Shifting Fates by Nadia Simonenko, Aubrey Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

know we’re somewhere down here.
    Why else would they have sent out a military patrol last night, on Christmas Eve?
    I run lightly through the empty streets. The sky is turning gray with the incipient dawn, but it’s still cold when I get to the edge of the river boardwalk. My breath comes out in white puffs. I look around but there are no patrols, and it’s too dark for humans to be coming out of their homes. After all, there are monsters prowling in the dark.
    I wait, watching across the East River, and then the sun rises.
    The sun breaks over the Macombs Dam Bridge. Or what used to be the bridge. The military blew up the middle of all of the bridges so nobody would escape from the city.
    The whitewashed steel bracings of Macombs used to arch majestically across the entire river. Now the middle of the bridge is gone and the cables dangle crooked and useless. The steel is charred and twisted. The sun comes up through the middle of the gap, silhouetting the snapped steel tendons of the bridge.
    The water flickers with light. The East River is cleaner now that everybody is dead in New York, and nobody to spill oil or gasoline into it. Ripples turn red and orange and white with the rays of the sun. The edges of the river are crusted with black ice. The ice reflects the red light of the sun, and for a second it seems to be a river of blood, but then the sun heaves up over the bridge and the red is gone and there’s only white, white light reflecting off of every bright and gleaming surface.
    Ducks paddle around under me, hoping for bread even though nobody has fed them for years.
    I close my eyes and feel the warmth spread over my skin. The rays lick my nose, my ears, my neck. I pull off my jacket to feel the sun on my arms. It’s cold, very cold this morning, and there’s frost on the ground, but I don’t care. I open my arms and let myself breathe the warmth in and out with my whole being, ignoring the goosebumps on my skin. Looking again up the river to the bridge, I smile in the silence.
    My present to myself is this: a Christmas morning sunrise.
    The siren breaks the morning air, wailing over the river. The ducks startle away, paddling out to mid-river. I snap my head around to see if there’s a patrol nearby. None that I can see. The siren rises to a high pitch, and my heart beats fast as I realize that it’s coming from farther west. They’re doing another raid. And from the sound of it, the sector they’re gunning for is the one right over our den.
    I run.

Chapter Six
    Cage
    “Attention!”
    I snap to attention at the head of my platoon and salute as the Major arrives at exactly 0800 hours. It’s Christmas morning and even though the troops are all supposed to be on leave today, he’s ordered us to report for duty. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last four years, it’s that you do what the Major tells you to do, period .
    Major Harkut is a good twenty years too old to still be in his current rank, but even the first time I met him, something about the way his eye right eye twitched as he looked me up and down told me everything I needed to know.
    He’s still a Major at his age because he’s insane .
    Not strait-jacket, padded-room insane, mind you… a different, more dangerous type. He’s the type of insane who would knowingly send a company on a death mission if it’d advance his cause even the slightest bit, casualties and morals be damned.
    In other words, he’s exactly the sort of crazy person the Lazaretto Containment needs right now.
    “Captain Jones, at ease,” he barks. I relax my posture and approach him as my platoon watches on, my breath shallow in my chest. He’s my commander and I’d obey his orders to the end of the world, but I’d be a liar if I said he didn’t creep me out a little.
    “Jones… were you briefed on today’s operation?” he asks, lowering his voice as he looks up at me. I’m a big guy—6’2” and 230 pounds—but something about Major