by M. R. Forbes
“Isabelle, why would the Iron General leave a canister containing a virus that kills trife here in Crosston? Why would he bring the trife to the community if his intent was the kill them? I’m missing something, and I can’t figure out what it is.”
He heard a pop a few dozen meters ahead of them, followed by a flash of light, followed by the appearance of an eerie white mist right in front of them.
“What if it doesn’t only kill trife?” she asked.
Hayden felt like his heart came to a sudden and complete stop.
Chapter 55
Nathan followed James and Doc out of the Crosston terminal. There was nothing but madness and chaos around them, the trife and the Crosston citizens locked in a sudden and unexpected war for supremacy.
Nathan knew how this was going to end. The trife would kill as many people as they could find, and only the ones who managed to hide would survive the night.
Wasn’t that what had happened before, during the original war? Even James’ power armor couldn’t stand up to the trife if enough of them attacked him at once. Sooner or later he would run out of ammunition, or the suit’s batteries would die. And then what? Even the augmentations that kept him alive needed power.
It wasn’t much different for anyone else.
James waved his rifle in an arc ahead of them, the plasma stream launching out ten meters and destroying everything in its path, both human and trife. Tents burned, shanties collapsed. The Iron General didn’t care. He led them through the clearing, to what had once been the wall leading outside. Now, it was a gaping hole and a pile of rubble where the wall and part of the rooftop had collapsed.
The outside of the building wasn’t much different than the inside. Less fighting maybe, as more of the Crosstons were able to hide in their trailers, or find shelter in the metal train cars. There were people on the terminal’s rooftop, firing down at the hundreds of trife still coming into the area from the south. There were trife scaling the walls to attack them. There were corpses of human and alien littering the ground.
A bright light locked onto them from above; the Liberator helicopter descending to them. The chopper’s mounted cannon opened up, sending a line of slugs into the trife closest to them, cutting them down in a vast swath. James covered the other side, his plasma rifle seeming to have an endless supply of fuel. Nathan watched as a projectile thunked out of a secondary barrel, arcing into the sky and then dropping in the middle of a group of trife. It detonated, killing dozens.
The helicopter touched down in front of them, and James urged them aboard. Doc and Nathan jumped on, James right behind them. Then they were airborne again, rising up and away from the fight.
Nathan looked down at the battlefield. Small fires were raging, plenty of gunfire, lots of dead people and dead trife. Was Hayden still alive in there? He had done what he could to save the Sheriff’s life. It was the least he could do. He realized now that Hayden wasn’t his enemy. He was trying to protect the people on his planet. Earth. He didn’t want to risk the information Nathan’s wife had gained falling into the wrong hands, whether they were Tinker’s or the Trust’s.
But Nathan had also decided he would roll with whatever outcomes came his way. He was closer to trusting Hayden, but he still didn’t trust him completely. He hadn’t been lying when he said he wasn’t going to trust anybody. He didn’t trust James, either. The general hadn’t lied about anything, but he had been careful about what he said and how he said it so he could remain honest.
It was a technicality at best.
“I told you to wait with the nomads,” James said, raising the visor of his helmet and glaring at Nathan.
The helicopter was two hundred meters off the ground, well away from the fighting below. Nathan noticed they were circling the Crosston compound. Was James enjoying the show?
“I tried that,” Nathan replied. “It didn’t work. Did you think I would stay put?”
James glowered, but he shook his head. “Not if you’re like me. No. But we had a deal, Nathan. You agreed to join the Liberators and follow my orders. You can’t go rogue. Not without consequences.”
“Fine. I got what I wanted. And you promised you would let me see what’s on it. I don’t care what else you do to me.”
“You might care once I decide what that is.”
“What’s done is done, General.”
James smirked. “I suppose it is.” He was silent for a few seconds. “Why did you want me to let Sheriff live?”
“I told you, I won’t kill a defenseless man.”
“Doc offered to do it. Why didn’t you let her?”
“Respect. A man fights that hard, he doesn’t deserve to die that way.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m surprised you left him alive, though,” Nathan said. “Aren’t you worried about the Trust?”
“If the trial goes as we’re hoping, we’ll never have to worry about the Trust again.”
“How will killing trife help you with that? The Trust doesn’t care about trife.”
“Of course they do. All of the leaders of Proxima are terrified the ones who sent the trife will return. But they won’t. Not if we do their will.”
“What do you mean?”
“It isn’t important right now. What is important is the result of the trial.” He pointed down toward the compound.
Nathan looked out, following the activity below. They were low enough he could see the people and the trife fighting one another. He could follow muzzle flashes and the outcomes at the other end as trife blood splattered and demons fell.
He traced the fighting, glancing from one smaller battle to the next. His eyes tracked further out, toward the trailers at the south end of the compound where it merged with the railyard. The fighting was lighter there, but it was still happening.
His eyes stopped when they landed on a figure with long hair. A woman. He recognized her clothes immediately. Rhonna. She had gotten a gun from somewhere and was standing on top of a rail car, firing down at the trife.
“Sir,” he said, pointing to her. “Rhonna is down there.”
“Who?” James asked.
“Rhonna. She’s my friend. She helped me survive when I landed in Manhattan.”
James lowered his visor, probably using it to zoom in on her. “That’s Rhonna? She’s the one who helped Sheriff escape.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons. Sir, we should go pick her up.”
“This isn’t a delivery service, Colonel,” James replied.
“Please, sir? She saved my life. That has to be worth something.”
James raised his visor. His lips pressed together, considering the request. “No.”
“Sir, I-”
“No,” James repeated. “Consequences, Nathan. If you hadn’t disobeyed my orders, maybe I would go down to rescue her. If you hadn’t disobeyed my orders, maybe she would be safe.”
Nathan felt the heat rise to his face in a fury. He wanted to punch James in his arrogant face. His muscles tensed, but he maintained enough control to stay seated, watching her. She was in a good position, safe enough from the trife for now. She only had to survive long enough for the canister to detonate and trife to start dying.
“I’ll remember this,” he said.
“I hope you do,” James replied.
They were silent for a handful of Nathan’s rapid heartbeats. Then he noticed a dim flash from the terminal. The canister had released its payload.
“Here we go,” James said.
“How long does it take for them to start dying?” Nathan asked.
“A few hours,” Doc said. “Long enough for them to carry it back to their nest, as long as we time the release properly. It spreads through contact and in the air, so within a few days, every trife within a hundred kilometers of here will hopefully be dead. Without a host, the virus itself dies off a few days later.”
“The Crosstons are going to be stuck fighting them for a few more hours?” Nathan said. He had though
t the virus would kill them almost right away.
“Probably not,” James said.
“What does that mean?”
James didn’t answer, leaving Nathan to watch. A white mist began to spread out from the hole in the terminal wall, reaching the people outside.
“The final version doesn’t have the accompanying particles, but the trials do so we can track the spread,” Doc explained.
The helicopter continued to circle. Nathan watched the mist spread out to the people fighting the trife below. They barely reacted to the smog, probably thinking it was smoke from one of the fires. They continued shooting at the creatures, shouting to one another, and attempting to defend themselves against the horde.
Then, almost suddenly, things started to change.
Trife started evacuating the inside of the terminal, rushing out through the hole, their movements slightly awkward and jerky. Doc pointed them out to him. “They’re infected,” she said.
They rushed back in the direction of the nest, retreating. He smiled when he saw it. The virus was working on some of them, at least. Hadn’t Doc said the last round was eighty percent effective?
The smile faded a few seconds later. He noticed the people on the ground closest to the terminal had stopped shooting. He saw that a lot of them were on their knees, or face down on the ground. No. Not most. All. He pointed to them. “Doc, what’s happening to them?”
She looked at him. Then she looked at James. Then he looked at James with sudden and painful understanding.
“It kills people too?” he asked softly.
James didn’t react. He shifted his attention back to the scene below.
“Doc?” Nathan said. “It kills people too?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“How effectively?”
She hesitated a moment before responding. “One hundred percent.”
“What?”
She swallowed hard. “We couldn’t make it work any other way. Making it safe for humans made it nearly useless against the trife.
He looked at James again. He couldn’t believe this. All of their talk of saving the world from the trife, and the only way they could do it was by killing all of the humans with them?
Not all, he realized. Edenrise had an energy shield around it. A shield he was willing to bet would kill the virus as effectively as it killed anything else that tried to pass through it.
His whole body turned cold, and he shivered from the sudden chill.
Son of a bitch.
He looked back down, finding Rhonna on top of the train car.
“General. James. We have to go down there and pick her up before it reaches her. Please.”
James ignored him, watching.
“General,” Nathan said again. “Damn it!” He stood up, moving toward James.
“Sit down!” James snapped. “This is our future, Nathan. Earth’s future. You’ve been here three days. You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t right for us. Proxima abandoned us. They don’t get to decide, either.”
Nathan dropped back into his seat. “Rhonna?”
“Consequences,” James said. “I made my decision. It’s final.”
Nathan found her again. The mist was approaching the rail yard, spreading quickly in the air. The battle between the humans and the trife was breaking apart, the demons running back to their nest while the humans fell and died. Rhonna was watching the creatures run, and she raised her arms in triumph, not understanding what was happening. The mist was creeping up on her, pooling below the car and starting to rise up and over. She looked down at it, confused.
He kept his eyes on her the entire time. He watched as she stumbled, falling to her knees. The tears came as she reached out to balance herself, putting her hand down on the top of the car. She was already too weak, and her arm gave out. She fell sideways and off the rail car to the ground beside it.
She didn’t move again.
“Buzzcut,” James said. “Take us home.”
The helicopter peeled away from Crosston, turning south. Nathan glanced over at Doc. Her face was stone. Her expression cold.
Hayden had been right the whole time, and he had been too stupid to listen. Damn it. The sheriff had been right about that too.
Now he was stuck with these people. These mass murderers. He was part of their disastrous plan. Rhonna was dead. Sheriff had been inside, which meant he was dead.
Everywhere he looked, all he saw were monsters.
He clenched his fist around Niobe’s ring. It was the only thing he had left to believe in.
Chapter 56
“Hold your breath,” Hayden said to the others, unsure if the action would have any effect on what they were about to drive through.
The RV passed directly through the center of the mist, the broad, flat front of the vehicle shoving it aside and then catching it in a vortex that pulled it down under the chassis, keeping it away from the door.
It only took a few seconds to pass to the other side, breaking free of the foggy grip and accelerating toward the northeast wall. He could see the large metal door there, currently rolled closed.
A trife jumped out in front of the RV. Isabelle didn’t hesitate, slamming into it and crushing it against the front, sending blood up onto the windshield. She turned the wheel, navigating around a few corpses on the ground, and then redirecting back.
“What was that?” Pyro asked. Hayden assumed she meant the mist.
“Tinker developed a virus,” he said. “To kill the trife.”
“Then why are we running away? If the trife all die, we’re in the clear.”
“I think it kills people too.”
Her face paled, and she sucked in a fresh breath and held it. There was no telling if it had already gotten into the RV. He had no idea how much longer they might have to live.
Isabelle slammed on the breaks as the RV reached the closed door. It was thick metal, too heavy to drive straight through.
“I’ve got it,” Hayden said, jumping down the steps to the floor.
He looked back at the mist behind them, gaining in a hurry. The trife were already reacting to it, their limbs moving oddly, their hissing silenced. He looked for one of the Crosstons, but there weren’t any nearby. He skipped the control panel for the door, kneeling in front of it and digging his augmented hand underneath. He lifted, fighting the resistance of the system and yanking the door upward. He heard something crack, and then it flew up freely, rolling back and slamming to a stop.
“Go!” Hayden shouted, grabbing the door frame and climbing in as the RV got moving once more.
They went through the door, out into the terminal parking lot. The sound of gunfire was diminishing, and when Hayden looked south, he could see trife moving out of the terminal and running away.
He also noticed the helicopter in the air, its spotlight flashing along the southern end of the terminal. Nathan was with them. Did he know what the Liberators had done? Did he know what Tinker had done?
It all made sense to him now. Everything Tinker had said on the radio. The cleansing. The will of the others. The rebirth of the world. If Isabelle was right and the virus killed both people and trife effectively, then he would get what he wanted. A chance to hit the reset button. To start the world over.
To be the one in power when it did.
Others only wanted to escape this fate. Tinker thought he could control it. And if his virus worked, maybe he could. But at what cost? If he could deliver the virus across the globe, he would kill thousands of innocent people. Maybe even millions.
Including Natalia and Hallia.
The thought made his blood run cold.
The RV sped east, toward the wide highway that backed the terminal. The mist was spreading behind it, out of the building to the people on the grounds.
Rhonna.
Hayden had almost forgotten her.
“Isabelle, where are the holding pens? Where did Loki send Rhonna?”
“On the south side,
in the rail yard,” she replied.
Damn it.
“Turn around,” he said. “We need to go south.”
“Sheriff, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gus said.
“Seconded,” Pyro said.
“My friend is back there. Isabelle, turn us around. Now!”
As long as he held her control device, she had no choice but to do as he said. She slowed the RV, bringing it to a full circle and getting it headed south, back toward the mist.
“Sheriff, please,” Pyro said. “If it’s as deadly as you say—”
“We don’t know it’s deadly,” he said. “It was just a guess. I could be completely…”
His voice trailed off as the vehicle’s headlights landed on a Crosston. He was on his knees. His skin was turning blue, and he was clutching at his throat like he couldn’t breathe. Isabelle brought the RV to a stop directly in front of him, and they watched as he toppled forward and didn’t move.
“That looks fucking deadly to me,” Gus said.
Hayden closed his eyes, cursing inwardly. He knew he couldn’t save her. She was probably already dead.
He looked up, finding the helicopter as it swung around and started south, leaving the scene.
“Isabelle, turn around again. Let’s get out of here.”
“As you say,” she replied.
“Get us heading south as soon as you can get clear of the area.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And call me Sheriff, not Father.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“Where are we going, Sheriff Duke?” Pyro asked.
“To Edenrise.”
“Because it’s safe there?” Gus asked.
“It won’t be for long.”
Chapter 57
The helicopter landed at Fort McGuire. Nathan and the two soldiers from Beta Squad departed while the chopper was quickly refueled.
James ordered the Beta soldiers to keep an eye on Nathan, holding him at gunpoint in the short-term. He knew Nathan was angry and upset, and he didn’t want him to do anything rash.
The soldiers brought Nathan to the barracks, leaving him in a windowless room with only one exit, and then taking up a guard position outside the door. Nathan slumped on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He couldn’t believe how badly things were working out for him.
