Read Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three Online
Authors: Emma L. Adams
Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three
COLLISION
THE ALLIANCE SERIES: BOOK THREE
Emma L. Adams
This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
Copyright © 2015 Emma L. Adams
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Amalia Chitulescu
Stock photographs purchased from
Shutterstock.com
About Collision (Alliance, #3)
When Earth suddenly gains inexplicably high levels of magic, all fingers point at the Alliance.
On a distant world, where magic-fuelled forces of nature rule over humans, a disaster is sweeping the land, threatening to knock the Balance across the Multiverse out of sync. When Kay and Ada are sent there with the other Ambassadors, they’re thrown into the centre of chaos. Nature is alive, and angry.
Ada embraces the magic she still half-fears, but learning to control it proves harder than she can imagine. Kay, meanwhile, becomes more reckless than ever when testing the boundaries of his own abilities. When faced with living magic, no one is safe from its influence. Ada and Kay must choose what they’re willing to risk for the sake of saving a world that might already be doomed. Can mortals overcome the gods?
Collision
is the third book in the world-hopping fantasy Alliance series.
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The Alliance Series
Delinquent: An Alliance Novella
CHAPTER ONE
ADA
“There’s a ghost in Jeth’s computer!” Alber’s shout came through the open window of the attic room, just below where I lay on the roof. Groaning, I rubbed my eyes. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep up there, but it was peaceful, even with the distant roar of London traffic and the smell of exhaust fumes. And for once, my sleep was free from screaming nightmares. I slid out of the improvised pillow-nest I’d made, picked up the pillows and the paperback I’d been reading, and climbed back into my room through the window. My seventeen-year-old brother Alber stood in the doorway, blinking at me with contact-less violet eyes.
“You were asleep on the roof?”
“I dozed off,” I said, shutting the window behind me and dropping the blankets on the bed.
Alber shook his head. “You’re mental. It’s freezing out there.”
I shrugged, though I was barefoot and wearing pyjamas, which didn’t help. “I had blankets. What’s going on?”
“Jeth’s computer’s freaking out. We reckon it’s a ghost.”
“Of course. How’d you figure that one out?” I put slippers on and followed my brother down the rickety ladder from the attic to the landing. Loud swearing came from behind Jeth’s slightly-open door. He cursed at full-volume, in Karthonic, the language of his homeworld.
“No other explanation. If Jethro the genius can’t figure out what it is, it has to be a ghost, right?”
“Wait, he really
doesn’t
know what it is?” I pushed Jeth’s door further open and went in. “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
“Very funny,” said Jeth, tapping the screen. The floor around his leather-backed computer chair was a tangle of wires hooked up between computers, monitors, and dubious-looking pieces of shiny offworld technology. My older brother was a certifiable genius who worked in the Alliance’s tech department. Since we’d moved into this new house, he’d claimed the biggest room to set up all his computers. And I’d asked for the attic. If I couldn’t have my old room, with the stars I’d painted on the ceiling, a window that opened onto the roof was more than enough to make up for it, even though I couldn’t see the stars here in the middle of the city.
I leaned in to see the screen, which had frozen on a blank page covered in what looked like white squiggly lines. “What did you do to it, anyway? Did you put parts of offworld tech in there, by any chance?”
Jeth was forever messing with different worlds’ technologies to see what would work on Earth, and he’d created devices even the Inter-World Alliance didn’t possess. Not that it was entirely legal.
“It was working fine until a few minutes ago,” said Jeth, rapping his knuckles on the monitor. “Whatever it is, it’s totally locked down the computer. I can’t fix it.” He slapped the desk with the side of his palm. “Dead.
Dammit!”
“Wow,” said Alber, lounging against the doorway. “Chill out.” At a distance, he and Jeth could have been related. They were both tall, tanned, and fair-haired. Nobody would have guessed they came from different universes.
“I was working on something important,” Jeth muttered. “And yeah, I did put a couple of… enhancements in there. But it’s worked fine for the past year!”
“RIP, computer,” said Alber solemnly. “Shall we say a few words in its memory?”
“Shut it,” said Jeth, regarding the screen with a forlorn expression, as though he’d lost a beloved pet.
“What in the world is going on?” Nell came upstairs and peered round the doorway.
“Jeth killed his computer,” said Alber. “We’re in mourning.”
Nell sighed, running a hand through the strands of hair straggling loose from her bun. “It’s almost quarter past eleven. Ada, didn’t you say you were meeting someone at half past?”
“Ah, crap,” I said, taking a step back and tripping over a wire. I steadied myself against the side of the desk. “Lost track of time.” I backed out of Jeth’s room and all but flew up the steps to the attic. Fifteen minutes to make myself look presentable before I went to New York.
I ran the quickest shower ever, changed my outfit seven times, panicked that I’d lost my communicator, then remembered I’d left it on the roof, jumped a mile in the air at the sound of a motorcycle outside, and ran downstairs so fast I almost knocked Alber flying.
“Whoa,” he said. “What’s chasing you?”
“Very funny.” I grabbed my coat. Though I opted to go without my guard uniform, I grabbed my magicproof leather-style jacket just in case. The chill in the air was more like winter than October. Hard to believe I’d been working for the Alliance for over a month now.
The sleek and shiny cycle hummed in front of our house. Removing the helmet, Kay looked up, his dark hair ruffled from the wind and his usually pale face flushed in the cold air. He wore the typical uniform of an Alliance guard–black gear, his jacket embossed with the silver cuffs of an Ambassador.
“Hey,” he said.
Alber came to the door and gaped at the motorcycle. “Holy hell, that’s
awesome.
Can I have a go?”
“No chance, Al,” I said, before Kay could answer. “He failed his driving test,” I told Kay. “Thinks speed limits don’t apply to him.”
“Yeah, but you can’t even drive,” said Alber. “So.”
Kay set down his helmet. “We good to go? The bike stays here,” he added. “No racing this time. Sorry, guys.”
“Dammit,” said Alber. Twice, Kay had managed to get hold of temporary permits to allow Alber to join us in one of Valeria’s capital’s famous hover-zones, where you could rent magic-powered hover bikes. They were automatic models, which came as a relief to me. I’d never learned to drive because we had so little money it didn’t make sense to spend it on something mostly unnecessary in London. But I’d still managed to cause a pile-up when the bike stalled and flipped upside-down in the middle of the track, much to Kay’s and Alber’s amusement. The two of them had ended up racing each other around the track.
At least it had redeemed Kay in Nell’s eyes somewhat. To her, Kay meant both the Alliance, which we’d tried to avoid our whole lives, and the council who’d doomed our homeworld. Considering Kay’s father, the currently-absent Lawrence Walker, had issued the statement against interfering in Enzar’s war in the first place, I wasn’t sure she would ever actually
like
him. Then again, Nell trusted no one outside our family. As a former servant to the sadistic rulers of Enzar, who’d have used me as a human weapon if she hadn’t smuggled me out, she wasn’t given to affection.
Nell appeared behind me and hugged me suddenly, startling me. “Take care of yourself, Ada.”
“Uh. I will.” This new Nell was kind of freaking me out. She’d always kept barriers up even with her own adopted children, but after she and Alber had been kidnapped by the Conner family, she’d been far more open with us than before. It took some getting used to.
Kay gave me a questioning look when Nell returned to the house. “You okay?”
“Huh? Yeah, it’s just weird.” I lowered my voice. “It’s like living with an alien. Until a few weeks ago, Nell hadn’t hugged me since I was about four. Unless you count teaching us headlocks, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.”
“Useful life skill, though,” said Kay.
“Ha,” said Alber, turning to wave at Nell before she closed the door. “To be fair, it
is
weird. Maybe she’s had a personality transplant. Pretty sure that exists on some universe, right?”
“Maybe the one with haunted computers,” I said.
“You know what Jeth’s like, he probably put too much incompatible offworld technology in there. He’s like a mad scientist,” said Alber. “Anyway. I’ve always wanted to go to the States. Bet you Alliance Ambassadors get to travel all over.”
“On assignment, mostly,” said Kay. “All Alliance bases are open to Ambassadors. And everyone in the Alliance can apply for an offworld permit.”
Even I could, though my application had been delayed due to my not having legal identification until I’d joined the Alliance. Some worlds barred outsiders from entry, some required a crap-ton of paperwork, and others were listed as “hostile” to offworlders. I’d only been to Valeria and Aglaia so far, but as soon as I made Ambassador, the Multiverse would be open to explore. Like I’d always wanted.
The three of us made an odd group as we passed by crowds of tourists and shoppers, mobs of bikes and over-enthusiastic taxi drivers wheeling around corners. I couldn’t quite get used to living right in the middle of London rather than on the outskirts, but at least it meant I didn’t have to travel far to work now. Central appeared as a dark shape against the sky, a black skyscraper taller than any of the surrounding buildings and reflecting the sun from its gleaming surface. Alien and yet familiar.
The street we headed for, however, appeared deserted, the houses abandoned to disrepair. Most bore the damage a rampaging wyvern had caused when it got out of the Passages concealed behind a sliding metal door on the back of an old factory. Wide, high-ceilinged corridors lit with blue light linked the entire Multiverse and covered hundreds of miles.
“No monsters this way,” Kay said, as we entered the corridor. “We’re sticking to first level.”
“Good,” said Alber. After being abducted by the Conner family, my brother wasn’t as keen on risks as before. He
said
he was fine, and we’d rescued him before he’d been seriously hurt, but I knew from my own experience the worst scars weren’t on the outside.