Ultio (Walking Shadows Book 4) Read online

  Ultio

  A Walking Shadows Novel

  Talis Jones

  Tri-Blood Publishing

  Contents

  The Walking Shadows Saga

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part II

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part III

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Part IV

  Epilogue

  Part V

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Talis Jones

  Thank you

  Ultio is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Talis Jones

  www.talisjonesofficial.com

  Cover copyright © 2021 Talis Jones

  Cover design by StaleJive Design Collective

  Map copyright © 2021 Talis Jones

  Map design by Talis Jones

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 9798594710535

  Tri-Blood Publishing

  www.tribloodpublishing.com

  Published in the United States of America.

  Ecclesiastes 1:9

  Proverbs 28:3

  The Walking Shadows Saga

  Alarum

  Solus

  Vicinus

  Ultio

  Initus

  Prologue

  Oh what do you do

  When weasels stage a coup

  But their reign makes life more peaceful?

  Or when neighbors disappear

  And honeyed lips whisper in your ear

  Words of assurance that are indisputably deceitful?

  Do you raise up your arms

  And clutch lucky charms

  Hoping they’ll listen to the people?

  Do you whisper your prayers

  Shrug away others’ cares

  Or gather under a golden steeple?

  Do you disregard your own life

  And fight their sanctioned scythe

  Burning a torch of bravery and sacrifice?

  Do you slither in the shadows

  Gathering secrets to expose

  And sneak up on them with an asking price?

  What do you do

  When the life you once knew

  Has been siphoned away in the night?

  What can you do

  When the thieves come through

  Armored in logic and might?

  I’ll tell you what

  It really matters not

  Because listen, here’s a clue.

  We all want to win

  We’re all willing to sin

  If you listen we humans will moo.

  Because we all want what’s best

  Even if it causes others unrest

  And really, there’s not much you can do.

  -ARES

  P.S. Remember remember

  The Fourth of July

  When freedoms were low

  But spirits were high

  Remember!

  Part One

  One. Two. String Up the Who.

  One

  Welcome to the Program, made of sweet dreams and the devil’s kiss. I cry out as a woman in a masked suit hoses my body clean until my skin screams raw, radiating heat and pain. Sterilization baths are a mandatory biweekly occurrence. You’d think after ten years it wouldn’t hurt so much, but no matter how familiar I become with pain, it still hurts. At least it doesn’t take long and soon enough I’m with the others in the cafeteria.

  We breathe recycled, filtered, carefully monitored air. We eat food designed in a lab. We never go outdoors, or see the sun, or remember what a breeze feels like brushing through our hair. We have no hair. Hair falls out too easily and is irrelevant to the experiment.

  Baa, baa, lost sheep, have you any wool? I sing in my head. I fear I’m becoming unhinged, or at least that’s what Maddy calls me. Unhinged. Unhinged is the gate, escape or face fate, the Program finds all, the Program will fall, I sing. None for the little boy who cries in the stall.

  I like to sing. Just for me, though. I like searching for words in my head and arranging them into a pleasing rhythm. I like to keep my songs secret, but sometimes the others know what I’m singing, which is odd because I never remember moving my lips. Can they hear me now?

  “Knock it off, 42,” Thomas (68) growls uncomfortably, calling me by my identification number tattooed upon my chin. Everyone uses identification numbers, but I prefer to collect names. Names are rare. It’s amazing how quickly one can forget their own name so I have to be swift.

  My mouth hangs open and my eyes become so large and round I can feel the skin around them stretching. “You can hear me?”

  “Unhinged, I’m telling you,” Maddy (143) shakes her head with a breathy laugh.

  “No, moron,” Thomas answers. “You were staring at me like a freaking weirdo. I told you to quit doing that to people.”

  At first relief coats my middle, glad he couldn’t hear my songs. Then disappointment ruins it. Thomas turns eighteen in two weeks and he hasn’t shown any positive progress with the experiment except for not dying. The gas doesn’t work on adults. It kills too often. And since they have limited resources they don’t even bother trying past the age of eighteen.

  My gaze is filled with pity. “You’re next, Thomas.”

  Fear and anger contort his face. “Shut up, freak.”

  I shrug and turn back to my plate of specially processed food. It looks like oatmeal but it’s rich in vitamins, proteins, fats, sugars, and carbs. Specially balanced to meet each individual’s needs. The others groan every day as it’s slopped into their bowl, but I think it tastes like Christmas – dissatisfaction and disappointment with a hint of relentless hope. Yum.

  Our matching cotton outfits wrinkle softly as we are escorted out of the cafeteria in one orderly tide of deep ocean blue. I reach out and grasp Maddy’s hand. She lets me. Maddy’s nice that way. I’m only older than her by a year but I’ve been in the Program almost thrice as long. I was brought in with the first wave of…volunteers. The rest have died, or disappeared, but not me. Although if I don’t show signs of progress in the next few months I’ll be meeting Thomas, Katy, Jamiel, Zack, Sasha, Ronny, Rachélle,…

  “42,” Maddy scolds me quietly, yanking my hand roughly. “You’re saying their names again.”

  I blink at her worried expression. She’s showing progress. “You’re going to live, Maddy.” I say it happily with a smile but it only darkens her fear.

  Dr. Ramsay close
s the door behind him when he enters the pristine white room. I remain prostrate on the table, my fingers playing gently with the crinkly paper barrier between my body and the cushioned table, a soft hum drifting from between my lips.

  “Hello Doctor,” I greet wistfully. We’re not supposed to know their names but I’ve been here for a very long time. I keep them all a secret though. I like secrets, but only if I’m the one collecting them.

  “You’ve reached your 15-year evaluation, 42. Congratulations.” His voice is warbly in an old man sort of way even though his hair is hardly gray. He smiles with pride. I smile back with hunger and he flinches.

  I think I’ll kill him first. Nice people who do bad things are worse than bad people who do bad things. Dr. Ramsay was the friendliest man you could imagine, it had made me feel safe when I’d first arrived in the Program, but then he hurt me.

  He flashes a light in my eyes, tests my reflexes with a little rubber mallet, listens to my lungs and heart, and then checks my blood pressure. The usual. “Well, everything looks good,” he affirms.

  Now here comes the real stuff.

  Pushing me back against the table he cinches heavy nylon straps around my wrists and ankles, imprisoning my body against the table.

  “Just breathe,” the doctor advises kindly. “No need to panic, yes?”

  I nod even though I know panic is the only thing my body will do. It’s pure animal instinct.

  He retreats from my side and presses a button, lowering thick glass walls around my table. Rubber seals suction the four pieces together sealing me in an airtight chamber. I watch his spidery fingers tap in a series of login codes into the computer (532914 – I know because I can see it in the vague reflection of the unused monitor pushed into the corner of his desk. He never changes it and I think that is a certain security flaw, but I never mention it).

  A sickly colored gas is pumped into the chamber from a vent above me. I watch as it drifts towards me for a moment before choosing to close my eyes and on the count of three, I take a powerful inhale. Immediately a fire fills my lungs and my body begins to convulse. It feels like a million needles scraping my lungs. My heart beats so fiercely I wonder if this time it will finally explode.

  All thoughts flee my mind as my body fights against the straps holding me down. I attempt the “mind over matter” meditations we are led through each morning and night, fighting to remain present, but tears drench my neck, sweat drips off the table, and with an ear-piercing octave rushing from my diaphragm I scream.

  This procedure has killed hundreds of kids. Many die within the first few trials. Some last for a few years, occasionally losing limbs or sanity along the way before succumbing to death’s gentle call. It is pure agony but I won’t die. I’m not done here. Not yet.

  Consciousness returns to me and I find myself curled up on my bed. It’s a thin mattress on a pathetic wire frame, but I came to the Program clutching my Teddy bear and against all protocol they’d let me keep it. After they’d sterilized it of course.

  Perhaps my mother allowed it. As an apology to me of sorts. A chuckle bubbles out of me like a hiccough. I trace the forget-me-nots embroidered over its heart. The pretty blue flowers remind me of her eyes. Tucking the bear under my chin I snuggle against its offered comfort and drift into my favorite dream.

  In it I escape this awful place and I leave it running red with blood. I like the color red. It’s so…emotional. You can’t ignore red.

  Words glide melodious from my quiet lips, singing me softly to sleep. “Read my riddle, I pray. What God never sees, what the king seldom sees, what we see every day. Baa, baa, lost sheep, answer my riddle, I pray. One for our master, one for the church, but none for the little ones caught in a search. Take a little and leave a little, and do not come again. For if you do, I will shoot you through, and there will be the end of you. Oh hear my riddle, I pray.”

  Two

  Thomas’ birthday approaches and I can see the terror in his eyes. It’s not hard to decipher despite the brutish front that he’s hiding behind. Silly Thomas, he doesn’t need to be afraid of death because his will be worth so much more than his life.

  I might be an unhinged freak but I am also smart. I know lots of secrets that I keep tucked in my brain and as the longest living test subject the others have a certain healthy fear and respect for me. They listen when I speak, even if they don’t like the words I am sharing.

  It came to me in a dream months ago, an escape plan. I decided I was ready to give it a try and I’d found enough desperate kids willing to try with me.

  Thomas, as the eldest, is unsurprisingly one of them.

  “Walk me through it again,” he orders.

  I roll my eyes. “Everything will be as it should be, Thomas,” I assure him carefully. Truthfully, I left out a few details, but I feel more comfortable holding secrets.

  “Please,” he says calmly. The sudden vulnerability in his tone unnerves me. It doesn’t belong on him.

  “Group A starts a fight in the cafeteria during dinner to attract the Martials. Once in there, Group B barricades the doors, trapping them inside.” I begin.

  “After Group A gets out,” Maddy clarifies.

  “Group B then heads to the security office and sends an alert to all staff members informing them of an emergency mandatory briefing in the conference room. Once there, Group B will barricade them inside and retreat. During this time Group C will take out the doctor running Thomas’ tests, spring him from his restraints, and destroy the ventilator system failsafe. Then everyone gets the hell out.”

  “It’s not going to work,” he frets.

  I shrug. “Maybe not. But I have several schedules, codes, and backup plans in my head and more importantly, your birthday is in three days. I’ve been planning this escape for a decade, Thomas.”

  His narrowed eyes challenge me. “So why haven’t you escaped yet?”

  “Because I was in no rush,” I smile with a sigh. “This place is more secure than a Kommander’s prison. I only have one chance and that chance is now.”

  “It’s going to work,” Maddy crows. She leans over and gives me a tight hug. “You’re freaking brilliant, 42. And you’re going to save us.”

  If this escape was all it took to placate them then my job was easy. What they’d do or where they’d go afterwards is on them. As for me, I have bigger plans. I saw it all in a glorious dream.

  “Happy birthday, Thomas.” I give him a tight smile as we pass each other down the hall. He is walking towards the testing chamber and I am heading towards the cafeteria.

  As I sit swallowing my dinner, I can feel the tension in the air. Everyone tries to act as if it were a normal day but even the Martials in the room have picked up on the air of unease. I let the clock tick only five minutes past six before staring down 223 (Ryland) and give him a slight nod.

  At once the frail-looking boy stands up, unfurling his excessively tall frame, and punches a one-armed boy beside him right in the nose. At once their whole table transforms into an uproar of chaos, moving to the table beside theirs and spreading like a wildfire until half the room is spilling blood, throwing food, and shouting curses. Martials flood inside and kids stream out of the way, fleeing down the halls.

  I slide slowly from my seat and exit the fray. When the stream of Martials trickles to a stop I swing the doors shut and turn the bolt locking them in place. Dashing over to the second entry I lock those doors too. Group A played a valuable part, but they are the weak ones and I doubt they would have survived long beyond these walls. Death had already begun calling their names. I’d separately planned five different table groups to claim the title of Group A, unknown to each other, effectively setting off a chain-reaction at the zero hour.

  Without a parting glance I hurry down the winding halls towards the security bay. The pounding of fists fading as I leave. The doors won’t hold for long on their own, the Martials have weapons after all.

  I hold the plan in the palm of my hand. A fun lit
tle game with me to blame. Group A to die, Group B to free, Group C only thinking they hold the key. I hum distractedly as my blue-clad feet dash across the polished floors.

  Slipping through the shadows I fire a gun I snatched from a rushing Martial’s belt at the three Martials who have remained behind in the bay. There are others surely on patrol but they don’t matter now.

  Taking a seat I type in Martial Prescott’s security code and release the lockdown doors for the cafeteria effectively sealing them inside unless they could shoot their way through steel.

  Quickly sending out a staff-wide alert to meet in the conference room I switch the screen to show me the security monitors. The cafeteria lock down had been successful. Switching camera feeds I watch as panicked researchers, technicians, doctors, all the way down to the custodial staff rush down halls rapidly filling the conference room. I can practically smell their fear and confusion. 3…2…1…the lockdown doors slide into place via my command sealing them all inside.