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by B. C. Tweedt

  “I’m going to.” Greyson pulled her arm away and shot to his feet without waiting for a response.

  Beep watched as he raced into the smoke.

  Chapter 41

  Greyson sprinted toward the smoke as dozens of others fled from it.

  [Retrieve the hard drive at all costs. It’s the key.]

  “I’m on it!”

  He jumped the remains of the downed rhino and skidded next to the vibrating Scorpion.

  Now what?

  “Where’s the hard drive?” he asked, his hands hovering over the heavy machine. At any moment he felt it could explode, plow into him, or worse.

  Suddenly his HUD revealed the answer. A box appeared around one of the drone’s panels. A holographic blueprint revealed its insides and the shape of the hard drive.

  “Okay. Hold still!” he commanded the drone.

  “Freeze!”

  It was a drone that had spoken to him in its robotic recording. A police Scorpion.

  Greyson threw up his hands and turned to it, but it was too late.

  It hovered and then shot.

  The tasers missed him left and then right.

  Two protestors fell at both of his sides, the digital paint visible on their clothing.

  The drone seemed to analyze him one more time before swishing away to its next victim. It hadn’t been hacked.

  Sighing in relief, Greyson reached for the downed drone’s access panel but came away empty. The drone had burst to life, flying away as if drunk, swaying and sparking. It flew over the heads of soldiers who turned and tried to shoot, but its erratic flight pattern made it a difficult target.

  And then it flew over a trio of riot cops. These three were not arresting anyone. They were more interested in the drone – and the boy who had been racing to tinker with it.

  The lead cop lifted his visor again and sneered.

  PatriARC.

  Greyson’s heart pattered against his chest.

  Hurry up. He glanced at his DOC. Hurry.

  PatriARC glanced back at the drone escaping over their shoulders, an understanding reading in his eyes; but he turned back to Greyson.

  Before PatriARC could raise his gun, Greyson typed on his DOC and stepped back into the smoke.

  “Kill him! And get that drone!” PatriARC shouted.

  His men struggled with the conflicting orders just as long as it took for Greyson to come bursting through the smoke toward them, holding on to Liam for dear life, his legs swinging beneath him as his drone took him in a path directly over PatriARC and his men.

  He kicked and connected with the two men as PatriARC ducked. Liam picked up speed and zipped Greyson away as PatriARC fired in his direction. But Greyson was unharmed, hanging on above bewildered soldiers.

  Liam took him to the car his friends hid behind; Greyson dropped to its roof with a thump and leapt off. He immediately typed at his DOC and sent Liam back at PatriARC.

  [PatriARC located. We want him alive.]

  Greyson cursed under his breath, typed again, and held Liam back. His crosshairs were still on PatriARC and his men, but they were scattering, calling in reinforcements. He wanted to kill them so bad. They had done this. They deserved death.

  But he withdrew.

  “Roger that.”

  He couldn’t take the time to address Drake’s squad. He was too busy thinking. He was stuck. PatriARC was to the west, scattering his men to track down the drone while it was still bouncing off buildings to the east. Which one to pursue when he needed both?

  When he got the answer, he turned to Drake. “I didn’t get the drive. We need that drone. We get to it first, PatriARC will come to us.”

  “Gotcha. You’ll be faster with two.” Drake turned to Windsor. “Go with Greyson. I’ll get these guys to the Tower.”

  Windsor fastened his lips, already bouncing on his toes.

  But Greyson wasn’t smiling. He heard the distant clonking of rhinos. He saw the reorganized lines of riot cops blocking off the entire block to the east, even as the malfunctioning drone buzzed over their heads; and he heard gunfire. The battle was far from over.

  “Let’s go!”

  Chapter 42

  Cael held the MP5 at his side taking in the aftermath around him. Fires. Bodies. Drone pieces littering the aisles, cells, and roofs of the entire camp. The turrets and guard towers were now theirs – their ragtag army of freed prisoners. The security room had been the last to fall, but the combined firepower of a dozen drones whittled its concrete to nothing. The soldiers had surrendered quickly.

  And then their army of drones had self-destructed.

  It had all happened in a matter of minutes.

  He remembered the chaos running the aisles freeing other prisoners. Finding a weapon. Watching the soldiers flee, firing haphazardly, like firing on an angry horde of wasps. The prisoners never relenting their rush. Their domination. Many of the prisoners were hardened terrorists. Some weren’t, but they had been bodies nonetheless – part of the horde released on their captors by a traitorous guard.

  A military truck roared to life and the prisoners cheered, rushing to board its cargo bed. A bus started soon after, blaring its horn. Cael had only taken his first step toward it when he was collared from behind.

  A guard stared him down. He was without a helmet, but Cael knew who he was. The accent only confirmed it.

  “No, Wolf. Follow me,” he said in his Middle-Eastern accent.

  But Cael hesitated. He had spotted the teenaged girl watching from behind a broken wall.

  The Arab guard didn’t wait. He swung his weapon over his shoulder and sprinted away, slinking through the wrecked outer fence.

  Cael started after him, but turned, cursing inwardly. “Don’t get on,” he whispered in her direction.

  She grabbed harder to the wall.

  “Ya hear me?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “And don’t follow me.”

  He took off after the guard, through the fence, into the rolling hills.

  -------------------------------

  The battle had spilled to the streets. Hundreds of protestors had escaped or had never been herded in the first place – and they were, in their minds, fighting for their lives, under attack by a military out to round them up and kill them. Weeks of rumors and preparations had readied the angriest ones of them all. The ones who still had weapons. The ones who knew how to make explosives.

  An explosion thudded down the street as a barricade of tires erupted in flames and plumes of dark smoke. Greyson and Windsor dodged the crowd that readied for a fight with metal shields, helmets, Molotov cocktails, and…

  “Guns!” someone shouted from a manhole.

  And then guns appeared. Two at a time, being lifted up from the sewers.

  The crowd swarmed the manhole – passed the guns around – took up positions. Someone broke a window two stories up. A barrel stuck out.

  “Stop!” Greyson yelled. “It was the Plurbs!”

  “Sure it was!” one of them shouted back.

  Stupid.

  He turned back to their target drone as it sputtered two stories up, passing just above the green signal lights as they turned yellow. When they turned red, a wave of Quads came around, passing through the thick smoke. And they meant business.

  “QUADS!” a man warned.

  Greyson and Windsor stopped dead in their tracks as the first bullets popped off. The people were shooting at the drones! Flashes of Georgia erupted in Greyson’s memory. He knew the outcome.

  “No, stop!”

  But it was useless. Greyson watched the drones’ flight-paths switch. The guns rotated underneath their bellies as if switching ammunition. Just as Liam had different modes for different settings, so did the Quads. And once they had been fired on, the mode had changed.

  “Here!” Greyson pulled Windsor in a coffee-shop doorway as the Quads passed over anyone without a gun. They
were on a mission.

  A lucky bullet knocked one out of the air, but the others swooped to the manhole and let loose their guns.

  POW-POW-POW! POW-POW-POW!

  Those with guns were torn from their feet in an instant. Another and another. The crowd returned fire. Some ran, others hid, but the Quads found them. POW-POW-POW! POW-POW-POW!

  A man ran by their doorway, rifle in hand, but his back shook with bullets. He collapsed face first. Lifeless.

  A woman saw the dead man’s rifle, lying on the ground. She hovered over it, searching the skies, as if thinking.

  “No!” Greyson shouted.

  She picked up the rifle, turned.

  POW-POW-POW!

  Greyson couldn’t look. He grimaced at Windsor, and hatred bubbled inside. His hatred rested only on the terrorists. They were responsible for all of it. Every single life.

  [Heading north!]

  Greyson eyed the holographic line that appeared in his HUD, leading him on the path to their target drone.

  “Come on!”

  They glanced both ways and darted out only to find the barricaded intersection ahead crowding with Humvees and a Bradley. Through the burning tires’ smoke, they could see soldiers marching alongside, flanked with Quads. The way was blocked. Behind the blockage, though, a boxed police van squeezed through on its way after the malfunctioning drone. The red triangle above it let Greyson know who it was.

  “Don’t move!” came the command from a loudspeaker.

  Though the floating triangles above the soldiers were green, the boys didn’t even think to obey. Greyson loaded and fired a Hate Ball into the cement. The smoke was instantaneous.

  “The window!” Windsor shouted, pointing at the window front to their left as plumes of smoke hid them from the soldiers.

  Greyson read Windsor’s mind; if they couldn’t go through the intersection, they could cut around it.

  He shot a ball-bearing sized hole through the window and it collapsed before Windsor jumped through to the swanky hotel lobby. Greyson and Kit followed, but a pair of soldiers emerged from the smoke, spotting Windsor first. “Stop!” they shouted, taking an angle to cut Windsor off; but Windsor’s skills began to shine through.

  He bounded onto a couch’s back; it tipped him toward the front desk, and he leapt to its surface. The soldiers pursued, but the boy was too fast; he jumped from the front desk to a rolling luggage cart, his momentum sending it forward like a skateboard. When Windsor reached the opposite window, he abandoned the cart with a push, sending it sprawling through the glass and into the street to the north. Satisfied, he turned with a smile that turned into a frown.

  The soldiers grabbed him from behind and three Quads cut off his path in the street as a Bradley grinded to a halt next to him, pinning him in.

  But not for long. A fierce growl caught their attention.

  Kit latched on to the soldier’s arm, taking him down. Liam came in with a thrash of gunfire, ripping the three Quads into pieces, one by one. Then, with purpose, Greyson knocked the other soldier first to his knees with a ball to his hamstring, then to the ground with a pulse from his glove.

  Free again, Windsor planted his feet in the Bradley’s front treads and leapt to the barrel. Using the barrel for a deft swing, he flung himself to the top turret – all as the driver and helpless gunner looked on in astonishment.

  “Smoke!” he yelled.

  Greyson threw him a Magic Hate Ball and smiled as the boy smacked it against the armor and rolled it down the barrel. “Time to go!”

  The smoke plummeted out of the gunner and driver’s ports, even shooting out the cannon’s barrel. The back hatch opened and coughing soldiers staggered free.

  Kit and the boys were already halfway down the street, following the line’s path again and just glimpsing the bumper of the police van as it swerved east. They were going to need another shortcut.

  -------------------------------

  Thump, thump, thump!

  Grimes’ shoes pounded the asphalt as he hugged his backpack. He didn’t have much of a running form; it was more of a hopping walk. His legs weren’t nimble like Windsor’s or bouncy like Beep’s. And he certainly couldn’t flex them like Ankeny could when practicing her martial arts. His strength, his flexibility was limited to his brain. And he hated jostling it around like this.

  But they didn’t have a choice. The military was chasing them.

  “This way to Griffith. The buses will take you to safety!” the soldier had said, swinging his arm in a circle. “All those who take up arms or stay will be considered hostile!”

  It had worked for hundreds of frightened protestors, but not for them. They had to get to Thanksgiving Square – in the heart of “hostile” territory. So they had run. Drake took point, then Beep, then Ankeny.

  And Grimes just tried not to die.

  Thump, thump, thump…thump…thump.

  His mind raced faster than his feed did. A map in his head told him they were on route. He calculated the distance to travel, then the number of steps it would take. Distance divided by the average step of a thirteen-year-old boy. Then he saw cracks on the road like tributaries of a running river, meandering this way and that. The rails for the trolley set on a more certain destination. He preferred the rails. He liked certainty.

  Then he was afraid. There was no certainty here. It was out of his control now. Like it had been on the evil day. The worst day that had ever happened.

  He whimpered and gripped his bag tighter.

  Finally they came to their destination. And it was blocked.

  “Now what?” Beep asked, surveying the entrance to the Pedestrian Tunnel. It was an archway covering two doorways, where two escalators descended into the dark beneath the streets. Vine plants he knew as Cocculus carolinus filled the archway, spilling over the barbed wire that ran the length of a chain-linked fence blocking the entrance. A sign reading “Escalators Temporarily Closed” stated the obvious.

  “Make it temporarily open,” Drake said, nodding at Ankeny.

  She pulled out a few metal tools and jammed one into the padlock.

  Grimes tapped out his nerves, watching the streets as more and more protestors straggled in. They were well off the beaten path, but others were thinking like them – finding a way around the chaos.

  Clonk-clonk-clonk-clonk.

  The rhino was distant, but they could still hear its roar. Tinny screams.

  Grimes hugged his backpack tighter and stole glances down the roads. He occupied himself with reading the banners that draped between apartment windows.

  We LUV ‘Merica. We H8 Tyranny.

  Give us Liberty, or give U.S. death.

  A bed sheet had been spray-painted with a cartoon. A soldier stepped on a man’s neck, giving him just enough height to reach a button called “Press for Tyranny”. Oddly enough, the man underneath the soldier’s boots held a sign saying “We Support Our Troops.”

  Clonk-clonk-clonk-clonk.

  “Hurry, Ankeny,” Grimes muttered.

  “I am.”

  “If we had a propane torch, steel’s melting point is…”

  “We don’t have a propane torch.”

  His fingers crinkled his bag’s cloth. “We can take another route. It’ll only take another 2.5 minutes to reach…”

  “Stop distracting me!”

  “If we die…not my fault.”

  “Shut up.”

  Clonk-clonk-clonk-clonk.

  Bang, bang, bang! Grimes shrieked.

  “Gunshots,” Drake noted as three protestors came running.

  “Ankeny…”

  She turned her tool, wound it. Stuck another in, peering in the gaps like a surgeon. “Almost there.”

  A man ran from the street, frantic, firing shots at some invisible pursuer. He wore a suit jacket and rimmed glasses. The kids jerked as they realized he was racing toward them, his AK waving as he ran. There was something disconcerting
about a suited man with an AK.

  “Ankeny…!” Drake warned.

  “I’m almost…”

  Drake pulled her away as the crazed man ran to them, his face soaked with sweat. Without a word he pointed the gun at the lock and blew it away.

  He kicked open the gate and ran through.

  CLONK-CLONK-CLONK-CLONK!

  A red-eyed rhino galloped onto the scene and jammed its metal hooves to a grinding stop. Its head snapped to their position.

  “Go, go, go!” Drake shouted.

  They raced after the crazed man, single file down the escalator’s steps.

  The tunnel was dark. Only yellow emergency lights lit the tile floors at the landing. Grimes hopped the last step as the rhino reached the top of the escalators, silhouetted in the daylight above.

  B-RRRRUUUUUUUUUUUH!

  Grimes grabbed his ears and ran from the roar through the glass door Drake was holding open for him.

  “Go!”

  Grimes stumbled through the door, into the underground mall, stunned by a crazy, frantic scene. Ankeny was searching for open doors, but the storefronts were closed. The armed man was flipping over chairs and tables that filled the broad tunnel thoroughfare as if they would obstruct the beast. On the tiled floors was dirt and debris from giant potted ferns that once lined the walls, attempting to bring fresh air into the dank and dreary. But still Grimes couldn’t breathe. He huffed behind a mound of a dead Cyrtomium falcatum and turned to watch.

  It’s a new technology. Maybe it has yet to master stairs…

  Suddenly the beast hurled down the narrow stairs, its steel limbs flailing and pushing at air as its enormous body slammed into tile and smashed through the glass doors in a fantastic crash.

  Glass shards raced across the tile, past Grimes’ feet. Drake eyed him from across the aisle, where he had taken refuge. He smiled his wide braces-smile, but it was short-lived. The beast groaned and searched for footing. It hissed from the wires and tubes that snaked underneath its metal shielding. Hydraulics of some sort. Grimes was fascinated. He’d seen videos from DARPA on such things, but this was far more advanced. Of course it would be. They wouldn’t post their most advanced technology for the world to see…