Worlds Collide (Architects of the Apocalypse Book 2), page 28
If her math was right—and it had to be, because she’d looked it up online at least a dozen times since she’d begun to notice her protruding abdomen—she was just ten weeks pregnant. But she shouldn’t have begun showing until week 16, or even 20, especially with the fact that this was her first pregnancy. So she’d set about to estimate how far along she was by rough measures that she could take at home. At first she’d assumed there would be some kind of height-to-weight or height-to-girth ratio that she could use to estimate how far along she was, but it turned out to be much simpler than that. All she had to do was find her fundal height, or the height of her uterus, which was measured roughly by how many finger widths the top of her uterus was either above or below her belly-button. So she’d laid down and measured the distance, finding the hard ball beneath her skin which was the top of her uterus. The result was the same each time—and she’d checked exactly five times. The top of her uterus was directly below her belly-button, and that corresponded to a gestational age of about 20 weeks.
That explained why she was showing. But it didn’t explain why her baby was growing twice as fast as it should be. Layla rubbed a hand protectively across her abdomen, feeling the curve of her bare skin beneath the oversized t-shirt that she wore. It had been her father’s. The sweatpants were hers, because at least they had some give in them. She wasn’t that big yet, but most of the clothes she had with her were too fitted to be comfortable, and buying maternity clothes wasn’t an option.
Ever since the Watchers had subverted the world’s economy with their tracking implants, she hadn’t been able to buy anything. It was now three weeks since she’d left with her mother to buy morning sickness meds only for her to get disintegrated by alien drones, and now Layla had even more pressing concerns than keeping her food down—like the fact that she didn’t have any food. The fridge and pantry were practically empty. She might have driven down the street or risked making a call to her sister to ask for some supplies, but Lacy wasn’t talking to her. She blamed Layla for their mother’s death. To be fair, Layla blamed herself, too.
She eased out of the bed, and the covers fell away, exposing her to the cold air. The heat came and went with the electricity, which was spotty at best. That was something Layla would never understand: why a gas-fired furnace needed electricity to run. She’d tried rigging it to work without power, but she wasn’t exactly a handy person. Never had been. Yet another reason she’d leased one of the newest, most advanced apartment buildings in Brooklyn. She’d had a whole fleet of staff on call day or night to handle any maintenance that might be required.
Layla’s stomach growled painfully, and she winced. Fumbling blindly with her feet, she slid them into her mother’s cozy pink slippers, then grabbed her sweater from where she’d left it at the foot of the bed and pulled her arms through the sleeves. Still cold, she hugged herself and wrapped the sleeves around her hands as she shuffled out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. The lights flickered on, then off, then on again. A welcome rush of heat came whooshing through the vents, and she prayed that this time the power would hold—at least long enough to beat back the icy chill in the air.
Once she reached the kitchen, it didn’t take long to confirm what she already knew: she had literally nothing to eat. The pantry was utterly bare but for an old can of peas that made her stomach heave, two cans of coconut milk, and some salt and other spices. In the fridge, things were just as bleak: a few old bottles of condiments, and a very suspicious looking carton of milk. One whiff of that almost made her lose the crackers she’d eaten for dinner last night. She held her breath and poured it down the sink, chunks and all, then opened the faucet to get rid of any residual stench from the sour milk.
It was time to admit defeat. Either she went out and got a tracking implant like everyone else, and with it, hopefully she regained access to her old bank accounts—or else she would starve to death, and her baby along with her. For the past week already, she had been eating considerably less than any pregnant woman should.
Layla shut the fridge with a shiver and went to the living room. She flopped down in her mother’s pink velvet armchair and sat staring out the window at the snow-covered lawn and street. Maybe if she went to her sister’s house, she could explain about the pregnancy. She might be able to compel some degree of pity from Lacy despite the animosity between them. She raised her smart watch to check the time—just after one in the afternoon. Lacy and Rick would both still be out at work.
She could go over there, let herself in, and wait for them to get back. While she was waiting, she could borrow some food from their fridge and pantry.
Layla’s mouth watered at the thought.
Better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
Layla nodded decisively to herself and sprang up from the chair. She hurried to the front door, pulled on a coat from the closet, and traded her slippers for boots. She added gloves and a scarf to her attire, and pulled up the hood on the jacket. Finally, she plucked her mother’s car keys from the rack by the door—
Until she remembered the foot of snow that had fallen since the last time she’d gone out. She’d have to shovel the driveway first before she could drive anywhere. And in her condition, with hardly any food in her stomach, she was likely to pass out from the effort. It would be easier just to walk the two blocks to Lacy’s house.
Layla unlocked the front door and swung it open—
A blast of frigid air took her breath away. She turned and locked the house with her thumbprint, and then hurried down the icy front steps. She ran along the snow-covered path to the sidewalk, her boots sinking in well past her ankles.
Her gaze snapped up to the sky, eyes scanning warily for the hovering black spheres of the Watchers’ drones flitting below the low ceiling of clouds.
They couldn’t track her without an implant, but they could likely still spot her thermal signature, and the fact that she was running around without a tracker was a serious offense all by itself. In between the blackouts, she’d seen reports on the news of people being executed on the spot for removing or tampering with their implants. And armed rebels didn’t get them pretty much by default, which led to people like her being lumped in with the actual freedom fighters, all of them labeled enemies of the state.
Layla had been tempted several times to go out to the nearest bank or tracking center and request an implant of her own, but each time she’d had that impulse, something had stopped her—one time the car had refused to start. Another, a blizzard had just begun. And the third time, the front door had literally seized up and refused to open.
Maybe it was superstition, or maybe some of that had been the work of her shadowy protector—not the blizzard—but the rest, perhaps. Besides, the more she got to thinking about it, the more she disliked the idea of a fascist alien regime tracking her every move and purchase.
Layla blew out a shaky breath that turned to steam in the wintry air. She picked up the pace, wherever possible, sticking to other people’s tracks through the snow on the sidewalk. She was running back through all of her reasoning now because she knew that when she saw her sister in a few hours she would have to explain why she wasn’t chipped like everyone else. The superstition angle wasn’t going to cut it with Lacy, so she needed a better excuse. Maybe she could pretend she’d converted and tell Lacy that she thought the trackers were the mark of the beast.
A wry smile touched Layla’s lips, but grim reality wiped it away an instant later. Apokalypsis was gaining more and more momentum with every passing day. Half of the on-going problems with infrastructure were their fault. Everyone was back at work, and law and order were being strictly maintained on the pain of death, so there shouldn’t have been problems with the electrical grid. But fringe religious groups like Apokalypsis, and rebel military units, were out there blowing up substations, hijacking delivery trucks, and planting bombs in government buildings.
If she weren’t pregnant, Layla realized she’d probably be out there with the best of them.
She stopped in front of a particular split-level with a red brick facade and a white two-car garage. Lacy’s home. The garage was shut, but she knew both cars would be gone. The kids would be at school, the home empty.
Hearing the distant boom of an explosion, Layla flinched and spun toward the sound. A dark shadow was moving though the clouds to the east, in the direction of the city. Flickering flashes of light sputtered from the clouds, drawing more muffled explosions. One of the Watchers’ cruisers was strafing a target on the ground. It was rare to see those ships now that they’d dispersed their drones. Most of them had landed in the ocean around the equator, where they were acting as floating habitats for the Watchers. There were also rumors that they were building underwater habitats, but those had yet to be confirmed.
More lances of fire streaked out of the clouds. Probably another resistance cell, Layla decided. Someone must have snitched on their location. The Watchers were diligent about rewarding their minions. Positions of power in their new government were handed out almost exclusively on the basis of who showed the greatest willingness to betray their own people.
Layla scowled and looked away. She hurried up the freshly-shoveled walkway to her sister’s front steps, then removed the glove from her right hand and planted her index finger against the thumbprint reader.
The lock beeped with an error and the status light turned red.
Layla gaped in shock at the result. It couldn’t be. She tried again.
With the same result.
Her sister was really serious about not wanting to see her again. She’d deleted Layla’s biometric profile, which had been programmed into the door locks ever since she’d bought the house with Rick and invited Layla to the housewarming party.
Layla bit her lower lip and considered her options.
She could run back to her mother’s house, wait for Lacy to come home, then come back and knock like any other guest.
But if Lacy had erased her profile from the security system, odds were pretty good that she wouldn’t let her in.
Layla’s stomach growled painfully, and her mouth began to water at the thought of all the food that she would find inside. How long had it been since she’d eaten a proper meal? Two days? No, three at least.
But without a way to open the lock, or her sister opening the door, there was really only one way to get into the house.
The thought of breaking and entering made her stomach turn. She was a cop. Or used to be, anyway.
But since half of the NYPD had been executed, and the other half disbanded by the Watchers, it made the current authorities into the bad guys, which paradoxically made anything that they considered to be a crime seem justifiable—even right.
And knowing that the victim was her sister made it just a little bit better. Not because Layla wanted revenge, but because surely her own sister wouldn’t want her to starve to death. She’d do as little damage as possible. Something easy for Rick to repair.
Layla walked down the front steps, around the side of the house, and let herself in through the side gate by jiggling it until the aging, spring-loaded lock jumped open. She remembered that Lacy’s security system only covered the front door and windows. The back was completely unguarded.
Layla shut the fence and hurried around to the sliding glass doors to the kitchen, hoping to find them unlocked.
She trudged through deep snow that had been only partially trampled by the little feet of her niece and nephew. The snow clumped up between her boots and her pants, melting in icy rivers and chilling her further.
Reaching the back deck, Layla hurried to the sliding door and tried to open it. It tugged hard against the lock. No luck.
She tried the door on the other side of the house, but with the same result. Lacy used to leave doors open and unlocked—even the front door. Despite the supposedly greater security ushered in by the Watchers and their millions of drones, Lacy was obviously being more cautious about locking up while she was gone.
Layla tried one last thing. Hopping into a snow-filled window well, she tested the basement egress window into the spare bedroom.
It wouldn’t open either.
That left her one option: breaking in the old-fashioned way.
Layla climbed out of the window well and hunted around the backyard for something heavy and solid that she could use. Eventually she settled on one of the rocks that ringed the firepit where she’d roasted s’mores with her niece and nephew last Christmas Eve. Returning to the window well, Layla hesitated briefly—
Then slammed the rock into the window pane. The double-glazed window shattered with an enormous crash, and jagged chunks of glass fell on both sides of the frame. No alarm sounded, which was good. The glass-break sensors were upstairs, so they mustn’t have detected the sound.
Layla knocked out clinging bits of glass with the rock, and then climbed carefully down into her sister’s spare bedroom. She shut the door behind her to at least keep the heat in, and then she ran down the darkened hall and up the stairs to the main floor. Once she reached the kitchen and tried the nearest light switch, she realized that the power was out. Again.
But that wouldn’t stop her from grabbing a bite to eat. In a matter of seconds, she was standing in the kitchen, gorging herself on a cold rotisserie chicken, plain white bread, and orange juice. She’d barely choked down two mouthfuls before the lights flickered back on—
Along with the shrieking siren of Lacy’s security alarm.
Shit! The egress window must have been wired into the system, and smashing it had separated the proximity sensors that determined if it was open or shut.
Now she was in big trouble.
Drones would be here any minute.
Layla gulped down the rest of the juice, stuffed the chicken into the packet of bread, and twisted it shut, fully intending to take those items with her for her trouble.
She ran to the security panel and entered Lacy’s code to disarm the system—her kids’ birthdays. The panel beeped and flashed red. She tried again, reversing the order. Another beep. Damn it, Lacy! Once more time. This time she added Rick’s birthday to the mix.
The panel turned green, and the ear-splitting alarm vanished into ringing silence.
Layla blew out a slow breath, struggling to calm her tortured nerves.
A sharp whirring sound interrupted the sound of her breathing. It was coming from the basement stairwell and rising swiftly in pitch.
Layla reached to her hip for her gun—only to remember that she hadn’t brought it. Being caught with a gun was an instant death sentence. It wasn’t worth it.
A pair of gleaming black spheres spun into view, sailing down the hall to the front door where she stood. Layla was rooted to the spot, unable to even breathe, let alone move or speak.
A flat, grating voice emerged from one of the drones: “You have illegally entered this dwelling. The punishment for this is...” The drone spun on the spot, as if the movement somehow aided its algorithms in calculating her fate. “Death,” it pronounced.
Weapon barrels slid out and began glowing brightly with some build-up of energy. Layla briefly considered making a run for it, but she was cornered against the front door, and unfortunately, her sister’s smart lock required a valid fingerprint to unlock it, even from the inside.
Layla squeezed her eyes shut, cringing in anticipation of the searing flash of heat that would end her life and that of her unborn daughter. Her mother’s gruesome death flashed through her mind’s eye, giving her a preview of her own demise. But maybe it was for the best. This world was no place to raise a child.
Chapter 36
3:15 AM, September 29, 2069
Ethan and the other Rangers hurried past the caves, sweeping them briefly with their rifles. No sign of enemy soldiers waiting there. Ethan pushed on, leading his people down the winding paths to the valley below. The neighboring planets in the sky illuminated the night at least twice as brightly as a full moon on Earth.
As they reached the last stretch of the winding paths, Ethan kept a wary eye on the nearest stand of trees below, making sure that archers weren’t poised to fire up at them as they descended.
He got on his comms to ask about the guard towers. The overwatch teams reported the Jakar hadn’t sent replacements yet. So far, they seemed to realize that they were at a disadvantage, and they were content to hide in the trees along the river. It was actually a smart strategy, because it would force them to engage at close range, where the Jakar’s swords and spears would be a greater threat. Not to mention they had plenty of hostages to use as human shields.
Ethan held up a hand as they reached the final stretch of the paths.
“What’s the plan, Major?” Garcia whispered as they crouched behind a big, jutting rock.
Ethan had his rifle up, his eye to the scope, and he was scanning the thermal signatures in the trees. Still no way to tell friend from foe. “Switch to light amplification,” Ethan suggested and flicked the switch on the side of his scope. The blurry red and orange heat signatures turned to brightly illuminated figures, their faces, armor, and weapons snapping into focus. Now he could tell them apart. He couldn’t see more than a handful peeking from the foliage, but it was a start.
“Tag your targets and take them out on my mark,” Ethan said, already tagging one for himself.
“Copy,” Garcia replied, raising his rifle.
Gibbons, Clark, and Meyers raised their weapons and red target boxes appeared over the Jakar soldiers within their line of sight, six in all.
“Fire,” Ethan whispered. He squeezed the trigger, and a bullet tore through his target’s chest, dropping the man in an instant. Four more fell like dominoes after that, but the sixth fled deeper into the trees, darting for cover behind a short female prisoner wearing a clinging black jumpsuit.
