Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

usually stoic protector yield under his hand. Such were the way of things when you were heralded as the Messiah who would save civilisation.
    Marek’s eyes were ablaze, but he stayed put.
    Alexander was reminded of Lucian, and a pang of anguish ran through him. In the firefight he had almost forgotten about his own brother. He was out there in the wilds somewhere. They had raced in aid of New Canterbury only a day ago and had spent a mere hour with boots on the ground at the suspected site of the enemy stronghold. It had been a false alarm; no shots had been fired. Yet still the silver-haired Lucian McKay had disappeared. They had searched for hours amidst the massacred corpses of countless slaves and innocents, but he hadn’t been among them.
    Alex wished he were here now.
    Gunfire still smacked with jarring jolts against the other side of the pillar, but its rate was ebbing. He tore his rifle from around his shoulder and swung around onto his toes, signalling for the others to do the same. Ignoring the aches and pains in his tired old body, he listened with practised patience until the lull reached its zenith, and then cried, “Now!”
    They leapt from cover and fired a return volley as one, peppering the weathered glass of the enemy position until it was fine spray, leaving a gaping hole all along one floor of the skyscraper. Perhaps once, such destruction would have seemed a scar upon the face of perfection, when the world’s economy had been managed from these very buildings, but not now—not among the mosses, the creepers, the fallen ceilings and walls, and all other the signs of Father Time’s work.
    They kept shooting until Alexander was certain the streets were empty, that whoever had survived from Oppenheimer’s party had taken shelter, and then waved to cease fire. They waited in ringing silence as plaster dust rained down on their shoulders and the tinkling of broken windows settled in the distance. Alexander’s legs were screaming from the effort of holding his crouched position—
    Christ, I’m old , he thought.
    But so long as the others were behind him, he would never show weakness, not if it killed him.
    “What’s the situation down there?” came the voice of a guard up on the compound walls. “How many injured?”
    Alex glanced around at the taut, determined faces beside him, and all the smoking barrels of as many rifles. “None!”
    “Mobile?”
    “All.”
    “Can you make it to the gate?”
    Alex darted his head to peer at the stretch of shattered glass on the distant skyscraper. Only blackness met his gaze, the enemy nowhere in sight, for now. They might start firing again the moment they stepped into the light. But so many counted on his strength, and they were so close to safety. They couldn’t afford to be beaten into submission. He trusted every man and woman in his party with his life, but even now he felt pressure on the back of his neck. All the long years he had trained his inner circle to lead others, to be his emissaries—his very flesh incarnate—and still now they were looking to him for strength.
    Some things never changed.
    “We’ll make it!”
    “Good. We’ll cover you.”
    Alex leaned back and swept his gaze over the others. Determined, twinkling pairs of eyes bobbed in the gloom, all trained upon him, all ready to give their lives for the mission; the mission to preserve the world’s knowledge, art, and science for future generations, and prevent the backward slide to barbarism that had already consumed so much of the world.
    They would follow him to the end. That was the story of his life. How many had followed him to their own ends while he had lived on? How many lives had been saved by his hand, against all those cut short by the storm that had raged around him all these years?
    “Are you ready?” he breathed.
    They all nodded without hesitation, and as always, his heart skipped a beat at the recollection of all that had nodded just as solemnly before all the