ARC10

Chapter 11.2

I stop dead in my tracks before her.

My eyes confirm it, but my brain won't register the sight. Here in the darkness, in this underground highway system that I'd recently learned existed, in the middle of this ridiculous mission, stands the woman I once called my sister.

The one I saw die three years ago.

With the lamps throwing long shadows around the room, I don't want to sound crazy and call some poor soldier by a dead one's name.

"Is that . . ." I strain to get to Dean's ear and whisper, ". . . is that Moyra?"

"Moyra who?" he whispers back.

"Oh my Lady, really? Moyra White. How many other Moyras do you know?"

He pauses, squinting into garish spotlight around her. "I can't tell."

Hayomo scans her hand with the stoic soldier and instructs us to do the same.

No. It can't be. Sisters don't come back from the dead. The dead don't guard ARCs.

Do they?

Dean approaches the girl first. Swift recognition dawns over him as his PAHLM signals the transfer. Her absent, unfocused gaze with walnut eyes is all the proof I need.

I remember those eyes clearly, but my heart can't believe this dream has finally come true. It's a miracle simmering in a three-year brew.

I face her. She faces me. Our hands touch.

"Moyra?" My voice crackles a pathetic and timid note, not what I'd hoped for if I ever got a chance to say her name to her again.

She remains motionless, glassy eyes focused on some world beyond me in the respectful gaze of a militiaman at work.

I linger on her face because I know, I know it's her. The moony eyes, the face cut from obsidian—I remember everything. She died three years ago when we were out on one of the biggest missions of my career. It's the one that toppled me into notoriety even more than my societal debut with Kai, the rod, and the HHP.

But she died. I mourned this girl. I lit her candle. How can I be here, holding her hand, and rejoicing in the false permanence of death?

The faint resonance indicates the scan has completed, but I hold on anyway, winding my fingers around hers. After a few seconds, she drags me through a muddy memory when I perceive the gentle squeeze of her fingers over mine. I'm hauled back three years to the time we covered our heads in dark hoods and crawled through pine needles on the surface of the Earth for Operation Hell Strike.

The night sky stretched over the earth and muddied where the two converged. No one could tell where the blackness began or ended. It was too dark everywhere.

It was supposed to be an easy night. It was a simple test drive of the new HEL-SR weapon. The OPLAN for Hell-Strike was simple—set off explosions in one area. Invader ships would follow it, allowing us to move quickly into place where large cannons were strategically dropped weeks before. The cannons would lie dead until activated. If they were dead, the Invaders, not sensing a threat, would ignore them. Once activated, we could use the HEL-SRs to take the bitches down.

For a race so terrible, the Invaders can be stupid.

That night in the clearing with the pine needles sticking to our special utilities, we saw the Invaders were not fooled by our decoy explosions. Everything in the mission was ass-end wrong. My artillery jammed. Thirty-one Reapers lay dead around us. It was me, Moyra, and nine others hiding in the trees. I worked frantically, remembering my training, holding my hands steady and trying to pull myself out of my misery from the events proceeding this mission.