by Simon Archer
“Alright, men,” I said, and somehow my voice sounded better than it had before in the wake of our victory. “Let’s go get patched up.”
23
It took us a while of fumbling around outside to find the house again, given all the smoke and the fact that many of us were injured, and those of us who were still intact weren’t feeling so hot either.
But, by the time we were in the general vicinity of the house, some of the smoke had dissipated since there weren’t more drones coming and smoking each other up by then, and the outline of the house appeared on the horizon.
“Over here,” I yelled back at the group since I was out in front.
There were about thirty of us then. We’d lost another third of our number in the battle, but the conglomerate had lost far more than we had. Compared with how many of ours that had quit earlier, TelCorp and the conglomerate were probably on even footing then as far as numbers of binders were concerned, and ours were better.
We ran together up to the front door, and I banged on it, leaving the rest of the group down below at the foot of the stairs at the edge of the walkway leading up to the door. It didn’t take long for Cindra to appear. She opened the door just a crack at first to look through, but then gasped and swung it open when she saw us, her face horror-stricken.
I looked down at my hands and then at the rest of my body and realized that I was covered in a combination of soot, dirt, and blood from the battle. The other binders were in the same state, and many of them looked even worse. I just hadn’t noticed how bad it was before with all the adrenaline going through my body and everything else that was going on around me.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I assured her, not knowing what else to say.
“Come in, come in,” she cried, ushering for us to follow her inside. She held open the door for us.
The house was not nearly as quiet as it had been before. I heard voices coming from all over the place: the kitchen, the upstairs, even the backyard. And Cindra and her family were all sitting in the living room, watching the holovision and looking very uncomfortable with the whole setup.
“What happened to you?” she asked when all of us were crowded into the living room. Cindra’s family members got up and motioned for some of the most wounded binders to sit down on the couch.
Clem shook his head. “It’s a war zone out there.”
“Wait, where’s Fizz?” I asked, looking around wildly for the other board member. Clem’s face fell.
“He didn’t make it,” he said flatly.
My shoulders slumped as I shook my head. “Shit.”
“He knew what he was getting into,” Semra said, not unkindly.
“I know, I just… I know he was scared, and I hate that he had a reason to be, is all,” I said. “I’ll have to call his mother, too, I guess, and a whole lot of others.”
“Who else didn’t make it?” Cindra asked, her eyes wide with concern.
“The Bissette brothers, and quite a few more,” I said, and then I saw her confusion. “I didn’t know their names either, but they were only kids.”
“Oh,” she said, her own shoulders slumping now. “That really sucks.”
“The rest of you are okay, though, right?” Cindra’s little sister, Hil, asked as she pulled on my binder coat, The young foxgirl stared up at me with scared, glistening eyes.
“Oh, Hil, I forgot you were here,” the girl’s mother, Paola, gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth. “Go upstairs right this minute.”
I looked around at the other binders and myself again. We were a sorry sight, weren’t we? And I scary one, I supposed.
“Here, I’ll take her,” Cindra’s other sister, Avil, said, reaching out and taking the little foxgirl by the hand. “I was planning to go check on Malthe, anyway.”
“Malthe?” I asked, suddenly all ears and at attention again. “I’ll come with you. I want to talk to him.”
“You will do no such thing,” Cindra said sharply, grabbing me by the shoulders and forcing me down into a nearby cushy chair. “None of you are going anywhere. Avil, get the med employees we put up on the third floor and bring them down here. They have a lot of work to do.”
“But I need to…” I started to protest.
“Malthe will be there after you get first aid,” she said sternly, putting her hands on her hips, and I relented. Cindra was a force to be reckoned with, that was for sure. That’s one reason I cared so much about her, after all.
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands weakly to show that I had given it. “I’ll wait.”
“What happened?” she asked me, looking around at the other binders and shaking her head.
“What about the drones?” her father, Henri, asked anxiously. “Are we safe now? Are we going to be okay?”
“I think so, but that’s why I need to talk to Malthe,” I told him. “He’ll have more information about how many drones and other tech units we have left to protect the south side. Still, the conglomerate’s drones are all gone, and so are their binders.”
“And a good chunk of ours,” Clem said darkly.
“Yeah, but not as many,” I said. “We’ve got the upper hand now unless the conglomerate’s got something else we don’t know about up their sleeves. Another reason I really need to talk to Malthe. Figure out what our enemies are up to now.”
“You killed all their binders?” Cindra asked hopefully. “None of them are coming after us now?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “We cleared them out of the area and killed the ones who were here.”
“None of our friends have reported anything to us from the other houses,” Cindra said, exchanging a look with her father to confirm. “So I think we’re good.”
“Good.” I breathed a sigh of relief before leaning my head back on my chair and closing my eyes, letting the good news and the comfortable environment sink in. “That’s really, really good.”
“Okay, so what do we do now?” Dane asked, and I shook my head without opening my eyes.
“Don’t worry about it now. Just relax. Cindra’s right, we need to patch our wounds and figure out the rest later,” I said. A few of the other binders crumpled into sitting positions on the carpet, having been given permission to chill out.
“There’s more space outside,” Paola suggested. “And there are tables and chairs, and you could rinse yourselves off in the pool. It will be easier to go out there. Some of you can stay here, of course, but I just think it would be easier.”
“Of course,” I said, smiling up at her. “That sounds better. Most of the smoke should’ve cleared up by now, too. Come on, guys.” I reluctantly forced myself out of my chair and led most of the group outside, leaving those in most need of medical attention behind on the couch. One of their legs was bleeding all over the place and was kind of off-looking like it had been crushed.
Outside, I jumped into the L-shaped pool and cleaned myself off, letting it wash over me and clean my wounds, washing away the dirt and the dust and the soot from the battle. The bleeding edge filtration systems for the water would clear out the grime within the hour, so I swam without a care. It was the most relaxing swim I’d ever had. Well, the second most relaxing after that time the night before with Cindra. Had that really only been the previous evening? It felt like a lifetime ago.
I heard several of the other binders splash into the pool behind me, and Clem came paddling up next to me after a few minutes at the other end of the L.
“Feeling okay?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, and I was on the outside, but inside? I was still thinking about the Bissette brothers and all the rest who had died. I couldn’t do anything to help them now, and that sucked. “What about you?”
“I’m alright, I guess.” Clem shrugged his broad shoulders, making a small wave in the water. “It was pretty rough out there, I’m not gonna lie.”
“What happened with your group?” I asked him. “Mine kept running into the conglomerate’s bind
ers, and then we found all of you. How d'you meet up with the other groups?”
“Well, we kept running into their binders, too,” Clem said, scrunching his eyebrows as if trying to remember. “We lost a guy early on when we weren’t expecting them to attack us. They just kind of came out of nowhere.”
“Yeah, they really did, didn’t they?” I said. “It was hard to see with all the smoke.”
“Yeah, that was the worst part, I think,” he said. “We kept going after we fought the first of them and then ran into a few more. They didn’t tell us anything. There wasn’t any time for that.”
“Yeah, neither could we,” I said. “I didn’t even think to interrogate any of them. We just wanted to get to the end and get out of there so badly. Our chests hurt from the smoke, and we were so beat up and everything…”
“Exactly,” Clem said before continuing, looking relieved that I wasn’t mad at him about it. “But then we heard voices and found Semra’s group. They were in a bit of a bind, so to speak, no pun intended, I guess, and we had to pull a tree off of a couple of ‘em.”
“A tree?” I repeated, unsure what he meant by this.
“Yeah, I guess a couple of the conglomerate’s guys dropped a giant tree on a couple of our folks. Semra and one of the others fought them off after that since the rest of their team was either dead or, well, under the tree, but they couldn’t get the tree off of ‘em by themselves. So we came along and helped them up.”
“Is that why that guy’s leg is all messed up?” I asked, jerking a thumb behind me to indicate the guy I’d noticed on the couch.
“Yeah, he was one of ‘em,” Clem said. “The other guy didn’t make it, unfortunately, but I’m glad at least one of them did. Means the delay wasn’t for nothing, I guess.”
“None of it was for nothing,” I assured him.
“Yeah, I guess not,” he sighed, shrugging again, this time with both shoulders, and some water splashed against my chest.
“So, what happened after that?” I asked. “How d'you join up with the others?”
“Well, they were already there when we got there,” he said. “So you’ll have to ask one of them, but I assume they came the same way we did, found some conglomerate binders there, started fighting them, and then more people from both sides just kept joining in when they heard what was going on.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “That giant thing Malthe sent at the end was pretty wild, wasn’t it?”
A grin spread across Clem’s face. “Yeah, it was. Seeing that made it all worth it, I think.”
“Definitely,” I said. “I just hope we got them all.”
“We did,” Clem said, and his tone was definitive. “If there were any more, we would have found them. We covered the whole area down here. We got them all. And if we didn’t, the drones got the rest.”
“Yeah, I hope you’re right,” I said. “I’m glad all the other foxgirl families seem okay.”
“Yeah, that could have been bad if we hadn’t gotten here when we did,” Clem said. “Good call, boss man.” He punched me on the shoulder playfully and grinned again.
Just then, several employees with medical badges came filing out of the house and setting up shop on the long table by the glass doors. Clem and I swam back over to the front of the L and sat down at a nearby table, waiting for them to come to treat our wounds. Someone came over to us in not too long to see to them.
“How are you feeling?” the medic, who looked to be about my age and was carrying a black duffel bag of supplies, asked.
“Okay,” I said. “Better now that the smoke’s subsided.”
“Good, take this,” he said, handing Clem and me each a pill and some water.
“What is it?” Clem asked, looking down at it with some skepticism.
“Just an anti-inflammatory,” the medic said. “Should help with the breathing.”
Clem arched an eyebrow. “But I feel better now.”
“Doesn’t mean your lungs aren’t inflamed,” the medic noted, pulling some gauze and bandages out of his duffel bag.
“Good enough for me,” Clem said, shrugging and knocking back the pill and water. The medic began treating his black eye, dabbing some ointment on it.
“Hold up, I got this last night, not today.” Clem tried to shake the man’s hand away. “It’s fine.”
The EMT chuckled. “Just because you didn’t get it treated when you should have doesn’t mean it doesn’t need treating.”
“Fine,” Clem relented and reluctantly allowed him to apply the ointment. I took my own pill as I watched the interaction.
Other than that, Clem and I just had some minor cuts and bruises, which the man insisted on taping up, anyway. I let him without complaint, though I was itching to get upstairs and talk to Malthe. No reason to argue and prolong the whole ordeal, I figured.
“Are we good?” I asked when the man seemed finished and began packing his supplies back up to move on to the next table. He nodded.
“Finally,” Clem sighed, pretty much jumping to his feet.
“But let us know if you have any more trouble, any at all, especially with the breathing,” the man warned, giving us each a pointed look.
“I think we’ll be fine,” Clem said dismissively, and the man cocked an eyebrow at us.
“We’ll let you know, I promise,” I assured him before following Clem over to the side of the house where some of the workers had placed fresh clothes for us. We changed and headed inside.
“Malthe first?” Clem asked.
“Yeah, let me just check with Cindra first,” I said, walking back over to the living room where the family was. Clem followed me there.
“She went upstairs,” Avil said when she saw us, anticipating my question. “Second floor. Malthe’s office.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning on my heels and taking the stairs up two at a time, Clem following close behind me.
24
The whole upstairs area appeared packed to the brim with TelCorp employees, especially on the floor above us, which I could see and hear from the open balcony area that doubled as a hallway. The second floor around Malthe’s office was pretty quiet, however, and no one saw us when we knocked on his door.
“Come in,” a soft voice that did not belong to Malthe said. I opened the door to find Kira there waiting for us by the door, surrounded by Cindra, Kinley, Lin, and Malthe, who was sitting at his desk looking at the burner phone map.
“Anything new?” I asked as Clem shut the door behind us, pointing at the map.
“No, nothing,” Malthe said, shaking his head.
“Not even to the conglomerate?” Clem asked, surprised. “You’d think they’d be in constant contact with these people.”
“Maybe they don’t need the burner phones to be in contact with them anymore now that the conglomerate’s got one of the tunnel people’s employees in charge,” Malthe said.
“That would make sense,” I reasoned. “Just like with Beaufort, they’re communicating with him using code on regular channels. Have you looked for that?”
“Yeah, and I’ve found some calls, but nothing that makes sense, just like with Beaufort,” Malthe said. “Sorry, boss.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“How are you guys doing?” Kira asked, clutching my forearm and looking up at me with fear in her eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“Nah, we’re fine,” I said, smiling down at her and slipping my hand into hers and squeezing it. “Just a few minor cuts. And Clem finally got that black eye treated.”
“Good,” Lin said, giving him a stern look. “You should’ve had that looked at ages ago.”
“It just happened last night!” he cried, indignant.
“Just like I said, ages ago,” she said, crossing her arms and shaking her head.
“It does feel like that, doesn’t it?” Cindra asked, exchanging a look with her.
“It really does,” she sighed.
“So, wha
t happened to you guys?” Kinley asked. “Is everything all good now?”
“Well, we fought a bunch of conglomerate binders, then we killed a bunch of conglomerate binders, and then Malthe sent this giant tank thing to destroy all the drones,” I recapped. “Long story short, at least.”
“Very long story,” Clem added.
“That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?” Malthe grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “I’ve been tinkering with those things for a while. Decided to debut ‘em early when it was clear things weren’t going so hot the way they were.”
“Good plan,” I said. “And yeah, it was pretty cool. Could’ve used it a while earlier, though.”
“It took a while to get down from the garage in the north side,” he explained. “And a couple of ‘em got shot down by conglomerate tanks before they even got here. We’re lucky the ones that got here did when they did, and that they even worked in the first place. I wasn’t sure they would.”
“Well, I’m glad they did,” I said. “We might not be there if we weren’t. Or at least we wouldn’t be here talking about how the battle was over already.”
“Already!” Clem exclaimed. “It wasn’t long enough for you, Joch?”
“You know what I mean,” I said, elbowing him in the ribs playfully.
“So, what do we do now?” Kinley asked, looking between Malthe and me.
“Well, what’s going on with our drone force?” I asked Malthe.
“More are being manufactured as we speak in the factory down the way,” he said.
“They’re still working with us down there?” Kira asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise.
“The whole south side’s fucked if all this shit Parliament’s doing actually ends up happening,” Malthe pointed out. “So yeah, they’re still working with us, and probably will be for a while. We’ve lost some people down there, sure, but not a ton.”
“Good, that’s good,” I said, thinking this over. “We did right, investing in the south side.”
“You could say that again,” Lin scoffed. “Without the people here, we wouldn’t have anywhere to work or anywhere to sleep, let alone a place to manufacture drones.”