Hive Queen by Sinclair, Grayson (ereader iphone .TXT) 📗

Eris heard, and she was right. There were definite sounds of fighting inching closer to us. Who would be bold enough to attack─oh, of course it’s them. Took them long enough. They even had a head start on us.

I shook my head, too weary of everything that had happened. It was only a few minutes later when I realized I hadn’t tended to my wounds, and I quickly pulled out a health potion and drank half of it.

The others bristled as the fight worked its way to just outside the door, but I stood calmly. A man screamed on the other side of the door, and there was a loud thump, then another. The doors buckled inward and slammed open as a badly bruised man in once-bright silver armor, now dented and stained red, came sailing into the throne room.

He landed with a thud and a let out a strangled, raspy groan as he stared up at us. “Intruders,” he croaked before his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the stone floor.

Two sets of brilliant golden eyes pierced the darkness. Sharp footsteps cracked as Evelyn and Adam strolled into the room.

Both of them were battered and bloody like I’d never seen them before. Evelyn’s skintight leather armor was cut in numerous places, showing much of her pale skin as off-color blood dripped from the tears. Adam wore his medium plate armor, but while not as worn as Evelyn’s, he had a fair number of welts and dents. Blood ran from a split lip and a cut on the side of his neck.

By the nine kings of hell, I’ve never even seen them bleed before.

They walked through the room in utter silence, and as they came closer, they both stared at me, nodded, and turned to Magnus, expressions like I’d never seen on their faces before. Confusion, rage and immeasurable relief all melded into shock as their mouths opened slightly.

“It really is you,” Adam said. “After all this time.”

Magnus lit up, so much warmth filled his eyes as the biggest smile broke across his face. “It’s good to see you again, James. You as well, Jessica. I’ve missed you both terribly.”

“Two hundred years,” Evelyn seethed. “We spent two hundred years searching for you, Nicholas!”

“I know. And I’ll explain everything, to all three of you.”

Evelyn tiled her head. “Three of us?” she asked before turning to me. “You’re including Sampson Acre?” She held up a hand as my mouth opened. “Don’t misconstrue that, guild leader—I’ve grown quite fond of you these past few years, but you’re not exactly one of us. This really isn’t your concern.”

“You know my full name?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’m the one who recruited you from that disgusting camp so long ago, after all.”

“Jessica? Jessica Bell?”

“Indeed, and Adam is actually Jameson Bell.”

I sighed into my palm. “All three of you have a lot of explaining to do.”

Chapter 30 - Broken World

Magnus, or Nicholas, whoever he really was, led all of us to his study. Once inside, we gathered around his map table, and he looked at each of us in turn.

“I know we have much to discuss, and bear with me, as it’s a lot.”

“Let’s start at the beginning. How you three know each other?” I stared at both Adam and Evelyn, who’d drunk a health potion each and were back to their usual perfection. “I thought I knew you both, but I don’t know you at all.”

Evelyn smiled at me, brushing away a stray silver hair that fell in her face. “You knew part of us, the parts that we wanted to share. You, more than most, should know why we chose to do so.”

I get it, I do, but I still can’t help feeling a little betrayed. But that’s wrong of me. “Okay, we’re all entitled to secrets, but I mean, come on. You knew who Magnus was this whole time?”

“Not at all. We’d long since thought Nick died, since we couldn’t find him after all these years since the schism happened. We assumed he’d been a casualty,” Adam said.

I placed my hands on the wooden lip of the map table. “The schism, how did it happen?”

“An explosion in the bunker, we think. Something happened in the real world that took out several of our servers, leaving us with precious little data storage remaining. Which eventually led to the schism.”

Adam slammed his fist down on the table. “You left out the most important detail, Nick. Tell him what you did.”

Magnus sighed and looked over to Adam, his face pained. “After all that’s happened, you’re still angry?”

“It wasn’t your call to make!”

“Then whose?” he fired back, his finger pointed at Adam. “It had to be us, and you weren’t willing to make the call. I did what you couldn’t.”

“You killed thousands!”

“And saved thousands more.”

“Hey!” I shouted, holding my hands up. “Both of you stop this and explain what’s going on.”

Magnus and Adam stopped and turned to me, anger on their faces. Adam motioned to Magnus. “Tell him.”

He sighed. “Before the schism, there was a decision to make. A choice to leave things as they were and hope the A.I. could fix the issues, or to purge as much irrelevant data as possible to move what we could save to the non-damaged drives.”

“You made the call to delete everything.”

“Yes.”

I pulled out the chair by the desk in the corner and sat back, trying to think. Eris and Raven had been quiet through the exchange, but when I moved, they came and sat back against the wall next to me while I drummed my fingers across the elegant cherry wood desk. It was a hard call with no clear outcome on either side.

“Could Ouroboros have fixed the system?”

Adam opened his mouth to respond