"What kind of ideas?" Cody echoed eagerly.
Sonya shot Ben a veiled glance before answering. "About escaping. Getting out of the complex was never a problem, lots of kids ran away for a while - "
"But there was nowhere to go." said Keri.
"Right. Sooner or later you had to go back." Sonya agreed.
"They never did anything to you for it - but they looked so gorram smug!" muttered Moon.
"The Tams had a twenty-four hour clearance, we knew they'd be leaving that night so we -"
"Stowed away!" Cody interrupted.
Sonya shook her head. "No. We asked them to take us, and they agreed. Like I said, they're good people. When we got back to Osiris the group who'd helped Simon Tam get River out contacted their parents, according to them River and Simon were heading for Boros so we decided to meet them there."
"Only they never showed." said Kimi.
"Caught?" Ben asked.
Sonya shook her head. "No. We'd have known if they were."
"Don't know what happened to them or where they are but we're almost sure they're safe." put in Jade.
"We'd feel it if something bad happened to River." Moon said with certainty.
Kimi wiggled. "We miss River."
"A lot." said her twin.
"According to Moon there's a fair chance we'll find her someday, but in the meantime we've got to keep moving." Sonya explained.
"They're after us." Jade said darkly.
"Orange and Black" said Keri
"And dripping with blood." added Kimi.
"They're tracking you through the credit accounts you're using." Ben guessed.
"Yeah. But we're well ahead of them." Sonya assured him.
"Laid a lot of false trails." said Moon with satisfaction.
"They trained us to be good, and we are." from Jade, very matter of fact.
"Better than anybody they can hire." sniffed Keri.
"Much better." said Kimi.
"The trail ends here." Sonya continued. "We won't draw on those accounts again."
"Won't have to." said Moon.
Some while later Ben found himself alone on the bridge with Sonya, hooking in the new navigation unit. "So," he said quietly. "What about the rest of it?"
She looked at him with black rimmed yellow eyes. "You mean how we got clear without being chased?"
He nodded.
...
They chose their targets carefully. Not only to create maximum confusion but to cripple the functioning of the school as much as they could. They couldn't take the others with them, but they could give them a chance.
Jade drew Dr. Falkener, the neurological specialist. The one who designed the 'experiments'. He sat in his darkened office, working at his computer, and looked up in annoyance when she entered. "What are you doing here Jian Yun?"
"'This person is come to kill you.'" she answered in Chinese, gliding softly over the deep pile carpet.
His fat white face showed more annoyance, not fear. He reached for the call button on his desk but she was close enough to catch his hand. Before he could react she opened herself up like a yawing black hole, watched in satisfaction as his face twisted in agony. She could feel it too as she drained him dry; sucking thought, knowledge, memory, life energy itself out of his body, but this was an agony she could and did enjoy. She drank in his pain as he'd drunk of hers, and his other victims. It was the perfect revenge. It was plain justice.
She released his wrist and he slumped forward over the desk, a trickle of blood leaking from his gaping mouth. She stood there a moment, smiling, savoring her handiwork. Then she pressed the call button herself - and left.
...
Moon picked Franklin Yu, the head of security. She owed him for all those smug smirks...and for her parents. He hadn't killed them, no. But it was because of him they'd died. He was the one who'd labeled them 'security risks'. And while she was at it she'd take out as many of his men as she could. They deserved it no less.
She walked into the security wardroom and kicked backward, smashing and jamming the door control with her heel. The men looked up from their cards and magazines, started to rise, a few going for their side arms.
Moon was too fast for them, hand springing into their midst and taking out the nearest two with a chest crunching side kick and larynx crushing finger jab. She spun to catch another under the chin with her toe, his head snapping back severing his spine as she simultaneously picked up one of the small metal tables to ram backhanded, edge on, into a fourth guard's solar plexus. He doubled over, face meeting the table top as she jabbed it upward then swung it around to mow down two more.
Dropping the table Moon spurned one of the fallen men's head under her foot - feeling the cranial bones crack and give - as she launched herself into an high somersault over the head of a guard drawing a bead on her - his stun beam hit one of his comrades instead. Landing behind him she delivered a short, sharp kick impacting the base of his spine and felt it snap. His body arched backward, she grabbed his head and gave it an expert twist the neck bones cracked.
The four remaining guards were hammering at the jammed door. Almost casually Moon picked up a fallen stunner and nailed them; wham! wham! wham! wham!
She stood easy, not even breathing fast, then turned towards the inner door just as it opened. Yu came out, followed by his adjutant. She gave them a moment to absorb the situation then hurled the stunner with expert and murderous intent at the aid. The solid metal impacted his jaw snapping his head against the doorframe. he fell.
Smiling Moon advanced on the chief. "You don't get it so easy. I'm gonna take my time with you, Yu."
...
The twin's target was inanimate, the kids called it the 'torture chamber'. Staff called it the 'sleep training room'. The lights were all on, the machines quiescent, the chair empty. For a long moment the twins stood quietly, side by side, in their starchy school uniforms, copper brown hair hanging down their backs in identical braids. Then, suddenly, stuff started moving.
The chair lurched and twisted, bolts groaning and snapping as it pulled itself out of the floor to fly straight and true into the vitals monitor board which exploded in a satisfying shower of sparks. Then the other boards began rocking, bucking, sparking, exploding. The sprinklers came on, showering girls and machinery alike. A door slammed open as the duty tech rushed in. Electronic components penetrated his body like bullets and he fell bleeding from a dozen wounds.
Metal screamed as the PK storm increased in violence. Chair and machines shredded, shrapnel scoring the plastic wall panels as they too began to buckle and disintegrate. Lighting fixtures exploded in blinding flashes of actinic yellow and blue then crashed to the floor. Even the tiles started to peel up.
And the two little girls stood untouched in the red emergency light, fire retardant soaking their clothes and hair. Smiling, smiling as they unleashed all their stored up hate and rage on the instruments of their pain.
...
Franklin Yu slammed against a wall and slid down it, his smashed face leaving a trail of blood. Moon's foot caught him in in the thigh as he tried to roll clear and bone snapped. He screamed.
...
The man they wanted worse than any of them, Matthias himself, wasn't available. He'd left the complex for New Washington as soon as the Tam's had left. So Sonya had to settle for his deputy, Agnes Diop. She was a tall, skeletal woman with dark skin that seemed to be melting off her. Her mind was as ugly as her body and she was deathly afraid of drowning.
She turned sharply as Sonya entered the Headmaster's office. "What are you doing here? All students should be in the refectory."
Sonya caught and held those beady black eyes. "The water is rising."
"Wha..What?"
The water is rising. Can't you hear it? lapping and gurgling..."
"No..." the black eyes began to glaze.
"Listen for it, it's coming closer, closer. It's sliding under the door. See it spread? silver shading to blue as it gets deeper. Its up to our ankles now."
Diop shrieked in fright and ran to the walls, feeling frantically for a way out...
...
Moon nudged Yu's crumpled, bloodstained body with a toe. Yep, he was dead. She sighed. "All good things must come to an end."
Walking into his office she saw the situations board sparkling with red lights. The others must be doing well. She opened a cabinet and took out a slender, needler pistol and went back to the wardroom. Moving methodically from body to body she gave the quietus to the ones who were still alive.
...
Diop was on the floor, thrashing and choking.
"The water is closing over your head," Sonya intoned, "it fills your lungs, you're downing, dying."
The woman thrashed some more, then suddenly stopped. Stopped moving, stopped breathing, died.
Calmly Sonya stepped over her body to touch a concealed control on the big mahogany desk. A panel slid open revealing a safe. A safe containing all the good doctor's records - and the staff's credit chips.
...
"We killed them with what they gave us." Sonya smiled a nasty little grin that didn't belong on a pretty girl's face. "Hoist on their own petard."
Ben's mouth was set in a grim line. "Thanks for not going into all that in front of Cody."
"You don't have to worry," She looked at him straight. "Last thing we want is for your boy to get like us. Nor to give him a horror of us neither. Cody's good for the twins. Teach them how to be kids again, maybe it's not too late - for them."
Ben said nothing. He could see, clear as she, that it was way too late for Moon or Jade or Sonya herself.
She stared out the ports at the busy dockside. "It was good at first. I'd never had friends I could really talk to before. I even had a boyfriend." she turned back to Ben, a sheen of tears in her eyes. "They showed us happiness and then they took it all away. I'll never forgive them for that. Never. None of us will."
"Nor should you." said Ben.
Now it was his turn to stare unseeingly out the port. Killing dreams, ruining happiness, destroying peace of mind was what the Alliance did best.