Corra looked down at the rusty cylinder she held in her palm and swallowed the lump in her throat. The Transmission. So much potential in so small a thing. How many legends had she read over the past weeks about this tiny little metal device? Yet it felt light in her hand. Insignificant. Then again, she’d thought the same of the Caelum Lex. Leta had called it a paperweight. And she’d never forget what that had managed…

What the hell was she doing? Continue reading →

“–but a time shall come when the pathway between our new world and the holy Origin must again reopen. When our colony lies in dire need of our ancestors, the Caelum Lex shall be broken and the deliverance of our people shall be gifted.”

Corra propped her head in her hand as, from her raised dais in the center of the room, she watched the woman read from the crusty old book and gesture dramatically to her audience. All around the walls of the little chapel, the rest of the Gatekeepers (or whatever this bizarre little cult called itself) nodded along in solidarity. As they had with every other time this passage had been read aloud over the past few days. Which was a lot.

Knowing that bursting into the unassuming building that housed the Gatekeepers’ religious center would end in her becoming their ‘honored guest’ or rather, well-treated prisoner, to listen to recitations of their scripture for days on end would not have stopped her from doing it to save Cyrus and Addy. But it certainly would have resulted in her doing it a little differently. Continue reading →

Leta didn’t look up from her book when she heard the knock on the door to her CORS quarters. Liam’s voice from the hall called, “Hey, you around?” and a smile came to her face.

“C’mon in,” she called back. Her eyes quickly scanned over the last few lines of the page as the the door slid open, and Liam collapsed onto the couch beside her. Clearly exhausted, he leaned over and kissed her warmly. Their lips were barely parted when she asked, “So how’d it go?” Continue reading →

“I have to say — ” Fiearius pushed open the door, flooding the dark war room with light from the station hallway. He held it open for Leta to pass through. “There’s nothing that makes these meetings more enjoyable than you shutting Arsen down in front of the entire council.”

Leta smirked. “I didn’t mean to embarrass him so much.” She noticed Fiearius’ skeptical brow raise and admitted, “Okay, maybe a little.”

Truthfully, Chief Strategist Arsen made her want to tear out her hair since she was recruited into the war council a week ago. He had made his opinion on her presence there known from day one and if it wasn’t a personal grudge that was making him talk over her and shoot down everything she said, she wasn’t sure what it was. Continue reading →

With a jolt, Cyrus snapped his eyes open, exhaled, and sat up sharply. He had no idea where he was: all he could see was darkness, blurred in the corners of his vision. He felt cold concrete beneath his palms. There was a light, natural light, from somewhere up above. It was so blurry. His desperate breaths echoed through what sounded like a small room, but there were no other sounds. Why was everything so blurry? What had happened? Where was he? Where was Addy? He blinked furiously to no effect. What the–

Finally, he put his hands to his face, feeling his nose, his jaw, his forehead to make sure everything was in place, intact. Everything wasn’t. Where his fingers should have met the metal wiring of his glasses, they touched only skin.

Cyrus sighed heavily. “Shit.” Continue reading →

“Good luck!” Corra called, waving over her shoulder as her feet carried her away from the town square. Addy and Cyrus stood by the fountain, seeing them off.

Finn walked beside her and added, “If we’re not back by tomorrow morning, you find that Eriaas guy who told us about the dig site and you shoot him, y’got me?” He mimed pointing a gun at his temple. “Right in the head.”

Addy laughed, and called from a distance, “Of course, cap’n. Right in the head!” Continue reading →

“You were right,” Fiearius grunted, leaning against the heavy bolted door with his arms crossed. He scowled. “I don’t like this plan.”

Leta just shook her head, not looking up from the book she paged through as she sat lounged in a plush red armchair with her feet up. Beside her sat Admiral Gates, smoking from a cigar and looking like he was enjoying his evening, as odd as it had turned out.

“Why not, Admiral?” he asked, smirking through an exhale of smoke. “I thought you were just dying to get away from the party.”

True enough, that was the one positive effect of Leta’s idea. But the idea of waiting it out hidden in this mansion’s incredibly well-furnished underground panic room until the danger of the supposed assassin upstairs passed was obviously not Fiearius’ kind of plan. For a man who lived on the cramped Dionysian, he didn’t seem very comfortable in other confined spaces. Continue reading →

Liam wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find when he excused himself from the dinner table and left the ballroom in search of Leta. The stairways were blocked off by security, but there was a door left open in the courtyard that seemed to have been used recently. Drink in hand, he half-walked, half-wandered up the carpeted staircase, away from the party. It wasn’t the first time he went exploring where he wasn’t supposed to: it was rather in his nature, as an investigative journalist, to poke around a bit. He just didn’t think he would have to seek out his own date and her ex.

Still, the thought didn’t sour him: he was surprised Leta had agreed to be his date at all. After his messages had gone unanswered, he’d nearly given up on her. And now he was terribly glad he hadn’t. Amazingly enough, Leta seemed to enjoy his company.

Upstairs, Liam was just wondering if he would soon be accosted by security when he spotted the missing pair. Fiearius and Leta stood in the doorway of a guest bedroom, their heads bowed closely together as they looked down at a tablet’s screen and whispered amongst themselves. Continue reading →

The tremendous grand ballroom was crowded, full of the wealthy elite chatting, laughing, toasting their glasses to their fortunes and good looks and vacation homes or whatever it was rich people concerned themselves with. Overhead, a chandelier glittered so brightly Fiearius had to squint, and below it, couples twirled on the dance floor to the string quartet. But for all of the visual overload around him, when he glanced across the room, his eyes instantly gravitated to one sight in particular.

Leta was hanging close to the bar, deep in conversation with a young Carthian beside her. A deep blue gown clung to her skin and flowed down her legs, and her hair was woven into an elaborate design. Really, she didn’t look much like the woman Fiearius had said goodbye to a few days ago when she’d departed the CORS for Carthis proper. Continue reading →