Spark Rising by Kate Corcino

she had enough control to put us on a fucking timer.”
    They had hoped to find a Spark evolved to a dangerous, exquisite extreme. They’d found her, and that presented a danger all its own.
    Alex ran his hands through his hair. “She took us out long enough to get out through her escape tunnel. Dust-made. Dust-protected. I found the exit in the side of an arroyo before we cleared out. The damn thing was a good three hundred feet long.” He shook his head again. “She made it to the tribe. I couldn’t do anything at that point.”
    “You know where she is?”
    Alex nodded.
    “Then we’ll go get her. Tonight.”
    Alex closed his eyes for a moment. Shit . He’d figured Thomas’s reaction would be strong. But this was on the extreme end.
    “No, Thom.”
    “Yes! She cannot get away. She belongs with us.”
    “We’re not ready to go to war. And that’s what it would be. We have to do this the way we do things. We have to be smart.” Alex stared down into Thomas’s pale eyes, holding onto his calm. One of them had to.
    Thomas took two quick steps to stand inches from Alex. “We cannot allow her to disappear. She is—she’s our Eve.”
    “I know. And I’m working on it.” Alex grimaced. “My partner knows he’s onto something big. And as soon as the Council gets wind of this girl, they will scramble everything to ensure she is taken into custody.”
    “Then you get to her first, Alex. Because if they get to her first and they can’t figure out how to harness her, they will kill her. And either way, they win. You get to her first. You bring her home to us. I don’t care what you have to do.”
    Alex took a long breath. “Decades of work,” he reminded his friend. “Decades. Of my work. And we are so close. Zone Three is primed. I’m not willing to undo that for a girl you didn’t know existed five minutes ago.”
    He wasn’t. Was he?
    “I knew she should exist. And now that I know she’s real, we will do whatever we have to do to bring her home.”
    Arguing would be pointless. Thomas had anticipated this moment for too long. Alex nodded, his mind working angles.
    Like this reaction wasn’t exactly what you wanted: an excuse to do whatever it takes to bring in the perfect Spark. The perfect weapon.
    “We can have both. I can make it happen.”
    “Then do it.” Thomas stepped away, raised his arms to resume his workout. “But remember, she’s our priority now. Once we have her, we have the future.”

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
    Lena sat cross-legged on the hard-packed earth floor of the medicine woman’s home. Soft, bright wool pooled before her knees as she worked the yarn and knitting needles above her lap. For the first hours after the agents had driven her away, she’d paced restlessly between the small bluff rising above the arroyos and Santo Domingo to the east, watching agents move in and out of her home.
    Finally Gloria, the Kewa woman closest to Lena, had tired of Lena’s temper and sharply told Lena to wait at Gloria’s adobe house. As the afternoon melted into evening, a trio of young women appeared at Gloria’s door. They had gone to Lena’s home to retrieve clothing for her, as well as her knitting and needles.
    Her mind worked as her fingers threw the yarn and moved the needles at a furious pace, everything soothing and meditative about the activity gone. She had turned her focus down to her hands, but instead of yarn and needles she saw Reyes and Lucas standing in her doorway and agents darting in and out like wasps. Could she reclaim her home?
    It’s done. It’s done. No going back.
    The rage built. It beat in tandem with the violence of her feedback headache. She needed to ground, but she couldn’t trust the agents were truly gone. Instead, she knitted.
    What about Danny? If they’d made the appointment through him, would they arrest him now? Had another Gracey man been put in danger because of her? The memory of the night the men had come to tell her mother that