by K. F. Breene
Terik looked Ryker directly in the eyes, squaring his shoulders as he faced off against a man twice his size and width. “They go with me, or I stay with them. That is the only way you are getting my help.”
Man and boy stared at each other, their breeding so similar Trent was now certain the conglomerate had been trying for another director. And they probably would’ve gotten it, too.
“Fair enough,” Ryker said after a silent, tense moment. “But their welfare is on your head. You need to know that if one of them should die, it will be on your conscience for the rest of your life.”
“Their welfare has always been on my head. I’ve already lost people since all this started. I’ll be damned if I lose four more.”
“That’s the shits, bro-yo.” Dagger patted the boy, dislodging his stare from Ryker. “But you’re not alone anymore. Now you got help. More strong arms, and more brains than you know what to do with. We’ll keep those little ladies and gents safe. Don’t you worry.”
“Let’s get rocking.” Ryker motioned everyone onward.
“That’s our cue.” Dagger patted the boy again before taking out his glasses.
“We are going in hot,” Ryker said to the group, “but we are trying to keep a low profile. Use your silencer to kill if you have to. Try to go unnoticed. Remember your directives.”
“What about the children?” Millicent asked. “Are they walking, or . . . ?”
“I’ll take Mira,” Trent said, picking up the toddler. “Watch Billy.”
“I’ll take his hand.” Suzi tried to capture his hand. Billy swung his shoulders and pulled his arm into his body before swinging his hips and turning. “Billy, come on!”
“This is not how I envisioned this part of the journey,” Millicent said, looking at the little boy. In a voice that made all her children stop acting up immediately, she said, “Take your sister’s hand.”
Billy’s eyes widened. He stopped moving. Within Millicent’s unwavering stare, he put his hand out for Suzi to capture.
“Good job.” Millicent put on her glasses.
“Careful kids, she’s tough.” Ryker laughed.
“How will they see?” Trent asked. “How will I see?”
“Here.” A trooper handed Trent a pair of glasses, and passed others out to the kids. “We don’t have anything smaller. We have one extra pair besides this. Don’t break them.”
Dagger put out his hand for Terik to lead the way. One by one, they all filtered into the hole surrounded by twisted metal and sharp points. They were crossing enemy lines.
Chapter 17
Butterflies filled Millicent’s stomach as she followed Dagger, anxious about the danger they were sure to find on the other side of this war-made tunnel. Her wrist screen was lit, distorting her vision somewhat, but she had to keep track of the assault on the headquarters. So far, Toton hadn’t gotten past her preliminary defenses, whether swooping down from above or attempting to come up from below. She doubted Toton was used to the kind of smart firepower she’d been working on while on Paradise. Ironic, how a peaceful place could inspire such extremely violent ideas.
They turned at a twisted beam and then stepped through a hole that looked like it had been burned around the edges some time ago. She bet it was from the time Terik had explored early in his occupation of the building, creating a path through the twisted rubble. The ceiling pressed down on them, making her stoop to keep moving. Claustrophobia reared its ugly head, squeezing her chest.
“Don’t touch anything you don’t have to,” Dagger whispered to her. “Pass that back.”
“Why?” she asked. Her wrist screen started to dim. She was losing signal. Soon it would be off altogether.
“Terik said this place is not structurally sound. I’m not paraphrasing. The kid is damn smart for his age.”
Millicent ignored the commentary and passed the message back to Ryker. He pulled his hand away from the wall before conveying it to the others.
Her screen flickered, and then went out. Something snatched at her suit. She slowed and put her hand out to Ryker so he wouldn’t run into the obstacle. Before she moved on, she saw him doing the same thing to whomever was behind him.
The structure groaned. A loud pop had Millicent jumping.
“The kid says that always happens,” Dagger whispered back. “Pass it on.”
“How many times has he been down here?” she asked.
A moment later, he said, “Twice.”
“Always, huh?” Millicent shook her head and attempted to ignore her rapid heartbeat and the sweat coating her forehead. The walls pressed in next, the tightening space lacing her thoughts with panic. She focused on breathing, on not losing her cool. Ryker grunted behind her. Dagger had to twist to fit—his shoulders were too broad for him to move straight ahead. The big men would have a hard go of it.
A bang sounded from behind them. A child’s voice rang out in the space, and then Ryker’s hand fell on Millicent’s shoulder. She snatched Dagger’s suit and pulled. He stopped when she did.
“What’s up?” Dagger asked as Ryker said, “We need to go faster. The little boy is talking about exploding crafts.”
“Go, go, go!” Millicent pushed at Dagger before repeating the message.
“What’s the point of the darkness?” Dagger asked.
“Trent said that’s how we should go through,” Millicent answered, panic now bleeding through her thoughts.
“Terik says we got a ways to go. There are no openings. Sound might carry, but the light won’t until we get closer. I say we ditch the glasses and light this baby up. These things aren’t showing me the fine details.”
“Yeah, fine.” She passed the message back, but before it could even make it to the end of the group, blue fire crawled up the walls around them, casting a strong glow. Millicent’s mouth dropped and she jerked away from a reaching flame. Surprisingly, there was very little heat.
“He says the fire won’t hurt you unless you touch it for a long time,” Dagger whispered. “Pass it on.”
Another bang. A stuffed toad went flying past Millicent’s head and hit Dagger in the shoulder. Billy’s voice drifted up again, the words not discernible.
“Faster, faster!” Ryker pushed Millicent’s back.
She snatched the stuffed animal off the ground and handed it back before repeating the message to Dagger. Their pace quickened. The building groaned above them. Fire-laden metal jutted out from the sides. Twisted debris snagged at her feet.
“RUN TOAD MAN!”
She heard Billy clearly that time.
She shoved at Dagger.
“Hurry!” Terik said in front of them, no one worried about sound now. “Zanda, can you harden the ceiling?”
“What?” a girl’s voice called up.
Millicent passed back the question even though she had no idea what it meant. She barely missed a sharp bit of metal at hip level. Ryker grunted behind her.
The sound of an explosion rumbled down the tunnel way. The building groaned. Metal screamed, and pops sounded above them.
“Go!” Ryker yelled, pushing her. “The boy is crying and saying we’re going to die. Go!”
Blind panic rushed through Millicent. She couldn’t die. Not while Toton and the conglomerates still held the power. Her children would be left defenseless, one of them still on this Holy-forsaken world.
She shoved Dagger. “Tell Terik to get his kids to make a miracle happen. And hurry, you donkey!”
“Bring up Suzi and Zanda, he says.” Dagger’s shoulder knocked into a twisted beam. The building rumbled again. A slab shifted and dropped, thunking Millicent on the head.
She flinched away, her hand coming up in reflex to rub the offending spot. Wetness coated her fingertips. She glanced at the glistening red while passing the message back. More pops went off, sparking her anxiety. What sounded like a smattering of gunfire preceded another explosion that shook their tiny tunnel. A deeper groan from the building made Millicent grind her teeth.
Two girls hurried past Millicent, squeezing through the space like they’d been doing it all their lives. Dust shifted down from above, accompanied by a worrying vibration. The fire-coated walls started to shake.
“This whole place is going to fall down around us,” she muttered as bile rose in her throat.
A solid metal support cried as it bent next to her. She hurried onward, moving at a breakneck pace. Metal sliced at her legs and arms. Pieces of building shimmied as she passed. The groan of the building got louder.
More metal squealed, but this time in front of her. Things clanked. As Millicent pushed against Dagger, she saw materials shifting. Being bent out of the way by an invisible hand. Cracks lined the walls, or warped them. Fire burned hot on anything wood.
The children were doing what they could to clear the way.
Dagger bent, his butt pushing out and nudging Millicent back. Suzi wrapped her thin arms around his neck, leaned her head against his shoulder, and closed her eyes.
“What’s happening?” Millicent asked.
“I have to focus,” Suzi said in a wispy voice.
A pop sounded above their heads. The building’s groan turned into a roar. The whole place was about to collapse on them!
“Almost there!” Dagger said. His voice was small in comparison to the roaring all around them. His body bounced around, knocking into the walls like Millicent’s was.
Someone screamed, a blood-curdling sound. Dust whooshed past Millicent from the falling building. The ceiling crushed down toward them, narrowing the space by half. Suzi’s fingers turned into claws on Dagger’s back. Her face screwed up in pain or concentration, and beads of sweat dribbled down her temple. “I’m . . . not . . . strong enough . . . to . . . hold it.”
They turned a corner and Dagger fell to his hands, crawling. Suzi still held on, eyes closed, her feet sliding against the floor between Dagger’s legs. Millicent dropped down, too, barely able to breathe through her panic. The ceiling crunched down another several inches. They’d be squished!
She hurried around a corner, her knees scraping something sharp. Pain sliced through her as the tunnel suddenly fell away. With a gasp of combined surprise and relief, she rolled out of the tunnel—and found herself in a fire-blackened building with straight walls and skeletal casings of work pods. Ryker rolled out next to her, holding Billy. Danissa and Trent came next, white-faced and panting. Roe, panting so hard he looked like he was trying to heave out a lung, collapsed on his side. The clones and a few troopers made it out before the rumbling and shaking intensified. The tunnel roof heaved and dropped. Someone screamed. Blood washed out of the tunnel. Still, the building groaned and shifted.
The tunnel had been closed forever.
“This is who’s left,” Ryker said into the continued low rumble, looking over the dozen or so faces that had made it out. Their starting numbers from headquarters had been cut down by about a third.
Suzi’s eyes snapped open. She looked around wildly and then held out her hand for Terik. Deathly pale, like Mira and Zanda, Terik inched over and took her hand. “You did good.”
“I couldn’t hold it anymore,” she said in a tiny voice.
“You held it long enough. It was all you could do.”
“It was more than we could do.” Millicent took a moment to breathe before looking at her wrist screen. It lit up. She had internet, and the headquarters was still holding its own. She wished she could say the same.
“Looks like they cleared this place out.” Ryker, the first to recover, which wasn’t much of a surprise, ran his fingers along the walls. “This scorching is old. Years and years old, I’d bet. It looks like it was offices. Their own, probably.”
“Before they started the war, you think?” Dagger asked, standing.
“No way to tell.”
Millicent pulled up a map before looking back at the collapsed tunnel. “Think they’ll look into what two pirate vessels were doing in that hollowed-out building?”
“Doubt it,” Roe said, sitting up and draping his arms over his knees. Sweat ran down his face. “If I were them, I’d assume a group of rebels had stopped there to wait out the battle at headquarters. We got vessels without firepower camping out all over the city. That should’ve been a perfect place to hide.”
“Makes sense.” Ryker bounced on the floor. “The floor is good. Walls are good. Just the inside was gutted. Why set fire to it?”
“Keep people from wandering back in and settling.” Dagger stalked across the large expanse toward a distant window. “They’re probably watching this place, right?”
“Feeds are coming from this building,” Millicent said. “From this floor, even. I think this place is doing the watching. You should see cameras looking out.”
“Okay,” Ryker said. “Now let’s get moving. Toton is bound to be suspicious at this point.”
The group took off toward the middle of the floor, where, judging by the map, the stairs were located. Once there, Marie confirmed over their comms that she could find no mention of surveillance on that stairwell.
“Why would they watch the whole city, but not their own buildings?” one of the troopers asked, looking around.
“They are confident that their defense will keep people out,” Millicent answered. “Hopefully that overconfidence lasts.”
“Hopefully,” Roe said. From his tone, it didn’t sound like he was convinced.
Millicent wasn’t, either. Despite their brush with death in the tunnel, this felt too easy.
They filed into the stairwell quickly. Concrete steps wound upward. Each floor was marked with a mundane sign, giving the number and its braille equivalent.
“We’re going down, right?” Ryker whispered. Even with the lowered voice, his words bounced off the walls and echoed through the shaft.
Millicent held up four fingers, then pointed downward and nodded. They weren’t positive of their destination, but earlier, while they were still at headquarters, Marie had done some extensive poking around while Millicent and Danissa created interference. She had found a sort of black hole beneath the fourth flour, indicating a hard port. A private loop that could only be accessed physically, with wires leading to an intricate yet hackable wireless system that was boosted by a great many towers throughout the city.
Or else it was a wasteland. That tunnel had showed up as a black hole as well.
Soft footfalls reached Millicent’s ears. The swish of fabric and hard breathing were an unwelcome reminder that anyone within earshot would know they were there.
A hard hand landed on her shoulder. Dagger held his finger to his lips; Ryker threw a fist in the air. Everyone stopped on cue.
She heard it. The faint scraping sound of many legs scurrying across the ground. It was probably a robot, a spider or something similar, and it was coming up the stairs.
Eyes wide and heart racing, she looked at her map, wondering why she hadn’t seen the sentry sooner.
It wasn’t there. This must’ve been the next-generation robot, because her software was not reading its proximity.
She swore to herself, fingers moving furiously as she searched for schematics on the floor they were standing near. Level fifteen, with video uplink and not much else. Could they dare to hope it was a blackened, hollowed-out floor like the other?
“Do we kill it?” Ryker whispered near her ear.
She shook her head. “It’s a sentry. They’ll be monitoring it; I have no doubt.”
Ryker gave a nod and looked at the nearest door before flicking his gaze upward. He was waiting for her decision, preparing for either possibility.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed through the closest door, feeling an iron grip on her shoulder before she could finish the action. Ryker ripped her back and took her place, entering the floor first.
The scraping quickened. The children pushed in around her legs, half knocking her aside. A foot scuffed the ground. Danissa’s body barreled into Millicent’s back, and they rolled onto the
floor together. Rough blackened char smeared across Millicent’s hands as the others filed in behind them. Then the door clicked shut, cutting off the glow of the stairwell.
“I sent the last couple of troopers back up the stairs,” Dagger whispered from the doorway. In the soft illumination from a portable light, he stood broad and tall against the wall, his hand on the door handle. It looked like he expected an army to barge through. “That thing moved fast. We wouldn’t have all made it in here, and they were closer to the upper level.”
“I’m just glad I made it with this group,” Trent muttered, shifting Mira on his hip.
Millicent was glad the children had made it, too. Their age aside, they were a valuable asset. One that had so far kept them alive.
Another light flared to life in Ryker’s hand, this one stronger. It showered the floor and walls around them, revealing exactly what Millicent had hoped for—a dead floor that had been burned through. Embarrassingly, her sigh was audible.
“Terik, light,” Ryker said, standing in front of them, facing the vast empty space.
Fire pulsed along the floor and along the wall, bright yet artificial. Ryker shut off his light and stowed it away in his utility belt.
“Now what?” someone asked.
Millicent touched the communication command on her wrist. “Marie, can you see any robots patrolling the stairs? Do they show up on your thermal map?”
“No, Mommy,” she said. “Looks clear.”
“They are there, honey. If you can, try to figure out how we can track them.”
“Okay.”
“She can do all that with her mind?” Terik asked in a flat voice. His eyes were wary.
“You’re the last person I’d expect to be weirded out.” Trent frowned at him.
“I’m not weirded out. Just asking.” The flames pulsed higher for a moment, reacting to whatever emotion Terik was trying to hide.
“We can search for an open stairwell,” Ryker said. “Moxidone had their fair share when departments were multiple levels, but this far down . . .”