by Kyla Stone
The crowd roared with applause, hoots, and cheers. Worn, tense faces broke into relieved smiles. Several children raised their arms in the air, pumping their fists in delight.
“A vaccine will be synthesized within days,” she said when the roar had died down enough for her to speak again. She said exactly what was expected, exactly what President Sloane wanted of her. Just like a beautiful, controlled doll. Like an obedient, docile sheep. “Soon, we will have a permanent vaccine to eliminate the Hydra virus for good!”
More cheers. Wild clapping. She paused again.
There was a rumbling sound from somewhere over the mountain—the distant thud of rotors. She faltered. Several people in the crowd glanced apprehensively at the sky. Were the New Patriots attacking again?
A guard tapped his earpiece. He stepped forward and leaned toward General Daugherty. “Sentries along the eastern perimeter reporting movement, sir. Armored vehicles en route.”
The general swore. “Send a squad to reinforce that perimeter…” His voice faded as he turned his back to the crowd, his finger swiping at his holopad furiously.
“I thought you said we’d eradicated that problem.” President Sloane spoke low so the hovercam’s microphone wouldn’t pick up her voice. But Amelia heard every word.
“Madam President, I assure you, we—”
“Send out three battalions. Better yet, send four.”
“That many?” General Daugherty asked in an equally soft tone. “Madam President—”
“We’re ending this,” she said between gritted teeth. “Exterminate the rats. All of them. Now.”
Amelia didn’t flinch. She gave no indication that she’d even heard the president’s words. Her smile remained fixed on her face.
Vera leaned forward and tapped her shoulder. “Please continue with the speech!”
Amelia read the words floating above the hovercam, her gut tightening with every word. She knew what was coming. The words she was supposed to say. “We will continue working tirelessly on improving the formula, but for now, the vaccine will continue as a monthly shot, similar to the one you are already used to taking. Over time, the vaccine loses its effectiveness…”
She took a breath. The crowd paused, expectant, waiting. Waiting for what she was going to say next. Hanging on her every glorious word, the hope she’d just delivered them on a silver platter.
She opened her mouth to speak.
The thudding rotors drew closer. The crowd gasped, twisting their heads.
President Sloane took the moment of confusion to snap her fingers at the second hovercam. It zoomed to her. “Remember who unleashed the virus!” she said, her voice ringing over the square. “Remember who the true enemy is. They tried to destroy us and failed. That same enemy is at our gates now! We are being attacked by those terrorists who would destroy our way of life.”
President Sloane cleared her throat. “We will not buckle, bend, nor break as these terrorists wish us to. We are stronger than that. We will not give in to anarchy. The Coalition promised you safety, and we delivered it. We promised you a vaccine and a cure, and we delivered it. We will destroy these terrorists, too. Every single one of them.”
“No!” Amelia cried. The hovercam zoomed in front of her. The vidfeed on every holoscreen featured a close-up of her face. For an instant, everything froze. She heard her thumping heartbeat, the roar of her pulse in her ears, saw the thousands of faces peering up at her, eyes wide with hope and fear.
The ground seemed to roll and buckle beneath her feet, like she was on a ship in the middle of a storm. Her lungs constricted. The world blurred. She blinked, and it became clear again.
This was it. The moment to decide, to act. To choose. To catch the wolves, all of them, once and for all.
Amelia had played the dazzled, malleable doll perfectly. So much so that President Sloane had put her on a stage for all the Sanctuary to see and hear, expecting her to parrot the words Sloane had given her, expecting her to fulfill the role of the delicate beauty, the fragile, inspiring embodiment of hope.
But Amelia was not as she appeared. She was not fragile. And she was no one’s puppet, no one’s doll. She lifted her chin. “President Sloane is wrong. Those people outside the walls are not terrorists! They’re not our enemies! They’re just scared, desperate people. And we can help them!”
“President Sloane smiled tightly. “You’re not in your right mind, dear. You’re devastated by grief. Please, let us help you—”
Amelia raised her voice. “I’m in exactly my right mind. The Coalition told you everyone outside these walls are reservoir hosts—contagious carriers of the virus. They lied to you. President Sloane lied to you. Only the infected are contagious. We can open the gates. We can let people in—”
“Miss Black!” President Sloane warned, her eyes flashing dangerously. “I’m afraid you’re descending into histrionics. You know we’ve done everything we can to help as many people as we can, both inside and outside these walls.”
Lies. All lies. Beneath this woman’s warm, capable exterior, she was rotting with the cancer of corruption. She was heartless. Cruel. Power-hungry and treacherous.
Amelia saw clearly now. She saw the barely restrained smirk tightening the president’s mouth, the calculating coldness in her eyes. The flicker of contempt and rage shadowing her features.
“President Sloane lied to keep you caged, to make you think you were trapped in here, with the rest of humanity stuck out there!”
Senator Steelman glanced from Amelia to the president, a shocked expression on her face. “Madam President, is she right? Have you—”
“That’s enough!” President Sloane shouted, losing her composure. She gestured to the guards standing along the edge of the platform. “This poor girl has been brainwashed by the terrorists and her father. Please, take her to the hospital. The Coalition will ensure that she receives the best treatment our excellent doctors have available.”
Hogan raised his gun and moved swiftly toward her.
Amelia stiffened, expecting him to grab her and drag her from the platform—because that was the only way they were getting her off the stage. She was determined to say as much as she could before they forcibly stopped her.
“We can end this war!” she cried. “We can stop it right now by letting them in. They can receive the vaccine and so can we. We can offer everyone the cure and help save the rest of the world!” She turned and stared at Sloane. “Your president would keep it for herself.”
The restless crowd gasped and murmured. Vera and Selma Perez stood frozen, their mouths hanging open in shock.
“Get. Her. Off!” President Sloane yelled, not caring who heard now.
Hogan reached Amelia. She started to pull away, her heart hammering in her throat. But instead of seizing her, he blocked the rest of the guards with his body. He turned and aimed his gun at President Sloane. “Finish your speech.”
Screams and shouts erupted all around them. The air buzzed with electrified tension.
“What are you doing?” Sloane hissed at Hogan. “This is treason!”
Amelia gaped at him, stunned.
“Finish, girl!” Hogan said between gritted teeth. His jaw was set, a vein pulsing in his forehead. “We don’t have all day.”
Amelia turned back to the crowd, to the hovercam. She forced herself to speak over the fear pulsing through her veins. “There are those who would sacrifice everything for absolute power. For absolute safety. But life is a risk. Every good thing requires some risk. Like love, and hope, and trust.”
A swarm of drones zoomed over the heads of the crowd, gun turrets swiveling toward the platform. Dozens of Coalition soldiers poured into the square from all sides. Several more leapt onto the platform, pulse guns aimed at Amelia and Hogan.
In the distance, more thunder sounded. No, not thunder. Cannons.
The murmurs of thousands of onlookers buzzed like bees. The crowd shifted, some trying to back away but hemmed in by hundreds of bodi
es. The air filled with shouts, angry, dismayed, afraid. They were elites. They had no previous experience to rely upon, no reserve of strength to hold back the terror.
But Amelia did. She stood her ground on the platform as the crowd disintegrated into chaos. The soldiers sprang into action, moving into formation around the outskirts of the square and forming a protective blockade in front of the platform. Somewhere past the crowd, near the plasma wall, gunfire peppered the air.
The Patriots had attacked the Sanctuary. And the Sanctuary was fighting back.
“We are the remnant of humanity,” Amelia shouted. “But humanity must be worth saving! We decide that! You and I—the choice is ours! We can still stop this!”
Two soldiers tackled Hogan. A third Coalition soldier seized her arms, his pulse gun pointed in her face. “You’re under arrest for treason—”
The roar of a hoverchopper drowned him out. Several distant explosions trembled the air. Smoke billowed up from a section of the plasma wall several hundred yards away. The crowd screamed.
Panic bloomed in Amelia’s chest. This was it. They were too late. Everything she’d tried to do, and war was coming anyway—
Her world exploded.
19
Gabriel
Gabriel didn’t have time to watch his brother exit the tunnel. He, Cerberus, Jamal, and the other Patriots unloaded the Phantom, set up formation around it, and headed into the Sanctuary. The nighthawk drones drifted in the air above them, much like their namesakes—sleek, lethal raptors seeking prey.
Snow drifted from the slate-gray sky. Black clouds roiled low over the horizon. A strong wind whipped Gabriel’s dark curls into his eyes. The streets were mostly deserted. Only a few people scurried out of the cold, ducking their heads and tightening their coats. No one looked at them.
Everything was clean and new and shining. Several metalheads scrubbed the streets and moving sidewalks. Gleaming transports waited at the curb to ferry passengers anywhere they wanted to go. They passed a beautiful playground with manicured green hedges and modified flowers, blooming even in the snow.
Benjie could grow up in a place like this. They could all make a life here. A real life. Gabriel could see them in his mind’s eye, clear as day—Micah, Amelia and Silas, Willow and Finn, Celeste. Safe. Happy. Vibrant and alive.
But first, they had to get through this.
He clenched his jaw. No one was going to give that dream to them. They had to fight for it. Gabriel had to fight for it, to make it real for all the people he loved.
Gabriel stiffened. Two Coalition soldiers rounded a corner thirty yards away as they patrolled the grounds of the residential sector. The soldiers gave them only a cursory glance. The uniforms and, more importantly, the nighthawks’ escort, legitimized them.
And then there it was, stretching before him, the enormous thirty-foot plasma wall manned by the menacing cannons atop the ramparts. At the far left base of the wall rose a narrow tower, with a metal door leading to the nearest rampart.
At least two hundred soldiers manned the gates and ramparts. But most of them were facing the opposite direction, watching the pitched battle outside their gates from holopads streaming data from surveillance drones. The cannons were engaged in battle. Loud booms echoed from each missile blast.
Gabriel counted thirty nighthawk drones to their twelve. Several armored vehicles and tanks lined the interior perimeter of the wall. But many of the parking slots were empty. The Sanctuary had committed a large percentage of their forces to fight the Patriots’ decoy troops outside the walls.
Maybe Cleo and her mother were right. Maybe their sacrifices would be worth it. It was still too soon to tell.
Gabriel swallowed hard.
“Here goes nothing,” Jamal muttered beside him, repeatedly touching his lucky rabbit’s foot.
“Alpha Team Two, head to that apartment building fifty yards to the southeast,” Cleo said into her comm. “We’ll provide cover from the second story.” She jogged away without a backward glance, zigzagging between buildings, her squad sprinting behind her.
Gabriel maneuvered the Phantom behind an unmanned tank about seventy yards from the first cannon. Jamal swiped in a series of codes, activating the weapon and punching in the coordinates for the first strike. It purred to life with a low, vibrating hum. The huge barrel rotated and lifted.
Jamal pointed at a razor-thin laser bead. “We need to aim the laser at the target first. It will relay the exact coordinates to the Phantom’s system.”
Cerberus’s finger twitched on the trigger of his automatic rifle. “When can we start killing these assholes?”
“Permission to engage,” Jamal said into his comm. Sweat beaded his forehead and the top of his lip. The whites of his eyes were huge.
Gabriel put his hand on Jamal’s shoulder. “Take three deep breaths to calm yourself. Control your breathing, control your fear. Got it?”
Jamal nodded as their earpieces crackled. “Alpha Team Two is in position,” Cleo said. “Permission granted.”
Gabriel pushed the small button. The high energy radio frequency wave was invisible. He saw nothing but a green blinking light indicating the shot had been fired. Jamal used the laser and input the next coordinates. The barrel slid ten degrees to the left. Gabriel pushed the button again. The tiny light blinked green.
“How do we know it’s working?” he hissed.
“Watch the cannon,” Jamal said. “It’s not firing.”
Cerberus let out an impressed curse.
Jamal and Gabriel took out three more cannons in the space of two minutes. Three more to go.
But the soldiers were growing suspicious. They rushed along the ramparts, shouting and gesturing wildly. Several tech-repair bots clustered around the first two cannons, performing diagnostics tests. On the ground, the soldiers were suddenly alert, fanning out in formation, searching for the saboteur.
The first bullets pinged against the Phantom’s shield wings. A pulse blast struck the hood of the tank two feet to Gabriel’s right. He flinched and flung himself behind the shield.
They’d been discovered.
A trio of enemy nighthawks zoomed toward them. The hacked drones guarding the Phantom swiveled their gun turrets and opened fire. Two drones went down in a spiraling blaze. The third one let out a torrent of bullets, striping the closest hacked nighthawk with holes. The drone screeched as it careened and spun before striking the roof of the tank and crumpling to the ground, now only a hunk of twisted, smoldering metal.
“Fall back!” someone on Alpha Team One grunted.
“Don’t you dare move until the mission is completed!” Cleo roared in their ears.
Gabriel and Jamal crouched behind the Phantom’s left shield wing. Cerberus ducked behind the other side, using the narrow slots in the shield to shoot. Seven Patriots huddled behind the tank, opening fire when they could. A few others had retreated to the residential apartments on their left.
“Coming in hot,” came the voice of the chopper pilot.
“Hold on tight,” General Reaver added. “A few more minutes and we’ll drill these assholes a new one.”
The remaining two cannons shattered the air with several explosions directed at the Patriots on the opposite side of the wall. Jamal sighted the laser, relaying the coordinates. The Phantom adjusted its aim, and Gabriel struck the button with his fist. The green light flashed.
“One more,” Jamal panted. “We’ve got to get the last one!”
A platoon of soldiers closed in from their exposed right flank. A pulse blast ricocheted off the shield. It was built tough, but it couldn’t withstand many more hits like that.
A rain of fire from the second-story windows of the apartments above the Coalition soldiers dropped half of them in a matter of seconds. One of their squads. A nighthawk rose rapidly and released a barrage of bullets, taking out the remaining five soldiers.
“Twelve down,” Cleo hissed in his ear.
Across the field, several Coa
lition soldiers had leaped into armored vehicles and tanks. A single shot from a tank and they were goners. Gabriel estimated they had less than a minute.
Jamal sent the coordinates for the last cannon, the one furthest to the right, above the tower. Gabriel pushed the button.
“Mission accomplished,” Cerberus said. “Cover us, Alpha Team Three. We’re about to hightail it outta here.”
Jamal ducked as a shrieking grenade sailed over their heads. “Go! Go! Go!”
“Wait!” Gabriel cried. He pointed at the blinking light. It was red. “Something happened. It didn’t work. That cannon is still active.”
“General Reaver is less than a minute out!” Cleo shouted. “We need her air assault to get our men clear. Take care of that cannon RIGHT NOW. Do you hear me?”
Gabriel yanked his tactical goggles over his eyes and clicked the zoom function. He found the tower and looked up. On the ramparts, directly in front of the last cannon, a young woman huddled with two trembling children.
“What the hell?” he breathed. Nausea swirled in his gut. What were they doing there? He zoomed in close enough to see the fear etched into the woman’s face, the streak of bubble-gum pink in the girl’s fluttering blond hair, the snow dusting the little boy’s curls. He couldn’t have been older than four-years-old, with a round cherub face and wide, startled blue eyes.
The woman clutched an old-fashioned picnic basket to her chest. She’d been bringing a soldier lunch—a husband, a friend, a brother. They’d gotten trapped in the sudden attack, and simply froze.
The chopper thudded in the distance, roaring closer.
Jamal looked frantically from the ramparts to the Phantom and back again. He scrubbed his forehead with the back of his arm. “They’re blocking the sensor panel!”
“Shoot!” Cleo screamed in his ear. “Shoot them! What are you waiting for? Shoot!”
Without a word, Cerberus swung his automatic rifle and opened fire.
Time slowed. The thoughts shrieking through Gabriel’s head were disjointed, chaotic, mingled with fear and panic and adrenaline. But the image that materialized before his eyes was not of the battlefield, the cannon, or even Cerberus’s rifle. It was the little girl in the yellow bathrobe he saw, her black hair fanned out around her head, perfect and innocent and dead.