Alexis brought her eyes up to meet his and slowly sank to her knees as she unfastened his belt. She slid his pants down to the middle of his thigh and reached into his briefs to wrap her hand around his pulsing cock. As she released it from the briefs and began running her tongue up and down the shaft Alexis had found herself actually becoming aroused. She had expected to be required to perform a sex act in order to gain his trust, or at least enough of a familiarity for him to let his guard down on the day she might need to exploit him, though she had not expected to enjoy it. The resistance fighter had experienced a handful of lovers in her short life, though most of them had been the sorts of fleeting affairs that were common among soldiers in this grim world. Her current lover was a rugged giant of a man named Magna, who had been with the resistance since the beginning, or at least that was the talk. He wasn’t the most talkative of men, though he fought hard, fucked hard, and believed hard. He was one of Fiona’s lieutenants, a resistance fighter and hater of all things Izrid, his passion for combat matched only by his seeming lust for the physical pleasures of life. Alexis sometimes wondered which he lusted after more, her willing young body or the homemade liquor sold on the city’s black market. As she parted her lips and took Samuel’s girth into her mouth she found herself wondering if he would be jealous or not. She doubted that he would react even if he had been murderously jealous, as committed as he was to the cause of the resistance, he could likely justify most any action in his mind. That made him dangerous, Alexis had thought, as Samuel began thrusting his hips forward and gripping the young woman’s long dark hair with his fist, but she too could be dangerous. Alexis made the little noises that all men crave to hear while they watch themselves disappear down a woman’s throat, and she had surged with a sense of power in that moment. Alexis had this man right where she wanted him, completely at her mercy, both physically and mentally. Samuel Gibbons was getting the blowjob of a lifetime, and already Alexis knew that next time she appeared on the ration line he would let her through without question. Samuel had lasted longer than she would have thought, and he had taken great pleasure in reminding her of the power he thought he had over her. He had begun to get rough with her, and had started thrusting harder, pushing the back of her head onto him as he forced her to deep throat his hard cock. By the time he finally pulled himself from her mouth and began pumping his hot cum onto her face Samuel had made sure, at least in his mind, that Alexis earned those extra bits of food and water. Once she had cleaned herself as best she could with the bottom of her threadbare tank top and pulled her jacket back on, he put a few extra nutrient packets in her box and sent her on her way.
Now Alexis looked into his eyes, the memory of their last encounter fresh in her mind, and she could not help but to smile. Samuel nodded to his half-dragon enforcer and announced for anyone who might be listening that there seemed to be a problem with her ration card and that she needed to go to the detainee pod for further processing. Alexis had turned her body slightly towards Samuel just so that when the half-dragon roughly seized her arm he would not notice the grenade under her armpit or the slight bulge in her jacket. Samuel was far too aroused to have noticed much more than her pretty face, which she knew shone through the dirt and grime of daily life in the city. The walk back to the pod was a familiar one, and she found herself counting the steps to the pod. It was nearly twenty yards to the pod, and while they walked she scanned the area nonchalantly, looking for the sleek black container that would be carrying the medicines they needed. There was a plague that had begun to spread across the slums, which is where most humans lived these days. It was simply called the “phage” and was a flesh-eating bacterium that while easily cured with the right medicines, was difficult to contain due to the apparent lack of supplies per capita. Resistance contacts in high Complex society had indicated that the upper crust of the new Complex culture had been inoculated first, as had all of the half-dragons, and Complex militia. The Izrid were immune, and though they had helped the Complex fabricate a combination treatment and vaccine, supplies were limited due to the complexity of the fabrication process. The average citizen was last in line for the limited supply of medical materials, and as such phage outbreaks and decimated several districts. Had the human population been given the freedom to migrate out of their assigned districts the outbreaks might have been contained before they became as fatal, though because of the heightened security entire districts were sealed off. The disease burned through nearly eighty percent of the population before being contained.
The Complex controlled media had been using the outbreaks as propaganda fodder to further slander the terrorist resistance movement, and blamed the so-called insurgents. It did not go un-noticed by MacArthur that the phage outbreaks seemed to only happen in districts where there was heavy insurgent activity, and had deemed it priority alpha that they procure phage vaccines for all of the resistance fighters. She suspected that it was only a matter of time before the Izrid pressured the Complex into phage-bombing every slum in the city. If that worked, and the resistance died off, then the same process would be repeated in every Complex controlled city on the planet. As it had always been, since the beginning of the resistance, Chicago was at the epicenter of the whole conflict. MacArthur’s refusal to just lay down and die had prevented Cava-Rek from being able to gain the symbolic victory over the resistance that he had been so savagely fighting for. So long as Fiona MacArthur lived there would be a human resistance, even if they were considered the bad guys by the very people they were trying to liberate. Alexis knew the gravity of their mission, and silently hoped that the shipping containers would shield the civilians in line from most of the hell that was about to be unleashed. She had seen Magna in line, with only a few people ahead of him, and once he hit the line she would be out of time.
Alexis was shoved into the pod, and her heart began pounding. This was it, she thought to herself, it was go time. Samuel sauntered into the pod as the half-dragon backed away dutifully and closed the door. As he had done last time the attendant of examination shut off the security camera before he turned towards her with a predatory look on his face.
“I wondered when you would be back Alexis Zaffran,” he said while he boldly strode towards her, all the while unbuckling his belt and reaching into his trousers rather lewdly to produce his already throbbing erection, “I hope you’re ready to play hard, because this time its going to cost you that tight little ass.”
Alexis said nothing as a wolf-like smile spread across her face. She took a step forward as she unzipped her jacket to reveal the machine gun strapped to her chest. Samuel’s eyes went wide, and the cock in his hand began to soften as the realization began to sink in. When he looked back up at her Alexis rushed the three steps to close distance with him and slammed a homemade shiv through his eye socket. The resistance fighter gripped the back of his head with one hand and drove the shiv deeper while she held his twitching body upright. When she was satisfied that he was as dead as he was going to get she slowly lowered his corpse to the floor. She knew she only had moments before Magna reached the checkpoint, and she unslung the machine gun. The resistance fighter ripped away the ident card that hung around his neck and used her shift to sever his right thumb, which she placed in a pocket for safekeeping. Alexis checked the mag and then racked the slide, and then she pulled the two grenades from her armpits and fastened them to the outside of her jacket for easy access. She pulled a heavy cloth from her cargo pocket and tied it behind her head as she left the long edge of it cover her face, the coarse veil both somewhat protecting her identity and identifying her as a friendly should any of her comrades find her in their cross-hairs. The heavy veil had become a symbol of the resistance, and even as it protected her from friendly fire, the telltale face covering was sure to draw the fire of their enemies. Alexis set her hand on the latch of the door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
The resistance fighter knew that she only had moments to sprint the twenty or so yards from th
e detainment pod to the security tech hub for the checkpoint. The hub was manned by three humans and controlled the power feed to the electrified fence, the blast shudders that were rigged to come pounding down, and the remote operated gun turret that silently swept its dual-barrels back and forth over the crowd in a 180 degree arc. When Alexis emerged she saw several things at once, and knew she had to pick her battles wisely, and to trust in the effectiveness of her comrades. The half-dragon had begun to walk away from the detainment pod, though as if the Izrid warrior DNA that had been grafted to the formerly human soldier sensed something amiss, the hybrid was turning back around. She saw Magna, who had been pretending to be a bent legged and stooped person, suddenly stood straight and squared his shoulders, easily rising a head taller than every sentry at the checkpoint. She had but a moment to make her choice, and Alexis sprinted towards the tech hub as she ripped a grenade from her harness and pulled the pin with her teeth. A shout went up from the checkpoint as Magna shook off his hood and with one arm threw open his cloak to reveal his other arm as it lifted an M240 machine gun to the chest of the nearest sentry. Alexis saw the two men and one woman at the tech hub scramble to their stations to begin deploying security counter-measures. This checkpoint had long gone un-tested or attacked by resistance fighters, and the soldiers had slacked on their discipline, which suited Alexis just fine. She hurled the grenade through the open door, left open by the soldiers as they rushed back inside, their cigarettes and snacks hastily discarded. None of the humans in the hub seemed to notice the grenade as they rushed to enter pass codes into the system. The hairs on the back of her neck raised and suddenly her heart was pounding far too hard, and Alexis tucked and rolled to the ground just as a hail of hard rounds scythed through the empty air she’d been occupying milliseconds before. Alexis rolled onto her shoulder as she swept her legs around to bring herself up into a crouching position facing behind her. Even as the deep barks of Magna’s M240 pounded the air she could see the half-dragon bearing down on her, spraying bullets as it sprinted. The young resistance fighter raised her rifle to return fire and just as she squeezed the trigger an explosion from behind hurled her across the open ground and slammed her into a nearby container. The citizens in the crowd were in a panic as they fled in every direction, some even storming the checkpoint as if they thought they would be safe within the maze of metal shipping containers.
Alexis could taste dirt and blood as she spit out a mouthful of earth and took an agonizingly deep breath. One of her ribs had to have been broken, or at least fractured, by the force of the blast. She got her arms underneath her and lifted herself to her feet as she scanned the immediate area for her rifle. She saw it laying a few yards to her right, and as she did her best to shake off the pain and begin shuffling towards it she heard the hiss of the half-dragon. At some point between the blast and now the hybrid soldier had taken two rounds in the thigh. The throaty roar of Magna’s machine gun had been joined by the chatter of several small caliber assault rifles and sub-machine guns as the five other resistance fighters who had been hidden in the crowd rushed the checkpoint. They had to be in and out as fast as they could, for no matter how hard they hit the enemy here, Complex troops would respond within minutes of the first shot fired. They had to be in and out in five minutes or less, or they would be forced to fight their way through legions of enemy troops, and that was a fight they could not hope to win. Alexis gritted her teeth from the pain and sprinted towards the gun as the half-dragon began firing on her, his aim tracking her and his hard rounds only missing her by inches as he tightened his aim. Alexis, running on pure adrenaline and bravado, kicked the rifle as she neared it and sent the firearm skidding across the ground to come to a rest in between two stacks of shipping containers. The fighter never broke her stride and slipped behind the cover of the container just before the bullets reached her. The sound of the hard rounds shearing through the metal was nerve rattling, and Alexis lost her footing just before careening to the ground. She screamed in pain as she leaned over and snatched up the assault rifle, her fractured rib sending searing agony across the entire left side of her body. With the gun in hand she scampered backwards, not bothering to attempt standing up as she put as much distance between that side of the container and herself as she could.
The battle outside was reaching a fever pitch, and Alexis didn’t have the time to play cat and mouse with the hybrid soldier, who apparently was too smart to come rushing headlong after her as she’d hoped. Alexis pulled the pin on her second grenade and whipped it hard against the far side of the other container, and as she hoped it bounced off the container at a steep angle and disappeared from view as it sailed towards the blind side of the opposite container. She gathered her feet beneath her and lunged to the other side of the small corridor, and sure enough the half-dragon leapt into view as he ran to avoid the grenade. The hybrid was no fool, having had a portion of his brain overtaken by Izrid DNA allowed him access to warrior instincts that had been honed over generations. The hybrid started shooting where it made the most tactical sense for Alexis to be, which was the patch of dirt she’d been originally waiting for him in, and his rounds kicked up dark earth as he sprayed the entire area until his magazine clicked empty. Alexis squeezed the trigger of her AK-47 and high velocity rounds started punching through the chest, neck, and face of the half-dragon, the bullets shredding his lungs, heart, esophagus, and shattering the porcelain mask that marked him as a half-dragon. The hybrid warrior collapsed in a bloody heap, and Alexis had to sink to one knee and shake her head clear, as the sound of the gunfire had been sufficiently amplified by the confined space to rupture her left eardrum.
Alexis yearned to get back out into the thick of the firefight, though she knew that it was likely she was one of the only insurgents to have plunged this deep into the container stacks. While everyone on the team had been briefed on what the medical container looked like, it was likely that everyone else was occupied with mopping up the defenders or holding off any reinforcements that may have arrived. She hustled down the stacks until she came to the medical container she’d seen on her way to the detainment pod, set near the back of the stockyard to prevent any of the desperate citizenry from getting any ideas about rioting for the medicine. Not that they would have succeeded. The security hub would have shut the blast doors, the fences would have electrocuted any who attempted to scale the walls, and the gun turret would have slaughtered half of them before the others would make good on their retreat. She’d seen it happen before, and the sight of it had only served to hardened her heart and her dedication to the cause.
She neared the container just as a wounded security guard stumbled out from the other side of an adjacent container. He looked at her pleadingly for a brief moment before Alexis raised her rifle and shot him twice in the chest. Her mag read out showed one round remaining as she walked up to the man, who sputtered and coughed up bright red as his lungs filled with his own blood. In brief moment of mercy she pointed the rifle at his head and squeezed the trigger, and as the spent cartridge flew out of the action she heard the dry click of an empty magazine. She eyes the medical container as she reloaded and observed the locking system. She had known that det-tape would have opened the container, though the Complex had grown wise to the occasional supply hijackings of the resistance, and had started fastening coded locks to their crates and containers. This coupled with ident locks had made sustaining the war effort through theft much more difficult. These days the resistance kept up the fight by relying on the spoils of war, which while it kept them in supplies, the Complex media had a much easier time spinning the image of the resistance as radical insurgents bent on theft and anarchy. Thankfully Alexis had expected this, and other than swift entry into the checkpoint without being physically searched, her faux relationship with Samuel had enabled her to see that she needed his DNA and his ident card.
Alexis pulled Samuel’s severed thumb from her pocket and slid the ident card through the slot as she depressed the
tip of the thumb against the DNA scanner. The red lock indicator flashed to green and the resistance fighter could hear the latch release. There was a brief rush of escaping air as the sealed container was hit with the open atmosphere, and moments later the door slid fully open. Each of the soldiers who had been sent on this mission had been forced to memorize a series of medical container part numbers so that they would be able to locate and procure the correct cases of medical supplies. The phage drugs were in a specific container, unmarked as were all the rest and able to be identified only by its coded part number. This was an additional measure of security that the Complex had enacted after a resistance cell had made off with several cases of antibiotics almost a year ago. MacArthur had a sleeper agent within the high society of the Complex elites, and that unknown agent had provided their leader with the codes. Alexis was nervous about trusting such a two-faced kind of person, though she accepted both that fighting this kind of covert war required such trust from time to time and that ultimate trust in MacArthur was critical. Men, women, and even children fought and died believing that MacArthur was a trustworthy and righteous leader, and Alexis was happy to count herself among such fallen heroes. Having been only ten years old when the Izrid came, Alexis had known little else in her life but war and suffering, so when she had come of age there was no better choice for her than to join with the great and terrible Fiona MacArthur.
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