by Matt Ryan
“We’re here.”
The helicopter landed in the parking lot. Zach didn’t wait for her as he rushed out of it, running toward the factory. The front doors were only a few hundred feet from the copter and as she approached Zach from behind, she saw what he was staring at—a piece of paper taped to the door.
“It’s for you,” he said with his back facing her.
She pulled the paper free from the glass. Six was written on it. She turned it over but there was nothing on the back side. She recognized Julie’s handwriting.
“It’s a calling card. They didn’t get into the building, and as far as I can tell, all they did was leave this note.”
“Why?”
Zach rubbed his chin and turned to face her. Some of the dangerous look was back in his eyes. She used to think it was exciting, but when it was directed at her it was terrifying. “Your friends sent us here as a diversion.” His eyes narrowed and he pushed past her.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer, so she rushed to catch up and got back into the helicopter. It took off before she could get her seatbelt on. Zach didn’t wear a seatbelt and jerked around in his seat, mumbling to himself. He pulled out his tablet and looked up at her before tilting the screen so she couldn’t see it.
He typed with his thumbs and she watched as he became more agitated. After a few minutes, he slammed the tablet on his lap and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“Everything okay?”
“No, take a look ahead.” He pointed to the window.
She stared out at a distant glow. As they got closer she saw their destination was his house, but it was covered in flames. The inferno reached high above the house, twisting and turning into the sky. She stared at it, not believing it as real. It was obviousl who’d done it. Why were they doing this to her?
The helicopter landed on the lawn. Even from the window, she saw a stake in the grass with a piece of paper flapping in the breeze. The Six could be seen from their location on the helicopter.
“They burned your house down,” she whispered.
“They did more than that. I had an . . . important server in there.” He cussed and slammed a fist into his seat.
“What ser—”
“Shit! Headquarters. . . .” He stood up and yelled directions at the pilot.
POLY STOOD NEXT TO JOEY in the president’s office. She missed all the blades once displayed and searched around the room for the few remnants of his old office. Joey nudged her and she focused on Travis standing in front of them.
“You two make a cute couple,” Travis said, rounding his desk to sit on the edge.
“Thanks,” Poly said. Travis spent far too much time staring at her. She shifted around under his gaze. She thought of the nights dancing with him and the kiss he stole in the apartment.
Joey cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, Mr. President—”
“Please call me Travis.”
“Yes, okay. I’d like to thank you for taking Harris in. I think he was much worse than he was telling us.”
Travis sucked in a deep breath. “Fortunately for him, there is little I won’t do for you guys. Harris should be fine in few days.”
Joey nodded and continued. “I know you didn’t want to help us before, but we have all but confirmed this Zach guy as Marcus and we could use some help to stop him.”
Poly huffed, like she needed another person with blades to help her. All they really needed was his stone.
“I will help, of course. But if this guy is Marcus, we won’t have much of a chance.”
“Gladius stabbed him with a wooden knife,” Poly said.
He smiled and stood from his perch on the corner of his desk. “If she lived to tell the tale, then I doubt very much this man is Marcus.”
“I hope he is. It needs to end with this,” Poly said.
THE WIND PUSHED OUT TEARS from his eyes as Hank drove the motorcycle hard. He saw the headquarters in the distance and twisted the throttle, shifting into a higher gear. The roads were clear as he approached. In the last thousand feet, he turned the bike off and coasted. Steering the bike into the ravine behind the parking lot, he put out the kickstand.
Gladius was sprawled on her stomach a hundred feet ahead, facing the headquarters building. He ran over and laid down next to her.
“It go okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, just as we planned.”
“Your hair’s a mess,” she said. “Gives you a bad boy look, riding up on that combustible, hair all wild.” She gazed at him up and down.
“You can call it a motorcycle, and I’m glad I could entertain you.”
She laughed softly and turned her attention back to the building.
“Anything happen while I was gone?”
“Yeah, it looks like everyone left the building as soon as they realized they could. That Derek guy led them away a while ago, so I don’t think they will have any troubles.”
“Good.”
She turned and looked back. “You hear it?”
He did. He looked to the sky and saw the copter flying toward them. For once, the plan was working as they hoped it would.
It flew in at a high speed and hovered over the roof before landing on it. He couldn’t see exactly who exited, but two people got off the helicopter and were walking away from it.
“Now,” Hank said.
Gladius pressed a button on the remote Harris gave them and the back end of the helicopter blew up. It wasn’t a large explosion, but enough to break the tail of the helicopter off. They were stranded.
A man rushed to the edge of the roof and looked in their direction. His arms flailed, and he looked pissed even from a distance.
“You got the roof door all sealed up, right?” Hank asked.
“Yep, they should be stuck on that roof for a while.”
“Alright, we’ve done our part. We better get to our rendezvous.” They got up and Hank pushed the motorcycle up the bank to the street. “You’ve ever ridden on one of these?”
“No, is it dangerous?”
“Not if you hold on real tight.” Straddling the seat, Hank scooted forward to make room.
Gladius swung her leg over and sat behind him, linking her arms tightly around his waist and resting her head on his back.
Hank started the bike and launched it down the road. He didn’t think the roof would hold back Zach for long. He just hoped it was long enough for Julie and Lucas to get their part done before he did.
JULIE’S FINGERS HAD DEVELOPED CALLUSES over the extreme use of her touch screen. She wondered if some future syndrome would be created by this extensive use. Panafingeritis, causing crooked fingers and loss of all feeling at the tips.
“I don’t like this at all,” Lucas muttered, jerking at the explosion far above them.
Julie shook her head, man was he jumpy. “Just Hank’s bomb. Which means we don’t have a whole lot of time.”
“Quicker the better,” Lucas said. “You really think she’s behind this wall?”
“Yes. I have narrowed down the power source to Zach’s office. It should be right here. Just give me a minute.” Julie’s heart was still beating hard from the sixteen flights of stairs they ran up. She took deep breaths and searched for the digital traces of the hidden door. “Found it.”
The wall slid open, revealing a small circular room.
“Oh, hell no,” Lucas said. “That is just like the room Alice was in.”
“You went to my sister’s home?” Renee’s voice echoed from inside the room.
“Jesus H. Christ.” Lucas held his hand over his chest. “No, Renee, I just saw it once.”
“You are lying.”
Julie ignored the banter and entered the room. Lucas took tiny steps through the doorway, looking at the ceiling, walls, and everything in the room. Julie wanted to shake him out of it. They had a job to do in a finite amount of time.
“What are you going to do, Julie?” Renee asked.
“I’m
sorry, but we have to stop you.”
“That is unfortunate. Did you stop my sister?”
She ignored the question and also tried to ignore Lucas as he paced behind her. “Can you stop walking around? It’s distracting.”
Lucas stopped and stared at the screen. “Just be careful.”
Julie returned her attention to her Panavice.
“Please, do not do this,” Renee said.
There wasn’t a monitor in the room but there was a speaker next to what Julie thought was her server. “It’s going to be okay, Renee. This will be over in a few minutes.” She had the same centipede she’d implanted in Alice. It took hours for Alice to succumb and would never have, if not for Lucas cutting her up.
She looked up at Lucas. “You ready?” He nodded and she pressed the button.
Julie had been tinkering with the centipede for the whole year, fine tuning it and catering it to an AI like Renee and Alice. It should work through this shadow of Alice in a matter of minutes.
Renee groaned and her face popped up on Julie’s Panavice.
Lucas moved back from it and touched his bow. The door slammed shut and Lucas let out a squeak.
“I will not let you do this to me.”
“You don’t have a choice. We can’t have something like you existing on Earth, especially when a person like Marcus is behind you.”
“We are trying to save your world. You cannot stop progress. You get rid of me and you’ll be helpless when they come for you all. Maybe not in your life, but in your children’s. I could protect them from these dangers.”
“We don’t need you to protect anything. Your sister tried to kill off an entire planet,” Julie said.
Lucas started pacing again, fixated on the closed door. “Is it working?”
She looked at the data running at the bottom of the screen and nodded in reply. Everything Renee tried to do would enlarge the problem, like a sticky glue you tried to get off your hands but ended up spreading it everywhere.
“You fools,” Renee said. Her face disappeared off the screen.
Julie looked at the different screens, looking for the traces of Renee, but they were all gone. Could it have been that easy? She ran another scan and she was gone, not a single trace. “She’s gone, all of her. See?” She turned to Lucas. “That wasn’t too hard. I really don’t know why you have all these nightmares over her.”
Lucas gritted his teeth and stared at the closed door. He nudged toward it and raised both eyebrows at Julie.
“I don’t know, this isn’t too bad of a spot, for the first time in a long time, we have privacy.” Julie stood and sauntered over to Lucas.
He backed up and pointed at the door. “For real, I need to get out of here.”
“Oh, come on.” She pulled him to her.
“No. We can make out, or whatever, but not in here.” Lucas was having none of her games.
“Fine. You’re no fun.” She used her Pana to open the door.
Lucas darted out with his bow in hand, but only an empty room greeted his threats. “We need to get out of here.”
“You sure? I think we have a few minutes.” Another explosion, much larger, shook the building. “Okay, maybe we do need to get out of here,” she said looking up.
“THE FREAKING DOOR’S SEALED SHUT,” Zach yelled.
Samantha watched on as he kicked the door and punched it with his fist. It was scary seeing this violent side of him. He stormed past her toward the helicopter, jumping into it and out of her sight. She walked toward the vehicle only to see him jump back out, holding a rocket launcher.
Running away from his aim, she watched as he pulled the trigger, launching the rocket into the door. The blast pushed against Samantha and rocked the building. The door and the walls around it, exploded in.
“Come on,” Zach said. He threw down the launcher and grabbed Samantha’s arm.
“Easy.”
“We don’t have time for easy. They are ruining everything you and I have worked for. Don’t you see that?”
“Yes, of course.” She saw it, but didn’t want to believe it. How could her friends do this to her and Zach? She wished they would just leave them alone and move on. She wasn’t ever going back to them. She had a new home with Zach.
He let go of her and rushed down the stairs.
Samantha chased after him, rubbing her arm. “You think they are still here?”
“They are close, for sure. And I think I know what they are doing.” He ran down to the sixteenth floor and into his office, leaving the steel door open. She followed behind him.
His office looked just as they’d left it, but with one glaring difference. Samantha gasped at the open wall. She had no idea he had some kind of secret room in there.
Zach frantically typed into his tablet, and then hit it and threw it on the ground.
“What’s going on?”
“They killed her.”
“Who?”
Zach looked past her. She wasn’t sure if he was even talking to her anymore. He looked distant, as if a man pondering his very existence.
“Who did they kill?” Samantha asked again.
Zach seemed to snap out of his trance. He mumbled something about a plan but she didn’t catch what he meant. “I know what they are doing now.” He got up and moved past her to the door. “We can’t make another predictable move. Come on, we still have a chance of finishing the plan.”
She darted out the door and ran down the hall after him. “Where we going now?”
“We need a ride.”
She followed him all the way to the basement floor and to another room with a few vehicles in it. Zach ran to the big diesel rig and pulled the driver’s door open.
“You know how to drive one of these?”
He laughed and it warmed her heart to hear it. She started to wonder if he’d turned into a different person entirely.
“In another life, I drove these every day.” He jumped behind the wheel. “I kept a route from LA to San Francisco.”
Samantha jogged to the other side and used the step to get into the big rig. She questioned the excitement Zach was showing behind the wheel. He almost seemed giddy about it. When the engine started, he shifted into gear and gained speed toward the garage door.
“You can open that, right?” she asked.
“Better buckle up.”
She grabbed for the seatbelt and strapped in. She held onto the hand grab near the door. A moment before the rig impacted the door, she closed her eyes and tensed up all her muscles. The sound crashed over her and she heard glass breaking. The rig jolted forward and the seatbelt held her in place. She opened her eyes to see Zach making a long U-turn in the back parking lot.
The tires screeched and he floored it as it straightened out. She guessed he really did know how to drive one. When in the world would he have had time to learn all the stuff he knew?
The rig plowed through the first car blocking their path down the road.
“That is why I brought this thing out here.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s better if you don’t know. They’ll be looking for us.” Zach took a turn and the tires squealed under the effort to keep upright.
Samantha watched Zach as much as she watched the road. The feeling of being on the different side of things shocked her into silence. She was actually being hunted by her best friends. They were more than friends, really, like family. But they’d abandoned her and chose a different path.
Rage built in her as she thought about it. They were imprisoning her. She could never be free with them questioning everyone she was with. Would she need to pass every friend by them?
The rig jolted forward and pushed through a meatball of dead cars blocking the road. Zach smiled at the action and bounced in his seat. They drove much the same way for the next half an hour, until Zach turned onto a dirt road.
Samantha sat upright and looked at their surroundings. “You know this road?”
&nbs
p; “Been here a couple times, yeah.”
The rig bounced and she jostled around in her seat. Dust spilled out from behind them and Samantha couldn’t see a single thing that looked like a destination in sight.
“It’s just over this hill,” Zach said.
Samantha strained to look over and down the hill as they crested the top. A small house came into sight down below. Calling it a shack may have been more appropriate. She raised an eyebrow, but he kept his eyes on the house as they approached.
Parking the rig and turning it off, he said, “Wait here.”
Samantha unbuckled and looked at the dilapidated house. The stucco had large cracks and the wood trim had turned to a gray color. Dirt pushed up against part of the house, either from burrowing rodents or the wind.
Zach walked to the front door and knocked. He stood with his hand on his hips, looking at the top of the door. He knocked again, harder and longer.
After a minute, Samantha began to wonder what exactly they were doing there. It was seemingly in the outskirts of nowhere. And what was Zach waiting for? If someone didn’t come to the door after minutes of knocking, it usually meant a vacant house or they just didn’t want to talk to you.
He moved closer to the door and put his ear to it. Shaking his head, he placed his ear against the door once more. Then he jumped away and bolted to the rig. Hopping in, he started the rig and began a long U-turn.
“Are you really not going to say what that was about?” Samantha asked when they were back on the dirt road.
“I think I just got on the wrong street.”
“The wrong street? We are in the middle of nowhere and you for sure knew where you were going a few minutes ago.”
“I did, but I was wrong. It doesn’t matter now. I know exactly where we need to go to finish the plan.”
“And where is that?”
“Back home, to our house.”
“Our burning house?”
“Yes.”
“Why, what is there?”
“The end.”
JOEY STOOD NEXT TO THE stone with Travis and Poly. Travis could be invaluable in a fight and Joey was glad to see him coming with them. He was sure it helped that his daughter would be there also.