The Child Thief 2: Deep Shadows
Bella Forrest
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Read More by Bella Forrest
Copyright © 2018 Bella Forrest
Nightlight Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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1
I ran faster than I had ever run in my life, my feet barely skimming over the ground. My flight was accompanied by sounds of what could only be described as a firefight breaking out in the sky above me—and was spurred on by an absolute terror unlike anything I had ever felt before.
I was in a forest, and I could hear two sets of footfalls behind me. For a moment I panicked, thinking that the people I was running from had found me, that they were on my heels and ready to take me to their headquarters. If I was caught, what would they do to me there?
Adrenaline flooded my body—though it must have been nearly full of the stuff already—and I sprinted even faster, dodging and weaving through the trees and shrubs around me. The sky above exploded in various colors and sounds from whatever the hell was going on up there, and I ducked as a shower of sparks came raining down. I panicked again, sure that the forest was going to catch fire around me and I’d never be able to get out before I was burned alive.
Then, with a suddenness that almost made me cry out, logic broke through, and I found reason again. I slowed my frenzied steps and let my team catch up.
It was important that we stay together. We were out here by ourselves, and we had no idea where the others were. We didn’t even know if they’d survived.
I exhaled when Jace caught up to me, then threw my gaze to the right. Ant was approaching as well, his long legs eating up the distance as if he ran for his life on a regular basis and found it to be a completely normal experience. His face, however, shadowed by the flipped-up visor of the exo-suit, told a completely different story.
Jace and I had come upon him moments after Jace had saved me from what I’d started thinking of as the Pincers of Death—those enormous metal jaws that had reached out and caught me around the middle in the parking lot surrounding the warehouse. Ant had matched his strides to ours without saying anything, and after that, we’d just run.
The parking lot had still been filled with the smoke from the bombs our decoy team had released, and we’d all saved our breath and tried to take full advantage of the limited oxygen inside our suits. We’d closed the vents on the suits to keep the sedative gas out, and that had meant very little air was left inside our masks. Barely enough to do what we’d had to do.
On reaching the outer edges of the parking lot, we’d come across some sort of creek situation and were forced to a screeching halt. We’d had no idea it was there, but the decoy team must have crossed it in order to get to the parking lot, and we hadn’t exactly had a chance to find them and chat about things like that.
“How the hell are we supposed to get over that?” Ant had groaned, using the comm channel we’d all been on when our mission suddenly went so badly.
I’d thrown my hand out in a sharp chopping motion to indicate that he should shut up, before turning and giving Jace an elaborate set of hand gestures that I’d hoped would communicate one important thing: we couldn’t be on the comm channel. We had no idea who was listening.
Then I’d turned back to the creek, my heart racing. It wasn’t that wide, maybe ten feet, give or take, but we didn’t have any way of crossing it, and I definitely didn’t think these suits were made for swimming.
Luckily, I’d realized there were cars parked right up against the creek, and they would give us the perfect launching ramps. Three steps and a leap had sent me to the top of one of the vehicles, thanks to the extra juice the suit gave me, and then one quick push of the button against my right toe, and I was shooting forward.
When Montague had first showed us the stilt feature in the suits, I’d thought it was kind of overkill—that it would take too much coordination to make that particular aspect really safe—but, in that moment, I’d thought that whoever had invented it was probably a genius.
Landing on the other side of the creek, however, hurt. A lot.
I’d somehow managed to hit the ground running, but it felt as though the bottoms of my feet had just broken clean in half. I had still been on my feet, though, and managed to stay that way, using the momentum of the jump to send me soaring into the long grass of the field.
Once I’d felt I was hidden enough, I’d whirled around and waited for the boys.
Jace and Ant had both made their appearance seconds later, Ant giving a much more graceful performance than the hulking Jace, and we’d raced toward the forest on the other side of the field. We’d hoped against hope that none of the people in the parking lot behind us had seen our escape, and we didn’t stop to see whether anyone else got out. We didn’t have time. We’d thrown our visors up from our faces for fresh air, and, without pause, continued our flight for survival.
Now, I didn’t think we’d been so lucky. There were airships and planes over us, though it was impossible to tell how many, and they were obviously fighting with… well, I had no idea whom they were fighting with, because we’d only brought the one airship with us. It definitely didn’t have any guns attached to it the way the ones above us seemed to.
But something was definitely going on up there.
Another deafening explosion—and an ensuing flash—threw me to the ground, and I hit with a shocked exhalation of air and lay absolutely still for a moment, wondering if I’d even be able to get back up this time. I’d landed face-first in the dirt and got a mouth full of dead leaves for my trouble. I also acquired several more bruises from the inside of the suit hitting me, and what felt suspiciously like an injured ankle, to boot.
But then I was back up and running in spite of the pain, because there were now shouts coming from the forest.
People.
And I didn’t have any doubt about who they were. We’d been in the midst of an illegal break-in, targeting an organization that we’d thought was managing a site where they ran auctions and sold children. But what we’d found had been even worse—mail-order forms, along with reams of records about all the children born to the lower classes. Those records held everything: lineage, eye
color, hair color, race…
It had been absolute proof that whoever was running the site was also tracking specific births. That was information only the Ministry of Welfare was supposed to have.
Unfortunately, we’d been caught before we could find anything else or come to any conclusions. Nelson, who had been supervising from afar and taking care of the heaviest hacking, had been cut off—I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to her—but she had been able to warn us that the government was probably coming for us, having tracked hacking activity within the warehouse. A trap, she’d said. They’d set a trap.
And we’d walked right into it.
I had no idea how they would have had a team so close to the warehouse, or why. Had they been expecting us somehow?
Of course, we hadn’t had the time to question it. From there, everything had been chaos. Jace, Ant, and I had gotten away by pure luck, but I couldn’t be sure that anyone else had. For all I knew, they could all be dead. The suits we were wearing were bullet resistant, but they weren’t bulletproof, and they wouldn’t have protected anyone on our team if there were enough bullets flying around. Even worse, our people might have been captured back in the parking lot. They could be sitting in some sort of collection van right now, awaiting their fate, anticipating the questions that were sure to come.
If they’d been captured by the government, I was sure none of us would ever be safe again. If we’d just stumbled upon a site that the government was running secretly, I was positive of one thing: they wouldn’t want any of us getting out of here alive. This was not a secret that they could ever risk having exposed, even if it was from the lips of the lower classes.
I snapped back to reality to see that Ant was in the lead. He flew through the forest, his long legs making the journey easier for him than it was for me. I groaned as the ankle I’d hurt tried to collapse under me, but I kept going. I didn’t have time for that sort of weakness. Not if I was going to keep up with the boys, who were not only stronger than me, but also taller. Instead of focusing on the pain, I put all my effort into not falling behind—or into the hands of the enemy—and shot forward.
I had no idea where we were, and that was a big problem. We were supposed to be heading for the clearing on the southern edge of the woods. I didn’t remember the woods being large, but we hadn’t done a very thorough job of specking them out, as we’d just demonstrated with our complete lack of knowledge surrounding the creek. I also didn’t know if we were heading toward the southern part of the forest. We certainly hadn’t identified any geographical points by which we could find the clearing we’d decided on, nor did we have any compasses with us.
Not for the first time, I kicked myself for our lack of forethought, and then ducked to avoid the branch that Jace had let go of, which swung straight for my head.
You would have thought the boy had never been in the woods before in his life, with the chaos he was leaving in his wake. I then realized that particular thought was completely ridiculous, because he had been in the woods. Rather a lot, I assumed. Didn’t that mean he should have some sort of sixth sense about direction, or something like that?
“Jace!” I hissed, doing my best to get closer to him so that he might actually hear me. I didn’t want to shout, as we didn’t know who else was out here with us—though, if I was being completely frank with myself, we were making enough noise just running to give away our location.
“Jace!”
He turned his face to the side and lifted his eyebrows in question.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” I huffed, finding it very difficult to run while speaking. “Where’s the clearing we’re supposed to go to?”
He snorted.
“Impossible to tell,” he replied. “There’s no moon out tonight, and no stars, thanks to the cloud cover. I can’t navigate without them. Unfortunately, I can’t perform magic.”
Dammit. That was a good point, and not something I’d even thought about. I was racking my brain to find a solution—any other answer to the problem—when there was a crash directly to our right. Without any pause, the three of us veered quickly to the left, as if we were all on the same page, and dashed into a more densely wooded area. This was even worse. We’d at least been running in a straight line before. Now we were turned, and had no idea what direction we were heading in. We could be rushing right back toward the parking lot, for all we knew. We still hadn’t heard from anyone else. In fact, the comm link had gone completely haywire moments after we entered the forest, and there had been nothing but static ever since. If anyone else was trying to get in touch with us, they’d been unable to make contact.
Which left us in the forest, scared and alone.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, wondering if the other two were having the same problem with their comms. “Can you guys hear anything on the comm? Is anyone coming through with anything?”
Jace threw his hand up abruptly in a sign that I recognized all too well, and I bit my lip. I’d been practically shouting in my panic, and the last thing we needed was me attracting attention with my loud voice.
“We haven’t heard anything more than you have, Robin,” Ant hissed. “If you can’t hear anything, we can’t hear anything. And do you really have to shout about it?”
I pressed my lips together and sprinted forward for several seconds, too aggravated by his tone to think of an answer. I dashed around a tree and stopped, my chest heaving as I leaned up against it. Ant and Jace stopped on either side of me, and though they weren’t breathing as hard as I was, I got the idea that they were both happy for a break as well, even if stopping was probably a bad idea.
“I was just asking!” I snapped back. “I don’t know if you guys can hear anything. And it makes sense to ask. In case you’ve missed it, we’re lost in the middle of the woods and have no way to tell if we’re heading toward our meeting place or not. Or if anyone else made it out of there!”
Ant spun at me, and for the first time in our acquaintance I was actually scared of him. I flinched back. The expression on his face showed sheer anger. Jace threw his arm up between us and muttered something at Ant which I couldn’t hear. And then Ant backed off and looked down.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s just… I know that we don’t know where anyone is, Robin. Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I could have forgotten? My brother is one of the people missing! One of the people the government might be torturing right now!”
I heaved in a deep breath, and my world stopped spinning.
Of course.
Abe.
I hadn’t seen him since we were inside the building, staring at a screen that was showing us things we could never have imagined. I hadn’t thought of him since Nelson had told us to get out of there. I’d never even spared him a second of attention. I hadn’t spared anyone else a second of attention, either, if I was being honest. Not really. I’d thought of them as a group, of course—in terms of where they might be, and how we were supposed to find them again. But not individually.
I guessed that was because I wasn’t traveling with a sibling. A twin, no less, someone who had come from the same womb as me. Someone who had shared almost every moment with me, almost every experience. Someone who even shared my mustache, on some occasions. With that thought came another: I had never seen Ant without Abe. They went everywhere and did everything together. We even joked that they slept in the same bed, for goodness’ sake. I had never… I’d never seen Ant alone. I’d always thought of him as the smaller twin, somehow, the one who didn’t get the great name, the one who always looked to his brother before he decided or said anything.
And here he was, by himself, separated from his twin, who might be dead or experiencing torture at this very moment.
No, I hadn’t thought of it. But I should have. These weren’t just some random people I’d set myself up with for one mission. These were my friends. I’d never seen either of them alone, and I knew for a fact that they wou
ldn’t leave each other’s side—not unless they had to.
The idea made me suddenly certain that something horrible had happened, that Abe was already dead. I gulped the thought down and tried to ignore it.
I put my hand on Ant’s arm—though I couldn’t actually feel it, thanks to the suit—and squeezed gently, trying to push my understanding through the metal and into his veins.
“I’m sorry, Ant,” I said softly. “I didn’t think.”
Then my voice hardened a bit, accompanied by my resolve.
“But we’ll find him. I promise. No one gets to die on my watch. And that’s an order.”
Ant was giving me half a smile, his eyes full of gratitude, when the world around us exploded and someone up ahead screamed. Ant threw me to the ground, and a moment later Jace was landing over me, pushing my face back into the dirt and bellowing at Ant to cover his head.
2
I didn’t start breathing again until my lungs were burning so badly I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I sucked in a heaving gasp of air, only to have my windpipe nearly rebel against me. I clapped a hand over my mouth to stop the coughing fit I could feel rising in my chest. My visor was still up, so that I could speak to and hear Ant and Jace—as well as the soldiers who were after us—but now I wished it was down. It would have at least muffled any coughing that might escape my mouth. I clamped my lips tightly against my teeth and held my breath again until my eyes were watering, but the urge eventually diminished, and I had a moment to take stock of our situation.