“There has to be a way to connect with the Sorens from within Ellena’s rooms,” I say as we gear up. “Whoever gets there alive first gets to do the honours.”
We all smirk at each other, then get ready.
“You can’t be strong enough to fight,” Sanaa says. “You’re still hurting, still injured.”
I look at the jar with Maya’s black blood in it, and wonder. My instincts run strong, so I reach for it. Thank you, Father, I think as I twist the jar’s lid open.
As the others watch with disgust on their faces, I bring the jar to my lips and take a long sip of the black tar within.
How does one describe the sharp taste of Maya’s blood? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted in my life.
“Hmm,” I say to the others as I fight to swallow. “It takes like the arse of a sickly bottom-feeder’s intestinal bacteria.”
We all laugh out, then the blaring starts and we know it’s time to go.
We carry as much as we can under our armour and wait at Bo’s tent’s entrance until the crowd of people moves past.
With my hair shorn, my face still dirty from before, I fit in the crowd even better.
And we make our way to the vedas which we know will take us up.
All four of us stand straight, ignoring the stares from the EPrisoners around us.
Not a bad team to fight with. And this time, we mean to liberate people that deserve it. We mean to destroy the people who deserve it. This time, we will be the good guys.
As we head up further, Annicka looks back at us and nods. This is where we slip through the mass of people.
Instead of heading down a hallway to work on harvesting, we walk in the opposite direction, where no one else deigns to tread.
It’s pitch black, with no sign of life other than us. No one else would walk this way—it would remind them too much of that torture hall.
When we arrive at Warden Ellena’s quarters, the first thing I notice is the complete silence. Like she knew we were coming and left in a rush.
The normally full bowl of fruit in the middle of the table is on its side on the ground, its contents scattered across the room. The table is upended and against one wall as though thrown in haste. To our left, the gilded cage is also empty, and its golden man-bird has flown the coop.
“Where is she?” I ask no one in particular. “What happened here?”
Franklin huffs as Blair says, “Looks like someone else had the same idea we had. But hey, let’s not waste time wondering about it. How do we get in touch with the Sorens, Rome? You said there would have to be a way from here.”
Yes. She’d have to have a way to disable the Faraday cage somehow. But where, how?
I turn slowly in the room, looking for something that would resemble a MirrorComm, with no luck. All right, so if not a regular comm, then what? Finally, I remember how the massive ceiling across the EPrison slid away at night as we were about to work.
“I think if we find wherever her comm is, we’ll be fine,” I say. “The EPrison’s roof—that’s the blocker. It’s out of our way, for the rest of the night.”
Just as the thought runs across my head that this is too easy, Sanaa says the words. “There was nothing to stop us getting here. Why—”
Before she finishes her sentence, a high shrill sounds around us, unlike any sound I’ve heard yet in the EPrison.
It doesn’t let up either, not until the four of us are down on our knees, with our hands covering our ears. The sound vibrates through my body and I realize we’re being tortured again, much like in that vault in the South Tower. This is worse though, because this doesn’t let up. I can’t even count this time.
I only look up when Blair grasps my shoulders and he’s yelling something at me. I can’t hear it of course, but he’s up, so are Sanaa and Franklin. We run to the door, only to stop in our tracks the same moment the shrill sound stops and we realize the door’s barricaded by one of her shark soldiers.
He smiles wide, reminding me of another villain from another time, and he walks in with his staff in hand.
Behind him, another walks in, then another, and yet another. They don’t stop piling into the room until I’ve counted twenty five.
The last one in closes the door, locks it shut, and turns to face us as all his shark brothers before him.
“Hardly seems fair,” Blair says as he steps into his fighting stance. “Four of us against twenty-some of you. Well, I hope you’re all well-rested.”
Though I don’t look his way, I imagine he’s got one of his most charming smirks on.
I crack my neck and crouch into my dance. All right, I hope I got enough of Maya’s blood in me because this is about to hurt.
Then I step forward.
Team
We fight for hours, or at least that’s how it feels. I’m attacking, defending, blocking, punching, kicking, kicking, kicking, as they come at me from different angles. In this small space, they can’t do much with their gnarly wooden staffs, not without accidentally hitting each other.
I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or Maya’s blood coursing through me, but I’m faster than I’ve ever been. I throw a flying kick at one of the sharks until his stupid dried head falls off his piddly body.
Just human, I tell myself, as I beat him down until he doesn’t get up anymore, and I concentrate on the next one.
I hear the others triumphant in their fights as well, and can sense where they are as I continue to attack. Two other shark soldiers come at me from either side, and I grab on the left one’s staff, pull it out of his arms just to smack him across the face with it, taking the other guy down with him.
The impact of wooden staff against human skull is not as loud as I’d thought—in fact, it’s as light as the sound of an egg cracking against a glass bowl.
I have two staffs in hand. They’re far too hefty and long to handle like my trusted metal sticks, but I keep the others off me long enough, moving so fast that they can’t get to me any longer.
Then I drop them behind me when I realize they’re too heavy, and I’m faster with just Maya’s sharp weaponry on my forearms.
Three other sharks come at me and I picture myself shredding them as my arms raise. I grab one around his neck as I slam my knee into his ribs. Use his body as a shield against the others as I continue to knee him.
He grunts and spews blood when I push his head down further and slam my knee into his nose. Then he’s down for the count.
The other two step back, watching me warily. Then the taller one moves forward. Brave? Or cocky? It doesn’t matter because I throw a quick left hook and he’s down.
His brother doesn’t seem to notice as he steps on his back, and comes at me with a running punch. I have the wall to my back and turn, but not in time. His punch catches me on the ear, and it thrums and burns in objection.
With the wall to my back, others fighting to my left and right, I can’t move past the guy.
So I drop to a squat and throw a swift leg kick, anchoring my heel around his legs. With another twirl, I bring him down and punch his temple several tims until he stops moving.
Another shark falls on me and though I punch him, his body doesn’t budge. Then he gets heavier, as another one lands on him. They’re unconscious or dead, and I’m trapped under their heavy bodies as they get piled on by others.
I growl as I push at them. Then, realizing my shoving does no good, I decide to crawl out from the side. I’m on the side of where the bird cage used to be, and notice a small divot in the wall, closer to the ground.
I don’t know what it is, but now’s not the time to go looking anyway.
From this angle, I finally get to see how my team’s fighting methods look. We’ve all sparred often enough, but now I see what they look like when they’re not holding back.
Sanaa’s always been a bit feline in her ways, but her movements are so rapid, I can’t tell exactly what combinations she uses to bring down her opponents. She flies throu
gh the air, flits circles around her enemies, and brings down many more sharks than the rest of us combined.
Franklin has a similar style—she doesn’t allow gravity to rule the way she moves, and she favours deadly flying kicks. There’s something intensely graceful about her fight. Something poetic about the way she twists to the side, grabs her opponent’s head in her hands, and snaps his neck.
Then there’s Blair—how do I describe how Blair fights? He has a permanent crouch, his knees and arms consistently bent, and he’s always moving forward. He doesn’t turn or twirl or really move much, unlike the rest of us.
Instead, he uses a shuffle-forward method as he blocks and punches and breaks his opponents’ arms.
He never looks his enemies in the eye, in fact, he doesn’t seem to look their way at all, keeping his silvery-black head in a slight tilt and his eyes angled on the ground.
It’s as though he has other thoughts on his mind as he beats up one, then another, and yet another.
I finally manage to crawl out from under the bodies over me, trying to forget that this is the second time in about as many days since I’ve had so many dead piled up with me.
Pushing the last dead shark off, I stand and turn to face the rest of them, meaning to do as much damage as possible, but there isn’t anyone left.
Sanaa’s got the last one down on the ground, unconscious, as she snaps his elbow and lets it go, giving him the impression of a rag doll.
“And that’s that,” she says with a wide grin as she makes a motion as if to wipe sand off her palms.
“Wow,” I claim. Not that I’d doubted it before, but—we make a pretty good team.
“And looky what I found on one of them,” Frankie says as she pulls up what looks to be a small digital key. Who knows what it unlocks or where we’d need to go, but it’s something, at least.
Then, I wonder. “There’s something back here,” I say, pointing to the piled up dead bodies, “behind all these sharks. I wasn’t sure what it was, but now that you have that key.”
We move fast to get the bodies out of our way, then I take the key and slot it into the divot I saw. It’s a perfect fit.
A tiny sound pings like an Alto scanner, then the entire wall rolls to the side, giving way to a smaller compartment and, right ahead of us, a MirrorComm.
Onwards
“The general didn’t seem very happy with what you’d said,” Blair says as the four of us make our way back out of the warden’s rooms, not half an hour later.
“She wouldn’t,” I agree. “She doesn’t like being told what to do.”
“Must run in the family,” he says.
“It’s not like I gave her an order,” I say, as we hoof it to our rendezvous point with the others. “I’d just suggested that this would be the way to go.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “You said she’d have us all back, as long as she gets the EPrison people out of here and keeps them safe. Not a big ask, Rome.”
I smile. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about the general these last few years, it’s that she’s amenable to negotiations.
She’s not trustworthy, of course, but when it comes to something like this, something she wants more than anything—that being the four of us—she’s very amenable.
“What’ll happen to us after, then?” Franklin says, “When she gets her hands on us?”
“If,” Blair and I say at the same time, and laugh.
“We’ll deal with that later,” I continue. “For now, we’ve got to get out of here before—”
We stop in front the vedas that’ll get us to where we need to go, when the siren herself steps in our way, her eyes glaring, her face enraged.
“Before what?” she spits. “Before you come into my house and kill all my guards and ruin our lives here? Why? Why would you do such a thing?”
The last part of her sentence comes out in a whiny voice, as though she’s a toddler who hasn’t been allowed to have her favourite toy.
Is she serious? She can’t possibly have thought that this was a good place, not with all the kids sitting around malnourished, made to work so that she could live up here on the top floor like a—well like a Prospo, I think, though I can’t fight the guilt.
“You are a horrible person,” Franklin says. “You deserve to be thrown in your torture chamber and left there to rot for the rest of your life. In fact—”
She grabs the warden by her hair and pulls her until she reaches the door we all recognize to be the one that leads to the room.
The one with the screaming and whispering and whatever other sort of programming she has in place.
Then Franklin throws her in, closes the door and turns back around to us, challenging us to object to what she’s done.
None of us say a word. Instead, we turn and head to the veda that will take us to meet up with the others.
They wait for us on a lower floor I’ve never been on. It’s a small dark hallway, not one I’d normally volunteer to walk down.
But I hold Annicka’s hand ahead, and on to Blair’s hand behind me. As long as their hands are in mine, I don’t need to remind myself that I’m not about to be tortured again.
Then Annicka stops. I don’t see anything but hear a strange sound, rock scraping on rock as we wait.
Ahead of us, a soft orange light glows as a rock door slides out of the way, making way to a compartment of sorts. I know, eyeing the materials on the inside, that this has to be Metrill-built.
Annicka steps inside and we follow her through. It’s not standing space for us—Annicka’s the only one who can stand straight. The rest of us bend as we look around.
If I raise my arms in here, I’ll touch either side of the compartment, it’s so small, but it’s a tube of sorts. As we wait, Annicka presses on yet another side of the tube and small round lounges rise from the ground, all the way down the compartment, which I now see can seat about twenty people. I turn to face one way, then the other, but decide to lay down in one of the lounges when my neck strains from the discomfort.
Annicka nods her head as if what I’ve done is exactly right. It’s not like I had an option in this thing.
I look to my right where the wall slid out to let us through. Instead of a wall, I see a version of the Metrills’ screens, facing out to fields and hills and a peaceful blue sky. It’s amazing what these people can do.
Then the entire compartment moves forward just as small restraints automatically slide down from behind my shoulders and meet in the middle of my belly, holding me steady, but not tight.
The tube moves faster and faster, at a speed beyond anything I’ve ever travelled in. I’m guessing it’s going at over a thousand kilometres an hour—the same speed as a supersonic jet.
This thing could get us to Liberty within four hours.
But I already know that’s not where we’re heading. For I saved the girl and managed to unlock the exact location for codes the Metrills can use to trigger their mission. The mission we’re still planning on stopping. How? I haven’t a clue.
I lay my head back and my neck rests on the curve of the seat. It must be made of a silicon derivative because it warms and molds to the shape of my neck.
The others speak in low voices—the sound in here is such a soft hum that you couldn’t tell at all you’re in an underground train. I try to think of how far under the earth we are but realize we’ll be travelling under ocean most of the way to our destination.
I turn my head to admire bright green plains and hills that seem to move past us with a slower speed than I know this compartment is capable of going.
The colours pop and appear so real that I nearly forget where we really are—I relish in every non-existent hill.
The trip soothes my nerves, and the slight vibration under my body helps me ease in even more.
Before I know it, I let out a wide yawn and fall asleep for the rest of the journey.
When I wake, after what’s probably the longest and the best sleep of my li
fe, Blair’s beside me, shaking my shoulder gently. “We’re here,” he whispers as he smiles at me, then leans in to give me a soft kiss on the lips.
I don’t expect that, of all things, but make nothing of it as he draws himself up and offers me his hand. I stretch and reach up.
Then we’re both standing, heads bent, as we walk through the transport’s open door onto a small platform in yet another underground world.
Dark rocks rise on either side of us. If I didn’t already know we’re far away from the EPrison, I breathe in and immediately smell that this is a different part of the world.
Where the EPrison’s fishy air took over my world for several days, this place smells more like lavender and clean spring water. I breathe it in even longer.
“What a nice change, eh?” Blair says as he does the same thing I do. “Welcome to Switzerland!”
Metrills
Turns out, the Metrills’ headquarter is in this remote underground compound in Switzerland, though they have several hundred other stations throughout the world, with at least two Metrills in each.
If I weren’t so terrified with their overall plans, I’d want to explore every inch, every station, get lost in their research and history. They are truly the most fascinating people I could imagine.
Still, I don’t forget just how dangerous they are—I don’t forget their intent to destroy the Earth due to some misguided attempt to “cleanse” her of humanity’s evil ways.
Blair, Sanaa, Franklin and I stand in his quarters, near identical to the ones we lived in during our stay with the Metrills in the north.
“So,” Franklin says, “what’s the plan here?”
Now that we’re here, seeing the size of this place, their calm dedication to accomplishing their task, we’re all left rather—deflated is the best word I can use.
“Let’s go over what we know,” I say. “We know we’re in the vicinity of the CERN Collider.”
Romy's Last Stand: Book III of the 2250 Saga Page 19