In Heaven and Earth by Amy Rae Durreson Page B

ground level.”
    “ Thank you,”
Reuben said and stood up to peel his outer suit off. “Keep
monitoring. We’ll need instant extraction if we lose air
again.”
    “ Understood.”
    The grenade launcher was
heavier now, and he couldn’t carry quite so much ammunition.
Nonetheless, it felt good to breathe in deeply and rub some of the
gathered sweat out of his hair. The air was hot, and he was glad of
the inner suit, which would still offer some protection from the
sun.
    “ Where next?”
he said.
    “ I’m still
having trouble maintaining a complete camera network,” Vairya said,
“but I’m watching the spread of the diamond across the city. There
are outlying spars in the Chahar Bagh district, ninety-five degrees
clockwise and three kilometres from your position.”
    “ On our way,”
Meili said and led them out of the courtyard.
    After a moment, Vairya
started, his voice whisper soft, “‘Of Man’s First Disobedience, and
the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree…’”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Nine
     
    THEY found the next few
trolls before they’d even reached the area Vairya had identified,
and from then on they were running and fighting without break,
taking turns to fire while the other loaded more ammunition
frantically. The trolls were fast, and there were more and more of
them with every strike.
    “ Vairya, tell
me they’re not hydras,” Reuben gasped as he ducked behind a
decorative tower on the edge of a small park. The smoke was still
clearing from their last hit, and he couldn’t see if there were
more coming, or where the edge of the diamond was now. “Tell me
they don’t multiply when we cut one down.”
    “ They don’t,”
Vairya said. “They have to copy an existing body.”
    “ The streets
are full of the dead!” Meili gasped, from the other side of the
tower. “Cooper, guard the door. We need to see.”
    “ Go,” Reuben
said, and she dashed up the tower, her feet clattering on the metal
stairs.
    He heard her gasp, and
then she said urgently, “Vairya! We’re cut off. Diamonds on every
side. Get us out!”
    “ I can’t see
you,” Vairya said frantically. “There’s too much smoke, and the net
just cut out in that district.”
    “ Get one of
Eskil’s drones down here,” Reuben said, peering through the smoke.
He’d thought he’d seen a flash of light out there, the now too
familiar shimmer of rainbows.
    “ Cooper,” Meili
said, her voice suddenly thin. “Get up here. You’re about to lose
the ground beneath your feet.”
    He leapt for the stairs
as the light flashed again, and he saw what she had seen. The dead
grass was turning pale and brittle, as if a tide of ice was
sweeping over it. “Vairya!”
    “ I’m
trying!”
    He went up the stairs
three steps at a time, aware of the glitter of the floor changing
below him. Meili was there to grab his arm and drag him out onto
the roof, and then they both bent to wrestle with the fastenings of
the stairs.
    The last bolt came loose
as lines of diamond came streaking up the banisters, and the stairs
went crashing away.
    “ It’s coming up
the walls!” Meili cried.
    “ Get in the
middle of the floor,” Reuben said, dragging her away from the
parapet. For a moment he regretted the full gravity, which stopped
them from simply leaping off the edge to propel themselves away
from the untouched roofs of the neighbouring buildings.
    Then, with a buzz, a
drone cut through the smoke, its faceted eye blinking
red.
    “ I see you,”
Vairya said, and the world went milky around them.
    They rematerialised on a
low hilltop, further out of the centre of the city. Dead trees
stood in a ring around the lower slopes, but Reuben could see right
across the hollow of the station from here. Smoke blurred the air
near the centre, but behind it, as far as the eye could see, there
was only the gleaming, dead expanse of the transformed
land.
    “ We’re losing,”
he said.
    “ We’re only
playing for time,” Meili reminded