Cottonwood Heights
“There’s a problem,” Helen said.
“With the drones?” Victor asked.
“With the target,” Helen replied. “You said it was a military installation.”
“And?”
“There are no bases around here,” she said, “and the coordinates you gave me are for an apartment complex.”
Victor didn’t reply.
Helen tapped at the computer, her eyes going wide. “You knew.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Get back to work.”
“No,” she said. “I refuse to be a part of this.”
“Don’t you dare disobey me,” Victor said.
“Screw you,” Helen said.
Victor drew his gun in one smooth motion, turned, and fired at Beck. The bullet hit the drone pilot in the leg, and he collapsed to the ground screaming.
Victor shifted it again and this time, he aimed it at Beck’s head. “Want me to fire again?”
Helen felt her lip quiver. “You’re crazy.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll kill me if I don’t help you?”
“No, first I’ll kill Beck. But I’m not going to kill you, Helen. There are worse things.”
“Like what.”
“I’ve seen the picture you look at. Your dead sister. You loved her and looked up to her. You wanted to be like her. But you aren’t. You know why? Your sister was a heartless bitch who knew how to do her job. She didn’t cry and moan about how bad things were. She got things done.”
“Leave Kate out of this,” Helen said softly.
“I can’t,” Victor said, “because I’m the one who killed her.”
He savored the look of confused rage on Helen’s face as she processed the information.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because she was in my way,” Victor said. “And when things are in my way, I take care of them. Now, I’m going to ask you a very important question, and I would think long and hard about your answer: are you in my way?”
Beck writhed on the ground, clutching his leg and groaning.
Helen stared at Victor, body tense like she was about to strike. “You’ll just kill me if I’m in your way?” she asked.
Victor laughed. “Oh no, I won’t kill you. I’ll cripple you and then I will punish you. I already killed your sister, which means you don’t have a lot of family left. What about your mom? If you don’t help me, I’ll go find her next, and kill her. Cousins, uncles, aunts, I’ll kill them too. I’ll kill everyone you love and care about until you are alone in this world.
“Starting with him,” Victor finished, cocking the hammer back on his pistol and nodding at Beck. “Now. Get. To. Work.”
Helen stared at him a second longer before letting out a shuddering breath. On the verge of tears and hands shaking, she started typing the firing sequence commands into her laptop.
Victor released the hammer on his pistol.
“That’s what I thought.”
2
Lyle crawled up the stairs, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He used his left hand to pull himself up and the right to hold his stomach. It was difficult to breathe and his vision was starting to fade in and out. The pain was nauseating, and he felt like he was going to pass out at any second, but he pressed on.
“Stay conscious, she says,” he mumbled. He tried to laugh but ended up coughing instead. “How could I fall asleep with all this excitement?”
He kept crawling.
He had tried counting the steps as he passed them, but he couldn’t string the numbers together. He couldn’t even remember what floor he was on now. His reality had become a lot simpler as he went: left arm up on the next stair, pull his body, left arm up on the next stair, pull his body, repeat.
He kept crawling.
Lyle wasn’t even sure what he was doing. The device had been broken and he couldn’t remotely trigger his device. He wasn’t even sure he could make it to the roof in time to even see the drones flying overhead.
But he kept thinking about all of the people in the apartment complex. The children who would be killed if the missiles were fired. If there was even the slightest chance he would stop it from happening, then wasn’t it worth trying?
He kept crawling.
Suddenly there was a door in front of him, hanging open. He was on the roof. The sun was overwhelmingly bright and he let out a gasp as his eyes adjusted. Breathing was getting more difficult with each passing second.
The device he’d built still had a manual switch. He could trigger the EMP as long as he was close enough to flip that switch.
“Maybe it’ll just blow up,” Lyle said. “At least, it’ll stop hurting.”
Left arm, pull, left arm, pull. He thought it would be easier on the roof, now that he was on level ground. But it was actually more difficult.
He had lost a lot of blood. He didn’t know how much, but he felt lightheaded and the pain was starting to diminish. That was what worried him the most. If it hurt less, then that probably meant he was losing the ability to process the pain. He wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.
He could hear the drones now in the distance. They were closing in.
So he crawled. He could see his contraption, mere feet away near the edge of the building, but it felt like he was crossing a barren wasteland to reach it.
