Twisted Metal Heart - Eve Langlais Page 0,36

clicked, she felt nauseous and a sheen of sweat covered her. She had no time to recover, but she could cause delay and confusion.

She set another fire. She ignited one at each level on her way down, joining the milling Madres who emerged from their rooms, their mild panic keeping them from noticing the stranger in their midst.

When they spilled out onto the main floor, Riella kept going, ignoring the clamor of alarms as she entered the basement and the utility area that hummed with the machines that kept this building in the dome running. The warren of crawl spaces for pipes and conduits wide enough for a person to move unseen and cause havoc. She literally shoved a pipe into the one generating power. The building went dark. But that wasn’t enough. She needed pure chaos.

By the time the fourth explosion went off, the dome was in full revolt. Soldiers were running around, Madres were crying, the doctors and nurses were in the streets exclaiming.

It proved easy to slip into a room and change appearance. The soldier’s suit she borrowed hid her from sight, and the glitch in the communication system between the soldiers, courtesy of a bit of a metal meltdown, further muddled things. In the chaos, no one realized one of the small terrain vehicles went missing.

By the time Earl Arianna realized Riella couldn’t be found among the Madres, she was long gone. With luck, Mother would behead the Earl for this.

Nine

Back in Haven a month and Titan still didn’t feel any better about his bionic limbs, himself, nothing. A restlessness rustled his spirit even as nothing seemed to touch him. He felt detached from everything.

But it wasn’t Haven’s fault. It hadn’t changed. It still played home to the same group of people, going about their day-to-day existence, talking to him, including him, and yet he felt an utter disconnect from them. As if he weren’t really here. His mind kept straying elsewhere, thinking things he shouldn’t. Dealing with guilt, not just about Alfred left behind in the tank but, oddly enough, about Riella. He hated her. And yet he couldn’t help mulling over the events of the attack. The way the queen treated her. How she talked to her.

It sounded as if the mother hated the daughter. Which then led to him wondering what had happened to Riella. Was she the prodigal daughter brought home? Or, as Alfred had intimated, did she currently suffer?

He had no way of knowing. To go anywhere near the city and start asking questions was akin to a death sentence. The outer domes might be easier to raid, but the inner circle, where the Enclave seat of power rested, had the might to smite anyone who poked into their business.

Unless he could find a tunnel underground that led inside… Once he started thinking of it, he couldn’t stop. Perhaps he should give Riella a chance to explain herself. If he didn’t like the answers, he could kill her.

Kill a woman he’d fucked.

That seemed cold. A little too cold for him. The best scenario was to not go after her. He owed her nothing.

But not acting didn’t mean he could stick around. He would go insane if he couldn’t get out of here.

His friends noticed something off about his behavior, and Zara broached it first. She did it under the guise of asking him to visit her cubby so she could peek at his bionics once more. He didn’t really mind. This was crafting of a type they’d never imagined. If machinery could be an art form, then, according to Zara, his arm and leg were masterpieces. Secure too. He’d long since ditched the harnesses, and while the seam of metal and flesh had some uneven edges, over time, he imagined it would become smooth.

Listing to Zara mumble when she studied him proved to be one of the few things he still enjoyed.

“It seems so impossible.” She poked at him, the lens over her eyes magnifying parts. “How did she get the metal to connect to your nervous system so seamlessly? And it works so well.”

“It does now.” It took practice to pretend the metal wasn’t there.

“But by all logic, it shouldn’t,” she mused.

He leaned back on his elbows, metal and bio, and glanced down at Zara’s tight rows of braids, nothing like Riella’s red crown.

“I told you, she used magic.” The princess could give it all the fancy names she liked. Her ability was on a whole new level that couldn’t