Текст книги "State of Alliance"

Автор книги: Summer Lane

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Chapter Fourteen

This is where I belong, I think.

I am dressed in black. The wind is whipping loose pieces of my red hair into circles as I stand on the crest of a hill just outside of the city. A rifle is slung across my back. Two handguns are strapped to my belt, one to my thigh. I’ve got a couple of knives, a few grenades, and an armor-plated vest.

I am back in my element.

I am in charge again.

We are waiting in a wooded area on the north side of Monterey. The terrain is strangely stepped, veering up and down at jagged angles. Roots of trees twist in different directions. The smell of saltwater and fog and coastal pines is heavy in the air. And all is silent.

We are waiting.

Watching.

I settle into a comfortable position behind a tree, checking my ammunition and weapons. My thin black gloves keep my hands warm but allow movement – potentially quick movement, when the situation calls for it.

Uriah, Andrew, Sophia and Vera are each Lieutenants, each in charge of an individual team of militiamen and women. They are spread out among the woods with their soldiers. I am in the center, the Commander that oversees each Lieutenant and their team. Chris is here with me. He is the top dog when it comes down to it, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Manny will be here soon,” Chris whispers.

“So will Omega,” I say.

He nods.

Our militias have spread out around Monterey, surrounding the city limits like a protective barrier, planning to stop the advance of Omega troops. The Alliance should take care of the warships, and this battle should be over quickly.

I hope.

I am comfortable being out in the woods again, back on the field. I’ve had so many worries and thoughts running through my head this past week, it’s been difficult to focus my efforts on one thing: winning.

“Your father would be proud of you, Cassidy,” Chris says, touching my shoulder.

“You say that like you think he’s dead,” I reply.

“I didn’t say that,” Chris answers. “I’m saying that if he knew what you’ve done with the Alliance, and surviving the Coast Guard cutter…” he breaks off. “He’d be proud. As proud as I am. You’re a strong woman, Cassidy. You’ve grown up. You don’t need anyone’s help anymore. You can stand on your own two feet.”

I look at him, smiling softly.

“Nobody can stand on their own two feet forever,” I say. “We all need friends.”

“True.” Chris kisses my forehead. “Like I said. You’ve grown up.”

I look at him. The eerie silence of the woods is unsettling.

And then I say,

“How come you’ve never told me you love me?”

There it is. The words that I have been too afraid to say for months are out in the open. I can see them sinking into his skin, registering in his brain. His expression becomes taut, his eyes troubled.

“What makes you think I don’t?” he asks, and his voice is low, defensive.

“Because you’ve never said you do,” I reply.

“I think my actions speak for themselves.”

“Sometimes words need to be said,” I say. “Sometimes people die and you never get the chance to tell them what you should have.” I frown. “Chris. Do you love me? I think you do. I mean, we’ve been through everything together. We’ve given each other everything. If you don’t love me by now, you’re never going to.”

Saying those words out loud is terrifying to me.

If Chris denies loving me, our relationship will be over. I have known that for months, but I have never dared myself to even let my mind wander in that direction. Yet it is true. If Chris doesn’t love me now, I can’t force him to later.

Love is not made. Love just happens.

But I will always love him, no matter what.

“When they told me that you were dead,” Chris says, choosing his words with care, “I didn’t know what I would do if they were right. The Golden Shark was completely capsized. Everyone was dead. Captain Adams, the entire crew. We recovered their bodies, but you weren’t there.” I see darkness in his face, and I realize how difficult that must have been for him. “I had to know. I took a diving team into the bay and we searched for your…” Here he stops to clear his throat. “We searched for your body. Didn’t find it. But I couldn’t believe you were dead. I didn’t let myself.” He presses the tip of his finger to my cheek. “I’m glad I didn’t.”

“You’re a good man, Chris,” I say. “But do you love me or not? I have to know. Do you understand? I have to. No more games. No more avoiding the question.”

Chris takes a deep breath, closing his eyes.

“Of course I do, Cassie,” he whispers. “I love you more than anything else in this world. You’re the light of my life. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

When he says this, my eyes fill with tears.

How long have I waited for him to say those words?

An eternity. I’m sure of it.

“Why didn’t you just tell me sooner?” I say, trembling.

“Because…” Chris sighs. “Because of Jane.”

I check my left and right, slide my hands down my rifle, swinging it into place in my arms. “Jane was your wife,” I say.

Chris nods.

“What happened to her?” I ask.

Chris runs a hand over his face, so handsome, so weary.

“I met her in San Diego,” he tells me. “I was in SEAL training on Coronado Island at the time. She worked as a concierge at the Del Coronado Hotel, right on the beach. Famous place, big draw for celebrities and rich people.” He laughs beside himself. “She was… a lot like you. Spunky, strong-willed. Nobody was going tell her how to live her life. I fell in love with her. We got married after a couple of years, and she moved around the country with me every time I was deployed.”

He pauses, gathers emotional energy, and continues.

“My missions overseas at the time were… high risk,” he says. “Higher than usual. I was on a hit lit. Terrorists put a price on my head. A lot of SEALs on my team did a pretty good job of keeping their identities and their home addresses a secret, but every once a while… information would leak.” He looks at the sky. “I was on an assignment in Baghdad, Iraq. Assassination mission. I got a call.” He stops. His voice quivers, and for the first time I see a flash of a heartbroken man, a scared man. “Jane had been killed. My parents found her dead in our living room. It looked like the house had been torn apart. She’d been shot four times.” He makes a fist and lays it against the trunk of the tree, above my head. “Terrorists. They killed my wife to get to me. But, being the spineless cowards that they are, did it while I was overseas. Killed an unarmed, innocent woman, because they knew I wasn’t home to protect her.”

“My God, Chris,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry.”

“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” he says. “The missions, the fighting. Why? My wife was dead, killed by the very people I’d dedicated my life to taking out. My job was to remove threats to the American people, and I couldn’t even keep my own wife alive.” He leans closer. “That’s when I left the military. I’d given about a decade of my life to my country. It was time to move on. I moved to Santee, California. My parents wanted me to come back home to the farm… but I wasn’t ready for that.” He swallows. “I was an idiot. I was destroyed, heartbroken. Broken by war. I’d see too much, way too much.” He looks into my eyes. “And then came the invasion, the EMP… and you.”

“I had no idea,” I tell him. “I just… I never knew.”

“How could you? I’m good at keeping secrets. I was trained to be a weapon.” He has a profound look of regret on his face. “When you came along, I fell in love all over again. But this time, we were both in a warzone. My chances of protecting you from Omega… from everything the world had become, were so much slimmer. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you, Cassie. I was afraid that if I said I loved you, I’d jinx it all. Ruin everything. It had happened before… and because you’re a soldier, well… it could happen again. Chances are, it would happen. Soldiers die. Every day.”

I place my hands on his cheeks.

“But I’m not dead yet,” I say.

“No, you’re not.” A single tear sparkles in the corner of his eye, slipping down the side of his face. “I’m sorry, Cassie. I should have told you long ago. I’m an imperfect man with an imperfect past. But as long as you’re alive, I’ll do my best to keep you safe.”

I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “We’ll keep each other safe.”

I slowly kiss him. It is a short kiss, but a meaningful one. Full of promise and love and new hope. “We will survive this,” I say. “Together.”

He smiles his beautiful smile, and for a brief moment, all is right with the world.

“Commander?”

Chris and I both turn at the same time. Uriah is standing there. He is dressed in black. Like me, camouflage paint is smudged on his face.

“Yes?” I say.

Chris raises his eyebrows.

“Omega is here,” Uriah says. “Get ready.”

There is always a calm before the storm. I lie prone in the brush, my rifle in my shoulder, my cheek on the stock. I am comfortable, I am prepared. I am strangely at peace. Chris is beside me, his position the same.

We are a team again. A single unit.

We’ve got six teams here in the woods with us. All of them are members of the Freedom Fighters. I miss having Alexander Ramos and Derek in the fight with us, but we have to work with what we’ve got.

I see Omega approaching. They are coming up the steep incline, cautiously moving along. They are well armed. None of them are talking. They are expecting us to attack them at some point, but they cannot see us. This is their scouting unit, the prologue to the initial attack. We will wait until their first wave is in the midst of our ranks – until we have drawn them in – and then we will attack.

We are hidden, invisible. We are guerrilla warfighters and the element of surprise is our best weapon. I study the enemy. As always, Omega is a varietal mix of ethnicities. German, Russian, Middle Eastern and Chinese. Some of them I can’t put my finger on. It brings on the same old question: Where does Omega really come from?

Focus, steady, I tell myself. Get ready, girl.

They come closer. I can feel my blood rushing through every inch of my body. I swear that I can hear Chris’s heartbeat next to mine. I barely move my head, enough to see Uriah on the ground with his team about two hundred feet to my right. Vera has her team two hundred feet to my left. Sophia and Andrew’s teams are further ahead. We form a curved lineup, a crescent moon. We are pulling the enemy in, trapping them inside a corral made of soldiers and bullets.

Ten, twenty, fifty, eighty…

I count under my breath. There are at least two hundred Omega troops here. I wrinkle my brow, a twinge of worry in the back of my mind. Harry had at least five hundred troops in the dunes. Where are the other three hundred? Probably spread out around the city.

I shake myself.

Five hundred troops is not really enough to inflict damage when you’ve got militia warfighters and United States military forces guarding a heavily fortified city. The warships on the coastline… they’re not firing any more cruise missiles because they fear retaliation from the Alliance.

But Omega has always fought dirty. Why would they follow the rules?

A thought strikes me.

“Oh, my God…” I whisper. “Chris…”

He looks at me. He makes a sign to remain silent.

I have gone completely pale. Blanched like a sheet.

Where’s Manny? I think. If he’s been flying, he must know, too.

I am bursting, dying to tell Chris what is going on inside my head. This is important, this is life or death. If I’m right, this could be the difference between Monterey falling into enemy hands or us achieving a major victory against Omega.

The front line of the Omega troops are close enough to hear their breathing.

Chris gives the signal by firing the first shot, hitting a soldier in the head. He jerks backward. There is a momentary, split-second where the enemy is frozen. And then everything is chaos.

We are at war once more.

I bring my rifle back into my shoulder, taking a shot. My first bullet hits my target, but I am off by a couple of inches, nevertheless.

“Hang in there,” I tell myself aloud.

The smattering of gunfire in the quiet of the forest turns into a barrage of white noise, of shattering limbs and desperate, guttural pleas for mercy. Sprays of blood fill the air. I move in formation with the rest of my units. Dropping to one knee to shoot, fire and return fire. Then I sprint to the next area of cover, repeat the action, and do it all over again. There is no break in the fight. It is one massive blur of instinctive movement. Of action and reaction. I make sure that I am in the former category.

I want Omega to react to me.

Chris and I stay together. I am always right behind his shoulder as we move from position to position. Our lines move in a circle around the Omega forces. We surround them from all sides, boxing them into our circle of fire.

It is a technique that we once used when we were fighting Omega in the hills of Squaw Valley and the smaller Central Valley farm towns like Sanger and Dinuba. We are so well camouflaged that Omega can barely see us as we move from point to point. It must seem as if they’re being attacked by ghosts.

If they only knew how much they outnumber us.

An Omega soldier manages to worm his way to the front of the enemy line and charge forward, evading gunfire for a few moments. He is very young – almost childlike in his appearance. I am kneeling behind the trunk of a tree, reloading my weapon. I see him coming. He is holding his gun carelessly, a wild look in his eyes. I know that look. It is the expression of someone who knows they are about to lose a fight.

He sees me behind the tree. I am the first person to make eye contact with him. I snap my rifle into my shoulder but he is faster than me. He is crazed with terror and the knowledge that he is about to die.

That is the difference between us: he doesn’t care.

He squeezes the trigger on his automatic weapon. A sputtering of gunfire hits the tree right above my head, tearing pieces of bark off the trunk, tossing splinters into the air like confetti.

I duck down, flinching. I fire off a couple of shots, hitting him twice in the shoulder. He jerks backward and rolls into the brush. He crawls on his stomach. His weapon is out of reach, his teeth are gritted in pain. Blood seeps from the sides of his mouth. I drop to my hands and knees and grab the butt of his weapon, bringing it to my feet, away from his grip.

I will not shoot him again. He will die. My job is done.

“Cassidy!”

Uriah sprints to my area of cover from a few yards away. He stops on the other side of Chris, who is methodically and calmly finishing off the front lines of Omega’s defenses.

“Manny’s here!” Uriah yells.

“GOOD!”

I have been worried about Manny, and even more confused that he shares the last name as Elle, the girl with the bomb dog. It ran through my head that they could possibly be related… but on the other hand, lots of people have the last name of Costas. That doesn’t mean anything.

But what did Elle say to me on the train ride to Monterey?

I was at a ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains. My Uncle’s place, after the EMP. I went back afterwards… it was empty. He was gone. Everything I thought I knew was changed. That fast.

Was it possible…?

Bam!

I hit the tree chest first, the wind knocked out of my lungs. I collapse on the ground, ears ringing. I look down at my body, scanning for injuries. My armored vest has not been pierced. I don’t see anything. But I feel it.

My hip is screaming with pain. It feels like it’s on fire.

Chris is instantly by my side. He fires off his gun and I turn. The dying trooper on the ground is gripping a handgun. There is now a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

“You’ve been shot,” Chris says.

I touch my hip. Hot blood seeps through the material of my pants. I probe the wound with my fingers, flinching.

“I don’t think it hit bone!” I yell over the noise. “It’s just a scratch!”

“Are you sure?” Chris asks.

“I’ll let you know when I need to get carried off on a stretcher!”

I kiss his cheek and force myself into a kneeling position. My hip is throbbing, but it’s not unbearable. The adrenaline of warfare will keep the pain at a minimum for now. I tear my medic bandage off my vest and slap it on my hip, sealing the wound up. It’s only skin deep. I should be fine.

We continue this pattern, pushing and shooting and moving until there are no survivors. Until there is nothing but the sound of weapons being checked and the heaving breaths of tired soldiers.

Sweat runs down the sides of my face, plastering my clothes and my hair to my skin. I lick my lips, dry and cracked. I taste blood in my mouth – I must have bitten my cheek during the fight, concentrating on hitting my marks.

I turn to Chris. The jarring thought that occurred to me before the beginning of this battle is back, demanding attention.

“Chris,” I say. “This doesn’t make sense.”

Chris takes a drink of water from his canteen. The Lieutenants are sweeping the area, checking for any survivors. Putting down anyone who is left alive.

“What?” he breathes.

“Two hundred here, three hundred there,” I say, shaking my head. “This isn’t enough to take over a city. This is a distraction.”

Chris looks at me. I can tell by the way he closes the lid on his canteen that this is a thought that he has had, too, but he said nothing. It does no good to upset the nerves of your troops right before a battle, after all.

And then I say,

“Manny!”

I turn on my heel, away from the forest. I run through the brush, the pain of my wounded hip on the backburner for the moment. I reach the clearing. There is a little highway here. It has been cleared of all vehicles, and Manny’s biplane is settled in the midst of it.

“Manny?” I call.

He is standing on the wing of his biplane, his leather duster caught in the wind, his flight cap stuck to his head, tangled with his wild gray hair.

“Cassidy,” he smiles. “What is it, my girl?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” I say. “But I think we found your niece.”

Manny’s hand drops to his side. I see something that I have never seen on his face before: shock.

“Elle?” he asks.

I nod.

He takes his flight cap off and hops off the wing of the plane.

“But where? How?” He walks closer. “How did you know I had a niece? I was under the impression that I’d kept that a secret.” He pauses. “Have I been talking in my sleep?”

I laugh – almost hysterically.

“No, Manny,” I promise. “I figured it out for myself.”

“Where is Elle?”

“She’s safe. She’s at the Naval Postgraduate School. She’s got a bomb dog.”

Manny makes a face.

“Makes sense,” he says, but I can see the excitement on his face – the total relief.

“Manny,” I tell him, snapping my fingers. “I need you to focus.”

“I’m focused. Bright eyed and bushy-tailed.” He grins. “What’s the situation, Commander?”

“You’ve been flying overwatch, right?” I ask.

“Just about three times a day,” he replies.

“What have you seen?”

“Well, I didn’t see Harry’s cronies hidden in the dunes,” he replies. “I’ve got a biplane, not a modern aircraft. I couldn’t see them through that thick fog.”

“Have you seen anything else?”

“I’ve been circling the city about twenty or thirty miles out every day. Haven’t seen a thing.” Manny shrugs. “Why?”

“Have you been flying today?”

“No. The threat of missiles put a cramp in my organized schedule.”

“What about last night?”

“No. Pulled aircraft in. I was searching the bay, looking for you.” He smiles softly. “I’m glad you’re alive, my girl.”

I blink, hard.

“Me too,” I say, clearing my throat. Then, “So all of our forces, all of our resources have been concentrated on the coastline, keeping those warships out of our hair.”

Manny nods. “Yes, that’s about the size of it.” He leans closer. “You’re brain’s working so fast, I can hear the cogs whirring.” He makes a motion with his finger. “Don’t give yourself a headache.”

“Too late.” My eyes widen. “Manny. Remember when we were fighting in the Grapevine? You told me that Roman soldiers used to send mercenary groups to the front of the line as a sacrifice. Right?”

“Yes, they knew that the first line of defense is always killed, so why waste the rest—”

“—Manny, I think we’re in trouble.”

“How do you figure, my girl?”

“Five hundred troops. Warships that are just sitting in the harbor, blowing up stupid buildings on the shore…” I look Manny in the eye. “My God, Manny. I think we just let Omega roll a Trojan horse through our front door.”

Manny doesn’t reply.

He just looks at me with an expression that says,

Here we go again.

We are back in the forest. Chris is on the radio, contacting the Naval Postgraduate School. Don’t pretend this isn’t happening, he keeps saying. Something bigger is coming. This is a distraction, smoke and mirrors. We’re in trouble. Call in the Alliance’s air support – everything.

I am breathing hard. Normally I can control my breathing, but right now I am on the verge of panic. I have lost quite a bit of blood, and I lean on Manny for support. He keeps his arm around me, gently squeezing my shoulders.

In the distance, the sound of gunfire and rockets echo across the sea.

“They’re not answering,” Chris says.

Manny cracks his knuckles.

“Try again,” he tells Chris.

Chris does try again. And again. We try contacting the guard posts, anyone.

“What the hell is going on?” Uriah mutters.

Nobody knows, so nobody answers.

“We should send scouts into the city to see what’s going on,” I suggest. “If something bad did go down, we won’t risk sending all of our militia forces into the heart of the city where we can’t make a quick exit.”

More gunshots. More rockets.

There is a distant scream, like someone is punching the air. I look up. Two fighter jets scream above our heads. “Enemy aircraft,” Chris says. “Damn.”

“What do we do?” I ask Chris.

Because I really don’t know what we should do.

The city isn’t responding. We’re stuck in a phantom gray area. Without communication with the rest of the Alliance, how can we know what’s going on?

“We send the scouts into the city,” Chris says, seconding my suggestion. “We find out what’s going on, and we keep the rest of our forces hidden in the woods. If Cassidy’s theory is right…” He shakes his head. “We’ll find out. Uriah, Vera. Take a team. Do a recon. See what you can see.”

“I’m going with them,” I say.

“You’re going nowhere,” Chris replies. “You’re wounded.”

“Give me some epinephrine and I’ll be fine.”

Chris gives me a look.

Geez. I was only joking.

Well… kind of.

I get a flashback of Desmond, the crazy field medic from the Mountain Rangers, his dreadlocks fluttering in the breeze as he went from wounded to wounded on the battlefield, saving every man he could.

He would have had me fixed up by now.

“Sophia,” Chris replies. “Help Cassidy with her wound, then hit the city. Fast.”

Sophia doesn’t meet Chris’s gaze, but she does as she’s told. She has often been our go-to medic when there is no one else available.

I walk over to her, sitting on the edge of a rotting stump. The sound of distant warfare is unsettling. Sophia kneels beside me, checking my hip. It is only a flesh wound, but it still smarts. The skin has been cut and burned. The bullet passed through the flesh, leaving me with nothing but pain – and what I’m sure will be a highly attractive scar later on.

“How are you doing?” I ask Sophia.

She glances at my face, shrugging. She cleans the wound with water and antiseptic wipes from her medial kit. “This needs some stitching,” she says. “Hang on.”

I sigh. She takes the needle and inserts it into my flesh. It pinches and burns, but I force myself to remain still. If I can endure a gunshot, I can endure the stitching up that comes afterward.

“Sophia,” I say.

She keeps stitching.

“Lieutenant,” I press. “Look at me, soldier.”

Sophia snaps her head up, locking gazes with me. Her eyes are red, teary. I touch her shoulder. She freezes, looking like a deer caught in the headlights of a moving vehicle.

“What is it, Sophia?” I ask. “Why all this bitterness?”

She finishes the stitches and ties it off, leaving me with a cleaned, bandaged hip. “What’s going on,” she whispers, “is that we’re at war.”

She stands up.

She swipes her black hair out of her eyes, now long enough to pull into a ponytail.

“You know,” I say, “you can only act like this for so long before you have to take responsibility for your attitude. And let me tell you, Sophia, I’m getting sick of this. We’ve all been through crap, and none of us do this to the team. It’s time for you to suck it up and get over it.”

Sophia’s expression is pure poison.

“You have no right to tell me how to feel or how to act,” she hisses. “I don’t care if you’re the chosen one or the freaking messiah of the entire revolutionary movement. You can’t help me. Ever.” She stands up. “You’ve made your choice. I’ve made mine.”

She shuts her medical kit and walks away. She converses briefly with Vera. They both look at me, then look away.

Sure. That’s right. Talk about me behind my back.

See how well that will turn out for you.

I stand and test my weight on my hip. Not bad. It’s sore, but it will heal – and hey. It could have been a fatal wound, but I got lucky. I’m still in the game. I approach Chris and place my hand on his.

“I want to take a team into the city,” I say. “Let me go instead of Sophia and Vera.”

Chris considers this. He knows that he cannot really stop me. I will go whether he wants me to or not… but I would prefer that he approve of my decision.

“You can go,” he says. “But with Sophia and Vera.” He looks at the woman who was once my best friend. “Both of you, same unit. Cassidy’s the Commander.”

Chris cocks a mischievous eyebrow, like he knows how much Sophia is going to hate this. I maintain a poker face and thank him, checking my rifle, loading up on ammunition.

“Be careful,” Chris whispers. “In and out. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. See what you see and report back as soon as you can.”

“I will,” I say. “See you soon.”

I kiss his cheek. He squeezes my hand.

“Cassidy,” he says, his voice low. So low that only I can hear it.

“Yeah?” I reply.

“I love you.”

A smile touches my lips.

“I love you too, Commander,” I say. “See you soon.”

And then I am off. Sophia and Vera are with me. There are about five militiamen with us. They are silent. I do not know them by name, but I have seen them in action often enough to trust them.

“This is insanity,” Vera mumbles. “We’re stuck on the outside of the safest city on the west coast.”

“Safe is a debatable term,” I say.

“You know what I mean, Hart.” Vera’s perfect blonde hair has fallen from its tight ponytail, hanging in limp strands around her sweaty face. “This was our last chance at rallying forces against Omega, and they’ve taken us by surprise.”

I don’t want to tell them my theory.

I don’t want to hurt them by making the situation worse.

So I keep it to myself. When we reach the city, they might see soon enough, anyway. There is nothing I can do to stop that.

We move through the woods, quiet and stealthy.

“So what’s your problem, Rodriguez?” Vera demands. “You’ve been a pain-in-the-butt since the Grapevine. Why are you even here?”

Normally, this would be the time where I jumped in to defend Sophia.

But Vera has a point.

“I’m fine,” Sophia snaps. “Shut up and leave me alone.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up, soldier,” Vera retorts.

Sophia swings around, stopping dead in her tracks. She takes Vera by the shoulders and shoves her backward, kicking her in the stomach. I am shocked. Not by the violence, but by Sophia. She has never been like this.

I am standing a little ahead of them on the trail.

“Stop it!” I command. “We’re on a mission. Both of you shut up and come on.”

Vera rises from the ground, clutching her stomach.

She shoots Sophia the most lethal glare I’ve ever seen.

The militiamen with me look to me for a signal. Should they interfere? I shake my head, no. Not yet. Not unless they pull out their knives and decide to duel. Until we reach that point… I can handle them.

We trudge to the top of the hill.

Vera is silent. Sophia walks on the other side of the unit, her face a mask of contained fury. At this point, I am so annoyed with her behavior that I’m about ready to kick her myself, but that’s not what she needs.

Sophia needs a new life. A life without bloodshed and warfare.

We all need that, I think. Until then, hang in there, kid.

We come to the crest of the hill, still hidden in the trees. Sophia stops and stares, and Vera takes a sharp breath. My hands falls limp to my sides.

“Oh, my God,” Vera breathes. “What have they done?”

The Monterey Peninsula is clearly visible from our vantage point on the side of the mountain. The warships have moved to the shoreline. They are anchored off the coast, and shiploads of troops are coming inland. They are moving like black ants, flooding the coastline. The beach is covered with them, an invasion force.

“Why aren’t we retaliating with cruise missiles?” Vera says. “The Alliance is supposed to protect us from this.”

I shake my head. “It’s too late,” I reply. “They’re already here.”

I watch the terrifying spectacle of the Omega troops crawling up the beaches and overrunning the roads. And in the midst of it all, downtown Monterey is ablaze with fire.