Tissue warning. Don't say you weren't warned.
So so so so so sorry that this has taken so long. I really am very very very sorry. Please keep prodding me. The next part is almost ready. If I wait longer than a week to post then you all have my permission to email me and threaten me. Honest! my email address is: fayth 82 at yahoo dot co dot uk (delete the spaces).
I'm serious. One week.
Thank you to everyone who continues to read. You all rock so much. Gracias.
Chapter 21
Aiden heard the explosion through the radio and his fingers tightened on the grenade he held in his sweaty palm.
The four helicopters had swung in close enough to shoot but not close enough to aim and their shots were going wide, causing the transgenics to duck and dodge in a mad dance.
"Why the hell can't they get closer?" he demanded, frustration etched on his face at their lack of co-operation.
Zan returned fire at the chopper, his aim wide. "Maybe because they don't want their asses shot off!"
"Unsporting!" Jace scolded as she ducked for cover.
"Delta team can you cover Beta west?" crackled the radio.
"With what? My ass?" Aiden said incredulously. He peered over the side and saw Alec's team fighting a losing battle with far greater numbers.
"The hell with this!" he spat and pulled his arm back, tossing the grenade as hard as he could towards the nearest chopper.
The deadly small green ball sailed through the air in a delicate arc, swinging almost daintily towards the helicopter.
It bounced gracefully off the door frame and landed elegantly inside the small enclosed space.
The detonation was felt rather than heard as the helicopter exploded. Bobbing down to shield themselves meant that those on the rooftop didn't see the ball of flame whoosh into the air. They didn't see the shock waves ripple in the suddenly humid air, nor did they see the sudden bucking of the other helicopter as the wave rushed them, a palpable, driving force that tainted the machinery, throwing them off course.
One black helicopter bucked in mid-air like a prize winning bronco and swung around, its tail slamming into another, shattering the windshield. The pilot desperately fought for control as the machine careened wildly.
But it was no use, with fried circuits and no way of controlling the chopper, it flipped and went into a death spiral, heading for the rear of Terminal City.
As Aiden and the others finally looked up, one of the remaining helicopters spun in wild circles, its rotary blade sputtering in fits and starts.
They watched it for a moment, a bizarre spiral that was oddly hypnotic. Hypnotic and getting bigger.
"Uh, I think its coming this way!" Zan yelled and dove off the edge of the building as the chopper turned on its side, the sharp metal blades heading towards the waiting transgenics, a whirling cycle of lethal steel.
Aiden grabbed Feen and dragged her, diving off the roof towards the next building. He dropped into a roll and landed harshly on the tarmac, his head banging on the concrete even as he rolled into a ball, trying his best to protect both Feen and himself from the sudden downpour of helicopter parts.
Something sharp pierced his side and he yelled, pain ripping through his back. Feen whimpered at the almost animalistic scream that echoed through her and tucked her knees in tighter, trying to lose herself in Aiden. She dove underneath him and held on.
Drew's fists flew with fury into the face of the cultist and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going to win this fight. The woman had no chance and the beast was just waiting for the inevitable slide into blackness that would signal victory. It scented death and it would be sated on the blood of its victim.
"Drew?"
A voice from outside called her but she ignored it. She would make them pay.
"Drew?"
The crunch of boots and the slick feel of blood under her hands was enough for her. Make them pay.
"Stop!" Her hand was grabbed and she spun around, murderous rage in her eyes.
Zack reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her eyes to focus on him.
"Stop it!" he ordered, his voice firm.
Drew tried to shake him off. "Let me go," she snarled her voice animalistic.
"Soldier!" he demanded and her whole body stiffened in response to the command in his voice.
"That opponent is dead, soldier." He avoided looking down at the bloody mass that had once been a body. "Reign it in."
Drew shuddered once and the haze left her vision. She gulped in deep cleansing breaths of air, dragging them into her lungs like a drowning man. With the breaths she pulled in scents of death, decay and violence and her breathing started to grow ragged as she felt herself slip.
Pay, make them—
"Focus, focus," Zack commanded, tapping her cheeks and Drew nodded coming back.
He waited until it seemed that she had control and then he let her chin go, shooting her an odd look that she couldn't decipher. "There are plenty more enemies to kill. Maintain, pull back the anger and focus on the mission."
The mission.
Drew dragged in another breath and went to swipe her fist across her sweat-soaked face.
Zack caught her hand before she could do so and gestured to it when she frowned. It was covered in blood and some grey matter that she didn't want to analyse too closely. He reached down and tore a strip off his shirt, handing it to her before racing off to rejoin the fight.
Drew gripped the torn rag and used that to wipe her face wondering what the hell was wrong with her.
She barely had time to move back into the fight when a sputter of machinery caught her attention.
She looked up in time to see a broken helicopter, spouting flames, bearing down on them.
"Everyone DOWN!" she yelled even as she started to dive behind an abandoned car, the air screamed a wail of pure rage as the heavy black chopper sailed over her head and crashed into the fence.
The blades caught on the fence, slicing through the wire like it was butter before the chopper crashed into the ground, bouncing once before it exploded.
The noise erupted, slamming into her delicate eardrums and shooting a high-pitched whine right into her skull, her teeth grinding at the pain.
A tidal wave of blast flared up and then began to roll outwards, taking everything in its path.
The cultists closest to the fence never even had time to scream as the ball of light engulfed them. Debris flew overhead, lethal birds burning like the mythological Phoenix, but twice as deadly.
A smouldering lump crashed into the ground inches from Drew's aching head and she rolled under the car, her shoulder screaming at her from some injury she didn't remember having.
Memories of Manticore and the way the whole facility had burned and fallen down around her ears swamped her as she clapped her hands over her ears, rocking as much as she could in her confined space. The car rocked and bucked above her, the smell of engine oil strong and potent.
She wanted to close her eyes and forget everything, forget who and what she was, where she was and pretend that it would all go away. But the roar of flames and the shrill screams of those who hadn't found someplace to hide echoed in her head and all she could do was hold on and ride it out.
Almost as quickly as it had started the noise vanished and all she could hear were her own ragged pants and the wild thud of her heart against her ribcage.
There was silence all around, blankets of silence and she wanted to roll in it, pretend that she was asleep with Dek curled up beside her, neither wanting to wake to face the day.
But she had been drilled from birth that pretence was wrong and her eyes flashed open, her brain telling her to get up, to answer the cries and screams that were filtering into her hearing.
She edged out from under the car and the hot, humid air hit her like a hard slap across the face.
Smoke swirled away from the remains of the charred chopper and she dragged in a breath that tasted of metal and fire.
She half-spun as footsteps sounded near her and Zack staggered into her vision.
"Y'okay?" he choked, his face and once-blond hair almost black with soot and ash.
She nodded, coughing a little. "You?"
He glanced towards the wreckage and inclined his head. "Let's get our people out."
Somehow it was easy to take orders from someone who had been born to lead and she forgot for a moment that she was in charge here and allowed him to lead her to the fiery furnace to salvage whoever she could.
The smoke poured into their faces, choking their already ravaged lungs and stinging their eyes, sweat and steam filling their vision, making them blind.
The enemy was swiftly forgotten as they tried to save their nearest and dearest, pulling friends out of the way of the blazing inferno.
Zack knelt in the wreckage rubbing the hands of an X-series Drew recognised from Seattle. She had been a brassy brunette called Roma and was alarmingly still in the fetid air.
"She dead?" Drew asked and Zack shook his head, his jaw taut.
"Not yet," he took a breath. "But we have to start moving people to med bay.
Drew looked up, her eyes intent on the damage to the rear of Terminal City. The fence was non-existent and charred beyond all recognition and the flaming remains of the helicopter stood in a bizarre parody of a guard, stopping the cultists from coming in.
Those who were already inside were swiftly overpowered by rapidly recovering transgenics and the battle which had raged fiercely only moments ago was doused.
Dix breathed a sigh of relief as survivors crawled away from the wreckage that was the helicopter and Drew started to assign medical evacuation and triage. He'd been watching the action with bated breath, from the moment Aiden shot the thing down to the point where it collided near Drew's team and he was more than relieved to see her walk away.
He swung his attention to the screen showing the rooftop action to try to pinpoint how Aiden had fared, but his attention was caught as Pix gasped.
"White's got Max!"
It was as if someone had iced Alec into place—he couldn't move anything: his arms, his legs, the fist he had thrust into the face of the cultist—nothing.
The words echoed around his head White has Max. White has Max.
Seeing that Alec was incapacitated Biggs reached over and snapped the neck of the cultist.
"Alec?" he yelled and Alec shook himself, his face paper pale in the harsh light of day.
"White has Max!" he repeated and Biggs bit his lip, knowing full well that if it were Sunny he'd already be racing for central command, no matter what the mission was.
The fact that Alec knew that Max was in danger and couldn't be there, couldn't abandon his mission, his friends or the battle made Biggs' heart ache for him.
Alec was essentially powerless here and it showed in the way that the blood had drained from his face.
Biggs searched for someway to reassure to his friend, even as the battle raged fiercely around them, the sound of flesh hitting flesh echoing through the air
"She's got both Dek and Ben with her," he offered and Alec snapped out of his funk enough to pin him with a glare.
"Oddly enough, that's not particularly comforting," he snapped.
Biggs grimaced and looked over Alec's shoulder. "Ooh hey, reinforcements!"
Alec glanced back to see Beta team east racing to join in and he mentally slapped himself.
He was a soldier; Max was a soldier. They had jobs to do and couldn't lose themselves.
They had to do the job.
No matter how much it sucked.
Max gripped the arm over her throat tightly and yanked, trying to pull White over her head. He was wise to the move and used her back almost as a flip board to jump and land on his feet, facing her with an arrogant sneer on his face that she would have loved to erase—permanently.
They circled each other like two prize bull terriers fighting over the last bone.
It was White who made his move first. He had been so intent on getting to 452 and making her tell him the code to capture the rest of the transgenics that she had become something of a Holy Grail to him. The unobtainable, perfect prey.
He lurched forward swinging his arms to catch her with a wild punch across the face, making her already tender jaw erupt with pain.
Stars burst into her vision and Max shook her head, trying to dispel the dizziness that came with it.
White pressed his advantage leaning back to kick Max in the stomach and, as she doubled forwards in pain, slamming his fists onto the back of her neck.
Max dropped to the floor and instinctively rolled, his feet missing her rib cage by inches.
It was the sneer on his face which made her bring her legs up, her stomach muscles screaming even as she straightened, kicking him in the chest with all her force. His breath rushed out and he gasped for air, jolting back.
There was a grin on her face as she leapt to her feet.
"Not so tough, are we Amesie?" she mocked and his face grew darker even as she threw herself into the fight.
The rest of the battle faded into the background and there was only the two of them, fighting for the whole stupid war. Transgenics verses cultists and the blows and strikes were their way of working out the problem of who deserved to live.
And who would die.
Isacar swore long and low as he wrenched the spanner back and tried to re-route the electrical supply.
"Obscenities are the indication of a weak vocabulary and limited intelligence," Em said as her nimble fingers twisted wires. "Throughout history they have been used to supplant descriptive terms with base oaths. Sad really." She sniffed as if in derision.
Isacar's jaw tightened. "Excuse me? I happen to have a genius I.Q. and a larger vocabulary than Oxford."
Em glanced up through her thick, dark hair. "Pity it doesn't show."
Techie's lips twisted into a grin at Isacar's indignation. The kid was fun to have around and he made Techie laugh, even more so when he was getting a taste of his own medicine.
Isacar sat back on his heels and glared at the girl. "It shows plenty . . . I mean—" he glowered even as she smirked. "At this precise moment I am under extreme duress in attempting to salvage some remnant of this . . . this . . . this . . . heap of crap! And endeavouring to be the salvation of my friends and family. Excuse me if I'm not thinking of the Queen's English right now!"
"Frustration is no excuse for sloppy syntax," she retorted, hiding her grin behind the curtain of hair.
Isacar slammed his hands on the hover drone and leant forward only to be startled as the machine gave a click and a whir and buzzed into life with a burst of static energy.
Isacar blinked at it. "I think we've done it!"
Dix hurried over, his fingers checking over the adjustments that Isacar had made. "Well I'll be a—," he peered at Em from the corner of his eye, "—thrice-be-damned descendant of a canine female. You've done it!"
Em threw back her head and laughed. "Well done, us."
"Let's get these things in the air," Techie ordered and reached over to follow Isacar's pattern with his own drone.
"Pix?" Isacar called. "We should have these in the air in five minutes."
Pix nodded, his eyes not leaving screen 6 and the rubble where Aiden and Feen had been. They may have the drones, but it may be too late.
Feen had once sat with her friends in the recreation room in Seattle and they had talked about the worst ways to die. It had been raining outside; cold, harsh sheets of rain, coming down too hard for them to see even a metre in front of them, and the Trainers hadn't wanted to even think about teaching them out of doors. They'd sat on tables, chairs and on the floor and someone, possibly Drew in one of her more psychotic moments, had asked what was the worst way for a person to die.
"Burned to death," Dek had said with a shudder. "Feeling the flames catch you and burn your skin."
"Gross much?" Cece shuddered and he'd thrown popcorn at her.
"Drowning." Pix spared a glance with Max over that. "Unable to get to the surface no matter how much you fought."
"Shot in the stomach," Steve offered. "Bleed to death and know that there isn't anything you can do about it."
"Eviscerated." Had been Alec's contribution as he pulled Max in closer, wrapping his arms around her middle. "Being awake while someone pulls out your insides."
"Death by torture?" Mets leant back on the sofa and thrown popcorn into his open mouth. "Electrolysis or maybe—"
"Sliced and diced?" Analytical Zan raised an eyebrow. "I always wondered at the 19th century tradition of being hung, drawn and quartered. Can't be pleasant."
"At least they were thorough," Coco laughed. "Nothing worse than a half-assed job. If you're gonna kill someone do it well."
"There are plenty of things you can do with scalpels," Tara offered and Carrot looked at her oddly.
"What?"
"You're scary!" he replied and she looked absurdly pleased.
"Max?" Drew looked at her friend. "Worst way to die?"
"Alone," Max said softly and there was silence for a moment.
"Being buried alive," Aiden had said into the quiet. "Knowing that, not only were you alone, but that no one knew where you were or would come to find you; that your oxygen was running out and you were going to die."
More silence and then Feen turned to Drew who had been uncharacteristically silent on the subject that she'd started. "What about you?"
Drew had chewed her gum for a second and then had looked up with a fierce grin. "Dying of old age, peaceful in my bed."
It was that grin that Feen thought of now as she shifted in the darkness. After the explosion of the helicopter and the jump over to the rooftops she had been so neatly tucked under Aiden that she hadn't even flinched when the lights went out.
Once the noise had faded and the dust had settled she'd opened her eyes to see nothing.
Darkness surrounded her even tighter than Aiden's arms. She'd shifted and felt the weight of something pressing down on her, oppressively pushing her into the ground.
"Aide?" she choked.
Nothing.
"Aiden?"
Silence.
She moved her arm and felt a sharp bolt of pain race through it. Tears came to her eyes and she bit down, trying to maintain her equilibrium, trying to be that soldier that she had been trained to be. She closed her eyes and tried to push upwards with all her strength but it was like being pinned down by a tonne of concrete.
The exertion caused a wave of dizziness to swamp her and she wanted to throw up, her head rattling in pain. She caught her breath and was unnerved to hear an odd gurgling sound coming from her own lungs.
Well, that wasn't good.
A drop of something tangy and vaguely copper-scented touched her lip and she instinctively licked it away.
Blood.
But she wasn't bleeding, she couldn't feel anywhere that she was bleeding and the angle was all wrong. Her body was pointing downwards and blood would go down, not up.
Something was bleeding above her. Someone—Aiden.
"Oh, God." She closed her eyes and turned her head towards the floor, her insides aching. "Please, please, no."
But there was no one to answer her and as she lay there she remembered Aiden's own words on that day.
"You were wrong," she whispered into the gravel. "Being buried alive, knowing that no one's coming, running out of oxygen isn't worse . . . than dying with you."
This time the drops that touched her lips were tears.
Ben wiped the sweat off his forehead and felt like crowing. This was a damn good fight!
He'd been spoiling for a damn good ass-kicking since way before he'd joined up with this merry band of miscreants.
The little skirmish with Alec didn't count in any way shape or form. There was nothing like a good old fashioned slam of fist against flesh, knuckles against bone with the expectation of pure joy as something snapped.
He cricked his neck and snarled at the cultist at his feet, basking in the glow of a hunter, a fighter in his element.
The primal part of himself that he let out more often than was probably healthy was dancing inside and wanted Ben to go after them all again. To kill and make it harder, hotter, longer, more painful.
The animal wanted to play.
"Ben, heads up!" Zane yelled and Ben spun to see the red-headed woman bearing down on him with a steel bar.
He ducked as she swung the bar and it missed as he leant backwards.
"I am Thula," she snarled. "You will die."
"I am Ben," he retorted. "I don't think so."
He swung his fist into her chest and was a little more than slightly perturbed when she just smiled at him.
"Okay," he said slowly. "That's just creepy."
Despite her size Thula was quick and reached out, grabbing his wrist and twisting, trying to snap the fragile bones. Ben just let himself roll with the momentum, flipping in mid-air and landing on his feet. Ben suddenly realised that he was dancing on what had once been the gates of Terminal City and he felt a pang at their destruction.
He hadn't been there long, but knew that Max and Mole and many of the others thought of it as home. He felt somehow disrespectful for standing on the fortifications and stepped off the rubble onto the streets.
There were plenty of humans still dumb enough to be standing around watching; no matter that they had seen the cultists shoot some of their number without blinking. No matter that they heard the gunfire and the yells from within.
Ben rolled his eyes, wondering what exactly it was about them that Max found so appealing.
He slid backwards over a large brick motioning for some of the humans to move further back. They gazed at him in confusion and he rolled his eyes as more transgenics spilled out on the streets, forced or drawing the cultists away from their home.
"Streets ain't safe!" Ben called to several gawping humans. "Might wanna mush!" They just stared. "Fucking cannon fodder," he grumbled and moved in between them and the approaching mammoth who had somehow realised that he wasn't coming back in to fight her.
Ben made his feet steady and waited.
He wasn't on his feet for long, however, as she backhanded him with all the force of a mama elephant and Ben slammed into the brick wall behind him, his head cracking the concrete and clay.
Thula swung her metal bar and Ben ducked just in time to have flakes of brick rain down on him.
He darted under arm and blurred around the back of her, jamming his foot into her spine and pushing with all his might. The juggernaut faltered but managed to keep her footing, spinning around to land a punch on Ben's face that felled him.
Laying back on the concrete floor, Ben shook his head, trying to reassure himself that there weren't six Deks fighting just metres away from his prone body.
One Dek was bad enough; imagine what six of them could do.
Ben heard a roar coming from his left and felt the impact of something heavy boot him in the side.
He curled up as his stomach hurled up everything that he had eaten that morning onto someone's shoes. The acrid taste of vomit was on his tongue and he spat, trying to clear the palate.
"Bitch!" he rasped as he flipped to his other side, every sense, that wasn't currently reeling in orbit, fixated on her position, trying to predict where she would go next.
The shift in the air and the slight scent change had him surging to his feet, flailing backwards as she came at him again with the bar. He jumped back, his eyes searching for something that he could use as a weapon.
"We are legion and we are more powerful than you pathetic lab rats can comprehend."
Ben blinked. "Say what, sweetheart?"
"We will prevail."
"I think someone has delusions of grandeur, and sweetheart, you ain't that grand."
Thula advanced on him, catching him a blow to the ribs with the bar. "Our order has been in effect for longer than you can imagine and we are not to be beaten." She looked up at the people that still hung around and smirked. "Humans will be next, after your culling. We own this planet."
"I'd say your lease is about due," Ben snarled as he threw himself at her. She swiped him off like he was a flea and stood over him, the bar raised.
"We will eradicate you and your sub-species from the face of our planet. Sandeman's scheme will not prevail—"
"Oh, God, kill me already!" Ben moaned. "Spare me the propaganda."
"Had I the time you would beg for death."
"I'm begging for it now!" Ben reminded her, his hands spread wide.
Thula lifted her head. "As the plague sweeps the earth, you will not be able to dodge it."
"Hey, bitch?"
Thula swung to the sound of the voice and was met by the barrel of Dek's gun.
"Dodge this."
The sound of the shot echoed in their ears as she fell to the floor, her hefty body impacting with the concrete.
Ben stared at her corpse for a long moment and then held out his hand. Dek reached down and hauled him to his feet, both of them staring at the corpse on the floor, her brains making pretty patterns with her red hair.
"She was a big one!" Ben said and Dek nodded.
"That she was."
"I could have taken her."
"That you could."
"Just so we're clear," Ben added and scratched the back of his neck, his ribs aching fierce. "Nice Matrix moment."
"I thought so." Dek grinned. Suddenly Dek froze in place and Ben could practically see his heckles rise. His shoulders stiffened and he turned slowly, his eyes searching the inner grounds amidst the ruins and wreckage until he saw it.
Max and White were locked in a deathly embrace, her nails gouging bloody ruts down his face as he tried to twist her head off her shoulders.
Dek felt as if someone had grabbed his heart in an ice grip and squeezed.
"Max."
Ben followed his gaze and he, too, straightened, fury making his face an expressionless mask.
"Kill him."
Techie rammed the hatch shut on the last hover drone and watched as it whirred into action.
"Gotcha!" he crowed with uncharacteristic exuberance and everyone around smiled wearily.
Pix gave Sunny a look and she darted in front of screen 6 as Techie made his way back up to the command screen.
He grinned sheepishly at them. "The birds are in the air, they should be making contact with our guys in less than five minutes."
"Great, thanks." Pix frantically searched his mind for a way to send Techie away before he realised that they were hiding screen 6 from him. "Techie, I need you to, uh …uh …find me some …some—"
"Plastic explosive," Sunny blurted, "we need some plastique to rig the buildings in case anything goes sideways. Provisional plan."
Techie stared at her for a long minute. "You want something to destroy Terminal City if …" His eyes snapped to the screens. "Where is she?"
Sunny bit her lip and shifted slightly on her feet. The movement was enough to have him rushing over.
Sunny tried to hold him back but he grabbed her arm in a grip of steel and shunted her to one side. His eyes fell on the screen where only two soldiers were left on the rooftops, shooting helplessly at the remaining helicopter. He scanned the surrounding screens but couldn't see Feen, Aiden or Zan.
He swallowed hard. "Where is she?"
There was silence around him.
He spun back, his usually shielded eyes hard. "Where is she?"
Sunny reached over and flicked a switch. Screen 6 crackled back to life.
It took a moment for Techie's eyes to adjust to the picture because all he could see was blackness and some kind thick mist, almost like smoke.
Smoke.
As his focus sharpened he made out the shiny black panel of a helicopter door frame, other deep black debris covered the smoking ground and all Techie could see was smouldering black metal parts.
He reached forward and put his hands on the back of a chair. "Is she under there?"
"Yes." Pix's voice was hard and Techie's fingers tightened on the chair, the plastic cracking under his hands.
There was a look on Techie's face that they had never seen before, one that maybe Manticore had never seen before.
Pure unadulterated rage.
He shoved the chair he held away from him and headed for the door.
"Should I stop him?" Isacar asked worriedly.
Pix stared at the fragments of chair on the floor. "Don't think you could."
Drew hoisted another body clear of the debris and swiped at her grimy forehead. "I don't think they're gonna come this way again."
Zack followed her gaze to the fiery blockade preventing anything for coming through the rear entrance. "Not if they value their lives, which," he toed a corpse at his feet, "I imagine they do."
Drew cracked a smile and felt her face stretch. It seemed like an eternity since she had been standing in central command, laughing and joking with her friends.
She opened her mouth to call Carrot to come and help her lift one of the bodies when her radio crackled to life.
"Drew … fire … Alec?"
Drew frowned, tapping her headset. The blast and residual explosion must have knocked her frequency out. She adjusted it.
"Come again? You want me to shoot Alec?"
"Neg … needs –up … repeat, Alec –eeds ba—up. Go … -eta wes—"
Drew glanced up at Zack who bit his lip. "Needs backup?"
She shrugged. "You want me to go to Beta team west?"
"—uckin' said. Never lis—n."
A smirk tripped her lips as she turned to Zack. "I'm taking half to help Alec. Can you—"
"Go," he urged her, dragging a hand through his hair. "I can order triage and maintain the area."
She nodded to him and began to recall her troops to battle.
Alec was very glad that he couldn't see what was happening, as it meant that he had no idea exactly how insurmountable their odds were.
Oh, they were ahead by numbers, no doubt about that. And the transgenics had a creativity that the cultists lacked, but what the cultists lacked in imagination, they made up for in absence of pain responses.
Nothing was more demoralising than beating the shit out of your enemy and him not caring.
Alec threw another punch and watched in exasperation as the cultist shook him off like an irritating flea.
Alec shook out his fist and decided to go for the rather ungentlemanly action and kicked him in the groin.
The man folded to his knees, eyes watering and Alec grinned maliciously. "Hurts, don't it?"
"Enjoying yourself?" Biggs gasped as he killed his own opponent with a gunshot to the head.
"We got back-up?" Alec asked as he swiped blood away from his lip.
"Beta-east is here and Pix just sent out a call for Gamma to join us."
"Good," Alec said as he cricked his neck. "Maybe Drew can take some of her frustration out on these assholes."
Biggs just grinned and darted back into the fight.
Alec threw a look over his shoulder, wondering if he could head over to the front gates to help Max out. He wondered if she had defeated White yet or if she was in further trouble. The radio silence was killing him.
He grabbed a discarded gun and fired a few shots before it ran out of bullets. Cursing in three languages, Alec used the butt of the gun to slam into a cult member's nose and grimaced as blood spattered over his clothes.
He had the odd thought that, if they survived this, the hot water heaters would be taking a beating.
He was so lost in the smooth movements of kicking ass that it didn't register when they were joined by Gamma team until Drew saved his ass from being shot.
He looked up, surprised as the man with the gun was decapitated by a piece of sharp sheet metal.
Alec looked at the shiny weapon. "Nice."
Drew flicked the discarded rotary blade over and nodded. "I thought so. Dek wouldn't buy me a samurai sword, so I had to make do."
"I'll tell him about that," Alec grinned and she bit her lip.
"Heard on the radio that White has Max."
"Yeah," Alec's back stiffened. "I hope she kills the son of a bitch."
"Wanna go help?" Drew knew that if someone had a hold of Dek there was no way that she'd be able to stay away, least of all if his captor was the man who'd been trying to kill them all. Drew could see the look on Alec's face, knew that he wanted to follow Max as soon as possible.
"I have my orders," he bit out, desperately wanting to go. "I'll hold."
"Alec," she started, her hand whipping up and slicing the arm off a man who had been sneaking up alongside her. "I think we can take them. Max might need help."
Alec head-butted the armless man and threw him back to Drew who neatly ran him through. "I won't desert my post, Drew. Max has Ben and Dek with her, and Zane and half a dozen others."
"But not you," Drew reminded him. "Your head won't be in the game until you go help. So go."
Alec warred with his head and his heart, both of which urged him to go to is mate, to fight by her side and help her in any way possible. But he had been assigned to stay here and he would follow her orders, damnit. "Can't," he said again and Drew nodded slowly, seeing that he was struggling with the decision. It made her respect him all the more as her CO, to know that he wouldn't abandon them even if Max was hurt.
"Let's kill some more of these guys," Alec suggested and Drew nodded, moving in tight formation with him.
As they moved into position there came a rumble from behind the blasted walls and they froze. Both suddenly remembering that the armoured cars held more than just the cultists.
"Did someone forget to mention the missile carrier was still in play?" Drew asked, her voice pleasant.
Alec kept an easy smile on his face, even as his heart sank. "Oops."
Techie's feet barely touched the floor as he sped over the ground between the central command centre and the warehouses on the east side, where Feen had been stationed.
She had been a pain in his ass, ever since that mission where he had corrected that line of code in her work and stopped the mission from going sideways. She'd decided to take that as a sign that he was ready for human interaction and worked her ass off to get him humanised, domesticated and housebroken. He'd run, he'd hid; he'd begged, pleaded and refused point blank and now …
Now he'd host tea parties in his damned underwear if she'd just be all right.
There was no sign of the sweet, easy-going teen turned man in his face as he caught sight of the wreckage littering the floor in front of the warehouses. The shards of metal and the fiery pieces of engine just made his legs blur faster, his feet pounding to the rhythm of his heart as he headed for the steps that led into the building and up to the roof.
Feen wasn't allowed to be dead. There would be something fundamentally wrong with the universe if her bright spark was dimmed and there was no possible way that it could be allowed to happen.
No way.
From her chirpy manner to her Manticore be-damned hair, she was a bundle of joy and vibrant light and it wouldn't go out.
It couldn't.
The roof door had been jammed shut by fallen machinery but Techie didn't care. Finding strength he didn't even realise he had, he rammed the door with all his might and it catapulted open, something skittering across the courtyard of the rooftop.
He didn't even stop to see what it was but raced for the downed copter shell, its scattered parts black and ominous.
"Feen?" he called frantically and stared at the hunk of machinery for a moment, not knowing what to do.
Then his hands started scrabbling at the ruins, fingers finding purchase on the tattered edges and yanking with all his might.
The black mass shifted and he started to throw rocks and metal parts over his shoulder, not caring where they landed or what they slammed into on their descent to the ground.
The whole world seemed to slow as the next part uncovered a thin, pale hand poking out of the ground.
Techie gritted his teeth and yanked at the helicopter door, dislodging it slightly as he pulled. Taking a deep breath, he thought about the sweet broken girl underneath, thinking about the time he'd found an odd piece of wire and twisted it until it resembled a tornado. Feen's face had lit up as he'd explained how the twisted hurricane reminded him of her; mad and dangerous and something that would completely suck you in, given half a chance.
He focused on the look on her face and hauled the sheet metal off her. Then he looked down, his heart stopping dead in his chest.
Aiden lay still and unmoving, his arms curled around Techie's girl, blood matting his hair and face, his arm bent back at an unnatural angle and his back twisted. Feen's shock of red hair was just as still underneath him and Techie knelt down, gently disentangling the unconscious man from Feen.
"Feen?" he whispered, "C'mon baby, wake up."
Aiden's body lolled to the side and Techie bit his lip as he looked the man over, his body broken and abused.
"Fuck!" he swore and laid Feen down, his hand reaching for Aiden's pulse point. The thrum of blood under his finger and slow thump of a heartbeat told him that Aiden wasn't dead, yet, but needed to be taken to the infirmary before he died of his injuries.
He turned back to Feen, his eyes running over her body to search for injuries. He couldn't see anything major, although her little frame bruised and battered more than he'd like. He ran a hand over his face. Should he move Aiden whose injuries seemed more life threatening, or should he take care of Feen first?
A small cough distracted him and he was at her side in an instant. "Feen? Baby, talk to me."
She coughed again, the action wracking her whole body in spasms of pain. "Tech?" she croaked and he slid a hand through her hair.
"M'here, where are you hurt?" his hands danced over, trying to find broken bones or cuts.
"Aid—n," she gasped wetly. "Hurt. Shielded me."
"Yeah, he took good care of you," Techie swallowed as a trickle of blood edged out of her mouth and dribbled down her chin. "Fuck, fuck, you're bleeding, baby."
"Think I punctured something insides. Don't be mad."
"I'm not mad," he insisted even as he looked around frantically for help, for something to bandage her up. For something to help her, damnit!
"Is he dead?"
"No."
"Am I?"
Techie grabbed her hand, tears sliding down his cheeks onto hers. "No. you're not allowed to die, Feen. It's not allowed. I . . . I . . . forbid it!"
"D—d—dumbass," she managed and coughed, blood spilling out of her mouth to mingle in her hair, the colours clashing. "You came."
"What?" his tone was furious.
"Didn't die alone. Didn't think anyone was coming."
"Gotta get you to the infirmary," he urged, his voice thick.
"No!" she grabbed his hand. "Can't move me without help, some kind of stretcher. Punctured lung, collapsed rib cage. Carrying me'd make it worse." She sucked in a breath. "And it feels real bad already."
Techie swiped his forehead. "I need to get help."
"Take Aiden," Feen urged. "Get him to the med bay. Then come back for me, with a stret—," her words were lost in a curdled gasp and a final cough and Techie clutched at her hand.
"Feen? Feen? Fe-fe?" Her hand drooped in his grip and her tiny fingers uncurled, fingers laying flat in his huge palm. Lifeless.