by Tarah Benner
Once Logan had recovered from her coughing fit, we vaulted the low wall and sprinted across the deserted street. My legs were moving without consulting my brain, and I didn’t even feel the burning in my lungs as we flew full force toward the Infinity Building.
It was only a block away — an imposing titanium formation that consumed the skyline.
We ducked behind a parked cruiser, and Amory checked that no officers were headed toward us.
“Go!” he breathed, and we all took off toward the building at a sprint.
I hefted my rifle in my hands, preparing to shoot, my legs and arms working of their own accord.
Logan was in full sniper mode now. Her hair was pulled back into a slick ponytail, and her beautiful face was set in stone.
The last time we entered the building, we had come up from the parking garage in an elevator. But since the visitors’ entrance would be on lockdown, we were planning to storm the front steps. Four heavily armed officers were standing outside the door, which didn’t seem like very much security to me.
Roman threw out an arm, and my chest slammed into his rock-hard triceps. With the wind knocked out of me, I didn’t fight as Amory pulled me behind another parked car.
He pointed up, and I followed his gaze to a building across the street. From one open window, I could just discern the tiniest flash of white. A sniper was perched there.
“They probably have more. We need to move fast.”
“We can’t just rush them all at once,” said Greyson. “That would be exactly the scenario they’ve planned for.”
“So what, then?”
“We take them from two sides,” offered Logan, following Greyson’s train of thought with ease.
Amory nodded. “Roman and I will approach them head-on. You three take them from the sides.”
“You have to let us go in first,” I said. “We’ll have the element of surprise. It will be less dangerous if you let us take out as many as we can before you move in.”
He nodded, clearly distressed that I had circumvented his efforts to keep us out of danger.
We dashed out from behind the parked car, skirting around a building that was out of the sniper’s line of sight.
Please don’t let there be any PMC, I thought.
If we had to open fire this close to the building, the guards would hear, and we would lose our advantage. More would come rushing in to fortify the building, and we’d have a much harder time shooting our way in.
The street was eerily quiet as we moved down the rows of buildings. Suddenly I wondered if they were empty or if they were businesses run by displaced Canadians living under World Corp’s regime.
Greyson turned up an alley, and I followed, hoping his sense of direction had magically improved overnight.
As we skirted down the narrow street, the corner of the Infinity Building came into view. We were at the perfect vantage point to take out the officers.
We crouched down behind a dumpster, and I checked my gun. Here, we could each get a clear shot at an officer.
“I’ve got the far right,” said Logan, lining up her shot.
A pang of worry hit me as I watched her fingers shake on the trigger.
“I’m fine,” she hissed, irritated by my pointed gaze. “I won’t miss.”
Forcing myself to swallow any doubts, I found my target. “Second from the right.”
“I got far left,” said Greyson.
That was smart. The final guard left would look to both sides, giving us one extra second to take him out.
“One . . . two . . .”
But then one of the officers raised his rifle, and a shot rang out from farther away. To my horror, I saw Roman sprinting out from his and Amory’s hiding place, shooting at the officers. Amory was nowhere in sight.
Roman staggered, and I knew he’d been hit.
“Shit,” breathed Greyson, lining up his shot again.
I didn’t waste any time. I found my target again, shooting and praying. I hit my officer straight in the chest, and he went down.
Logan shot, missed, and swore loudly, lining up another shot. “He moved,” she growled, fending off a remark I had no intention of delivering.
My heart was pounding too loudly. Roman was still staggering, lifting his gun despite his injury. I still couldn’t see Amory.
“Is he out of his mind?” Greyson yelled after he’d shot again. There were still two officers standing.
“It’s the virus,” said Logan. “He’s not himself right now.”
Why hadn’t Amory appeared? Had he been hit? I had heard two gunshots, but I assumed one had been the fatal shot to the officer.
“We need to move in before we lose our window,” I said. “Now!”
Greyson and Logan didn’t argue. We shot out from behind the dumpster and sprinted toward the building. The officers heard us approaching and aimed their rifles in our direction, and then one shuddered and fell to the ground.
Amory.
I shot at the other officer and hit him too low. He fired at Logan as he went down, missing by inches, and she delivered another shot to his head.
We had reached the marble steps. An alarm was sounding within the building. It must have been triggered by the gunshots’ reverberations.
A blistering sting of heat unlike anything I’d ever experienced hit my shoulder.
My eyes watered and I froze, but my feet kept moving without consulting my brain. I stumbled, feeling warmth spreading down my arm — pain. Something was wrong.
I raised my hand to my shoulder, and it came away sticky with blood. The sniper had grazed me. I’d been shot.
I wanted to throw up, but a delirious laugh bubbled out of my mouth, and I threw myself against the glass doors. They wouldn’t budge, and I bounced off like a mosquito hitting a light bulb. Blackness was pushing at the edges of my vision as though I were wearing blinders.
“Get out of the way,” growled Roman. He had come up right behind me, clutching his arm.
He was bleeding profusely. He fumbled with his rifle, but he didn’t seem to be able to raise his left arm.
“I got it,” said Amory, flying to the door. He snapped two black devices I’d seen him use before onto the glass and then pulled me with him until we were in the shadow of a large planter, hidden from the sniper’s view.
Everything was moving very slowly, and the numbness was overtaking my body. I couldn’t believe all my limbs still worked.
Logan, Roman, and Greyson hit the deck, and I crushed my hands over my ears as the rhythmic beeping began.
There was a wave of heat and a tremor that shook the marble steps. The doors shattered.
Unwilling to give the sniper any more chances, we scrambled to our feet and dashed inside. We were barely inside the building, and two of us were already shot. We were such amateurs.
“You’re bleeding,” said Amory.
I tried to shrug, but the tiny gesture sent a wave of pain down my arm. Now that the shock had worn off, the burning feeling was intensifying. At least I could raise my rifle. Roman threw his down and reached behind him with his good arm. He produced a handgun, and I wondered if he’d lifted it when Switch wasn’t paying attention.
I could hear movement in the lobby. There were more officers inside. Greyson lunged around the corner first, sending an officer in white sprawling across the floor as he fired.
Greyson ducked back around the corner, panting.
“How many?” I breathed.
“Fifteen or so.”
Amory swore.
Roman ducked around the corner, and a volley of shots cracked through the air. For a moment, none of us breathed, but then he jumped back around, his arm bleeding worse than before from exertion.
“Make that thirteen. They’re guarding the elevators.”
That was it. We were done for. We knew this place — only one way in or out, now that the visitors’ entrance was sealed. The walls were sheets of titanium. Between the officers and our own rico
cheting bullets, there was no way all of us were coming out of here alive.
We looked at each other, knowing we didn’t have much time.
“The desk,” I said suddenly. “Run for the round desk in the center of the room.”
Roman nodded reluctantly.
My pulse was racing, but my head felt clear. I couldn’t even feel my shoulder anymore. The tears had dried in my lashes.
I reached up and kissed Amory briefly, and when I pulled away, he wore a fierce expression that mirrored everything I felt.
“Let’s go,” Roman said.
I nodded, steeling myself for the worst, and we dashed around the corner.
Taking aim at the officer nearest me, I hit him in the abdomen — not a clean kill. The others were firing behind me, but I focused on pumping my legs and propelling myself toward the round desk in the center of the lobby. I didn’t stop.
Across the room, an officer raised his rifle, and I knew he was aiming at me. His partner was aiming at Amory. What were we thinking? These officers were trained. Of course they had a strategy.
I only had one option.
I dove onto the floor, their shots echoing off the walls. I hit the ground harder than I’d wanted to, but it worked. The officer who’d been aiming at Amory stopped, training his rifle on me instead.
I struggled to get to my feet. Roman was already at the desk. He vaulted it and poked his head up. His arm came up, training his gun on the officer aiming at me. It all happened so quickly I wasn’t sure who fired first. All I knew was there was a gleam of satisfaction in the officer’s eye, and Amory was diving down in front of me.
He fell on top of me, unable to cushion his landing, and I felt the warmth of blood that wasn’t mine. The officer who had shot at me fell to the ground. Roman’s gun was still raised, pointed in his direction.
Greyson and Logan slid over the desk, but I couldn’t feel relief. Amory let out a low howl of pain.
There were more gunshots. My ears felt as though they would bleed. Every shot and every echo reverberated deep in my bones.
“Amory?” I whimpered. “Amory?”
He mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“Where are you hit? Amory?” My voice was two octaves too high. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe.
I tried to shift Amory. We had to move. We had to take cover.
A bullet whizzed past me, narrowly missing my head. With every ounce of strength I had, I pushed Amory off me. He fell back onto the white marble, his eyes squeezed together. He was clutching his chest, and my heart tripped erratically.
No. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening.
Somebody else shot, and I raised to a crouch and whipped my rifle around. Miraculously, I took out an officer, but two more were encroaching.
I didn’t know what to do. I had to move Amory, but I couldn’t stop shooting.
My hands were starting to shake. I gripped my rifle tighter, trying to maintain control, but I was cornered.
Another shot made me jump.
Greyson had taken down one of the remaining officers, but there was still one crouched behind a bronze bust, his dark eyes flashing behind his helmet. I moved to raise my gun, but his was already trained on me. There was nothing I could do.
Instead of raising my rifle to fight the inevitable, I dropped toward Amory, falling onto my knees and reaching out for him one last time. I braced myself for the inevitable pain — the choking cold that would clamp down on me as the blood poured from my chest.
A final shot cracked through the air, the echo cutting up the high ceiling and piercing my eardrums.
My knees hit the hard marble floor, but I hadn’t been shot.
I looked around. Logan had her gun pointed where the PMC officer had been. Now he was slumped against the brushed titanium wall. I’d given her a clear shot.
It only took a fraction of a second for reality to sink in. Amory was in front of me, bleeding — dying.
A heavy silence descended.
“Amory?” I gurgled, tears stinging my eyes and throat. I moved his hand, and he winced.
Hot, sticky blood coated his fingers, and more was seeping down his shirt.
Now that I was this close, I could tell the bullet was embedded too high to have hit his heart, but he was bleeding heavily. I pressed my hands over the wound, applying pressure.
“Haven . . .” he murmured.
“Why did you . . .?” I swallowed down the messy tears that were burning in my throat. “Help me,” I choked. “Help me. They shot him.”
A second later, Greyson, Logan, and Roman were at my side.
“We have to move him,” I said. “More PMC will come.”
“There’s no time,” said Roman, his voice surprisingly gentle. “We have to keep going.”
I shot him a nasty look, but I knew he was right. We could not fail. We had to kill Aryus.
“You keep going,” I said. My voice was shaking. “I’ll take care of him.”
“You can’t move him,” said Logan.
She was right. I glanced at Roman, but he was already reloading his gun, wincing as he used his injured arm. Even if he could move Amory in his current state, there was no way he would agree to stay behind.
“I’ll stay,” said Greyson quietly. “You go.”
My tears doubled when I looked at him. Greyson really was the best friend I could ask for, but leaving him with Amory would put him in more danger. If another wave of officers came, he would be on his own.
“Go,” he repeated. “You know this building.”
Feeling like a blubbering idiot, I threw a bloody arm around Greyson’s neck. Then I turned to Amory, pushing his hair back. His eyes were fluttering closed.
“Stay with me,” I whispered. “I love you.”
And we were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was easier than I thought it would be to leave all thoughts of Amory and Greyson behind as we entered the small, sterile-looking elevator.
I couldn’t think about them. If we didn’t kill Aryus, I would have failed everyone.
The elevator doors closed, and I knew Greyson had punched in the correct floor from the console at the desk when the robotic female voice spoke.
We shot up through the building, and I tried to block out the steady sound of Roman’s blood dripping on the clean white floor. Logan looked as though she might be sick, but my hands were surprisingly steady on my gun as we waited. I felt deadly calm. We had to finish the job. There was no other option.
The elevator doors flew open with a friendly ding. We each raised our weapons, expecting officers to swarm the elevator. But the hallway was deserted.
I recognized the sound of trickling water coming from the industrial fountain snaking along the sharply rounded hallway. We inched around in a tight circle, and I caught a glimpse of Roman’s face out of the corner of my eye. He looked a little green around the edges, and I knew he was fighting the exhaustion, fever, and blood loss.
Then we rounded the corner, and I saw a flash of white. I aimed, but a familiar voice stopped me.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
The officer turned. It was Mariah.
As I took in her smug smile and that greasy blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, a million hateful remarks burned on my tongue. I longed to toss my rifle aside and tear her apart with my bare hands.
“You shoot me, and that robot will shoot you.” She gestured over her head to the swiveling weaponized rover.
So Ida had been right. In the end, Aryus guarded himself with the only person he could trust.
“He’s in there, you know,” she teased, the light glinting off her smartlens. She was stroking the trigger of her rifle as if it were a shiny black bird, reveling in the power she held over us. “He’s pacing.” She threw us a mock pouty expression. “Poor baby. He does that a lot.”
“Jeez, you really do fuck your way to the top,” Roman blurted.
Mariah’s rifle m
oved toward him with a metallic jerk. Something about the way she turned on him reminded me of a cobra, poised to strike.
I mentally pleaded with Roman not to do anything stupid. Mariah was volatile. Doctor Carson would say her behavior was the result of residual brain damage caused by the virus. But her cockiness made her stupid. If given the chance, Mariah would let her guard down. The briefest second was all we needed.
“I didn’t fuck him, you asshole,” Mariah spat. “He just knows he can trust me.” She seemed to toy with this notion for a moment. “Stupid, really . . . you should never trust anyone. Given half a chance, anyone will turn on you.”
“Like Aryus did, you mean?” I asked.
Mariah’s gaze snapped to me. “He lied, yes. It doesn’t matter.” Her lips formed a poisonous sneer. “I’m used to it. People are liars by nature.”
She took a step toward me, and I could see the dark shadows under her eyes behind the smartlens — the way her skin looked pinched around the mouth. She wasn’t much older than we were, but she looked it.
“You’re a funny one, Haven. We bring you over to our side, and you still end up crawling back to the rebels. Such an idealist.
“I tried to tell Aryus the conditioning would never hold. Once a defector slut . . . always a defector slut.”
I smiled — happy I got under Mariah’s skin even half as much as she got under mine. I took a deep breath, trying a different tactic.
“His men killed Jared,” I said quietly. “They shot him like a dog in this very building. Doesn’t that bother you?”
By the shadow that crossed Mariah’s face, I knew I had struck a nerve.
“Liar,” she spat.
I hadn’t expected that.
“You’re lying to try to get a rise out of me. Aryus told me Jared went back with you.”
I shook my head, hardly able to believe Mariah had taken Aryus’s words to heart. Then I realized that besides her brother, Aryus was probably the person she’d trusted the most since he had cured her.
“You liar!” she screamed.
The more she called me a liar, the more her hardened expression cracked. She believed me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you knew.” As much as I hated Mariah, I really was sorry. The love she had for her brother was the only thing that ever made her seem human.