The Soul Eaters (The Thin Hex Line Book 1) by Gwyndolyn Russell (e reader txt) 📕

"Ain't nothing down there anymore. It was the testing area."

"Testing for what?"

"Skills and abilities. It's the safest area in the whole base. Not even a nuke can get through it."

"Eight, you're talking too much again." Zayla sighed.

"Sorry, ma'am." He rubbed the back of his head. "Does it matter though? It's all over anyway. Where's the harm in it?"

"Over?" Fenris looked to Zayla.

"We can't make any more valkyries. This is our last pack and we'll be sending them straight to Skao with what we can as soon as they're old enough."

"What about the missing armor?" Reaper asked.

"I have nothing to offer you, but if you could retrieve it, that would be marvelous! It shouldn't be left in the hands of humans. It belongs to the valkyries. The new armor sets are vastly improved on with eos DNA, so I can't guarantee anyone's safety if they wear it."

"What could happen if a human wears it?" Reaper asked.

"Sick." Fenris answered.

"That's an understatement. We haven't fully tested the effects eos have on humans. What we do know...there's no fix. No cure. They die horrible, painful deaths. A lot worse than what happened here."

"Then we need to get that armor from Spectre before it's too late."

"You should take Fenris back to Skao where it belongs. It needs to be with its own kind. They need it."

"No." Fenris shook its head. "Will not return." It pointed to itself. "Exiled. Pack...does...not want Fenris."

"What? Why not?"

It snorted.

"What about the artifact on B-58?" Jackal asked.

"Artifact? I don't know what you're talking about."

Jackal watched Fenris for a moment. "He knows there's an artifact on that planet that could help fight the eos."

"You told them about the eos?"

"He didn't say much. Could you elaborate?" Reaper frowned.

"The eos are ancient creatures. They crop up every few millennia according to the books we have here. They are part machine and part flesh. They're the only things we know of that can spontaneously evolve at will."

"We tested all of our weapons on them," Eight chimed in. "You have to destroy their core to keep them down. Fire works best when they've been weakened."

"That's why the valkyries were made. To fight the eos. We took their DNA and turned it against them."

"Can the valkyrie...evolve like that, too?" Jackal asked.

"Yes. I think they have more control of it, too. It's hard to determine."

“Take it they’re pretty hard to deal with then.”

“If you’d like I can send you a map file. We’ve been keeping track of all suspected eos locations.” Zayla said. “Maybe you can convince everyone else of the threat. If the Council would believe our data, this issue would have been taken care of a long time ago.”

TWENTY-NINE

“This is just a lot of information to process.” Reaper rubbed his forehead.

“What’s there to process?” I said with both of my hands out as if his answer would just fall right into my arms. “The eos are real. They’re coming. They’re even further than Avant-Garde thinks!” I pointed to the map displayed over his desk.

A basic star chart with the addition of red highlights where Avant-Garde believed the eos to be located. It blipped from time period to time period on a loop with the red highlights over taking significant chunks of the galaxy each time.

I tapped on the desk to make it zoom in to the sector B-58 was located. The highlights stopped just to the edge of the sector.

“Fenris says there are eos on that planet.” I pointed again. “Avant-Garde doesn’t even know it.”

“How does Fenris know it though?”

“Gut instinct?”

“You don’t think what Zayla said was the truth?”

“The truth? A theory is stretching it!” I rolled my eyes. “Connected to everything by strings? Intangible, or not, that’s pretty farfetched.”

"How do you explain your bond with Fenris?" He crossed his arms. "He obviously listens to you. He knew to guard the ship from Spectre without even knowing her or if she were coming. He speaks in a way only you understand."

"Maybe I treat him like he matters. I'm not afraid of him."

"I don't know." Reaper frowned. "I'm not sure I believe it myself...but what about how everyone reacts to him? Those kids called him by a name they couldn't have known. Hid in fear from something they wouldn't know to fear."

"If I didn't know what made that sound, I would've ran, too."

"Okay, what about the people on Empyree? If Fenris has always been on Skao until meeting Fauriei, then there's no way those people would have known him. Solstice, too. That was his first time there and there were still people who knew him."

"Word of mouth? How does everybody know who you are?"

"I'm not a secret working on secret missions." He put a finger to the desk. "Zayla said it herself, nobody knows anything about valkyries or their existence aside from those at Avant-Garde and the Syndicate. Fauriei would be the only other one. There's no colony on Skao since its overrun by eos."

I shook my head. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a universal connection by way of invisible thread. I would sooner believe one could survive a fall into a black hole than believe a bunch of nonsense like that.

"You gonna use that as an excuse to hunt Spectre down? Feels like you're building up to that."

"If that armor is really that dangerous, we should at least tell her."

"I think she can handle herself. Seems to be doing just fine if you ask me. The bigger danger is the eos. According to Zayla they are spreading fast. We need to find out why and stop it."

"We couldn't handle the ones on the Utopia. We couldn't possibly take on more."

"Maybe we don't have to? What if we convince the Admiral of the threat? If we got hard evidence he couldn't deny it. He'd have to go to the President with it. The Federation would have to take action."

"So, you think we should go to B-58, or Skao?"

"Fenris doesn't want to go back to Skao."

"We might not have a