7

“Aww god you guys,” cries somebody as the hatch clanks back closed.

Amethyst scrabbles away from me, both of us looking at each other in confusion.

It takes me a moment to recognize the voice. “Deqar,” I gasp with glee. We throw our clothes back on and pull ourselves out of the tank. The rim of the hatch is burnt and battered, and all around it lie blue suited men with blood dripping from holes in their bodies.

“Wha…” I breathe, looking around.

The shock on our faces quickly turns to glee. “We’re not going to die,” she gasps.

“We’re going to freaking live!” I exclaim, leaping off the tank in joy.

“What the hell happened?” Amethyst asks, visibly bewildered.

“Well,” Deqar begins. “We lost Horgan to the damn mega gun thing, but the rest of us got into one of those doors before it got us. From there we just kind of wandered around the place until we found this hangar. We saw all these mechanics banging the hell out of the tank, along with some soldiers shooting, so they were easy pickings. Janns said that it was like mowing grass.”

“Janns is alive?” Amethyst asks.

Deqar nods. “Yeah, he’s at the end of end of the hangar with Lorick and Cherthur.”

“Sekera?” I ask, wide eyed.

His grim face says it all. “Haven’t seen her.”

All the anxiety that had been absent in my momentary deathbed manifests itself quickly into my shoulder and neck. My pills are back at the camp.

“C’mon, we got to regroup and plan our move,” he says, gesturing for us to follow him.

We pad after him, neither of us wanting to look at the other. Amethyst face lights up as she sees Janns, lanky and longhaired, reclining against a pile of tires, Lorick, ugly faced and curly haired, sitting atop that same pile, and Cherthur who’s sprawled out over the floor. She embraces Janns quickly and formally.

“We thought we were lost there,” she mutters.

“We’re not done yet,” Janns replies, picking up his gun. “We’ve found the route that leads directly to the control room. General Korren is bound to be there.”

“So, we just pull up and chuck a grenade in there. Simple,” says Cherthur, sitting up.

“Pretty much.”

“No,” Amethyst contradicts. “If we’re taking this place down, we might as well get some valuable info with it. We can’t do that if all the tech is blown the hell.”

“Korren first. If we can keep a monitor working, then sure, we do that,” Janns decides.

“And Sekera?” I ask. “We don’t know if she’s dead. We can’t just act like she is.”

“If Sekera’s alive, then its safer for all of us if we go looking for her after the threat has been neutralized,” Amethyst explains.

“How the hell are we even supposed to do this? If we manage to get Korren, the rest of them will surely overrun us soon after,” I protest.

Janns shakes his head. “These bastards are real good at looking more in number than they are. We’ve probably killed most of their arms force already. Those twats with that chain gun up there and the others in the command room. Maybe a couple stragglers between.”

“Ok. Let’s get this shit over and done with,” Deqar says, with more enthusiasm than I’ve seen since we arrived here.

Janns claps him on the shoulder. “Let’s move.”

We jog into the hall, moving as a unit. Janns in the lead, followed by Amethyst, then Lorick, Deqar, Cherthur and me at the rear. At first, Deqar keeps a safe distance between himself and Lorick, but as we progress the distance dissolves. can put his emotions and his part behind him in order to achieve something for the greater good. Deqar is better than me in that sense. In most senses actually.

Then a thought flickers back into my mind. I’m still probably going to die, aren’t I? I managed to scrape through so far, purely because of Amethyst. We’re literally storming a control room. They probably expect us and will pick us off one by one once we’re pinned down. So how the hell am I supposed to survive this? Janns will go first definitely, but Amethyst will probably follow. Letting the others go first would be my best chance but sticking to Amethyst might be a better option. Or maybe I should just turn around and run like hell. No. I wouldn’t even make it out of the base, let alone manage to steal a rover.

Screw that. Me, Deqar and Sekera are going to escape this shit, make it back to West Side, and have the time of our lives. Amethyst will go on being the over achiever that she is, and maybe screw around with me from time to time. Huh, who am I kidding. No way I’m ever getting that again. That was more out of pity and ‘it’s the end of the world’ than anything else.

Janns halts, putting a finger to his lips. We ease onto our toes and hunch our backs. Silence is everything in an ambush. The shark knows that. The wolf knows that. The snake knows that. Humans know that too, but let’s see if we can execute it. Unlike the snake, shark or wolf, a failed ambush right now means receiving a bullet through the brain.

Janns reaches the closed door and stands opposite to it. Amethyst has her back to the wall next to it, gun raised past her cheek. I force my eyes to remain open and my consciousness to remain grounded. Muscle anxiety throbs through my entire left side, like a fungus, with the core being in my shoulder and neck. Left side always. Left side endlessly.

Janns throws himself forwards in a solid kick, taking the door clean off it’s hinges. He lands on it, inside the room and holds down the trigger. Amethyst moves in next. I wince at the horrific, memory scarring screams that follow. Lorick goes next, alongside Cherthur. Deqar nudges me.

“C’mon. It’s all over after this.”

Deqar. The weak, battered fag, who’s been beaten to a pulp and humiliated time and time again, is offering me comfort in this dire time. I move. I don’t bother to take a shot, rolling under a metal desk immediately. Deqar arrives next to me.

C’mon Kallix. You’re a damn badass. Shoot some bastards.

I swivel around, pistol in my outstretched arms. We already outnumber them. One of them pops up, firing at someone to my far left. I take the shot, hitting them solidly in the shoulder. A bullet whizzes past me, forcing me back to a crouch. Another one glances off the side of the desk I thought was safe, so I move with a ducked sprint followed by a dive to a toppled desk.

I peer over the smashed monitors. One blue uniformed man with an assault rifle stands, firing away at Lorick’s position. Another man, bald, stern looking and with golden epilates. General Korren.

I lean over, aiming at the sole assault rifle soldier, when something catches my ear. Over all the gunfire and hollers, I hear a recognizable whir. Like a jet engine size blender. The memory clicks in my mind.

“Get down!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

The giant machine rolls into the room and the sight of Cherthur taking two dozen bullets imprints itself next to too many others for a sixteen year old memory to handle. The line of fire switches to Amethyst, who I can see army crawling faster than I would’ve thought possible as all the monitors above me are blown to bits. I catch her destination, a wide metal pillar that Lorick and Deqar are crouching behind. I sprint, not giving a damn about the cover, just running for my raggedy damn life. As Amethyst reaches, the barrel points towards me.

I dive forwards, reaching safety but not before a bullet tears through the skin of my forearm. I tumble into Deqar, who pulls me further into safety. I see Lorick hauling Janns out of the line of bullets before he can be pumped full of lead.

This is it. We’re screwed.

“It’s not going to hold forever,” Lorick caws, pressing his back to the metal.

“We need ideas fast,” hisses Janns, squeezing further against Lorick.

“I’m thinking,” Amethyst mutters, shoving a new clip into her gun.

The bullets are deafening, chipping off the edges of the metal pillar until we can no longer fit shoulder to shoulder.

Hey god. If you exist, you can be a real dick sometimes, you know that?

Just as we start to pile on top of each other, I hear a thud, followed by a scream. The bullets stop, and we quickly peer apprehensively over the jagged remains of the pillar.

Sekera, fully alive and fully ass kicking, literally falls from the ceiling, guns blazing, right onto the giga gun, slaughtering half of our attackers in under five seconds.

Amethyst and Deqar join her in a full on close combat assault, while Lorick and Janns go for Korren. I’m scrambling after Deqar when I see Sekera dive off the chain gun, twist unnaturally mid air and crumple to the ground.

Deqar clutches her arms, dragging her to cover.

“God damnit,” I hiss. “Where’s she been shot?”

Deqar, thinking quickly, goes for Amethyst, who’s handling too many to win, even with her combat capabilities.

“Sekera,” I say.

She sucks in air through her teeth and grips her leg. Dark red blood stains the trousers of her upper thigh. Images of Varan bleeding out in front in front of my flash before my eyes as I pull off my uniform shirt and tie it as tightly as possible around the wound.

Then all of a sudden, the gunshots stop. I look up, wearily.

Amethyst is disarmed with her hands in the air, and one soldier holds an assault rifle, barrel pointed towards her. The second soldier’s gun is aimed at Deqar, who’s rifle is held against his shoulder, switching between the two foes. Across the room, Lorick stands up tall with his rifle pointed at Deqar’s soldier. Janns, holds Korren in a headlock, pistol shoved against his temple.

“Drop you weapons,” Janns orders, pointing the pistol at the others.

The soldiers refuse, their eyes darting like flies between Amethyst, Deqar and their captive General.

“I said drop your damn weapons!”

“General?” one of the soldiers asks.

“Do as he says,” Korren replies.

Weapons clatter to the ground.

“Good,” says Janns. He nods to Lorick.

Two shots.

Both soldiers crumple.

Two heaps of flesh, as dead as the floor beneath them.

“Great,” Janns smiles, shoving Korren to Lorick. “Secure this twunt.”

Shocked or not, I’m relieved. Alive. Still god damn freaking alive. I couldn’t count how many times I’d been shot at in the past few hours.

Amethyst smiles. She actually smiles. It’s a rare, stunningly beautiful sight, but I don’t have time to soak it in.

“Are you fading?” I ask.

Sekera grunts. “Naw. Not yet. Not so easy to kill me. Bad bitch, right?”

Amethyst’s smile quickly fades, returning to sternness as she searches the wreckage for a still working monitor. Eventually she finds one, with a cracked screen and missing keys, but working nonetheless.

“We thought you’d died. Well, they did. I knew you’d… find a way.”

“I was pretty sure I was dead myself,” she says with a weak laugh. “That thing nearly got me. Managed to get myself into an air vent before they found me though. I was crawling around in that damn thing for so freaking long. I found the control room pretty early, but I couldn’t seem to find you guys. After I started hearing gunshots, I crawled towards them and lo and behold I’m directly above that dratted chain gun. Thank the damn lord for that.”

As she speaks, her tone fluctuates, and her eyes flutter.

“Rest,” I advise. “We’ll get Amethyst to fix you up. I’m sure they’ve got a shit tone of medical supplies here. We’ll…”

“Hey guys, look at this,” Amethyst calls.

“What? What is it?” I ask, scampering to her side.

Janns and Deqar crowd around, while Lorick cranes his neck to see, not daring to move away from Korren.

On the screen is a grainy old video, with a figure standing in perfect military posture. I make out the figure to be Blax. Definitely younger, but still with the same stark, icy eyes.

His face switches to a warm smile, something I wouldn’t have thought would be biologically possible on a man such as himself. He unclips a walkie talkie from his belt and mutters something indecipherable about it.

The video switches to security camera footage of a horde of raggedy, underfed, barely clothed children, none of which is over ten years old, ambling out of a room. A dozen or so beige clad soldiers intercept them. At first, I couldn’t tell what they were doing, but then I realized that they were shackling them, onto one long chain link. The distinct figure of Blax remains in the corner, still smiling all the while.

“Oh my god,” Deqar gasps, recoiling from the monitor.

“The bastard is a damn human trafficker,” I gawk.

I knew he was stark, stern and sadistic, but never in a million years would I have guessed this.

“Do you people,” Korren pipes with a smooth, deep voice, “ever stop to think why you’re on the side that you’re on? Do you ever think that maybe, just maybe, I’m on the wrong side?”

Amethyst is too stunned to move, Sekera has nearly passed out from blood loss and my mind is racing with all sorts of unwanted and ungodly possibilities. These were the reasons why we didn’t see the next move coming.

Janns swiftly pulls his pistol from its holster, grabs Deqar by the neck and presses the cold metal to the back of the ex-Swifter’s neck. “Nobody move,” he utters with a stone voice.

“Woah, woah, woah,” I stutter, unable to take in this much. “You too?”

Amethyst’s eyes are fiery, but she remains still. Her jaw is clenched and her neck is flexed with anger, but there’s nothing she can do. Both of our weapons lie on the other side of the room.

“Ok, this is what’s going to happen,” he starts. “You’re going to place your hands behind your head and turn away from me. If you move your hand from your head, I’ll shoot you and then Deqar.

“You bitch of a weasel,” Deqar hisses, receiving him a knock from the pistol barrel.

“Lorick,” Janns calls.

“Yeah, boss?” Lorick calls from across the room.

“Delete the files. All of them. Wipe the computer clean. Smash it to bits if you have to.”

I hear Lorick picking his way to the wreckage.

“Lorick,” Janns says.

“Yes?”

“You don’t need your gun to do that.”

“Oh. Sorry boss.”

I know a lot of action happened in the half second that passed before I turned around, but all I saw was a bullet splattering Janns’s brain over the wall, and a second one, shot earlier, tearing through Deqar’s torso.