Staring at the destroyed building, Lalo said, “Do it.”
The ground rocked violently with the first explosion, and then continued to shake as more devices went off. The sensation at first reminded Midori Nagawa of an earthquake, only no earthquake she’d ever lived through had lasted as long.
Unlike the attacks at most of the other Project Eden locations, her team’s was not aimed at the walls or fences surrounding the Tokyo survival station. Rather, they had utilized the extensive network of tunnels under the city to place their explosives directly below the buildings where the bulk of the Project Eden people worked. Their hope was to inflict enough structural damage to occupy the attention of the base personnel while Midori and her people rescued the imprisoned survivors.
When the ground stopped rocking, she jumped up and yelled, “Go, go, go!”
They ran up the stairs and out into the street, guns at the ready in case they had to fight their way through the front gate. But the guards who had been there minutes before were gone.
Above the wall, a huge column of smoke and dust rose into the air, obscuring the view of anything inside the compound. Midori pushed aside the metal arm that served as the gate and led her people in. They only made it a few meters before stopping dead in their tracks.
“Dear God,” someone muttered.
Tunnels underneath two of the buildings had opened up wide enough to swallow the structures nearly whole. Other buildings had partially sunk into the ground, their walls collapsed inward, leaving behind only piles of rubble.
Here and there they could hear groans and pleas for help. Midori also spotted a handful of people crawling over the rubble, trying to assist their colleagues. Given what Project Eden had done to humanity, she couldn’t bring herself to give its members any sympathy.
As she and her team passed more damaged buildings, Midori couldn’t help but worry that their attack had been too aggressive, and that the explosions might have also harmed the prisoners. When she caught sight of the first pen, she knew she was right to be concerned.
An entire corner of the holding area had sunk a good seven meters, dragging down part of the fence. What was left at ground level looked like it was moments away from slipping into the earth.
The other holding area had received damage, too, but not nearly as much. In neither pen did she see any survivors. She divided her team into two, leading her half into the more devastated holding area.
“Hello?” she yelled after she’d crawled through a tear in the fence. “Is anyone here? Are you all right?”
The ground felt unstable under her feet, and her mind screamed that she should turn around or her next step might be her last. Ignoring the warning, she ran toward the dorm building that sat precariously close to the hole they had ripped open.
She yanked the door out of the way and raced in. “Anyone here?”
Bunk beds lined either side of a central aisle, but the room appeared deserted.
“Hello,” she yelled as she moved farther into the dormitory. “We’re here to get you out!”
A sniffle and a fearful breath from somewhere toward the back.
Midori picked up her pace, her gaze swiveling back and forth between the bunks, making sure she didn’t miss someone. She found the girl three beds from the back, pressed against the wall, terrified. In her lap sat a young boy.
“Are you okay?” Midori asked. “Are you hurt?”
The girl’s lip trembled but she said nothing.
As Midori moved toward her, the girl shied away, wrapping her arms tightly around the boy.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Midori said. “I’m here to get you out.”
“Earthquake,” the girl whispered.
“It’s over,” Midori said. “But the building’s not safe, so we have to leave.”
“I don’t want to move. If I move something bad will happen.”
“No. I promise. It won’t.” Midori held out a hand. “Come. I’ll help you.”
A few silent moments passed before the girl uncoiled an arm from around the boy and took Midori’s hand.
“What’s your name?” Midori asked as she helped the girl to her feet.
“Noriko.”
“And your friend?”
“My brother,” Noriko said.
“Your brother?” Midori smiled at the boy. “You’re very lucky to have a big sister to watch over you.”
He buried his face in his sister’s shoulder.
“His name’s Katsuro,” Noriko says.
As Midori led them to the door, she asked, “Were there any others in the holding area with you?”
Noriko nodded.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know. Katsuro wanted to take a nap so I brought him in here. And then…the earth…”
“It’s all right. It’s over.”
Midori guided them outside, where they joined the rest of her team and twelve survivors who had been discovered hiding in the second building.
“Is this everyone?” Midori asked one of the survivors. “Just the fourteen of you locked up here?”
“There were another fifteen yesterday,” a man said. “But they passed their quarantine period and were taken to the safe zone.”
Midori cringed inside. She had heard about the false stories the survivors were told about the nonexistent safe zone. If she and her team had been able to come just a day earlier, they would have been able to save twice as many.
“We were supposed to get the vaccine today,” the man went on, worried. “Does this mean it will be delayed?”
“No,” she told him. “You’ll get it soon. But we need to take you off-site to someplace safer.”
There was only one survivor in the other holding area, a man in the early stages of Sage Flu. Midori was hopeful they’d be able to save him, but just in case, they isolated him from the other survivors as they walked through the ruins toward the gate.
With the thought of the fifteen people who’d been sent to the “safe zone” the day before fresh in her mind, Midori half wished the Project personnel they passed on the way out would give her an excuse to finish the job the explosives had started.
But either they knew to do so would be a death sentence or they no longer cared, for not one person tried to stop Midori’s team and the rescued survivors.
The team in Guangzhou was not as well equipped as some of the other Resistance attack forces around the world. Though the team members wished it were otherwise, their goal was not to take over the survival station but to throw a scare into the personnel assigned there and add to the overall pandemonium the Resistance was trying to create.
Pieter Dombrovsky and Meghan Zhang were assigned to cover one of the two rear exits of the station from a well-hidden position on a hillside overlooking the facility. They were equipped with sniper rifles and a large box of spare ammo. In addition, they were in possession of four remotes linked to charges set along the back wall.
Team members on the far side of the compound triggered the first explosions. Then the devices placed close to the front gate went off.
“That’s our cue,” Pieter said.
Meghan nodded nervously. “You first.”
Pieter pushed one of his remotes and was instantly rewarded with a boom.
Meghan took a deep breath and then pushed one of hers. The blast was even louder than Pieter’s.
“Together,” he said, holding up his other remote.
She held hers up, too, and on the silent count of three, they pushed their buttons.
Pieter’s blast sent a shard of the concrete wall hurdling in their direction. When he looked over at Meghan, he found her lying on the ground, blood gushing down her face.