Page 18 of The Inheritance (Breach Wars #1)

He looked at me, and his eyes seemed feverish. “I felt relief.”

“What?”

“I felt relief. A burden lifted.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do. Adaline, why would I lie about this now?”

I stared at him, stunned. What do I do with this? How do I fix it?

“The world is ending. This right here…” He held his hands out and circled the street. “This is done. It’s over. It’s over for all of us.”

“I think you’re still in shock.”

“Maybe. But I see things very clearly now. We are living on borrowed time. There will be more of these holes. They’re not just going to give up. We can’t beat them. I don’t know how much time we have left. Six months, a year, a week. Nobody knows.”

I’d gone strangely numb. A part of me knew he was talking and making words, but none of the sounds made any sense.

“I’m going to live whatever time I have left on my own terms. Doing what I want.”

He fell silent and looked at me. This was the part where I had to say something.

My voice came out wooden. I was so calm, and I had no idea why. “And what is it you want, Roger?”

“Not this.”

“Ah.”

“Not anymore.”

“Is there room for me and the kids in this new life on your terms?”

“No.”

The word lashed me.

“We’ve been together ten years. If you don’t want to be married, that’s fine, but you don’t get to just quit being a father. The kids have known you their entire lives. They won’t understand, Roger. They need you. I need you.”

“It’s not about you or them. This is about me. I need something else.”

“Tia loves you. Noah adores you. That little boy can’t wait for you to come home. Every day he does a little dance when he sees your car in the driveway. You know what Tia told me while we were waiting for you? She said, ‘Don’t worry Mom, Dad will kill all the monsters.’”

Roger shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t kill any monsters. I didn’t save anyone. I just froze. And I’m not going to spend the rest of my life feeling like a coward.”

“So, you’re just going to abandon us? To whatever happens?”

A hint of something cold and vicious twisted his face. “I have a right to be happy. For however long I have left. I’m going to grab my happiness and hold on to it while I still can. This is done. We are done.”

“What am I supposed to tell the kids?”

“Whatever you want.”

He got up and went inside.

“And now you know how my marriage ended, Bear. I’ve had a decade to think about it.

I understand it better now. I was able to drive away from the slaughter.

I escaped. He couldn’t. He just sat in that car stuck and waiting to die, and it must’ve occurred to him that he was doing that exact same thing in his life.

He must’ve realized something about himself that neither he nor I knew until that moment. ”

I stroked Bear’s fur.

“He’s down in Puerto Rico. He owns a boat and takes tourists out to the reefs to snorkel with manta rays.

He is exactly where he wants to be. And until today, I was where I wanted to be.

I manifested as a Talent three years after that first gate break.

Yes, I got this job for benefits and pay, because I have bills and kids, but there are other ways to earn money.

I do it because every time I find adamantite or aetherium, it makes us a little stronger.

It gives us a better fighting chance to repel this invasion, and I will keep finding this shit until all the breaches are broken and all the gates are closed, so my children can have a safe, boring future. ”

I realized that I was snarling and took a deep breath.

“I don’t blame Roger for the divorce. I blame him for being a shit father. I’ve tried, Bear. I’ve sent emails, I texted, I offered phone calls. He didn’t respond. The only communication from him was through the child support payments. That’s how I knew he was still alive.”

Another shudder twisted me.

“He works as little as possible, so he makes just enough to survive and maintain the boat. At first he was sending two hundred dollars a month, then a hundred, then he stopped. I kept offering to send the kids to visit him or inviting him to visit us, and he cut that off. He said he didn’t want to see them.

I finally had enough and had my lawyer email him an affidavit to relinquish his parental rights.

I thought it would shock him into having a relationship with our kids.

It came back as a scan in twenty-four hours, attached to a blank email, signed, notarized and witnessed by two people.

He wanted to get rid of Tia and Noah that much. ”

I gritted my teeth.

“I didn’t tell the kids, but I have the Death Folder with insurance, and the will, and all that crap.

It’s backed up on my laptop. The children know about it, and that affidavit is in there, with his fucking signature on it.

Once my death is announced, they will learn that their father doesn’t want them.

My children will think they don’t have anyone left in this world.

People break promises all the time. Roger promised to love me.

Melissa promised to be my friend. London promised to protect me.

“Promises must be kept, Bear. Especially to children. I promised Tia I wouldn’t die in this hellhole and I meant it. We are going to survive. We will get out of here if I have to crawl on my hands and knees all the way to that damn gate.”

* * *

Drishya Chandran blinked her big brown eyes. On paper, she was twenty-one. To Elias, she looked about fifteen at most.

It’s not that the kids are getting younger; it’s that I’m getting older.

“I’m sorry,” Drishya said. “I honestly didn’t see anything.”

They had settled Tia and Noah into one of the HQ apartments.

The guild headquarters took up an entire office tower in Schaumburg.

Twelve floors of offices, meeting rooms, apartments, R&D labs, sitting in the middle of a twenty-five-acre greenbelt space.

The building had a clinic with an emergency room, two restaurants, a gate diver-rated gym, a movie theater, an arcade, a park, and a roof garden.

It was a village onto itself, and he’d assigned Haze to look over the children.

All of their needs would be met, and Haze would unobtrusively chaperon them if they chose to wander.

Elias had called ahead, and when the kids arrived, their apartment featured a brand-new cat tree and a robotic litter box.

Mellow hated both, hissed at him again, and hid under the bed instead.

He wasn’t very fond of cats, and the feeling was clearly mutual.

After the kids were settled, Leo and he turned around and went to Elmwood, where he’d commandeered the Elmwood Public Library as their makeshift office.

Guild policy dictated that in case of a fatal event wiping out the assault crew, the gate had to be secured at all times, and he intended to sit on it until they accumulated enough divers to go in.

Through the glass window of the conference room Elias could see the gate looming like a dark hungry mouth, bathed in the glow of the floodlights. No matter how many lives they threw into it, it would never be enough. It was past one in the morning, and he was out of coffee.

“Walk me through it one more time,” he said.

“The drill head jammed,” Drishya said. “I showed it to Melissa. She said to go get the new one from the cart in the tunnel. I went to get it. The next thing I know Wagner is running out of the tunnel, and Melissa is behind him, and her face doesn’t look right.

I’m like okay, I guess we are doing that now, so I turned around and ran to the gate.

I heard an explosion behind us, so I didn’t look back.

I didn’t even know London made it until I was out. ”

“Were you the first to the gate?”

“Yes. I was scared.”

“Who came out after you?”

“Wagner.”

Middle-aged Wagner with arthritic knees somehow overtook both Melissa and London, who sprinted faster than most Olympic athletes.

If Melissa and London wanted to get their story straight without being overheard, the only time to do so would be just inside the breach, after Drishya and Wagner exited.

“Why was the cart with the spare parts in the tunnel and not at the site?” Elias asked.

“It didn’t fit. The site sloped to the stream and there wasn’t a lot of flat ground, so we could only get three of the four carts in.

” Drishya counted off on her fingers. “Cart One had the generator, lights, and first aid, so it had to come in. Carts Two and Three were for the ore. Adamantite is heavy, so we didn’t want to carry it too far.

Cart Four with the spare parts had to live outside. ”

“So there was adamantite at the site?” He’d read Leo’s notes of Melissa’s interview, but it seemed almost unbelievable that so much adamantite could exist in one place.

“Oh yes. That’s how my drill broke. Chipped off a chunk this big.” Drishya held her hands out as if lifting an invisible basketball.

“Was the adamantite in plain view?”

The miner shook her head. “No. Buried, and half of it underwater. It took the DebrA about ten minutes to find it. She had to mark it with paint for us.”

Was this why they were attacked? Was something protecting the ore?

Drishya sighed. “It’s awful, isn’t it? Everyone is dead.”

“It is, and they are,” Elias confirmed.

“I knew we would get a big bonus when we found the gold, and then the DebrA came up with adamantite. I was so excited. I thought I could finally put a deposit on the house. My mom isn’t doing so well. I’ve got to get us out of the apartment, and I’m the only one working.”

Gold? What gold? “I’m sorry your mother is in bad health, and that you had to go through this trauma. You may want to see Dr. Choi. He has a room set up downstairs.”

“I’m okay. I didn’t see any of it,” Drishya said. “I’ve only been working for six months. I didn’t even know people that well…”