Page 15 of Shared Omega

“Wait!” Sloan hollers, rising from her seat. “Our helmets!”

She’s right. Nobody has their helmets on yet, and as soon as that hatch opens, the entire craft will be exposed to the contamination of the Zone.

Donovitch pauses, hand on the latch. His eyes roll back white, and the blood drains from his face as he succumbs to the same sickness as his partners.

As his body slumps to the deck, his hand unwittingly pulls the latch, a rear door swings open, depressurizing the hold with a sudden, violent roar of rushing air. As Donovitch collapses, his ripcord snags on something, and his chute billows open, violently ripping him out of the ship and into the open sky beyond. His flaccid body sags in his harness as he drifts out of sight.

“No!” Sloane screams, her voice almost silenced by the whipping wind.

That’s when I have a sudden flash of intuition. I know what’s happening to the pilots and marines. They’ve already been exposed. The supposedly advanced shielding of the craft failed, turning everyone into beta mutants one-by-one.

The only one who hasn’t changed is Sloane.

A shudder of turbulence rocks the plummeting ship, and Sloane stumbles. I race forward to catch her. Even with the harsh wind sucking the air from the hold, I’m instantly assailed by her intense scent. She turns her face toward mine, revealing eyes that are unnaturally dilated.

Sloane has changed. She’s not a beta, but she has mutated.

There may not be any outward signs, but the contamination has gotten to her body, altering her in invisible ways—her physiology, her hormones, her needs…

She’s an omega now.

“We have to jump!” My roar is muted by the howling vacuum of wind sucking at the interior of the ship. “Now!”

I grab hold of Sloane’s body and shove her toward the open hatch at the aft of the craft.

“Wait!” she shouts, her voice ripped away by the wind. “We need rifles.”

There’s no time for that. We have bare seconds before the aircraft slams into the ground.

I shove her out into the open night sky, praying that she has the presence of mind to pull her rip cord. A split second later, I dive out after her, immediately opening my own chute.

A surge of relief floods through me as I see Sloane’s camo parachute blossom out of her pack, and she floats away in the darkness. Just two seconds later, and it would have been too late.

But my hope is wiped away when the backwash from the falling ship hits me, pushing me in the opposite direction and crumpling my own parachute. I’m spiralling out of control, plummeting way too fast.

The treetops reach up toward me like leafy claws.

A second later, and my world becomes a chaos of snapping branches ripping at my flesh as gravity pulls me toward the ground. I don’t feel any pain, however.

My mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only.

The omega.

Sloane.

I have to survive this.

I have to make her safe.

CHAPTER 5: TRUK

Once the fire has settled down into a nice bed of glowing embers lined with white ash, I place the freshly caught fish directly into the coals to cook. There is a sizzle, and a vortex of orange sparks swirls upward toward the stars. I sit back on the riverbed and listen to the purling stream flowing by in the night, clear and cold.

Even with the wall of dark trees on one side, this campsite is relatively exposed, but I don’t care.

The Farlanders know me, and they know better than to mess with me. And if they have somehow forgotten, I’ll be more than happy to remind them. Just let them try.

As for the ruin-dwellers, they hardly ever venture this far from their home.