by Simon Curtis
They weren’t supposed to kill anything today. In fact, they’d been strictly forbidden from it. These ones were to be kept alive. He couldn’t understand. They’d never received an order like this during his time with the SHRF, never taken a single human hostage before, but he didn’t question it. It wasn’t his place. He was just glad he wouldn’t have to add yet another face to his already-filled nightmares.
He took one last breath in the hot sun before the voice sounded over the com unit in his ear.
“They’re here. Everyone in position.”
He thumbed the scar on his face one last time and stepped inside.
You’re doing this for her.
CHAPTER 4
ISAAK
My pulse is pounding.
Hushed voices of confused employees and customers waft through from the other side of the bathroom door. I pull the handle and slip out into the store.
The only light left in the entire arena-size store is coming in from the glass doors at the front. It reminds me of the caves back in Pacific.
A child starts crying, and the sound echoes down the aisles.
I have to find the others. Immediately.
I run past the registers, beyond the point where the light can reach, and into the blackness. “Azure!” I call out.
I hear footsteps filing in behind my back.
That might not have been the wisest decision in the world.
Click.
I turn to face the noise and a row of men—or women, I can’t tell—stand silhouetted in front of me. There must be thirty of them, all with their rifles pointed toward me.
Their triggers click in unison, and the sound of the strange buzzing bullets fills my ears. Before I can react, an electric-blue veil springs to life between me and the Sheriffs, cutting me off from the barrage. Each of the odd bullets sparks against the shield, then falls to the floor, spent.
“Come on!” Azure says as she grabs my wrist and pulls me down the aisle.
I feel so much faster than I did the other night, but it still isn’t fast enough to outrun a bullet. I can hear their feet on the tile behind us and the click of the triggers as they prepare to shoot. Each of my senses is heightened. I can feel everything happening around me.
Azure flares the blue veil behind us at regular intervals.
Why doesn’t she just leave it up?
When we reach the back of the store, Azure turns and pulses one of her shields up the side of the aisle we just came down, sending it crashing to the floor. Ten feet of metal and assorted home goods slam down onto the Sheriffs. She grabs my wrist once more and guides me through a pair of swinging doors.
We tear through the cavernous back area of the store until we come careening out of an emergency exit. The midday sun hits me like a smack in the face.
Squinting, I watch as a small fleet of the Sheriffs’ black SUVs tear out of the parking lot and into the street.
Azure stands by ready to pounce, one of her glass grenades in hand.
A gun fires in the parking lot at the front of the building. I jump and press my body to the wall as Azure grits her teeth and remains where she stands.
“No!”
A voice screams from the lot.
Another gunshot.
“No! Get back here!”
It’s Kamea’s voice.
Two more gunshots.
Azure abandons her post at the emergency exit and runs toward her in the parking lot.
I take a deep breath and follow.
• • •
“We can’t just let them have him. We can’t let them get away!” Kamea screams in Azure’s face. I’ve not seen her even temper falter until now.
“We can’t go after him. You have two Robots with you now. Those lives are worth more than that of a human hostage.”
The sound of the smack across Azure’s face makes my jaw hurt.
“How dare you,” Kamea says, shaking.
Azure doesn’t even flinch from the hit.
“Do you have any idea how many of you he’s saved?” Kamea continues. Her eyes boil with rage and tears and the deep, terrifying dread of loss. “Do you have any idea how much of his life he’s given up to help you and your kind, just because he believes in your right to exist?”
She begins to tremble as she fights back her tears and braces herself against our stolen car. She lets out a single, heaving sob and then regains her composure. The smooth indifference of a leader comes back to her face, in stark contrast with the tears glistening on her cheeks, as she raises her chin to address Azure once more.
“You’re right.” She nearly chokes on the words and takes a moment to get ahold of herself. “We need to move on.”
She opens the passenger side door and sits down. Azure moves to the driver’s side.
None of this makes sense to me.
I get into the backseat behind Kamea as it finally hits me that I’m never going to see JB again. I barely even got to know him, and yet I feel like he might’ve been the only person who genuinely wanted to help me.
I felt something with him.
“I can’t believe we’re not going after him.”
I say it to no one in particular.
Bile rises up from my stomach as I look out across the parking lot. Stunned customers flock around the glass doors at the entrance as police sirens approach. Mothers clutch their crying children, and dumbfounded employees gesture wildly with their hands as they cry into their phones.
We turn out of the lot and head back toward the freeway.
• • •
About an hour later, with my forehead pressed against the glass and the sun roasting my face, I feel a tingle in the back of my head, a ping in my consciousness. I haven’t stopped thinking about JB since we left—his eyes flashing up to meet mine in the rearview mirror, his smile, how little of him I actually knew—and it’s as though my thoughts of him are coalescing into a single point in my head.
I grab one of the sports drinks from a plastic bag on the floor and take a sip. A deluge of sensations washes into me. I sift through them as they pour and home in on the one I’m looking for. I can feel it. I know it.
Then it hits me. “I know where he is.”
Azure doesn’t visibly react, but Kamea turns to face me.
“What do you mean?” Her eyes scan my face for any sign of a bluff.
“I don’t know how, but I know where he is. I can feel it.”
Kamea looks to Azure. She doesn’t take her eyes off the road.
“Azure, we have to go back. We can’t leave him with them,” I say, trying to make eye contact with her in the mirror.
She doesn’t react.
“Azure, please.” Kamea’s voice is barely a whisper.
Azure slows the car and moves out of the left lane into the rocky median to our left. She makes a U-turn into the left lane of the east-bound side of the highway.
A trail of brown dust floats in our wake.
• • •
About twenty minutes later I tell Azure to take the nearest exit. We are still outside of Albuquerque, out in the middle of the desert somewhere. I don’t know exactly where we are going, but I know we are only a few miles away.
We make a left over an overpass and head north.
Very quickly, red rock terrain shoots up all around the road. No one else seems to be out here. The rock formations turn into cliffs on either side of us.
Azure huffs in the front seat.
I know what she’s thinking: This road would be the perfect place to set a trap.
I grip the handle above the door and my breath quickens as I wait for something to happen.
But nothing does.
The rocks give way on our right and a wide, flat expanse opens up before us. Mounds of the red rocks dot the entire field, and at the far end lies a remote industrial park and a large gray warehouse.
“There!”
How do I know this?
Azure doesn’t slow down.
&nbs
p; “What are you doing? I said he’s in there!”
“So should we just pull up front and wait while you ring the doorbell and ask for him to come out?” Azure says, glaring back at me in the rearview mirror.
I bite my bottom lip and watch as the valley disappears from view behind another giant mound of rocks.
About a half mile farther down the road, Azure slows the car. She takes a right into an open patch of gray dirt. The car bucks and tumbles until we pull behind another one of the rock mounds and park.
The car shuts down and the silence is deafening.
I take a deep breath and open the door.
The dry, desert air drapes over me like a blanket. The sun is bright and warm, and what little breeze there is only seems to deaden the sound around us.
Azure scans our surroundings and points behind us, toward a ridge of rocks.
“The warehouse you saw should be a little less than a mile that way. We walk, single file, and keep as close to these rock formations as we can. Once we are in range, we’ll assess the building and develop an entry plan from there.”
Azure looks to Kamea like she’s waiting to be challenged. Kamea nods and opens the back of the car. She unzips her big black duffel and turns back to us.
“Grab some gear,” she says, and steps aside.
Azure looks at her suspiciously, then peers into the bag.
“You’ve had all of this the entire time and haven’t mentioned it until now?” Azure asks, anger rising in her voice. “You realize your friend might not even be in this predicament had you thought to include me in this little secret sooner?”
“I wasn’t sure that I could trust you. I’m still not. But I really don’t have a choice now, do I?”
They stand practically nose to nose, glaring into each other’s eyes with hard fury. Azure’s cold steel to Kamea’s smooth obsidian.
“Guys,” I say, voice slightly cracking.
They both turn to me and back down.
“Come, Isaak,” Azure says as she beckons me over to the bag. I lean in and take a look at the glistening array of metallic tools unlike any I’ve ever seen before.
“Laser gun,” she says as she removes a pair of mundane-looking silver rings from a pouch at the side. She slips one onto her forefinger and the other onto the thumb of the same hand.
I don’t even bother asking.
She finds a case of several more of the glass orb grenades. Seeing them sparkle in the sun turns my stomach, remembering what they did to the Sheriffs that night. She empties the entire case and keeps looking.
“Here we are,” she says as she pulls a gleaming chrome rod from the bottom of the bag. The entire surface is smooth except for a crown of metal prongs at one end. The opposite end has a rubberized handle. She hands it to me, and I take it by the grip. A subtle vibration rings to life inside of it the moment my hand clasps around it, like gripping the metal of a gong after it’s been rung.
“This is a Kinetic Disruption Pulse Rod.”
“What does it do?” I examine the metal prongs near the top, and Azure bats it away from my face.
“Be careful,” she says as she regains her composure. “That,” she continues, “is capable of creating a pulse of kinetic energy that catalyzes a domino effect of energy and releases upon impact.”
“Think of it like a gust of wind that makes lots of smaller gusts in every direction once it hits something,” Kamea says.
“A very powerful gust of wind,” Azure adds.
I can’t help but keep the look of disappointment off my face. There’s an open trunk of superweapons in front of me and I get stuck with a wind stick.
“It’s really powerful, and really dangerous,” Kamea says, as though she can read my mind.
I look at it again. It is a beautiful piece of equipment, I must admit—simple, clean, and perfectly weighted in my hand. I wonder what it’s like to use it.
“They’re incredibly useful in small spaces when you need to create some chaos,” Azure says as she pockets a few more items. She closes the hatch and dusts off her hands.
“When it comes time to use it, squeeze the handle to start the charge. You’ll feel the vibration inside intensify rapidly until it almost makes your hand go numb. It’s very quick. Then, aim it at your target and release your grip. It won’t make impact as fast as a bullet, but when it does, you will know.”
I lift it up and take aim at a boulder across from the car. A subtle yet powerful vibration sends chills up my arm.
“Don’t fire that out here,” Kamea says. “If they’re not aware of our presence yet, then they definitely will be once you set that off.”
I lower the rod, and the vibration fades.
• • •
The sun bears down on the back of my neck as I crouch down behind a rock formation a few hundred yards away from the building. It took us almost an hour to make it to our current hiding spot, and Azure has been gone almost another hour, scouting the perimeter of the building. Thus far there hasn’t been any sign of occupation. There hasn’t been any sign of life at all. I fixate on the point in my head that I felt before.
JB is inside. I don’t know how I know it, but I do.
Kamea sits in the dirt with her back to the rock, eyes closed. I wonder what her life must’ve been like up until this point—how she became a part of the Underground, when she met JB, if she still has any family. I doubt it. These people don’t seem as though they have any ties left to the outside world.
Outside world.
I can’t believe I no longer feel like a part of the world I grew up in—the only world that I knew existed up until a few days ago. How long have these people been fighting? How long has someone like Kamea been running? I think about Jonathan and wish I could talk to him, if only for a moment. I hope he’s okay.
A crunch in the sand gives Azure away only a few short feet from us. If she were an enemy, we’d be dead.
Kamea opens her eyes and waits for her assessment as she crouches down in front of us.
“That’s your only way in,” Azure says, barely above a whisper. She nods to a large cluster of air-conditioning units sitting against the gray wall of the warehouse. A pair of narrow ventilation ducts connect them to the building near the roof. “Can you make it up?” she asks Kamea.
Kamea gives a nod.
“You’ll go in and locate him. If you make it into the ventilation system, it shouldn’t take very long. I’ll give you exactly half an hour, at which point Isaak and I will come in the front doors and create a diversion. We should be more than enough to draw them off while you get him out. The timing will be tricky, but I don’t see any other option.”
“There might be another way,” Kamea says. Her hushed voice sounds as dusty as the hot air around us. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a phone. I can see Azure shrink back.
“If this isn’t timed perfectly, it will be for nothing,” Kamea says. “Who knows when I will find him in there. It might be in an hour, maybe in five minutes. A diversion has no chance of working if the timing is off.”
Azure clenches her jaw and studies Kamea’s face.
She reaches out and swipes a single finger over the phone. The screen lights up. I lean over to see what it says, and Kamea tilts it toward me. A new message has arrived from a long sequence of seemingly random letters and numbers.
FINE.
Kamea types out a reply and sends it.
Azure nods in response. She received the message in her head.
Kamea stands and cracks her neck. She puts a hand on my shoulder and locks eyes with mine. They are deep and dark and full of emotions I can’t even begin to sift through. She gives me a wink and takes off. I carefully peer around the edge of the rock to watch her.
She bolts across the dirt as fast as she can. In a span of seconds that feel like years, she makes it behind the AC units. I crouch back behind the rocks and release the breath I’d been holding.
Azure stares ahead.
Now
we wait.
• • •
It’s been two hours. Or maybe it’s been twenty minutes. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s been too long. The sun is on the far side of the horizon now, and the bright, golden heat is melting into a rusted orange. She’s been caught by now. I know it. They’re probably torturing her alongside JB, prying out whatever information they can about the Underground from their bloody, screaming bodies. I put my middle finger in my mouth and start to chew the nail.
Azure stands up and looks at me. “Remember: Squeeze the handle, aim, release.”
My pulse quickens.
“Let’s go.” She offers a hand and lifts me up from the ground.
This is it.
I follow her around the rocks and into the open space. She saunters at a cool, even pace toward the front of the building, and I follow. I feel exposed and terrified. It’s too quiet out here. If the Sheriffs are in there with JB, then why isn’t anyone out here guarding the place? It doesn’t make any sense.
Azure stops in front of the building. “Remember, Isaak, they will kill you if they can. Don’t let them live long enough to try. Stay behind me.” With that, she walks toward the doors.
My head is spinning as we approach. Azure looks calm and collected, taking deliberate, assured strides across the desert floor to our potential doom. She looks cool and powerful, and I feel like I’m going to vomit. My legs won’t stop shaking.
“Kill the ones with Taserifles first,” she adds.
Without missing a beat, she reaches the door and kicks it in. The sound of crashing metal smashes the silence into a million pieces as the door goes flying down the hallway behind it, hinges and all.
She charges into the debris and sends up one of her shields just as the sound of gunfire fills the air. A deluge of bullets is unleashed upon us in a narrow hallway, but none make it past her electric veil. She pulses it out before us with every wave of bullets, predicting exactly when they will fire. Her stride is uninterrupted as we march down the hallway. Near the end, I notice her hand dart into her pocket. She lets her shield flicker away for barely a moment, just long enough to toss the glass orb into the room beyond.
