Novels by SONIA

As evening settled in, Derek Kane made his way toward Chloe's estate, confident she'd be home soon tired, alone, and about to have a very bad night.His ability, discovered through some careful late-night forum digging, had turned out to be metal manipulation full control, offense and defense both. Compared to the "useless" powers everyone online kept complaining about, Derek considered himself one of the lucky ones. He genuinely couldn't imagine anything out there that could stand against him.Every test run had gone perfectly. Even the infected weren't a problem a flick of his focus, and a stray kitchen knife would drift through the air and punch clean through a skull from twenty feet away. Each success fed the same growing certainty: nothing could touch him now.He'd already pictured it in detail a blade at Chloe's throat, her face twisted with fear and humiliation as she gave in. The image alone quickened his pace."Ridgemont... sixteen... here we are."He crested the hill into th

Chase could feel his body settling into something new, something sturdier. High-tier cores clearly hit different than the low-level ones every green core barely registered anymore, but two blue cores in one night had left a fluctuation he could actually feel, humming under his skin.If Lulu had made a single move against him back there, he wouldn't have hesitated. His first read on the woman who'd shot out his tire hadn't exactly been glowing, and if she'd turned hostile after he'd bothered saving her twice, he'd have written her off the same way he was planning to write off Vanessa and maybe tasted that gold core of hers while he was at it.But she hadn't. She'd stood there quietly while he finished testing his limits on Vivian, and once he stopped, she'd simply said, "...Thank you. For saving me. Twice now."Chase studied her sheepish expression. His senses were unusually sharp right now crisp, almost hyper-defined and he realized, testing it, that the effect wasn't just his own.

Lulu got a good look at Chase then the bone-white skin, the blood-red eyes, the fury twisting his features and her stomach dropped.That is not a person.She raised her hand to fire, but Chase closed the distance before she could finish the draw, appearing directly in front of her almost faster than her eyes could track. Point-blank range killed any advantage her arrows had.He thrust his hand up. A fireball erupted beside her ear close enough to singe her hair, and Lulu braced for the burn.It never came.She followed Chase's gaze past her shoulder and found an infected crumpled on the ground behind her, already dead."...You saved me?" Lulu stared at him, disbelief plain on her face.He had, in fact mostly because she'd been decent to him minutes earlier, sharing intel and taking a shot at a threat that hadn't even been aimed at him. Small kindness, in Chase's new math, was worth something.He also clocked, now that he was standing this close, the faint gold pulse behind her eyes. A

"Chase Ryder."He tapped the pen against his own chest after writing it."Oh Chase. Right, I think I actually recognize you. From around the neighborhood."He nodded, then pointed toward the stairs."You should sleep. I don't need to. I'll keep watch."Chloe hesitated. It was one thing to accept food from a zombie standing on her porch. It was another thing entirely to fall asleep upstairs with one technically still a strange man wandering her living room.Chase seemed to read the hesitation on her face. He stepped to the center of the room, raised his hand, and a fireball roared to life above his palm bigger than he meant it to be, close enough to the crystal chandelier overhead that it nearly caught the glass alight.He blinked, startled by his own strength, and let it dissolve."If I wanted to hurt you," he wrote, "I would have done it already."Chloe read the note twice, something in her chest loosening. If Chase hadn't shown up with that first suitcase, she probably wouldn't have

The infected descended on the screaming girl like starving dogs on a fresh bone. The screaming didn't last long.Chase watched the entire thing happen, expression flat and dark. He wasn't in any hurry to deal with the ones now feeding on Mia's core.Instead, he bent down, picked up a heavy stone, activated his newly-formed speed ability, and took off after Nathan.You want someone to blame? Blame yourself. You had a real power and you used it to run. His thoughts came out sharper than he expected. Coward. Damn coward.Nathan was sprinting hard toward the nearest clear stretch of street when he registered something behind him footfalls too fast, too heavy, and wrong in a way that made his skin crawl. Not the shamble of the infected. More like a motor winding up.He glanced back out of pure reflex and caught one clear look at Chase's bone-white face bearing down on him before the stone hit.It caught him square in the skull. Blood ran down into his eyes. He died without ever understandi

Chase spun around and stormed out, slamming the door behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.The bang drew every infected within earshot straight to the house and straight into Chase's fists. A few solid hits later, they scattered back the way they'd come, uninterested in a fight they clearly weren't winning.Chloe stood frozen in her kitchen, staring at the closed door.Was he... angry?She replayed the last few minutes. He'd brought her an entire suitcase of food. He'd just personally beaten off a small crowd of zombies outside her house. That wasn't the behavior of something that wanted to eat her.Is he... a good zombie?Her stomach growled, loud and insistent, cutting the thought short. She dropped to the floor beside the suitcase and ate like she hadn't eaten in days because she hadn't, not really, not a full meal. Tears blurred her vision halfway through, and she let them fall without bothering to wipe them away.Chase headed back toward the Westchester estate on foot. Dri