by J B Cantwell
She cocked her gun. I put my hands up. Small screams of alarm sounded from the few people who were in the street.
“So, do it,” I said, baiting her. “Go ahead. I dare you.”
Her face contorted into an expression between rage and confusion.
This was not how this meeting had been supposed to go.
“You’re not the one,” I said. “This isn’t your decision at all. They made a mistake sending you, and you know it. Whoever it was that sent you, that is.”
Because it could’ve been anyone.
I turned and walked away.
“You can’t do this,” she said.
I didn’t turn back. She cocked her gun again.
I turned around, walking backwards now.
And she did it. She fired. In a flash, I was on the ground, taken down by someone I hadn’t seen coming. Someone big.
Alex.
“Stay down,” he said, whispering, shielding my body with his own.
I heard a scream and another gun firing, then a thunk on the ground. Whoever that woman had been, whomever she had been working with, she was dead now.
Suddenly, I was so, so tired. I had thought that my reunion with Alex would’ve been exhilarating, but the events of the past two weeks had worn me down. I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and go to sleep.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” I said softly.
He was on high alert, though. His head was whipping from side to side, searching for a threat he couldn’t seem to find.
“We need to move,” he said, acting as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
I stared up into his face and caught his eye.
He was the same. They hadn’t gotten to him. He recognized me, at least.
His head whipped around, then his eyes grew wide. He reached into the back of my jeans and snatched my gun, expertly training it on whomever it was that had shot the woman, and he fired. He got up and ran to the body, a man this time, taking his weapon from him and running back over to me.
“Riley, you need to get up. I’ve been tracking you, but I needed to wait until you were out in the open.” He dragged me up off the concrete, lifting me until my feet were an inch off the ground. It was then that I realized how enormous he had become. My head barely made it to his chest.
“What did they do to you?”
“I don’t want to have to carry you,” he said, still staring around. “Move!”
He took my hand in his, but his was so huge and awkward it was like following a giant.
“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice a desperate whisper.
“We need to get you out. You can’t stay here. They’ll kill you.”
“Who will kill me?” The word ‘they’ could be attributed to anyone.
“The Service. I need to get you out so that I can get back.”
“What? Why?”
“Because they’re expecting me. This was my test, to try to catch you. That woman with the gun, she was my partner, a spy, a hired soldier by the Service. She didn’t show her true colors until now. She was the one who found you. I heard her sending the communication to her sergeant. She’d left me behind, thinking I couldn’t track her, too. ”
“And what about the man?”
“Service.”
We were running, but there was no way I could keep pace with him. He was so powerful now, bigger than he’d ever been, a freak of the Service’s making.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere you’ll be safe.”
As we turned into a dark alleyway, I stopped.
“But you won’t be safe. You’ll go back there, and they’ll kill you without me. You have to take me with you.”
“No. Your place is with the Volunteers. They know about you and your group. You need to get back to them and find somewhere else to stay. Jonathan followed you, and before he was caught by the Volunteers’ side, he sent his communication to the Champions.”
“Oh, my God. We have to get to them, to warn them.”
“Kiyah’s already doing that, I’m guessing. She says she plays for herself, but I know she sides with the Volunteers. Otherwise she wouldn’t have made it her priority to find you.”
He tore his eyes away from the street beyond and trained them on me. It was then that I noticed several long gashes on his face. Many of them were healing, but some were new.
“They tortured you, didn’t they?” I asked. Suddenly, I was furious again. “Who was it? I’ll kill them.” I was standing upright now, no longer fading into exhaustion. There would be time to sleep later.
He smiled, putting one hand on my cheek.
“That’s my girl. Now come on, we need to go.”
“No. I want to know who.”
He sighed, frustrated.
“Does it really matter who? It’s all the same. The only people good and right are you and I. No one else can be trusted.”
“Then take me with you, back to the Champions. I—”
Shots fired, and not too far away. The sound came from the direction of the zoo.
He grabbed my hand and turned to run.
“We have to get you out of here.”
“But what is that?” I asked, trying to keep pace with him as he tore through the alley.
“There are only two groups that can be fighting now, the Service and the Champions. And I don’t want you near either of them.”
“Okay. We can get out of here, go warn the Volunteers or try to find them if they’ve moved from the space already.”
“That won’t work,” he said, slowing down to let me catch up.
“Why not?”
He stopped, then lifted up a short lock of his hair.
“Because of this.”
He was chipped.
“Wait, if you’re chipped, why doesn’t the Service have you in custody?”
His face fell, grim and regretful.
“Because it’s not the Service’s chip.”
He didn’t speak, and for a moment I thought he might even cry.
And then suddenly I understood. It wasn’t the Service holding his puppet strings.
It was the Champions.
Chapter Eleven
They had thought of everything. They’d chipped him with their own device to make it impossible for him to escape. Now I understood why he couldn’t join me, because if he did, he’d be targeted and probably killed.
And this was to be his test. To catch me.
“They’ll kill you if you let me go,” I said. “You know they will.”
“They won’t. They still need me. They don’t know where the bombs are. And they want that nuke.”
“Wait a minute, you did steal a nuke?”
“No. I’m not an idiot, and that would’ve been impossible anyway. They’re even more heavily guarded than the EMPs. I just got the one.”
“You did get the EMP?” I asked. “How?”
“That doesn’t matter now. I hid it somewhere they will never find it. Right near the server buildings. It’s ready to go. You just need to get to it.”
“How on Earth did you get it there?”
He shook his head. “That’s not important. I had been on my way to the Burn to get to you, but the Champions found me first. You have to trust me when I say you need to get out of here. They think you know the exact location of a nuclear device.”
“Well, I do know where one is. And so do you.”
“I’m not talking about the one at the silo. But I had to pretend I knew where one was, that I’d stolen one.”
“Why?”
“Because they knew about you. They knew that you’d gotten out of the Burn. Riley, they know everything.”
“How? How can they possibly?”
“Jonathan.”
Jonathan. I couldn’t wait to come face to face with him someday, hopefully soon. I had a punch or two to throw in his direction. Maybe a couple of bullets, too, while I was at it.
“We have to hide somewhere,
” I said. “I can dig out that chip. I’ve done it enough times. It won’t take long. It—”
“They’ll know. We can’t do that.”
“Of course they’ll know. But once you’re invisible, you’re invisible.”
“Do you honestly think that I could walk down a street and look invisible? I mean, look at what they’ve done to me.”
He looked down at his mangled body, and for the first time I saw real sadness on his face. Muscles engorged. Height unnatural, even for a Prime.
Who? Who had done it? The Service? The Champions? My list of people to kill was starting to grow exponentially.
“Then you have to take me back. You know you do.”
“Maybe not. Maybe I can—”
“You can’t. Whatever it is, you can’t do it on your own. You have to let me help you. Please.”
I pulled out my gun and handed it to him.
“Here. Take me with you. I swear that if you don’t, I’ll go in on my own. This is something we have to do.”
“You don’t understand.” He let his head hang.
“Have I ever steered you wrong before? When I was leading our teams back in Edmonton, or in the lake?
He looked up.
“This isn’t like those times.”
“This is exactly like those times. Now take it.”
I waved the gun in front of him, and a moment later, he took it from my hand. I raised my arms up into the air and turned to walk out of the alley.
“What will you tell them?” he asked.
“Whatever it is they want to hear.”
We walked out into the street and headed straight for the zoo. I wondered what the result of the gunfight had been. The Service was strong, yes, but they had been playing the game on the Champions’ turf.
I couldn’t decide whom I’d rather have win the battle. Maybe they’d all just killed each other, and now we were free.
Not likely.
The streets were deserted now; the citizens had gone into hiding with all the shooting going on.
“No,” Alex whispered behind me. “Turn right.”
“Right? Why?”
“We’re not going to the zoo. We can’t risk getting into the middle of all that. I’ll take you to their headquarters.”
I turned right, then continued to walk, his gun held up against my back. I could feel him back there, so close. How I wished I could turn around and kiss him, to get lost in something wonderful to counter all the horror that had been our lives for so long.
But that wasn’t the mission. Not today.
“So, tell me,” I said as we walked. “Tell me now where the EMP is.”
“No.”
“Why not? Aren’t we supposed to detonate it together?”
“They’re going to hurt you, you know,” he said. “Coming back with me can only mean bad things for you.”
“Then tell me where it is.”
He stopped walking, and, feeling the gun leaving my back, I did, too.
“They’re here.” His voice was shaking now, with fear or anger, I couldn’t tell.
“Tell me now,” I whispered. “It’s the only way.”
He stepped closer to my side, and I felt the gun in my back once more.
“It’s in Bay Two in the receiving entrance at the server buildings,” he whispered. “Nobody ever goes in there. It’s in the back of an old truck parked just inside. Looks like it hasn’t been used for a long time. But I took the keys for good measure.”
He dug into his pocket and produced a small keyring. I took it from him and hid it in one of the cargo pockets of my pants.
“Don’t tell them,” he said. “Send them to Bay Four. Kiyah will be back. She can tell the Volunteers to get to it first.”
I thought it was clever that Kiyah had everyone thinking that she was working for them. The Champions. The Service. The Volunteers. I wondered where her royalties actually lay.
But she couldn’t play that game forever. Someday, someone would catch her and demand answers. Until that day came, we would all of us be in the dark about her true intentions.
I couldn’t trust her. She was a wild card, and I had no idea what game she was even playing. Why bother chasing everyone around all the time? Someone was compensating her, and generously, I guessed.
Bay Two. Don’t forget.
“How hard was it to get in there?” I asked.
“Hard. But I didn’t have a chip again yet, so they didn’t see me coming. I paid off a truck driver with a rifle I’d stolen from the Service. He was only too happy to hide me in the back of his truck and drive me in along with his delivery.
“He parked in Bay Ten, though. I had to sneak it over to the truck in Two, but it was dark along that side of the building, and not many guards. Then, when I had it planted, I skirted back to the rig and hid in the back. No one checked the cargo area on our way out, and I gave the truck driver the rifle as promised.”
“Will we be able to get back to it? To detonate it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any weapons now except this one.” He held up my pistol. “It might take us a while, and it will be dangerous. Way more dangerous than we thought.”
His voice was low, almost inaudible.
“But right now it’s here we need to break into. Put your hands up. Make it look legit.” He paused. “I can still get you out, you know. There’s still time. I’m fast, Riley.”
I ignored him. Speed wouldn’t matter with that chip in his head. I put my hands up into the air.
“You can come out now,” I called to whoever might’ve been listening. “I’m here. I’m unarmed.”
The sound of several safety latches being disengaged rang out through the alley, and two distinct shapes came into view, both with guns trained on my head. Then, a third materialized from farther away. A woman.
“Looks like you caught her, Alex,” she called out. “Nice job.”
Alex gasped behind me, a sound he tried to cover up with a cough. He knew something suddenly, that had been why he’d gasped. But what?
The woman sauntered forward, but in the dim light I wasn’t able to see her face. Still, there was something familiar.
“How nice to get you two lovebirds back together, even if it’s only for a short little visit. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The quiet sound of her footsteps. The way she was swaying slightly as she approached us. The sing-song nature of her voice, full of taunting. Finally, she stepped out into the light. Another traitor. Again and again. I wondered where her lies ended and the truth began.
She walked up to me and let her finger slide down my cheek, almost lovingly.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said.
Hannah.
EPISODE 2
Chapter One
“Two soldiers dead,” Hannah said. “I knew you’d turned, but I didn’t think you’d turned wicked, too.” Her voice was one of approval.
Alex was struggling against the other two Primes. They had him by the arms, and though he was bigger than either of them, the strength of the two Champion Primes together was too much for him.
“Riley!” he called as they started to drag him away. “Get out of here! Just run! You don’t want to—”
One of the Primes hit him in the head with the back of his elbow, knocking him sideways. Then, the Prime took out a dart gun and stabbed him in the neck with it.
“Leave him alone!” I demanded. I ran for them, trying to pry their arms off his, but I was the next one to feel a blow from them, and it knocked me to the ground.
“You see, that’s the problem with you,” Hannah said as Alex was pulled away, limp and bloodied. “You always take things so personally. Come on, now.” She extended a hand for me to take, but I didn’t and instead pushed myself up on my own.
They were already around the corner with him, and I ran after them. Too late, though. They’d loaded him into a van and were starting to pull away.
I grabbed onto the handle
on the passenger side and pulled open the door, but the Prime elbowed me, in the face this time, and I felt my nose break as I was tossed backward into the street.
“Alright, little girl,” Hannah called as she rounded the corner. “It’s time to play with the big kids now.” She wrapped her hands around my arm and tried to pull me up.
I struggled, but not from her strength; Hannah had always been slight, easy to take down in a physical battle. I struggled instead with my own weight as I pushed off the pavement again, my head throbbing, vision blurred.
I ran away, trying to catch up to the van. It rounded the corner, tires screeching, fifty feet ahead of me. Just as I was about to turn the corner, I felt a sting in the back of my neck. It only took moments before I was on the ground again, knocked out by the poison in Hannah’s dart.
I woke up on a bed, warm and comfortable. For several seconds I thought I was in my old room in Mom’s apartment. Then, with a start, I realized I was nowhere near Brooklyn. Light streamed in from a window over the bed, and I squinted my eyes from it, too bright. My face and head throbbed, and when I went to touch my nose, I felt a brace around it.
I sat up and immediately fell back down to the bed, too dizzy to stay upright.
What had they given me?
Someone had set my nose, something I had been mercifully asleep for. But now I was feeling the repercussions from that dart. I tried to fight my way up to sitting again, but soon I was nearly blacking out. I let myself fall into the pillow and tried to control my breathing. I touched the area near my temple and found that I had not been implanted with a Champion’s chip. Not yet.
What had happened?
My memories were a blur in my current drugged state. I remembered gunfire, being taken down and protected by Alex’s grotesque body, hearing the shots ring out as he killed the two Service spies with my gun. And then there he was, dragged away. The stinging pain in my neck as I was hit with a dart.
Who? Who was responsible for all of this?
She was. Hannah.
This time when I sat up, I steadied myself on the edge of the mattress. I wasn’t sure if I could walk, but somehow or another I would reach my target.