Apocalypse Five: Archive of the Fives Book One

by Stacey Rourke

  “Don’t goad him,” Reno warned, peering at the gun in his sister’s trembling hand.

  Venturing closer, Detroit’s boots squeaked across the floor. “But, people down here will care. They know you’ve been lying to them, and they’re done, Washington. Done with the subjugation. Done with starving while you fill your plate. Done … with you.”

  “You think I need them, or your team?” Washington’s right eye twitched with rage. “Juneau, click off the safety, if you please.”

  Honoring his request because she had no choice, a whimper escaped Juno’s clamped lips. Torrents of tears dripped from her chin as she clicked the button that brought the weapon to life with a high-pitched squeal.

  “That screen behind you? That is a satellite grid that allows me to find anyone, anywhere within my dominion. Want to venture out into the nothingness that lies behind that?” Washington challenged with the lift of one brow. “Be my guest. It would save me the hassle of killing you. In the meantime, I think it’s time for a lesson in the potency of my power. There’s nowhere any of you can go that I can’t find and destroy you. Juneau … pull the trigger.”

  Finally, Juneau found her voice, self-preservation forcing a sob from her quaking shoulders. In spite of her anguish, her finger tightened on the trigger.

  “No!” Reno’s hand shot out, wrestling with whether he could tackle his sister and tear the gun away from her in time.

  “One moment, Juneau.” Washington’s raised finger appeared in the projection in his casual effort to halt her. “This is an excellent teaching moment. You were all raised to be soldiers. To put the mission before all else. Yet, you let yourselves form emotional connections to each other. I hope you see that as the mistake it is, now that you’re faced with how easy it makes it for me to manipulate you. As you were, Juneau.”

  “Please!” Catching her wrist with the opposite hand, Juneau fought against the betrayal of her own appendage.

  “That’s right!” Detroit eagerly agreed. Head whipping in Reno’s direction, the words tumbled from her lips fast and furiously. “We’re a team. One that is stronger from each of us having our own strengths and specialties! Like me, I know weapons and engineering. Which means, I’ve studied the mechanics of implants like this. There was a way to short them out.” Fingers outstretched, as if the information was about to float by so she could grab it, Detroit frantically searched her memory.

  As her pleading eyes beseeched her brother, Juneau’s face crumpled. “I’m so sorry,” she hiccupped.

  “Fight this!” Reno demanded. “You’re a ginger! We eat souls for breakfast, isn’t that what all of the other cadets used to say? You don’t go out like this. Do you understand me?”

  While Washington kept his impassive front firmly in place, the slight tightening of his jaw hinted at his unease that his order had yet to be carried out. “Not that your attempts aren’t endearing, but I’m growing bored with this. Juneau, pull the trigger!”

  Something in the boom of his voice reminded Detroit of the energy required of the human body for every motion or act to be carried out. “She has to be the charge! The current in her own body can generate a strong enough jolt to short out the system!”

  “How?” Reno pressed, stare lobbing from Detroit to Juneau and back again.

  “Juneau! Squeeze that trigger!” Washington thundered. On his end, he heightened the settings of the implant. The potency of its ripping current tore through Juneau, arching her back as her muscles clenched tight.

  Lost in her own mind, Detroit’s eyes fluttered side to side as she worked the equation. “Heightened endorphins would be mandatory. Safe to say we’ve accomplished that—”

  Released from her punishing strike, Juneau’s spine straightened. This time, it was a steady, purposeful grip that raised the taser to her head.

  “We’re running out of time!” Face blanched of color, the fatal conclusion played out across Reno’s horrified features.

  The answer came in an icy wave of awareness, bobbing hope further from reach. “She has to act against it. A blatant act, completely opposite of the command it’s enforcing on her.”

  “That’s the entire problem!” Reno bellowed, stabbing his hand in his sister’s direction.

  “I can’t! I’m sorry!” Legs buckling, Juneau’s knees slammed to the ground. Whether she was talking to Washington, or them, they didn’t know.

  “Pull the trigger! Now, soldier!”

  “Self-preservation is powerful, that’s why she’s been able to fight it this long,” Detroit explained. “But it needs to be an even more powerful impulse than that.”

  The words barely left Detroit’s lips, when Reno’s narrow chest expanded with purpose. “I know what I have to do.” Drawing his pistol, he dropped to his knees and mirrored his twin’s pose.

  The act was jarring, and cracked a nick in Washington’s hold. “Wh-what are you doing?” Juneau stuttered.

  “Remember that horrible old movie about the boat sinking you begged me to watch? The one where the guy could have easily fit on the door?” he explained with a serene calm that contradicted the frenzied scene. “I said no, that I couldn’t endure one more sappy movie. But, I sat there with you anyway and listened to every word. The girl was dangling off the edge of the ship and the guy told her ‘you jump, I jump.’ That’s what’s happening here. I refuse to live without you, June-bug. So, if you jump, I jump. We came into this world together. I’m ready to go out together.”

  Face tipping toward the camera, Washington’s face loomed larger. “Cadet 1205, I am prepared to neutralize you if you do not submit! Discharge that weapon, immediately!”

  A sad smile tugging at the corner of his lips, Reno cocked his weapon. “I love you, June.”

  Chin quivering, Juneau adjusted her hold on the grip. “I love you, Benny.”

  “You jump, I jump,” he softly soothed. “On the count of three?”

  “Uh … Reno, I think you have a blatant misunderstanding of what I said!” Detroit interjected.

  A cackle of laughter barked over Washington’s hologram’s feed. “Two for one! See what happens when you try to fight against me?”

  “One …” Reno coaxed.

  “You don’t have to do this. You can, and you will, go on without me.”

  “Two …”

  “Orion’s Belt, Reno!” Grabbing at his sleeve, Detroit tried to drag him to his feet. “Listen to me, damn it! Don’t throw your life away over this!”

  “Three.”

  A single shot rang out, and the room fell silent.

  Blinking in disbelief, Juneau let her gun fall to her side. Behind Reno, pieces of the grid screen rained to the ground in a tinkling of glass shards, taken out by the blast of Juneau’s taser. Desire to save her brother forced the gun away from her temple, an act that shorted out her implant with a smoldering fizzle.

  Washington dragged his fingers through his hair, rolled his shoulders, and fought to keep a hold of his slipping composure. “None of this matters. It’s all insignificant. My soldiers are swarming that compound. They will ensure this act of insurgency doesn’t stand.”

  “Hey! My passcode works here!” Auggie chirped as he trotted into the room. A beat to read the room and he shifted back to the ramrod straight business setting. Going so far as to clap off a salute to his team leader, his stare never drifted from the bust of the loathsome chancellor. “The compound has been cleared. All remaining soldiers have been detained or retreated into the woods like the cowards they are.”

  Nostrils flaring, lasers of hate beamed from Washington’s flickering projection.

  With the tip of her tongue pressed to her front teeth, Detroit sauntered across the room to take a seat at the terminal he haunted. Elbows on the console, she leaned into his hovering image. “Hear that, Chancellor? The Fortress is ours, and your grid has been destroyed. You enjoy your comfy little palace in the stars. Because next, we’re coming for you.”

  Leaving her threat dangling in the air, Detro
it pushed her chair back. She borrowed Juneau’s taser and blasted three shots into the terminal. The entire communications system exploded in a spray of sparks.

  Washington stared at the wall of sizzling static on his monitor. He inhaled once, twice, and again. Each breath was more fevered and ragged from the last. Unable to fix the cap on his fury, he shoved his chair back. Springing to his feet, a scream sliced from his lungs. One potent sweep of his arm and he cleared the surface of his desk.

  Lansing stood in the corner—hands folded, expression a passive neutral. She allowed the chancellor his moment to mutter expletives to himself, before he spun on her wearing the ugly mask of hate.

  “What are the latest reports?” he barked.

  Tapping at her tablet, Lansing cued them up. “The grid is down, sir. As is the communications system, which makes further status updates from the Fortress impossible to retrieve.”

  A cloak of silence fell. Washington paced the perimeter of his office before flopping back down in his chair. Fingers steepled beneath his chin, he attempted to calm his breathing with a cleansing breath. “I want the next team called in. Don’t worry about making them camera-worthy. I doubt they will live that long. I want them vicious and deadly. Find me the candidates that have been penalized for excessive violence. Those are the ones we want. We’re going to form a new team and turn them loose. I want those kids dead, and their heads on my desk.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lansing’s gears whirred as she dipped in a formal bow. “I will have your new team for you by morning.”

  “Oh, and, Lansing? Change their call sign. Initiate order 0504.” A nod of dismal and he waved her toward the door.

  Hugging her tablet to her chest, Lansing made her exit in full robotic indifference.

  Bangor appeared from a side hall, obviously waiting for Lansing to appear.

  “Are they still alive?” she asked, falling into step alongside her fellow Handler.

  “They are. Though I can’t say for how long.” Lansing offered a nod of acknowledgment to a passing coder.

  Shoulder pressed to Lansing’s, Bangor dropped her voice to a secretive whisper. “Did you erase anything in the systems that can trace this back to us?”

  Lansing clicked over to heat sensory viewing, and scanned the space for human activity. Determining them to be alone, momentarily at least, she clamped onto Bangor’s throat and dragged her into a nearby utility closet.

  Slamming Bangor against the wall, which knocked a mop and bottle of glass cleaner to the floor, Lansing pinned her there with the heel of her palm pressed to her chrome clavicle. “When you came to me with the idea of sending them down without a simulation code, what was your reason? What did you say to me?”

  Bangor’s eyes morphed to digital dots as she searched her memory storage. “That Augusta would die if we didn’t get him out.”

  “That’s right. It was just a matter of time until the entire team was wiped out in one brutal fashion or another. This was the only way we could keep them safe. Now, they need us more than ever. If we want to help, we can’t be found out and recycled. That requires silence and careful planning. Is your programming capable of that, or shall I deactivate you now?”

  “Due to my latest emotional upgrade, I do determine myself to be satisfactory,” Bangor stated, unperturbed by the threat.

  Releasing her, Lansing rolled the sockets of her joints to return herself to neutral stance. “Their call sign is being changed effective today. I have been ordered to issue the alert. After that, they will become the most hunted bounty in the galaxy.”

  If it was possible for an android to exhibit terror, Bangor accomplished it. “You don’t mean …”

  “Yes.” Folding her hands over her tablet, Lansing’s stare locked with Bangor’s in a system sharing moment of mutual understanding. “Effective today, they become the Rogue Five.”

  About the Author

  Utopia Award Winner Author of the Year 2018

  Utopia Award Winner for Best Villain 2018 for Ursela in Rise of the Sea Witch

  Readers' Favorite YA Fantasy Bronze Medal Winner 2017

  Readers' Favorite Fantasy Silver Medal Winner for 2015

  Turning Pages Magazine Winner for Best YA book of 2013 & Best Teen Book of 2013

  RONE Award Winner for Best YA Paranormal Work of 2012

  Young Adult and Teen Reader voted Author of the Year 2012

  Stacey Rourke is the award winning author of works that span genres, but possess the same flare for action and snarky humor. She lives in Florida with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and two giant dogs. Stacey loves to travel, has an unhealthy shoe addiction, and considers herself blessed to make a career out of talking to the imaginary people that live in her head.

  Visit her at www.staceyrourke.com