by C. S. Nelson
Next, a table was rolled down by a group of people in white lab coats. They set up about halfway down the row of soldiers, pulling out chairs and contraptions from underneath the table. “What do you think that is?” Annie asked.
Zed squinted. It was just far enough away that it was difficult to see what they were doing. “It looks like they’re setting up to give people some kind of needle.”
It could have been for anything. An antibiotic, a nutritional shot, a tracking device. But Annie was almost positive that she knew what it was. It was going to erase the memories of every person on Earth. This ship was a death trap. And people were already running towards it, towards their saviors, having no idea of what was in store for them.
Annie wasn’t even sure if the other ship was even coming. There was supposed to be preparation for this moment. The breeders were supposed to be able to meet up. Annie could only imagine the panic that was ensuing elsewhere in the Shield between Summer and the president and Dustan. The breeders needing to fear for their lives for the first time ever. It satisfied Annie more than she liked to admit.
Crowds of people had crawled out of their hiding spaces and were now sprinting towards their safe-haven. Annie and Zed watched in silence as people lined up for their shot and then were led into the ship. Annie’s heart was breaking as every child ran onto the ship in excitement. She watched as people she recognized ran past the building with bigger smiles on their faces than anyone had ever seen. They thought they were running to freedom.
“What’s going on out there?” a voice mumbled quietly from behind them.
Annie and Zed exchanged a quick glance before looking over their shoulders. It was Commander Matthew, but there was barely any of him left. A thick grey beard had grown on his hollow face. His hospital gown hung off his thin body. But he was awake. For the first time since Annie’s training, the commander was awake.
Annie slid down off the bed and stared at him in disbelief. “You’re up,” she said, smiling.
Chapter 26: Tom
Last time she had seen Commander Matthew, he had been as good as dead. With the chaos that had ensued over the last couple of days, someone must have forgotten to return to the sleeping quarters and re-inject him with the poison that was keeping him asleep.
The commander looked down at his own body, thin and frail. His skin was a greyish hue that Annie had never seen before on a living person. He looked like a corpse. “What happened to me, Annie?” he asked.
“You don’t remember?”
He shook his head before taking a seat on one of the beds. “I had a conversation…with Summer, and the president. I don’t remember what it was about. That’s the last thing I remember. How long ago was that?”
“A couple months.”
Commander Matthew rested his face in his hands. “I’ve been out for months?”
Annie walked over and sat on the bed next to him. Zed was still keeping watch, looking out of the window at the people running for cover. “You went to a meeting with the president and Summer Henderson. They told us that you had been reassigned. But we found you. They had brought you back here and put you in the back room. But none of us knew what to do, and you just never woke up.”
“Who took over for me?”
“Kevin, sir. And then when he failed, Scott took over.”
Commander Matthew let out an involuntary cry. “How many have we lost since then?”
Annie looked around at all the beds that had once been filled by her friends. “Quite a few, sir.” Her eyes drifted to Anthony’s bunk, just below the one that Zed was still sitting on. If only he could have made it until today. If only she had done a better job protecting him. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, though. Kevin did the best he could.” She tried not to think about him crying on the hospital floor only minutes before.
“The suckers were getting smarter. They knew the Shield was weakening.” Annie nodded, glancing at Zed, who had subtly turned his ear in their direction. “They knew before we did.”
The commander sighed. “Those things do not, and never did, deserve life,” Zed turned and glared at him, but he didn’t notice. “God created them to punish us. Their only purpose in life is to cause pain.”
Zed’s shoulders tightened. “If only we could have found a preventative measure,” Annie agreed. She shot Zed an apologetic glance.
The commander’s face drained of colour. He turned and grabbed Annie by her shoulders, harder than his frail fingers should have been able to do. “Annie, I remember. I remember the conversation.”
Annie tried to refrain from showing her excitement on her face. “Do you think you could tell me what happened, Commander?”
“It’s Summer Henderson,” he said. “I remember now. I refused to help them. The only reason the ship is coming to bring people home is for Summer Henderson. She is the only one they want.”
It was a rumor that Annie had heard before. But he didn’t have a chance to tell her why. The sleeping quarter doors burst open, letting sunlight stream through the room. Zed was hidden in an instant, leaping from the top bunk and pulling himself underneath the bed quickly. Annie did the same, before realizing the commander couldn’t move that fast. He was in full view by the men in black at the doorway.
“Identify yourself,” one of them ordered through a speaker in his helmet.
Annie watched as the commander rose, slowly straightening out his back until he stood as tall as he could while being so malnourished. He slowly turned towards them. Annie locked eyes with Zed, underneath a bed across the room. Zed shook his head slightly at her. “I am Commander Matthew,” he spoke proudly.
There was a pause from the soldiers. One of them was mumbling softly into some sort of communication device. So quiet that Annie could hardly hear him, even though the room was silent. “Yes, Commander Matthew. The leader of their soldiers…Well, didn’t Captain Jansen want him alive? Well do I kill him or do we take him with us?” The man then raised his voice to speak to the commander. “Are you willing to come with us without resisting?”
“I know your secrets. I know what you bastards have done,” Commander Matthew snarled at them. “I will never stop fighting.”
“Very well,” the soldier sighed. Then Annie heard a gun cock and fire as the commander crumpled to the ground in front of her. There was a hole in the middle of his forehead, and blood slowly began trickling out. His eyes looked as though they had popped out of his skull. The puddle of blood slowly began creeping towards Annie as more and more poured out of the wound. Annie clenched her teeth as blood began to curl up around her fingers. She couldn’t move. She didn’t trust herself not to make a noise. The last thing she wanted was to end up like the commander.
“Call Captain Jansen,” one of the soldiers said. “Let him know that the commander has been taken out.”
“Weren’t we supposed to bring him home?” one of the other soldiers, who sounded like an extremely young teenage boy, asked.
“He was supposed to be asleep,” the first soldier said. “The president instructed us that they were keeping him asleep.”
“Is he vital to the mission?”
There was a long pause, that Annie could only assume involved one of them looking up information. “No. The issue the people of Earth had with him was that he went rogue when they told him the plan. Began announcing it to people. We instructed the president to take out anyone that had heard the plan. The group of…breeders took care of them all, and the commander was put under.”
Annie remembered that day. She remembered when Dustan’s then partner and a group of other breeders had come to round up some of the rangers. She remembered the look on his face as the group of them got pulled out of the sleeping quarters.
Now she understood why he had reacted the way that he did. The reason that he couldn’t lie to the soldiers. Commander Matthew would never stop fighting. He had watched every person that he had told this secret to be rounded up and taken away. He had known that they were being
sent to their deaths, and he had known that it was his fault. Annie would take the torch and add flames to his fire.
“Okay, Tom, get the body. You two run back to the ship and get a body bag. We don’t want there to be some sort of panic so close to lift off.”
Annie could hear someone walking over to where the commander lay in front of her. She couldn’t move, she was frozen with fear, and staring at Zed with wide eyes. When they discovered her hiding beneath the bed, would they kill her too? The soldier stepped up, directly in front of her, and bent down to pick up Commander Matthew by his underarms. His eyes glanced past her, and for a second, Annie thought maybe he wouldn’t have registered what he saw.
Then his eyes shot back and they stared at each other for a moment. Annie waited for him to call out to the others, to reveal her. But he didn’t yell. He just watched her. Then, very deliberately, he drew two imaginary lines across each cheek with his fingers, and one down his nose. He recognized Annie. He knew that she was an ace. They had been watching everything from the safety of their own planet. They probably knew everything about her, her alliance with Zed, her people turning on her, her plot to kill Summer. They were probably watching right now, but their eyes were focused on the ship.
Earth had originated as a plan for survival, a place to move as their planet died. Surely it had begun as a mission that was fueled by hope. But when they had realized that humans had no chance against the silver people, it had turned into a form of entertainment for them. Which person on Earth was everyone’s favourite? Which Shield would break down next? Who would be the next person to be brutally murdered? They had so easily disassociated themselves from the humans of Earth so easily.
The soldier, Tom, was giving her an out. Maybe she had been one of his favourites. Maybe there were posters of the aces on every teenager’s wall back on Mpho, wanting to grow up to be as brave and strong as the Earth humans were. Tom’s eyes drifted from hers, and he picked up the commander, dragging his body back towards the door. The only evidence that Commander Matthew had just been murdered was a bloody trail that was left behind. “Do we clean that mess?”
The lead soldier paused. “Don’t worry about the blood, it would just be assumed to be a sucker attack. Let’s move out.”
Annie rested her head in her blood-soaked hands as the soldiers made small talk at the door, waiting for a body bag to put the commander in. If the people of Earth weren’t safe with the people from Mpho, where were they safe? Eventually, after what felt like forever, the soldiers left. Annie and Zed were once again alone in the sleeping quarters.
Zed slid out from beneath the bed gracefully. “Are you okay?”
Annie didn’t answer. She was covered in someone else’s blood. Human blood, which was so much worse than the soul sucker blood that had splattered her body. She had almost been killed for the millionth time in the last day. Annie was exhausted. She was so tired of running for her life.
“Annie?” Zed asked. He was crouched next to her. He sighed when she was silent again, pulling her out from under the bed by her feet. Once she was out in the open again, she crouched up into a ball in his arms.
The ship was filling up with people. They were being injected with poison that was filling their bodies and destroying their memories. People that Annie had known her whole life were currently forgetting that she, or anyone for that matter, existed. They were forgetting their entire lives on Earth. And she just couldn’t bring herself to go outside and do anything about it.
But then an idea struck her like a ton of bricks. There was a chance to save these people. There was a chance for Annie to do right by the promises she had made. “Zed.” Annie sat up straight, forcing him to release his grasp. “We have to find Summer.”
“You mean the woman who’s trying to kill you?”
Annie stood up, her mind racing. “We have to find Summer, and we need to find her before the ship leaves.”
Zed stood up too, a massive smile stretching across his face. “You have a plan?”
Annie grinned too, grabbing him by his shoulders. “I have a plan,” she sang.
Chapter 27: Departure
They knew exactly where Summer would be. Hiding, cowering under the school with the rest of the breeders. A group of people that had never spent a day having to fight for their lives. A group of people that were spoon-fed everything, that didn’t know what it was like to put in a hard day’s work. And Summer, the worst of them all, living life on vacation because her ancestor had created a Shield that had delayed their inevitable death.
Annie and Zed had to hide in the shadows. There were soldiers everywhere, collecting people who were afraid to go outside. There were a few brave suckers, trying to collect a final meal before everybody disappeared. Annie barely recognized the place she had lived her whole life.
Annie had pulled a couple large guns from the body of a soldier that had obviously been caught off guard. “Are you ready?” Annie asked.
Zed shrugged. “For a room of soft humans that aren’t prepared to be held at gun point? Sounds like a breeze.”
“We aren’t all soft.” Annie cocked her gun, smiling at him.
“Yeah, and we aren’t all grey.” Zed cocked his gun in response, changing into his sucker form. There was something eerie about a soul sucker holding a human weapon. He was taller, his limbs long and thin, his pointed fingers looking too frail to be able to pull the trigger if he needed to. But he was strong. So strong that he could probably take on the entire room of people by himself if he caught them when they weren’t expecting it.
Annie ran down the dark staircase, two steps at a time. They could hear chattering from the room below. Annie was glad that they were so predictable. When she pushed the door open, Zed remaining hidden behind her as she pushed the door open. The talking and laughter stopped. There they were, every remaining breeder. They were all seated, cramped together, around the circular table. Dustan was tucked into the corner. Summer Henderson and the president sat with their backs to her, only a few feet away. And because they were so used to living in leisure, none of them had even thought to bring and hold onto a weapon. Not even just in case.
“Hello, friends,” Annie said, holding her gun at the ready, in case anyone tried to attempt anything.
Everyone turned and stared at her, including Summer, who’s face dropped when she saw Annie standing there. Annie didn’t blame her; she looked like a living nightmare. Completely covered with blue and red blood. “You stupid girl,” Summer said, chuckling softly. “Why did you come here?”
“For you, Summer.” Annie tilted her head and smiled. “Since your lover-boy here,” she gestured towards the president, “offered to fill your seat with whomever I wanted if I murdered you, I thought I better act on it.” Summer’s face remained unchanged. The president was grinning, just enjoying the show.
“I’m just having a hard time believing that there’s someone you want to bring home with you, considering every human on this planet wants you dead.” There was soft laughter around the room.
Annie laughed as well, allowing Summer’s cocky attitude to fuel her hate. “Yeah, you got me there. Every human wants me dead. Fortunately, I found someone else to help me that isn’t human.”
Zed, an expert in the theatrics, stepped out at that moment. The laughter around the room stopped. The breathing in the room stopped. “Hello!” Zed roared. He was grinning like the suckers did whenever they had a human trapped. A sick, uneasy smile that even hurt Annie to look at. But in this moment, she loved it. She could taste the fear in the room.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Summer, but I’m going to kill you now.”
“Do you really think that’s wise?” Summer asked, standing up. Suddenly the grin had disappeared from her face.
“I think that these people, your so-called friends, would rather watch you die in front of them then make any sort of attempt to save your life. I mean let’s just ask around the room, would anyone like to volunteer to di
e in order to try to save Summer?” There was complete silence. “No? No one?” Annie was enjoying this far too much. “Mr. President?” He was still grinning. “How strange! Won’t you come with us, Summer Henderson?”
She shook her head aggressively. Her face was still unreadable, but Annie could see that she was finally afraid. “If you kill me, the ship won’t come. You’ll kill all of these people.”
Annie pursed her lips and nodded her head. “I’ve been in contact with Captain Jansen,” Annie said, repeating the only name she remembered from her interaction with the soldiers in the sleeping quarters. “He has assured us that the second ship is coming and returning to Mpho whether you’re on it or not.”
There was no longer the nervous tension in the room. Every breeder relaxed slightly. They no longer had to worry about keeping Summer alive, or so they thought. No one felt an urge to protect her anymore. She was now just a regular person. She was no longer valuable. Finally, after all of these years, Summer Henderson was simply ordinary.
“Please, won’t you come with us?” Annie repeated.
“If you’re going to kill me, do it right here. I want all these traitors to watch me fall and know that they are responsible.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Fine, enough with the dramatics. Zed?”
Zed grinned, rushing forward and latching onto Summer. Annie’s plan hadn’t been to actually kill her. She had planned on Zed taking her soul and then returning it to her later, when they needed her alive again. And the plan would have gone perfectly, if Summer had succumbed to his attack.
