The Gender Plan

by Bella Forrest

  I looked over at Owen as Morgan swerved around something in front of us, the gravity in the car shifting, sliding me into his shoulder. “We need to slow him down,” I shouted. “Look for something—anything—we can throw from the back of the car.”

  Owen looked at me from where he was pensively staring out the window, and then doubled over the backseat, opening a panel on the flat, felt-like shelf behind us. The panel was a long cutout, and as he lifted it, I squeezed my fingers under the crack to pick it up, the car bouncing under our knees.

  We slid it forward, propping it against the backseat, and I looked up in time to see the man running a few feet behind and to the side of us, snarling and snapping his teeth. He pulled back an arm to strike at my window, and Owen pulled me back from his location, forcing his body between us.

  “Watch out!” Lynne screamed, and Morgan jerked the wheel hard. I turned as the end spun out of control, trying to see what we’d almost hit, and suddenly we were bouncing back the other way. I landed hard against Owen as Morgan slammed on the brakes, sinking down a few inches into the gap between the seats as we came to a lurching stop.

  “It’s Solomon,” Lynne breathed shakily, and I sat upright, rudely grabbing on to Owen and hoisting myself up from off my back. I moved back to the window as Morgan gunned the engine, and confirmed that, yes, it was Solomon.

  By the time I had found where to look in our turned-around car, he had the other man by the throat, his mouth bared in a silent snarl. The red fire behind him caught the definition of his broad muscles flexing as he lifted the wild man up by the throat. The man’s legs kicked out, catching Solomon in the jaw, and he stumbled back, dropping his prize. The man pressed his advantage, his fists slamming into the side of Solomon’s face once, and then Solomon reached out and grabbed the other man’s fist, stilling it, his head snapping back to look at him.

  “He’s… protecting us,” I whispered as I watched him force the struggling man over, step by step, to the wall and begin smashing his head into the brick.

  “Good,” said Morgan. “We have a mission to complete.”

  She hit the gas and we sped off, leaving Solomon and the other man behind as they rapidly faded from view. Morgan hooked the next left, and I saw more fire, and people running around, fighting on the streets. A man picked up a rock and threw it at us, but it missed, sailing to one side and onto the street as we sped by.

  I clicked over to the main channel, knowing I needed to give everyone a report. “We encountered an enhanced human—male, in his early or mid-twenties, dark black beard,” I announced quietly over the line. “I think Elena brought the boys in.”

  “Yeah, Thomas told us, Vi,” said Amber. “But to what end? The place is a catastrophe. She’d lose more of the boys than she’d keep, in all likelihood.”

  “She could be sweeping in behind us,” replied Logan. “Using these enhanced humans to pin us between a rock and a hard place.”

  I frowned, my mind working. Amber was right. The fact that Elena had unleashed the boys here, and six blocks away from the water treatment plant, seemed careless. Like an afterthought.

  Then again, maybe it had been. Elena’s plan was coming apart at the seams—maybe she was running out of solutions. Maybe we finally had her scared.

  But that didn’t feel right for Elena. She wasn’t the same as regular people. She didn’t have the handicap of fear to distract her from the battle. Frustration, yes, but fear, not so much. The woman was a high-functioning sociopath with power. Whatever was going on, I doubted it had much to do with desperation. Not yet.

  “Violet, keep an eye out for them and let Thomas know if you see any more boys.” Ms. Dale’s voice was firm, but I could detect the notes of exhaustion and concern in her words. “Clear the channel. We need it for the plant.”

  “Roger,” I acknowledged, my heart a stone in my chest as I realized that Ms. Dale and everyone were going to attack soon, and that some of the brave people who were fighting with us were not going to survive.

  Leaning forward between the seats, I grabbed Morgan’s attention. “Get us there fast,” I said. “We can’t afford to let Desmond disrupt their plan in any way.”

  She nodded, her face grim, and sped up as the road in front of us seemed to clear. I leaned back in my seat, unable to feel relaxed as my eyes darted around, studying the road as we drove by. The streets had quieted down again, but I couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling in my stomach at the revelation that the boys were here.

  There was something more to this plan, something we were overlooking. I just wasn’t sure what.

  33

  Viggo

  “You and Drew’s team do your best with the barrels, cars, whatever,” I told Ingrid. “Just keep them from coming in behind us.”

  The pixie-faced Liberator bobbed her head, her blonde top-knot bouncing. She swiped the back of her hand against her cheek, wiping away sweat and leaving a long black smudge along her jaw. “We got your back, Croft,” she said. “Stop wasting time.”

  I nodded and approached the door where the rest of the team—now twenty-six of us—were heading in. The circular building was massive, and the area of the plant we needed to get to was buried in the heart of it. The place was also designed in a maze-like fashion that made it difficult to navigate, but Thomas had pre-plotted our route.

  Cruz cursed, and I turned to see where April was finishing wrapping up his still bleeding shoulder. She tied a quick knot, eliciting another harsh sound from Cruz, and then gave him a sharp nod. “It’ll hold,” she murmured. “But you should really sit this one out.”

  “And miss protecting your lovely self from harm? You would deny me that honor?” Cruz’s face was tight as he said it, his flirtatious tone lighter than usual, likely due to the pain he was in. Still, somehow, April gave him a wide grin.

  “You never give up,” she teased, and he managed a half shrug as he stood up.

  “I was never taught how to.” He looked around, his eyes landing on me. “We ready, Croft?”

  I looked at his shoulder, and then nodded. “Waiting on you,” I replied as I turned back to the small door that led to the plant and the rest of our mission. Apprehension tried to take over my brain, but I shouldered it aside.

  We just had to hope for as little resistance from inside as possible, though that hope sounded dim given what we’d encountered just getting here. I nodded to Alejandro, and he pulled back the heavy metal door. A red glow emitted from the wall across from me, illuminating the small service corridor that bordered one of the massive tank rooms. I could hear the loud roar of machines churning deep inside the plant through the entrance.

  Pulling out a hand mirror, I handed it to Alejandro, who held it out into the hall, checking the left side. It wasn’t something everyone had considered bringing, but I had brought mine, my time as a warden having taught me the importance of it for checking blind spots. Mine happened to be one of three on our team. He dutifully handed it over to Mags, who did the same on the right. “It’s clear,” she said softly, handing it to me, and I slipped it back into my pocket.

  I stepped forward into the hall. The red emergency lighting lit it up well, revealing only small pipes—probably filled with chemicals to treat the water—lining the wall, periodically feeding back into the wall or into a box.

  “Viggo?” Violet’s voice in my ear was soft, but there was an edge to it.

  “Violet?” I asked, taking a step deeper into the plant. “It’s not a really good time.”

  “I know that, but this is important.”

  I hesitated, and then turned, disconnecting the microphone so I didn’t transmit orders meant for others over the line. “Cruz, Mags, take two teams of five and find the doors. The one on the east side needs to be secured and locked, while the one on the west leads to our first room on the way to the control center.”

  Mags nodded and began giving orders in hushed tones. I stepped deeper into the hall and then put my back against the wall, giving people room
to move by. “What’s up?”

  “I guess this goes for everyone, really, but there was something off about that enhanced man.”

  I frowned, confusion coming over me. It took me a minute to remember what she was talking about—which was understandable after everything that had just happened. “What was it?”

  “He was… angry. Kind of berserk.” She delivered the information matter-of-factly, but I could hear the bomb drop in her words. I suddenly felt rooted in place, my stomach churning in horror as I realized what she was saying.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “What?” asked Henrik, confusion roughening his voice. “What are you talking about?”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “Thomas, is it possible that whatever they have been contaminating the water with is making it out into the city fountains already?”

  “Possible. Especially the ones closer to the plant,” announced Thomas grimly. “But you seem to have drawn a conclusion based on some yet-to-be-explained data.”

  “He was like Solomon,” Violet said, her tone bitter, angry. “Angry and prone to attack everything around him. That’s not like the boys we’ve known, especially when they’re on the Benuxupane.”

  There was a long stretch of quiet as we all absorbed this information, and then Violet continued. “What if Elena isn’t dumping Benuxupane or poison? What if she’s putting in the pill that Desmond gave to Solomon? What if her game is to show the Matrian people how dangerous the Patrian people have become, and wage her war against them openly, with their full support?”

  There was another long silence, and then Thomas spoke. “The efficacy of that plan would be astronomical,” he whispered, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. “It would incite a primal fear in the Matrians—their next-door neighbors have become monsters capable of incredible feats of strength, but suffering from extreme rage and unable to control their behavior. She could even let the people inside the city tear themselves apart… and just keep them from leaving the city through those checkpoints they set up. It’s brilliant.”

  A loud bang came from down the hall, and I jumped, turning toward it. “Mags?” I said.

  The comm buzzed, and it was Henrik, trying to shoot down the idea, but I already knew in my gut that it was true. Everything was worse than we’d feared, and the plant had gotten infinitely more dangerous. I ignored the discussion and took a few steps forward, allowing the curve to illuminate more of the hall. “Mags?” I repeated.

  The bang came again, this time more of a clatter, like loose metal rattling in its brackets. “Viggo?” came Mags’ questioning voice, and I came around the curve a few feet back. The hall acted like a tunnel, the walls stopping abruptly and opening into a small room with grated steps leading to the next door. Tim was slowly backing down the steps, toward Mags, who stood by the entrance, her gun trained on the door. Something slammed into it with another loud bang, and the door flew back a few feet and then toppled over, part of it hanging over on the stairs.

  I almost knew what I was going to see before I saw it. An olive-clad woman stepped out, her hands balled into fists. The skin over her knuckles was torn and bleeding freely, and she peered at us from beneath a lowered brow, her lips curled up in a silent snarl. She wiped the back of her arm over her mouth, and then screamed, a throaty, angry sound, leaping into the air and coming down in front of Tim.

  Tim danced back a few feet and then planted his legs wide, ducking low under the wild, sweeping haymaker the woman leveled at him. He stepped in close as the woman’s swing carried her arm past him, grabbing a fistful of her shirt and planting one foot on her stomach. He used her momentum to drag her down as he lowered himself to the floor, rounding his back and then rolling her over him, his foot shoving her forward so that she flipped over him. Her head and shoulder hit hard against the concrete ground.

  Quickly scrambling to his feet, Tim turned as the woman began to move, her hands bracing on the floor as she pushed herself up. I didn’t give her a chance to get up again—I shot her dead, and pressed forward. “C’mon,” I said. “We gotta get into that room.” Because if all of the wardens inside the plant are like that… we gotta make it through as soon as possible.

  I tested the door sitting on the top of the stairs, making sure it could be stepped on without tripping us up, and then moved through the open doorway onto a catwalk, inside one of the water treatment rooms. Pipes wider than I was jutted out of walls in any direction, seemingly at random. I kept my back to the curved side of the building as I stepped past the massive pipes coming through the wall just a few feet to my left.

  “Don’t shoot!” a feminine voice cried, causing me to hold up. “I didn’t sign up for this. I surrender!”

  “TRAITOR!” shouted another voice, and I ducked back as gunfire exploded in the room, filling the area with bullets ricocheting off of pipes, whistling at high velocity until they found some concrete to stop their flight. It died quickly, and I poked my head out again, studying the dim shadows under the pipes.

  “Anyone who wants to surrender, throw your guns on the ground and put your hands up so we don’t shoot you!” I shouted, and launched myself over the railing, down the five-foot drop to the concrete below. I used my right arm—my left still felt like ground meat stuffed into an overstretched sock—and landed solidly on my boots, dropping behind a set of three pipes that rested inches off the ground, rising in a leveled slope up toward the ceiling.

  I could see a wide hatch standing open on the pipe opposite me, and a large red barrel tipped on its side, leaking a milky white fluid into the water rushing by. Then gunfire erupted in the room, and I ducked down as it came dangerously close.

  “Right side, right side!” Greg shouted, and I stood up and fired at the general area, sparks from my gun and the guns on the area above lighting it up, only adding to the red glow that illuminated the space. I angled left when I saw a dark figure emerge from behind a grouping of smaller pipes, gun in hand. Her focus was on the catwalk, so she never had the chance to see me, or the bullet that caught her in the head.

  I turned and saw a woman standing over the hatch, cupped hands to her lips, water streaming through her fingers. She met my gaze, going wide-eyed in surprise when she realized that I saw her, fear crossing her features. Then, quicker than I would have thought possible, her face began to change, and before I knew what was happening, she had ripped off the hatch allowing access to the pipe and flung it at me like a frisbee.

  I ducked down under it and squeezed the trigger wildly, and she went down. A few more shots were exchanged, and then it was done, a chorus of “clear” beginning to fill the room. I came around the pipes in a hurry, pulled the barrel off the hole, and righted it, stopping it from polluting any more of the water source while making sure to keep my hands well away from the milky substance.

  “Henrik,” I said, pressing my fingers together. “I just watched a woman drink from the water she was ‘poisoning,’ and then rip off a hatch weighing about forty pounds, and fling it at me hard enough to take my head off. They—” I paused as Gregory appeared from around another set of pipes, guiding an olive-clad woman with sleek chestnut hair toward me.

  “I surrender,” she said immediately, holding up her hands to show she was unarmed. “I didn’t sign up for… whatever the hell that was.”

  “I’ll get back to you in a minute,” I transmitted to Henrik before disconnecting the transmission. “It’s all right,” I told her. “We won’t hurt you. What’s your name, and what happened?”

  She tugged at her uniform and squared her shoulders. “Janice Stevenson,” she said, swallowing. “We were getting ready for you to come in, and then Vanessa drank the water and… and went insane. There’s no other way to put it. Those were our orders, but they lied to us! They told us that they got wind of a terrorist chemical attack happening in the next couple of days, so we’ve been trying to flood the water with these. We were told to drink the water if the terrorists… if you were close enough… They
said it would inoculate us against certain poisons if you tried to use chemical weapons. The rest of us thought we were fine, but Vanessa panicked and started drinking the water and just changed. She killed Gwen, just like that, and then she came after me, but… then she heard something at the door and went after it instead.”

  I held up my finger to her as I began to transmit. “It’s confirmed,” I said grimly. “And the Matrians have orders to drink the water if we get close to them.”

  “There’s more,” added Janice, almost impatient to get her story out, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “We were also given pills to take in emergencies to protect against chemical attacks. Now I’m worried they’ll just do the same thing.”

  Leaning back on the pipe, I felt the terse silence on the line as everyone realized the impact that this could have on our battle. I shook my head, a mix of anger, disgust, and fear clenching in my gut as I realized that some of the tainted water was already on the street. It must have been, if that man Violet had seen was affected by it. People were being changed against their will, and then probably killing others. No one could know that it was coming from the water, not yet. And how could they resist drinking it, even if they did? All other sources were already out.

  If I hadn’t hated Elena before, this move would have made me despise her.

  I quickly informed everyone in the main channel of Janice’s revelation as I rolled away from the pipe and stood up. When I was done, I pulled apart my fingers and gave her a stern look. “Janice, we can purge this system and save a lot of people. That’s what we’re here to do. But I need to know—is there a faster way to the control room?”

  Janice returned my hard look, her jaw clenching with indecision. Then she nodded, sliding a long strand of hair behind her ear. “Yes. I can show you, but you have to let me go free.”

  “Agreed, but after the battle is over. There are still rogue Matrian forces outside, and even if you did manage to make it out into the city, there would be no stopping any of the hundreds of angry people in the street looking to make someone pay for what’s happening to them.”