by Hanks, Greg
“B2. No luck yet. How’s it going on your end?”
Dodge piped in. “Just dandy—we’ve almost been caught three times. But it looks like personnel is thinning out the more we climb.”
“Wait!” I exclaimed. Something was scratching in my earpiece. It sounded familiar. Someone was calling out to me. It was scrambled, but it was someone nonetheless.
“Ple—elp us!” shouted the voice.
“It sounds like—”
“Hello?!” shouted a distinguished, raspy voice. “Dodge, Bollis, Vexin? Can anyone hear me?”
“Vane?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“What?!” growled Vexin as the others started talking wildly. Times like these made our awkward communication link obstructive and downright annoying.
“Everyone shut up for a second!” I said, “Vane, are you there?”
“Mark, listen closely,” he said, sounding like he had just run a marathon. “I don’t have time to explain. You need to hurry.”
“Well where are you? We’re here!”
“It’s about damn time you got here!”
“Are you guys okay? Justin’s with you, right?”
“We’re fine,” he said. The audio slipped in and out of clarity.
“You still there?” I asked, my nerves splitting.
“Is everyone alive?” he asked.
“We’re all here,” I said, sighing. “Celia went dark just before you contacted us, though.”
“We’ll deal with it. Listen, Justin and I escaped and are in a small communications room on Level 5. We can’t hold this position for much longer.”
“Copy,” I said, making it so everyone heard me shoot directions.
“And Mark,” said Vane before letting us go, “Repik’s not fooling around. You might have more resistance than we anticipated.”
“We’ll handle it,” I answered, nodding to Vexin. “Can you keep this line open?”
“I’m not sure. Just get here.”
The stairs blurred into a shimmering mirage. Vexin and I reached the secret door in moments, punching in the code Celia had given us and sprinting through the Level 1 foyer. As Vexin led us through the stairwell door, I recalled Vane’s last caution. What was Repik thinking? If he risked being discovered, we had a whole different problem on our shoulders.
“So what did he say exactly? Are you sure it was him?” asked Vexin, trailing behind me as we climbed.
“You can ask him when we get there,” I responded heavily.
We kept rising, watching the numbered floors fly past us. Our bodies were machines, crafted exquisitely. My suit wicked away my sweat and automatically cooled my body. With every step, the strength in my muscles grew. I couldn’t help but feel prevailing; I could destroy GenoTec with my bare hands.
“What’s that sound?” said Vexin, stopping his ascent.
Then I heard it too: the piercing pitch of an alarm. It was turning into a wail. We doubled our pace.
“You two better hurry!” yelled an otherworldly Bollis.
The alarm reached its maximum level. An automated female voice played over and over, detailing a security breach. GenoTec must have found some fallen comrades. I wondered how much destruction the other group had done. Nevertheless, it was time to start the war. Something I was both looking forward to—sadly—and despising all at the same time. Tara might have been right; I was starting to enjoy the rush of battle.
Just as we reached the 44th landing, a distortion of metal boots and muffled voices came from the floor above. We watched as a group of metal-heads trampled down the stairs, still unaware of our presence. It gave us the perfect opportunity to be the first to strike.
Between Vexin’s shotgun and my confiscated rifle, we dropped four bodies before any backlash came our way. We fled down the stairs as more bullets showered our location.
Mini firefights broke out in the negative space between railings. My MLM-GR was clunky and hard to get used to again. Its rate of fire was slower than my CT-46, but packed a bigger punch. After firing blindly, I ran back to the 44th landing and waited until one of them broke cover. Sure enough, an armored soldier cautiously stepped onto the sub-level ledge in front of me. Two seconds later, he was meat against the wall.
As I started to advance, something clanked in front of me, sending a freezing bolt of ice through my chest.
Grenade!
“Watch out!” Vexin screamed.
I lunged down the small flight only to be whipped into the wall and pelted with millions of concrete bits. I tumbled down to Vexin’s location and he helped me to my feet. As rubble sprinkled off of my suit, rage pounded within me like a Vegas nightclub.
Vexin knelt on one knee and aimed his shotgun through the dead space. He fired a few rounds, escaping the return. They had us pinned down. If we tried moving upstairs, they would have another grenade ready, or be waiting on the ledge to pick us off. Any attempt I made to advance was shut down by a furious shrapnel scorch.
Below us, the 43rd floor door opened and unleashed more metal-heads. Vexin and I nailed our backs to the corner and hunkered down. The other half of our squad wouldn’t be much help two Levels ahead, most likely reunited with Justin and Vane already.
“How many grenades do you have?” asked Vexin.
“None,” I panted.
“Well, we might—”
The ledge above us shook with incredible force. Large pieces of synthetic surface material fell through the space between stairs. A cloud of smoke poured into our position.
“You didn’t think we’d leave you, did you?” a familiar voice echoed from above and within our ears.
“It’s about time!” Vexin shouted, and we rushed to meet our saviors.
“Hurry up! That was just the welcoming committee!” Bollis yelled.
We escaped a deadly reaping from the other group of soldiers, passed the charred 45th landing, and pursued our friends. Perched on the next ledge, Dodge discarded the husk of his RPG-88 and punched the air at our arrival.
I couldn’t help but smile when I saw Tara. However, she looked worse than I imagined. Her suit carried heavy dents and scratches, and her visor displayed a top-to-bottom crack.
“Vane better be paying us double for this,” Dodge joked, throwing his last grenade down the chute. It exploded in free-fall and plastered the walls with GenoTec Volunteers.
We climbed the next two floors without any resistance, charging in full sprint. The siren still burned our surroundings, informing the entire building of our terrorism.
Tara led our pack to the 49th floor just as the door in front of her whooshed open.
“Tara!” Bollis exclaimed.
She unleashed her own barrage before lunging out of the way. The rest of us doubled back.
I fired at the door keypad and damaged the module. Sparks flew and the door closed, sealed with a red light.
“Move!” I shouted.
We only reached the next sub-landing before the sealed door exploded. Tara and Dodge didn’t hesitate to continue upward, but Vexin, Bollis, and I held our ground.
“Mark!” called Bollis, “you know how to use it?” He passed me the Boomsocket from within his large pack.
Finally. The voluminous, black barrel was like the superhero action figure I had always asked Santa to bring.
“I got it!” I shouted back, gripping the Boomsocket into position. I only had seconds to aim. I could see more metal-heads than I wanted to believe, forming into the antechamber before the threshold.
“Hurry, Mark!”
I nervously pulled the trigger.
The destruction was phenomenal. The canister passed through the threshold of the 49th floor and decimated the antechamber, turning it into a blackened, dripping cauldron. A hole-in-one. The bloodlust inside of me grinned maliciously and I fired again, watching flames and carnage escape the mouth of the 49th floor. Surfaces were starting to catch fire, and Vexin scolded me back into reality. With a gorilla-like gait, I lumbered up the final steps and joi
ned the crew, more than ready to relinquish the Boomsocket.
“Inside!” cried Bollis, ushering us into the 50th floor. He wasn’t particularly happy to have the heavy weapon back, either.
The room before us spanned the entire building with a ceiling as high as twenty feet. The floor consisted of a network of individual rooms, covered in foggy glass windows. A narrow corridor continued forward for another ten feet, and then split into a four-way intersection.
“Vane,” I asked, “we’ve made it. What room are you in?”
A long, unnerving pause followed.
“Maybe something happened to them,” said Vexin, ready to move forward.
I tried to answer Vexin, but was interrupted by a sneering voice coming from the ceiling. It definitely wasn’t Vane.
“Intruders. You’re making a very bad mistake. You are surrounded. You are hopeless. Your goals are fruitless. Too many good people have died at your hands today. You add to the blood that Edge has already spilt. Shame on you. I will give you one last chance to turn yourselves in. In ten minutes, I will send in another five squads. If you haven’t surrendered on the north side of the building, throwing down your weapons, I will have no other option than to take you by force. The choice is yours.”
The intercom buzzed as Repik finished and we exchanged wary glances.
“We’ve got enough for five squads, Bollis,” assured Vexin, seeing the hesitation in our temporary leader.
“If Justin and Vane are already somewhere safe, let’s just get Repik now!” said Dodge.
“No,” Bollis said, “they’re close. We need Vane for this—”
“Yes, you do,” sparked Vane through my earpiece, and apparently through everyone else’s this time. “Don’t listen to Repik. Take your first right, we’re the fifth room on your right.”
We booked it down the next corridor and found the fifth chamber, surrounded by impenetrable glass. A red light glowed above the door and Bollis hammered the polished partition.
Three seconds later, the light flashed green and the door slid upwards.
“Awwww hells-to-the-yeah!”
I never thought I’d be glad to hear that voice.
Vane sat at a desk that spanned the length of the room. Four humongous screens covered the rest of the back wall, while servers and mainframes lined our right and left. He swiveled around and stood up to greet us. Justin rushed up to join, a wide grin spread across his face. Both of them looked like hell.
“Whoa, whoa, Ladynuts!” exclaimed Justin, but he was no match for Tara’s embrace. She didn’t care how much he squirmed, she held him tight. Even though he looked embarrassed and angry, I knew he was happy to see her too.
“What did they do to you?” she asked, kneeling to Justin’s height.
“Vane,” tried Bollis, “we were doing the best we could. We would’ve been here sooner—”
“We don’t have time for this,” replied Vane in a harsh, grizzled tone. “We’re losing our window to find Repik.”
“Did they hurt you?” continued Tara, directed toward Justin.
Justin looked at Vane and said, “No. We hurt them.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” I said, nodding to Justin’s makeshift syringe launcher resting on the desk.
“Oooh!” the boy bellowed. “Really? What did his face look like?” He fanned his hands out from his head and sang, “Red, red, what’s your name? Red, red, dead’s your game.”
His little made up songs weren’t unusual, but I hadn’t heard them in so long that it caught me off guard.
Vane ignored the eleven-year-old. “Repik’s scared. He knows how dangerous we are. We are so close.”
“Do we have a location?” asked Vexin.
“The 72nd floor.”
“The squads are gonna be here any minute,” said Dodge, readying his M580.
“Does Celia have our back? The cameras?” Vane looked around, but no one said anything.
“She went dark,” said Dodge, more than eager to answer. I looked his way, seeing the worried fear within his eyes.
“We have to assume she’s still looping surveillance using our own heat signatures. Repik didn’t find the two of us, after all,” said Vane.
It went silent for a few seconds. Everyone’s breaths were tense. We knew what was coming.
“This is it, isn’t it?” asked Tara, looking around at the only people she trusted.
“If we don’t find Repik,” concluded Vane, “everything we’ve done will be kicked under the rug. We’ll be branded as terrorists for eternity.”
52
Justin’s cyan eyes were ablaze. “This is complete bull—”
“Enough!” snapped Vane.
“You can do more from here anyways, dude,” said Dodge, trying to be helpful.
It had been decided. Justin had to stay. Vane said we couldn’t risk his life—which really meant he wouldn’t risk our lives if Justin caused something to go wrong. The boy had no official training of any kind—even if he was technologically smarter than the rest of us. It was the best possible scenario that he stayed put.
Justin attempted another defense, but everyone started moving outside. Our ten minutes was up.
Tara and I stood around him, giving him some sort of comfort.
“I don’t understand,” he began, “I’m as much a part of this as any of you.”
Tara sighed and kneeled to his level. “It’s not like that. Let us handle the bloody stuff—you handle things from here. You’re much more effective in here.”
He hopped in place, twirling in a circle. “Fine, but I’m gonna mess them up from in here—like, real bad.”
Tara grinned. “That’s the plan.”
Justin broke out into one of his low-pitched songs. “I. Can. Set up. A. Channel. So we can talk.”
“Good,” I said. “Do you think you can see what’s going on with Celia?”
The eleven-year-old jumped onto the chair and it rolled into the desk.
“Yo, I got this!” he shouted, turning around to manipulate GenoTec’s system.
Tara and I looked unsure about the situation, but we had no other option. She donned her helmet and we started for the door.
“Wait!” Justin yelled, hopping off the chair and approaching me. He got quiet and shifted his eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Just promise you two will come back alive. ‘Kay?”
My first reaction might have seemed rude. I looked over at Tara, completely stunned. But when Justin didn’t have any kind of retort, I looked back at the boy, who had a serious, determined face.
I hope I didn’t regret saying this. I kneeled down to his eye level.
“I promise.”
Justin put a cold hand to my cheek, waited for a moment, then slapped me hard.
“Good! Now get to work!” he yelled, hopping back to the station on one foot.
“Little bastard,” I said to Tara, rubbing my cheek.
“That little bastard is our little bastard,” she said, no doubt smiling underneath her helmet.
The heavy, gleaming door slid shut when we caught up to the rest of Genesis. Bollis and Dodge were on either side of the corridor, crouched before it split three other directions. Tara and I turned into war machines again, making sure our rear was covered.
“Bollis,” directed Vane, lifting his head toward the end of the hall.
Bollis followed orders and crossed the intersection. He knelt just before the right turn. Beyond the corner, our destination waited—the second stairwell.
Through my earpiece, Bollis gave us the green light. We moved like scurrying rodents in an experiment maze. I watched our back, occasionally stealing a glance at Justin’s room, still visible from our new location. When we settled again, Tara switched me positions and I hunkered down behind the other guys.
A cascading, curved window lined the wall of the new hallway, creating a memorable sight. Jersey City lied on the other side of the glass, shrouded in darkness. The corridor was wide,
dotted with couches, end tables, a twenty-foot long centerpiece of towering flora and diminutive garden décor, and enormous marble pillars jutting out from the right. Glass cubicles and conference rooms lined the entire right side of the hallway.
I looked outside, trying to discern parts of the beautiful view behind the glare of the bright room. Thousands of people were still alive down there. The future of our free world was represented by tiny, flickering lights. I was fighting for them. Though I would never think of myself as a hero, because I definitely had my own reasons for being there, too.
“Contact!”
The glass cubicle on the right shattered and the battle began. Our interim was over.
Everyone took cover. Gunfire pierced through the wooden eaves of the table I was up against, barely singing my shoulder pad, leaving a trail of ripped metal. Tara was still at the rear, recalibrating her sights for a potential preemptive strike.
“I spot twenty,” said Bollis.
“Nineteen,” added Dodge, returning to his post behind a pillar. Bullets were bounding off the enormous bulletproof window, creating a mesh of twanging sounds and surprising sparks.
“Here we go!” Tara sparked, defending our position from a second squad that was approaching from the first staircase. Vexin moved back to help her, leaving Vane, Bollis, Dodge, and I to deal with the first group.
I crouch-ran toward a pair of sofas and took cover behind a metal partition that held reading material. Hot bullets fell upon my location, pelting the barrier like a hailstorm. Dodge and Bollis gave me some cover fire, allowing me to kneel, aim, and lock on.
The battle continued for five minutes. My routine was simple: steady, line up, fire, advance. Repeat. The more we advanced, the more we pushed them back. Our tactic was working wonders, pummeling the first squad into oblivion. We moved passed the waist-high shrubbery wall, taking incredible shots along the way. Heads jerked back, shoulders and hips whipped to the side. Blood was a common element.
But I couldn’t stop. A switch had been flicked on inside my brain. I was a machine. I was programmed to pull the trigger. My reflexes knew the circumstance. Reloading was almost automatic. Finding certain trajectory points and cover spots was old hat. Each time my bullets connected, I felt a rush of warm liquid fill the basin of my stomach.
