Secondborn (Secondborn #1)(61)

“It means that even when your brother goes away, a true friend will remain forever.”

“Sounds like something a firstborn would say,” I reply.

He laughs in delirium. “It does, but . . . I think it means something else. Why are you sticking around?” he asks.

I kneel beside him and place my good hand on his forehead. He’s clammy. He’s trembling—going into shock. A death drone emerges from the fog. A steel rope slithers out from its belly and wraps around my enemy’s neck, pulling tight. The drone attempts to scan his moniker, but all it finds on his left hand is a scar where the processor chip has been removed.

“State your Fate of origin,” the eerie machine demands. I know the soldier is Star-Fated—it’s obvious from his armor.

The pressure on his neck eases so he can speak. He gasps but refuses to answer. I ease my fusionblade from the scabbard with my left hand. The moment it ignites, I slash the death drone in half. It falls in two pieces.

I kneel beside the soldier and untangle the steel rope. He gasps. My cold fingers pry off the death-drone beacon. Standing, I toss the blinking black summoner into the air and swing at it with my fusionblade, disabling it.

“Why . . . did you . . . do that?”

“It isn’t right,” I reply. “You’re helpless.”

It doesn’t mean he’ll live. I reach into my pouch and extract a red beacon, placing it on his boot where the black one had been.

“What? Why?” His face scrunches up in agony.

“Because you’ll die if I don’t get you help. You don’t have a moniker. The medical drone won’t help you if it can’t identify you.”

I use my fusionblade to slice off the hand of the dead Sword soldier, pick up the hand, and hurriedly rest it on top of the Star-Fated man’s. The medical drone arrives and scans the moniker. Nothing happens. It hovers idle. Then, a bright burst of laser light shines from the belly of the automated medic. It cuts the Gates of Dawn soldier’s armor open. I hold my breath as the medical drone goes to work. A syringe emerges and sticks in his neck. He closes his eyes, and the pained expression on his face eases. He loses consciousness. I release the breath.

The ground shakes again. A mortar shell explodes so close that dirt rains down upon my head. I have to stay until the medical drone finishes. If I don’t, he’ll be shipped away on a hovering stretcher to a medical evacuation ship that will take him to the Twilight Forest Base, right into the hands of interrogators who will do far worse to him than what the death drone had planned.

Sword soldiers stumble past, retreating. I close my visor and move around the man I’ve chosen to sticketh with, pushing corpses to shelter him. Crawling to his side, I make myself as small as possible. The robotic arm sutures singed edges of his skin. It dresses the wounds when it’s finished. My resolve to stay begins to wear thin.

The medical drone hoists the Gates of Dawn soldier, loading him onto an inflating stretcher. It secures him to it and flies away. The stretcher lifts to hover, but I destroy the homing mechanism on its side with my sword. It rapidly deflates. With the toe of my boot, I kick the soldier’s fusionblade next to his hand, then extract my penlight and prop it against his left thigh, turning it on and facing it toward the sky, hoping it will help his people find him. Then I run.

The roaring thunder of an explosion sends burning flack streaming down on me. I’m knocked sideways. Falling, I’m stunned for a few breaths. I rise to my feet and keep running. Fear makes my stomach heave, but I swallow the bile down. I glance behind me. The flash of fusion fire singes the side of my visor, just skimming over its surface. I turn my head back and keep going.

Ahead, troopships are firing up. The closest one shuts its door and lifts off, leaving me behind. I force myself to push on. My thighs burn with exertion. More fusion fire flies past my shoulder. I get closer to the next troopship, but the door of it closes before I can make it there. It lifts off right in front of me.

I cry this time. “Stop!” I scream. “Please! Stop!” Panicking, I sob as the ship ascends and grows smaller in the sky.

All around me, broken boy soldiers lie discarded. I trip over one, almost falling, but I right myself again and keep going. The pull of changing wind sucks me forward as a small airship descends in front of me. The door is already open, lined with Sword soldiers. Fusion-rifle fire hums by, the airship soldiers shooting into the gathering storm of the enemy behind me. A few of them jump from the belly of the airship and surge out near me. One tall Sword soldier grabs my arm and drags me back toward the aircraft. No ramp extends when we reach its open door. The tall soldier picks me up and throws me inside, where I hit the floor hard and tumble. The other Sword soldiers jump inside one after another.

The tall one makes a circular gesture with his finger, and we ascend amid exploding mortar shells. The airship shakes and I’m tossed around. The tall soldier falls on top of me, holding me to the floor. The other soldiers hold on to grips on the walls.

I wheeze and try to catch my breath. We stabilize, and the bucking of the airship eases. The tall soldier slides off me. He presses the external button that retracts my visor, and the sword-shaded screen ticks back. Reaching out, I push the button on the side of his helmet. His visor falls away, and the most beautiful storm-cloud eyes gaze back at me. Hawthorne.





Chapter 15


A Beautiful Crime