Jane shook her head, still tuned in to whatever she was hearing. “Not that. Listen.”
Anna tried for a moment before growing frustrated. “I don’t—”
“Shh!” interrupted Jane with a finger to her lips.
I thought it was crazy that she could actually hear anything with the loud alarm blaring above our heads but tried to listen in anyway. It screamed deafeningly before tapering off for a split second and then extremely loud again. I focused on the siren’s rhythmic pattern, riding it up and down like a wave. And then I noticed it. In the small break of the alarm’s screech there was a rapid patter. Almost like someone tapping hard on the ceiling. No. They were footsteps.
People were coming.
“We have to move,” ordered Jane.
Without looking back at us, Jane took off, sprinting down the hall, and we followed her right into the elevator we rode earlier. She then leapt straight up and punched out one of the ceiling tiles.
It opened a small hatch at the top of the elevator, which Jane pointed to as she looked at us. “Up. Now.”
“Are you kidding me?” protested Anna.
“We don’t have time to argue,” said Jane. “Just listen to me.”
Anna shook her head in disbelief but listened to the white-haired girl anyway. Jane gave my girlfriend a boost through the opening and I went next. Once we were both on the top of the elevator I realized there was no way for Jane to join us. She then proved me wrong by jumping straight up and grabbing onto the top of the elevator. From that position, the time-travelling teenage soldier pulled herself up with ease.
I could feel Anna visibly shocked by Jane’s strength. To be honest, I was too, but I tried not to show it.
“Now what?” I asked Jane, hoping she had a plan.
“Wait here,” the girl replied with confidence.
It wasn’t exactly the answer I was hoping for.
She turned around and stepped onto a ladder that was bolted to the side of the elevator shaft’s walls. As she started scaling it, I heard the march of Monarch troops exit the stairwell and enter the server room we had just exited. It seemed as if we had evaded them for now.
About ten feet up, Jane came to a closed elevator door, presumably the floor above us. From the plans of the building Spencer Jenkins gave us, the server room was several levels deep, so the next floor up must’ve still been the basement. The boiler room, if I remembered correctly.
Jane stepped off the ladder and onto the very small ledge in front of the door. It was so tiny I wasn’t sure if she would fit, but the girl balanced perfectly with her body up against the wall. She then fit her fingers in between the elevator doors’ gap and tried to pry them apart.
Still standing atop the elevator cab, Anna and I anxiously watched as Jane struggled to push the doors open. She grunted and groaned under the strain but eventually the thick slabs of metal separated. Jane then squeezed her body in between the small opening and finished the job with her legs.
Once the door was completely open, Jane stuck her head back into the elevator shaft and looked down at us.
“Who are you?” asked Anna in awe. “Sarah Connor?”
I found the analogy eerily appropriate.
Jane ignored the compliment, though. “Hurry.”
Anna and I quickly climbed up the ladder and hopped through the open elevator doorway. I was right. We were now in the boiler room, but it wasn’t like any one I’d seen in horror movies. It was clean, bright, and big. There were tons of pipes everywhere, but they were all neatly organized and grouped together. I assumed this was what a proper skyscraper’s basement looked like when you could afford to build it the right way. Also, best of all, there weren’t any alarms going off.
Jane started moving forward and, again, we followed her without question. She’d led us correctly to this point, so why question her now.
She brought us to a door that led into another stairwell and held it open for Anna. “Go and head up to the lobby.”
Anna was about to step inside when she realized the instructions were just for her.
“You two aren’t coming?” she asked worried.
I had no idea what was going on, but Jane had an answer ready. “There are two more stairwells on the other side of the building. We’ll each have to take one.”
Anna looked oddly suspicious of that explanation. “Why?”
Jane went on without missing a beat. “The alarms mean they obviously know that someone was trying to access the server room, so they’re probably looking for a team rather than a single individual.”
“What if one of us gets caught?” I asked, wanting to elaborate the story.
“Simple,” answered Jane. “We got lost trying to evacuate during the fire alarm. It’s easier for them to believe a single kid rather than a group.”
Anna thought about it for a moment before continuing her questions. “What about Fred and the others?”
“They’ll be fine,” Jane lied. “We need to worry about ourselves.”
Anna’s gaze shifted back and forth between Jane and me. She knew something wasn’t right. “I don’t like this. What are you not telling me?”
There was nothing Jane could say to sway my girlfriend, so it was up to me to convince her. “You need to trust Jane, Anna. She’s gotten us this far.”
She thought for another second before nodding with an expression of reluctance and worry. “Fine. Just be careful, you hear me?”
“We’ll meet up with the rest of Mr. Welles’s class,” said Jane, still holding open the door. “Now go.”
Anna gave us one last look before entering the stairwell. Jane then shut the door as Anna disappeared up the steps.
Now alone, I felt the need to confirm my own suspicions. “We’re not splitting up, are we?”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Jane said, indirectly answering my question. “Come on.”
We moved deeper into the center of the boiler room, where I noticed the pipes along the walls were getting thicker and more bunched together. We started seeing machine units sporadically placed around the room. Furnaces, water tanks, and generators. The lifeblood and organs of the building.
The silence between Jane and me was tense, filled only with the whiz and rush of mechanical sounds echoing around us. I was nervous as we slowly stalked around. Jane must’ve sensed it, too, because she felt the need to explain what she was thinking. “The Hope Assassins are here somewhere, and we can’t leave until they’re dealt with.”
Revealing her plan did little to put me at ease. “But how will we find them?”
My question was answered when a stern voice shouted at us from behind. “Don’t move!”
This is it, I thought. Now was when we died. Then I realized it probably wasn’t the assassins. If it was, then we wouldn’t have heard anything at all. We would just be dead.
I froze in place, too scared to move. Jane slowly turned around, which gave me the confidence to do the same.
There were four Monarch soldiers standing before us, all decked out in tactical gear and holding assault rifles aimed at our heads. They looked more like Special Forces than security guards. Masks covered their faces and they had enough body armor to look like they were preparing to face an army.
One of the soldiers barked at us. “What are you two doing down here?”
I was still too afraid to answer. Chances were anything I said would probably only get us killed. However, Jane’s stoic demeanor instantly vanished, replaced by the terrified look of a frightened teenage girl.
“We’re … we’re lost,” she said with a trembling voice.
“Lost?” another soldier repeated. “In the boiler room?”
The soldier closest to me took a hard step forward. “No. I think you little brats are up to no good.”
The one closest to Jane took a step forward, too, bringing the muzzle of his rifle only inches from her forehead. “I agree. Someone here definitely needs to be taught a lesson.”
A second Monarch trooper swiveled his rifle towards her, ready to fire. “Hey!”
He then unleashed several rounds, but Jane had already thrown the first soldier she grabbed in front of her, forcing him to take the shots in his body armor. From there, the third soldier drew a stun baton and charged ahead, but Jane was ready for him. She blocked and countered with a punch that the soldier then blocked in return. By then the other two soldiers, the one that got shot and the one that did the shooting, joined the action.
The men, all wearing armor and nearly double Jane’s size, were attacking her relentlessly. She held her own, though, ducking and dodging every strike thrown her way.
Amidst the scuffle I tried to slip out of sight only to walk straight into the rifle that was still aimed at my head.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said the fourth Monarch soldier that I had forgotten about.
At first I froze. That seemed to be my go-to reaction when faced with fear. Then I remembered Jane’s training. We practiced for moments exactly like this one. I prepared specifically for when I was faced with a threat I had no way out of.
Ironically, the memories of getting my ass kicked in the basement filled me with confidence. Enough to actually lower my shoulder and plow into the soldier.
The attack barely phased him. He took a step back before shrugging me off and jamming the butt of his rifle against my cheek. I had to admit that hurt. Way more than any of the times Jane hit my face.
The soldier tried to do it again. This time I managed to dodge out of the way and throw a counterpunch. I was surprised by how well my knuckles connected against the man’s jaw. For a few moves we were evenly matched, exchanging attacks back and forth like it was an actual fight. Then I was painfully reminded that my opponent was a trained Monarch soldier when he landed a three-sequence strike that involved an elbow, a knee, and the heel of his boot.
I dropped to the concrete floor hard with the wind knocked out of me. Gasping for air, I struggled to breathe while on my hands and knees, but that wasn’t enough for the Monarch soldier to grant me mercy. He wound up and kicked me in the gut, causing my body to flop over helpless.
I quickly glanced to the side as I landed and saw Jane, still engaged with the three other soldiers, reach out to me in terror. “Robbie!”
Unfortunately, that momentary distraction allowed her foes the opportunity to gain the upper hand. Even outnumbering a teenage girl, the Monarch soldiers ruthlessly pounced on Jane from all sides and began beating her to the floor. Still reeling in pain, I wanted to sprint over to her, but I soon found myself in a similar position. My own Monarch adversary had straddled me and begun raining down a fury of fists.
After experiencing several hard jabs to the chest and head, I was expecting a final hard blow straight into my face, but it never came. Instead, the Monarch soldier screamed as two swords popped through the armor on his chest, followed by his body being sliced straight in half. Across the room, I spotted the other three soldiers attacking Jane being thrown into the air as their heads exploded in a hail of gunfire.
Jane and I were saved, but only for the moment. We now faced a whole other set of problems. It appeared the assassins had arrived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After Sabrina showed up at my doorstep wanting to kill me, Jane thought it was a good idea to tell me about the three remaining assassins. Their names and descriptions didn’t ring any bells. In fact, when she was describing them, it didn’t sound like they were anything special. Seeing them in person now, I realized I was wrong.
In the center was Gunner, who appeared to be leader of the trio. He was young, probably in his mid-twenties and not even born yet. Unlike Solomon, the grisly assassin that attacked me in the hospital parking garage, Gunner looked like he could’ve been a movie star. He was tall, blond, and had a chiseled jawline. I would’ve even dared to call him handsome, except for the roadmap of scars etched across his face.
Beside him was Esther, another youngster roughly the same age as Jane and me. She was the one who killed the Monarch soldier with her dual swords now dripping in his fresh blood. Ignoring the fact that she was a psychotic killer, the girl was actually kind of cute with short red hair and a heart tattoo on her cheek. Upon a closer look, I saw the heart actually had a dagger in it and was dripping blood, which continued down her neck and under her clothes. Who knows what the rest of the tattoo looked like and Jane hadn’t bothered to tell me.
On the other side of Gunner was Cody. He was an Asian man around my father’s age, but nearly a foot shorter and probably half his weight. Cody’s most distinguishing feature was the large, unwieldy axe twice his size resting on his shoulder, but he held it with the ease of a plastic toy.
Despite being the reason they were here, the three assassins weren’t even paying attention to me. They stared Jane down instead, all of them with sly little smirks at having finally tracked her down. It was almost like I was a non-factor to them, which was fine by me. I stood awkward and uncomfortable with the standoff.
Jane didn’t look nervous at all, though. She just looked angry. “How did you find us?”
Gunner’s smirk grew even wider. “That’s how you’re going to start this, Jane? No ‘hello?’ No ‘nice to see you after I took off and turned traitor to our mission’?”
Jane shook her head. She had obviously seen things differently. “Our mission was wrong.”
Esther raised the sword in her right hand to point the tip at Jane. “That’s not for you to decide.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the blood dripping from the blade, and Jane gestured over to my mesmerized stupor. “Why not? Just look at him. This is your target. The great and terrible Scorpion. Does he look like someone worthy of your time?”
I snapped out of my trance to roll my eyes at her insult. “Gee. Thanks.”
“The Scorpion seemed to think so,” said Gunner, denying Jane’s claim. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
I didn’t quite understand what he meant by that and asked the scary assassin to elaborate. “What are you talking about?”
He looked at me, perplexed for a moment, as if he didn’t know why I was so confused. Then his baffled expression morphed into another conceited smile that shifted over to Jane. “You haven’t told him yet, have you?”
Jane didn’t respond. She just continued staring Gunner down, forcing me to direct my confusion to her instead. “Told me what?”
“It’s not important,” said Jane, shaking her head without even looking at me.
I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easy, though. “What’s not important?”
Getting only silence from Jane, I returned my gaze to the assassins. Cody gave me an answer, but he spoke in a foreign language I didn’t understand. Strangely enough, it sounded like French.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Esther held her chin up high, proud of the words she was about to repeat. “He said ‘we are and have forever been loyal to the Scorpion.’”
Now I was even more confused. “Then why are you trying to kill me?”
Gunner’s smirk faded from his face, replaced by a coldly serious stare. “Because that is what he … you … ordered us to do.”
I knew exactly what he said. I understood each and every word. Still, their meaning was difficult to process, stunning me into silence.
Gunner then proceeded to further explain his revelation. “We pledged our lives to the Scorpion. Followed him through killing fields and Armageddon. But in the end, all he felt was remorse. In trying to defeat a ruthless enemy he himself became a monster. He wasn’t unaware of this fact, but he told himself it was worth it to eradicate a greater evil. A mission he fell short of accomplishing. The Scorpion never won the war he started, and on his deathbed, our messiah decided the cost was too high for what little he had achieved. The pain too unbearable. The destructi
on too irreparable. And it was his dying wish for his crusade never to have occurred in the first place.”
My gaze fell to the floor as I still tried to wrap my head around what Gunner was telling me and all the implications that came with it. “He ordered you … to kill … himself?”
As my eyes stared downward deep in thought, Gunner saw an opportunity to further drive his point home. “I’m guessing you’ve spent all this time asking yourself if you deserved to live, knowing what you would become. Little did you know that you had already made a decision.”
“Is it true?” I finally asked Jane, looking for confirmation.
Her lips parted ever so slightly to deliver a soft reply. “Robbie…”
“Is it true!?” I shouted, interrupting her weak plea.
“He was selfish,” Jane said, keeping her voice low and humbled. “I see that now.”
“Selfish?” I repeated in disbelief.
“Yes,” Jane said, staring. “He could have dismantled the Hope Army whenever he wanted or at least tried to make up for his actions. But like a child, he did his best to try and undo all his sins in a way that he wouldn’t have to confront the faces of his victims or the followers who believed in him.”
I understood not telling me was a tough decision for her, but I could also see she didn’t regret it. Jane owned up to her choice and burned a hole right through me with her glare. I was the one who finally looked away, still processing all that I had learned.
As I did, Esther saw my vulnerability and tried to reason through it. “Don’t fight us, Scorpion. You’ll only make things worse.”
Then Cody said something in French again, which Gunner felt the need to translate. “Your death is the only way to end this.”
I thought about their argument for a moment longer before looking up at the three assassins ready to end my life. “They’re right.”
Jane’s mouth fell open in distressed shock. “No, Robbie. They’re not.”
“I don’t want to die,” I said, nervously laughing. “Believe me, it’s really the last thing I had planned on happening today, but I can’t keep running from this. If there’s even a chance that the Scorpion is in my future, then there’s only one foolproof way to prevent him from rising.”
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