Welcome to the Unbanded sample chapters! I’ll release two a month between now and the book’s Kickstarter launch on October 7, 2025. Follow the project here for updates, and check back for new chapters.
Note: the book is complete, but needs one final proofreading edit. So if you come across a typo, just know that will be taken care of before the book reaches publication.
June 25, 2094
Eleven minutes pre-death
City depth: Level ninety-seven
One of these days, Jacen would give up soldiering. He ignored the warm pulse of the empath band wrapped around his left tricep, warning him of rising stress levels as he sidestepped another body in the abandoned stairwell.
A girl this time. Her rust-stained fingers clutched a shard pistol. Standard issue. Drained electrical charge. Probably stolen from another guard squad in the city.
She’s what? Fourteen? Maybe thirteen?
No empath band on her arm to calm the fear of her last moments. Just shallow charred holes against the side of her face and neck where another pistol had dug tiny hooks beneath skin and discharged a fatal voltage of electricity.
Jacen slipped her weapon into his belt.
The vibrations from his city-issued band increased. Maybe, on the day he’d give up soldiering, he’d finally tear the band off too.
Except you won’t have a chance to quit, because Commander Kagan—
He cut the thought off, shifting his weapon and then temporarily muting the automatic notifications. With a quick burst of stored electricity, the band could trigger the basan in his bloodstream, calming him.
But decreasing stress meant decreasing alertness.
Decreasing alertness meant death.
He’d told command center this multiple times. Far better to let a soldier’s emotions spike above acceptable levels, triggering an alarm at some distant monitoring station, than for that soldier to end up dead because they weren’t scared enough to be careful.
Jacen’s heel slipped in blood as he bypassed the body, and he caught the edge of a gaping hole in the stair’s outer wall. Through the makeshift window, the surrounding towers of the city were mostly dark. A few orange lights glimmered far below. Watching. Waiting.
Like this girl who shot three of his men before they silenced her.
What sort of monsters make children fight?
He limped down the iron stairs as the inner wall peeled away. Chipped posts bowed between the floor and ceiling. More faint light filtered through gaps in the charred walls.
What sort of desperation makes people follow someone who allows innocents to suffer?
Jacen slipped a pair of thermal goggles from his forehead to his eyes. The world lit up in blues, purples, greens, and yellows. Shapes against darker backgrounds. Broken bottles. A discarded rag in the corner. Crumpled, matted papers.
No hidden fighters.
He shifted the rifle as it dug into his shoulder blade and shoved the goggles back up. “Floor clear.”
Nothing here but a stale wind and the distant vibrating hum of a million citizens in a million vehicles riding the transit lines.
“Fl… c..r,” the voice cracked through his com. “Two be…” the words dissolved into static.
The sound line. He was what, ninety-eight floors down? Almost half the depth of the city. Jacen was surprised the sound had held up this long.
“Sub-signal,” Jacen ordered. He flipped a switch on a box at his hip. The communicator took his voice and converted it to text before sending. On the other end, an automatic voice would read the text aloud.
His squad reported back, several seconds lagging between each sent message and the reception. Most were scattered along the two floors below. No resistance.
Jacen pushed down the next flight of stairs.
The bodies on this level were of a man and woman. Again, no empath bands. No reddened skin from a lifetime wearing the required emotional regulators on their arms.
Resistors then. This attack wasn’t from a black-market group like he’d originally suspected. Black-marketers at least pretended to be banded.
Jacen swore to himself, sending a final message to headquarters in the city’s center for backup. He checked the bodies for weapons.
None.
Which meant there were armed combatants within his net. Perhaps with screens hiding them from thermal imaging.
That, or his men picked up the weapons as they passed. Jacen doubted it. They were trained for crime scenes higher up, with orders to never touch evidence. This deep in the city, it was different.
The remaining Unbanded could be anywhere by now. Perhaps, after retrieving their comrades’ weapons, they’d even slipped through cracks in the burned-out building to climb down the outside.
Which would leave him with exactly five dead men, seven wounded, and nothing to show for it.
Gritting his teeth, Jacen pushed himself faster, ignoring the growing ache in his right leg. This patrol wasn’t trained for the lower levels yet. They were supposed to keep to the natural-light areas. But Commander Kagan had been insistent about the anonymous tip and—
Two thrums from below vibrated through his feet and sent a dull thwamp through the air. A short-range melter blast hitting a wall.
He swore again, mentally.
Only Unbanded rebels used melters. The heat was too dangerous for regulation weapons. Too likely to start another fire.
Jacen gripped the railing, bypassing a floor completely as he hurried lower. The ache in his leg sharpened to a thousand fragments of glass.
He thinks it’s her. Commander Kagan thinks the Wraith is here, even if he wouldn’t say so out loud.
This wasn’t black market activity. Black Marketers didn’t try to fight. Even most Unbanded groups weren’t outfitted like this.
But the Wraith? Here?
A garble slipped through the low volume of his com. “Contact on lev… one’o three. Gro… five; maybe six. …hiding.”
“Sub-signal level, idiot,” Jacen muttered. Apparently some men hadn’t switched their outputs yet. “Wait for backup. I repeat, wait—”
He cut himself off at another round of weapon fire a level below. One melter. A second projectile weapon like the one he carried. Mostly, they were electrical cracks of standard issue weapons.
Should have demanded a depth-trained squad.
Kagan, Commander of city security, wouldn’t have granted it. Not if the Wraith was involved. Kagan didn’t just want her arrested. It was how he wanted her arrested.
I only had five months left. She couldn’t have stayed hidden for five more months?
Except then someone else would be in his place who would have to make this decision and—
Steps thudded below and a door slammed. Jacen gripped his rifle tighter.
“Captain!” A shadow skidded into the landing of the stairwell below. “Captain Gray, Sir!”
“I’m coming as fast as the old knee will let me,” Jacen grumbled.
Below, his lieutenant sagged, one hand on his thigh and the other on a weapon. “Captain. We think we got her.”
Jacen closed his eyes.
“The Wraith,” the man continued, breathless. “And a few others. Still in hiding. They have weapons.”
I was so close.
“Get back there,” Jacen said. “Don’t let Marc do anything stupid. The Wraith doesn’t hide unless she has a plan.”
Maybe it wasn’t her. The name of Wraith had been whispered for months about the elusive Unbanded rebel, but she didn’t fight if she could help it. She wore disguises. Rescued prisoners. Replaced weapon shipments with tightly wound lengths of street-rubbish.
She didn’t attack city patrols.
She didn’t this time either, did she? You came here.
Jacen shook his head as he stumbled the last step. What did she do that made the Commander want her so much?
A red glow spilled from the room beyond the stairwell. Jacen squinted as he stepped inside, keeping close to the wall. It smoked, likely from a melter blast. The air smelled of burnt flesh.
Bodies lay next to concrete pillars and steel girders. Jacen didn’t look too closely. Time enough for numbers, names, and sorrow later.
For now, five of his men surrounded a small huddle of prisoners against one pillar.
His lieutenant lifted one hand helplessly and motioned at Marc.
Figured.
“Present!” Jacen snapped.
“Think we caught ourselves a Wraith?” The nearest man cradled the captured melter rifle in one arm, his gaze fixed on the foremost prisoner. “Right size and age, Captain.”
She was, though Jacen hadn’t realized how small that would make the Wraith look when surrounded by shadows, soldiers, and death. Or how young.
Is it her?
Nineteen or twenty was what their reports claimed. This girl couldn’t be older than that. She didn’t look like a myth though, with torn, blood-stained fatigues. Frizzes of brown hair escaped a ponytail at the base of her neck. Her narrow, wiry frame looked like the result of too little food, and her pale skin the result of too little light.
But her eyes. It was impossible to tell their color through the shadows, but they were steady as the city foundations. At her feet lay a crumpled Unbanded, little more than a boy.
None of the prisoners wore bands.
Jacen limped forward, shooting a sideways glare at Marc. “I sent orders. You didn’t listen.”
The man snorted. “We waited for you. We could have killed them already.”
The others around the girl shifted, but Jacen watched her. The tightening of her lips. The tensing of her shoulders.
“We can kill them now if you want. Sir,” the soldier added.
“Quiet, Marc,” Jacen snapped. Why now? “So, the Wraith is it?”
The girl didn’t flinch. “You really think I’m going to answer that?”
“It might save your life.”
Save hers and doom his.
Slowly she shook her head. “We didn’t want to fight.”
“No? Well, now half my men are dead,” Jacen said. “Some of yours too.”
“I know. It doesn’t mean everyone has to die.”
“It doesn’t,” he agreed. It was her. It had to be. It wasn’t just the face that vaguely matched up with the grainy footage they had. It was her attitude. Her spirit. She was the one Commander Kagan wanted.
But why?
Did it matter, when he knew the cost for failure? He allowed himself a faint sigh. “Take her.”
“And the rest?”
Jacen grimaced, but the script had been set months ago for just such a situation. The Commander claimed to know what would cause a reaction from the Wraith. What would…what could create the situation he desired.
“Kill them,” Jacen said.
“Don’t!” The girl raised one hand. As if expecting them to listen.
Marc lifted his rifle. “I hardly think you’re in a position to order anything.”
“Please don’t.” She was shaking her head. “We don’t want to fight. We—”
The lad at her feet shuddered, face half-covered in blood.
So many. So young.
“Step forward,” Jacen said. “Or you die with the rest.”
She didn’t move. “Don’t do this.”
“Orders are orders.” More lines from a script he didn’t write. How did protecting the city come to this? “Take her.”
“Gladly.” Marc stalked forward. “Next time come better prepared, little rebel.”
She’d stilled. Her hands hung loosely at her sides. But the spark in her eyes…
The Commander had been right.
Jacen’s lips parted in warning.
“I don’t think there will be a next time,” she said. Something flashed in her fingers as her arm lifted. Wires sparked from a concealed shard pistol.
Marc died as tiny hooks of electric metal slammed his chest, face masked in surprise.
The huddled figures behind the girl pivoted to the side, springing for their weapons or pulling out new ones. The burnt smell of the first electric shot hung in the air.
The boy on the ground shoved himself to one elbow, scrabbling for Marc’s gun and shooting the young lieutenant who’d fetched Jacen.
Jacen shot the lad between the eyes.
Too late. The rest of his men were down. Some still, some screaming. The rest of the girl’s followers were crumpled as well.
The Wraith held a projectile rifle now, pointed in his direction as she sank to one knee next to the boy.
What sort of monsters sends children to die?
Her gaze flicked back to him, expression as hard and scarred as an interrogation room floor.
Who kills children instead of protecting them?
His weapon burned his fingers.
Five months.
He’d almost made it.
His daughter would receive all the honors of a hero’s family. She’d live, and she’d prosper. Because of what he was about to do.
Jacen’s free hand moved toward his pocket.
“Don’t.” The Wraith’s weapon drooped, one blood-stained hand outstretched. “Please.” Her lips were moving. Talking to him, he thought, but it didn’t matter now.
She wouldn’t kill him if she could help it. Some of the Unbanded were strange that way. But he had his final orders.
Force the Wraith’s hand.
For the greater good of the city.
The city could burn, for all he cared, but his daughter would live.
He smiled faintly, ignoring the anger at the back of his mind. The unjustness that allowed years of hard work to lead to this. “Do you think you’re the only one willing to die for what you love?”
His free hand pulled back into the open. His thumb brushed the smooth metal of the explosive while his forefinger on his other hand touched the edge of the trigger.
Commander Kagan would have his way. Again. Another prisoner to bend to his will.
The Wraith was still pleading. She was almost the age of his daughter, he noticed absently.
He met her eyes and wrapped his finger around the trigger.
May Kagan get more than he bargained for. He let his other hand feel for the pin in the electrical explosive.
She pulled the trigger.
A shot caught him full in the chest, spinning him to the ground. Two more thudded in place.
There was pain and there was cold. Then there were shadows falling around him as the red light dimmed.
The explosive rolled free, the pin still in place.
Pity… Five months.
Shouting. Boots tramping and someone screaming.
Five.
Men with guns spilling through the door. His men. Backup.
Fi…
Somewhere, someone was crying.
Then there was nothing.
________________
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