by B. C. Tweedt
He pumped his arms toward the last elevator at the edge of the building. But a door opened in front of him. Two Marines poured out, joining the battle, finding targets. One turned and found him. A target.
His slingshot was too slow. He hadn’t been ready. His muscles jerked taut and he slid to a stop as Diablo struck. The soldier was ripped from his feet, back into the elevator. Not a moment later, the other joined him, dropping his rifle next to his boots.
[Keep going!]
But Greyson couldn’t move. Something had snagged his conscience like barbed wire. He couldn’t take his eyes off the boots sticking from the elevator. The doors attempted to closed, but turned back. And again. The boots still.
[Go!]
He whipped himself free of the barbed wire and swallowed the lump in his throat, racing again toward the door. The firing had died down. The Plurbs were gone, every glass broken. There were no more standing bodies in his way. But one of the downed bodies was still alive.
As he passed, the soldier lunged for him, tackling him hard to the ground.
“Aagh!”
The man was strong, wrestling him for position, pinning him.
Frantic, Greyson swiped at the soldier’s hands, pushed at his throat. But the soldier gained his way to the top, kneeling over him. He was young. A sharp nose, blue eyes. When Greyson saw him rise up, he knew what was going to happen. His heart skipped a beat in panic.
“STOP! I’M ON YOUR SIDE! I’M ON YOUR…”
The soldier’s body was no longer there.
Greyson lay on his back, his arms still raised to defend himself. He closed his eyes, shutting out what he had seen.
Silent sobs heaved in his abdomen, but he fought them down.
“I’m on your side…”
DING!
The elevator doors opened. The corner elevator with glass walls.
[Go, Orphan! We’re almost out of time.]
He rolled to his forearms, avoiding looking at the soldier’s body. Robotically, he found himself walking to the doors, sticking his arm in to keep the doors from closing. He pulled his goggles down, his bloodshot eyes staring at the leftovers of the lobby. His finger found the button for the top floor. He pressed it, weary, shocked, long past exhausted. But he knew he wasn’t done yet.
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“Ma! Ma-aaaaaa!”
Chase saw her amidst the crowd, fending off a man who was pulling on her cart. Others around her were yelling, pulling, defending her. Another man stole a pack of her bottled water from the cart, trying to escape.
“Stop it! Let go!” his mother shouted. “Hey, you! I saw that!”
With a surge, Chase pressed through the crowd, passed the man yanking on the cart, and grabbed his mother. “Mom! Let’s go!”
She glanced at him then came back with a double-take. “Chase!”
“Yes. Let it go. We have to leave!”
“Our water! He took it! I’m trying to leave and he…”
He helped convince her by pushing the cart away, giving it to the man.
“It’s just water.”
“Chase,” she said, watching the man pushing it away. She hadn’t seen the drone swarms, hadn’t seen the soldiers.
“Come on, Ma! We’re getting evacuated. It’s the drones, Ma.”
Finally coming out of her craze, she nodded. “Drones? What do you mean, drones?”
“They’re coming for us. All of ‘em. Come on, Ma.”
He held her wrist, pushing his way through the holes in the crowd like a running back. They pressed through the freezer aisle and found the emergency exit in the back. “Through here. We’ll go around,” he said.
He pounded the door open and covered his eyes as the brightness took him by surprise. As his eyes adjusted he was aware of the plane passing low overhead. The high-pitched drone, the rumble in his bones.
Moving his hand from above his eyes, he squinted toward the sky. Even more surprising than the Texas snow were three jets in formation above, racing to the east. Another formation was further north, and another to the west, circling the skyline.
He stood with his mom, holding her hand with equally slack jaws. But she was the first to check their surroundings. “Oh, Chase,” she said, pulling him back toward the door. “This is bad.”
They had wandered toward the front lines. Two military trucks had stationed themselves behind the warehouse, the massive missile boxes on their backs tilted fully back, exposing the missiles toward the falling snow. There were scores of engineers working to prepare other anti-aircraft artillery, some Chase had only seen as G.I. Joe play toys – with barrels and missiles and radar dishes in all sorts of configurations. They were all faced to the east, toward the rising sun.
Chase tried to look beyond the sun, holding his hand out just where the sun was. He thought maybe he saw a flock of geese in the distance. More like a small army of geese. The more he shifted his fingers and squinted, the more tiny dots he found, stretching across the horizon.
His mom was already trying the door, but it had locked behind them.
“Okay, okay,” she said, trying to calm herself. “We have to go around. Follow me. We’ll get the car. Oh, gosh, we have to call my mother,” she pulled out her cell phone. “Jameson. Addie. The shelter. Do they know where the key is?”
She had walked along the back of the building, past the loading docks. Chase was lagging behind, watching the military work.
“Chase! Keep up!”
Chase couldn’t help himself. He stopped to stare straight up as another three squadrons of jets rumbled overhead, the vibrations shaking his teeth.
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As soon as the doors shut, Greyson put his back to the wall and raised his head to the ceiling in a heavy sigh. The elevator hummed to life as it rose from the ground, leaving the violence behind. He peeked outside the glass exterior, but felt sick to his stomach as the street shrunk underneath. When he closed his eyes, the motion began to lull him toward an invisible pillow.
[Orphan, snap out of it. Break the window.]
His head snapped up. “What? The window?”
[Give me a wind reading with your gaiter. Do it now!]
Greyson shot out the window, snagged his gaiter on one of the glass shards as the glass fell toward the street below.
He took a step back to watch it flap in the wind. “What did I do that for?”
[So I don’t shoot you. Bogies, a dozen floors above. They’re waiting for you.]
Greyson pulled his goggles back over his eyes and scanned the floors above with infrared. Amidst the blues and greens, he recognized the red shapes of humans as they grew bigger and bigger.
The elevator was small. Nowhere to hide. He pressed himself to one of the walls, then changed his mind.
“Diablo?”
[I’m below you. Don’t move!]
Below? He peeked outside. He was twenty stories up already. What would Diablo be able to do from below?
He pulled out his slingshot, slumped to the floor opposite the doors. Pulled the band toward his body, loaded a regular ball.
The elevator slowed. He heard the ding on the soldiers’ floor above.
He aimed at the crack between doors where he knew the soldiers were. Held his breath. Waited.
Waited.
The doors opened.
The floor clanged under his feet. Once, twice. The jolts scissoring through the floor, through the soldiers, punching the ceiling.
Bodies thudded.
Then silence. A flutter of ceiling tile.
Greyson lowered the slingshot, gulping air. He stared at the bodies, at the holes in the floor by his feet.
[Clear?]
Greyson swallowed. The doors shut, leaving them behind.
“Clear.”
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Chase’s mother pulled open their car door, throwing her purse inside. But
Chase waited at the passenger door, surveying the dense parking lot. It was a mess of vehicles – many of which had gotten stuck trying awkward angles to escape the jam. The snow always caused panic in Texas, but today it only amplified the present panic. Honking horns and angry shouts confirmed what Chase already knew. They weren’t getting out this way.
“Ma, we’re stuck.”
The loud rumble of more aircraft roared overhead, but a new sound rose behind it. A deep buzz, like a bee in an ear.
“Get in, Chase!”
“But, Ma. Look.”
She looked over her shoulder as she started the car. When she had taken in the scene – two cars blocking her path behind and another line in front – she struck the wheel with an uncharacteristic curse.
“What do we do?” Chase asked, standing at his open door.
His mother tried her phone again to no avail. No reception. “I don’t know! I just…maybe we try inside. Use a landline.”
She shut off the car, snagged her purse, and exited the car. “Come on.”
By this time, the buzz had overtaken every other sound. The blaring horns paled in comparison. Then shouts stopped. The horns stopped. Car doors opened.
And the shadows passed over. They were so numerous, the intermittent light flashed on Chase like a distant disco.
When they looked up, his mother ducked inside, looking instead through the snow-speckled windshield. But Chase was enamored with it. A swarm of drones so massive, so wide. Like a school of sharks floating in the ocean of clouds. The swarm wasn’t made up of the small drones everyday people used or even the medium-sized ones the police used. These were full-blown baby-dragon drones with full wingspans and missiles hanging in their claws. The first of the swarm passed over the military’s front line without a shot, and the rest followed suit.
“They aren’t shootin’,” Chase muttered, “The military – they’re doing nothing!”
The wave kept coming, unhindered, with their incessant, cruel buzz. Their direction was undeniable. Beyond the swarm waited the Dallas skyline.
Chapter 78
The elevator floor vibrated under Greyson’s feet where his eyes were directed, absent of thought, peering through the two jagged bullet holes to the shrinking street below.
Wind whipped at the broken glass wall as the elevator lifted him higher along the skyscraper. He faced the building opposite as he ascended past its roof, alone in the skyrocketing cage. His stomach sunk. Even after everything, his fear of heights pushed at his gut.
The rising elevator brought the city skyline into view; towering skyscrapers and their shorter siblings sprawled toward the horizon in every direction. The rising sun painted the arrays of windows in orange, yellow, and red as if setting them on fire. But Greyson knew the real fire had yet to come.
[You’re on your own to the roof, Orphan.] Diablo’s voice did nothing to ease his mind. Getting to the roof would only bring him closer to death. [You’re the last one. Make it count.]
The last one? The other Rubicon teams had failed?
“Roger,” he said, fighting off despair.
Above the sun, and at the edge of his eyesight, he finally discerned what looked like a giant flock of birds, so big that it formed a wall across the clouds for miles. Though his stomach had already sunk to its bottom, Greyson tapped the side of his goggles and zoomed in on the specks. His eyes registered what his HUD confirmed. Drones. Hundreds of them.
Knowing he was the last renewed his conviction. This was his calling. He had to own it. Forge had said he was a grenade. And now was the time. The pin was pulled.
But everyone knew that a grenade never survived.
He toggled radio channels. “Avery, if you hear me, you’re running out of time. His gaiter was still caught on a jagged piece of the window, flapping in the wind.
[I know, I know!] she huffed through his earpiece.
Greyson took a deep breath. “I need it down in two minutes, or …”
[I’m going as fast as I c’ahn. I’ve got three people talking in my e’ah, and I don’t know who to listen to.]
Greyson gritted his teeth in frustration, biting his words, and turned toward the golden doors. Tapping his goggles, he watched as the doors seemed to vanish into an infrared sea of blue and black. Beyond the doors he could make out the edges of the floors that rushed past one by one. Only heat vents glowed in bright red. He craned his neck toward the roof, but couldn’t make out any human shapes. He was alone. The last one in the skyscraper.
At least they had evacuated in time. Greyson clicked his goggles into normal mode and focused again on the approaching swarm.
And then it hit him; he was actually going to do this. He was most likely going to die. Every moment the elevator hummed upward took him closer to that time. Hot fear prickled at his arms, pressing in on him as if he were in a furnace. And then he realized. He had been in the furnace. It had burned him, melted him, purified him with pain and suffering. Something had chipped away parts of him that were holding him back – his parents, his old life, Sydney. But he had come out stronger, harder, and with less to lose, made ready for this exact purpose at this exact time. He’d been forged.
There had been a reason Sydney had left him to his training. There had been a reason their helicopter had been brought down. There had been a reason his parents had been taken from him. It was for the good. He now had little to hold him back from giving his life to stop the attack. This was his purpose.
A second wind swelled in his chest, but it hurt. He winced.
[Greyson?] chirped his earpiece.
Surprise slapped him. “Sydney?”
[Yeah, it’s me.]
He could sense the hesitation in her voice. There was fear, too. He knew what was coming. She would try to talk him out of it. Hold him back.
[Y-you okay?]
Her words weren’t what he expected. The elevator hummed another three floors up while he chose his words. The buildings below dwindled to a tiled floor of square roofs. Over the layer of fear blanketing him, it was comforting to hear her voice. Like she was there with him. He so wished she were.
“Been better,” he quipped, examining his wounds and gear.
He could hear her breathing, but there was no response. He took the moment to stare at the gaiter fluttering against the glass, trying to imagine Sydney at the tent headquarters, hunched over the microphone, watching the monitors and surrounded by brainy soldiers. Who knows how she had persuaded the soldiers to lend her the microphone, but she had.
[Greyson…I…]
DING!
Suddenly the elevator’s hum ceased and the cage jerked to a stop. Greyson swung to the doors and drew his slingshot as they opened, revealing the rooftop.
[About what you said…]
“Hold on!” he whispered, surveying the roof. The area was clear, except for an abandoned spotlight near the ledge. He took a cautious step beyond the doors, slingshot drawn. His body tensed, tight and painful, his shoulder and chest sending stabs of pain to his brain. But he ignored the pain and stepped further onto the roof, aiming left and right.
[Greyson?] Sydney whispered.
The wind swirled snowflakes as he ignored her and took long strides toward the building’s edge, closer to the spotlight that tilted toward the east. But as he got closer, he realized it wasn’t a spotlight. There was a keyboard and monitor behind it – its controls. His HUD identified it. A HELM. A portable laser. Was it the same one that had brought them down? And they’d left it behind. Were they giving no resistance to the swarm?
“Sydney, now’s not the best time.” He gulped, eyeing the weapon, and then jerked around, suddenly afraid that he had missed someone.
[I need to say something before…you do this…] she began.
Clearing the rest of the roof, Greyson turned back to the orange horizon. He felt the panic pumping through his veins, shortening his breaths as he snapped open the silver suitcase and began cha
nging into his wingsuit.
[Greyson, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I said. For doubting you. So I…I’m cheering for you. We all are here.]
He was surprised. His first response caught in his throat. While he thought of what to say, he zipped his suit.
[You there?]
“Yes. Thank you.”
[You’re welcome.]
Greyson pulled his goggles tight to his face and approached the ledge. He didn’t like what he saw. “Hold on, Syd.” He switched channels. “Avery, status?”
[I’m close,] Avery responded. [We’re connecting now.]
“Am I a go?”
[Maybe thirty seconds. Just hold on!]
“Hurry!”
Through his earpiece he heard men screaming and banging on a door. Avery’s heavy breathing. The clicks of the keyboard.
You can do it, Avery. Come on…
His eyes never strayed from the horizon beyond. He knew why the soldiers had left. They had known what was coming and had escaped. Even the army was running. Retreating.
And here he was, staring down his fate.
Sydney’s voice eased back into his ears. [Greyson.]
“What?” he muttered, leaning on the ledge, feeling as if gravity were tugging him over the side, toward the earth so far below. His heart pattered inside his chest as his gloved hands gripped at the gritty concrete. “Don’t hold me back.” His chest heaved, trying to fight his emotion with a smile.
[I wouldn’t dare. But I dare you to stop this.] The pain scratched at her voice. [Hear me?]
He cleared a catch in his throat and shook his head, ridding himself of the tears forming in his eyes. “I hear you.”
[Good. I’ll leave you alone now.]
He looked into the sky and saw the tiny dots swooping closer like shooting stars, streaking toward him.
Then Avery’s voice pounded his ears. [We’re almost in, Greyson! I swea’h!]
He turned and jogged toward the elevator, just enough for a running start whenever the drones began to pass. His heart pounded. His hands were sweating through his gloves. Shaking fingers secured his slingshot in its holster.
