Survivors of PEACE

by T. A. Hernandez

“Cedric found Ryku. He’s in the Mid Pacific region, just a few hours’ drive away. I’ve got my team reviewing all the information now. We’ll make all the arrangements and head out tomorrow morning if you give us the go-ahead.”

  “Absolutely. Go. Take whatever and whoever you need.”

  She gave a curt nod and started to leave.

  “And Zira?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Before, when Chase was concerned about capturing him alive and not turning him into a martyr—that’s not an issue anymore. We’ve all seen the damage he’s capable of no matter what kind of security we put him under.” Her brows drew together over an intense, dark stare. “When you find him, you go ahead and pull the trigger the first chance you get.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Crouched in a narrow, dry canal bed, Zira surveyed the school where Ryku was holed up across an open field. The building had clearly been abandoned for years, if not decades. Most of the windows were shattered and boarded up from the inside, and weeds had overtaken what might have been soccer and baseball fields at one point. Thus far, they’d seen no signs of activity, but that didn’t mean there was no one was inside. Three relatively clean and seemingly functional cars sat in the parking lot, which Zira took as a sign that someone had indeed recently taken up residence in the place.

  According to Cedric’s intel, there were at least five other True PRM members inside with Ryku, so it was possible they would be outnumbered, but not drastically. Two other SIO teams were stationed about five miles out to provide backup if things went bad. Zira and her team had debated bringing them in to help with the mission, but ultimately decided stealth was more important than brute force here. They wanted to get into position and move in on the building as quickly and discreetly as possible without allowing those inside to prepare for their entrance.

  Jared, Dodge, and Nova were already posted on the opposite side of the building and would enter from the front while Zira, Josefina, and Salim went through a door at the rear. Tripp would take care of any technical issues they ran into and keep them updated on the situation outside with the assistance of two drones currently resting on the ground beside him.

  Zira looked at her teammates. Under their helmets, their eyes burned with focused determination as they waited for her signal. They were ready.

  “Jared, what’s your status?”

  “We’re all set.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  She led Salim and Josefina up the shallow bank of the canal, then crouched low as they moved across the field. The tall grass whispered against their legs.

  “Drones are in the sky,” Tripp said through their earpieces. “I’ll let you know if I see anything.”

  When they reached the building, Zira pressed herself flat against the wall beside the door. “We’re in position.”

  “Same here,” Jared responded a few seconds later. “Ready when you are.”

  She reached forward to test her door. It shifted easily with the tug she gave it. Unlocked. “Move in.”

  Jared didn’t answer, but Zira assumed he’d heard her. She pulled her door wide open. Josefina and Salim filed past her and split off as they entered, one to the left, the other to the right. She followed with her gun raised.

  They were in a large, open room with dusty tables and chairs stacked along the brick walls to either side. A set of open double doors on the opposite end of the room led out to one of the school’s two main hallways. Zira took the lead and headed through the doors. She gestured for Salim to stay put and watch their backs as she and Josefina swung right to search the two classrooms on the shorter end of the hall.

  They entered the first one together. Empty. A quick scan of the second room revealed it was also empty. Josefina opened the door of a cabinet that looked big enough to hold a person, but it only contained long-forgotten stacks of paper, markers, and other supplies.

  Salim rejoined them as they worked their way down the rest of the hall. They checked three more classrooms, all empty. The only sound was their own soft footfalls on the dust-covered floor. Unease prickled at the edges of Zira’s mind.

  “Jared?” she whispered.

  No response.

  She tried again a little louder. “Jared, you there?”

  Still no response.

  “Hey, Tripp, I don’t think Jared’s comms are working.” She waited a few seconds. “Tripp? Anyone? Can you hear me?”

  Silence. She turned to Salim and Josefina and tapped her earpiece with a questioning look. They both started speaking in soft voices, testing out their communications. She should have been able to hear them over her earpiece, but she wasn’t getting anything, and they both shook their heads at her.

  “Probably just a glitch,” said Salim said.

  She motioned them onward. “I’m sure Tripp’s working on it. Let’s keep going.”

  They checked the bathrooms, then moved on to a larger classroom towards the center of the school. Nothing there, either. Every muscle in Zira’s body tensed like so many compressed springs just waiting for release. Where was everyone?

  She opened the door to a connected office and froze as her eyes swept over an object attached to the wall in the far corner of the room. It was roughly the same size and shape as a brick, packaged in white plastic with the seal of the PEACE Project stamped on the outside. A small electronic device had been affixed to its surface, rigged to detonate at any moment.

  Zira shut the door and motioned for Salim and Josefina to follow her back out to the hallway. “We need to get out of here now.”

  She swung her rifle to her back and disconnected from the team communications channel on her CL. As they jogged back down the hall the way they’d come in, she entered Jared’s CL code to connect directly, but the call wouldn’t go through. She entered Tripp’s code. Also rejected. She swore under her breath.

  Salim tried the team comms channel again. “Jared, are you there? Dodge? Nova? Anyone?”

  Josefina tried to contact their backup teams. “Bravo, Charlie, can you hear us?”

  Zira glanced over her shoulder at them, hoping for good news, but they both just shook their heads.

  She stopped running when they reached an adjoining hallway that branched off at a perpendicular angle. If she remembered the layout of the building correctly, that hall eventually connected with the one on the other side of the building where Jared’s group would have begun their search.

  Should she go look for them? The school wasn’t huge, but without knowing exactly where the others were, she could be looking around for a while. For all she knew, the entire place could blow at any second. Maybe Jared and his team had already found a similar explosive device and retreated outside, or maybe they still had no idea about the potential danger they’d walked into.

  She swore again and turned back to Salim and Josefina. “You two get out of here and find Tripp. Help him get those comms up and running again. Tell him we found armed explosives in the building and he needs to let Jared and the others know.”

  She took a step down the other hall, but Salim reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “You can’t go down there alone. You need to get out, too.”

  She wrenched her arm away from him. “I’m giving you an order! Now get moving.”

  “No, wait,” said Josefina. “I’m getting something.”

  Zira quickly reconnected to the team comms channel. “Hello? Tripp? Jared?”

  “It’s Tripp,” he said. His voice came through scratchy and a little garbled. “Sorry…-thing’s interfering with…. Trying to…work….”

  “I can’t hear what you’re saying. It keeps cutting out.”

  “Meet…back….”

  “Let’s go.” She ran to the back doors in the cafeteria where they’d entered. Josefina and Salim’s footsteps echoed in the empty hall behind her.

  Tripp was waiting just outside, working on something on his CL with intense concentration. He barely glanced up at Zira as she exited the school. “Someone’s di
srupting our communications. There was a drone flying around out here just before you guys went in, not ours.”

  “PRM?”

  “Probably. I took it out with one of mine, but I can’t get our communications working. There’s still something interfering.”

  “I just need to reach Jared. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, maybe if I just….” He kept working for a few more seconds. “Here, try it now.”

  “Jared?” said Zira. “Jared, can you hear me?”

  She was relieved when his voice finally came through. “What’s going…comms?” Still patchy, but better than nothing.

  “We found armed explosives inside the school. You need to get out of there.”

  “Negative…can’t…. We…”

  Negative? Was he saying they couldn’t get out, or was he willfully disobeying her orders? She tightened her grip around her rifle. “This isn’t a request. Get out now.”

  No response.

  “Lost them again,” Tripp said. “Here, maybe I can pinpoint his location with his ankle monitor.”

  There wasn’t time for any of this. If the PRM had had a drone in the sky surveying the area, this was definitely a trap, and it could spring at any time. Zira removed her helmet and slipped out of the carry strap holding her rifle to her body. She handed both to Salim, and before anyone could try to talk her out of it, she sprinted around the corner headed for the school’s front entrance.

  She rounded the corner just in time to see Dodge push the door open. She craned her neck, trying to see past him. As far as she could tell, he was alone. She kept running.

  Dodge raised a hand to wave her back. Whatever he tried to call out to her was lost in the rumbling blast that came from somewhere inside the school. Three more followed in a chain reaction, and the whole building began to collapse in on itself from the center outward.

  Hot air pushed against Zira and tugged at her hair and clothes as a cloud of dust expanded out towards her. She raised an arm to shield her eyes as tiny pieces of debris pelted her face. Something heavy struck her right foot through her boot, sending a shudder up her prosthesis and into her knee. The ankle joint buckled underneath her, and she staggered. Dust filled her nose and mouth. She coughed, then lifted the front of her jacket to cover her face.

  The rumbling started to die off. Zira blinked away the granules that had settled on her eyelashes and searched for what used to be the school’s main entrance, but there was too much dust to see more than a couple feet ahead. She couldn’t even see Dodge anymore, and as far as she knew, Jared and Nova had still been inside when the building collapsed.

  How close had they been to the center of the explosion? Were they buried under the fallen structure? Were they alive?

  A desperate cry slid up from her throat, but she clamped her mouth shut and refused to let it out. The only reasonable option was to move forward. She didn’t know anything yet, and she’d be damned if she was going to fall apart now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Jared could see the sunlight streaming through the door around the corner when the first blast sounded behind him. The noise rumbled down the hall like an enormous guard dog’s warning growl. He broke into a sprint. He could see Nova’s silhouette against the light as she neared the exit, and Dodge was already outside.

  They were going to make it.

  Three more blasts echoed the first. Jared forced every last ounce of speed he could from his body. His muscles and lungs burned like fire. Just a few more yards.

  He was halfway out the door when the shockwave from the last set of blasts sent him sprawling onto the ground. His head smacked against something hard, but his helmet absorbed most of the impact. He lay there dazed and shaken as he tried to recover his breath.

  He wasn’t sure how much time went by before he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. The harsh rumbles of the collapsing structure had stopped, but he could barely see anything around him through all the dust. “Nova?” he called out, or tried to. His mouth was so dry and caked with grit that his voice only came out as a stifled croak.

  He stood up and started walking in the direction he thought was away from the school. The dust started to thin, and he could hear his teammates calling to each other.

  “Dodge, is that you?” said Salim.

  “Yeah. Nova and I are over here.”

  He moved towards the sound of their voices.

  “Are you guys okay?” Nova asked.

  “We’re all fine,” Josefina said. “Tripp, too.”

  All fine. Zira was fine. Jared tried to call out to them again, but his vocal cords still didn’t seem to work properly. He felt like he’d swallowed an entire sand dune.

  He could see the obscured figures of his teammates in front of him now. One of them turned and pointed at him.

  He raised a hand to greet them and kept walking, finally getting clear of the dust enough to make out their faces. Brownish-red powder from the school’s brick exterior clung to all their clothes, though Salim and Josefina looked considerably cleaner than Dodge and Nova.

  Salim raised a hand to his mouth and called out. “Zira, Tripp! He’s over here!”

  “Are you okay?” Nova asked as he joined their group.

  He nodded, then forced out, “Water?”

  “Water,” Dodge repeated, looking around at the others. “Sorry, man. None of us thought we’d need to pause for a drink when we went in there.”

  Tripp and Zira approached from the rubble. Zira’s face was streaked with dirt, and a heavy layer of dust clung to her clothes and hair. She must have been close to the school when the explosion happened. Closer than Salim and Josefina, anyway.

  Tripp set down his backpack and pulled out a first aid kit and some bottles of water, which he passed around to the others. Jared poured some water into his mouth, swished it around, and spit the now-brown liquid onto the ground. He took a second mouthful and swallowed before passing the bottle to Dodge.

  Zira just watched him with her arms crossed and her jaw clenched. When she caught his gaze, she erupted. “What the hell were you doing in there? I told you to get out.”

  “Our communications were down,” he replied.

  “Screw that! You heard me. You responded—negative. That’s what you said when I told you to leave the building.” She was standing mere inches away from him now, screaming into his face with all the force and vehemence of an angry lioness. Under different circumstances, they might have been a rather comical sight, him towering over her petite figure as she railed at him, but no one was laughing now. “You don’t get to just do whatever you want. We’re not in the Project anymore. And you’re not the one calling the shots.”

  “I know that. We just couldn’t understand you. I thought you were asking if I heard you.”

  She shook her head and continued to glare at him. Jared kept his expression neutral. He’d seen her angry on more than one occasion, and there was usually something else behind it. Anger and aggression were just easier to express, something he understood well enough. They’d both grown up in a world where showing any other kind of emotion was viewed as a weakness, and Zira had had to fight harder than most to prove herself strong. So he stood there and waited for the anger to subside, as it always did eventually.

  She turned away from him, but her expression remained harsh as she looked at the rest of the team. “I’m going to go get the van. If Bravo and Charlie teams show up before I get back, tell them they’re free to head home whenever they’re ready. Tripp, make sure you get that drone the PRM had flying around. The rest of you should patch yourselves up if you need to and go check out those empty cars in the parking lot. See if you can find anything.” She turned on her heel and started walking back towards the empty canal road where they’d left the van.

  Jared watched her go, noting how she favored her right leg as she walked. Was she hurt? He took the adhesive bandage Josefina handed him and distractedly pasted it over a scrape on his knee without bothering to clean t
he wound. When he looked up again, Zira was walking through the overgrown field behind the school. She stumbled, but quickly righted herself and kept going.

  He should stay put, follow her orders, but the van was a good mile away—a long walk for someone with an injured leg. He hated that she’d walked away angry, and they wouldn’t get a chance to talk to each other alone until they got back home tonight, if not later. He took off his helmet and set it on the ground beside his rifle, then set off at a steady jog after her. Tripp called out to him, but Jared pretended not to hear.

  “What’s with those two, anyway?” Salim asked. If anyone answered him, Jared didn’t hear the response.

  Zira was already crossing over the dry canal when he caught up with her. A wooden plank that served as a bridge creaked under her footfalls. Jared didn’t dare test his weight on the rotting wood and opted to jump to the opposite bank instead.

  She shook her head without looking at him. “You should go back.”

  She didn’t sound quite as angry as before, but she didn’t sound like she was ready to talk, either. He kept pace beside her as they followed the narrow dirt road that ran alongside the canal.

  A few minutes later, she stumbled again, but this time when she tried to continue, her leg wouldn’t support her. She shook it out and gingerly tested her weight on it again.

  “You okay?” Jared asked.

  She didn’t answer, but her frown was one of anger and frustration rather than pain. Her prosthetic leg must have been damaged in the blast somehow.

  “Here,” he said, offering his arm to her.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. She only managed to take two more stubborn steps forward before her ankle twisted underneath her, and she swore.

  Jared offered her an arm again. This time, she accepted the support with a resigned sigh, grasping his arm and leaning into him with every other step. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead as they continued down the road. They walked like that in silence until they reached the van, which was parked behind an old shed at the edge of a field barren of everything except for a few stray weeds.