Burned and Scarred (Burn this City Book 2) by Brenda Poppy

Author:Brenda Poppy [Poppy, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Glass Fish Publishing
Published: 2021-04-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Scar’s night was not going well. The PeaceBots she’d sent out to do her bidding had thus far been unsuccessful, finding nothing more than barricades and solid walls along the city’s edges. Despite their widened search area, they’d discovered no weak spots, no secret doors, and no hints that life could exist outside the dome.

Naturally, she was more than a little frustrated. She’d done all that work, put herself in harm’s way, and enacted an incredibly ingenious plan, yet she had nothing to show for it. She was no closer to finding Burn or uncovering a way back into the city. She couldn’t even prove to the Lunaria that Burn and Hale were still alive.

Normally Scar wasn’t given to flights of fancy, but for some reason, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining the worst. She kept seeing Burn, all alone, pursued by some nameless evil that was inching ever closer.

To distract herself from the images, Scar threw herself into her work. In normal times, she’d have had a backlog of projects for other people, from upgrading their tabs and hacker-proofing their goggles to creating some less-than-legal code to hide their activities from prying Peace Force eyes. She’d gained quite the reputation, too, and had been the go-to girl in all the least-reputable circles. Anyone on a Peace Force watchlist found their way to her door eventually.

Since Burn’s disappearance, however, she’d shut herself away, eschewing the typical projects in favor of her own creations. In the span of a few days, she’d concocted a nearly imperceptible tracker, a jammer for Peace Force comms units, and an early prototype of a sonic blaster that would temporarily incapacitate attackers.

Yet none of those things would help her find Burn. So she turned to something that could – or at least something that could help her establish contact. Scattered around Symphandra’s small table were the parts of Scar’s tab, each chip and connector and bracket separated and categorized. She’d taken apart her first tab when she was only 3, so by now it was second nature to her.

Her previous tinkering had always been for fun, though, a curiosity-fueled exploration of the boundaries of technology. This was something else entirely. This was a lifeline to her sister, a link she could use to reel her back in and save her from the wildlands. This was Burn’s salvation.

It also wasn’t working.

The plan was simple: to extend the tab’s transmission range beyond the dome, allowing Burn to receive her messages. The execution was a tad more difficult. She’d never before had to send data beyond the dome, through the thick glass that encased them and into the uncivilized world outside. The task was steadily driving her mad.

Every time she thought she had cracked it, she’d send another message to Burn. And, like clockwork, every time it pinged back, undelivered. It made her feel…normal. Like one of them – the ungifted, the powerless. She almost understood why they were so angry all the time.

Of course, there was the chance that it wasn’t Scar’s fault.

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