“I’m sorry,” I say finally. “That was mean. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And so help me God, Boone, if you say ‘PMS’ I will punch you in the face.” Boone puts his hands up in surrender. “Can we please just drop it? I don’t know why I went out there or why this Ezra guy should be any different from anyone else. He probably isn’t. I’m just … I don’t know …” I rummage around in my head trying to come up with the words to explain how I feel. When I can’t, I just apologize again.
Vi reaches over and gives me a hug. “It’s okay. We’re all just doing the best we can. Some days are better than others,” she says, and I nod my head, embarrassed. I hate hurting my friends. And for the most part, Violet was right. The Blood Lust is one of the crueler by-products of the chip, but it’s not like we want to kill every person we find attractive. It’s always there, though, simmering beneath the surface like a sleeping junkyard dog. As long as we are careful, as long as we don’t linger on romantic thoughts or touch someone that we might have—in another life—hooked up with, the dog remains asleep. I understand that the idea behind this wiring was to make us more efficient, but honestly it takes a lot of energy to suppress these urges. ARC must know this, but they continue on with it anyhow. Maybe it’s just too late; they can’t have some Citadels who can get it on and some who can’t without a mutiny. Or maybe it’s just another cruel way to control us. I don’t know, but if you combine the Blood Lust with our constant lying and living a double life, we can burn out in this job. When that happens, they send the Citadel away for a couple months to recuperate. Sounds great, but it’s not something we push for. Our teams depend on us. What if something bad happens while we’re gone? Something we might have stopped?
I take hold of her hand. “Thanks, Vi.” I watch Boone look at us. We are comforting each other the way best friends do. He turns sharply away, uncomfortable, knowing it’s something he’ll never be able to safely do with her—yes, even something as benign as holding her hand. There’s a lot of pain on this platform, and it’s relieved only when I suddenly hear Omega Team in my earpiece. The Rift is opening. I enable my mic, as do the rest of us.
We stand and look out at The Rift. That was quick. We have been on duty for only a matter of minutes. I check in with Command, confirming that we have eyes on the situation and can see The Rift opening. The center of The Rift turns black as tar and then we hear an earsplitting sound.
An explosive detonated by a hand-held rocket launcher deploys as soon as the Karekins enter this Earth. They don’t mess around. The rocket destroys a tree about seventy-five feet away from us. Karekins are streaming out of The Rift. I use my enhanced eyesight to count as they come through. A dozen. Two dozen, fifty, one hundred, one hundred fifty, two hundred. That’s a significant number. There are about a hundred of us Citadels, so I don’t love the odds. The five other teams that have been hiding in trenches will emerge. The reinforcements will come forward. Each Nest team will jump down, leaving the best marksman behind to shoot whomever they can safely. In our case it’s Violet. Boone, Henry, and I give each other a nod and do a swan dive off the platform, flipping at the last second so that we land on our feet. I immediately get shot in the shoulder. Karekins use laser technology. I wince in pain and take sharp breaths until I can steady myself. The suit has absorbed most of the impact. I’ll have a bruise, but that’s about it.
I take about two seconds to calm down. I must not be angry. I must feel nothing. I must run forward when every instinct I have still says, even after all this time, to get the fuck out of there. I take out my gun and shoot one Karekin in the middle of the forehead. I swing around and shoot another in the same place. Karekins, like us, evolved from apes. I think in their case it was more of a King Kong thing. They are eight or nine feet tall, and hairy. Their eyes are small and slit-like. They use sound and smell mostly to fight. Sounds like a big disadvantage, but the research people at ARC think it might be an advanced form of echolocation that allows them to compensate for their poor eyesight. They aren’t savage, though. They wear sleek black uniforms and have advanced weaponry—lasers, remember? Most important, they keep coming through, and they seem more prepared each time to deal with us. It’s almost as if they are getting to know our weaknesses and adapting, which should be technically impossible. Because that would mean that they are reporting back through The Rift, and they should not be able to do that. Yet here they are. Shooting into the trees, into the Nests.
How else would they know to do that?
I feel one of the Karekins pick me up from behind and fling me at least twenty feet to the side. My shoulder takes the brunt of the impact. I know it’s been dislocated. I flip up before I can get attacked again. I try to pull my shoulder back into its socket. I can’t get the right angle. Bracing myself, I smash it into a tree so that it pops back into place. I hear a Karekin behind me. I kick out, pushing off from the tree trunk. I turn around and he staggers a bit. I leap up, using his shoulders as leverage, and land with my legs around his neck. I squeeze, and we both fall to the ground with a thud. I reach down and pull my bowie knife from my boot and stab him squarely in the throat. I push my body out from underneath him. Just for good measure I slice his throat back and forward. Blood spurts all over me.
Gross.
I almost laugh at that thought—surrounded as I am by all this gore and death—but another Karekin is already racing toward me on the ground. I have just enough time to whip my knife out of the other one’s throat and throw it into the approaching Karekin’s right eye. Their suits are just as protective as ours, so there is no point in aiming anywhere else. Boone runs up beside the one who is now down on his knees with my knife planted firmly in his eye. Boone shoots him in the forehead and kicks him down to the ground.
There are screams and shouts, and the sound of gunshots and the smell of blood are thick in the morning air. I cannot afford to take the time to really live in the middle of all this. And yet, just for a split second I wonder how I got here. Who put my name down on the list for this? Who guessed that I would make such a good killer? Who would even look at a seven-year-old and be able to imagine such a thing?
“Ryn!” Henry screams at me. He leaps ten feet in the air. I turn just in time to hear a laser pulse whiz past my ear. I can’t believe how stupid that was. I lost focus for just a couple seconds and I almost died. Henry is now just a few feet away, but before I can turn and face the enemy to fight, I feel a massive Karekin hand on the back of my neck. He’s going to try to snap it and now I have to break free. Henry lunges at him. The Karekin has just enough time to remove his hands and hit me with something large and heavy on the head. When I fall, the sky shifts sideways. It’s like it happens in slow motion. One minute I’m up and the next I am floating to the ground. Henry has killed my attacker. From this angle it all looks so different. Like a dance. I can almost hear music in the rifle shots.
“Ryn, are you okay?” Henry screams, but his voice seems far away, like he’s on the other side of the forest and not right beside me. I open my mouth to answer, but all my words are gone. I want to say that yes, I am fine, but I am not fine. I am always almost dying and so is he and Violet and Boone. I am not fine, because I will most likely die a virgin. I will never have another profession. I am a liar. I’m not even sure I am capable of telling an absolute truth. My head will heal, but I am not okay. I want to say this, but I can’t say anything. Nothing is working on my face. Henry stands guard over me, taking out two or three Karekins as I lie helpless on the ground. The world tilts again and everything goes black.
I awake to the steady electronic beeping of my heart. I am back at the base in the medical facility. I am hooked up to an IV. As my eyes flutter open, I see the plastic tube first, running from the back of my hand to a bag beside me. I try to blink away the fuzzy outline of everything in the room. In