Kin of Exile

by Tyler Bunyard

  “There’s a single place that we can go to get one of these things.” Johnny confided “A UWP superdome.”

  Karrel was shocked at this revelation. He had seen these superdomes before. He had been close enough to several of them, so he understood the dangers that they posed.

  “How in the hell do you expect us to get inside a superdome?” Karrel jumped up from his seat. “Those places are goddamn fortresses. They have automated defenses that can shred an armored transport in seconds. Even if we get to the walls of the dome, they have an energy shield wrapped around it.”

  Karrel looked around, expecting to see other shocked faces. However, he was met with a few blank stares and a smirk coming from Angel and Puck.

  “We’ve got a friend on the inside,” Angel revealed.

  Karrel sat back down, taking in the full extent of what they were revealing. “You have a mole in the UWP?” he asked.

  Johnny once again took command over the room. “She’s not exactly a mole,” he objected. “Think of it more like, undercover.”

  Karrel was shaking his head. “Getting anywhere near a superdome is a death sentence, let alone breaking in to one. How do we know we can trust her?” he questioned the others.

  “Well,” Johnny began, “about a year-and-a-half ago, we brought another person into our group. She was adamant about saving lives and carried a deep vendetta against the UWP. Shortly after the other girls joined our ranks, they told us about the causes of the cataclysmic weather. Once we realized that we needed to take the fight to their home, and that I was going to need a ridiculous amount of energy to do so, we came up with this plan. She volunteered for it the second she heard that she was going to be able to do some damage to the UWP. Honestly, she was the best one equipped for the job anyways…”

  Puck chipped in his two cents to Karrel, “We knew the girl for a year before she left on this mission. We’ve only known you for a few months.”

  “Hell,” Angel gave an evil smirk, “If she didn’t know she was going to be leaving for the better part of a year, she probably would have been paired off with Krystalyn, and we would have never needed you.”

  Karrel stared at Angel for a long moment. He turned to Krystalyn and asked, “Would this girl have been capable of surviving you?”

  Both Jessica and Prisca stared at each other. They immediately turned away from the group attempting to disguise their smiles, but Karrel caught them in the action and crossed his arms in annoyance. Rolling her eyes at her sisters, Krystalyn gave her answer to Karrel. “She didn’t have any gifts, like you,” she answered. “But yes, she probably would have lived.”

  “Fine,” Karrel submitted. “You guys trust her. I’ll trust her.”

  “Good!” Johnny rejoiced. “Now let’s get to the plan. Our infiltrator will create an opening for us. Specifically, there is a small loading area on one of the sides of the superdome.” Johnny’s MAITs once again reformed themselves into a different image. Now, they represented what looked like a large garage entrance for trucks. “She will open up this area, and we will slip in, hopefully unnoticed.”

  “Is the facility large?” Karrel had a feeling that this was going to turn into a squad based mission.

  “Huge.” Johnny replied. “We will eventually need to split into groups, which is why the girls are going to be coming along with us.”

  Jessica gleefully hugged her sister. “Oh, yay!” she hopped up and down, as Prisca carefully peeled her off. “We haven’t done this in a while.”

  “We’re supposed to be hiding,” Alice commented, blank-faced and without looking at her sister.

  Prisca stepped toward Alice and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “We are,” she confirmed. “But, a girl’s gotta have some fun every now and then.”

  Johnny cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention, and the group brought their attention back to him. “Once we’re in the facility we need to find their power stations. There should be at least one energy core in each of these areas. We will all grab as many of them as we possibly can before exfiltrating the facility.” Johnny stood even more upright than he already was, displaying a serious demeanor that everyone noticed. “Let me be clear. We need at least two of the fusion cores for this mission to be considered a success. Without two of them, I will not be able to power my stabilizers, and it could be years before we get another opportunity like this.”

  The room was silent. It was starting to sink in. They would be entering an incredibly well defended UWP facility, and were tasked with bringing back not one, but at least two crucial pieces of equipment. This meant that the mission was going to be long. This meant that the chances of them going unnoticed was slim. This meant that fights were going to be as bloody as they were inevitable. But, it was necessary to proceed forward, so no one was going to back down.

  Angel popped out of his seat, his signature smile drawn upon his face. “Walk in, grab a glowing pipe-thing, and don’t die,” he shrugged. “Easy.”

  Everyone stared at Angel. It was Puck and Karrel who broke the silence with their chuckles while Krystalyn and Jessica sighed, shaking their heads, empathetically embarrassed for the overconfident man. Prisca, however, seemed invigorated, trying to hype her sister up to no avail, as Alice quietly returned to reading a nearby book. As Karrel scanned the room, he felt amazed. Angel always seemed to know how to instill confidence and rally the troops. This was simply another instance.

  “Alright everybody!” Johnny shouted over the ruckus. “We have a few days until moving out. I’ll be updating everyone on the details as we lead up to the operation date. We’ll meet up in the portal room when it’s time to go. Until then, take this time to relax and prepare yourselves. We’ll need all of our strength.”

  Johnny grabbed his things and left the room. Over the course of the next hour, everyone else followed suit until Karrel was the only one left in the room. He couldn’t get out of his head. He hadn’t thought about it until now. What they were all about to do would be considered rebelling against the UWP. There would be a target painted on their backs for the rest of their lives. Or, were they already targets? The UWP considered the Survivor’s Guild a rebel faction, and they had been assisting them for some time.

  In the next few days, Karrel’s resolve would be tested. He had said that he was ready to stick with this group, but the next mission would hold a venture that would mean death for an average man. Sticking with them through the dangers would be proof that he had changed. Leaving would prove that survival was all that he lived for. He would have his answer in a couple of days.

  •—•

  Energy surged through the cords that wrapped themselves around the walls and floor. A humming noise filled the room and grew louder and louder as the portal powered itself on. Standing at the base of the towering structure, everyone prepared themselves for a long trip away from home.

  Karrel pocketed his green book and fiddled with his loner-armor. Johnny had lent him a batch of protective clothing. It had pockets and flaps spewed across it and was obviously not designed with fashion in mind. He had been told that the clothes would not help much against anything blunt or sharp, but it offered a mild form of protection against energy based attacks. Unfortunately, the description reminded him of what he was going to be going against. The UWP had incredibly advanced technology, and lasers was going to be one of them.

  Johnny himself had changed out of his casual wears. He was now wearing very light clothing, with both his pants and his shirt being incredibly thin. He still wore his brown belt, which continued to carry a variety of metallic polyhedrons that Karrel now knew to be small groupings of his MAITs. However, Johnny had something new attached to his body. In a multitude of incredibly thin, reflective lines, he had a chrome substance that traveled all around his body. One or two of these narrow, chrome lines were attached to Johnny’s arms, legs, and every other body part, all the way from his shins to the sides of his face. They crawled up and around his body like slim, linear snake
s and were almost impossible to spot unless you were deliberately looking for them. When Angel started poking at them, and asking, “Whatcha’ got there?” Johnny simply responded saying that it was “a new toy.”

  Interestingly, though the bulk of Angel’s wears had not changed, he did have a unique look when preparing for a big mission. He was still wearing pitch black clothing, though now his hood was fit snuggly around his head, and he had a thin mask of dark smoke that covered both his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes revealed. The apparel also seemed to expel an incredibly faint cloud of black. This miniscule amount of dark exhaust served as a reminder for something Karrel had discovered over the past few months: Angel’s “clothes” were really just him wrapping his shadows around himself. Now, these shadows seemed to be a bit more armored than what he usually wore.

  When it came to Puck, almost everything about what he was equipped with seemed straight forward. He was wearing padded clothing and something that resembled a ballistic vest, but wasn’t quite that. Several knives were holstered along his body. The only unusual thing he pocketed were several small cylindrical objects. They looked like steel vials, and each of them had unique markings along their sides.

  While the boys seemed focused on their gear, the girls were waiting patiently at the base of the ramp to the portal. Prisca and Krystalyn were attempting to hide their eagerness to leave, idly poking fun at the boys’ attire. Alice, with folded arms, was rolling her eyes at Jessica, who made no attempts to obscure her impatience and was promptly shouting, “Come on! Let’s go!”

  Walking over to the portal, and satisfied that his gear was in order, Johnny carried a large bulk mixture of cloth and leather. He began handing each of the pieces to the girls. Grabbing the drab-looking attire, all of the woman unraveled their items. Johnny had given each of them a plain, cloak and hood covering.

  Alice immediately nodded and donned her cloak, pulling her hood over her head. However, the other girls extended the cloaks outwards and away from them. Prisca held the cloth in one hand, pinching it between two of her fingers and expressing her contempt, “No! Hell, no!”

  “We can’t be flaunting the fact that you all have tails and horns,” Johnny insisted.

  The girls were about to quarrel, but Alice nudged her sisters, giving them a deathly look. “Fine!” Krystalyn, Prisca, and Jessica all conceded in unison.

  With their cloaks and hoods equipped, the girls’ demonic features had been successfully hidden. The cloak was loose enough to hide their tails behind, and the hood obscured enough of their head to hide their horns.

  Enough time had passed, and the portal was now fully charged. The familiar rainbow-colored gel filled the hollow portion of the elliptical structure. It would take them to a small Survivor’s Guild outpost, relatively near to the superdome. From there they would take a day long trek through the wastelands before reaching their destination. The group had agreed that they could not take any vehicles with them, as the superdome’s security would most likely spot and eviscerate the transportation before any of them could react. They had a better chance of sneaking up to the structure on foot.

  With the group seemingly prepped and ready, Johnny gave one final check. “Everyone knows what their tasks are?”

  Everyone nodded their heads.

  “Everyone knows who their teams will be?”

  Everyone nodded their heads.

  “Alright!” Johnny clapped his hands together, “With any luck, no Executives will show up and we’ll only be dealing with minor resistance. Now, let’s move out!”

  Once more, Johnny received several nods, however, none of them was Karrel’s. Karrel raised his hand into the air and asked, “What the hell’s an Executive?”

  Johnny was taken back by the question, and Angel stared wide-eyed at his friend. Puck stayed silent for a few seconds before bursting out in laughter. “Holy crap!” Puck mused. “Now that would have been a huge oversight on our parts!”

  Angel was amazed. “You’ve never come across a UWP Executive before?” he asked.

  “I religiously stayed clear of the UWP during my travels,” Karrel answered honestly. Looking at each other in disbelief, and then acceptance, Angel, Johnny, and Puck shrugged.

  Puck cleared his throat. “Okay,” he began, “here’s what you need to know as far as I’m concerned. On this mission, if you come across any man dressed in a suit… don’t engage with him. Avoid him if you can, ‘cause you aint coming outta that fight unscathed.”

  Karrel gulped down a bit of anxiety. If the green-eyed combatant was telling him to avoid a fight, these “Executives” must be dangerous.

  Puck continued. “If you come across any woman dressed in a suit…” Puck pointed to his side. “You find Angel. And if you can’t find him, you run until you do. He’s the only one of us powerful enough to contend with them.”

  This was getting scary. Karrel could see how serious Puck was, and Angel and Johnny didn’t seem to be taking this for a joke either.

  “And finally,” Puck concluded, “If you come across a woman and a man together, both dressed in the same colored suits…” There was a moment of pause in his voice, and Karrel could feel the weight of his words pressing down upon him. Puck took a deep breath. “You run in whatever direction is opposite of us… Because I don’t feel like dying yet.”

  Karrel observed his friends and was aghast by the serious demeanor of the group. It confirmed everything that Puck had just said.

  Satisfied that all their bases had now been covered, the eight of them proceeded toward the towering, elliptical structure. As he walked through the portal, and onward to the task at hand, there was something painful that Karrel did not want to admit to himself. Fear was consuming him, and he was terrified of going on this mission.

  Chapter 17

  Breach

  Trekking through the wastelands was every bit as dull as Karrel remembered. It had been a day’s worth of walking to get from the near-abandoned outpost to the superdome. The Survivor’s Guild had only a handful of members monitoring the station they had portaled to, and it had been a fair distance away from their destination. However, after a night spent sleeping underneath rocks with minimal camping supplies, the group was as ready as they were ever going to be.

  After gathering their things, Jessica, Prisca, Alice, Krystalyn, Karrel, Angel, Johnny, and Puck made their final adjustments to their gear and headed toward the final mile between them and their supposed entry point to the superdome. The sheer size of the dome was throwing off Karrel’s sense of distance. No matter how much space they closed between themselves and the dome, it always looked as though it was only a hundred meters away. Johnny assured him that they were almost there, however.

  Finally, they were close enough to make out some of the details of the dome. The first of which, was that there were many, many automated weapon-emplacements strung along the side of the dome. Some were large, and others were larger. Everyone immediately jumped into whatever cover they could find.

  The superdome was gigantic in size. It was as though half of a perfectly smooth, gray sphere had protruded itself out of the very ground. Not a speck of dust could be found along the surface, which shimmered in the light of the purple sky. The glimmering was artificial of course, marking that the shielding system was still operational. The only areas that were not rounded to perfection were, relative to the superdome, the small turrets that kept the peace on the outside. They shifted from side to side, scanning the area for any object that was unlucky enough to move.

  Johnny peaked out from the boulder he was resting by. He observed the outer defenses of the dome. After a few seconds, he touched his ear and said, “As we thought, the weapons on the outside are made to target vehicles, or anything equivalent in size.” His voice traveled to everyone’s ears, confirming that the radio system he had setup was working as intended. “We should be able to slip by unnoticed.”

  “Should?” Prisca inquired, uncertain.

  “You’re
right,” Puck mocked, “It’s too iffy. We should just go home.”

  Prisca smacked Puck on the back of his head and moved up to Johnny’s position. She stared into the distance before telling the group, “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone outside.” Turning back to everyone, she asked, “Should we just go for it?”

  Nodding in agreement, the group moved from rock to rock, keeping their eyes peeled on the turrets. If they were wrong, the weapons would most certainly vaporize all of them. Closer and closer they inched their way toward the surface of the dome. Every few seconds the turrets would scan back and forth, briefly appearing as though they were aiming themselves at the group. Karrel’s heart would stop every time, but they would always pass right over them and continue their routine.

  They were moving as fast as they could, whilst being careful to remain in as much cover as possible. However, Johnny had said they were still about three minutes away from the dome, and despite their best efforts they were moving at around half pace.

  They had gotten about a quarter of the way there before Krystalyn’s voice came over the comms. “Does anybody else hear that?” she asked.

  Karrel stopped moving and closed his eyes. There was a slight rumbling noise coming from somewhere far off. It was strange though. It didn’t sound like it was coming from the ground… His eyes opened wide. He knew what it was; it was something he was all too familiar with. He brought his gaze directly above him, and sure enough, a barrage of lights was growing brighter and brighter in the sky.

  “METEOR STORM!” Karrel tapped his ear and screamed it over the mics.

  Everyone’s attention shot to the stars. Sure enough, a salvo of fiery rocks was plummeting down to the ground. They were usually small, but the area of effect was still going to be massive. There was no amount of stone nearby that was going to be able to protect them from the flaming death that approached. Only one area was safe.

  “MOVE!” Angel shouted. “To the superdome!”