Authors: Kyra Anderson
Kailynn took a deep breath, her eyes
going wide as she exhaled.
“Wow…” she murmured.
“A lot of information, I know,” Isa said,
reaching over and running her fingertips over Kailynn’s cheek. The Significant
turned to look at the Golden Elite.
“Knowing all this, you want to shut down
Venus?”
Isa nodded slowly.
“If I could, I would,” Isa said.
“So much for Elites being loyal to
Venus,” Kailynn tried to joke.
Isa smiled. “I’m not considering myself
an Elite anymore,” she whispered. She shifted forward, taking Kailynn’s face in
her hands and kissing her tenderly. “I don’t think I ever was. I may have
passed the degeneration tests, but I know for sure that I am a degenerate.” Isa
looked over Kailynn’s face. “I’ve fallen in love with you. An Elite can’t be
more degenerate than that.”
Kailynn looked into the clear blue depths
of Isa’s eyes, her heart stopping at the words.
“…I love you, too,” she breathed.
Isa let out a relieved breath and closed
her eyes.
“Can you repeat that?” she asked, the smile
touching her eyes when she looked at Kailynn again.
The Significant smiled broadly.
“I love you.”
The day was progressing as normal.
Kailynn was picked up by Rayal nearly an
hour after Isa left for the Syndicate. They discussed the continuing
investigation for the Gihrons that had killed the prototypes and were
continuing to send threats to the Syndicate about attacking.
All of the Syndicate Intelligence Agency
was on-edge, but it was the environment they were used to working in.
Kailynn went about her normal day,
running errands around the office for Rayal and trying to learn as much as she
could. She had become much better at reading at writing, partially because
Isa’s doctors had been worried about her health and continued to send her home
hours early to be sure she was well enough to handle the mounting tension.
Kailynn was able to spend her evenings with Isa, and the Elite helped her with
lessons, finally taking her back into the library where there were electronic book
cases and hardcopy books, which Kailynn had never seen in her life.
Kailynn did not mind spending time in the
library. Sometimes, it was too much for her to watch the sappy romance
unfolding between Tarah and Rayal, so she would escape into the library.
A month had passed since Isa’s collapse
at the Syndicate Building. While she was not eating as much as she should, she
was forcing herself to eat every day, which helped her keep up her strength.
This allowed some of the tension to leave the Syndicate.
But on that day, everything would reach a
fever pitch.
At 14:36, there was a deep, sonic
rumbling that caused everything in the Intelligence Agency to rattle. Kailynn
and Rayal both looked up from their tasks, glancing around at the shaking
glasses and files on the table.
Before the rattling stopped, every
monitor in the room began flashing red and alarms shrieked. Kailynn was
immediately on her feet, walking to Rayal as he glanced at the screens, hitting
several keys on his keyboard.
“Fuck…” he breathed. He angrily smashed a
button on his desk. “Code Red! Scramble detonation control and the military to
the Syndicate Building immediately! The Syndicate has been bombed! Initiate
emergency response and then evacuate the building!”
Kailynn’s hearing had turned to a dull
ring as the words bounced around her head.
The Syndicate Building had been bombed.
“Kailynn, we have to evacuate,” he said,
grabbing her hand.
“What about Isa?!” Kailynn gasped.
“We won’t know immediately. Come on!” he
snapped, yanking her out of the office. “We’ll get as close as we—don’t call
her!” Rayal snapped when he saw Kailynn reach for her phone.
“What?!”
“If she’s in any sort of trouble, you
don’t want to make it worse!”
At the Syndicate Building, Isa heaved
herself out of the small compartment door to escape the audience hall where she
had been meeting with Venus. She glanced around the main control room, looking
at the flashing lights and warnings as various automated voices in the building
recited their programmed words.
“Isa!” Remus yelled. She turned and
looked up to the third balcony above her head, where Remus was leaning over the
railing. “Are you hurt?”
“No!” she called back over the deafening
sounds.
Remus ran down the stairs to get to the
main control room as Isa ran to one of the terminals to assess the damage to
the building. As she looked over the flashing red sections of the building
where the structure had been damaged, a sonic boom sounded and all lights in
the building flickered briefly, the sounds distorting as power began to fail.
“They’ve hit the central power!” Isa
called. Several other Elites had joined her in the control room, also looking
over the screens and warnings.
“One more hit like that and they’re going
to knock out part of our defenses,” Hana said.
“All employees to the central control
room,” Isa said, pressing a broadcast button. “Do not attempt to leave the
building.”
“The front of the building is completely
destroyed,” Aolee said, looking over the building schematics.
“…we’re about to be ambushed,” Isa
hissed.
They all rounded on her, their eyes wide.
“Get the employees in here,” she said,
motioning to the few operators and maintenance employees that were running into
the central control room. “Fey, deactivate all of Venus’ ports in the building.
Chronus, get a tablet and see what exterior cameras are still operational.”
Isa climbed up onto the center platform
of the room and walked to one corner, flicking the release switch and typing in
several codes.
“Anders! Get the employees down here,”
she said, motioning to the hatch that opened. “Take them to the far west side
of the Pipes. They’ll be safe. Stay with them.”
Anders nodded, pushing one of the
computers to the side and getting up on the center platform with Isa, pulling
some employees with him and motioning to the open hatch. Isa watched the first
operator go down.
“Hostiles in the building!” Chronus
announced. “East entrance.”
“Remus, we’re going to need protection,”
Isa said quickly.
The Silver Elite ran to one side of the
room to open one of the vaults while Fey turned to Isa.
“I can’t deactivate any of Venus’ ports,”
he said quickly. “The mainframe is glitching.”
Isa glanced around at the computers in
the control room.
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath, “everyone
focus on getting the employees into the Pipes.” She climbed off the center
platform as more employees quickly ducked into the hatch and disappeared.
“Everyone’s here, right?”
She got a chorus of affirmatives as she
ran to one of the desks and pulled out a communication piece. She shoved it in
her ear and placed her pointer finger against the top, going to Chronus and
pressing her finger to the edge of the tablet. When the three high beeps
sounded, she nodded and looked at him.
“Go into the Pipes and watch them.
They’re clearly done with bombs or they wouldn’t be entering the building.
Watch the street. When one minute has passed without a hostile entering, let me
know.”
“I’m not leaving your side,” Chronus said
quickly.
“I need you to watch them,” she said
seriously. “Go. That is an order.” She turned to the room. “Okay, everyone,
we’re going to force shut down the building once they’re inside. Stay together.
Remember everything we’ve been taught.”
“Isa,” Remus said, walking over to her
and handing her a gun. She nodded once to him and attached the holster to her
waist, pulling the gun out and checking the ammunition as the other Elites were
given weapons.
“Wait for me here,” she said. “Make sure
everyone gets down into the Pipes and then shut the hatch.”
She turned aimed her gun at a small area
of the west wall high above their heads. When the bullet connected with the
area, sparks flew into the room and rained down on them, continuing for several
seconds as the lights flickered and the building groaned.
Isa ran to the same wall, Remus behind
her. She shot twice at a handle that was concealed among the monitors to
destroy the lock and then she and Remus shoved the heavy door aside.
Isa holstered her gun and ran into the
long corridor with the wires and ports for the building.
Remus stood at the door as Isa stopped at
the section she knew she needed to rewire. She quickly unplugged all of the
ports she knew to belong to Venus’ vital information, plugging them into a
secondary port that blocked the transmissions to keep them from being copied to
any external source.
She was nearly finished when she heard
Chronus’ voice in her ear.
“I’ve counted sixty-three,” he said. “But
they’re still coming.”
“These cocky bastards…” Isa groaned,
running to the end of the corridor and flipping two large switches, typing
hurriedly into a computer.
“Isa! They’re in the stair corridor! The
security robots are down!” Hana called.
Isa continued typing hurriedly. Once she
was sure that her coding secured Venus’ information, she ran to another, much
larger switch. She pulled it down twice, allowing it to snap back into position
when the charge had been built.
Isa ran out of the corridor and she and
Remus pushed the door shut. Isa pressed her finger to a small touch pad under
the desk and the clanking of magnets forced every component in the wall to be
completely sealed in emergency lockdown.
“Where are they now?” Isa asked, pulling
out her gun again.
“The southeast stairwell.”
Isa watched an employee slip into the
hatch.
“Is that everyone?” she asked.
“I think so,” Remus said, climbing onto
the center platform and closing the hatch, securing it correctly.
“Isa,” Chronus’ voice said in her ear,
“I’ve counted eighty-three. Some were fighterbots, but most were human. All
armed. It’s been thirty seconds since the last one.”
“We’ve got human and bot,” Isa announced,
walking back to the center panel and climbing on top of it with Remus. Remus
went to one corner and pressed his ring finger to a very small sensor under the
lip of the platform. Isa did the same on the opposing corner. A soft beep
sounded and a small panel no larger than a phone opened up in the middle of the
platform. A touchpad raised up from its fireproof box, exposing the black
screen
Isa and Remus walked to it, glancing at
one another.
Isa held out her hand to Remus.
“Stand by me?” she asked.
He took her hand.
“Always.”
“Chronus,” Isa said. “How long since one
has entered the building?”
“Fifty-six seconds.”
Isa nodded to Remus and they both went to
their knee, pressing their ring fingers into the pad.
Immediately, the building shuttered and
groaned, loud gears clacking within the walls to force the building to shut
down. Blast doors slammed angrily shut, covering every door and window. The
computers went silent, the lack of their humming noticeable to all who worked
at the Syndicate day-to-day.
Isa and Remus got down from the center
platform and the Bronze Elites began filing out of the room, Isa and Remus
following. They were calm and prepared.
“Well, everyone,” Isa started as she
reached the hallway. She turned around when she was out of the control room and
went to a crouch, hitting her fist against one of the floor panels, shattering
it. She swept the pieces to the side and turned back to the other Elites.
“They wanted a fight,” she continued.
“Let’s show them exactly who they’re picking a fight with.”
The Elites backed away from the entrance
of the corridor and formed a block in the hallway, the only hallway that
allowed anyone to get to the secondary stairwell and, therefore, further into
the Syndicate Building. The quiet and the darkness were unnerving, but the
Elites fell into formation, three Elites in a crouch, shoulder to shoulder and
two Elites standing directly behind them, all their guns pointed at the only
area where the attackers could approach. They quietly crept backward toward the
stairwell. Isa was at the back of the group, Remus directly in front of her,
both of them with their guns ready.
Isa reached the stairwell and everyone
began filing into it. They scaled the steps carefully and quietly, everyone
with their guns pointed at any possible direction from which they could be
shot. They managed to reach the second floor when they heard the ambush. The
footsteps and barked orders echoed in the quiet building. Isa and Remus slipped
onto the walkway overlooking the control room, their backs pressed against the
wall to stay hidden in the shadows created by the dim, red emergency lights.