Earth Awakened, page 20
He needed to see that piece of metal shrapnel half-buried into the metal of his hood.
It was one of the devices he used to remind him that certain events had happened and that all of this—the magic, the invasion, the occupation—was real.
A piece of his school, melted, mutilated, and stuck forever in his hood.
They moved as a convoy, one vehicle behind the other. There were certain cons to traveling like this, but debris from the city’s fall and the subsequent seven years of abandonment eliminated most other options.
Sometimes, they had to stop and clear the road, which gave him and Caleb a chance at some last-minute Earth practice ahead of the battle.
The battle.
Nervous energy danced a thrill through his skin.
He was about to use magic. He was about to use magic and fight.
We need to learn the shielding spells. If we learn them, we will be invincible.
That had been next on his list, after Baj’lur and Baj’pyr. He’d found them in the files. He just had to work up to it.
He squinted up at the sky. A lack of cell phones and reliable watches meant that they used the sun to keep track of time. Naomi, Thorn, and Bonnie had trained in this. He was getting better at it, but wasn’t great.
Eventually, he turned his mind back to Naomi.
God, she was always on his mind, wasn’t she? Even when she was shutting him out, he still thought of her.
They’d been together six months ago. What had happened?
The fall had happened. The occupation. The loss of everything they’d tried to protect.
He sat in the passenger’s seat as she guided the vehicle toward the outpost, her mask convincing and well-made. Every so often, he’d glance over Rosie’s head and try to get a read on her.
No one spoke in the cab of the truck.
Even before Rosie had joined them, there’d been silence.
A cackle of braying laughter caught his attention, and he switched to the rear-view mirror just in time to see Gannon crunch a loose shopping cart under the large truck’s wheels.
He huffed a laugh at the sight of the crumpled plastic cage flinging to the side of the street.
Then, something caught his attention over the back of the boys’ Humvee.
The mountains sloped up behind them, big and dark and green, wreathed in clouds closer to the top, with the odd streaks of scree marking their slopes. Even without a connection to Caleb’s Earth Element, they made an impression on him.
With the distance, the shades of the trees and dirt blurred into solid blobs, shrouded with a slight haze.
Which made the plume of smoke and burst of white, burning sparks extremely noticeable.
He jerked his head down, getting a better angle on it. “Naomi, in the back, the mountain. Is that the—”
“Fuck!”
A flare from the mountains.
Something had happened at the western comms tower.
Chapter 24
May 14, 2003 - Transition Year Twenty-One
Occupied Seola
A breeze slipped across her face, and she squinted against the glare of the late morning sunlight, her heart doing a small stutter as she took in the city before her.
She’d done it. She was here. She’d teleported across more than five hundred kilometers, crossing mountains, rivers, cities, and borders, and she’d done it all in seconds.
I could come here whenever I wanted. I can do that.
Her skin tingled from the magic. Slowly, she got over the rush of the teleport and turned her attention down to the city itself.
In her experience, most people thought of coastal cities in one of two ways: either they were quaint, seaside towns with a summery flair and a healthy tourist economy, with strings of resorts hugging the coastline like strips of moss, or they were heavily industrialized, grungy cities with massive docks, the port at its heart, and a glass-encased downtown of chic corporate headquarters and banking branches, just blocks away from the grime and ugliness of the industry.
Seola was a mix. The bulk of the city sat just east of a river delta with a goodly sized inlet at its core. It sprawled into communities and sub-communities, riding through the lowland’s plains and foothills, and sucked around the feet of the mountains like a tide around rocks.
A few scraggly communities dotted the valleys and coastline, townships and retirement villages that had fallen onto the map for one reason or another, but the bulk of it was a sprawl of cityscape and residential.
Except for where the mountains stepped in, it was like someone had fired a paintball at a map of the area and drawn the city limits wherever the paint ended.
They’d landed midway up a hill on the western side of the city, right on the edge of the downtown spread and just three blocks from where the water of the inlet lapped against its shore.
She frowned.
This was… not where they were supposed to be.
It took her a few moments to get her bearings—Seola was not her hometown, and teleportation had a way of turning one around—but she managed to re-adjust her mental map of the town.
She raised her gaze to the left, where a range of mountains lifted up in the distance.
“We’re off mark,” she said, pointing a finger. “We should be over there.”
Gobardon stepped up to her side, his expression stony and unreadable, but also squinting against the sunlight.
He didn’t look happy.
Her frown deepened. Had she made a mistake? Gobardon had been asking about her confidence in teleportation, and how much power the cat—Greneinta—would lend her.
With this far of a teleport, it would have taken a far greater reach from Greneinta than the simple within-Mersetzdeitz trials she’d had.
But… if that were the case and she were off-mark, then Gobardon wouldn’t be here with her.
Something must have happened.
She turned her view back to the city. To the right, one of the city’s newer buildings—a glass and metal structure that must have been built just before the fall—stood tall, sharp, and weathered, its metal gleaming under a few layers of grime and dust. Seven years’ worth of fallen leaves had blown into its courtyard, riding up against the empty glass of shops that had never been moved in and offices that had never finished renovations. Most of the courtyard’s saplings had died, their stick-like branches scratchy and barren, but two had a full head of leaves.
“Yes,” Gobardon said after a few moments. “I did notice that.”
She turned her gaze to him and waited.
When he didn’t elaborate, her frown deepened. “So, what happened then? Is this normal?”
“No. We were blocked.”
“Blocked?”
“Yes. An opposing energy stopped us from going to where we wanted to go and put us here instead. Ergo, we were blocked. I felt it happen.” The edges of his mouth made an unhappy downturn, dark eyes gazing at the mountains in the distance. A touch of his Element slipped into the ground as he put a feel out, reading their surroundings.
She let him do his thing.
It was weird, though. She knew the Mages had anti-teleporting warding—buildings like Finnevar and Kjaran were covered in it—but she also knew that she could ghost right through that warding.
She’d done so just last night, when she’d teleported back into her dorm room. And again this morning, when she’d done it again.
So, if it wasn’t a Mage blocking them…
“Do you think it’s the spirit?” she asked. “Could the Malik be blocking us?”
“It’s possible. If it is her, that shows a lot more sentience and awareness on her part than I had anticipated.”
She squinted up at him. “You saw that video. She’s clearly with it.”
He ignored her, focusing on the mountain. “We need to get over there.”
“Guess we’re using the ankle express.”
He turned to her, his brows taking on a perplexed twitch.
“Walking,” she said, her tone flat. “We’re walking.”
By the way his eyes slid from hers and back to the distant mountains again, she guessed that he didn’t like the idea.
“Relax,” she said, clapping him on the back. “I know where we are. Used to go to a garage around here. I’m sure we can find something driveable.”
Although, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t so sure. In the military, they’d had a steady supply of new gas up from Terremain or Ryarne, a lot of it imported from Mersetzdeitz through the inter-mountain rail lines, but Seola had been dead for seven years.
Unless Swarzgard had been topping up the pumps, she had some doubts about finding good gas. That, and batteries.
As if on cue, a blast cracked through the air, making a percussion that went straight through her chest. She flinched and jerked back, spinning to the left just as a staccato of gunfire erupted.
She made it three meters toward the small wall at the side of the courtyard before she forced herself to stop and take stock of the situation.
She was an Earth Mage now. She didn’t need barriers for protection.
Still, the next cracks of automated weapons fire made her flinch.
A few seconds later, a flare shot into the sky, flashing a bright white against the deep green of the mountain as it spluttered into the atmosphere.
To the west.
Well, at least it was in the opposite direction of where they wanted to go.
Still, she didn’t like it.
“This place fell seven years ago,” she said. “Is there infighting? Or maybe some kind of resistance effort…?”
She couldn’t imagine there being one. Maybe in Terremain, and definitely in Ryarne with the Underground, but not here.
Gobardon stepped forward. “Whatever it is, it isn’t our concern. We are here for the Malik, nothing more.”
Right.
She was not a soldier, not anymore. She lived in Mersetzdeitz now.
And she had a job to do.
“Okay, well—let’s get to the garage. I’d rather not get caught up in whatever’s going on there.”
Chapter 25
May 14, 2003 - Transition Year Twenty-One
Occupied Seola
The engine screamed as Naomi flattened the accelerator, and the truck crashed through the streets. Numbing pain smacked through Javen’s arm as he was slammed against the door.
Between them, Rosie sat with her hands over her ears and her eyes pinched shut.
He gritted his teeth together.
It was way too soon for her to be shutting down.
“Fuck,” Naomi said, turning the wheel sharply to the left to avoid the rubble of a collapsed storefront.
Behind them, the other street vehicles lagged behind. Only Gannon’s Humvee matched their pace.
“Has it been three hours already?” he yelled over the thumping of the truck’s frame hitting road and debris.
“I didn’t think so,” she said.
The truck suddenly dipped and made a noise that sounded profoundly expensive. He grabbed the handle over his window, attempting to brace himself against the door.
“Flares aren’t just signals,” she continued. “They are warnings. Either I mismanaged our time, or they ran into trouble. Do you see a second flare? It should appear a bit to the east of us.”
Their view of the mountains had shifted in the rear-view mirror. It took him a moment to regain his bearings and figure out where the first flare had been. Thin plumes of smoke reached like a hand over part of the mountain.
He rounded his gaze toward the east and searched the mountainside.
“I don’t see another one.”
“Shit. We need to get to that outpost before those bastards scatter into the streets.”
If the map they’d made was accurate, they should be nearing the outpost—but the surrounding streets gave no evidence of this.
From his limited experience, outposts were supposed to be well-fortified, miniature bases surrounded by open space, but around him, all he saw were residential streets and quaint business blocks, thick with trees.
Either the Swarzgardians were still developing theirs, or they felt confident that no one would come for it.
The smell of gasoline came to him suddenly, strong enough for him to attempt rolling the window down—but when he pressed the button for it, the window whined and didn’t move.
He used the inner lever to adjust the side mirror to look at the door.
A dent punched deep into the outside of the door.
How did I miss that?
They must have hit something. And, by the smell, they’d hit the undercarriage, too. He leaned across Rosie to inspect the gauges on the dashboard. The bright orange arrow of the fuel gauge was dipping quickly.
“We’re going to run out of fuel before we get there.”
Naomi’s eyes left the road long enough to glance at the meter.
“Fuck. We might make it. We’re almost there.”
The truck lurched as she turned into a side alley barely wide enough to fit them. Behind them, the Humvee scraped the brickwork on the way in. Walls rose on either side of the truck, partially blocking the late morning sunshine, and garbage cans crunched in succession beneath them, throwing the cab around. A lone, rusted bicycle vanished under the fender with a sickening clatter.
The engine roared, and Naomi jerked them around a corner, bursting free from the alley.
Suddenly, the world opened up, and she was punching the truck toward a tall, chain-linked fence. His eyes caught on the series of brick and concrete outbuildings beyond, and the coils of barbed wire that twisted against the sky.
They were about twenty yards away when the truck began to list.
Rosie fell into him. He braced them against the door, catching sight of an alert glowing on the dashboard.
“Naomi—the tires!”
She swore and pumped her foot down. The truck lurched another few yards before the engine sputtered and died.
She threw the stick into park, checked her sidearm, and launched herself out the door.
Javen tried his own door, but it was stuck fast.
Whatever they’d hit had shut it for good.
Rosie still pressed hard against him, a solid, stiff lump from where she’d fallen during the bumpy ride.
She hadn’t moved since the flare had lifted into the sky.
“Rosie,” he said, easing his hand around her shoulder and giving it a gentle push.
Naomi reappeared at his window, holding the guns she’d retrieved from the truck’s bed. “Why are you still in here?”
“I’m coming,” he said.
His hands wrapped around Rosie’s wrists and slowly, but forcefully, lowered her hands from her ears.
“Rosie.”
“I can’t… I can’t…”
“You don’t have to.”
“What?”
“You won’t be able to help like this.”
She opened her eyes. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
“I need to move past you,” he said. “This door won’t open. I need you to slide past me and get on the floor. Don’t raise your head, no matter what you hear. Just stay here, and we will come get you afterward.”
They hadn’t gotten close enough to the fence for any of the towers to be able to shoot into the cabin of the truck. He would have preferred for her to escape to one of the nearby buildings, but he doubted she could even move in her state.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry. Just be safe.”
Gannon pulled beside them in the Humvee. Soon, all of the vehicles would arrive—all sixty people they had to launch the attack—and the Swarzgardians inside would know that they weren’t just daring urban explorers.
Javen shimmied around Rosie and grabbed the handle of the driver’s side door to pull himself out of the truck.
He stopped himself from assessing the damage.
“Can the Humvee take down the fence?” he asked, taking his gun from Naomi and throwing it over his shoulder.
She snapped the chinstrap of her helmet and shook her head. “No. The supports are reinforced with concrete. The Humvee is strong, but it can’t take down a fence like that.”
But magic could.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Caleb and Gannon watched them through the windows of the military truck, waiting for orders. Javen pointed to Caleb and waved him over, then turned back to the fence.
It rose higher than any chain-linked fence he could remember seeing, angling toward them at the top where it supported the coils of barbed wire. Every ten yards or so, thick steel beams held the fence in place, stuck fast into large blocks of concrete.
The stone tower at the edge of the fence looked empty.
“Alright,” he said, turning back to the others. More vehicles pulled into the free areas beside theirs. They looked to Naomi for orders. She looked to him.
No pressure, right?
“We will use the Humvee to take down the fence,” he said.
Naomi sighed. “I already said that the Humvee can’t handle it.”
Just how stupid does she think I am?
“It can once Caleb and I remove the concrete supports,” he explained. “We’ll go first, and you can follow us.”
“That will put you in the direct line of fire without a vehicle to use as a shield.”
“Oh, we will follow you guys past the fence. We just need to go to the fence first.”
She didn’t like this plan. He could see it by the way she chewed the inside of her cheek. Her gaze was examining the length of the fence, likely looking for an alternative.
A loud, mechanical howl sounded from within the outpost.
“They know we’re here,” Naomi said. “We have to move.”
Javen smacked Caleb’s upper arm and dipped his head toward the fence. They sprinted. The alarm blared, rising and falling like an air-raid siren from an old movie, sending adrenaline straight into his blood.
He pointed Caleb to the left support beam.
