Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
But the really concerning thing on the data display is the little box on the bottom left. It’s flashin’ red and the words inside the box say—COMBAT MODE: ACTIVATED—in all caps. Above that is a list of what’s goin’ through my blood right now. Epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, cortisol, and good old testosterone. All of them in levels only seen in extreme fight situations.
Which explains my shaking arm.
Another boot comes at me, trying to turn those broken ribs into three. But even though my eyes are still closed, I see it. And this fucker should know I see it. Because he might as well be me, that’s how fuckin’ augmented he is. I can smell the nanotech comin’ off him like sweat.
But he doesn’t and obviously, now that I’m back in my body, he’s not gettin’ a second chance to kick the fuck out of my ribs. I grab his foot, eyes flyin’ open, and twist my body, taking him with me. In mid-air, I watch his face. Surprise.
How did he not know I was waking up?
I decide I don’t care when his whole body spins and his face slams in to the ground—which I just now realize is made of stone—and this cracks his front teeth, blood comes gushing out.
And for the smallest of moments, the crowd stops. Shocked.
But it’s so brief, it barely happens.
Then the roaring starts—and for a moment I feel the wave of bodies tryin’ to get at me. Held back by…
This is when I realize I’m on my feet, eyes are open, and I’m stupidly reaching for my Versi—which of course, is no longer on my hip—because there he is. The weird augment with the melting face.
Except… I tagged him wrong earlier. He’s not an augment.
I’m looking right at the fuckin’ god, Epsilon.
And he’s so out of my frame of reference of what a god looks like—I can’t move.
I can only stare.
Because Myra was right.
Memories come crashing back from when my team was whole—perfect—and still alive. Jast, Myra, Stepan, Kirt, and me. Sitting on the floor of the deploy train for the trek into the Outlands. I’m laughing, lookin’ at Kirt, because Myra is telling a ghost story to all the new kids we picked up at the Psi Outpost, the last human habitation before the dead sandy sea. They were all eighteen, only two years younger than us, and on their first deployment.
This was our third so it was our duty to put the fear of the god in them in the hopes they’d be careful, they’d think critically, and remember their training. Get them out alive so they could be sent back in for round two.
Myra’s story was about fight clubs in the dead space between Alpha and Omega. This dead space was somethin’ only people from Alpha actually believed existed.
The Dead Space fight clubs were run by the Corrupted God.
He was a myth. A rumor.
Myra came up in Alpha city and they are some superstitious fucks because they think the world is circular and if ya look to the north, you’re actually lookin’ south. Which means, if you’re a citizen of Alpha City, the Omega Outlands are always creeping up your backside.
One leads to the other, leads to the other.
Eventually.
The other guys fucked with her endlessly when her Alpha heritage came out during our augmentation—because that place is filled with fuckin’ ghost stories, conspiracy theories, and nutters who think death is a badge of honor, and dyin’ for one’s god is how they show respect.
Alpha, I guess, breeds his military for insanity. Because Myra was crazy as all hell.
Her Alpha City heritage, as well as being the only girl in the class, made her a target.
If she wanted to fight alongside us, she had to either take it and brush it off, or manage it and earn her place.
Myra did not take it. She managed it. And she did this managing by scaring the fuck out of everyone with her crazy Alpha City stories. They were all insane. Especially the conspiracy theories.
Like the one she told our group about the Alpha Ghosts and how, if she ever got lost or died in the Outlands, she’d just become one of them and walk her ass home by heading deeper into the south because eventually it would become north again.
But it was the one about the Corrupted God running fight clubs in the dead space between Alpha and Omega that really got to people. And every time she started in with this story, we’d all moan, and complain, and tell her to shut up.
Which is sad, now that I think about it. Because she did die out there. I blew her brains out. And every day, for years, I would picture her out in the sand, wandering north. Trying to find her way home in the loop that leads to Alpha City, as a Ghost.