She focused on the thick trunk of tangled branches that jutted from the tip of the shell. Gritting her teeth, Sam unslung her rifle, set it to fully automatic, and took aim.

Her bullets raked across the bundle, punching through the tendrils easily, and sparking as they ricocheted off the wall of the pit beyond. Each branch that she severed turned gray instantly. By the time she’d depleted her ammo, most of the trunk was gray, and the violent motion above had all but stopped. Two or three branches still swayed, so Sam reloaded and took care of those, too. Her ears rang from the sound of gunfire.

“Faisal?! David?!” she shouted again.

The rope they’d lowered her on still rested against the pit wall, a few meters away.

A shape in the water caught her eye. Another body in a yellow suit, the material sliced into tatters, tainted with fresh blood. She waded over to it and flipped the corpse over. David’s eyes stared back at her, glassy and wide with terror.

“Fuck,” she muttered, and pushed his body away.

Shaking, Sam climbed the rope, leaving the alien cube where it lay.

At the top of the pit she found Faisal’s body, or what was left of it. He’d been farther from the lip of the sinkhole, and sliced to pieces when the thorny branches went haywire. Bits of his flesh hung from the gray limbs, along with pieces of his environment suit. Yellow and red ornaments on a dead alien tree.

“Grillo,” she coughed into her headset. “Come in.”

The device had shorted out, she decided, from her fall into the water. She ripped it off her head and threw it angrily into the pit.

From a pocket on her vest she produced the flare Faisal had given her. Sam closed her eyes and wished for luck as she cracked it open. Even after being submerged when she fell, it crackled to life and soon a red fire blazed on its tip, dripping sparks.

Gingerly, Sam held it out to the nearest branch, wondering if the now-dead segment would recoil as it had before. Instead of shrinking away, the material blackened and disintegrated.

After what felt like an hour, Sam finally emerged from the alien forest and trudged back to the barricade at Aura’s Edge. The sight of Grillo standing there, waiting for her, was a strange comfort.

Sam sat in the back of the APC, wrapped in a blanket and nursing a bottle of water, when the cavalry arrived. Dozens of trucks filled with armed fighters encircled the area, securing it. Grillo’s private army.

She stared beyond them, at Darwin’s dirty skyline. Unable to focus, she had only a vague awareness of the activity around her. A dozen people gathered, clad in environment suits, armed with flares and torches. They walked out of her field of view toward the barricade.

They were talking about the space elevator. Something about a vibration along its length, and a surge of power, when she’d removed the cube from the crashed ship. They were laughing about it, like someone laughs after walking into a surprise birthday party, so her action must not have caused any damage. Still, it meant the object was connected, somehow, to the alien cord.

Numb and exhausted, Sam pulled her blanket tight and fought to stop shaking. Despite everything she’d seen, the only image that she seemed able to conjure was David’s dead eyes, staring at her, accusing her. Like Jake’s, in a way. She shuddered at the memory.

Sam hardly noticed when the group returned later. Four of them carried a cube-shaped bundle of blankets, and were moving with slow, deliberate steps. The people around them cleared the path, and soon the package disappeared into one of the newly arrived trucks.

The group began to remove their environment suits once the crate was secure. Dazed, Samantha hardly recognized their Jacobite garb before the rear door of her APC was thrown shut, blocking her view.

Seconds later she heard the vehicle’s caps begin to whine. She swayed in her seat as it lurched into movement. Sam leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the gentle rocking of the vehicle lull her to sleep.

Chapter 18

Melville Station

5.MAY.2283

SHE WAS IN the cargo bay, helping unload a shipment of apples, when the station rattled. An alarm went off somewhere, one she hadn’t heard before.

“What the?” Tania said to no one in particular. The people working around her looked as worried as she felt.

“Collision?” someone asked.

Tania doubted it. The vibration seemed to come from the Elevator cord itself. “Excuse me,” she said, and pushed off for the intercom on the wall. Her mind raced as she flew across the room. She imagined Blackfield’s troopers swarming through the station like they had on Anchor.

At the wall she steadied herself with a handhold and tapped the activation switch. “Tania here. Someone talk to me. What’s going on?”

Tim’s voice came through a few seconds later. “Unknown. A vibration rippled up the cord. Black Level reported it first, then the farms a few seconds later. Now us.”

“It started at the shell ship? An explosion or …?”

“Some kind of electricity discharge, hence that overload alarm. Our draws on the cord went into emergency disconnect mode when the surge hit us.”

Tania frowned. The cord generated electricity due to friction with the atmosphere, something the stations tapped as a backup source. The climbers relied on the source exclusively to make their journeys. A change in that would be catastrophic.

“Everything’s fine now,” Tim said. “Greg says all systems are reading normal up there.”

Memories of Darwin’s Elevator malfunctions raced through Tania’s mind. Nothing like this, but still, if something similar was happening again … “Put all stations on maximum alert. All personnel should be required to check in. If the aura failed …”

“Already done. Commanders will report within the hour.”

“Thanks, Tim. Keep me posted.” Her hand shook as she switched the intercom off.

Tania sat cross-legged on the floor of Room 17, her chin resting on steepled fingers.

The room, which had been stocked to the brim with weaponry by Neil Platz, was all but empty now. A few crates remained here and there, mostly gear no one knew what to do with. That simple fact seemed to encapsulate for her everything about the state of the so-called colony. Gear and resources depleted, and no one who knew what the hell they were doing.

She sighed, exhausted from the mental effort it took to stop thinking, even in brief spans, about the fate of the aircraft she’d sent down to the planet below. Crew and craft lost, and they hadn’t even made it to the edge of Camp Exodus. By any measurement the entire endeavor had been a complete fiasco.

The bizarre fluctuation along the cord didn’t exactly help her nerves, but all personnel were accounted for and there’d been no repeats of the event.

Failings aside, what bothered Tania more was that she had no idea what to do next. The strike team had been her last-ditch effort. She glanced around the nearly empty room. “You’d know what to do, wouldn’t you?” she asked, her voice echoing from the walls. She wasn’t quite sure if she’d meant the question for Neil Platz, or for Skyler.

The soft sound of a key-card swipe came to her from outside, and the door behind her opened.

“There you are.” Tim, of course.

“Here I am.” She felt immediate guilt for the unappreciative tone in her words. He’d been trying, hard, to lift her from the melancholy she’d fallen into since the failed rescue. It seemed wholly unfair to treat him badly for the effort.

“I brought chai,” he said. “Can I sit with you?”

With a sigh she hoped she’d hid, Tania nodded and patted the floor next to her.

He handed her one of two mugs and mirrored her cross-legged position. “Spared no expense,” he said, gauging her reaction.

The cup had a twist-on lid and when Tania opened it the warmth and smells contained within hugged her like an old friend. “This is the good stuff, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm. You gave me two bags of it for an early simulation result, a few years ago.”

“I remember,” she said, lying.

“Been saving it,” he added, then sipped. Tim winced from the heat and set his cup down. “Oh, blimey but that’s hot. Might want to wait a minute.”

Tania followed his lead. In truth she was content just to let the complex, spicy scent drift up and around her. It smelled like her mother’s kitchen. “Thank you for the tea,” she said earnestly. “And the company.”

“No problem.” He shrugged, settled himself. “So what are we doing in here? Concocting a new plan?”

“I wish,” Tania said. “Unfortunately I don’t think we have many options left. I mean, look at this place. We’re overextended everywhere. No supplies are coming up. Who knows what the hell is going on in camp.…”

She let her voice trail off. Tim knew all this, and the last thing Tania wanted to do was rehash it all again.

Tim, mercifully, said nothing. He tried his tea again, hissed through clenched teeth, and set the cup back down. “You think you have problems—I can’t even boil water right.”

Tania elbowed him, laughed lightly at his mock show of pain. “Anything new to report on that vibration that the cord exhibited?” she asked.

“It was some kind of power surge, we know that much. Beyond that, nothing new. No damage reported, at least.”

“How’s Zane?” she asked, desperate to change the subject.

“He retired early. Between us, I think all this stress is getting to him. He’s always tired, and doesn’t eat enough.”

“Sounds like he’s the one who needs chai,” Tania said.

Tim grunted, and looked over at her. “If you’re saying I should leave …”

Tania turned and met his gaze. Even in the dark room, she could see the sparkle of intelligence and energy in his eyes. “I’m trying to find any excuse not to think about our dire situation.”

“A distraction,” he concluded. “Good. Did you, er, have something in mind?”

Tania searched his eyes. “Yes,” she said sternly. “Let’s make Zane some dinner.”

Tim readily agreed, and for the next hour they took over the mess kitchen. The meal had to be improvised, but Tania thought the result was a reasonable curry, something she knew Zane loved.

They called him down from his cabin and the three of them ate together, even shared a bottle of wine. To Tania’s delight, for that evening at least, no one mentioned the plight they faced. For the first time in a while, they were just three friends sharing the simple, sacred pleasure of a meal well prepared.

Chapter 19

Belém, Brazil

5.MAY.2283

SKYLER AND DAVI lay side by side in the brush at the top of a small rise.

Ana worked in silence behind them, securing their excess gear. She’d become more and more withdrawn during the last stage of their trek. When Skyler asked, Davi had chalked it up to fatigue.

Skyler held a scavenged pair of binoculars to his eyes, scanning the shallow valley below while Davi used the scope on his hunting rifle. Skyler had found the weapon, too, and spent an hour each morning for the last few days teaching Davi how to use and clean it. The young man had none of Jake’s natural skill, but he could hit a target if he focused.

The lodge appeared intact. Beyond it stood a barn, doors closed and latched, the muddy ground in front churned and laced by tire tracks.

A dirt road, obscured by knee-high weeds, served as the primary way in and out of the complex.

“Fresh tire tracks,” Skyler said. He kept his voice low.

“I see them. This is the place.”

Over days of cat-and-mouse with Gabriel’s people through the streets of Belém, Skyler’s radio picked up the needed hint to find the hidden immunes: a call to help free a truck stuck in mud. From that they knew the road being used by Gabriel’s people to move back and forth between their base of operations and the colony at Belém’s Elevator. Tracing their exact path proved easy enough, as the heavy military vehicles Gabriel’s people used left plenty of evidence in their wake.

Skyler pulled the binoculars away from his face and took in the whole scene below him.

A shallow ravine lay below, carved by a thin stream that snaked down from lush foothills to the west. Morning fog obscured the eastern end of the valley, where the grassy field gave way to rainforest, and the stream met a stronger river.

Nestled in the center of the valley, in a wide clearing, was a lodge. A tourist hotel, Skyler judged, with maybe twenty rooms on two stories. A barn stood a short distance from the main building.

Two black personnel carriers were parked between the two structures. Neither had moved since dawn, nor had any signs of activity within the buildings been seen. The quiet made Skyler wonder if the location had already been abandoned, but the presence of the two vehicles threw doubt on that theory.

“Let’s go,” Davi said. “They’re probably all sleeping.”

Skyler caught movement through his binoculars. “Hold up.”

Three men marched along the ridgeline on the opposite side of the valley. Skyler put them at half a kilometer away. Only their heads were visible above the weeds.

“See ’em?”

“I see ’em,” Davi said. “Keep still.”

They watched the men for a tense few minutes as the trio worked their way toward the lodge.

Davi sucked in his breath as they came into full view. “What the hell?”

Through the binoculars, Skyler saw something that raised goose bumps on his arms.

An old man with a thick gray beard led the group. The other two each carried long metal poles, with loops of rope at the end.

The ropes were lashed around the neck and torso of a woman, or what was once a woman. The subhuman was nude, filthy, and very much alive. She bled openly from a number of lacerations on her belly and legs.