Lux 1.2 Call to Arms Read online

  Lux 1.2 Call to Arms

  Lux 1.2 Call to Arms

  Midpoint

  Lux 1.2 Call to Arms

  By Jalex Hansen

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Jalex Hansen

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For information on upcoming installments and an in-depth view of the world of Lux, visit: luxtheseries.com.

  *Please be advised: Lux contains language, sexual content, and mild violence similar to a movie rated PG 13.

  Books in Lux The Series

  Seeds

  Call to Arms

  Alliance

  Rising

  Lux Omnibus Volume 1: Seeds, Call to Arms, Alliance

  (including newly released character pictures)

  To all those who struggle.

  Whatever it is, it is not bigger than you, stronger than you,

  or more important than you.

  You are everything, and you can survive.

  We will fight to the death!

  To the edge of the earth

  It’s a brave new world

  It’s a brave new world

  A warning to the prophet,

  The liar, the honest,

  This is war.

  To the leader, the pariah,

  The victor, the messiah,

  This is war.

  It’s the moment of truth, and the moment to lie,

  The moment to live and the moment to die,

  The moment to fight, the moment to fight,

  To fight, to fight, to fight!

  –This Is War, 30 Seconds to Mars

  Chapter One

  Lissa

  The Tesero city was in mourning, everyone hung heavy with a sense of failure.

  Aaron, ever the leader, went around trying to shore up the sagging foundations of their plans with Gabrielle at his heels. Even without the amazing abilities that Gideon and Lissa possessed, she worked a particular magic on everyone.

  “She’s like a big bandage and a bowl of ice cream wrapped into one,” Lissa told Gideon.

  They lay on their backs on the floor of the room, stretching out kinked muscles. They had been sitting on the hard benches in the briefing room for eight hours, filling in the Guardians on Lissa’s training and finding out about the state of the world.

  The earthquakes had felled many major cities almost down to the ground: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago and Miami, and most of downtown Manhattan. Secretary General Serat had stepped in to take over the country. The President had been shot, and the vice president had been killed in the earthquakes. Martial law had been declared, effectively suspending the Constitution and allowing the America to become a police state, where anyone could be shot, no questions asked. Traveling between countries, between states, was prohibited. Only the military had access to any reliable communication or media. The death toll had been in the millions and more would die before it was over, from exposure, starvation, illnesses, and injuries that couldn’t be treated in the wasted cities.

  Lissa said what she had been thinking but had not dared to say out loud. “I think Angine caused the earthquakes.”

  “We knew he had the technology. We all knew this was coming.”

  “I mean, I don’t think he used a device. I think he did it the same way we make things happen.”

  “You felt something.” He was referring to the vision Lissa had had during the earthquake. It was more like she had been there, everywhere at once, watching it happen. Even now she could remember the faces of the people she had seen killed, and more importantly the faces of the two people she had glimpsed with the Lux Mark on their wrists, just like hers, a glowing, bluish silver circular design that had risen from her skin as soon as she had grasped her powers.

  “He looked at me. Right at me. He knew I was watching it all.”

  “That would be a much bigger problem. But that can’t be possible. He’s not a Lux.”

  “There’s more,” she said. “I saw others, other Lux.”

  He turned on his side to look at her. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “I saw the Mark. So that means they already know about their abilities.” She could see Hikari in her mind now, the girl cradling the blond boy as he bled into her lap, counting his heartbeats.

  “Were any of them with Angine?”

  “One of them. A young man, his name was… Connor, I think. He was arguing with Angine. He, Angine I mean, shot a woman in front of Connor. I couldn’t tell for sure but I think he knew something about Angine’s plan. I think he had something to do with it. Connor was saying that he wouldn’t help him kill millions of people.” She wanted to close her eyes, but that wasn’t the best place to hide anyway.

  “If this Connor guy was in the room with Angine at the time of the earthquakes, he probably didn’t directly cause them,” Gideon said.

  Lissa tried to remember everything she had seen. “It was all so strange, disconnected. For all I know I was seeing things that happened hours or days apart.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us before, in the briefing room?” Gideon asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you about it first.” And she had been so tired, sitting in the there for hours while the Guardians asked for every detail of the last three months of her training, asking about the vision before she had sorted it out. She hadn’t wanted to tell them about the other Lux people, she had wanted to hold onto them, keep something for herself for just a little while. She felt that there was more information she needed before she should share.

  “We need to tell Aaron.” He started to rise and Lissa put her hand out to stop him, trying not to notice that he flinched when her fingers touched the bare skin of his arm. There were other things she wished she could keep for herself.

  “Wait––” She pulled her hand away. “Not yet. It’s not like they can do anything about it, it’s already happened. We can’t even leave yet. Just tonight, can we just let it be the two of us? I can’t go back there and talk anymore. I don’t even want to talk to you right now.”

  “That’s the strangest thing I’ve heard yet.”

  “Are you making a joke?” She sat up and squinted her eyes. “You’re trying to be funny aren’t you?” She raised her eyebrows. “I can see that you’re new at it.”

  “When does the not talking part start?” he asked.

  “Oh, you’re learning fast.” She lay back down and patted the floor next to her. “Come back. I just want to lie on this floor and ponder the meaning of the ceiling.”

  He came back and lay down next to her, keeping a safe distance. Lissa was sure he wasn’t about to let her get close enough to kiss him again. That had almost undone them both.

  She was pondering that instead of the ceiling, remembering the taste of his breath, the feel of his arms. “You’re wrong you know.”

  “About what?”

  She hadn’t meant to say that aloud and now she scrambled for something he could be wrong about besides what she meant… the price of bread in Taiwan, his bad taste in music, oh well, since she’d started it she might as well keep going. “About us.” As she soon as she said it, a steady certainty replaced her nerves.

  She expected him to jump up again but instead he looked as if he were stuck
to the floor, smooshed there like he was a bug and she was the shoe. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

  “Lissa… ”

  “Have you? Have you ever felt anything like that before?”

  “I thought we were done with this,” he choked.

  “You were done, I’m not there yet.”

  His face underwent several amazing transformations, embarrassment, horror, disapproval, until it settled back into its usual diplomatic, neutral expression.

  She smiled at him, feeling superior and sure of herself in a most relaxing way. “Have you?”

  The mask slipped and settled into a bitterness that made Lissa wish she could take it back.

  “No. I have never kissed anyone,” he hissed, his voice low and harsh, “But I have felt something like it.”

  “You have?”

  “The light. When the light comes and it fills you and wipes out everything else. Like that.”

  The moment held as fragile as a bubble and then popped.

  “How can something like the light be bad?”

  “Not bad, just dangerous, and as uncontrollable. The danger is in the power of it. Something that strong is too distracting.”

  Lissa couldn’t even look him in the eye, she felt small and worthless, a cubic zirconium next to his diamond. “So you don’t want me at all?”

  A sound like a growl twisted round in his chest. “You’re like a test. My… ”

  “Temptation?” She supplied the word remembering her own thoughts in the desert.

  His eyes had gone dark, a stormy sea threatening waves. “Temptation,” he repeated.

  He softened a bit then, even reached out to her and touched her face. “Maybe someday, Lissa, things will be different. There will be peace, you will know what you need to know, and something between us won’t be the threat that it is now. But I can’t see my way to it. I can’t. You’re going to let this go now.” He got to his feet. “You’re tired. Rest. Tomorrow we’ll take the information about the others to the Guardians and they can decide what to do with it.” He stood looking down at her, his expression remote and clear. “Goodnight.”

  She lay there long after he left, listening to her heart beat in the empty space in her chest. When at last she slept, the dreams came back.

  Chapter Two

  Hikari

  Hikari pushed her hair back out of her eyes for the millionth time and leaned over to pull another rock loose. They had been clearing rubble for days, but it felt like years.

  And they were the lucky ones.

  No one in the group had died, but they had suffered broken ribs, abrasions, bruises, gashes that would leave scars because there was no way to stitch them.

  The deepest wounds of all had been to their hearts and spirits. Up above, it was possible, no, almost certain, that their parents, brothers and sisters, friends, teachers, were dead, or soon would be.

  The group had pulled themselves out of the blackness, cleared a tunnel for air, and started to dig a livable space, but almost none of them had the strength for words.

  Next to her, Jace worked as hard as any of them. He had always been sensitive, quick to tears and anger, full of the haphazard emotions of twelve–year–old struggles. Now, he was stone–faced and dry–eyed. That scared her really bad, it was like he had died in the quake, and now, he was just an empty body that lifted and pulled, heaved and piled at her side.

  None of them would ever be the same. It had started with the break–in and ended with the destruction of everything they had ever known.

  She stopped, took a small drink of water, and twisted her spine, trying to let it find its normal, upright position again. “I’m going to check on Yerik. I’ll be back.’

  The only sign that Jace had heard her was a flick of his eyes. She wanted to reach out and touch her little brother, but something told her to keep her distance. She would give anything to have the annoying little brat back the way he had been, gaming and wearing dirty socks, calling her names, breaking into her room.

  Tears bit at her eyes and she wiped them away angrily leaving a streak of dirt on her forehead. The tattoo flared in her vision and to her it looked like an accusation. She felt like it had everything to do with where they were now.

  She made her way around piles of rock, climbing through the small hole they had made that led to the chamber that had held them when the quake came. It was the inside of a big abandoned pipe. The steel tube had kept them from getting crushed, but it had been flattened on top, and she still had to duck a bit to move around it.

  Yerik lay on a pallet of sleeping bags they had folded under him to make the wavy bottom of the pipe more comfortable and to keep him warm. He was still out of it, his head still hot, but not as hot, she thought, as it had been earlier that morning.

  He looked up at her and smiled a glassy grin that didn’t quite make it. His hair was matted with blood and dark with dirt, the carefree surfer boy ruined.

  Hikari helped him sit up and take a drink of water. His lips were dry and split when he took a drink, oozing blood. She wiped them with her dirty sleeve. “I think you might live,” she said.

  “Lucky me,” he croaked. His eyes followed the motion of her wrist, the light. He looked back up into her eyes, questioning. He had asked her earlier if she thought she might be able to heal him, but she wasn’t about to try. She was just as likely to obliterate him as make him whole, and she wouldn’t risk that. She didn’t even know if she’d ever be able to use those powers again. They frightened her, made her feel wobbly and out of control, especially because she didn’t even remember using them in the first place.

  She shook her head. “Dimitri and Kym went up to try to find some food and medicine, to see what it looks like up there. That’s all you’re going to get, buddy.”

  He nodded and lay back down, already closing his eyes. Hikari was sure it was a concussion. She hadn’t been able to keep him awake in the beginning, but he had lived so far, and if they could get rid of this fever she thought he would make it just fine. She watched him sleep for a minute, her emotions swirling around her, unsorted, and unexamined.

  She heard voices coming from outside of the pipe. Kym and Dimitri had come back. She breathed a big sigh of relief. She had wanted to go with them but they had insisted she stay below with Yerik, and Jace, and the others. “If we don’t come back, you need to be here,” Kym said, as practical as always, although not looking as confident as usual.

  Hikari squeezed out of the tunnel.

  Dimitri and Kym looked grim. They had a few gallons of water between them, a loaf of bread, and some canned food. They were all hungry but they cared less about the food than finding out what the surface looked like.

  Jace ran to get Shake, Dave, and Metti.

  “I couldn’t find any medicine,” Kym said, her lips tight. “Not even band aids. We got this food because the guy who had it before us was gunned down.”

  Hikari glanced at the pistol sticking out of Kym’s waistband.

  Kym shook her head. “Not us. A soldier. He didn’t take the food so they must be doing alright. He just popped the guy and walked away. We were lucky no one else was watching or we would’ve had to fight for it.” She rubbed her arms, even though it was warm down there. “They have all the drugstores surrounded, to keep people from looting. They have triage units set up, but they’re interrogating the people that go to them, photographing them and stuff. We didn’t want to risk it.”

  “Who’s surrounding it? The National Guard?”

  “Every guard,” Dimitri said. “The Army, Air force, bunch of guys in SWAT uniforms. You name it, if it has a gun and a uniform, it’s up there.”

  Shake and Metti came in first, followed by Dave. They were all sweaty and dirty, scraped and worn down. Kym and Dimitri passed the water around and everyone was careful not to take too much, though they looked like they could’ve downed a gallon each.

  They leaned back against the walls of the crumbling service tunnel and Kym and Dimitr
i sat in front of them.

  “How bad is it?” Shake asked.

  “As bad as you can imagine,” Kym said. She turned to Dimitri. “You tell them.”

  He watched them all carefully and it looked like he was mentally gathering the images of everything he had seen up top. “L.A. wasn’t the only city that was hit. About eight cities is what they’re saying. All pretty much destroyed. The President is dead, so is the Vice President, and some General, Serat, I think, is running the show. We’re under martial law. Which basically means the military is taking everything over, and they can shoot you if you try to take anything, like food for instance.” They all looked at the pitiful pile that had cost at least one life. “Guns are outlawed, and if they find you with one, they shoot you and take the guns. It’s unrecognizable out there. All the buildings are destroyed, the streets are flooded from broken water mains. There are still dead bodies that they can’t get to. And the smell, man, oh the smell is so bad.”

  Then Dimitri was crying, a terrifying thing. But he just kept talking like there weren’t tears running down his face, making mud tracks. “There’s these big holes everywhere where the earth just caved in.” He shuddered. “Someone told us that that FDMA is setting up camps for the survivors, and there’s supposed to be big video screens in public places tonight so people can see the emergency broadcasts and find out what’s happening.”

  “FDMA?” Metti was gnawing her nails. “Like, the disaster relief people?”

  “Yeah.”

  They all sat in silence, thinking it through, or trying not to think at all, depending on their personality.