by Tanya Lisle
“She is dangerous.”
“Hey guys?”she called behind her. “I need an escort. Get him to the elevator.”
People came out of the trees and Mac put up no fight as he was escorted back to the hall. Ed knew that she wasn’t going to hear the end of this for a very long time if Mac had his way and he let out a deep sigh, turning back to Liah.
Liah looked furious as she watched him go.”Iris, run protocol GTFO Taylor Mackenzie.” She shook her head. “How the hell is that guy head of anything up there? How could you let that happen?”
Ed ignored her and turned back to Snow. Despite his actions, Mac did bring up a very interesting point. “You said there were people coming from the outside.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s coming?”
Snow said nothing, her dark eyes looking away. She considered the question for so long that Mac’s escort came back, but Ed didn’t press. She finally looked up and Ed was very careful to not meet her eyes. “You are not meant to know,” she said.
“These outside people are going to kill you?”
“Yes.”
“When are they coming?” Ed asked.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Liah raise an eyebrow. She said nothing, arms crossed and looking between the two of them. Ed could tell she was lost and had opted to observe until something either of them said made any sense to her. Ed thought briefly about warning her that this was about to get a little crazy, but she doubted Liah would believe her.
“You are not meant to know.” Snow was more insistent this time.
“They’re coming to kill you,” Ed said. “If we know when they’re coming, we can stop them.”
“You stop them. You fight and you defeat them. Those you capture are sent to Liah.”
“Are a lot of people going to die?”
“One hundred and thirty seven will die during the fight. Four will die after.”
“We could stop that if you tell us when and where the raiders are coming. Those people wouldn’t die.”
“Yes.”
“You could be one of the people who doesn’t die.”
“What the hell is going on?” Liah asked no one in particular, looking between them. She shifted; ready to pull Ed aside if she tried to press the matter any further. Her eyes kept drifting between both of them, not following the conversation, but able to easily read the mood.
Snow’s eyes stayed forward, concentrating on something very far away. Confusion, worry, and fear washed over her features in waves and Ed could almost see the stars on her dress move while the rest of her stayed perfectly still. Eyes fell on them from the trees, through Snow still didn’t respond.
“Yes?” Ed asked after a minute of waiting.
Snow blinked, which was unsettling only because Ed couldn’t recall an instance of her doing so before. “Yes,” she said, though she didn’t look happy about it. “They will come tomorrow. At 1706, a party of thirty four people will break through a wall in Section I with a small explosive. They-”
“Stop!” Liah snapped at her, putting an end to it. Blood leaked down Snow’s pale skin from her eyes and dribbled out the corner of her mouth. Liah put herself between Snow and Ed, gently coaxing Snow away. “That’s enough. She doesn’t need anything else.”
Snow wavered on her feet. “I feel unwell.”
“I know you do, hun,” she said gently. “We’re going to get you fixed up.”
Around them, the sounds of work stopped and Ed could feel the eyes on them. It felt like everyone was holding their breath at the sight, not sure what to make of it. Ed wasn’t sure herself, still gazing in awe at the spot where Snow had just stood and trying to take in the sight of the woman bleeding as she spoke.
“I want to know exactly what the fuck this was,” Liah told Ed in a tone she hadn’t heard directed at her in a very long time.
That was enough to snap Ed out of her trance. “If she’s wrong, I’ll be able to tell you. If not, ask her.” Ed turned back to the elevator. If Snow was right, they had less than twenty four hours to stop a raiding party from taking out a wall.
Chapter 10
Fifteen hours later, Ed was in the control room. She dropped down into the large chair in the center of the room, draping her tool belt over the back of it. The evacuation was done at last; though she needed something for the headache she got after having to negotiate with that many people. They wanted to go back and get more of their things to bring with them. No one was attacking them yet. They weren’t even sure if an attack was coming. They should have time to go back for just a couple more things.
Now that it was done, though, there were more important things to attend to. She looked around the small control room to the dead screens covering the walls and counters covered in a light layer of dust. The whole room smelled musty with a touch of something sour, likely from the garbage can that Ed didn’t dare check. She hadn’t been in here in two years and it showed.
“Iris?” Ed asked waiting for the tone. It was louder in here and came much more quickly than anywhere else in the building. “Where’s the keyboard?”
Like most rooms in the complex, there were hidden panels that revealed computers built into the walls and counters. A section of the counter slid away and a large keyboard popped up in its place with a large glass square set into the counter next to it. Ed rolled toward it and settled her fingers on the keys. “Iris, turn on monitors 13, 15 and 17.”
Three of the monitors directly in front of her flared to life and she got to work on the keyboard. As nice as voice commands were, they were an afterthought of Iris’ functionality. While Ed could yell at her to do whatever she needed, her fingers moved faster over the keys and Monitor 13 came to life with a stream of white code on a black screen.
Monitor 15 displayed the haze outside. Ed let her finger drift to the glass pad, tapping a spot along the edge to signify the right monitor and rotated the camera with her finger. With nothing but yellow haze and the dim line of the horizon to work with, she wasn’t even sure quite where she meant to point it. Following along with the numbers on Monitor Thirteen, she got it in line with the outside of Sector I and left it, switching her attention to the last monitor.
Getting the monitor to show the interior of Section I was significantly easier. There were landmarks to use and a preset orientation for the cameras. Monitor Seventeen showed twenty shots, Ed eliminating the ones she wouldn’t need and spreading the rest out between even more monitors in the room. Carefully, she adjusted the orientations until they were exactly where she wanted them, with the fewest blind spots and the widest range of the potential battle zone.
Ed was a little surprised at how easily most of the commands came back to her. She already typed in the commands to make sure the weaponry for the external security was in order after only looking up the codes to do so on her way over. She left her phone next to the keyboard with reference notes, but she didn’t so much as glance at it as she let her fingers move over the keys.
A knock on the door made her jump. A few keystrokes later and she had a monitor showing Mac outside the door with a tray of food in hand, raising his other hand and knocking again. Ed got up to let him in.
“Hey,” she said as she opened the door to let him in. “Just getting things set up.”
Mac shoved the tray at her. “Eat something.”
“Yes sir,” she said. She hadn’t even thought about food since this mess started, but with it staring at her, she realized she was starving. Even with everything she still had to do to get ready, she figured a quick lunch break would be fine. She was useless if she passed out before the end of the fight from hunger. She picked up her fork and started shoveling the contents of the tray into her mouth.
“Have you slept?”
“No,” she said, swallowing before she continued. “I’ve been organizing an evacuation. And meeting with you and Grace. When the hell was I supposed to sleep?”
Mac let out a grunt and leaned back against the
door. “You sure you’re going to be okay for this? I don’t need you falling asleep or missing something.”
“I’ll be fine,” Ed said. “My job’s pretty simple. I’m just watching.”
“And the first round.”
“Loading the exterior weaponry now,” Ed said, glancing up at the monitors. “Probably not going to need manual override.”
Mac looked at the monitors and leaned against Ed’s chair to get a better look. Ed moved the outside view from monitor Thirteen to one of the larger screens for him and Mac shook his head. He kept looking through each camera, hand hovering over Ed’s shoulder like he wanted to touch something, but he kept from making a move.
Times like these were good to remind Mac why Ed was in charge. The entirety of the Janus Complex was controlled by Iris and he didn’t have the first clue on how to make her work. It was a system intentionally designed so that the military could never get full control of a complex initially built for peaceful scientific purposes and, in six generations, Security still hadn’t provided anyone who both wanted control and had the programming background to actually use the system.
With only the sound of her eating to fill the space and dilute the tension from Mac staring intently at her monitors, Ed felt the need to fill it with something else.
“So,” she said around her food. She tried to swallow most of it before she continued. “You think anything’s actually going to happen?”
Mac didn’t move from his spot over her shoulder, but he let his hand rest on the back of her chair. “Hope not,” he said. “If we’re lucky, Snow’s just crazy.”
“After all that shit, now you’re ready to accept that she might just be crazy?”
Mac shook his head. “I had to be sure, but what she said… It’s too specific. We basically have three scenarios that are going to happen. First, nothing happens and she’s just nuts. I don’t care what you do with her. Second, they do attack, but they are coming from somewhere else and she’s given us exactly the wrong information so that they can get in and take us out. I’ve already got that worked out in case it happens, but if it does, I want her out of here. That woman Downstairs is clearly not going to be able to take this seriously.”
Ed kept her tongue still for the moment. At this point, the only thing Liah knew was that an otherwise docile woman appeared in the orchard and caused no harm to anyone else. That, and that talking to Ed had somehow made Snow bleed out the eyes. At this point, there was no cause for Liah to be remotely suspicious of her.
“And the third?” Ed asked instead. She put her fork down and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
“If she’s right,” Mac said slowly. He paused, looking at the large monitor and the shot of outside. “If she gets this right, and I mean down to every single detail, then… I don’t know. It’s not going to happen.”
“You’ve thought about it, though.” Ed went back to the keyboard, slowly filling the rest of the monitors with shots from other cameras around the complex. If Snow was wrong, they could be coming from anywhere. She saw a few men scattered through the halls, waiting in full gear and ready for an assault. She set up a second alert so Iris could tell her about any sign of a breach.
“It won’t happen,” Mac told her.
Ed let the silence linger between them, her fingers moving over the keys. She needed to activate the rest of the exterior cameras and check the other areas. It was frustrating to hear about the chance of attacks from other areas only now. She needed more time to adjust the cameras and get them all looking where she needed them to look. She’d need at least another hour, but the clock was already ticking. By her estimate, if they were coming, they would be on the horizon in minutes.
“If it does,” Mac said finally, looking at each new monitor that flared to life, “then just leave her.”
“Leave her?” Ed would never be able to adjust all this in time. She could already feel her eyes straining as she looked between each monitor, adjusting them as they came up to roughly where she wanted them before moving to the next.
“Keep an eye on her,” he said. “Obviously. But if she’s right down to the last detail, then there’s something more to her. That story, that stuff she knows… it might be best to just leave her alone.”
“You’re getting superstitious on me, Mac.”
“There’s something about her. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me uneasy.”
“Because she saw something on your hand?” Ed pointedly looked at it, still on the back of her chair. On it, she could see a faded black mark that she was sure wasn’t actually there. She looked at it and it turned into an outline of a diamond with a circle inside of it and two small dots on opposite points.
Mac pulled his hand away and stood straight, his eyes on the large outside camera. “You know what you have to do?”
Ed blinked. She wasn’t sure if she actually saw that, but this was hardly the time. “Let them blow the hole. Let them run if they want. Give them a reason to run. Same as every other time. Why?”
Mac nodded at the screen before he made his way out. “Because company’s coming. Keep an eye on the clock. I want to know how close she gets.”
Chapter 11
Mac arrived in time to see the explosion at the other end of the corridor that rocked the building. No one stood in the way, his men all tucked in small alcoves, along hallways or hidden in rooms along the path where they could avoid the debris. The haze added to the dust that lingered in the air obscuring his view of the outside.
He could hear the first shots fired outside over the ringing in his ears as the exterior system came to life. Something dropped heavily to the dirt outside, followed by another, and the men inside grew restless in their hiding spots.
The first shadows started moving through the dust. As the ringing in his ears started to dull, it was replaced with screaming of people outside. The battle cry rang out and, while he could see some of their number drop in the shadows, the majority of them were still rushing forward. Something hit the inside of the corridor, too weak to be fired from a gun but enough to leave a mark on the wall. It was soon followed by several more.
“Fire on sight!” came Grace’s voice over the ringing in his ears. “They don’t pass us!”
As frustrating as it was dealing with Katima Grace, she knew what she was doing. Even after outlining the plan, it took a considerable amount of coordination to get everyone into position and she knew how to get them in place. More importantly, watching as the front line moved in, she knew how to make them act.
The first of the raiders charged through, followed by several others, all yelling and firing wildly. The makeshift armour made of metal plates stuck onto themselves and poorly maintained body armour, did little more than make it obvious that they had no intent of sneaking in.
It also made for a rather pleasant clunking sound when they were hit and larger crash when they fell.
If Mac hadn’t known about their attempt beforehand, they would have suffered heavy losses. As untrained as they were, the weapons the raiders brought were capable of doing a lot more damage than Mac anticipated, taking out chunks in the walls as they fired and several of his men falling further back into the halls and rooms they took their positions from. While those who had fallen first were armed with pea shooters and potato guns, there were well armed men among them that Mac and Grace spotted quickly, both barking orders to take them out.
As it stood, they were very lucky to have the warning. There were men to take over when someone fell from the hail of gunfire and they were armed well enough to minimize damages on their side. The raider’s numbers looked like they were thinning after only a few minutes.
“Incoming!” Grace called from the front.
Mac caught sight of a metal ball with a red light on it flying through the air above them. The enemy stopped their advance, some watching as it flew. “Fall back!” Mac called loud enough to be heard over the battle around him.
At his word, his men w
ithdrew back behind cover. The metal ball landed hard on the ground and stuck. It did nothing for a long moment.
Then it exploded.
The explosion rocked the hall, sending debris flying and kicking up a new wave of dust. The walls around it caved in and several people on both sides had been tossed out of the way, lying like ragdolls in the ruins.
There was only a handful of their enemy left, all of whom decided to charge in amidst the rubble.
“Final rush!” Mac roared. “All in!”
He couldn’t hear himself, but it appeared that everyone else did and joined him as he left safety and charged back. The enemy was outnumbered and down in moments.
They looked around in the end, waiting for something to twitch or some sure sign that it was over. Mac kept his gun raised and eyes on the hole to the haze, waiting for something else to appear and come at them, but nothing else did. He was about to let out the all clear when a pleasant tone sounded around them.
“You’re clear in there,” Ed said over the speakers. She sounded exhausted. “Three escaped through the hole they blew on your left. I’m cutting them off as best I can, but it looks like they might still have a couple explosives on them. You should be able to follow them pretty easy.”
“Grace!”
“I’m not fucking moving,” she called back at him. He looked around, finding her sitting where the first line was stationed, back against the wall and her left side coated in red. Kimball was already at her side and taking account of the damage. She tried to get back to her feet, crawling up the wall.
Kimball quickly placed his hand on her shoulder and forced her back down to the ground. “You’re not moving like that,” he said.
Grace frowned at him and shook her head, but said nothing and turned back to look at Mac. “I’ll take care of the cleanup shit,” she said. “I don’t need to stand for that. Perez! Get over here!”
“You, you, you,” Mac said, pointing out three men who looked like they were still in good condition and had yet to lower their weapons. “With me. Come on.”
