Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (28 page)

“She’s
what?”
said Carl, looking aghast. “We cannot authorise this—Jethro, you aren’t even supposed to be in here yourself.”

“Yeah, that reminds me,” I said to Jeth. “Valeria’s tech labs are interested in your Chameleon devices,
and
the sciras. They might be in touch.”

“Damn,” said Jeth. “Any other time—” His communicator buzzed and he held it to his ear. “No, for God’s sake, Nell, I told you I haven’t tested it. She’s got the other Chameleon,” he added to me.

“Right,” I said. “I’ll go and find her. Don’t argue with me,” I said to Carl. “You can’t deny Ada’s message confirms my story.”

“No,” he said, “I can’t. But I don’t have a world-key authorised for use.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m going to find Nell before something attacks her.”

I ignored the questions that followed me, and ran back around the corner to the place I’d parked the car. I climbed back into the vehicle, switched on the acceleration and steered it a roundabout route to the nearest stair to the lower Passages.

Now for the tricky bit.
The stairs were too narrow for the hover car. I had to leave it parked at the top of the steps and hope nothing was lurking below. Jumping the last few steps, I ran through now-familiar corridors, pausing near each doorway, searching for anything, any trace.

My feet skidded in the mud and metal fragments on the floor. Their dull blue colour left no doubt—they were pieces of auros. Defunct, by the look of it. No trace.

And there was blood on the floor.

Ice chilled my spine, and I stiffened as my communicator buzzed again. Jeth sent me a file for the world that matched Ada’s description. A world abandoned, lifeless, choked by magic-fuelled plants. The native population had emigrated, and the Alliance had listed it as dangerous, cutting off its former doorways. I had no idea what the Stoneskins wanted with a place like that, but I didn’t trust them at all. They wanted to take Ada to Enzar, but it didn’t sound like they were close yet.

Footsteps. I tensed, turning on the spot, but it was Ada’s guardian. Nell glared at me. “I should have known I’d run into you down here.”

“I found where Ada is.” I held up my communicator. “I’m going to try to open a door. I have on-the-ground transport ready.”

“Really?” Nell raised an eyebrow.

“Really,” I said, checking my communicator. Another message joined the first—an image of a symbol made of two interconnecting circles. And—“Carl’s opening a doorway upstairs. We should probably join him.”

“Why should we?” she demanded.

“He knows more than I do.” But I was pretty sure he suspected I’d swiped Ms Weston’s world-key already. I couldn’t help looking at the broken fragment of auros. I didn’t sense a signal coming from it at all, but there was
something.

The blood. I crouched down beside it, and tapped into the tracker.

A signal washed over me, sharp and sudden. I jumped back, heart thudding. “Ada.”

“What?” said Nell.

“Her signal. I found her signal. Tell the others not to bother making a doorway.”

I pulled the key from my pocket and used it to sketch the symbols on a blank stretch of wall, willing my hand to stay steady, willing the signal not to disappear again. The last symbol… I let the signal guide my hand, like I was following directions I only half-understood. My hand moved as if of its own accord, but magic was doing it somehow—I doubted even Valeria’s scientists could fully explain it. The symbol resembled a clawed footprint.

The door opened… to Cethrax.

I stared for a moment. “Cethrax? No way.” It made sense, with it being riddled with doorways, but…

A screech tore through the air.

Damn. Ada was in trouble—I was certain of it. On the other side was swampland, no wyverns visible. Before my eyes, the scene changed to—nothing.

“What the hell?” I said, staring. The scene looked awfully familiar, like the edge of a cliff, nothing to see but thick mist. And on the other side there might have been a shape, the outline of something, but it was impossible to tell. The void.

The world-key vibrated in my hand, snapping me out of the trance. Without realising it, I’d drawn another symbol, and the scene changed yet again.

“What are you doing?” Nell demanded.

“I don’t know,” I said, attempting to pull the world-key back. “It’s like it’s stuck—I was trying to follow Ada’s signal. Maybe it got jumbled.”

“You said it might be blocked,” said Nell. “Adamantine blocks all magic. If any of those
things
was touching her—”

“Shit,” I said. “You’re right. Her signal won’t go in a straight line—it’ll be scattered. And she might not be there
now.”
I hoped she wasn’t in Cethrax. That scream… there were more wyverns out there. Blasted wyverns.

The scene changed to a desert. Nothing to see. But it was already changing again—cycling back to the swamp, then to a rocky outcrop—then, again, the abyss with no end.

I pulled my hand back as the scene changed to the ruin of a city. Several Alliance guards turned to stare at me from a few metres away on the other side of the open doorway. Hell—this must be the place Carl had opened the doorway to upstairs.

Sure enough, Carl himself stepped up to the new doorway I’d opened, staring at Nell. “What are you doing? Non-Alliance members aren’t allowed in here. Kay, you’re
not
authorised to—”

“I think Ada’s on Cethrax,” I said, scanning the city behind Carl. “I have a tracker, and I can follow her signal.”

“Trackers only work on low-magic worlds,” said Carl. “What do you mean, follow her signal?”

“What if I told you I was an amplifier?”

A pause. Carl’s expression shifted to incredulity before I’d finished speaking. Exactly what I’d expected, and exactly why I’d never told anyone. But I couldn’t think of a cover story, and finding Ada was paramount.

“I can amplify a tracker,” I said. “Normally, I can zone in on one person’s trace, if they’re a magic-wielder—that’s how I found Ada’s brother when the Conner family had him held captive on Valeria. That’s when I realised I could do it. But it doesn’t work on Ada’s signal right now, because it disappeared. I don’t know if it’s because they took her too far offworld, or if they’re somehow blocking it.”

“I can vouch for him,” said Nell, to my total astonishment. “I witnessed it myself.”

Carl blinked, then looked over his shoulder at the ruined town. “This place was in the message she sent.”

“Yeah… you don’t have any weapons, do you?”

“You didn’t steal any along with the world-key?” he said.

Touché. “Look, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had any other choice. You can’t deny Ada’s message matches what I said.”

“No, I can’t.” He sighed. “But neither do I feel Earth is ready for a cross-world war.”

Shit.
“That’s likely to happen?”

“It depends on how things go with Cethrax.”

And if Enzar are really involved… damn.

“Look,” I said, “I can follow Ada’s signal here.” I stepped over the door’s threshold, and the signal surged up without warning, as well as something else I couldn’t place. Another magic signal—a powerful one. My skin buzzed all over. “Something’s off here.”

The other guards had begun to head towards the ruins of the city. “Wait,” I said, hurrying after them. “There’s something not right.”

The static feeling climbed higher. Like Ada’s message had said, the abandoned town in this world was in ruins, most of the buildings covered in a thick, inky-black plant with creeping vines. Not unlike a certain god…

“It’s alive,” I said. “Don’t go near that plant!”

Ada’s signal felt oddly muted now, but it was still there, just about. One road into the town wasn’t choked by the plant, so I pointed that way.

“How do you know?” asked one of the other guards. I vaguely recognised him as from the Valerian Alliance.

“I’m using an amplified tracker,” I said. “Following Ada’s signal—she’s their prisoner.”

“All right,” said Carl. “It looks like Kay’s account was entirely true. Lead the way.”

“If I lose the signal, we’ll have to turn back,” I said. “I was picking up on at least five worlds. They’ve been using the Passages in some way.
Her blood was there.
A chill went through me.

Something’s not right here…

But was it just the sense of a world left to ruin? It must have been high-magic once. Maybe that plant-thing was a source.

I led the others past wrecked, crumbling buildings, through streets lined with the skeletons of metal vehicles not unlike Earth cars. How long had this world been abandoned? It was impossible to tell.

A blue gleam caught my eyes. A fragment of auros lay in the middle of the road, surrounded by more of the plant. They’d opened a doorway here…

The plant was
moving.

“Guys, get back,” I said, as tentacles inched along the ground. “I think this is a dead end.”

The static rose to a fever pitch as magic surged up without warning.

“Hell,” I said. “There’s a source—run!”

The road trembled under our feet, and the world exploded.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ADA

A scream jammed my throat as I fell from the window. My hands scrabbled at the walls, and I dug them into a crevice and hung on, heart thudding in my ears. Below, the humans had scattered—some ran, others had huddled together for protection. Aric yelled something, but I couldn’t make out the words. My fingers dug into a gap between the stones, already hurting. I couldn’t hold on for long.

“Give up, girl,” the StoneKing shouted from above. “It’ll be over quicker.”

Screech.

“Hell,” I whispered. The sky was marked with bird-shaped outlines, descending fast. Not birds.

I frantically felt for another gap between stones, dropping a foot down. From the balcony below, a Stoneskin reached out and grabbed my ankle. I screamed and kicked, and screamed louder when my foot connected with stone. Darkness crept at the corners of my vision. Maybe I’d get lucky and pass out before I died.

The blood rushed to my head. I hung upside-down over the side of the balcony. The red sky… those shapes…

“Come and get her!”

Laughter. The Stoneskins were laughing at me. The one holding my ankle dangled me over the edge, and a dark shape descended on me, claws outstretched.

A wyvern.

I kicked again, desperately—I’d rather fall to my death than be a snack for a wyvern—but the Stoneskin’s grip was like iron.

Screech.

The hand let go, and I fell.

Claws snatched me out of the air. I yelped as one cut through the sleeve of my jacket. The world rushed upright. I hung over the edge of the wyvern’s giant curved claws, my head pressed against rough, rock-hard scales.

Holy. Shit.

I twisted in mid-air, the ground spinning below. People ran in all directions. Aric shouted something, and lightning speared the sky.
No. It won’t do any good.
Wyvern scales were magicproof, unless you found a weak spot. And to do that, you needed a weapon.

Teeth grazed the top of my head, and I wriggled out the way. “Let me go, you bastard,” I snarled, twisting again. I dug my hands into the scales, magic sparking from my own hands.

“Let me go…”

Magic rushed through me in a wave, and everything turned to blinding white.

***

KAY

Thunder roared in my ears. It took several minutes to become aware someone called my name. The ground under me felt like broken rock. The sky was dark red, like blood. I lay on my back, on concrete, or that was what it felt like. My skin buzzed all over, but the overwhelming sense of magic had faded.

I’m alive…

Disconnected words swam around my brain.
They tried to kill us.
Stoneskins had played all of us. And the others were…

I forced myself to look away from the sky.

The town was gone, the buildings reduced to heaps of crumbling ruin, blocking my view of the street. I shook my head to clear the ringing. Someone had shouted my name.

“Get back here! Now!”

Nell. She was behind the still-open door. But there was no one else. No one…

I lurched to my feet, unsteadily. The Chameleon remained in my hand, miraculously untouched—
the sciras. Of course.

Voices shouted. I spun around to see several feet away was another doorway, the path was blocked by guards.

“What happened?” yelled a voice.

“An explosion?”

I ran to the ruins. The way was blocked, but there must be bodies buried under there.