Blink: Leviathan (Book 2)

01

The lake rippled gently under the afternoon breeze, its glassy surface shimmering and shaking. Sunlight struck the bands of water, cracking into rainbow prisms and creating a wash of colour under the cobalt sky. Amber dipped her toes into the water, feeling the pleasant, cool sensation pass up her legs. She closed her eyes, leaning back in the floating lounger with a contented sigh as the sun beat down on her skin.

Suspended several hundred feet in the sky, she was doing her best to enjoy what was left of her leave from being a Blink operative. After the events that took place on Titan Aquilla her whole squad received an extended period of rest and recuperation, to be taken however they pleased. And they'd needed it.

One of Illuvari's enormous sky lakes made the perfect solitary escape from life, but it wasn't her job Amber found she needed to get away from for a while. She needed time away from the normal flow of human civilisation. It didn't feel quite right rejoining the casual humdrum of the citizens of Illuvari, not after what she'd been through.

Nothing would erase the nightmare of that fateful mission two months ago. At the time Amber had still felt like the rookie, the new girl, only on her seventh mission as a fully-fledged operative. What the team had been through forced her to grow up very fast. She'd seen dark things out in the depths of the universe, things that she couldn't and wouldn't share with anyone from her old life. Coming home on leave had underlined how little she had in common with the people she used to know.

Her parents, although ecstatic to see her for the first time since she shipped out for Blink, could sense that something had happened out there. She tried her hardest to act normal and enjoy the visit; she was happy to see them. But as the reunion wore on she realised there was too much she couldn't tell them, and when she tried to take an interest in what they'd been doing in the past year she found herself losing that interest rapidly. Their problems seemed so small now.

She looked at the small metal band around her wrist – the Blink communicator that the operatives had been issued before going on leave in case an urgent recall was required. It was sleek, smooth; a perfect bracelet of silver adorned with a small sapphire light. Part of her hated the Blink organisation for ripping her out of her normal life. She could no longer relate to friends and family; no longer cared whether a new politician had been elected to the Council Chambers, or if the Sky Jockey flotilla were stopping to ply their high octane trade in the clouds of Illuvari. She didn't care if a school had closed, or that the government were imposing new tariffs on inter-planetary goods. All the little things that colonial life revolved around no longer mattered to her.

The other part of her, however, felt a sense of pride that she was out there, protecting billions of human beings from threats they didn't even know existed. Her life had the ultimate purpose – Blink had given her that much. The dream she once held of being a fleet navigator seemed so inconsequential now, when measured against what her life had become.

Amber tried to shake those thoughts from her mind. In a sudden burst of motion she stood up in the lounger and dove straight into the lake, relishing the feeling as the water cascaded over her. She plunged deep, able to look down through the crystalline waters and see the glittering mass of the city below. It gave the spires a dream-like quality, making their structures warp and bend as the water of the lake moved.

For as long as she could hold her breath, Amber stayed beneath the surface, gazing down through the cool waters. The world didn't seem so frighteningly real when she stayed beneath the surface. Eventually she had to come up for air, bursting back into the sunlight with a gasp and shaking her head from side to side in a blizzard of water droplets.