Adamant
Authors: Emma L. Adams
ADAMANT
THE ALLIANCE SERIES: BOOK ONE
Emma L. Adams
This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
Copyright © 2015 Emma L. Adams
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Amalia Chitulescu
Stock photographs purchased from Shutterstock.com
I dedicate this book to the online writing community and to my readers for making this the best job I could possibly have, in any universe.
About Adamant (Alliance, #1)
This is the first book in the Alliance series, set on an alternative 21st-century Earth in which our world is one of many in the Multiverse.
Ada Fletcher is twenty-one, keeps a collection of knives in her room, and lives under the Alliance’s radar in London, risking her life to help her family smuggle people away from a devastating magical war on her homeworld to hide on the low-magic Earth. But when a simple delivery goes wrong and she’s forced to use magic to defend her own life, she becomes a prime suspect for a murder at the heart of the Alliance.
Kay Walker, grandson of the Alliance’s late founder, expects to spend his first week as an Alliance employee chasing monsters out of the dark Passages between worlds, not solving a murder or questioning a strange, fierce young woman he arrested in the Passages. Killer or not, she stole something highly dangerous from the Alliance - something tied to a dark time in the Alliance’s history. The closer he gets to the truth, the higher the body count rises.
The last thing Ada wants is to help the infuriating Alliance guard who arrested her, but it soon becomes clear that the Alliance knows too much about Ada’s magic. More, in fact, than she knows herself. Now she has to choose between loyalty to her family, and helping the Alliance save the Earth - and the Multiverse - from a deadly enemy.
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The Alliance Series
Delinquent: An Alliance Novella
Collision (Alliance, #3) - November 2015
ADA
Pulling up my hood to hide my face, I slipped from the fog-shrouded London street into a narrow alleyway between two abandoned buildings, a smile forming at the prospect of breaking the Alliance’s rules. Rule number one: no trespassing in the Passages. Rule number two: no leaving Earth without a permit.
Lucky they didn’t know about this particular door.
I rubbed my arms, the chill from the alley wall penetrating the thin fabric of my coat. Several feet in, the brick gave way to a fake section of wall which wasn’t obvious at first glance. This area was so off-radar, no one would ever come looking for trouble here, not of the magic variety. But my fingers found the familiar cracks between brick and metal, and a gentle push made the fake part of the wall slide away, revealing cold metal.
I didn’t know who’d first discovered the Passage here, nor who’d concealed it. The Alliance had logged every single one, including the handful that existed on Earth, but this was hidden even from them. A nice irony that the biggest illegal offworld operation in the Multiverse was in the same city as Earth’s main Alliance branch.
Nothing was quite like that first thrill when magic made itself known, buzzing under my skin as my fingers brushed the metal wall. It was icy to the touch and functioned like a sliding panel, moving back to reveal a dark corridor. Heart beating fast, I stepped over the threshold.
The Passages were always freezing, no matter the time of day. There was no sun here, and on the lowest level, where I was, it felt like the inside of a gigantic refrigerator. The lowest level, or “level zero”, was the most dangerous, which was most likely why the Alliance hadn’t found the door. Even Alliance guards could get eaten alive by the monsters down here.
Luckily, this time it was quiet, though the lingering stench of Cethrax’s swamp followed me through the corridors. That world was not on my list of tourist destinations. But once I’d escaped the warren of the lower levels via a concealed staircase, I was in the Passages for real. The first-level corridor opened before me, branching out into countless others. All identical—high-ceilinged, ten metres wide, and lined with metal doors like the one that led to Earth. All were labelled with numbers in an order only the Alliance knew, to ensure nobody but them could tell which door led to which universe. There were thousands in total, spread throughout these corridors. Maybe even millions
—
I hadn’t seen them all.
For me, imagining was part of the thrill. Every hum of the wind in the dark whispered promises of worlds beyond imagining, every door held something new behind its cold metal exterior. I’d come here too many times to count, yet I’d never set foot beyond one of those doors. But God, the temptation was so intense I could taste it.
And then there was magic. You couldn’t really
see
magic on Earth the way I could here, like the shift of a tinted lens, enough to make the world look one degree different. And I could feel it under my skin, like I was plugged into a live wire. Something in the Earth’s atmosphere stifled magic, which was why the Alliance relied so much on their offworld technology. No denying they needed it, seeing as they were the one force standing between Earth and the mercy of a thousand offworld threats. And yet, I’d be at
their
mercy if they found me here. Using an unregistered Passage to help illegals from another world that the Alliance deemed ‘dangerous’ would mean instant imprisonment, if I was lucky.
I walked swiftly, with the occasional glance behind to make sure I wasn’t being tailed. I had long since figured out the pattern of the Alliance’s patrols and could avoid them, but despite having come here frequently since I was eight years old, I couldn’t pretend I knew all the Passages’ secrets. They’d been set up by the original Alliance. That was about as much as anyone on Earth knew. Not how they’d put the doors in place, not how they found each world. Classified, Nell had said. The Alliance guarded its secrets well.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out and glanced at the screen. “Level 2, Door 65. You’re late.”
Rolling my eyes, I slid my phone back into my pocket. Delta had been the one to hook up my phone to Inter-World Communications so I’d have a means of contacting him from Earth. A pretty handy extension. Not quite as fancy as the flashy communicators members of the Alliance carried, but it worked for me. I could call anyone within the five neighbouring worlds and the Passages between.
Second level. I suppressed a shiver of unease, and the smile faded from my face. I knew which world I’d be dealing with this time.
The staircase was invisible to most people, but I found it, coat whipping behind me in the chill wind of upper level. Shivering, I climbed the twisting staircase and hurried through the corridors, not daring to glance at the doors hidden in the gloom. I couldn’t imagine the horrors on the other side. These were worlds torn apart by war, worlds barred from ever joining the Alliance.
One of them was my homeworld.
Reaching the corridor I needed, I paused, looking out for the familiar figure. Delta waved at me from a shadowy corner near door 65.
“You took your time.” Delta faced me with a smile full of elongated teeth.
“Can’t be too careful,” I said, mimicking Nell’s lecturing voice, and he grinned. His hair stood up like the bristles on a toothbrush.
“Right. There’s a family coming through. They should be here any minute now. They’ve been checked over. No magic, and no weapons training.”
I nodded. No magic usually meant it was easier to get away.
“How’s it going?” he asked. “Is Nell still being paranoid? I thought she’d locked you up.”
“Not going to happen,” I said. “She knows I’d break out and come here anyway. What’s she think will happen? I can hardly go swanning off to Valeria without a permit—though I wouldn’t turn down an invite,” I added, not so subtly.
“Nice try, Red,” he said.
“Ugh. Enough with that stupid nickname already.” Though my dyed dark-red hair had an even more vivid glow in the Passages. Blue light shone from the walls and ceiling, like an alien nightclub. “Seriously, though. Hover boots? Valeria has actual hover boots now?”
“New patent,” said Delta, with another grin. “Not on the market yet, but I’m going to get my hands on some as soon as they are.”
“If you don’t let me have a go in them, I’ll never forgive you,” I said, crossing my arms. Delta and I were like weird cousins… who happened to live in different universes. I’d never met most of his family, and all I really knew about them was that the Campbells worked in magi-technology in Valeria’s capital, trading with other universes. When they weren’t illegally helping refugees.
“Sure thing, Red.” He ducked as I pretended to aim a punch at him. “How’s Gary?”
“Long gone, thank God,” I said. “He took issue with my–” I made quotation marks with my fingers–“‘wild lifestyle’. I made the mistake of going over to his place after that fight with the selver and he thought I’d been in some neon orgy or something.”
Delta snickered. “That’s priceless. You went over there with selver drool all over you?”
“I couldn’t help it! That stuff doesn’t clean off easily. I glowed in the dark for a week! I had to throw away my clothes, Delta. The sacrifices I make for you.”
“I’m sure you’ll get over him.”
“Already have.”
Such was the price I paid for a double life. Part-time cashier and part-time assistant at Nell’s home business by day. Owner in chief of an illegal shelter for offworlders by night. Any time between, I spent in the Passages. And none of it could I share with another person. I was surprised my now-ex stuck around that long. For some reason, most guys weren’t particularly enthused when you refused to tell them where you lived or how you spent most of your time. “I know a dozen ways to kill a man with my bare hands” didn’t go down well as a conversation-starter. Even if you followed it with “Wait. I’ve not actually done that.”
There was a slight possibility I needed to work on my conversational skills.
“Good. How’s Nell doing, anyway?”
“Same as ever,” I said. “She’s thinking about expanding our business into offworld markets.”
“Might as well, seeing as you have the connections,” he said. “The Alliance upped their cross-world trade restrictions not too long ago. A lot of people are angry about it. You’d have support.”
“Yeah, not exactly legal, though, is it?” I gave him a meaningful look. We were breaking a dozen laws between the two of us just by standing here talking.
“You could always join the Alliance,” he said with another toothy smile.
My own smile froze. “That was a joke, right?”
“Right.” He gave a rather forced laugh. “Sure. Just, you know, it’d give you an alibi. You could come here more frequently, help more people…”
I bit my lip. I couldn’t pretend it had never crossed my mind, and I knew
his
family had connections with Valeria’s Alliance. As an Alliance member, I’d have legal access to the Passages without worrying about being intercepted by guards. But I’d also be expected to work for
them.
And that I couldn’t do. I couldn’t pretend to be one of them. Not even for money to pay the shelter’s bills. Their council, as Nell reminded me on a weekly basis, had left my homeworld to ruin.