New World Order (39 page)

I pushed my dad’s chair back from the table and stood, taking a last look around my family home. “Ready,” I said.

He stood and held his hand out to me, and as I laced my fingers through his, I remembered the first time I’d ever placed my hand in his, a year ago, when we’d decided to take on the Holt regime. It filled me with as much strength now as it had then.

Jack

The stone stairs of the Pit were just as narrow and worn as I remembered. Not that I’d ever told Sunny, but sometimes I had nightmares about living down here. Like Ted had pointed out, it was worse than anything we had ever imagined. Aside from the stale air, coal dust, and poorly lighted enclosed spaces, I had the overwhelming fear that the Pit would
cave in on me at any second. And as much as it scared the crap out of me, I was glad I’d experienced life down here. It gave me a better understanding of my wife, strengthened our bond, and gave me insight into the issues that plagued our two races.

Although we were not two races; we were the same. We had just been segregated by unjust politics. Justice was overdue.

“How are you feeling?”
I asked Sunny as we climbed the stairs.

“A little nervous.”

“Only a little?”

She squeezed my hand. “I’ll be honest,” she said, a little out of breath from the stairs. “I’d like nothing better than to take you home, shave that beard off your face, and make love to you.”

I pulled her off the stairs into a hallway and thoroughly kissed her. My body responded to her warm soft curves, and
for a fleeting moment I thought,
Why not go home? Why not let someone else deal with Leisel Holt? Why was it always us?

Sunny pulled back a little and stroked my beard. “I could get used to it,” she said. She looked around us. “You know what level we’re on?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I didn’t bother to check.”

“Fourth level. Our apartment is just down there.”

It was a tempting thought. I
kissed her neck. “We should go check it out.”

She groaned softly. “If only we didn’t have a bunch of people waiting for us to save the day.”

I slumped against her in disappointment. “If only.”

She pushed against me, and I straightened. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”

Neither of us mentioned that we might not make it home.

“Did you get the metamaterial or whatever it
is?”

“Doc made me a cloak that goes over my head,” she said, shrugging her backpack off her shoulders. “It’s kind of like a ghost costume.” She opened her pack and took something out. It looked like nothing, but since I couldn’t see her hands, I knew she was holding something.

“That’s amazing. It actually is invisible.” She gave it to me, and I held it up. If I shifted it I could see
something
—like a variance in lighting that caused a subtle shimmering effect. “Did you get two?”

“No. There was only enough material to make this one.”

“Then I’ll wear it, and you stay down here.” I wasn’t okay with Sunny facing Leisel on her own… or facing Leisel at all, for that matter.

“Nice try, Jack,” she said, plucking the garment away from me. “But it’s just my size. It’ll be too small for
you. There’s no way you can be invisible with your feet and hands showing.” She draped the cloak over her arm and half of her went missing. “Plus I have my exoskeleton and you don’t. I’m safe, Jack.”

“And yet I still have a problem with letting my pregnant wife sneak into the tiger’s den all by herself.”

She kissed me, took my hand, and pulled me back to the stairs. “Come on, Jack. They’re
waiting.”

“There are going to be two doors to get through,” Bron said to everyone. “This one and then the big steel doors into the Dome. It’s standard procedure to guard both doors, but over the years we got slack with the rule because of our confidence in the steel doors to prevent anyone from the Pit getting in. Under the current circumstances, they might be adhering to standard procedures.”

Bron was the only Pit guard among us, and she knew the tactical measures they would be taking on the other side of the door. We still weren’t sure just how many guards would be on the other side. Although the number of people in the Alliance now far outnumbered Domers, there were still a fair number of soldiers loyal to the Holt family. Leisel wouldn’t have a huge army in there with her, but
she would certainly have some security.

“And you know where the switch is to open the steel doors, right?” I asked her.

“Behind the security desk, next to the steel doors. Try to get the doors open before reinforcements are sent.”

Hayley handed me a communicator, and I clipped it to the strap of my gun holster.

“Won’t a reinforcement team come through the doors?” Reyes asked.

“No,”
Hayley said. “For security reasons, on-duty personnel are in the defense wing of the Dome, by the hangar. If there’s an uprising, the first protocol is to ensure the steel doors remain sealed and the president is protected.”

“I can get to the switch,” Sunny said. “Just keep the guards busy.”

“I can get to the switch too,” Reyes said with purpose.

“If Leisel knows the Dome has been successfully
infiltrated, she might decide to go ahead and blow the warheads,” Sunny said. “We get the door open, I slip through, and then you guys retreat back to the Pit and make them think they won.” She wagged a finger in Reyes’ face. “
Don’t
show off the power of that suit until you have to.”

“If we don’t hear from you in forty-five minutes, Reyes can go ahead and show off all he wants,” I said and held
up my gun. “And I will too.”

Ted clapped me on the back. “We all will.”

“Are we ready?” Hayley asked.

Sunny put on the cloak, disappearing in the fabric. My stomach clenched. I wasn’t ready for any of this. My mind started swirling with the idiocy of it all. She was my wife, she was pregnant with my child, and I was
letting
her
do this?

“Ready,” Sunny said.

“I changed my mind,” I said.
“This can’t happen. Give me the cloak.” I held my hand out, but she didn’t give it to me. “Sunny,” I said and made to grab her arm, but she wasn’t there. “Sunny!” I yelled. But she was gone.

Before I had a chance to find her, hold her one last time, tell her how much I loved her, Hayley had set off the charges. Rapid machine gun fire followed, bullets whipping through the open door.

Reyes
and Mica were already creeping up the stairs toward the opening where the door used to be. They returned fire, forcing the guards to seek cover.

I took the stairs two at a time. “Sunny!” Still no answer from her.

The rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns sounded again, and I flattened myself against the wall. I watched in fascination as Reyes and Mica were both drilled with bullets and not one penetrated
the suit.

“I’m going to get one of those when all of this is over,” I said.

Reyes shot me a lopsided smile. “Good luck getting Doc to make you one.” He shot another round through the door.

Summer and Raine came farther up the stairs to stand behind Reyes and Mica.

“Is she through?” Summer asked me.

“I don’t know.” Staying against the wall, I walked the last few steps to the open door
and peeked around. In the five seconds I allowed myself to look, before they saw my head and started shooting, I took stock of what we were up against. “Six guards. Reinforcements are probably already on the way.”

More gunfire. And then there was a commotion. I heard someone yell, “I didn’t open it! I didn’t touch it!” And then an order: “Get that damn door closed.”

“I think she’s in,” Summer
said.

I peeked around the corner again just in time to see the doors closing, and I wished I knew if she had made it in or not. I unclipped my communicator, the urge to call her strong, but I put it away. A message from me right now would give away her position. The most I could do was stay close to the door, out of the thick rock of the Pit that blocked communication signals, and wait to hear
from her.

Then the sound of reinforcements sent us into action.

Sunny

Jack reached for me, and I stepped out of the way, letting his hands grab at thin air. It was hard enough on both of us without dragging it out. I knew what it would do to me to watch him go, but at least I was clothed head to toe in a suit that was indestructible. I was fast, armed,
and bulletproof. Jack was not. So using the enhanced speed my suit gave me, I had dodged his outstretched hand. Then Hayley blew the door, and before the smoke even cleared, I ran through the opening straight for the security desk.

I half expected every guard in reception to turn their guns on me and start firing. But I passed through unnoticed. I stood at the security desk, and from my vantage
point, I could see the switch to open the door. But if I leaned over the desk, my boots might show. The cloak was a little longer than floor length to ensure my feet remained covered, and I had to hold the cloak out a bit so I wouldn’t trip. Three of the guards were hiding behind the desk, and I waited for them to muster the courage to join the fight and get out of my way, hopefully before reinforcements
showed up.

Gunfire sounded in the Pit, and I saw Jack’s head peek around the corner. The lead guard motioned for the others to take up strategic positions, and finally two of the guards cowering behind the desk moved. As soon as they were out of the way, I quietly walked around the desk and past the one guard left behind it. As my cloak brushed against him, I stopped and held my breath, waiting
for him to turn around and grab me. Not that I was afraid of him, but this was our only shot at getting to Leisel undetected. But he was too wrapped up in cowering from the gunfight to notice me.

I got to the switch, counted to three, pushed it, and ran as fast as my suit could take me to the opening doors. The lead guard reacted immediately, and the guard cowering behind the desk jumped up
to shut the door. I slipped through and then paused to look around.

The big fireplace that dominated the main reception area was lit with its fake flames, and a half-finished drink sat on the coffee table in front of the big overstuffed chair beside it. There was a time when I thought this was the biggest, most beautiful room I had ever seen, but that was when the only place I had ever been
in my life was the Pit. After a year of living outside and becoming accustomed to the blue of the sky, the green of the plants, and all the vibrant colors of the earth, the room looked small, tired and faded.

I crossed the reception area to the grand staircase. Holding out my cloak, I climbed, remembering another time I had walked these stairs shrouded in a gown: Leisel and Jack’s wedding.
What a terrifying day that had been. When I wasn’t fretting over being shot by an assassin, I was worrying about being caught posing as the bride. At absolutely no point during that wedding did I ever think things would work out the way they had. Yet here I was, married to Jack Kenner and pregnant with his child, climbing the grand staircase once more to finally finish what had begun on these very
stairs one year ago. Only I wasn’t scared this time around. Experience had made me wiser… not to mention my exoskeleton made me stronger than any bulletproof vest.

I left the grand staircase and suddenly stopped. I hadn’t thought about how to get into the elevator or open the door to the stairs without being seen on camera. The Dome was practically empty, so it wasn’t as if people were opening
doors that I could slip through. Positioning myself between the stairs and the elevator, I waited. Someone was bound to come eventually.

About ten minutes later, just as I was about to give up and risk being caught, the ding of the elevator sounded. But it was downstairs, in the reception room, and not on this floor. I walked to the elevator and pressed the button, hoping they would think it
was just a malfunction or something. The hum of the elevator came closer then stopped, and the doors opened.

Three Domers were on it.

“Who hit the second floor?” one of them grumbled. He punched the keypad.

I hesitated to the point where I almost didn’t make it, but at the last second I hopped on and held my breath.

“There’s no way it can be Jack Kenner,” said the one who had punched
the keypad.

“One of the guards says he was sure it was him,” one of the others said.

“I’ll pass it on to Senator West. Right now your priority is to secure the presidential wing.”

I really needed to breathe. Would they hear one breath?

The elevator door finally opened. I tucked myself into the corner while they rushed out and then exited before the doors shut. Four doors led to four
different hallways: Holt, West, Powell, and Forbes. I was on the presidential floor. The tactical squad I was trailing rushed into the Holt wing.

Desmond, Leisel’s boyfriend, was in the hallway shouting orders. His uniform had a lot more stripes than the last time I’d seen him, and I figured his girlfriend had given him a promotion. It wasn’t really surprising. More than ninety percent of the
Dome’s security forces had left as soon as the doors were opened. Very few people continued to live inside. And by the look of it, Desmond took his position very seriously: he barked orders for soldiers to guard the stairwell and the elevator and to line the hallways. He reminded them all of how successful Jack Kenner had been at getting his forces up here last year and demanded there not be a repeat
of that event. He spoke into his communicator requesting an update on the rebels at the Pit door and gave a satisfied nod when he was told the rebels were being held at bay. No one had gotten through.

Rebels. It was almost laughable.

I trailed Desmond, knowing he would eventually lead me to Leisel, even though the activity in the hallway made it almost impossible to stay out of everyone’s
way. One Domer actually bumped into me, and I braced myself for him to blow the whistle. But he just stepped back, an angry set to his face as if ready to reprimand whoever had gotten in his way, and realized no one was there. With a blush, he looked around to see if anyone had seen him.