Gene. Sys. (24 page)

“Hydro! Al!” I yell out as I toss each of them
the rifles I collected.

They catch the guns and step up to the front
where Sodi and Titan are. Together, we shoot and take out the first few
outsiders that come around the corner. There are a couple moments of calm and
then two small canisters bounce off one of the hallway walls and roll towards
us.

Instantly the canisters release a gas that fills
the hallway.

“Cover your faces!” Dr. Metzger shouts.

I pull my shirt over my mouth and nose. When I
look around, the few Genesys that I can see have done the same.

“Everyone down!” I
shout
as I get flat on my stomach. This will reduce the amount of surface area that
can be hit.

We all shoot towards the end of the hallway,
hoping that it will buy us time. With the smoke filling the hallway, we are
easy targets. Bullets fly over my head and, after a few pass by, I hear a grunt
behind me. Someone was hit.

The grunt was definitely male and I find myself
hoping that it didn’t hit anyone anywhere vital. I shift to get into a better
shooting position, when a sharp pain in my arm reminds me that I was shot.

If the smoke doesn’t lift soon, we are all dead.
I think about telling the Genesys to retreat back into our old hallways, but a
surprising noise stops my thought. A barrage of shots is being fired from the
opposite side of the hallway ahead of us. After a few deafening moments of
gunfire and screams, it all stops.

“It’s all clear,” a voice calls out ahead of us.

I look around but I can’t see anyone, not even
the Genesys I know is next to me. None of us are moving though, we are being
cautious.

“We are here to help, Atom,” the voice calls out
again.

“We’re coming,” I say.

“Atom, no,” Ev calls out.

“It’s okay. If these guys wanted us dead they
would have shot at us while we are still in the smoke. They don’t have time to
play around.” I stand up and can hear everyone else doing the same.

As I walk towards the end of the hallway, the
smoke gets lighter and I can tell that the people calling us forward are a
group of about a dozen drones. My thoughts return to the grunt I heard and I
wonder who it was that got shot.

One by one the Genesys make their way to the end
of the hallway and join me with the drones. Titan and Sodi raise their rifles
when they see them, but I push their rifles back down. After Ox walks out,
carrying Mag, there is a long moment of inactivity.

“Where’s Cal?” Al asks.

My heart races and a lump
jumps
up in my throat. He was the one who was shot. “Cal!”

A few others join in shouting his name. Just as
I’m about to go back into the smoke to find him, a silhouette appears. It’s one
person dragging another one. After a couple more steps I see that Cal is
dragging Marco.

Dr. Metzger runs over and checks on Marco. “He’s
dead.”

“Damn,” Cal says as he drops Marco’s body.

“We need to go,” one of the drones says.

I look around and see about thirty outsiders
lying on the ground. We wouldn’t have stood a chance if these drones hadn’t
shown up.

“If you don’t have one, grab a gun!” I shout. I
run over to the closest outsider and swap his gun for mine. The remaining
Genesys do the same.

Once we are all equipped with lethal rifles, we
follow the drones back down the hallway they came from. They lead us down a
couple more hallways and finally through a set of doors that takes us to the
fields behind the scientists’ quarters.

As we pour out into the open I see that there
isn’t much activity back here. It seems like the majority of the fighting is
happening inside and in the front of the compound.

A missile hits the ground to our left where the
corn and other vegetables are. Where Dr. Kivuli is. My thoughts jump back to
what Dr. Kivuli said, that 80 had shot her. It still doesn’t make sense. It
can’t be right.

“Let’s go!” a drone orders.

They jog ahead and we do our best to keep up
with them. Ox is slowed by having to carry Mag and none of us wants to leave
them behind. Sil seems to be the only one keeping pace with the drones.

Before I can blink, my body gets thrown back. A
missile slams into the drones in front of us. I jump back to my feet as fast as
I can and run to the point of impact. The explosion of the missile has left a
ringing in my ear.

I reach the drones at the same time as Titan and
K. Most of them have been blown to pieces, but there are three who I can see
are picking themselves up.
Sil’s
screams draw my
attention the ground to my left. Titan and K get to him before I do.

They are rolling him onto his back as I arrive.
His body is covered with scattered cuts, including his face. It seems as though
he was showered with shrapnel.

“I can’t see!” Sil yells.

I inspect his face again and see that there are
cuts from shrapnel around his eyes. Dr. Metzger arrives and kneels by my side.

She inspects
Sil’s
eyes carefully. “They should heal fine once you get into the hyperbaric chamber
at your bunker. Don’t rub them or touch them.”

Another explosion goes off behind us, near the
library again. All of the Genesys have gotten back up to their feet and are
walking over to us. Some of them are trying to rub the ringing out of their
ears. I notice that mine still have a faint ring, but I ignore it.

“We need to keep moving,” one of the remaining
drones says.

I look at K. “Will you guide Sil and make sure
he’s protected?”

“Yeah,” she says without hesitation. We stand
and then help Sil stand. He groans in pain as he gets to his feet. K takes his
hand and places it on her shoulder. “Don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” Sil says with a shaking fear in his
voice.

We press on, walking at a quickened pace. A few
more missiles explode around us, but none close enough to do more than spray
some dirt on us. We stay as close to the building as we can to at least provide
us some cover.

As we get closer and closer to the end of the
scientists’ quarters, the screams, shots, and other sounds of fighting grow
louder. I can’t help but think that we are missing Fe by traveling outside the
buildings.

We arrive at a part of the compound where the
building connects to the exterior wall and we have no other option than to
reenter the building. The drones lead the way through a door to make sure the
coast is clear. After firing a few shots, they wave us in.

“Keep Ox, Mag and Sil in the middle,” I shout to
the other Genesys. “We need to protect them and make sure we all make it to the
Flyz
.”

We all reorganize to make sure that those three
are in the middle. Dr. Metzger joins them and grabs the rifle from Sil.

“What are you doing?” Sil calls out.

“You can’t see,” she answers back.

“Do you even know how to shoot?” Sodi mocks her.

“About as well as you know how to practice
medicine.” Dr. Metzger raises her gun and aims it down the hallway.

We continue forward and turn at the end of the
hallway. As we walk I look into an open door on the right and instantly
recognize the room. It’s the surveillance room. There is no one in the room but
the monitors are all functioning and show various images of the outsiders’ city.
It’s quiet with the exception of a few people walking around as if it were just
another day. It seems, though, that the majority of the outsiders are here,
fighting.

As we press on, the two Genesys at the end of
the pack, Ev and Al, fire their guns. I look back and see a couple of
outsiders, a couple of drones and a scientist on the ground. I don’t recognize
the scientist, but he must have been one of the Mutineers.

When we reach the end of this hallway, the
drones stop. Titan and I jog up to the drones.

“What is it?” Titan asks.

One of the drones holds a finger to his mouth
and points around the corner. Titan and I peek around. Halfway down the hall is
an open double door. There is a fairly consistent stream of outsiders and
drones running into the room empty handed. When they exit the room, they are
all carrying a weapon. Most of the weapons are guns.

I look at Titan. “What do you think?”

He shrugs. “That must be the real weapons
cache.”

“It is,” one of the drones speaks up. “We will
run at them and take out as many as we can; try to thin the herd.”

“Shoot the ones coming out with the weapons,” I
say. “We will shoot the ones running into the room.”

Titan and I move back to let the three drones
step up to the corner. My shoulder gets bumped from behind and when I look, I
see Dr. Metzger standing next to me.

“I’ll go with you,” she says to the drones.

“No,” I hear Ev say behind us.

“We need to make sure you guys make it,” Dr.
Metzger says definitively.

“Wait.” I look at the drones. “Where do we go
from here?”

“At the end of this hallway, there is a double
door that leads to the hangar that holds the rollpods,” he answers.

“Is that where all the people are coming from?”
I ask.

“Yes. That is also where the major battle is
happening, but it’s the only way to get to the hangar with the
Flyz
,” he says as he looks back around the corner. “We
should go.”

In an instant, the three drones turn the corner
and run towards the weapons cache, firing their guns. Dr. Metzger runs behind
them, she’s shooting as well, but struggling. They manage to kill about a dozen
before the outsiders and other drones return fire.

Titan and I shoot from our covered position
around the corner and manage to hit a few
ourselves
.
One of the drones protecting us gets hit and then another.

I look back at the other Genesys. “Sodi. Come
shoot!”

She happily takes my place and I turn to the
others. “K, stay here with Ox and watch over Mag and Sil. Wait for us to call
you forward. The rest of you come with me. We are going to have to attack, and
fast.”

I rejoin Titan and Sodi at the corner and look
around. The plan has worked, as the majority of our attackers have been shot.
The lone remaining drone and Dr. Metzger are still shooting, mostly at the
incoming outsiders and drones.

“Let’s go!” I shout.

The seven of us charge, shooting at the
attackers that are still standing and the few that continue to run into the
hallway. Just before we reach Dr. Metzger and the drone, two outsiders run out
from the weapons cache, firing. Dr. Metzger hits one in the leg, but the other
hits her in her chest. She falls over.

“No!” I hear Ev and Hydro shout. They must have
all bonded with her.

We take care of those two outsiders and make our
way to the weapons cache. Every couple of moments a new outsider, drone or
scientist steps into the hallway, but they are quickly taken care of.

“Watch the hallway,” the drone demands.

He runs into the weapons cache and is followed
in by Sodi and Al.

“K! Ox!” I yell back to let them know they
should join us.

I return my focus to the hallway and see Titan
and Ev handling any new threats that come into the end of the hallway.

 
When
I peek into the weapons cache I see Sodi switching her gun out for a sniper
rifle. Al is adding a few knives to his arsenal and the drone is tucking in his
shirt and stuffing anything sharp into his pockets.

Right behind them I see something on a shelf
that makes me smile—a chain, a real chain. I drop the simulation chain
that is still wrapped around me and grab the one from the
shelf,
it’s slightly heavier and colder than the other one.

One by one the Genesys take turns going into the
weapons cache and grabbing the weapons of their choice. Once we are all
equipped we gather back in the hallway.

“Do not follow me in,” the drone states as he
turns towards the end of the hallway. “You will know when to go.”

He takes off running and we walk down the
hallway behind him, adding cover fire when needed. In an instant he turns the
corner and is gone. I run towards the end of the hallway, but before I get
there, a boom stops me in my tracks. The metal doors leading into the hangar
are blown into the hallway. One of them has a small knife sticking out of it.

“Did he just blow himself up?” Cal shouts as he
catches up to me.

“Yeah.” I’m in disbelief. I can’t believe the
drone would voluntarily do that. It certainly has bought us some time.

I look around the corner and assess the
situation out in the hangar. A massive amount of bodies lie on the ground. Some
are beginning to pick themselves up, but the
majority are
down for good. To the right, the sharp glare of the sun is penetrating through
a hole at the top of the ramp the rollpods used. The flow of attackers
streaming through the hole breaks up the shine of the sun.