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They swayed to the music. His lips brushed her jaw, drifting toward her ear. Val laced her fingers into his hair and thought that even if the world did go to hell, she could survive it as long as she could have this.

5 23
2020-07-29

They stared at each other. Val wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. There was nothing to forgive. No anger or hatred lay between them. Just time. But right now time seemed like the worst enemy of all.

5 34
2020-07-28

They stole an hour to separate from their unit and found an abandoned men’s shop. Dress clothes lay scattered on the floor, dusty with broken drywall and much of it charred. They tread on the debris of someone’s life. Glass. Paper. Wood.

2 16
2020-07-21

“Do you have any weapons?” said the pilot, his voice trembling. The bastard was terrified. He turned to the gunner. “If she moves at all, shoot the kid.”

1 7
2020-07-21

She put her head on his chest so that she could feel his heartbeat with her face. Feel the life there. The warmth of his flesh.

Nothing’s really ours in the end, she thought. That’s the key to everything. And it’s the hardest thing to accept.

4 22
2020-07-18

“Show me your face, you bastard,” Val said, leaning her head through the doorway and into the night. She could see the UAD-9’s spotlights shining on the asphalt. It was coming.



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3 10
2020-07-18

“They might use EMP rockets,” he said. “Those make a low-power pulse, but it’s enough to shut this thing down. They could also use conventional weapons and blow us out of the sky. They want the boy, but they won’t risk letting us get away.”

1 11
2020-07-17

Y’all, every time I read the news, I feel an urgent need to tell everybody who will listen that I wrote The Way Out back in 2018. If you read it when it comes out in September (and I *really* hope that you do!), you’ll understand why...

2 3
2020-07-16

The Dragonfly was a standard troop and supply carrier. Four hoverbikes were secured to yokes in the middle of the cargo space. Weapons hung on one wall. Rifles. Pistols. EMP guns.

This will do, Val thought.

3 10
2020-07-14

The general gave Bowen a self-satisfied expression. The old bastard was enjoying himself.

“Nothing?” said Tolbert. “I figured you’d have some kind of... reaction.”

“You want Theresa euthanized,” said Bowen.

Tolbert nodded.

“Dead.”

4 25
2020-06-25

“We can’t just hide,” she said. “We’re going to have to run. We’re going to have to fight. Sometimes I might have to kill. Because the people who are coming after us now want to take you away from me. Do you understand?”

7 27
2020-06-18

Val had become a Marine pilot because of her grandfather.

“I flew cause I loved it,” he’d told her once. “Cause I wanted to look down and see the world like an old patchwork quilt. But I fought cause that’s what I had to do. I had to serve.”

8 43
2020-05-20

Their job was ground assault and street warfare, but Val’s unit had picked up a nickname for their ability to take down enemy aircraft. The Hellhounds. Val had been happy to share the name with the others, but she was the one who had earned it.

5 17
2020-04-19

Though her eyes burned, Jessica couldn’t drift off. Her mind wouldn’t stop spinning with fragmented images. Antonio floating in his artificial uterus. Mel, the proud mother, smiling at him through the glass bubble that mimicked her womb.

1 10
2020-03-15

“I do love you,” he said. “But when I get home, I’m going to try to work things out with my wife.”

Wife.

The word felt like a sliver of ice sliding down her throat––the kind that gets caught in your gullet and cuts like a knife until it melts.

0 23
2020-03-11

They had left the windows open, and the idea that someone might hear them that night had made their lovemaking all the more delicious. How young she had been then, even after the experience of war in the Middle East.

1 12
2020-03-10

Lifting his glass to his lips, his hand shook. Not much, just slightly. Just enough to remind him that his body was beginning to break down.

3 13
2020-03-02

Val put a bullet into the gunner’s knee, sending a splash of blood flying. Firing another burst of rounds toward the woods, he screamed and collapsed into the water.

3 10
2020-02-24

Looking at Val flying the Dragonfly, Jessica felt soft. Inadequate. Val was born to sit in a pilot’s seat. Born to be a fighter. Born to stand up to a world that had gone wrong.

4 21
2020-02-23

Bowen poured another glass of bourbon, put the pill on his tongue, and looked across the room at Morgan. The robot stood in her charging station, lights blinking under her translucent skin.

He lifted his glass to her.

“Cheers.”

3 24
2020-02-19