The Rise of Io Read Free Page A

everywhere, and Ella could sense her life slipping from her body with every second. Ella hovered over the woman, frantic. She looked up at the man, still frozen in place near the back wall.
    â€œHelp me!” she screamed. “Do something! Save her!” She picked up a rock as big as her fist and chucked it at him.
    It brought him out of his stupor and he rushed over. He checked her wounds and paled. He turned to Ella. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”
    â€œThere’s no hospital in Crate Town.”
    The two of them tried to lift the woman but the instant they moved her, blood gushed from the wound in her stomach. Her eyes rolled back and she grasped the man’s arm. “Make sure,” she gasped. “The news… Seth… reaches…”
    And then she was gone.
    Ella had seen enough death in her life for it not to affect her any more. Growing up during a war and then in the slums, she had seen terrible things. People beaten and robbed, their bodies left on the streets. The ravages of sickness and famine and starvation.
    But for this death, Ella felt a terrible sadness. The feeling aggravated her. She lashed out at the closest person. She stood up and scowled at the man. “I saw you stand there doing nothing. Coward!” She was about to give him a swift kick to vent her frustration when she stopped.
    The woman was glowing. A strange fog with sparkling lights was slinking out of her body until it formed a cloud hovering in the air. The tiny lights, thousands of them, blinked as if alive. The cloud began to float toward the man. And then it stopped, and then it moved toward Ella.
    Ella yelped and retreated, taking several steps backward and tripping over one of the bodies. She fell onto her butt and began to crawl on all fours, trying to get away from this weird, supernatural demon stalking her.
    The light floated directly above her and hovered. At first, Ella shielded her face, but then she peeked. First, one eye between her fingers, then both. Up close, the cloud with its thousands of swirling lights was beautiful. If this was a demon, it was an awfully pretty one. She reached an arm out toward it.
    â€œYou want her to be your host? You can’t be serious,” the man said. “You, get away from the Quasing.”
    Quasing? Ella had heard that name mentioned before in passing every once in a while. They had something to do with the war that had raged across the world for most of the past ten years. Is this what everyone was fighting over?
    â€œShe doesn’t deserve you.”
    Ella had no idea who the man was talking to. However, being told she didn’t deserve something grated on her. She had already experienced a lifetime of ridicule, of being denied and demeaned. She didn’t need this feeble man to pile onto it.
    â€œShut it, coward,” she snapped.
    She reached for the living cloud, and then tiny bursts of light moved directly into her. Ella felt a jolt and a hard jab in the back of her skull. Her entire body clenched. She thought she heard a strange gravelly voice in her head that definitely wasn’t her own.
    This is probably a mistake.
    Blinding pain punched her in the brain and Ella felt her stomach crawl up her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out were the regurgitated chewed up strips of sweet salmon. The last thing Ella felt was the sensation of flying, or falling, or the world being pulled from beneath her feet as she hit the ground.

Two
    Ella Patel
    E lla woke up to a blinding headache, like someone had driven an ice pick into her skull. She groaned and opened her eyes to hazy blobs melting into each other. A piercing yellow light in the distance poked at her brain, and a strange fleshy object hovered uncomfortably close to her face. Something muffled was rustling off to the side, and in the distance, she heard a low ringing, as if someone was banging a gong.
    Slowly, her vision cleared, and the mushy blobs