Unravel Read Online Free PDF Page A

His gaze swept the crowd. “Then what are they doing standing here? This is an SFI base—it’s equipped with underground shelters. Get these people into them!”
    As if that was all it took, Miguel jerked into action. He snapped an order to Bryn, who swung away to relay instructions to a handful of official-looking people—mostly the ones, Elissa realized, who were holding weapons.
    Had been holding weapons. They weren’t bothering now, tucking guns back into belt holsters and inside jackets, focusing instead on shepherding sections of the crowds in different directions, back inside the buildings.
    Miguel looked back at Cadan. “You need to go,” he said. “They’ll have clocked the ship entering the atmosphere—it’s likely they’ll have tracked it here. You could come in the shelters with us, but if they break through this time . . .” There was despair in his face. “Captain, listen to me. I have to keep these people alive. If they break into our shelter but neither you nor the clones are with us, at least—”
    Cadan interrupted him. “This time? The base has been attacked before? How many times?”
    â€œSince I got here? Six. Not all from the same group, though, as far as we can work out.”
    â€œYou can tell? How?”
    Miguel shrugged. “Firepower. Some of them are using SFI craft. Some of them have nothing more than target-practice guns strapped to souped-up beetle-cars.”
    Markus gave an unexpected choke of laughter. “Seriously?”
    Miguel looked at him, bleak. “It’s funny when you’re not living it. We’ve got the shelters, and the aboveground buildings are pretty well fortified, but if they get a direct hit on our solar cells, or the purifier . . .” He nodded toward the familiar shape of the half-buried water-recycling station.
    Up until this point Elissa hadn’t thought about that—she was still struggling to deal with the impact of finding out that people were killing Spares—but of course. This far out in the desert, the base would have to operate independently of the city’s resources: power, water, medical supplies. When things had been running normally, they’d have been able to rely on deliveries, but now, out here, more than a day’s walk from the city, if they ran out of water, or the power that kept their perishable food and medicines refrigerated—how long would they last?
    And then, selfishly: If we end up stuck out here, how long will we last? I knew we were taking a risk coming back to Sekoia, but I didn’t plan on not surviving my first day back!
    â€œWhy are they attacking you, though?” Cadan was saying. “If you think they’re after Spares, why have you come under attack anyway?”
    â€œWe’ve got ex-SFI personnel with us,” said Miguel. “And some government officials who swear they never knew what was going on but who got chased from their homes anyway, and a few immigrant families—legal ones, but people are saying if we’d closed to immigration years ago, Sekoia would never have come under so much pressure that thegovernment was forced into using clones—”
    â€œSpares,” snapped Elissa, shock and fear making her careless, almost before she was aware she’d opened her mouth to speak. “They’re not clones, they’re Spares .”
    Miguel shrugged without looking at her. “Whatever. The mood in the city . . . it’s not a good place to stay for anyone who could take any of the blame. A connection with SFI, or the government, or Spares . . . People are here because they were afraid to stay, Captain. And if we can manage to go even farther away, we’ll take it. Right now we’re stuck within easy attack range. We haven’t come under serious fire, not so far. It’s more of a harassment—angry people looking for