Retaliation (The Praegressus Project Book 3) Read online

  Daniella had lain facedown beside her bed, her mother just a foot away. A trail of blood marked how the woman had tried to reach her daughter. Both were long dead, murdered by the same government they had sought to protect.

  Looking at their long dead bodies, Chris had struggled to find some emotion, to feel something for their deaths. It seemed like he should feel something, that their deaths should mean something to him. But after watching the vile guards attack Liz, after witnessing Halt murder the old Chead, Artemis, and seeing Richard die, it felt as though he had nothing left to give.

  Now, Chris wondered how much time they had before someone noticed the women were missing and came looking for them. The apartment had clearly been staged as a home invasion gone wrong – only a giant crack in the television screen appeared to have spared it from disappearing with the rest of the apartment’s valuables. Sooner rather than later, they would have to leave this place, though where they went then, he didn’t know.

  After the news broadcast they’d just seen, nowhere would be safe. They were terrorists now, the culprits behind a terrible attack on innocent civilians. Where before a few people might have recognised them, now their faces would be known to every citizen in the country.

  “What about… Artemis?” a small voice croaked from the sofa.

  Chris looked across at Mira, the final member of their ragged little group. She sat on the couch, her grey wings wrapped around her tiny body, watching them with her mismatched blue and green eyes. She had hardly spoken since fleeing the courthouse, but now she sat up and wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “I’m sorry, Mira,” Liz whispered as she moved across and sat beside Mira. Reaching out, she rubbed the girl’s back, taking care not to touch skin. “We couldn’t save him either.”

  The girl’s lip trembled, but she only nodded. “I know,” her eyes flashed, “I want to make them hurt.”

  On the floor, Sam chuckled. “Where did you find this girl, Chris?”

  Even Chris found himself smiling. “Don’t worry, Mira,” he said, “We will. But first, we need to rest.”

  The girl nodded, and standing, she jumped down from the couch and disappeared up the corridor without another word.

  “Does she give anyone else the creeps?” Sam murmured, still staring after the girl, “Like, maybe we shouldn’t close our eyes around her…”

  “Are you afraid of a little girl, Sam?” a wry smile twisted Liz’s lips as she shook her head, “You probably missed it – she’s Chead, a proper one. Or she was, until Halt injected her with our lovely virus.”

  “Why would he do that?” Sam asked.

  “That’s…a long story,” Chris sighed.

  Suddenly his legs felt wary, and he realised he was still standing in front of the television. Glancing at Liz, he carefully moved across to the sofa and sat next to her. His heart sank as she edged away from him, but he supressed the urge to pull her back.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter much now,” Sam gave a sad smile, “Thanks for stopping him, Liz.”

  Liz shrugged. Her eyes remained fixed on the floor. Now the discussion had petered out, the energy seemed to have drained from her. “It was Richard who got us out,” she whispered.

  They fell silent at that, each of them drifting off into their own memories. Guilt swelled in Chris’s throat as Richard’s face flickered through his thoughts. The boy’s emerald eyes shone in the darkness, angry, accusing. They had left him behind, left him to be overwhelmed by the soldiers, to fall to their bullets. In his heart, Chris knew there had been nothing they could have done, that Richard had chosen to sacrifice himself to save them all. But even so…

  He shook his head, and his mind drifted again, returning to the cold words of the Director.

  Terrorists.

  He shivered. The word had terrible connotations. Every citizen in the Western Allied States would be hunting them now. There would be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It was only a matter of time before they were caught. And this time, there would be no cages, no steel collars and injections. Just a line of soldiers on a stage, a camera in their faces, and the flash of gunfire ushering them into the darkness.

  2

  Liz let out a long breath as she moved into the corridor. The silence in the living room had become suffocating, and she was glad to escape to the darkness of the hallway. Coming to a stop, she leaned her head against the wall. A scream built in her chest and she clenched her fists, struggling to contain it. Images of the courthouse ran through her mind, over and over, an endless loop she couldn’t seem to break.

  Halt thrashing in her hands, his face turning red, then purple, his strength slowly trickling away.

  The look on Chris’s face when he had looked at her, the terror in his eyes.

  And Richard – brave, stupid Richard, telling her to run, while he turned to face the soldiers.

  She shivered, fighting back tears. It was all too much. How could she go on after what had happened, after what she’d done?

  Looking down at her hands, Liz searched for some hint of a change, some indication of the new power at her fingertips.

  Nematocysts.

  That was what Artemis had called them, the tiny stinger cells that now lined her skin. But even to her enhanced vision, her hands looked as they always had. There was no sign of their deadly nature, of the agony they could unleash at just a touch. She clenched her fists again, feeling the sharp pain as her fingernails dug into her flesh. But that pain was nothing compared to what Chris had felt when she’d touched him.

  Nothing compared with the agony in Halt’s face as he died.

  Shaking her head, Liz cast the image aside and looked up. She sensed movement from behind her, as the others prepared to sleep. She heard distant voices whispering about setting a watch, and quickly moved deeper into the corridor. After her fight in the courthouse, she figured she’d earned a respite from first watch. The door to her right led to Daniella’s room, and Liz had no desire to face the horror there. Steeling herself, she moved to the door on the left, and slipped into Danny’s room.

  She paused as the door clicked closed behind her, waiting for Jasmine to scream at her to get out. When there was no response, Liz shrugged and moved deeper into the room. Danny’s bedroom was sparsely decorated – the white walls were empty and the dressing table was bare except for a couple of family portraits. Jasmine lay tucked beneath the blankets of a queen bed pushed up against the far wall, while she spied Mira’s smaller figure curled up at the foot of the bed.

  Shaking her head at Mira’s strange sleeping preferences, Liz moved silently across the room and lay down on the other side of the bed from Jasmine. Staring up at the ceiling, she wondered whether Jasmine had fallen asleep. But something about the other girl’s rigid stillness told her otherwise.

  Listening to the soft whisper of Jasmine’s breath, Liz searched for something to say, for some words of comfort. Jasmine had been closer to Richard than anyone; the two had been cellmates, had faced the trials of the Praegressus Project together.

  A dull ache began in Liz’s back where her wings extended from her spine and she rolled onto her side to face Jasmine. To her surprise, she found the other girl staring back at her.

  “I can’t do it, Liz,” Jasmine murmured.

  “Can’t do what?” Liz whispered back.

  Jasmine’s eyes were stained red and wet from crying. Sniffing, she used her sleeve to wipe away her tears and then shook her head.

  “Go on. Keep running. Keep fighting,” she took a breath, “I’m not strong enough. I feel like I’m teetering on a cliff, and without Richard there to hold me, I’m about to fall off.”

  The image of Richard screaming for them to run flickered through Liz’s mind. She shivered and pushed it away. “But you have too,” she replied, “We all do. Otherwise, he died for nothing.”

  “I never asked him to!” Jasmine sat up suddenly, throwing off the covers. Along her back, her emerald feathers stood on end as she looked away. “
I never wanted him to.”

  To her surprise, Liz found herself smiling as she thought of the blonde-haired boy. They hadn’t gotten off to the best start, with herself and Chris getting caught up in the feud between the older prisoners. There had been no love lost between the two prison cells – Richard and Jasmine had hated Sam and Ashley. After the atrocities Halt had forced them to commit, it was difficult to blame them. But since their escape, they had been forced to work together, and Liz had come to respect Richard’s quiet strength.

  Looking back at Jasmine, she shook her head. “Sometimes we don’t get to choose what people do for us,” she sighed, remembering the sacrifices her parents had made to send her to the private school she’d hated. “But you still have to accept it.”

  “I can’t!” Jasmine was standing now, her wings extended, her face a mask of rage. She shook her head. “Don’t you get it? He did it for me, because of everything I said after he fell asleep on watch, because of what I said about family and going back for you.”

  Slowly Jasmine slumped to the floor, where she knelt in a pile of ragged clothes and feathers. Liz crouched on the bed watching her, thinking again about the time in the woods, when the soldiers had almost captured them. Only the intervention of the Chead had saved them. The incident had left Jasmine shaken, and she’d lashed out at Richard, blaming him for their being taken by surprise. But she didn’t think that was why Richard had decided to sacrifice himself.

  “I don’t think it was you, Jasmine,” she whispered, remembering a conversation she’d had with Richard high in the Californian mountains. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. “I think it was for Jeremy… to repay his sacrifice.”

  On the floor, Jasmine stilled. She looked up at Liz, her brown eyes wide. “He told you about Jeremy?”

  Liz smiled and nodded. “When we were still in the mountains. He told me what Jeremy did, how he chose to sacrifice himself rather than let Richard fight him.”

  A sob tore from Jasmine’s throat. Reaching up, she tugged at her hair. Liz longed to go to her, to pull the grieving girl into her arms, to offer whatever comfort she could. But she hesitated, feeling again her desperate isolation, knowing her touch no longer brought relief, but agony.

  “He’s really gone, isn’t he?” Jasmine said at last.

  Liz nodded, her own eyes wet with tears. Jasmine sucked in a breath to steady herself, and then lifted herself back off the ground. She sat on the edge of the bed, staring off into the darkness. A wave of weariness washed over Liz, and closing her eyes, she lay back down.

  “He wanted to leave you, you know,” Liz’s spine tingled as Jasmine spoke. “He said you were gone, that you’d turned and we should leave. I convinced him to stay.”

  “Jasmine…” Liz whispered.

  The girl lay down beside her, her eyes closed. “So it’s still my fault. And yours, and Chris’s for getting us caught in the first place. And Ashley’s for slowing us down, and Sam’s for attacking us,” Jasmine shivered, and her eyes found Liz’s in the darkness, “So why do we all get to live, when he had to die?”

  Liz opened her mouth, but suddenly her throat was dry and she couldn’t find the words. She managed to croak something unintelligible, and then shook her head. There were no answers to Jasmine’s question, no reason in this cruel world of theirs. A longing rose inside her, to feel another’s embrace, to be held in strong arms and comforted.

  And suddenly it was Liz crying. The tears came hot and fast, streaming down her cheeks to soak her pillow. She wrapped her arms around herself, but there was no comfort there, no reassurance. Her gut churned and she felt an empty hole in the bottom of her stomach. She remembered Artemis’s warm embrace, and felt again the pang of his death, and the realisation that with him gone, she might never feel the warmth of human touch again.

  Then Jasmine’s hands were taking her by the shoulders, drawing her close, though she was careful not to touch Liz’s skin.

  “Liz… I’m sorry,” she heard the other girl whisper.

  Shaking her head, Liz fought to swallow her sobs. Slowly they died away. Finally she drew in a long breath and looked at Jasmine. The other girl stared back, her tear-streaked face no doubt a mirror of Liz’s own. Unexpectedly, she found herself smiling.

  “What a mess the pair of us are.” She laughed.

  Jasmine grinned back, though Liz could still see the emotion welling just beneath the surface. “He’d be pretty pleased if he could see us,” Liz shook her head, “A couple of pretty girls crying over him.”

  The silence resumed then, though it was no longer strained, and Liz found herself drifting off towards sleep. The images returned, flickering in the darkness behind her eyelids – Halt, Chris, Richard.

  “What now?” It took a long time for Liz to realise she hadn’t dreamed the question.

  She groaned, struggling to make her mind work. “We stick together,” she said at last.

  “How do we stop them?” Jasmine pressed, “Artemis is dead. We don’t have any proof about the Chead.”

  An image flickered into Liz’s mind, of a blonde boy soaring through the mountains, a grin on his youthful face. Richard had never believed they could win, that there could be anything for them but a life on the run. Yet in the end, he had sacrificed himself to save them all. She would never forget it.

  “We’ll find a way,” Liz smiled, “Somehow.”

  3

  Sam startled awake as a voice shouted in the darkness. Beside him, someone started to thrash, and something hard struck him in the chin. Gasping, he rolled across the ground and tried to sit up, but a feathered limb struck him again, flinging him back.

  “Ashley!” he shouted, “Ashley, stop, it’s okay, it’s me, Sam.”

  A sudden stillness came over the room and Sam let out a long breath. Struggling to his hands and knees, he crawled across to where he’d been lying with Ashley. She sat on her haunches, her amber eyes wide, almost glowing in the darkness. Her white wings caught the light of the distant moon, and Sam could almost believe this was not Ashley at all, but some angel come to take him away.

  He shivered and blinked, and she was just Ashley again.

  Poor, terrified, Ashley.

  Reaching out, he drew her into his arms. She crumpled at his touch and he pulled her close, feeling the bones beneath her flesh. Her wings drooped behind her, seeming dull and lifeless now, lacking the spark of a moment before.

  “Ash, it’s okay, you’re safe.”

  She trembled in his arms. Burying her head in his shoulder, Ashley whimpered. Gently, he stroked her hair, whispering to her in the darkness, promising her it would be okay, that Halt was gone.

  “You guys okay?” Chris’s voice came from near the door, but Sam waved him back.

  “He’s coming,” Ashley pulled herself from Sam’s arms.

  Sam shivered. Ashley’s eyes were wide and staring, but they did not seem to see him. She watched him, unblinking, as though still deep in sleep. He lifted a hand and cupped her cheek.

  “Who’s coming?” he whispered.

  “Halt,” her voice was hollow, despairing.

  “Oh, Ash,” Sam hugged her again, as though his embrace alone could heal her, “He’s gone, Ash. He’s dead.”

  At his words, Ashley went limp in his arms. He looked at her face and saw that her eyes were closed again, her face at peace. Holding her carefully, he lowered her back to their makeshift bed of blankets and pulled them tight around her. Then he brushed the hair from her face and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  “Is she okay?” Chris’s voice came again.

  Nodding, Sam stood. He wouldn’t sleep now, not after his abrupt awakening, and moving across the room he found a seat on the floor across from Chris. The other boy didn’t speak for a while, just sat staring at the door, as though there were something fascinating about the way it had been torn free of its hinges.

  “It’s my fault, you know,” Chris said finally. His eyes never left the door.

  Sam shook h
is head. “What do you mean, Chris?”

  Chris sighed. “That we were ever here. I… there was a news report, about my mum being executed,” his voice cracked at that, but he swallowed and went on, “I lost it. I heard a girl screaming and I didn’t even think. I killed the policemen that were attacking her, and she brought us here. But her mum betrayed us, and now…” he waved a hand, “They’re dead. Artemis is dead. Richard is dead.”

  Sam sat in silence for a while, staring at Chris, watching the dim light of the moon playing across his pale face. His hazel eyes were harder than the last time Sam had seen them, when he’d bid them all farewell in the mountains. In truth, he hadn’t expected to see them again. He’d given himself up for dead when he’d taken Ashley back to the facility.

  Despite everything, Sam found himself smiling. “If you want to think of it that way, Chris, then it’s also your fault we’re free. And that Halt’s dead,” he paused, and guilt touched his chest as he remembered the boy and girl he’d left behind, “We all have our regrets, Chris. You can’t blame every bad thing that happens on your own mistakes.”

  “But I should have been better,” Chris bowed his head, his eyes distant, “Somehow, somewhere out in those mountains I became their leader. They trusted me to keep them safe. Instead, I got us all caught, got Richard killed.”

  Sam sighed, thinking of the headstrong young boy he’d first met back in their prison cell. Chris had come a long way since then. “You did the best you could, Chris. Remember what Ashley said, back in the facility. We weren’t trained for this – at the end of the day, we’re just a bunch of kids. We’re going to make mistakes. But we can’t let them stop us. We have to keep moving, keep fighting. Otherwise, they’ve already won.”

  Chris nodded. Finally he turned to meet Sam’s eyes. “It’s good to have you back, Sam” he grinned, “Although I’m sure the President will miss having you as his poster boy.”

  Sam groaned. “How did you find out about that?”