Brink (Spark City Book 1)

  Brink

  Book One of the Spark City Series

  Cameron Coral

  Contents

  Bonus Story

  Copyright

  I. Newcomer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  II. Discovered

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  III. Resurrection

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Bonus Story

  About the Author

  Bonus Story

  Get a FREE copy of the short story, Breaking Day, that you can’t buy anywhere: CameronCoral.com

  Breaking Day is about a dystopian prep school. Dresden School isn't like regular schools. Electives include Weaponry 101 and Advanced Hand-to-hand Combat. Interesting things start to happen when new student, Rik, arrives and meets Ida. Don't be late to class...your life may depend on it.

  Copyright © 2017 Cameron Coral

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Matt Rott

  Cover by Kreative Covers

  For more information:

  CameronCoral.com

  info@cameroncoral.com

  Part 1

  Newcomer

  “Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.”

  -Hippocrates

  “‘Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.’”

  -W. H. Auden

  Chapter 1

  999 lives saved. Ida Sarek wondered if she would make it to 1000 today.

  It might be her last chance—her military service was up, and she was assigned to return to civilian life. In three days, she would start over in Spark City, a place she had never been. Hard to believe the time was finally here. She’d known no other life than this.

  Her team chanted, “We are Earth’s protectors. We help the wounded; we kill our enemies. Nothing can stop us.”

  Ida closed her eyes tightly, willing herself to believe the words. She repeated the verse again with the others, but this time only her lips moved, “…Nothing can stop us.” Her hands tightened on four or five other fists, a pile of hands all grasping each other in a confused muddle. A long, desperate handshake in case there was no tomorrow.

  They were on the edge of a death zone.

  Deep in the Outer Territories—desert land—Ida and her team were about to enter a town that had been attacked by Heavies, the alien force that had invaded most of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. It was a salvage mission. The front-line soldiers had already battled off the alien creatures, but there had been many casualties.

  Now, they waited patiently in their ship for the signal to go in. At the head of the line, Ida felt she was unraveling. She was part of a misfit crew of medics, nurses, and body bag carriers—only she wasn’t exactly sure what she was, because she was different than the others.

  Her role was classified; she could tell no one about her training. She had signed over her rights to the military when she had been on the verge of starvation, living on the streets those many years ago when she was nineteen.

  In those early years when she’d first joined, she’d been sent to a remote, secret medical facility where she’d been tested, forced to endure rigorous physical training, and operated on four times. The surgeries changed her forever, and left her with a unique ability.

  Her life had become a whirlwind of military boot camps, training exercises, and now two years spent in the Territory battle zones. She was amazed the military was letting her go now. Whatever experiment she had been must have been disappointing.

  The door of the ship raised, and Tyren, her commanding officer, entered. “Medics,” he said in his booming voice, looking at the team assembled before him on the ship’s jump seats. “I have a read on the situation in this village.” He looked down, and his voice turned gravelly. “It’s not good.”

  The team members stopped their nervous fidgeting and chatting to listen. Tyren said, “This was a small farming village. Been here for centuries. Many men went off to fight, leaving mostly women, children, and the elderly.”

  Tyren removed a small sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “There were a few soldiers stationed here for security, but they were no match for the Heavies who ambushed this town last night.”

  999 lives saved and three more days until I leave this hell hole. Ida pushed away the thought and tried to focus.

  Seated next to her, the group’s newcomer, Jessa, breathed audibly. Jessa was the first hybrid to join their group. It was hard to tell what she was in her combat gear, but when you got close, you noticed her pointed, triangular ears sticking straight up from her head, and her dark orange fur. Ida wasn’t sure how she had ended up next to her, since she had been careful to avoid the new soldier, whose face, skin, and hands resembled a fox. “You should prepare yourselves for this,” Tyren finished.

  Ida stood. “Any chance of survivors?”

  “If there are, you will need to find them, and quick.” Tyren turned and left.

  Already in their gear, Ida’s team made the trek toward the village on foot, carrying medical equipment and extra body bags.

  When they arrived, the sight was devastating. Bodies lay twisted on the desert floor in all directions. The metallic smell of blood tinged the air, forcing the soldiers to put on their biohazard masks.

  The others started tending to the bodies—checking vital signs and spray-painting large red X’s on the chests of those that were dead.

  Ida walked past the group looking for signs of life, listening to see if any of the villagers called out for help. She could help those that were near dead, but if they were too far gone, she would be of no use.

  She kept walking, and passed dozens of mangled bodies. Tyren was right; it was mainly women and children. So many children were dead that it made her head ache.

  The Heavies were large, and they outmatched human soldiers. Their body mass was three times the size of a human, and they were fast—they could run at speeds approaching a cheetah’s. There was no negotiating with the alien race. They ran on animal instinct, although they possessed a strong intelligence and advanced weaponry. Operating as a collective, like insects, the Heavies would descend on a battle zone, their small fighter ships flying in formation and making way for those of them on the ground to attack and kill.

  The Heavies fought with guns that discharged a hot flashi
ng pulse, and many of them preferred to carry long blades forged from a metal that came from another world. Nobody knew exactly where the Heavies had come from.

  They were ruthless and made no distinction between soldier and innocent civilian. It made no difference to them; they only wanted to seek and destroy the people on Earth. Most civilians had been evacuated from the Outer Territories, but there were always pockets of stubborn people who refused to leave their homelands.

  Ida felt the strange sensation in her chest again—an unraveling. In three days, she would be free of this life, starting life somewhere new. What would civilian life be like? Her only pre-military memories had been as a teen: fighting to survive a crowded existence on the streets in a large city, constantly starving, and stealing to live.

  But this death zone—she had seen thousands of injured and dead bodies in her army years, but nothing like this. So many dead children. Innocents.

  Ida stood still, alert for signs of life or calls from her comrades should they find someone still alive. She turned around slowly, taking in the full scope of the scene. Bodies lay in all directions, and blood stained the sand. The village was in ruins, with small fires still smoldering among the clay huts.

  Jessa the hybrid yelled, “Got one! Need assistance.”

  Ida ran quickly to find her administering chest thrusts on the body of a nine-year-old girl. “I’ll take it from here,” she said, placing her gloved hand on Jessa’s shoulder.

  Without a word, Jessa stepped away from the body. “I was told to stay out of your way and let you do your thing.”

  “You heard right,” said Ida, avoiding eye contact with the unknown fox-human creature. “Go on. Keep looking for more.” Since Jessa was new, she didn’t know what Ida was capable of yet. She likely wouldn’t find out at all in the few days left.

  Jessa hesitated, then left, continuing her search for more survivors.

  Ida went to work on the small body next to her. She checked for a pulse, and found a slight murmur of life in the girl’s veins.

  Smoothing tangled brown hair away from the girl’s face, she placed a small towel under her head. “You’re going to be okay. You’ll be just fine.”

  Ida removed her gloves and searched for a wound. Quickly, she found a long slash in the girl’s chest where an alien blade had torn through her flesh.

  She placed her bare hands on the wound and closed her eyes.

  Before making the jump into the girl’s small body, she thought, 1,000 lives saved.

  Chapter 2

  Lucy wondered what it felt like to walk on a warm beach and feel sand under your feet. Once, when she was small, she’d seen a picture book about Hawaii. Mesmerized by the exotic images of mountains, ocean, and volcanic sands, she’d often sketched tropical scenes in her notebooks.

  Reality in Spark City was much different. Instead of balmy breezes, she forced her way through a biting arctic wind that rose off the steely, gray lake. Drawing her coat closer around her body, she dug her fists deeper in her pockets and tried to make her body thin and upright to cut through the wind. Other people walked by in different directions as they made their way to and from their jobs.

  This was the busiest time of day. Early evening in the city was when the factory day shift workers finished, headed home to scrounge food, and slept enough to live the same day over again. Every day was the same for the poor city workers, who spent twelve hours a day forging the steel that would rebuild the crumbling city.

  Gone was the prosperity of the first two decades of the 21st century. After the earth’s temperature had spiked suddenly in 2025 and the rising sea covered the coastal cities, the world’s priorities had changed.

  Lucy didn’t know much about those times, just that all the adults her mom’s age referred to the “good old days.” They joked about laws that required kids to attend school for eight hours a day, and reminisced about how families had two cars each and lived in huge houses with green lawns.

  Now everyone lived in condensed, crowded cities like Spark City, while the countryside was deserted and lawless. The adults laughed, but Lucy saw her mom get quiet and misty-eyed whenever there was talk of old times.

  Snow flurries dusted the air, and Lucy picked up her pace as the chill bit into the exposed parts of her face. She tied her hood’s drawstrings tighter and thought of what she might find at home. Would her mother be coherent? Would there be yet another man with her in their apartment?

  Lucy was finding it harder to occupy her days. She hadn’t yet told her mother that she had lost her job last week. Her income as a seamstress in a small textile warehouse hadn’t been much, but it was the only thing keeping scraps of food in the apartment.

  Losing her job hadn’t been her fault. For all the times Lucy had dreamed of stomping out and shouting, “I quit,” the reality was far less glamorous. The shop’s owner was sick and decided to move in with a relative in another city. Lucy and everyone else in the warehouse was fired, including the twelve-year-old orphan boy who was taking care of his four siblings.

  Lucy shivered in the Arctic lakefront wind that blew from the north. The cold snap was unusual for this time of year. She tugged briefly at the belt inside her jacket, a constant and reassuring confirmation that her important belongings were secured from the many pickpockets she would pass on the streets. She was down to her last fifty dollars and held onto it in case of emergency. She never knew what state her mother would be in when she got home.

  The sun was setting, and Lucy picked up her pace. She wanted to get home before dark. She’d been mugged once, and the assailant had flashed a knife. She never wanted to be caught in a dangerous situation again, and wished she had a weapon of her own, or at least knew how to fight.

  Lucy’s path took her along the lakefront, where there was a wide, concrete path. She walked on the right side of the wide path, following the general flow of foot traffic. She walked behind a few men and women who wore the heavy steel-toed boots common in factory work. They wore long black and brown coats with many layers beneath, and carried small bags that held the food that would sustain them through their long shifts. She tried to avoid eye contact, never sure who was friendly or looking for a victim.

  Lucy kept to herself. A girl her same age (seventeen) who worked next to her station at the textile warehouse had been friendly. She would comment that Lucy’s sewing looked nice, and would often try to catch Lucy’s eye and smile. Once, Lucy couldn’t help but smile back. The next day, the girl’s station was empty. Something must have happened to her, because an older woman replaced her later in the day.

  That’s what happened when you tried to get to know someone—they disappeared or disappointed you in some way.

  As Lucy neared the small footpath that led home, she glanced at the water. It stretched far away until the water touched the horizon. Covered with large slabs of ice, the surface had a blue-gray sheen.

  She tried to imagine how cold the water was, and shivered. Once Lucy had seen a man fall into the frigid lake. Other passersby had tried to help him get out, but he’d started swimming away from shore. Lucy had stood with a small crowd and watched for several minutes. The man kept swimming and then stopped suddenly and sank. A man standing next to her muttered that the man had a death wish.

  Lucy thought about the drowned man for weeks after, and those words: death wish. She couldn’t help it. Strange that the image of that unsettling afternoon came back to her now as she walked home along the lake. Sometimes she wondered if her mother would be better off if Lucy took a lake swim—one less mouth to feed. But she knew better. Her mom wouldn’t last on her own. And now that Lucy was seventeen, she wondered whether she’d ever be able to leave her mother’s side.

  The top of her mid-rise apartment building came into view as she traveled the familiar path through the woods. She crossed a small footbridge over North Pond, then glanced at the old dome-shaped conservatory, as she often did. The dilapidated building had always fascinated her. The architecture was uniq
ue, and she knew it was old, but she didn’t know enough about history to know when it was built.

  Five years ago, when she left school to work, she’d been twelve, and her instructors hadn’t talked much about the local area. Instead, they had read old textbooks that talked about former presidents and wars from long ago. She didn’t remember much from school. It had all seemed so pointless when she was always worried about her mother and where their next meal was coming from.

  Something propelled Lucy to take a detour and walk along the path closer to the conservatory. She inhaled the chilled air, taking breath into her lungs. The closer she got to home, the more her nerves overcame her. She would often have a stomachache by the time she reached her door.

  There was something new about the conservatory—she noticed a motorcycle parked near the front. The entrance door was slightly ajar. “Keep walking,” she told herself. But then she heard music coming from inside, unlike any she had heard before. Curious, she walked closer to the entrance.

  As she approached, the door swung wide open, stopping Lucy in her tracks. A tall, muscular woman with short, dark-red hair stood in the doorway, hands on hips. The woman stared at Lucy, as if challenging her. Lucy took in the imposing figure wearing a faded green military jacket, black pants, and black military boots.