hatch in the tunnel we were using, and we exited the tube system into the dark spaces within the transit network. Our current refuge is a small, cramped space that constantly vibrates and shudders as locals whiz by us, one after another, all moving too fast to register our makeshift camp. We are a tangle of limbs and backpacks, but we are temporarily secure.

I am thinking, accompanied by the symphony of whirs and whooshes all around us, my mind humming as fast as any transport tube. I find myself tapping one finger against my knee, the tempo varying, then repeating. I do not know this pattern’s origin, but I feel it rising to the surface of my mind.