The Fall (Book 4): Genesis Game Read Online Free PDF

much pain, and then the worst of it was over. Panting, Kell found himself flat on his back, good hand clutching his injury. He shuddered as the memory of the knife skittering across his broken bone replayed in his head.
    Someone leaned over him and tried to talk, and it was Kell's attempt to make out the words that brought him fully back to himself. Someone else screamed now, the same tone of abject, horrible agony, if at a higher pitch.
    “Don't try to move,” Emily said as she knelt next to him. “We'll need to take a look at this and see if she damaged the bone, but I don't feel comfortable doing it here. She cut through one of the straps holding your arm in place, so I'm going to have to immobilize it again.”
    “Who is that yelling?” Kell asked, ignoring her words. “You should be helping them.”
    Emily paused as she opened her field medical kit. “That's the girl who cut you. She's not my problem.”
    Kell looked up at Emily, who had begun to work with mechanical efficiency. “What did you...”
    “Jumped down on her from the truck you two were fighting next to. Broke her ankle for sure, and I think I broke her arm when she tried to use that pig-sticker on me.”
    The howls of pain gradually wore down as Emily worked. Not, Kell suspected, from any lessening of the girl's suffering, but judging by the breaks and cracks in the voice, from sheer exhaustion. Soon they were replaced by sobs and hoarse curses.
    Someone else showed up to gingerly move Kell into a sitting position with his back against the wheel of the truck. The girl lay a dozen feet from him, broken limbs bound to healthy ones by yard-long tethers. Not enough to keep an uninjured person from removing them and escaping, but too much for the damaged child to manage.
    Kell clenched his teeth as Emily finished tending him, all the while listening to the pitiful sobs coming from the wounded girl. It was twisted up in a disharmonious funeral song with the sounds of the nearby marauders being killed. The commotion died down even as Emily stood and brushed her hands across her stained pants.
    His attention snapped from the girl to Emily as the scout squared her shoulders and flipped the snap on her holster. The two pieces of stamped metal holding the leather strap in place made a thin, almost nonexistent sound. To Kell it might as well have been the ringing of the headsman's axe as the whetstone glided down its length.
    “What are you doing?” Kell asked carefully, though he already knew the answer. As did the girl, apparently, because broken bones or not, she went utterly still and silent. It was the physical representation of the ellipse, the pause which places emphasis and meaning on what happens next. The reaction of prey as its base instincts war between fight and flight.
    Hobbled and bound, one of those was no longer a choice.
    Emily stepped forward, hand casually expert as it slid the gun from its place on her thigh.
    “Did you see her hurt anyone?” Kell asked, a profound desire to avoid watching an execution making him desperate.
    “What?” Emily asked, not looking back at him.
    “Did you actually see her hurt anyone? Or was it just the others here?”
    Emily hesitated, though her hands remain rock steady as they gripped her weapon. “I saw what this group left behind, fifty miles south of here. Looked like a small band of nomads. Counted ten adults and six children, mostly pretty young.”
    The words lashed into Kell, though over the years a thick weal of scar tissue had covered the loss of his own daughter. He let the momentary flash of pain pass through him before gritting his teeth and pushing himself to stand.
    “She's a kid, Emily,” Kell said. “We kill marauders, but she's just a girl. We don't know that she can't be helped.”
    Kell thought he heard the girl's breathing speed up just a hair, but it could have as easily been his imagination. As for Emily, it was impossible to tell whether his words were having any sort of