Blood of a Thousand Stars (Empress of a Thousand Skies #2)(20)

It wasn’t working. Vin would’ve told him to visualize, but with every second the dread clawed at him.

He pushed through the thinning crowds but couldn’t find her anywhere.

“You may have suffered a concussion,” Pavel was saying. He didn’t even know how long the droid had been talking to him, hadn’t realized that P was still by his side. “If you won’t seek treatment I can consult my limited medical databaaaaaaa—” The droid stalled out.

Aly turned, just in time to see a UniForce soldier grabbing Pavel and attempting to power him down.

Aly didn’t think. He lunged.

Muscles he didn’t know existed screamed as the man brought his scanner down on Aly’s shoulder and shoved him backward onto the ground before he had a chance to fight back.

“Don’t move.” The guy had a stunner drawn now, aimed right at Aly’s chest. He loomed over him, and Aly thought he looked like one of the prison guards. Perhaps he was.

“Excuse me,” Pavel said, polite, more than the guy deserved. His eyelights were still blinking like crazy. “There is no need for such roughhousing . . .”

In response, the soldier swung his foot and kicked Pavel over. The robot tipped sideways into the dirt, eyes flickering red as his attachments flailed. When Aly moved to help, the soldier struck him once in the ribs with the butt of his scanner.

“I said: Don’t. Move.”

Even when he pulled it back, Aly could still feel where the blow had landed.

Aly curled in on himself and tried to breathe through the pain. Half his face was in the dirt. His eyes had adjusted by now, and he could see this piece of taejis. Aly wanted to charge him. To rip his goddamned throat out. But the stunner was pointed right at him.

And that’s when he saw it.

Her.

All he could see was an arm, a hand, a body pinned beneath a fallen pillar. A bag. Her bag.

“Kara!” he screamed again, trying to pull himself up, but the UniForce soldier shoved him right back down. Aly felt his strength flooding out of him in a wave of terror. She wasn’t moving. It couldn’t be her. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Kara.

No. It wasn’t her.

Aly crawled toward her. Only twenty feet from where they’d just been standing.

The soldier went after him, booted him back down into the rubble. Dust from the rubble flew everywhere, blinding Aly.

“Get the fuck off me,” Aly shouted, rotating and swiping at the guy, feeling the stunner shoot him in the arm, which numbed him for a second. Where was Pavel? He’d lost track of him for now. But still he swiveled, dragged himself in the direction of the rubble pile, the backpack, the girl’s body, the arm . . .

It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. Kara was alive somewhere. She was not this limp arm, this broken thing.

But when he got closer, he gasped, choking on burning-hot dust. The prayer beads were clutched in her hand, tangled in her fingers.

“Pavel, tell me it’s not her.”

The droid righted himself as his eyelights flickered in and out. He stuck a thin attachment that looked like a thermometer into the ground. “I detect traces of her DNA . . .”

There was a blur of motion and sound, a screaming ripping through him, ripping through time and space, so that his scream, his pain, existed everywhere at once. Aly yelled Kara’s name as he clawed at the pile of rubble on top of her.

“Put your hands on the ground where I can see them,” a soldier said from behind. He pressed the cool metal of the stunner down hard on the side of Aly’s head so that it bit into his temple. Aly lifted his hands; there was no coming back from a stun in the head. He had seen it in the Wray—guys fried after a run-in with the UniForce. Crazy outbursts. Disorientation. Anger they just couldn’t get a lockdown on.

“Don’t move,” the soldier said, pulling one of Aly’s hands down behind his back. His eyes were still locked on Kara’s hand underneath a ton of concrete. He made himself pliable as the soldier grabbed his other hand, about to join them behind his back. If he timed it just right he could spin around. The guy was probably wearing the same kind of holster Aly used to wear when he’d been part of the UniForce. It came equipped with a standard-issue blade . . . could he get to it in time?

“Perhaps I can assist,” Pavel said just as the soldier tried to join Aly’s hands. “He was processed in the camp just two days ago, and he was held—”

The soldier moved his stunner off Aly’s head and shocked Pavel. A blue web of electricity crawled up his body. His eyes flickered then went out. Aly knew he couldn’t feel pain, not in the same way a human could, but it sure as hell looked painful.

Aly used the opportunity to break free and spin around. He leapt up and kicked the soldier on instinct—brought the heel of his foot as hard as he could across the side of the guy’s knee. It bent exactly the way it wasn’t supposed to, and he cried out in pain as he went down. Aly jumped up and the world flipped. They’d switched places now. The soldier fumbled for the stunner, but Aly kicked it out of his hand, then drove his foot between the soldier’s ribs. That was payback for earlier—and for Pavel.

He kicked again. More payback. He was enjoying this: seeing a man struggle and wearing the very uniform he’d been so proud to put on himself. Suddenly it wasn’t a stranger Aly was kicking, attacking, with everything he had in him. It was himself on the floor, that stupid kid from the Wray who ran away from home and joined the UniForce, too weak to be himself, thinking the only way to belong was to blend in. Everything Aly had done brought him here, to this moment—and he wanted to destroy himself, the UniForce, the memory of everyone who had died because of him or in spite of him. All the memories. All the horrors. All the unfairness. Everything.