by K. F. Breene
Looking toward Puda, she saw the other machine was backing away.
“No you don’t. You’re going down, too.” Gritting her teeth against the pain in her legs, she chased it. Two gunshot blasts were followed by a click, click, click. No more bullets. “Shit!”
She snatched Puda’s gun from his limp hand, trying to ignore the aching fear for him as she turned back to the robot. “C’mere, you little sucker,” she said, wild. Her adrenaline was running out, but unexpected rage took its place. “C’mere!”
She sighted and fired, missing the first time but getting it the second. And third. She ran at it before having to jump back from a swinging, razor-sharp claw at the end of its blocky, humanlike arm. She kicked its undercarriage, like she’d done with the spiders. Pain vibrated up her leg. The thing didn’t seem to notice.
She aimed at its flat face and shot. The lighter metal spheres were next. The robot didn’t react.
“How do I kill you?”
A thrum of a large carrier craft vibrated through the building. She’d heard that sound before, right before robots attacked, and she and the higher-level staffers had to be moved.
These robots had sent for reinforcements.
She shot at the humanoid cockroach again, dodged its swinging arm, and stepped in to kick. No matter where her bullets punctured, or her kicks landed, the robot didn’t seem affected. It was slow, too. Clumsy.
Click.
She looked at the gun. “No,” she whispered. Out of bullets. Now what?
In a last effort, she dodged an arm, reached over, and ripped at the metal spheres on the thing’s back. One popped off. She dropped it, letting it roll away. Under it was a sort of crater, as though this cockroach creature had only been designed to transport the spheres.
She danced around the turning body, then slammed her heel into the crater. The whole butt end of the thing banged against the ground. One of its legs cracked.
It hobbled—if a robot could hobble—still trying to turn and face her. Its humanlike arms swung, but couldn’t reach.
She slammed her heel into it again. And again. A fissure point opened up along its side.
Angry tears dripping down her face, she kicked at that tiny vulnerability with all her might. A spark spit out of the body before smoke curled up. Crackles and a shimmer ran through the robot.
It had to be enough. She didn’t have any more time.
She jammed the empty gun into her suit’s utility belt and ran to Puda.
“Sweetie, are you okay?” she asked as she applied two fingers to his neck. A weak pulse pushed against her touch. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
The thrum lingered, the carrier probably stationed right next to the security hovercraft. She’d never get out that way.
After threading her arms under his, she started to drag Puda across the floor. They made a wide sweep around the shaking robot, tried not to hit any rubble, and made it back to the elevator. Her only option was to hide and try to break into any intranet she could in order to call for help. It was a futile effort, but it was all she could do.
Chapter 3
“What has happened to this world?” Millicent asked as she stared at the gray destruction spanning out in front of them. Where once Los Angeles had been a collection of jagged building peaks rising above the constantly hovering cloud of pollution, now only half of the spires still stood. As though a huge animal had flown through and randomly bit off chunks, ragged holes had cut out sections of skyline. The light that had once glimmered off windows was now fractured, since many of those surfaces had apparently been blown out or broken.
“It looks like they just unleashed the weapons without thought or regard for human life.” Millicent shook her head in sickened awe.
“This screams of desperation,” Ryker said, staring through the window. “A desperate people are a dangerous people.”
They rode in a large craft filled with the small group of fellow passengers from the rocket, and a much larger group of rebel troopers who were transporting them to the headquarters. The wall surrounding LA, acting as a barrier between the city and what lay beyond, loomed large behind them, nearly deserted of crafts entering the partially desecrated city in front of them.
“No more dangerous than what we’re facing, right?” Trent asked. He clutched Marie tightly to him, resuming his duties as caretaker for the time being. Soon, however, he’d be in charge of tracking down the enhanced children the conglomerates had hidden from Toton, as well as acquiring any information or equipment he could gather regarding the progression of the breeding projects since they’d left.
Millicent glanced at her little girl and then away, her anxiety over bringing her child into this dangerous city threatening to derail her focus. At nearly seven, not including the three plus years of cyber slumber she’d spent on rocket trips, Marie had the intelligence and intellect of someone twice her age. But she was still a child. She’d begged and pleaded to be brought along on the mission, citing the many reasons she’d be useful. While her arguments were all justified, since she was the only one as good as Millicent, or better, at manipulating systems, and she could do it from a distance, she was continually met with a hard no. Appealing to her daddy hadn’t helped in this case. Millicent and Ryker had forbidden Marie to come along.
Before leaving, they’d discovered one of the rocket pods had been locked with Marie’s special abilities. It didn’t take a genius to realize Marie had taken matters into her own hands, but Millicent hadn’t been able to get her daughter out of the pod—she still didn’t know how to counteract Marie’s mental locking ability. In the end, they’d had no choice but to bring her, something that continued to gall.
“This is what we’re trying to save?” Marie asked with skepticism.
“I see you didn’t grow out of that attitude,” Roe said. He grunted as he pulled his ankle onto his knee. The rocket journey hadn’t been kind on his aging body.
“What, while I was sleeping?” Marie rolled her eyes. Her knuckles turned white where she clutched the window frame.
“We’re not trying to save this,” Trent said softly. “We’re trying to keep this from spreading to us.” He shook his head slowly. “I’m so glad I was kidnapped from this place.”
“Mommy, someone has been trying to unravel your code in the pirate network,” Marie said.
Trent’s gaze drifted to Marie’s face. “Her range and ability keeps surprising me. Just amazing.”
“It’s not her range so much as the pirate intranet having a strong signal in this city. They’ve worked hard to boost it.” Using the console, Millicent locked on to what her daughter had found. A grin tickled her lips; she knew exactly who was trying to break in. “She’s wily. Looks like she picked up a thing or two from Toton’s code. She’s gotten better. Still not as good as me, though.”
“She hasn’t been analyzing it in a serene environment.” Ryker leaned against the cockpit partition. “She’s been fighting for her life, most likely.”
“Who?” Roe asked.
“My sister. She’s been trying to get into the pirate network.” Millicent pulled up the firewall log as a list of all the things she needed to look into rolled through her mind. She glanced at Marie again, and sighed. Why fight it? “Marie, can you get an up-to-date overview of where the various conglomerates stand? Logs, hazard reports, social media—”
“Sure.” Marie turned away from the window, pulled her legs into a crossed position on the seat, and closed her eyes. Using just her mind, she could go deep into the systems and find twice the amount of information Millicent could, in half the time. The older she got, the more she could do. It was staggering what she was capable of—what the human brain was capable of.
Trent put his chin on his fist and stared at Marie, clearly thinking the same thing and marveling.
“Toton hasn’t gotten through in the seventeen months we’ve been on the rocket,” Ryker said, reading off the console screen.
“They’ve
tried, but no.” Millicent hacked into Moxidone’s decrepit intranet. Toton had ravaged it, breaking through the firewall and scrambling files. Millicent wouldn’t be surprised if they’d also somehow erased backups. “Looks like they had more important things to do.”
Gregon was next, and while the overall structure was just as shot and ragged, Millicent found wisps of a different sort of defense. A cyber wall of sorts that would take her ages to crack.
Pride welled up. Her sister had erected a small defense in the only way she knew how. She’d hidden her secrets well.
“There’s a pattern,” Marie said in a wispy voice. Her brow scrunched. “I can’t quite . . . Mom, look at the screen.”
Pages of data overtook Millicent’s screen and started to scroll. Millicent took control, organizing the communications and security logs into sections before poring over the data.
“Looks like Moxidone and Gregon have been moving their high-level staffers from one safe haven to the next.” Millicent flicked more data onto the screen. “People have still disappeared, though. Declared dead, it looks like.”
She latched on to the pattern her daughter had spotted. Toton had followed the group of high-level staffers from place to place, tracking them relentlessly, until one of the staffers was sent off with a team of highly experienced security. Only then had the threat to the other “important people” dwindled to manageable defensive proportions.
Toton had changed their target. Instead of following the group, they had begun to follow the individual.
Millicent knew who it was before she read the name.
“Danissa Lance,” her daughter said, as if reading her mind. “They tried to hide her identity but they are hacks, at best.”
“Toton has realized Danissa would work perfectly in their machines.” Millicent leaned against the craft wall.
“How do you know?” Ryker asked.
“Because they’ve followed her all over the city, or so these security logs say. Shit.” A sick feeling churned in Millicent’s gut. “The last is recent. They are down to a security team of two. Gregon hasn’t sent reinforcements.”
“Do you think we’re too late?” Roe asked.
Millicent slowly shook her head. “There’s no way to know. But we have to check it out.” She searched the database for Danissa’s last whereabouts. “We need to change our plans. She’s on borrowed time. We have to find her before they do.”
“Then we should split up.” Ryker gently pushed Millicent away from the console. “We need as many eyes and ears as possible, and we need them now. I can arrange for other crafts so we can hit the various destinations at once.”
“Remember that we need to see if the rumors about the gifted children are correct,” Trent said. “Preferably sooner rather than later, because if some of them are anything like Marie, they can help.”
“Once a lab rat, always a lab rat, huh, Trent?” Ryker said.
Trent’s brow fell low over his eyes. “They’re children. I’m thinking of the children!”
“Enough,” Millicent said, moving back to the screen. “I have a last known location. It’s on the other side of the city, upper level. Toton has the location, too. They have units there—”
“How do you know?” Roe finally rose to look at the console directly.
“Because I know how to get into their intranet, Roe,” Millicent said with barely contained impatience. “What did you think I was doing the whole time I was analyzing Toton’s code?”
“Farting around? How should I know. I thought that was code no one had ever seen before.”
“It was. And while it is advanced, much more advanced than most people could understand on this planet, I am not most people. And with Danissa’s help, I am confident I can take it down. But we’re going to need an army to get close enough.”
“We have a sizeable force with the Rebel Nation, and if we can enlist some clones, we will have our army. Roe, you take a team and get the clones—make sure they accept our offer of employment,” Ryker said, assuming command. He took his position in the middle of the floor so the group of rebels toward the back of the craft could both see and hear him. “Spread them out into the designated locations until we’re ready. I’m with Millicent. We’re going into the belly of the beast to get the systems specialist. Trent, you’re on lab duty. Get out as many of the kids as you can.”
“Wait a minute—by myself?” Trent clutched his shirt.
“What about me, Daddy?” Marie asked, her eyes snapping open again.
“Trent, not just you. A team will go with you. Marie, sweetie, this is too dangerous. We need to put you in a secure location.”
Marie’s face closed down and her jaw set. It was exactly the expression she’d had before sneaking aboard the ship.
“Rethink that, Ryker,” Millicent said in a low tone. She didn’t want to undermine his authority, but if she didn’t say something, the situation was liable to blow up in his face. Marie was too much like him for her own good, and she’d push against his authority with all she had. Millicent had seen it before. Often.
Ryker’s jaw had exactly the same set to it as Marie’s did. He stared at her. She glared back.
“She’d get out of the secure location and put herself at risk,” Millicent pushed quietly.
“You will be grounded for the rest of your life when we get back to Paradise, young lady,” Ryker said grudgingly. “You’ll go with us and do as we say.”
“Yes, Daddy.” Marie gave him a sweet smile.
“Is that safe?” Trent asked.
“She’s safer with me than anywhere else,” Ryker barked. “Land this craft and let’s get going. The clock is ticking. Soon Toton will realize there’s a new enemy on scene.”
“A new enemy, and three new incredibly competent staffers,” Roe said, eyeing Millicent. “If you’re right, and they are after your sister, you’ll draw their forces like flies to shit.”
Chapter 4
“We’ve got activity, cupcake,” Ryker barked a couple hours later from the console. “Your alert is going off. Someone is trying to get through your firewall.”
Millicent glanced up from the array of weaponry she’d spread out across the floor. Two of Ryker’s handpicked rebel troopers leaned forward in their seats. The other seven sat idly, placid and patient. They were high-level security guys from Gregon and Moxidone whom Roe’s people had easily snuck out of the system when all hell broke loose. None of them had wanted to go to Paradise. They’d all joined the rebel ranks to help free more of their brethren. Except for one—he was only interested in freeing a girl. Whatever worked.
Marie sat with her eyes closed and her legs crossed under her. “It’s from the same building that we’re going to. She’s picking at the wrong points. She doesn’t see the gaping hole.”
“There is no gaping hole.” Millicent sniffed, now wondering what her daughter saw that she had not . . .
“If you say so,” Marie said in a singsong voice.
“I’m not looking forward to the teenage years,” Millicent muttered.
“Do we let her in?” Marie asked.
“No.” Millicent stood and took the console. “She might dismantle some of my work without meaning to. I can’t risk making the intranet vulnerable. Any idea what she’s after?”
“Help, most likely.” Ryker shifted so he could lean into the cockpit. “Skies are clear of traffic. This city is in a bad state. The death toll must be three times what we were thinking.”
“At least,” Millicent said. “How much longer before we engage, and what do you need from me?”
“Fifteen minutes until showdown. I can see Toton’s arsenal gathered on the side of the building in question.” Ryker bent to look through the window. “They have quite a few forces, but I doubt they’ll be expecting an attack. Not with the skies looking like they do.”
Millicent took a deep breath. “I’m about to cross enemy lines again. If Toton didn’t notice the first time I poked into their system, t
hey’ll probably notice this time. We’re about to show our hand.”
“What hand is that?” one of the rebel troopers asked.
“What side we’re on. And that we’re not only hostile, but a huge threat.”
“What should I do, Mommy?” Marie asked, eyes still closed.
“Can you follow along with what I’m doing?” With a few quick strokes, Millicent let herself into the back door she’d created in Toton’s intranet and quickly got to work.
“Yes. Mostly. There’s a lot of disturbance.”
Millicent frowned. She wasn’t getting that from the console, but then, she had no idea how her daughter’s mind worked.
“Any of those crafts on manual?” Ryker asked, attaching an electromagnetic pulse device onto a large gun.
“No.” Millicent ran through the information. “None. No sentient beings in the crafts, either, as far as I can tell. Unless Toton names its staffers using serial numbers.”
“Then bring ’em down.” Ryker braced near the door. “Let’s go, men. Get armed and ready. This is when shit gets real.”
“We don’t dock first?” one of the guys asked, jumping up.
“What sort of a cushy job did you come from?” Ryker growled.
“Ryker doesn’t like doing things the easy way.” Millicent executed her various commands.
“This is the easy way, cupcake.”
Millicent rolled her eyes, then started hunting for the devices that were deployed to this building’s location. If she could cut their feed—
“Mommy! They’re overriding your commands.” Marie sat ramrod straight.
Millicent swore under her breath. “This will be the constant struggle against brain-powered machines.”
“I’ll take care of the crafts.” Ryker leaned over and slapped the command to open the craft door. Wind whipped through, flinging Marie’s hair around her head. He posed in the doorway with his gun held out before pulling the trigger. He shifted his stance, pulled the trigger again. Another shift, another squeeze of his finger.
