I had to wonder when I’d developed mine.
“I’m of no use to you from this far,” Chen informed me when another drone disintegrated with a loud thwack emanating from the forest, lighting the canopy into a slurry of flames.
“Is Neveed in the room with you?”
“Always.” His voice came over the line.
Since all of us were hooked into the feed with Chen, Armise was hearing the same thing I was. I looked to him for his opinion.
Armise nodded his agreement and faced back toward the forest. It was a huge risk to have Chen with us—she wasn’t trained for active combat, let alone experienced in the chaos of battle. One of us would have to protect her.
“Jegs,” I called out.
“I’ll take care of her,” Jegs answered, being able to anticipate what I needed from her because of how many years we’d been working together.
With Jegs taking on protection of Chen it would leave Armise fighting without a Revolution soldier at his side. But it wasn’t as if that would be a first.
“I want Chen here—” I started to say to Neveed.
“No,” Neveed thundered before I could even finish.
“I need her here, Neveed. On the ground with me and these kids. Now.”
“She’s a child,” he replied with a force of will that matched mine. “Absolutely not.”
Taking care of Chen was Neveed’s sole connection to the Revolution since he’d left active duty and ceded his role as general. But the years he’d spent in war, the horrors he’d been the one to order, could never be erased from his history. Chen would have no real knowledge of the hell she was transporting into, but Neveed would. I understood why he didn’t want her in Kash. I agreed with him on principle. But we didn’t have a choice. All of our lives would be in jeopardy if these camps weren’t D3ed now.
“We don’t have an advantage,” I insisted. “I don’t want to die today, let alone here. If we have to activate the kill switch her tech won’t be reliable to make sure it happens.”
“Send her in, Niaz.” Simion’s voice came over the line before Neveed had time to negate my argument. “Chen is a part of the Revolution, you aren’t. This isn’t your decision to make.”
I hadn’t known Simion was listening in, but I’d anticipated he would be monitoring this assault in some way or another. There was a breath on the other end of the comm, the vague sounds of movement and muffled voices then Neveed came back on the line. “She’s getting the gear she needs. I want one of the dronebots diverted so I can keep eyes on her and rip her out if anything goes wrong.”
I glanced over at Jegs and found she was already on the move.
“Then you talk to her about making that happen,” I pushed back on him. “Jegs will meet her where the dronebot signals seem to be the strongest. Track Jegs’ chip, lock in and have Chen meet her there.”
It was mere minutes before I saw the distant flash of a transport. “Stay there to monitor,” I instructed Jegs.
I was met with silence.
“Jegs!” I repeated.
“She’s coming to you,” Jegs barked over the comm.
“What the hell are you doing bringing her up here—” I began to protest into my own comm, but Jegs was already yanking Chen through the line of hybrids.
Jegs let go of her and stalked past me, mumbling, “Ask her yourself.”
Chen’s features crumpled and she twisted her hand over her left wrist, staring at a reddened spot that looked like a recent repair using surge. “I took out all my chips yesterday. And I blocked Neveed’s end of the transmissions before I came in.”
I stared at her. “You what?” Then I noticed the black strap around her neck. She really had taken all her chips out. “Why the fuck would you do that?” I railed.
“Now he can’t pull me out of here without my permission.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and met my eyes. “I was a kid of the jacquerie. I belong here with you and them, Merq.”
Jegs paced in a circle, coming around to stand next to Chen again. “Tell him the other part.”
“I also modified the shield chip to remove the kill switch and implanted it. I think.”
I prowled forward. “You think you implanted something into your body that’s fucking up your DNA right now?”
She shook her head. “I know it’s in me. I think the kill switch is deactivated.”
Jegs lifted both her eyebrows in silent commentary as she locked eyes with me.
I was as dumbfounded as her. “You hearing this, Pres?” I asked Simion over the comm.
There was an exaggerated sigh on the other end. “Yeah.”
I glared at Chen and had to turn away. Her thoughtless actions were both a complication and unhelpful, two things Chen, of all people, was aware I despised.
“At least we don’t need to worry about you getting shot. Don’t leave her side, Jegs,” I called out over my shoulder.
A warbling whine had me whirling around to face the forest again and a projectile rocketed out of the line of trees, spearing the hybrid next to Chen in the chest, dropping him to the ground. Jegs whipped around and wrapped Chen up, pulling her into the shelter of the hybrids who closed in around her.
“We should seek cover now,” Elina advised in an even voice.
I motioned for Armise and his half of the group to divide off from us. “Any idea what that was?” I asked Elina as she used hand motions to direct the hybrids into reformed front lines.
“Not much else can kill us besides taking out the heart, and sometimes that doesn’t even work. So when someone discovered that thick branches filed to a point were effective, we were trained how to make weapons from the trees.”
There was little to no cover for us unless we made for the tree line, which was likely where the hybrids were trying to force us since it would be easier to chuck projectiles at our fucking hearts. We needed them to bring the fight to us. “How do we draw them out?”
Elina tightened the ponytail her hair was pulled back in. “Burn the forest to the ground.”
“Chen, we have anything on one of the remaining dronebots that could do that?”
“Give me two.” Her composed voice came over the comm.
We didn’t have two minutes. I opened my mouth to order her to work faster when the static hiss of a dronebot descended over our heads and above the tree line. A line of white mist emanated from the drone and drizzled over the canopy. As soon as the droplets hit the places where the first drones had exploded—when chemical met fire—the trees exploded in a shock wave that knocked us to the ground.
I attempted not to inhale sharply from the impact, worried about the toxicity of whatever Chen had unleashed into the air. I wasn’t expecting her to poison us on purpose, but her clarity of thought was questionable at best. My lungs didn’t protest a shallow inhale, so I breathed deeper and heaved myself to my feet. “Well. That works.” Elina rubbed her palms clean on her uniform and stood next to me.
“We’ve lost all but one dronebot now,” Chen informed me.
I watched the forest line for movement, trying to peer through the flames for any sign of life or evidence of a struggle to get out of the crackling devastation lighting the night sky. “Are you sure that’s where they were?” I asked Elina.
“I’m not seeing any movement on this side either,” Armise confirmed over the comm.
We didn’t have to wait to find out. I couldn’t determine which direction the initial attack came from before I was being slammed to the ground by Elina, muscled out of the way by a woman who was slighter than me by half but stronger than I ever could be. The hybrids who had lined up around us waiting for a command descended on the threat, circling around me and shutting me out from the fight. I pushed up and shouldered my way forward, toward the sound of fists on skin, of a resonant clang that reminded me of a knife fight but that was likely the cracking clash of titanalloy skeleton against titanalloy skeleton.
Elina appeared in front of me, hand to my chest, p
ushing me back, yelling in my face, “They know they can kill you the easiest. Get the fuck back and let us work.”
I stumbled away from the fray, brought my pistol up and tracked the movements of each pack of hybrids, seeking out targets in my sights. Armise appeared at my side, huffing, a snarl on his lips. “They won’t let me fight.”
“Same here. How many are there?” I asked him, hoping he’d gotten a better look than I had at the attacking hybrids before madness had rained down.
Armise shook his head. “No idea.”
To our right and left hybrids fighting for us dropped to the ground, and the ones behind them barreled forward, holding the line but not making any progress. I had to assume that not losing ground was successful when it came to these beings.
A male hybrid tore out of the black forest, directly at Armise and me. The packs were embroiled in their own battles with fuck knew how many enemies. I pulled off a volley of shots, all of them aimed at center mass and yet doing nothing to impede the hybrid’s progress.
“His shield is in effect,” Armise had just enough time to say before he was crouching and taking off, knives at the ready, to meet the hybrid head-on. With momentum behind his strike, Armise swiped and opened a crescent arc on the hybrid’s belly. I was only a step behind Armise, my own blades fisted in my hands.
The hybrid went for the gun at Armise’s side and Armise tried to muscle him away but even with two hands pushing against the hybrid, trying to set him off balance, Armise couldn’t topple him or stop his forward momentum. I stabbed my knife down into the hybrid’s wrist before he could take hold of the gun. The hybrid backhanded me, with the metal handle and blade whistling as they sliced through the air inches from my face and clipped my right ear.
He shook his arm, trying to dislodge the knife as he kicked out and caught his boot in my chest, knocking the wind out of me. Armise jammed the heel of his palm into the hybrid’s chin and forced his neck back at a harsh angle, pulling my knife from the hybrid’s wrist at the same time. Armise flipped the blade in my direction and I caught it out of the air.
“The heart!” I called out to Armise.
Armise reeled back, losing ground, the enemy hybrid lunged toward him, and Armise kicked his leg back and drove his shoulder forward, smashing his head into the hybrid’s cheek as his arm arced up and he plunged his knife into the divot between neck and collarbone. I put my hand to his chest and drove my blade in the hollow separating titanalloy ribs until I felt the resistance of metal instead of flesh. Whether it was Armise’s blade meeting mine or the hybrid’s skeleton didn’t matter. The hybrid slumped, driving my knife farther into him, eyes blackening. Armise drew his blade out with a wet suck and wiped the smear of blood off on his thigh. I sidestepped and let the hybrid fall to the ground.
My heart pounded in my ears, the rapid answer to the adrenaline rush making my body twitch. I swung around, surveying the field and the forest, struggling to see through the darkness and the dust kicked up by our collective movement.
The frenzy of the fight had dissipated. Our hybrids tended to the ones on the ground, mortally wounded most likely since there was no urgency in their survey.
I was searching the field, looking for Jegs and Chen, when I saw two diminutive figures emerging from the haze. I breathed post-battle relief I’d never felt before. I engulfed Chen in an embrace. Now that the threat had passed, and my anger, I took time to really consider her. She was taller than she’d been the last time I saw her—longer ago than I could decipher with days bleeding into years with the same unending threat. She was still so tiny, yet so strong.
Elina joined us, wiping blood from her cheeks and smearing it down her neck.
“How many casualties?” I asked her, but also for Simion’s benefit.
“Eleven. All dead. No wounded. We’re taught to be definitive.”
“How many of them enemy hybrids?” Armise asked.
“There were four. Three dead. We have one hostage.”
“Four,” I repeated, my heartbeat kicking up with the realization of how much devastation only four of them had wrought. It had taken twenty of us and a fleet of dronebots to take out three of them. All but one of the dronebots had been destroyed. More than half of us had died in the process. At that rate, and with the estimates of how many kids Ahriman had been able to turn, we wouldn’t have enough capable fighters on the planet to take the hybrid forces on, let alone trained soldiers. I locked eyes with Chen, my stomach sinking with the realization.
Simion’s rough voice came over the comm, him coming to the same dark conclusion as I. “We’re going to have to use the kill switch.”
* * * *
“Merq.” Grimshaw’s voice came over the channel. “We’ve secured the pre-hys from this location and cleared the camp for D3 protocols.”
Elina hadn’t asked, but I’d watched her scan the hybrids and knew what she was likely wondering. “Athol?”
“He’s with me. We’re headed back to our place to regroup and secure medical treatment for the pre-hys who need it.”
I waved off Elina to let her know she was free to head back to their encampment. “Elina is coming your way.”
“Good, we’ll need her. Merq.” Grimshaw hesitated. Then, “We’ve got Tiam, too. Alive.”
There was no way to restrain the shudder that passed through me. My response was too ingrained. Unlike the detachment Priyessa’s influence had imbued in me that had been nearly impossible to break through, I didn’t know if the revulsion and fear Tiam inspired from me could ever be conquered.
“Are you going to assassinate him?” Armise asked. It was a fair question since death seemed to be the restraint system of choice of the freed hybrids.
“I’ve told them that can’t happen,” Grimshaw answered. “Not yet.”
“I need you and Armise to handle him, Merq,” Simion said over the comm.
He didn’t ask me if I had the capability of working Tiam over—he wouldn’t question my abilities with anyone except me—but I could hear his doubt clinging to the waver of his voice.
“Not before we deal with the prisoner,” I answered with a gruffness I used to prop up my shaking confidence.
“Report back to me when you’ve dealt with both fronts,” Simion replied. “I’m going to check in with the other operations.”
“When can Chen transport ba—” Simion started, then his voice cut off, replaced by abrupt silence.
I cocked my head and looked around, wondering if his transmission had ended for anyone else. Chen swiped her BC5 away and stared at me, all fire and determination. “Faulty transmission capabilities and all. I’ll go back when my work here is done.”
Neveed was going to transport over himself if I didn’t get Chen in his house again soon. “Let’s work then.” I put my arm around her shoulder and started toward where the packs had the enemy hybrid on his knees.
If this hybrid was a teenager, he had lost all vestiges of his age with his transformation. He matched Armise and me in size, and the indifference he scanned us with was more separated from any human light than I’d ever seen before. His cold eyes locked on to Chen with a defiant darkness as we approached. I maneuvered her behind me and saw Jegs and Armise close ranks around her in my peripheral vision.
“How are you keeping him down?” I asked the one hybrid of Grimshaw’s who stood guard next to the hostage. They only had one hybrid on guard. Was that a good sign?
She held up a device and waved it. “Restraints.”
I looked to his wrists, ankles and neck. There was nothing. “I don’t see anything.”
Armise stepped up and pointed to the precise incision down the hybrid’s biceps, a thick line of dark blood beading from the wound and winding down to pool at where his arms were bound together at the wrists. “They are using what they used on me.”
My brow stitched together in confusion. I addressed Armise. “That chip put you down. In more pain than you could tolerate.”
“I don’t feel pa
in,” the enemy hybrid said, his answer stuttering out syllable by syllable through a jaw that appeared to fight the simple movement.
“His muscles are locked. He’s incapable of moving,” Grimshaw’s hybrid explained. “If he says he doesn’t feel pain then he doesn’t.”
“We sure about that?” I asked her, unwilling to get Chen any closer and risk her life more than we already had.
Grimshaw’s hybrid nodded and curled her fingers into the prisoner’s hair, muscles bunching as she yanked back. When she released his head she dropped a handful of his hair to the ground and yet he didn’t move, didn’t flinch.
“Okay then.” I stepped to the side and allowed Chen through. “Tell me everything you can about his shield chip.”
Chen raised her BC5 and ran a scan over his wrists then body, biting her lip in concentration. “His chip is implanted at the base of his neck.”
“All of them are from what I saw at Grimshaw’s med base,” Jegs said.
“From what I can see here it’s the same tech Armise brought to us,” Chen continued, shaking her head. “I don’t think there’s anything new for me to learn here…”
I caught onto her hesitation. “Unless?”
“Unless I take it out and confirm that with some diagnostics. I can bring it back to Neveed’s to study more.”
“Then let’s take it out,” I ordered. “He won’t feel it anyway.”
Grimshaw’s hybrid drew a knife. Chen and the female hybrid leaned over the enemy’s back, Chen using her scanner to guide the hybrid’s cuts. The hybrid chucked a hunk of flesh and skin away, exposing the metallic gleam of titanalloy skeleton and a square embedded at the junction of spine and neck.
“You should be able to pop it out,” Chen instructed.
With that, Grimshaw’s hybrid slid the tip of her blade under the square and flicked her wrist, sending the square flipping into the air and catching it in her outstretched hand. The enemy hybrid slumped, landing face first as he thumped into the rocks and dirt.
Chen gasped and stumbled back.
Falling One by One Page 8