Revolution (45 page)

             
"Dude, what is with you?" I asked before groaning as my hand slipped and banged into the panel door.

             
"Nothing. I'm just wondering if I should rethink my part in this plan."

             
"What plan?"

             
"This one. It's
close to over." The cryptic message hung in the air.

             
"Well, I'm not going to pretend to know what you mean, but-"

             
We both turned our heads towards the door as it banged open. Daniel slammed the control booth door shut, but it was made of half glass, so that wouldn't stop them for long.

             
"Hurry!" he hissed to me and kept going as he watched the Lighter come toward the door. "Fix this. Make sure you get this up and running and you'll have a good start to saving your people."

             
"What are you-"

             
"Tonight, after you're done, you need to get in the car and drive back to Effingham as fast as you can. They'll need you there."

             
"For what?
"
             
"For war," he said low and then rammed into the door the same time the Lighter did. They fought and
threw each other around as I tried to find the right switch to flip. The labels were so old, it was hard to read.

             
"Hurry, Cain!" I heard behind me. I didn't say anything. It was moot. What did he think I was doing in here? Painting
my nails? I saw one marked '
Online Con….
.
'
That looked like the one to me, but before I could touch it, I was yanked back by my hair and thrown across the
room. My back slammed into a
hard edge, knocking the breath from me.

             
Daniel charged him again, but the Lighter threw him back. Then he picked up a chair, slung it back and over his head to smash into the control panel. Everything stopped for me. That was it, our one chance, and it was gone now. I was raging mad. I picked up the first thing I could grab and ran to the Lighter, s
licing
it into
hi
s back.

             
He went up in a blaze of lightning
, not knowing what hit him. I wondered how he knew to come here. And how he knew to smash
the equipment. Someone was on to us, which meant what we
had been going to do would have worked. They wouldn't have been so scared otherwise.

             
But none of that mattered as I jumped and ran as the ceiling began to come down
from the destroyed building
.
Lightning would do that.
I pushed Daniel back and we bolted through the doors just in time to survive the avalanche of debris. I cursed and slammed my fist into the concrete. "Now, we'll never get it going and have no way to let them know
that
we fa
iled!" I lay down
on my back, b
anging my head once on the hard surface. "They're walking into an ambush and we can't even warn them."

             
"Come with me," Daniel groaned and stood. "There's one more thing we can do."

             
"What? What can we possibly do now?"

             
"There has to be something!" he yelled. "Maybe the equipment survived," he ventured. He obviously knew nothing about it.

             
Wait… There had to be a back-up somewhere. They always had back-ups or main control panels for places like this. We just had to find it. I could see under the wooden steps as we lay out
there. There was no basement, it
was a crawl space. "Where's the radio line map?"

             
Daniel pulled it from his pocket. "I don't know what you'll get from it now."

             
I snatched it from him and laid it out flat.
It showed where all the hard
lines went directly into the building. Aha! There was a control box under the building. A failsafe in case of fire or building repairs. This way the lines were safe no matter what happened. And we had to get to them.

             
I got up and ran to the edge of and looked under the building. There was a ton of water under there. From all the melted snow that hadn't evaporated away yet, I guessed. I could see the electrical box where all the lines ran
to and knew there were switches
inside it that controlled everything, the online connection being the main thing we needed.

             
I started to go in, but Daniel jerked me back and pointed at the ground. There was a spark as the wires from the above floor hung and touched the water. Great. "I'll just go around them," I told him and tried to go again, but he grabbed my shoulder.

             
"No," he said slowly and gulped as he looked at everything. "
You'd
never make it. Once you flip that switch, all the wires will be live, not just that one."
             
I winced. Crap he was right. "Well, it has to be done," I told him and nodded. It
had
to be done. The fact that I might not make it didn't matter. We had to give them a fighting chance to send that broadcast. I
t was the only way we'd have a
real chance at winning the war. "I'll go." I looked over at him
and nodded. "I know I probably won't make it, but I have to go." I looked back at the mine field I was about to enter.

             
"No, you can't. Lillian will be upset."

             
I smiled. "Lillian will be alive and have a chance to live a normal life. If I didn't do this and selfishly just went home without even trying, I'd never forgive myself. Tell her…" I tried to think of something poetic, something beautiful that would convey
everything I wanted her to know
, but nothing of the sort came, just,
"Tell her that I loved her with my last breath."

             
He sighed and I took that as all the agreement as I was going to get from him. I nodded to him and tried not to think about the possibilities he must have
had
running through his head right then. "Take care of her, all right." I said it as a command, not a request.

             
I didn't wait for an answer. I lowered myself to crawl through, but he stopped me once more. I jerked up, irritated. "What?" I barked.

             
"I know you love her and that's the only reason I'm doing this. This doesn't change my hate for you, this is for Lillian."

             
"What is?"
             
An
d before I could react, he cold-
cocked me right in the jaw. I went down and blinked just in time to see him crawling through. That bastard! I sat up and yelled something at him, but was so anxious about him making it to the box, I couldn't even remember what I said.

             
He barely skated past the live wire and the
support beam wi
thout being fried. He reached the box
and lay on his back as he looked it over. He yelled, "There's so many lines connecting to the box. They aren't marked."

             
I cursed again. "What color are they?"

             
"Most are white, but one's red."

             
I thought hard. "Red would be my guess."

             
He looked over at me. He was lying in a large puddle that couldn't be avoided to reach the box. I had a bad feeling, but it got worse when he smiled. "In another life, we might've been friends."

             
"Maybe," I mused. "If you weren't trying to steal my girl, you wouldn't be so bad."

             
"I'm not sorry I kissed her."

             
"I didn't expect you to be."

             
"But I am sorry that my time is over." I frowned. "I would have loved to have gotten to be a real human."

             
"Come on, man. Stop talking like you're not crawling outta there."

             
"I'm not. This is the vision I saw." He took a deep breath, laying his head back for a few seconds before lifting it back up. "Tell Lillian she doesn’t have to be sorry that she couldn't
love
me. I know she'll be in good hands."

             
"What… I don't know what-"

             
"Goodbye, Cain." And then he flipped the red
wire
switch.

             
Everything sparked and lit up. I gasped as I fell back and watched as the water sizzled
for long minutes
. Then it quieted and
I could see through the haze. Daniel was lying there, motionless. How had he know
n
that was going to happen? He…saved me by punching my jaw.

             
I wanted to go and see if he was alive, but saw the smoke coming off his boot. I knew he was gone, but I still called out his name
anyway
. When he didn't answer, I got up and ran to the Gremlin.

             
I sat in my seat in a slump, letting my head rest against the steering wheel. That just happened. Daniel, the Lighter who hated my guts, saved me. He could have let me go and I'd have died instead. He knew he was going to die and…he still did it.

             
And he told me that I had to make it ba
ck
as quickly as possible to help…with the war. Then something was going down soon.

             
I sat up, jerked the car into gear and pressed the gas as hard as it would go.

             
His sacrifice wouldn't go unnoticed. I'd tell everyone about the Lighter who risked his life to save the humans. The Lighter who won us this war.

This Is Our Town

Merrick