Into The Fire (The Ending Series)
Read Into The Fire (The Ending Series) Online
Authors: Lindsey Fairleigh,Lindsey Pogue
book two of The
Ending Series
by Lindsey
Fairleigh & Lindsey Pogue
Copyright
© 2013 by Lindsey Fairleigh and Lindsey Pogue
All rights
reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All
characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imaginations
or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, is
intended or should be inferred.
Editing by Sarah Kolb-Williams
Book cover design by Scarlett Rugers
Design
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MORE BOOKS BY
LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
& LINDSEY POGUE
After The Ending
Into The Fire
Out Of The Ashes (coming in 2014)
MORE BOOKS BY LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
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Prophecy
For
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CONTENTS
Can’t get enough of The Ending?
MASE
JANUARY
5, 1AE
“I’m just sayin’ the General freaks me the fuck out, Mase,
and…” Carter stopped talking—for once—as he shifted the beam of his flashlight
to shine down the next aisle. “D’you hear that?”
Carter could be dense, but if he thought he heard something,
there was something to be heard. Thanks to the Virus, the guy had the ears of a
dog.
Mase lifted his left arm and made a fist, and the other two
members of his fireteam froze behind him. Ahead, Carter stood, head cocked to
the side. As one, they listened. Mase barely caught it—whimpering. After giving
Carter a curt nod, he signaled for all three men to follow him, raised his M4,
and crept closer to the noise.
Patrolling the supply warehouses had been their duty for
over a month, ever since the Virus had wiped out almost everyone, and they’d yet
to find an intruder. General Herodson’s standing order was that only select
personnel could enter the warehouses to guard, inspect, and distribute food and
other supplies. Unless Mase was grossly mistaken, they were the only patrol on
duty at Warehouse F until the shift change at midnight, which was still hours
away.
It looked like they’d found their first intruder.
As they crept down the aisle between two towering metal shelving
units stuffed with pallets of shrink-wrapped supplies—paper towels, toilet
paper, plastic cups—they swept each side with the lights attached to their rifles.
Halfway down the aisle, huddled on the cold cement floor, was the intruder. The
girl was hugging her knees and hiding her face like she was trying to
disappear. Mase scowled.
Slowly, the girl raised her head, and when Mase saw her dirt-smudged
face, his breath hitched. It couldn’t be
her…
not in the Colony
.
Her
long, dark hair was ratted and clumped, tear tracks trailed down her cheeks, and
confusion filled her eyes. Mase knew they were hazel from memory, even if he
couldn’t see their color in the darkness.
“Stand down,” Mase said to the other soldiers before turning
his attention to the young woman. “Camille? What are you doing here? Are you
hurt?” His voice was always deep, gravelly, but concern or maybe fear made it
even harsher. Hesitantly, he took a step closer to her.
Camille flinched, becoming an even tighter ball of folded
limbs and tangled hair on the dirty cement floor.
For the first time in his two years as a Ranger, Mase
regretted spending so much time lifting weights. She was afraid of him. But he
knew
her. He had to help her.
Clearing his throat, he put on what he hoped was a
comforting smile and took another step closer.
“We won’t hurt you,” he told the teenage girl as he knelt
down in front of her. “I promise.” When he touched Camille’s arm, she flinched
again. “I promise we won’t hurt you,” he repeated. Intruders were to be taken
straight to headquarters—to General Herodson—but he couldn’t do that. They tended
to disappear after that. Of course, if the bastard found out Mase had disobeyed
his orders, Mase would disappear himself . . . but it was Camille.
When she finally peered up at him, Mase did his best to look
less intimidating by hunching his shoulders, hanging his head, not scowling.
She watched him carefully, blank curiosity filling her face.
“What are you doing here, Camille?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She
tried again. “Who—who is Camille?”
Surprised, Mase sat back on his heels and studied her.
It
is
her, isn’t it?
She was older—more a woman than a child, unlike
the last time he’d seen her. Camille was a few years younger than him, so now
she had to be at least seventeen
.
She still looked like a perfect little
doll, though. There was no question in Mase’s mind that he was staring at the
young woman he’d lived next door to nearly his entire life.
“You,” he said. “You’re Camille. And I’m Mase.” He
remembered the day her parents brought her home from the hospital…the afternoon
she fell off her bike and chipped her tooth on the sidewalk…the Valentine’s Day
she gave him a card made out of pink and purple construction paper…the day he taught
her how to coast on his skateboard without falling…the night she ran away
crying after meeting one of his girlfriends. But if Camille could remember any
of that, she was hiding it well. She just stared, not responding, and began to
shiver.
Mase heard his men whispering and shuffling around behind him.
He ignored them. “It’s okay, Camille,” he said, doing his best to soften his voice.
“We’re friends. We were neighbors, remember? Back in Minneapolis? I used to
look after you when your parents—”
The other men chuckled, Carter bursting into open laughter. Mase
flipped them the bird over his shoulder. They only laughed harder.
“You…” Carter couldn’t stop laughing. “You…you used to
babysit
?”
Rising, Mase spun and pointed threateningly at Carter. “Shut
the fuck up.” He glared at each of the men, warning clear in his eyes, until
they quieted. “Nobody touches her. Nobody says a fucking word about this.
Forget you ever saw her.”
Their amusement vanished, and they stared back at him with
identical expressions—fear mixed with pity and regret. They knew what had to be
done.
“Mase,” the nearest said. “We have to turn her in. The
General’s standing orders are to—”
“I know the orders,” Mase snapped. “Fuck them. She’s not
going anywhere near Herodson. Forget. You. Ever. Saw. Her.”
After a brief hesitation, all three men nodded.
Letting out a relieved breath, Mase turned back to Camille.
She was watching him with eyes widened in interest, not fear. He knelt in front
of her and explained, “It’s not safe for you here. You’re going to have to hide
until I can get you registered as a Colonist.”
Surprising him, Camille reached out and touched the side of his
face with her fingertips, frowning when he flinched. “Where am I?” she
whispered.
Mase glanced back at his men, silently warning them to keep
their mouths shut. If Camille didn’t have any memory of the Virus—of nearly everyone
dying—he didn’t want to be the one to tell her. At least not yet. “You’re in
the Colony. It used to be a military base. You’ll be safe here as soon as I get
you registered.” He hesitated for a moment. “You have no idea how you got
here?”
Quietly, Camille said, “No. I have no idea.” She studied him
with eerily calm eyes.
A metallic bang stole Mase’s attention, and then the
overhead lights flared to life. Someone else was in the warehouse. While the
others stood nearby, rifles raised, Mase helped Camille hide between two pallets
of paper towels. She was barely out of sight when the newcomers rounded the far
end of the aisle. Mase’s stomach dropped when he saw
him
.
“Atwell! How is your patrol going this evening?” asked the
man leading a dozen soldiers. Dressed in his usual officer finery, General Herodson
strolled down the aisle toward Mase…toward Camille.
“Nothing unusual, Sir,” Mase reported, stepping away from
Camille’s hiding place before the General was close enough to see her in the
shadows.
General Herodson inspected Mase and his fireteam closely.
“So it seems,” he said, giving Mase an instant feeling of
holy-fucking-shit
.
Casually, the General glanced around, his gaze lingering near Camille’s hiding
spot.
“How are the Ability transfers going?” Mase asked, hoping to
distract him.
The General looked at him with cold, gray eyes.
Mase returned the man’s stare, refusing to look away. “Have
there been any new developments? I know some of the men would like to get
outfitted with regeneration or telekinesis.”
General Herodson bared his teeth in a smile. “Not yet, no.
However, we
have
had an interesting breakthrough on another project.
We’re calling them ‘Re-gens’—they’re reanimated corpses, more or less. They even
retain their Abilities, though they’re altered somewhat from what they were
during their first lives.” He paused, glancing up at the lights thoughtfully.
“But the process wipes their minds completely clean, making them
very
easy
to influence.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “No need to deal with
pesky memories or morals.”
Reanimated corpses. It took effort for Mase to keep his expression
blank.
Abruptly, General Herodson said, “As you were,” and turned
to leave.
Mase watched him walk away, reluctant to move. Why had the
General told him about the Re-gens?
Why had he come into the warehouse
in the first place? Something wasn’t right.
As they neared the end of the aisle, General Herodson and
his guards halted. “CL-one,” the General called out as he turned to face Mase
again. “Come here, CL-one.”
Shocking the shit out of Mase, Camille wriggled out from her
hiding spot and hurried to General Herodson’s side.
Mase clenched his jaw, realizing he’d just signed his own
death warrant.
“CL-one is a particularly amazing Re-gen, don’t you agree,
Atwell? We just finished her the other day.” General Herodson watched Mase like
he was gauging every minute change in his expression. Mase kept his face hard
and cold, like the General’s. “Take their weapons, my dear,” Herodson said
to Camille.
Even at a distance, Mase could see the confusion on
Camille’s face. “Why, Father?” she asked softly.
The General stiffened. “Because I told you to,
my dear
,”
he said with strained affection. “These men must be arrested and put on trial.
They broke the law.
My
law.”
“Oh,” Camille said, sounding sad, or maybe confused. “What
will happen to them after the trial?”
It seemed to take a conscious effort for General Herodson to
suppress his simmering anger. The man hated being questioned. “The other three will
be banished from the Colony,” he said through gritted teeth. “Atwell will be
executed and turned into a Re-gen.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling contentedly. She took a deep
breath, then shut her eyes. Her mouth thinned to a flat line.
As Mase looked from her to General Herodson, hatred flooded his
veins, quickly followed by adrenaline. His muscles vibrated with the unnatural
strength that had increased steadily over the past two years. He was the strongest,
fastest person he’d ever heard of—not that it would help him now. The General
knew about his Ability. Mase figured that was probably the only reason he
wanted to bring him back as a Re-gen: to be used…owned. Mase ground his teeth
together and tried to think of a way out of this clusterfuck.
Suddenly, his M4 tugged out of his hands and floated upward.
He tried to yank it back down, but it continued to float higher. Moving
quickly, he untangled his arm from the rifle’s strap before it forced him up onto
his toes. From the sounds of his men cursing behind him, he knew they were
being remotely disarmed as well. Mase watched as their weapons glided into the
hands of the General’s guards. His attention was drawn to Camille, who was
still concentrating.
She
was doing it.
She opened her eyes and left the General’s side, a coy smile
curving her mouth. Mase watched her approach him, frozen in remorse at what he’d
caused. His men wouldn’t be “tossed out of the Colony”—they would be executed,
regardless of what the General had claimed.
It felt like minutes, but finally Camille reached Mase. She
caught his gaze, a spark of sharp intelligence lighting eyes that had once been
hazel but were now gray. Almost inaudibly, she whispered, “Do not be afraid,
Mase. I will take care of you, just like you used to take care of me. And with
my friends, we will take care of Father.”
Mase barely registered her robotic intonation. He couldn’t
believe what was about to happen. Soon, he would die, only to be brought back
as something else. As some
one
else.
The reanimated young woman stood on tiptoes and lightly touched
her lips to Mase’s cheek. “My friends
really
do not like Father.”
1AE