Opposition

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  said, as if he could read my mind. “But we have to sacrifice the few to save the many.”

  I turned back to the screen as it flickered rapidly for a second before evening out. The image had zoomed in once more, enough that I could track movement on the ground.

  “That’s not all it does,” Archer said quietly. “The EMP was designed for a different purpose.”

  The general nodded. “Originally, it came to creation as a weapon of mass destruction that would limit the loss of human life. The EMP irreversibly damages any and all electronic devices and power sources.”

  Holy shit.

  That was all I was capable of thinking.

  “That’s everything,” Kat whispered. “That’s absolutely everything in the city—phones, cars, hospitals, communications—everything.”

  “One minute, elevation at four hundred feet.”

  “It will virtually knock L.A. back into the Dark Ages.” Archer stared at the large screen. “You’re about to see history be made again, but the kind of history that can never be rewritten.”

  “You can’t do this,” I said.

  Kat was shaking her head. “You can’t. There’re people there who need electricity—there are innocent people, and their whole way of life is about to be ended. You can’t—”

  “It’s obviously too late,” Nancy snapped, dark eyes firing. “This is our only option to stop them. For there even to be a tomorrow where mankind is safe.”

  I opened my mouth, but the broken radio transmission fired up, counting down from twenty seconds, and there wasn’t any way to stop this. It was happening, right in front of us.

  Moving closer to Kat, I continued to rivet my eyes on the screen, on the cars traveling the freeway, trying to exit the city. There could be Luxen in those cars, good ones and bad ones. There could be humans with heart conditions. There were also hospitals somewhere on that screen, people whose next breath would never come.

  And then it happened.

  Kat smacked her hand over her mouth as a flash of blinding light caused the image on the screen to wobble for a moment or two, and then the picture settled. Everything looked as it had seconds before, except none of the cars moved on the freeway. Nothing moved, actually, and . . .

  The entire city had gone dark.

  13

  { Katy }

  Oh my God, I felt like I needed to sit down or I was going to fall over.

  I couldn’t tear my gaze from the screen. Nothing was happening. Of course not. Millions of people in L.A. were currently stunned. And out of them, how many would never get back up again? Hundreds? Thousands? I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed.

  A voice crackled over the radio, declaring a successful drop of the EMP bombs. No one in the room cheered. I was glad they hadn’t, because I was sure either Daemon or I would’ve ended up with onyx being sprayed in our face.

  “We’ll be initiating a scan for any electrical pulses,” the man who had been counting down earlier announced. “Two minutes and I should have the data.”

  General Eaton nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Luxen and their many spinoffs emanate an electrical response,” Nancy explained, but I already knew that. That was why the PEP and EMP weapons were so dangerous.

  They fried us on a massive level.

  Daemon wrapped an arm around my shoulders, dragging me against his side. When I placed my hand on his chest, I could feel his body hum. He was angry, like me. The fury swirling inside me caused a rush of static to pop across my skin. There was so much frustration, because I knew our options were limited, but this . . . ?

  The magnitude of what had just happened went beyond the loss of life. Today, whatever the date, would go down in infamy as the day the City of Angels just stopped. Nothing would work there the same again. All of the electrical grids, the networks, and the complex infrastructure that was so beyond my realm of understanding were all gone.

  “There’s no recovering from that, is there?” I asked, and my voice sounded hoarse.

  Archer’s jaw was set. “It would take decades, if not longer, to rebuild to what it was.”

  I closed my eyes, floored by the ramifications of this.

  “There is no activity,” the man announced. “Not even a blip.”

  Daemon stiffened beside me, and I pressed my hand against his chest. There had to be a lot of innocent people who had perished.

  And this was only the beginning. I knew it. They would do this to more cities, all around the world, and more innocent people would die and the world would become . . . holy crap, life as we knew it would become a freaking dystopian novel like I’d thought before, but for real.

  Pulling away, I turned and faced General Eaton. “You can’t keep doing this.”

  His deep gray eyes met mine, and I knew he had to be thinking, Who in the hell is this chick to think she can even say anything? and maybe I didn’t have a right. Hell, in the grand scheme of things I was a nobody, just a freak of nature, but I couldn’t stand here and not say something as they literally destroyed the world one city at a time.

  “You’re obliterating millions of people’s way of life, and that’s not even taking into consideration the people who were killed when those bombs were dropped,” I said, voice shaking. “You can’t keep doing this.”

  “This wasn’t a decision that came lightly. Trust me when I say there were and will be many hours where sleep will be lost,” he replied. “But there is no other way.”

  Daemon folded his arms across his chest. “What you’re doing is basically committing genocide.”

  No one responded, because what could they say to that? It was genocide, because those bombs were going to wipe most of the Luxen off the planet.

  Archer scrubbed a hand along his jaw. “The thing is, guys, what other option do they have? You know as well as I do that if the invading Luxen aren’t stopped, and if the Origins who are working with them aren’t rounded up, it will take just weeks before they have complete control of the whole planet.”

  “Maybe not even that long,” Nancy commented as she dropped into an empty chair. Her expression was as impassive as ever, but I wondered if she feared that wherever the Origins were holed up was near one of the cities where bombs would be dropped. “If the Origins are in on this—”

  “They are,” I said, thinking of Sadi and the Elder Daemon had mentioned. “Some of them are.”

  Her cool, dark gaze landed on me. “Then there truly is no other option. The Origins were created as the perfect species, with cognitive abilities beyond anything ordinary humans are capable of. The Origin—”

  “We get it,” snapped Daemon. His eyes glimmered like cut emeralds. “Maybe if you hadn’t messed with Mother Nature and create Origins—”

  “Hey,” muttered Archer. “One standing right here.”

  Daemon ignored him. “Maybe if you hadn’t done this, the Luxen wouldn’t have come.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said, shoulders bunching. “They could’ve—”

  “What I do know is that they are working with the Luxen,” he said, cutting her off. “And it doesn’t take a giant leap of logic to think that they had something to do with the Luxen coming here. That shit is on your hands—on Daedalus.”

  “Which is awfully ironic, don’t you think?” Archer said, and when Daemon shot him a blank look, I thought for a second he might roll his eyes. “Daedalus was the father of Icarus in Greek mythology. He built the wings Icarus used to fly, and the dumb kid got too close to the sun. The wings melted and he plummeted back down to Earth, drowning in the sea. Kind of like his invention was his own downfall. Same with Prometheus.”

  Daemon stared at Archer for a long moment and then turned back to Nancy. “Anyway, no matter how you guys spin it, this mess is on your hands.”

  “And we are trying to fix it,” General Eaton responded. “Unless you all have something we haven’t thought of, there is no other option.”

  “I don’t know.” I pressed my fin
gers to my temples. “We really could use the Avengers right about now.”

  “Screw that. We need Loki,” Daemon retorted.

  General Eaton arched a brow. “Well, unfortunately, the Marvel universe isn’t real, so . . .”

  I started to laugh, because I was seconds from doing the crazy laugh and never stopping, but then Daemon blinked as if something had smacked him upside the head.

  “Wait,” he said, thrusting a hand through his unruly hair. “We need the equivalent of Loki.”

  “I’m not really following that train of thought,” I said.

  He shook his head. “There is something we can use, that I know we can use.”

  General Eaton inclined his head as Archer’s gaze turned razor sharp. His lips thinned, and I knew he was peeking in on Daemon’s thoughts. Whatever he was seeing, he didn’t look like he was a big fan of it.

  When Archer spoke in an awed whisper, he confirmed my suspicion. “That’s crazy insane, like completely senseless, but it might work.”

  Daemon sent him a killer look. “Gee, why don’t you go ahead and tell them what I’m thinking.”

  “Oh, no.” Archer waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t want to steal your thunder.”

  “I think you already did, so—”

  “Come on,” I jumped in, impatient. “Tell the rest of us who don’t have nifty mind-reading abilities.”

  Daemon’s lips twisted into a semblance of a smile. “There is one thing that the invading Luxen really have no defense against.”

  “Well, obviously the EMP weapon,” Nancy commented mulishly.

  His nostrils flared. “Besides something that destroys everything as we know it on Earth.”

  She looked away, focusing on the monitor as if she were bored with the whole conversation. I wondered if anyone would get mad if I spin-kicked her in the back of the head.

  “The Arum,” Daemon said.

  I blinked slowly, thinking my brain just went kaput on me. “What?”

  “The invading Luxen know of the Arum. That much I picked up, but there was something else I learned from them,” Daemon explained. “They have no experience with them.”

  “But they know of them,” General Eaton said. “You just said that.”

  “Yeah, but from my personal experience, knowing of the Arum and hearing about them are totally different than actually dealing with them, especially if you’ve never seen one face-to-face before—and they haven’t. The Arum were long gone, on their way here, and these Luxen went in the opposite direction. Even if they’d seen one before, they were just children then.”

  A few of the officers in the room, the ones at the mini-monitors, had turned in their seats and were paying a lot of attention to Daemon.

  “The first time I faced off with an Arum, I would’ve died if Matthew . . .” He took a breath, and the others might not have noticed the flicker of pain, but I saw it, and my chest ached. Matthew, who had been a father figure to all of them, had betrayed them, and I knew that would cut deep for a very long time. “If Matthew hadn’t been there, someone older and more experienced with the Arum, I would’ve died. Hell, many times over before I got the hang of fighting them.”

  “The Arum were created by the freaking laws of nature to keep the Luxen in check and fight them,” Archer said, excitement thrumming in his voice. “They are the only true predator of the Luxen.”

  A tiny spark of hope flared in my chest, but I didn’t want to give it too much room to grow. “But the Origins will know how to fight them.”

  “They will, but there aren’t thousands and thousands of them,” Daemon said. “And there’s no way they can teach the Luxen that quickly how to defend themselves. Hell, I doubt they even think the Arum will be a problem. Luxen, by nature, are arrogant.”

  “Gee, really?” I muttered.

  One side of his lips kicked up in a sexy, smug half grin as Archer snickered.

  “Origins are probably more arrogant, you know,” Daemon said. “The borderline stupid kind of arrogant.”

  The smirk faded from Archer’s face.

  “Wow. I feel like Morgan Freeman should be doing a voice-over right now, like, ‘Their weakest link is something already here,’” I said, and when several sets of eyes settled on me with identical looks of confusion, I flushed. “What? It’s from War of the Worlds, and I think it’s totes appropriate for the situation.”

  A real smile crossed Daemon’s face, and in spite of everything, my insides melted into goo whenever he smiled liked that, because it was so incredibly rare. “I love how your brain works.”

  There’s that love-struck thing you were wondering about in Beth and Dawson’s room. Archer’s words floated through my head, and I cringed. Heat enveloped my cheeks as I cleared my throat. “Do you think this will work?”

  “How many Arum are here?” Daemon directed the question at the general and Nancy.

  One of the biggest things that had surprised us over the years was the fact that Daedalus had been working with the Arum to keep the Luxen in check, for whatever gross, nefarious reasons.

  Nancy’s lips pursed. “We don’t have exact numbers, not like with the Luxen who have been assimilated. Many of the Arum went dark when they came here.”

  “Went dark?” I frowned.

  “They went underground,” General Eaton explained. “Moving from city to city. They’re damn hard to keep track of.”

  “And you guys were more concerned about us and the cool things we could do.” Daemon smirked. “Nice.”

  “So how many do we know are here?” I asked before the conversation went downhill.

  “A few hundred worked for us,” Nancy said.

  “Wait.” Daemon’s eyes narrowed. “That’s in the past tense.”

  Oh, no.

  General Eaton looked like he wanted to strip out of his jacket. “Many of them left when the Luxen arrived.”

  “Many?” scoffed Nancy as she smoothed her hands down her legs. “All of them did. None of us should be surprised. They aren’t the most loyal of all creatures.”

  That tiny spark of hope started to fizzle out when Archer spoke up. “But they are still here, on this planet.”

  “So what?” Nancy challenged. “You’re going to get them to help?”

  A mysterious smile trekked across Archer’s face. “Not me, but I know someone who owes someone else a really big favor.”

  Nancy rolled her eyes. “Even if you could get them to help, it would be pointless. There’re too many spread out and—”

  “Actually, if I may speak up,” came a voice from the middle of the room. It was a middle-age woman with dark blond hair pulled back into a tight, neat bun. She was standing, her hands clasped behind her back.

  General Eaton nodded for her to continue.

  “Most of the invading Luxen landed in the United States with manageable numbers overseas. We think this is due to the amount of Luxen we already have here in the States. As you know, we’ve been tracking movement over the last ten or so hours. Many of the invading Luxen have been moving east, toward the capital. If our suspicions are correct, they will be joining forces there and becoming a sizable unit,” she said, glancing toward Daemon and Archer. “Some have integrated themselves into the cities we’ve already lost, but if we were able to make a strike against D.C., we’d take out many of them.”

  “And that is what we are planning,” General Eaton said.

  “But you’re planning to drop an electrical-whatever bomb on the nation’s capital,” I stated, hands clenching at my sides.

  “Actually, if an even more sizable mass of Luxen does appear, it will be several e-bombs,” Nancy said. “Enough that most of Virginia, Maryland, and even the I-81 corridor in West Virginia would be hit.”

  “Jesus,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut. That’s where my mom and my friends were. “What are you doing to the cities already lost—Houston, Chicago, and Kansas City?”

  “Over the next twenty-four hours, EMPs will be dropped.”