Rebel's Consort - Phoenix Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

overgrown forest region beyond the western grid if something happened to his guide. Each minute, the clock ticked on the child’s condition, which added to the risk. And Wolf, while surviving these past few years in underground teams, wasn’t prepared for the pulverizing piece of hardware slowly making its way across rubble toward their position, leaving only dust in its wake.
    Trace would bet any odds Wolf hadn’t seen the new search and destroy device. He’d never seen one until now, though Shepherd had warned him several weeks ago of their presence.
    He flipped the membrane over his head and stalked into the darkness behind his rubble, following Wolf’s last location. Out of sight of the guards’ surveillance lights and their machine, he tapped the side of his face shield and turned in a slow 180° scan. A green line jumped and dipped with his inspection, peaking higher as he faced the Down Below market and its influx of people. Two more taps, and he readjusted his signal variance to correlate with Wolf’s readings. A second line in red tracked the guards’ destruction machine, Crusher.
    A second scan revealed a faint pulse of the green line in a northwest direction.
    “Intersect calculation and lock,” he whispered. Five minutes started counting down in the far right of his screen. Damn, the boy was heading right into them. And, consistent with Radar’s prediction of the Regents’ new strategy, the guards were taking no prisoners. No rebels to stand trial for breaking into the detention centers, no time wasted on interrogation or torture. The Crusher would eradicate every target it found, guilty or not.
    “Layer line to westernmost grid point.” A faint yellow line appeared, spanning from Trace’s position to the final meet point. Yellow crossed Wolf’s green path and Crusher’s red with an intersection at one of the major girders supporting the grid platform. If he ran hard, he could plant the AG box near the girder, safe from the machine’s path, and connect with Wolf before the guards did.
    Four minutes later, what had seemed like a simple plan left Trace sucking in breath and canvassing in vain for some sign of Wolf’s pulse-line on his screen. Where had the boy gone?
    Lights flickered at head height with the guards’ approach. A tremor beneath his boots signaled the machine’s advance with forty-two seconds left before it carved a new path of dust through this sector. Dead ahead rose a small tower of century-old crushed vehicles. To the left lay a small makeshift shack of stacked concrete with a polyfiber roof, likely stolen from construction above grid. The shack posed too obvious a choice, but what remained of the vehicles constituted skeletons of metal, offering no cover. All the reusable piece parts long since stripped and salvaged left only an airy steel monolith.
    There wasn’t—
    The green line jumped as he stared at the far bottom corner of the pile and a visible bit of leather where none should exist. Damn.
    Radar?
    Shepherd?
    Radar: confirm
    Need one minute delay for crusher—target distraction due east my position
    Radar: copy
    A high-pitched siren split the silence. The number of lights doubled, flashing over every crevice within twenty yards of Trace, but with the Regent general alarm the squad swung to retreat and cover ground they’d already inspected. The opening gave him just enough time to scuttle a few feet to the remainder of a collapsed wall and crawl behind the crush of metal that provided Wolf’s cover.
    The alarm had circumvented the guards. Unfortunately, Crusher was still on the move and feet away from compressing Wolf into dust.
    Trace guessed at the location of Wolf’s shoulder and gripped tight on the flesh he encountered. He yanked them both backward. The Crusher missed Wolf’s boot by a hair, but a scrap of flying metal sliced his arm as Trace pulled him behind the wall.
    “Don’t—” Trace didn’t bother to finish his statement. More would have provided