by K. F. Breene
“Aim high, my ass.” Walking forward, determination keeping her arms steady, she pulled at the harness to get more slack. Then bent.
Her knee planted down on the ground. Bullets spewed forth, slicing through feet and legs. Cracking bones. Men danced and then fell. Blood shot up. Heads were hit next, spraying blood across the sidewalk. “High means they could’ve ducked,” she said into the rapid-fire blasts. “But now they’re not going anywhere . . .”
Her arms jolted back rhythmically; tolerable. Ryker dived to the side yet again as her sweep went in his direction. She cut down troops who were running at her. Cut down troops who were aiming. Blood washed the street. Screaming took over the night.
And then the last bullet erupted through the gun.
Smoke curled through the streetlights. Agonized moaning accompanied the writhing of individuals who were slow to die. A handful of men staggered, holding some part of their person, staring off into the distance.
Bang!
Ryker sighted and fired again. Another man dropped. He was killing off the survivors.
The revving of a truck made Millicent turn back. Roe was just now maneuvering around the flaming debris. Marie’s wails cast an eerie horror on the scene.
And then the echo of boots against the ground reached her ears. Movement at the edge of the darkness had Ryker drifting toward the line of cars in that direction.
Shadows moved in front of the dancing flames before solidifying close enough to see. Ten—now fifteen—now twenty more men and women walked out into the middle. They re-formed into lines, standing around the dead at their feet.
“Waited for us to use our first wave of ammo,” Ryker said in an even tone. “Mr. Hunt never did care for the lives of his subordinates.”
Millicent had already believed she would die, so this wasn’t that big of a setback. “I guess those weapons weren’t a lifesaver after all.” She wrestled the guns off her arms. They clinked onto the ground. “Time to get personal.”
She snatched out the last two remaining guns, which were different sizes and much smaller than she would’ve liked, before starting forward.
“This is your final warning,” another voice said. Guns came off shoulders and pointed at them. “We do not wish to—”
Millicent rose her gun and fired. A patch of the man’s head flapped back. He fell in a boneless slide as she charged forward. Her heels clicked against the ground. She reached the nearest troop and kicked out. The razor-sharp heel punched through his suit armor and into his sternum. She ripped it down, slicing his body, before yanking it out and whirling. She kicked through the air at an angle, slicing through a throat. Then stuck her gun up and squeezed, blasting someone in the face.
She felt absolutely not one twinge of discomfort from her stomach.
“Bring it on!” she yelled. Fire blazed through her. Adrenaline pounded. “Come at me!”
Gunfire sounded from the side as she sighted, shot, sighted, shot. Men went down, but some only faltered, their suits able to withstand the bullets.
She’d finish them off later.
She grabbed a man, shot him in the stomach, then ducked behind him as another gunshot blasted out. It hit his suit, bending him backward before he fell away. Ryker was shouting something. Trying to tell her to get clear, probably.
She ignored him. They both needed to be here to give their baby time.
Finger squeezing, she shot someone in the throat. Blood splattered her face as she whirled. Something whistled by. A bullet smacked into the back of the troop in front of her. He fell forward, surprise on his face, gun reaching for her.
She snatched the semi and lowered the point. The troop hit the ground. Her gun went off a moment later, clipping him in the head for good measure. Ducking from incoming shots, she pointed up and fired.
Two men ran in her direction. She shot one in the chest and the other in the head. Back to the first, but he was already falling. Damn. Hopefully he wouldn’t pop back up.
“They’ll overrun us. Run, Millicent. Please, run!”
Ryker just did not get it.
She popped up again, following someone running by her. A moment of confusion overshadowed her squeezing finger. She glanced where he was going, taking her focus off the battle for one moment. Then her stomach dropped.
Marie was on the ground, running toward her. A security staffer was closing the short distance to her.
“No!” Heels—disengage!
Trent sprinted toward the little girl. Metal glinted as he raised a gun and shot. His face a mask of cold determination, he fired three more times without flinching. The staffer jerked backward as the bullets struck. He faltered and fell.
Her heels retracted, and then she was running toward her daughter. “Get her out of here!” she screamed.
Trent reached Marie and scooped her up. Without a second glance, he turned and sprinted for the truck, where Roe was hanging out the window, yelling at Trent to hurry. Marie twisted in Trent’s grasp, and a mask of pure agony peeked over his shoulder before her hand whipped out, fingers splayed.
Explosions rocked the world, shaking Millicent off her feet. Starting from the dwellings at ground level and going up, windows exploded. Fire and glass coughed into the street. Another explosion up above took out a wall, and bricks rained down on the street, pelting the troops. Ryker staggered backward, blood coating half his body, the fire illuminating his wide eyes.
Another explosion burst from the building. Something in the middle of the street exploded down the block, probably drones kept out of sight. Electrical fire zinged across wires and licked up the walls. Strange bursts of liquid fire rained down on the cars before crawling outward like lava. More explosions, farther up, probably ten floors, all alongside the host of troops.
Arm at his face to block the spewing fire, Ryker shot into the crowd, killing off those left standing. Then he was running, the only one moving, reacting quicker than Millicent could even think. He snatched her off the ground, threw her over his shoulder, and raced after Trent.
“Go! Go! Go!” Ryker yelled, pushing Trent faster.
“What the fuck just happened?” Roe asked before he disappeared into the cockpit. Trent jumped into the bed.
“My daughter saved the day,” Ryker said. “Let’s not let it go to waste.”
Millicent’s teeth chattered as her butt hit the bed. The truck roared and lurched forward, the sound of twisted metal groaning against the tires.
“Dada!”
Ryker jumped into the truck bed before turning to face the opening with his gun out, his chest heaving.
“We’re going to need a miracle to get out from under those drones,” Roe yelled back.
“We’ve got Millicent and Marie. We’ve got all the miracles we need,” Ryker answered.
Chapter 25
“We were so concerned about her brain responding as we anticipated, we didn’t expand our scans to see what else was affected.” Trent stared at Marie in wonder. He could not believe what he’d seen. He had never imagined a human could be capable of that. Not so soon anyway. “I mean, we probably would’ve eventually, but . . . this is certainly something. This . . . and the range!”
The truck stopped next to a building with a big metal door, like a bay, but it was ground-side. The front door opened, and then Roe appeared at the back, gesturing for them to come out. “We just have one more hurdle to jump, caused from what just happened. We’re almost there.”
After jumping out of the truck, Ryker held out his hands for Marie. “She’s mine. I’ll take her.”
“She’s both of ours,” Millicent said as she passed the baby out.
“You need to worry about keeping yourself alive, cupcake. Let the big boys handle the heavy lifting.”
“You do have experience with heavy lifting, what with the size of your ego,” Millicent said, climbing out after them.
“He’s just trying to console himself,” Trent said without thinking, gripping the gun he’d never thought he�
�d use. He started when he realized his mouth was getting away from him. “I mean, you know. He almost lost her, so—”
“I’m still in a killing frame of mind . . . Trent,” Millicent said through clenched teeth, making the use of his first name clear. “I wouldn’t talk about how close of a call that was.”
Trent’s extremities shriveled in a way usually reserved for Ryker. “And this is why you were chosen for the weaponry department, I’d wager,” he mumbled, following her through a flimsy, half-rotted door at the side of the ground bay. “It was in there all along. And now we know.”
“We always knew.” Ryker slowed in front of them at a door. Little arms were wrapped tightly around his neck, and a blue glow surrounded his body. “Holy shit.”
“Get that truck out of here.” Roe’s voice drifted from the room. “And someone get Mr. Gunner a basketful of Cure-all and stitchers.”
“Something is going on with Moxidone,” another voice drifted out. “I have no idea what. Their vessels are stalling all over the place, and several of their departments are randomly going black.”
“Something’s up with the government uplink. What the hell is this code . . . ?” someone else said.
“Get Ms. Foster in here,” Roe yelled.
Ryker moved aside, giving Trent a view into the room as Millicent rushed forward. The space before him was huge and filled with people. Wall screens as well as handhelds illuminated people’s faces as they worked with furrowed brows. Various instruments lined the shelves, some with lights blinking, many dark.
“I’ll get rid of the truck,” a man said as he cleared out of the way for Millicent, allowing her to sit down. He jogged from the room, only sparing a quick glance for Ryker as he passed.
“I’ll grab medicine,” someone else said, leaving the room out of a far door.
“This network will be transparent to their coder,” Millicent said. Images and binary code flashed across her screen. She palmed a console over to her, stealing from someone who had been working with it, and then screens started changing around the room.
“Hey!” someone said.
“I need more screens,” Millicent mumbled, her eyes darting all over. “What’s the goal here? What are you trying for?”
“We have a craft leaving in five hours for the launch site,” Roe said, standing behind her. “It’s leaving from just outside the city, and it’s marked as a delivery transport vessel. It’s safe. All you need to do is get on that vessel without leading them to it. The problem is . . .” He pointed at a map off to the side. “The route we had picked out is compromised. They’ll be checking it. We need a different route. Higher, lower, doesn’t matter. Just something where they won’t scan us closely.”
“They’ve got people on all levels now,” someone said, looking toward Millicent’s screen. “And they have some sort of mastermind blasting your images all over. Every time we try to take them down or change them, our hackers are caught almost immediately.”
“Of course they are.” Millicent tsked. But didn’t say anything else.
“And now their crafts are just stalling out,” someone else said. “Just randomly stalling. I don’t know if that’s a trap, or . . .”
“That’s me,” Millicent said. “I bet their mastermind, as you called her, is trying to untangle that mess right now. Her superiors—my old superiors—will be flipping over it. They’ll think their security is breached and that I’m trying to . . . Oh, who knows what goes through their heads.” Millicent shook her head. “I can plan a route through the stalled vehicles, but we have to make good on it before my viruses are disarmed. We don’t have long, and even still, they’ll see us moving. They’ll call in recruits, so we might have to fight our way out.”
“Who are you?” someone asked, staring at the screen in front of him.
“Someone who wants her freedom.”
“We’ll lose,” Roe said softly, shaking his head. “We don’t have smart enough tech. The crafts that are still operational won’t even have to blow us out of the sky—they’ll freeze us and then just waltz right in.”
“I know,” Millicent murmured. “I’m trying to create a way. I just need to . . . I just need more time, that’s what I need. She’s anticipated me. I shouldn’t have tried playing those games with her . . .”
Trent leaned against the wall, and then jumped up when half the room turned to look at him. He moved away from a screen to lean somewhere else, sighing as he looked at his shaking hands. He’d thought they were all going to die, and then he’d known Millicent and Ryker were going to die. And that was before he’d killed a man and the world had blown up. He’d thought that was it. He was dead.
All of it was nuts. This whole plight was insane. And for all of that, he was just as invested as Ryker and Millicent were. He wanted to stay with Marie. Even the other two. They weren’t blood, but they’d become family. He would kill for that family, and had. He’d do it again.
A man approached Ryker with the various medicines, and Trent took Marie while Ryker was doctored.
He thought back to when he was choosing whom to use, and then whom to pair. He’d had to take several trips between facilities to discuss his research and choices with various superiors. He didn’t have this own private vessel, like Millicent and Ryker, so he’d taken the company transport. Specifically, the crafts that Millicent had probably affected—the rinky-dink types.
“Why not just board a frozen craft before it’s released?” he said without thinking.
“And deliver ourselves to them?” Ryker asked in a harsh tone. It was a pain-filled warning tone, the worst kind.
Trent cleared his throat. “No. I mean, we can board the craft, throw everyone overboard—or whatever you want to do—and then wait for the virus to be fixed. Then, can’t we just . . . pretend to look for us, but actually head out? Would they know? Because I don’t—”
Millicent’s finger flew up into the air. She turned toward him slowly, her eyes on fire in a way that said she was problem solving. “Would they know?”
Trent looked behind him and then realized that she was, indeed, asking him. “That was my question.”
Millicent turned to Ryker.
“Retinal scan upon entry for clearance reasons,” Ryker said. “Then the implant connects the rider with the vessel—usually just the head personnel, not everyone in the craft. Upon leaving, the head personnel will shut it down so that it can be used by another.”
“But that’s not a problem because their implants are down.” A smile spread across Millicent’s face.
“But you have to get in somehow,” someone said. “They’ll probably be freaking out. They aren’t going to just let anyone board.”
“We’ve got the entrance covered,” Millicent said, her focused eyes rooted to Trent in a very disconcerting way. “But what if she’s freed them already? What happens if they die?”
Trent pulled at his collar. He had no idea why she was asking him.
“The vessel will automatically go to the next in command,” Ryker answered. “But someone dying will be noticed by the system. Even if it’s someone expendable.”
“What about if they are unconscious?” Millicent persisted.
Ryker hesitated for a moment. “Gray area. Should be . . . fine. On the lesser ships. Should be . . .”
“It’s worth a shot,” Millicent said, turning back to the screen.
“But . . . is it?” someone asked. “If it doesn’t work, you’ll be caught.”
“Then we’ll be chased.” Millicent’s hands flew across her screen before pulling in information from another screen and working at code that looked like nothing more than a bunch of symbols to Trent. “If we use your way, we’ll surely be chased.”
“Not surely,” the man said.
“Surely. Everyone is looking for us, radiating out from where we blew up a bunch of buildings. We could probably evade them by making our way through the dwellings in this city, but we don’t have that kind of time. Unless we
can stall the launch?”
“Can’t,” Roe said, shaking his head. “We need specific conditions.”
“Then if we are flying out of this location, we’ll run into a scan either there”—Millicent stood and pointed at the map—“there, or there. There is one chance in a hundred that I can time it perfectly. Since I have never been that lucky in my life, we wouldn’t hit it, they’d scan us, and the chase would be on. I’d rather not land in a warehouse equipped with those homicidal smart doors. Which leaves us with Trent’s idea.” Millicent roamed the shelves, looking at the various devices. “Yes, taking a conglomerate craft will be the best bet. I can get us, possibly without detection, to the craft we pinpoint. There are a couple stupid vessels way higher than they should be, which means security doesn’t expect us that high.”
“I wouldn’t,” Ryker broke in. He grimaced as the stitcher was applied to his stomach.
“Right,” Millicent said, snatching something off the shelf. “So we have fifteen minutes to climb the floors, maybe less, before that ship”—she pointed at another one—“circles back around to cut us off.”
The room fell silent.
“So . . .” A young woman looked around. “Are we . . . doing this? Because time is ticking.”
“Fuck it. Let’s do it.” Ryker pushed away the helper. “I assume you have a craft that doesn’t require wheels?”
“Well, I mean, they all have wheels, right?” one of the guys said with a grin. “When they get worked on, they—”
“Shut up, Roger.” Roe pointed at the ceiling. “There’s a dock three floors up. We can shoot straight up from there. Let’s go. No time to lose.”
“There it is.” Millicent stared at the vessel, a small thing dead in the air. A man stood in the cockpit, staring down at the controls. Another stood in the window, looking at the wall, which was probably a console. She glanced at her own console, connected to the pirate’s network. Her sister was steadily working through her viruses, implant malfunctions, and prison programs, unraveling them and wiping them away with the deft hand of someone who had been at this all her life. “We don’t have much time. She’s better than me.”