“I can’t say I’m going to lose any sleep.” I held her gaze until she looked away. Dasher may not have been a complete sociopath like her, but he was on my To-Kill list.
At least I could mark his name off.
“General Eaton.” A voice traveled from a man near the large monitor. He was standing, arms pressed to his sides. “We’re five minutes out.”
Five minutes out from what?
No sooner was that thought finished than the image on the monitor zoomed in and the tops of buildings became clearer, as did congested streets. Some areas were nothing but blobs of gray smoke.
“What is this?” Kat asked, stepping forward and out from underneath my arm.
I glanced at Archer, and at once, I knew this was what he wanted us to see. “What’s going on?”
The general strode down the middle of the room, past the lines of smaller monitors and people pecking away at their computers. “This is what we are doing to stop the invasion.”
I turned my gaze back to the screen. Man, I had a real bad feeling about all of this.
“Four minutes,” another guy up front announced.
Yep. When people started counting down, no good shit came from that. Kat had asked for clarification, but as I stared at the twinkling lights of the city, an idea began to take form in the back of my head.
“What you see on the screen is Los Angeles,” the general explained. “There was a significant number of invading Luxen there, all who have taken human form, mostly government officials and others in positions of power. They have rapidly assimilated the human DNA of those who are around the age necessary to have a family. We have people in there who’ve been keeping us up to date, but as of yesterday night, we’ve lost complete control of the city.”
“Oh wow.” Kat folded her arms around her as she stared at the monitor.
“We’ve also lost Houston, Chicago, and Kansas City,” Nancy interjected. “That we know of at this point. The only city we’ve been able to hold without any Luxen is D.C., but the invaders are amassing tremendous forces around the city—Alexandria, Arlington, Mount Rainier, and Silver Spring are all almost completely under their control.”
Damn.
“And we don’t know of any Origins inside D.C. who might have joined forces with the invading Luxen,” he added. “We’re hoping that’s not the case, but we have to plan for it.”
“Three minutes.”
My gaze landed on the back of the man counting. “What happens in three minutes?”
Kat turned around, her face pale, and I knew her mind was going where mine was, and none of this was heading to a pleasant place.
“We have to stop the Luxen by any means necessary that will result in minimal human casualties.” The general’s shoulders rose as he drew in a deep breath. “Obviously, that limits what we can do.”
Archer pushed off the wall, gliding closer, as if he expected me to lose my shit when my suspicions were confirmed.
“The president of the United States, in conjunction with the secretary of defense, has approved a test strike of an EMP over the city of Los Angeles.”
I stared at the general.
“EMP?” Kat said, her eyes wide.
“Electromagnetic pulse weaponized in the form of several nonnuclear e-bombs,” he explained, and my stomach dropped to my feet. “It will work just like a PEP weapon once the bomb detonates around a three-hundred-foot elevation, but on a more widespread level. Expected loss of human life is nominal, limited to those with heart disease or other disorders that might be susceptible to an electric pulse of that magnitude . . . and currently those whose lives are dependent upon life-support systems.”
“Two minutes, elevation at seven hundred feet,” came from the front, followed by a static-filled voice announcing the location over a radio signal.
Archer was now standing near me.
“Most humans will experience a burst of pain and momentary paralysis,” he continued as Kat turned back to the screen. “The EMP will act as a lethal, immediate kill weapon to any Luxen, hybrid, or Origin within the strike zone.”
Holy shit.
I got the necessity of it—they had to do something against the invading Luxen—but my sister was out there somewhere, hopefully nowhere near L.A. And there had to be innocent Luxen and hybrids there, even Origins, and they had no clue what was coming their way.
“Innocents will die in this, both human and Luxen,” the general said, as if he could read my mind. “But we have to sacrifice the few to save the many.”
I turned back to the screen as it flickered rapidly for a second before evening out. The image had zoomed in once more, enough that I could track movement on the ground.
“That’s not all it does,” Archer said quietly. “The EMP was designed for a different purpose.”
The general nodded. “Originally, it came to creation as a weapon of mass destruction that would limit the loss of human life. The EMP irreversibly damages any and all electronic devices and power sources.”
Holy shit.
That was all I was capable of thinking.
“That’s everything,” Kat whispered. “That’s absolutely everything in the city—phones, cars, hospitals, communications—everything.”
“One minute, elevation at four hundred feet.”
“It will virtually knock L.A. back into the Dark Ages.” Archer stared at the large screen. “You’re about to see history be made again, but the kind of history that can never be rewritten.”
“You can’t do this,” I said.
Kat was shaking her head. “You can’t. There’re people there who need electricity—there are innocent people, and their whole way of life is about to be ended. You can’t—”
“It’s obviously too late,” Nancy snapped, dark eyes firing. “This is our only option to stop them. For there even to be a tomorrow where mankind is safe.”
I opened my mouth, but the broken radio transmission fired up, counting down from twenty seconds, and there wasn’t any way to stop this. It was happening, right in front of us.
Moving closer to Kat, I continued to rivet my eyes on the screen, on the cars traveling the freeway, trying to exit the city. There could be Luxen in those cars, good ones and bad ones. There could be humans with heart conditions. There were also hospitals somewhere on that screen, people whose next breath would never come.
And then it happened.
Kat smacked her hand over her mouth as a flash of blinding light caused the image on the screen to wobble for a moment or two, and then the picture settled. Everything looked as it had seconds before, except none of the cars moved on the freeway. Nothing moved, actually, and . . .
The entire city had gone dark.
13
{ Katy }
Oh my God, I felt like I needed to sit down or I was going to fall over.
I couldn’t tear my gaze from the screen. Nothing was happening. Of course not. Millions of people in L.A. were currently stunned. And out of them, how many would never get back up again? Hundreds? Thousands? I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed.
A voice crackled over the radio, declaring a successful drop of the EMP bombs. No one in the room cheered. I was glad they hadn’t, because I was sure either Daemon or I would’ve ended up with onyx being sprayed in our face.
“We’ll be initiating a scan for any electrical pulses,” the man who had been counting down earlier announced. “Two minutes and I should have the data.”
General Eaton nodded. “Thank you.”
“Luxen and their many spinoffs emanate an electrical response,” Nancy explained, but I already knew that. That was why the PEP and EMP weapons were so dangerous.
They fried us on a massive level.