The Defiant (38 page)

Before I can think about it, I pull the trigger.

David fires too, shooting wildly as Liam leaps out of the way. David staggers back as my bullet hits him, but he stays on his feet. The gun falls from his hand.

There's a split second of silence after the gunshots.

David looks at me, stunned.

“You shot me!” he says, sounding angry and hurt. Surprisingly, the ministers keep standing there, watching us closely. They don't fire. And they do nothing to help David. Neither does Dr. Vargas-­Ruiz. I shot to kill David, but somehow he is still alive.

“Why would you shoot me?” he asks, sounding stunned. “You weren't supposed to do that!”

“Because you pointed a gun at Liam!” I yell. “Because you were going to kill him, and probably Gadya too!” I know it to be true. They are disposable to him now. More blood is coming out of David's wound.

“But I'm not supposed to die,” he says. “Your friends are. . . . Not me. . . .”

“No, they're not,” I tell him. “None of us are.” I feel so shaky, I can barely stand up. I grab on to Liam for support. Both of us are breathing hard, transfixed by David and the stone-faced ministers.

A trickle of blood starts coming down David's shirt, and he wheezes for air. He raises a hand to his chest. “This whole time I thought you liked me. I thought I could manipulate you.” He sounds oddly thoughtful and quizzical. The anger is gone from his tone now. “I didn't think you'd do this to me.” He stumbles backward, nearly getting caught on the wires surrounding him. “How can you not understand. We lost. . . . There's no point being . . . on the losing team.” His breath is coming in gasps.

“I'd rather be true to myself than win,” I tell him.

I'm still waiting for the ministers to open fire on us, but it
doesn't happen. They just keep watching David with their nearly identical faces.

David continues looking at me. My hand is shaking but I don't lower my gun. “Didn't you care for me at all?” he asks. He takes another step back. More blood is soaking through his shirt. “I'm . . . surprised.”

“It doesn't matter what I felt for you once,” I tell him, revolted by his actions. “That's over now. I don't care about people who switch sides. Who play the system. Who use other people. You took any feelings I might have had for you and threw them away. You were willing to kill me. You just never thought I would be willing to kill you. Face it. You're the one who lost.”

David is getting pale. He glances back at Dr. Vargas-Ruiz. She has backed away into a corner of the room, expecting a gun battle. “I told you to take their weapons. . . .” David murmurs. “Just in case.” He looks at me. “Why did you choose Liam over me? I still don't understand . . .”

Then he abruptly collapses backward onto the floor, in a jarring tangle, slamming his head down hard.

Gadya grips my arm. We don't know what's going to happen next.

I look away from David and see that all five ministers have their guns pointed at us again. Perhaps we will not be getting out of this room alive. I just hope we can take some of the ministers down with us.

I hear faint coughing sounds from David. He is dying.
I have killed him. I can't believe it. I feel like I'm going to pass out.
Then his choking sounds become even louder and more agonized. I see blood flowing from his lips, followed by some kind of strange tentacle.

I gasp.

“It's a MIOD!” Gadya yells.

Indeed, a large metallic tentacle is clawing its way out of David's mouth. David's body seizes up as he goes into his final death throes. The MIOD begins emerging, prepared to attack us.

My hand is too unsteady to shoot. But Liam and Gadya both fire at once, exploding the metal creature into fragments.

Is this why David did it? Did the ministers implant him with one of these, as a means to control him and keep him in line?
I don't understand. Rika had one of those in her, but she was still willing to sacrifice herself so that we could live. David has no excuse. He made his choices. And he had to live and die by them.

Then the entire building begins to shake.

Confused and scared, I grab out for Liam. The floor feels like it's moving. The ministers run to the windows to look out.

I hear the roar of engines out the window.

Dr. Vargas-Ruiz tries to make a dash for the doors, but Liam grabs her.

“You traitor!” he yells at her.

“No, wait—” she cries out. “The ministers made me do it. I have a family. My brother and his young children. They said they'd have them killed if I didn't go along with their plans. Please don't hurt me.” But in her hand, I see a small, sharp silver knife appear. Liam doesn't see it yet.

“You're lying,” he says to her.

“Liam, look out!” I yell.

Just in time, he lurches back, barely avoiding her blade.

Then gunshots ring out and she falls backward. Gadya stands there. She has shot Dr. Vargas-Ruiz twice in the stomach. Dr. Vargas-Ruiz retches and falls to the ground. She tries to crawl away on all fours, like an animal.

I rush over to her and yank her up by her hair as she screams.

“How could you do this to us? Was my mother in on this?” I yell. I snatch the knife away from her.

Her scared eyes find mine. “No . . . ,” she moans. “And I was never a rebel scientist. I was an operative for the UNA . . . sent to control the rebels as best I could. . . . Matthieu Veidman was my son. . . . Please—” She clutches at my hands. “Please forgive me for what I did to all of you.”

I let go of her hair and she falls facedown to the floor, in an ever-widening pool of blood.

That's when the gunfire starts in earnest. The ministers begin firing their weapons at us. I fling myself down and narrowly avoid getting hit.

Outside the windows I inexplicably see aircraft rising up.

We are doomed.

These must be UNA craft. Clearly, thanks to David's and Dr. Vargas-Ruiz's treachery, the ministers knew all about our plans.

“Duck!” Liam yells, sheltering me as the aircraft closest to us opens fire.

The thick glass windows explode under the massive barrage of supercharged antitank shells from the aircraft.

I slide onto the floor, trying to grab hold of Liam and Gadya.

I see one of the ministers get hit in the head with a piece of shrapnel, as a wave of flying glass blasts over him. He screams, staggers a few steps forward, disoriented, desperately trying to pick glass out of his eyes, and then tumbles out the broken window. His screams echo back to us as he plunges to his death seventy stories below.

The other ministers are firing at us, and out the windows as well.

“They're not UNA aircraft!” I scream, in a moment of sudden understanding.

Gadya looks at me as she fires back at the surviving ministers. “What?”

Liam has realized the same thing. “It's ships from the European Coalition!”

We race toward the doors and unlock them as bullets fly.

I tumble into the hallway with Liam and Gadya. Behind us, the airplanes from the European Coalition continue to shoot at the ministers in the room.

Liam slams the doors behind us.

Rebels race out into the hallway, guns drawn. For a moment I think they will shoot us.

“Stop!” I yell. “David and Dr. Vargas-Ruiz were traitors! We're on the same side!”

“The Europeans are here!” Liam says.

The rebels look confused.

“No more shooting!” I call out. “But we need to get out of this building right now! The ministers are in the conference room. Kill them!”

The rebels don't disagree with that. Some immediately head into the room with their guns raised. The whole building is shaking as bombs hit nearby. I'm worried that the European Coalition will start bombing the hotel before we can get out.

We all run down the hall together and back to the stairway, heading down to ground level. I can't even believe what has happened.

I feel sick, but I also feel jubilant. The ministers and the mutants will all be killed by the European aircraft. The mutants might be able to survive bullets, but I doubt they can survive missiles and
bombs. I just hope the same thing is happening in the other cities.

We hammer down the stairs as a group, moving as quickly as possible. More rebels enter the stairway at different levels and join us, forming a throng. Finally, we all burst back out into the lobby.

Through the massive windows, I can already see the bodies of mutants littering the street, along with the bodies of so many fallen rebels and citizens. Bomb craters are everywhere.

We run across the marble floor to the doors. I fling them open, and we race outside.

I immediately look up.

The sky is filled with planes. In the distance I can see more explosions. The European Coalition is destroying the remains of the UNA.

I clutch Liam's hand.

Liam, Gadya, and I stand there on the steps outside the hotel for a moment. I look behind me. The entire top floor of the building is on fire. David and the ministers are history.

“We're free,” I say.

“I hope it turns out that way,” Gadya replies.

“It will,” Liam says. “I just know it.”

I shut my eyes. All I can see is David's face. I know that I did the right thing. I want to be on the winning side only if they are fighting for the right reasons. The UNA is evil. It deserves to be torn down.

David lost his way, or perhaps he was corrupt all along. I don't want to fight the European Coalition. I want them to help us. This country is going to need every bit of help it can get.

Citizens who were hiding in other buildings, or on side streets from the mutants, are rushing back to the main street. They are
dazed and pale, wearing shocked expressions. Nobody can understand what's going on. People are too stunned from the carnage to be congratulating one another.

Planes continue to fly overhead, bearing the emblem of the European Coalition.

“We're going to have to rebuild everything,” I say.

Gadya sighs. “I guess so.”

“We did it on the wheel,” I tell her. “We can do it again here.”

“This is our home,” Liam agrees. “We can make it anything we want it to be. What happens next is up to us.”

For a moment, I'm seized with a burst of optimism. I hug Liam. The three of us are still alive. And the UNA has been defeated. No matter what happens next, we achieved our goal.

“We did it,” I tell Liam and Gadya. “We should be happy.”

Liam nods. “This is victory, even if it doesn't feel like it yet.”

Gadya looks at me. “We killed the UNA.”

More citizens are flooding the streets.

“Victory,” I say, looking around. “We have to make it count. We have to make it worth it for Cass, Rika, Alun, and everyone else who didn't survive.”

Liam and Gadya nod. We stand there together, watching the street for a moment.

Right then I see a figure approaching us out of the corner of my eye. He's swaddled in gray blankets.

I turn toward him as he nears us, thinking that it's a civilian survivor of the massacre, possibly injured and needing our help.

His face is hooded by a blanket. He is about twenty paces away before I realize that this is not an ordinary person. There is something unusual about his gait and posture.

Gadya and Liam notice it at the exact same moment.

“Stop walking,” Liam calls out to the figure, raising his gun.

Then the figure throws off his blankets.

It's Minister Hiram.

Somehow he must have gotten out of the penthouse conference room. His face is burned and raw, but he is very much alive. And he is smiling at us.

Gadya and I raise our guns, as we call out warnings to everyone.

“Look out!” I yell. “It's one of the ministers!”

Minister Hiram keeps walking as we begin peppering him with bullets. They tear into his clothes and flesh but he continues moving.

“I have a gift for you rebels,” he cries out, raising his black-gloved hands above his head.

I remember him back in that creepy room in New Dallas. How he touched my shoulder, and I felt electrical shocks. I didn't know what to make of it then, and I still don't. But I sense that he possesses some final kind of weapon that he wants to unleash on us.

“Keep your distance!” I yell, as the three of us keep backing away from him. The bullets aren't slowing him.

And then he yanks off one of his gloves and flings it to the concrete. I see that his hand is missing. In its place is a steel prosthetic, with lead-coated robotic fingers. He pulls off the other glove, revealing the same. Both his hands have been hacked off and replaced, like a cyborg.

A bullet pings off one of his metal fingertips.

Everyone is yelling and screaming.

Liam manages to hit him in the neck with a round, and the minister drops down to one knee in the street. He keeps holding his metal hands above his head. And he keeps smiling.

“You will never win!” he calls out with his final breath, as he touches his metal hands together. “The UNA will live forever!”

Instantly there's a huge roar of sound, as the street buckles underneath us. I lose my balance and fall down. It's like an earthquake is beginning. The ground is shaking and it won't stop.

Minister Hiram collapses. His metal hands have clearly acted as a detonation switch. When he touched them together, it began a chain reaction of explosions under the city streets.

“They must have put bombs underground!” Liam calls out. Everyone is screaming. I see buildings shaking. The noise becomes a deafening roar. It's like the city is self-destructing.

“Run!” I cry out. We start racing away, trying to find safety. Huge openings appear in the street, like massive sinkholes. I see people falling down into them, to their deaths. Bits of debris start toppling from buildings, as windows explode from the vibrations.