The Sun Dwellers

“So how did you manage to convince her to let you join when you were only twelve?” A

“I didn’t,” Maia says, chuckling. “I ambushed her one night at training. There was a break while they set up for hand-to-hand combat. I walked right up to the trainer and asked to join. The look on my mother’s face was priceless, I’ll never forget it, a mixture of wide-eyed shock and unexpected pride. My petition went to WLM leadership and I was allowed in, the only one under sixteen. ‘A special case’ they called it.”

“I’m surprised I don’t remember it,” A

“Your name was on the approval form,” Maia says, winking, “although I suspect it was a forgery by one of your assistants.”

A

Chapter Seven

A beam of light cuts through the darkness and into A

“Move!” Maia hisses, clambering to her feet, dragging A

Only the sun dwellers would have technology like that.

This is it.

The last stand. Take out as many of the sun dwellers as possible to make it easier on the others.

Ever so slowly, A

For what?

To die for what they believe in. To die for those they love. To die for good.

But only if someone kills them.

A shadow cuts into the beam of light; footsteps cut into the night. “Anyone down there?” a voice yells out, gruff and no-nonsense.

A

“I think it’s empty. Give me a sec to check it out,” the grizzly voice says.

As slow footsteps descend the steps, A

Only one choice: kill or be killed.

A

He peers through the gloom on the opposite side, slides through the lighted area in the middle, and then scans the other side, his eyes passing directly over where A

He scans back the other way, and then turns, taking one step up. A

A

That’s when she’s notices how dirty the cellar floor was from the explosions and cave-in, a thin layer of dust covering everything.

Everything except where they were sitting, where the outline of two bodies, four legs, and the scrape of their feet as they made their hasty escape, is stark and visible—unmistakable.

He takes a step back into the cellar.

Chapter Eight

A

The soldier reaches the bottom step, his footsteps slow and cautious. But not cautious enough.

She strikes from the shadows to the side, using her weapon like a club, slamming it into the back of his head, where she knows it will have the greatest and fastest effect. As pla

From above, she hears, “Quincey! You comin’ back up or what?”

She has no time to lose—a second could mean the difference of life or death, seeing her daughters again or not. Grabbing the red-clad soldier by his boots at the ankles, she starts to drag him from the light, wishing he wasn’t so well fed. Then she feels Maia beside her, pulling at his arms, helping her get the job done twice as fast.

Back in the shadows, she tries to catch her breath as she reassesses the situation. First off, she was lucky that the wound didn’t bleed too much—no trail of blood will lead the other soldiers to where they’re hiding in the dark. The second thing of importance is that she still doesn’t hear voices above them, which might mean there isn’t a full platoon of sun dwellers ready to charge down and overwhelm them. Which might mean they’ve spread themselves so thinly to search the rubble for survivors hiding in cellars and bomb shelters that there are only a few soldiers in each place.

“Quincey?” the voice yells again from above. It’s the same voice. Perhaps they got really lucky. Perhaps the soldiers are working in pairs, which, of course, would mean they now had the advantage in numbers.

“He’s probably messing with us,” another voice says, this one deeper. “He’s always been a prankster.”

“If he is, I’ll kill him myself,” a third, much raspier voice says. “This isn’t the time for pranks or messing around.”

Three distinct voices change the odds completely.

“What do we do?” Maia says, her lips practically touching A

“Follow my lead,” A

Chapter Nine

Before the soldiers are even halfway down the staircase, A

There’s the distinct clink of metal on stone, but she doesn’t know if she’s hit the far wall, like she intended, or if she inadvertently caught the edge of the stairs, rebounding the handheld explosive device back toward her.

The chatter of automatic gunfire explodes somewhere, bullets zinging and ricocheting off hard rock, distant enough to be safe. And then:

Boom!

The grenade’s explosion is deafening, and although A

Someone cries out in the night—maybe more than one somebody.

A