by Natalie Reid
“And don’t forget to wait for my signal,” Ritter added.
“Guys!” he interrupted. “I got this. I mean, out of the whole military, I’m the only one that’s got this.”
Jessie smiled sadly to herself, realizing that he was right. Trid was the only one that could pull this off.
Chapter 18
Lights Out
Trid dogged an incoming punch from a pilot, ducking out of the way and trying to do as little damage as possible to his opponent. It was strange, being mistaken for a Task Force agent and having to defend himself against his own men. But, if they so readily believed him to be an agent, then he had to hope that the other side would be just as easily convinced.
Trid leaned against the wall of a hallway and looked down the corridor. There were fights being carried out all the way down, but his destination lied just at the end of the hall. Once he exited the hallway, he would be in hangar one, which was currently Task Force territory. That’s when things would get interesting.
Trying to hug the wall and avoid the fight as much as he could, he inched forward down the hall. Several elbows and shins were knocked into him as he made his way down, but luckily he managed to avoid anyone’s notice. However, just before he was about to reach the line of agents that were holding back the insurgence, a fellow soldier named Freddy recognized him. This was the guy that held a grudge against him and Chance because they were just plain better at everything than him. Trid tried to hide his face, but Freddy started charging through people, heading straight towards him. He wasn’t sure if he knew it was him under the uniform, or if he just wanted to capitalize on the opportunity to hit someone that looked exactly like him.
Freddy gritted his teeth and growled at him, lunging out. Trid avoided his first punch, but before Freddy could throw another, the hilt of a gun came forward and knocked him on the head. His body crumpled upon impact and fell to the floor. Trid stared down at him in shock, and then looked up to the man that had hit him.
Immediately he recognized the Task Force agent that had been talking with Dale earlier, the same one that had picked a fight with him when he, Chance, and Aaron had gone down into Aero City.
Trid gave a curt nod of thanks and lowered his head, hoping that the man wouldn’t see the subtle differences that existed between him and his brother.
“You had enough already?” the man said, clapping him on the back.
Trid coughed and rubbed a spot on his forehead where a particularly adamant soldier had punched him. Taking a few steps forward, he walked up to the line of agents and tried to squeeze past two of them. For a minute, he thought that they weren’t going to let him through, but they gave way a little, and finally he broke out through the other side.
Looking around the hangar, he found a few injured agents hanging around, as well as some higher-ups. In each of the hallways, a line of agents stopped the soldiers from breaking out. Then Trid’s eyes fell to the Task Force planes that had landed in their hangar. They all bore the Task Force insignia, but three of them bore an extra marking on their side: the golden wings of the Aero City government.
He was about to step towards one of these ships, when he realized that the man that had bailed him out of a fight with Freddy had followed him past the line.
“Can you believe this?” Trid asked him, straining his voice.
The man laughed. “Of the military? Yeah, I believe it.”
Trid glanced to his side. An agent with a line of blood going down his forehead broke open an ice-pack and placed it to his head. He started heading towards the man, planning to rummage through his first-aid kit, and hopefully lose the interest of the other agent in the process.
“You know what the worst part is?” Trid said to his would-be-friend as he limped over to the first-aid-kit. “My brother is using this as an excuse to get payback on me. He and a group of his little friends got me cornered and kept beating on me until I found a way to escape.”
“You let your little brother do that to you?” he asked incredulously.
Trid threw him an annoyed glance and then looked down to the medical kit in front of him.
“Don’t mock me,” he half growled. “I was in deep when the fight started. It was like Trid knew when it was gonna start and made sure I’d be somewhere he could get to.” He glanced back quickly one more time, saying, “You remember when I left you in the mess hall. That’s when he did it.”
“Racking pilots, man,” the man said, shaking his head. “Hey, if you want, I can get a few of our buddies together and go find him. Do what he did to you.”
Trid grabbed an ice-pack and winced when he put it to his head. Then, giving himself a moment to answer, said, “Punch him in the face for me.”
“Ha ha!” the man bellowed, psyching himself up for a fight. Then, jogging away from him and back towards the line, he called out, “Maybe I’ll pull out a tooth for you!”
Trid winced as he watched him go, hoping that they didn’t find where he hid Dale’s unconscious body. Then, walking away from the first-aid kit, he casually strolled closer towards the planes. So many eyes were on the hallways that it was easy to walk up without being noticed. Walking up to the door on one of the three government planes, he took one last look behind him before pressing the button to open the door.
No one was inside as he crept to the command center at the front of the ship. The lights were on, however, and the control panel was lit. Trid guessed it was in case they needed to fly away quickly, and couldn’t wait for things to charge up.
Looking over the main screen, he found a button labeled: The Fulcrum.
Trid pressed the button on the center of his ear-piece and whispered, “I’m primed and set over here.”
* * *
The central command room of The Fulcrum was situated in a large oval compartment of the ship. Though it controlled the ins and outs and operations of the space craft, it was not a room entirely devoted to such purposeful tasks. In fact, while at the center of the room stood the glass tablet that controlled the space ship, the rest of the room was filled to the brim with furniture, games, decorations, and every other forgotten oddity of the old world. One might even say that the past was kept inside that room. Nearly every object within its walls had been forgotten by the toiling city below.
Ward stood behind the large glass table and sighed. It had been several minutes since he had called for Ritter on the intercom system, and he decided that he needed to be pushed along. Pressing a button on the screen, he turned the intercom back on, and waited for the green light before speaking.
“As I’m sure you’re aware by now, Ritter, I’m not sending anyone after you. It’s just a simple matter of walking through the hallways and going through the door. And please, by all means, bring Jessie with you. I’d like to properly meet her for the first time.”
As he pressed the button to turn off the intercom, the only door to the room slid open. Ward looked up from the table, expecting to see the former Task Force agent, but was met with the sight of a lone, young woman.
“Come in!” he called out. “Don’t be nervous.”
From the entrance several yards away, Jessie stepped inside and took in her surroundings. The door behind her slid shut. She allowed her eyes a quick scan in each direction, seeing that they were alone in the room.
“Jessie Fifty-Fifty.” He nodded to her and offered his smile. “We’ve never met, but I have been observing you for a while.”
“I know,” she said, standing her ground and holding his gaze.
“Would you…” he began, and then looked down to rub his forehead, showing that he didn’t fear taking his eyes off her. “Would you mind telling me why Ritter has decided not to join us?” When she didn’t reply, he touched a button on the screen and pulled up a camera’s feed. “I can see him right here. He’s just right outside. Cleaning his gun.” He shook his head. “You know, I always thought he was a little too fond of his guns.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, actually,” she re
plied, letting the tug of anxiety leak through her words.
Ward tapped his hand on the table as he stared at her in deliberation. “I see you’ve had a run-in with one of our newest weapons.” He motioned with a finger up to his own eye. “You know, I know some doctors that could get rid of it for you. The scar as well. Of course, I couldn’t help a wanted Bandit. Not publicly anyway.”
“Everything’s different in private, though, isn’t it?” she commented.
He smiled sadly. “Yes. I’m afraid you’re right.”
She tapped a finger against her leg and looked around her once more. There were several bulky machines up against the wall, reminding her of the ones she had seen in the Expedition Depot that led down into Bunker City. On the walls, there were small metal dots zigzagging the length of the room.
“You’re nervous,” he commented, looking down at the finger tapping against her leg.
“I have a lot to be nervous about,” she said, letting her hand shake a little more. “It’s not every day you break into a government ship and come face to face with the President.”
She looked down at her feet and studied the line in the floor from where the outside tile turned to wood flooring. This was the line that Ritter had told her not to cross.
Ward hunched forward on the table and narrowed his eyes at her. “I can’t tell if you’re joking, or if you really think you’re going to get to this control panel.”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I wouldn’t joke. Not tonight.”
“Why’s that?” he asked, straightening his back.
She shook her head, letting him know that she wasn’t going to answer that, and continued looking around the room.
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. “I don’t want to cut short all your fun. I gather you and my sergeant out there have devised some plan on how to get out of this. The truth is, I’m too tired to wait for it to fail. I have the weight of a city on my shoulders, and I get tired.”
He looked down and pressed a few controls on the table. When he was finished, the room suddenly lit up in a maze of blue light. The only portion of the room that wasn’t touched by these blue beams was the area surrounding the desk.
“I hope this puts a little more perspective on things,” he said. “Or do I have to list off all the ways that this isn’t going to work?”
She rubbed the back of her head and let out a shaky laugh. “If it kills some time.”
“I’m telling you so it will speed things along,” he said, exasperated. “I think you can guess the obvious. If you try to take a few more steps forward, you’re going to be cut up to pieces. If you plan on shooting me, I can assure you, a bullet would never make it past these lasers. And if you’re planning on waiting me out, all I have to do is wait the half hour it would take my men to break into that ship you have in my hangar. Once we get your friends out of there, you and I both know I could make you put a bullet to your head in order to save them.”
He took a tired breath, and then added, “And of course, I could just send my men in right now to deal with you. But, giving you and the sergeant some credit, that would certainly mean casualties. I’m not an impractical man. I don’t want to throw away their lives when I don’t have to. All I have to do is wait for you to give up. You’re not getting over to this panel, and you can’t get off this ship without it. So you see, you’re truly racked.”
“It would seem that way,” she admitted, following a beam of blue light with her eyes.
Suddenly Tom’s voice came on her ear-piece, announcing, “I’ve got her. Ritter, she’s safe. I have her!”
The sound of his voice emitted past her ear, and Ward cocked his head at the noise. Jessie quickly cleared her throat and continued talking. “If I had actually wanted to get to that panel, you certainly would be stopping me in my tracks, I’ll give you that.”
She wiped her hands on her pants in uneasiness, and he narrowed his eyes at her.
“Don’t try and play games with me,” he warned.
“I’m afraid this is a game, Ward,” she said, the heavy press of dread weighing down her words. “I’m just not the one moving the pieces. I’m…” She rubbed the back of her neck and shifted her weight. “I’m flattered if you thought I was such a good warrior to have made it this far on my own. Truly I am. But I’m just another pawn.” She laughed nervously. “If you want the truth, I don’t want to be here tonight any more than you want me to be.”
“The sergeant,” he started to say, but she cut him off, shaking her head.
“He’s just another pawn too. A little higher up on the chain of command, but…” She narrowed her eyes at him and shook her head in disbelief. “You really don’t know who’s behind this?”
Ward stared intently at her before looking down to his table and pulling up as many camera feeds as he could.
Jessie gave out a short laugh. “You don’t, do you? Well, you’re not going to find them on that, trust me.”
He abruptly stopped what he was doing and looked over at her. “You’re bluffing, aren’t you?”
“I wish I was,” she commented sadly. “You know, I had even wished you would have figured it out. I thought you of all people would be my best shot out of this. But apparently this is bigger than the both of us.”
Ward pushed a button on the screen and took off the camera feeds. “You can stop trying to trick me. It isn’t going to work.”
“Actually it already did,” she said, twitching her mouth in a pained expression. “I’ve already done what I was told to do. Even your own men helped. Of course, they didn’t know what it was they were wheeling in. And you,” she said, motioning to him. “You fell for it hook, line, and sinker. You thought I was looking for my mom. You believed it, so you let your guard down. You got cocky; didn’t even send any guards after us.” She shook her head and winced. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Ward tried to keep a cool face, but she could see his eyes dart on either side of him, expecting something to jump out from somewhere, or a call to come in, informing him of bad news.
Before Ward could be left to his thoughts to rationalize everything she had told him, she quickly began adding fuel to his fire, saying, “You received reports not too long ago about a fight down on the military air-base, right?” He didn’t answer her, but she nodded anyway. “Of course. And, to help keep the peace, you sent down some of your men to help out. Sent them down in ships coming directly from The Fulcrum, because, how else would they get down? And those same ships, if they were taken over, could lead them right back here.”
She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. “I really am sorry,” she offered. “I know we haven’t always been on the same side, but I never wanted this. What they plan to do…”
Before she could say anymore, the door behind her opened, and Ritter stood in the doorway. Jessie’s face fell, and she looked fiercely at a spot on the ground away from the sergeant.
“My time’s up,” she said quietly.
“Ritter,” Ward announced, trying to sound pleased. “Finally got tired of waiting outsi—”
The President stopped abruptly when he saw Ritter raise a gun. Instead of pointing it at Ward, however, he lifted it to Jessie’s head and pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang, and a moment later, Jessie crumpled to the floor with a trail of blood leaking from the side of her forehead.
Ward stared at her body on the ground, just inches from the first of the lasers. Then he hardened his face and glared at Ritter. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you aren’t going to get out of here alive.”
Ritter put his gun away and gave him a cold stare. “None of us are,” he said. He turned around for the door, but before walking out, he called back, “You’ve got maybe a few minutes to do whatever it is you have to. Then it’s lights out.”
Ritter walked out the door like a tired man waiting for the end, leaving Ward alone to himself.
At first he stared at the gir
l on the floor, and then looked down to the table. Searching the cameras once more would take at least a minute. If Ritter was telling the truth, it would be the last thing he would ever do.
Before he could make up his mind, the control panel beeped, and a message appeared on screen. Ward quickly looked down at it, seeing that it was from one of the ships that he had sent down from The Fulcrum to the military air-base. When he read the message that it sent, he froze. It said simply: Get out now!
Ward suddenly slammed a hand down on the table, opening hangar one. Then, disarming the lasers, he hurried across the room, past Jessie, and out the door.
For a few moments of stillness, the only noise that could be heard inside the room was the President’s hurried footsteps as he raced down the hall. Then Denneck’s quiet voice came through the line.
“Wish I could have seen his face.”
From where Jessie laid on the floor, she let her mouth curve into a smile. “Yeah, me too.” She got to her feet and wiped a hand on the blood going down the side of her forehead. A small bloodied wad of fabric came off in her hands. “That thing hurt by the way, Ritter,” she muttered, wiping harder at the blood and walking over to the table.
Ritter sounded hurried as he answered, “Hey, I’m the one that had to bleed for you. And taking apart that bullet wasn’t the easiest thing either.”
By now she had reached the table, and saw the button to open up the second hangar. Pressing it, she announced, “You guys are all set, just wait for me to—”
“Wait!” Griffin yelled on the line. “Jessie, don’t leave that room.”
“What is it? Is there something wrong?”
“Is there something on that tablet that says intercom link?”
She looked down at the various functions on the tablet. On the top of the second row, she found the command: Intercom Link.
“Yeah,” she said, looking over to the open door to make sure no one was watching her.
“We’ve got one down here too,” Harper said.
“What are you getting at?” Denneck asked.