The Proving
Authors: Ken Brosky
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015
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Thanks to our fans, both old and new, for helping us on this wonderful journey. An extra special thanks to our readers: David Atkinson and Emil Girardin, both of whom were gracious enough to read this multiple times. An extra, extra special thanks to my personal editor, Dagny Holt, whose insight is absolutely necessary to the success of this story.
Prologue
Her heart hammered wildly as she ran. Her ears strained for sounds of pursuit over the whoosh and thrum of her own blood. She dared not turn around. She clung to the hope that it wasn’t behind her, following,
hunting
.
Running was all that mattered now.
Her foot caught on a tree root and she nearly fell. She reached out, palms scraping against the furrowed bark of a tupelo tree. Her eyes probed the shadows for a clear path. Bushes and thick undergrowth choked much of the forest floor but there were places near the tallest trees where the ground was mostly clear. She zig-zagged through the barest places, her shoes digging into soft dirt and rotted leaves, her legs numb with exertion. She’d been running for so long that the burning pain of overworked muscles had grown dull.
She could do it. She could escape with her life.
She had to.
Then she heard it: a low, haunting moan that seemed to echo from all around. Her breaths escaped in raspy coughs. There were no other sounds in the forest, not even the rustle of a bird or the harsh chirr of katydids calling for mates. The forest knew what was following her and wanted no part of it. She was losing light; the sun had set. The last traces of rosy dusk filtered through the forest canopy wherever the leaves allowed. Where branches intertwined thickly there were only dark shadows.
Just ahead, the edge of a ravine leapt up from the gloom. She skidded to a stop, narrowly avoiding a nasty tumble down the dangerously steep slope. She looked around. To the right, an opening in the leaves above provided a reprieve from the heavy shadows but the forest floor was heavily roped with twining strands of ivy. To the left, the forest thickened into a mass of dark, broad trunks but at least there would be less undergrowth.
Suddenly, the area all around her began to glow, as if some sinister light was slowly coming to life. Thin pine and tupelo trunks were painted in a fiery red light, bright enough that each tree cast a bloody shadow. The creature was near. She ran left, thinking about her family and blinking away stinging hot tears. She hoped to see them again. She hoped to tell her husband and her daughter how much she loved them both. Her body, numb, expected death at any moment but she refused to give in. Ahead, she could see an end to the forest. And something else . . .
A fence! An old fence whose links were being pulled earthward by heavy vines with thick stalks and fat, crescent-shaped leaves. And beyond the fence: a dim pool of white light illuminated a squat building at the far edge of a barren lot. The building must be an emergency supply depot, no doubt running solely on stored energy from the solar panels attached to the roof, slanted up at the sky. The depot would contain emergency equipment and maybe some kind of weapon. It would have a communication system, too.
She could jump the fence. She could take one step on the constrained chain links and reach the top and hop over. She could reach the building. She could survive. She’d carried a child in her womb for nine months, seven days and an additional fifteen excruciating hours of labor. Her back had endured. Her legs had endured. This pain she felt in her shins now? It was nothing. It was an annoyance.
She could
do this
. She could send a warning.
All around her, the forest glowed a dark red, as if fire lurked deep inside the trunk of each tree.
She reached the fence and jumped, sticking out one foot and pushing off the damaged diamond-linked metal wires. Her hands fumbled with the cold bar at the top and she held on for dear life, the toes of her shoes digging between the wires. She pulled herself over, dropping to the ground. A sharp pain coursed through her left ankle. She tried to put weight on the joint; it was impossible.
Her family, Kaya and Gustav, if she could send out a warning, then someone
would know
, someone could ensure her daughter and her husband would be safe.
She limped toward the building. From behind her came another low moan that seemed to vibrate all the way to the marrow of her bones. Bitter bile rose from her stomach to coat the back of her tongue. The sun was long gone behind the mountains beyond the squat building but the dark red glow remained. The creature was behind her, so close that she cast a shadow in its bloody light. Each move it made caused her shadow bounce and stretch, as though desperate to abandon her.
“Kaya . . . Gustav . . . I love you,” she rasped, watching her shadow shorten. Her hunter was closing in. It would overcome her and steal the life from her, an alien thief, a parasite. A
ghost
.
A ghost with dangerous secrets.
She had to survive. If she didn’t get the warning out, the last of Earth’s remaining cities could be doomed. Her family . . . she shuddered to think. They’d been so wrong. So wrong about everything. They thought they knew their enemy. This creature closing in on her, this
ghost
, they did not know it as well as they thought.
She was close to the door of the building now. She could see its touchscreen lock — her thumbprint would open it. And then all that mattered was sending the warning. She thought of her Kaya, and how last she saw her had been almost a year ago, and Kaya had just started primary school and had become obsessed with the periodic table and used pastels to color in the families of elements. Uranium. Neptunium.
Phenocyte
. She had been so proud of her daughter. Her two-week leave had made her ache to retire from her position so she could return home for good.
But the research was important. The
secrets
they were uncovering . . .
The door! She pressed her shaky thumb to the touchscreen. A green light blinked on. Her brain allowed an optimistic surge of dopamine. She grabbed the handle to the door and pulled.
The door refused to open.
“No!” she shouted. The bloody glow spread over the exterior of the building. The creature behind her advanced and her shadow seemed to duck down in terror. She could not hear her hunter moving closer . . . she could
feel
it. The soft hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She pressed her thumb to the touchscreen again and again its light turned green. She tried the door again.
Again it refused.
“Please!” she screamed, punching the touchscreen again and again with the palm of her hand. A click — a click! She tried the door again.
This time it opened.
She could get away —
She —
Clan Sparta
The train moved rapidly over its mag-rail, shuddering ever so slightly as it turned north toward downtown Neo Berlin. Skye’s memory automatically recalled all the relevant information that had been drilled into her brain by Spartan drillmasters. Twenty million people. Fifty-seven skyscrapers taller than fifty stories. Three Phenocyte reactors — two to power the city, one to power the invisible energy shield.
103 VR cannons.
Ten thousand Spartans stationed inside the city proper.
Well . . . ten thousand and three. Technically.
Skye turned and glanced down at her brother. He was sitting beside her, staring at the opposite window as the tunnel lights zoomed by. His curly brown hair was getting too long; it would need to be cut soon to maintain regulation length. Her eyes were drawn of their own accord to the narrow, puckered scar on his right cheek.
“A scar is a badge,” Father had once told Cassidy. He’d said it with pride.
Cassy had only forced a smile, saying nothing. That had been months ago.
The scar would probably always be with her brother. A reminder of the training accident. A reminder of a mistake made during a rifle-training exercise, when all of the 13-year-olds — the Young Adults — crawled in mud underneath razor wire before swarming a hologram of a Specter.
The enemy.
Some of the kids fired while still running, afraid of the life-like creature whose pre-programmed motions only allowed it to pace and watch its enemies close in. It was a Sebecus Specter, the kind that looked like a humanoid crocodile, with a long snout and a long tail and a row of diamond-shaped spikes along its back.
If it was real, it wouldn’t have waited for the kids to surround it.
Skye remembered watching her brother getting stuck underneath the web of razor wire, crying when one of the barbs sliced his cheek. He’d looked so foolish. All of the kids had looked foolish. Too young. Too little.
But I looked the same at that age, no doubt.
It was funny, but the way Skye remembered it, the Young Adult training had seemed
too
grown-up. Too real. So very serious, with live VR ammunition in the pistols and the eerie, haunting moans of the Specters piped in through loudspeakers. The first real training to become a Spartan.
That had been five years ago. Now, she was a New Adult.
“Cassidy.”
Father was standing just beyond the rows of seats lining the train car, his hand resting on the back of the conductor’s chair. The conductor wore Clan Sparta’s traditional red service uniform. One could mistake him for an Elite, except that he was piloting the mag-train, which was obviously not a coveted position. In fact, the man was most likely not even driving at all. The mag-train had an autopilot feature.
But of course any autopilot program worth a darn was written by someone in Clan Persia. And
of course
Father didn’t trust Clan Persia any more than he trusted Clan Athens. And so
obviously
the autopilot had been turned off and the conductor was indeed driving the train using the complex array of brightly colored buttons on the massive glass touchscreen console. It was a thankless task and a waste of a soldier.
Father could be just a
little
paranoid from time to time.
He was looking at Cassidy with narrowed eyes. His upper lip ticked — it was barely visible underneath his heavy white beard. He’d lost most of the hair on his head over the years and had been happy to lose it. No Athenian gene therapy or topical treatments for him; no, he wanted to go bald just like his ancestors did and relished the opportunity to show that he wasn’t moved by vanity. Just because baldness
could
be cured didn’t mean it
needed
to. And where some equated baldness with weakness, Father had nothing he needed to prove. His Coterie had killed numerous Specters in the course of their duty.