“You have to wake up.” Hissing at my lack of response, she shoved me down the road. “I hate to abandon them, but we have no choice. If we stay here, we’re dead. FuckingArdatonis coming this way.”
75
GEDEON
“You lost her?” I grunted at Sadira crouching down beside me, both of us taking cover behind a bullet-perforated car. All green-banded units, or how the city preferred to call them, the Matches, were assigned this type of silver personal vehicles since their Matchings.
One more method to separate the fertile and non-fertile folks. Because, according to Ilasall, the black-banded couldn’t own shit, and the most they deserved was dirty public transportation.
Which you also had to pay for out of your own pocket.
Knowing Kali had spent almost three decades living like this, barely scraping by, caused ants to crawl across my knuckles. My fists ached with the yearning to fracture Ilasall’s government’s jaws.
“What the hell was I supposed to do? I turned around for five seconds to check our surroundings, and when I glanced back, Kali was gone.” Sadira checked her rifle, a groan slipping out when she found it empty. “She knows the city better than I. It’s not like I could drop everything and comb through dozens of neighborhoods in hopes of finding her.”
If it was possible to implant a tracker into someone, I would have done so to Kali ages ago. The woman could not stay in one place for more than a minute. Like how she had run away from me and Zion the moment she had heard Eislyn’s yell.
Chasing her had turned out to be futile—an influx of Ardaton’s military puppets had reached the Spire.
Only they had been too late.
My father had already ceased breathing at that point.
But hearing from Sadira that Kali had vanished—again—because neither me nor Zion could weed the soldiers out of our way fast enough, it threatened to split my skull apart.
Peeking out from around the car’s bumper, Sadira cursed. “They’re everywhere.”
Four blocks from the Spire, soldiers swarmed the streets. Except now, the leaders of crews, sections, and squadrons bore red patches instead of the golden ones Ilasall’s military preferred.
Somehow, somewhere, someone had managed to call for help on behalf of Peter, and Ardaton had responded by sending their troops.
My back pressed against the silver vehicle as I checked the handgun I had previously picked up. But the firearm was empty, just like Sadira’s.
With only cold weapons in my arsenal, there was not a chance I could cross the road buzzing with Ardaton’s soldiers to reach Zion trapped on the other side of the crossroad.
At least the fallen-on-its-side bus served as a shield to protect him from the hunters. Though it also meant I couldn’t see anything and had not a hunch whether he was fine or not.
I cracked my knuckles, the sound of air leaving my joints similar to my splintering patience. I needed Zion and Kali next to me, safe and sound—protected. Not separated by rows and rows of Ardaton’s armed forces.
Based on their movements and shouted orders, the majority of them were tasked with capturing as many people as they could. Instead of warping Ilasall’s residents’ and our people’s heads and limbs with fists and bullets, the soldiers cuffed their wrists and stuffed them into military trucks. Half a dozen of the black, matte, windowless vehicles lingered at the intersection, their engines rumbling, Ardaton’s scarlet emblem painted on their sides.
Clutching her knife so tightly her hands whitened, Sadira gritted out, “They're stealing our people to tag them.”
Ilasall was being evacuated. And knowing the cities’ decade-old tactics, Ardaton would mark the captives with black or green wristbands, force them into servitude, either labor- or childbearing-driven. Either way, it was a sentence of slow decay until death welcomed you with its wings spread wide.
Except… Not a single black-banded was being hauled into the military trucks.
My blood chilled as realization dawned on me: those with improperly functioning reproductive systems weren’t necessary in reaching Ardaton’s objectives.
The troops herded the non-fertile folk into a small alleyway, a dead-ended one, cutting off the escape routes on both sides. The black-banded’s cries, shouts, curses, and pleas saturated the swirls of fog?—
Thunder silenced the bellows and wails.
Ceaseless fire shredded the slowly dissipating mist, replacing the voices with a rumble of doom. One by one, like a stack of cards, the corpses struck the ground silently as the line of five soldiers emptied their rifles’ magazines.
My backburned, as if the souls kicked out of their bodies had found their way into my flesh and were joining the flock of inked birds.
“They’re cleaning up.” Ardaton had clearly decided to turn the narrow passageways into above-the-ground catacombs. The city must have sent support with the command toonlytake those from Ilasall who had already gone through fertility testing and had gotten positive results.
