The Other Side (28 page)
Authors: Joshua McCune
We
spend the ride down going over hand signals so we can communicate without talking. Doesn't do us much good once we hit bottom, though. It's pitch black in the train tunnel and uncomfortably silent. I press the machine gun close to keep it from rattling. We tiptoe forward, feeling our way to the edge of the platform.
I reach out with my machine gun, probing for a train, but there's nothing. Colin grabs me by the waist and lowers me onto the tracks. I hear him land next to me. The noise of him, his footsteps, his breathing, it's all too loud, but I'm not sure I could move forward without it.
With my free hand, I find his. He's sweating.
“Nervous?”
“Just hot,” he says. “You?”
“Just hot,” I respond, and take off before we get any hotter.
Fire shoots through my injured calf with every step, but I bite back the groans and force Colin to keep up with me.
Too many minutes later, I see the faint haze of the terminal's lights. No Green glow. The dragon cages are empty. Colin slows us, skulks ahead, machine gun poised. He motions for me to stop or follow every few steps. It takes all my effort to comply.
The terminal is empty. The expansive quiet reminds me of Chicago. No echo of humanity.
“You okay?” Colin asks.
“Fine.” The path of dragon cages extends out of sight. To our right, there's another set of tracks leading into a different tunnel. “Which way?”
He checks my duct-tape bandage. It's stained crimson. “Melissa, you're not doing wellâ”
“Which way?”
He indicates the tunnel.
Before he can become too concerned, I pull him into the blackness of the other tunnel and set a brisk pace.
My lungs are burning almost as much as my calf when Grackel enters my head.
The attack has begun
, she says, her voice resonating a little, which must mean she's in broadcast mode, telling Colin the same thing.
“How do you know?” I whisper aloud for Colin's benefit. Even that sounds like thunder in the dark quiet of the tunnel.
I can feel it. The air is alive with Green rage.
I drop into silent communication.
Do you know where?
No, I do not know where. Feels like a lot.
What about my brother?
I have not been able to reach him
, she says, for my ears only.
We reach the tunnel's terminus. Columns of light funnel down a bank of deactivated escalators, dimly illuminating the station's platform. Colin holds up his hand.
Halt.
He and the train he lurks behind are little more than gray shadows. He sneaks around it, climbs onto the platform, and scouts the escalators. He circles them twice before waving me forward.
I follow him up an escalator at a torpid creep. He pauses now and again, I assume to listen, though I'm not sure for what. That eerie silence from the terminal has followed us.
Can you tell Colin to hurry it up, Grackel?
Seconds later, Colin glances back at me and shakes his head.
He says that he is the trained soldier and rushing into the unknown is unwise,
Grackel tells me.
Unwise, huh? I imagine he said something with a little more bite. He looks back again and holds up his hand, stiffer than normal, his eyes tight. Not just
Halt
, but
Halt!
I push past with a glare and take the remaining steps two at a time.
The escalators funnel into a colossal concourse that reminds me of the one at FedEx Underground, where Dad treated Sam and me to soccer matches while Mom was on deployment. But there are no vendor stations or causeways onto a field here. It's all bland gray wall, demarcated in giant block letters with the inscription
A51-TAACOM.
Colin looks both ways. “This is it. There will only be one entrance. Heavily guarded.” He scans again, extra slow, even though there's not a ghost of a soul in sight. “Left or right?”
“I got right. You go left.”
He grabs me before I've gone a step. “We're not splitting up.”
“We're easier targets together.”
“And you won't have anybody to guard your ass. I know this is hard, but we can't be rash, Melissa.”
“Fine, but you've got to pick up the pace.”
We scuttle across the concourse to the wall, stick close to its edge. Colin speeds up from snail to turtle. He scans ahead. I scan behind. Another escalator well appears on the opposite side. Then another.
I'm guessing we're about a quarter of the way around when Colin gives me the halt command, followed by a thumbs-down. He makes a circle around his eye with his fingers, then slinks forward at a low crouch.
I strain to listen, but beyond the whisper of my quick breaths, I don't hear anything but that vast silence.
He stops, holds up four fingers, then waves at me urgently. Retreat.
Grackel sends me an image as I'm backing up. Four white cloaks flank a set of wide double doors, the kind you see in a movie theater or high school hallway. Except these are metal and controlled by a bioscanner.
Colin scuttles toward me, a finger pressed to his lips. He takes me by the shoulders, looks at me, smiles. Somehow happy and sad all at once.
“What's wrong?” I whisper.
“I'm always with you,” he mouths, kisses my forehead, and sprints back toward the doors.
Colin is going to draw them away from you,
Grackel says as I start after him.
Tell him to go to hell.
But with my leg injured, I can't keep up. Just before he disappears around the curve, he looks back. His eyes wide and pleading, he motions for me to halt. And then he's gone.
Be still and listen,
Grackel says with a telepathic growl.
You will hide in the black stairs. He is going to kill the four warriors in white. He believes this will bring reinforcements. He will lead them away. You will stay hidden until all is clear.
We're not splitting up. We agreed.
Kill emotion, human. You are a warrior, Melissa Callahan. Warriors only bleed when the war is over. Go!
I send her my own telepathic growl as I scamper across the concourse to the escalators and take cover. I peek out, but can't see anything from my position.
Show me what he sees, Grackel.
No, human, you must concentrate on your task
.
Hold still. Be calm.
Dammit, Grackel, at least tell him to wait so I can give himâ
Shots explode through the emptiness. Four seconds, maybe five, and it's over.
“Rule one of the hunt: never wake a sleeping dragon!” Colin bellows. He starts shooting again, bombarding the door and wall, by the sound of it. “I'm awake!”
He fires a few more rounds before fleeing. I hear his boots drumming the concrete. For one long held breath, he's alone. Then the avalanche comes, a fusillade of footfalls and gunfire in frenzied pursuit.
The pandemonium fades, the gunfire becomes more sporadic. I dread the inevitable silence that minutes ago was an ally but now will mean . . .
I push Colin from my thoughts and break cover. I dash across the concourse, staying light on the balls of my feet, machine gun gripped in both hands. I skirt the wall at a quick jog, freeze as I come around the bend and see Elise and two white cloaks treating the four guards laid out on the ground.
The white cloaks don't notice me. Elise does. She shakes her head, nods for me to retreat in the direction I came from. I shoot the two white cloaks in the back of their heads. She opens her mouth, I assume to scream. I drill her between the eyes.
The steel doors, now riddled with dents, are closed. Though Colin shot up about every inch of wall in the area, he left the bioscanner intact.
I check the bodies. One of the white cloaks Colin shot up still pulses blood from a bullet wound in his abdomen. With lots of grunting and cursing, I manage to prop him against the wall. I yank his arm up to the scanner and press his palm to it.
The door clicks. I open it. A tangle of voices swarms me.
“A-B squadron coming up E Street. I'm flanking around and coming in high.”
“Take that, you scale sucking sons o' bitches!”
“Apaches spotted in the flak cloud. Disengage and regroup at beta mark.”
“Don't wanna get burned, shouldn't have tickled my dragon!”
“Who's kissing who now?”
“Pentagon defense perimeter has been cleared. Let's move in for an attack run.”
I steel myself and enter.
Allie's
hive is a domed arena ringed from floor to ceiling with scaffolded cubicles, modular ramps, reinforced catwalks, and enormous thinscreens.
Hundreds and hundreds of thinscreens. From the causeway where I lurk, I spot a few that are blacked out. The rest bring back horrid memories of Georgetown in bright, vivid color. Aerial battles here, blazing skyscrapers there, death everywhere. . . .
On a cluster of screens to my left, through a thick haze of black smoke, I see the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Black House, the Pentagon . . . all aflame. Farther down, I catch glimpses of the New Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building. . . .
Manhattan burns brighter than D.C., but I think that's
only because the buildings are taller.
White cloaks oversee the devastation. They wear headsets and sit in high-tech armchairs that have joysticks built in on either side.
I watch one operator involved in a dogfight with a trio of DJs over the Potomac River for about three seconds before I realize what's happening.
In the battle room, talkers told the dragons what to do via verbal commands. Here, Oren's figured out a way to communicate with them via joysticks.
More than communicate.
Control.
He's turned mass destruction into a veritable video game.
And the CPU, the queen bee, is Allie.
She's in the middle of the arena, strapped to a metal chair, a skullcap fixed to her head. Tubes protrude from its circumference and wrap around a center column, spiraling toward the ceiling. At the apex, they spread out and follow support beams to hubs that look like giant internet routers. Dozens of smaller tubes extend from the opposite sides and funnel into the thinscreens.
Even at this distance, a hundred feet, maybe, I can see that her jaw's locked open in rictus. Her eyes are rolled back in her head. On the rare occasion a screen blacks outâwhen a dragon diesâI hear her hoarse voice over the din, shouting
the dead dragon's name for a few seconds before returning to her catatonic state.
White cloaks patrol the catwalks. White cloaks patrol the arena floor. I cannot rescue her.
Two choices.
Grackel?
What is it, human?
Did you ever hear my mother sing?
Once or twice.
The old Red chuckles.
Her voice hurt my ears.
Do you remember the words?
Of course. They were incredibly silly.
Could you sing it to Allie?
I expect her to go silent, but she must decide to include me, too. At first it hurts, and not just because her guttural voice screeches the lines, but soon . . . the emotions . . . I hear them in every word . . . feel them . . . they are not Grackel. They are Mom. And they are far more beautiful than any rainbow.
I swap my machine gun for the Beretta.
I steady my breath.
I raise the gun.
I listen to the song a couple more notes.
I blink away the tears.
I send Allie to the stars.
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