Children of Scarabaeus Read Online Free PDF Page A

at the three cryo capsules that Cat had pulled forward from the rack. They lay open—chilled coffins of white and silver. Cat helped Finn check them over one last time. Edie wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop the shivering.
    Finn beckoned to Edie. For a moment they looked at each other. She wanted to say something to him, in case this was the last time she saw him alive. But no words came. He watched her steadily.
    “In you go.” A smile flickered on his lips, a wordless acknowledgment that he understood. At least, she hoped so.
    She climbed into the first capsule. He hooked up her sensor cuff and fired up the unit. Edie felt a spike inside the cuff slide into her vein. The cover snapped shut over her and locked with a hiss. Through the lozenge-shaped window in the front, she saw Finn checking things again. On the far side of the rack, she watched Cat climb into her capsule and its cover close.
    After a few seconds Edie was aware of feeling far less apprehensive and claustrophobic than she should. The spikefed her tranqs, a precursor to the cryo fluids. She no longer felt cold, either. She concentrated on Finn’s face as their eyes met through the plaz. The crease between his brows settled into a familiar look of concern. Her blood ran ice cold and her lungs hurt. Her breath misted the window and formed delicate ice crystals across the plaz. As her eyelids grew heavy, Finn’s face blurred and faded.
    Edie closed her eyes and drifted.
     
    Something was wrong. She was burning up. In a panic, she raised her hands to push open the coffin. But there was nothing there. She opened her eyes and blinked to clear her vision, expecting to see Finn’s face, expecting to hear his voice telling her everything was okay.
    But the face that looked down at her was young, serious, unmistakably military.
    Unmistakably Crib.

CHAPTER 3
     
    Her warmed blood felt like fire as it pumped through her veins. The rest of her was still cold. Edie rolled her head to one side, trying to make sense of her surroundings. She was on a bunk, not in a cryo capsule. In a medfac, not a cargo crate—more of a screened-off cubicle. And there was no sign of her fellow sleepers.
    No sign of Finn.
    “Where’s Finn?” Her voice was a dry croak. How long had she been asleep, anyway?
    At her side, a young milit fiddled with the IV bag next to the bunk and checked the readout on a med tom attached to the bunk’s railing. “Take it easy. The doc says the effects of cryo will wear off in another hour or so.”
    “How far away are we?” Her brain couldn’t quite produce the question she needed to ask. Is Finn nearby or is he more than two thousand meters away…and dead?
    “You’re on the Peregrine , ma’am.” The milit had the correct professional tone, but he had an awkwardness about him that made Edie think he was out of his depth. As if having Edie on board was a situation he didn’t know how to deal with. “I’m Sergeant West. We’re heading to rendezvous with—”
    “Where’s Finn?” Edie yelled. It came out as a hoarse cry. She tried to sit up. West reflexively grabbed her arm and eased her back.
    “We retrieved no one else from the Lichfield .” He sounded taken aback, even a little apologetic.
    That didn’t stop his words digging into Edie’s chest like daggers. A wave of desperation lifted her off the bed and carried her across the cubicle as she threw herself at the sergeant. She didn’t know what she screamed. Her lungs ached with the effort. She flailed against West and the faceless milits who came to his assistance from the other side of the screen.
    Finn’s dead.
    She’d seen the bloody result of what happened when a serf’s boundary chip went out of range. Since the moment they’d met, she feared this. It was only a matter of time before Finn met that end, too. He was just a serf. No one to mourn him but Edie.
    They cuffed her to the bunk, reset the IV spikes she’d pulled free, and tranq’d her. Not enough