Child of Chaos
Author: Harmon Cooper Narrated Byneil Hellegers
Date: 2019-10-22 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Harmon Cooper presents Book 1 in his new series, Child of Chaos. Contains mature themes.
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Child
of

Chaos

---( Book One)---

By Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2019 Boycott Books

Edited by Allison Erin Wright

Audiobook narrated by Neil Hellegers, produced by Tantor Media

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Email signup: https://geni.us/HCReaders

Facebook Group: https://geni.us/ProximaGalaxy

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HarmonCooperWriter

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

To Sor, my eternal love.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part One: The Long Night

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

.5.

.6.

Part Two: The Before Times

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

.5.

.6.

.7.

Part Three: Sewer Discovery

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

Part Four: A Day’s Wake

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

.5.

.6.

Part Five: Psychological Warfare

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

Part Six: Tumbling Down

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

.5.

.6.

.7.

Part Seven: The Shadow of Tomorrow

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

.5.

Part Eight: Reign in Blood

.1.

.2.

.3.

.4.

.5.

.6.

Epilogue

Back of the Book Content

Prologue

We were supposed to be the good guys.

Tell that to the exemplars standing in a room strewn with bodies, walls caked in blood, claw marks streaked across the floors.

Tell that to Amethyst, who was swaying from side to side, the beast morpher’s muscles twitching, blood vessels pulsing, her terrifying snarls filling the space, horns scraping against the floor as she tried to stand, the stink of alcohol radiating from her skin.

Scream it from the top of some crumbling rooftop in Ravja, the Western Province city that was as grand as it was war-torn. Piss it into the stream of consciousness. Carve it into your own flesh. Whisper it into the ear of the dead vampire lying at my feet.

We were supposed to be the good guys, the Protectorate.

We weren’t supposed to be the ones that created the monsters.

Part One: The Long Night

.1.

(Present day.)

“I’m tracking it,” I told Amethyst, watching as a pale creature slipped over some rubble.

“Track it or kill it—there is no try,” she said in the usual snarl that came with her transformation.

Ram horns had grown out of her skull, and she was swaying, intoxicated. The smell of alcohol overpowered the stench of death.

“Here we go,” I said as the data floated before me, beamed from an Eastern Province apparatus on my headgear. “Yep. This one has been tagged.”

“Do tell.” Amethyst’s red eyes flickered as she watched the vampire scurry away.

[Ronda Septo]

[Age: 26 F]

[Hometown: Korkovin]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): five days]

“Non-ex, female, from Kork,” I relayed to her.

Amethyst sped away, her barbed tail whipping behind her.

My patrolmate was wicked fast in her beast form, especially when she dropped to all fours. Her back legs propelled her forward as she slammed her horns into the vampire. The two struggled for a moment, tumbling in the gravel.

It wasn’t long before Amethyst ripped the woman’s arm off using her barbed tail. The naked vampire squealed and hissed as Amethyst proceeded to beat the woman with the bloodied stub. She pulled her hand back and activated an energy blade, driving it into the female vampire’s chest.

Done.

“Destry, behind you!”

Not done.

It was too goddamn late to activate my energy blade.

The vampire had already latched on, the muscular monster going straight for my neck. It met my clavicle, and my flesh pulled aside as more of my own bone tore from my skeleton, wrapping around the vampire’s neck.

The creature managed to swipe its claws at my face, and one of its nails cut into my cheek.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I growled, the blood from my cheek staining my teeth.

The noose I’d created out of my own clavicle started to grow in size. The bone compounded upon itself as it thickened and moved the writhing vampire out in front of me, no longer within arm’s reach.

Like I said, muscular, with beady eyes and pockmarks across his face.

“You aren’t supposed to play with them,” Amethyst called over to me.

“Says the lady who just beat one to death with its own arm.” I gritted my teeth as I felt a strain on my skeleton, waiting for the man’s details to appear on my Heads Up Display.

[Evan Mod]

[Age: 49 M]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): ten days]

“Tagged.” And with that, I cracked the vampire’s neck and brought him to the ground. I drove my energy blade deep into his back, killing the man for good.

I cringed as my bone returned to my body and reformed back into my skeleton. The pain was something I was used to by now, yet it still managed to catch me off guard from time to time.

“How many? We done for the night yet?” Amethyst asked as she carried the woman she’d killed over to me. She threw her on the stack of bodies behind us, mostly vampires but also a few drained bodies we’d found.

“By my count…”

We heard a terrible cry from a building across from us. Amethyst took off almost immediately, her tail bouncing behind her. I cleared the rubble and watched as a blast of purple energy ripped Amethyst from her feet, sending her skidding backward.

An exemplar.

Glass exploded outward, the same energy looping around Amethyst’s legs and dragging her into the building, which was formerly a gym based on the signage.

My own transformation took place as I ran, my specially made armor moving aside as bone ripped from my skin to form spikes and a hardened shell over most of my body.

I wasn’t all the way morphed, maybe at the sixty-percent mark, but I could definitely feel the added weight slow me down as I ran.

And just like that, I was transported back to my youth, to Ravja’s Turnstone District, a childhood cut short when I’d been sold by my father to the State, a time when I’d run through a set of streets that perfectly resembled our current location.

The last time I’d ever known childhood freedom, before I became a child of chaos.

Strange for a memory to come at a time like this, as adrenaline hissed through me, but it had happened during my transformations before. Something about the chemicals it released in my body when my bones punctured my own flesh…

At least that was what the doc had told me.

My reverie was stripped away once another blast came from the building, tearing down an outward-facing wall. I pivoted just in time, keeping my speed as the gravel exploded into bits and pieces all around me.

Knowing my bone armor would protect me, I dove into the former gymnasium and rolled to the right, coming to my feet in front of a set of kettlebells.

I saw Amethyst’s reflection in the cracked mirror, her horns scraping against the ground as she continued to be pulled in by a purple tractor beam. I couldn’t yet see the exemplar, the superpowered fucker who had attacked her, but I could see the trail of his energy.

So I did what anyone with enhanced strength due to a weird bone mutation would do. I grabbed a kettlebell and tossed it at the exemplar as I rounded the corner.

It connected, and the bastard went down hard.

“You threw a fucking kettlebell!?” Amethyst roared with laughter, literally. When she was in her morphed form, not only did she stink of booze, but her laughs and bellows were difficult to distinguish from one another.

“It worked, didn’t it?” I asked as I reached her, another kettlebell in my hand.

I saw the vampiric exemplar struggling on the ground, the bastard trying to heal from organ damage as he gnashed his teeth.

I brought the kettlebell down onto his face. While this would definitely add to his medical bills, it wouldn’t kill a vampire, which was why my arm began to form into a large lance made of bone.

The fucker hissed, his tongue flicking out of his destroyed face, shattered bits of teeth dribbling down his bloody chin as the bastard still tried to bite me.

I pressed my bone lance into his chest and quickly finished the job.

“You’re supposed to use your wrist guard,” Amethyst said with a snarl, getting back to her feet.

“I’ve used my bone weapons to kill these things a million times; I haven’t been infected yet. You know I can control my blood.”

“Destry, protocol. You’re the one who’s supposed to be reminding me of that, Mr. Junior Commanding Officer,” Amethyst said as she got to her feet. “Tag him yet?”

“Yep,” I said, reviewing the information presented before me.

[Oliver Blue]

[Age: 19 M]

[Hometown: Bretnick]

[Status: Exemplar II, D, enhanced energy manipulation]

[Time since infection (estimate): eleven days]

“And?”

“Type II, Class D with enhanced energy manipulation abilities. Infected eleven days,” I said as some of my bone armor merged back into my body and the pain spiraled through me.

Amethyst straightened, taking a quick look around the gym. “Think that’s all of them?”

I sighed. “It never is.”

.2.

Amethyst dragged the dead V’s body to the roofless building where we had started our body stack. We were in the cordoned-off area of the city of Ravja, the far-reaching edges of Overtone Heights, with shadows, terror, and darkness everywhere we turned. We’d been working here for days, camping out on rooftops and in abandoned rooms.

Living the good life.

Ravja had been ground zero for a proxy war between the Northern and Southern Alliance for years; those bastard rune users had been arguing over arcane nonsense since long before I’d been born.

The city was also, conveniently enough, where the vampire infestation had taken place in two of Ravja’s more expansive districts, infecting both non-exemplars and exemplars—people without superpowers and those with enhanced abilities.

Our job as the Protectorate was to clean up a perpetual mess.

“Nice night,” Amethyst growled, snarky as always. “Too bad we have to meet with the others tomorrow.”

“Is this really that romantic?”

“It depends on who you ask. The moon is just right, a little cloud coverage, a soft breeze.”

“Please…”

“Just let me enjoy it,” she said with a playful growl.

“Enjoy away.”

Once the exemplar’s body was stacked with the other Vs, Amethyst tapped her palm. A button on her wrist guard switched it from energy blade to blaster mode.

“Give me some juice,” she instructed me, her voice a hoarse growl.

“I can do it.”

“I want to light it.”

“As you wish.” I took a metal canteen of fuel from my backpack. Amethyst’s pack was near mine as well; we’d both gotten good at finding places to stash our gear when hunting time began.

“Don’t use too much,” she reminded me.

“We still have plenty left.” I placed my finger over the opening of the canteen and lightly spritzed the stack of bodies.

“And they’re all tagged?” she asked, her voice still tinged with anger and fury due to her transformation. Amethyst would be like this for another thirty minutes or so, unless she drank more alcohol.

“I just need to load them up.”

Returning to my pack, I stuffed my canteen in a side pocket and wiped my finger on the strap. After a little searching around, I brought out a small tablet cased in thick black plastic. Like my headgear, this was also Eastern Province tech, the type of shit the general public would never see.

The screen lit up.

--Enter Passcode--

“Shit, what’s the passcode?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s right.” I typed in the words, watching the screen light up with each letter.

The screen flashed red.

“Is ‘fuck you’ in all caps?” I asked.

“Yes—why can’t you remember this?”

“Sorry,” I told Amethyst as I punched in the code. I plugged in my headgear and waited for it to load up.

[Ronda Septo]

[Red Bernard]

[Oliver Blue]

~~~~~~~~~~

[Ronda Septo]

[Red Bernard]

[Oliver Blue]

“The thing is glitching out,” I told her.

“Try hitting it.”

“We should be more careful with our tech.”

Amethyst snorted. “Whatever. What’s the count for the evening so far?”

“Okay, that I can find out.”

I pressed the sideways triangle that indicated the “back” button and was presented with a number, plus a list of names.

[Ronda Septo] [Evan Mod] [Oliver Blue]

[Stone Greenlock] [Edward Gray] [Patrick Blue]

[Zara Beige] [Freda Bane] [Red Bernard]

[Cranston Black] [Gary Stone] [Todd Klock]

[Kory Redface] [Jenny Lou] [Walter Mapes]

“Fifteen,” I said as I unplugged my headgear. Once it powered down, I put the tablet up and returned my headgear to its proper place.

“It doesn’t look like fifteen,” she said as she eyed the stack. Her tail hung in the air just over her shoulder, bobbing like the tail of a cat.

“Children.”

“Lurkers,” was all Amethyst said as she stepped back.

I nodded. We both hated lurkers, which was what we called the smaller vampires that were fonder of surprise attacks than coming at us head-on.

The fire started up almost immediately, and by the time it was really raging, both of us had our backpacks on and were heading back to the main street.

We’d seen what these fires could attract.

“Where should we post up?”

I glanced at the rooftops, looking for one with the best vantage point, a place that wouldn’t leave us boxed in. We had been in the field a week and a half now, and I was getting accustomed to finding good spots to rest. I sort of had a knack for it.

“You’re doing the shooting, right?” Amethyst asked. “I’m too shaky in this form.”

“As always,” I told her once I spotted a place that used to be a bank.

“Thanks, Destry.”

There was a fire escape on the partially cratered building half a block away that I would be able to use to hop down onto an adjoined rooftop. We’d need to destroy this route of entry once we landed, but I was fine with that.

There were other ways for me to climb, but using the terrain presented to me was easier.

Plus, the rooftop in question was upwind. And for someone who had smelled enough burning bodies, this was key.

How many stacks had we burned since this tour of the infected districts? It didn’t matter; it was what our government had ordered, and the politicians calling for more death as they came up for reelection were marginalizing an already marginalized creature.

To what end?

I despised the Vs just as much as any other soldier who’d had to take one down, but even with all the faces of death I’d seen, I still couldn’t forget they had once been human.

They had once been like me.

The woman Amethyst had beaten to death with her own arm? Someone’s sister. A teacher, for all I knew.

The guy I’d pegged with the kettlebell? Someone’s uncle, brother, father.

Who knew?

But we had to follow orders, and so we followed them, sometimes becoming just as terrible as the things we were hunting. No sense in trying to find a cure when a knife to the gut would do the trick.

“You’re up,” I told Amethyst when we reached the roof in question.

The beast morpher scaled to the top of the roof using her powerful hind legs and claws, with her tail occasionally looping around the bars over the windows for balance.

The average person wouldn’t believe that the horned woman with red eyes, sharp claws, and a barbed tail was actually one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. Amethyst, the unmorphed version—with her purple-red hair, dark eyes, soft skin, full lips, and shapely figure—was a pleasure to look at.

But what stood on the rooftop reeking of alcohol, watching as I took the fire escape, was a far cry from the girl I had trained alongside for the last twelve years.

Frightening.

Once I scaled the fire escape, I dropped down to the rooftop and made my way over to Amethyst.

Her shoulders moved up and down as she sucked in raspy breaths.

She always breathed harder in this form; I had seen in her medical records that the transformation put an incredible strain on her heart.

The sad fact was, Amethyst would die sooner than later due to cardiac circumstances if she kept the morphing up.

She knew it, I knew it, and it was why we fucked like it was the last time either of us would ever have sex. It was yet another reason I loved her: Amethyst was the fiercest, most powerful person I had ever encountered, yet she was surprisingly frail beneath it all.

The military docs had given her five years to live if she kept up the morphing, which was why she would retire in three, according to her. If she stopped morphing, her life would be prolonged.

Theoretically.

I placed my pack down and set up the concentrated energy weapon using my backpack as support.

I preferred to use my wrist guard over this contraption for closer combat, but for long-range strikes, there was nothing better.

Centralia, one of the countries we shared a border with, had provided these weapons to us like we were a fucking charity case.

But they did the trick.

The energy weapon had a long barrel attached to a tripod, and each piece broke down for easy storage. Centralians had trained to use these damn things and claimed they were just as good as wrist guards.

But it was hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

“Spotted, your three,” Amethyst said. The beast morpher was now perched on the parapet, her red eyes locked on the blazing fire below, her tail hooked in the air behind her.

“Got it.”

The scope gave the bloodsucker a green outline, easy as hell to track, and it had zoom capabilities too. I could do something similar with my HUD minus the zoom, but again, for long-distance assaults, the Centralian weapon was best.

I waited until the V moved closer to the fire. The monster sniffed the air, pausing before continuing onward.

I pushed a short breath out and fired.

My blast tore a hole through the creature’s chest, the voomp! echoing in the streets below.

“Nice shot,” Amethyst whispered.

“Thanks.”

I watched the creature through my scope as it clawed at the ground, hissing and squealing, blood oozing out of the gaping wound on its chest. We would have to tag it tomorrow.

“Been a night,” said Amethyst, her horns just a little smaller than before.

“There will be more,” I told her as I continued surveying the area through my scope.

I heard a mini explosion behind me and turned to see Amethyst had shot down the fire escape. These fuckers could crawl vertically, but many still had some of their human thought patterns, especially the ones that had just turned.

Without the fire escape, it would be just a little harder for them to reach us. We would still have to set traps around the rooftop and the rooftop entrance, but that was something we could do later.

“See? Romantic evening,” Amethyst said as she walked along the perimeter of the roof looking for vampires. She had to wave away some of the smoke that was coming from the fire. The wind had shifted; Ravja’s weather was always unpredictable.

“I saved the best MREs for tonight,” I told her. “We’ll only have one more before we rendezvous with Margo and Orange tomorrow night.”

“Barf.”

“Trust me,” I said, tracking something in my scope and realizing it was just an oversized rat. “These are the best ones. Centralian omelet. Comes with a side of toast too.”

“And what makes these the best ones?”

“Simple.” I spotted another bloodsucker moving toward the fire. Once I steadied my breath, I locked on the monster and lit it up. We’d have two to tag in the morning. “It comes with syrup, and if you cook it with the syrup in the omelet, it almost tastes like a sponge cake.”

“You’re serious?”

“Margo and I discovered it on one of our last details, on the edge of Meriday Heights. Actually, I discovered it. I did all the cooking. Gourmet dessert, Ames, believe me. This is the type of stuff you’d get at a fancy rooftop restaurant in Centralia. Gourmet.”

“Please. You’ve never been to Centralia.”

“A boy can dream, can’t he?”

“Not in Ravja, he can’t. Especially not in the Overtone Heights—especially not if he is a member of the Protectorate.”

The city of Ravja, my hometown, was divided into eight districts, and two of these districts, Overtone Heights and the Brownlock District, were heavily infected zones barred from public entry.

Making matters worse was the fact that two countries, the Northern Alliance and the Southern Alliance, were having a goddamn proxy war in this area and to the east, all the way up to our border with Centralia. They had cooled it some considering the vampire infestation, which most called the Western Plague, but that wouldn’t stop the two sides from going after each other.

At least one of the people we’d killed yesterday was a Northern Alliance soldier who had turned. Sons of bitches, those ones. The soldiers fought back, and some still had the wherewithal to use their energy weapons.

As if thinking about these foreign troops could somehow conjure them, I noticed a group moving onto the street below.

“NA patrol spotted.” I turned my energy weapon toward the group coming around the block. “Five total.”

.3.

“Fucking Northern Alliance,” Amethyst growled. “Just take them out from here.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I told her, my weapon still trained on the group below.

She sighed. “Dammit. I was looking forward to the MRE sponge cake and some rest.”

“Let’s just see what they do, and you’ll get your goddamn sponge cake.”

“Should we MM Orange and Margo?”

“Nah, no mental messages yet,” I told her. “Let’s just see what they do.”

“Affirmative.”

Orange and Margo were just like us, two exemplars who had been raised by the Western Province government to be super soldiers.

Our superpowers meant all four of us were classified as exemplars, even if we came from families of non-exemplars. The uniqueness of our powers was why our families had given us to the State at an early age. That and the lump sum they’d gotten for doing so, the cheap bastards.

I guess things could have been worse.

“Just be ready,” I told her.

Amethyst nodded.

It didn’t take long for the Northern Alliance patrol to come upon the two Vs I had gunned down earlier, which was cause for concern for them.

By this point, I had pinpointed the one I assumed was their leader, a woman with red hair in a ballistic helmet with energy radiating around her.

“NA exemplar team,” Amethyst whispered.

“Activate telepath bands,” I told her, lifting my hand in her direction.

Amethyst triggered hers and crouched next to me, activating mine. These would prevent a telepath from searching the area if they happened to have one on their team.

“They seem spooked.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” I whispered to Amethyst. “Imagine coming up on a street and finding a stack of burning Vs. Not to mention two freshly shot corpses lying in the road.”

“They should be used to this kind of stuff by now.”

“Agreed.”

After getting instructions from his commanding officer, one of the exemplar soldiers traced something with his hand and lifted into the air.

“Rune user,” I told her.

“Confirmed.”

“Do not engage if he comes up here.”

“Affirmative, but only if he plays nice.” Amethyst went for the metal flask on her belt. She unscrewed the top and took a small swig from it, cringing as she did and then trembling. A vein in her neck bulged. “Ugh,” she said as her voice deepened, her horns started to curl, and her eyes fizzled red.

“Don’t drink too much; we don’t know if they’re hostiles or not.”

“Let’s end this now.”

Amethyst let out a bark that definitely caught the flying exemplar’s attention. The leader of the bunch, the redhead, traced a rune and rose into the air as well. They moved toward the rooftop as the other three moved to the front of our building.

I stood, joining Amethyst and leaving the weapon perched on my backpack.

“Identify yourselves,” the female squad leader said once they arrived, her voice likely amplified by runic magic. Unfortunately, my headgear didn’t give me any information on the two from the Northern Alliance, so there was no way of telling if they were exemplars or non-exemplars.

“Destry Banner, Western Province Protectorate, P3-COF.” I pointed to Amethyst. “Amethyst Jayde, P4-HE.”

“She can’t speak for herself?” the NA squad leader asked, now hovering before us.

Her counterpart, a muscular man with blond hair, had that twitch in his eyes that told me he was ready to trigger his energy weapon if need be. Runic magic swirled around his feet.

That was the frustrating thing about rune users; it was difficult to tell if they’d been born with a superpower or not, and fighting one—which I had done several times—could lead to unwanted surprises.

“I can speak,” Amethyst seethed, the alcohol surging through her.

If the muscular guy floating in front of us was trigger happy, Amethyst was trigger crazy. And even if he was in the air, I was fairly certain she’d be able to clear the distance between the two in the time it took him to use his wrist guard.

“Then identify yourself,” the red-haired woman said.

“He already did, Captain Twat, and you can fuck right off with your demands,” Amethyst spat. “You’re in my country, fighting a war over some stupid runic bullshit at the same time we’re dealing with a goddamn vampiric infection, the likes of which this world has never seen before. Don’t fucking forget that!”

I cleared my throat. “What my colleague means to say is that you are patrolling in a quarantined area.”

“How many of the people you’ve burned are soldiers from my country?” the man asked, his eyes still twitching.

“Not enough,” said Amethyst, her breaths short, angry.

She was especially terrible after the alcohol first hit her system, and there had been times when I’d thought she’d tear my throat out. I was used to it by now, but I would be lying if I said I was mentally prepared to engage her each time she transformed.

“I’ll ask the questions here,” the woman with red hair reminded her counterpart. “C.O. Banner, there are no laws or rules in place as to where we can patrol.”

“Ha!” said Amethyst. Her barbed tail struck the rooftop and bits of concrete spritzed the air.

“You do not have jurisdiction here,” I reminded the woman, “and that is aside from the fact that it is a quarantined area. I would advise your patrol to move closer to the border. You will not find any S.A. soldiers in this district. Not ones that are alive, anyway.”

“C.O. Banner, your remarks have been relayed to our command team,” she said.

“Good, tell them to send me a runic postcard as thanks.”

“And by claiming jurisdiction over this area, you are violating a protocol in the Warring Nations Agreement, Protocol 3.4, paragraph four, specifically. This is an active warzone, C.O. Banner, and there are no claims to country or territory when we are engaging an enemy.”

“Protocol 3.4?” Amethyst looked at me, her red eyes still furious.

“That is a Northern Alliance protocol. We never agreed to that non-binding bullshit,” I told her.

“Come again?” the floating woman asked.

“You have two minutes to clear out of here before my team comes,” I said, my muscles bulging as bone protrusions pressed out of my skin. “They are en route now. You will not like the powers they bring to the table. Both are Type Is, if that means anything to you. If you value the air you breathe or your vital organs, I suggest getting as far away from here as possible.”

Amethyst bristled, not prepared for the threat that had come out of my mouth. I could be as aggressive as her when I wanted to be.

The NA squad leader swallowed hard, steeling herself in an instant. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a fucking promise,” I told her as large spikes tore out of my shoulders.

She exchanged looks with her counterpart, who watched my transformation with horror in his eyes.

“We can patrol elsewhere,” she finally said. “And if we run into you again, we will be forced to arrest you for violating Protocol 3.4.”

“Fuck your protocols,” said Amethyst. “They mean nothing to us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” the red-haired woman said as she turned away.

The two floated down to their patrol and spoke for a moment. Amethyst and I stood at the ready, both of us prepared for them to change their minds. But they didn’t in the end, and the group turned to the east.

“Well, we know they don’t have a telepath,” I told Amethyst once the NA patrol was nearly out of sight.

“Or they don’t know how these telepath bands work.”

She deactivated hers by pressing her nail against a button on the side of the bracelet.

“Then again, I could have deactivated it and mental-messaged Margo and Orange.” I returned to my backpack, noticing that the fire below had begun to burn down. Less smoke now, more ash, and hopefully less activity.

“That’s always an option.”

“Hungry yet?”

“Give me thirty minutes to unwind,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t wasted a boost on those assclowns.”

“Take your time,” I said, pressing my eye to the scope of the weapon. “I’ll keep an eye on the streets.”

.4.

“Your sponge cakes weren’t so bad,” Amethyst said as she moved closer to me. Twilight was upon us, and the streets were quiet below. Traps lined the perimeter of our rooftop campsite; any bloodsucker coming after us would be met with a shocking surprise.

Amethyst was back to her normal form, still with the sweet-sick smell of alcohol radiating off her skin, but nothing I wasn’t used to.

We were still in our armor, both of our Protectorate uniforms entirely custom. Amethyst’s allowed her to morph into the horned monster while mine allowed for my bones and muscles to contort and absorb the armor, making it possible for me to use my ability in a variety of ways.

Good stuff. Eastern Province tech, as usual.

It was a bit chilly out, but it would warm up in the morning. I felt dirty under my armor, but I was used to that too, and it never stopped Amethyst and I from expressing our affection for one another. We had gone through training together and had known each other for twelve years. She was a sister to me, a lover and a teammate, and it had been this way for quite some time.

“Glad you liked the sponge cake,” I told Amethyst as she nuzzled her head under my chin. I placed a hand on her ass, moving my fingers closer to the crack and drumming them there for a moment.

“In the morning,” she said with a yawn, her eyes half shut. “It’s too dark up here. I want to see you in the light.”

“Going to be a day tomorrow…” I said with a grimace.

“It will. We’ll be heading through the most infected part of the Overtone Heights.”

Amethyst’s tone was sweeter now, stripped of the harshness that came to her when she went into beast mode.

“I was there a few weeks back with Margo,” I told her. “Hopefully the Protectorate teams that have swept through since will have made a difference.”

“Likely not.”

“True.”

I knew what we were doing in Ravja was futile.

Kill one vampire and six more seemed to spring up out of nowhere. There were better options on the table, such as hunting the one who had initially started this infection or trying to find a goddamn cure for it, but our government’s solution had been to throw soldiers at it. And not just any soldiers—the best of the best, the Protectorate.

There was debate as to whether this had been their policy idea or possibly Centralia’s. The rich country was constantly pushing their weight around on our side of the border.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

There were already dozens of programs back west training the people who would eventually replace us, the new Protectorate, and there were more gearing up and ready to go.

Exemplars with the strangest superpowers hailed from my country, the Western Province. And there wasn’t a day that went by without my government searching for these unique, superpowered individuals or figuring out ways to exploit their abilities.

But I usually kept most of this to myself.

I wasn’t trained to think; I was trained to kill.

Amethyst was breathing lightly now, her jaw making that clicking sound it made when she was about to fall asleep.

Eventually, sleep came to me as well.

No nightmares, no dreams.

Just blackout.

A hissing screech interrupted my reverie.

“Destry,” Amethyst said, already moving away from me and out of our shared blanket.

“I’ve got it!”

The morning sun caused coronas on my vision as soon as I opened my eyes and rolled to a defensive position in front of Amethyst.

A vampiric child, a fucking lurker, had gotten caught up in the tripwire we’d set around the perimeter of the rooftop. The shirtless, brown-haired boy was covered in dried blood, with huge chunks missing from his shoulder and rotting slashes across his chest.

He was caught up in the wires, which were currently sending pulses of electricity through him, but I could tell he was likely small enough to free himself.

“He’s going to bring others. Do it,” Amethyst growled.

“Going in manual,” I told her as I approached the writhing little monster, the bone pressing out of my arm and spiraling into a sharp lance. I speared the kid in the back, and the young V let out a throaty gasp as I twisted my weapon in.

“Tag him,” Amethyst said. “And you’re not supposed to kill them that way.”

“Stop nagging me about that,” I said as I wiped the blood off my bone weapon using the boy’s own clothing. Amethyst brought a cloth over to me and cleaned it, then tossed the cloth onto the roof when she was done.

“I should have just blasted him.”

“We got him; that’s all that matters,” I told her once the bone had merged back into my skin. I isolated my blood in that region of my arm for a moment, something I always did when using bone weapons to kill a vampire. Then I bled it out, my blood dripping onto the rooftop.

Once I was done and my skin was healed, I equipped my headgear.

It activated, and I focused on the boy. His information appeared, floating before me.

[Comal Belt]

[Age: 14 M]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): twelve days]

“Ravja, Non-Ex, twelve days since infection,” I told her.

“Not looking bad for twelve days,” she said sarcastically.

“Yeah, aside from the chunks out of his chest.”

“Aside from that.”

“Not a very sexy way to start the morning,” Amethyst said as she moved to the far corner of the roof, where she started deactivating our traps. Once she was done, she undid her pants and squatted.

I heard a steady stream of piss hit the rooftop.

“I’m next,” I told her once our sleeping gear was packed.

“Just pee over the side like you always do,” she said.

“That’s always fun.”

I moved to her left and went through the slightly complicated process of undoing my pants. Once I was able, I aimed my cock over the side of the building, only to be joined by Amethyst moments later.

“Let me help,” she said, grabbing me and guiding my stream in a zigzag motion.

“I don’t know why you like doing that so much,” I told her.

She snickered. “It’s like aiming a wrist guard.”

Seeing her hand on my member caused a slight erection. I looked at her, placing my free hand on her lower back.

“Later,” she said as she shook me out.

“Later can’t come soon enough.”

“Hopefully we can find somewhere a little more private.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

I packed up the rest of our gear. Once we were good to go, I grabbed the V kid and tossed him over the side of the roof so we could retrieve him in the street.

“Splat,” Amethyst said with a snarky grin.

“Hard way to go, but it’s better than one of us carrying him.”

“Agreed.”

She used her energy blade to break through the door of the rooftop entrance, and both of us went in with our weapons at the ready. I wasn’t too concerned with a vampire being shacked up in a bank, but that wouldn’t mean there weren’t others.

As we entered the main lobby, I saw a body with its back against the door, the woman’s wrists slit.

“Tag it and I’ll add her to the stack.”

“Yep.”

[Emelia Amaara]

[Age: 19 F]

[Hometown: Vilmar]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

“Where’s she from?” Amethyst asked as she dragged the body to the door.

“Vilmar, non-ex. She took her own life.”

“Can’t blame her.”

I moved forward, my armor forming and the pain quickly dissipating.

Once I saw we were clear, I moved out onto the streets with my wrist guard drawn just in case. Amethyst followed, dragging the woman by her feet. My purple-haired counterpart was an eighth as strong as she was when she morphed.

“Hold up. Why do you get to drag the kid and I have to drag the full-grown adult?” she asked.

“Let’s switch then,” I told her. “Anything else I can carry for you?” I asked as I lifted the woman from the bank and tossed her onto one of the Vs I’d sniped last night. I brought the second bloodsucker to the stack just as Amethyst dropped the boy on top.

“My tail,” Amethyst said with a snort. “You said she was from Vilmar, right?” she asked, referring to the woman who’d taken her own life.

“Yep.”

“Long way from home. I heard it’s pretty up there.”

“Too sunny.”

“Better than constant gray clouds and death all around us.”

“Good point,” I said as I spritzed the stack with a little fuel.

I could see a few of the high-rise buildings of the Garden Edge District in the distance, a visual reminder of why we were clearing out our current location. As it stood, the Garden Edge District was sandwiched by Overtone Heights and the Brownlock District, both about as infested as a city could be.

Yet it hadn’t touched Garden Edge.

There were a lot of theories as to why this was, but most of us knew it was all about economics. Garden Edge was wealthy, and they’d put up walls eighty feet high around their district as soon as the infection had started.

This was no small task, considering the area was about thirty kilometers squared. But they’d had the money to do it, and that was why the infection hadn’t spread.

That and us.

We had been taking out Vs in Brownlock and Overtone for the better part of a year, focusing exclusively on the areas surrounding Garden Edge.

“Care to do the honors?” I asked Amethyst.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

She activated her energy weapon and the stack instantly ignited. We stood there for a moment watching the bodies start to burn, the smoke billowing into the air.

The stench.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, and it really didn’t matter.

Eventually, Amethyst said something about moving on and I agreed. We needed to head toward the far end of Overtone Heights to rendezvous with Orange and Margo. I had been at this long enough to get a sense when trouble was on the horizon, and I couldn’t help but feel we were about to go up against something that would truly test our abilities.

Hopefully, I was wrong.

.5.

We continued our patrol for another hour, maybe two, possibly three.

There were gray clouds overhead, but I didn’t sense rain.

I grew up in Ravja, in the Turnstone District, and I had seen my fair share of dark days. Older people at the time said the city had more gray days than sunny ones, but I never counted, and the patrols I had been on were already so hazy that I couldn’t recall if this was actually the case.

In the end, all that mattered was making it through this patrol so I could recover for a few days and start my next one.

My left wrist guard was active, the other one in my pack. This allowed for my right arm to have bone protrusions jutting out from it just in case something came out of the blue.

Or the gray.

It didn’t matter where it came from; there wouldn’t be much time to act with how fast these creatures moved.

Hopefully, our next encounter would be with non-exemplars who had been turned. Those were by far the easiest to take down, just your average civilian, half-powered at best, no enhanced abilities.

What kept us up at night were the superpowered ones, the exemplars who had turned, like the one we’d encountered last night in the abandoned gym.

Those were unpredictable.

Some of them had powers that didn’t give them any advantages, but others…

The most brutal fight I had been in yet was with a strongman that could fly. If it hadn’t been for my ability to enhance the thickness of my bones, he would have easily crushed my skull.

As I recall, the bastard had come out of nowhere. Amethyst was off checking a former deli when I was lifted into the air.

Wham!

A man slammed me into the ground.

He was on me, knees pressed against my shoulders, calloused hands squeezing around my face trying to pop my goddamn eyeballs out. I was momentarily blinded when instinct kicked in and bones ripped out of my forehead to slice off his fingers.

There were quicker ways to dispose of him, but I didn’t want to reveal my backup plan just yet. It was all bones from that point forward, a couple seconds of hesitation making the difference.

That was the weird part about some of the Vs.

While many, exemplar and non-exemplar alike, had entirely transformed into animals, a few of the smarter ones still had some cognizance.

By the time he cried out, I had run as many bone spikes through his arm as I possibly could, serrating their edges as I drove them up.

I still didn’t know he could fly at this point; that power was only revealed to me when he launched both of us in the air, two bodies tumbling skyward, enlarged bones from my body jutting into his. The man blasted us as high in the air as he could before bringing us back down.

If it hadn’t been for Amethyst…

She tore out of the deli, going through the glass like she’d done several times before.

The strongman and I crash-landed. Amethyst was on him in an instant, on both of us actually, considering we were stuck together because of my bone weapons.

But I pulled away quickly and let her take over.

She was stronger than me in her beast mode, faster, and arguably more ruthless.

Eventually, her barbed tail took the man’s head off, and I finished the job by knifing him in the chest with my energy blade.

Another gray day passed.

“You okay over there, Destry?” Amethyst said, bringing me back to our current moment in time.

“Fine, I’m fine.”

I had been guilty of this before, letting my thoughts carry me away.

Amethyst didn’t say anything else as we rounded the corner, noticing two men standing in the street with clubs at their sides.

“Locals,” I started to say.

“Hostiles is more like it.”

Not all the locals agreed with what we were doing here.

There was a group that considered the vampiric transformation a natural evolutionary step. We didn’t encounter them all the time, but there was usually an ambush to be had when we did.

“Are we going for the diplomatic approach here?”

“We’re supposed to,” I reminded her.

“No one can see us out here, Destry.”

“We should be able to take them down with our energy weapons alone.”

I took a few steps closer to the men.

“One more move and you’re dead,” the first man said.

He was thin, with age spots all over his bald head, a gnarly beard, and rags for clothing. His counterpart looked pretty much the same, aside from his long brown hair. He had a larger shoulder span as well.

Did you tag them?

Amethyst’s voice appeared in my head through a mental message.

We both had access to mental messaging, the service run by powerful military telepaths at a garrison in the Turnstone District. It was useful for communicating, sure, but it could be distracting as well, which was why we were careful not to get carried away with it.

Yes, I thought back to her.

At least it felt like I was thinking back to her.

In actuality, I was thinking this aloud to a telepath that had been commissioned to run our exclusive channel for Protectorate patrols. It was pretty much in real time, though. From what we had calculated in the past, there were only a few seconds of lag time.

The men’s information had already been presented in the form of a transparent display floating before me.

[Kilmer Green]

[Age: 54 M]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

---

[Brando Green]

[Age: 24 M]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

Father and son, I thought back to Amethyst. Both non-ex, not infected.

Ready to engage when you are.

“Lower your clubs,” I told the older man. “As part of the Protectorate, we are here on assignment from the Western Province government. I am Destry Banner, P3-COF, and this is Amethyst Jayde, P4-HE. We are asking you to step aside and lower your weapons. Otherwise, we will be forced to engage. Because we are in the field, we are authorized under federal law to use lethal force.”

The older man spat. The younger man, his son, took a step forward that indicated he was ready to lay it all down on the line.

I pinched the bridge of my nose for a moment as I considered our next action.

It was one thing to have to hunt vampires through a war-torn city—plus, there were the other patrols from other countries. Adding locals into the mix only made things more complicated.

It was against my personal code of ethics to engage civilians, but if they came at me, I would have no other choice.

“I can make this quick,” said Amethyst.

“No, I will handle this.”

I felt my skin begin to shift as my already-morphed arm made room for more bone spikes. That was one thing that made my power truly extraordinary.

Bone was incredibly hard, especially when thickened.

At some point, I had learned how to produce barbs from the top of my arm and grow them down to my fist, sort of like a cast. Not only did it create a powerful punch, it also had the benefits of a serrated edge and something to use as a shield.

The young man looked back to his father, swallowed hard, and lifted his club.

Something red caught my eye, coming in fast from the left.

I bristled, ready to engage it with the energy weapon on my wrist guard.

But I had been at this long enough to not shoot without confirmation, and I was glad for that when a young girl no older than twelve slammed into the younger of the two men, hugging him and begging him not to fight me.

“No, Sarah, no!” He hissed as he tried to push her aside.

And normally, something like this wouldn’t have struck me as out of the ordinary.

There were children living with these groups, and many did not want them to fight Western Province soldiers, or any other nation’s soldiers, for that matter. Several of the fights we could have had in the past had actually been stopped by children, their young voices having reminded us all of what was at stake.

But this situation wasn’t like that—not when the red bandanna fell from the girl’s neck.

Amethyst raised her weapon. “Tag her, Destry.”

“Shit…” I said under my breath as her information appeared before me.

[Sarah Green]

[Age: 11 F]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): one day]

“Is she?” Amethyst asked. “Is she?”

“Yes.”

The older man, clearly her grandfather, grabbed her red bandanna off the pavement and pulled her close, tying it back around her neck while her father stood guard, true fear in his eyes now.

“Are there more than three of you?” I asked.

“Engage,” Amethyst said under her breath.

“The others were eaten…” the older man said, sniffing as he started to tear up while hugging his granddaughter.

The girl had dark hair and a frail body, no muscle whatsoever. It was miraculous she had moved so quickly earlier, which I took to mean that while she was half-powered, she did have a heightened sense of agility.

“You can’t do anything to her! I swear, if you even try…” Her father mumbled a few more words, all of which were incoherent. “I swear… I swear I’ll… I’ll…”

He was having a panic attack of sorts.

I had seen it before and was keenly aware of how adrenaline affected a person who wasn’t used to these types of situations.

Hell, it still affected me, no matter how much training I’d had or how many patrols I’d been on. Fear-based adrenaline always won, always leveled the playing ground.

It was how a person responded to the influx of chemicals that showed their experience.

Amethyst and I still went through the same jitters every time we engaged a V, whether in a direct assault or an ambush. We had just learned how to manage it better.

“It won’t be much longer until she turns fully,” I told the three. “At this age, they generally lose all cognizance once they have fully transformed. I am telling you this so you realize that neither of you will be like her. She will continue on after she has eaten the two of you. Vampires only create other vampires by blood transfusion, which takes cognizance. They have to latch on, suck some of your blood out, and return it mixed with their saliva. Usually, the younger ones’ minds are completely taken over by the infection, and they end up devouring the people around them until they become more cognizant of what they can do. She won’t be cognizant enough to turn both of you when it takes over; she’ll eat you.”

“It’s true,” Amethyst chimed in, her weapon trained on the girl.

“And it will be excruciatingly painful when she does,” I continued. “She won’t just eat you whole; she’ll eat you in portions, starting with your appendages, then your vital organs. You may be alive while this happens. And others will come. They attract their own kind. It’s a terrible infection, and it’s why we suggest you step aside and let us continue the eradication.”

“I…” The man gulped. “If that’s my fate, then so fucking be it. Look at this shithole,” he said, waving his hands around. “This fucking joke of a life.”

He wasn’t wrong there. All of the buildings were abandoned, trash lined the pavement, and there was smoke coming from a building across the street.

There was no reason anyone would want to live this way.

An explosion on one of the rooftops caught our attention. We turned towards it, Amethyst prepared to engage whatever it was. The five of us waited silently for something to come of the explosion, some monster to descend from the roof, some fight to inevitably start.

It never happened.

What did happen, however, was the young girl with the red bandana let go of her grandfather and turned to me. She took a few steps forward past her dad, tears in her eyes as she looked up at me.

“Please don’t kill me, sir,” she whimpered. “Please.”

I felt my throat quiver.

“Destry,” Amethyst said, her voice suddenly a distant echo.

I saw in the young girl’s face everything I still cared for about humanity. Her watery eyes were windows into a soul that knew it didn’t have long to live yet had decided to keep fighting. The anguish of existence. The false hope. The truth behind the facade.

“Please…”

I kept my weapon trained on her.

“I’ll kill myself before I turn, I promise.”

Amethyst snorted. “Destry, step aside and let me handle this. You and I both know she won’t be able to finish the job once she goes.”

“I will,” the girl promised, pulling a dagger from her belt. “I swear to you.”

“Destry…”

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

My hand started trembling and I just knew it.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t fired on someone within a day of infection before.

But something was different about this girl. Something about the way she looked at me, the energy I felt just by seeing her.

“You may go,” I told the girl and the two men behind her. “Now!” I roared, regaining my voice. “GO NOW! Before I change my mind!”

“Destry!”

“Enough, Amethyst—that’s an order.”

The family of three scurried off, Amethyst grumbling as she lowered her weapon.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said once they were gone.

She huffed beside me now, tensing her hands.

It was strange to see the beast in her coming out without its catalyst. I knew she couldn’t fully transform without the alcohol, but her twitching face and the way her skin kept tightening on her hands told me she was on the verge.

Which was why I clapped her on the back.

“Dammit,” she hissed at me. Horns bulged from the skin on her forehead and then died back down.

“Relax,” I told her. “What’s done is done.”

“Easy for you to say. She’ll kill them, and then we’ll have to kill her once she becomes a lurker.”

We turned to the building that had just experienced a mini explosion. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. If she doesn’t follow through with the suicide, we’ll get her on our next patrol. I’ll make sure she’s not counted with our numbers until then. I’ll remember that name though, Sarah Green.”

“You say that like it’s a sure thing.”

I gave Amethyst a look that contained within it every patrol we had already been on and every patrol we would likely go on in the future. “Trust me, it’s a sure thing. I bet we’ll have a week or less before they send us back out. Some job.”

“There are worse jobs,” she said with a shrug, cooling off some.

“Worse jobs than hunting Vs?” I snorted with amusement. “I don’t know if I can agree with you there. Sorry. And, um, sorry for all that back there. I just couldn’t do it.”

Amethyst nodded.

I waited for her to say something, but she never did.

.6.

No matter how many patrols I took, it was never easy to survey the damage, to be one with the bedlam.

But I tried.

I tried to just accept that this was here, that there were other places not so far away, safe places, districts without piles of intestines lying on the ground, random eyeballs perched on windowsills, bodies strewn about, random fires—positively post-apocalyptic.

I was here. And when I was here, I was a child of this chaos. When I was there, I was a creature of their comfort.

“Lots of trash on the ground,” Amethyst said as she kicked at a wooden crate. “More than usual.”

“Let’s remember to keep a low profile.”

“Should I dose up?” she asked as we looked up at the building in question, smoke still billowing off the rooftop. More rowhouses, all connected somehow. The Vs would be able to move from home to home, banister to banister, lurkers fitting into small cracks while the older and stronger ones simply made their own doors.

I hated these types of places.

There was no telling what was inside, and they were usually pretty dark.

But if Amethyst took her beast form now, and this was a false alarm, it would prolong our chance to have sex. And I needed sex at that moment. As stupid as I felt by having it on my brain, I needed it.

Just a short form of escape, not very long, a release, a moment to forget.

Just something.

“I think I’ll be able to handle it, Ames.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her hand on her flask. “I’m supposed to be the heavy engager here.”

“Aware. Put your headgear on and equip both wrist guards. Set one to blade, the other to blast. Be ready to dose if need be. We’ll make this sweep quick. If nothing is there, we’ll get the hell out. We won’t continue into whatever labyrinth the rowhouse may present us, not without a full team. Let’s just investigate the smoke.”

“Roger,” she said as she took her pack off and retrieved the necessary equipment.

We found a side alley to set our packs after she’d geared up.

I quickly set tripwires around them, just for added protection. On occasion, a rat would touch the tripwires and we would find it lying on its back, legs twitching.

The tripwires were mainly for any civilians that came across the pack; the Vs didn’t touch them—not on purpose, anyway.

“Ready?”

Amethyst adjusted her headband and brought the attached goggles down. She didn’t normally wear her headband because it got in the way of her morphing. “Don’t you just love my new sunglasses?”

I stifled a laugh as we approached a large wooden door, which Amethyst opened. I went in first, coming to a small mudroom of sorts.

“Nothing so far,” she whispered as we arrived at another door. She opened it; I moved to the left and Amethyst took the right.

As I predicted, the hallway inside was incredibly dark, the only bit of light in the area coming from a torn-out section of the wall. We were able to see with the tech from the Eastern Province, the Night Vision Display adding a green hue to everything.

I preferred not to use this feature. Using it for too long usually gave me a headache, but in an enclosed space like this, and with a fatal funnel likely in our future, it would be the difference between life and…

Something.

I turned to my counterpart, the beautiful Amethyst, and saw her with her tongue flitting against her bottom lip, looking up the stairs, wrist guard at the ready. As if she were just a random encounter on the dilapidated streets of Overtone Heights, her information appeared before me.

[Amethyst Jayde]

[Age: 23 F]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: Exemplar I, B, enhanced mutation, modified speed, dexterity and healing]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

It wasn’t the first time I had seen her stats, but it had been a while since I had really focused on her while wearing my head unit’s goggles. When it came down to it, we were not much different than the creatures we’d been sent here to destroy, however futile our task. The only thing that really separated us from them was that last line of information:

Time since infection (estimate)…

“Are you going to stare at me, or are we going up?” Amethyst whispered.

“Sorry, just adjusting,” I told her. “Again, we’re not checking each apartment. We only want to see where the smoke is coming from. We also won’t be going into the building next to this if it connects. Worst-case scenario, we tag the building and come back with Orange and Margo, or send in a full patrol.”

Amethyst nodded and stepped aside, allowing me to move up the stairs.

The bones on my left arm began to tear out of my skin as I walked, growing thicker as they pressed through the specially-designed uniform, and hardening into something that resembled a combat gauntlet, each spike a good three to five inches thick.

The best part about my ability was that my bone structures were nearly indestructible. It was practically impossible to break any bone in my body, considering the speed at which I healed. Several had tried, and only a few people could take me down without resorting to telepathy.

Oddly enough, two of these people were exemplars I had grown up with.

Margo could simply animate my bones and shred me apart from the inside. Gruesome, but true. She was rumored to have dismantled a squad of thirty Northern Alliance troops without breaking a sweat.

And she wasn’t the type to brag about it, either; this bit of intel had come to me from Orange, who had read it in a report.

But Orange…

Orange could kill me even faster than Margo could.

“Destry,” Amethyst said as she paused, turning to a door on the left.

We were on the second floor now. There were three doors before the stairwell wrapped back around, moving up.

“Eyes on the prize,” I reminded her.

“I was going to say the same to you,” she quipped, her form various shades of green. A bit of light peeked through the bottom of the door, painting a yellow patch near her feet.

Both of us had learned the hard way what happened when we went prowling around in people’s apartments, especially at the rowhouses, where the poorest citizens of the country lived.

Or had lived.

Everyone was supposed to have evacuated over a year ago, but there were always those who thought they could fight back and didn’t want to lose their property, or those who believed the infestation was part of the natural order. And there were even those who didn’t actually believe vampires had infested their district.

Over the course of the last year, we had run into several families still happily living in the depravity, in basement-like bunkers, ignoring the outside world.

The people Amethyst and I had just encountered, the two men and the young girl with the red bandana—they were likely these types.

And I had to hand it to them.

You couldn’t pay me enough to stay in a place like this, especially if I had a real choice to leave.

Amethyst and I moved on, my heart beating a little faster as we reached the second floor.

I had developed a weird intuition about these things. I sensed when I was going to be attacked, when something was about to happen.

But I wasn’t always right.

And even when part of my brain tried to tell the other part to relax, to pay attention to the signs, to focus, to look for any movement, I still wasn’t able to douse the fear.

I paused.

“Get ready.”

The click of Amethyst’s wrist guard signaled she had turned the safety off. I then heard the silent hiss of her energy blade, which grew from her other arm, illuminating the floorboards.

The spikes jutting out of my arm bent forward. I cringed at the way it sounded, like two rocks grinding against one another.

It didn’t usually hurt, but sometimes it did, especially when I mentally changed the direction in which the bones were growing.

But I wanted to be ready, so I had them grow the other way, eventually moving up my knuckles to form thick dagger-like protrusions.

I would go with my energy weapon first; it was the smartest thing to do and, with my enhanced vision at the moment, the easiest to pull off.

But if whatever was upstairs got close, I would have to handle it the old-fashioned way.

“I should dose.”

“No,” I told Amethyst. “We can handle this.”

We heard the sound of something scraping against the floor above, something big. Then the patter of feet and a low, garbled noise.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck, but after a deep breath in and a shallow breath out, I continued upward.

The light above us suddenly turned on. Amethyst aimed a weapon at it as it flickered off, both of our hearts not yet settled in our chests.

“What do you think that was?”

“No idea, but whatever it was, just be ready for it.”

“Could be an exemplar up there,” she whispered. “Possibly a Class B, electricity user.”

“Possible. If there is, the best way to take them out will be to do so quickly. Just make sure your blaster is set to lethal.”

“It always is,” Amethyst told me, a slight grin on her face.

God, I loved this woman. Every part about her. If only our shared experience didn’t have to be one of constant calamity.

“I hope it isn’t a hive.”

“We’ll call Margo and Orange if it is,” I told her. “We can have them airdropped onto the rooftop.”

“MM air support just in case.”

“Done,” I said as I fired off a mental message, letting them know to remain on standby and to peg our location.

One of the advantages of being in our elite squad was the ability to use exemplars with teleportation and flying powers to instantly deliver backup resources. We used this sparingly, but it was a last-ditch option always presented to us.

“Here goes.” I took the steps one at a time, barely blinking as I tried to get a picture of what was happening on the floor above us.

Nothing was coming through, just that green hue, but when we finally arrived on the floor, we saw that one of the doors had been blown out and the smoke was coming from the apartment inside.

“I’m going to dose,” said Amethyst.

“No, not yet, we still don’t know…”

“Why don’t you want me to dose?”

“Because…”

“Are you serious right now?” she hissed, and I could tell by the way she was glaring at me that she had totally read my mind.

“Dammit.”

“You’re adorable, but we can’t let that get in the way of what we came here to—”

The creature that came tearing out of the apartment was twice my size.

Hunched over, hair in its face, a terrible mouth full of jagged teeth, dozens of angry eyes glaring at us.

I turned just in time to meet its open maw with my bone claws, enlarging them instantly and tearing through the back of its head. Blood sprayed into the air as they pushed out its back, and it opened its mouth wider. I tossed it to the side just as Amethyst fired, spritzing the wall and ceiling with what was left of its brains.

“Fuck… fuck…” I said as I collapsed.

Amethyst moved over to it. It was still breathing—even without a head it was still alive, the muscles jutting from its neck flapping as it sucked in breaths. She aimed her energy weapon in the center of its back and let off two shots.

“I really want to burn this place to the ground,” I said once I got my bearings. I had already retrieved a small rag from a pocket on my belt, hoping to wipe some of the blood away.

“Tag it,” Amethyst said, catching her breath, “and we will set it on fire in the hallway. If it burns the building down, then so fucking be it. Whatever it was, it was a beast morpher like me.”

“Yeah,” I said as I focused on the monster.

[Emerald Black]

[Age: 30 M]

[Hometown: Korkovin]

[Status: Exemplar II, B, enhanced mutation, enhanced vision]

[Time since infection (estimate): eight days]

“Where is he from?”

“Korkovin.”

“Fucking Korks,” Amethyst said. “Let’s wrap this up and get the hell out of here.”

Part Two: The Before Times

.1.

(Twelve years ago.)

“Show them, boy.”

I was still in shock. My arms were numb, and it felt as if every muscle fiber in my body had been betrayed, torn to shreds. That they could go from loving me unconditionally to this, in a matter of hours, spoke volumes about who they really were.

“But…”

“Do not embarrass us,” my father spat. “Now, Destry!”

“I don’t know how…” I said, bowing my head to the councilmen who sat before me.

They wore dark outfits, most with State medals affixed to their chests. I knew what the medals meant, which battles they had fought in, how brave they had been.

They were all heroes.

“Do it,” my father said, slapping me on the back of the head.

He wasn’t always this harsh—not with me anyway, but he often got rough with others, especially my mother.

She was here too, sitting in one of the pews with my brother and sister next to her, not able to make eye contact with me.

Things would have been different had I known this was the last time I would see them. Maybe I would have gathered up the courage to turn around, to look them dead in the eye.

I had thought of this moment many times since, and I still didn’t know what my response would have been had I actually turned to see them.

Maybe it would have been a whimper. Perhaps I could have summoned up enough courage to look at them and scream, and the image of bones splitting out of my face would have haunted them for the rest of their lives.

But I didn’t look back.

I kept my focus on the councilmen, noticing that the man on the right was starting to grow annoyed. He had dark hair with a short mustache, and there was something strange about his eyes. They weren’t quite catlike, but not far off.

He also had the most medals of any of them.

“Now, dammit,” my father said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Do it, Destry!”

Choking back a sob, I began tensing my arms and legs. I felt the bones tear out of my elbows, forming scythe-like tips, blood dripping off the protrusions as they thickened.

“Please…” I whispered, and the tears started to fall. I swallowed them up just as quickly as they came, not letting a single one actually make its way down my cheek.

“Show them more,” my father said through gritted teeth.

I looked down at my hands, at my fingers, as sharp claws ripped from the space between my knuckles. They formed a spiral made of bone as the protrusions twisted together.

I was breathing heavily now; I could feel the muscles in my arms shrieking in pain, my heart galloping in my chest, my vision blurring.

Blood dripped on the floor below, splattering around my feet and slowly spreading outward.

I was cold, numb, exposed. There was a draft coming in from an open window, a breeze that licked at my open, pulsating wounds.

“More…” My father said, and he stepped to my right.

I noticed the excited grin on his face, the redness of his cheeks, his addiction evident in the size of his nose.

The thought that I could kill him right then and there never crossed my mind.

It wouldn’t for another few years, but there was a point in my life where I would wonder what the decorated men and women before me would have done had I simply decapitated him.

I had even had nightmares about it. Or were they dreams?

They’d told me I was here for patriotic reasons, but the truth was solely financial. I wouldn’t receive any money for what I was showing them.

I would receive the best training in the world, but it would break me so many times that there would never be a scab big enough to cover the wound.

No, my father would receive the money, and it would be gone before the end of the week. The profit from a son the ultimate bargain.

“Do it, Destry,” he said under his breath. “Show them more.”

“Yes, Father.”

I let those fuckers sitting at the table see what I could really do, even though I risked killing myself in the process. Bones tore out of my back and neck, blood spritzing the air as I hunched over, my flesh ripping to shreds as the protrusions swelled.

I experienced a strange sense of pride as I showed them my true potential—pride for my family, for the fact that I was helping them.

I had never been the type to run, but if ever there had been a moment for retreat, it would have been that moment.

Joining the military on my own free will was one thing, but what they were about to put me through would take me a lifetime to come to grips with.

I fell to my knees and everything went black. I was a bloodied mess, barely alive, bones jutting out of me every which way, a pool of crimson forming around me.

The council had a healer, a gray-skinned man with a sharp nose. He had webbing between his finger, which I remembered seeing as time sped forward. He placed his hand over me as my world started to disintegrate.

The last image I recalled was a man with long white hair coming forward, shaking my father’s hand, both of them oblivious to my suffering.

.2.

“Wake up,” a voice told me.

Maybe I had been dreaming. Maybe the demonstration of my power was just a figment of my imagination, a nightmare. Maybe…

My lungs started to constrict.

I began gasping for air, choking, unable to take a full breath in.

The feeling dissipated.

“Welcome,” the voice said.

I blinked my eyes open to see I was in a dark space, lit by the moonlight, on a single bed with metal railing. A boy sat on the bed opposite mine, his legs crossed beneath him as he watched me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Who are you?” came the reply, the moonlight reflecting off the white of his teeth.

“Destry,” I told him as I sat up.

The feeling came to me again. It was like I was being choked by an invisible force, the oxygen in the room nonexistent. I gasped again. “What’s… happening to me?”

“What’s your power?”

“My... power?”

“They said another may come. And now you have come. What is your power?”

“I don’t have a power,” I told the boy, the same thing my father had trained me to do.

“It’s not nice to lie to people.”

The oxygen cut off again and suddenly I felt lightheaded, barely able to keep my head up. I gasped for air again.

“It’s you—you’re doing this…”

“I’m not doing anything,” he told me. “It’s just something that happens in this room sometimes.”

“Where are we?”

“They didn’t tell you before you came? They didn’t tell you why they brought you?”

“They didn’t tell me anything. They checked my…” I bit my lip, realizing I’d been caught in a lie.

“They checked your what?”

“They checked with my family to make sure it was okay to take me.”

The boy shifted out of the bed, revealing more of his face. He had long dark hair and sharp features, with ears that seemed just a little bit higher than they should be. He was quite thin, scrappy, at least a head shorter than me.

Possibly younger than me too.

“It’s not nice to lie,” he said as he placed his feet on the floor.

“I’m not lying,” I told him, and then I felt it again, the room suddenly devoid of all its oxygen. I started to feel lightheaded again, and just as I was about to fall backward, the air returned to my lungs.

“Stop…” I told him, panting now. “Please.”

“I’m not doing anything,” came his reply. “But you never told me your power.”

“I don’t have a power,” I said through gritted teeth. My father had always told me I had a temper problem, and it was something my mother had repeated a few times as well.

But this was also something about myself I hoped to change, and even then, at the age of twelve, I knew it was something that could get me in trouble.

“It’s not nice to lie.”

The black-haired boy stood in front of me now. He lifted one hand to my cheek and kept it there for a moment, staring at me.

Whap!

He slapped the shit out of me, sending me over to the side. I would have come at him if not for the aching in my lungs, as if someone had plunged a spear into my chest.

I wheezed as he continued to stand before my bed.

“Are you ready to tell me?”

“I… don’t… have… a power…” I told him, grinding my teeth so hard it hurt. My breath finally came to me. “But if I were you… I would leave me… the heck alone.”

“So there is some fight in you.”

The boy climbed onto my bed, both knees inches away from my face. I sat up and moved away from him, still feeling weak, like my lungs were only half full. “How old are you?”

“Twelve,” I told him.

“I’m eleven.”

“You seem… older,” I said, eyeing him fearfully.

“I’ve been here since I was nine.”

“Where are we?”

“The Training House. It’s nicer when you call it that.” The boy stared at me curiously for a moment, cocking his head to the left, some of his black bangs falling in his face. “What’s your power?”

“I don’t have a power,” I told him, my voice growing louder. “I would tell you if I did.”

“Why are you scared of telling me your power?”

“What’s your power?” I asked him.

“I don’t have one,” he said with a laugh.

I gasped again, trying desperately to suck in air. It was as if someone had shoved my head underwater.

“Please… stop!”

“I don’t have a power,” he told me as he let up.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the one asking questions here,” the boy said, his voice thinning. He brought his hand to my throat, baring his teeth as he started to tighten his grip. “Who are you?”

“I…” I glared at the boy. “I warned you.”

A bone from my clavicle moved up into my neck. It tore through the palm of his hand, and the boy screamed out.

He fell to the side, and from there to the ground, holding his hand and shrieking at the blood.

No oxygen now. Reeling from the pain of my own bone pressing through my skin, I sent everything I had forward. My bones ripped through my flesh, pierced his body and pinned him into the ground.

“Stop!” A man with long white hair kicked open the door, and my ability flicked off as if someone had hit a switch.

I saw the man with gray skin enter the room, making a clicking sound in his throat as he took in what had happened.

A light came on and I glanced down to see the boy with dark hair, puncture wounds all over his body. The gray-skinned man immediately dropped to one knee and ran his hand over his wounds, healing them as he said something under his breath.

I looked up at the white-haired man standing before me, not quite recalling where I recognized him from. Had it been a dream? Was all this a figment of my imagination?

He said something to the man with gray skin and the guy nodded, helping the injured boy to his feet.

“You are not to use your powers against the others,” the white-haired man told me, his voice rising in volume. “I am Headmaster here, and if I see anything like this ever again, I swear to you, Destry Banner, I will make your life a living hell.”

Not knowing what power he had, nor what he was truly capable of, I cowered away, practically pressing myself into the wall.

“Yes…” I took a deep breath in, feeling the oxygen fill my lungs, thankful that I could breathe normally again. “Yes, sir.”

.3.

“This is our newest member,” Headmaster Malus said the following morning.

Three kids around my age stood across from us. One was a female with short purple-red hair, dark eyes and bony shoulders.

Next to her was the boy named Orange, the one who had the power to control oxygen. He had yet to make eye contact with me after what had happened last night.

Standing next to Orange was a beautiful teenage girl who had already started to develop. She had white hair, one blue eye and one green, and Headmaster Malus had paused next to her upon entering the room, his hand coming to the small of her back.

And what a room.

I didn’t remember arriving in our current location last night, and I hadn’t had a chance to tour the grounds yet, but if there was another room as large as this one, I wouldn’t be surprised if the place stretched several city blocks.

The ceilings were higher than any room I’d ever been in before, like a cathedral, and there was something deafening about the space. It was like the walls were three times as thick as they would be in a normal room.

“…Destry Banner,” the headmaster said.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You clearly aren’t listening to me. Introduce yourself.”

“My name is Destry,” I told the three standing in front of me. The girl with purple-red hair and dark eyes smirked.

“And his power?” the white-haired teenager asked.

“I will get to that in a moment, Margo,” the headmaster said. “Tell them where you are from, Destry.”

“Ravja. Turnstone District, sir.”

“Good. Another from Ravja, just like you, Amethyst.”

“District One,” she said, her eyes lighting up.

“And since you are both from the same city, I feel it would be appropriate for you to introduce your powers to the others in a little battle,” the headmaster said, pacing now.

“I’m supposed to fight her?” I asked.

I heard the door creak open, and I turned to see the healer with gray skin enter the room. He stood off to the side, his hands crossed in front of his body.

“No sense in sugarcoating this any longer.” Headmaster Malus turned to me, his eyes staring holes into my chest. “Destry Banner, you have been selected for an elite training program known as the Protectorate. The Western Province government is not as short-sighted as some of the other governments in our world, and we are actively putting together a team to end the war on our borders and address other issues as they may arise. For far too long, the Northern and Southern Alliance have been fighting a proxy war to the west, along the border between our country and Centralia.”

He started pacing as he spoke.

“The Protectorate will eventually put an end to this war. We will drive both forces from our country, and anyone who plans to get in the way will be squashed in the process. That is why you are here, Destry, and that is why your family has bequeathed you to the state. To be clear: this is an entirely covert operation designed to look like a government-run school educating the country’s brightest exemplars.”

He paused to look at each of us.

“No one out there will know who you are or what you do. No one will know that you are a future member of the Protectorate. Everyone will think you are simply the ward of a government agency, as if this were an orphanage. Eventually, you will have access to the outside world. But there is a lot of time between now and then, Destry.”

Headmaster Malus started pacing again.

“When the time comes, you will be as lethal as an exemplar can possibly be. You will use your powers in a way that no other country has seen exemplars use their powers before. You will be champions, heroes, and you will be obscure. The world will never know about you. Your actions will be read about years after you’ve already died, people will whisper when you pass by them, but no one will truly know. You will do your best, without a doubt and without a question. You will live your life in service to your country.”

A long silence passed over the room. The headmaster stared down at the ground for a moment, as if something about its color and texture infuriated him. Finally, he spoke again.

“Come forward, Amethyst. Destry, prepare to fight her.”

I watched the purple-haired teen step away from her peers. She approached me with both fists drawn.

“Good luck,” Amethyst said.

“I don’t really know how to fight,” I started to tell everyone. “Aside from wrestling…”

“We have a particular way of teaching people how to fight here at the Training House,” the headmaster said. “We are very much a trial-by-fire type of operation; you will learn everything you aren’t supposed to do, and then we will teach you what you are supposed to do. But to get an appreciation of what you aren’t supposed to do, you first have to have tried it. Amethyst.”

The girl stuck her hand in her pocket and brought out a small vial.

She spread her legs wide and uncapped the vial, finishing its contents. She winced, her hands shaking as sharp claws tore from her flesh. Her forehead bulged, two horns taking shape, curling.

Her eyes turned red and a tail pressed out of her lower spine, a barb on its tip.

Amethyst was fast, and within seconds she was next to me. She dug her claws into my left shoulder, ripping at the flesh. I cried in agony as she tore through tendons and muscles, and blood seeped from my wound.

Amethyst took me down, and she was about to swipe her claws across my face when bones tore out of my forehead, protecting my face from her attack. This caused her to yelp. She jumped off me and backpedaled as she took in my form.

“Good, good,” Headmaster Malus said. “This is very good.”

I somehow got back to my feet, my left arm completely useless. While Amethyst was apprehensive for a moment, she also had picked up on the fact that the guy with bones sticking out of his face didn’t really know what he was doing.

So she started stalking me, with a predatory grin. She kept her head low, her horns in a position to charge.

“That’s all you can do?” she asked, almost mockingly.

“I don’t know…” I told her, not yet willing to make eye contact.

Bones began to rip out of me, moving up my arm, thickening as they came together over my skin to form a shoulder pad of sorts. I felt stronger, like I could actually use my arm.

And not a moment too soon.

Amethyst came in for another attack. She lunged at me, stopping just in time for me to try to move out of the way. Her barbed tail came over and whacked me on the back. The pain was excruciating, but I powered through it.

I lifted the arm that I had practically formed out of bone, blocking her next attack.

“Good!” the headmaster shouted, gritting his teeth, his face turning red. “Good, Destry!”

Encouraged by his words, I threw my fist at Amethyst, who quickly dodged it and came back around with a fist of her own. She sank it deep into my gut, a pleased snarl on her face, then followed it up with a knee to my kidney. The pain rippled inside me now, my skin moving as bones and muscle twisted to protect my vital organs.

I was too slow.

If I had anticipated her attack…

If I’d been ready…

And even though she would end up beating me not too long from now, at that moment I understood more about my power than I had ever known before.

I tried to utilize this newfound knowledge.

I jumped forward again, swiping my bone arm at her, the protrusions shifting and taking a chunk out of her thigh as she tried to leap away.

She skittered away, then stopped and turned back to me, angry as hell.

Taking a running leap, Amethyst launched herself at me, bringing me to the ground. She ignored the spikes lifting from my flesh as she brought both hands around my neck, utter fury in her red eyes.

“Enough!” Headmaster Malus cried. “Amethyst!”

She roared and suddenly, her form started to twitch, her skin shifting, eyes bulging.

Amethyst fell off me, curling up into a ball at my side as her horns disappeared into her forehead.

My bones began to retreat back into my body.

We lay next to each other for a moment, both of our eyes meeting, hers soft now. She was clearly in pain.

“Are you okay?” I whispered to her.

“Are you?” she whispered back.

“I think… I think I’m fine.”

The gray healer approached us in the periphery, his webbed hands dropping down onto both of our bodies.

“Thanks for not killing me,” I told her.

“It wasn’t my choice.”

.4.

Orange and I hadn’t spoken since our altercation. Even though we shared a room and attended the same training and academic courses, we still had yet to speak.

Our shared silence had gone on for a few days now, and in that time I pushed my body to its very limits.

I was getting stronger, better, and at least I sort of had a friend now.

It was on the third day that Amethyst joined me for breakfast, the purple-haired girl wolfing down twice as much food as I was able to consume.

“You shouldn’t watch me eat,” she said with her mouth full.

“It’s your second loaf of bread,” I told her. “Plus the eggs, potatoes, carrots…”

She swallowed. “Do you normally keep track of what other people eat?”

“No,” I told her, looking down at my tray.

Orange and Margo sat down at the table next to us, neither speaking to one another. Orange began eating with one hand, taking notes with his other.

I had been given a tour of the grounds on the first day.

It was brief but impressive, the home even larger than I’d thought it would be. It was strange that there were only four of us at the moment, and I asked about it, but the person giving the tour, the gray-skinned man who had yet to tell me his name, never explained why.

From that point forward, up until breakfast this morning and the three meals we had each day, it had been all training and healing afterward.

I still hadn’t figured out how to use my power without causing great damage to myself, but even if the others seemed skeptical, Headmaster Malus was convinced I’d be able to do it one day.

While I had at first thought of Orange as scrawny, I now thought of him as incredibly strong, with endurance like no other person I’d seen before. It had to do with his power, the ability to control oxygen, allowing him to oxygenate his blood to go longer and harder than his opponent.

We hadn’t fought yet; the only battle thus far had been between Amethyst and me. But I knew it was coming. The headmaster had hinted at it, and I hoped it wouldn’t be anytime soon.

I still didn’t know what Margo’s power was, but I had noticed her strange relationship with Headmaster Malus. The older man was more affectionate with her than he was with the others.

“What were you doing before you came here?” Amethyst asked me, going for an apple.

“Before I came here? I was just hanging out with my friends. And then my dad got me, and…”

“Took you to a council and gave you away?”

I frowned. “Something like that. Is that what happened to you?”

“Something like that,” she said, biting into an apple. “You know the reason I eat so much, right?”

“I don’t know, sorry.”

“It’s because of the creature I become. They told me that it takes a lot of calories to maintain. So they have me on a special diet.”

“Interesting.”

“It’s bad for me, you know.”

“What is?”

“The transformation,” she said, taking another bite of her apple. “Keeping it for too long is bad for me. The transformation itself is bearable; I’m used to the pain now.”

“I’m not.”

“You and your bone power,” she said with a weird grin on her face. “It really took me off guard when the bones stuck out of your face to protect your skull. You looked like a really big bug.”

I heard Margo snort.

I turned to look at her, but she didn’t look back.

“What’s the deal with her?” I whispered, hopefully as quietly as possible.

“Margo, what’s the deal with you?” Amethyst asked her.

“No deal,” said Margo, focusing again on her food.

“She’s Margo,” Amethyst said. “She doesn’t speak so much.”

“I speak.”

“Yes, you speak, to me. But we’re roommates. Like you and Orange.”

Orange didn’t look up from the notes.

And after another moment of eating, I decided to initiate the peace offering. With a solid exhale, I turned to him, forcing a smile. “You know, what happened the other day happened. I don’t have control over my power yet. You clearly have control over yours. You tested me. I reacted.”

The next breath I took was shallow. I tried to take a deeper breath and wasn’t able to. A wry grin formed on Orange’s face as I lifted my hands to my throat.

“Come on,” Amethyst told him. “You two are supposed to get along. You’re roommates now.”

“I prefer to be alone,” Orange said.

I gasped, able to breathe normally.

I wasn’t the type to go around trying to stir up trouble with others, but Orange was definitely pushing my buttons. What was the point in acting like that? What made his situation any different than mine, aside from the difference in our abilities?

“Maybe they’ll give us our own rooms one day,” said Amethyst. “We’ll get a new place in the future, once others come.”

“She’s right,” said Orange. “Others are coming. We’re the first of this experiment.”

“I thought there were already other groups,” I said.

Orange shook his head. “That’s just something they tell us. Everything here is just something they tell us.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

Margo turned to me and tilted her head to the right. “Your power is strange.”

“I’m aware.”

I didn’t know how old she was, but I could tell she was older than me. Amethyst was the youngest, Orange was a year younger than me, but Margo was definitely older. Not by much, but she had started to develop, and she was taller than the three of us.

“It’s a freaky power,” Orange said. “Your bones tear out of your skin and then they just grow back in. Right? Is that how it works? You seem to always get injured after you use your ability.”

“I’ll get control of it one day.”

“Or you’ll kill yourself,” Orange said matter-of-factly.

“It’s a pretty cool power,” said Amethyst. “But it does have its limitations. For one, you have no range. But I don’t have range either, aside from my tail.”

“Your tail is awesome,” I told her.

“It’s getting longer,” she said proudly. “More spikes on the end too.”

“What’s your power?” I asked Margo as she pressed some of her white hair out of her face.

“Margo has the best power of all of us,” Orange said.

“Really? Are you a telepath or something?”

“No telepaths here,” Amethyst said.

“Then what’s your power then?”

“Do you really want to see?” Margo asked me, her left eye twitching a bit.

One of her eyes was green, the other blue, and I noticed when she made eye contact with me that she seemed to look past me in a way, like I was standing behind myself.

“Sure. Your power is the only power I haven’t seen yet.”

“Okay.”

Margo looked at the food on my tray.

The piece of bread I had been eating started to peel away on its own, forming two legs.

The top part twisted together into a body of sorts with two arms. The apple Amethyst had just finished pressed together until both red parts were touching. The small amount of water I still had in my glass started to spiral, lifting out of the top and returning to a neutral position.

“What kind of power is this?” I asked.

My tray started to press into a V shape, the bread falling into its crevice. It snapped shut, pressing together, and once it was flat, it ballooned outward and formed a sphere.

The water sprayed into my face, my glass melting into a puddle and moving beneath the sphere she had formed.

As I wiped the water out of my eyes, I saw the glass begin to bubble beneath the sphere, and wrap around it, encasing it.

“It’s so cool,” Amethyst said, her dark eyes locked on the spinning glass encased spherical tray.

“Can you control anything?” I asked.

Margo nodded.

“Anything anything?”

“She was the first one here,” Orange said.

“When did you come here?”

“When I was ten,” Margo said as the sphere morphed into a pyramid. “That’s for you. You can keep it.”

And with that, Margo returned her attention to her food, which she ate in silence.

.5.

Aside from what Amethyst had mentioned about me being a close-range fighter, one of the other disadvantages of my ability was being left with gaping wounds when my bones moved back into my body.

I would never forget the first time it happened either.

It was a story I had heard countless times from other exemplars, ones whose powers had first come to them at inopportune times. There really was never a good time for a power to come, but if it came in a way that led to assault and battery, that was usually worse.

And that was how my story went.

My father had come home from gambling, not drunk but not sober. My mother yelled at him, he lashed out at her, and I responded.

He wasn’t even angry after I’d struck him with my bone blade.

Even as he pressed himself off the ground, a bloodied gash across his chest and a puncture wound on his arm, my father grinned at me. His eyes wide, his teeth covered in blood, my old man saw money.

And besides, it hurt me more than it hurt him.

I was barely able to move after striking him, lying in a puddle of my own blood, dry heaving and bowel movements part of the first time I transformed. My mother ran off to get a healer, and I was surprised she came considering they were in high demand.

But she did.

And I was healed up, not even a scratch on me. My ego was bruised and my pants were filthy, but my father just grinned, telling me how proud he was. I would do something for the family that my brother and sister could never do.

And two days later, I went to the council.

.6.

“There are only four of you at the moment,” Headmaster Malus said as he paced before us. We were in the large training room, breakfast a distant memory. “But there are more coming. Margo, you have been here the longest,” he said, smiling at her, “and I know you have been hearing me say that for a while, but the Protectorate only takes those with the most potential. So consider yourselves lucky. The Western Province government paid a fee for you, money that will better your family, which is something that shows just how benevolent our government is.”

He kept pacing for a moment, his hands behind his back, a few strands of his long white hair in his face.

“You were born here, and you are citizens here. You owe your government your service, yet even with the war on our border, our government still tries to do what is right. But you must understand this fact; you must understand that you are cogs helping to build a great political and socio-economic machine that will lead the Western Province into a bright and prosperous future. And I tell you this only so you stop thinking of yourselves as individuals and start thinking as a unit.”

The headmaster paused, looking at each of us individually.

“You are no longer singular. The four of you are all the same. You are each a unit of a moving part, all future members of the Protectorate. And there is no room for selfishness or cowardice,” he said, growing angry. “Or stupidity. In the future, everything you do will affect those around you; everything done by those around you will affect you. You are units of a moving part, a cog if you will, and it is a wonderful thing. Your countrymen don’t know what it’s like to be part of something like this, something greater. But you do, and if you don’t understand it already, there will be a point in the future when this will be poetically clear. Now, Margo, it’s time to fight me.”

Even though I couldn’t see her face, I could sense Amethyst’s eyes had just gone wide.

We stood next to each other, our hands behind our backs, all of us at attention.

Before the headmaster’s little speech, we had been standing like this for fifteen minutes at Orange’s instruction. My knees ached and my lower back was starting to strain, but I quickly forgot about this when Margo stepped forward.

“As you wish.” She kept her head bowed as she approached the headmaster, who had already started taking a few paces away from her.

“Land a hit on me,” he started to say, “and I will take you out to dinner tonight—any food you would like in the city.”

Out to dinner? Without making it too obvious, I tried to look at Margo to see what her reaction would be. Unfortunately, she was in a position where I could only see just the side of her face and the back of her head.

I’d been at the Training House long enough to know that we were in Monseeyaj, the capital of the Western Province. It was a quaint city, and since it was filled with diplomats, there were wonderful restaurants here, as well as grand shopping districts. I’d been once when I was eight or nine years old, after one of my father’s lucky streaks.

There was something odd about what the headmaster had said.

While I figured Margo, or any of us, would like to go out to dinner, it just seemed like a strange prize.

And at that moment, I really wished I could have spoken to Amethyst and asked her about this strange prize. But I knew better than to break attention. I didn’t know yet what the headmaster was capable of, but I was smart enough even then not to try and find out.

The floor started to peel away, lifting into a scorpion-like tail over Margo’s body and forming a spike that hovered before her.

“All you need to do is get one hit in, and I will take you out to dinner,” Headmaster Malus said, one hand behind his back and the other limp at his side.

But rather than use the tail she’d just created, Margo simply cast her hand forward, her fingers curling. The Headmaster’s skin began to peel back, showing muscle, tendons, veins—and for a moment he just watched this happen as blood started misting into the air.

Before I could blink, everything was back together, the way it should be, his skin totally undisturbed.

“You’re getting faster,” Headmaster Malus told her. “But not fast enough.”

Margo hit the ground face first, the scorpion-tail she’d created out of cement falling on top of her. But rather than smashing her, it formed a sarcophagus around her body, preventing her from standing.

That was, until she animated the sarcophagus, creating an armored suit, which she used to propel herself toward the headmaster.

He sidestepped her first swipe, and with a simple tap of his foot against her leg, Margo exploded backward, the concrete washing away from her as if it were water.

Rather than smash into the back wall, which she should have considering her trajectory, Margo caught herself midair using a pillar she’d lifted from the ground.

She was breathing heavily now, her hair in her face.

Margo wiped some of it away and shot her hand forward again. The skin on the headmaster’s face started to peel back and then reformed almost instantly, but not before a large block fired out of the back wall, making a beeline toward him.

The block fell to the ground at the Headmaster’s feet, as if it had hit an invisible shield. The concrete crumbled and reformed in front of him.

It transformed into a person.

The concrete person charged forward, throwing fists and kicks at Margo that she wasn’t able to avoid. Margo spun, her face slapping against the ground, spit flying out of her mouth.

“Good,” the headmaster said. “It looks like I will be dining alone yet again.”

The headmaster’s creation grabbed Margo by the neck and lifted her, her hands coming to her throat as she tried to pry free from his grip.

I noticed Orange tense up, breaking attention as he looked to Amethyst. He returned his focus to the headmaster’s creation, which was starting to grow larger, pulling from the wood on the floor, the material melting and swirling around its body.

Margo tried to fight it, but Headmaster Malus’s power far surpassed hers. As he approached her, I noticed a new part of his power that totally made sense now that I was seeing it in action.

Suddenly, the tendrils Margo had formed flapped over, merging back into his powerful, human-like creation.

He completely nullified her power.

“Please,” Margo started to whimper, her face turning a shade paler.

She shot her hands forward, trying to animate something, and at one point she even tried to punch at the form holding her up in the air. She hit it enough times to bloody her knuckles.

“You are weak, Margo,” Headmaster Malus said, grinding his teeth now as he looked at her. “Too goddamn weak to be here, to be amongst other exemplars of this caliber.”

“Please…”

“Look how pathetic you are, begging for your life. You have been here longer than any of them, and they wouldn’t beg for theirs—would you, Orange? Would you!?” he roared.

“No, sir,” Orange said, his lip trembling.

“Amethyst!?”

Amethyst didn’t respond. She merely bit her lip, glaring him down.

The headmaster looked over to the gray-skinned healer and lifted one finger, letting him know he needed to hold off on any healing he had already planned to do. The healer merely dipped his head, glancing away from the headmaster as he approached Amethyst.

“You wouldn’t, would you?” he whispered to her.

Amethyst didn’t respond; she merely glared at him, the muscles on her face twitching.

I was looking straight ahead now, too afraid to look to my left. But if I had, I would have noticed her horns were starting to bulge out of her head, the beast making itself known.

“You want to do something to me right now, don’t you?” Headmaster Malus asked, offering Amethyst a wicked smile as Margo struggled behind him. “Would you like to do something to me right now? Just tell me; I want to hear it. You want me to let her go. You want me to stop hurting her. Say it!”

Amethyst bit her lip so hard it started bleeding. I heard the sound of tearing flesh. I finally broke attention to look left and see her tail starting to rip out of her back, her eyes turning red, her claws growing at her side as she tried to control it.

“Good,” the headmaster said, slowly lifting his hand to her cheek.

As soon as he touched her, Amethyst started to spasm, her power fading away.

He kept his hand on her cheek for a moment longer and, just as he was about to turn, he pulled his hand back and slapped her so hard she went flying into Orange, who just barely managed to catch her.

“Would you plead for your life?” he asked, pointing his finger at Amethyst. “Would you!?”

“No, sir!” she cried, her form twitching again as horns began to tear from her skin.

“GOOD! Get control of yourself, Ames, or I will have Orange borrow your oxygen.”

Margo made a snorting sound. I looked to see that she had passed out, her body now limp, her head rolling uncomfortably on her neck.

“And you?” the headmaster asked me. “Would you plead, Destry?”

I glanced out of the corner of my eye to find Orange nodding at me, a terrified look on his face.

“Well?” Headmaster Malus asked, wrapping his fingers around my chin.

“No, sir!” I said, and as the words left my lips, puberty took over, my voice pitching upward for a moment.

Headmaster Malus kept his fingers around my chin for just a moment longer as he glared at me.

He let me go and returned to Margo, casting his hand behind his back as he walked past her. The poor girl fell and smacked her head against the ground.

“Clean this up,” the headmaster told the gray healer as he left the room.

.7.

It took another week or so for Orange to warm up to me, telling me that Headmaster Malus had a short, unpredictable temper. The headmaster had been blessed with two incredible abilities—the power to animate inanimate objects and to nullify the power of others—but he could be incredibly cruel, and his abilities didn’t change the fact that he was a psychopath.

Days would go by without incident.

And then something would happen, something that reminded everyone in the room where they were, a training ground for the exceptionally gifted if not slightly deranged.

A prison cell for superpowered children, packaged as patriotism.

But I was too young at the time to know this; all I knew then was that I wanted to stay out of Headmaster Malus’s way.

“A new boy is coming tomorrow,” Orange told me one night.

We were in our room, both of us on our beds and reading the same history book. Our training had many sides, and its multifaceted nature was why I would later look at it with both appreciation and disappointment.

Aside from mathematics, one of the things we were taught was the history of the various treaties of Centralia and how they all worked together. Professor Stone, our history teacher, was an older man, a non-exemplar, who must have had a hidden power in his ability to recite dates and occurrences as if they had happened yesterday.

He also knew a lot about the runic disagreements between the Northern and Southern Alliance, and what the hell this had to do with our border.

That was what we were both studying when Orange looked up at me and spoke.

“A new boy?” I asked, looking up from my notes about the four runic schools of the Southern Alliance. “How do you know?”

“The headmaster told Margo.”

I nodded.

I didn’t quite understand their relationship, especially after how brutally he had assaulted Margo earlier in the week during yet another training session. Sometimes they were friendly, and it seemed like Margo actually enjoyed his company; other times they simply glared at each other, Margo’s glare never actually reaching him, always stopping just before his feet.

“Do you know anything else about the new student?”

“No, aside from the fact that he’s from Bretnick. That’s what Margo told me, anyway. So I guess we should get ready.”

“Why would we need to get ready?”

Orange shrugged.

“There are other programs like ours, right?” I asked as I closed my book. “We can’t be the only ones training to be part of the Protectorate.”

Orange shrugged again.

Training House was set up in a strange way, at least compared to any other “school” I’d been in. There was the headmaster, Caldon the healer, and the teachers they brought in: Ronda the math professor, Stone the history professor, and finally our military representative, Commander Indigo, who mostly just checked on things and sometimes lectured about past strategies along the western border.

There were also people tasked with keeping the place clean and putting food in our stomachs, but we rarely saw them. I would find out at one point that all of them had enhanced speed, and that they’d been instructed to stay as hidden as possible.

“Maybe I will ask Caldon,” I finally told Orange, returning to my book.

The next day came, and we took our history exam after breakfast. It wasn’t very hard to memorize the four runic schools of the Southern Alliance; what was hard was remembering the headmasters of the schools, their histories, and their rivalries. Professor Stone had told us several times that this history was important in understanding the differences between the North and the South, but I had yet to put those pieces together.

After our exam, we were brought back to the main demonstration room to find Headmaster Malus next to the handsome boy who had dark gray hair and birthmarks on his neck. He had no sclerae, just pitch-black eyes.

“Cedric, tell everyone hello,” the headmaster said.

The boy simply nodded.

“Don’t be shy; they won’t bite. Well, Amethyst may.” A rare smile formed on Headmaster Malus’s face.

Amethyst merely nodded, slowly lifting her hand and waving at the boy.

“Well, I guess now that that’s over, it’s time for you to show them what you can do. Amethyst, Orange, Margo and—hell, why not?—Destry. I want all four of you to attack Cedric.”

“At the same time?” I asked.

The headmaster’s smile started to twitch. “What part of my command do you fail to understand?”

“Right,” I said, lifting my fists.

I didn’t want to take my transformation.

It still hurt too much, and it wasn’t really worth it—not with what it felt like when my bones had to reenter my body.

I knew that one of the other three would be able to take the boy named Cedric down, so I kept my fists up, shuffling my way toward the back of the group, preparing myself to be a last resort.

The headmaster was also out of the way now, off on the other side of the room with Caldon the healer.

“Margo,” Orange said as he nodded his chin at the gray-haired boy with pitch-black eyes.

The strange boy stood there, not looking at any of us, just focused on some point in the distance. He spread his legs just a little, lowering his head.

Margo cried out in pain.

She was suddenly on the ground, the floor parting, tendrils lifting and wrapping around her. Orange went left and Amethyst right, the young beast morpher going for a small vial on her belt and throwing it back to start her transformation.

There was no way that Cedric had the same power as the headmaster and Margo, the ability to animate inanimate objects, but that was what it looked like.

Margo was still trying to fight back as the ground flipped her around. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as her mouth snapped shut.

I watched Amethyst advance on the boy, bringing her clawed hand back only to be shot to the other side of the room. Her body hit the wall so hard that it crumbled some, with a deafening smack!

Orange came forward, adjusting the oxygen to the point where I could barely feel my own lungs, which was the only thing that seemed to stop Cedric.

At least for a moment.

The gray-haired boy looked at Orange with confusion on his face, then recognition, and suddenly Orange was thrown upwards. He slammed against the ceiling and fell straight to the floor, out cold.

Cedric turned to me.

“Now is your chance,” the headmaster said in a whisper, and whether he was telling this to me or Cedric, I would never know, but I took it as a signal that I needed to act.

The pain was excruciating as my bones began to tear out of my arms.

Bloodied spikes formed along my shoulders, ripping through my uniform. Plates of hardened bone thickened into armor around my body as the muscles gave way, tendons twisted, fibers tore, and blood oozed from my new wounds.

All for naught.

I suddenly saw my father standing in front of me, a furious look on his face as he dragged my mother by her hair and showed me her dead eyes. He dropped her body to the floor and kicked her in the stomach.

“No!”

My father came forward, cursing under his breath as he lifted his hand. He struck me so hard that I exploded into the wall behind me, the bones that had grown out of my body cracking as my body slapped against the floor.

I whimpered as I wearily looked up at Cedric, who had a calm look on his face, his eyes black as he surveyed the carnage.

“What… What are you?” I whispered, the words tumbling out of my mouth.

My shoulder blade slipped back into my flesh, and the pain was so excruciating that I blacked out.

It would be a while before I woke up again.

Part Three: Sewer Discovery

.1.

(Twelve years later. Present day.)

Types of Vs.

There were what we called “non-cogs,” which consisted of non-exemplars and exemplars who had little to no cognition of what they had become. Most of the ones Amethyst and I killed were of the non-cog variety.

“Full-cogs” were Vs that knew what they were. These could be exemplars or non-exemplars, but all the ones we’d encountered so far were exemplars. Margo and Orange claimed they had encountered full-cog non-exemplars, and I believed them.

That left us with one other classification: alpha Vs.

The assumption was that alpha Vs had been turned by the first vampire. They were completely cognizant, and they had the power to command other vampires around them. While our primary mission in Overtone Heights was to clear the streets, our classified mission was to find and hunt down as many of the alpha Vs as we could.

We hadn’t encountered one during this patrol, and since we were rendezvousing with Orange and Margo in a couple of hours, the odds of an encounter were slim to none.

“Have we checked that one before?” Amethyst said, nodding at a flashing hotel sign up the street.

It was a gray day, with a smog settling over the district, and while I was ready to engage anything that came onto our path, I was hoping to have a little alone time with Amethyst.

“No, I don’t believe we have,” I told her once my HUD registered the location. I pressed the goggles up to my forehead, still amazed that there were neighborhoods in this district we hadn’t checked.

It really was that big.

“Should we clear it?” The tone of Amethyst’s voice told me what she really meant.

I couldn’t help but smile as we turned to the hotel and Amethyst stepped ahead of me, my eyes falling on her ass as it moved beneath her tight fatigues.

She paused once we reached the front of the hotel.

It had a modest entrance, just a single door, but hotels in this part of the city were usually like that, especially if they were love motels.

“Clear,” I told her as I entered the lobby. Ames came in after me, her wrist guard at the ready, her other hand on her elbow to stabilize it in case she needed to fire a shot.

“How swanky,” she said as she lowered her weapon.

There were stained-glass panels at the top of the room that allowed for some light to enter, enough to illuminate the space, revealing a set of plush red sofas and a chipped coffee table that would have been beautiful in its heyday. Not any longer. Graffiti and blood, scratch marks across the floor, gutted sofas, a chandelier barely hanging—the place was a wreck.

“On me,” I told her as we moved to the spiral staircase on the right. We reached the second floor and from there gravitated to a different staircase, both of us on high alert as we made it to the third floor and then the fourth.

No noises, no indication that there was anyone here.

Still, one could never be too careful.

“Which room?” she asked when we came to a hallway. There were three or four rooms to the right and a long hallway that turned around the corner to the left. Judging from where we were in the building, I knew it would be easiest for us to get out on the right, specifically if we had to blast our way through the wall.

So I nodded to the right, Amethyst already moving in that direction.

It was amazing to think we’d been training together for twelve years. What had started at Training House as a program to stop the proxy war on our border had quickly shifted to a team of exemplars with the sole goal of stopping the Western Plague.

Time and circumstance are a bitch.

“Let’s do this one,” I told her as she came to the last door. “Easiest to exit.”

“Agreed,” she said.

I glanced at the door handle. I didn’t want to make a lot of noise; so, rather than bust it down, I put my nail in front of the keyhole and closed my eyes as I lengthened it, fitting it in all the grooves.

After a little tinkering, the door popped open.

“Good,” Amethyst said as she moved past, her weapon drawn just in case.

I closed the door and it locked behind me, satisfied with the room we had found.

Amethyst went to the curtains and peeked out, letting a bit of sun come in. “Not bad.”

“It looks like the sheets are clean too.” I brought them to my nostrils, my nail already back to its normal size. “Yep, housekeeping got to this one before Vs did.”

“This just keeps getting better…” She turned to the dresser. “Are you going to help me?”

“Yes.”

We carried the dresser over to the front of the room and pressed it up against the door, angling it in such a way that the door would never be able to open. From there, we took a nightstand and wedged it between the top of the dresser and the ceiling. Amethyst also laid out some tripwire just to be sure.

“It’s so nice,” she said as she lay down on the bed, her hands coming behind her head.

I went to the restroom and saw a little bit of mold in the sink, with a cockroach scurrying away. But it was still clean, and the cockroach wasn’t very big.

I moved to the large bathtub, where I turned on the faucet, hearing the pipes creak in the wall. Red, rusty water came out, smelling of sulfur.

“You know it’s not going to work,” Amethyst said from the other room.

“Have faith,” I called back to her.

I slowed the water, just letting it run for a moment, hoping for…

“Yes,” I whispered as it started to turn warm. “Yes! Amethyst, we have hot water. Get your ass in here—we have hot water!”

She was at the door in a matter of moments, already stripping down.

“Dammit, yes! This is going to be so good. So damn good.”

“Tell me about it. And that’s a big tub; there’s definitely enough room for both of us in there,” I told her.

The water was less red now. Once it was piping hot, I put the stopper in the tub, allowing it to fill. Amethyst came to me, kissing me as I began taking off my uniform.

“Just give me a moment,” I told her between kisses.

My pants came off, and then I remembered to get out of my shoes, which I did before I could actually take my pants fully off, Amethyst giggling as I hopped around the bathroom like an idiot.

She was already in the tub by this point, relaxing with her head back, her legs spread, plenty of room for me.

“I have to sit on the faucet side?” I asked her as I got in, finding a position that was comfortable, even with the faucet pressing into me.

“Sorry can’t hear you; I’m relaxing over here,” she said with a purr.

As soon as the water stopped, as soon as there was enough to go way up to her shoulders, that was when the scratching at the door started.

Amethyst and I locked eyes.

The boiler had brought something up from the basement of the hotel, but whatever it was, it wasn’t smart enough to break through another room and through the window from there.

And if it was that smart, I would kill it before it reached the sink.

Amethyst was prepared too. She always had a small bottle with her, aside from her normal flask of alcohol. And she had one now, which sat within arm’s reach where the soap should have been.

“I’m going to murder that little lurker when we finish up here. Damn scratching,” she said, gritting her teeth. “And this was going to be so relaxing!”

“Just ignore it,” I told her. “Enjoy this. We got lucky finding this place; let’s just enjoy it.”

We moved from the bath to the bed. It had been six days, maybe seven since we had last had sex, and I could feel my penis throbbing as I took in her naked form. Amethyst had one hand behind her head, touching herself with the other.

Still, the scratching at the door.

I heard something louder now too—a fist.

“We should make this quick,” she hissed.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“We can enjoy it another time, or at least enjoy it more.”

“Right,” I said as I pressed myself into her, our breaths shortening.

“Destry…” she whispered once my penis was all the way in. Her tongue flitted against her lips, her two horns bulging under the skin on her forehead. “I’ll control it,” she whispered.

“It’s fine, do whatever you have to do,” I told her as I made a little space underneath her back, just in case she accidentally took her transformation and her tail formed.

It had happened before.

“Amethyst,” I whispered, watching her throat quiver and her breasts bounce. I wanted it to last longer, and I knew a way to make it happen, but I was thrown off guard when I heard a terrible slam against the door, as if someone had run their shoulder into it.

“Fuckers,” Amethyst said through gritted teeth. “Can’t two people just fuck in peace and quiet!?” Her horns pressed out of her forehead and her eyes turned red, then morphed back to their dark color, her horns suddenly gone.

“Shhh…”

“Sorry,” she said, her expression softening. “Faster, Destry, faster.”

I did as I was told, as I had been doing on and off for the last twelve years.

Aside from the brutish sound against the door, there hadn’t really been enough noise for us to know what was trying to disrupt our brief lovemaking session. And if there was an exemplar, we had tripwires out, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

“Finish for me,” Amethyst said.

“I want you to finish as well,” I told her.

“You idiot—we’re supposed to be out on patrol. Just finish. Shit, I’ll try too.” She clenched her eyes shut. “Finish, finish!”

And like a good soldier, I did what I was told, my body tingling as the last several days came over me in a wave of pleasure, which Amethyst gladly took in, her thighs shaking as she started to orgasm, her horns pressing against the skin on her forehead.

“Sorry… I couldn’t last longer.”

“It doesn’t matter, and don’t worry,” she whispered softly. “You know I won’t get pregnant anyway. They saw to that.”

“Easier to clean-up?”

“Sometimes.”

We were both silent for a moment as I stayed inside her, my member naturally starting to shrivel.

“I’m sorry they did that,” I finally said.

“You’ve said that before. I always wondered why they did it,” she said. “You’d think they would want to breed us in some way, for us to have children who would be even stronger than we are.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Amethyst stood. She cupped her hand in front of her body and made her way to the restroom, where she washed up. Then she returned, pausing in front of the door to listen to the sounds in the hallway outside, nude as the day she was born.

“I really want to go out there and kill them,” she said.

“That is sort of our job. But I’m against fully clearing the hotel with as many hallways as there are—not with just two of us.”

“We could leave an explosion…” she said.

“We could, but that wouldn’t necessarily kill them for good. We could just mark the space as a possible infested building, and another team will come through and sweep it up. There’s always another team.”

“There always is.” Amethyst returned to the bed and came into my arms. She was parked on top of me now, her legs straddling my waist as she looked down at me.

“What do you want to do when all this is done?”

“I don’t think it will ever be done for us,” I told her.

“It will be for me,” she said.

“You still have some time left before the doctors want you to stop.”

“I know. And you will stay with me?”

“Always,” I told her. “No matter what I have to do or where we have to go. Once you’re out, I’m out.”

“They won’t let you out, not with your ability. Besides, you don’t have a health condition,” she said, referring to what her morphing was doing to her heart.

“I will fight my way out.”

“You can’t win against them.” She swallowed. “Against others like us.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. By the time you’re out, I will have given close to twenty years of my life to the Protectorate, to my government. By that point, they must be able to do something for me—make me a teacher, a trainer, or part of some reserve force.”

“You know that won’t happen. There are two countries at war on our border, plus the Western Plague. They need everyone they can get, especially people like us.”

“Let’s just focus on stopping the Vs; once we’re done, cooler heads may prevail.”

“You really are too hopeful for a man in this kind of work,” she said as she dropped.

“No, I’m a realist. All things must end.”

“But a realist can’t play God.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like the girl earlier, the one with the red bandanna. You spared her. You played God. A realist would know that at some point, she would become the enemy. Either for us or someone else.”

“I couldn’t. She just reminded me of…”

“Who? Your sister?”

I turned to Amethyst. “No, you. The first time I saw you, twelve years ago.”

Amethyst closed her eyes and shook her head. “That was then, and this is now,” she finally said. “And I’m getting hungry.”

I laughed. “And here I thought you were going to say something profound.”

“Let’s get some food in me before I start philosophizing.”

.2.

“See? The noodles taste better with a tomato packet on top.”

“I don’t know if I would describe it as ‘better,’” Amethyst said as she finished packing up.

Something big was trying to come through our hotel room door. Luckily, we had already found that easy exit point through a window, which would allow us to jump onto another rooftop and move down to the street from there.

“We shouldn’t leave the MRE containers behind,” I told her. “They may report us when they sweep the place.”

“What would they report us for? Having some lunch?” she asked. “You’re too paranoid. They’ll eventually discover this room after they blast down the door; they’ll see that we holed ourselves up in here and move on. No harm done. Why are you so paranoid?”

“Maybe you’re right,” I told her as I used my wrist guard to blow the window out.

“Think you could have made that any louder?” she asked with a giggle. “It opens, you know. Most windows do.”

“Well, considering the way you’ve suggested we travel to the next rooftop, I thought it would be easier with a bit more space,” I told her. “We’re doing this for you, so you don’t have to transform.”

Amethyst took my backpack and looped it around her left shoulder. From there, she got onto my back, her arms coming around my neck. “Fly pretty for me,” she whispered in my ear.

“I’ll do my best.”

I took a staggering step toward the hole in the wall, the bones on my legs thickening. My arms grew heavy as my knuckles quadrupled in size, forming two square-shaped boxes over my hands.

More protrusions grew from my arms to provide added support, and after another breath in, I leaped toward the rooftop below.

I landed, using my fists and knees for support, the ground rumbling.

“It’s like riding a pony,” Amethyst said as she got off, dropping my bag onto the rooftop.

I stood as my bones returned to their normal size, the pain making me twitch for a moment.

“I would describe it as anything but that,” I finally said, “but sure, consider it like riding a pony.”

“You know, I’ve never ridden a pony. Or a horse.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

She laughed. “Yes.”

“It’s not so common here,” I told her, tensing for a moment as the bones continued to move back into my body, my uniform adjusting for it. I looked back at the hotel as I put my headgear on, marking its coordinates.

Which reminded me…

“Checking numbers?” she asked as I went for my backpack, getting out the small touchscreen and plugging my headgear into it.

“Two hundred thirty-four,” I told her after scrolling through a few menus. “Lurkers, non-cogs, full-cogs. You point them out, we kill ’em, I tag ’em.”

“Easy there, tough guy. And need I remind you, we have done better before. Way better.”

“Yeah, two weeks ago we nearly hit four hundred.”

“Do you think Orange will say something?”

“Margo and Orange always have high numbers when they go out together. But we can play catch-up. We still have about five hours before we meet them; maybe we can boost it up some.”

Amethyst looked back at the hotel. “That could be an option.”

“We’ve been over this—it’s too large of a place to clear with two people. You know the protocol.”

“We checked that one building earlier,” she reminded me. “That was technically too large for two people as well.”

“Let’s move closer to the rendezvous point. I’m sure we’ll pick stuff up on our way, and if not, we’ll start poking around in the buildings there. We should be able to increase the count, hopefully by sixteen to give us a solid number.”

“Maybe there are simply less of them…”

I shook my head. “Let’s not speculate. The patrols we’ve done in our zone may have finally started working, but other Protectorate patrols have seen higher figures than expected.”

“You’re the boss.”

“That’s Mr. Boss,” I said with a smirk. “And if I’m the boss, you’re the CEO.”

“Please.”

“You know I listen to you no matter what.”

“Only because you think it’ll improve your chances of getting tail.”

Both of us chuckled at her pun as we made our way down to the street using a fire escape.

I recalled meeting a guy on one of my first patrols, a non-exemplar telling me that the world was a vampire and we all got bitten at some point.

He was dead the next time I saw him.

Such was life, and it was hard to imagine that to the far west, Western Providencians lived on a beautiful coastline with exquisite views. That to the east, Centralians lived in a city that was so large that it doubled as a country, with skyscrapers as far as the eye could see and no visible horizon, from what I’d heard.

Yet here I was in the war-torn city of Ravja, in Overtone Heights, walking alongside Amethyst, the love of my life, with an overturned trolley off to the left, the remains of a veteran’s clinic to my right, death and despair the only guarantee.

And for some reason, a big part of me wouldn’t have it any other way.

Amethyst and I were quiet for some time.

We often fell into these spells for hours, no words exchanged as we made our rounds. Occasionally, one of us would check something, mentally communicating to the other to stand guard.

“A freebie,” Amethyst finally said. We came across a woman with her body ripped in half. She was still alive, the damn V crawling in our direction almost as soon as she spotted us.

“Kill it. I’ll tag it, and we’ll start a burn pile,” I told Amethyst.

If there was one, there were always more.

This was something that had held true almost every time we’d encountered one of the damn creatures.

Amethyst aimed her blaster and blew the woman’s head off, the Vs body rolling to the left.

This didn’t actually kill it, though—something a few people had found out the hard way. The woman’s body trembled until Amethyst moved around to the entrails’ side, aimed her wrist guard at the woman’s back, and triggered her weapon.

Another one down.

“Tag it,” Amethyst said.

“With pleasure.”

[Indra Sepson]

[Age: 35 F]

[Hometown: Korkovin]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): nine days]

“A nine-day-old Kork,” I started to say, just as a searing blast of sound threw Amethyst off her feet. She was whipped up into a whirlwind of energy and hurtled onto a rooftop.

The bones beneath my skin began to change almost immediately, tearing out of my flesh to form sharp barbs and armor, the protrusions on my left arm creating a structure for my wrist guard to still exist.

I knew better than to cry out for Amethyst; I had to find the threat before I went after her.

And I hated this, but that threat was what would make a difference between us meeting again or one of us being fatally injured.

It had been a trap.

The body had been a fucking trap.

I knew it just as soon as an older man stepped out of a roadside shack, a smaller V with him.

He was a full-cog, clear as day.

He pointed at me and the little vampire girl took off, but the lurker didn’t stand a chance.

I tore her in half with my first blast, charging the man only to be swept back by an ear-piercing sound. The bass rattled my bones and slammed me into a wall, knocking the wind out of me.

I struggled to get back to my feet, my mind reeling as I came to understand the man was an exemplar, one that could manipulate sound.

He drove his fist into my stomach, his punch amplified. It cracked through my body, and the bone armor I’d just made tore off in pieces.

I kicked him away, which gave me a second to replenish my armor.

I aimed my wrist guard at him and fired a shot, but he dodged it, and what was left of the kid vampire launched at me in the meantime, latching on to my arm.

Not good…

I swung her into the wall, barely paying attention as a barb tore out of my arm and into her chest, killing the lurker for good.

My focus returned to the sound manipulator who had risen up into the air, seething, visible energy spinning around his wrists. He shot his hands forward. I felt an excruciating pain move over my body, and my bones started to whittle away.

The ground sank as well, the power of his bass attack affecting everything around me.

I could feel him trying to rupture my organs, so I protected those even further, bone after bone, my skin bulging as blood vessels ruptured and reformed.

I fired off a few shots, all of which went wide. Things were starting to go black now.

Amethyst…

I pulled myself up to my feet again, taking a staggering stepped forward. The pavement cracked all around me, my bones continually forming and breaking, everything on the periphery a blur.

“Mother… fucker…” I whispered as I focused on the V, lifting my arm, my elbow propped up by my side.

It was going to be an awkward shot, but…

A comet-like force smashed into the man, bringing him to the ground. Amethyst roared as she drove her energy blade into his chest multiple times, lashing at his face with her barbed tail.

“Destry, are you okay?” she asked, not immediately coming over to me. Her focus was on protecting us from more attacks.

My body began to return to normal.

I felt lightheaded for a moment as some of my wounds healed up, a sense of euphoria spreading over me.

“I’ve got you,” she said, now at my side, her tail lightly wrapping around me.

I dropped back to my knees, one hand on the pavement to keep myself up, breathing heavily.

“You shouldn’t have transformed…”

“Are you serious right now?” she hissed.

I grinned up at her. “No. And thanks.”

“Heal up and tag these ones. We need to move on.”

“You got it, boss.”

She snorted, her red eyes dimming. “At least our numbers are looking up.”

“We still aren’t at two-fifty,” I said as I finally stood. I healed relatively quickly, so it wouldn’t be long before I was back to normal. Hell, I already felt better, maybe seventy-five or eighty percent.

“Just tag them,” she said with a bit of an edge to her voice.

“Will do,” I told her. “And thanks again.”

.3.

A father and his two daughters had been bitten by a vampire. The father was an exemplar, the daughters not. Perhaps the father had been bitten first, or perhaps it was the youngest daughter.

Those weren’t details we would know by tagging them, only their names—Manco, Edina and Meredith Rand.

All reduced to a number.

That was one thing I hated about this job. The people whose names we collected all had stories. Yet in the end, each one was a corpse stacked in a pile of burning corpses. Their legacy simply a name in a registry we kept.

These people were no different from me, aside from the training I’d had and the fact I’d been sold by my parents to the State. There had even been a few we’d attacked who I thought may be distant relatives, something about their names or an identifying mark. All this was likely in my head, but it did bring me closer to the victims, even if there was no evidence to support my assumption.

“On me.” Amethyst moved forward, hunched over in the way she normally was after her transformation took place. Horns jutted out of her head, fierce ram horns I’d seen her use numerous times to finish off opponents. She could bite as well, but she didn’t normally do that—at least not with Vs. There were her claws and her barbed tail, the redness of her eyes, that lingering smell of alcohol.

All things I had grown accustomed to seeing.

As she walked, I remembered what she looked like when I’d first met her, when she was only ten years old—her bony shoulders, the way her face would turn pink when she got upset.

We’d both gone through puberty together, Amethyst growing into her shoulders, the creature she transformed to also changing.

When I looked at her, I saw her in the same way I’d seen her that first day we were forced to square off.

Alone, different, interesting.

I wasn’t great with adjectives to describe her, and there were plenty more that would fit the bill, but those had been my first thoughts so many years ago.

“Something’s moving on the rooftop,” she told me, looking up and to the left. The building was seven stories high; I couldn’t see anything from my current vantage point.

“Are you sure?”

“Why would I lie about something like this?” she hissed.

“Right. Should we investigate then?”

“I don’t know. You’re the commanding officer.”

“And you’re our CEO.”

She snorted. “That sounds so dumb.”

“Let’s scale the exterior then. How’s that sound?” I asked. The skin peeled away from my knuckles, tendons swirling as I formed two thick spikes. I walked over to the corner of the building in question and looked up.

As we had done before, I started up the building, punching one fist in and using it as leverage to pull myself higher.

It worked, and at about the time I reached the halfway point, Amethyst launched herself at the building, scurrying up to my left and quickly surpassing me. I picked up my pace, pulling myself onto the rooftop seconds after Amethyst had already arrived.

“Don’t move!” she said, aiming her wrist guard at a man.

I recognized the guy almost immediately.

He had been part of the Northern Alliance patrol we’d encountered yesterday, the blond-haired guy who had given us shit. He was still in his uniform, but his arm was ripped to shreds, and he looked up at us with bloodshot eyes.

“I will engage,” Amethyst said. “Get down on your stomach, now!”

“Now!” I shouted, my weapon also aimed at him. “You are in our jurisdiction. Get down, now!”

“You won’t be able to…” He gulped, blood trickling out of his mouth. “You won’t be able to…”

He started hacking up more blood, and as he turned his head, we both saw the bite. More than a bite, really. The entire right side of his neck had been eaten away, pieces of flesh still hanging, torn tissue.

“I’m taking him down.” Amethyst blasted the man, his form slapping against the rooftop.

He was up before Amethyst could clear the distance between them. He tried to jump into the air. She caught his feet with her tail and slammed him back down, activating her energy blade and knifing him in the back several times.

“If he’s infected…” She bristled as she glanced left and right.

“No, that doesn’t mean the rest of the team is,” I reminded her.

“Too bad.” She got back to her feet, pacing some, anger radiating off her.

“We’ll have to log him as an unidentified hostile, at least for our system,” I said, tapping on my headgear. “But he must have some type of identification on him. If not, we can take the patches on his sleeve.”

“Okay,” Amethyst said as she returned to the man and flipped him over. We waited beside him for a few minutes, making sure he was dead. We didn’t always do this, but with certain exemplars, especially ones who had proven to be pretty quick, it was a smart idea.

Not that one had ever woken after being stabbed or shot in the chest.

“Goddamn these patrols,” she said as she looked him over. “They know death is on our border and spreading, yet they continue to wage war.”

“The Northern and Southern Alliance have been at it since well before we were born,” I reminded her as I started checking the guy’s pockets. “And they will probably be at it long after we die. I agree, though. Why would they do it on our border?”

“We’ll solve that after we solve this,” she said, back on guard.

“You always say stuff like that,” I told her with a smile.

“It helps to stay positive.”

I fashioned my finger into a bone knife, sharpening its edges to the point that it was able to cut around the patch on his uniform and remove it. I read the NA soldier’s info on the back of his patch.

“His name is Brand of Cody-Port,” I told Amethyst. “A Specialist.”

“Destry.” Amethyst peered over the side of the building again, a curious look on her face.

“What is it?” I deposited his patch into one of my pockets, my fingers returning to their normal texture.

“Do you see that?”

Amethyst’s transformation allowed her to see in the dark; I would have to do this the old-fashioned way. I started to lower my head unit to use its night vision features when she stopped me.

“We need to get closer for you to see it. Those won’t work,” she told me.

“So we should come down the same way we came up then, right?”

“Let’s take care of his body first. Protocol.”

“Protocol.” I retrieved some of the flammable liquid we carried with us and spritzed some of it on the NA soldier’s body.

“Care to do the honors?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she grunted, lifting her wrist guard at the man as I stepped away.

She fired once, his body igniting.

“And here we go,” Amethyst said as she leaped off the side of the building, using her claws to scrape her way down to the alley. I reformed the giant spikes over my knuckles and scaled my way down slowly. I eventually got there, my hands returning to their normal shape.

I shook my fingers out.

Sometimes there was pain; sometimes there wasn’t.

“Is this what you’re talking about?” I asked Amethyst.

“Where do you think it goes?”

She was perched in front of an amputated leg. Not far from the leg was an arm, clearly from a different body, and not far from that was another arm, followed by another leg.

A trail?

No words were exchanged as we started to follow the trail of body parts.

The tension was palpable; Amethyst and I knew we would be in for a fight whenever we located what had done this. And like the situation earlier, the father with his two daughters, it could very well be a trap.

But this was what we were trained to do, and even if my nerves were firing a little bit more than they normally would have been, I kept my focus on the path before us, my three and my nine.

My steps were heavier now. I already had a layer of spiked bone armor on my back and around my arms, which was a problem with having a backpack of supplies. It was hard to truly protect myself with it on, which was why Amethyst had instinctively taken my backpack from me and slung it over her shoulder.

She was incredibly fast and strong in her current form. If she had to, she would drop both bags and spring into action.

More discarded limbs...

The alley was incredibly dark but, looking up, I could tell it was still day out there, a day that would turn to night in the next hour or so.

When I saw where the body parts stopped, I realized it would turn to night much sooner for us.

“Let’s leave our packs here,” Amethyst said, leaning them against the dumpster.

She set up a tripwire around them as I stood guard, just in case a street kid stumbled upon our gear.

Once she was done, she joined me next to the manhole.

Still looking down, Amethyst took a small swig from the flask she carried with her, trembling as her transformation solidified.

This was just a precaution; even without the extra alcohol, she could have been in her form for a good forty-five minutes or so.

But in our line of work, it was better to be safe than sorry.

I activated my night vision as I climbed down into the sewer, my senses tingling, more spikes growing from my back in response to how exposed I felt.

The spikes retreated once I was standing in the sewer below, no longer prone.

Everything had a green hue to it now, and it only took me a moment to locate the next limb.

I focused on it, failed to tag it, and surveilled the rest of the area as Amethyst came down the stairs.

We would need to be able to find a way back to this particular sewer entrance, which was why she used a small, fluorescent object to paint a strip of color along the side of the sewer. I saw it instantly with my night-vision features; Amethyst would notice it through her natural vision enhancement.

“Be ready to engage and eliminate any targets,” I told her through gritted teeth as we started deeper into the sewer, the stink berating my nostrils. I fired off an MM to Orange and Margo. “I have backup on standby.”

“Good.”

We came to a corner, and Amethyst marked the wall again.

It took me a second, but I eventually saw that the amputated body parts continued off to the left. With a nod of confirmation to each other, we returned to tracking them.

This tunnel was long, and it was a good five minutes or so until we got to the end, where it turned to the right.

Ames and I were painfully quiet. The only sound I could hear now was the occasional drip or noise caused by the friction from our uniforms.

But I tried not to focus on that.

We were in a terrible place for a fight, both Amethyst and I better at utilizing large spaces than smaller ones.

After another minute or so, we came to a four-way intersection, and Amethyst gasped as she looked straight ahead.

I had been focusing my attention on the left, but when I turned to see what had caught her attention, I too had to suppress a gasp.

“What do you think it is?” she whispered. “I mean, I know what it is—but why?”

“I…”

Blocking the tunnel in front of us was a wall of torsos, heads still attached, all of them Vs, wedged in such a way that they couldn’t wriggle free from the wall of flesh. They hissed, a few gnashing their teeth once they registered our presence. They seemed weak.

“I need to mark the spot,” I finally said. “Whatever this is, it may take some heavy artillery.”

“Mark it, and then let’s go. Whatever’s done this likely has reinforcements.”

“An alpha V,” I said as I went for a small device in one of the pockets on my belt.

I looked up at the curved ceiling of the sewer and tossed the tracker up, the device making a decompression sound after it had stuck.

Amethyst’s ears twitched. “Something’s coming.”

I looked to see her eyes wide with horror, her natural instinct already kicking in as she braced herself.

“How many?”

“Dozens. Dozens…” She glanced left and right. “What do you want us to do? What do we do, Destry?”

I took a deep breath in. “Run.”

The first vampire spilled out of the tunnel on the right, crawling on the ceiling, his dark eyes locked on us. Amethyst managed to fire a shot that blew his head off, and both of us took off in the direction we had come.

At this point, it was all about stamina and endurance. Knowing it would make me faster, I returned my bone armor to my body, and my pace instantly picked up.

I didn’t dare look back.

I could hear their feet, their hands, their hisses, their hungry growls.

They were on us, and as I ran, I threw my arm behind me and fired off a few more blasts. I knew doing this too much would overheat my weapon, so I kept it to a minimum and focused on my footwork, not wanting to trip.

We rounded the first corner and continued to the next.

It would be a right, and then we would be back to the entrance.

One of the faster Vs launched himself at me, grabbing on to my chest and back. I instinctively shot a two-foot-long bone spike out of my elbow, puncturing him in the stomach and tearing upward as he fell back.

“Destry!” Amethyst cried.

“I’m fine—run!”

I fired a few more shots behind me and heard a sizzling sound as at least one of my blasts connected.

I thought about trying to bring the walls of the sewer down, but this could prevent us from coming back later, or whatever team was tasked with taking out the wall of bodies.

Fuck…

I almost lost concentration as I remembered the wall, the squealing forms, the sheer villainy of whoever had done it.

I didn’t know how many Vs were chasing us, but from the sound of it, it was more than we had ever taken on before. This led me to believe the alpha controlling them might be a telepath.

It was too early to speculate.

We rounded the next corner. A V latched on to me, this one grabbing my foot and causing me to fall forward.

A different one latched on to my leg, pulling me back just as Amethyst came forward with her energy blade, swiping at their faces and using her other wrist guard to blast into the crowd of Vs.

“Come on!” she shouted, yanking me back to my feet. Her voice echoed down the sewer tunnel.

We both fired blasts from our wrist guards as we continued toward our exit point, my night vision registering the marks on the inside of the sewer wall.

“Go in front of me,” she said, sort of throwing me forward toward the ladder up to the top. “Go!”

“No, you go,” I started to tell her.

“Do it, Destry!” she roared. “I climb faster than you!”

I took a running leap and latched on to the highest rung I could reach.

Bones tearing out of my arms, I pulled myself up even further, skipping five or six rungs at a time as the ravenous vampires started to reach Amethyst.

Still climbing, I fired a shot into the crowd swelling into the tunnel.

“Hurry, Ames!”

I punched open the manhole cover and pulled myself out. Amethyst appeared behind me moments later, kicking her feet at one of them, half of his torso coming up as well.

I severed his head with a bone saw, and Amethyst and I pressed the manhole cover into place. Then both of us sat on top of it as the Vs scratched and hissed from the inside.

“Orange and Margo, and then heavy artillery,” I told her, looking at the severed head, which continued to snap its teeth. I aimed my wrist guard at it.

“Do it,” Amethyst said with a snarl.

.4.

Vampires spilled out of a manhole cover half a block away, crawling over each other, the bloodthirsty fuckers charging in our direction.

“We need to move up!” Amethyst said, her wrist guard aimed at the Vs.

“Backup is on the way,” I told her. “Hold your ground.”

Another manhole cover shot off on the other side of the alley, the Vs boxing us in. The snarling, hissing fuckers were ready for a fight.

“Destry…” Amethyst steadied her weapon on the first group to spill out of the sewers, firing a blast that took a few of them down. I did the same, aiming at the second group just as a portal opened up overhead, the ground and the walls forming a cocoon around us as Orange and Margo landed.

“That was fast.” Amethyst lowered her weapon.

We were momentarily protected by a half-sphere created from any material Margo could latch on to. The white-haired woman with the mismatched eyes had already started to harden her creation as the vampires reached it, beating their heads and fists against it in an attempt to devour us.

“It looks like they’re all non-cogs,” said Orange, my roommate for so many years looking fit as ever in his dark-gray milspec uniform, his bag slung over his shoulder.

“There was a trail of body parts,” Amethyst explained. “We followed it down into the sewer and from there…” She looked at me as she sucked in a deep breath of air.

“We came to a wall made of human bodies, stacked.”

“All infected?” Margo asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “And that’s when the others began to swell into the sewers. Ever seen this many in one place?”

“It’s clearly a hive, which means there must be an alpha V involved. I’ve seen a smaller amount than this all controlled by a single alpha,” Orange approached the hardened wall Margo had created. “This is usually how they move, like a hoard of insects.”

Something heavy slammed into the protective barrier.

“It sounds like they have a few exemplars as well,” said Orange. He paused a moment. “Okay, command wants us to clear out what we can and get to higher ground. From there, we’ll regroup and bring in the heavy artillery. We’ll have to blow them out of the sewer.”

“What about structural damage?” I asked. “I know the sewers have been cut off surrounding the Garden Edge District, but sending in heavy artillery could cause structural damage and allow some of the Vs to slip through.”

“Let’s just get to higher ground first,” Orange said after a moment of deliberation. “Once we view the sewer schematics, we can figure out the best way to pull it off. We may have to just hit certain portions and then use our teams to clear out the others.”

“And to think it’s been relatively quiet over the last few days,” Amethyst said with a growl.

“Your kill count?” Margo asked.

“Approaching two-fifty,” I said with a grunt.

“Yours?” Amethyst asked.

“Four hundred sixteen.”

I nodded at Margo. “Good job.”

“Thanks.”

I looked away from her, not knowing what else to really tell the woman.

I’d been on a patrol with just Margo before, and I’d noticed she rarely slept, sometimes speaking to the things she animated. I’d discovered other parts about her abilities that I was unaware of, things that made my skin crawl.

There something wrong with the woman.

Somewhere along the way, a screw had gotten loose in her head. But then again, maybe a screw had gotten loose in all our heads.

“Everyone ready?” Orange said, still facing the front, not looking back at us.

“Let me refuel,” Amethyst started to say as she went for her flask.

“Just a little,” I said under my breath to her.

“I know how much it takes,” she said harshly.

My muscles started to move, bones creating armor along my body, the thick protrusions twisting down my arm and forming two huge blades with openings for my wrist guards, so I could hack and blast.

“Here we go,” Margo said, and the half sphere collapsed all around us, tossing the Vs backward.

Orange and Margo focused on the front, Amethyst and I on the back as we started cutting through the masses, their outlines all green due to my NVD.

Whoosh!

A wall came down on Margo’s victims, slamming them to the gravel and melting, holding them there as Orange walked past, inflating their lungs to the point that their chests exploded, leaving bloody mists in his wake.

Amethyst and I fought as normal, slicing them down or blasting them away if the opportunity presented itself.

After skirting ahead, Amethyst ducked a vampire’s direct attack, this one’s exemplar status evident in his long, stringy arms. The red-haired man was all over the place, avoiding her lethal swipes, flattening his body, coming back up and trying to bring her down.

Definitely not our alpha V, but clearly a full-cog, swifter and smarter than the rest.

As she took on the more powerful vampire, I focused on blasting through a group of lurkers, stabbing my bone blade through the chest of one that had come at me from the side.

Amethyst leaped to the wall, scrambled up it, and used it as a springboard to jump onto the vampiric exemplar.

Bringing him into the ground, she fired a blast point-blank into his chest. His arms writhed as they settled, and Amethyst stood, the love of my life already at it again, cutting through Vs with a laser focus.

A muscular V lunged for her and she met him headfirst with her ram’s horns, knocking him off to the side, where she blasted him through the chest.

I looked up just as a vampire hurtled out of a window above, catching me before I could catch him. I was just about to use my energy blade on him when his chest exploded into a blood mist, courtesy of Orange.

They were endless, but I knew we could go on like this for a lot longer before we started to lose steam.

Amethyst’s barbed tail cracked one in the face, looping around its neck and throwing it into the wall.

Another came at me from the side, its face peeling back, bones exposed and cracking as Margo animated the vampire’s body, eventually puncturing its own chest with its rib cage.

Their numbers had dwindled, but more were starting to swell out of the sewers.

“There will be more,” said Orange, the only one of us who wasn’t slightly out of breath. “We need to move up.”

Amethyst nodded, then fired a few more blasts at an approaching throng. Her tail struck the ground and she jumped to the wall, scaling up toward the nearest rooftop.

“Destry, on me,” Margo said.

I approached her, Orange to my right. The ground morphed into a pillar beneath us, pulling from our surroundings as it grew taller and taller, allowing the three of us to join Amethyst on the rooftop.

We were only four stories above the vampires below, so we used Margo’s technique to go even higher, to the large rooftop of an abandoned building.

As soon as we landed, Margo began making sure the Vs wouldn’t be able to climb up. She smoothed out all the edges of the rooftop, collapsed the only entry point, and formed a spiked parapet just in case they somehow managed to reach us.

“Everyone stay alert,” Orange said. “We may be here for a while.”

Part Four: A Day’s Wake

.1.

(Present day.)

I paced back and forth, ready for anything. I was tired, sure, but working under extreme conditions and being part of the Protectorate went hand in hand.

“Don’t get excited,” Orange said once he got done MMing with command. “A teleporter will be here soon; they’re taking us to a garrison in the Turnstone District.”

I looked at Amethyst.

“Why would we get excited about that district?” she asked. “Everyone who’s ever told me about it has told me it’s a shithole. It also just so happens to be where Destry was born and raised.”

“From where I stand, ‘shithole’ would describe most of Ravja,” I reminded her, “aside from the Garden Edge District.”

“They don’t let me into that part of town; my tail is too long.”

“We’ll be sleeping at the garrison for the night,” Orange said, not taking part in our banter. “Heavy artillery in the morning, and then the four of us will be responsible for tagging as many of the Vs as we can. That is the part no one should be getting excited about. It’ll be pretty grueling.”

“But it’s the best part of the job…” Amethyst whined. Margo smiled at this; Orange kept the stern look on his face.

“So to recap, we’re going to the garrison for the night, returning in the morning after heavy artillery has taken out as much of the infected sewers as possible, and then we’re supposed to clean up what’s left. Right?”

“That’s right,” he said to me. “Any objections, Junior Commanding Officer?”

“I’ll take a night at the resort over sleeping on a rooftop any day of the week.”

“A warm bed and a hot shower…” A rare smile stretched across Orange’s face. “I don’t know about you two, but it’s been a while.”

“We found a hotel that still had running water the, um, other day,” Amethyst said.

“It’s always good when that happens,” Margo added.

Orange looked up at the sky for a moment, running his tongue against the front of his teeth. “How much longer until you transform back?”

“Thirty minutes tops,” Amethyst told him. “Why? You think I’ll scare some of the new recruits?”

“Command prefers if Class Bs return in their pre-morphed stage.”

“They deal with exemplars all the time,” she said, her voice quivering with anger.

“I will arrange for teleportation after you have transformed.”

Amethyst turned away from him, walking to the corner of the rooftop and looking over the edge. Her tail bobbed up and down like it did when she was agitated.

Orange sent off more mental communications while Margo stood off to the side, not really focusing on anything.

Strange bird.

While I wasn’t too excited about tagging all the vampires we were going to kill the following day, at least we’d get better digs for the night—a warm meal, too. And boy was I glad for that. I had gotten used to MREs a while back, but actual food beat freeze-dried stuff any day of the week.

“In the meantime, go ahead and load all your tags into my system,” Orange said, handing me a black flatscreen in a thick protective case.

“Will do,” I told him as I removed my headgear.

I popped open a flap on the side of the screen, flipped it over, and plugged into my headgear. It only took a second for the information to download; the only thing it showed me on the screen was a confirmation page.

[Destry Banner]

[Protectorate III Junior Commanding Officer]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Amethyst Jayde]

[Protectorate IV Junior Heavy Engager]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[239 kill count. Confirm to finalize transmit? Y/N]

[Yes.]

[No.]

I confirmed our kill count and handed the device back to Orange, glad he didn’t check to see that I was bloating our numbers earlier.

Our backpacks were still in the streets below, protected by tripwire. I took a small remote from a protected pocket on the inside of my uniform.

I made my way over to Amethyst, my headgear now loosely hanging around my neck.

“We need to blow up our bags,” I told her.

“Can you get mine?” she asked, turning to me. “It’s a bit harder with my nails in this state.”

“Will do,” I said.

I unzipped the front of her uniform, moving my hand under her breasts to one of the many hidden pockets built into our uniforms. I took the remote out and zipped her back up.

“We have bags to blow,” I told Orange, who simply nodded.

“I hope you kill some of them,” Margo said nonchalantly.

“One can only hope.”

To avoid our remotes’ from accidentally being pressed, they could only be pressed after something sharp was inserted into a small hole on top of the device. The remotes had been tested, and it was the only way to make the bag self-destruct.

Hell, we’d even tried stomping it to see if that would do anything, but no. It had just shattered the remote, no explosion.

Another thing that worried me was the explosive in our packs somehow being punctured during a fight.

But again, inventors from the Eastern Province had us covered with their advanced tech. They’d assured us the explosive could only be triggered by the remote, and so far, they’d been right. Fire, electricity, and sudden impact didn’t work. In one of our tests, we’d even fired our wrist guards at it to see if it’d blow.

No explosion.

We had too much sensitive information to leave in the field, and sometimes, like when we went into the sewer or cleared certain types of homes, it was required that we removed our bags to do so, especially with our abilities.

Still, I didn’t like having the remote on the front of my body while wearing the backpack.

“Here goes,” I told Amethyst.

After sharpening my nail into a pin that was thin enough to fit into the hole on the top of the remote, I placed my thumb across both buttons. I heard my pack explode in the streets below, the sounds of vampires moving over to investigate just as I did the same to Amethyst’s bag.

I could see a bloom of flames now, which died down just as quickly as it had started.

“Fuckers,” she said with a snarl.

“Agreed.”

Once Amethyst was back to her normal self, a teleporter materialized above us, the woman hovering in a sphere of energy. “Everyone needs to be tested,” she said, not yet lowering.

“Right,” Orange said, and it was a rare occurrence of him forgetting protocol. He brought his headgear down onto his face and looked at me. “Clear.” He then moved to Amethyst and Margo. “Clear.”

“And you, Junior P3-COF,” said the teleporter.

Once my headgear was over my eyes, I looked at Orange.

[Orange Chalmer]

[Age: 24 M]

[Hometown: Monseeyaj]

[Status: Exemplar I, C, oxygen manipulation, enhanced stamina]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

“Clear,” I told the teleporter.

“My turn,” the teleport said, looking at each of us through her headgear.

A commanding officer (not a member of the Protectorate) had failed to correctly read the info presented to him by his headgear a few months ago. They’d ended up taking a V back to a garrison in Meriday Heights, which had caused the entire place to be quarantined while we swept through it. Now we had the CO check first, then the Junior CO check the CO, and then the teleporter check everyone.

“You’ve been cleared,” the teleporter said, four bubbles descending from the giant sphere encasing her form. The bubbles lifted each of us into the air, where we joined her.

And with that, we were gone, off to a garrison in the Turnstone District, away from the depravity for a night.

.2.

Two baths in one day.

Had I known I was going to get a hot shower, I might not have stayed as long in the bathtub with Amethyst…

Nah. I would have still gone for it.

While we had been planning all week to eventually meet with Orange and Margo, there was no guarantee we would actually be able to leave Overtone Heights. They had done it to us before, sending us off on a mission and then extending that mission indefinitely.

One could argue I had been on an extended mission since I’d been sold to the State twelve years ago.

Heh.

Even odder. Here I was, at a garrison not very far from my childhood home. What were the odds? Twelve years away and I’d never been back—now I was here in a comfortable bathroom taking just about the longest shower I could.

In the end, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I even thought of going back to the mess hall for seconds.

Eventually, the water went cold, and I decided to step out into my private suite, which was one of the few perks that came with being part of the Protectorate. I toweled myself off and moved to my bed, ready to get some sleep, my skin still piping hot.

But even with the coolness of the sheets, I was restless, the food in my stomach keeping me up.

I tossed and turned, and I eventually got up, unable to fall asleep.

Bones weren’t the only thing I could control.

One of the things my teachers had made me focus on after the first year at Training House was physiology. Because of this, I knew that “digestion” was the word we used for the breakdown of insoluble fuel molecules into easier-to-manage water-soluble molecules. I understood the process, and the average amount of time it took for chyme to be absorbed in the blood.

So this was what I focused on for a moment, speeding up my digestion, which made me feel nauseous but quickly settled as my internal organs kicked into overdrive.

It wasn’t long after that I had to rid my body of the waste, glad now that I wasn’t sharing a room with Amethyst.

I knew it was well past midnight, but I decided to go for a walk anyway, to see…

To see.

No one stopped me from leaving the garrison, and soldiers at the front all saluted me, all keenly aware I was one of the Protectorate, the rare breed of exemplars tasked with ridding the Western Province of its horrific vampire infestation.

“I’ll be back, guys,” I said with a wave.

“Off to a pub?” one of them asked.

“Sure, as long as it’s this way,” I said, turning right.

“One certainly is,” he said in a baritone voice. “Not too far actually, two blocks down on the left. There’s an entertainment district down there too, if you’re game.”

“Two blocks down? Good to know,” I told him as I stuffed my hands in my pockets.

I was now in a tight, short-sleeved shirt that was tucked into my pants, my normal military boots completing my outfit. If anyone out on the streets saw me, they would know exactly what I was, and they wouldn’t say anything about it.

The wind hit me and, for a moment, I wished I had worn a jacket. Most of our wind came from the east, from Centralia, and this gust was no different. It settled, though, and I continued along the paved streets, which were cleaner than I remembered them being in my youth.

It was hard to imagine that there was so much turmoil just across the tracks. And it was a wonder that city planners and military officials had been able to keep the infection contained to just Overtone Heights and the Brownlock District.

This took constant surveillance and clever construction, which was why I had asked about the repercussions of destroying the sewers. It was also why Orange had wanted to go over details with his superiors before choosing a route of attack.

I didn’t know how long the two districts would be host to Vs but, as it stood, the infection showed no sign of spreading.

If only people would actually leave the areas.

But conspiracy theories, weird fascinations with the creatures, and the desire for something different—coupled with the mobility of certain individuals—only added to the vampiric population.

There had been some pretty radical measures proposed, such as using a power amplifier to allow a telekinetic ability to explode every head in the district, but politicians had fought against it, and people had as well. Many citizens of the Western Province were under the false assumption that they would get their loved ones back.

Fat chance. Anyone who had seen what happened after the infection took place knew this was not the case.

I moved past what I assumed was the pub recommended by the guard at the gate. There were a few soldiers out, women too, the stink of booze hanging in the air reminding me of Amethyst’s scent after she took her transformation.

And while I wished the soldiers at the pub would be more focused on the mission, I was also envious that they had actually volunteered to join up, that they had been able to make choices more freely than the people I had grown up with.

Lucky them.

It was just a couple more blocks now, so I picked up my pace, taking exaggerated steps. Things had changed in the twelve years since I’d last been here, but I recognized exactly where I was—the local grocery, a hardware store, a small playground, and the post office.

All of it.

As the district’s name implied, most of the homes were in the Turnstone style, which described the way they were created, almost as if they’d been built along the petals of a flower, a roundness to everything that made walking in a straight path a little challenging.

I didn’t know much about the reasoning behind this building style, but I’d heard it had come from the Northern Alliance, that there’d been a point in our history where the Northern Alliance had set up in this district, and the houses were actually that old.

Looking around now at their curves, at the absolute absence of angles, I appreciated the uniqueness of my hometown.

Even if I’d been cast away, it was still the place of my birth.

After a little more searching, I finally found the apartment block I was looking for. Rounding the corner, I came to what had once been my childhood home, still tucked away behind a gnarled sycamore tree.

It was still there, a single light on inside.

I knew my dad was long gone; this news had come to me pretty quickly at Training House, tucked away in one of the only letters my mother had ever sent me.

I didn’t know why she never wrote to me, but I suspected it was guilt. At least I hoped that was the case.

After opening a small iron fence, I came to the front door. My ability to move ceased to exist. I just stood there for what felt like an hour, wondering if I should knock even though it was late.

“Can I help you?” a man asked, interrupting my spell of nonaction. He was on the second floor, looking out over the courtyard, his face framed in shadow.

“No, I was just leaving,” I told him, starting to turn away.

“That’s not what it looks like, soldier.”

“It’s that obvious?”

He came to the banister and leaned on it, looking down at me. “What do you think?”

“Well, I won’t bother you any longer,” I said, starting to turn again.

“You aren’t bothering me. Were you looking for someone?” he called after me.

“I grew up in this area and I, um, I knew the family that lived here. The Banners.”

The man looked out at the street, the light from the lantern reflecting off his eyes. Finally, he returned his gaze to me.

“Sorry, soldier, never heard of them.”

.3.

“Morning,” I told Margo as I joined her in the mess hall. I sat before her, my tray filled with plates of food.

She had a glass of juice and a single hard-boiled egg. Her white hair was pressed behind her ears, her expression calm and content.

“Did you rest well?” she asked, not quite looking up at me.

“I did. And you?”

Margo focused on the egg for a moment, using her power to peel its shell away. It was interesting watching her do this, the eggshell spiraling off to leave just the edible part in the end.

“I ate too much last night,” I told her.

Her eyes went from staring absentmindedly at the table to my face. I felt a little spark in my body when we locked eyes; that was how rare it was for Margo to make direct eye contact.

“What is it?” I asked, a bit startled.

“It’s odd, you know,” she said, still staring at me. “You had problems sleeping last night because of overeating, yet you now have several plates on your tray.”

“Nothing a little organ work can’t handle,” I told her, looking down at my stomach.

I wish I could say we had an enlightening conversation after that, or that we spoke at all, but nothing more was said as she focused on her egg, using her fork and knife to slice it up, then eating each piece individually while I gorged myself.

“You should eat more than that,” I told her once I moved on to my second plate of potatoes and scrambled eggs. “Who knows how long we’ll be out in the field.”

“That’s what MREs are for,” she told me.

“You and I both know those things are terrible.”

“You seem to have some pretty good recipes, though.”

“You remember?” I asked, looking up at her.

“Of course I do; we’ve partnered before.”

“We had a pretty high kill count that one time around, didn’t we?”

“Three hundred ninety six. Yes, it was high.”

“I see someone found the breakfast buffet.” Amethyst sat down next to Margo, her purple-red hair in a tight ponytail. She looked refreshed, clean, all three of us wearing the same outfit at the moment—dark gray shirts tucked into our dark gray pants and military boots.

Even if we blended in somewhat, the other soldiers in the mess hall knew exactly who we were. I had already caught a couple glances, a few whispers, and several thank-yous as I’d filled my tray.

“Who knows how much longer we’ll have to eat MREs,” I told Amethyst.

“But you’ve developed all these great recipes you’re so proud of,” she said, teasing.

“I just told him the same thing,” said Margo.

“My recipes aren’t great; they’re necessary,” I said, a grin forming on my face.

“I don’t know, the tomato sauce you made for the noodles was pretty good.”

Margo nodded at Amethyst’s statement.

“Look, we can’t all be chefs, but we should at least eat well in the field.”

Amethyst snorted. “You always were trying to turn bad situations to something positive, weren’t you?”

“What bad situation? The three of us have been raised by the State to be super soldiers, and now the State is using us to hunt vampires, even though an adequate solution to our infestation problem has yet to materialize. They just send us to keep killing and killing. What’s bad about that situation?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Amethyst said, eating a piece of toast. “I do like that you call us super soldiers, though. It sounds cool.”

“Superheroes?”

Amethyst and Margo shook their heads.

“That’s some Centralia shit,” Ames finally said.

“Super soldiers it is, then. Like I’ve said before, we have to hold on to the little things. Breakfast buffets, hot showers—those sort of things. Margo, you really should eat more.”

“If you insist.”

A cart near a side wall scooted forward, its wheels propelling it toward the scrambled egg station. Ames and I watched as a plate scraped along the stainless-steel countertop, stopping in front of the eggs so a spoon could deposit them onto the plate. The plate then moved to the sausage, gravy, and finally a bin with various pieces of bread and biscuits.

Once the plate was full, the cart scampered over to it, tipping itself toward the stainless-steel tables so the plate could slide onto the cart. From there, the cart backed up and quickly made its way over to us.

“Careful,” Amethyst told her, “everyone is going to think you’re a telepath.”

“They already do,” I said, noticing a few of the soldiers seated near us activating their telepath bands.

“It’s always good to keep them guessing, right?” Margo asked as she took her plate from the cart.

“I suppose it is,” Amethyst said.

After breakfast, Margo informed us that Orange had already arranged for a meeting in one of the command rooms. It was to take place in thirty minutes, which gave me plenty of time to do my stomach thing so I wasn’t uncomfortable.

Even with my restroom antics, I was early to the meeting. Margo was already in the room animating a pair of paperclips, having them twirl like they were dancers.

“You keep yourself entertained,” I told her as I took my seat.

“I try.”

One of the paperclips began to split in two, the metal swelling in its center, a bulge pressing its way back to the top and forming a head of sorts. The door opened and the paperclips fell, only to be reanimated once Margo saw that it was Amethyst.

“I keep running into you two,” she said with a smirk, taking a seat across from me. “Did you have enough for breakfast?”

I nodded at her. “More than my fair share.”

“I saw that. It was like you were eating for two.”

“Who says I’m not pregnant?”

Margo and Amethyst smiled, their enthusiasm fading once Orange entered the room with the garrison’s commander, a non-exemplar with a scar on the side of his head. We stood, saluted and, once all that was out of the way, Orange began.

“So, as discussed last night, we will be bringing in heavy artillery. However, we want to limit the amount of potential collateral damage, especially in regards to the sewer lines that connect to the Garden Edge District.”

“How can we possibly do that?” I asked.

“I’m getting to that, Junior Commanding Officer,” he said. “Margo will use her power to create a blast wall that cuts all the way down to the sewer. The explosion will take place within this area, and it will be up to us to clear out any other Vs we come across.”

“So we’re basically part of a demolition squad,” Amethyst said.

“We are there to tag them and pick off any that remain. There is another thing they have tasked us with.”

“What’s that?” Amethyst asked.

“We want you to find the alpha V,” said the garrison commander. “And we want this person to be brought back to the garrison alive.”

“Alive?” Margo asked.

Orange nodded a confirmation.

“Our policy has always been not to bring any of them alive, for fear that the infection could spread into another district or another city,” I said.

“Yes, that has been our policy. And now, our policy has changed,” said Orange.

“Who authorized this?” Amethyst started to ask. “Never mind—I mean, have there been considerations for the repercussions the garrison may face if this V were to escape or use their power in some way?”

“All preparations are being made now,” said the garrison commander. “Once you bring the alpha here, they will not be able to get out, nor will they be able to infect anyone else.”

I looked to Amethyst, knowing she wanted to protest. I bit my lip and shook my head, reminding her to follow protocol. It wasn’t our job to question what they were asking us to do.

Besides, they wouldn’t be the ones in the field with us.

If push came to shove, we would shove.

And this alpha V would not end up on the right side of death if we shoved.

.4.

Amethyst and I said nothing while Orange and the garrison commander went over the rest of the plans. And even though I could tell we both felt the urge to speak up at times, we knew this wasn’t the place.

We would just have to see how it played out.

After the briefing finished, our small group was led to a room off the armory to find our bags already packed. Our wrist guards were hanging from the wall using magnetic strips, telepath bands arranged around them. Everything had been polished and charged, ready for the field. Next to my backpack was an Eastern Province tablet, along with my headgear.

“Looks like they gave us enough MREs to last a week,” I said as I searched through my pack, double checking that everything was there.

“There you go again with the MREs,” Amethyst joked.

“I feel like everyone here judges me for my dedication to the craft.”

“What craft is that?” Margo asked as she put on her pack. Rather than clasp it shut herself, she used her power to sliver the clasps across her waist, where one buckled under her breasts, the top staying loose.

“The craft—no, art—of making these things actually edible,” I said.

Orange smirked. “They aren’t so bad. It’s better than eating nothing.”

“Anything is better than eating nothing,” Amethyst reminded him.

“Although the beefsteak one has always been hard for me to get down,” Orange continued.

“That’s because you’re doing it wrong,” I told him.

The dark-haired man had his backpack on now and was adjusting everything, looking slim and fit in his uniform as usual. Once suited up, we were pretty much indistinguishable from the other soldiers in the garrison, aside from an emblem on our right shoulders that let people know we were members of the Protectorate.

And as I put my own backpack on and then went for my two wrist guards, I couldn’t help but wonder what my family would have thought had they known what I’d become. And where could they be? If not at my childhood home, where had they moved? Were they still alive?

Since being handed over to the State, I had been prevented from reaching out to them. There’d been a couple of times I’d attempted to mentally connect with them, but those channels of communication were not open for me.

“Shouldn’t Chipper be here by now?” Amethyst asked.

“Ames!”

Chipper Green stepped into the room already suited up—no backpack, though. We had grown up with Chipper, since the big man had joined our group when I was fifteen or so. He had a very unique power, one that was in high demand not only in our field, but also in some of the Western Province government’s mining operations.

The jovial, bearded man gave Amethyst a big hug and patted her backpack hard enough to make her wince. His bald head was shiny, with a wrinkle under his crown that looked like it connected to the back of his ears. He’d been bald since childhood, a condition that apparently came with his power.

“There he is!” Chipper pulled me in for a hug, slapping his hand across my backpack as well.

He wasn’t as cordial with Orange, simply telling him hello. And for Margo, he went in for a fist bump.

“Nice to see all of you. Are you ready to do this?” he asked.

“Only if you are,” Margo said, a crooked smile coming across her face.

“Blowing vampires out of the sewer? That’s the kind of stuff I do before breakfast,” he said with a cheery laugh. “Maybe not breakfast, but definitely lunch.”

“Remember, we have a very specific area we need to hit,” Orange said, referring to the schematic we had looked at during our briefing. “From that point forward, it’s showtime. We’ve been given full clearance to demo as much as necessary to take them out, but we have to remember not to disturb the sewer lines. That shouldn’t be very hard, but…” Orange smiled at all of us. “All of you know how we fight when the gloves are off.”

“Then let’s bloody get on with it!” Chipper said.

Orange turned to the entrance of the room, the four of us following in line behind him.

We went to a quarantined section of the garrison, where we found two exemplars standing by the door and a teleporter waiting for us inside. A woman scanned all of us with her headgear and, once she was done, gave us the go-ahead to step up to the male teleporter.

Safety and precaution now officially handled, the teleporter told all of us to come a little bit closer to him.

“How close?” Amethyst asked.

“Closer.”

The shift in gravity caught me off guard; it was like stepping off a cliff. I felt the rise in my stomach, and I almost activated my power just as we appeared on the rooftop from last night.

Back to the infected district.

“That is some teleportation skill, mate!” Chipper told the man.

“I apologize. I thought they had warned you that my power can be a little unsettling at first,” the man said before falling away.

At least that was what it looked like to me.

To leave, the teleporter tipped himself forward, falling toward the surface beneath our feet and disappearing before he reached it.

“I did not like that,” Amethyst said.

“You’ll be fine, Ames.” Chipper placed both hands on his waist and took in a deep breath. “So this is what Ravja looks like before noon, eh? Is it always this gray and depressing?”

“It is,” Amethyst said as she removed her backpack.

“Agreed,” I said.

“We’re keeping our stuff up here, right?” Amethyst asked Orange.

“That’s fine for now,” he said. “Worst-case scenario, we have a teleporter do an airdrop. But regardless of what happens down there, we should all have a plan to get back up here. I appreciate your assistance in advance,” he said, nodding at Margo.

“All right, then let’s do this,” I said, removing my bag as well.

My protrusions began to press out of my skin, hardening and tearing through my specially designed suit. I made sure the bones didn’t disrupt my wrist guards, instead actually stretching over the weapons to create a protective barrier. I would use my left hand as an energy blade, my right for the blaster.

“Fine, fine.” Amethyst loosened her wrist guards and took a swig from her flask.

Her transformation began to take shape, the woman I loved growing a few inches taller as her shoulders moved back, muscles bulged down her arms, and her claws sharpened while horns grew out of her head and her eyes reddened.

She took a deep breath in, shaking her claws out, her barbed tail pressing out the back of her uniform.

“Beautiful,” Chipper said. “Now there’s the Amethyst I know and love!” He clapped his big hands together. “Margo, stop leaving me in suspense. Give me a goddamn target to explode!”

Orange, Margo, and Chipper made their way over to the side of the rooftop, Orange again pointing out the location where they were going to drop the heavy ordinance.

“I’ll need to get in closer, but that shouldn’t be very hard.” Margo cast her hand at the side of the roof. It began to stretch, forming a circular platform as it pulled away from the building.

She walked out onto the platform, Orange next to her.

Once they were secure, the two lowered from the building, Chipper now rubbing his hands together as I’d seen him do countless times before.

“It’s going to be a big explosion,” he said, and his body started to blur as he vibrated. “A big… big…”

Soon he was airborne, the big man still rubbing his hands together, his form starting to spin and fire lifting off him.

I moved to the edge of the rooftop with Amethyst by my side, both of us watching Margo and Orange lower closer to the streets below.

Margo’s ability to animate inanimate objects definitely had range, and it had a lasting effect as well, considering the rooftop she had turned into a protective barrier last night that still looked the same today. But she did need to be a little bit closer to what she was doing, which was why Orange and Margo now hovered over the street, a few Vs already coming out to meet them.

I’m on it, I thought aloud.

Thanks, Orange thought back.

I returned to my pack and got out my long-range energy weapon, hooking the pieces together and quickly pushing the battery into the back.

I got into position, looking down the scope and bringing the reticle to my first target. A quick breath out, and the V hit the ground.

“Nice,” Amethyst said, ignoring the fact that Chipper was a spinning ball of energy above us, nearly at full throttle.

Margo started to swirl a hole in the street, a cesspool of sorts that opened to the infested sewers below.

“Damn,” I said as I brought my scope over the hole Margo had created.

Hundreds of Vs screeched and gnashed their teeth as they tried to crawl up the rotating walls, some of them getting caught up in Margo’s work, others jumping free.

This needed to happen soon.

There was bound to be a full-cog exemplar or two who had a long-range power.

But our team was fast, and Margo had her blast-zone created in a matter of moments, just as I picked off a vampire crawling onto a building across from Margo and Orange.

“Nice,” Ames said as Margo raised the platform she had created back to our rooftop.

I started to put away my weapon almost immediately.

I could hear a whistling in the air now, more energy forming around Chipper, who was twirling in the sky, energy crackling around his form. Amethyst was already shielding her face with her hand.

“Clear,” Margo said as she stepped back onto the rooftop, Orange beside her.

Like a comet fired by a slingshot, Chipper blasted up and down to the hole Margo had created.

He slammed into it so hard the rooftop vibrated. The explosion didn’t quite reach us, but the aftermath did, a huge cloud of dust and debris, minced vampire guts making it all the way up to our location.

Moments later and Chipper was standing behind us, black smudges all over his face and body, that same wild look in his eyes, his skin and bald head shiny pink.

“Your turn,” he said, giving all of us the thumbs up. “Go fuck shit up!”

.5.

It was indeed our turn.

With another swig of her flask, Amethyst hurled herself over the rooftop, where she drove her claws into the building across from us and then cascaded her way down to the vampires in the streets below.

“Are you coming with us?” Margo asked, the rooftop beneath her starting to form another platform.

“Sure. Jumping off a roof is more Amethyst’s thing,” I said, joining them.

Margo’s platform grew in size as ash started to rain down from the sky. We descended into the falling ash, the sound of snarls and yelps all around us.

A vampire lunged toward the platform, and Margo speared her with a sharpened hunk of steel. Orange now wore his headgear, as did I, which would allow us to see better once we reached the main fight.

Everything was green, eerie, chaos imminent.

I leaped off the platform and landed on a V, driving my energy blade into the back of its head. A hissing sound met my ears as its brain was punctured. I jabbed it in the back to make sure it was dead and moved on, catching my next target running toward me.

The armless monster didn’t stand a chance.

I brought my blade into its chest just as it tried to sink its teeth into my neck, its face shattered by a fist-shaped bone cluster moving off my shoulder.

Two Vs approached to my left and down they went, their chests exploding.

Orange.

Our CO was a force to be reckoned with in this kind of fight, but he still had backup in the form of Margo, who was still on her platform, using building materials to cut the creatures down, with a crazed yet calculated look in her eyes.

Another came at me, his flesh on fire and his face half gnawed off, scratch marks all across his naked body. I brought my elbow back, and a bone blade grew from its tip to catch the creature under its chin. The rail-thin V did his best to lay a swipe on me.

I parried its attack and sank my energy blade into its chest, the monster squealing and gnashing its teeth as it died.

A few more burst out of a doorway that opened up onto the street.

I fired several shots at the snarling fucks. One of the blasts took out a bigger V, but the other three managed to skirt around him, making a beeline toward me.

Amethyst charged into the group and knocked them all to the side. Her claws met the first one that approached, the love of my life ripping its head off and impaling the bloodsucker with her barbed tail.

She cut through another’s neck with her tail, tossing it to the side while she focused on the third. I finished off the second one for Amethyst, just as she drove her energy blade into another V’s chest.

Fuck, if she wasn’t in her element.

I knew her transformation was bad for her in the long run, and we both were well aware that if she wasn’t careful, it could overwhelm her. But seeing her this way, so fierce, muscled, the epitome of killer instinct, a true huntress—it was a part of her I would never forget, no matter what came after this.

It was awe-inspiring.

She bellowed as more Vs charged at us, these ones partially on fire and speeding on all fours as if they were animals.

Amethyst dove into them, ravaging the creatures as I picked up any that made it through her claws and barbed tail.

A tall V came at me from behind, leaping onto my back, half its face on fire. My body’s natural response was to grow my spikes, shredding its body. It was still attached, though, and I had to run it backward into a wall to get the fucking thing off me.

One energy blade to the chest finished this guy off, but another one lunged at me just as I was about to move on, trying to bite into my leg. I aimed my wrist guard at this one’s open mouth and fired a shot, a bloody mist filling the air.

Another down, more to go.

More spilled onto the streets, accompanied by fire and thick clouds of black smoke.

It was almost as if someone had tried to create an army of flaming zombie-like bloodsuckers. Vs were everywhere, and even more charged at us as the dust cleared.

Margo and Orange handled the ones coming in from the north while Amethyst and I took the ones coming from the south, all of us keeping our eyes on our threes and nines for lurkers.

Fucking lurkers.

It had been a while since a V actually scared me, but the lurkers could come out of nowhere, and they were usually small, mostly children or frail older people.

Fuck, did they put up a fight.

A redheaded lurker tried to ambush me, but I swept my arm to the side, a scythe-like bone forming almost instantly on my forearm.

I cut the lurker in half and drove the blade into its chest, twisting it to make sure it was dead.

I took one look at the V’s face and grimaced. A boy, no older than eleven. Dammit. About the same age I’d been when I was given to the State.

But at least I was part of the Protectorate now—at least there was a purpose to my life, even if that purpose was to kill endlessly in an effort to keep numbers down.

“Ames!” I cried out, a millisecond too late.

A heavyset V smashed into Amethyst, the two tumbling into a pile of rubbish. Amethyst knifed him in the chest multiple times once she got the upper hand. A lurker tried to take a jump for her, but her barbed tail knocked the small woman out of the air, letting me finish the job using my bone blade.

Spinning around, I got another one with a blast from my wrist guard, the grizzled man flying backward and into another charging vampire. A burst of wind cut me down; an exemplar V had hit the scene, this one a full-cog by the way it was concentrating its attacks on us, barking to the others—commanding them.

“Alpha!” I shouted, catching Orange’s and Margo’s attention.

A sweeping gust flipped Margo into Orange and both of them spilled into a crater on the ground, a pair of Vs immediately jumping on top of them.

“Confirm, alpha!” Amethyst cried, cutting into a V’s throat with her barbed tail, then lifting and flipping the creature over so she could drive her energy blade into its chest.

Amethyst took off toward the alpha, only to be tossed sideways by a whirlwind of force as vampires piled on the beast morpher.

I dove for Amethyst, my muscles shifting as my bones thickened and grew more daggered, turning me into a bulky porcupine by the time I reached her. I threw myself onto the pile, rolling right immediately and pulling some of the Vs with me as I rolled.

Amethyst scurried out and doubled back around.

She began blasting and energy-blading her way through the stack as I took care of the few I’d picked off the pile.

It was mayhem, a bloody mess obscured by ash and accented by flames.

But we kept at it, and in the end we managed to cut through what felt like two dozen Vs before finally joining the main fight with the possible alpha.

More wind swelled around Orange as a few smaller Vs charged forward, the damn lurkers, which Margo stopped by bringing spikes up into their bodies and holding them in place as the asphalt spread through them, splitting the kids in two.

The wind-controlling alpha V’s chest exploded. I looked right to see Orange reaching out at him, his fingers curled, a look of utter focus on his face.

“Got him!” I told Amethyst, who ducked just in time for me to blast a V coming right at her.

We didn’t normally resort to these types of theatrics, but we’d fought together so many times that our actions sometimes felt choreographed, both of us trusting one another more than we trusted anyone else.

And in that brief second, I grinned at her, both of us covered in blood and nicks, the Vs starting to…

Run away?

“Try to pick them off!” Orange shouted, a platform lifting under him to propel him toward more of the fleeing Vs.

We’d never seen them run before. Normally, the mindless fuckers just attacked until we killed them.

Yet here they were, all fleeing, the four of us trying to catch up as best we could.

Amethyst and I were just about to switch from energy weapons to hauling ass after them when Orange stopped us.

“Something isn’t right,” he said, breathing heavy now, his black hair a mess.

Margo, who stood near him with one of her fists wrapped in concrete, looked to Orange and nodded.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I think… I’ve never seen them run before. You?”

“No.”

“No,” said Amethyst.

Margo shook her head. “Never.”

“Something bigger is at play here. And that guy,” Orange said, pointing toward the wind user with his chest blown out, “is not their alpha.”

“Then what? Why are they acting like a hive?” Amethyst asked as her shoulders heaved up and down. I was glad in that moment that the Vs were gone; I didn’t want her to overexert herself.

“I don’t know, but we took out a good number of them,” Orange said. “So they’re either going to regroup, or they’re trying to lead us back to their alpha.”

“Then let’s go,” Amethyst said, her red eyes narrowing on Orange.

“It’d be better to regroup,” Orange said. “Let’s tag the ones we have and then get to higher ground for a moment. We can have command do an air sweep and possibly another drop.”

Amethyst huffed, turning away. She kicked at a Vs body, then took a step back and stomped the creature’s face, the sound of crunching bones meeting my ears.

She stopped protesting once she realized everyone was watching her. With a disgruntled exhale, the love of my life lifted the body and took it over to another body, then returned for another, which she stacked next to the first two.

“What?” she growled at me. “You heard the man—start stacking and tagging.”

.6.

“And?” Orange asked over to me.

After helping Amethyst for a spell, I finally made my way over to the exemplar who had attacked us. He was a bloody mess, the puncture hole in his chest nearly as big as my foot.

[Scott Red]

[Age: 37 M]

[Hometown: Chalmer]

[Status: Exemplar III, C, wind manipulation]

[Time since infection (estimate): eight days]

“Wind user, actually ranked as a three,” I told Orange as I grabbed the body. I dragged him over to the stack Amethyst had started, ready to be done with this part of my duty. The fighting was always exhilarating, the cleanup equally sobering.

“Where is he from?” Amethyst tossed an older woman onto the stack.

“Chalmer.”

“Figures.”

I tried not to watch Margo go about her work.

I’d seen her animate a dead body to help her out before, and it was always unsettling. What kept me on edge even more was the sense that someone was about to jump out, a feeling that triggered me every time I saw the dead man grabbing another body and putting it on a different stack.

She had another one working somewhere else, on the other side of the blast site, as Margo quietly directed the ground before her to create chimneys of sorts to contain the dead Vs.

I caught Margo’s eyes for a moment, one green and one blue. Then I looked away, watching as Orange went about it manually like the rest of us did. While he was the commanding officer, we were all the same in the end. The Protectorate, those tasked with destroying the place and tidying up afterward.

A joke.

“Chipper should have stayed around to help,” Amethyst said with her usual snarl. She was still in her beast form—easier to move bodies that way—but I could tell she was starting to wind down.

Luckily, time was flying; it had already shifted into late afternoon, and we’d be done soon if we kept up this pace.

I continued stacking, tagging each one, hardly remembering their names as they flashed across my pane of vision projected directly in front of me.

[Willow Onyx]

[Age: 21 F]

[Hometown: Moneeyaj]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): two days]

“A fresh one,” I said as I dropped the body.

[Indigo Onsen]

[Age: 22 F]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): eighteen days]

“Not looking so good,” I told the woman.

It was a feat that she had lasted this long, especially with the arm she was missing and the rotten wound on the left side of her face. Non-cogs were non-cogs for a reason; they usually became mindless at some point, many eating their own flesh or attacking each other, all usually dead before thirty days or so.

There had been a few that had lasted much longer, and there was really no telling with a full-cog how long they would go, let alone an alpha.

[Christopher Blue]

[Age: 59 M]

[Hometown: Oblerage]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): two days]

“This guy is from Oblerage,” I told Amethyst.

She dropped her body and came over to look at mine. “Have you ever seen a guy from there?” she asked loud enough so Orange could hear.

“I haven’t,” I said.

“Nope,” Orange said as he set a child’s body down.

“Same,” said Margo, still focused on controlling the minions working for her.

“I think his nose looks different than ours,” Amethyst said. “Don’t you think?”

“All noses look different,” I told her. “Everyone has a different size.”

“No, but there’s something different,” she said. “It’s hooked in a way. Do you know what their natural skin color is?”

“People from Oblerage are usually darker skinned,” said Orange. “But his skin is almost blue.”

“He’s a non-exemplar,” I told them, “at least according to this.” I tapped on my head unit and got back to it, hauling more bodies and ignoring Margo’s zombies.

It was grueling work, but after several more hours, we finished cleaning up the area. We lit the stacks, and Margo took us back up to the high rooftop we’d started from.

“Everyone rest and I’ll see to dinner,” I told them. “And before you rest, toss me your beefsteak packets.”

“With pleasure,” Ames said, going for her backpack. She was back to her normal self now, a bit haggard after her transformation.

After they gave me their MREs, I peeled off the tops and added the water, as per the instructions. Once I placed the tops back on, everything started to cook inside, the small packets instantly warming. I knew the stuff was salty, so I drained it once it finished, then asked them for their bread rolls.

“Bread rolls?” Margo asked.

“It comes with the potato soup MRE,” I told her.

“An expert as always,” Amethyst said after she located the MRE in question. Once I had their bread rolls, I made each of them a sandwich with the beefsteak in the middle. I used the weird pasta that came with the beefsteak as a topping.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like this,” Orange said, giving my concoction a skeptical eye.

“Perfection isn’t always beautiful.” My face began to morph as I grew a pair of bone horns, not unlike Amethyst’s. “See what I mean here?”

“Don’t make me get my flask,” she said.

“That would be something to see,” Margo commented as she examined her food. “The two of you butting heads.”

“He knows I would win,” said Amethyst as she took a bite. Her eyes lit up almost instantly. “This is amazing, Destry!”

“What can I say? You don’t go to chef school for ten years and not come out a gourmet chef.”

Amethyst laughed. “You mean culinary school? They don’t call it chef school.”

I took a bite of my sandwich.

“Well, they should.”

“And you didn’t go to chef school.”

“I don’t know about you, but I spent most of my nights at Training House working on my recipes.”

Amethyst snorted. “What-the-fuck-ever…”

“I’m going to take your word for this.” Orange took a bite of his sandwich.

“Well?” I asked him, my mouth full.

He chewed, nodding for a moment with a surprised look on his face. There was some smoke behind him coming up from the streets, but it seemed far away in that moment, like we were just some friends having a rooftop meal. “Destry, I have to admit…”

“Yes?”

“This isn’t half bad.”

“See?” I told Amethyst, even as Margo laughed at the look on my face.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” the love of my life started to say.

“It’s better than it would have tasted as plain beefsteak,” I told Orange.

“Yes, it is.”

Margo nibbled at hers; I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or not, but she finished more than I had expected.

She played with what was left of her food, marching a piece of bread over to a pigeon that had landed on the other side of the rooftop.

The piece of bread approached it slowly, the pigeon startled at first and then going for the morsel once it realized it was an easy meal.

It had started to flap its wings in an effort to fly away when Margo stopped it. The pigeon looked left and right in a panic as its wings lowered, pressing back into its body.

“Careful,” Orange said, placing his sandwich down.

“It’s hard to control,” Margo said, focused on the pigeon, “but it’s something I would like to eventually master. This, and one other thing.”

Amethyst and I exchanged glances.

We knew what that other thing was, and it was one of the more frightening parts of Margo’s power, much scarier than her animating the dead.

Margo had the ability to take over an object and partially transfer her consciousness to it. She hadn’t experimented with it as much as she would have liked, mostly because our teachers, and then later our superiors, had thought it was too risky.

“Hey, how about we let the pigeon go and finish getting set up for the night,” I said, wiping my hands together. I was still hungry, so I went for another MRE, this one some type of garlic-y meatloaf with tomato dressing.

There were ways to modify it, but I didn’t bother this time around. I was more interested in watching Margo control the pigeon. The bird lifted one wing and then the other, pausing its head and twitching frantically as it tried to figure out what was happening.

“It’s not worth it,” Orange told her as he finished up, going straight to his backpack. He brought out his tablet and connected his headgear to it, loading up all the bodies he attacked.

Rather than watch Margo play with the poor bird, Amethyst took my headgear and went to our tablet to load up the details.

Margo walked over to the pigeon, looking down as it is it fluttered its feathers. She lifted it and tossed it into the air, giving it its own power back, and the pigeon immediately flew away.

“How many?” I asked Amethyst as I ate the meatloaf.

“We tagged eighty-three in one go, a new record.”

“We’re in the nineties,” said Orange as Margo brought her headgear over to him.

“Damn,” I said as I looked up at the gray clouds, noticing the sun had started to peek through them.

Once Orange was done messing with his gear, he stood, pacing back and forth like he did when he was receiving telepathically transmitted commands.

“Any good news?” Amethyst asked. “Are we going back to Turnstone?”

“Hardly. We’re here for the night; they want us to continue cleanup as soon as the sun comes up.”

“Why won’t they just teleport us?” Amethyst asked.

“That’s not the order we’ve been given,” said Orange.

While I agreed with Amethyst, considering how easy it would be to have a teleporter pick us up and take us to a place where we could sleep in actual beds, I knew Orange wasn’t about to question the chain of command.

There might have been a time when he was younger and a bit rebellious, but he was all business now.

Since we were sleeping on a rooftop in a heavily infested area, we would be taking turns keeping watch. Luckily for us, Margo didn’t sleep very much, so she volunteered for the latest shift.

I got assigned the first shift, meaning I would actually get a semi-full night’s sleep.

As soon as I was done gorging myself on MREs, I pulled out my small cot and fashioned my bag into a pillow.

I wished Amethyst and I could have a moment alone, but I knew that until we were sent out on patrol again, or until we were back in the capital, there wouldn’t be time for anything like that.

Too bad.

With my bed ready to go, I took my shift, letting the others know they could rest as much as they wanted. Orange lay down, Amethyst as well, while Margo lifted a chair out of the rooftop material.

“Would you like one too?” she asked.

“Sure,” I told her.

And, oddly enough, that was the only dialogue Margo and I had for the next five hours as the sun set. At some point I heard Amethyst snoring lightly, which made me smile.

It was cute, really, especially for someone as beautiful as her to have such a funny, normal human tendency.

Real cute.

I was just about to wake Orange for his shift when Margo stood, her eyes focusing on a darkened corner of the rooftop. We had a lamp now, a glowing halogen of sorts, but it wasn’t enough to see anything at a very far distance.

“Destry, get ready.”

My bone armor immediately took shape, bulky spikes growing out of my arms and shoulders.

Margo started to raise the corners of the rooftop even higher, so it would be harder to leap onto it.

This did little to stop the incredible force that tore through her barrier, or the ape-like creature with a terrible maw and bluish gray skin that appeared.

I ran to greet him with a tackle, bringing the creature down only to be kicked off, flying into a portion of Margo’s barriers. Amethyst was already up and going for her flask while Orange crouched, adjusting to the darkness after placing his headgear on so he could see.

The monster bellowed as some of Margo’s building materials came to meet him. He swiped them out of the way, charging at her, only to be brought to his knees, the rooftop swallowing him up until all that was left was his face, the terrible man staring up at Margo with hatred in his eyes.

Amethyst lowered her flask.

“Let’s tag it,” I started to say, aiming my wrist guard at its face.

“No,” the monster growled.

I nearly stumbled backward; I’d never actually heard one of them respond to us before.

“Margo, finish the job,” Orange started to say.

“No,” the man said again. “I will take you to him.”

“Pause,” Orange told Margo. “Take us to whom?” he asked the creature, crouching before it.

“The one true alpha,” the man said, his jaw twitching as a wild look came across his face.

“That’s not how this is going to work,” Orange started to say.

Margo’s protective barriers gave way as dozens upon dozens of Vs scrambled onto the rooftop.

I started swinging almost immediately, Amethyst taking a swig from her flask and crying out as her transformation took shape.

“Stop!” the towering man shouted—and, rather than attack us, all the Vs paused, swaying and hissing. We were completely surrounded now. “If you do not come with us, we will kill you all.”

I saw Orange’s throat quiver for just a moment as he regained control. I knew he was already sending messages to command, and that we could have backup in a matter of moments. I also knew the ape-like vampire’s threat didn’t scare Orange for shit, considering he could explode the thing’s chest in a matter of seconds.

But Orange was clearly curious as to where this would lead.

“Sure,” he finally said. “Let us equip our gear, and we will come with you. Until then, you will stay right where you are.”

“Deal,” the bluish-gray vampire said, a sinister grin on his face.

Part Five: Psychological Warfare

.1.

(Ten years ago.)

“Don’t heal him!” Headmaster Malus bellowed.

Caldon, the gray-skinned man with webbed hands, nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“I can’t…” I whimpered. “Headmaster, I can’t…”

“You can, Destry. You must!”

I looked up at the headmaster, my vision blurry as bones pressed out of my face, my shoulders, arms, knuckles, ribs—anything and everything from the waist up a jagged protrusion. I was on my knees, a puddle of blood around my body, with more blood dripping off the spiked bones pressing out of my skin.

“I don’t know how…”

“This is your ability, Destry,” he said, dropping in front of me, strands of his white hair falling into his face. “You must be able to recover from it. It is time to take your unique power to the next level. Everything we have discussed comes together now. Do it.”

“I…”

My control over my power had grown considerably in the two years I had been at the Training House. It wasn’t the only thing that had grown. Our numbers had multiplied, we had moved to a new estate with several stories, and we had become the interest of politicians and more military officials than I could fathom at the time.

The Protectorate was alive and well.

Yet even with our newfound notoriety, I still had the problem that had plagued me since the discovery of my powers: I couldn’t keep losing so much blood.

My ability to animate my own skeleton, grow it considerably, and turn it into a weapon or a shield came coupled with a massive amount of blood loss.

I had to learn to control my own life force.

“Are you paying attention to me?” Headmaster Malus grabbed one of the spikes jutting out of the back of my head and shoved my face into the puddle of blood on the floor. “One way or another, you’re going to get this blood back in your system.”

“Please, Headmaster,” Caldon started to say.

“We have given him plenty of time to figure out how to use his power. We know from research that others with similar abilities are able to heal themselves much faster than he has been exhibiting. Let me handle this part of the training!” the headmaster said, glaring up at the gray-skinned healer. “Sometimes, the only answer is force.”

“I…”

“More bones,” the headmaster told me so only I could hear him now. “I don’t care if it kills you, Destry. I want you to press more bones out of your body. Now,” he hissed, using the protrusion he had grabbed to push my face even further into the puddle of blood.

“Yes… Headmaster,” I said, speaking into my own life force, my lips wet, the wind from my words causing bubbles.

The pain would make me pass out.

It had happened before, and it would happen now. Once I passed out, some of my bones would grow back into my body; others would stay like they were until I regained consciousness and fixed them, which would create yet another issue with pain and blood management.

I grew delirious in that moment.

What a sweet rest it would be to pass out. What a sweet rest it would be to get away from the headmaster’s madness, his extreme training techniques.

My hatred for him boiled within. I wanted his hand off my head; I wanted to send one of my bone spikes right through his throat.

But I knew better than to disobey his orders.

I’d seen what he could do with his abilities, and I knew trying to fight back would only lead to more pain and potential death.

Others had died; a few of the new ones who had come a year ago couldn’t take it. They were no longer with us, yet the original five still remained: Amethyst, Margo, Orange, Cedric and me.

“You can do it, Destry,” Headmaster Malus whispered. “You have to do it.”

Fighting through the pain, and ignoring the fact that the front of my face was now smeared with blood, I focused on my own life force.

One thing that had changed over the last two years was the time it took for me to heal.

Whereas before, a healer, usually Caldon, had to help after I used my ability, I was now able to do it on my own, over the course of the night and through a bit of a struggle, usually less than twenty-four hours.

And no matter what I pressed out of my skin, it would heal up completely, no sign whatsoever that I had used my ability.

This was why the headmaster believed I could prevent myself from passing out due to my power, or from going down early in a fight. It was all about control. He believed I could heal just as quickly as I drew my weapons—that if I synchronized it, I’d be able to fix myself at a speed that would make me much more formidable in the long run.

To do so, I had to have control over my own blood, as much as I apparently had over my bones and my skin. And if I had control over my skin, he reasoned, I could eventually get control over my organs…

Something clicked inside me.

As I pressed more bone spikes out of my back, my flesh tearing, I subconsciously reached forward to mentally retain my blood.

“What’s this?” the headmaster asked, looking down at my shirt as the protrusions pressed out, no blood spillage as there normally would have been. “You are doing it,” he said with a gasp, letting me up. “You’re doing it!”

My eyes closed, blood still dripping off my face, and I started to return more of my protrusions back into my body. Something felt different this time; not only did I have control of the bone, which felt heavy and cumbersome, I also had control of something light, something liquid.

“Heal him,” he told Caldon.

“Right away, Headmaster,” the healer said as he came to me, hovering his hands over my body.

I began to feel stronger.

Even though there was still an incredible amount of blood on the floor, I soon had enough strength to bring myself back to my feet, all my wounds completely vanished.

“I want you to try again, just using your knuckles,” Headmaster Malus told me, a sense of awe in his voice. “You’ve already proven to me that you can do it, so do it again.”

“Yes, Headmaster.”

Looking down at my knuckles, I sent my bones forward, gray protrusions tearing out of my flesh.

Blood this time.

“No, no,” he said, growing agitated. “You can do it. You showed me that you can do it. Now do it!”

“Yes, Headmaster,” I said as I returned the bones to my knuckles, looking at the wounds they left behind.

Caldon came forward and I stopped him, watching the flesh heal up on its own, the last bit of blood seeping back into my skin.

“Okay, that’s it,” said the Headmaster. “Now do it as you push the blades out,” he said, wiping his white hair out of his face. “You’re almost there.”

I looked at my hand and shot the bone blades out again, this time noticing their weight, sensing a tingling sensation around them as blood began to take shape.

Blood which I absorbed.

“That’s exactly how this works,” the headmaster said, clapping his hands together. “I knew it, Destry! You have to be cognizant of your power. Eventually…” He came to me and pressed his finger to my chest, right over my heart. “Your heart, your lungs,” he said, dropping his finger to my rib cage. “Every organ inside your body… You will be able to control everything. But for now, heal up, get dressed, and join the others for supper. You have done it, finally.”

“Yes, Headmaster,” I said, bowing my head at him.

.2.

I waited until Orange was asleep to slip out of my bed.

I stepped into my shoes as quietly as possible, the pair in a perfect location to make this transition incredibly smooth. I was already in normal clothing, the type of stuff someone would wear outside on a breezy summer night, which I had kept under my blanket, going to sleep with my shirt off and shuffling into it once Orange dozed off.

Once I reached the door, I dropped my hand on the handle and opened it as quietly as possible, wincing when it squeaked.

I paused, looking over my shoulder at Orange, hoping it hadn’t disturbed his slumber.

Even after I was in the clear, I still waited another few moments just to be sure.

Good, I thought as I stepped into the hallway, where I made my way to the stairwell at the end of the corridor. One flight up and I was on Amethyst’s floor.

I stopped in front of her door and flicked her door handle twice. After I’d made the signal, I stepped aside and waited.

I heard movement down the hallway, my heart skipping a beat. Even if the headmaster believed I would eventually be able to control my organs, I still didn’t see that as a possibility, not yet anyway.

But I decided to give it a try as I waited for Amethyst, narrowing my focus on that thing inside my chest that kept my blood pumping.

I had to stop breathing to actually feel my heartbeat, but once I felt it, I was able to speed up the rate at which it thumped, and slow it down too. Speeding it up made me feel anxious, while slowing it left me feeling lightheaded.

Weird.

I stopped playing with my heart as soon as the door opened and Amethyst slipped out of the room she shared with Margo.

Two years had passed since I’d met her, and in that time, she had started to develop. The future love of my life still held herself like a child, loose, oblivious to her body parts. But as with all people, exemplar and non-exemplar alike, there had been some noticeable changes as she’d progressed through puberty, from her chest to the way her hips had grown.

I wasn’t really one to judge.

I had grown taller and more muscular over the last two years, at odds with the boy who had first shown up at the program. I used to be relatively thin; now I was stocky, my features slowly chiseling as I grew into the body I would have as a young man.

The changes had been gradual enough that I couldn’t actually document them, but I did notice a difference when I grew out of my clothing, or when my hand brushed against my stomach and I felt my abs.

Things like that.

“What are you doing?” Amethyst asked as she took my hand, leading me back to the stairs.

“I was playing with my heart,” I whispered to her.

She rolled her eyes at me. There was a smattering of zits on her forehead, which she’d clearly tried to cover up with some type of powdery concealer. “Is that supposed to be romantic?”

“I didn’t mean it to be romantic,” I told her as we reached the stairs and began our descent. Amethyst wore a black shirt with a hood on it and the same black stretchy pants she wore when we trained.

“You were supposed to dress in all black,” she reminded me. “Not light gray.”

“Everything was dirty,” I said as we came to the bottom floor, both of us crouching next to the entrance to a long hallway.

“No one will see us,” I told her, “just like last time.”

“Maybe. But we still have to be careful, and we may have to find another way in.”

“I’m ready to accept that challenge.”

We made it down the hallway and past the kitchen, where we heard some activity. The staff was getting ready for tomorrow’s breakfast, preparing bread and cutting fruit.

I licked my lips.

“You aren’t supposed to be thinking about food right now,” Amethyst hissed, elbowing me.

“Sorry,” I told her as we slipped into a circular room, the exit on the left. We made it to the door and Amethyst quietly opened it, allowing me to go out first.

I started sprinting toward the gate, Amethyst following behind me.

She was fast, but not nearly as fast as she was in her beast mode.

I actually beat her to the gate this time, and I quietly celebrated this by lifting both fists in the air.

“Stop it,” she said with a smile.

“It’s the little victories that count,” I reminded her.

She covered her mouth as she laughed and eventually gave me a playful kick.

“Hey!” I whispered.

“Sorry, had to,” she said with a sweet smile.

It was dark out, but the gate still had an orange glow to it from a clever lighting device that had likely been developed in the Eastern Province, where all the good technology came from.

“Here,” I said as I crouched and cupped my hands together, doing my best not to cast any shadows.

I boosted Amethyst up, waiting for her to make it to the other side. Once she was on the ground, I jumped for the top of the gate and lifted myself over.

“Impressive,” she said sarcastically when I landed next to her with a loud thump!

“I try,” I told her. “Where to?”

“Anywhere—let’s just get away from here.”

Amethyst took my hand, and we started running down the street. We took a right once we made it to the end, heading toward the center of the city.

The Western Province had put a lot of money into our training and, because of this, they wanted our program to be as close to the seat of government as possible. We were only a few blocks away, and sometimes we would jog as a group around the capitol grounds, zigzagging across the giant square in front of the main government offices.

So I was definitely familiar with the place.

We headed down an even wider lane with manicured trees and statues on either side, embassies and government buildings lining the street.

The square was pretty lively, filled with people taking part in night activities. There were people seated on the ground in one area watching a drama about Centralian superheroes, others taking strolls or walking their pets, even a few riding bikes. There was a night market, a food court, and an area where lesser-ranked exemplars exhibited their powers.

“Let’s go there,” Amethyst said, nodding toward the exemplar stage.

“Whatever you want,” I said as she squeezed my hand. I felt a spark between us, something that always happened in the few moments we were allowed to be intimate.

“I’m so happy we slipped out.”

“You aren’t the only one. Today has been rough.”

“Every day is rough,” she said grimly.

“Some are worse than others.”

“At least we have each other.”

Neither of us knew what we actually had; I was a few months shy of fifteen, and Amethyst was almost thirteen. We had sort of just gravitated together, keeping our relationship a secret from the others.

It was an entirely innocent relationship.

We just hung out when we could, studied together and, if we were ever alone, hugged and held hands.

Sometimes Amethyst cried. When Amethyst cried, I also wanted to cry, but I never did. There was pain and there was suffering, and then there was having your bones tear out of your body, seeing a halo of blood around you, feeling yourself grow weak.

Feeling helpless.

That was the type of thing that made me want to cry.

And I didn’t know why Amethyst cried, but seeing her do so (and it had only been a few times) always affected me in some profound way.

I found myself stripped of our situation, an outsider looking in, the two of us sitting in the courtyard at night, keeping as quiet as possible. Or the two of us sharing a moment in the study hall, no one else around, Amethyst getting that look in her eyes.

I wasn’t even fifteen yet, so I didn’t know what love was at the time. But I knew of one certainty in this world, that I would die protecting her if I had to, and that she would die protecting me.

And that was enough.

We came across a man with his arms on fire, slowly dancing to the beautiful sound of a cello player. Non-exemplars sat around him, eating fried fruits and drinking wine, his flames reflecting off their eyes.

“I want some wine,” Amethyst said as she took a seat, patting the ground next to me.

I dropped down next to her, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulder as soon as I did. Amethyst pressed her head into the crook of my neck, allowing me to slide my head on top of hers.

“You don’t need wine,” I said.

“I didn’t say I needed it; I said I wanted it,” she said as both of us watched the flames lick off the man’s body.

“No. You know what that does to you.”

“Don’t worry,” Amethyst said as she looked at a man who sat next to her, a bottle resting in a basket at his side. “Mind if I have a sip of your wine, mister?” she asked him.

He gave her a funny look. “How old are you?”

“Trust me, I’m of age. I just look like this because, well, I’m an exemplar. My ability has kept me from aging.”

“Amethyst,” I said under my breath, grabbing her hand.

“Does it now?” the man asked.

“I promise,” she told him.

He laughed long and hard, elbowing the guy next to him and telling him what Amethyst had just said. This man laughed too, telling his buddy to offer her the wine.

“Fine, fine,” he said, “but don’t drink too much.”

“Thanks,” she said, bringing the bottle to her lips. She paused, giving me a playful look.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Just kidding,” Amethyst said, lowering the bottle. “I wouldn’t do that in public.”

“Why did you even ask him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know—I just felt like it was something a normal person would ask, someone at an event like this.” She pretended to wipe her mouth and handed the bottle back to the guy. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the man said, returning his attention to the fire dancer.

“What was the point of that?” I asked again.

I could tell by the way she ignored me that she didn’t like the tone I’d taken with her. I apologized, and once I did so Amethyst shrugged it off.

“Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to be normal?” she asked after a long spell of silence.

“We are normal; they are abnormal,” I told her, but even I couldn’t quite put conviction behind those words.

“Do you ever miss your family?”

“My dad is dead. My family members haven’t contacted me, and I can’t MM them.”

“Mental messaging is overrated. Have you thought about writing a letter?”

I laughed. “What good is a letter going to do?”

“You can tell them you have a nice girlfriend,” she said with a smirk.

“They wouldn’t care about something like that.”

“You never know. Especially if they met me. I can be very polite,” she said, letting me wrap my arm around her again.

“What about your parents?”

“Fuck them.”

Amethyst and I stayed in the square for another couple hours, just taking in the sights and sounds. Eventually, we turned back toward the Training House. As we walked up the narrow street that led to it, Amethyst grabbed my hand, forcing me to stop.

“What’s up?”

“We don’t have to go back, you know.”

“We’ve had this conversation before,” I started to tell her. A trolley passed on the other side of the street, kicking up noise and a bit of dust.

“They wouldn’t find us,” she said once it was gone.

“They would find us.”

“There are places in our country that we can go, and if we can make it to the border…”

“You know there’s a war on the border.”

“Destry, you’re not listening to me.”

“I am listening to you, Ames. You said we could make it to the border; I told you there’s a war on the border. Between the Northern and Southern Alliance. You already know this.”

“A different border—not the border with Centralia.”

“The desert? There’s no way we could get across it.”

“What if we prepared, brought as much supplies as we could…”

I placed both hands on her shoulders and looked at her for a moment. “Amethyst, as soon as we can get out of here without having them hunt us, we will do so. I don’t know when that time is, but I promise you, if it comes, I will be ready.”

“Okay.”

She hugged me, both of us standing in the street, the world crumbling around us. It was just us. Nothing else mattered in that brief moment in time.

Eventually, we made it back to our home and I boosted Amethyst over the wall, performing the same move I’d done a few hours earlier and flipping myself to the other side.

Amethyst slowly opened the main door and slipped inside, gesturing for me to follow her.

We passed the kitchen, made our way to the darkened hallways, and reached the stairs, both of us holding our breath as we came to Amethyst’s floor.

I hugged her once again, kissed her forehead.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” I told her as I let her go.

She slipped back into her room, and I’d just made it to the stairwell when her door swung open.

“She’s not in here,” Amethyst said, her face going white.

“Margo?”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Do you think she snuck out too?”

“No—I mean, maybe? I don’t know. But she doesn’t normally do stuff like that,” Amethyst said as I returned to her.

“Maybe she’s just out and about, you know, being Margo.”

Both of us heard a loud sound at the end of the hallway, toward the headmaster’s suite.

“We should just go back to our rooms,” I said hurriedly. “We don’t want to get caught.”

“We have to see what’s going on,” Amethyst replied, taking my hand.

“Are you sure?”

“Destry.”

“Okay.”

We tiptoed down the hallway, Ames in the lead.

A bubble formed in the wall, hissing outward, pieces of the building material melting to the ground.

“Get down,” I told Amethyst.

We both ducked as we stepped as far around the oozing bubble as we could, some of the light from inside the room pressing out to the darkened hallway.

We could see inside now, and what we saw had Amethyst gasping almost immediately, forcing me to place my hand around her mouth and pull her off to the side.

“Quiet,” I hissed.

“What the hell!?”

I couldn’t get the image out of my head either, and the only thing that stopped me from having the same reaction was saving Amethyst.

“Destry!”

“You have to be quiet,” I hissed, dragging her back to her room, instinctively protecting her.

We had both seen the headmaster doing something terrible to Margo, his hand around her neck, her eyes filled with terror, the room shaking.

We heard another bang. Amethyst and I stopped dead in her tracks.

“What do we do?” she whimpered. “He’s… he’s hurting her!”

“Training? Is it some type of training?” I shook my head. “I have to talk to Orange. I have to talk to Cedric.”

“But what do we do?”

I looked toward the end of the hallway, watching in horror as another bubble formed in the wall. “I really don’t know,” I finally told her. “But whatever we do, we’re going to need our friends. I…”

“Destry.”

“Go,” I told her, nodding to her door. “Before they see us.”

.3.

“I didn’t know you and Amethyst were sneaking out,” Orange said after I told him what I’d seen.

It was the next morning now, and both of us were getting ready to go to breakfast.

“We just wanted to get out for a little while.”

“And you came back and saw the headmaster doing something to Margo.”

“Yes, I swear it.”

“Okay.” Orange ran his hand through his dark hair. He was standing in front of me, shirtless, his disheveled hair making him look like he was sleepy even though he was wide awake.

“I’ve felt since my first or second day here that there was something going on,” I started to tell him.

He nodded. “I’ve had my suspicions as well. I’ve never gotten confirmation, and I’ve never seen anything like you saw.”

“The wall was like bubbling outward,” I explained, using my hands to show him what I meant, “because of the headmaster’s power. Or maybe Margo’s, I don’t know. Both can animate pretty much anything. All I know is that he was…”

“And what do you suppose we do?”

“That’s why I told you. I wanted to tell you and Cedric, to see what you two thought we should do. Maybe… maybe we can contact the government or something.”

“That wouldn’t get us very far.” Orange turned away from me, his fists clenched at his sides.

I felt something shift in the room, a change in oxygen perhaps. I had lived with Orange long enough to know when he was upset. I also knew that he was fiercely loyal, even if we’d gotten off to a rough start in the beginning.

“Then what?”

“I don’t think we’re ready…” Orange slipped into his shirt. Once he was dressed, he started pacing.

“Then what?” I asked again.

“Let’s talk to Cedric.”

When Cedric had first come to our program, the telepath had stayed in the same room as us, on the bed closest to the door. But he had nightmares, and when a telepath had nightmares, everyone suffered.

So they’d eventually moved him to a small room down the hallway, one that used to be a broom closet of sorts.

“Come on,” Orange told me once he reached the door.

I slipped out of bed and dressed as quickly as I could, joining him. We came to Cedric’s, and Orange knocked. After a short pause, the doorknob twisted, creaking open.

You may enter, Cedric thought to both of us.

There were other telepaths in our program now, and all of them aside from Cedric could actually speak. Even two years later, I still didn’t know if he could actually form words with his lips, or if he was only able to speak mentally.

“We have a problem,” Orange started to say.

Cedric was floating above his bed, his legs folded under him, his eyes black as the day he’d started here. They were always like that, a deformity that came with his transformation.

I see, he thought before Orange could finish. And both Amethyst and Destry saw this?

“That’s right,” I told him. “We were…”

Out and about. I understand. All of us want to escape at times. But now the question becomes something else. What do we do about it?

“That’s why we brought this information to you,” said Orange. “You already know what I’m thinking, but I know it’s suicide.”

Is it?

Cedric’s eyebrows furrowed. Over the course of the last two years, it had become clear that he did not agree with Headmaster Malus’s particular style of teaching. There had been several occurrences now where the headmaster had simply turned Cedric’s ability off, which was akin to clipping the young telepath’s wings.

I didn’t know what the Western Province government had up their sleeve when it came to exemplars, but I knew that Headmaster Malus was among the most powerful. Not only did he have the ability to animate inanimate objects, he could also nullify another exemplar’s power.

Long-distance, too.

It was a wonder they didn’t have him doing something on the border against the North and the South.

“We can’t do that,” Orange said after a long pause.

It was your idea, Cedric told him.

“I don’t even know how we would do it.”

It would take all five of us, Cedric said inside our heads.

“You can’t be serious,” I said. “We aren’t ready for something like that.”

You have been training for two years, Destry, and your peers are some of the most powerful exemplars in our country.

“You think?”

Cedric nodded, his black eyes settling on me.

“But how would we even do it?” Orange asked.

First, we will need to see if the other two agree.

“And then?”

Cedric looked at Orange. It took him a moment, but eventually Orange mumbled something under his breath.

“What was that?” I asked.

“It’s going to be a bit tricky, especially with Margo.”

“Why would it be hard for her?” I asked.

Because she loves the headmaster, Cedric thought to me.

“She does?” I made a disgusted sound. “Him?”

I know you have read some about the ancient tribes of our world, and you may remember Professor Stone speaking of them, but both Margo and Headmaster Malus are descendants of this tribe. In fact, anyone who has that ability, be it an exemplar or a non-exemplar who has the power hidden within them, is related to these people.

“And?” I asked.

And those that know of the bloodline have a tendency to want to keep it pure. So now we have yet another angle, another reason this is happening.

Cedric floated down to his bed. His drawers opened on their own, his clothing coming out and slowly spinning through the air over to him.

“So we act?” Orange asked.

“Everyone will have to be in agreement, and I just don’t think…”

Yes you do, Cedric replied to me. After some of the things he has put you through, including what he did to you yesterday trying to bleed you out, you have most definitely had the same thoughts as all of us. Now we have an opportunity to act on these thoughts, to rewrite our own futures.

“Let’s just see what the others say at breakfast,” Orange said.

If we have to switch to a private channel, that is something I can provide, Cedric thought to us, a grin on his face.

There were things I had come to learn about Cedric since he’d first come here.

He was generally quiet, and he kept to himself. It had been the nightmares he’d shared with us that had given me a glimpse of what he’d suffered through, a boy on the Centralian border where the proxy war was taking place between the North and the South.

One of his earliest memories was watching his mother die, and if the nightmares he had shared with us were any indication of what he had been through, that was just the start of his childhood turmoil.

The other young exemplars in our program were scared of him and did their best to avoid him at all costs, especially the telepaths. He’d become a legend of sorts, many not knowing what power he possessed, and Cedric had always been one to let the rumors metastasize.

“Let’s go.” Orange stepped past me, an indication that it was time to join the girls.

Our breakfast was scheduled earlier than for the other “students” who lived in the house, the five of us considered sort of a senior class. We entered the space to find Margo and Amethyst sitting across from each other, neither making eye contact. They had trays of food in front of them, Amethyst with helpings twice as large as Margo’s.

After the three of us had gathered our food, we sat at the same table as them, Orange next to Margo and Cedric next to me.

“Margo,” Orange said.

She kept looking at her food, using her unique power to tear her bread apart and reform it. It was uncanny how perfect it looked once it was back in its original form, no indication whatsoever that she had just broken it into tiny pieces.

“Amethyst,” I said under my breath. She turned to me immediately, noticing me give her a nod that indicated someone was about to say something. She bit her lip and turned to Margo.

“Before any of them say it, I will.”

“Say what?” Margo asked, glaring up at Amethyst.

“I know—I mean, we know what is happening,” Amethyst told her.

“You… what?”

Margo’s tray began to rattle.

“Between you and the headmaster, we saw what happened. And…”

“And we want to help you,” Orange said, finishing Amethyst’s sentence.

“I didn’t… No, it was you,” Margo said, glaring at Amethyst.

“Me? What are you talking about?”

Margo’s fork started to curl, one point at a time. “All of this. All of it was you. It’s not me, it’s you.”

“What do you mean?”

Margo’s tray snapped shut as if it were a book. She flung it across the dining area, splattering it against the wall like a water balloon.

“Everyone calm down,” Orange started to say. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding here.”

“You’re trying to put this on me, but it was you,” Margo hissed, “You are the one that… You seduced…”

Margo’s eyes flashed, just for a second, and it wasn’t until a later date and time that I realized what had happened.

What had really happened.

But in that moment, I assumed Cedric had used his telepathy to calm her. Margo sat back down, a distraught look on her face. It was more emotion than I’d ever seen her exhibit before. While I had seen Amethyst cry, rage, and go through the pantheon of human emotions, Margo had more or less stayed the same, distant, eerily quiet.

“Are you with us?” Orange asked, the air in the room thinning for a moment before he realized what he was doing.

It will be risky, Cedric thought aloud. But I believe it is the only way forward.

“I’m with you,” Amethyst said bitterly. “No one deserves that. Whatever he was doing, he was hurting you. He was…”

“I know what he was doing,” Margo said through gritted teeth. “And I don’t know if…”

“You have to believe that we can do something,” Orange said, now focused intently on Margo. I had the sense that he wanted to wrap an arm around her shoulder and bring her in. But she was volatile, this fact evident in the way the table was vibrating. It was slight, but we all knew she could animate the damn thing in a heartbeat.

“Okay,” she finally said. “I will do my best. Just give the signal.”

I will give the signal, Cedric thought to us. And we will have to move faster than we have ever moved before to make it happen. Orange, I will leave it to you to figure out how we will do that. For now, let’s just prepare. We will have to do it when we are at a training session. Everyone agreed?

“I do,” I said.

“Yes,” said Amethyst.

“I will make preparations then,” Orange told us with finality.

The four of us turned to Margo to see her nodding. “I agree, I agree,” she mumbled.

Cedric folded his arms over his chest. Good, let’s make this happen. No matter the risks. The five of us together are capable of anything.

.4.

It took another two weeks for our plan to solidify. There had been trainings between the incident and the point when we decided to act, but we had to make sure everything was right, that everyone was truly ready.

Margo insisted that what had happened to her had not happened since, and any issues she may have had with Amethyst seemed to be put to rest after the little incident in the dining area.

Still, it was coming.

And we all knew the day of action had arrived once Headmaster Malus had Cedric and Orange face off against him.

Our strange and devious instructor with long white hair took his place across from the two of them, his hands behind his back as he looked over the two young exemplars.

“The desired outcome of this exercise is simple,” he told Cedric and Orange. “Take me down. Any way you can, take me down.”

Amethyst, Margo and I stood at the sideline, Caldon the healer not far off. I looked straight ahead, remembering the plan Orange had devised. I swallowed hard once the dark-haired boy gave the signal, tapping on his side four times before pausing and doing it again.

And even though he wasn’t looking, Cedric nodded, a grin forming on his face.

“Think you will do it this time, huh?” Headmaster Malus asked.

Cedric merely got into position, a darkened energy swirling around his hands.

“Margo, count us off,” the headmaster said, not looking over to her.

She cleared her throat. “Three… two… one.”

Both Orange and Cedric pretended like they were going to charge the headmaster, each taking a step forward and stopping. Orange pivoted to Cedric and clenched his fist at his side, and the telepath started to choke.

“What are you doing?” Headmaster Malus asked Orange.

Help… Help…! Cedric pleaded in all our heads.

I saw Amethyst take a quick swig from the small vial of alcohol on her belt, her form starting to morph as the headmaster approached Cedric and Orange.

Cedric was on his knees now, and as soon as the headmaster used his ability to nullify Orange’s oxygen manipulation, Orange brought his foot back and kicked Cedric as hard as he could.

“What’s the meaning of this?” the headmaster wailed, grabbing Orange’s shoulder.

Orange pulled his shoulder away and came in to kick Cedric again, only to be swept off his feet by the headmaster’s power to manipulate the ground.

And that was when Orange unsheathed a small blade from his boot, one he had taken from the kitchen, stabbing it into the headmaster’s leg.

The headmaster tossed him across the room with his power, and Orange slammed into the wall.

It was the second we needed to move, my bone armor tearing out of my body, Amethyst at my side immediately, Margo trying to suffocate the headmaster with his own clothing.

Our second only lasted, well, a second.

As soon as the headmaster nullified Margo’s power, he lifted the floor beneath the teenager, tossing her to the side. He then turned to Amethyst and me, both of us ready to fight, Amethyst already diving toward him with her claws at the ready.

The headmaster lifted a pillar from the ground and wrapped it around her neck, choking her, her tail striking the object as she tried to break free.

I zipped around the pillar, protrusions breaking from the skin on my arms.

There was the pain of my transformation, and then there was the pain of someone with the ability to animate inanimate objects animating my own bones.

It was excruciating.

I was a broken mess in a matter of moments. Even though I had gotten better at healing over the past two weeks, it didn’t matter once the floor rolled me up as if I had been wrapped up in a carpet, exposing my throat to the headmaster.

My chin and cheekbone started to bulge, everything flashing red.

A hunk of building material slammed into the headmaster, sending him stumbling forward.

While there was a sphere of power nullification around him, it didn’t prevent gravity, which was what Cedric used as he telepathically ripped a piece of concrete from the wall and hurtled it at the headmaster.

“Everyone, calm down!” said Caldon. The healer with webbed hands had already made his way over to Margo, doing his best to tend to her wounds.

“We know what you did!” Orange cried, blood dripping from his forehead as he ran forward, ready to tackle the headmaster if that was what it would take.

Orange wasn’t a big man, but I saw a level of greatness in his eyes in that moment that I hadn’t seen up until that point.

He literally did not care what happened next; his only goal was to accomplish the task presented to him.

Of course, this didn’t bode well for Orange, who was lifted by a pillar that quickly wrapped around his neck, spinning my roommate in the air.

“What is the meaning of this!?” the headmaster cried, limping over to Orange with the blade still sticking out of his leg. “I am only asking one more goddamn time!”

“You know… what you… did,” Orange said through gritted teeth. “To Margo.”

“To Margo?” Confusion spread across Headmaster Malus’s face. He brought his hand to his head, running it through his long hair. “To Margo…”

He turned to Cedric.

Headmaster Malus approached the young telepath, who was now suspended by a pillar, a portion of the object wrapped around his neck.

Cedric did everything in his power to try to attack the headmaster, failing each and every time. He even tried kicking at some point before Headmaster Malus bent over and pulled the blade from his own leg.

He turned it around his hand and stabbed the kitchen knife into Cedric’s thigh.

“No… No!” I tried to crawl toward the headmaster, my completely disabled body scraping against the ground, the only strength I had left coming from what I could conjure through adrenaline.

I heard Amethyst’s tail behind me, striking against the pillar that had held her up, the future love of my life screaming for the headmaster to stop as he twisted the blade deeper into Cedric’s thigh.

He was saying something to the young telepath now, something inaudible while Cedric cried, his black eyes filled with terror as he stared up at the ceiling.

It was me, we all heard Cedric’s voice whisper at the back of our heads.

“Tell them again. Again!” the headmaster growled. “Now, Cedric!”

It was me. I made you hallucinate.

“You made us…” Orange looked from Cedric to the headmaster.

I wanted to see… I wanted to end him.

And the images suddenly became clear in our heads.

Amethyst and I were slipping in late, coming upstairs, an image so clear that I could actually see my arms before me now, but then my perspective shifted to a bird’s eye view of the situation.

Margo was asleep in the room, but we still moved down the hallway anyway, both of us sensing a rumbling. We came to the headmaster’s room, and that was when we saw Cedric floating in his bedroom through the floor beneath us.

His head was rolled back, his eyes focused on the ceiling as he created the hallucination inside our heads.

I then saw myself telling Orange, and I sensed from Orange that he was skeptical until Cedric planted the seed. The brief rivalry between Amethyst and Margo was also answered in the vision.

Cedric was just playing with us.

The young telepath wanted to see the extent of his power, to see if he could turn us against the headmaster.

It was all so real, and by the end of the vision I realized the terrible error we had made.

Amethyst’s pillar lowered her to the ground, the beast morpher coming to my side immediately. She was sobbing now as she looked down at the mess that used to be my body.

“Destry, please, Destry. I can’t…” Amethyst took a deep breath in.

“It’s so bad,” I said with a groan, everything around me starting to go black.

Caldon was by my side in a matter of moments, mending my bones. Margo joined the healer, still a bit bruised up but better than before.

“You are going to be okay,” Caldon told me repeatedly. “You’re going to be okay.”

But I wasn’t going to be okay.

I was never going to be okay.

And even though I had trained hard over those last two years, even though I had perhaps understood my role as part of the Protectorate, it wasn’t until Caldon told me this that it really sank in.

And this was before vampire infestations, patrol after patrol in Ravja. This was a fourteen-year-old boy realizing he would never have a life, that his destiny was entirely in the hands of other people who wanted to use him as a sword.

The headmaster lowered the pillar that had been holding Cedric up. The young man was now on the ground, still sobbing, the blade sticking out of his leg, Cedric too afraid to actually pry it out.

“We’re not done here,” Headmaster Malus said to the telepath.

Cedric’s hand raised on its own accord, and the fingers pressed all the way back until each one snapped, the boy crying out in pain.

“Please, Headmaster,” Caldon started to say.

“You will have your chance to heal him. But for now, I will make him suffer for what he has put all of us through, for the lies he has spread. You will not forget today, Cedric, not for a long time, not ever. None of you will.”

The headmaster animated Cedric’s other arm, even though Cedric tried desperately to push it away. He brought the boy’s hand up again and snapped each of his fingers back individually until they broke.

“What the five of you did was incredibly stupid, but you did so with no concern whatsoever for the harm that would come to you, which some would call incredibly brave. It’s not going to be easy to heal the wounds this has caused,” Headmaster Malus said, cracking more of the bones in Cedric’s hands, “but your camaraderie will go a long way to eventually mend them.”

He let Cedric’s arm go, the boy yelping as it dropped to the ground.

“Heal them all up,” Headmaster Malus finally told Caldon. “All aside from Cedric. I want him to stay like this for a while, to think about what he has done. After that, I believe it is time for you to move on, Cedric, to a place where they can curb your appetite for rebellion.”

I gasped as the bones in my legs snapped back together, my own healing power working in tandem with Caldon’s.

I just wanted it to be over in that moment; I just wanted the day to end.

Part Six: Tumbling Down

.1.

(Present day.)

We followed the large gray vampire as dozens upon dozens of bloodsuckers formed a perimeter around us, hissing and gnashing their teeth. We were in the street now, dark clouds above, barely any light, everything cast in a green hue because of my headgear. We had already MMed each other to divulge how this would play out.

I looked at the muscular, gray-skinned vampire again, the man wearing a thin black shirt tucked into a pair of torn trousers.

[Talon Arms]

[Age: 35 M]

[Hometown: Bretnick]

[Status: Exemplar II, C, enhanced speed, stamina and strength]

[Time since infection (estimate): three hundred days]

Orange and Margo walked ahead of me, Amethyst to my left. I saw her go for her flask, take another swig, cap it, and return it to her belt.

“You’ve had enough,” I whispered.

“Not a fucking word, Destry,” she snarled.

“Who are you taking us to?” Orange asked the vampire.

“That information will be revealed to you once we get there.”

“You know that we can kill you all before you’d be able to do anything. Confirm with me that you understand this, Talon.”

Talon turned to Orange, not at all taken off guard that he knew his name. “Is that so?”

“This won’t end well for you,” Margo reminded him. “It doesn’t matter how many you have surrounding us; we will persevere.”

My skin tore, my bones cracking as more barbs pressed out of my flesh.

The majority of our assault would come from the front, from Orange and Margo, while Amethyst and I picked off any that made it through their initial barrage of attacks.

It would be a bloody mess in the end, Orange exploding all their lungs as Margo used their own bones to impale them.

“We need answers,” Orange said. “Our job here is to eliminate you and tag your kind after we have done so. It doesn’t matter where you take us; that will remain our mission. And it doesn’t matter what you do to us; there will be more like us tasked to do the same thing.”

“Sounds familiar,” Talon said with a grunt. “It sounds exactly like what we will do to you.”

“Enough of the bullshit,” Amethyst hissed. “Are we doing this or not?”

She whipped her tail around behind her for emphasis, and a few of the smaller lurkers leaped backward, barking at her.

I could smell the alcohol radiating off her skin now because of a gust of wind that had pushed up.

Talon turned away from us. “As much as I would like to see this happen and show you how wrong you are, I have been instructed to bring you back to our leader, so that’s what I’m doing.”

“Who is this leader of yours?” Orange asked.

He looked at Amethyst over his shoulder, shooting her a look that told her to cool it a bit so he could try to get some answers. She snorted, her tail straightening and curling, but she eventually fell back in line with a dark look on her face.

“It’s not my job to ruin the surprise,” the big gray vampire said.

“Stop!”

A flash of light above us signaled that we were being attacked from the sky.

I dove right just as a blast of energy cut through some of the Vs, Amethyst leaping onto a storefront and crawling up to a rooftop, cutting a lurker’s head off in the process with her tail.

I too moved toward higher ground, stabbing a spike into a wall and using it to get to a rooftop.

Something hurtled from the sky onto the pavement, crushing the vampire known as Talon.

Dust kicked up into the air as the two went at it, and for a moment, I thought that Chipper had come, that Orange had called in for an airstrike without telling us.

But he would tell us—he would definitely prepare for something like that, I thought as a cold gust of air swirled around us, the temperature dropping by ten degrees, fifteen, twenty, to the point that I was shivering in a matter of moments.

Something incredibly fast whipped through the air, spinning, a snow cloud forming.

I then saw someone who looked totally familiar, a woman with red hair in a Northern Alliance uniform.

The NA patrol from the other day…

“Shit,” I whispered to myself as I started firing off messages to the rest of my team to give them the heads up on the NA patrol and tell them to activate their telepath bands.

A vampire scurried onto my roof, screeching as it jumped at me, only to be met by a bone scimitar through his chest, the creature snapping its teeth together as it started to die.

“Do not move!” the redheaded Northern Alliance woman shouted, using a runic power to amplify her voice. “Under Foreign Engagement Protocol Sixteen, I am ordering everyone to stop!”

I looked at her incredulously for a moment.

Didn’t they get it? Didn’t they understand what the hell was happening here? Something unheard of was happening! Members of the Protectorate were being led to an alpha V by a hoard of vampires and she was trying to use reason and made-up protocols to stop us?

Fuck!

More snow began to swirl through the street. Glancing up to another rooftop, I saw a Northern Alliance soldier who had been flying earlier, this one apparently with the ability to control the weather.

I wished in that moment that there was a better way to communicate with foreign forces, a mental messaging channel or something, but I knew these kinds of hopes were of no help in an actual combat situation.

The redheaded woman’s body started to twist and turn as Margo took hold of her uniform, tightening it to suffocate her. She fell out of the sky and hit the ground, Margo instantly forming a cocoon around her body and lifting her up and away from the vampires.

Another NA soldier appeared on the same rooftop as Amethyst.

They stalked each other for a moment before the woman grew a pair of terrible claws, and Amethyst nearly laughed at what she had brought to the table. That was, until the Northern Alliance soldier turned her arm in Amethyst’s direction and cut into her own vein, tracing up some sigil in the air.

Amethyst was blown backward, where she hit the parapet and flipped over the rooftop, down to the streets below.

Not at all concerned for my own well-being, I leaped down to the streets, preparing for impact as I landed on top of a pack of Vs, all of them trying to get at me.

I spiked out a host of bone protrusions, piercing anything in my vicinity, focused solely on getting to Amethyst.

The air started to thin.

I was gasping to catch my breath in a matter of moments, my lungs starting to feel as if they were filling with liquid.

Everyone in the vicinity was down now, including the exemplar able to manipulate weather patterns, the Northern Alliance strongman who had attacked Talon, all of the vampires, Margo and Amethyst.

The only person standing now was Orange, who had his arms crossed over his chest as he walked among us.

Orange could use his powers in a concentrated way, focusing just on one person and not the person next to them. But there were too many present, and the fight was getting to the point where it didn’t matter.

So he simply used his power on all of us.

I watched through blurring vision as he stopped in front of the leader of the Northern Alliance patrol, the cocoon Margo had made around her filtering away.

Orange crouched down and touched her hand, helping the redheaded woman to her feet. The woman clutched at her throat, eyes wide as she gasped.

Suddenly, she could breathe again.

“What… what have you done?” she asked.

Orange spoke to her quietly for a moment.

She traced a rune into the air, and a symbol formed around her feet that lifted her up.

Next, Orange went to the other Northern Alliance patrol member, the strongman. He let the big man breathe again and he immediately traced the same rune, also rising into the air.

From there, Orange turned to the one who could manipulate the weather, allowing her to breathe again, this one up in the air just about as quickly as she could get to her feet.

He looked up at the rooftop, toward the rune user who had used her own blood to cast a spell on Amethyst.

Now approaching Margo, Orange helped her to her feet. And once she was able, she raised a platform from the street to take him to the rooftop. He also gave the blood-rune user the ability to breathe again, and the woman immediately started up a rune.

Once they joined each other, the Northern Alliance team got the hell out of there, heading back in the direction of the part of the district where we’d first met them. If they were smart, they would get as far away as possible and never return to our country.

If they were smart...

The oxygen returned to my lungs.

I got to my feet, standing guard in front of Amethyst as she too regained the ability to breathe.

“Fuck, Orange!” Amethyst roared just about as soon as she caught her breath. “Some fucking warning next time!”

“Do you see what I mean?” Orange asked Talon as he approached the gray-skinned vampire. The man was still scowling, but I could see fear in his eyes. “If we wanted to take all of you out, it would be a matter of seconds. Do not forget this as you take us to your leader. And one more thing—make sure your kind doesn’t do anything once I allow them to breathe again.”

Talon nodded, sucking in a deep breath of air as Orange gave him the power to do so.

He got to his feet, scowling at us, and the other Vs also got to their feet, some clenching their teeth shut and biting into their own lips with fury.

None of them made a move.

Orange had made his point painfully clear.

.2.

We moved on.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but our telepath bands were still active, something we had grown into the habit of doing when running into a patrol, be they from the Southern or Northern Alliance or the rare Centralian patrol, which mostly consisted of people here for “humanitarian” missions.

Heh. What a joke.

Everyone understood this was just a cover for them to assess the damage and figure out how to make money off it.

There were more Vs around us now, crawling up the walls, moving across rooftops, slipping out of windows and holes. I could see them all with my headgear on, and I kept my guard up as we took a left down a narrow side street, the vampires on our perimeter stopping to let us pass through.

“I hate this,” said Amethyst, who was behind me now. I tried to let her go in front of me, but she wasn’t having it.

“Just keep your guard up,” I finally told her. “We still have an advantage.”

“Pfft! How can we have an advantage when we’re trapped in an alley like this?”

“We have Margo,” I reminded her. “And that’s not even our worst weapon.”

“I heard that,” Orange said. His humor came out in rare circumstances; it was always tongue-in-cheek, but he could be funny at times.

“I meant that,” I told him.

There were a lot of things I didn’t like about our current situation.

For one, I didn’t like that there were vampires all around us on the rooftops, looking down at us and ready to pounce. I didn’t like that we were being led to some alpha V powerful enough to control all of them, and I didn’t like that we were going to meet their leader.

Everything was crooked, the situation growing more dire by the minute.

“Destry,” Amethyst said.

“Just be ready,” I told her under my breath.

A bright light ahead forced me to turn my NVD off. I kept the headgear on, however, ready for the inevitable moment when Orange would ask us to tag all the ones we had taken down.

Because that was how this would end.

Even if we had a word with this supposed leader, it would ultimately end in a bloodbath.

Reserve Protectorate forces were already staging as we moved further along.

That was one advantage to the MMs Orange had already sent out, making all three of us privy to them. There were other Protectorate squads on patrol, but nothing superseded what we had stumbled across.

As soon as he gave the command, more would arrive.

They were all waiting on standby now, a good dozen or so of the best exemplars the Western Province had to offer.

Even with this knowledge at the back of my mind, I was still on edge. No amount of concentrated breathing or other attempts to cool my nerves would work in my current situation.

I had the itching feeling we were willingly walking into a trap, and I didn’t know what Orange thought about it, but it was clear that Amethyst agreed with me. And Margo? Who knew what was going on in the strange woman’s mind.

Talon came to a door and stepped aside, letting Orange, Margo, and eventually Amethyst and me through.

Amethyst bristled when she saw what was on the other side of that door.

“Destry…”

“I see it.”

With a deep breath in, I started to grow my weapons, taking on more bone than I had put out in a long time.

We were now in a throne room of sorts, but rather than fancy red drapes and other unnecessary regalia, there were armless and legless vampires sewn to the wall as if they were decoration, many of them watching us now, snarling, trying to break themselves free from their restraints.

It was a large space too, easily the size of the gym we used to train in.

At the front of the room was a dais made of discarded body parts, a throne of sorts fashioned out of random legs and arms. But it was the figure seated on that throne that really had me reeling.

“What have you done?” Orange asked.

The man had long stringy hair, sallow skin, and black eyes with absolutely no sclerae.

I heard Amethyst snort in fear, her tail lifting, her claws growing even sharper as they pressed out of her skin.

“What in the fuck?” she started to whisper.

“Damn this,” I said under my breath. “Damn this.”

“Cedric?” Margo asked, coming forward with no concern for the walls.

The man simply sat there looking at us, a calm yet curious expression on his face.

“Answer me!” Orange shouted.

Cedric switched his position, resting on his other arm and bringing his hand to his chin. He looked at the gray vampire and Talon stepped forward, turning to us.

“It was smart to activate your telepath bands,” Talon said, something different about the way he was looking at us.

“Cedric?” Amethyst asked. “What… What are you?”

“I have been wondering how long it would take for the four of you to finally reach me,” the gray vampire said, clearly channeling Cedric, who couldn’t speak.

Some commotion to my left caught my attention; one of the vampires stitched to the wall had tried to pull his shoulder free, a crazed, ravenous look in his eyes as he gnashed his teeth at us. Some of the others responded, doing the same, barking as they bit at their own lips, blood dripping down their chins.

“We’re going to have to completely destroy this place,” I said loud enough for Orange and Margo to hear.

“No, Destry,” Talon said, still transmitting Cedric’s thoughts, “that’s not how this is going to play out.”

The doors behind us slammed shut, but not before letting in several dozen of the bloodsuckers that’d been standing outside.

And the stench.

It was only coming to me now that my heart had settled. It was unlike anything I’d ever smelled before, a rotten butcher shop in the armpit of hell.

“Why have you done this?” Margo asked.

There was something different about her now, something more forward about the way she was acting. She was usually the quiet one, letting others do the questioning, but not this time around.

Now, Margo was front and center.

“Have you ever thought about what they did to us?” Talon asked.

“It doesn’t matter now, Cedric,” Amethyst growled. “This is who we are, and this is what we were bred to do.”

“The beast is talking, isn’t it?” the gray vampire asked her, concern flitting across his chiseled face. “But please, Margo, answer my question. Have you ever thought about what they have done to us?”

“I’m fine with what has happened,” Margo said.

“Are you really? Or have you questioned it since the day you were taken to the Training House, the day you were told you would become part of the Protectorate, the moment Headmaster Malus violated you?”

“Please spare us the bullshit,” Amethyst told him, lashing her tail against the ground. “That was all you, your little mind tricks.” She tapped her claw against one of her horns. “We understand that now, and we understood it then. Stop trying to reframe it.”

“If only it were that simple,” the gray vampire said after a long pause.

“Have you really become one of them?” Orange asked, even though the answer to this question was pretty clear.

Cedric had never looked great, especially with his black eyes. He had always been thin, but now he carried the weight of someone who was half-decomposed, his eyes sunken into his skull, his hands and wrists bony, claws long and yellow, brittle at first glance.

“I came here specifically to become one,” Talon said, speaking for the powerful telepath. “Maybe this isn’t a sacrifice you would understand, or maybe…” The gray vampire turned to Margo. “Maybe you would understand this, seeing what you have been through, how the State and those who serve it have used you. All of you—but specifically you, Margo—should appreciate what I’ve done here.”

“Stop the lies,” Margo said, bristling, a crater forming around her feet and then quickly flattening again.

“They aren’t lies, Margo. Not the way I see it.”

“You willingly became one of them?” I asked.

I couldn’t help but feel like the room was closing in on me, the walls getting tighter.

A battle lay ahead; there was no way we were getting out of this without a fight, and it was only a matter of when. The vampires behind us were geared up and ready to go, and I knew what would happen if any of us happened to get tossed into one of those walls made of torsos.

“I did, Destry,” said the gray vampire. “I heard about the start of the infection, so I came down to see what it was about. And once I saw, I decided to…”

The towering creature was silent for a moment as Cedric stared us all down, a smile coming across his face.

Finally, Talon spoke again. “I decided to make it mine; I decided to own it.”

“You’re running the entire thing?” Orange asked.

“Does that surprise you?”

“You don’t have this power,” said Orange. “You don’t have the power to spread this infection to… What happened to the original one, the original exemplar?”

“Ah, him. What do you think happened to him?”

“Did you kill him?”

“No,” the gray vampire told Orange. “He killed himself. And not the way you would have thought, by getting picked up in one of your patrols or devoured by his own creations. Nothing like that. He did so willingly once he met me. Funny how that works, right?”

Amethyst and I exchanged glances.

I’d never been more ready to fight, but the information we were getting right now was more than we had received since the start of the Western Plague.

“Of course, I had him turn me before he succumbed to his own madness. And now, as you can see, I control them. I am not just an alpha V, as I’ve heard some of the patrols call me. There are those, a few still that haven’t been snuffed out, but no—I am the Alpha V. The plague is mine, and I will spread it across our country and over the border to Centralia.”

“That might be kind of hard with how you’re treating some of your, um, protégés,” I told him, nodding at the walls.

“You don’t like the decor?” Talon asked. “These ones are all part of an experiment, to be honest with you. I’m feeling very honest at the moment, as you can tell. Normally I’m not as forthcoming with information. But since you asked, once I spread to the Garden District and beyond, I will need to make my own walls. So I wanted to see how that could work. They aren’t willing subjects, but they are stupid, and they listen to me. They’re almost like wolves in a way, following their leader.”

“I think I’ve heard enough,” Amethyst said.

“Same,” I echoed.

“Cedric, by order of the Western Province government, you are coming with us…” Orange started to say.

I paused. “Coming with us?”

I quickly glanced at Amethyst, who couldn’t contain the frustration on her face. She huffed, her tail striking the ground.

“Even I know that’s a bad idea,” the gray vampire said, “but so be it, take me with you. Let’s see if I’ll be adding the four of you to my ranks tonight. That would be marvelous, would it not? Old classmates reunited! From one trauma to the other, it truly would give us cause to celebrate.”

“Make it quick!” Orange told us.

All the vampires sewn to the wall gasped, their chests exploding outward.

.3.

Amethyst jumped up and drove her claws into the ceiling.

She dropped down onto the first vampire that tried to lunge at her. Her hands around his head, she twisted it to the side, snapping his neck.

With a quick grunt, she knifed him in the back with her energy weapon and moved on, running low to the ground now as she advanced toward a hoard of the bloodsuckers to her right.

A force tossed all of us backward, and Margo spilled off to the side, her hand coming up and slamming against the ground, shattering her telepath band.

Talon leaped onto Margo’s body, his jaw opening and teeth distending as he bit into her face. He pulled his head back, tearing some of her flesh away just as I tackled him.

My bony fists were a blur as I started beating the hell out of Talon, anger swelling through me. The big motherfucker laughed, his mouth open, teeth bloodied, still latched on to a hunk of Margo’s flesh. Another wave of force sent me spinning off to the side, where I smacked into the wall of bodies.

I pushed myself off just in time to see Orange standing over Cedric, the telepath choking now, his black eyes wide with terror.

I returned my focus to Margo to provide support, blasting away at a couple of the Vs pummeling toward her. My concentrated energy beam cut through their ranks. I was a goddamn porcupine tank at this point, my bone armor completely covering me in sharp protrusions and blunt objects.

I crashed into the lot.

I was on my feet in a matter of seconds, swinging my arms wide and cutting through the masses. One jumped onto my back. I grew a spike through his body, and the fucker slid off onto the ground.

Amethyst’s tail took the head off a thin vampire as she scurried to the right in an effort to defend Margo and Orange from the Vs swelling into the room.

I was now too focused on what was happening before me to see what was happening behind me.

I knew that Orange had Cedric, but for some reason the Vs were still attacking, and it was only when I was finally able to take a breath and look over my shoulder that I saw what had happened.

Orange was on the ground, and Margo was standing in front of Cedric protecting him, her face a bloodied mess.

Margo lifted her hand toward Amethyst and me; the floor gave way beneath us, creating a huge gap, both of us falling in and the Vs tumbling in on top of us.

I felt the impact of bodies on top of me, the sudden feeling of suffocation. The vampires snarled and snapped their teeth as I cut through them, swimming toward the surface, desperately needing a fresh breath of air.

I broke through the top, gasping, and another vampire fell in on top of me, gnashing his teeth at my face just as a spike grew out of my forehead to stab him in the eye, blood spritzing the air.

Bodies writhing all around me, I pushed my way to the top of the stack, ignoring those that were reaching for my feet, scratching against my skin. I saw Amethyst’s tail and latched on to it, tugging her away from the sea of vampires.

Explosions overhead signaled that backup had arrived.

A blast of energy moved overhead. Something incredibly fast jumped over our gap and smashed into another V before he could drop in.

“Shit!” Amethyst gasped, just as a lurker leaped onto her shoulder and tried to take a bite out of her neck. I pierced the little fucker straight through the heart, driving my bone and its body into the sidewall.

Both of us covered in blood, both of us knowing things were only going to get worse from here, Amethyst and I scaled our way to the top. More Vs came barreling into the gap Margo had created, one latching on to me and trying to pull me with it.

A jagged protrusion from my shoulder stopped the lurker from taking me down.

I continued upward.

By the time I reached the throne room proper, most Vs were dead or dying as other members of the Protectorate killed en masse.

And they weren’t the only people who had joined us.

There were also exemplars from Centralia, evident in their uniforms, and one woman with fiery hair proceeded to torch the gap Margo had created. The woman flew back and forth spraying more liquid flames onto the Vs below, burning them alive.

Cedric was out; an exemplar stood over him creating what I recognized as a vector cage around the vampire’s body.

Meanwhile, Orange held Margo in his arms, looking down at her, the bottom half of Margo’s face torn to shreds.

“Why did she attack us?” Amethyst bellowed, coming forward, ready to strike.

I stopped her. “Her telepath band broke; it was Cedric!”

She snorted, her red eyes narrowing on me. “Are you sure?”

“I saw it. I don’t know how I saw it, but I did.” I turned back to Orange. “She’s not infected, is she?”

I could tell by the way Margo was gasping that Orange had taken control of her lungs, just in case Cedric still held her mind. He looked up at me, his eyes slightly watery. “I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t think…”

I looked around for the big gray vampire. “Where is he?” I growled. “Where’s Talon!?”

“Gone,” Orange said. “He ran off.”

“Then we will find him.” Amethyst went for her flask.

“No,” Orange told her.

As agitated as she was, Amethyst followed orders, slowly lowering her claws, seething as the exemplar teams continued to clean up the room.

“We have to tag all of them,” I finally said.

Orange nodded. “Later. For now, we get back to the garrison. We did it. We captured Cedric as ordered. We will get Margo healed up. Hopefully…”

The three of us exchanged nervous glances. No other words were said. We all simply nodded at each other, all thinking the same thing.

Hopefully she hadn’t been infected.

.4.

The hours that followed were a blur.

They kept Margo in a quarantine area, a telepath and other exemplars on guard as time continued to cascade away.

It was well past four in the morning now, and I stood outside the quarantine area, watching through a glass window as they attempted again to heal Margo’s face while techs from the Eastern Province monitored her vitals.

Amethyst was with me in her base form, her purple-red hair a mess, the beautiful woman absolutely filthy from the battle. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t in her beast mode at the moment; she was still seething, rushing to Orange every time he came out of the room.

“No updates,” he told her as he stepped out, “aside from the fact that she’s still not showing signs of infection.”

“Why the hell can’t they heal her face?” Amethyst asked. “Caldon could have easily taken care of this!”

“Not so,” said Orange. “The wounds are incredibly deep, and the healers the State currently has are having trouble mending it back together. It’s… it’s uncanny. They’ve stopped the bleeding, but there will be permanent damage.”

“So she’s going to…” Amethyst gulped.

“Yes, she’s going to be scarred from the nose down. They will try to graft some skin, but there is a high likelihood this will cause permanent damage to Margo’s face.”

“Dammit,” I said under my breath.

“Indeed,” Orange replied. “We’re going to continue to monitor, but if the infection starts up and she starts to turn, I’ve been instructed to kill her.”

“Wait. What?” Amethyst said. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“Of course I would, Ames,” he said, turning to her. “All of us would. I will follow my orders to eradicate the infection. It is what we have been sworn to do. We do not need someone as powerful as Margo on their side. She has always been a bit… unstable.”

“And Cedric?” I asked with a shake of my head.

“They’re keeping him unconscious for now. I don’t know what they plan to do with him, but I am monitoring that situation as well. The last thing I want them doing is deciding to perform some experiments and creating something they can’t contain.” He nodded toward the door, to the Eastern Province technicians inside.

“They’ve already asked?”

“That’s right,” he told Amethyst.

“Let me have a word with them.”

“No, I want you two to get some rest. We have to go after Talon tomorrow. Be ready to hunt.”

“Born ready,” Amethyst growled.

Orange returned to the room, leaving the two of us standing there, both groggy, both wanting to do something, but also realizing that after the night we’d had, a hot shower and some rest would probably go a long way to making tomorrow better.

So that was what we did.

And we didn’t give two shits about protocol as we went to Amethyst’s room, both of us undressing.

I stepped into the walk-in shower and turned it on, feeling the water against my chest. It was cold at first, but I didn’t care. Eventually it became warm, and once it was, I motioned Amethyst in.

Steam started to build up around us as I washed her body.

I massaged my hands under her breasts, my fingers circling around her nipples. I drew my thumbs down onto her waist, around her hips, and my hands clasped her ass cheeks, digging in.

She started washing me as well, soaping my chest, my stomach, my cock. It felt so goddamn refreshing to be under the hot water that I paid little attention to my erection.

But Amethyst continued to touch it, and then she turned, placing both hands on the shower wall.

She slid her hands down the wall as she started to bend forward, opening herself to me. She had to buckle her knees just a little to give me the right height I needed to enter her, but once I did, we went at it slowly, Amethyst softly moaning, both of us with our eyes clenched shut, both trying desperately to scrub the day away with lust.

I had been exhausted earlier, but I no longer felt this exhaustion as Amethyst and I made love.

She eventually sat down on the tile, more steam rising all around us, her legs spread wide as I got down on my knees, my bare ass touching the other side of the shower wall. I began to lick her up, practically devouring her, Amethyst moaning, her hand pressed into the back of my head.

I looked up at some point to see her face tremble, her horns starting to press into her skin and stopping, returning.

Repeat.

As I continued to lick and suck her clit, I placed one hand up around her neck, massaging the side of her face, my thumb eventually finding its way into her mouth. She sucked at my thumb, and I could feel her moans vibrating my skeleton.

I stood, and Amethyst came forward, bringing me into her mouth this time, looking up at me. The water sprayed against my back as she started to jerk me off.

She kept jerking, sucking, looking up at me, her other hand between her legs while she fingered herself.

Somehow all of this made sense after what we’d seen tonight.

From one debauchery to the next, our evening had only grown stranger and, in the end, more intimate. She kept sucking, looking up at me, occasionally moving her face away as her hand pumped up and down.

“Stand up,” I moaned to her, “I want to fuck you so badly.”

“No,” she told me, with a playful smile. “Do it now—do it for me here.”

“Okay.” I said as she took me back in her mouth, this time working even more effort into it.

I came just a few moments later, the head of my penis suddenly more sensitive than it had ever been as Amethyst continued to suck at me, to swallow me completely.

My knees were trembling now, but they eventually strengthened again. Amethyst was still putting in the effort, her head moving back and forth in front of my body.

She eventually stopped, using my arm for support as she got to her feet.

Amethyst turned to the showerhead and washed her face, allowing me to come in behind her, my hands on her waist, lightly touching the lips of her vagina.

We would sleep well that night, possibly harder than we had ever slept before. But no matter how long we tried to postpone it, tomorrow would come.

It always did.

.5.

“Why do you think he did it? Where do you think his life went wrong?”

Amethyst and I had just woken up, and she was more chipper than usual, the beast morpher already halfway dressed.

“I really don’t know,” I told her. “We all have our own shit.”

“I was hoping that if we talked about it, maybe we would be able to piece something together. There has to be something…”

“All of us had rough childhoods,” I reminded her. “From what I remember of Cedric’s, he grew up on the border and something terrible happened to his mother at a young age. But that’s it, and I only got that from one of his nightmares. He could have been hiding other things; maybe there’s something to that, and he was keeping it from all of us. I really don’t know.”

“I’m sorry.” Amethyst sat down in a chair, her elbows on her knees as she rested her head in her hands.

“For what?” I asked her.

She looked over at me. “Are you going to get out of bed?”

“Why would I do something stupid like that?”

She smiled. “What? You don’t want to go back out into the field and hunt vampires?”

“More like tag them,” I told her. “You shouldn’t kid yourself. Once we get out there, part of our job will be to tag them and deal with any fallout. Hopefully, we won’t run into the Northern Alliance team again.”

Amethyst shook her head. “Those fuckers. I really hope they got out of the area. They would be idiots to stay around.”

“One of theirs already turned, if you remember correctly.”

“I know, and I didn’t get to tell them. But back to what I was saying. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t get it. What are you sorry for?”

“For both of our childhoods,” she said suddenly. “No child deserves that, to be sold to the State.”

“Sold to the State to become heroes, members of the Protectorate,” I reminded her.

Amethyst snorted. “I know you’re smarter than to actually think that.”

“You caught me red-handed; you should get back in bed.”

“I’m already wearing my uniform.”

Amethyst wasn’t in her fatigues, as she normally would have been if we were sticking around. She was in a fresh uniform, one brought in by a teleporter this morning. It was form-fitting yet flexible, designed for her to morph.

“I’m up and I’m staying up,” she finally said. “But you can rest longer, and I can just entertain you.”

“Nice. Did you finally learn some magic tricks?”

“Besides turning into a beautiful beast with a sharp tail and bulging horns?”

“Yes, besides that—I’ve seen that trick too many times. Something different. A striptease would be nice.

“I have no rhythm.”

“Okay, what about… um… there must be something you can do. Can you juggle?”

“Headmaster Malus never taught us how to do that.”

“That’s right…” I rested my hands behind my head, staring at her fondly for a moment.

“It’s odd, you know.”

“What is?”

“That we’ve come together like we have,” she said, “and that both of our powers are based on us turning into something else.”

“I wouldn’t say what I do is ‘turning into something else.’ It doesn’t really change my persona or anything.”

“Are you saying my personality changes?” Amethyst asked in a playful tone.

“No—hell no—I would never say something like that.”

“You always were good with words.”

“I wouldn’t say that either.”

“And I was always better with words, which is why I said it.” Her brow furrowed. “Okay, okay. I’m being serious now. Do you think we should go down there?”

“Down where?”

“To Cedric. Maybe he would tell us something…”

“First of all, he’s sedated. And they’re not letting anyone near him that doesn’t have a nullification power. But to be honest with you, I don’t think we would learn anything, Ames. We’re not going to suddenly get to the bottom of this. There is no bottom, really. Or if there is, we’ve already hit it. Maybe the trauma that sparked Cedric’s behavior happened before he came to Training House; maybe it happened after the incident. I really don’t know. And I really don’t care. He made a choice.”

“But just think about that for a moment,” she told me. “He made the choice to go to an infected zone without knowing what the infection would do to him. He willingly became a vampire. That says something about him.”

“And now he controls an army. Or did.”

“What was his end game, though? What was he actually going to do? Did Cedric really think he would form an army of vampires and just take over the country? What do people with evil in their hearts truly think?”

“We have to keep it contained,” I finally said. “That’s all I know.”

“But seriously—think hard, Destry. Do you really remember anything from back then? Anything he may have told you about his childhood?”

“I really don’t,” I told her, “but maybe that was on purpose. Maybe he told us something and then wiped our minds. He is an incredible telepath, remember, so I wouldn’t put that past him.”

“I just can’t believe a normal person would go to this length…” she said. “I just don’t understand why.”

“What about convincing us that Malus had raped Margo? What kind of sick fucker would try to do something like that? He actually convinced us to attack the headmaster.”

“That ended poorly. Do you remember when he came back?”

I nodded. “I don’t know where they sent him, but wherever it was…”

“So maybe that was it. Maybe that was what broke him.”

“It definitely could have been the catalyst for Cedric wanting to go to Ravja. To be honest, I thought he had disappeared to another country. There were those rumors that he was in the Northern Alliance.”

“It’s way too hot there for someone like him,” said Amethyst. “Don’t you remember? He always liked cold weather. He despised the heat. Whoever started that rumor is an idiot.”

“Then where?”

“The Southern Alliance is cold, so maybe he went there. But all this is speculation; he clearly went somewhere, and he clearly came back. And now we have to sweep up the pieces.”

“Maybe the infection would have ended had he not gone down there to take control…”

“Maybe.” Amethyst stood, turning to the door. “Orange is telling me we need to eat. Meet me in the mess hall; then we’ll check on Margo.”

“Now you’re talking,” I told her as I kicked off the blankets. I quickly suited up and joined Amethyst, filling my tray with plates of breakfast items and ignoring some of the looks from the other soldiers.

“And they say I’m the one who turns into a beast,” Ames said as she bit into a hard roll.

After breakfast, we made our way past a couple of troops, all of whom stopped to salute us. We nodded at them and continued on to the medical ward, where we found Margo still in quarantine.

She was sitting up now, the bottom half of her face hidden by a medical veil. Orange was in the room with her, and as soon as he saw us, he waved us in.

“Did you rest well?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, coming forward and pretty much ignoring him. My attention was solely on Margo; I was glad as hell to see she was doing better.

“So you’re not…?”

Margo shook her head at Amethyst.

“The infection would have made itself known by now,” said Orange. “It usually only takes a few hours or so.”

“That’s incredible news,” I said as I returned my focus to Margo. “We’re going back out there; we will find Talon and kill him.”

“I know you will, and it won’t be long before I join you,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by her medical veil.

“You need more rest,” Amethyst said.

“I feel rested. The healers have done what they can. This is…” Margo started to remove her veil. “This is how I am going to look from now on.”

I made no indication whatsoever of how I felt about Margo’s face.

She didn’t need any comments, gasps, or fearful looks.

Margo needed support.

It didn’t matter that everything from the top of her lips to the bottom of her chin had been severely deformed. It didn’t matter that the scars were so deep I could almost see through her skin to her teeth, or that the bottom portion of her face was pinkish red, inflamed.

I didn’t care about any of that.

And I wasn’t going to let her see that I even noticed. I just looked her square in the eyes and nodded.

“They will be able to heal you—someone will,” Amethyst said, breaking the silence.

“No. No, they wont. But I have thought of some way to make it better.” Margo looked at us curiously, her mismatched eyes glazed in a way.

It was as if all the gears in her head were turning and one suddenly got stuck, the entire mechanism trembling for a moment before starting back up.

“I’m just glad to see you’re going to be okay,” I finally said.

Orange cleared his throat. “You and Amethyst will start your patrol in an hour. I will teleport there with you at first, to meet our counterpart from Centralia.”

“No fucking way,” Amethyst said. “There’s no fucking way we are patrolling with a Centralian.”

Orange smoothed his hand over the sleeve of his uniform. “You know I wouldn’t do something like that to you. But we do need a particular Centralian exemplar to help us track Talon. She’s on one of the exemplar teams, one of the more famous ones. She is an incredible telepath who apparently has the best psychometry skill of any registered exemplar.”

“That’s the type of telepath who can get information from objects by touching them, right?” I asked.

“Telepathy 101,” Orange reminded me.

“Please. I slept through that class,” said Amethyst.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Margo said, lifting the veil back over so it covered her face.

“That’s how I know you’re on medication.”

“No, nothing except a bit of a painkiller.”

“Sure, Margo, sure.”

“Margo and I will join you tomorrow,” Orange told me. “Your orders are to simply find Talon tonight, and to keep a low profile. Just tracking for now. Once we get a location, we will bring in the full squad.”

“So it’s back to sleeping on rooftops tonight, right?” Amethyst asked.

“That’s right,” Orange told her.

“Good,” she said, turning to the door, “it’s nice to sleep under the stars.”

.6.

I focused on the three bodies for a moment, their information appearing before me:

[Edward King]

[Age: 25 M]

[Hometown: Monseeyaj]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): three days]

---

[Jill King]

[Age: 20 F]

[Hometown: Chalmer]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): four days]

---

[Nicolas Black]

[Age: 35 M]

[Hometown: Oblerage]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): eleven days]

“Tagged,” I said to Amethyst, who quickly went about setting the bodies on fire. We were on a rooftop near the location of yesterday’s terrible situation.

It was a calm day, no wind, a slight chill in the air. The sprawling district of Overtone Heights lay before us, waiting for yet another patrol. Orange was with us, so it wasn’t like I was too worried there would be an ambush in our future, but I still couldn’t help but feel on edge.

The Centralian telepath was supposed to be here by now, and I didn’t like the fact that we were just standing out here in broad daylight with our dicks in our hands.

Something seemed off.

“Damn Centralians.” Amethyst had taken her beast form mostly to intimidate whatever Centralian was coming to meet us, and now she was antsy. This was why she was moving bodies around on the rooftop, having me tag them.

Just for something to do.

It had been Orange who had taken these ones out, each of their chests exploded, matted with blood. It struck me as odd that they’d all been gathered on a rooftop, not a normal place for Vs to hang out, but they were gone now, their bodies kicking up smoke.

“This may bring attention to us,” Orange said.

“It will bring attention,” said Amethyst. “That is sort of the plan.”

Orange didn’t reprimand her for anything.

It wasn’t really worth it; Amethyst in her beast mode could be hard to get along with, and Orange was keenly aware of this after a decade of living with her.

Another ten minutes or so passed before a portal opened up. A woman wearing a black mask with a white circle plastered across it stepped out. The masked woman was joined by the same lady I’d seen last night, the one who could conjure fire. She was in a green uniform that hugged her figure.

I instinctively activated my telepath band, not wanting any of my thoughts broadcast.

“It’s about time you showed up,” Amethyst hissed. She too used her nail to activate her telepath band.

“Awww, was someone forced to skip breakfast?” the woman with flaming red hair asked.

Amethyst’s tail snapped against the rooftop.

Then she snorted and turned away, both angry and upset at herself for showing such emotion. I knew this about Amethyst: she couldn’t control some of her urges when she was in her beast mode, yet she was still cognizant of her behavior.

“I’m Orange Chalmer, Sr. P2-COF; this is Destry Banner, Jr. P3-COF; and Amethyst Jayde, Jr. P4-HE.”

“And all of you were there last night?” the woman with red hair asked.

“Correct,” said Orange.

“You may call me Plume, and this is my associate, MindLenz,” she said, introducing the telepath.

Amethyst snorted.

Both of us were thinking the same thing—Centralian exemplars were so fucking full of themselves with their stupid superhero names—but neither of us said anything about it.

“We already have the information you seek,” MindLenz told us. “I have tracked the man known as Talon, but there’s a problem with his trail.”

“What’s that?” Orange asked.

“It seems to splinter off a couple clicks west of here. That entire area may need to be searched.”

“A couple clicks west?” I asked, then turned to Amethyst. “That was the same area we were patrolling the other day.”

“Aware,” she growled, still glaring down the two Centralian exemplars.

“If you don’t mind, I can imprint the location in your head,” the telepath said, “but you’ll have to deactivate your telepath band. And unfortunately, I only have the general area. We actually checked the place out, which is why we are late, and we couldn’t find any more signs of this vampire you’re hunting.”

“Would there be any advantage to actually following his tracks?” Orange asked.

“You mean rather than teleport there?” asked the telepath.

“Precisely.”

“I don’t see why it would hurt. You may pick up on something we missed,” MindLenz admitted.

“You can beam whatever information you have into me,” I said as I came forward, deactivating my telepath band. “But that’s it. I do not consent for any other telepathic inquiries into my thoughts.”

“Noted.”

The woman with the completely black mask and the white circle across its face turned to me. I suddenly felt hyper aware, like someone had turned up the volume for my inner ears.

Do you understand the location? MindLenz asked inside my head.

Yes, I thought back to her, everything hitting me at once.

You may reactivate your telepath band, if you wish.

“Well, I think our little exchange of information is done here,” Plume said.

“Awww, are you sure you don’t want to go with us?” Amethyst asked. “I’ll play nice, I promise, and if it gets cold at night, we could use a nice fire…”

“Centralia has already proposed methods for your government to use to deal with the spread of this infection. Our proposals have been ignored. We will leave you to your primitive patrols.”

A portal opened up, and before Amethyst could say something snarky, Plume and MindLenz stepped inside.

“We aren’t going to be making any friends if you keep up that attitude,” I told her with a smile.

“Friends with Centralians? This is how I know you’re getting soft.”

“As previously discussed,” said Orange, interrupting our little banter, “you two will track and tag along your way to the target area. Margo and I will join you later on.”

“Looks like it’s another patrol,” Amethyst said.

“It is precisely that,” said Orange. “But remember that we can come to your aid if you run into a situation you cannot handle. Do not engage Talon by yourselves. That is an order.”

A flash of energy startled Amethyst, who jumped back, her tail already moving into position to strike. A Western Province teleporter now stood on the far side of the roof, the man in military garb and a headpiece.

He gave Orange the thumbs up, which signaled that he had checked all of us.

“Destry,” Orange said, looking at me.

[Orange Chalmer]

[Age: 24 M]

[Hometown: Monseeyaj]

[Status: Exemplar I, C, oxygen manipulation]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

“Looks good to me,” I told both of them. Orange walked over to the man and joined him, the two vanishing in an explosion of color.

“Well?” I asked my counterpart.

“Let’s get to it.” The love of my life moved to her backpack and strapped it on. “Fucking Centralians.”

Amethyst looked at the side of the rooftop, calculating how she would scale down to the ground.

.7.

And so our trek continued.

We killed a few lurkers along the way, one of them missing its lower torso. Ames and I also came across the corpse of an older man who had been drained completely of his blood.

As I tagged him, I wondered what his last moments had been like, whether he had tried to fight back. I even looked at his knuckles to see if there was any indication he had swung, but his skin was too blemished to tell.

Thinking about Talon’s location spawned an instinct in my brain, telling me to follow the same path I was already on.

Just follow.

Which was exactly what we did.

We walked like this for some time, clearing out a couple smaller buildings along the way. We were purposely moving slower than we normally would so we could rendezvous with Orange and Margo in the morning.

I didn’t think it was a great idea that Margo was going to come back out to the field, but those were the orders. And aside from the scarring, she seemed more or less okay.

More or less.

A disturbance caught my attention.

I looked up, noticing something move through an open window.

“I see it,” Amethyst said as she took off toward the building.

“I’ve got you covered.”

No one in their right mind would hunt the way we hunted, but it worked for both of us, and I was a very steady shot. I watched as she leaped from the street to the building, scampering up the wall and bursting through the window. She returned moments later with a young boy, whom she tossed down at the streets.

The boy kicked his legs against the street for a moment and died, the gaping wound in his chest bleeding out.

“Tag him,” Ames said once she reached me again.

[Devon Red]

[Age: 7 M]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): two days]

“Great,” I told her.

We moved on.

We moved on and on, talking at some points and working silently at others, until a rooftop fire caught our attention.

We both crept up the fire escape this time, keeping as quiet as possible. We knew what it was—Vs didn’t need fires for warmth. Still, especially after last night, we wanted to be sure.

We crouched just beneath the fire escape, both of us with enough space to leap onto the rooftop.

“How should we do this?” Amethyst whispered to me.

“What can you hear?”

“Just some movement; the wind is making it hard to hear exactly what’s happening.”

“Let’s see what we find.”

Amethyst leaped up; I followed close behind, driving my bone spike into the side of the building and using it as leverage to lift myself up and over.

“Shit, Destry…” Amethyst’s throat quaked.

We exchanged glances and I turned my focus back to the man on the rooftop, who was kissing a woman’s face, his shadow enlarged by the fire he’d started.

“Excuse me,” I started to say.

Amethyst cleared her throat, her hand coming to her mouth.

The man was mumbling to himself, still crouched over the woman’s corpse. It was easy to tell she was dead; aside from the fact that she was lifeless, she was also missing an arm, and her skin looked bloated.

“Sir,” I said, approaching the man.

“It’s just you and me,” he told the woman in a wispy voice. “I’m here with you—I’m here. Don’t be scared. Please, don’t leave me.”

A hand landed on my shoulder, startling me. I looked up to see Amethyst nodding for both of us to leave. But I checked anyway, and I was sad once I did.

[John Ruby]

[Age: 68 M]

[Hometown: Chalmer]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): one day]

“Tagged,” I said.

“And?” Amethyst asked.

I stepped away from the man. “Infected.”

Amethyst sent her barbed tail through the guy’s back. He fell forward onto the woman he’d just been comforting, hissing, baring his teeth as he died.

“I hate this job,” I said as I tagged the woman as well.

[Celia Ruby]

[Age: 64 F]

[Hometown: Chalmer]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): four days]

“Let’s finish up here and call it a night.”

“Good plan,” I finally said.

Amethyst took the man’s body over to the fire and dropped it onto the flames. I set the woman’s body on top of his and added a little fuel, the plumes sparking as they lifted off the bodies.

“What a world,” I said as Amethyst and I looked over to another rooftop.

“What are you thinking?”

“I was just about to ask you the same question,” I told her. “Any rooftop tickle your fancy?”

She snorted. “No. A real bed tickles my fancy, as you put it.”

“Where’s that phrase even come from?” I asked her.

“Not the Western Province, and it definitely wasn’t something Headmaster Malus said.”

“Did you ever hear what happened to him?”

Amethyst shook her head. “Let’s find a rooftop. Preferably, somewhere away from the husband and wife we just murdered.”

I shook my head. “We only murdered one of them; he would have turned fully within the next day or so. Still, when you put it like that…”

“I hate this job too, Destry, but someone has to do it.”

Amethyst hopped over the side of the roof.

I followed her down and once we reached the street, we continued along the sidewalk, both of us paying close attention to our surroundings. I had my NVD goggles on; Amethyst had her enhanced sense of sight as usual.

And for the moment, luck seemed to be on our side.

We found a relatively tall building a couple blocks away, and I took the fire escape up, Amethyst simply scaling up the side.

Once I was up, she leaned over the side of the roof and fired her blaster at the fire escape, sending it down to the streets, a loud bang! ricocheting up the alley.

“Way to wake the neighborhood up,” I told her.

“No one’s going to mess with us tonight,” she said as she set her pack down. Then she started hooking up the tripwire.

While Amethyst secured our rooftop, I worked on dinner.

We had enough food and water for a couple days, so I decided to splurge tonight, making two of the noodle packets with tomato sauce, and also my famous sponge cake.

“My favorites—how did you know?” Amethyst asked as she approached me.

Her transformation was starting to fade, her horns growing smaller and her eyes turning back to their normal color.

I loved the way she looked in this in-between stage.

It was like she was another person entirely, her mood different than Amethyst in her beast mode, and also different than when she was in her normal form. There was a calmness to her in the stage, like she was slightly buzzed.

I found it utterly fascinating.

Amethyst and I rolled out our cots once we’d finished eating.

She paced for a moment, waiting for her transformation to fully dissipate, and once it did she lay down next to me.

I had a wrist guard to my right, but even though we were secure, it took me a while to fall asleep.

Amethyst and I were both light sleepers, but because of our transformations, it was imperative for us to get rest, especially when she kept her morphed form for longer amounts of time.

The tripwires always did their job, and they did their job again early that next morning, when the sound of a screech woke both of us up.

“I’ve got it, Ames.” I went for my wrist guard immediately, approaching the lurker and activating my energy blade.

The young girl, no older than five, tried to grab me, but I quickly ended her life, my blade pressing through her chest.

“Shit,” I said as Amethyst started to wake up.

The sun wasn’t up yet, but it would be up soon, the early morning twilight beautiful yet eerie for some reason.

“I’ll tag her in a minute,” I told Amethyst as I walked to the side of the building and looked over the edge. Once I saw that nothing was happening in the streets below, I turned back to Amethyst, just as another lurker moved over the side of the building and immediately got caught in our tripwire.

“I’ll gear up,” Amethyst said, going for her own wrist guard. She approached the twitching vampire, aimed her weapon at it, and blew its head into a fine mist. “It’s that kind of morning,” she told me.

“I get that,” I said as I returned to our bed and sat down.

“We can try to go back to sleep if you’d like?”

“I’d like that,” I said with a yawn. “But there’s no point now. Let’s wrap this party up and move on.”

“You’re the boss,” she said. And just as Amethyst turned to me, a half dozen Vs came over her side of the rooftop. The first got shocked, and the other used the first as a bridge to clear our tripwire.

I sprang into action. As I bolted toward them, my bones began to tear out of my body, arms morphing into long blades.

I cut through two of the bloodsuckers just as more came over the rooftop, several advancing toward Amethyst.

My focus turned to the right as a larger lurker slammed into me. I brought him down, blading him under the throat.

A portion of the rooftop gave way, causing a landslide near my feet.

I only barely caught a glimpse of an even larger vampiric exemplar, a strongman of sorts, before my body started to fall to the streets below.

I heard Amethyst call my name, everything now moving in slow motion as I grew my arm blades as long as I could, stabbing them deeply into the building to catch myself.

I felt my shoulder dislocate as I held my body, and a lurker fell on top of me, trying to bite at my face. I threw her off and used my own bone to click my shoulder back into place.

With my free hand, I formed another spike that helped me climb up, only to be tackled by the strongman when I reached the rooftop.

We spilled out onto the rooftop of the building next to ours, the bulky fucker trying to come down on me with his teeth.

I shot a bone spike from my chin that got caught in his throat and grew in size, the muscles in my face screaming.

We struggled for a moment, the V trying to close his jaw as saliva sprayed me in the face, a terrible stink on his breath.

He slammed the back of my head onto the surface of the rooftop, and even though I was able to protect myself with thickened bone, it still knocked me out for a second.

Everything was black now.

I was falling…

There were sounds all around me…

The world was on fire…

I blinked my eyes open to see the strongman V stumbling, the hole I’d instinctively cut through his mouth sending him into shock, blood oozing from the wound.

I ran at him with my energy blade, driving it deep into his chest and pulling up, bringing him into the rooftop and screaming in his face as I killed him.

Amethyst…

I saw an energy weapon blast on the rooftop to the right, and I figured Amethyst had kicked it into high gear. There were more lurkers crawling up the side, so I focused on them, switching my weapon to long-range and taking each of them out from the lower rooftop.

I took a running leap, made it onto our building, and scrambled up to the rooftop where I found…

I bellowed as I charged at the small clump of ravenous lurkers that had gathered on top of Amethyst.

I threw them off the building, trying to get to her, yelling her name when I came to the final one, the one with the red bandanna, the one…

I pulled the young vampire off Amethyst and gasped, my heart sinking.

Amethyst had been bitten, two wounds oozing on the side of her neck.

Her eyes were shut, a pained expression on her face, and when I looked around her body I saw she had been bitten in other places as well.

“Fuck… fuck…”

I sensed the V that had bitten Amethyst trying to get to her feet.

I turned to the girl, recognizing her almost immediately. Her name was Sarah Green. She was the girl I had spared a few days back, the one with the red bandanna.

This was my fault!

“No.”

The girl looked at me, her eyes narrow, baring her fangs.

“No!” I blasted her down and approached her, firing shots into her chest until there wasn’t much left of her torso.

“Destry…”

I returned to Amethyst, scooping her into my arms. “It’s just you and me,” I told her, tears coming to my eyes. “I’m here with you, Ames, I’m here. Don’t be scared. Please, don’t leave me.”

Part Seven: The Shadow of Tomorrow

.1.

(Present day.)

“No, no, no…”

I choked back a sob, my vision tilting, nothing around me the same as it had been just moments ago.

Amethyst was in my arms, her dark eyes locked on me as she gasped for air. She was having a panic attack, her form quivering, her skin piping hot.

“Destry…”

“No. This didn’t happen. You’re going to be fine, Ames—baby, please, don’t panic,” I told her, smoothing my hand over her hair. “We can salvage this. We can do something about this.”

A couple more lurkers scrambled onto the rooftop, setting off the tripwire.

“I…” I sucked in a deep breath. “I have to handle this.”

I softly set Amethyst down as I went to them, my arm morphing into a thick blade.

The creatures looked up at me and hissed, which was the last sound they would ever make as I cut through both their necks, their heads flying as their bodies slapped against the rooftop. I knifed them both in the back and looked around, staggering as I waited for more to come.

“Come on… come on…”

I kept waiting to wake up from this terrible nightmare. I willed myself forward, which only caused more protrusions to tear from my skin, the pain barely registering with me.

“Come on!” I cried out.

I could feel my blood boiling within, causing even more protrusions. I was ready to bring the entire district down with me.

A warpath.

I would kill every last one of them if it was the last thing I did.

I would…

“We need to move.” Amethyst crouched with her hand on her neck, a look of utter shame on her face.

“We’ll call a teleporter and get you back to the garrison,” I told her. “You need to be healed; we need a doctor.”

“I can’t believe I let my guard down…”

She reached for the vial she usually kept at her side and threw it back, her horns bulging out of her forehead, claws forming, her tail pressing out of her back and the barbs snapping open and shut.

“What are you doing?” I asked her, now at her side.

“We need to kill them,” she said with a snarl.

“You aren’t thinking straight,” I told her, placing my hand on her shoulder.

“Leave, Destry.”

“Leave? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Amethyst’s tail struck me in the side of the face.

Everything went red for a moment, and by the time I opened my eyes again I saw her perched on the rooftop, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her form framed by the rising sun.

“Please,” I said, reaching out to her.

“You have to kill me,” Amethyst said without looking in my direction. “I will take out as many as I can, but once I’ve turned fully, I want you to be the one that kills me.”

“No,” I told her, “we don’t know if you’re infected or not. It takes a couple hours for the results to show.”

“She was latched on me long enough. We both know it happened. I can…” She gulped. “I can feel it, Destry.”

“We need to get you to a doctor,” I pleaded with her. “We need medical help.”

Amethyst turned to me, fear in her eyes. “You know what will happen if you take me back there. They will quarantine me, and once they find out I’ve been infected, they will execute me. We’ve seen this happen before.”

“We don’t know that…” I dropped my hand to my wrist guard, dialing it to the stun setting.

“Yes, we do. Wake up, Destry. Our job is to hunt them, and if we become them, we become the hunted. I don’t want any of that. If I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out killing as many of these filthy fuckers as I can. Once I’ve turned, you have to end my life. You and only you. But until that time, I will hunt down Talon and any other vampires he may be protecting.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how this is going to play out. We have to make sure you aren’t infected, and we need to get you medical help.”

“Do not test me,” she said, her voice wavering.

“This isn’t the time for your stubborn bullshit,” I told her as I got to my feet. “I’m ordering a teleporter now. I’m reporting to Orange.”

“Do it. It’s not going to stop me from jumping over the side of this roof and disappearing into the streets below. This is goodbye.”

“Okay,” I told her, both hands up now, trying to appease her. “What if we just keep this to ourselves then? We can wait a few hours to see if it manifests. And then we can go from there. Would you agree to that? Between you and me.”

“It wouldn’t take them very long to find out.”

“Please, Ames—I fucking love you, you know that, and I can’t let you go, especially if you aren’t actually infected.”

She paused, her throat quivering.

“I love you and you know that!” I cried to her. “I would do anything for you, and I’m not letting you go out there alone. Not until we at least know if the infection has taken. Think of Margo. She got her lower jaw fucking gnawed off by a V and she’s clean. We don’t know. We can’t risk it.”

Amethyst swallowed hard. She stepped back onto the roof, approaching me. “Are you going to blast me?” she asked, her eyes darting to my wrist guard.

“No,” I told her.

To show her I meant business, I took it off and dropped it to the side.

“Let’s relax for a moment here, Ames, see how it takes. Let me make you breakfast. I’m sorry. I don’t know if you want food or not. But I would love to cook for you. Shit, this is all my fault. I know it is. The girl that bit you… Okay, I’m just so sorry. I’m rambling now. Please accept my apology.”

“We can wait a few hours,” she said under her breath. “I love you too, and there’s nothing to apologize for. I saw her too.”

“Sarah Green was her name.”

“I remember.” Silence stretched between us for a moment. Finally, Amethyst spoke. “Just be ready to take me out when the time comes. And I’m serious, Destry—if I’m infected, you’re going to let me go out by killing as many as I can before I turn. And then you are going to take matters into your own hands. You don’t want this thing,” she said, knocking her fist against one of her horns, “turning into a vampire. Especially one that’s been trained to kill from a young age.”

.2.

“I, uh, hope you like it,” I told her as I handed her the MRE.

It was a concoction I liked to make that sort of tasted like a roast. It was made by combining a vegetable soup packet that was absolutely terrible on its own with an Eastern Province beefsteak, which always came with two small potatoes as part of the meal.

Amethyst choked back a sob.

“You don’t have to eat it,” I told her.

“No, it’s fine. I’m hungry.”

I wished in that moment that there was something we could do medically, some way to prevent the inevitable.

But I knew that wasn’t the case.

If she was infected, she was infected.

The government had already funded dozens upon dozens of experiments to see if there was a way to stave off the infection. The vampiric infection wasn’t like a snake bite; the venom couldn’t be sucked out, and there was no balm or medical procedure they had developed yet that would do anything.

The inevitable…

Amethyst took the food from me and started eating.

She had morphed back to her normal form by now, and I couldn’t stop looking at the wound on her neck, especially with the sun coming up.

There was literally no one to blame aside from myself. I had let my heart get in the way of good judgment, and now I would suffer the consequences.

“This is really good,” Amethyst said. “If it really is my last real meal, I’m glad it doesn’t taste like shit.”

“I thought I made that for you before,” I told her.

“If you have, I can’t remember when. I would have said something, or I would have asked for more of it.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

I turned to my backpack, my eyes falling on my headgear.

I wanted this nightmare to end. I wanted to wake up and never have done something as stupid as allowing a future vampire to live.

“Come sit with me,” Amethyst said, setting her MRE down.

I moved in next to her, plopping down on my haunches.

“How does it look?” she asked, showing me her neck.

There were two marks, and a portion of her neck was bruised, just like every goddamn vampire bite I’d ever seen.

No blood, though; she had already cleaned that up.

“We should at least bandage it,” I told her.

“No. I don’t want to do anything with it until I’ve been tagged. There will be no point in bandaging it if I’m infected.”

“You’re being stubborn again.”

“So what if I am? I don’t want to be bandaged. I want it to heal, open air.”

“You aren’t being reasonable; you and I both know that’s not how this will work.”

“I don’t care, Destry.”

I smiled, looking away from her. “You always were too goddamn stubborn for your own good.”

“That’s why you love me, right?” she asked, her voice growing soft.

“Yes,” I finally admitted. “I love your stubbornness. I love how tough you are, how witty you are amid your braveness.”

“It sounds to me like someone is trying to get laid before the love of their life turns into a vampire…” she said, trying to make light of the situation, but failing.

A joke like this would be fine in a few hours if it was clear she hadn’t been infected. But at the moment, it hit too close to home.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told her. “We both know whose fault this is. So make all the jokes you want. I just wish there was more I could do. I feel so fucking useless. Here I am training my whole life to be powerful, to kill indiscriminately, and I couldn’t prevent a young girl—a fucking twelve-year-old—from taking down the love of my life. I’m so angry right now; I can’t even explain to you how angry I am at myself.”

“Please,” she said, her arm coming around me. “Everything happens for a reason. I hate that saying, you know that. But you also know that from what we’ve seen, this is often the case. If this is what happens to me, if this is how I go, then at least I went with you,” she said, tears starting to well up in her eyes. “At least we had something that was real. No matter what our government tried to do to us, or what they tried to make us, we were real.”

“Shit,” I said, looking away from her. “This is all shit.”

“It’s shit. I agree. Now fucking check me, Destry.”

I looked over to my backpack. “It’s too soon. You know the infection doesn’t take that quickly.”

“We don’t know the exact time it takes. It varies; it can even take longer than forty hours,” she said.

“They’ve only documented that once.”

“Check me, now,” she said, her voice growing harsher.

“Fine.”

I went over to my backpack and got my headgear, waiting for it to power up as I focused on her.

[Amethyst Jayde]

[Age: 23 F]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: Exemplar I, B, enhanced mutation, modified speed, dexterity and healing]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

“Well?”

“Nothing.”

“Dammit,” she said, punching her fist against the rooftop.

“I told you, it takes time. And why are you disappointed in these results?”

“I just want an answer. I can’t sit here on this rooftop for the next few hours waiting to hear if I’m doomed or not. Any word from Orange?”

“Not yet,” I told her. “It’s still pretty early.”

“I need to know before we meet up with them or whatever we’re planning to do later today,” she said. “I can’t have this come out then. Orange will check us at some point. It may be when we leave, but he will check us, and I need to know before then. I don’t want to turn into a V when they’re around; I want you to kill me. I don’t want Margo doing something crazy, or Orange exploding my chest. I want you to do it, Destry. I want you to kill me.”

I swallowed hard. “Please, stop saying that.”

“It’s what I want.”

“Let’s just check in an hour. We can start up another patrol, if you like. Sorry, that’s a stupid suggestion.”

“No, it makes sense. My possible final hours as a human, and I’m actually interested in going on a patrol. Can you believe that?” she asked, pressing herself to her feet. “Isn’t that just the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard?”

“Well, we are in one of the worst areas of Ravja, so there isn’t much to do in terms of entertainment. I could call a teleporter to take us back to the garrison, but I’m guessing…”

“No, I don’t want to turn there. If it happens, I want it to happen in the field, so I can say goodbye to you one more time, and just in case.”

“Just in case what?” I asked.

“Just in case I get violent.”

.3.

How many times had Amethyst and I roamed the streets of Overtone Heights in search of something to kill?

This was on my mind as we moved along past a former bank, a Notary Public, a wealth management office, and a pre-school. Everything that had been wasn’t, the sun now shining down onto the streets regardless, our world a vampire.

My father used to say something about everyone having an expiration date tattooed on the back of their neck, that there was nothing anyone could do to live past this date. No exemplar that could change it, no nothing. The only problem with this date was that we usually didn’t know when it would happen.

And that was Death. A beaming light now shattered, not unlike the streetlamp above us, not unlike the prospects of our future.

How many times had Ames and I looked Death in the eye and laughed, daring it to do something?

Death always got the last laugh.

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” Amethyst said as we came to a three-way intersection.

“How do you know what I’m feeling?” I asked her.

“You aren’t that great at hiding your emotions, you know that?”

“Is anyone?”

She nodded. “Orange is. Margo too.”

“I don’t know if Margo has emotions,” I told her.

“She does, and I’ve been over this with you before. I roomed with her all that time—I know her. She has emotions, she just doesn’t wear them on her sleeve like you do.”

“I just can’t help but feel…”

“Destry, you have to stop beating yourself up about this. If it happens, it happens.” Amethyst brought her hand to her neck, squinting at me. “I don’t blame you. We learned long ago that there are dozens of decisions made in the field, and if we dwell on all of them, we can never successfully complete our mission.”

“Headmaster Malus?”

“He may have been a psychopath, but he was our psychopath. And he was right about that. We can’t dwell. I want you to test me again.”

“I just tested you twenty minutes ago,” I told her.

I wore my headgear as usual, but I didn’t want to keep the device over my eyes as I sometimes did. While it was helpful to have my HUD, I didn’t want to accidentally discover the truth.

“And you are going to test me again, and again,” she said, “until we know.”

“Until we know,” I repeated.

Amethyst dropped into an attack position. “Something’s coming,” she said, her tail lifting into the air.

I heard a hissing sound followed by splatter of liquid against the pavement. It began boiling immediately as another shot cut through a streetlamp, bringing it down to the cracked sidewalk and kicking up dust.

“Fuck…” I said under my breath as I looked around to see where the attack had come from. I was ducking now, advancing toward cover, naturally forming my bone armor when another burst of liquid cut right past me, sizzling through the protrusion pressing out of my shoulder.

It stung for a second, but I was too focused on finding where it was coming from to pay any attention to the pain.

Amethyst leaped to a side wall, and from there she scaled up to a second-floor balcony. She took a charging leap and landed on top of a V that had been hiding in an alleyway. Her barbed tail went through his chest several times as blood trickled out of his mouth, his own saliva reaching his clothes and boiling them away.

“Surprise attack, huh?” I asked as I made it over to her.

“I hate the exemplars that spit acid,” she growled. Amethyst kicked the young man’s dead body. “Tag him.”

She stormed off, her tail whipping against the pavement.

Just to be sure, I aimed my wrist guard at his chest and fired off another blast, his body quaking. From there, I lowered my headgear and captured his details.

[Abe Evergreen]

[Age: 33 M]

[Hometown: Korkovin]

[Status: Exemplar II, C, acidic saliva]

[Time since infection (estimate): four days]

I hated to do it, but I looked at Amethyst next, waiting for her details to populate before me.

[Amethyst Jayde]

[Age: 23 F]

[Hometown: Chalmer]

[Status: Exemplar I, B, enhanced mutation, modified speed, dexterity and healing]

[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]

I exhaled a sigh of relief.

“What are you grumbling about?” she asked.

“It wasn’t a grumble; it was a sigh.”

“And where was our spitter from?”

“Korkovin.”

“Fucking Korks.”

Both of us laughed.

It had sort of become her catchphrase, but it did have some alternate meaning considering we were both from Ravja. The youth didn’t want to work in tourism, so rather than stay in the beautiful coastal city, they moved here and ended up overcrowding some of the districts.

“We should go there,” I said as we continued up the street. “To Kork.”

“We will go there,” Amethyst said, a glimmer of hope returning to my heart as I noticed she had shifted from being negative to positive about the situation.

“Yes, we will. It will be great. We’ll stay in one of those hotels that look out at the sea. You know the places.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“Me too. We’ll spend so much time there. Shopping, swimming, everything.”

“It sounds like a dream.”

“It’s not,” I told her as an MM came in from Orange.

It was quickly relayed to me, and once the transmission ended, I caught Amethyst up. “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.”

“Bad news first,” she said.

“We have to stay here for longer.”

“That’s the best you can do?”

“Who wants to stay in Overtone Heights any longer than they have to?”

She grinned, baring her teeth. “What happened? What’s the good news?”

“We have longer. That’s the good news.”

“Longer to see if…”

“Exactly. Orange wants Margo to rest another day, so he’s going to stay at the garrison with her. She’s healed, but she’s acting a little funny.”

“I see,” Amethyst said, her brow furrowing.

“I wish I could be there too, but Orange wants us to stay out here, to keep our eyes out for any movement. Of course, this works out in our favor in a way.”

“I’m aware,” said Amethyst, neither of us wanting to mention now that we were waiting for her infection to show.

“Do you feel any different?”

“I would tell you if I did,” she snapped.

“Easy, easy,” I told her. “I was just asking.”

“Sorry, it’s the beast in me talking. Let’s continue.”

“What are we patrolling for again?” I asked.

“To stay busy.”

“Couldn’t we just find a hotel or a house that’s been completely abandoned and relax? Wouldn’t that be nice? You know, take these bites seriously. I don’t want to be out here in the field and mistakenly catch the fact that you are now…” I gulped. “One of them. I would rather it be just the two of us, something a bit more intimate. Besides, we have more time now.”

“It is just the two of us,” she said.

“You know what I mean. I want the day off. If we can get high up, we can keep our eye on the area and take the load off for a bit.”

Amethyst looked up, her tongue coming to her upper lip as she observed some of the buildings. “There has to be someplace for us,” she said. “But we’ll need to get a higher perspective to find it.”

She leaped toward a wall and started to scale a building, leaving me in her dust. I grew the spikes that I normally grew out of my knuckles and followed her, punching my fists deep into the wall as I climbed upward.

Most of the buildings in this area weren’t higher than four or five stories, but we did see one that looked like it was nine or ten, a place we had cleared a couple weeks back.

“I remember that one,” Amethyst said. “You can see the Turnstone District from the top.”

“It was mixed-use, right? Residential and commercial?”

“I believe so. That was sort of a blur.”

“And what a team it took to clear the place! The bottom floor is still likely frozen after Kay Blue did her thing. And now look at it. It’s probably infected again.”

Amethyst shook her head. “I still don’t understand that part of our government’s strategy. Why do they clear a place only to let it sit there and waste away?”

“It makes no sense,” I told her.

“Well, fuck them. Let’s get to the top from the outside. There were some penthouses on the top floors, and I’m sure we can barricade at least one of the rooms. It will also give us a view of the entire area. A bird’s-eye view, but a view nonetheless.”

“Let’s do it. After you,” I told her, stepping aside.

Amethyst took a running leap and made it to the next rooftop, her tail bouncing behind her as she dropped on all fours, going even faster. I launched myself off the rooftop and landed hard, thickening the bones in my legs to protect myself and leaving a crater behind me.

I was much slower than Amethyst, but I followed her from rooftop to rooftop, watching her move ahead of me as I tried to keep up.

Another couple rooftops and I paused for a moment; Amethyst leaped onto the building in question and started climbing to the top.

I watched her climb, in awe of her beauty and power.

I knew then what I would have to do if she was indeed infected. There really was no other choice.

With this decision made, I grew my spikes even longer and thicker, and I launched myself off yet another roof.

.4.

“I can’t believe it,” Amethyst said after she shouldered through a door. White marble floors, a tan sofa with the cashmere thrown over it, painted ceilings and crystal chandeliers floating above the main living area. The condo was spotless, the only indication of the constant turmoil outside being the view from the windows.

“How did we not find this place before?” I asked, shutting the door behind me. We had come in from the rooftop, clearing the hall as we moved our way through. Aside from some scattered debris and a few discarded MREs near the fire exit, the place seemed untouched.

“I’ll sweep the place,” Amethyst said as she bolted off.

While it seemed perfectly normal, we had to make sure there wasn’t anyone actually in there. Luckily, it was a one-bedroom apartment, and it didn’t take Amethyst more than a minute or so to sweep through it. We both knew it would be empty—at least from what we had seen, Vs didn’t live this way.

I got behind an armoire and helped Amethyst push it toward the door.

“Tripwire too,” she said, setting some out in front of the armoire, neither of us questioning whether this was helpful anymore considering what had happened on the roof. When in doubt, protocol.

Once we were finished, Ames stepped into the kitchen and began looking through the pantry. Her transformation was starting to revert, her horns already smaller than they’d been just ten minutes ago.

“I found some wine,” she told me.

“Wine and an MRE? Now that’s a meal. But wine isn’t so great for you. I thought we’ve been over this?”

She snorted. “There’s actual food here too.” She set the wine bottle on the counter and returned to the pantry. “But it seems mostly like dry goods.”

Amethyst went for the faucet and turned it on, but no water came out.

“Figures,” I told her.

She checked the stove and returned with the bottle of wine.

“I said we could wait it out, not get drunk,” I started to tell her.

“Look, I’m going to be as real with you as I have ever been before.”

“Is that even possible?” I asked her as I took off my wrist guard, placing it and my headgear on the coffee table.

“Am I not honest enough?”

“Never,” I told her.

She took a swig from the bottle of wine and handed it to me.

“If these are my last several hours as a regular person, I’m going to enjoy the living fuck out of them,” she said, her horns starting to grow. “And that means I’m going to drink wine, and I’m going to have sex. Now, you can be part of my going away ritual, or you can watch me drink wine and finger myself.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” I said, reaching for the bottle. She took another swig before handing it off to me. After checking the label and seeing the stuff was from some place called Meeko’s Vineyards in Centralia, I took a pull from it, wincing at the sudden sting of the alcohol.

“That’s the spirit!”

“We still don’t know if you’re infected or not,” I reminded her, wiping my mouth with my arm.

“Well, if I’m not infected, then we spent a few hours drinking and fucking. If I am, then we spent a few hours drinking and fucking.”

“You really have a way with words,” I told her.

“I told you I was a poet.” Amethyst sat on the couch to my right, taking the wine bottle from me. She took another swig from it, then sighed as the liquid reached her stomach.

“It’s not bad wine,” I told her.

“Yes it is. But neither you nor I know anything about wine, so it’s good enough for us.”

“Then how do you know it’s bad?”

“Something about the flavor,” she said, adjusting her seated position for her tail. Her horns were pulsating now, her lips parting as she took in big gulps of air.

“Okay, let me have some,” I told her, and rather than watch her drink herself into a beast-ridden stupor, I finished off the bottle and dropped it on the marble floor, where it hit the ground and rolled under the couch.

“That’s one way to do it,” she said, baring her teeth.

“My beautiful red-eyed girl,” I told her, feeling good and numb now that the wine was in my system. I could adjust my organs to filter out the alcohol, but I decided to stew in it for a while, to just be a little drunk.

“You think I’m pretty like this,” she said, facing me.

“I thought you were beautiful since the day I met you.”

“You thought I was beautiful when I was ten years old?” she asked with a smile. “Because that’s kind of pervy, you know.”

“I didn’t know what I thought then, but I know what I think now, and I know what it felt like to see you grow, to become Amethyst. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything in this shit world.”

“I was always Amethyst,” she said, moving closer to me. “And you’re right, this world is shit.”

She hopped onto her knees, making room for her tail to bob in the air behind her. I couldn’t help but stare at the wound on her neck, the puncture marks still visible even though she had taken her beast form.

“Kiss me,” she said. “Fuck me.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I told her as I moved in closer.

“I’m not asking you; I’m telling you.”

We started making out, her kisses harsh and rough. Amethyst was sucking in deep breaths of air, her forehead pressing into mine, her horns framing the sides of my skull. It was powerful, intoxicating, forbidden in its own way.

“Careful,” I told her, “unless you want me to grow horns too.”

She threw her head back, laughing.

And from there, she swiveled over onto my waist, straddling me. Kissing me as harshly as she possibly could, biting my lip as she did so, drawing blood…

I didn’t pay any attention to it.

My hands were now on her lower back, moving up and down, touching her tail, circling around and cupping her breasts. I unzipped the front of her uniform, and her breasts spilled out.

She started gyrating her hips, careful with her claws as she brought them on my back, digging them into me once my shirt was off.

In a matter of moments she went from rough to ravenous, grinding harder and harder. With the alcohol surging through my system, I squeezed my hand around her neck, Amethyst’s tongue guiding my hand to her mouth as she bit down onto my knuckle, glaring down at me lustfully with her red eyes.

I tried to get out of my pants, but it was impossible with her on top of me. We eventually moved off the couch to regroup, our pants coming off as we stumbled toward the bedroom.

Amethyst fell onto the bed, hiking her ass up, allowing me easy entry as I slid in from behind.

I knew she was wet, but I didn’t know she would be this moist, and as I started to gain my rhythm, her tail lifted and wrapped around my neck, her barbs sliding against my face but not cutting into my skin.

“I love you,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse.

“I love you too,” I told her, my eyes closed, feeling every part of this.

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

We continued on the bed for a moment and then made our way to the floor. Amethyst climbed on top, digging her claws into my chest as she bounced up and down. She drew blood, and I watched as her eyes jumped from my face to the blood now on her nails.

I knew what was going on, but I didn’t say anything as she lifted her fingers to her mouth and stuck them inside, sucking them clean.

“Harder,” I told her, and Amethyst dug into my flesh again, pressing up and down, going even faster than she had just moments ago.

She drew more blood, and her eyes darted to it, her breaths shortening, something changing about the way she looked at me.

“Do it,” I told her, staring her dead in the eye.

Amethyst threw her head back and came down onto my neck, stopping just short of biting me.

She pressed away, whipping herself in the process.

“Do it!” I told her, now naked in front of her, standing over her as she curled into a ball.

“Get out of here,” she told me. “Go, Destry!”

“Do it, now!” I cried. “I’m fucking serious, Amethyst. Do it!”

“Leave. You have to leave! Now. I don’t want…”

I grew my finger into a thin blade and pressed it against one of the veins on my arm.

“Look at me,” I told her through gritted teeth. I took control of my own blood vessels like I did every time I healed, sending more blood toward my wrist. “Look at me!”

“Destry…”

“Amethyst, I’m serious.”

I started to dig into my own arm, slicing into the vein. Blood began to spill over my hand and onto the floor, where I let it drip in front of me.

“Do it. Do it…”

“Kill me,” she whimpered. “Kill me, Destry!”

“Fuck you, Amethyst, I’m not playing around,” I told her, choking back a sob.

“I can’t… I won’t…”

“Do it, goddammit!”

Amethyst lunged for me, taking me down, both of us spilling into the hallway, our bodies sliding on the cold marble floor.

“I won’t,” she said, her fangs starting to grow. “I won’t!”

“You already have,” I told her, my hand coming around her neck and pulling her in closer, smearing my blood across her face. Amethyst tried to press away but I held her down, her vagina pressing against my cock, still wet.

“Fuck,” she said as my member slipped inside her, and she moaned. “Fuck, Destry…”

The sudden sensation caught both of us off guard and I let up for a moment, Amethyst shifting away, her face smeared with blood. She started gyrating her hips again, her head thrown back as she licked the blood from her face. “It tastes…”

“Have more,” I told her.

“It tastes so good,” she said as she looked back down at me, at my bloody arm.

“It’s yours, Ames, it’s yours. I’m yours.”

She kept fucking me as I brought my arm up to her, inches away from the side of her face. I smeared it against her cheek, a little more roughly than I would have liked, her horns getting in the way. A line of blood was now visible on the side of her cheek, which she quickly wiped onto her shoulder and licked.

“You have to,” I told her. “I’m not killing you.”

“I don’t want this for you,” she said.

“This isn’t about you. It’s about us. And I’m not… I’m not going to…”

“Destry…”

“I’m serious, Ames. I’m not going to kill you. So do what needs to be done!”

She pressed both her hands into the floor on either side of my face, looking down at me, her fangs visible, her lips curling into a snarl.

“Does it hurt?” I whispered to her as she continued to have sex with me.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“I still think you’re beautiful,” I told her with the best grin I could conjure.

“You’re such an idiot,” she said.

“I’m your idiot.”

“Keep fucking me. It feels good.”

“I didn’t plan to stop,” I said, slapping my bloody hand against her ass.

She looked down at my chest again, then my arm, licking her lips.

“It’s all for you. Take it,” I said.

“We don’t know if it will work,” she said, her voice turning back into a whimper.

“It worked for you, and I can control my own blood. It will work. Dammit, Ames, don’t make me say it again.”

Amethyst sat back up, slowing the gyration of her hips. She leaned back and touched her own nipples, pinching them for a moment as she looked up at the ceiling.

“I’m serious…” I started to tell her.

Amethyst struck my neck so hard that everything went black for a second.

When I woke back up, she was still fucking me, her horns jammed against my face and neck.

She had bitten me.

There was no pain, but I was starting to grow weak.

“Not… too… much…” I managed to whisper.

Amethyst pulled away, her lips and teeth bloodied, her face puffy from crying. “I don’t know how to do this,” she said.

“You’re already doing it,” I told her. “I think it will work. Just a little more. Don’t kill me. Just like we saw… You remember…”

From all the tests our government had run, it seemed that the only way for the infection to spread was for some of the person’s blood to be drawn into the vampire and then forced back out into that person. A vampire could either drain someone completely, killing them, or give them some of their life force back, turning them.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, and even though everything was a bit blurry, I could still see her ass moving up and down, her tail hooked in the air.

“Go with your instinct,” I told her, exposing my throat again.

Amethyst struck hard, her horns again pressing into my face and my shoulder.

Everything started to dim, the room darker than it had been just moments ago.

An incredible wave of force came into me, a monstrous energy moving through my body. I gasped, my eyes flitting open, everything coming back to me as Amethyst pulled away, her lips and chin bloodied, her eyes filled with concern.

“It worked,” I told her with a deep breath out. “I think… it worked.”

“You don’t know that,” she started to say.

“I’m not dead; I felt something. I know it worked.”

“What have we become?” she whispered.

I started fucking Amethyst harder, my hands on her hips as I went at it with renewed vigor.

“That part doesn’t matter now.”

.5.

[Amethyst Jayde]

[Age: 23 F]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: Exemplar I, B, enhanced mutation, modified speed, dexterity and healing]

[Time since infection (estimate): one day]

I took my headgear off and placed it on the coffee table.

Amethyst was asleep on the couch, dried blood smeared across her face, the love of my life no longer in her beast form. I felt weak, sure, but my own healing ability had already started up. Even more curiously, it had smoothed over the wounds on my neck. I could no longer feel them, but I could feel something inside me.

And perhaps I may have been able to separate my good blood from the infected blood, sending it out of my body before it took effect.

But even if I could, even if Orange was standing here pointing his wrist guard at me demanding that I do it, there was no way I would change what had happened.

As primal and brutal as it was, as uncertain as it made our future, I was now on my way to becoming one of them.

Just like Amethyst.

And I didn’t really have a plan, not yet anyway. Would we stay on the run forever? Perhaps. Would we go out killing as many Vs as possible? Most definitely.

We weren’t going to be non-cogs, and we would be much more than full-cogs. Neither of us planned to do any alpha work, especially considering that neither of us wanted to see this infection spread any further.

So we would hunt them, then? At some point, we would have to feed.

This thought sent a shiver down my spine.

The infection would make itself known by the end of the day, unless my system was a little slow to show it, which was entirely possible.

And from that point forward?

I pressed myself off the floor and stumbled over to the window, gaining my balance.

Amethyst had drained a lot of blood, and I was hungry, groggy, starting to feel irritable. I had already slept a few hours next to her on the couch, but even though I was still tired, I was also restless.

This was my last day as a normal person.

And what did I want to do? Even I didn’t know the answer to that question.

It was moving into late afternoon now.

From this height, it was hard to imagine so much turmoil in the district below. It almost seemed calm down there, serene in a way, yet I knew what lurked beneath the surface, literally, at times.

We were in for a hell of a fight, and that was before Orange and Margo discovered what had happened.

This led me to believe there was nothing left to do but hunt Talon, the large, gray-skinned vampire who had taken a portion of Margo’s face off.

We could do it now, Amethyst and I—we’d been born to go on this kind of rampage.

And looking down at the streets below, knowing that Talon was somewhere in the vicinity, at least according to what the telepath had uncovered, only made me thirstier.

Thirstier?

For a moment I wondered if it was possible for one vampire to feed upon another, but I cast the thought aside for now. It really was too early to speculate.

“Amethyst,” I said loud enough to wake her up.

“What do you want?” she asked, blinking her eyes away. Amethyst rolled to her side and pressed herself off the couch.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel like a fucking vampire.” She stepped up next to me, still nude.

“We really need to clean up.” I swept my hand over the blood that had dried across both our bodies.

“The place doesn’t have running water.”

“Did you check the restroom?”

“No.”

“It’s always the first place I check.”

Amethyst led me to the toilet, her steps light on the white marble floor.

I didn’t know when it would happen, but at some point in the future, someone would do a sweep of this apartment and wonder what the hell had happened here. Actually, they would probably just think it was more vampiric activity, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

We both stepped into the bathroom, using what light came through from the living room to see ourselves in the mirror.

“Wow,” Amethyst said, immediately bringing her hand to her chin and trying to scratch away some of the blood.

“It’s not pretty,” I told her. “Well, you are, but you always are.”

“Do you think we’ll lose our minds?”

“I think we’ve already lost them by now,” I told her.

She smirked at her own reflection. “You know what I mean.”

“I won’t become some lurker in Overtone Heights looking for a quick meal, trust me there. Also, I have an idea.”

“What’s that?” she asked, testing the faucet. No water came out, but we did hear some movement in the wall, which led me to believe the water had gotten stuck in some way.

“Let’s run it for a second.”

Eventually, water started to pour into the sink, Amethyst adjusting the handle as the smell of rust met my nose.

“It’ll be fine in a moment,” she said. “Now, you were saying…”

“Let’s go after Talon ourselves.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Why wouldn’t we? We’re both in a state of mind to really give it to him.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t really have an answer to that particular question, but I should start feeling the effects of your bite soon. Actually, I already am.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said as she started washing her face.

“It was my choice.”

“That was… I don’t want to ever have sex like that again.”

“Neither do I, but I’m glad it happened that way. Otherwise, I was going to force you to bite me.”

“Force me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at my reflection.

“That was my plan.”

“How?”

“I hadn’t really figured that part out yet, but I knew it had something to do with using the wrist guard to stun you, cutting myself and forcing my blood into your mouth.”

“I don’t like the way that sounds,” she said, her voice lowering.

“I’m sorry I even mentioned it. I just can’t let you do this alone, Ames. We’ve been together for twelve years, and there’s no one else in this world I would rather die with than you. So we take out as many as we can, and if our own teammates come for us, we’ll let them finish the job.”

“Margo and Orange will kill us. They’re not going to give us a second chance.”

“What kind of second chance would we have?”

“There are other options,” she said.

“Like?”

“Like working for the Protectorate as vampires, a special unit.”

I shook my head as Amethyst continued to wash up. “I just don’t see that happening. Maybe it’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t count on it. You and I are going to have to be on the run until they catch us.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I actively took control of my own destiny today. And even if it was selfish of me, I’m proud of that fact. I made a choice that will forever change my tomorrow.”

“Want me to wash some of the blood off you?” Amethyst said.

“Sure. You aren’t hungry anymore?”

“No. You?”

“I think I’ll eat an MRE. I need to get something in my stomach if we’re going on the hunt.”

“I didn’t think it would come to this,” she said as she found a cloth. She wet it and started rubbing it against my neck.

“I didn’t know what would come out of all these patrols, but I always had a feeling it wouldn’t be something great. My only hope was that we would get out of this alive and be able to retire together.”

“But you knew they weren’t going to let you do that,” she said.

“I knew it, but that never stopped me from hoping it was a possibility. Let’s do what we can for them by taking out Talon and anyone he is associated with. If it will help the cause, it will make sure that two people like us, whether they are part of the Protectorate or simply civilians, will never have to make this type of sacrifice again.”

“I love you, Destry.”

“I love you too, Ames.”

Part Eight: Reign in Blood

.1.

(Present day.)

Amethyst and I were back at street level when we came across a toppled sign still pointing in the same direction it had pointed when it had stood tall.

“You never think about how close Overtone Heights is to the Turnstone District,” I told her.

“I bet our garrison is only a few clicks away from here,” she said.

There was something different about her, a slight change to the color of her skin. She wasn’t in her beast form at the moment, but I could tell that something was off.

And I knew exactly what that something was.

“Where should we start?” she asked, sensing that I was looking at her.

“Since Cedric was fond of using the sewers, maybe that’s the place we should begin.”

“Then I’d better fuel up,” she said, going for the flask on her belt.

“Good call.”

I watched Amethyst throw back a shot and her form start to bulge, everything about her sharpening, from the horns now jutting out of her head to her claws and her barbed tail.

I lifted my hand to my neck.

There was absolutely no sign that she’d bitten me, but I knew I wasn’t in the clear. I had already noticed a strange feeling inside me, a ravenous urge, an insatiable hunger.

It was mellow for now, but I sensed it would grow…

“Destry!”

A lurker tore out of an open doorway, and Amethyst immediately caught him by the neck with her tail and slammed him into the ground, piercing the young boy’s chest. “Tag it.”

“Yep,” I said, bringing the visor over my head.

[Falcon Gray]

[Age: 7 M]

[Hometown: Vilmar]

[Status: non-exemplar]

[Time since infection (estimate): six days]

“Well?” Amethyst asked.

“He’s from Vilmar.”

“I feel like we never tag people from there. Poor kid. I wonder what he was doing.”

“The same thing everyone is doing in Overtone Heights,” I told her as we moved on. “Trying to stay alive.”

We didn’t bother burning the body this time. There would be more, and once we found them, we would circle back around and get this kid to the stack. It was that or bring him with us, which was something I tried to avoid. There had been times when I’d patrolled with Margo and she’d simply animated their corpses, allowing the Vs to walk behind us.

Fuck that.

“It’s stupid, you know,” Amethyst said as she looked up the street, focusing on something.

“Anything?”

“Nothing,” she finally said.

“What’s stupid?”

“I’ve already started to turn—no, I have turned,” she said, her voice growing soft. “And you will turn in the near future, yet we’re still down here doing the same thing we always do. Can’t we be a bit more creative than this?”

“You want to find another hotel?”

“No, I’m a bit sore from our last hotel.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You think you’re real clever, don’t you?”

“I believe it may be a dormant power of mine, so yes.”

Amethyst snorted, the end of her tail snapping. “Funny.”

“That’s another dormant power.”

“And MRE chef?”

“Three hidden abilities. I consider myself blessed.” I shrugged. “Hunting Vs isn’t so bad. Wait a minute. What am I saying?”

“Sounds like someone is an overachiever.”

I laughed. “That was never me, and you know it. That was Orange.”

“And that’s why he’s our commanding officer.” Amethyst shook her head. “Look, I was never best friends with Orange and Margo, but we…”

“I know. We grew up with them. They’re like a brother and sister to us.”

“I don’t know if we can fight them when it comes down to it.”

“We may have no other choice,” I finally told her after a long pause.

“And Orange could just kill us anyway.”

“He could. He might.”

“But there has to be something else we’re good for, or at least some way we can be useful.”

“I don’t know how this will play out, but I know how I’d like it to play out.”

“There’s one thing I’m certain of.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to become some type of guinea pig for the Western Province to experiment on. We can’t let that happen to either of us.”

“Agreed. If that’s what it comes to…”

“…Kill anything that gets between us and an exit.”

I smiled at her. “I was going to say ‘We won’t go down without a fight,’ but sure, we’ll go with your line.”

We came to a statue of an exemplar healing a fallen comrade. The installation was surprisingly intact, and I admired the handiwork for a moment, even taking the time to read the description. It was a nice space too, the statue surrounded by benches and a circle of shrubs.

“They weren’t wrong,” I finally told Amethyst.

“Who?”

“Our teachers. The North and the South have been at it here on our border for over a hundred years. That’s what this statue is all about.”

“It’s a damn shame,” she said with a shake of her head.

An incoming message from Orange caught me off guard. It appeared at the back of my head, read in the voice of one of our private-channel telepaths.

“What is it?” Amethyst asked when she noticed my face start to go pale.

“It can’t be…” I turned in the direction of the fallen sign we’d just passed. “The garrison is under attack. They came for Cedric, an entire army of vampires. We have to get there.”

“Are they sending a teleporter?” she asked, her shoulders tensing.

“No. It’s too dangerous. We’ll have to go on foot. As you said, the Turnstone District isn’t too far from here.”

“What about the barriers, and all the protections in place between the two districts?”

“We’ll have to go the same way the vampires went,” I told her, looking down at a manhole cover.

Amethyst didn’t say anything. Her next reaction was one of sheer instinct, out of concern for her friends—her fucked up family. She dropped to her knees and used her claws to remove the sewer cover, tossing it aside.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked as she slipped in, her backpack flung over one shoulder as she climbed down.

“Just let me tell Orange we’re on our way.”

I mentally sent a message back to him, leaving out a key detail.

“We good?” Amethyst called up to me.

“Let’s do this.”

.2.

We got lucky.

The sewer system we just happened to drop into was the same one the vampires had used to travel to the Turnstone District. It was Amethyst who first pointed this out, a strange look of familiarity coming across her face.

She could see in the dark. I couldn’t, at least not yet, so I wore my headgear as usual, everything highlighted in green.

“I can sense them,” she finally said.

“No,” I started to tell her.

“It’s like…” She took a deep breath in. “It’s not even a smell. It’s a sense. I just know that they were in this tunnel, that they went in that direction.”

She pointed her claw to a passageway that led off to the right, the sound of a dripping pipe reaching my ears.

“You take the lead,” I told her, growing more bones out of my body and encasing my wrist guards.

My stamina levels were good, even though the bones were a bit heavy. I felt like I could power through, like I could go on like this for several hours if necessary.

But even if I felt strong, there was still this sense of hunger inside me, nothing like the hunger I normally experienced.

I didn’t focus on it.

I could tell my organs were wondering what was happening, and with my power, I actually had the ability to do something about the poison in my system. But I wanted it to settle. I wanted it to take effect.

I wanted to be the same as Amethyst.

I watched her charge ahead, recalling the times when we’d sneaked out to the square in Monseeyaj, Amethyst a teenage girl running ahead of me, looking over her shoulder, smiling.

This was what we were made to do. Every part of what was happening here was our destiny.

All our training, the terrible things we had experienced in our youth, the darkness, all of it converged into this single moment, to Amethyst moving in front of me, her tail bobbing in the air behind her, the woman having to slow her pace so I could keep up.

Fuck.

She was now a vampire.

I was slowly becoming one. Everything about our lives was about to change. And if ever there was a time for us to escape, to finally follow through with those plans we’d had years ago to escape to the northern desert, now would be that time.

They might be able to track us for a while, but eventually we would persevere.

Or die trying.

I had to grin yet again at this thought. It wasn’t the first time I’d had it during the last hour.

There really were only two options here: either make it through or die.

But wasn’t that life? Even with a mundane task, was there really ever a gray zone?

I shook my head of my own thoughts as I continued running after Amethyst. I had been in the field for too long. It had totally warped my sense of humanity, and anything I’d felt just six hours previous would be turned upside down now that I was becoming the thing I had hunted.

“Two are approaching,” Amethyst said, leaping to the ceiling of the sewer.

She drove her claws in and used her leverage to toss herself forward, where she landed on a V with stringy white hair and immediately punctured its chest with her sharp talons. I fired my wrist guard over the small amount of water that separated the left and right sides of the tunnel, my shot going just a bit wide, and the second lurker scurried out of the way.

Amethyst took this one out with pretty much the same tactic of dropping down from the ceiling.

And as she finished the job, another larger vampire came barreling through the tunnel.

Electricity crackled off his skin as he brought his hand back and blasted Ames, the bolt sending her flying backward into a wall, bricks tumbling. The electricity spiraled around her body as Amethyst shook violently, her head slapping against the ground.

I took off toward the full-cog, clearly some type of Class C exemplar. I managed to dodge his blast of electricity by firing my wrist guard, which clipped him in the shoulder and sent his attack off to the left. He was just bringing his arm up to stop me when I lobbed his wrist off with my bone scythe.

I wasn’t done yet.

Even as he glared at me, lightning crackling around his eyes, his mouth opening and his fangs starting to grow, I drove a knuckle spike to the bottom of his neck, then lifted him into the air and slammed him into the ground.

He raised his other hand and a bone tore from the side of my leg, slicing it off at the wrist, the vampiric exemplar hissing.

I dropped my knee onto his chest and finished the job, watching the cursed life leave his body. I spit in his face as I stood and the bones returned to my body.

“There is the Destry I know and love,” Amethyst said, hobbling over to me.

“Are you all right?”

“Just a little frazzled…” she said with a grin. “I hate people with elemental abilities.”

“You aren’t the only one.”

“Just give me a second, maybe a minute or two. That’s all it should take.”

“Take your time.” I glanced around. “Should we leave our packs down here?”

“They’re a little cumbersome, but no. We may need them at some point.”

“Good call.”

Amethyst took a small pull from her flask. “That’s the good stuff,” she whispered, her horns pulsing and her eyes blazing, blistering in my green-tinted vision.

“Where are your senses telling you to go next?”

We had come to a fork in the tunnels, and I wasn’t picking up on anything.

“To the left,” she finally said. “There will probably be more ahead.”

“I’m sort of counting on it,” I told her.

“And we need a plan for what to do once we arrive.”

“I have a feeling this is going to be like one of those bars in Bretnick.”

“A ‘fight your way in, fight your way out’ type of place, huh?” she asked. “And you have used that one before.”

“Well, if the shoe fits…”

“Let’s just get there and see what we’re dealing with.”

“You’ve got it, boss.”

“Please, you’re the commanding officer.”

“Sure, but you’re the vampire.”

Amethyst shook her head. “You know, some of these jokes aren’t funny.”

“Then why are you laughing?” I asked her as we turned down another tunnel.

“Because…” She cleared her throat. “We had a chance to be free back there. The garrison attack would have given us even more cover, however terrible that is. I hate to say it like that, but it’s true.”

“I was thinking the same thing earlier,” I told her.

“Yet we’re heading straight to the people who will kill us once they find out.”

“That we are.”

“And for what?”

“For country?”

“You really are becoming a wise ass, aren’t you?”

“I heard it was a side effect of becoming a vampire,” I told her.

We walked for a few more minutes, trading jabs.

“Are you feeling anything different?” she asked at some point, concern in her voice.

“No. Just hungry. A weird hunger though, not like being hungry before. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Amethyst said as the sewer opened up, now twice the size it had been just moments ago.

I looked around the space.

Nothing.

Still, I kept my voice down. Everything we did was risky, and even though we were feeling emboldened, both of us heading toward certain doom anyway, we still needed to be professional.

“What do you think they’ll do with us?” Amethyst whispered.

“What would we do with them?” I finally replied.

“If Margo turned?” Amethyst considered this for a moment. “We might have to kill her.”

“Possibly. That would be hard. Damn hard.”

“And if Orange turned…” She shrugged. “I just don’t know. I don’t know how we would react in that situation. There are no good answers in this.”

“That’s for fucking sure.”

She stopped and turned to me. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? We could just go back, head toward the border, and fight our way into Centralia.”

“Centralia? What the hell would we do there?”

“It’s easy to escape in a city so large that it doubles as a country. We would escape.”

“That could be an option,” I told her. “But I was thinking more of heading north, to the desert.”

“It would be easier to disappear in the city—plus, there’s food there.”

“Vampires don’t eat food.”

“Both of us are going to have to change our definition of sustenance, aren’t we?”

I sighed miserably. “No more MREs.”

Amethyst started laughing, placing both hands over her mouth. “Is that what you’re most upset about?”

“Maybe,” I finally told her.

“Figures.”

.3.

“The trail leads up from here.”

Amethyst was hunched over, still scanning the walls and the ceiling. We had traveled for about an hour, moving through the sewer tunnels as rapidly as possible. There had been no updates from Orange; we were literally in the dark.

It was clear how the vampires had gotten through to the Turnstone District.

We had found a huge hole in the wall that was supposed to keep them out, which led me to believe they had an exemplar with them who had explosive capabilities.

Craziness.

There had never been a breach like this before, and I thought about that as we started up the ladder that led to the exit point of the sewer. How much of what we had learned of the Western Plague had come from trial and error—mostly error?

Once we reached the top, Amethyst bent her head forward and used her tail to pop off the manhole cover. She scurried out and I followed after her, both of us pausing as we got our bearings.

“I know exactly where we are,” I said with a gasp.

“You do?” Ames turned to me, concern on her face.

I bristled as a vampire tore out of a window, crouching in front of us and hissing.

“Got him.”

I blew his head off in a matter of seconds, then Amethyst stepped over to the V and knifed his chest with her tail.

“My house is…” I could see the fires in the distance, hear the bedlam and smell the smoke.

“Destry.”

“This is where I’m from,” I finally told her.

“You mean… your childhood home?”

“There,” I said, nodding toward the two-story circular building.

“What do you want to do?”

I hesitated. This was not what we had come here for, clearly, but seeing my home and remembering the old man from a few days back, the one who had told me he didn’t know of any Banner family, had struck a nerve.

“Do you want to go there?” Amethyst asked me.

“It’s not why we’re here,” I finally said.

“But…”

“I don’t see many people on the street—any people, for that matter. They must have evacuated. But I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

I turned away from my home, toward the garrison.

Amethyst dropped her hand on my shoulder. “You should still check.”

“It doesn’t matter now. You are my family, Orange and Margo…”

“Orange will probably kill us when he finds out.”

“No, I don’t believe that,” I said.

“Let me finish. And if he kills us, you will never know what happened to your family.”

“They abandoned me,” I told her. “It doesn’t matter what happened to them.”

“You aren’t being reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable, and we need to get to the main fight, to save as many people as we can. We don’t know what Orange will do. I grew up with him. I know he’s hell-bent on following orders, but we don’t know if he’ll kill us or not.”

“Well, would you kill Margo or Orange if they became vampires?” she asked me, her red eyes narrowing on a burst of flames in the distance.

“We’ve discussed this before. I really don’t know. Margo, maybe.”

Amethyst nodded. “But Orange?”

“He was only cruel to me in the beginning. He hasn’t been cruel since then, and I don’t think that is his true nature. I think… I mean, I don’t…” I took a deep breath in. “You are infected, and I will be soon. We don’t know what this is going to do to us in the next couple of days.”

“If I wanted to turn feral, I would have done so by now,” Amethyst said, baring her teeth. “And in my opinion, we have more control over this than you may think. Maybe—just hear me out on this one—maybe a lot of the turmoil in the two infected districts is from people trying to fight back and lash out at what they are becoming. I’m not talking about the non-cogs, but the full-cogs, ones like us…”

Ones like us.

It didn’t matter what Amethyst said in the next few minutes.

My mind continued to repeat those three words.

Not only was everything in our lives on the verge of change, but we were about to become monsters. We were about to…

“Orange will spare our lives,” I finally told her.

“I wish I had your hope, I really do. But you and I both know we are running toward our death.” Amethyst nodded. “We can still turn around. If you want to continue, I’ll come with you. If you want to go, then I’ll go. As long as it’s with you. That is what matters most to me. And I’m not talking about the military ranking either, even though you’re my commanding officer, whatever. We can go now, escape, or we can try to rescue our friends and put ourselves at the mercy of our own government.”

I turned in the direction of the garrison. “This is what we have to do,” I finally told Amethyst, leaving my childhood home behind me.

“As you wish.”

We made our way through the streets of the Turnstone District, everything cast in lilac and orange from the setting sun, fires burning in the distance.

A terrible roar met my ears. Two children came running down the street, a half-dozen lurkers in pursuit.

Amethyst and I were fast, but we weren’t fast enough to stop the lurkers from lunging forward and bringing the children down, immediately going to their necks and tearing out their flesh, snorting and growling as the kids kicked and screamed.

I started firing indiscriminately at this point, knowing I would take civilian lives with my blasts.

But it was a better way to go, especially with the speed at which the lurkers ate, portions of the two kids’ faces and arms already gnawed to the bone.

A small V that avoided my attack charged at us, and Amethyst ran forward on all fours to tackle the lurker.

She fought differently now, with less concern for her own well-being, her focus solely on complete and total annihilation.

And I sensed the beauty in this.

I recognized that Amethyst was at her peak form, but I didn’t say anything as she approached with an angry look on her face, blood dripping off her horns.

“Those poor children,” she finally said.

“Just imagine how many times that has played out over the last two hours,” I said, turning back toward the garrison.

I started running, shrinking some of my protrusions to give me more speed. I felt something churn in my stomach and I stopped, bending over, the urge to gag coming over me.

“Are you okay?” Amethyst asked.

I vomited, stepping my feet back just in time to avoid getting any on my boots.

“Look at me,” Amethyst said, placing her hand on my cheek. “Look at me!”

“Just give me a moment.”

“Look at me, Destry,” she said, and I finally glanced up to see concern in her red eyes.

“I’m okay,” I told her as I wiped my mouth with my arm. “Just…”

“The infection?”

“That’s right. Just the infection.”

More vampires came at us as we grew closer to the garrison, some coming out of buildings, others bursting out of alleyways.

Whatever happened after this, if we were able to secure the garrison, the Turnstone District would have to be cordoned off just like Overtone Heights and the Brownlock District.

The Western Plague had spread, and it had done so under our watch.

And for some reason, that shame, that guilt, only made me want to reach the garrison faster, to save as many of my countrymen as possible and the people I had grown up with.

“I’m MMing Orange,” I told her.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“I can’t see why it would be a bad idea.”

“Because of Cedric,” she said, tapping on her horn. “The vampires clearly came to free him. And I don’t know how they did it yet, but he may be monitoring the area.” Amethyst lifted her wrist and activated her telepath band.

“Good call,” I said as I did the same. “So we go in stealth?”

“Definitely.”

The newer garrisons and bases in the Western Province were built away from the cities, but Ravja had packed them in, meaning there wasn’t much distance between civilian housing and military quarters.

“Then lead the way, my love.”

“That’s cute. Now try to keep up.”

Ames tore off down an alley, which eventually opened onto a street that would take us around to the back of the garrison.

We turned onto a cobblestone road, the sound of shattering glass catching our attention. Amethyst and I turned to a building on the left and saw a woman jump out onto a lower balcony, pursued by a male vampire.

“I’ll get it!” Amethyst leaped to the outer wall of the building and pulled herself up to the balcony.

Not ten seconds later, the vampire went sailing over the railing and landed on the ground in front of me, gnashing his teeth together as I sank my energy blade into his back. The bald fucker clawed at the ground, his fingers bloodied knobs by the time he finally gave way.

“She okay?” I asked Amethyst once she returned to the alley.

“Shaken up, but…”

“Was she bitten?”

“No.”

“I wish we could get her to safety…”

“The best thing we can do now is make it to the garrison,” Amethyst said, moving ahead.

“Lead the way.”

I followed behind her, both of us keeping as low of a profile as possible.

It was easier for her, especially with her enhanced agility due to her beast form. I felt vulnerable without having any bone armor, but I also realized it didn’t matter now anyway; it wasn’t like one of them could turn me, and I wasn’t exactly an easy guy to kill.

And even as I tried to focus, I could sense that a moment of reckoning was upon us.

What happened after they knew?

I shook my head, continuing forward.

There really was no telling.

.4.

The walls of the garrison had contained much of the fight between the soldiers and the vampires.

I would have expected to see more roaming about the streets of the Turnstone District, through windows and balconies, coming after Amethyst and me, but that wasn’t the case. We had cut down a few on our way to the back, but it was only when we entered the courtyard through a hole blasted in the wall that we saw just how dire the situation had become.

The garrison was an enormous compound, the back courtyard large enough to contain an exercise field, training grounds and dormitories. And anywhere carnage was possible, it had presented itself.

At first, neither Amethyst nor I knew where to begin.

Upon entering, our eyes immediately jumped to the brightest action, which happened to be near the dormitories, where soldiers were firing upon a crowd of lurkers.

The main event was in the center of the courtyard, an absolute menace of an opponent. The monstrosity was twice the size of Amethyst, with two sharp tails, charred skin, glowing pink eyes, and a maw unlike any bloodsucker I’d seen yet.

“I’ve got the big fucker,” Amethyst said as she took a small swig from her flask.

Two soldiers charged it with their energy blades drawn, their bodies cut in half by…

“Amethyst, get down!” I shouted, dragging her to the ground just as a bolt of blistering energy swept over us.

The monster emitted another blast from its open mouth, tearing through anything in its path, from fellow vampire to a few of the garrison soldiers who just so happened to be alive.

“Stay low,” I told her, moving to the right and dropping my bag as I got out of the monster’s sight.

She did the same, both of us skirting around an empty building used to train soldiers in search and seizure methods.

We kept to the back wall. A lurker scurried over the rooftop and jumped down in front of us, and Amethyst decapitated it with her tail.

Its body slapped against the ground and I blasted a hole in its chest, just in time for a female V to come around the corner, spot us, and drop to all fours as she readied her attack.

I fired my wrist guard at her. The woman screeched as her arm was blown off, the momentum sending her spiraling to the dirt.

Amethyst dropped her knee onto the V’s back and drove her energy blade in. Hunched over, the love of my life looked up at me and bared her teeth.

“Hungry so soon?”

She nodded. “How could you tell?”

“Just a guess.”

Amethyst and I bolted toward the end of the building, where we came across a stumbling soldier, a pitiful look on his face.

“Please… Help…” he said, reaching his hand out to us.

He clutched his throat, his helmet hanging off to the right, his hand clearly covered in blood. He was pale, gasping for air, barely able to stand. What looked like a gallon of blood had already drained from the poor fellow.

Amethyst aimed her wrist guard at him and blasted the soldier down, ending his life immediately.

“Ames,” I said, dropping my hand to her shoulder.

“I…”

She looked at me.

“I know, I know.”

“He was going to turn. You saw it; I saw it.”

Both of us were thinking the same thing as our eyes met, that this could soon be us, that Orange and all the other members of the Protectorate were trained to do the same thing.

And I almost said it.

I almost let those goddamn words fumble out of my lips: We could just leave. You and me, Ames, we could climb over that wall, go back through the sewers and never return, never look over our shoulders.

But I didn’t say it. And I tried not to think it.

We had made it this far.

“You did what you had to do,” I finally told her, taking the lead.

We crept up along the building, and another lurker leaped out at us. Amethyst grabbed it by its throat and slammed it into the wall. She held it there for a moment as it hissed, as it gnashed its teeth.

With a snort, she brought her energy blade into its chest and pulled the blade up, the young boy’s skin fizzling.

“We take out the big guy, and then we move into the main building,” I told her. “Without him, the soldiers should be able to clean up what’s left.”

Amethyst and I exchanged glances. “Hopefully, they can at least do that.”

“I have faith in them.”

“There you go with that hope thing again.”

Bits of gravel whipped into the air, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Whatever the thing was firing, it had the ability to slice us in half and tear through brick.

Maybe I could block some of it with a shield made of bone hardened by enamel, something I had done before. But I didn’t want to risk it. We needed to move incredibly fast if we were going to take it down, and most of all we had to prevent it from opening its mouth.

It was a tactic we had used before when facing an enemy larger than us.

The Western Province was known for its strange exemplars, including men who could be three times the height of a normal man, and dealing with these big fuckers usually required taking out their footing.

So that was what we did.

Amethyst and I focused our energy weapons at the monster’s feet, both firing at the same time. For a split second I thought we’d brought it down, but by the time the dust cleared…

Shit.

The monster’s two tails kept it balanced, and however hangry it had been before, now it was pissed.

Amethyst and I took off toward the beast, the love of my life racing ahead.

She reached the monster in a matter of moments, leaping toward it with her arms wide. Ames clapped her hands around its distended jaw and held it shut as the two struggled, as it tried to whip her off. Eventually, the beast threw a fist into her side, and Amethyst grunted as she continued to clamp down on its main weapon.

Seeing her in distress caused me to move even faster.

The monster flung her off just as I reached it, my entire arm now a blade made of spiraled bone, which I drove into its stomach, twisting my way in further.

The creature’s hand came to my neck just as I expanded my bones, thickening my muscles to prevent the beast from choking me out.

Its mouth started to open, a sphere of energy forming at the back of its throat.

Amethyst leaped for the beast just in time, clamping its mouth shut again, its own power causing a hole to blast out the back of its head as she slid out of the way.

It fell to its knees, a confused look on what was left of its mutilated face.

A gurgling sound met my ears, but rather than stand there and figure out if it could still fire whatever the hell it’d been firing out of its mouth, I brought my bone blade up to make sure the vampiric beast was dead, its blood spraying against the front of my body.

What was left of its head made a wheezing sound as it fell to the side.

Fuck…

A few of the soldiers start to cheer while others fought back against the lurkers, inspired by our actions.

“You’re a hero,” Amethyst said.

“You’re the one who clamped his mouth shut.”

“But I’m too scary for them.” She turned toward the main building, lashing her tail at the air.

“Maybe,” I said as I followed her.

“You’re supposed to be supportive.”

“I am.”

A lone lurker careened toward us. Amethyst blasted it down with her wrist guard, barely looking at the little bastard.

“So we’re doing this, right?”

Amethyst stopped, a concerned look spreading across her face. “We’ve made it this far; didn’t you say something like that?”

And even if a voice at the back of my head told me not to go in there, told me this would end poorly, I knew it was what we had to do. So I simply nodded at Amethyst, checked my wrist guards, and got ready to put my headgear back on.

I had a feeling it would be much darker inside.

.5.

Blood-streaked floors, flickering lights, shattered glass, and soldiers leaning up against the wall, dead or dying.

My life.

Amethyst whipped her tail against the lurker feeding on a female soldier, the young V slapping against the wall and then yelping as it hit the ground. She sank her barbed tail through the lurker’s chest.

“That’s one way to do it,” I said.

We heard some commotion ahead.

“Sounds bad,” I said as we slipped around a corner, a sticky substance dripping from the ceiling.

I noticed a chill in the air, something out of place, doom evident.

“I think it was one of ours.” Amethyst pointed at a body that had been impaled against the ceiling by a lance of ice.

“I’d recognize that lance anywhere.”

“Kay?” Ames asked.

I nodded.

Kay Blue had come to the school a few years after us, the ice user able to do some incredible things with her power, including fashioning blocks of ice into sharp objects and powerful weapons. I had seen her craft everything from a scythe to a mace. She didn’t even need to use her power at close range; it was just her preferred method.

“It has to be her,” Amethyst said.

We turned to a large conference room, and Amethyst stepped in first.

A couple Vs were frozen to the wall, still chomping their teeth when they saw us, their eyes screaming with animosity.

We blasted them down, making sure they were dead. Two more spilled into the room, hopped onto the table and sprinted over toward us.

The first met the end of a blade I’d grown out of my knuckles; the second was chucked to the ground by Amethyst, who quickly knifed her in the chest.

We both turned to the door.

Kay stumbled into the room, her headgear on, icy mist swirling around her hands. There was a wound on her side, but she seemed stable. “Destry? Ames?”

“Fuck, Kay, are you all right?” I asked, moving over to her.

She took a deep breath and started to collapse, barely catching the table in time to hold herself up.

“There are so many… There are so…” she whispered as I helped her to her feet.

The blond-haired woman looked at Amethyst, curiosity painting across her face.

She was just starting to raise her hand when I drove a bone blade through her lower back, pulling it up.

“Shit…” she whispered, and a coldness spread down my weapon as it started to turn to ice.

“I’m so sorry…”

“No…” Kay said as I pulled the blade out, letting her fall to the ground.

“She would have done something to you,” I finally said, not able to make eye contact with Amethyst. Kay and I had never been that close, but she was part of the Protectorate, one of us.

I had just killed someone I’d grown up with.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, the memories I had of the person that now lay at my feet hitting me all at once. Kay’s skin started to crystallize as her power took over, the temperature dropping all around her.

“She would have done something to you,” I said again, softer this time.

“You don’t know that…”

“I’ve hunted with her before.” I looked at the dead vampires in the room and back to Kay. “Just one patrol. When she lifts her arm like that, how she pulled it to her side, her palm exposed—that’s how I knew she was going to attack. That’s her style.”

“This is…”

We heard a loud bang in the hallway.

A soldier stumbled in with a lurker on his back, chomping down on his neck. Amethyst fired a shot that went through both of their chests, the two falling onto the table, toppling a chair.

“You think they’ll know?” Amethyst asked, still fixated on Kay, who was completely blue now, icicle tears frozen on her cheeks.

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” I said with a sigh. “But I don’t know if we’re going to make it through the next hour anyway. So hopefully, this won’t come back to haunt us.”

Amethyst crouched in front of Kay Blue’s corpse.

“What’s the matter?” I asked her.

“Her skin is no longer frozen,” she said, poking Kay’s cheek.

“So?”

“Destry…”

“Don’t tell me…”

Amethyst lifted Kay to her knee and bit down on her throat, her shoulders swelling as she ate.

There was a smell about it, something I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe I had always noticed the smell of blood, but now it was suddenly strong, alluring…

Intriguing.

I found myself stepping over to Amethyst, my legs taking me forward even though I hadn’t given them a command to actually move. I watched her feed and felt a shift in my throat, a sudden thirst.

Amethyst looked up at me, first embarrassed, then sad, then indifferent. “Are you hungry?” she asked me, blood dripping off her chin.

“I don’t…”

Am I hungry? I had control over my organs, so I knew what hunger felt like, but this was different than any hunger I’d ever felt before. It was as if the blood was a nectar, and something was telling me I needed it to survive.

“It will make you stronger,” Amethyst said in a voice I hardly recognized.

It was new; there was something I instantly despised about it even though…

“No,” I told her. “We grew up with her. I don’t think I can.”

“You’ll have to sooner or later,” she said, baring her teeth. Then she dug back in, Amethyst breathing heavily as she fed. Finally, she looked back up at me. “You’ll see. Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging you,” I told her, closer than I was before, the metallic scent making my mouth water.

Was this what it would be like? What had I actually done?

Amethyst finished up, clearly satiated as she licked her lips. “You’re going to have to do it soon. You will lose strength if you don’t.”

“We don’t know if I…”

“Check yourself,” she said suddenly. “Do it.”

“Yeah.” I brought my hand in front of my face, waiting for the information to appear:

[Destry Banner]

[Age: 25 M]

[Hometown: Ravja]

[Status: Exemplar I, C, enhanced mutation, modified strength and healing]

[Time since infection (estimate): one day]

.6.

I gasped, and a sinking feeling in my chest made my knees buckle. I dropped one hand to the table, trying to come to grips with what I had become, what I had just seen.

Amethyst was next to me in a moment, her hand on my shoulder. I could smell the blood coupled with that sweet-sick hint of alcohol that defined Amethyst in her beast form. With each inhale, I wanted it—I wanted to eat, to feed, nourishment.

No…

I pressed off the floor and made my way over to the wall. Growing my bone around my fist, I punched the wall as hard as I could, and my hand made a crater in the brick. I punched it again, choking back a sob.

And then I was good.

Everything was fine, this was what I wanted, this was who I had to become, this was a goddamn choice.

At least I told myself this.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Now you know how I felt.”

“I knew it was coming; I just didn’t expect…” I looked at Amethyst, barely able to make eye contact. “How many of these things have we killed and tagged?”

“I’m sure Orange could tell you.”

“And to see myself as one…” I shuddered.

“It’s a lot.”

“It’s… it is what it is.”

The floor creaked. A large bubble formed in the corner of the room, expanding and shrinking, kicking up dust.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say Margo is somewhere downstairs,” Ames said, watching another bulge form, “likely in the underground training areas.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Are we good to go?”

I closed my eyes and took another deep breath in. “Yes. Let’s go.”

“Because we still have a chance, Destry. We can still salvage this. We can get the hell out of here and no one would know any better.”

I waved her suggestion away. “Let’s make sure Orange and Margo are okay.”

I turned to the exit point, knowing there would be a stairwell nearby. The room we had met in just a few days back, where we’d been briefed on exploding the sewers, was across the hall.

After confirming this, I made my way to the darkened hallway, everything green from my headgear. A lurker jumped on my shoulder and met its death almost instantly as a spike tore out of my back, sending it to the floor. I grabbed the fucker with one hand and drove him into the ground, triggering my weapon and eviscerating his upper body.

“Someone’s not happy,” Amethyst said as she took off towards the stairs.

“Fuck these things.”

We worked our way down, noting the bodies in the stairwell, bloodied handprints streaked on the walls. We reached the lower level and were greeted by the discord of calamity. There were explosions, cries for help, blood-curdling screams, the sounds of bodies hitting the floor—mayhem in the air.

We burst into one of the large underground training rooms, easily half the size of the stadium, where we found Margo and a few soldiers cutting through row upon row of vampires.

A pillar had lifted out of the ground, and from my vantage point I could see that Orange was on top of the pillar passed out, his hand hanging over the side.

No time to figure out how the battle had made its way underground, or if Talon and Cedric were somehow involved. Amethyst and I launched into action.

Whip fast.

There was no question, no other response but to help our comrades.

I threw myself into the crowd, my bones expanding out of my skin as I smashed through the vampires even though I could tell I was growing weaker, the hunger setting in.

Ignore it.

Amethyst was faster than I’d ever seen her, zipping around, avoiding the objects Margo had animated, from spikes on the ground to exploding body parts—Margo continued to be a force to be reckoned with.

But she was clearly tired, and injured, blood in her hair, balancing her weight on one foot as she tore through our enemies, a wild look on her face even with the headgear covering her eyes.

What would become of her?

It wasn’t the time to think about these sort of things, but seeing her—and seeing that look on her face—had me worried for Margo’s future. The bottom half of her face was incredibly scarred, mangled, part of it looking like she had barely survived a third-degree burn.

What will become of you, Margo?

The thought only lasted a moment, a fleeting second.

Time both sped up and slowed down during the fight, and even though I was completely engaged with slicing Vs down, I still had the time to ponder about her, however brief it was.

What a life.

The explosion that tore into my shoulder did not come out of nowhere.

I saw the full-cog charging up, and I tried to make it to her in time before she could release her power.

As it had done countless times before, my bone armor protected me.

It hurt, sure, and I could feel my armor crack, smell my own flesh burning, but I pressed forward, determined to stop her from using her power again.

I reached the female vampire just as she tried to fire off another shot.

I tackled her, her shot going wide and hitting the ceiling, dust tumbling to the fight below. The barbs sticking out of my forearm came under her neck, tearing into her throat. She tried to bite me and ended up biting off her own tongue in the process, hissing and snarling as I sank my energy weapon deep into her chest.

She gasped once, her mouth opening as she passed.

I caught Ames spinning to the right, her tail slapping against the face of a large V.

She dropped to her knees and sprang forward, slamming her horns into his chest. Once she was on top of him, she jabbed her energy blade into his chest, ducking just in time for a lurker to jump over her.

I blasted this one just as it hit the ground, blood misting the air.

We were finally starting to win, their numbers dwindling fast, which only kicked everyone left standing into a fervor to finish the job.

The two surviving soldiers worked even harder, some fighting with energy blades, others using their blasters. Margo targeted heads and upper bodies, using her power to animate the creatures’ organs and explode them.

Amethyst continued her spinning attacks, using her claws, her tail, and occasionally her weight to beat them back, her red eyes filled with fury.

A mutant vampire with legs almost like a frog jumped into the air and came down hard on one of the soldiers, biting into his face. The other soldier tried to save him, only to be overwhelmed by lurkers, who quickly saw to his death.

I charged off in their direction, growing my blades as I ran, scooping up anyone who dared to get in my way. Rather than dive in and start stabbing, I turned my fist over and triggered my wrist guard, blasting into the pack, killing indiscriminately.

One managed to escape, its legs breaking out from its own body, clawed hands going to its stomach as it ripped its own organs out.

Margo.

There were only a few more left now, which Amethyst and I swiftly cut down with our wrist guards, the fuckers dead or dying in a matter of moments.

Perhaps there were more in the garrison, but we had cleared out the majority of them, and after we regrouped with Margo we could go after the rest.

Or so I thought…

“Thanks,” Margo said as Amethyst and I cautiously approached her. The strange woman turned in our direction, looking right past us.

Both Amethyst and I stopped dead in our tracks, bristling.

“What happened?” I asked once Margo turned away from us.

“They came, as you clearly saw,” she said. “You went through the sewers, right?”

“How did you know?” Amethyst asked, both of us trying to stay behind Margo now.

“It was what we would have done. It made sense, especially regarding your location in Overtone Heights.” The white-haired woman shook her head. “Once they got here, they swarmed into the area where Cedric was being held. There were exemplars watching him, but there were too many Vs. As soon as they got to Cedric, he turned the garrison against itself.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He convinced almost everyone present that the people they had come into contact with, their fellow soldiers, had turned into vampires,” she said, slightly out of breath. “It was a bloodbath from that point forward.”

“But we saw some soldiers fighting alongside us,” Amethyst started to say.

“Maybe those were the ones who were transported in before they cut off teleportation.” Margo cast her hand at a few Vs who still had their limbs attached. They stood and began lifting lurkers, stacking them. “Anyone who was here at the time had their mind reworked by Cedric.”

“And you and Orange?” I asked.

“As a precaution, both of us were wearing telepath bands. We had been since I started feeling better. His idea.”

Margo looked up at the pillar she had raised from the floor. It began to lower, both Amethyst and I getting out of the way.

One of Margo’s zombie Vs moved past, not making eye contact with us. I exchanged glances with Amethyst. “What about Cedric and Talon?” she finally asked.

Margo shrugged the question off. “Long gone. We will continue to hunt them, however.”

“What happened to Orange?” I asked as the pillar reached the ground.

“An exemplar with wind power swept him into a wall, knocking him out.”

Margo turned to us, both Amethyst and I pausing.

“Shit…” Amethyst whispered, her tail curling. The zombie Margo controlled dropped a body onto the floor and turned to us.

“There’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you,” I started to say.

Every nerve in my body was firing now; if anyone could kill us before we could reach them, it was Margo.

The white-haired woman licked her lips, looking from Amethyst to me and back again. “I see,” she finally said.

Her hand came to her headgear and she raised it up to her forehead, looking at us both intently with her mismatched eyes.

Silence stretched between us. I kept waiting for my heart to explode, or my own protrusions to dig back into my body.

But they never did.

Margo just continued to stare at us, waiting for one of us to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Amethyst whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” Margo finally told her. “And this is not my decision to make. Will you run? If you run…”

“No,” I told her. “That’s not our plan. We won’t run.”

“Good. Then let’s get Orange to a safe place and secure the rest of the garrison.”

“Thanks,” I said as she turned away from us.

Margo nodded. “You would have done the same for me.”

Epilogue

“Tag it,” Amethyst said, her tail flicking against the pavement.

We were a few blocks away from my home in the Turnstone District, trying to contain the spread. We had been at it for two days now, and even though the sewer line had been repaired, this had done little to stop the infestation.

I focused on a man lying on the ground, his arm bent under his body in an awkward way.

[Neil Hellablack]

[Age: 42 M]

[Hometown: Korkovin]

[Status: Exemplar IV, E, enhanced intelligence]

[Time since infection (estimate): three days]

“Where’s he from?”

“Kork. A real smart ass.”

Amethyst snorted.

“Seriously. He’s one of those enhanced-intelligence exemplars.”

“Your jokes aren’t funny if you have to explain them.”

“You laughed.”

“There was something on my horn.”

She brought her hand to her horn, wiping some of the blood off and sniffing it.

“Lots of Korks in Overtone Heights,” I told her as she flicked the blood off her fingers. “At least it seems like that.”

“Figures. Then again, we are pretty close to the tracks, so it makes sense for someone from Korkovin to live here.”

“That it does.” I lifted the man’s body and took it over to the pile we had made.

There was already a stack lit about a block away, smoke billowing into the air. We were upwind from it, something I learned the hard way back on my first patrol, but I could still smell the burning flesh, or at least I thought I could.

There really was no telling if some of the things I experienced were real or simply psychological.

“Should we light it?”

I nodded. Another stack of bodies, another fire, another set of lives no better than ash in the end.

“We might as well.”

Amethyst took one of her vials out of the side pocket of her backpack, dousing the stack. I aimed my wrist guard at it once she stepped away, a plume of fire taking shape, crackling.

The night we discovered what Cedric had been up to seemed like so long ago. But in actuality, it had only been a few days ago, a short time span in which our lives had changed in a way neither of us could ever have predicted.

And the shame.

I still couldn’t get over the shame, even though it had been my choice.

“Are we watching the stack burn or moving on?” Amethyst asked.

“Moving on.”

The sun was setting, but we still had a long night ahead of us.

We hunted longer hours now, and even though both of us felt the urge to sleep at times, neither Amethyst nor I could ever really doze off. In my mind it almost mirrored the infection in a way, a constant inner purgatory, a slumber interrupted, stitched together by fleeting nightmares.

“Did you hear that?” Amethyst said, looking up at one of the rooftops.

I focused for a moment, ignoring the fire blazing to our right, the hiss of clothing lit aflame, boiling flesh.

“I hear it.”

“And? You’re my commanding officer.”

“Does that still apply to us?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t.”

“We’d better check it out,” I told her, immediately forming a spike over my knuckles. I was just about to climb up when Amethyst nodded to a fire escape.

“Sure, I’ll take the easy way.”

“I mean, unless you’re trying to impress me.”

“I always am, boss.”

“Twelve years and you still haven’t managed to pull it off.”

I grinned. “There’s always tomorrow.”

Both of us took the fire escape to the top, where we discovered a dead body, practically a skeleton by this point. The only bit of flesh left on it was along its scalp.

“Lurkers,” Amethyst said.

“They really are hungry little bastards.”

We had discovered a lot over the last two days, and one of those things was that the non-cogs, most notably the lurkers, didn’t have the finesse it took to correctly extract blood from a person’s neck. Not all of them—clearly not the one who’d first bitten Amethyst—but most of them.

This was why they were so ruthless once they actually got a hold of a body. The lurkers literally did not know what they were doing. All they knew was that the thing that they craved, the thing that they needed to stay alive, was beneath a person’s skin.

“There it is,” Amethyst said, nodding off to the distance. I glanced at a rooftop about half a kilometer away, a red glow flashing around it.

“Should we investigate?”

“That’s why they pay us the big bucks.” Amethyst launched herself off the rooftop and onto another, her tail slapping against the parapet.

I backed up all the way to the other side of the rooftop and bolted toward its edge. I threw myself forward, both hands now bone spikes that I used to anchor myself into the side of the building.

I felt a pull on my skeleton, but it wasn’t so bad, nothing I wasn’t used to by this point.

The State had pretty much beaten the ability to feel pain out of me, and while I did notice sensation sometimes, I more or less ignored it, especially when the adrenaline was running.

And even though we didn’t know exactly what we were about to go up against, I experienced a surge of the good stuff as I climbed onto the rooftop and continued after Amethyst. The love of my life, twice my speed, in her beast mode.

She laughed as she hit another rooftop, scurrying up to the side of a water tower and then waiting for me to join her. She checked the time on an invisible watch once I arrived.

“You know, climbing is a bit harder with the backpacks,” I told her, catching my breath.

Amethyst peered down at me with her red eyes for a moment, a smile on her face, her lips parting. “I have to make you work for it.”

She clambered up a water tower and used it to jump to a higher rooftop, then rolled and leaped to another building, this time latching on to a fire escape at the very last moment and swinging herself to a window ledge.

“Shit,” I said, taking a deep breath in.

“Try to keep up,” she said as she tiptoed along the window ledge, a shit-eating grin on her face.

I eventually followed after her, never letting Amethyst out of my sight. I would follow her past the gates of hell if it would keep us together.

Always together.

In the end, I wasn’t able to pull the fire-escape move, but I did manage to reach her after some careful maneuvering, which saw me latching on to a light post and using it to swing myself to another building.

Exhilarating.

Amethyst and I arrived at a temple, the courtyard below filled with trees, their limbs reaching up to the darkened sky.

The action was coming from one of the buildings outside of the church, but rather than go inside and put ourselves in a fatal funnel situation, both of us waited to see what would emerge.

I was considering setting up my concentrated energy weapon when a pair of doors burst open. A vampire went sailing out, hit the cobblestone, and kicked up dust as it flipped around.

“That’s our cue,” Amethyst said, her tail lifting into the air.

A woman flew out of the doorway, one I keenly recognized as the leader of the Northern Alliance patrol, the squad leader with her red hair and dark helmet.

A menacing vampire with a sharp horn on his head and wings on his back tore out of the open doorway. As soon as he gained his footing, he lifted into the air, flying toward her, the female rune user tracing a sigil just in time to prevent him from striking.

Amethyst dropped down into the courtyard and took off toward the winged exemplar, the man baring his teeth at her, hissing, his eyes filled with madness.

The two reached each other, and Amethyst quickly overpowered him. She dragged him to the ground, pressing her sharp thumbs into his eye sockets, her tail lashing at his limbs as she held him down and blinded him.

I hopped down from the bell tower onto a two-story building, and from there I scaled down the wall, where I landed next to a vampire just getting to his feet, the one the rune user had blasted out of the double doors.

I blew its head off as I approached Amethyst and her future kill, the love of my life just about to deliver a final blow.

“What the hell are you doing in this district?” I asked the NA squad leader.

“I…”

“You know this isn’t your jurisdiction,” I said, turning to her.

“Under Protocol 6.19 of the Warring Nations Agreement, paragraph seven and eleven, we are allowed to patrol any part of the city of Ravja where we deem enemies may be present.”

“What enemies? The Southern Alliance isn’t stupid enough to come to this side of the city, and they certainly aren’t dimwitted enough to hang out in an infected zone.”

“Protocol 7.32 of the Warring Nations Agreement…”

I shook my head at her. “Haven’t we been over this before, lady? Your protocols and faux diplomacy tactics mean nothing to us. The Western Province never agreed to them. And even if they did, you are looking at two members of the Protectorate, and not just any members—we’re part of a special forces unit.”

“A special forces unit?”

I smiled at her. “Correct. And we don’t operate under any foreign treaties or laws, except for those specifically signed by our government, and even then, only the ones that relate to special ops.”

I exchanged glances with Amethyst, and she took over.

“How did you even get over here?” Amethyst asked, finally killing the vampiric exemplar she’d pinned down.

She then got to her feet and made her way over to the one whose head I had turned to a bloodied mess, where she sank her tail into his chest, making sure it was dead.

The NA squad leader gulped. “The way you two hunt is… barbaric.”

“What would you prefer us do? Invite the fuckers over for tea and poison them? You know, I forgot to tell you…” Amethyst reached into one of the pouches on her belt. “We killed one of yours, but it’s not what it sounds like. He was infected.” She turned the patch over and read the details aloud. “Brand of Cody-Port, a Specialist. Ring a bell?”

The redheaded woman swallowed hard.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Jade of Under-Row, Squad Leader.”

“Okay, Jade, where’s the rest of your squad?”

“Just one, and he’s…” She nodded at the building.

“Is he dead, or was he bitten?” Amethyst asked point-blank.

Jade lowered her head. “Dead.”

“And you’re all alone now?”

She nodded.

“You really should have listened to the warning we gave you,” I started to tell the woman. “It was in your best interest. And if you had…”

“I can take care of myself,” Jade said, her fists curling at her sides.

“Are you sure you don’t want to call a teleporter?” Amethyst asked.

“Pity from Westerners never did anyone any good!” she scoffed. “Maybe if you had pitied less and killed more, you wouldn’t be dealing with this vampiric infestation.”

“Is that so?” I asked, taking a step closer to her.

I could sense it, her fear, but I could also sense something else, something beneath her skin.

Something I desperately wanted.

She barely had time to lift her hand before I struck, my fangs growing just as I bit into her neck. It was messy, but I was getting better at this, her blood instantly nourishing, rejuvenating.

Jade tried to push me away and even attempted to trace a sigil in the air, all to no avail. It wasn’t long until her hand fell weakly by her side, Amethyst watching me finish up.

“Here,” I told her, suddenly embarrassed.

I still hadn’t gotten over the feeling of embarrassment after I fed, the shame. But Amethyst had, and the beast morpher used her tail to lift the woman up.

I felt a surge of energy move through me as I wiped the blood from my lips.

We were supposed to be the good guys, the Protectorate, the fucking heroes. We weren’t supposed to be the ones who created the monsters.

I couldn’t help but think I was on borrowed time, that I was an experiment, that none of this would matter in the end.

Amethyst continued feeding, and I turned away.

It was time to stack a couple more bodies.

The end.

Back of the Book Content

Reader,

This book was quite the ride for me, and I truly hope you enjoyed this story. More details about the conception below, but first…

Please take a moment to review Child of Chaos.

If you enjoyed this story, and you want to read more of my genre-crossing works, your reviews go a long way in letting others know that this one is worth picking up. This book was a longshot for me, and I wrote it even though I knew it’d be emotionally draining (the feels) and that it’d be hard to market.

If it resonated with you, please let other readers know.

There will be a book two, hopefully by the end of 2019. If not then, it will come in the winter of 2020.

I don’t want to hold a book hostage, but if the reviews are flying in I’ll probably write it faster to please you…

Because it is my goal to please you (consider yourself Amethyst in this fucked up situation, and me Destry. Anything for you, Ames!).

But in all seriousness, please take just a few moments to review this book.

Now… the rest of the story.

Originally, my plot outlines called for Destry to get infected, not Amethyst. In fact, I wasn’t going to have her get infected at all, at least not in the first book. I even set Destry up for failure, making him a little too casual with his power through the possibility of the illness spreading after he’d cut someone down.

But no.

The words started flowing and it turned out that Sarah Green (little girl, red bandana) got Ames instead. It was brutal too. I love my characters, and I was practically sobbing at my keyboard once Destry tried to come to grips with it. It was hard to come back from writing that part for me: all I could imagine was the same thing happening to my wife and how I’d feel if that were the case. (Spoiler alert: I’d let her infect me in a heartbeat!)

I hope you felt it too.

Other inspirations

I’ve thought long and hard about where the idea for this one came from. I wanted to explore more of Margo and Orange’s pasts (they are characters in another series I write called House of Dolls), and I definitely can feel some The Road influence in the bleakness of some of the scenes.

Another influence came from my interest in the Iraq War, and some of the various writings from soldiers to journalists about Baghdad. I tried to capture this as well in a fictionalized dark fantasy setting, especially the voices of some of the soldiers in What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It. I really wanted Destry to speak like some of these brave men and women.

Another thing that inspired me, and what made this book harder to write than some of the other books I’ve written, was the focus on a very small group of characters. I liken Child of Chaos to small cast plays, which rely entirely on the strength of four to six actors to deliver the story. This made the writing challenging, but it also made some of the scenes very intimate.

I want more.

So do I.

If you want more of this story, you can start the House of Dolls series while I work on the second Child of Chaos book.

https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

House of Dolls takes place ten years after Child of Chaos. Margo becomes a reoccurring character in the second book. And Orange joins in the third installment. House of Dolls has been one of my best-selling series to date, and it’s another dark fantasy joint with superhero elements. Readers of House of Dolls consider Child of a Chaos a prequel. So if you haven’t read that one, do yourself a favor.

Other cool places.

What’s that? You have a Facebook group dedicated to your books? YES. You can also join the Proxima Galaxy here to see how all Harmon Cooper books are connected, see previews of upcoming releases, and get early copies of my new works as well as free audiobooks.

Also, I’m Harmon Cooper. Hi. Sorry if I didn’t mention that previously.

Other ways to connect would be on my mailing list, or through my Patreon (where you can get exclusive swag and read Child of Chaos 2 before anyone else does).

Email signup: https://geni.us/HCReaders

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HarmonCooperWriter

Need some more LitRPG? Then check out the LitRPG Books page, or the GameLit Society page, run by some great dudes.

So join the group and thanks again for your reviews.

Yours in sanity,

Harmon Cooper

Other Books by Harmon Cooper

I have written over thirty books. Here are some of the highlights!

Hate your job, win the lottery, get a superpower.

Don’t miss the best-selling House of Dolls series, which shares a world and characters with Child of Chaos.

https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

A Super Harem Adventure about a sci-fi writer and the superpowered women who are trying to kill him. Fun content, adult read!

https://geni.us/CherryBlossomGirls1

A fantasy harem adventure inspired by Pokemon Go!, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the Persona family of video games.

https://geni.us/MonsterHuntNYC

What if Ready Player One was a multi-part epic? Gritty LitRPG action, gamer humor, fantastic fantasy worlds, and a killer MC. An epic story told over eight books. This is the series that put Harmon Cooper books on the map.

https://geni.us/TheLoop

If you love dark fantasy, RPGs, Witcher, Punisher, or Mad Max, you'll love this powerful gamer trilogy about a man and his wolf companion.

https://geni.us/LastWarrior

Tokyo, Japan meets online fantasy gaming and South Park-styled humor. Yakuza, goblins, action, intrigue - add this book to your inventory list!

https://geni.us/FICK

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