Archangel Down: Archangel Project. Book One Read Online Free

decision to add the extra nanos, and she’d been worried about it herself. Her mom said it was the “Luddeccean influence” affecting Noa’s reasoning. Her family was part of the fourth wave of settlers to Luddeccea, the “fourth families.” They weren’t part of the hard-core Luddeccean “first families” and “second families” that had migrated here to escape the coming Cyber Apocalypse and Alien Wars. It had been over four centuries since the first, primitive neural interfaces were designed and humans had begun exploring deep space. Neither of those conflicts had come to pass. Now, only the most fundamentalist Luddecceans didn’t receive the neural interface—interfaces might be forbidden by Luddeccean gospel, but then, so was birth control. Most Luddecceans practiced birth control, and neural interfaces were even more popular than that. Still, many of the Satos’ neighbors were against more drastic augmentation, like what had been done to Kenji. It would strip him of his “soul,” they argued.
    Noa had worried about that, and that it might hurt. But it didn’t. Her smile broadened.
    Kenji gasped. “You’re happy.”
    Noa’s eyes widened. He’d read her expression! “Yes.” She hadn’t sent that feeling to him through the net—his nanos were too new, and it would be a while before he was sending and receiving feelings or data.
    Kenji’s brow furrowed. “And you’re surprised … ” His eyes drifted down to her mouth. “And happy.”
    “Yes!” Noa cried, squeezing his hand. “Are you?”
    “Yes,” he whispered. And then he smiled. A little awkwardly, to be sure, but genuine. Kenji’s smiles were always genuine.
    “I feel … ” he murmured. His hand tightened around hers. “Not alone.”
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    T he wagon jerked to a stop , and Noa’s eyes bolted open. She heard shouts, and the roar of large engines, but not the distinctive whir of antigrav. She was at the destination; she’d fallen asleep and missed her proverbial stop.
    Outside of the wagon someone shouted, “Detach that dumb lizzar and get that loaded up onto the dumper! Let’s toss those corpses and bury them so we can get inside and get warm!”
    Noa’s heart stopped. So that was what they did with the dead. She heard the driver step down from the wagon, heard engines approaching, heard four loud squeals, and then the wagon was hoisted into the air. Noa lifted her blanket, crept over to the side, and peered down. She gulped. She was thirty feet above a deep pit in the dark, rich earth. She lifted her gaze. Beyond the pit was a field of low hillocks covered in snow. Her heart sank as she realized the hillocks were graves. “Focus on the positive, Noa,” she reminded herself, and then realized there weren’t many positives to focus on. “You’re out of the camp … and being a first officer was boring you half to death. Stupid blue-green algae reports.”
    “Did you hear that?” someone said. “I swear this place is infested with spirits.”
    Her eyes went wide. Damn it, she’d spoken aloud. But then someone else said, “You’re starting to hear things. These are augments, they don’t have souls to be trapped in the afterlife. Human up!”
    Noa’s mouth fell at that. Shaking her head, she focused on the terrain around the graves. Through the falling snow she made out low mountains and forest—the perfect hideout if she didn’t freeze to death.
    She heard engines to her right; she looked and saw enormous bulldozers. The platform the wagon was on started to incline and the frozen bodies started to slip. Scrambling forward, Noa grabbed the front edge of the wagon. She had to stay on top of the bodies or it would be all over. Clinging to the cold metal, part of her brain screamed that this was it, that the dirt from the bulldozers was going to be on top of her before she made it out of the pit. “Shut up, brain,” she whispered. This time no one heard. The whirring of the engines and screeching of the dumper drowned