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Terminus (The Transcendent Trilogy Book 3)




  Terminus

  The Transcendent Trilogy, Book 3

  K. A. Riley

  © 2020 by K. A. Riley. Published by Travel Duck Press.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For further copyright information, you may contact K. A. Riley at travelduckpress@gmail.com.

  Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and events should not be associated with living people or historical events. Any resemblance is the work of the author and is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design

  www.thebookbrander.com

  Contents

  A Note from the Author

  Summary

  Prologue

  1. Impatient

  2. Talk

  3. Wall

  4. Help

  5. Abby

  6. Vision

  7. Normal

  8. Harris

  9. All Clear

  10. Red

  11. Chaos

  12. Interview

  13. Smart

  14. Distraction

  15. Jumble

  16. Alone

  17. Moving

  18. Swords

  19. Interface

  20. Worlds

  21. Through

  22. Void

  23. Trapped

  24. Outside

  25. Fight

  26. Trauma

  27. Safe

  28. Twins

  29. Campfire

  30. Lovebirds

  31. Unsettled

  32. Outflanked

  33. Cloud

  34. Off

  35. Chronicler

  36. Worry

  37. Welcome

  38. Myth

  39. Tour

  40. Hospitality

  41. Sanctum

  42. Dream

  43. The Valta

  44. Arrival

  45. Hatched

  46. Ravenmaster

  47. Need to Go

  48. Terminus

  49. Epilogue – Five Years Later

  Coming Soon! The Emergents Academy

  Acknowledgments

  Also by K. A. Riley

  About the Author

  A Note from the Author

  Dearest Fellow Conspirator,

  * * *

  What you have in your hands is one-ninth of what’s called an ennealogy, a rare and hard-to-pronounce word meaning “a nine-part series.” It’s basically three sequential and independent but interlocking trilogies. (Think Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, or Yukito Kishiro’s nine-volume Battle Angel Alita cyberpunk manga series.)

  * * *

  Here is the Reading Order for the Conspiracy Ennealogy…

  * * *

  #1: Resistance Trilogy

  Recruitment

  Render

  Rebellion

  * * *

  #2: Emergents Trilogy

  Survival

  Sacrifice

  Synthesis

  * * *

  #3: Transcendent Trilogy

  Travelers

  Transfigured

  Terminus you are here

  * * *

  Thanks for reading and for joining in the Conspiracy!

  * * *

  Conspiratorially yours,

  To the ones who got me here, who stuck with me, and who helped me remember that the best stories don’t have endings.

  Summary

  After their overseas missions, Kress and her Conspiracy return home to a divided nation.

  The East and West Coasts have become fragile havens from a dystopian middle America, which remains mired in fear, poverty, disease, and the most sadistic brands of vigilante violence.

  All Kress and her Conspiracy have to do is embark on a cross-country road-trip from Washington, D.C. to the Valta in Colorado, dodge the deadly Army of the Unsettled and the Cult of the Devoted—two groups battling for control over a land that might not be worth saving—and complete a perilous rescue mission along the way.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Join Kress and her friends—new and old—for one last adventure of sad losses, happy reunions, deadly encounters, and heartbreaking departures.

  The end is here!

  But what new beginnings will the finale inspire…?

  “I give you my hand!

  I give you my love more precious than money,

  I give you myself before preaching or law;

  Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?

  Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?”

  * * *

  — Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”

  “Parting is such sweet sorrow,

  That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

  * * *

  — Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene 2

  “The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.”

  * * *

  — William Cowper, 1856

  Prologue

  We came back to America from our overseas mission in Europe thinking our work was done.

  In England, France, and Spain, we succeeded in rescuing five young Emergents from captivity in an impenetrable Processor and picked up two more young strays along the way. Plus, we managed to escape the Hawkers and their leader Noxia, the powerful, mind-bending Hypnagogic.

  So we had good reason to be proud.

  As it turns out, we got back just in time for the hard part and maybe too late for anything to ever be easy again.

  The wheels of our rickety cargo plane had barely touched down on the tarmac of the airport just outside of Washington D.C., when Granden—the leader of our very young, very fragile transitional government—delivered the distressing news:

  A six-person recon team, sent across the country to track down a forgotten, half-built training compound in the Rocky Mountains, disappeared somewhere in the Midwest near the Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge—the exact place where my friends and I were recruited and trained to be super soldiers in what turned out to be a fake war against an invented enemy.

  So…just like that…with no planning, little food, and even less rest, we’re off again.

  At least Granden promised to take good care of the six Juvens—Sara, Mattea, Arlo, Libra, Ignacio and Roxane—the twelve-year-old kids we brought back with us from Europe.

  They’re the ones we were sent to find. The ones we promised to protect. The ones whose potential abilities as Emergents could help save the world…

  …or else, without the proper training and guidance, send it spiraling even deeper into chaos, violence, and apocalyptic despair.

  Like it or not, by rescuing them and bringing them back with us, we’ve taken on a huge responsibility for those kids.

  And now, here we are, driving away from them at lumbering speed in the Terminus, our top-of-the-line military transport and battle rig, embarking on a new mission before we’ve even fully recovered from our last one.

  1

  Impatient

  With the sparkling white marble and polished glass of the recovering city of Washington, D.C. disappearing in the distance, I do my best to switch my focus from the reconstruction behind us to the unknown in front of us.

  The names of our six missing friends scroll in a classroom rollcall through my head:

  War. Bald and big.
A dump-truck with muscles. A relentless warrior and leader of the Garfield Boulevard Syndicate of the Chicago Survivalists, who also used to teach night school and coach little league football before the wars.

  Mayla. Short. Confident. The leader of the Unkindness of Chicago. A kindhearted peacemaker with bangled, dreadlocked hair down to her knees.

  Kella. Half Barbie doll, half assassin. A total deadeye sharpshooter. Psychologically broken. But healing up nicely and deadly as ever in a fight.

  Lucid and Reverie. The mysterious Emergent twins we rescued from the St. Paul’s Processor in London.

  And Wisp. Brohn’s kid sister. Tiny. Driven. A beyond-brilliant strategist who led the Insubordinates in a victory over the Patriot Army in San Francisco and then, almost single-handedly, led the rest of us in the successful revolution against President Krug in D.C. At only fifteen years old and barely five feet tall, this once-timid little girl has somehow transformed into the biggest person I’ve ever met.

  Six fellow warriors. Six missing friends.

  It’s funny how saving six people feels so much harder than saving the world.

  In the roomy cabin section of the rig, Brohn and Rain are tucked away at a small glass-topped ops console, talking strategy and assessing the truck’s weapons stash and military capabilities.

  Terk, nearly seven feet tall now and crouched down in the cabin so he doesn’t bang his head, is lumbering back and forth between the truck’s main input panels while the Auditor, the techno-consciousness based on my mother and implanted in a black disk on his back, announces the results of her vehicle equipment evaluation and environmental diagnostics review.

  Manthy has been holed up in the Communications Pod in the back of the truck for hours now. No matter where we go or how close we grow, she always manages to plant herself in the spot farthest away from the rest of us.

  Haida Gwaii, the pink-mouthed, female white raven, is nestled in Branwynne’s lap in one of the cabin’s fold-down jumpseats.

  Up front in the cab, I’ve got my hands clamped onto the rig’s dual-steering columns. Even with its high-end navigation and hybrid mag-propulsion systems, it’s a lot of truck to handle. It doesn’t help that the highway is cratered and choked to near impassibility in long stretches by broken bridges, dense clusters of thick weeds, impact craters, long-abandoned cars and trucks, and the skeletal remains of thousands of fleeing people, wiped out by the drones, or, maybe even worse, by each other.

  Render—my long-time raven companion—is sitting next to me, his head swiveling between the narrow front window and the smaller round windows on either side of the cab. I know how tempting the sky must look and how much he wants to be in it. Sure, it’s polluted and probably even radioactive in places. But Render was literally born to fly.

  I’ve always thought of ceilings and rooftops as protection. For Render, they might as well be the iron bars of a prison cell.

  We flew to Europe and back. But that was in a plane. Not exactly what Render considers “flying.”

  Unfortunately, flying over the U.S. has turned out to be next to impossible thanks to vortexes of radiation thermals, fluctuating temperatures, dense pollution, and the stations of surface-to-air missiles set up by a wide range of warring factions around most of the nation’s airfields.

  So we get to drive.

  As we’ve only recently discovered after a lifetime of isolated living in the mountains, it’s a huge country, with endless, war-torn tracts of desert, scorched woods, shattered cities, and pockets of scared, desperate, dangerous people.

  And our six friends are out there in the middle of it.

  I drum my fingers on the truck’s dual steering columns. I’m nervous. I have this strange feeling—bordering on terror—that our friends’ time and our own luck may be running out.

  We’re about to throw ourselves head-first into what could be the fight of our lives, and I feel like we’re getting ready to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun.

  Fighting used to be optional. Now, like dying, it’s inevitable.

  Everywhere we’ve gone has meant a new fight for survival.

  We’ve traveled so much. And here we are again, barreling into America’s heartland to face an unknown enemy on the very site where our adventures and our lives as Emergents first started.

  I’m sick of waiting, worn-out with worry, and I’m already tired of the driving. I just want us to be there, to get it over with. Live or die—at least it’ll be better than the purgatory of endless combat. It doesn’t even matter how dangerous this mission might be. Nothing feels deadlier than the helplessness of getting from where we were to where we need to be.

  Render fidgets on one of the passenger seats. He ruffles his hackles and clacks his thick black beak. The gold plating and filaments from his built-in armor glint in the dim light from the bank of displays and indicator lights on the truck’s instrument panel.

  I can sense his impatience through the telempathic bond we share. We’ve been connected like this for most of my life, thanks to my techno-genetic abilities as an Emergent and by the nano-circuitry my father embedded in my forearms when I was little.

  Render must sense my own impatience, because he initiates our connection, slipping his consciousness into mine.

  ~ You’re worried.

  Can you blame me? We’re exhausted. Branwynne is twelve. This truck is too slow. We’re leaving six new friends behind to look for six old friends who’ve disappeared, and we’re heading back to the worst, most dangerous place in the world to try to find them. You have to admit, that’s a lot to be worried about.

  ~ Try not to spend so much time looking forward.

  I’m driving. If I don’t look forward, I’ll crash into a tree or something.

  ~ You know that’s not what I meant.

  Fine. I’ll focus on the present.

  ~ The journey is the destination.

  I know. I know. I need to appreciate the moment, live for today, and all that. Still…we have such a long way to go, and the country is huge. I wish we could fly.

  ~ When the time is right, you will.

  Ooh. Or even better. I wish I could just concentrate really hard and magically bridge space and time.

  We disconnect, and I start to laugh at how silly that sounds when Render’s voice eases back into my head.

  ~ You’ll learn how to do that, too.

  2

  Talk

  After a few hours on the meandering, pitted, and debris-filled highway, Rain’s taking her turn as our driver with Terk keeping her company.

  Rain is a talented tactician and a ferocious warrior. But she’s also short, and it’s kind of funny how her feet don’t quite reach the floor, even with the driver’s seat at its lowest setting.

  Fortunately, the truck is run by hand-controls, so she’s free to sit cross-legged on a folded blanket Terk found for her so she can still see out of the truck’s long, narrow front window.

  The sliding door between the cab and the cabin is open, and I can hear her and Terk’s laughter and playful banter even over the rumble of the truck tires on the buckled pavement.

  Well, I can hear Terk’s laughter. Rain, as usual, is all business. She takes survival very seriously.

  Terk tends to be nervous, but he seems relaxed with Rain. They’re busy chatting about our recent European trip, reminiscing about the hazards we faced, and speculating in light, upbeat voices about the good things to come.

  Always the planner and strategist, Rain is tapping her fingers one by one on the two steering posts as she counts off all the steps we’ll need to take to survive this trip, rescue our friends, and reach the Valta—preferably without being chased down, shot at, imprisoned, or killed along the way.

  Terk teases her for being so methodical. Pretending to be offended, Rain teases him back about being “the world’s largest mouse.”

  “I swear,” she says, squinting up at the bleak red sky, her voice strained as she tries to suppress a very un-Rain like giggle, “it’s
like driving through the apocalypse with the Cowardly Lion.”

  “I’m not cowardly,” Terk whines. “Just…cautious.”

  “Fair enough,” Rain replies. “Although ‘the Cautious Lion’ doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?”

  Then they laugh in tandem, and I wonder if there’s anything romantic going on between them.

  Of all of us, they’re the ones who probably have the least in common. Rain is fearless, brilliant, and laser-focused at all times. Terk is a tall, constantly anxious Modified who could easily save a butterfly with one hand while bench pressing a cement-mixer with the other.

  Still, the two of them have been spending a lot of time together these past couple of weeks. So…who knows?

  I don’t mean to eavesdrop. But lately, my senses seem to be sharper, even when I’m not connected with Render. It’s a strange feeling, and I’m not always in control of it. I make a mental note to ask him how he manages to filter out all the noise.