Lowering the DSR 50, I turned to Tristan. “Actually, I think I’m good now. Thanks for this. I don’t feel quite so useless anymore.”
He gave another smile before turning and going back down the door into the hospital.
Facing the edge of the building once more, I brought the rifle back up to eye level and looked down the scope.
I crossed to each side of the building, checking every road. We had a guard positioned in the middle of every street that led into the hospital, exactly five blocks out, just as Graye had ordered. Each of those guards paced. They held their assault rifles at the ready, fingers hovering. There were eighteen ways to get access to the hospital directly. Men, women, and even two teenagers from the Underground, stood guard.
That was a quick way to get over the tension that had built between the two colonies. When your existence as a human being is about to be wiped out, you tend to get over your differences and work together.
This surge of Bane once again had been good for something.
Seeing that we had all the entrances covered, I searched out Avian. Gabriel was positioned on the northeast side of the building. Even Wix was out there with a gun. It looked bigger than him. He helped watch the west side. I smiled at that. That was the least likely direction an attack would come from.
I finally found Avian at the south side of the building. The direction the Bane were most likely to come at us from.
He stood tall and sure. He held an assault rifle in his hands, but unlike some of the others, his was leveled at his eyes, ready to fire at any half-second. His knees were bent slightly and where the others paced between buildings, across the roads, Avian held perfectly still, pivoting at the waist slightly to scan the roads.
I smiled as I scrutinized him. I’d never gotten the chance to watch him work from afar, when he didn’t know I was observing him. Avian was an impeccable soldier. When he wasn’t worrying about my safety.
I was glad he couldn’t see me up here on the roof of this building.
The sun crept to its highest position in the sky and started sliding toward the west. From my perch, I watched as Bane came in on foot or again attempted to barrel their way through by truck. My breath would still in my chest and my finger would hover at the trigger.
I created a set of rules for myself:
I had to let the soldiers around me take care of the Bane that were within seven blocks of the hospital.
But the second I spotted any further out that that, I took them out.
The first shot I fired drew eyes. Avian met mine, and a slow smile curled on his lips.
I wasn’t leaving the hospital, I was perfectly safe up here. But at least I was useful.
This continued all day long.
I could feel each and every one of the seconds passing like another stitch in my skin. Time sewed me tighter and tighter, until I felt as if my insides were squeezed too hard, my hair even felt too tight, my eyes too compressed.
How many hours were left until we knew if this would work or not?
So my finger nearly pulled the trigger by accident when my radio crackled to life.
“Eve, it’s Dr. Evans.”
“Go ahead,” I said into it.
“Everyone else up here has gone home to the hospital. Can you come over and talk for a bit?”
“Give me ten minutes.”
I stashed the sniper rifle in a corner where it wouldn’t be seen and slipped quietly downstairs. Since the building we had built the Nova on was barely within our five block perimeter, it wasn’t too difficult to sneak behind the guards. Their attention was turned the opposite direction.
I took the elevator this time, climbing all thirty floors. I stepped out onto the roof and took everything in.
Dr. Evans stood facing the Nova, his cybernetic hands clasped behind his back. As soon as he heard the door, he turned.
I stilled instantly, though, when I saw the look on his face, or what was left of it. His left eye no longer showed any traces of ever looking human. But his right was still mostly white and brown and expressed enough emotion to compensate for the rest of his mechanical body. His shoulders were held high, as was his chin.
“It’s done,” he said.
It took me a moment to nod.
It’s done.
“The energy storage devices will require about eighteen hours to charge,” he said. His voice didn’t sound right. Almost like he was talking into a tin can. It was rough, very not-human sounding. “Like your Pulse, this device requires an enormous amount of energy to be set off. Power must be built up for a few hours. And then we can set it off.”
I calculated the time in my head. We would set the Nova off at noon tomorrow.
It stood behind him, beautiful and shiny and brilliant. The dish was mounted to the top, pointing up and slightly east.
“I wish we could do a test first,” he said, his eyes turning up to the sky.
“To see if the satellites in orbit respond?”
He nodded.
Everything in me said this wasn’t going to work. It had been six years since anyone cared about those chunks of metal and technology floating up in space. How could we ever expect them to work?
“But we will only get one shot at this, before we drain our power source.”
I swallowed hard.
“Are you ready?” he asked. His eyes fell to me again. His words were heavy and full of meaning.
It took me a moment to reply, because I wasn’t sure how to answer. I hadn’t really allowed myself to picture what life would be like if this did work. I had become depressed months before, when I had felt like I had no purpose because we had no Bane to fight off in this city.
Soon, that’s how the entire planet would be.
This would be different though. If it worked.
“Let’s hope so,” I replied.
THIRTY-ONE
There were less than twenty-four hours until we knew if we were going to live or die.
Some people celebrated. They laughed and spoke loudly and dared to discuss how they would live their lives tomorrow and the next day and the next.
Some people sat in the background, staring blankly ahead, too overwhelmed to think about the future when there might not be one.
Others went to bed to stare restlessly at the ceiling above them, afraid of the too hopeful dreams or the too near future nightmares that were sure to haunt them.
Twenty-two men, women, and teenagers went back outside for the night guard. Royce was among them, now finished with the device. So were West and Vee.
I sat in a chair in the middle of the lobby, facing the front doors that were blocked off with reinforced steel. I could hear voices just outside them, speaking harshly and loud. Every once in a while I would hear a gun fire.
Avian paced the space before me, gently bouncing Creed, who lay wrapped up in a blanket against his chest.
Lin sat next to me, a stack of magazines sitting in her lap.
“I think this style would look really flattering on you,” she rambled, holding a magazine in front of me. I didn’t bother to look down at the bridal pictures she was trying to distract me with. “But then again, you might be too tall to pull off that look.”
She shuffled a few more pages and then I heard her drop that magazine to the floor and pick up another. “Ooo,” she said. I could tell her eyes had widened without even looking at her. “Look at this cake! Doesn’t that look amazing?”
But I couldn’t make myself look at the amazing cake. I could only look at the steel doors and imagine what must be going on out there.
So far, in the last three hours since security detail had switched, I’d heard no fewer than eighteen gun shots and one blast from the southern tank.