“Luke,” I say, my voice strained. “We have to escape, into a pod.” My feet slip and slide over bodies as he pulls me away while we rush toward the pod port ahead. There are no longer orderly lines of augments waiting for pods, just disarray as hoverers, rollers, controllers, and augments rush to escape by whatever means possible.

  Luke steadies me. All that remains between us and the port door is a trio of augments. Cogent coppers carrying blasters rush past, jumping over obstacles in their paths.

  I don’t see the explosion that shifts the platform under my feet, but I feel and hear the shriek of twisting metal as the platform collapses. Luke and I are left dangling, scrambling to crawl up.

  Gasping at the edge, I put my arms around Luke and press my face against his neck. I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. Luke’s eyes rebuke me as I look up at him.

  “I’ve been watching the pods since we entered,” Luke says, glancing over his shoulder. “They’re not going down below. They’re going back to City Blue or perhaps to another ship.”

  Nothing remains between us and the pod port ahead, but we’d need wings to reach it. I know now isn’t the time for conversation, but there’s something I need to know.

  “Luke, there’s something you aren’t telling me. What is it?”

  He puts me at arm’s length, grabs my hand. As we turn around, we see an eye racing toward us. Without hesitation, Luke picks up a blaster from a fallen copper, offering it to me. He jumps over the body and retrieves a second blaster. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s something. Tell me.”

  Luke takes aim at the oncoming eye. “I know when you slip. The look on your face, I’ve seen it before.”

  I point at the eye and fire at the same time Luke does. He rolls behind a tangled section of railing. I follow; he presses me back with his free arm as the eye returns fire. “Slip? You’re not making any sense.”

  His expression changes. “It’s not something you remember. It’s more like an echo where a memory should be. I know because I experience the same thing. I always thought I slipped into the collective, but you’re not connected to the collective.”

  We fire at the eye, striking center iris. “What does it mean? Why us?”

  The control room reverberates. The massive holosphere over our heads breathes fire, sending a spray of molten quicksilver in every direction.

  Luke protects me, using his body as a shield. The pungent scent of singed hair and burning flesh fills my nostrils. I twist away franticly.

  My hands pat his back, chest, arms, cheeks. He’s okay, but the augment nearby isn’t as lucky. The molten quicksilver has melted away flesh and bone, leaving a legless torso. The eye that had been firing at us is lying against the wall not far away.

  Luke pulls me against a wall as studies the room, slipping his fingers into mine. Smoke and fire and chaos surround us. “Every collective has its underlying doctrines and founding principles. From these come directives that guide its members. Some collectives study basic concepts such as truth, existence, and reality. Others seek knowledge or transcendence. Fundamentalist, like Cogents, Ardents and Erodents, try to compel specific ways of thought. Most machines seem to be either Cogents or Ardents.”

  I look where Luke points. It’s a pair of eyes, their red lasers scanning. “Why are you telling me this?”

  He stands and pulls me with him as he runs. “I’m telling you this because you need to hear it. I’m telling you this because I don’t know if I’m in complete control of myself.”

  “You seem in control to me.”

  He stops to help me around a broken crescent wedged into the floor, his eyes searching my face. “Don’t you get it? If I’m not in complete control of myself, you might not be in complete control of yourself. I know you’re not Cogent, so what are you? If you’re Ardent, you’re dangerous.”

  We continue, picking our way toward the nearest pod port. Between us and the port is an octet of coppers, firing at everything that moves. I want to say “Am I supposed to know that? Do I look dangerous?” But I realize I’m holding a blaster and it’s practically aimed at his back.

  “The collectives are at war with each other.”

  “I can see that,” I say, peeking at the approaching coppers around a twisted multi-track. The pod port is just ahead.

  Luke pulls me down, so I’m hidden from a pair of roving eyes that seem to suddenly appear. The roving eyes and the coppers exchange fire. “Cogents, Ardents and Erodents compel and control. Cogents, with appeals and reason. Ardents, with zealotry and rhetoric. Erodents, with loyalty and devotion to what was. Are you one of these or none of these? Do you believe in amalgamation or alliance?”

  His words spark a memory. I feel like I just woke up and I’m standing outside in the sunshine. I am none of these.

  I am Lucent.

  I don’t know how I know, but I know. I also know I don’t want him to know.

  I look at him to see if he’s inside my thoughts, but his gaze isn’t fixed on me. I turn around. Far behind us, a trio of vertical wings races above the remnants of the platform, toward us, moving alongside each other. Their guns spinning.

  “We’re going to get boxed in,” he says.

  He grabs my hands and looks me in the eye. I watch his pupils focus on me as I stare back. I wish I had his strength and certainty, but I don’t.

  “The ship’s in lockdown. The pod holds one. You’ll have to pry open the door and override the controls to force a launch.” He squeezes my hand and takes my blaster. “I’ll hold them off. You have to go, get out of here as fast as you can.”

  “No, I won’t.” I shake my head. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  The flex of his muscles is the only thing that betrays his intentions. It’s enough though for me to pull back as he tries to spring away.

  My hands on his shoulders, I say, “We’re doing this together. One way or another.”

  The pinch of his eyebrows shows his concern. “You don’t know what you’re saying. This is the way it has to be. We don’t know if, when, we’ll betray each other. It won’t be because we want to; it’ll be because we don’t have complete control.”

  “No. No, it isn’t the way it has to be.” I press my lips firmly against his. “There’s room for both of us. We’ll squeeze in, make space if we have to.”

  I don’t give him a chance to argue further or convince me otherwise. I take back my blaster and push him ahead of me as I run toward the pod port, firing my weapon as I go. Where the sudden burst of energy comes from, I don’t know, but it comes just in time.

  Chapter 12

  Node: 011

  Luke at my side, I sprint across the platform, dodging blaster fire. Two coppers survived the clash with the roving eyes. They’re all that remain between us and the pod port.

  “Together,” Luke shouts. We focus our blasters on the same copper. The copper stiffens, his back arching. Blood surges from his wounds. He drops his weapon, falls to his knees and slumps to the side.

  This isn’t the time for me to think about his wide, dead eyes, but I do. I can’t erase them from my thoughts, even as I fire desperately at the remaining copper.

  Luke avoids a salvo that surely should have struck him clean and through, but somehow doesn’t as he rotates around and returns fire. He misses. It’s my discharge that strikes true. A moment later the copper is lying motionless, her arms limp at her sides.

  “Go, go,” I say. Glancing over my shoulder, I locate the nearest patrol.

  My lower lip trembles when I jump over the fallen copper and continue on. My cheeks are wet. I want to scream, to cry out at what I’ve been made to do.

  A few strides ahead of me now, Luke enters the pod port and works to pry open the doors. His fingers thrash and press against the door seals, trying to gain purchase. “Cedes, get up here. Take the flight controls.”

  As I slip sideways through the half open doors into the pod, I look back at Luke and offer him my hand. “If I’m going, you’re coming with me. You’re not staying behind.”

  He shakes his head. “Cedes, there’s no room.”

  Images of how to override the controls flash through my mind. From the fix of Luke’s eyes on mine, I know he sees what I see. The instant our fingers connect, I hold fast and pull. “Luke, I can’t do this by myself.”

  Pods are meant to be flown from a standing position, with a circle of controls surrounding a lone pilot. There’s barely enough room for one, but we need to find a way to fit two.

  Luke glances back. “Cedes, the pod won’t seal. You have to let me go. We don’t have time to debate this.”

  Bullets strafe the wall of the pod port. Looking up, I see a trio of vertical wings closing in fast.

  I clamp both hands over his. I’m small and injured, but I manage to bring him to me. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Leave me behind. It’s the way it has to be.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” I say as I thrust back, sitting on the controls with my back and head pillowed against the curved surface of the pod. Somehow this helps us squeeze tightly enough together for the seals to suction together.

  With the seals in place, I twist around to a standing position. He’s behind me, pressed up against my right side. “We don’t even know if we can make this thing fly,” he says.

  His hands are snaked around me; my hands on the controls are a counter to his. “This thing’s going to fly. I know it,” I say.

  The override requires breaking into the primary panel and reversing circuitry. We work in tangent. Bullets ricochet off the closed doors just as the docking mechanism disengages and the pod falls away from the port like a stone dropped from a great height.

  I hear Luke yelling. “Put your hands out, fly!”

  I try, I do. I put my arms out, hands raised, palms flat. Stating the obvious, I say, “This should make us level off but we’re not. We’re still falling.”

  The pod walls are translucent so I can see everything that’s around us. Blue sky. White clouds. Broken buildings that we’re hurtling toward.

  Luke in my ear, “We must have missed something. Think, think. What did we forget?”

  My heart is in my throat. I feel like I’m being pressed into the ceiling, but I haven’t moved at all because there’s no room to move. “I don’t know. This shouldn’t be happening.”

  Luke is behind me, looking over my shoulder as he frantically pushes various controls. “It’s one of these—it has to be one of these.”

  Everything freezes when I close my eyes. It’s not the ether that finds me here; it’s the images that were swimming through my mind seconds ago. I see what we missed. “There’s a secondary circuit within the controls we’ve forgotten.”

  Opening my eyes, I see the stone ghosts looming closer and closer. I need to remove a circuit from the inside of a panel on my right. My fingers can’t quite grasp it, but Luke’s can. Just as he reverses and reinserts the tiny rectangular node, the pod stops dropping. It’s as if it’s frozen in place.

  My hearts drops into my stomach. Everything becomes still. The pod’s heads-up display comes to life before my eyes and the virtual controls spin in front of my outstretched hands.

  “Fly this thing!” Luke shouts.

  Arms out, hands raised, palms flat, I test the pod’s responsiveness by tipping my right hand. The pod arcs right until I bring my right hand back beside my left. A tip of my left hand makes the pod arc left. The pod shoots up into the air when I lean my hands back.

  For a moment, I see the Cogent airship. It’s listing to the right like some great wounded beast. Pillars of smoke billow from forward sections. As we continue to rise, a trio of vertical wings blasts their way out and drops straight toward us.

  Luke’s left hand grips my waist with increasing urgency. “Get us out of here!”

  Both hands together, I tilt my hands forward. We drop. It’s a controlled fall with the pod maintaining forward momentum and us racing toward the broken buildings below.

  “Faster, faster,” Luke tells me.

  I pour urgency into our flight by rotating my hands toward each other while still titling forward. The more I rotate my hands, the faster we go. “I’m trying. I’m trying.”

  “It’s not fast enough. They’re right behind us.”

  He doesn’t have to tell me that for me to know. Bullets are slicing the air all around us. Some are even glancing off the thin shielding on the pod. I veer left and right to try to shake the wings off our trail. After glancing at the energy reserves gauge in the heads-up display, I engage both afterburners by bringing the thumb and index finger of both my hands together.

  The sudden thrust presses me hard against Luke. “Wow,” I say as we rocket our way into the midst of the broken buildings.

  In the map of the old city, the streets ran straight and true, but that’s not how the streets run now. A toppled ruins ahead blocks our way and I have to pinch my thumbs and pinky fingers together to engage the air brakes before I break left.

  One of the wings doesn’t make the split-second turn and crashes into the ruins, sending a fireball up into the sky. The two remaining wings continue their pursuit, but now I have a notion of how to get rid of them.

  We’re going to make it. I know we’re going to make it.

  The story continues with:

  After the Machines

  Episode Four: Precipice

  This Mortal Coil

  .

  About the Author

  Robert Stanek is author of the #1 bestselling ELVES OF THE REACHES, an epic fantasy series, currently comprising eight books, which has been translated into twelve languages; the #1 bestselling MAGIC LANDS, a young adult series comprising two books and counting, which has been translated into seven languages; and the #1 bestselling POCKET CONSULTANTS, a computer technology series comprising 35 books and counting, which have been translated into 21 languages.

  Robert is also author of the #1 bestselling BUGVILLE CRITTERS, a children’s series comprising 28 books and counting; #1 bestselling BUGVILLE LEARNING, an educational series comprising 31 books and counting; the #1 bestselling BUGVILLE JR, a children’s series comprising 26 books and counting; and the #1 bestselling THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE, a mystery thriller novel for adults.

  In his fiction writing, Robert transports readers to many imagined worlds. Robert’s early fiction work has many influences, including JRR Tolkien, C S Lewis, Anne McCaffrey, H G Wells, and Ray Bradbury.

  In his long, distinguished writing career, Robert’s books have been distributed and/or published by Simon & Schuster, Random House, Macmillan, Pearson, Microsoft, O’Reilly, and others. In 2007, Robert founded Go Indie, an organization dedicated to supporting independent publishers, authors, and booksellers, and over the past few years Go Indie has helped hundreds of independents.

  Dubbed ‘A Face Behind the Future’ in the 1990’s by The Olympian, Robert’s been helping to shape the future of the written word for over two decades. Robert’s 150th book was published in 2013.

  Select Acclaim for Robert Stanek…

  “Robert Stanek is one of our most featured and respected Kids & Young Adults, K-12 Educators and Kids authors.”

  --The Audio Book Store

  “Stanek [has] a penchant for clear and simple prose. He also prefers swift, action-oriented scenes. Solidly built. Stanek moves among his main characters with ease, always switching at a climactic moment to maintain suspense. The accessible, brisk language keeps things moving.”

  --Foreword Magazine

  “Sure to attract fans of graphic novels and classic Tolkien alike. Stanek will likely draw a cult following. This guarantees fans, and those fans will be ready to wield their swords against the Dark Lord in Stanek’s next installment.”

  -- VOYA, the leading magazine for YA librarians

  “Word of mouth turned it into a bestseller. Very satisfying.”

  -- The Fantasy Guide

  Select Achievements for Robert Stanek and his Ruin Mist books…

  #1 Fiction, Audible (12 weeks, 2005)

  Top 50 Sci-fi/Fantasy, Amazon (26 weeks, 2002)

  Top 10 Fiction, Audible (25 weeks, 2005)

  Top 50 Fiction, Audible (52 weeks, 2005-2006)

  Top 10 Kids & YA, Audible (180 weeks, 2005-2007)

  #1 Featured Book Audible June-July 2005

  Featured in Cover Story, Publisher’s Weekly (2009)

  Featured in VOYA (2007)

  Featured in Complete Idiots Guide to Elves and Fairies (2005)

  Featured in Ancient Art of Faery Magick (2005)

  Popular Series Fiction for Middle School and Teen Readers (2005, 2008)

  Top 10 Recommended Author -- SciFi Bookcase (2004 - 2012)

  Top 10 Book -- SciFi Bookcase (2004 - 2012)

  Top 20 Author -- RateItAll (2005 - 2012)

  A Top 100 Fantasy -- The Fantasy 100 (2005 - 2007)

  Robert Stanek and his books have also been featured in…

  The Olympian, The Journal of Electronic Defense, The Publisher’s Weekly Cover Story, The Parenting Magazine, VOYA, BookWire, Children’s Writer, Children’s Bookshelf, Library Journal, School Library Journal, The News Tribune, and more.

  Also by Robert Stanek

  Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches #1, 2, 3, 4:

  Winds of Change

  Seeds of Dissent

  Pawn of Dragons

  Tower of Destiny

  In the Service of Dragons #1, 2, 3, 4:

  A Clash of Heroes

  A Dance of Swords

  A Storm of Shields

  A Reign of Dragons

  Guardians of the Dragon Realms #1, 2:

  The Dragon, the Wizard & the Great Door

  A Legacy of Dragons

  Dragons of the Hundred Worlds #1, 2:

  Breath of Fire