Aika (Keepers of the Flame: Origins)

Excerpt From BRIGHID'S CROSS--"The Burnout Zone"

THANK YOU for reading! Aika's story concludes in my apocalyptic novella from Samhain Publishing, BRIGHID'S CROSS (Keepers of the Flame #1). Read on for a free excerpt:

                                                     BRIGHID'S CROSS

                                                     by Cate Morgan

                                                     Chapter One

A tale of two cities. How did the story go?

Ah, yes.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Which, all things considered, summed matters up about as well as anything else these days.

Aika Lareto walked the crowded midnight streets, passing windows of flashing, shrill advertisements that tried to latch onto her as they tried to identify her by a nonexistent birth chip, flattered and hooked onto the next passersby. A hologram stepped out onto the pavement to waylay her. She walked through it. It glitched, fizzled out, and disappeared. As she turned alongside the river, her gaze slid upward to the biosphere encasing the city since the Seven-Year War rendered the outside environs uninhabitable.

Only the most mega of the conglomerates could afford time and space on the sphere, in the very sky itself, exposing citizens to the latest in shiny new products. The new online hologame from the Microsoft-Starbucks merger of 2015, for instance, was hailed as a door-busting hit a mere year before release. The biospheres architects had no doubt laughed themselves breathless over that one, had Dreamtech’s board of directors any sense of humor to speak of.

So what really lay beyond the biosphere? Her final action had been here in the city, and here she stayed, awaiting orders. Like the rest of its denizens, she only knew what the governing board released to them, properly sugared and spiced. Global warming accelerated by the effects of the war? Flattened suburbs that had been evacuated during the fifth year, crowding the city to bursting? No one knew. Not many wanted to know. Those that did tended to be the dregs of society—the fringe dwellers and underground lurkers, assorted conspiracy theorists and general crazies.

Aika skirted a Technicolor block party pulsating beneath a violent fuchsia tarp anchored to street lamps with jellyfish tendrils, then slipped into a side street packed end to end with small clubs, all night takeaways and street vendors offering food and stimulants to keep the crowds going—and spending. The throngs migrated in one direction, taking as much notice of her as a river parting around a rock. It was a knack, this not being noticed. Almost as effective as going between. She needn’t have bothered, except for the practice.

She passed an alley on her left. The muted chink of a broken bottle skittered across its dark, damp well of concrete and brick. She didn’t think twice; she pulled folds of shadow around her like a midnight blanket and stepped into the time and space between this world and the other.

It was like being deep underwater, close and oppressive, but she was inured to its womb-like dark. Time slowed. Space expanded. She braced herself. Pushed as she exhaled from the abdomen, and squeezed herself back through the end of the block on the opposite side of the party goer currents. She stepped beneath the awning of a trendy sushi bar, the wide front windows pulled open so the overflow could perch on its sill. Paper lanterns exuded improbable colors—summer-sun yellow, peacock blue, hot-pant pink.

Two figures in overcoats hurtled out of the alley, arguing strenuously. One sported the sort of Nordic bulk associated with his Thor, his companion dark and wiry. Violent arm gestures ensued.