Rebel's Consort - Phoenix Book 1 Page 2

  Onyx?

  With a curse, Analena moved further toward Down Below’s market place and crouched behind a pile of rubble. The mound bordered one of the steel girder structures that comprised the base level for the five-mile diameter of New Delphi. A location too close to civilization for her liking and on the border of the Regent guard patrols. Desperation dictated her choices. She needed reception. Looking up at the solid ceiling of Down Below, she tried to gauge whether the structure was interfering with her signal.

  Onyx?

  She cradled the boy closer, waiting for the response on her communicator.

  Twenty seconds, thirty, then a blip of letters flashed on the device covering the back of her left hand.

  Onyx: Status?

  2 much 2 handle. No shit. Not that she intended to send that particular message, but the thought kept repeating in her mind as she murmured words of comfort against the boy’s head. His fingers dug into her arm, feeding back his fear.

  Onyx: Health?

  How exactly did she gauge health for a missing eye and blindness? The boy was alive, so that put him at better than 50/50.

  60%—need help And now she was rambling useless details on the underground network channel.

  Onyx: I’m here, focus—age—sex—location

  8?—male—? ‘Stuck out in the cold’ and hiding from guards in Down Below didn’t translate well for location.

  Onyx: Bleeding?

  No—maybe The boy didn’t show outward signs of wounds or lethargy. The second symptom, one she’d expect if he had internal bleeding. But she couldn’t know and worse couldn’t repair based on what the surgical monsters had done.

  Onyx: Have it covered—what tools—details?

  Damn it. She couldn’t even articulate what to request. The only thing she knew for certain—she couldn’t handle the boy’s problem alone. Years with Onyx’s guidance and all she could handle this time was the physical haul and comfort. She drew the line at working on head wounds, too delicate, too much room for error. At least this extraction had been cleaner than some. Swallowing back frustration, she made a quick decision.

  Need hands on.

  Nothing followed but dead air space. Her dealings with Onyx were always at a distance. Notorious in the underground teams for his reticence and shadowed lifestyle, he kept himself isolated, though she claimed that status as well. Frankly, she had no information on his participation with other team members. The occasional global distress call had flashed on her receiver from time to time. Her initial surprise at receiving his query on her status before responding to others had faded to a circumstance she now took for granted. Perhaps a potential error on her part.

  Her second team member, Wolf, indicated Onyx delivered procedural advice and support across all the teams. He’d been known to talk people through surgery via message, but he came out of hiding for almost no one. Perhaps she’d doomed this boy and screwed her most important contact with her request.

  Onyx: Your transmissions cutting out—detail Pickup zone

  Thank you. Analena bent her head and released a breath of relief against the boy’s head. “Hang in there, buddy. Help is coming.”

  The boy’s head twitched against her midriff. His hands remained fisted, yet his breathing had calmed.

  Wolf @ Little Dipper@10 That would give her two hours to get the boy home. A risky elongated time schedule, but she’d need to weave false trails and ensure the guards couldn’t follow her.

  Onyx: Confirm

  Thanks

  Onyx: Not needed

  The astrological overlay of the city worked for her security measures. Code name Wolf, or Aaron, was the oldest of her crew. He operated in the thin layer between the ruins of Down Below and New Delphi’s acceptable society above the grid. He’d made the original contact with Onyx, albeit by messaging as well, the first face-to-face contact cemented in a dive coffee shop on the middle level of the city’s framework. The shop functioned as the central coordinate for the constellations and the encrypted meeting codes. The meet point of the map shifted, based on the season, constantly moving the pickup zone with a secure option known only to the Onyx, Wolf, and herself.

  Even after several more contacts with Aaron, if one could call them that, this meeting left her and Aaron confronting a virtual stranger. Onyx had always used a face shield and required the same of Aaron, a measure of distance and security she’d respected. Now past caution left them vulnerable.

  She shifted the boy in her arms. “Hold on, buddy. I’m taking you home.”

  Chapter 2

  Trace kept his face averted and followed the edge of the Down Below market place. The makeshift stalls and bartering tables supplied ‘recycled’ items from New Delphi’s prestigious homes and kelp byproducts for food until the wee hours of the morning. The more secluded accesses, levels beneath the ruins of homes and office buildings, hosted the edgier, lucrative flesh trade. People did what it took to keep their families clothed and fed. He didn’t judge. But the fringes were a good place to become lost and hidden from the Regent guards.

  His face shield kept anyone from recognizing him, though his shield was now a recognizable icon for Onyx on its own. Obscurity was an obvious reason to wear a mask, but not his reason. He’d modified the interior. With a glance and shift of his pupils, he could activate programs developed to run external scans for body temperature, heart rate, and a preliminary assessment of fluids. All key for an initial scan of victims, or threat, without revealing himself.

  And the shield had allowed him to make his first contact with Piper’s team, several years ago. Determined to push for acceptance, he’d hounded the underground team leader.

  Radar: I can’t confirm you as a dedicated resource to Piper

  You can

  Radar: Piper makes the call—has own circle—Wolf

  Have me vetted by her second—Wolf

  Radar: Her?—codename not confirmed as female

  Test me with Wolf—will continue 2 work other cases

  Radar: Wolf may not concur

  I will agree 2 anything she wants—just need to be Piper’s single point of contact for medical

  The transmissions had stalled. Radar’s recruitment of him, after his wife’s death, necessitated the leader’s knowledge of Trace’s past. He’d known all the heinous details and pulled Trace into to work anyway to counter the Regents’ plans to gain immortality using the lives of others. Trace’s only interest had been derailing the harvesting of body parts from uninfected children. However, he’d assisted with any team requiring his help.

  Radar: Sometimes better to let the past go

  Can’t—please

  Radar: confirm—will offer the meet

  The initial meeting with Wolf had been public, cold, and uncomfortable. Pretty much as Trace had expected. He hadn’t released his face shield and requested the same of the boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old. What the kid lacked in age he made up for in street smarts and resilience. The first meeting led to more, as Radar integrated Wolf above the grid into New Delphi’s society and tagged Trace to provide guidance and insight. His knowledge of life above and his occasional use as a backup provided an opportunity to bond with the young man and develop his trust. Both necessary for his incorporation in Piper’s mission. The process had spanned years, but it didn’t matter.

  “You’d be dead now if I wanted a target.”

  Trace shifted his shoulder against the steel door of a half-submerged semi. The truck’s rubber tires long since salvaged, and the trailer covered in concrete rubble from an ancient loading dock, the worthless site provided a discrete meet point. He flipped a small panel, typed in a code and, at the click of the lock, entered the trailer and turned off his shield.

  Clayton Ebris, codename Shepherd, was one of only two people who knew Trace Boden as Onyx and could identify him. Ebris was the only one with a past that came close to being as horrendous as his own. Yet, eight years of missions had developed resp
ect between the two of them. It had given Trace some hope that his own future held enough time to pay back for the actions of his past.

  “The break at the detention center came close to a blackout. Without your word on contact with Piper, we would have sent someone in because we lost signal.”

  “More to it than erratic transmissions?”

  Ebris nodded and leaned back against one of the stacks of crates in the trailer. The closed metallic cover of his cybernetic eye reflected the artificial light from the ceiling, giving an odd illumination of the silver. The dim light projected his heavily muscled frame and striated blond, brown hair into darker relief. The effect made Trace uneasy and presented Clay as more machine than man. A reality he could dispel only from working together, trust built the hard way through dangerous missions riding the edge of death.

  “Radar has intel that Regents are expanding their trade to the other international hubs.” Clay gave a quick snort, shook his head, and continued. “I expect that we’ll see a pickup in Piper’s activities but I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

  “These children need someone to help them.”

  “Calm down, Boden. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get them out. I’m sure Radar has a plan, though my hope is that he’s working something further up the cycle. Extracting injured children isn’t a solution. Stopping the Regent guards from scouting out the orphans and abducting newborns will end this.”

  “Neutralizing the Regents would stop it.”

  “And while I feel your anger, total anarchy isn’t a solution either. It’s taken us several generations just to get back to cities, some sense of government, and a safer, if not peaceful world for the majority.”

  Trace turned away, not willing to become distracted by a political battle he couldn’t influence. Given that Clay wasn’t completely sold on the words he delivered, and spent all his waking hours trying to offer security to those who struggled, it wasn’t worth the debate. “Go back to the transmission problem.”

  “I haven’t finished running my search, Radar either, but it looks as if the transmissions coincided with Piper completing the extraction.”

  Trace whipped back around. “A planned interference? That means they knew she was coming?”

  “You’re going to lose yourself assuming Piper’s a woman, but I’m obviously wasting my breath. Yes, the activity could even pinpoint the kid as a plant to lure her in. Flagging us of his circumstance would automatically commit Piper for a mission.”

  “If they’d planned that well, then they could have taken her. So this was what, a practice run? For what?”

  “You could probably tell me, since you spend all your waking hours on Piper’s missions.”

  “A crackdown now makes little sense. Piper’s been extracting kids for years.”

  “So have others. But if Radar’s correct, and the supply line is expanding, then they need more kids, not fewer.”

  The bile rose in Trace’s throat as he closed his eyes and tried to dispel the images of surgery after surgery. Those days were gone but the waking nightmares never left. “Their option to increase the supply is to clamp down on those being saved.” He smashed his fist into the trailer’s wall. The pain barely fazed him, but it reminded him that his hands were of more value than as just punching gloves. “At least with some of the children surviving the surgeries, the Regents could hold off rebellion with the illusion that they weren’t monsters. This will get out. How do they expect to cover up what they’re doing?”

  “I don’t have answers for you. I will, however, be clamping down on routing intel to Piper until we’ve got a better handle on this. No one from our teams is expendable.”

  With a nod, Trace glanced at the square black box Clay had placed on the floor. “The AG?”

  “Ten pints. Three fresh, seven frozen.” Clay nudged the box with his foot. “Given what we know, supplies will get tight. That’s why I had you meet here instead of my place, less time in the open. Try to make this last.”

  “Will do.” He bent to pick up the case and extended a hand. “Thanks.”

  “All in a day’s work, brother.”

  ***

  Careful to avoid the lights streaming through the occasional drainage grates of New Delphi’s streets above, Analena made her way over the uneven mounds of concrete, mortar and asphalt toward the darker bowels of Down Below. Hollows dug out by hand and machine, makeshift squatter’s ruins in the rubble, provided shelter to house the basest of the work force. Few, if any, entrances were visible.

  The people were there nonetheless.

  The occasional call, hawking of water, fresh kelp strips, and transient job offerings coincided with pockets of harsh lights ahead. Rechargeable neon gas tubes contorted in lettering of pink, blue and green—the Down Below version of advertising—decorated small open-air stalls in a physical demarcation between the public trading places and opportunities for twenty-four-hour services. The haphazard homes in the dark, recessed communities, represented two-thirds of the city’s population. Surprising, if one stood beyond the city grid and compared the huge metropolis built on metal stilts with the dark, half-mile high layer beneath it.

  She’d been born above the grid. But her life, like that of Onyx and so many of the rebel teams, existed in Down Below and along the fringes of New Delphi.

  With a mental shake, she tried to dislodge concern about Onyx.

  He didn’t want thanks, but he would want something else as barter. Onyx never took her money. He only accepted promises. That had worried her ever since he’d become so critical to the success and failure of her missions. Fortunately, she’d had no failures and, to be fair, she could credit his presence for the health and well-being of the children she’d rescued.

  The promises he extracted were her commitment. A promise that he would be her first call, her only call, for help.

  She’d be a liar if she didn’t admit she was relieved he’d agreed to support her, but given her circumstances she worried equally that the man who’d had her back might show up for something more. Best case, he was coming for her. She didn’t have that kind of freedom for any man, but, if she had to, she could offer minutes of her life. It couldn’t be worse than she’d endured in the past.

  Worse, he was coming for her kids. An unacceptable consequence. She had killed to save them. She would kill to keep them.

  Haunted brown eyes filtered through her mind. No, her imagination was filling a void. While the crystals’ visions had proved true for her missions and her kids, they had no relevance for her personal life. She didn’t believe those eyes held any connection to Onyx, and if they did, they most likely delivered warning.

  She would find a way to pay him and return to their old method of business. Even so, she anticipated one expensive house call. A tremor pulsed along her skin as she endeavored to focus on the risks around her.

  The boy’s tightened grip, coinciding with her elevated anxiety, performed the objective. She rubbed her cheek against the crown of his head as she analyzed her path.

  Every few steps, the glint of watchful eyes lasered from the dark. The monitoring of her movements was no less dangerous than the search beams above, or worse, the ever-diligent New Delphi immunization squads searching for newborns and pre-pubescent children in Down Below.

  She angled away from the mountains of rubble and the city’s nexus. Zigzagging to her destination took twice as long as a straight route, but safety required the extra deviations. She finally broke through the last line of thick pillars, computer-integrated steel columns that supported the foundation of New Delphi’s grid. Faster now, free of the grid’s overhang and deep into the high, wild grasses, she headed for the maze of communication dishes and security beacons. One-hundred-foot structures of steel, cable and wires formed on thirty-foot concrete cubes circled the city of fifteen thousand people.

  Beyond the outposts existed only broken bits of blacktop, thick brush, dense forest, and kudzu. The aggressive foliage blanketed the lands betwe
en New Delphi and Little Pitt, the next reconstruction city in the northeast quadrant.

  Not her target.

  With a press at her belt, a slow buzz folded around her body and the boy’s. A dense cone of electronic disturbance covered them from head to toe, enough to shield them from detection for several seconds, though not enough to trigger an alarm.

  She shifted the child higher, gaining a tight hold around the back of his thighs, and carefully drew back a thick layer of vines from the base of the closest satellite dish. Plastering her back against the rough concrete surface, she pushed and squeezed through the manmade crack to an earthborn one. The going was tough with two bodies. She pushed harder as the crevice narrowed. After several minutes of sliding, she finally cleared the entrance.

  Black sucked away both light and sound. She waited several minutes, confirming no one had found her entrance before her appearance or followed from behind. Confident of her success, she hurried along a trail to her right, relying on nothing but blind faith and years of practice.

  She bent her knees as she moved, adjusting her posture to absorb the angle of decline and the boy’s added weight. The rough sponge of her soles found firm footing in familiar sections.

  Ten minutes in, the console on her hand chirped with confirmation of Wolf’s contact with Onyx, and their approach. They’d enter the caves below from another point. Given Onyx would be blindfolded, they would take a bit longer.

  The ground evened out, and she squatted with the final plateau two feet in front of her. “I’m setting you down.”

  The child’s arms strangled her, refusing to let go as a garbled whine pitched in his throat.

  Taking one of his hands, she patted it against the flat rock and eased his fingers to feel the edge and nothingness that followed. “There’s a jump here. I have to get down first.”