by C. S. Nelson
Every prisoner in the room was dead quiet, knowing that if they said the wrong thing, they would have no chance of survival. But the fact that they were all sitting at the edges of their cages, at full alert, when the last time Summer had left them they had been laying in dying piles, made Summer even more suspicious. “Who were you talking to?” Summer asked.
Kevin remained silent.
Say anything, Annie thought.
“I bet he’s helping Annie,” Dustan said. That got the attention of the rest of them. To Annie’s dismay, Kevin looked up at the sound of her name. He was giving them away.
“Why’s that?” Summer snapped.
“Why else would he be down here, digging through supplies?” Dustan asked. “She’s probably injured, needing help. You didn’t break him enough. You don’t own him.”
Annie was appalled. How could Dustan have turned this evil this quickly? “Check the experimentation room,” Summer ordered.
Good. If all of them went into the other room, it would give Annie enough time to run out the door. Probably not Zed, but it didn’t matter. He was hidden, camouflaged in his own skin. She would come back for him. Then she locked eyes with Kevin. She shook her head slightly. Look away. But he wouldn’t. His eyes were fixed on hers. He swallowed hard. Summer slowly stepped over to the broken boy, noticing his gaze. She stopped in front of him and knelt down. Annie found herself staring into the eyes of the devil herself.
Annie’s heart dropped. This was it. They were outnumbered, and Zed couldn’t fight even if he wanted to. She sat still, holding onto the cage bars, as Summer slowly waltzed towards her, with a sickening grin on her face. “Hello, Annie.” She bent down in front of her cage, still wearing her signature summer dress, with stockings and a winter coat overtop. She was so privileged. Her life was so easy. And now, Annie was being served to her on a silver platter.
“Summer.” Annie nodded once at her. There was nothing else to do.
“How nice it is to see you again.” She brushed her blond hair out of her face. So beautiful, so young, so fortunate. Annie glanced down at her own broken and bruised body. Muscular and scarred. And this was how it was going to end? With the privileged winning again without having to lift a finger?
“I wish I could say the same.”
Summer grinned. “Cute. Come take her, please.” She motioned to the breeders standing at attention at the door.
Two breeders came forward, pushing Kevin aside, and leaving Dustan alone at the door. If Dustan was upset at all about Annie being caught, his face didn’t show it. The breeders ripped the door open and pulled her out by her hair. Annie refused to show any fear, she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. As she was pulled down the hallway towards the door, she clenched her teeth together so hard she was sure they would shatter.
“Bring her outside,” Summer was walking behind her, strutting down the hallway with all the confidence in the world. “I want her to be executed at the hospital doors. Where they’ll find her in the morning.”
Annie saw Kevin staring at her from between the prisoners, looking horrified with what he had done. It was the end, Annie realized. She was out of options. Her only friends had betrayed her. Zed was lying in a cage, unable to move. Annie was trapped. With the ship coming, only days away, this wasn’t the ending she had ever pictured for herself.
She got yanked up the stairs, one hand under each arm. Annie kicked as hard as she could, making it tougher for them, but it did very little. Summer began laughing at her feeble attempts. “You know, I do have a lot of respect for you, Annie,” Summer said. “You just don’t give up. You’ve put up quite the fight. I do wonder how powerful we could have been together if we weren’t on opposite sides.”
“We aren’t on opposite sides,” Annie said between clenched teeth. They were at the top of the stairs, heading to the outside doors. “We both want to live. We both want to make it to Mpho. We both want as little death as possible.”
“Wrong. What we do know is that the president made deals with both of us. I want you dead, and you want me dead. You wanted to kill me to get your little boyfriend a one-way ticket to freedom. The slave? The one who just ratted you out? You need to choose your partners better. Me? I wanted you dead simply because you’re a nuisance. You see right through me.”
She was thrown into the ground, reaching her hands out to stop herself. They were both sliced open from the frozen dirt, but Annie could hardly feel it from the chill. She had only just gotten warm. She turned onto her back, staring up at Summer. The breeders had backed off, surrounding them to ensure that Annie had nowhere to run. She had no game plan. No weapons on her. Nowhere to run. She was outnumbered. Her only hope was that Zed might come up to save her. “I won’t kill you if you don’t kill me.” Annie smiled.
Summer genuinely laughed. “I think the reason that you annoy me so much is because you’re just like me, Annie. You’re a leader.” Summer snapped and one of the breeders handed their gun to her.
“You aren’t a leader.” Annie hissed, shaking her head. “You were born into the right family. We owe everything to Albert Henderson. And you’ve brainwashed people to think that we owe something to you as well.” Summer smirked, which only made Annie angrier. “I earned my respect, what little respect I’ve had. I’ve had to risk everything. I’ve had to put my life on the line. I am not like you.” She was hoping that Zed would come up the stairs at any moment and rescue her, because she had no chance of fighting her own way out of here.
Summer rubbed a smudge of the gun and then pointed it at Annie’s face. “Any last words, Annie?” she asked.
This was it. Zed was still downstairs. Kevin had still been down there when she had been dragged out. It was entirely possible that Kevin had locked Zed’s cage before he had a chance to get out. Two people that Annie had loved had abandoned her. Kevin and Dustan had both forsaken her as soon as they had a chance. And now she was going to die.
But Annie was calm. Her hands were bleeding and her body was shaking from the shock of the cold. But she was completely and totally calm. Maybe this wasn’t a life that she wanted to live anymore, with selfish people that had no respect for anyone else. She shook her head slowly. No last words. There was nothing left to say.
Summer giggled and looked down to cock the gun. The moment Summer’s eyes were off her, Annie acted without thinking. She leapt up and tackled Summer to the ground, grasping the gun with her cold, bloody hands. It happened in a second, and none of the breeders had been prepared. She sat on top of Summer, and cocked the gun easily, almost showing off, and then pressed it hard against Summer’s skull. She had learned so much in her time with the rangers.
There was a flash of fear in Summer’s eyes, before her face returned to the same calm, infuriating look that had always made Annie’s blood boil. “Tell the breeders to put down their weapons or I pull the trigger,” Annie growled. She was going to pull the trigger anyway. She just needed an escape plan before it happened.
“Lower your weapons,” Summer ordered, her smile unwavering.
Annie looked around at all four of them, watching intensely as they dropped their guns to the ground. She made sure she stared Dustan in the eye to make him as uncomfortable as possible. He would be next, she thought. As soon as she put a bullet through Summer’s head, Dustan would get the next shot. And then once she had killed all the breeders, she would go back downstairs and save Zed. There was a moment of thought that crept into Annie’s head. I’m not a killer. I don’t want to kill the people I care about. But she pushed it away. She couldn’t be the accepting person that she once was. None of these people cared about her, regardless. Nobody but Zed.
“Any last words, Summer Henderson?” It felt good. She wasn’t going to invite Kevin onto the ship with her. She would find someone though. A child perhaps. Someone that didn’t deserve to have to go through all of this again on another planet.
“I can’t wait for the people of Mpho to eat you alive,” she hissed.
>
Annie chuckled. “I’m so pleased to be the one that takes your miserable life.” She didn’t even know that she had this side, but she wasn’t disappointed in herself. She hadn’t always been this way. The Shield had made her this way. And she realized she was thankful.
“You don’t have to…” Summer began. Annie picked her up by her collar and threw her back into the ground, knocking the wind out of her. After many weeks as a ranger and Annie had gotten stronger than she had ever imagined. Finally, a look of true fear flooded Summer’s face. She had finally understood that she was going to die. But just as Annie began to squeeze the trigger, there was a massive cracking sound from the sky above them.
Chapter 23: Abort
“Captain, I think you need to see this.” Eliza had pulled her headset off in disbelief, watching the black and white cameras that covered every nook and cranny on Earth. It appeared they covered all the relevant parts of the planet. Cameras were scarce these days. With only Shield left that had survivors, it just wasn’t necessary for entire crews to be manning the monitor stations anymore. She was one of the last couple left.
Captain Jansen was talking to someone across the room about the entrees that were available for the crew that was bringing some of the test samples back to Mpho. “Do we have any vegetarians?” Jansen asked. The crewmember nodded. “Dammit. That’s going to cost us an extra third. Let the kitchen know. Give them…I don’t know…” He waved his hand in the air flippantly. “Some cardboard to chew on.” The crewmember began frantically typing on the computer in front of him.
“Captain!” Eliza yelled, a little more urgently. “Captain, I think it is very important that you see this!”
Jansen sighed. “Also, make sure my ship has a couple dishes of lasagna, because I’m not eating that freeze dried shit.” Three more hours until his double shift was over. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow when the ship was off the ground. A half-day trip to go pick up the people of Earth and back. Then order would be restored. The experiment would begin again. And he could finally get a little sleep. He’d had no inkling that this promotion was going to cause him so much stress.
He walked over to the screen that the intern was looking at so intensely and his heart dropped. “Who’s that?” he asked.
“That is the outlaw, Annie…”
“I mean who is Annie pointing a gun at?” Jansen snapped.
Eliza gulped, readjusting the glasses resting on the end of her nose. “That would be, um, Summer Henderson.”
Jansen squeezed the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb. The only person that was absolutely vital to bring home to Mpho was about to have her brain blown out right in front of him. He would lose his job for sure. “Audio?” He snapped aggressively. “Audio, audio, audio!”
Eliza clicked a couple of buttons. “Annie is definitely looking to kill her,” Eliza said, scrolling through.
“I’m so happy I get to be the one that takes your miserable life,” Annie chuckled.
Jansen cringed as Annie picked Summer up by her collar and slammed her back into the ground. Summer must have said something infuriating. Why did she always have to be such a bitch?
“Destroy the Shield,” Captain Jansen ordered.
Everyone in the room stopped working. “You can’t be serious.” Eliza had reviewed that protocol with her supervisor. She remembered him specifically saying, ‘you will literally never use this, but if every other plan has gone catastrophically wrong, here are the instructions to destroy the Shield’.
“Does it look like I’m joking?” Her questions were wasting precious seconds. At any moment, there could be a bullet in the head of the most important specimen on Earth.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Eliza began typing on her computer as fast as her fingers could move.
“And why is no one else working?” Jansen spun around to face an entire room of wide-eyed employees. “Do you know what breaking the Shield means?”
There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.
“It means that our humans have no protection down there. It means the ships need to be sent. Today.”
“But, sir, the crew isn’t expecting to leave for another eighteen hours. The ships aren’t ready.”
Jansen laughed manically. “Is everyone looking to get fired in here? I want those ships to be in the sky within the hour. Anyone that fails to do his or her job before then will be sent on as part of the next experiment as a test subject. Do I make myself clear?”
There was a brief second of silence. Then a loud scramble by every employee as they worked to get the ship ready.
Jansen felt a tug on his sleeve and looked back down at Eliza. “It’s done,” she said with tears in her eyes. “End of an era.” Eliza had only begun working for the labs a few months before, but due to the time warp from Mpho to Earth, she herself had seen years of Earth time. She felt like she had grown with them. She remembered the day that Summer had been born. She could recall what she was doing every single time a Shield went down, and an intern next to her had their heart broken watching their test subjects being torn apart by the soul suckers, before clearing their desk and going home.
Jansen put his hand on Eliza’s shoulder as she cried. Both of them watched the Shield collapse around the inhabitants. Annie jumped off Summer’s body to avoid falling chunks of Shield. The town had been so quiet in the middle of the night, but people had begun stepping outside in their pajamas to look up at the sky in horror. Some unlucky citizens were crushed by falling Shield before they even realized what was happening. Eliza’s hard work had come to an end. “You did good, kid,” Jansen said.
She smiled through her tears, putting her hand on top of his. Their work was done. Their efforts with the Earth experiment over the past two years would not go unnoticed by the king. “Get home safe, Summer,” she whispered.
Chapter 24: Open
The Shield had shattered overhead. Annie looked up in horror, as did the breeders standing around them. They all seemed to have forgotten about their conflict for a brief few seconds. Cracks started in the very center, and ran down to the ground like lightening. Massive chunks fell from the sky around them; some pieces were the size of houses. Annie didn’t have time to think, she dove off Summer and out of the way of falling debris. “What is going on?” the female breeders screamed.
Annie still had the gun in her hand, but she didn’t have the time to aim and shoot. Her eyes were focused on the sky and dodging massive pieces of Shield. In the history books, nothing like this had ever happened before. Holes would form as the jelly substance wore thin from age, but nothing like this. It was as though someone had taken a massive hammer and smashed the Shield. It didn’t make any sense.
Annie wasn’t in a position to find out what happened to Zed. She would have just been backing herself into a corner for Summer to come find her again. She hadn’t killed Summer, but that wasn’t what was most important right now. She turned back for a brief moment to see the breeders and Summer dodging debris, running for cover into the hospital. She was safe, for now.
Annie ran until her lungs burned, with a gun still in her hand and blood dripping down to her elbows and onto the grass. People had been woken up by the thunderous crack that had happened moments before. They were leaving their houses barefoot and in robes, stepping out in the cold to watch their world shatter around them. Nobody even noticed her.
Annie went to the only place that she had known to be her home, back to the ranger camp. She didn’t know what would happen when she got there, but she figured that nobody was safe anymore. Everyone was in a crowd outside of the front entrance, watching the sky fall around them. They were closer to the edge of the Shield, where the pieces didn’t nearly have as far to fall. No one looked to be hurt, except Mia who was standing at the front, holding onto a bloody arm. “Annie?” She called, confused, as she ran down the hill towards them.
The rest of the crowd came to attention and stared at her as she slowed to a stop in front o
f them. “Everyone,” she gasped, throwing the gun to the ground and resting her hands on her knees. “You aren’t safe.”
“We know, we can see that,” Ethan attempted to joke, but nobody reacted.
“No, no…” she panted. “More than that…” The last of the pieces from the sky had fallen. It was eerily quiet. People must have been coming to the realization that they were exposed now. To the elements, to the world, to the soul suckers. Snow had even begun falling around them, which was new to everyone but the rangers.
“Nobody listen to her,” Scott called from the back, pushing to the front. “She’s a wanted criminal.”
Annie had been expecting this kind of reaction. Those that took the ranger career seriously were all about honor. That had always been Scott. It was the reason that everyone had trusted him in taking over the rangers when Kevin had been demoted. He was honorable.
“Well let’s give her a chance,” Dougie spoke up. He was more muscular than he had been last time she had seen him. In fact all of the new recruits were. Even Mia had grown. Her face wasn’t as soft as it had been. Ethan had a massive scratch down his neck that looked similar to the scar on her arm. Annie, looking around, realized that there were some rangers were missing. Some people that hadn’t made it in the past couple weeks. It must have been a mission gone wrong.
“No chances.” Scott stepped up, looming over her by at least a foot. “You need to leave, now. Before I can’t pretend that we didn’t see you.”
“The world is ending, Scott. I don’t care whether or not you tell Summer that you’ve seen me. That is, if she’s still alive.”
All she received in response was a glare from him.
Annie was desperate for help. She was bruised and broken from her fight with Summer Henderson. She had lost the only being that been there for her no matter what. Now she was truly alone. Annie was ready to blurt out that there were two ships, that all their memories would get wiped, and every other secret that she had discovered in the last couple weeks. “You aren’t safe,” she repeated. The rangers were all staring at her, unsure of whether or not to trust her. “I’m not sure what you heard about me, but it isn’t true. Anything Summer told you wasn’t true.”