CHAPTER 35 - Morales Live

  Smoke had a taste now.

  It clung to the back of Jenna’s throat as she stood just off the center of the intersection, one boot planted on fractured asphalt, the other on the thin line where melted tar had pooled and hardened again. The fire on the corner building roared up through broken windows, orange and white and ugly, throwing heat that pressed against her face even at this distance.

  “Portland feed, Morales live,” she said. Her voice sounded thin in her own ears. “Luis, are we up.”

  Her cameraman lifted one hand off the rig long enough to give her a small nod. The shoulder mount sat tight against his frame, the lens tracking the tilt of her head. A cable ran from the camera to the pack on his back, its indicator light still mercifully green.

  “In three,” her producer said in her ear. “Two. You are live to network and international. Go.”

  She drew a breath that tasted of ash.

  “This is Jenna Morales reporting from the northern impact zone of downtown Portland,” she said. “This area was not part of the original strike corridor. Military officials stated earlier that the bombardment would be contained to the riverfront industrial grid. It was not.”

  Luis shifted his stance behind the camera. The image window on her side monitor showed the building behind her tilting at a sickening angle, flames rolling through the interior. A fire truck sat half sideways in the street, lights spinning through the smoke. Firefighters moved in a tight pattern near the entrance, half visible, half lost in the haze.

  “At least one missile from the first strike drifted off target and detonated here,” Jenna continued. “The blast threw debris across the block and ignited multiple structures. Fire crews are working to prevent further collapse and to find anyone still inside.”

  She moved a few steps to her right. Luis followed automatically, keeping her shoulders centered in the frame and the burning building over her left shoulder. The pavement underfoot was cracked and heaved. White dust coated the edges of the street, clinging to her boots when she brushed against it.

  The sheet covering the body near the crosswalk had been pulled tighter since she last looked. The paramedic’s glove that had fallen beside it remained, fingers curled inward on empty air.

  “There are confirmed casualties,” she said. Her throat tightened. She did not bother to hide it. “We witnessed at least one fatality here earlier. Emergency teams report additional injured and unaccounted for inside the buildings around me. This was a residential and mixed-use neighborhood. People were at home. Some never had a chance to evacuate.”

  Two firefighters staggered out of the building as she spoke, one with an arm hooked under the shoulder of a woman whose hair had been singed almost to the scalp. A medic rushed forward, guiding them toward the truck. Luis turned the camera, following the movement with a quick, practiced motion.

  “Hold that,” the producer said. “Stay with them. You are full screen on every major outlet. No banner. No split frame. Just you.”

  Jenna tracked the medics for a moment, then glanced back at the burning building. The heat pressed in harder as another section of interior collapsed. Sparks and embers shot outward, carried on gusts that smelled like someone had set fire to an auto shop and several houses at once.

  Her head still hurt where she had clipped the side of a doorframe during the earlier shockwave. It was a deep, steady ache behind her right eye that pulsed when she moved too fast. Her ears rang faintly, but she had been able to think clearly enough to talk. It was the only reason she was still out here instead of in an ambulance.

  “Morales, remind viewers this was off target,” her producer said quietly. “They need to understand that.”

  She nodded slightly, then focused on the lens again.

  “For those just joining us,” she said, “this neighborhood was not part of the announced evacuation or the original strike zone. Officials assured the public the bombardment would be tightly controlled. From where we are standing, that control did not extend far enough. This is a residential community. People had their lives inside these walls.”

  A siren wailed somewhere beyond the next block. Another truck was approaching.

  Jenna swallowed against the taste of smoke.

  “Stay with the visuals,” her producer said. “We will pick up your audio as long as we can. Do not overexert. That is an order.”

  She almost smiled at that.

  “I hear you,” she said. “Staying put.”

  She took another breath, coughed once, and motioned for Luis to follow as she stepped closer to the fire truck. The air grew hotter. The sound of crackling wood grew louder under the steady roar.

  “Cut when the siren hits the intersection,” the producer said. “We will throw to D.C. and come back.”

  ***

  The siren from Portland bled tinny and distant into the White House Situation Room speakers before the communications director muted the feed. The image remained on the central wall display. Jenna stood framed against the burning building, her shoulders set, hair dusted with ash. A thin caption bar at the bottom of the screen read: PORTLAND OFF-TARGET STRIKE ZONE.

  “She is killing us,” one of the domestic advisors muttered. “Every network has her up. They are not showing the industrial corridor at all. They are showing this.”

  “That is not our problem at the moment,” the National Security Advisor said. “Embassies first.”

  A communications officer turned in his chair.

  “Russia and China both on secure lines,” he said. “Priority flags. They insist on speaking to you directly.”

  The President sat at the head of the table, shoulders tight, eyes fixed for one last second on the silent image of Jenna and the burning building behind her. Then he looked away.

  “Put them on,” he said. “Both. Split screen.”

  Two windows opened on the screen to the right of Portland. The Russian ambassador appeared on the left, still in the same dark suit he had worn to several late-night emergency sessions this week, but with his tie slightly askew. The Chinese ambassador appeared on the right, posture perfectly straight, expression carefully neutral.

  “Mr. President,” the Russian said without preamble, “our early warning systems have detected multiple high-energy launch events originating from remote coordinates in Siberia. These do not match any of our fields, any of our systems, or any profile in our catalog.”

  The Chinese ambassador spoke almost over him.

  “Our Antarctic stations report ascending signatures from within your survey zones,” she said. “They do not behave like your launch vehicles. They do not behave like ours. We would like an explanation before they come any closer to our shared sky.”

  An intelligence officer tapped controls at the far end of the room. A projection lit up on another wall, showing a stylized view of the planet. Trajectory lines rose from a point deep in Siberia and from the Antarctic ice, climbing in clean arcs before angling toward a point in the central Pacific.

  “These are the launches,” the officer said. “We confirmed minutes ago these are not ours and not theirs. Energy curves are outside any known chemical profile. They transited to orbit, then shifted vector.”

  “Shifted where,” the President asked.

  The plot updated. The lines curved again, descending in a new cluster.

  “Here,” the officer said. “West-central Pacific. No registered facility or platform. Now they are leaving that point and moving inland. Projected corridor intersects our coastline near Portland.”

  “So something left from our monitored territories,” the Russian ambassador said, “gathered over your ocean, and is now flying toward your burning city. It is not ours. It is not China’s. It is not the European launch system. It is not you. You are not in control of it.”

  “We are dealing with an embedded hostile presence under one of our cities,” the National Security Advisor said. “What you are seeing is a separate axis of the same conflict. We have taken steps to neutralize their base of operations. Once that is complete, this will deescalate.”

  “Your steps,” the Chinese ambassador said, eyes flicking toward the muted Portland feed in her peripheral screen, “have produced an image of you firing missiles at your own people while something you cannot identify moves freely above us all. That is not deescalation. That is failure of control.”

  The Russian leaned closer to his camera.

  “If the United States cannot regain control of the situation,” he said, each word measured, “we may be forced to consider independent actions to prevent a wider catastrophe. The entity now approaching your coastline will not stop at your borders if this continues to spiral.”

  “That sounds like a threat,” one of the President’s advisors said.

  “It is a description of reality,” the Russian replied. “Get control. Then we will talk again.”

  His window was cut off. A second later, the Chinese ambassador did as well.

  Silence settled over the table. Only the air handlers and the faint rumble of distant servers filled the room.

  On the main screen, Jenna’s image held still for a moment as a camera adjusted in the heat. A line of firefighters rushed past behind her, heading for the entrance of the building.

  “Options,” the President said.

  The operations officer slid a folder across the table.

  “Expanded payloads,” he said. “We can retask high-yield conventional units. Mix of penetrators and thermobaric platforms. All non-nuclear. All legal. Their combined overpressure and penetration will significantly increase the chance of fracturing whatever structure is under that city.”

  “Accuracy,” General Harrigan asked.

  “Degraded,” the officer said. “We are working with the same conditions that interfered with the first strike. Smoke, thermal plumes, turbulence from the earlier detonations, and interference from whatever they are using as a shield. We can tighten the pattern, but we cannot guarantee full precision.”

  “Collateral,” the President said.

  “High,” the officer said. “Even with revised targeting, any off-target impacts will strike adjacent districts. We have confirmation not all of those areas are fully cleared. Civilian casualties are likely.”

  “We strike anyway,” one of the hawks at the table said. “If we do not, those craft arrive over our soil while we are arguing about percentages.”

  “If we do not,” the National Security Advisor added, “Russia and China will begin gaming joint operations on our territory. They said as much.”

  Harrigan’s jaw tightened.

  “First strike did not breach their shield,” he said. “Subsurface readings are unchanged. They will see fire on the surface and intact structure below. If we walk away now, we demonstrate that we have no way to reach them. That will embolden them.”

  The President looked back at the burning city on the screen.

  “Then we do not walk away,” he said. “We finish the job.”

  He placed his hand flat on the table.

  “Authorize the second strike,” he said. “Expanded payloads. Full sequence, no interval. Maximum penetration. Execute.”

  The operations officer nodded once and reached for the secure handset.

  “Yes, sir.”

  ***

  The siren that had been approaching hit the intersection at a wail, then faded as the truck angled away through the Portland streets. Jenna watched it go for a moment, then had to brace herself against a parked car as the world slid sideways.

  Her head throbbed harder now. The ache had moved from a single point behind her eye to a band that wrapped around the back of her skull. A fresh wave of dizziness rolled through her when she turned too fast. The air pulsed in and out of her ears in a way that made the producer’s voice feel too close.

  “Jenna, talk to me,” he said. “How bad is the head.”

  “I am upright,” she said. The words felt thick. “We can keep going. Just do not spin me.”

  “That is not medical,” he said. “But I will take it for now.”

  Luis shifted the camera on his shoulder.

  “Take a breath,” he said quietly, just close enough for her to hear. “You are listing a little.”

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  She nodded and put a hand out to the hood of the car again until the street stilled under her feet.

  “Stay with us as long as you can, Morales,” the producer said. “We are cutting back to you in five. Four. Three. Two. You are live.”

  She straightened as much as she could.

  “For those of you still with us,” she said, “we are in the northern impact zone. Fire crews are continuing to pull survivors from the off-target strike site behind me. The first bombardment ended some time ago, but the damage it caused is still unfolding.”

  She gestured toward the burning building. Luis shifted the frame, panning up across shattered windows and down again to the line of medics at the truck.

  “The official word from Washington is that this was a controlled strike,” she said. “From here, that control looks very thin. People are doing everything they can with what is left.”

  The ground under her boots trembled.

  This vibration was different. It came in a low, building roll that moved up through her legs and into her spine. Her vision fluttered for a second, everything going dim at the edges and too bright in the center.

  “Jesus,” Luis whispered.

  Her producer’s voice sharpened.

  “Morales, we just got a bulletin,” he said. “There are reports of renewed launch signatures on military channels. Nothing official yet. Do you see anything in the sky.”

  She blinked slowly, then tilted her head back. The motion made her stomach flip and her knees go soft. She caught herself against Luis’s free arm, then squinted into the gray-brown haze above the city.

  The clouds glowed with the reflected firelight. Smoke moved in sheets. For a moment she saw nothing new.

  “I do not…” she began, then stopped.

  Something streaked behind the clouds. A thin, bright line that cut the haze at the wrong angle. Then another. Then several more.

  Her brain tried to label them, but the word she needed felt like it was on the other side of a wall.

  “Streaks,” she said. “High altitude. I think.”

  “Jenna, if that is the second strike, you need to move now,” the producer said. “Get behind solid cover. I am serious. This is not worth your skull.”

  She looked at the firefighters at the entrance. They were still going in and out, moving stretchers, yelling to one another. None of them were looking up.

  “If this is another strike,” she said, the words coming out slower than she meant, “then everyone here is going to be hit twice.”

  “That is not your responsibility,” he said. “Your job is to show people what is happening, not stay in the blast path for the sequel. Move.”

  Her legs did not want to listen. The combination of heat, smoke, and the pounding in her head made everything feel disconnected. She took one step back, then another. The pavement shifted again under her boots.

  The air in front of her rippled.

  It was like watching heat come off asphalt in summer, except the day was too cold for that and the ripple moved sideways through smoke without disturbing it. It rolled toward her down the length of the street, bending light in a way that made her eyes water.

  Luis swore softly behind the camera.

  “What is that,” the producer demanded. “Morales, what are you seeing.”

  “I do not know,” she said.

  The ripple passed a shadowed gap between two ruined storefronts. Something stepped out from the darkness as it passed. For a moment her eyes refused to focus on the shape. Then the distortion around it collapsed and she saw armor plates, smooth and curved, catching the firelight in muted bands.

  Another figure appeared behind it. Then a third, farther down the street. Cloaking fields shed like water.

  “Those are not Guard,” Luis said under his breath.

  Her throat went dry.

  “I think we are looking at Xi,” she said.

  “Xi,” her producer repeated. “You are sure. You cannot just say that on live feed, Jenna, you need to be sure.”

  “They are not ours,” she said. “They are not anyone’s I recognize.”

  The nearest armored figure lifted a compact device and aimed it at the sky.

  The clouds tore open.

  A white-hot streak burned downward, bright enough that it turned the smoke bank above them into a glowing sheet. The angle was shallow, but it was coming in faster than her concussed brain could track.

  The Xi fired.

  A lance of pale light shot upward, thin and impossibly straight. It met the falling streak and for a split second the sky looked like it had sprouted a new star. Then the light folded inward, collapsing without the outward bloom she expected. There was no shockwave. No blast. Only a ring of fading brightness.

  “Did you get that,” Luis breathed.

  The camera shook once as his shoulders jerked, then steadied.

  “Please tell me you got that,” the producer said. “We just lost half our other feeds to interference.”

  “I think so,” Luis said. “If the rig is still talking to you, you saw it.”

  More streaks appeared.

  The Xi moved in coordinated positions along the street, cloaks abandoned, emitters raised. Beams lanced upward, each hitting a descending point of light. Warheads vanished in contained flares high overhead.

  The ground vibration became a constant background hum.

  The fourth incoming streak tumbled. One of the beams caught it late, tearing off part of its casing. The core spun, bleeding fire, and continued to fall, erratic now.

  That was when the nearest Xi ran.

  Jenna saw a blur of motion, then felt a gloved hand clamp around her upper arm. The ground lurched again as the concussion in her head turned the world into overlapping frames.

  “Jenna, get out of there,” her producer shouted. “Move. Move now.”

  She tried. Her legs did not respond fast enough.

  The Xi hauled her two steps backward with strength that ignored her halfhearted resistance. The visor turned toward her for a fraction of a second. She could not see the face behind it, but she felt the focus in that look.

  The Xi tapped a panel on their forearm and pulled something small and curved free. Before she could flinch away, they pressed it gently against the skin just behind her ear.

  It adhered without pressure. A clean tone cut through the ringing in her head.

  Her producer’s voice snapped into clarity.

  “Your audio just cleared up completely,” he said. “What did you do. Did you switch packs.”

  A second voice slid in underneath his, smooth and steady. It did not come through the street. It came through the new warmth behind her ear.

  “You will hear us through this,” the voice said. “Your signal is unstable. Listen when instructed.”

  “What,” she managed.

  Her fingers went up automatically and brushed the edge of something that felt almost like skin and cooled metal at once.

  The tumbling warhead screamed lower through the clouds.

  Another Xi farther down the street fired again, trying to catch it. The beam clipped one edge of the falling object. Part of it came apart in a spray of fragments, but the core still dropped, now on a different trajectory.

  The armored figure holding her shifted, calculating.

  “Both of you,” the new voice said in her ear, “come now.”

  A strong hand closed around her shoulder and guided her backward. Another Xi appeared at Luis’s side, pushing him firmly away from the center of the intersection.

  “Keep the camera,” the Xi said in accented English. “If it remains intact, you will use it later. Not here.”

  The ground jumped.

  The camera jolted in Luis’s hands, slipped, and hit the pavement. A spiderweb of cracks appeared across the lens housing. The stabilizer mount snapped. The red record light blinked once and went dark.

  “Dammit,” he said.

  Another rumble rolled across the street. Heat hit them from a new direction as fires farther away found new fuel.

  “Phone,” Jenna said, half to herself.

  Her hand fumbled at her pocket. The world tilted again. She got her fingers around the device and pulled it free, nearly dropping it before she caught it with her other hand.

  “Jenna, where are you going,” her producer demanded. “We just lost your primary video. You are dark on the main feed. Audio only.”

  “I have you,” she said, or thought she did. Her tongue felt thick. She was not sure how much of it came out.

  The Xi moved them toward a collapsed loading dock. Up close, even with her blurred vision, she could see the lines of the break were too clean to be natural. A gap waited between two slabs of concrete, just wide enough for a person to pass through sideways.

  “This way,” the voice in her ear said. “Stay close. Do not fall.”

  Another Xi stepped ahead of them and raised a different device. A brief shimmer of pale light arced outward, forming an invisible curtain between them and the open street.

  The tumbling warhead passed somewhere above that curtain.

  She did not see the impact. She felt it.

  The shockwave hit the barrier and rolled over them like a distant, muted roar. The floor of the world jumped. Her knees went out from under her. The Xi holding her kept her from hitting the ground, then turned her toward the gap in the broken wall.

  “Move,” her producer said, voice shaking now. “If you are going underground with them, stay talking. Do not stop talking, Morales. If we lose you now, nobody is going to believe what we saw.”

  She clutched the phone in both hands, thumb sliding clumsily across the screen until the camera opened. The image wobbled, showing smoke, fire, and the edge of the armored shoulder in front of her.

  “If you lose me,” she said, words slurring together, “tell them the second strike did not hit the Xi. It hit us. And they tried to keep us alive.”

  The Xi pulled her into the gap.

  The street vanished behind them.

  ***

  In the Cascadia intake bay, sound faded the moment they cleared the narrow passage. The roar of burning structures, the distant scream of sirens, even the concussion of detonating warheads, all of it collapsed into a muted vibration humming beneath the floor.

  Jenna stumbled as the incline shifted downward. The surface beneath her boots changed from shattered pavement to a smooth fusion of metal and stone. Soft light rose in thin bands along the walls, bright enough to illuminate everything without ever stabbing at her aching eyes.

  “Stay upright,” the Xi at her side said, guiding her with a steady hand. “You took a head impact earlier. Move carefully.”

  She nodded, though her vision still dragged half a heartbeat behind her movements.

  Luis followed on her other side, supported by a second Xi. His camera was gone, lost somewhere in the blast above. His pack had been torn half open when the shockwave hit, the cables dangling like severed roots.

  The chamber opened before them, a vast intake bay shaped like a hollow carved from living stone, reinforced with seamless metallic ribs. Its ceiling arched high overhead, glowing faintly in the same muted tones that lit the walls.

  It was full of people.

  Raised platforms lined both sides of the bay. On each lay someone, firefighters, civilians, transit workers, wrapped in blankets or burn sheets. Some breathed with difficulty. Some stared into nothing. Some shook with adrenaline and shock.

  Xi medics moved among them in controlled, silent lines. Their armor was lighter than the operatives on the surface, sleeker, with open-faced helmets that showed calm, focused expressions. They adjusted crystalline panels along the platform edges, and thin humming fields of light hovered over injuries, pulled skin together, stabilized fractures, slowed bleeding, or cooled burns.

  Jenna stopped short, breath catching.

  Her producer’s voice reached her instantly, clarified, amplified, and steady through the harmonic device behind her ear.

  “We have your audio back,” he said. “And, wait, holy hell, Morales, is that video. Are you transmitting from your phone?”

  She glanced down at the device in her hand. The small connection icon pulsed faintly in the corner of the screen, an impossibility this far underground.

  “I think so,” she breathed. Her voice sounded distant, even to her. “I am still live?”

  “You are live,” he said. “You are the only live picture we have. Tell us what we are seeing.”

  She lifted the phone with shaking hands.

  “We have been brought into an underground facility,” she said, struggling to steady the frame. “There are dozens of injured, being treated by Xi medics. Firefighters, civilians, people pulled from the blast zone.”

  She turned slowly, letting the camera capture the chamber without lingering too long on the worst injuries.

  A firefighter she recognized from the surface lay on a platform, half his gear cut away. A shimmering field hovered above his chest, pulsing in time with his breath. A medic adjusted a control panel beside him, expression unreadable but movements precise.

  A civilian woman coughed weakly under a softly glowing breathing hood. Another Xi medic guided her into slow, steady breaths.

  Jenna swallowed hard.

  “They are stabilizing injuries,” she said. “Burns, blast trauma, smoke inhalation. I do not recognize the equipment they are using, but it is working.”

  Movement drew her eye.

  Erin.

  Her hair was pulled back in a rough knot. Soot streaked across her cheek. A torn strip of cloth wrapped her forearm where a scrape bled through. She wore no armor, just a dark shirt and pants, but her hands moved with practiced efficiency as she worked beside a Xi medic.

  She held pressure on a man’s bandaged shoulder, murmuring quiet reassurance, then moved to help a woman with labored breathing, adjusting her posture and guiding her through slow inhalations while another medic checked vitals.

  Erin glanced up briefly. Their eyes met. A flash of recognition, exhaustion, fear, gratitude, passed between them. But someone called Erin’s name from farther down the row, and she turned away immediately, already reaching for a medical kit.

  “Erin Rowe is here,” Jenna said. Her voice trembled, but she did not lower the phone. “She is assisting the Xi, acting as a nurse. She looks tired, but she is alive.”

  Her producer went silent except for a sharp inhale.

  A soft tone chimed from a panel near the far wall.

  “Surface bombardment is concluding,” a medtech called out to her team. “Secondary fires ongoing. Structural collapses above remain probable.”

  The rescue operative who had guided Jenna underground turned slightly, listening to incoming instruction. Then he nodded to Luis.

  “You will be evaluated,” he said simply. “Remain still.”

  He moved away to assist another operative, efficient, direct, and offering nothing more.

  Jenna and Luis exchanged a glance.

  He looked pale. Tired. Overwhelmed.

  That was when the air at the far end of the bay shifted.

  A figure approached with armor marked in flowing, geometric lines that subtly reflected the ambient light. Her helmet was retracted. Pale luminescent arcs traced along her temples. Her stride was confident, balanced, unmistakably controlled.

  Jenna recognized her instantly, from the night Erin and her children escaped.

  The woman who had stepped out of the dark at the house and had dismantled armed federal agents with terrifying efficiency before disappearing into the night with the family. She had the same calm expression, the same eyes there was no doubt it was the same woman.

  She stopped before them, gaze moving from Jenna to Luis, then to the humming diagnostic field near his arm.

  “He will recover,” Tirra said quietly, indicating Luis. “His injuries are minor. His role is complete here.”

  Luis stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “Complete,” he echoed. “You dragged us under a city.”

  “We saved your life,” Tirra said, not unkindly. “And you will return to the surface with the others. Emergency teams will collect you.”

  Luis opened his mouth to argue, but Tirra had already turned to Jenna.

  “You are not leaving yet,” she said.

  Jenna swallowed.

  “Why me.”

  “You carry the eyes of your people,” Tirra said. “You showed them the truth before anyone else did. More will believe your account than any words we could send them.”

  Luis shook his head.

  “Jenna, no. Do not let them,”

  Tirra lifted a hand lightly, not as a threat, but as a quiet boundary.

  “She is not a prisoner,” she said. “She is a witness. And there is someone here who needs her to listen.”

  Her gaze shifted toward Erin.

  The meaning was unmistakable.

  Erin Rowe had a story the world needed, and would believe, only if Jenna Morales carried it out for them.

  “When her account is complete,” Tirra said softly, “you will leave as well. We do not hold those who came here unwillingly.”

  At the far end of the chamber, evacuees began filing toward a newly opened passage, firefighters, civilians, and finally Luis, escorted gently but firmly by two medics.

  He looked back once, helpless and pale.

  Jenna steadied her phone.

  “This is Jenna Morales,” she said, her voice soft but steady, “reporting from beneath Portland. The Xi have rescued dozens from the blast zone. The second strike is over. Civilians are being escorted to the surface.”

  She turned, capturing Erin helping a medic stabilize a patient.

  “I have been asked to stay a little longer,” she said. “There is more to this story. And I am going to hear it.”

  She lifted her phone, took a breath and kept recording.

  Thank you for reading. This chapter marks an important turning point in the story, and the events here will shape everything that follows.

  New chapters are released every Tuesday and Friday.

  If you are enjoying Horizons Gate, ratings, follows, and comments genuinely help more than you might think. I appreciate every one of you who has come along for the ride.