The transport glided through the empty streets. Out of the back, Katherine saw the progress they had made toward the plaza run in reverse. She watched as facade after facade drifted further and further away. Daring a glance at the two soldiers positioned at the exit, she saw their machine-like focus and found it difficult…
Several blocks later, and the Merlian sun was blaring down in the escapees. The weight of Lillian was increasing and Katherine urged them to stop. She’d requested to stop several other times, but the sounds of the approaching military had spurred them on. But they had to stop. The princess would not last the distance…
The air in the safe house had grown stale, and Drex refused to open the windows. Two days had passed since he and Evan had first ventured out into the neighborhoods to see what the ground conflict might look like and how, if at all, the four of them might get Lillian to the Coellum…
“They’ve gone?” Adrenaline surged through Katherine as she whipped her head around to find Lillian, pale and gaunt, leaning against a doorpost. Katherine closed her eyes and calmed her breathing before speaking to the Princess. “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked, leaning against a counter to keep from passing out from fright….
Drex rose from his vigil at the monitors. It had been two days since the arrival of the Coellum and it remained unclear how safe it might be to make any moves. Katherine had learned a new name, Commander Tavon Voss, who seemed to be the leader of the landing force. His addresses over the…
The dust and debris continued to swirl and fall after Amnon’s grenade exploded. For a long time, all Saw Yatha knew was the high whine of a siren in his ears. He lay still amid chunks of wall and ceiling motivating his mind to remember how he ended up in such a state. The ground…
Katherine paced the floor of the safe house. Drex raked his hair and stretched as he eyed the surveillance monitors. “Any word from Amnon?” Katherine muttered. “No.” Katherine continued to pace. It had been a long day and she felt it in her in every bend of her joints. Katherine’s mind retraced the moments of…
A bag suddenly blocked Amnon’s vision, and his wrists were bound to each other. Then, with a harsh jab in his spine, he lurched forward. Unable to see where he was going, Amnon received several jabs to his back to keep him going. It was one thing to be captured, but it was a whole…
Amnon Saxe sprinted away from Katherine’s transport and aimed for the thickest grouping of people. It wouldn’t be impossible for the guards to pick him up from a crowd, but it would be a lot harder than if he headed for the fringes of the plaza. His chest pounded and his nerves were on edge….
Evan carried Lillian out of the Processing Unit’s room, past the guards still incapacitated by the door, and out to the floor’s main passageway. It was then that he began to realize that building was no longer empty of activity. There was the sound of a low beehive in the atrium below. Evan risked a…
