Intended Extinction (34 page)

The rooftop
door slid open for us, like a hatch to our discomfort and fear.

“It looks a lot smaller in person,” shouted Bollis through a gust of wind. Everyone looked to the squat, two-story minibuilding in the center of the rooftop.

Our feet scuffed the concrete as we passed different structures. Tall, communication obelisks, pyramid shaped boxes with glass coverings, dense cubes of concrete adorned with solar panels, and numerous other architecture dotted the surface.

The jet-black sky encapsulated the end of our journey. In the darkness I saw the silver elevator located at the base of the annexed structure—the only way inside. Above the blank, windowless first story was our destination.

Illuminating its surroundings, the second level reminding me of a lighthouse. The lights showed us nothing more than a few bookcases and indiscernible wall hangings. From our angle, the details couldn’t be seen, but Repik
had
to be there. So many thoughts pawed at the sides of my brain. Did we give him too much time to escape? Where would he run? I watched Vane lead the group closer to the building and told myself I needed to trust the plan.

In the distance, a whirring noise cut through the gales of wind.

“Do you hear that?” asked Dodge through his communication unit.

Everyone stopped feet away from the elevator, listening to the steady humming noise become louder. Adrenaline flushed through my veins and my heartbeat quickened. My gut feeling told me what was coming, but I didn’t want to believe it.

“Incoming helo!” shouted Bollis.

Just as the sound reached its final pitch, the monster revealed itself. A gigantic helicopter shot its way into the sky above our position, glaring us down with its heavy, cylindrical gatling guns, one on each wing.

“Use the building!” shouted Vane.

Repik wouldn’t risk damaging his command post. The only way we were going to survive was to use the minibuilding to our advantage.

I threw away my cautions, finding cover behind a communication pillar. The bird blended with the dark backdrop, giving me a frustrating time trying to get a good shot off. Once again, being helmet-less sucked.

The helicopter’s side door slid open to reveal three black-garbed men toting small arms, silhouetted by an inside light. They began to fire at us, easily smoking us out of cover. The bird hovered over the edge of the building, focusing on Bollis and Vexin, who were busy drawing attention to themselves.

“Mark, nine o’ clock!” shouted Dodge, piercing my eardrum.

I turned to see GenoTec soldiers bursting out of the stairwell entrance. I moved forward and slid behind a solar panel box.

“Tara!” I shouted. “I’m pinned down!”

“Copy. I see them,” she replied.

I kneeled out of cover, blasting another oncoming soldier. Bullets flew my way, forcing me back behind the concrete box before I had a chance to see where it originated from.

Tara reached me in time to stop a stealthy soldier from dispatching me from behind. The body fell in a heap at my ankles. The two of us broke away from the box and flanked the stairwell door, keeping them from the rest of the group trying to deal with the helicopter.

“They’re preparing something, Mark,” said Tara, reloading.

Indeed, the soldiers in the stairwell had stopped firing at us, leaving their teammates outside to be mutilated by our positions. Tara and I cleaned up the final members of the kill squad and waited impatiently.

As the stairwell door closed, an idea struck my cortex.

“Vexin! Get the RAV-77 over here!”

Through a chain of different Genesis members, the heavy machine gun was passed along the rooftop without missing a beat. Tara ran the behemoth over to me with an extra drum of ammunition. I calibrated the electromagnetic force and heaved the loading mechanism into place.

“Have the ammo ready,” I told Tara. She clutched the 600 extra rounds as we moved to a more centralized position. The helicopter never escaped our peripheral vision.

As the rest of our teammates held the metal bird in their sights, I propped the RAV-77 upon a cooling device and aimed the v-shaped chamber at the stairwell door. My finger grazed the trigger.

The door whooshed open, revealing another armored guard holding a harpoon weapon. How unfortunate for him.

The sound of the RAV-77 left me deaf. Blue trails of electricity erratically escaped the barrel as hundreds of rounds plastered the doorway. The man holding the harpoon weapon split in half as the supersonic bullets cut him like a knife. I blanketed the walls on either side of the door, watching blood and metal fly in every direction. The recoil dissipated into my shoulder, causing my whole frame to shake. The longer I held the trigger, the more inaccurate I became.

“Okay! That’s enough!” I head Tara from behind.

One remaining floodlight allowed me to see just how obliterated the threshold was. Literally dripping with entrails, the entryway caused my breath to stop for a moment.

“Holy hell!” spat Tara, gawking at the carnage.

“Get out of there!” yelled Bollis.

Tara and I turned our heads just in time to see the helicopter locking on to our position. The gatling guns began to whir. Huge rounds of ammunition rocked our position to hell. We crossed the length of the roof, feeling the violent vibrations of each powerful shell hitting the surface behind us. I dropped the RAV-77, fearing it would slow me down, and we made it behind the minibuilding without a scratch.

The gatling gun turned its focus on the others, showering their position in metal melting precipitation.

With cover dwindling and ammunition spreading thin, our hopes of taking this bird down were shrinking by the second. Dread began to dawn upon me as I nervously fiddled with another clip of ammo. I could still feel the gatling gun tearing apart the rooftop, probably blending our friends into a bloody soup. Our little rifles weren’t going to put a dent into the helicopter. We needed the RAV-77—more realistically, we needed a miracle.

I poked my head around the corner of the building and saw Vexin’s incendiary rounds blasting the open door of the helicopter. Vane’s crouched back could be seen behind a large solar panel array. It was now or never.

I sprinted across the roof, jumping over chasms created by the gatling gun. I retraced my steps and found the RAV-77, slightly damaged, teetering on the edge of a wide hole in the surface. Tara was close behind.

I grabbed the heavy weapon just as crossfire pelted our location. We were pinned down by the last two guards within the helicopter. While they kept us at bay, the gatling gun worked on the other four.

“I can’t get into position!” I shouted to Tara.

“I can’t even manage to suppress!” she replied.

We sat there, held captive by GenoTec. Time was running out. By now, Repik could have escaped. Everything seemed to fall upon me with a weight of failure.

“What’s that?!” yelled Tara.

I focused my already damaged ears to a faint-yet-rising melody, playing against the sounds of war.

No. It couldn’t be. What the hell?

Electric guitar and double bass echoed across the war torn rooftop. I couldn’t believe it, but it was “Good Times, Bad Times” by Led Zeppelin.

“Whoo!” shouted a mousy voice from an unknown source, amplified ten-fold. “And in three . . . two . . .
one!
”

In a flash of light, an electrical box below the floating helicopter burst, sending a pulse of paralyzing force in all directions. The EMP-like wave rocked the helicopter, stunning it in mid-air.

“Now’s your chance you morons!” shouted Justin’s voice, echoing across the rooftop. “Take it out!”

“Hell yeah!” screamed Dodge.

In the midst of the familiar rock tune, I repositioned the RAV-77, replaced the ammunition, and tore into the disoriented helicopter.

At first the bullets ricocheted off of the heavy plating, but after a few seconds of concentrated fire, the windshield shattered, blood exploded out of the cockpit, and the front of the metal bird surged in a plume of black and yellow.

“It’s coming down!” shouted Vexin.

I stopped firing and watched in horror as the flaming hunk of metal came plummeting toward their position. The last soldier fell out of the open door, breaking his legs upon the hard concrete. Tara and I rounded our cover, watching the entire event unfold. The helicopter proceeded to descend upon the soldier, the spinning blades closing in on the surface. The unfortunate Volunteer tried to crawl away, but the rotor tore into the roof. Blood splattered across the rooftop, spraying a huge portion of the wall the helicopter was about to crash into. The giant rotor broke into pieces, flying in all directions at intense speeds.

It was the most gut wrenching sound I had ever heard when that giant metal beast met its match against the sentinel wall. First, a monstrous rumble shook the ground, debris splashing every surface. Two seconds later, the helicopter exploded, knocking Tara and I off our feet.

Justin clicked
away at the keyboard, quietly humming to himself. Tapped into the surveillance system, he watched Genesis recover from the helicopter blast. Using a tethering algorithm with Celia’s ongoing looping, Justin had commandeered the cameras without being detected. He had done what Celia could not.

While the eleven-year-old mischievously worked, a message popped up on his monitor. A picture of a rotating question mark displayed inside the small alert window. Confused, Justin tapped the box and it expanded to cover the majority of the screen.

“Celia!” shouted Justin.

The young brunette’s face covered the monitor, smiling brightly at the boy.

“Justin!” she exclaimed. “I had a hunch this tether was yours! Are you okay?! What’s going on?!”

“How come the others can’t reach you?” asked Justin, leaning close to the screen, practically hovering on his chair.

“I’m not sure. Every channel I use is blocked. Somehow GenoTec knows we’re tampering with their system. But we’re on completely separate wavelengths—it makes no sense. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t like it.”

“Well, in other news, everyone’s okay,” said Justin, “they’re on their way to Reppy as—
we
—
SPEAK!
”

After Justin related the details, Celia sighed heavily, knowing her friends were safe. She knew that Dodge was safe.

“Okay,” said Celia, “we’re going to work together on this. Start sending me your surveillance footage. I’m going to try and work around this communication block.”

“Already took care of it,” he said proudly. “I hijacked the intercom system.”

Celia smiled, “Damn. I knew you were good, but I had no idea you could handle this kind of thing. Thank God you’re with us.”

“Well,” said the boy, “after what they did to me, I’m going to do everything I can to kill everyone involved.”

Celia frowned from the other end of the feed. “What do you mean? What did they do to you?”

The door behind Justin beeped and whooshed open.

A thick
haze covered the world around me. My head burned with a malevolent heat. I knocked pieces of shrapnel and rubble out of the way as I crawled. I heard a distant moaning sound. Was it me? Disoriented, I tried to stand.

“Mark!”

My eyes focused. Flaming wreckage appeared before me. The billowing flames warmed my face and dried my mouth. Ash and smoke fell upon me. Tears came, combating the debris.

“Are you okay?!”

I coughed blood into my hands, caught my breath, and my surroundings found their place.

“Hey!” redoubled Tara, stepping in front of me, grasping my arms. Her helmet was gone, leaving a soot-covered face.

“I’m—I’m okay. You?”

“Fine. We’ve got to find the others. The helicopter fell right on top of them.”

Her words ignited a fearful flame. Nevertheless, I nodded and we hopped toward the ruins, bounding over gaping holes, fissures, and mounds of churned concrete.

We started shouting names, searching amongst the wreckage. The remains of the helicopter shed enough light to discern between the different bodies. We pulled huge slabs of concrete and moved sheets of plating, but our squad was nowhere to be found.

The middle building was unaffected structurally. It stood safe and sound, waiting for us to enter and claim our prize. But I didn’t care anymore. As I searched, I realized the people I loved were the only thing that mattered. Repik had probably escaped by now, seeing the attempt to kill us fail right before his eyes. Maybe we could still reveal their secrets. Maybe we still had a chance.

“Over here!” shouted Tara from the other side of the wreckage.

I scaled the hill of rubble and saw Tara kneeling over a lifeless corpse, half covered in large chunks of metal. I reached her in time to help remove most of the debris from his body. We dragged him to an unaffected part of the roof and removed the helmet.

Bollis.

“No . . .” muttered Tara. She leaned down to listen for breathing.

When her ear was centimeters away from his mouth, he coughed and sputtered. He groaned, turning over.

We rejoiced and helped him into a sitting position just as Vexin trotted over with Vane in tow.

“Is everyone okay?” asked Vane, followed by a giant string of coughs.

I noticed a huge gash running diagonally across Vexin’s face. He wiped the blood away and buckled to one knee, weighed down from the ordeal. Vane’s Undersuit hardly looked useable at all. He reminded me of a rag doll. His gaunt cheeks collected a ring of black and his breathing was hindered even more than usual.

When I looked past them, I couldn’t find the third member.

“Where’s Dodge?” I asked.

Vexin kept his head down. His eyes were glazed and heavy. I had never seen him so dejected.

“I barely made it out of the explosion,” said Vane, his tone so low and scratchy it was hard to understand. “And he was a few feet behind me.”

I looked over to Tara. Her face was sagging. Tears were forming.

“No, he’s alive,” started Bollis, struggling to his feet. “He’s got to be around here some—”

“Bollis . . .” tried Vexin.

“No!” Bollis snapped, and then moaned as a sharp jab of pain hit his abdomen. Tara and I helped him stabilize. He squirmed again. “We’ve got to look!”

“We all knew the risks involved!” rebounded Vane. “Get a grip!”

Bollis wrenched away from our support. His breaths were getting shorter and his eyes growled with rage.

“We’re out of time! After this little episode, it would be a miracle if Repik’s still up there!” Vane continued.

Tara approached Bollis and looked him in the eyes. “We’ll come back for him. I believe you. I know Dodge is still alive. But right now we
have
to finish this.” I watched the fire reflecting in their glass eyes.

Vane made his way around the destruction, toward the elevator, signaling the end of the debate. The rest of us stood in the dancing light of the helicopter fire. It was as if we were standing around our best friend’s tomb. Emptiness consumed us. For the first time, Vexin looked unsure. Bollis was defeated and somber, yet full of anger. It was a side of him I never wanted to see again.

I placed a hand on his shoulder.

No matter what I told myself, I still felt the poisonous sting of sorrow. Dodge—gone? I couldn’t accept it, not for one second. I tried shrugging it off, but like a cancer, it grew in the back of my mind. I knew one thing for sure; Jonas Repik was going to suffer for this.

Everyone eventually piled into the elevator with an uneasy air. Genesis was falling apart. In a matter of seconds, the bond they—as well as Tara and I—had built for years started to crumble. Bollis was done. I could feel it. The energy once displayed across his face had disappeared. Vexin was seething. Tara was in a state of mournful perception and shock. Vane was stripped of all other options, held together by eight years of dedication. I was . . . in the middle of it all.

And Dodge was dead.