Cottonwood Heights
Victor saw the car approaching in the distance, kicking up dust as it went. He knew without even having a clear view that it wasn’t Francis or William driving it. It was coming too fast.
Which meant it was someone coming to stop him.
“Is it ready?” he asked.
“The commands are set and the target is locked,” Helen said, her voice morose. Beck was still writhing on the ground in agony, but Victor had little trouble ignoring him. “They will fire as soon as they are in range.”
“And it requires no further input to fire and transmit?”
“None,” Helen said. “It’s done.”
Victor glanced back at the approaching car, wondering what had happened to Francis and William. Were they dead? It would be unfortunate, but that was the cost of this life.
The car was only a few hundred meters away. Victor shifted and fired his pistol into the laptop. He fired several shots, destroying it, and then faced back to the car.
“Now it’s done,” he said.
The car came in fast. Victor lined up where the driver would be and fired out several shots. The window splintered and cracked where he hit, but he couldn’t tell if he’d made contact with his shots. The car didn’t stop, however, but only sped up. It barreled down on his position.
About twenty feet away it swerved on the dirt road, sliding at an angle and kicking up a huge wave of dust. It floated in, covering him completely. Victor squinted through the cloud, looking for the car. He heard Helen cough next to him but kept focused on the car. He heard the driver door open and fired blindly at that.
Footsteps approached, crunching the dirt. He aimed and fired blindly again. Suddenly a shape appeared out of the dust cloud. He was instantly on the defensive, blocking a punch to his face and knee to his groin. He stumbled back, trying to put distance between him and his attacker.
The gun was knocked out of his hand and he staggered back. A hit landed solidly on his leg, and he collapsed to one knee. He launched a clumsy counterattack and was easily deflected. He fought back up and kept moving back, trying to get out of the cloud.
The dust hung in the air, making it difficult to see. He stayed on the defensive, backpedaling and avoiding strikes. It was hard to make out the features of his attacker other than it was a slight woman. She moved fast and with grace.
He dodged another kick, felt his legs get swept out from under him, and suddenly he was on his back with the air knocked out of his lungs.
That was followed a second later by a kick to his face, disorienting him. He tried to stagger back to his feet and felt a kick in his ribs, throwing him back down.
The dust floated away, and he was able to see again. He tried to crawl away. Another kick to the ribs sent him down, and he rolled over.
His eyes went wide.
“You!” he said, coughing. “I killed you!”
Kate stood overtop him, holding a gun and with a pissed off expression on her face.
“Next time check for a body.”
She shot him in the stomach. He felt searing pain and let out a scream from the pain.
“Who put the hit out on me?” she asked.
Victor tried to crawl away, but she walked next to him. She kicked him in the side, sending waves of agony through him.
“Who was it?” she said.
Victor laughed, tasting blood on his lips. “You don’t get it,” he said. “They thought…thought you were dead.”
“Who?”
“You could have left,” he said, gasping from the pain and laughing. “When they find out you are still alive…the will…never…never stop…”
He crawled another step, gasping and coughing.
Kate knelt down, placing the barrel of the gun up to his chin.
“Who was it?” she asked, her voice soft.
Victor gasped for air and leaned forward. “When they…when they find you…tell…tell them…I said…”
Kate pulled the trigger and it ended.
2
The dust cleared and Helen rubbed her eyes, trying to see what happened. She heard yelling and had run to Beck’s side as soon as the fight started, making sure he was okay. She heard gunshots, a scuffle and then silence. She didn’t know who had come in the car or what had happened.
A second later she did. Her sister walked out of the dust cloud toward her, very much alive. She had a gun in her hand and looked beat up but otherwise okay.
“Kate!” Helen screamed, rushing forward and hugging her sister.
“I’m all right,” Kate said, hugging her close. “I’m all right.”
“Oh my God, I thought you were dead,” Helen said, crying.
“I know,” Kate said. “It’s okay, I’m here now.”
The sound of drones passing overhead interrupted their moment, and Kate held her sister back. “We need to stop those,” Kate said.
“We can’t,” Helen replied, sniffling and rubbing her nose. “The laptop is destroyed. I don’t have any other links to their network.”
“Then what do we do?”
Helen blew out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know.”
3
Lyle crawled to his contraption on the roof, leaning against the wall next to his regulator box and finally allowing himself to relax. He had made it, and he’d never been so proud of himself.
He would die knowing he’d done his best.
“Come on Lyle,” he muttered. “Stay focused.”
The world swam in and out of focus as he fiddled with the regulator. He needed to remove the remote connection and hook up the manual one again, splicing together two wires.
The sound of the approaching planes grew louder. There were sirens in the distance but none of that was any concern. This was the last thing he needed to accomplish. He had hooked the regulator up to high voltage industrial wires, which were around five hundred kilovolts.
If his contraption worked, the EMP released would be massive. If it didn’t, the explosion would be even bigger.
He turned, gasping and groaning, and found a position he could watch the approaching drones from. There were several of them, little specks on the horizon getting larger by the second.
It felt peaceful, sitting on the roof and watching it. He heard a bird screech in the distance and felt the wind rustling past his cheeks. The pain was almost entirely gone.
He rested his finger on the switch. If he was about to die, then, at least, he would make it as worthwhile as he could.
4
Kate grabbed the laptop out of her car and handed it to her sister. She knew Lyle had been fiddling with it, and maybe there would be something her sister could do with it.
“Anything you can do?”
“Not really,” she said. “We don’t have time.”
Helen typed furiously, and after a second of loading, an image popped up on the screen.
“What is that?”
“The live stream,” Helen said.
“The what?”
“Six hundred thousand viewers,” she read in horror.
“What?”
“Victor wanted to broadcast the attack around the world for everyone to see. There are six hundred thousand people that are about the watch these drones kill several thousand civilians.”
“You can’t stop it?”
Helen looked at her helplessly. “I’m sorry.”
“Damn it,” Kate said, leaning heavily against the car. “Damn it all.”
She felt like crying. After all of this, she was about to fail in this mission. She had lived her life doing horrible things, and this had been her chance at redemption. At finally doing something good with her life and stopping the people she’d once trusted.
And now she had failed and those people were going to—
“What’s that?”
Kate glanced over. “What’s what?”
Helen pointed at the screen. “On that roof. It looks like…is that a person?”
Kate looked at the image and saw Lyle, leaning against his contraption on the roof. The drones weren’t very far from him, almost right over top of them.
Suddenly, the feed cut out.
“What was that?” Helen asked.
Kate turned and looked back at the building where she had left him. The building the drones were flying over top.
“Uh oh.”
She saw the drones falling out of the sky. One smashed into the side of the building, another two went all the way down and hit the ground, exploding into metal and smoke.
The last two smashed into the roof.
A moment passed in silence as the sisters stared in awe.
“What the hell was that?” Helen asked.
Kate turned to face her sister, shocked beyond her wildest dreams.
“Our backup plan.”
