27 Hours
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Nightside 1000/Hours to Dayside: 27 (RUMOR)
Nightside 1000/Hours to Dayside: 27 (NYX)
Nightside 1100/Hours to Dayside: 26 (RUMOR)
Nightside 1100/Hours to Dayside: 26 (JUDE)
Nightside 1200/Hours to Dayside: 25 (NYX)
Nightside 1200/Hours to Dayside: 25 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 1300/Hours to Dayside: 24 (JUDE)
Nightside 1300/Hours to Dayside: 24 (RUMOR)
Nightside 1400/Hours to Dayside: 23 (NYX)
Nightside 1400/Hours to Dayside: 23 (JUDE)
Nightside 1500/Hours to Dayside: 22 (RUMOR)
Nightside 1500/Hours to Dayside: 22 (JUDE)
Nightside 1600/Hours to Dayside: 21 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 1600/Hours to Dayside: 21 (NYX)
Nightside 1700/Hours to Dayside: 20 (RUMOR)
Nightside 1700/Hours to Dayside: 20 (NYX)
Nightside 1800/Hours to Dayside: 19 (RUMOR)
Nightside 1900/Hours to Dayside: 18 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 2000/Hours to Dayside: 17 (NYX)
Nightside 2000/Hours to Dayside: 17 (RUMOR)
Nightside 2000/Hours to Dayside: 17 (JUDE)
Nightside 2100/Hours to Dayside: 16 (RUMOR)
Nightside 2100/Hours to Dayside: 16 (JUDE)
Nightside 2200/Hours to Dayside: 15 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 2300/Hours to Dayside: 14 (NYX)
Nightside 2300/Hours to Dayside: 14 (RUMOR)
Nightside 2400/Hours to Dayside: 13 (JUDE)
Nightside 2400/Hours to Dayside: 13 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 2500/Hours to Dayside: 12 (NYX)
Nightside 2600/Hours to Dayside: 11 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 2700/Hours to Dayside: 10 (RUMOR)
Nightside 2800/Hours to Dayside: 9 (JUDE)
Nightside 2900/Hours to Dayside: 8 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 2900/Hours to Dayside: 8 (NYX)
Nightside 2900/Hours to Dayside: 8 (RUMOR)
Nightside 3000/Hours to Dayside: 7 (NYX)
Nightside 3100/Hours to Dayside: 6 (RUMOR)
Nightside 3200/Hours to Dayside: 5 (BRAEDEN)
Nightside 3300/Hours to Dayside: 4 (NYX)
Nightside 3400/Hours to Dayside: 3 (RUMOR)
Nightside 3500/Hours to Dayside: 2 (JUDE)
Nightside 3600/Hours to Dayside: 1 (RUMOR)
Nightside 3700/Hours to Dayside: 0 (BRAEDEN
Day 0100Hours to Nightside: 36 (NYX)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
More from Entangled
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Tristina Wright. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Kate Brauning
Cover design by Fiona Jayde
Interior design by Toni Kerr
ISBN 978-1-63375-820-9
Ebook ISBN 978-1-63375-821-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition October 2017
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Stephen,
for believing in me even when I couldn’t.
I love you
~
To every teenager who’s sat on the sidelines
relegated to sidekick
or comic relief
simply because you weren’t The Default
To every teenager who’s wanted to be more
to be the hero
to be the love interest
to fight the monsters
and save the day
This book is for you
The first generational ship leaves Earth:
2075 AD
As these brave few,
these extraordinary few,
leave this planet for new homes amongst the stars,
they enter our imaginations, our dreams,
where they’ll live forever.
- Malia Mora
Canadian Prime Minister
Nightside 1000
Hours to Dayside: 27
RUMOR
Rumor Mora feared two things: hellhound gargoyles and failure.
The first stemmed from the gargoyle attack that killed his mother when he was ten and left him with a silvery scar down his spine. The second was why he methodically swung through his blade exercises again
and again
and again.
They never knew when another attack would hit. Always be ready. His father’s words. Always be aware.
Sweat rolled down his temples and his back, sticking his shirt to him despite the cooler temperatures on Sahara’s nightside. His muscles burned, and his scars twinged, but he kept going, pushing through each slash, each step, each memorized movement. The twin machetes felt like extensions of his arms, their inner cores glowing red-hot along the entire blade. His boots slid through the gravel of the empty training lot. He liked the top terrace for a few reasons: it was only a few kilometers from the north city wall, it afforded him privacy for training, and the view of the city was spectacular.
Not many people stayed in the upper terraces for training. The training building was right there so any instructor could see them at all times. Rumor didn’t mind that, if it meant fewer people around to talk to him.
Most trainees picked the lower terraces: more practice weapons, dummies, obstacle courses. Plus the lower you were, the quicker you got out when each training session was over. The main avenue through HUB2 started at the lowest terrace and cut the city in half north to south, ending at the main residential district.
Far away, lights dotted the residential towers that were staggered along the wall in enormous stair-step patterns, but they were nothing compared to the illuminated sprawl of HUB2’s central district at night. It curved down below him and up again on the western side—an enormous bowl of a city stretching toward the northeastern corner of Lake Llyn. The eastern side of the avenue housed HUB2’s adamantine mining operations. Every dayside, the steady thud of drills pounding into the ground filled the air like the city’s own heartbeat. Right now, the drills sat silent and dark, long shadows thrown across them from the glittering lights of the city. The mag-train hummed along its elevated magnetic track around the city, ferrying HUB2 colonists who didn’t care to walk from one side to the other.
Sahara’s host planet cast a dark shadow across the eastern side of the HUB, the gas giant eclipsing a third of the night sky. The stories from Earth said the night sky there had been the color of the void and pricked with millions of stars. Only one moon had stamped a hole in the darkness. The sky above the colonized moon of Sahara was a jumble of blue-green nebula, Sahara’s host planet (which had some long number designation Rumor could never remember), and five other moons.
From up here, the sounds of the city—the mag-train, the marines, the shouts, the automata, the traffic—all blended into a steady, thrumming white noise that helped him focus as he trained.
“Did you sleep?”
Rumor glanced at his father, who must have come out of the training facility without him noticing. “A little bit. Like six hours.”
“You need more sleep than six hours.” Eric Mora folded his arms, his stance wide as he watched.
Rumor hitched a shoulder as he spun around, ending the exercise with a diagonal slash toward the ground. The blade blurred as he moved, thirty centimeters of heated adamantine that cut through the blue-green light from the nearby butterfly nebula smeared across the sky.
“Drop your shoulder more when you land that hit,” his dad said. “You’ll be able to move into defense better if you do.”
Rumor nodded. “Got it.”
“Rumor.”
He switched the blades off as he straightened and faced his father. Rumor had inherited Eric’s wild dark curls and dark eyes, but the brown skin and the wide smile came from his mother. He knew Eric saw his late wife in their only son. The tightening of Eric’s eyes always betrayed him. After all, Rumor saw his mom every time he glanced in the mirror or the scar up his back hurt. It’d been seven years, and those memories still didn’t hurt any less.
Eric looked like he wanted to say something. Finally, he ran a hand through his curls and blew out a breath. “We need to talk about something.”
Rumor arched an eyebrow. “Okay.”
“Not now. Later. I don’t want to disturb your training.”
The second eyebrow joined the first. “Ohhh-kay.”
Eric’s lips twitched in a smile. “Stop looking at me like that.”
Rumor fought to maintain the patronizing expression, but he couldn’t stop the smile. “I’m probably going to head down to Padriack’s after this. Maybe meet up with Jordan and Steve.”
“I have to head into the office. General Stewart wants to discuss something. He said it was urgent. I’ll try to meet you there later.” He turned away as he spoke, his eyes narrowing at the shadowed side of the HUB, just beyond the military barracks.
&nb
sp; “Is it about finishing that?” Rumor pointed up at the partially completed dome that would one day cap HUB2 from wall to wall. Supposedly. The project had been delayed many times for many reasons: supplies, manpower, attacks. HUB1 had completed a dome two years ago, protecting the citizens from air attacks. The HUBs were far too large for the adamantine webbing the smaller colonies used.
“I hope so,” Eric said in a distracted tone. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” Rumor glanced in the direction his father faced, squinting into the darkness where the wall cut across a small set of foothills before heading south. Several guard towers dotted the edge, their guns trained out. Marine barracks lined up in organized rows, following the wall to the foothills. Most of them were dark, their occupants asleep. A handful glowed with life, shouts and muffled music seeping out of open windows.
“I don’t…maybe nothing.” Eric waved a hand dismissively and walked away. He spun around after a few steps, walking backward as he pointed at Rumor. “Talking. You and me. Later. I promise not to embarrass you in front of your friends.”
Rumor gave him a mock two-fingered salute. “Talking. Got it.” He rotated his wrists, spinning his weapons over twice as his dad walked away, frowning at the shadowed part of HUB2. Rumor shook his head. Paranoid Dad.
The ground vibrated. It was low and brief, but it was enough for Rumor to pause.
Maybe not paranoid?
Metal groaned. The very distinct sound of stone on metal screeched across the night from somewhere behind the training building, sending goose bumps across his skin. Rumor pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and strained his hearing over the white noise of the city. He scanned the immediate area, then looked upward toward the nebula. The sky remained clear. HUB2 bustled on as it had before. His dad had stopped walking on the other side of the terrace, and now stared at the shadowed portion of the city.
Rumor’s skin tingled as he stood perfectly still and listened. His thumbs ghosted over the hidden switches on the inside of each handle, releasing the chemicals that heated the core and made the blades glow softly. They threw orange light across the ground as he tried to hear past the music and shouting from the barracks.
A roar echoed off the mountains to the north of the wall—a little to his left. The roars never ceased to put him on edge. Even if they never came near the HUBs, he’d never get used to gargoyle roaring during nightside.
Metal groaned again, this time behind him, bending into a squeal that seemed to echo across the entire training ground.
Eric turned around, his eyes fixed on something over Rumor’s left shoulder. “Son, you need to move now,” he said in an overly calm voice.
Rumor flexed his fingers around the leather-wrapped handles of his blades. He inhaled a shaky breath and took a step forward, his back muscles tightening and the base of his skull prickling. Gravel behind him crunched.
“Come on, Rumor,” his dad said, his focus still over Rumor’s shoulder.
Gunfire erupted in the distance, the cracks echoing through the city. Rumor flinched at the first shot, hating the instinctual movement despite all his training. His heart sped, and adrenaline flooded his system.
Not again. The words whispered through his mind as he stared at his father.
“Dad,” Rumor managed.
“Drop,” his father ordered.
Rumor dropped.
The gargoyle launched, clawing the air where he’d just stood. It landed on the other side of him, sliding in the loose gravel as Rumor rolled and came up to a crouch, his blades ready. The gargoyle was one of the more humanoid-looking ones—one head, two arms, two legs—except it had too-long arms and horns curling up from its hairless head. Its skin was an ashy gray color, dappled by the nebula light. He had no idea if it was male or female or if the gargoyles even had those genders. He didn’t care. He just wanted it to die.
“Stupid to try to attack a HUB, asshole,” Rumor growled as he rose.
“Rumor!” Eric shouted. His gun fired twice, but Rumor couldn’t turn around to check on his dad.
The gargoyle clicked at him, guttural noises rolling out of its throat. It lunged, claws swiping for Rumor’s face. He bowed backward and slashed at the creature’s ribs. The thick hide almost resisted the heated blade.
Almost, but not quite.
Black blood oozed out of the slash, streaking down the creature’s side. Rumor straightened and spun, bringing both blades down across its back as it stumbled to the side. Skin split along bone, and the creature howled.
Howls answered it. Howls reverberating all around the wall. A chorus of howls overlapping and echoing as they built in volume and ferocity.
Rumor lowered his chin and stared at the gargoyle. It spun at him again, its claws catching him across the side. Pain bloomed up his side. He brought his blade down across the gargoyle’s throat. The skin split, sizzling where the heated blade touched. Hot blood spurted across his shirt and arms. It stank like something muddy and rotten.
The gargoyle sank to the ground, scrabbling at its throat as the blood pooled, a void across the light gravel. Rumor held his side, breathing hard.
“Dad!” Oh, gods, where was his dad? Was he even okay? He’d been so focused on the gargoyle, he hadn’t kept an eye on his dad.
Eric stumbled to him. “Are you okay?” Sweat dampened his shirt and stuck a few curls to his forehead. Parallel scratches ran down his cheek, and his hands were spattered with stinking black blood.
Rumor nodded. An alarm wailed, and he winced away. The whine grew to a feverish pitch, echoing across HUB2 and mixing with the horrified screams of humans—of his neighbors, his friends—and the grating and clicking of gargoyles to create a cacophony of terror.
“Rumor!” His dad grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away from the corpse. Eric cursed, loudly and creatively. Rumor thought he caught the word “Hector” but wasn’t sure.
“What’s happening?” Rumor bent a little to protect his injury. Pain radiated through his ribs. “Where did they all come from?”
His father’s answer was swallowed by deafening roars that shook Rumor to his bones.
Rumor looked at the twisted gray body of the gargoyle he’d killed. Its blood was so black, it reflected the nebula above. His grip on his blades tightened. How dare something so ugly live under such a sky? “How did they get past the wall cannons? What’s happening?”
Eric shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. You need to run.”
“What? No.” Rumor pulled himself free from his father’s grasp.
“Rumor, you need to get out of here.”
Screams rose in the air as shadowy figures erupted over the city wall in dark waves. The shadow of a dragon slid across the sky. Gargoyles were swarming his city. There were so many. More gargoyles than he’d ever seen in one attack. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
The dragon landed roughly twenty kilometers away, on the eastern side of the HUB just past the darkened mining equipment. Its bulk scraped over buildings, peeling off layers of greenery from walls and destroying solar panels as it hit the ground with a roar.
Rumor had always thought the old Earth descriptions of dragons from the archives were ridiculous. Giant lizards that breathed fire and hoarded gold and stole princesses. Those were nothing compared to these. Monstrous creatures as large as those giant lizards, but with long bodies, six legs, and serpentine necks ending in a mouth that split four ways and opened like space’s deadliest flower. These didn’t care about gold or girls. They wanted to kill and eat and destroy anything that happened to wander across their path. They were untamable and near impossible to kill.
He’d never seen them in a city.
The dragon’s head swung and smashed into a narrow red tower, knocking the upper three floors to the ground. It trampled over the rubble, heading directly for the mining equipment.
“That was Padriack’s,” Rumor said in a shaking voice. “Jordan and Steve were there.”
“Rumor.”
Rumor’s stomach lurched as the dragon howled. “There’s a gargoyle riding the dragon.”
“What?” Eric breathed.
Rumor pointed at the cloaked figure standing between the dragon’s spiked shoulder blades. “Why would a gargoyle be riding a dragon?” That would require an intelligence—a hierarchy—they didn’t possess.
“Why aren’t the wall guns firing?” Eric asked.
“Seriously, why is a gargoyle riding a dragon like a commander?” Rumor insisted.