The rain in New Eden was far from clean. The rain came in greasy sheets, accompanied by the toxic wastage emitted by the sky factories that encircled the city in iron halos. Every raindrop hissed on contact with the low energy field that Viper maintained around her skin, and her tastebud absorbed the metallic and electric sensations, the same sensations she first got on the night they took Lena.
Three months. Ninety-one days of dead ends, black market gossip, and corpses warming up in the alleys. Tonight, the trail led here, in the Syndicate's Dock-7 warehouse—a brutal structure of concrete and corrugated steel that sat on the rim of the irradiated harbor. The warehouse was empty-looking from the outside (windows blacked out, warning signs telling all comers to stay the heck away), and Viper had observed the telltale heat emissions inside for six hours straight. Thirty heavily armed guards, two null-field generators, and something else—namely, a pulsing, oscillating hum of curative energy that grated against her bruised breastbone like a broken rib.
Lena was here. Or had been.
She lay flat on the rooftop across the street, her cheek against the soggy gravel, her scope fixed on the scene. The rifle was just for show. She hadn't used bullets in a long, long time. Now, she counted beats instead of counting seconds. When the catwalk patrol turned its head, she acted.
Sound. The absence of wasted motion.
She slid down the drainage pipe, boots whispering kisses on the wall, and ended up in the shadow of the shipping box, where the smell was a mix of fish and hopelessness. Power was building in her hands (filaments so fine they could sever links). She moved along the wall until she came to the service entrance. One guard was leaning against the door, synthetic cigarette lit, the small red dot of the ember like an eye. Viper stepped out of the darkness, touched the spot at the base of the guard's skull, and pushed. A needle-sharp jolt of pure dynamic energy slipped through bone and brain. The cigarette slipped from her hands as she lowered the guard to the floor.
Inside, the warehouse was colder than the rain. The air was filled with the smell of antiseptic and fear. Above, the sodium lights hummed and flickered, casting long shadows between the rows of iron cages. Few were filled. Some contained things that had once been human.
She began to hurry now, her boots making no sound on the oil-stained floor. Each cage was tugging on her, a girl with frosted lips, a man whose arms ended in charred stubs, and one who was watching her with an animal fear in his eyes. None of them Lena. Viper compelled herself to memorize each face. She would come back when she got the chance.
In the far corner, a freight elevator came creaking down. Viper blended into the shadows beside a pallet of null-crates, lead-lined boxes the Syndicate employed when they transported valuable Cannings. The freight elevator creaked through the doorway. Two guards, their exosuits a dull gray, exited, leading a gurney. The patient, a woman, was on the gurney, IVs running from both arms into bags that pulsed a light, gold glow.
Lena.
Viper's heart was racing so much that she could taste its pulsations in her teeth. Her sister's black hair was cropped on one side, and her scalp was a network of surgical scars. The golden liquid in the pouches was the ultimate healing fluid (distilled, bottled, and beyond price). They were milking her like a maple tree.
The guards pushed the gurney towards a heavily fortified vault door, where the insignia of the Syndicate was emblazoned—a serpent devouring its own tail. Viper could taste the metallic sensation of her own tongue biting through her own skin.
She had seconds.
There was energy flowing through her, and it was hotter than anger. She went out.
The first guard noticed her too late. A lash of focused power uncoiled, and his head separated from the rest of his body, the wound closing before a single drop could fall. The second guard raised his gun, but Viper was already in motion (low, fast, ravenous). She flashed across the floor, her palm slapping against the breast plate. He folded in on himself, bones snapping, heart exploding. He fell silently.
The vault door cycled open from the inside. Reinforcements.
Viper raced over to the gurney. Lena's eyes fluttered.
"Evie.?" A cracked whisper
"I've got you." Raw was the tone in which Viper spoke. With an energy blade thinner than a single hair, Lena severed the restraints. Lena's burning skin was hot against her touch, her pulse beating like a caged bird. The gold bags still drained her.
The boots beat behind the vault door. Thirty seconds, perhaps even less.
Viper yanked the IVs away. The blood and the liquid gold splashed against the concrete. Lena screamed in pain (weak, broken) from the shock. Viper held her sister in her arms and realized just how light her sister was.
"Stay with me, Lena. Just a little longer."
She turned towards the cages. The prisoners were now standing, their bodies crowded against the bars, their eyes fixed on her with a desperate hope. Viper locked eyes with the frost-lipped girl and made her decision.
She raised her hands. The energy burst outward in a perfect circle, silent and invisible and deadly. Every cage lock exploded. The null-field emitters flashed and went dark. Thirty inmates stumbled forth.
"Run," hissed Viper. "Scatter. Don't look
The vault door hissed fully open. Six exosuit guards came rushing out, guns raised.
With Lena in her arms, now light as a feather, Viper turned to them. Electric energy, like black bolts of lightning, flashed all around her.
The first bolt led the guard through the visor. The second made a hole straight through the vault door and into the corridor beyond. The others all opened fire.
The side-stepping
She was all motion and slaughter. Razor-sharp energy blades erupted from her forearms, longer than most swords, and pulsed with dreadful intensity. She chopped through armor like paper. Fire and blood splashed about on the walls in mad patterns. In the melee, a pyrokinetic prisoner broke through and reduced the corridor to flame. Viper employed the fire and made a run for the dock with Lena in tow.
alarms FINALLY screamed (too late).
She splashed into the rain. The freed Cannings streamed out into the night like terrified birds. Viper ran until her lungs were on fire, until the warehouse blazed like an open wound behind her, until all she could hear was the faint rasping of Lena's breathing against her skin.
She didn't stop until they got to the culvert beneath the old skyway, her emergency exit, filled with med-packs and her stolen bike. It was there, in the rain, that she first sank to her knees in the mud and held her sister.
Lena's eyes opened, glassy but alert. "You came," she whispered, her fingers curling weakly around Viper's wrist. The gold light flickered beneath her skin (dim, but there).
"Always," Viper said, her voice cracking for the first time in years. "I'm never losing you again.
In the distance, searchlights swept across the harbor. The whir of rotors cut through the night air. The Syndicate would come. The government would come. And they would declare this night terrorism, a reason to fear the Cannings.
Let them.
Viper leaned her forehead against Lena's and sensed the first flicker of the potentially perilous spark within her.
"Not just vengeance.
uession She boosted her sister up onto the motorcycle and they both got on. She turned the throttle, and the engine roared like a promise. Dock-7 was burning behind them, a pyre for the old world. Before them, nothing but war.