The Apocalypse Five (Archive of the Five Book 1)
Page 21
“Fight this!” Reno demanded. “You’re a ginger! We eat souls for breakfast, isn’t that what all of the other cadets used to say? You don’t go out like this. Do you understand me?”
While Washington kept his impassive front firmly in place, the slight tightening of his jaw hinted at his unease that his order had yet to be carried out. “Not that your attempts aren’t endearing, but I’m growing bored with this. Juneau, pull the trigger!”
Something in the boom of his voice, reminded Detroit of the energy required of the human body for every motion or act to be carried out. “She has to be the charge! The current in her own body can generate a strong enough jolt to short out the system!”
“How?” Reno pressed, stare lobbing from Detroit to Juneau and back again.
“Juneau! Squeeze that trigger!” Washington thundered. On his end, he heightened the settings of the implant. The potency of its ripping current tore through Juneau, arching her back as her muscles clenched tight.
Lost in her own mind, Detroit’s eyes fluttered side to side as she worked the equation. “Heightened endorphins would be mandatory. Safe to say we’ve accomplished that—”
Released from her punishing strike, Juneau’s spine straightened. This time, it was a steady, purposeful grip that raised the taser to her head.
“We’re running out of time!” Face blanched of color, the fatal conclusion played out across Reno’s horrified features.
The answer came in an icy wave of awareness, bobbing hope further from reach. “She has to act against it. A blatant act, complete opposite of the command it’s enforcing on her.”
“That’s the entire problem!” Reno bellowed, stabbing his hand in his sister’s direction.
“I can’t! I’m sorry!” Legs buckling, Juneau’s knees slammed to the ground. Whether she was talking to Washington, or them, they didn’t know.
“Pull the trigger! Now, soldier!”
“Self-preservation is powerful, that’s why she’s been able to fight it this long,” Detroit explained. “But it needs to be an even more powerful impulse than that.”
The words barely left Detroit’s lips, when Reno’s narrow chest expanded with purpose. “I know what I have to do.” Drawing his pistol, he dropped to his knees and mirrored his twin’s pose.
The act was jarring, and cracked a nick in Washington’s hold. “Wh-What are you doing?” Juneau stuttered.
“Remember that horrible old movie about the boat sinking you begged me to watch? The one where the guy could have easily fit on the door?” he explained with a serene calm that contradicted the frenzied scene. “I said no, that I couldn’t endure one more sappy movie. But I sat there with you anyway and listened to every word. The girl was dangling off the edge of the ship and the guy told her ‘you jump, I jump.’ That’s what’s happening here. I refuse to live without you, June-bug. So, if you jump, I jump. We came into this world together. I’m ready to go out together.”
Face tipping toward the camera, Washington’s face loomed larger. “Cadet 1205, I am prepared to neutralize you if you do not submit! Discharge that weapon, immediately!”
A sad smile tugging at the corner of his lips, Reno cocked his weapon. “I love you, June.”
Chin quivering, Juneau adjusted her hold on the grip. “I love you, Benny.”
“You jump, I jump,” he softly soothed. “On the count of three?”
“Uh … Reno, I think you have a blatant misunderstanding of what I said!” Detroit interjected.
A cackle of laughter barked over Washington’s hologram’s feed. “Two for one! See what happens when you try to fight against me?”
“One …” Reno coaxed.
“You don’t have to do this. You can, and you will, go on without me.”
“Two …”
“Orion’s Belt, Reno!” Grabbing at his sleeve, Detroit tried to drag him to his feet. “Listen to me, damn it! Don’t throw your life away over this!”
“Three.”
A single shot rang out, and the room fell silent.
Blinking in disbelief, Juneau let her gun fall to her side. Behind Reno, pieces of the grid screen rained to the ground in a tinkling of glass shards, taken out by the blast of Juneau’s taser. Desire to save her brother forced the gun away from her temple, an act that shorted out her implant with a smoldering fizzle.
Washington dragged his fingers through his hair, rolled his shoulders, and fought to keep a hold of his slipping composure. “None of this matter. It’s all insignificant. My soldiers are swarming that compound. They will ensure this act of insurgence doesn’t stand.”
“Hey! My passcode works here!” Auggie chirped as he trotted into the room. A beat to read the room and he shifted back to the ramrod straight business setting. Going so far as to clap off a salute to his team leader, his stare never drifted from the bust of the loathsome chancellor. “The compound has been cleared. All remaining soldiers have been detained, or retreated into the woods like the cowards they are.”
Nostrils flaring, lasers of hate beamed from Washington’s flickering projection.
With the tip of her tongue pressed to her front teeth, Detroit sauntered across the room to take a seat at the terminal he haunted. Elbows on the counsel, she leaned into his hovering image. “Hear that, Chancellor? The Fortress is ours, and your grid has been destroyed. You enjoy your comfy little palace in the stars. Because, next, we’re coming for you.”
Leaving her threat dangling in the air, Detroit pushed her chair back. She borrowed Juneau’s taser, and blasted three shots into the terminal. The entire communications system exploded in a spray of sparks.
***
Washington stared at the wall of sizzling static on his monitor. He inhaled once, twice, and again. Each breath was more fevered and ragged from the last. Unable to fix the cap on his fury, he shoved his chair back. Springing to his feet, a scream sliced from his lungs. One potent sweep of his arm and he cleared the surface of his desk.
Lansing stood in the corner—hands folded, expression a passive neutral. She allowed the chancellor his moment to mutter expletives to himself, before he spun on her wearing the ugly mask of hate.
“What are the latest reports?” he barked.
Tapping at her tablet, Lansing cued them up. “The grid is down, sir. As is the communications system, which makes further status updates from the Fortress impossible to retrieve.”
A cloak of silence fell. Washington paced the perimeter of his office before flopping back down in his chair. Fingers steepled beneath his chin, he attempted to calm his breathing with a cleansing breath. “I want the next team called in. Don’t worry about making them camera-worthy. I doubt they will live that long. I want them vicious and deadly. Find me the candidates that have been penalized for excessive violence. Those are the ones we want. We’re going to form a new team and turn them loose. I want those kids dead, and their heads on my desk.”
“Yes, sir.” Lansing’s gears whirred as she dipped in a formal bow. “I will have your new team for you by morning.”
“Oh, and, Lansing? Change their call sign. Initiate order 0504.” A nod of dismal and he waved her toward the door.
Hugging her tablet to her chest, Lansing made her exit in full robotic indifference.
Bangor appeared from a side hall, obviously waiting for Lansing to appear.
“Are they still alive?” she asked, falling into step alongside her fellow Handler.
“They are. Though I can’t say for how long.” Lansing offered a nod of acknowledgment to a passing coder.
Shoulder pressed to Lansing’s; Bangor dropped her voice to a secretive whisper. “Did you erase anything in the systems that can trace this back to us?”
Lansing clicked over to heat sensory viewing, and scanned the space for human activity. Determining them to be alone, momentarily at least, she clamped onto Bangor’s throat and dragged her into a nearby utility closet.
Slamming Bangor against the wall, which knocked a mop and bottle of gl
ass cleaner to the floor, Lansing pinned her there with the heel of her palm pressed to her chrome clavicle. “When you came to me with the idea of sending them down without a simulation code, what was your reason? What did you say to me?”
Bangor’s eyes morphed to digital dots as she searched her memory storage. “That Augusta would die if we didn’t get him out.”
“That’s right. It was just a matter of time until the entire team was wiped out in one brutal fashion or another. This was the only way we could keep them safe. Now, they need us more than ever. If we want to help, we can’t be found out and recycled. That requires silence and careful planning. Is your programming capable of that, or shall I deactivate you now?”
“Due to my latest emotional upgrade, I do determine myself to be satisfactory,” Bangor stated, unperturbed by the threat.
Releasing her, Lansing rolled the sockets of her joints to return herself to neutral stance. “Their call sign is being changed effective today. I have been ordered to issue the alert. After that, they will become the most hunted bounty in the galaxy.”
If it was possible for an android to exhibit terror, Bangor accomplished it. “You don’t mean …”
“Yes.” Folding her hands over her tablet, Lansing’s stare locked with Bangor’s in a system sharing moment of mutual understanding. “Effective today, they become … the Rogue Five.”
About the Author
Stacey Rourke is the author of award-winning books that span various genres, yet maintain her trademark blend of action and humor. She lives in Florida with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and one giant, floofy dog. She loves to travel, has an unhealthy shoe addiction, and considers herself blessed to make a career out of talking to the imaginary people that live in her head.
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Find the full catalog of her books here: https://readerlinks.com/mybooks/1328
The Gryphon Series
The Conduit
Embrace
Sacrifice
Ascension
Descent
Inferno
Revelation
and The Official Gryphon Series Coloring Book
The Legends Saga
Crane
Raven
Steam
Reel Romance
Adapted for Film
Turn Tables
The Unfortunate Soul Chronicles
Rise of the Sea Witch
Entombed in Glass
Coming Soon: Pursuing Madness
TS901 Chronicles (co-written with Tish Thawer)
TS901: Anomaly
TS901: Dominion
The Veiled Series
Veiled
Vlad
Coming Soon: Vendetta
Archive of the Fives
Apocalypse Five
Coming Soon: Rogue Five
The Journals of Octavia Hollows
Prequel-How the Dead Lie (A Havenwood Falls Novella)
Wake the Dead
Caught Dead
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Dead Ringer
Dead as a Doornail
The Journals of Octavia Hollows Books 1-6