Wiped by Nicola Claire Read Free Book Online Page A

wave of Wánměi’s military. And then the darkness of Lunnon’s Underground swallowed us up completely.

Seven

This Was Lena
Trent
    T hey were going underground . My breath all but left me. There’d be no room to manoeuvre down there, if any room was left at all. From the state of the road aboveground, I could only assume that some of the damage reached deeper than street level.
    But I understood what they were doing. I understood, and under normal circumstances would have applauded it, but that didn’t mean that right then I had to like it.
    “Makes sense,” Alan said quietly at my side. “We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the Lunnoners aboveground. Where else could they be?”
    “Hmmm,” I said, evasively.
    “But what the fuck is she planning once she’s down there?”
    Good question. And if I knew Lena, it was the only one that mattered.
    She’d made a mistake. Lena was nothing if not honest with herself. She’d recognise the ambush had gone south and she’d want to step up to the plate and correct things. But going down blind into a dark hole under the streets of a forgotten city was not the way to achieve it.
    And Cardinal Fucking Beck was encouraging her. The idiot.
    I sat on my haunches and watched the Cardinal team move out. Fluid. Silent. Stealthily. I had to hand to him, he’d trained them well. And there was Lena. In the thick of it. As much a part of their team as the man who led them.
    In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, Beck took his lead from Lena.
    Tan had a hand in this. I’d laugh, if I wasn’t so monumentally fucked off.
    Lee Fucking Tan interfering from across the sea.
    Figures.
    But what was his endgame? What did he think Lena was doing?
    I thought about it, as we followed them down into the darkness. As we navigated fallen masonry and dust filled hallways. As the signs of a lost city became clearer, untainted by wind or rain or sunlight. It reminded me of a mausoleum. Preserved and protected from outside elements.
    Farther away from the entrance to the Underground the damage was more contained. Occasionally the roof had collapsed, but the deeper we went, the more intact it all seemed. The logic was sound; if anyone lived, survived , in Lunnon, then they’d do it underground. But the air was stale, putrid even. The heat was excruciating, reminding me of Wánměi in the middle of summer. And the facilities were practically nonexistent.
    Who lives like this? Who would have to?
    And why would they?
    There was something about these Lunnoners that made me nervous, and it had nothing to do with their homemade laser guns. It was the way they behaved. Aggressively but resolutely. As though they didn’t have a choice. As though more than just their lives depended on it.
    I couldn’t put my finger on it. Every time I thought about the way they’d almost sacrificed themselves in that ambush, determined to give us nothing but their bodies, I’d come up blank.
    Who fights like that? Not even drones. Everyone has a self-preservation switch. Mechanical. Human. It doesn’t matter. Suicide by gunfire was not something I could relate to.
    But I wondered if Lena did. If she knew something, or suspected it. I wondered if what compelled Lena to find these people had something to do with their behaviour. Perhaps more to do with that than the fact she’d kept a dangerous secret from me.
    I sighed as we dodged more debris, quietly stalking our prey through the shattered remains of a once bustling railway. In truth, I’d reconciled why Lena had done it. I’d seen her logic, even if I disagreed. Calvin was right. I’d been as bad as her father.
    Trying desperately to protect her from a threat that seemed real.
    Cal loved her. He was just attempting to make up for it in record speed.
    I’d exacerbated the situation, by insisting Lena keep close, keep safe, keep contained. No one should contain Lena. I should have known better. I did know better. But where Lena was concerned, sometimes I lost the