Iq'her

by Elin Wyn

“Please, everyone,” Vidia said, pulling the microphone toward her. “Let’s remain calm. If you have any questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer them. The important thing is for us to work together to overcome this.”

  No one was paying attention to her.

  More people had now started to shout, fists were being raised in the air, and I noticed that the guards surrounding the general were becoming antsy. I felt a lump in my throat as I noticed some of them laying their hands on their rifles, and I recognized Iq'her among them.

  There was no mistaking him: his black skin glistened under the sunlight, streaks of green snaking up his forearms, and his demeanor was as serious as ever.

  Knowing that someone like Iq'her was among the aliens on the balcony made me relax, just a fraction. My body just felt safe with him and I liked knowing he was around. His presence soothed me. I had the impression that he was the kind of guy that liked to think before he acted — but I still knew the situation was a dangerous one. Things could escalate quickly, and then it’d be a free-for-all.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I growled, tightening my grip on Roddik’s arm. The idiot could have started what was slowly turning into a riot, but I wouldn’t let him stay here and make things worse.

  Unfortunately, he seemed to have different plans.

  Not saying a word, he pulled his arm free from me and turned around. He nodded at his buddies beside him, and they quickly dispersed among the crowd. Then Roddik signaled some other guys standing right behind us with a hand gesture.

  And that was the moment when I realized Roddik hadn’t shouted out because he was angry.

  No… the whole thing had been planned ahead of time.

  “What the hell are you doing, Roddik?” I shouted, but either he didn’t hear or he didn’t care. Taking his backpack off, he went down on one knee and grabbed something from the inside. It looked like a small battery box, but it had a couple of miniature rotating blades attached to it.

  Fearing whatever it was my brother was trying to do, I scanned the crowd as fast as I could, and realized that his accomplices were all holding similar devices. I rushed toward Roddik. In the crowd, people had already drifted between us, making a wall. I pushed people out of the way, but it was already too late.

  I couldn’t stop him.

  “NOW!” He screamed at the top of his lungs, jamming his thumb on a button and throwing the device up into the air. The blades started spinning furiously and the damn thing floated up, joining other similar looking devices. I didn’t even have the time to blink. The devices started flying toward the balcony, the aliens screamed something, and then it was chaos.

  The devices exploded at random, the noise of it making my ears ring, and I held my arms up in front of my face as debris started falling over the crowd. Clouds of smoke were now shrouding the balcony where the aliens were, but I could still hear them shouting orders.

  Still standing upright, my feet were glued to the ground. I was too shocked to move. I tried to see through the smoke, praying that no one had died, but I couldn’t see a damn thing. If Roddik had murdered anyone, would that be my fault, as well? Had I failed so miserably as a sister that my brother had turned into a monster?

  “Don’t just stand there, you idiot!” Roddik screamed, and then he grabbed my wrist and pulled me after him. I wanted to slap him, to do something other than just be a helpless witness in all this, but I simply didn’t have it in me.

  I just let him drag me through the crowd, too confused to do or say anything.

  Iq’her

  I tackled Rouhr to the ground as the first modified explosives landed. The rest of his security detail protected the women. As quickly as it had started, the attack stopped as the perpetrators ran away.

  I saw, at the far end of the crowd, Stasia being dragged away by her brother. As much as I wanted to chase after them, there were fires to be put out first. Shouts of confusion and fear filled the air as the liquid explosives spread fire through the square.

  “Take care of the injured,” Rouhr yelled out to us as I got off him and helped him up. I nodded quickly and moved to care for an elderly woman only a few feet away. The crowd that had been there, a few thousand strong, had broken into a stampede of confusion and chaos.

  Dozens were running for water while many more were trying to beat and kick the fires out. Several more were trying to deal with the wounded, and all of that within a few quick moments from the first bottle shattering open and flinging fire wherever it could.

  There were calls for help, cries of pain, and shouts for lost people filling the air. Soon enough, sirens could be heard as emergency vehicles arrived to aid the personnel already there.

  “What the kout happened?” I heard someone next to me shout above the chaos. Sakev knelt nearby, helping a young child that had been trampled in the panic. Her leg was at an awkward angle and he was doing his best to try to calm her as he looked at her twisted limb.

  “I don’t know,” I answered back. “You’re going to be okay, ma’am. You only have a few minor scratches,” I told her.

  “Thank you. Is my granddaughter okay?” Tears welled in her eyes. “She fell out of my arms when I was jostled from behind.”

  I made a quick comparison between the two and saw the same hair, eyes, and slightly crooked nose. “She’s alive, ma’am, but I’m afraid her leg might be broken,” I said quietly, directing her attention to her left.

  She looked and let out a desperate cry. She crawled over to Sakev and her granddaughter, crying and apologizing.

  “Rekking bastards,” he said to me. “They knew that would cause chaos, prevent us from chasing their asses down and breaking them.” For someone that was supposed to be annoyingly funny, I wasn’t at all surprised by his anger. I felt the same way.

  After nearly half an hour, medical personnel and volunteers had taken over dealing with the wounded and finding lost children. The fires had been quickly put out and all three strike teams were gathered near where Rouhr had been standing.

  Vrehx was livid, barely controlling his anger. “I want those bastards found,” he growled. He hovered over Jeneva, who was extremely pregnant. She wiped grime from her face and patted his hand. She might be annoyed, but Vrehx was ready to kill something.

  “Iq’her, Tu’ver,” he said, looking at us. I hadn’t realized that Tu’ver was standing right behind me. “Get into the security footage, now. Get us pictures of everyone involved. If they’re still in the city, I want them in a tiny little box before they get a chance to get away.”

  He looked at Sylor next. “Make sure the underground gets a copy of those pictures, I don’t want these rekking assholes thinking they can hide out down there.”

  We all nodded. The three of us, Tu’ver and I with our implants, Sylor with his modified sleeve, quickly got into the cameras. It wasn’t long before every member of the strike teams had pictures of the men and women that had thrown the explosives.

  “Find them,” Vrehx snarled.

  I found myself slightly worried for the people involved. If he found them, alone, I wasn’t sure his temper would allow him to bring them back unmarked.

  The teams divided, each of us armed, thanks to Tobias having guards gather our gear for us, and I went searching for Roddik and Stasia.

  I knew Stasia hadn’t been a part of this, she wasn’t like her brother or the people on the recording, so I wanted to be the one to find her. If any of the others did, they weren’t going to be as calm around her.

  She might be injured.

  Unacceptable.

  If I had time, I could remotely access the bug on her, connect it to the grid of satellites Karzin had launched, and find her.

  But right now, it was a risk. Should I take the time for the recoding, and then be able to go right for her, or chance that maybe one of the other teams would find her first.

  Either way, the stakes felt too high.

  I quickly fell into a search pattern, checking out the area just north of the squar
e. Within minutes, I saw a flicker of movement as someone ducked behind a corner. I cautiously jogged over, my assault rifle at the ready. I would have preferred to use my gloves, but an assault rifle used the right way was more likely to get people to surrender.

  As I neared the corner, my quarry turned out to be Stasia and Roddik. Roddik yanked on his sister’s arm to get her to follow him. “Roddik!” I yelled as I entered the alley. Even from as far away as I was, I saw his eyes go wide and he pulled on Stasia harder, causing her to wince. They ran, her stumbling behind him, face pale.

  “Back off, freak!” Roddik shouted.

  He wouldn’t hurt her, not his own sister. Would he?

  I fell back slightly, still following them, but I was unfamiliar with the backstreets and alleys in this area. When I followed them into another alley, there were nine different points of entry — or exit — for them to choose from. I looked down each little alley access, but never saw them.

  I did, however, see another of the attackers trying to open a door. I rushed him, ducking his wild punch and putting my shoulder into his chest. The air whooshed from his lungs as we went to the ground. A quick tap to the side of his head with my rifle and he was disoriented enough for me to bind him.

  I didn’t take any chances of him managing to escape, so I bound his hands, then his ankles, then his hands to his ankles behind him. He was uncomfortable, to say the least, but I didn’t care.

  I put another tracker on him so I wouldn’t lose him, and continued my search for Roddik, Stasia, and anyone else I could find.

  By the end of the day, I had captured three of the idiots and directed one of the vans that Team Three had commandeered to their locations. As the sun was setting, we were all back at the town square with Rouhr.

  “Is Vidia okay, sir?” Daxion asked. He had been on the outskirts of the crowd when the attack happened, so he had been able to quickly round up four of the suspects before they could escape. He had even grabbed one of the ‘wounded’ before they could be taken to the hospital and sneak away.

  All together, we had nearly a dozen people arrested, eight of those thanks to me and Dax.

  Rouhr nodded. “She’s fine. Tobias covered her with his own body, got a bit of a burn on his leg because of it, but he’s otherwise uninjured. He’s coordinating with her now on cleanup and everything else.”

  I looked over and saw Tobias speaking with a very cute young lady. The way he smiled at her, even when he was serious, suggested that this was the girl he had told me about. I did notice that his left pant leg was burned, but he seemed to pay it no mind. I shifted my attention back to the general.

  “We need to figure out why this happened, who those people are, and if there is another attack coming,” he said. “Vrehx, I want your team in charge of interrogations.”

  Vrehx nodded. He was barely paying attention as he stared at his communicator, presumably keeping tabs on Jeneva’s condition.

  Rouhr gave him a sympathetic look, turned to Tu’ver, who nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned his focus to Team Three. “Sk’lar, I want your team to coordinate with the city’s police force and conduct another search. I want everyone involved with this brought in for questioning.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  With a nod, Rouhr looked at Karzin. “You and your team get the fun job, you get to go aerial and search the forest. I doubt many of them stayed in the city limits, but I also doubt most of them are smart enough to lay low before coming together.”

  “Understood. But…” Karzin started.

  “Yes?” Rouhr asked, obviously not in the mood.

  “How do we know who was involved and who was simply caught up in the rush of the chaos and trying to get out of the way? I mean,” he quickly added, “for Team Three. Anyone running and hiding in the forest is going to be part of this, obviously.”

  I spoke up as Rouhr pointed to me. “I have an audio recording of people planning to leave the city and create their own society, ahem, ‘without aliens’. I can always do a voice comparison.”

  “Fine. Let’s get these idiots before they cause any more harm and destruction,” Karzin said.

  Now that there had been time to breathe, I’d taken the opportunity to reprogram the tracker, and expanded the area of coverage.

  I swore.

  The tracker showed her heading out into the forest, just as Rouhr suspected. “Wait,” I said, stopping my team.

  “What?” Rokul demanded.

  “If we go in there full-bore, it’s going to create a situation where we might have to use deadly force,” I said.

  “And?” Rokul asked with a shrug.

  “And that would be bad, brother,” Takar answered as he placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “If we are still dealing with humans that hate us, imagine how much worse the situation will become if we end up killing some.”

  “Fine,” Rokul said angrily. “What do we do then?”

  I stepped forward, turning my attention to Karzin, noticing that Rouhr had stepped a little closer to hear. “I could use a holobelt. Infiltrate the group and get more intel. Maybe I can convince them to come back to the city, but I doubt it. But, with more intel, we can figure out a better plan to deal with this.”

  “I like it,” Rouhr said. “However, I want you to be on the alert and ready to get out at the first sign of trouble, got it?”

  I nodded. I wanted to be out there. It worried me and frustrated me to no end that I couldn’t immediately go check on Stasia and make sure she was alright. I wanted to be close to her, before that insane brother of hers got her in any more trouble and put her in any greater danger.

  “Fine,” Rouhr said. “Do it.”

  Stasia

  It was already night when we finally stopped.

  I sat on an old tree stump, head between my knees as I tried to catch my breath. Locks of hair were plastered to my forehead; my shirt was covered in dark patches of sweat. I could barely breathe. My pants had slight tears below the knee, courtesy of the thorny plants that covered this part of the forest.

  Only when my heart rate returned to normal did I dare look up.

  Roddik’s group of rebels and misfits was scattered across the small clearing, and they all seemed to be as exhausted as I was. For a long time, no one said anything, the only sounds reaching my ears being those of small animals scurrying away from us in the night. Roddik went on and on, several times mentioning how right he was, how the forest wasn’t as dangerous as it used to be, how he had known all along.

  I just rolled my eyes.

  “Here,” I heard Roddik say.

  I looked to the side to see him standing across from me, a bottle of water in his hand.

  He tossed it to me, and I grabbed it mid-flight with just one hand. Even though I was thirsty—probably more than I had ever been—I didn't open the bottle. I just sat there, my eyes on Roddik’s, as anger coursed through me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, my voice nothing but a whisper. I was struggling to keep it together, and was actually surprised I was resisting the urge to have my hands around my idiot brother’s neck.

  “Tell you what?” he asked, a smile on his lips. There was an amused expression on his face, one that told me I wasn’t being taken seriously. That, at least, wasn’t surprising.

  When was the last time Roddik had taken me seriously?

  “Something so stupid and dangerous,” I continued, not even knowing if I was talking to him or to myself. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do something as reckless as that?”

  “I didn’t tell you because you would’ve stopped us.” Shrugging, he grabbed another bottle of water from his backpack. Opening it, he drank almost the whole bottle at once.

  “Of course I would’ve.” I raised my eyebrows. “Who in their right mind would do something like that? What exactly did you think you were going to accomplish?”

  “Don’t you see it?” he asked me with an air of superiority. His self-importance wa
s almost nauseating. “I did it so the aliens would learn their lesson. It’s high time they stop thinking they can walk all over humans. And I believe they got the message, loud and clear.”

  “You went too far.” I gritted my teeth, my fingernails digging into the palms of my hands so hard I could’ve drawn blood. “You could’ve killed somebody, Roddik. In fact, you might’ve killed somebody. And now… we’ll never be able to go back to the city.”

  “Who cares about Nyheim?” Turning to the side, he gestured toward the horizon line. “We’re going to build our own settlement. We’re going to have the fresh start we dreamed about, Stasia, away from all those who think they can rule us. Here, we’ll be free.”

  “You have it all figured out, don’t you?” I cried out, jumping up to my feet.

  He didn’t even flinch. Holding my gaze, he kept that smug smile on his face, almost as if he were dealing with a tantrum thrown by a petulant child.

  “Roddik Cole, the brave leader of the rebels, genius of the revolution. Is that how you see yourself?”

  “I don’t want to be a leader,” he said. For a moment, I almost believed him. “I just want to do what’s best for the people.”

  “Yeah? Well, the people,” I insisted, gesturing toward the group, “are expecting you to lead them. And if you really want what’s best for them, you better rise to the challenge. None of us can return to the city, so you better make this work.”

  “It will work, Stasia. Why don’t you just trust me?”

  “Because I don’t believe you’ve thought any of this through.” Shaking my head, I sat back down on the tree stump, already feeling a headache brewing behind my eyes. Just what I needed. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I let out an audible sigh. “What are we going to eat, Roddik? Have you thought about that?”

  “We can forage, and some of us know how to hunt.”

  “What about the other supplies we’re going to need? How exactly are we going to build a settlement now that we’re pariahs? It’s not like you can send someone back to Nyheim with a shopping list, you know?”