Transcendent (9781311909442) Read Online Free PDF Page A

lasting so long, they went with the
Earth standard of a twenty-four-hour day. They split it into three
periods: first, second, and third rots. Rot was short for rotation.
Krys’s dad worked and his mom taught at the school during first
rot. That left second rot for personal time and third rot for
sleeping.
    For him, at least. Other families were on
different rots. Almost all of the kids shared his schedule, though;
it made it easier on the teachers or something.
    Krys was pulled out of his thoughts of his
normal day when he started to see his colony through the edge of
the forest. He’d gotten used to the smoke but now he was stunned
again by what he saw. Buildings and machines were broken and
destroyed. Smoke still rose from a few, but mostly they lay
destroyed. He saw a few soldiers moving about, but mostly it seemed
silent and empty. Abandoned. Dead.
    Krys swallowed hard. Were his parents gone?
Had they been—he shook his head. No, they couldn’t be. They hadn’t
done anything wrong! His dad was smart; he’d keep them safe. At
worst they’d be captured. He nodded. He had to find them. The army
wouldn’t destroy everything, would they?
    He pushed through the brush until he reached
the creek where the horrible day had started. Krys turned his head
to the left and right and picked out landmarks of where he’d played
with his friends his entire life. To the right, he could make out
the bend where he and Devon had been hiding. Only a few meters
beyond the edge of where the forest had been razed was where Pita
had stood. He wondered if she’d been flattened by the army as
easily as the forest was.
    Krys shook his head and climbed down the
bank and crossed over the stream. He paused and stuck his hands in
the cool water, rubbing them to clean them and then bringing some
water to his lips. He tasted the same water he’d drank from a
thousand times before and, for a few peaceful seconds, didn’t think
about what was going on. He ran out of water in his hands and was
forced to stand up and look around.
    Everything had changed. His village was in
shambles and the forest where he’d built a lifetime of memories had
been ripped into pieces. He sniffed and blinked, forcing back the
tears. He took a deep breath like he’d seen his dad do every time
he had a new job to do and turned to climb up the far bank. He had
to find his family. And Lily’s too. They needed to know what he’d
seen. Even if it was the worst news he could imagine, they deserved
to know.
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    Krys waited long enough that he’d gotten an
idea of how people were moving. He hadn’t spotted anyone from the
village yet, just soldiers and other people wearing blue and white
uniforms. The people in blue and white weren’t soldiers, or at
least they didn’t carry any guns. They looked different, too. More
normal.
    The soldiers weren’t doing much, just
wandering around and talking to one another. The people in uniforms
were picking through the wreckage and cleaning up. Krys watched
them come and go and wondered how he was ever going to find
anything. There were too many of them wandering about and it was
too bright out.
    Krys turned his attention to the power cells
that were fed by the energy channeled down from the solar shield.
The tower of power, as they called it, was still standing. It
stretched over twenty meters into the sky. His dad worked on that,
too, sometimes, but since there weren’t any moving parts, it didn’t
break down very often. The power cells would last a hundred years
each, and there was something like two hundred of them buried
beneath the colony. It was enough to keep them at full power
through an entire night and have plenty of energy to spare.
    Krys stared up, following where he imagined
the invisible energy beam was to the sky above. The sun was blotted
out by the solar shield in orbit, but enough light was still
allowed through to cause a shimmering circle in the sky. Lily used
to stare at it and talk about