by J. W. Elliot
Kaiden’s head still ached even after nearly two weeks since Raven’s betrayal. He blinked at the pain and suddenly remembered an experience he had long ago. It was foggy and filled with rage.
He was amid a crowd of jostling teenagers pumping his fist into the air. “Save the children. Kill the clones,” he had screamed at the top of his lungs. How could they create clones when the earth’s population had already passed twenty billion, and ecosystems were collapsing? People were starving in every megacity on earth. Instead of perfecting food production and combating disease, the government was spending trillions of dollars on a secret clone program that meant they had given up on humanity. It was immoral. It was wrong. “Save the children. Kill the clones,” Kaiden screamed again.
“There’s one,” someone shouted. The mob surged with a roar, and Kaiden was with them. It was time to do something real to stop this evil.
A blonde woman exiting a skyscraper spun around with her eyes wide in terror.
“Get her!”
Kaiden was in the forefront of the mob, the first to grab her. There was no way to tell by sight if a person was a clone, but the crowd was so worked up, no one cared. Kaiden was the first to swing. She was screaming and shrieking, and then the mob overwhelmed them, and Kaiden was trampled until he managed to crawl away. When he came to his feet panting, his body aching from the pummeling he received, he raised his hands and found them covered in blood. Horror filled his chest. What had he done?
“Captain?” Quill’s voice blared from his earpiece. “He’s moving.”
“Jam,” Kaiden ordered. “Move in.”
Kaiden shivered from the horrible images, clipped into the line hanging over the side of the building, and zipped down into the alleyway. He divided his attention between his team’s movements and the necessity of keeping his feet from breaking through the windows. It had been necessary to hide on the rooftop to avoid the security search of the plaza and to oversee his team’s movements. But now, he needed to be on the ground helping his team.
He hit the ground, unclipped, and raced into position. Quill approached the senator from the left, Birch from the right, and Greyson from behind. Birch dropped a canister, and blue smoke billowed through the crowd. Someone shouted.
Security emerged from one of the buildings and pelted toward the senator. Kaiden knelt and dropped both of the security officers with tranquilizer darts. They toppled to the ground twitching spasmodically as the tranquilizers did their work. The van rolled forward when Kaiden saw the little boy sitting in the plaza in the path the van would take. The child was scribbling on the stones with chalk, oblivious to his peril. Where had he come from? Where were his parents? Kaiden cursed. Jade wouldn’t be able to see him before the truck plowed him over. In a sudden burst of desperation, Kaiden sprinted toward the boy.
“Watch the kid!” He yelled into the mic.
“What?” Quill said.
“Jade, the kid.”
The van careened around the corner. Kaiden jumped, grabbed the child, and rolled with him in his arms. The bumper clipped Kaiden’s hip and sent him flying. Bullets kicked up fragments of rock all around him.
“We’re taking fire,” Birch screamed.
“Kaiden! Iris! The sniper!” It was Quill’s voice.
Kaiden set the boy in the shelter of a doorway and jumped up to see Quill and Birch, ducking into the crowd toward the van, dragging the staggering senator behind them. Greyson came behind them, his gun drawn. The blue smoke from Birch’s smoke grenade wafted over the plaza, providing a bit of cover. Kaiden dove behind a concrete barricade, found the sniper, and shot a dart in his chest. But it was too late. The senator’s guards were alerted now and converging. The crowd stampeded for cover, leaving Quill, Greyson, and Birch exposed. Iris began dropping guards with her sniper rifle. Kaiden shot several more guards, but the guards’ electromagnetic pistols sliced indiscriminately through the crowd. People shrieked in terror. Quill jerked. He spun and fired, but his feet weren’t under him. He stumbled and staggered, desperately trying to reach the van.
Kaiden sprinted for the van, fighting the pain in his hip and shooting every guard he could see through the drifting smoke. Others fell, and he knew Iris was trying to cover them, as well. Quill staggered to his knees, dragging Birch to a stop. She took one look at the senator and released his arm. The senator sagged to the concrete, lifeless and unmoving. This couldn’t be happening. Everything was going wrong.
Birched grabbed Quill instead, and they lurched toward the van. Greyson tumbled to the ground, but he rolled and came to his feet, his pistol blazing. The guards dispersed, seeking cover behind trashcans and statues. Several of them grabbed up the senator and dragged him from the plaza. The team launched themselves into the van, and Jade sped off into the streets. Bullets clicked against the sides of the armored vehicle.
“Quill!” Kaiden knelt beside his friend on the floor of the van. The pool of blood was spreading underneath him. Birch ripped two bandages from her bag, threw one to Kaiden, and rolled Quill onto his side. She pressed the bandage to the exit wound while Kaiden pressed another bandage to Quill’s chest. Blood soaked the bandage immediately. Birch’s gaze found Kaiden’s.
“Why isn’t the INCR working?” Kaiden said. He grabbed another bandage, desperate to save his friend. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.
Birch shook her head. “He’s bleeding out too fast,” she said. “That bullet must have clipped an artery.”
Chapter Seven
Sabotage
Quill was dead. It seemed impossible. How could that silly grin and irreverent laughter be erased from the world? Snuffed out in an instant of horror and blood. Kaiden still couldn’t believe he’d seen the light fade from Quill’s eyes. He couldn’t process that he would never stay up all night with Quill, playing video games while Vivaldi, Schubert, and Beethoven blared from Quill’s top-of-the-line HHC surround sound speakers.
Kaiden peered out the window in one of the tiny rooms of the T-60 Python gunship sent to extract them from New York. He wanted to be alone. The city spilled out beneath them as the airship banked and turned west. The buildings fell away to be replaced by long strips of green land carefully laid out along the banks of the dwindling rivers. In between the green oases, everything was brown and barren.
He had been told that vast forests once covered the land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. What might that have looked like? Kaiden grunted. What did it matter if forests once covered the land? Nothing at all mattered anymore since his friend was dead. They hadn’t extracted the senator, and every private aerial-bot and hovercraft camera in the plaza probably had footage of the whole thing.
Kaiden toyed with Quill’s wrist terminal. He had slipped it off his wrist when it was obvious that he was dead. This whole thing had been wrong from the start. An inexperienced team should never have been sent on such a high profile assignment in such an exposed position. Now Quill was gone forever.
Kaiden tried to breathe normally—to control the choking anguish that burned in his chest and the hot fury boiling just beneath the surface. He couldn’t cry. Quill wouldn’t want him to. They had rushed Quill away to a hospital unit, but Kaiden knew it was no use.
It was all Kaiden’s fault. He should have refused the mission, but he had gone ahead despite his misgivings. He had been trained to trust his instincts, and he had ignored them. First, there was the explosion and the murder of the clones and his crew. Now, his best friend’s body was being shipped back to Ararat. He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t.
Kaiden stuffed the wrist terminal into his pocket and clicked on the news feed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched the news, but he didn’t want to think just now, and he might as well be prepared when he had to face Rio again. Rio would discipline him for sure this time.
Kaiden dropped into a chair as the female broadcaster stepped in front of
a huge screen showing the earth with a belt of satellites encircling it. “Now for the news roundup,” she began. “The Equitable Trade Association has fined the Greater South America Co-Prosperity Sphere one billion dollars for allegedly selling a stripped-down version of its software to African states for the same price it charges the more developed regions.
“The Chinese Free State has launched an offensive against Indian forces in their decades-long struggle to control the water flowing from their Himalayan stronghold. Water politics continues to promote instability in the International Confederation of States as the United States of North America disputes the United Slavic States for the rights to melt arctic ice for drinking water.”
This is why Kaiden didn’t watch the news. It was too depressing. He adjusted his seat to relieve the pain in his hip. The music played, and the words “Breaking News” flashed onto the screen.
“We now have more information,” the broadcaster continued, “on the terrorist attack at an anti-clone rally in the Plaza of Global Cooperation in New York. It is believed that at least two terrorists were injured in the fighting, but both escaped. Early reports suggest that Senator Christopher Benton was assassinated, and the terrorists attempted to steal his body. Three civilians were mortally wounded, and fourteen remain under medical care.”
Aerial images of the plaza with people scrambling in all directions and Birch and Greyson dragging Quill to the van panned across the screen. One of the videos depicted Kaiden scrambling away from a spray of bullets as he ducked behind a concrete barrier with the boy in his arms.
Kaiden sat up, suddenly alert. Those bullets were not coming from the sniper he had shot. The angle was wrong. And Quill had been hit in the chest, not the back. Kaiden tried to remember if any guards had been in front of them, but he was sure they hadn’t been. The only sniper he had seen had been in the wrong position to fire those bullets.
“The Destroying Angels deny involvement,” the reporter continued. “In response to our request for information, they released the following statement: ‘It would be a complete contradiction of our platform to attack an anti-clone demonstration. We support any and all attempts to halt the willful and illegal creation of clones who can only take jobs and food away from our own children.’ We will continue to follow this story…”
Kaiden clicked it off and rose.
He tapped his wrist terminal to send on Birch’s frequency alone.
“Where are Iris, Jade, and Flint?” He whispered into his mic.
Birch’s voice came on. “I left them in loading bay cleaning their weapons.”
“Where are you?”
“Relaxing.”
“Stop relaxing and find Greyson. We need to talk.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“What about the others?”
“Just the original members of the team, for now,” he said. “Meet me in the weapon room in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes later, Birch lounged with her feet propped up on a chair and her arms crossed, the picture of ease. But her gaze followed Kaiden as he entered. Birch was a pretty, slender young woman with light brown hair and big, dark eyes. If you didn’t know her, she would be easy to underestimate.
Greyson leaned on the wall by the door with his hands in his pockets. He had not been injured in the fighting as the news reporters thought. Instead, he’d simply tripped over a fallen guard. Greyson kept a little patch of short, black hair on top of his otherwise shaved head. Though he had been top of the class his year, he had been passed over for captain because of an unfortunate passion for alcohol.
Still, he was a genius at grappling and small arms. That’s why Kaiden picked him for his team. Still, Kaiden knew Greyson often chafed at having to take orders when he thought he should be the one giving them.
Kaiden gestured for them to turn off their mics and their wrist terminals. Then he pulled out the little DWJ Quill had given him and clicked it on. It didn’t matter if TAP knew he was meeting with members of his team. They would expect him to. But he didn’t want them to know what he was going to say—not yet, anyway.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
“I noticed,” Birch replied.
“Quill was murdered,” Kaiden said.
“What makes you say that?” Greyson asked. He shifted to stare directly at Kaiden and folded his arms.
“He took that bullet in the chest,” Kaiden said.
“So?” Birch said.
“So there were no security personnel to your front. Only one person we know could have fired that shot.”
“You’re suggesting that Iris killed him?” Greyson said.
Kaiden nodded. “And I took fire from the same direction.”
“No,” Greyson said.
“No what?”
“You can’t shift the focus away from the fact that you botched this job by calling it too late and wasting your time on that kid.”
Kaiden bristled. “Be careful, Greyson,” he said, “or I’ll cite you for insubordination.”
Birch shifted nervously.
“Yes, sir,” Greyson said, but the muscles in his jaw flexed.
“It was supposed to be a non-lethal extraction,” Kaiden said. “And that included civilians.”
“Sacrifices have to be made, sir,” Greyson said. He paused, calculating. “But that doesn’t explain why you called it too late.”
Kaiden ground his teeth. “I didn’t call it too late. We had plenty of time. If Iris hadn’t wasted time shooting at me and Quill, we would have made it.”
Greyson couldn’t keep the smirk from his face. “With all due respect, sir, Iris only had tranquilizers like the rest of us.”
Kaiden raised his eyebrows. “You don’t know that,” he said.
“Look,” Birch said, interrupting Greyson’s reply, “I think the captain is onto something. There’s no way Quill could have been hit from the front, but he was.”
Greyson snorted. “So, what are you going to do about it? You picked her for the team.”
“I’m going to make a full report to Rio.” Kaiden raised his eyebrows. “Including your lack of respect for your commanding officer.”
“You could get us all disciplined, sir,” Greyson said.
Kaiden frowned. He had considered that, and he was trying to work out a way to avoid it. He concluded that honesty was his best option.
“We’ve lost five members of our club,” Birch said. “Why?”
Kaiden shifted. “I think you mean team,” he corrected her. Birch had a habit of mixing up her words. It was usually humorous, but not now. He had a good idea why he and Quill had been targeted, but he couldn’t tell them—not yet. Raven was a different matter. That had happened before he even knew what Quill was doing.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Raven was on a suicide mission no matter what happened. She could have just killed the clones and been done with it, but she targeted the entire crew. Iris must be involved with the same group.”
“While you work that out, sir,” Greyson said, “our faces are going to be plastered over every screen in the world.”
Chapter Eight
The Genesis Room
“I thought I made myself clear!” Rio shouted.
The images of the aerial-bot cameras from the New York City plaza played across the screens surrounding Rio’s desk. Kaiden’s own face filled one of them as he ducked behind a concrete barrier with the child in his arms.
“Yes, sir.” Kaiden had braced himself for the onslaught. He expected the discipline to flare up at any moment. Still, he had to grit his teeth to keep from shouting back. He balled his fists behind his back.
“And?” Rio demanded.
“We were set up, sir.”
“What?” Rio slammed his fist into his desk.
“The extraction point
was an impossible situation, sir, and we received friendly fire.”
“What friendly fire?” Rio said. “I thought you eliminated a sniper.”
“Yes, sir, but the fire came from Iris’s position.”
“What? You have proof of that?”
“The fire that killed Quill could only come from Iris’s position.”
“Bull crap,” Rio said. “She’s the best we have.”
“Watch the footage, sir,” Kaiden insisted. “Quill was shot in the chest. The sniper I took out was to our right. There is no way—“
“I’ve heard enough,” Rio snapped. He paced behind his desk as he brushed a speck of dust from his immaculate uniform.
“I’m placing you on administrative suspension until I can check into this. You’re not off the hook yet. Get out.”
Kaiden saluted and left. But he didn’t go to his room. He was convinced he and Quill had been targeted because of Quill’s breach of the security system, which meant that Quill hadn’t been as careful as he’d thought. If Iris wasn’t the assassin, then Rio must have sent someone else to do it and kill the senator. None of his team on the ground had lethal ammunition. Kaiden didn’t know who to trust anymore. Raven had been his friend and comrade for at least seven years, though she’d only been on his team for two. If she could betray him, anyone could.
Kaiden clicked on the DWJ as he walked. It was better that no one knew where he was going. He drew Quill’s wrist terminal out of his pocket and used it to enter Quill’s room. Now that Quill was gone, the room would be reassigned. That’s the way it was. Kaiden was surprised it hadn’t been cleaned out already. But he wasn’t going to waste this chance. He swallowed the knot that rose in his throat at the sight and smell of Quill’s rooms and yanked the pillowcase off the pillow in Quill’s bedroom. Then, he dumped all of Quill’s bots, computer gadgets, and anything he could find into it.
