Fate of Devotion (Finding Paradise Book 2) Read online

  “Holy . . .” Trent stared, out of breath though he hadn’t moved. The three moaned. “Holy . . .”

  The fire along Rhett’s legs sputtered out. One minute it was burning full force, eating holes into his fire-retardant suit, and the next it was simply gone.

  Wide-eyed, Trent turned his head slowly to stare at the children. He couldn’t form words.

  “Them two ain’t worth taking,” Gertie spat before rolling onto her side. She coughed. “Disgusting wastes of space. Monsters!”

  “What the fuck just happened?” Rhett asked, getting to his feet. The rest of the troopers had their guns out and were looking around wildly, clearly with no idea whom the enemy was or what they’d do once they found out.

  “Was that . . .” Trent cocked his head, black craft forgotten, staring at a nonplussed Terik. “Did you do that?”

  “Toad Man!” the little boy yelled. He jammed his balled fists toward the ground in anger.

  The glass doors behind them shattered. The adults jumped. The troopers peeled away to the sides, probably looking for cover. A moment later, a dingy stuffed toad flew through the air until it hovered in front of the violent boy. He snatched it up. “Toad Man.”

  “What do you say?” Trent said with a slack jaw, on autopilot.

  “Thank you,” the boy muttered, swishing his hips from side to side.

  “An abomination, that’s what them is.” Gertie climbed to her feet and spat bloody mucous at the ground near Terik. “Shoulda been recycled with the rest of the retards.”

  “Screw you, old woman!” Terik sneered.

  “That is a disgusting thing to anyone, much less children,” Trent said to Gertie, grabbing Suzi and pulling her close. It was clear from the children’s placid reactions, however, that worse had been said to them—and often.

  They are still alive. I can still help.

  Dozens of questions were suddenly burning through him, but there was no time, so Trent gently nudged Suzi forward. “Let’s go. We need to make it to headquarters, and then life will get better for you children. I promise. We just have to get past Toton.”

  They started walking forward as a group, with Trent near the front. Someone in the back whispered in a shaky voice, “Did they do that?”

  “Seems like it,” someone else answered. “That’s weird. It isn’t natural.”

  Trent shook his head. “You aren’t natural, either.” He glanced back, hitting everyone with his hardened gaze. “We were all born in a lab. So before you throw stones, think about that. The only differences between you and these children are they are smarter, and they have awesome natural abilities this world has never seen. They are furthering evolution whereas the rest of us are just running in place. Open your minds.”

  “Big talk for someone that don’t know what evil he’s shepherding,” Gertie said, keeping pace with him.

  “What I don’t know is why they gave a rocket launcher to someone who is obviously insane. That’s what I don’t know.” Trent shook his head and took Suzi’s hand. She was walking so close she was bumping up against him.

  They turned the corner and continued through the darkened, empty corridors, the lighting stripes on the floor guiding their way. Footsteps and breathing pushed against the silence. Trent’s curiosity flared within the deadness.

  “While we have a second,” he said conversationally, his lifetime of training getting the better of him. “What is it that makes you children special? Can you really move items telekinetically?”

  “Don’t tell him, Suzi,” the other little girl said. “He’ll just think we’re weird like everyone else does.”

  “He said we have awesome abilities,” Suzi replied.

  “That’s right, Suzi. I think you are fascinating and special. All children have gifts; don’t get me wrong. Especially children above the Curve. But you—or some of you?” He waited for elaboration on who had enhanced abilities. No one spoke up, not even the adults. “You are one tier more advanced than that. It really is an exciting situation for all of us. We are literally seeing the progression of evolution before our eyes.”

  “Does that guy ever shut up?” someone said in the back.

  Trent pressed his lips together.

  “I’m smart, too, but no one seems to care about that,” Terik said quietly.

  “On the contrary, I am keenly interested in how intelligent,” Trent replied. He couldn’t help himself. This felt like the realization of his life’s work. How could he not be excited? “Did they test you against the Curve?”

  “Yeah. I’m four and three above, so they said. They were all excited until I accidentally lit something on fire. I barely remember doing it. Then their tune changed real quick.”

  “I’m three and some four,” Suzi said. “But mostly just three. Terik is smarter. But I can control my power better. Once I have access to it, that is. That part is still hard.”

  Gertie huffed in derision.

  “Do any of the little ones have special abilities?” Trent asked, thinking that a direct question might get some answers. “Or heightened intelligence?”

  “They may test high, but they ain’t smart,” Kajel scoffed as they came upon the large barricade they’d crossed earlier.

  “They need to be taught—oh, just never mind.” Trent waved the rebuttal away. “I’m not usually an asshole, but you need to be sent to the front lines of this war. There. I said it.”

  “Get the children over.” Rhett stopped at the base of the barricade and motioned everyone up. He brushed his fingers against his implant. “We got more trouble coming. It doesn’t take Toton long to swarm.”

  “Here.” A gruff-looking male trooper stepped closer and reached down for the energetic little boy. “Fancy a ride, little man?” he said, his harsh voice softened.

  “I’ll help.” The female trooper smiled at Suzi. “Hi, smart girl. Can I help you?”

  “Now that’s more like it,” Trent said as Suzi shyly took her hand. “At least some members of the group have sense.”

  On the other side, where they were joined by the staffers who’d protected the other barricades, Rhett paused. “Shots fired!” He stared at his wrist screen and swore. “We’ll be fighting our way out of here.”

  Without a command, the group sped up, hurrying down the corridor. Suzi’s hand found Trent’s, trembling. Or was it Trent who was trembling? It was hard to tell.

  Trent’s wrist screen lit up with a warning. When he got to the large entranceway to the floor, able to stare through the glass to the bay beyond, he knew why.

  Four black vehicles hovered around the bay openings, waiting like sharks in Paradise’s salt lake. Two bodies were sprawled on the ground outside the rebel craft. Blood pooled in the places where their heads should’ve been.

  Someone retched. Trent’s stomach swam.

  “They shot through the bay. We won’t even make it to the craft,” someone whispered.

  “There are too many.” Kajel shook his head. “They’ll come in after us!”

  “How are we going to get out of here?”

  Terik stepped away from everyone else, his gaze pinging between the waiting craft and the bodies on the ground beside it. “Suzi, get everyone ready,” he said in a haunting voice. “We can handle this.”

  Chapter 7

  “This floor is teeming with them,” Millicent whispered as they waited in the stairwell with half the troopers. Marie huddled in close beside her. The other half had taken the elevator, just in case one way didn’t pan out. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that Ryker had chosen the stairs for his family—the elevator had the most probability of failure.

  “How many would you guess?” Ryker asked as he crouched by the door, EMP gun in hand.

  Millicent bit her lip. “Hundreds. They clearly realize that Danissa is the most valuable player in this war.”

  “That’s because they don’t know you’re planet-side.”

  “No. It’s because they don’t know Marie is.” Millicent felt the fam
iliar pang of agony in her gut. If she had been a mom who spanked, she would have turned her daughter’s butt a fierce shade of red for forcing her way into this journey.

  A comforting hand rubbed her back. Ryker’s confidence and strength bled through the touch. “We’ll all make it out of this, Millie. We are prepared for the worst. This isn’t it by far.”

  A sob welled up—instinctive fear for her child. She forced it back down. This was not the place to lose her cool. Instead, she nodded and blinked the moisture out of her eyes, annoyed that her three births had turned her into a sobbing mess. Biology was a real asshole.

  “Here’s what we need to do,” she said, back on track. Barely. “We’ll take out the first wave of critters with this.” She held up the Deadener, a sleek little orb fashioned from the same metal as the CPU casings. “It’ll electronically sever the brain unit from the motherboard. The system will be nonoperational, but the brain will not die. As soon as the Deadener stops working, the connection will restart, and the critters will be back in business.”

  “How long will it last?” Ryker asked.

  “In testing, it lasted five hours. But gravity and time are different on Earth than on Paradise due to the gravitational—” Millicent registered Ryker’s clenched jaw and the impatient shifting of the troopers. This wasn’t the time for a science lecture. “It’ll probably last a little longer if the environment doesn’t corrode it, but it’s tough to say.”

  “It’ll last long enough for us to kick the little fuck—excuse my language—spiders in the nuts.” The trooper rolled his shoulders and then his neck, glancing at Marie.

  “Exactly.” Millicent glanced at her wrist screen before zooming out to get a better view of the floor as a whole. “I only have one Deadener, and that will reach a radius of ten feet, so twenty feet diameter in a nearly perfect circle. Again, that may change in this environment. Don’t waste time trying to kill them all. Marie and I will take care of most of that. Just run past them and kill however many you can.”

  “I don’t want her touching—”

  “Ryker, you can use the EMP gun on the second wave of robots”—Millicent raised her tone to drown him out—“which will allow me to move the Deadener close to Danissa’s location. Hopefully the elevator crew will have caught up by then.”

  “And if you can’t get the Deadener into a useful position?” Ryker asked with a severe tone and flashing eyes.

  In other words: “If it’s too dangerous, you better keep to safety and leave us to handle it, or there will be hell to pay.” But she had paid hell plenty of times—this would be no different. There was no sense telling him that, though. He’d only push his point. “Then we improvise. I’m sending the coordinates of Danissa’s probable location. To those who can receive it, obviously. The rest will just have to figure it out. Shouldn’t be hard. Their host is converging on one spot. She is likely in that spot. Any questions?”

  “No, ma’am,” many of them said.

  Ryker nodded and started gesturing—pointing and flicking his fingers, flashing numbers, and waving his arms. His vocal language was grunts, mostly. Millicent had no idea what directions he was giving, only that he was giving them. The men shifted and braced themselves for action, some bringing out guns, some switching to knives—all their bodies coiling into attack readiness.

  “You better not be undermining my plan,” she said for his ears alone.

  “I will not lose you or Marie, Millie, no matter what perfect strategy is involved. Your ruling has been usurped by the king.”

  “All hail,” someone said.

  “Kings got their heads cut off in times of old,” she retorted, getting ready. “I’d be careful if I were you. I might take an active interest in history.”

  “I love your violent foreplay.” Ryker glanced at the troops. “Here we go.”

  He ripped open the door from the stairwell and quickly stepped aside, leaving a gaping entry for Millicent. She filled it immediately and rolled the Deadener in front of her. In the ball’s wake, scurrying robots slowed, jerked, and then their legs curled up under them. They sat immobile.

  “Kick their faces, or stomp on their—” Millicent cut off as Ryker flicked a robot up with his toe and, while it was still turning over, kicked it. A sizzle and spark accompanied its crash to the ground twenty feet away. “Or do that.”

  She reached the first robot and stomped on the CPU, dislodging it from the base enough to hear a strange sort of mechanical whine. A shiver arrested her. It was just the mechanics, she knew, but it sounded a little like a robot scream.

  Time to harden up and use her training, or she’d end up in one of those CPUs.

  Picking up the pace, she stomped on another as all the troopers started flicking and kicking, only some of them able to properly take out the robots, and none so masterful as Ryker.

  “Moving on to the next phase.” Ryker left the circle of stilled robots. He aimed his gun at the moving, scurrying swarm of insects beyond the Deadener’s range.

  Millicent’s skin crawled. She slapped at a tickle on her arm, feeling imaginary legs crawling up under her suit. “They had to pick the most vile animals as models for their robots . . .”

  “Not animals, ma’am. Insects,” a trooper said as he ran by.

  “Yes, I—” Millicent rolled her eyes and pulled Marie close. “C’mon baby, we need to follow Daddy now.”

  “There are more on the way,” Marie said with wide eyes, taking in the teeming space in front of them, festering with the insect robots. “There are too many.”

  “They are a stupid sort of robot, sweetie,” Millicent said, not able to soften her battle-ready voice. “They are here to collect a prize, not do battle. Danissa must not have shown any sort of serious resistance in the past. But Daddy and I do resistance best. We’ll be fine.”

  But the sheer number of spiders in front of them put lead in Millicent’s stomach. Toton wanted Danissa something fierce, and they’d sent quite a collection unit to grab her.

  “Let’s go, baby, we’re falling behind.” Millicent grabbed the Deadener and ran forward, staying to the middle of the path, making way through the EMP-downed robots. They wouldn’t be getting back up—that was the beauty of that gun. Too bad it didn’t last longer or maintain a larger charge.

  A robot scurried out from the side. Its leg swung out, aiming for Marie’s thigh. Millicent swung her daughter around behind her and dropped the Deadener.

  Five-shot.

  The gun filled her hand as the robot swiped again. She dodged, yanked Marie with her, and fired into the creature’s face area. It readied another leg, but Millicent fired again. Smoke curled up before the robot started to jitter. It would die a moment later, Millicent knew. She didn’t wait around to watch.

  “C’mon, baby. Hurry!”

  “I thought they were dead,” Marie said in a panic-stricken voice, clutching on to Millicent’s thigh, slowing her down.

  Millicent snatched up the Deadener and forced it into Marie’s hands. “Figure out why that stopped working, baby.”

  Another robot rushed in from the front, swiping with two feet. And another from the side.

  “Crap.” Millicent turned, fired. Turned back and fired again. She stepped forward to kick a shaking wounded robot in the vulnerable area on its underside. She wrapped her fingers around Marie’s arm and ran, dragging the little girl behind her.

  “Mommy!”

  A robot ran behind them, trying to get at Marie. Another came from the front. “Ryker!” Millicent yelled as she kicked the one in front of her, sustaining a slash in the process, before swinging around to shoot the one behind. Its sharp claw glanced Marie’s ankle before it went down. She clutched her little girl tightly, no idea where to stash her or turn her to keep her out of harm’s way.

  “I gotcha!” Dagger, the leader of the team that had gone into the elevator, ran up out of nowhere, followed by his group of troopers. “Here we go.” He scooped up Marie and swung her around onto his broad bac
k. “Hang on tight, little lady. Don’t fall off now, ya hear?”

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” another trooper said, firing down at two robots running out of the darkness.

  “You got any light in your bag of tricks?” a trooper asked as he swung his foot back before delivering an intense kick. A robot went flying. “It’d be nice to see into these shadows.”

  “Where’d you guys come from?” Millicent’s heart was pounding in her ears.

  “Ran into a wall of desks.” Dagger jogged forward. “Looked like it was made recently. These robots aren’t as dumb as you say. They’re trying to keep our mark on this floor. Trap her.”

  “Danissa must’ve come down on the elevator, then.” Millicent checked her wrist as the troops surrounded her. “A smart robot would’ve also blocked the stairs.”

  “Touché.”

  “Okay,” Millicent said, recovering her focus. “Straight forward and then curve left—”

  “Millicent!” Ryker emerged from the gloom, his men fanned out behind him.

  “I got ’em. We’re good, sir,” Dagger said. “I’ll keep the baby. She’s as light as they come. But Sinner’s right—a light would sure be nice.”

  Sinner? Someone with an active sense of humor had named these guys.

  “Marie, can you activate the screens again?” Millicent said as she reached Ryker.

  His gaze coated her body, lingering on the scrape on her leg before rising to meet her eyes. “You good, princess?”

  “Now that Marie is taken care of, I’m good. I was having trouble playing hero.”

  He flashed a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Leave the hero business to the big dogs, cupcake. You handle the nerd stuff.”

  “Cute.” She pointed at a diagonal right. “We’re headed that way, ultimately.”

  Cracked or faded screens flickered before a cresting wave filled them. Light shone down on the critters, which were skittering into a sort of cluster ahead of them.

  “How about that Deadener?” Ryker asked, staring ahead.

  “Cut out. I don’t know why. Marie is hopefully working on it.” Millicent glanced back at her daughter, who was trying to hang on to Dagger and look at the orb at the same time.