The Rift - Howard Chris (читать книги бесплатно полностью .txt) 📗

I tapped at the glass. “Could be this thing’s low on juice. But I don’t see no engine on it. It’s like they had it charged up.”

“Meaning the charge is wearing off?”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Maybe the controller could help.”

Alpha had taken the control pad off the tank and hooked it into the boat, back before she’d given up trying to hack into the boat’s steering so we could change our course if we ran into trouble.

“It’s up in the cockpit,” I said. Seemed a long shot the controller would do any good. Thing was for steering the tank, not charging it. But I had to do something. And I hated the feeling of being trapped down there below deck, so close to the water, my guts churning as the boat churned through the lake.

“I’ll go get it,” I said. “We can connect it back in.”

“And what should I do?”

“Make sure that number don’t start ticking down any faster.”

As I ran back through the hull, the whoosh of the water pressed tight at the walls, like the lake meant to crush me to death. I bolted up the ramp, back into daylight, feeling queasy and sucking in air, then stopping for a moment to clutch hold of the railing at the rear of the boat.

And I knew something was wrong soon as I started slipping through the puddles, heading for the ladder that led up to the cockpit.

The rain splashed out of the clouds, and the wind beat the sky, and the boat plunged on just like always. But it was as if the volume was messed, and the world had become louder in all the wrong places.

I heard voices at the bow—and that weren’t right, it was only Crow up at the bow. And that weren’t his voice. Or Alpha’s.

Then I saw the cargo-hold doors hanging open, the padlock broken.

And I heard footsteps come rushing up behind me.

A fist crashed into my head and drove me straight down, and all I could see was black.

Someone was kneeling on me like they meant to split my spine open, and they were working me over, their fists like hammers, knuckles like nails. My bones screamed out, but my brain was all scrambled, and my mouth weren’t working. And next thing I knew, I was being dragged across the deck, all out of focus and splayed out sideways, and when we got up to the bow, I could make out enough to see that all hell had broke loose.

The guy holding me was a stranger—just a wiry knot of muscles, eyes like bruises—but I sure recognized the redhead who was pressing a knife at Crow’s throat.

Crow looked helpless. Brought down by a blade tied off to a stump of bone. He was all contorted on the deck, legs useless beneath him. His head yanked back in Kade’s one good hand.

But I spotted Alpha, too. Not ten feet from them. And my pirate girl had her shotgun pointed straight at Kade’s head.

Standoff is what it was. Must have been about fifty strugglers stood around in scraps of purple turning slick in the freezing rain. They had a few clubs and one lousy knife between them. So that meant they’d not yet found the guns.

“Alpha,” I called, and the dude holding me thumped me in the guts so hard, I nearly bit off my tongue.

“You look like me, bud?” she said, not turning her gaze even slightly. Never taking her eyes off the redhead with the knife. “Or you look like Crow?”

I tried to speak, but the bastard holding me clogged up my mouth with his filthy fingers. And for a moment, there was only the sound of the wind in the rain, and the rumble of the boat’s engines as it burned up juice and stained the waters oily behind us.

And I wished that I did look like Alpha. I wished I had a gun in my hand and the world at my feet.

“Guess that means you look like Crow,” she muttered, her gaze still fixed straight ahead.

I tried to make a moaning sound, loud enough she might hear it. And I knew she couldn’t look at me, but I wanted her to know what I was thinking from the look in my eyes.

We couldn’t lose him. That’s what my eyes would have told her. We couldn’t risk losing Crow. I needed him. This man who’d been a warrior and then a watcher and who now was a cripple. This man who’d been turned into a freak and had somehow turned into my friend.

But it weren’t Alpha’s style to back down from a fight. And I imagined her weighing the odds, wondering if she could drop Kade to the ground before his knife even flickered, or wondering if Crow was a dead man, anyway, whether she laid her gun down or not.

“I’ll kill every one of you,” she called. “If you harm either one of them.” But as she said it, Alpha hoisted up the shotgun and threw it out off the boat, into the water.

“I gave it up,” she cried, as the ragged bodies swarmed towards her. “Now let them both go.”

But Alpha could shout all she wanted and it wouldn’t make any difference.

We weren’t calling the shots anymore.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rain and blood filled my eyes as the bodies roared past me, feet trampling and voices arguing about what this posse ought to do with us now.

But what had we done to them? Hell, they’d have never woken up from Project Zion if it weren’t for me. And I’d planned to let them go, hadn’t I? Soon as we hit land.

Only now they’d find my trees. And my trees were in trouble.

I heard Alpha screaming. Then Crow was screaming, too.

Then silence.

I slipped my arm free as the rain made me slick. But Muscles wrapped a hand around my windpipe and squashed me flat on the deck.

“Keep him down,” Kade said, and he appeared above me, his spine straight, head up, the rain bouncing on his shoulders as he gazed out at the lake.

“Did you kill them?” My voice was cracked and brittle as I stared up at him.

“You know what?” he said. “I hate this. Really, I do.”

I struggled and strained, but Kade bent down and put his hand on my shoulder, his green eyes like deep pools of water. So calm, and somehow that made me even more scared.

Then he gestured behind him, and Alpha and Crow got sucked out of the crowd. Battered and bleeding. But still blinking, still breathing.

Kade leaned in closer, his stink all up in my face. “I don’t do unto others what they don’t do to me. Though I’m afraid I can’t speak for the rest of my crew.”

“Your crew?” I tried to pull my head away from him. “You folks had a vote or something?”

A fire came into his eyes. “Well, if we had, I guarantee not one of them would have voted for you.”

My back was swollen tight from the beating. Had blood pouring out from a gash on my cheekbone, and bruises blooming all up my ribs. The pain made me stagger, but Kade grabbed my neck, shoving me down the ramp into the gloom of the hull.

In the far corner, I could see the outline of the steel box. Closed up now. Its secrets hidden for just a little while longer.

“Banyan?” Zee rushed towards me, but stopped cold when she saw who I was with.

“Long story, gorgeous,” Kade said. “He’ll tell you later.”

His blade shone in the dim light as he gestured me forward. And by the time we reached the tank, more than a dozen folk had come down there to join us.

“Keep your distance, people,” Kade told them. “Let me check this thing’s safe.”

They all held back, like his words cast a spell or something. I mean, some of them strugglers must have been twice his age. It was that voice of his. Like he was too confident to have to be cocky. The voice of someone who knew all the shit you did not.