Chapter 38 Warner
Warner
“We have to split up.”
Kenji ducks down beside me as I say this, a bead of sweat dripping down his temple. He wipes at his face with the hem of his
shirt, breathing hard. “Just like that? No romance, no poetry? You’re just breaking up with me?”
“Something is wrong,” I say, turning to look at him. I taste blood as I speak, and I reach blindly for the gash at my head,
trying to ascertain the damage. “This feels like a much bigger operation than we’ve trained for—”
Kenji slaps my hand away from my head. “Don’t touch it. It looks worse than it is. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
“I’m fine,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.
“No concussion?”
“Like I said, I’m fine.”
Kenji peers around the low wall, then falls back. “Look, these dudes are fighting with weapons I’ve never even seen before.
One of those lasers could’ve taken off your whole head.”
“The teams were prepared,” I admit. “We’ve got powers on our side, but they leveraged the element of surprise. We have to
pivot, and we have to do it quickly.” I pause. “I think we should split up.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I hate it when we split up.”
This nearly prompts a smile. “It’s our best option,” I say to him. “All units are under the directives of their commanding
officers, and I can’t issue any new orders without giving away our position. Between the two of us we can cover more ground,
execute individual operations—”
“Wait, hold on, why can’t you issue new orders? You can decide right now. Issue a new directive over the comms. We’ll pivot
together. We have a system for that.”
I shake my head, then check to make sure we’re still clear before I say, “I think our central comms have been hacked.”
“What?”
“The information has been inconsistent,” I explain. “In some cases, entirely unverified.”
“Shit.”
“All intel seems to insist that a high-profile prisoner and known Ark assassin is responsible for stealing sensitive material.
But we know for a fact that Rosabelle has been in Nazeera’s custody for several hours.”
Kenji takes this in. “You think someone’s trying to set her up?”
“I don’t know. I still don’t know what to think of her. She might’ve helped orchestrate the entire thing. Created the opportunity.
All I know for sure is that the intel isn’t coming from us. I wasn’t the one to report the vial missing. I certainly never indicated to anyone that she was the main suspect—”
“Get down,” Kenji cries, knocking me to the ground, then covering me as he exchanges fire. The sounds are both deafening and short-lived.
Kenji ducks back behind the wall, breathing hard.
We both activate invisibility, but the protection has been limited; our enemies had already seen us open fire from this position.
I rise into a low crouch and spot an assailant taking cover behind a distant building. I soon spot two others. They’re dressed
exactly as our infantry would be. Same uniforms. Flawless mimics. Perfect spies.
The only difference is, I can feel their malice.
“On your left,” I say quietly. “Two on my right.”
“I see him,” says Kenji.
We take them out together, finding our marks in nearly coordinated kills.
Then we bolt.
“Head inland,” I say as we run. We can’t see each other, but I can sense Kenji close by. “I want to get away from the harbor—”
I hear the electric thrum of advanced weaponry and I tackle Kenji to the ground, holding him there as the laser fire shoots
past our heads.
“Motherfucker,” he cries.
I hear the weapon recharging and I grab him by the arm, hauling him upright, and this time I don’t let go. “Run,” I shout.
“We can take cover in the alley up ahead—”
Shots hit the ground at our feet, then whizz past our heads. I realize, with a shock of dread, that the assailant must be sensing our heat signatures. It’s possible their weaponry is advanced enough to offer this technology.
“What do you think they’re trying to do?” says Kenji. “We don’t even know what their objective is—”
“Enslave the world,” I answer, breathing hard. “The ultimate objective of The Reestablishment has always been global colonization.
By any means necessary.”
“Right, I get that,” Kenji says. “But what about right now?”
There’s a sonic boom—
We both lose our footing.
The entire world seems to shudder, shock waves reverberating painfully. My ears ring as clouds of ominous smoke rise in the
sky, flashes of a firestorm raging in the distance.
“What the hell was that?” cries Kenji, panicked.
“I don’t know,” I shout above the din, helping him up, “but we have to move. The scope of this attack is bigger than anything
we’ve dealt with so far—”
More shots narrowly miss us both, searing the ground beneath us, pulverizing the landscape around us, and we just manage to
dive into a back alley, out of range. I realize, on a delay, that my left leg caught the edge of a laser shot, the skin raw
and bleeding through the scorched material of my pants.
We take a second to breathe, but I know we can’t stay here long. “Their weapons have heat trackers,” I say to Kenji. “We can’t
just keep running. We need to split up.”
“How did they even smuggle these weapons onto the continent?” he says, fighting for air. “Wouldn’t our teams have noticed crates of terrifying, alien weaponry coming in from hostile territory?”
I shake my head. “We’re more deeply infiltrated than we realized.”
“Infiltrated? You mean you think our own soldiers are working against us?”
“There’s no other way they would’ve been able to orchestrate and execute a complex operation like this from within our borders.
It makes me wonder how deep the corrupted veins run through our systems.”
“Holy shit.”
“Kenji,” I say, glancing over my shoulder. “I’m going to tell you something right now that I want you to take to your grave.
Are you listening?”
“Yeah, man,” he says. “I’m listening.”
“The stolen vial is another decoy. I’ve planted several; each one was meant to be a trap; each one has a tracker. Only I know
where the original is stored.”
Kenji lets out a low whistle. “This is why they paint your face all over the city, bro. Already a fucking hero.”
Shots ring out in the near distance.
Not long before we’re discovered.
“I want you to track down the stolen vial,” I say to Kenji. “I’ll tell you where to find the coordinates.”
Kenji is quiet a moment, just breathing. “What about you?” he says. “What are you going to do?”
I risk a quick look through the unreliable notifications coming through on my pager, my jaw tensing, and then I glance up at the firestorm still raging in the distance.
A sinister feeling moves along my skin. “I need to find out how much of this is real.”