They were in big trouble.
Mira struggled beneath him, and he clamped down on her mouth even tighter. He could tell she was boiling mad, but he really didn’t care.
“Quit squirming, you’re gonna get us killed,” Holt whispered soft but angry into her ear. “They’re all around us.” Her hair smelled like mint and spice, not at all unpleasant, but Holt forced those thoughts away.
Stop it, she’s your
prisoner
, he told himself.
Lasers from two other shadows flared outward and found the log, moved over it curiously, examining it, seeking and looking along with the first probe.
The ground under Holt and Mira vibrated in matching drumbeats. One of the shadows appeared just on the other side of their log. Holt pushed himself as far as he could into the ground. The hulking shadow stomped closer, the vibrations filtering through the ground and into his chest. He knew if he looked up, he would see it standing over them. All it had to do was look down.…
The shadow emitted strange, distorted, electronic chirps. They sounded quizzical, curious, but detached and frightening, too. A few other shadows called out in response, like they were talking to one another. For all Holt knew, they were.
The dark shape kept moving, shaking the ground with its footfalls, walking on through the trees. The laser probes on their log died and the air above them went black.
The shadows thudded onward, chirping their eerie communications back and forth. The sound echoed hauntingly among the trees until they finally vanished.
When they were gone, Holt yanked Mira to her feet. They stared at each other hotly.
“Still making you work for it, aren’t I?” Mira asked him, her mouth twisted in a smirk. Her arrogance infuriated Holt.
“What were you
doing
?” Holt demanded. “You struggled the whole time, those lasers can detect movement and sound, you almost got us killed!”
“You were on top of me, and I didn’t particularly like it!” Mira shot back. She shoved him backwards. “Your legs were digging into my knees, and you bruised my wrist. Plus your hand smells like your stupid dog!”
“My stupid dog would have known enough to keep quiet when a patrol of Mantis walkers was just ten feet away!” Holt shoved
her
now, for good measure.
“And would he have known enough not to lead us right
into
them on our little hike through the woods? Did you even think to scout the route before we moved through it in the pitch black?”
Holt fumed, tried to find something to say … but couldn’t. She was right. In his hurry to get them away from the crash site and all the Assembly that were certainly swarming there, he had led them right into a patrol of Mantises.
Mira smiled at his lack of comment, saw she had won. It filled him with anger. Big reward or not, emerald eyes or not, the girl was quickly starting to be more trouble than she was worth. No wonder Midnight City had a vendetta against her.
He shoved Mira forward, back the way they’d run from. “Run. That way,” he said tightly. “We have to get to Zoey and Max before the walkers do.”
The two darted back through the woods. As they did, Holt tried to figure out his next move. They were miles from the crash site now, and the Assembly was still searching the area. But why? For what? They had the crashed ship and whatever secrets it contained. What else could—?
Holt’s thoughts trailed off as something occurred to him.
Whatever secrets it contained …
There was one thing, secret or not, that spherical ship had held that was no longer there.
Zoey.
She
had been in the ship. In fact, as far as he could tell from his quick jaunt inside, she was pretty much the only thing that had survived the impact in one piece. Which could mean only one thing, Holt realized grimly.
The Assembly were looking for
Zoey
.…
But why? She was just a little girl. A little girl who was afraid of the dark and jumped at shadows and liked dogs.
But was that
all
she was? Hadn’t she warned him? Hadn’t she said the Assembly were right in front of them? Somehow, impossibly … she had known. And Holt hadn’t listened, and almost got them killed as a result. Was she connected to them somehow? If so, could they detect
her
?
Holt guessed not. If they could, they would have been overrun a long time ago. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a one-way connection, at least for now.
But did that make it any better?
The sun was rising in the east, filling the sky above the tree line with a dim glow that permeated down through the leaves. The forest would be lit up in minutes. They had to be well away from here before that.
Holt and Mira broke through the trees back onto the trail they had been following earlier. Zoey and Max were still there. The dog was engrossed in having its belly rubbed and didn’t even look up when his boss reappeared. Holt frowned down at him.
“You found them,” Zoey said, looking at Holt.
“They almost found
us,
” he said. “Get up, we have to move.”
Holt grabbed his and Mira’s pack from where he’d dropped them earlier.
Mira looked down at Zoey, smiled. “Might have to start listening to you more.” Zoey gazed up at Mira with huge, blue, unreadable eyes, and smiled back.
And then two large dark shapes stomped through the underbrush behind them.
Max howled in surprise. Holt spun toward the movement and found himself staring at the same shadows from before … only now revealed.
Machines that stood over ten feet tall, pushed off the ground by four powerful mechanized legs, each with dozens of complicated actuators. Atop the legs was the cockpit fuselage, which held twin mounted plasma cannons, a missile battery, sensory equipment, and other ordnance. In the middle of the fuselage rested their “eyes,” a triangular grouping of three polished, round sensors that glowed red, blue, and green. The machines were painted a mixture of blue and white stripes and patterns, like every other Assembly walker Holt had ever seen … until yesterday.
Assembly Mantis walkers. Likely two of the very walkers Holt and Mira had just escaped from. They had found them.
Earth’s children, its only survivors, named them Mantises because of their four-legged bodies. But other than the legs, they didn’t look anything like insects. The machine was streamlined, deadly, built for both speed and accuracy, while still possessing firepower enough to be formidable. It was an amazing mechanical construction, a marvel of engineering so advanced, it was almost art.
No one knew what the walkers were really called.
Assembly
and
Mantis
were terms coined by Earth’s survivors, weak attempts to give names to something that was indifferent to what its subjugates called it.
The walkers’ targeting lasers flared to life, streamed toward them. The machines called out eagerly among themselves, with frightening electronic chirps.
“Move!” Holt shouted, but it wasn’t necessary.
He and everyone else, even Max, instinctively fled in panic. There was no concern for direction or path finding now. There was only the primal need to escape certain death, and any direction would work just fine.
They ran in a disorganized group through the trees, dodging rocks and roots. The dim sunlight filtering in from above made it easier than before, but it was still precarious.
Holt heard the walkers behind him, their legs pounding the ground as they chased after them.
Outrunning them simply wasn’t an option. He’d seen Mantises move at upwards of forty miles an hour over open ground. Just because they had legs and not wheels didn’t make them any less mobile. In fact, the way they could corner and jump and climb, in Holt’s mind, it made them even more agile. Their only hope was to use their size against them.
“Hang a right!” Holt yelled as they ran.
“Why?” Mira shot back.
“Because the trees are thicker!”
Sure enough, the trunks were larger, more numerous, more tightly packed. The walkers would have to work to find paths they could squeeze through.
They rushed into the tightly packed trees, the walkers chirping sharply behind them … but Holt heard their footsteps slow down as they looked for ways to follow.
The four ran through the forest, actually putting distance between them and the Mantises. Holt braced himself, waiting for the high-pitched electronic whine of the plasma cannons to rip the air, the yellow bolts to shred the trees to splinters all around them …
… but nothing happened. The walkers were pursuing, but they weren’t firing.
Holt was stunned. The Assembly usually fired without hesitation—what was different now?
To his left, he saw Zoey struggling to keep up with them, ducking underneath low-hanging limbs as she ran.
And the answer hit him. There was only one thing that made sense. The Mantis walkers weren’t firing, for a very specific reason: They didn’t want to hit Zoey.
Whoever the little girl was,
whatever
she was … the Assembly wanted her
alive.
13.
WATER
HOLT RAN THROUGH THE WOODS
in a strange state of panicked concentration. Mira and Max were to his right, a little ahead of him, running for all they were worth. To his left was Zoey. And she wasn’t doing well. She was just too young, too small, quickly being left behind.
Holt scooped her onto his back and he felt her arms tighten around his neck, holding on for her life.
“Turn left!” Zoey shouted into his ear from behind.
“But we’re losing them this way!”
“Only for a little bit, then they’ll be on us again. Turn
left!
”
Holt frowned, not liking the idea … but she’d been right once before, and it had almost cost him when he hadn’t listened. With a grimace, he turned hard to the left, whistled for Max.
The dog changed course, rushing forward ahead of them. Mira did the same. Holt guessed she knew her best chance was with them, especially since Zoey’s presence seemed to protect them from plasma bolts.
Behind, the thuds of the walkers were growing louder, they were gaining again, pounding after them.
The four broke from the tree line … and just about ran straight into a enormous river, flowing fast and full toward the east.
Holt almost cursed out loud. “It’s a dead end!” he shouted, letting the little girl down off his back so he could stare at her. This was where her sixth sense had taken them?
“Swim!” she pleaded, looking up at him.
Swim? Was she serious? “You see how fast it’s moving? Why would—?”
“Swim! We have to, it’s the only way!”
Holt looked to Mira. Mira shrugged. “They’ll be on top of us any second anyway. I don’t see another choice.”
Downstream, less than a hundred yards, the two Mantis walkers stormed through the tree line, turning toward them. The open sky above the river revealed the blue and white machines in even more detail. Their size, their weapons, the sharp edges of their giant legs.
Holt and company didn’t wait; they ran for the river’s edge.
The walkers rumbled forward in response, closing the gap fast, chirping loudly.
From behind Holt came a growl as Max stared at the walkers with an intense glint in his eyes. His hair stood up; his tail wagged furiously.
Holt knew that look, knew what was about to happen. “Max, no!”
But the dog ignored him. To Max, the walkers were bad, they were dangerous, they had chased his boss. Max charged forward, barking sharply.
The walkers stopped dead, their three-sensor eyes focusing down in confusion at the furry gray creature charging them. Holt didn’t imagine Mantis walkers were used to someone charging
them.
Mira held Zoey’s hand as she ran toward the river. She stopped, turned, stared back at Holt.
Holt looked from her to Max, watched as his dog reached the four-legged walkers, futilely biting and clawing at their metallic legs, barely scampering out of the way as they stabbed down.
He wouldn’t last much longer.
Holt could try to save him. But was it worth it?
Survival dictates everything,
Holt reminded himself. He would also have to let Mira out of his reach, and losing her would be a very bad thing. Plus the odds of him surviving a close encounter with two Mantis walkers were very low.
Max yelped as one of the walker’s legs slammed into him, sending him rolling backwards on the ground. Holt scowled as he watched.
“Damn it,” he said with a grimace. Survival was one thing, but Max was the only friend he had left. Holt didn’t like it, but he made his decision.
He dropped the packs on the ground. “Get Zoey across the river!” he shouted at Mira. She considered him in a new way, a mixture of surprise, puzzlement, and … something else. Something softer. Holt didn’t like it, whatever it was. “Go!” he yelled as he ran toward Max.
Mira didn’t hesitate long. She looked to where Holt had dropped her pack … then rushed for it, grabbed it, and pulled Zoey toward the water. They leapt into the fast-moving current, and it ripped them downstream.
Holt drew his shotgun as he ran, pumped out the last of its cartridges, and loaded in new shells, each marked with black tape.
Max was still on the ground, dazed. He barked up at one of the four-legged Mantises as it raised its powerful leg. Max yelped and rolled out of the way as the metallic limb stabbed downwards.
The second Mantis, behind Max and out of sight, raised its own leg, about to crush the dog.
A shotgun blast hit the Mantis right in its “face,” where the three-sensor eye sat. But these weren’t normal shells. Normal shells wouldn’t do much to a Mantis’s thick armor. When these shells hit, black tar exploded all over the thing’s optics and sensors. It screeched in electronic anger, wheeled back.
The first Mantis turned on Holt, targeting laser streaming out. Holt fired twice more. More shells clanged in bull’s-eyes on the machine’s eye, spraying black tar everywhere. The thing chirped angrily, shook, and contorted, blinded.