The Black Tide (Outcast 3)

There’s an emergency exit opposite the room that holds the children, she said. It’s alarmed, so they’ll know you’re coming.

“Not if I shadow, they won’t,” I said.

Jonas glanced at me. “How can you do that when there are absolutely no shadows in this place?”

My answering smile was flat and without humor. “With a whole lot of effort. But it’s not as if we have much choice.”

He hesitated, and then said, “I guess not.”

We reached the end of the corridor and the two doors of interest. I dragged the doc’s RFID chip out of my pocket and placed against the scanner guarding the door into the children’s bunkhouse. Unsurprisingly, the red light flashed and the door remained firmly shut. I spun around and tried the exit door, but the result was the same.

I grimaced and dumped the bit of flesh to one side of the door. “Cat, do you want to go inside and see if you can convince—”

I stopped as the bunkhouse door slid open. Standing in front of it was a black-haired, black-skinned boy who had the most amazing eyes I’d ever seen. They were tri-color, but the colors weren’t mixed. Instead, there were distinct rings of brown, blue, and silver. Though he looked to be no more than five or six, he very much reminded me of little Raela. There was a very old soul shining out of those eyes.

“Are you here to rescue us?” he asked.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized that unlike the other children we’d rescued, his lips had not been sewn shut—and I couldn’t help but wonder why not.

Jonas squatted in front of him and said, “Yes, we are, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be successful.”

The child’s gaze solemnly switched from him to me, and then returned. “We’ll take that chance. But there are two problems.”

I could feel Jonas’s surprise and amusement. “Those being?”

“There are two who are too young to walk.”

“They can be carried,” Jonas said. “The other?”

“The other is that they’re all not only control chipped, but it’s attached to an incendiary device,” I said before the child could. “Foot or heart?”

The kid’s gaze came to mine. There was little emotion to be seen in either his expression or his strange eyes, and I had to wonder just what had been done to this kid—whether he’d not only been a victim of their drug regime but also perhaps some sort of physical alterations in the form of DNA or even brain manipulation. In some ways, he reminded me of the soldier déchet, though he was very obviously capable of thought and reason.

“Foot in six. Under the ribs in one.”

“The latter being you?”

He nodded. “It cannot be removed here. There is no time.”

No, there wasn’t. Not if the noise coming from the other end of the corridor were any indication.

Jonas glanced at me. “None of the others we rescued had any sort of incendiary or control devices placed in them.”

“They were placed in our bodies very recently,” the boy said.

A crash echoed and dust drifted toward us. Jonas swore and then said, “Tiger, you take care of the guards up top. I’ll remove the devices from the kids’ feet and then bring them up. Cat, can you go down the corridor and let me know when the soldiers down there break through?”

As Cat sped off, I took a deep breath to gather my strength and then called the light to me once again. This time, however, I didn’t just have to create a shield, but one that was thick enough to block out all light even as it continued to reflect everythi

ng around it.

And I had to do it quickly.

A storm of light and energy shimmered around me, sparking brightly as it grew thicker and denser, until the corridor had all but disappeared from my sight and darkness claimed the space in which I stood. I reached for that darkness, sucking it in, letting it surge through every part of me, ripping flesh and muscle and bone into nothing more than particles in seconds flat.

I would pay for that swiftness. But right now, I had work to do.

I drew in the shield until it was little more than a tightly wrapped bubble around my particles and then slipped under the door and up the stairwell. The topside door was both metal and scanner locked, but there was enough of a gap between the bottom of it and the concrete top step for me to slip through.