The Gender Plan

by Bella Forrest

  I moved up to the next windows, letting silence fill the line. “I really want to hate him, you know,” Amber admitted softly.

  I said the only thing that came to mind. “I know.”

  Blinking at the screen, I leaned closer and squinted my eyes, trying to discern what I had just seen. It had looked like a flash of movement, which wasn’t uncommon, but there was something about it that was weird. It hadn’t been dark… It had been light. I peered a little closer and stroked a finger across the screen, running my fingers over the thin vertical line that was now jutting out the window. I switched over to thermal, and blinked when the red-hot body of a person lit up, standing just behind the wall next to the window. I realized what that vertical white line was—it was light shining brightly off of a silver muzzle, reflecting the light of the moon.

  “Amber, adjacent building, two o’clock from your position. Individual is armed and pointing at your position.”

  “Most of my team’s up on the roof. The civilians just passed us and are moving away. We’ll be clear in—”

  Whatever she said I lost as the door to the command room I sat in slammed open and the basement went dark.

  “What the—” I heard Owen utter, then he grunted, and I heard another clatter and a slam. Almost in the same moment, my chair was pulled out from under me, and I fell, hard, on my rump. Pain jolting my body, I scrambled forward on hands and knees, under the table that held the screen. Then it seemed that things were flying all around me.

  I heard the flutter of papers followed by the crash of something breaking. Ducking under my table, I was almost hit by something heavy as it crashed to the floor in front of me, skidding off to one side. Henrik shouted, but the sound of rushing wind grew, and I became aware of a breeze that seemed to fill the basement.

  “Cody?” I asked, daring to lean out slightly from under the table, and then ducking quickly back in as something long seemed to come right for me. There was a hard metallic thunk on the side of the table, making my shoulders hunch for fear that it had somehow broken through. The breeze stopped, and the door at the top of the stairs slammed closed. I heard a sharp click, and then there was silence.

  My heart beat hard against my ribcage, and I pressed my hand against it, fearing that it was too loud in the sudden silence of the room. I waited a few seconds, my eyes finally growing used to the darkness. There was light coming from somewhere. Likely the kitchen lights were on, and shining through the cracks in the closed basement door. I hurried out from under the desk.

  “Violet?” Amber’s voice made me start in alarm.

  “Amber, are you safe?” I asked.

  “Yes, but the—”

  “Hold position and keep the line clear. Something’s happened.” I was sure my words were going to worry her, but there was nothing to do about it now. I couldn’t report anything when I knew nothing. “Henrik? Owen?”

  “I’m here.” Henrik’s voice came from the left of me, and I moved around the table, blinking in the dimness, to find the older man leaning back on the floor with his hand on his side. I knelt down next to him.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, moving his hand away.

  “I’m fine,” he rasped, although he let me pull up his shirt to check on his wound. The bright white bandage taped just left of his bellybutton was stained with blood, and I carefully peeled back the tape, revealing the stitches underneath.

  From what I could see in the dim light, one of his stitches had popped out, but the wound was far enough healed that we could fix it with some butterfly tape. I pressed the bandage back down, leaning into the tape to make it stick a little bit longer, and nodded. “It’s an easy fix,” I said. “Can you get up?”

  “It’s a gut wound, girl,” he grumped, but he let me help him up.

  “Violet?” Owen’s voice was a rasp in the darkness, and I turned my head toward the stairs leading up to the door, studying them in the orange light creeping in through the door’s seams. Something opposite of the stairs moved, and I saw Owen’s shadow emerge from the darkness in the corner, lumbering toward the table. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I whispered. “Are you?”

  “Got the wind knocked out of me. Something just slammed into my chest.”

  “It must have been Cody,” I breathed.

  Owen leaned on the table with one hand, his other wrapped around his stomach, cradling it. “I know,” he replied, his tone resigned. “I’m sorry.”

  “Desmond’s the one who’s going to be sorry,” I muttered as I moved over to the stairs, picking my way across the debris-ridden floor. I climbed to the top of the stairs, and then felt around the stone for the light switch, clicking it on.

  Much to my relief, the bulb immediately switched on, and I glanced down the stairs toward the chaos of the room—papers and equipment everywhere, a length of pipe lying on the ground next to the desk, the drone controls knocked over, and various pieces of the unfinished basement room having been strewn about randomly. Turning back to the door, I twisted the handle, but it refused to turn.

  “Who’s got the keys?” I asked.

  “They were on the table a minute ago,” said Henrik, sinking to one knee and beginning to sift through the papers that had been scattered there.

  “Were those the ones that also had the keys to Desmond’s chains?” Owen asked suddenly.

  I felt a splash of fear and immediately hit the transmit button, cutting to the channel that connected us to our other houses. “Lacey?” I called for the guard who’d been stationed at Desmond’s prison.

  Henrik and Owen looked up at me and then exchanged looks. “How would Cody know where we stashed her?” Henrik asked. “I don’t think we talked about it in front of him…”

  “Children always have a knack for hearing information they shouldn’t be hearing,” I said, thinking about Tim when he was young. “We shouldn’t have let him wander around, even with his guard… Oh God.” I pressed my fingers together again. “Lacey?”

  Silence and the occasional pop of static filled the line. “Everyone, change frequency to Delta nine,” Henrik announced on the command channel.

  “Does anyone have a lock-picking tool?” I asked, although I knew they didn’t.

  “No,” said Henrik, heaving back on to his feet.

  “Damn it!” exploded Owen. “Right now, he’s probably getting her free, and then she is going to go tell the Matrians about our base, ruin our plans for the water treatment plant, and continue this horrible game she’s playing! Why couldn’t you just have executed her?!”

  “Because she threatened the boys, Owen! And if there was even a remote chance she wasn’t lying, we couldn’t risk it!”

  Silence met my statement, and a glance at Owen nodding angrily revealed that he had already known this—he just hated the feeling of impotence it brought. I could understand that. I didn’t envy the turmoil that was running even hotter inside him than it was inside me, but I didn’t have time to entertain it. We had to get out of this room. I had to check on Morgan and stop Desmond. If she’d escaped, she now knew the location of one of our newly found bases. And as much as he would hate it, I had to get Cody back from her.

  “Violet?”

  Viggo’s voice in my ear made my thoughts tumble apart, and I turned, expecting and wanting him to be right behind me, even though I knew he wasn’t.

  “Viggo? Are you okay? Did you make it through the Porteque territory?”

  “We’re almost there. We’ve got a few more issues to clear up, but so far, everyone is fine.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all night.” The little reminder that the men I loved most in the world were still all right made things feel a little less grim. I was going to ignore the strain in Viggo’s voice, until I had a chance to extract the whole story from him. If I did. Right now, I was just glad, so glad, he and everyone were safe.

  “Glad to hear you’re okay,” said Henrik, echoing my thoughts, and I looked over at where he was leaning agai
nst the table, his hand still pressed to his side. “We’ve got problems here. Cody came in and wrecked a bunch of stuff, and we’re currently locked in the basement. He’s got the keys, and we think he went for Desmond.”

  Silence met Henrik’s statement.

  “Cody got her out?” Viggo said, his voice coarse with disbelief. “How? We’ve been sedating him.”

  “We don’t have all the details,” I said. “All we know is it was Cody, and he was using his enhancement. The place is a mess.”

  “Violet?” Amber’s voice cut in softly. “I’m not sure if this is the best time to tell you this, but your drone is dead. It slammed into the wall of a building.”

  “What?” I raced down the stairs again, my eyes finding the heavy briefcase-like remote control a few feet from the table, propped up on its side. I rolled it over and lifted the heavy lid a few more inches, revealing spider web cracks in the screen, cutting black lines across the screen that was supposed to display the feed, which was now showing only red static. I exhaled slowly and closed the lid. “Crap.”

  “Use the roofs, Amber,” Ms. Dale said over the radio, her voice sternly practical. “You’re in a pretty dense part of town, structurally speaking, and it’ll give you the advantage of elevation.” It was a good suggestion, and now more than ever we needed the groups to get to their rendezvous points on time.

  I sifted through the debris lining the floor and found a few paperclips. Straightening the rounded edges, I climbed back up the stairs and knelt in front of the door, slipping one into the keyhole on the doorknob. I started to unfold the second one, when I realized that I couldn’t pick the lock with a cast on my hand. Of course I couldn’t. And even with all the training I’d been doing, I didn’t think my left hand was going to be up to the job.

  I waved Owen over and let him take my spot in front of the door. Picking a lock was difficult in the tensest of times, and doing it with a paperclip wasn’t easy. Minutes ticked by as he fiddled with it. Henrik stayed below, giving orders over the radio as he sifted through the papers, mechanically trying to organize them.

  The doorknob rattled and I looked up, barely hearing Amber’s voice in my ear. Owen pulled his gun and stood, motioning for me to move past him down the steps. I did so just as the rattle stopped, and then there was a distinct jingle of keys. The lock clicked, and the door swung open, revealing Morgan, one hand cupped over her eyes. “You guys okay?”

  “Morgan,” I said, taking a step closer. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  Morgan looked away and then slowly lowered her hand, revealing the quickly purpling flesh under her brow, the mark wrapping around her orbital socket. “Cody blindsided me. One minute I thought he was sleeping, the next thing I knew, pow. Violet… as soon as my head stopped spinning, I took off after them down the road in the car. I got there just as she was pulling away. I would’ve kept chasing them, but I needed to see if you guys were wounded. I couldn’t handle it if one of you bled out while I chased down Desmond.”

  I took in a deep breath through my teeth. “Did you see Lacey while you were there?”

  Morgan’s face went from weary to appalled, and she shook her head wildly. “Oh no, I didn’t even think about it. I’m so sorry—I hope she’s okay.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, though we both knew that if it wasn’t, there wasn’t much we could do about it now. Morgan bit her lip and nodded as though trying to convince herself.

  “Violet,” she said, “one more thing. Desmond was driving the truck. With Solomon in it.”

  I was unprepared for the flash of dizzying anger that coursed through me and left me feeling burning white and hot. “What?”

  “They took the truck—” Morgan began, wrongly interpreting my question.

  “I know, I know,” I snapped, unable to stop the current of flame that was eating up my insides. “She’ll use him if she has to. She’ll turn him on anyone who gets in her way.” I turned and leveled a look at Henrik. “I want to go after her.”

  Henrik looked unsurprised. “Guys, Violet wants to go after Desmond. We have just learned she took Solomon in her escape.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Do you think Desmond will try to jeopardize the mission?” Viggo kept his voice calm and even, but I knew he didn’t want me going into the city without having a really good reason.

  “I do. I’ll bet she gleaned that we were going to target the water treatment plant, and if there’s something going on, she’ll head there to warn them—and because she has a vehicle, there’s a chance she could get there before our people.”

  “If she even goes there, but Violet, if she doesn’t…” Amber trailed off. She had unwittingly helped me to understand another angle to this argument: if Desmond didn’t go for it, then it meant nothing was happening at the plant to begin with, and we could call off the attack and focus on freeing the city completely.

  “We have to go, regardless of where she goes. By the time she gets to the city, she will know our location, or something close enough to it to make life bad for us. And we have to get Cody and Solomon back from her before she can put them on the Benuxupane and use them for her plans again.”

  “No offense, but Cody made his choice,” Amber said, and I couldn’t help but snap.

  “We have no idea what Desmond said to him in that room, but we do know that he is a traumatized little boy, suffering from abuse and neglect. Desmond has a drug that he feels he needs in order to… stop feeling the way he does about all of the horrible stuff that happened to him. And you want to blame him for that? Blame her, for making him take it in the first place, and then convincing him it was a good thing he was doing. You can give up on him if you want, but I’m not ready to.”

  I didn’t mean to become so passionate, but the whole situation made me quake with anger. Desmond escaping was a dash to our hopes—but it was almost expected, almost a relief to be rid of the burden of her unwanted presence and the threat that what she’d said about the boys was true. But to force Cody and Solomon back into their lives of being used as tools? I couldn’t let that happen. I hadn’t wanted to go into the city in this condition. It very likely could kill me. But if there was a chance of stopping Desmond from interfering with our plans, I had to take it. Everyone else was busy with the mission. It had to be me.

  The other people on the line seemed to take my shout as all the convincing they needed.

  “Owen’s going with you, obviously,” said Viggo softly. “But you need more people if you’re going after her. Who’s left?”

  “Morgan,” I said, and I turned to where she still stood on the landing, looking up at her. She hesitated, her eyes flicking over to Owen, and then Henrik, before nodding.

  “Lynne will want to go too,” she said softly.

  “—and Lynne as well,” I transmitted. “We’ve still got one of Ashabee’s special cars. We’ll gas it up and track her. But we’ve got to go now—we’ve already wasted too much time.”

  Henrik met my gaze and nodded. “Go,” he said. “I can give you my mobile comm set, with the glove, and use the headset you were using with the drone. I’ll send someone out to check on Lacey.”

  “Thanks.” I nodded to Owen. “Get whatever you need and meet in the car. Morgan—”

  “I’ll go get Lynne,” she said, turning and leaving the room at a run. I raced after her, my mind compiling a rapid list of what I needed. We hadn’t had much time to begin with... and now we had even less.

  29

  Viggo

  I fired another round at a group of cars that several men had scrambled behind, picking them out using the night vision goggles I had scavenged from one of the dead gang members. I pushed them back from the building, trying to keep as many of them as possible from getting to the doors before Mags got there. When we’d begun firing on the Porteque gang members from their own building, the intersection had erupted into chaos—I’d seen fighting between the members well before they’d even thought to fire back at us, and the sight
gave me a savage pleasure.

  The gun clicked empty, and I ejected the magazine. In the room beside me, Alejandro continued to fire. I heard a rifle go off in the hallway and gritted my teeth.

  “Report!” I roared, into the microphone and down the hall at once.

  “Tim’s on the move, as are we. Entering the park.”

  “Two down on the stairs.”

  April and Mags spoke at the same time, but I picked out what was said simply by context as I slid a new magazine into place, my eyes tracking Mags’ group’s progress down the sidewalk in the park below. My eyes flew right as I saw something shift on the building across from us, and I pressed the stock of my gun into my shoulder, firing in short, controlled bursts at the rooftop several hundred feet below.

  “Marna and I took out the group trying to flank us on the left. She is an amazing shot. Tells me she had a good teacher.” I acknowledged Cruz’s report, not having time to really register the compliment, just satisfied they were holding their own over there. My rounds streaked red, giving the goggles a bit more light, and I readjusted and fired another burst, watching the man who had been creeping up on the edge of the building jerk and fall. I stared at the shadows for a second, looking for movement, and then glanced at Mags again.

  “We got guns out front,” she shouted into the mic, and I saw her leap back a few steps, bright white flashes on the screen making her disappear and reappear. She was firing, as were several of the group around her, creating havoc in my vision.

  “I’m sending a few people down to help you,” I replied, disconnecting and looking at Alejandro. “Get down there and take one from each room… and April. You’ll be in charge until you get to Mags. Take out the guys who are pinning them down, and get our team into the building.”

  My main channel beeped, and I quickly switched over while Alejandro moved out of the room.

  “Viggo, I’m in position,” Ms. Dale said. “What’s your status?”

  Before replying, I fired another few rounds at the car. I must’ve gotten too close for comfort, because the Porteque members behind the car were running, and a little bit of satisfaction grew in me. “We’re two blocks away. Mags and her team are in a firefight, but we’ve got the advantage on them, and we’ll be able to control the situation and get there soon.”