Pawns of Destruction

By CJ Lyons

A heroic teenage girl’s adventure through time continues in the thrilling finale of the trilogy that’s “The Wizard of Oz meets Star Wars” (Hugh Howey, New York Times–bestselling author).

Annie has embraced her Meta-self, realizing that only by accepting who she is can she save the world and prevent more destruction and unnecessary deaths. She also reluctantly accepts the help of her new friends—Killian, Revv, Blake, and N-8—despite the fact that there is a very good chance none of them will survive.

The Meta in her could calculate the overwhelming odds against them making it to Delphi’s underground fortress alive, but the girl in Annie prefers to ignore the odds and focus on their mission to cross the Burning Waters, make it past the other Metas and Delphi’s security, and then use the Key to stop Delphi from continuing to collapse timelines.

She knows there’s no way they’ll all make it out alive. Her plan is to make sure that if anyone must die to save the world and stop Delphi, it will be Annie.

Annie might no longer be human, but she’s still the same girl who sacrificed herself to save her little brother. Annie clings to that, it’s the only piece of her real self left.

If she can save her friends along with the universe, then her death won’t be for nothing . . . she hopes.

Now, as every plan she’s made suddenly goes wrong, Annie and each of her friends must choose: themselves or the universe?

Time is running out and there are no futures left to steal . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781946578112

Book preview

Chapter 1

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

~Carl Sagan

Blake was in a forward passenger car interviewing the traitor, Lafitte, when the comms went wild. A panicked call from the train’s engineer collided with transmissions from the monitoring station at Fort Knox.

We have a super cell formation, one of his Fort Knox analysts broke through the overlapping chatter. Doppler— Static interrupted her.

All comms went dead. The train jostled, braking abruptly. Lafitte, slumped in a chair against the wall of the compartment, looked up. What’s happening?

Before Blake could answer, the train car shuddered so forcibly that he was flung off his feet and Lafitte fell out of the chair. Noise screeched through Blake’s auditory implant. Then he realized the noise wasn’t coming from the malfunctioning, overloaded comms but rather from outside the train. Hail blasted against the window and outer wall, pinging and popping and crashing.

Lafitte crouched at the window, peering out. A tornado, he shouted, his words barely audible over the roar of the storm. The train swayed, coming close to rolling over.

Get away from there. Blake grabbed Lafitte just as the window shattered. Wind howled into the compartment. The floor tilted beneath his feet, the outer wall buckling.

Lafitte cried out, but Blake couldn’t make sense of the old man’s words over the noise of the storm. Beyond the broken window, huge tendrils of black wind clawed at the land, leaving gouges of red mud in their wake.

Blake shoved Lafitte into the relative safety of the interior lavatory compartment and slammed the door behind them both just as the carriage gave up its fight against gravity and toppled over.

The lights went out as the world spun around them. Blake was able to easily see in the dark, and his gyroscope informed him which way was up, but Lafitte wasn’t so lucky. The old man crashed into the basin, smacking his head, until Blake grabbed him and pinned him against the floor, preventing any further damage. According to Blake’s sensors, Lafitte sustained no serious injuries; heart rate and blood pressure were high but not dangerously so.

Then came silence.

A woman’s voice found Annie as she floundered in the void, drowning in data. Go back. You can’t be here. Not yet.

Mom? Annie called into the darkness, thrashing limbs she could not feel, desperate to find any hint of her existence.

It felt like dying. All over again.

Go back. Now. It’s too dangerous without the Key. You need the Key. It will protect you.

Not Mom.

Annie searched for the source of the voice. It came from inside her and all around her and vibrated through every cell of her body. It was everywhere and nowhere.

She felt a push—she had no body, she wasn’t even certain she had a mind, yet someone was pushing her away. She didn’t fight; how could she without arms or legs? Somehow she didn’t want to resist the woman who wasn’t her mom but who sounded as if she had to be someone’s mother. Her voice was as gentle as a lullaby; Annie felt safe wrapped inside it.

Who are you? Annie asked.

We’ll meet soon enough. At Iron Mountain. Go now. You’re not safe here.

Before Annie could gather the strength to reply, a trickle of cold water dripped onto her nose and she opened her eyes.

She wakes. Beautiful, Killian said, his smile tight with worry. He squeezed her tight, holding her in his arms where they sat in the remnants of the train compartment. Beyond him, beams of red light slashed through the black sky exposed by the torn roof, whipping through the air, six of the beams surrounding and embracing the twister.

Lasers, her sensors told her as her mind filled with several research papers about the ability to tame a tornado by regulating the thermal dynamics that created the vortex. The science was nothing compared to the reality.

She watched, fascinated, as six yellow-clad figures straddling vehicles that reminded her of dune buggies—narrow, caged driver compartments beneath roll bars—circled the twister, using their lasers as lassoes. They stood tall, their posture that of ancient mariners lashed to the wheel of a ship tossed by an unforgiving sea.

Except these modern-day storm chasers met nature’s fury not with grim certainty of impending doom but rather with wide-eyed grins and whoops of laughter that reminded her of spaghetti westerns’ cattle rustlers wrangling a herd. As the lasers moved, a choreography of light sparking against the rain, the wind slowed, the churning spiral of destruction stuttered and then collapsed. The tornado had been vanquished.

Killian didn’t even notice the battle of man and nature, his attention focused on examining Annie. She let him because as his hands moved over her body, she was able to perform her own diagnostics on him and realized that he was unharmed.

Annie, your back, he said in dismay, barely having to shout as the storm around them calmed. He touched her lacerated skin gently. Does it hurt?

It will heal. She calculated the extent of the injuries and her nanotubes’ capacity. In fourteen minutes, eleven seconds.

One of the figures in yellow skidded to a stop at the rear of their ruined train carriage, leaping from his vehicle. Up close, she saw that the controls were arranged so you could drive sitting down or standing up. The man was tall, with dark hair, dark skin, and a cluster of seven small crystals implanted in the skin over his left cheekbone, arranged like a constellation of stars.

He pushed his goggles up, rain sluicing from his yellow slicker and chaps. Annie was reminded of motorcyclists’ leathers from back home combined with the all-weather gear of ocean-going fishermen.

You can’t be here! he bellowed, his face twisted in anger. No trains scheduled. This track was meant to be clear.

Killian stepped forward, his balance wobbly, his heart rate still faster than normal. Fear more than adrenaline, she diagnosed. Who are you?

One of the man’s partners shouted from behind him. I found another one!

Chapter 2

Blake’s auditory sensors came back online.

Report, he ordered his men as he pushed open the lavatory door, now horizontal rather than vertical, and hauled Lafitte out.

In addition to the broken window, a gaping gash sliced through the side of the car, now the ceiling. Blake chose the window to climb through, then reached back inside to help Lafitte. The rain slackened, as did the wind, but all around them, the earth was churned into small rivers of mud.

Slowly, his men came back online. Two were trapped with the engineer in the forward compartment, but there were no life-threatening injuries. Three more were in the dining car, all wounded but no fatalities; they were slowly making their way out of the demolished car.

Blake stood on top of the crumpled passenger car. As he reviewed available data and his priorities, he scanned the scene. The rear of the train had vanished, the cars left behind as Blake’s section had sped forward, the tornado slicing a path between the two. Using his enhanced opticals to zoom in on the tracks behind them, he could make out activity at the far edges of his sensors’ range.

His orders were to transport his high value targets—the Key and the Meta—to Fort Knox. He still had the Key but had lost the Meta, who’d been in the rear of the train. His human prisoners—Lafitte, Kymee, and Killian—were considered low priority when it came to preventing the impending Crisis. Per Franco.

He leapt down from the car, joining Lafitte in the mud. Blake’s men came first: without them, he’d be powerless to fulfill either objective.

See to him. He handed Lafitte to one of his men who appeared somewhat intact other than a broken arm. Another pair crawled free of the wreckage, dazed but functional. You two, help me free the others.

It took longer than he would have liked, mostly because as always, he had to disguise his bot-abilities from his men.

Soon he had rescued his men as well as the engineer. All needed medical attention, two were critical with internal bleeding and head injuries. None functional enough to assist him in recapturing the rogue Meta.

Stalking behind a twisted piece of wreckage, out of hearing of his men, he called his report to Franco.

You lost her? Franco thundered, almost as angry as the storm had been.

I cannot control the weather.

I don’t care what it takes, bring me the Meta. She might be the one, the key to everything. We cannot let her escape.

What about my men and Lafitte? I can’t abandon them. They require medical attention.

Leave them. I’ll make arrangements.

But— It was a word Blake had never used before with Franco. He hesitated, not sure how to finish his protest. His sensors picked up movement at the rear of the train, over a kilometer away. It appears there were other survivors, perhaps even Killian. They’re with locals.

The Meta as well? Franco snapped.

Probably. He couldn’t be certain, but there was no reason to suspect otherwise. From what he’d seen, Annie would not leave Killian or Kymee Revv; she was their best protection, she would never abandon them. Her human frailty amazed him. Further proof there was something seriously wrong with her.

Good. Track them down and bring me the Meta—if you need to disable her bot, then bring me her datacore. That should be sufficient. Eliminate the humans.

All of them? Including Killian?

Killian has proven he’s no son of mine.

Blake had no idea what Franco meant by that. Blood was blood, right? Of course, how would he know? He was just a Meta following orders. You’ll send someone for my men and Lafitte?

Lafitte. Franco considered. He might still prove to be useful. Besides, I want to see that bastard’s face when he learns where his wife really is.

My men need medical attention. Questioning Franco? That, too, had never happened before. Had the collision damaged Blake’s AI?

I said I’ll see to it, Franco snapped. Call me when you have the Meta. Franco broke the connection.

Blake circled back around to where his men had gathered, a straggled group of bloody, bruised, and broken warriors. Lafitte was helping to splint one man’s leg while two more, their faces and hands smeared with blood, held him down. The howling wind did little to mask the man’s cries.

When Pasqual, Blake’s second, spotted Blake, he pushed to his feet, bracing himself on a jagged piece of broken steel from the train’s belly. He had a gash that ran down the side of his chest and couldn’t use one arm. Squad present and accounted for. Orders, sir?

The rest of the men raised their faces to Blake. Despite their injuries, they would follow him if he asked. The realization brought with it a strange warmth that rushed over him; a temperature inversion triggered by the storm, no doubt. Yet his sensors detected no change in the barometric pressure.

Would they feel the same way if they knew what he really was? A boy whose brain had been kept in stasis for years, crammed full of the knowledge he’d need, then transplanted into a bot with the body of a man? He shoved the thought aside, cursing Kymee Revv for seeing through his deception. How had she done that? Was he losing control like Kissinger had before his final violent rampage?

Questioning direct orders, doubting Franco—he needed to be on guard for more illogical behavior. Perhaps it was best that Franco had ordered him to leave his men. He could not risk jeopardizing them if he decompensated.

The Comptroller is sending medical assistance. Stabilize the wounded, shelter here, Blake ordered.

He nodded his thanks to Lafitte as the old man glanced up from the man he was tending. All of you, keep the prisoner safe. He removed Franco’s Key from around his neck and handed it to Pasqual. This you deliver directly to the Comptroller and only the Comptroller, understood?

Pasqual’s face filled with a puzzled expression. You’re not staying with us, sir?

No. I have my orders.

Pasqual stumbled forward as if planning to follow Blake, despite the fact that his blood pressure hovered dangerously low and his heart raced with the shock of blood loss.

Pasqual, you are in charge during my absence.

Yes, sir. Understood, sir. Pasqual’s legs gave out, and he slumped to the ground.

Blake turned and headed east to where he’d last seen his quarry, his sensors barely registering the brilliant double rainbow that filled the now-blue sky overhead. He’d lost valuable time by rescuing his men, yet something made him stop and look back.