Nyxia Unleashed_The Nyxia Triad Read online

  Contents

  Part I: THE ADAMITES

  Chapter 1: The Fallen

  Chapter 2: A New World

  Chapter 3: Foundry

  Chapter 4: A Dysfunctional Family

  Chapter 5: The Ways of Our People

  Chapter 6: Dig

  Chapter 7: Orbiting

  Chapter 8: Surprises and Mistakes

  Chapter 9: Gripped

  Chapter 10: Behind the Curtain

  Chapter 11: The Backup Plan

  Chapter 12: A Jewel

  Chapter 13: One Small Step

  Chapter 14: A New Song

  Chapter 15: The Cosmonaut

  Chapter 16: The Babel Files

  Part II: THE GENESIS

  Chapter 17: Grimgarden

  Chapter 18: Old Rivalries

  Chapter 19: Myriad Station

  Chapter 20: Light in the Dark

  Chapter 21: Sling

  Chapter 22: Duel Through the Dark

  Chapter 23: Across the Universe

  Chapter 24: Pieces of the Puzzle

  Chapter 25: Ophelia Station

  Chapter 26: A Taste of History

  Part III: SEVENSET

  Chapter 27: The Seventh Ring

  Chapter 28: The Gripping Ceremony

  Chapter 29: Strike the Slight

  Chapter 30: The Sixth Ring

  Chapter 31: Guests

  Chapter 32: Scarving

  Chapter 33: The Cosmonaut and the Alien

  Part IV: MAGNIA

  Chapter 34: The Other Requin

  Chapter 35: Collision

  Chapter 36: A House Divided

  Chapter 37: The Sanctum

  Chapter 38: Brothers by Force

  Chapter 39: King David

  Chapter 40: The Best-laid Plans of Imago and Men

  Chapter 41: I Forget the Rest

  Chapter 42: Babel Revealed

  Chapter 43: The Ambush

  Chapter 44: The Other Genesis

  Chapter 45: The Garden of Eden

  Chapter 46: The First Reckoning

  Acknowledgments

  Follow Penguin

  ALSO BY SCOTT REINTGEN

  Nyxia

  FOR MOMMA.

  I fell in love with books while tucked under the covers listening to you read. Your voice built bridges to other worlds. I still find them sometimes, like majestic ruins, and can only marvel at how many ways you gave me to pursue my passions. So this world, this story? I’ve built it for you.

  Love, Scott

  Part I

  * * *

  THE ADAMITES

  Chapter 1

  The Fallen

  Emmett Atwater

  Fallen angels were cast down to Earth and became demons. When Babel casts us out, it’s in fire and blood and steel. As the descent begins, I hold on to one truth: I am more than what they would make of me.

  It takes thirty seconds for the silence of space to give way as I break through Eden’s atmosphere. It sounds like giant fists hammering the sides of the pod. Metal screams, and I start shouting every cuss word I know. The porthole windows dazzle: bright purple slashes and golden hooks against black backdrops. The patterns start to turn my stomach, so I close my eyes.

  A snarl and a snap, then I get a nice gut shot as the drags deploy. Flame-resistant chutes explode overhead. My velocity cuts to nothing, but my heart rate’s still spiking when the entire console flashes red. I lean forward and catch a glimpse of dark nothing before the pod drives, hammer-struck, into Eden’s surface.

  “Landing sequence complete.”

  I groan at the android voice. Grid lights flash from the console. They trace the contours of my body before winking out. My holographic avatar appears in the air. Burns on my lower back. The cut on my shoulder from Roathy’s blade is a thin red slash. There are a few speckled internal stresses, but nothing with exclamation points.

  “You require medical attention.”

  “You think? Let me out of the pod.”

  “Exodus Sequence confirmed.”

  The porthole windows are covered in mud, but that doesn’t stop the walls from peeling back like the wings of a great metallic insect. Sweat-soaked, I stagger out beneath the hatches and take my first steps on a foreign planet. Turn and search, turn and search. I’m alone.

  My launch pod flashes red beacon lights, but I see no answer on the dark horizon. Behind me are vague, mountain-like rises. Ahead, a strangled valley thick with trees and creeks.

  I look up, blink, and look again. Two moons loom in the starless night. Their combined light creates the illusion of a bright, snowy evening. Every branch is pale-painted, every creek a whitewashed echo. I look back up. One moon is bigger and brighter, its surface marred by a series of bloody scars. The other moon is dime-to-quarter of the first. Hanging in the sky, they look like a pair of mismatched eyes set in a dark, endless face.

  The moons watch me stumble to the nearest creek and plunge my hands in elbow-deep. A rippling shiver runs up my spine and sharpens the senses. My hands shake as I wash Roathy’s blood away. I scrub dark streaks from my suit, rinse my face, and try to forget the broken boys Babel wanted to bury in the stars.

  I left Roathy alive, but what about Bilal? The others?

  Shivering, I stumble back to the pod and hoist my knapsack over a shoulder. There’s nothing else to do but walk, find the others. Did something go wrong with my landing? Or did Babel lie about this too? The need to see another human face dominates every thought. I can’t fathom the idea of sleeping alone on an alien planet. So I climb the nearest hill. And after that, another. My strides are light and long in Eden’s lower gravity.

  At the top of the next hill, I look back. My pod’s beacon glows red, but there’s still no sign of the others. I stare down at the strangled valley, brightened by both moons, and realize it’s empty. The creek shuffles through the hills. A breeze clacks branches together like spears, but I don’t see any animals. No birds fluttering between branches or fish leaping out of creeks.

  Anxious, I press on to the next hill, and the next, and the next.

  Finally I reach an overlook that connects to the other valleys. They honeycomb darkly out, each of them beaconless. I have no idea where the rest of the crew might have landed, or if they landed at all.

  In the gloom, I look for a sign. A hole dug into a hillside or a tree snapped by a falling spacecraft. Anything. The landscape stares back, and a fear takes shape, nestling in the darkest corner of my mind: I’m alone.

  Then a flicker. Bright orange against the pale moonlight. Not a pod beacon, but a fire. It’s no more than a speck, but I strain my eyes, scared to lose the sight. It flickers again, a bright flash, and then someone brandishes the torch like a flag. The movement’s so human, so hopeful, that a ragged breath escapes my lungs.

  I’m not alone. The others are here.

  The way isn’t easy, but I cut across the face of the valley, trying not to lose sight of the fire. I’m forced down a pair of steep hills and into the forest. I splash my way through ankle-deep creeks and finally plunge through the low branches.

  They’re waiting. Four faces washed in flame.

  Morning stands apart. She’s holding a crude and crooked branch tipped with fire. I don’t know who she expected, but the sight of me dismisses some dark fear. There’s something fierce about the way she tosses the branch back onto the pile and crosses the distance. I can barely get my hands out as she wraps me in a hug, head pressed to my chest like it belongs there.

  Over her shoulder, though, I get my first good look at the others.

  They look like the survivors of an apocalypse, not explorers knocking on the door of a new world. Azima’s eyes are dark. She’
s wearing her ceremonial bracelet for the first time in months, and I understand why. Out here, anything that feels like home is a good thing. Jaime rests his head in her lap. I almost confuse it for something romantic until I see the wound. An angry red marks him from rib to gut. It’s already stitched up, but that doesn’t make it look any less nightmarish. His pale knuckles are painted with dried blood.

  My heart breaks. For him, for whoever they made him fight. The sight puts an end to my theory that Jaime was ever special or different. Babel’s broken him just like the rest of us. My mind jumps to Bilal. Is my friend alive or dead? Was he put in Jaime’s launch room? Anton sits nearby too. The little Russian’s eyes look completely lost. What did Babel do to us?

  Morning slides out of my grasp. She takes a deep and steadying breath, like for one second she was breathing me instead of air, before turning back to the others.

  “We should get moving,” she announces. “Our supply location is nearby.”

  “Moving?” Azima asks quietly. “Look at our boys. We need rest. We need sleep.”

  Morning considers that. “Does anyone feel like sleeping?”

  Anton looks up. “I can’t sleep. Not now.”

  Morning’s eyes flick to me. “Can you sleep? After what happened?”

  I realize she knows. She knows what Babel did, what they wanted us to do. If I close my eyes, I can still see Roathy on the other side of my barrier, begging to go down to Eden. It takes about two seconds to figure out how she might know.

  “You?” I ask, stunned. “They made you fight?”

  Her expression hardens. My question just confirms her guess. Now she knows what Babel tried to do to me, to them. “No,” she says. “I didn’t have to fight. It was in the captain’s instructions. The computer told me to monitor my team. It said that some of you experienced additional testing. After Anton landed … he told me what happened.”

  My laugh is harsh and short. “ ‘Additional testing.’ That’s what they called it?”

  Morning nods. “I’m sorry. None of you should’ve ever had to go through that.”

  There’s silence, a crackle of flame, deeper silence.

  I ask, “So we just keep moving?”

  Morning nods again. “The walk will tire us out. No point sitting here if we can’t sleep. Babel’s instructions say the supply center is by far the safest place to be. The other crews will be heading to the same center from their landing sites. I want to get us to a secure location as soon as possible. But let’s get things straight: all we have is each other. Babel’s up there plotting. The Adamites will have their own plans. Starting right now, we depend on each other. We fight for each other. Everyone got that?”

  There are nods all around, but no one gets to their feet. Jaime pinches his eyes shut in pain. His perfect hair is slicked back with water. Azima gently rubs his shoulder like that will help. Only Anton looks up, his expression slanted and dark in spite of the firelight.

  “We need to get all our shit out on the table now,” he says. “I don’t want grudges.”

  Wind slashes through the valley. Our circle grows cold with his words.

  “I killed Bilal,” he says.

  There’s only shame in his voice, but blood still pulses in my neck and through my arms and up my throat. I don’t remember moving, but Morning has me by one arm. Azima’s up too, holding me by the other. I’m dragging the two of them slowly forward.

  Anton stares back, eyes dead stone, face colorless.

  “I didn’t want to kill him. He was in the room. Waiting there. They didn’t even tell me. He did, though. He said they were going to let him go to Eden if he killed me. Babel wanted us to prove ourselves, one last time.” Tears streak down Anton’s face, pooling along the rim of his nyxian mask. “I wanted him to at least fight me. Just fight me. I shouted at him. I pushed him. He just sat there. Refused to do it. He stepped to the side and told me to go. I didn’t know what else to do. I … I went. The room vacuumed after ….”

  I sink to my knees. My whole body trembles. Azima loosens her grip, but Morning holds on, and thank God she does, because I almost collapse into the flames. I want to rage. I want to hate. But Anton? The broken boy who was forced to kill my friend? He’s a sword in the hands of Bilal’s true killers. He’s nothing. I remember Isadora’s final look. The hatred that burned its way from her pod to mine. I realize she must think that I killed Roathy.

  But I didn’t. And Anton didn’t really kill Bilal.

  It was Babel. It always comes back to Babel.

  “Roathy,” I say. “They tried to make me kill Roathy.”

  “Tried?” Morning asks.

  “I used nyxia to seal him in the room and launched.”

  Anton’s eyes snap up. “God help me. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  I don’t have any answers. All I can do is look away. Morning’s hand tightens on my shoulder. I hear Azima hiss a string of curses. Everyone looks at Jaime next. The bloody knuckles and the gut wound are their own answers to the question, but he still says the name.

  “Brett. I killed Brett.”

  I always thought something about Jaime was wrong, that he was Babel’s favorite for some reason. I started to realize that was a lie on Genesis 11. The photograph of his family, the way Jaime acted toward me. I couldn’t keep seeing him as wrong. Babel is just confirming that truth. He wasn’t spared. No one was. The Adamites think Babel is sending a group of innocent children. They couldn’t be more wrong.

  Anton stands. I want to hate him, but it feels useless. How can I honor Bilal through hate? The boy who refused to kill for what he wanted. The boy who was better than us, than all of this.

  “Remember him,” I whisper. “Be better than they want you to be. Don’t let them win.”

  He gives a nod as he wipes the dirt and the tears from his face. He glances over at Morning. “The other fight,” he says, like he’s realizing it for the first time. “Loche and Alex.”

  “Alex would have won,” Morning says.

  Anton shakes his head sadly. “You don’t know that.”

  There’s silence for a few seconds. Grief takes over Anton again. I remember how inseparable they were aboard the ship. I have no comfort to offer. Not with my best friend already confirmed dead. Anton lowers his eyes.

  “It won’t end there,” I say. “They’re going to try to kill us too.”

  “They still need us,” Morning replies. “But yeah, after we hit their mining quotas, I’m assuming they’ll try to get rid of us. We can use that knowledge against them. For now we keep up appearances, fathom? We mine nyxia, we earn our keep, and we always remember who Babel really is. On Genesis 12 my team had a saying: shoulder to shoulder.”

  “Shoulder to shoulder,” Anton repeats.

  “No gaps in the line,” Morning explains. “We stand together or not at all.”

  The group nods their approval. I can’t help asking, “You have a plan?”

  “A couple. Let’s get moving.”

  I walk over and offer a hand to Jaime. He looks at it for a second, then takes it. A bloody peace offering. A reminder that we’re not that different. Azima and I take turns helping him walk. If the wound was any deeper, he’d probably be dead right now.

  Morning leads us into wilderness. At first she walks up front. But a few minutes in, she falls back so that she’s walking with me. She wears her hair in a dark braid over one shoulder. I can tell her mind is racing: the creased forehead, the restless hands, the clenched jaw.

  She’s so tough, but the weight of all of this is threatening to bury her.

  We walk together, shoulders touching, like we’re walking home from school on a normal day. But that’s not reality. Reality is a new world. Reality is two moons hanging in the sky, bright and beckoning. Reality is what we’re leaving behind as we move through an empty forest and out into a world that feels full of ghosts.

  Chapter 2

  A New World

  Emmett Atwater

  As we walk, Morn
ing slips each of us a food ration and a new gadget from Babel. She wasn’t supposed to give them to us until we reached our first supply station, but she’s smart enough to see that we need them. Too much time alone with our thoughts could be a bad thing right now. It helps that the scouters are a choice piece of tech.

  Black nanoplastic suctions to the skin just above our nyxian language converters. The piece extends over a cheekbone and in front of one eye, ending in a tinted, transparent rectangle. I’ve only ever seen stuff like this in old anime shows. But there’s nothing old about the scouters. A thought from my brain cycles the screen through different settings: night vision, satellite maps, even a point-and-click database for identifying random objects in the environment around us.

  Our first taste of something alien comes from the surrounding forest. Azima points out that every tree has a slight lean to it. We realize it’s because every single leaf is reaching out, curling in the air, grasping for the nearest moon. “That happened to mi abuelita’s houseplant,” Morning says. “But with sunlight.”

  It gives the trees an imbalanced look, like they’re being blown off course by a permanent western wind. Our surroundings have been so quiet that the first snap of branches sounds like a gunshot. Morning signals for our formation to tighten as the distant sounds draw closer. Her eyes look dark and serious above her nyxian mask. A huge section of the forest on our right fills with shadowed movement.

  “Weapons out,” Morning commands. “Be ready for anything.”

  Manipulations fracture the air. I pull my nyxian knuckles on. It takes about thirty seconds for the shaking branches to close on our location. I’m expecting something straight Jurassic, but the movement’s coming from above.

  We catch glimpses of flocking, winged creatures. Their swinging limbs aren’t birdlike, though. They’re more like feathered monkeys, sharp-clawed and strangely limber.

  My scouter lands on one of them, and the word clipper pings into the corner of my vision. A thought will bring up a prepared description of them, but I’m a little busy staring as an entire pack swings overhead. Morning’s the first to snap into motion.