I smiled at her mimicking mylanguage.
Leaping softly off her back, I landed on the ground, pulling my gun.‘Ready?’ I askedher.
She nodded and started to walk toward the building. I did the same, keeping my feet and movements light. We reached the door quickly, and I wasted no time leveling my gun at the keypad and pulling the trigger. Three pops and the pad’s lights turned off. Then I shot the actual keyhole of the door and the handle turned with ease. If there were humans in there, I had no freaking clue what I would say or do. Act dumb, probably. Say I had run out of supplies and was scouting randombuildings.
‘Sentry will be coming for that gunshot sound,’ I reminded Dawn, then pulled the door open jumping inside as quickly as Icould.
I wasn’t prepared for the level of luxury I experienced. Was that air conditioning blasting my face? The floors looked freshly carpeted, and evenvacuumed.
‘Dawn is ready to blow fire at tall one. Get clear blue,’she toldme.
Her words spurred me into action, and I ran into the hallway and toward the opening at the end, where I could seelights.
Bursting into the room, I stopped short, in shock. There was a twelve-person conference room table, and freaking water and foodvending machines. That’s what Dawn had seen. The government officials sat in there drinking chilled water and eating little packets of cookies while the rest of humanity was slaughteredoutside.
Oh hellno.
Rage ripped through me and suddenly I was seeing red. Thankfully the room was empty of people, and my eyes went to the whiteboard that took up half of the backwall.
I picked up the red marker and wrote the word‘traitors’in big block letters across the entire thing. Then I threw the marker down and picked up a chair, lifted it into the air and heaved, watching in satisfaction as it crashed into the first vending machine. Bottles of water fell out, along with shards of glass, and I searched around the room for something to carry thingswith.
The sounds of gunfire outside had me panicking, and I threw the second chair into the food vending machine. Next to it on the counter was a small file folder carriers, a plastic one, sitting right beside a super old-school typewriter. Opening the plastic file folder box, I saw it was only a quarter full. I smashed the files down to the bottom—in case they were important—– then started shoving water bottles, packets of cookies, and chips into the plasticcase.
Latching it closed quickly, I busted ass outside to get to Dawn’s aid. She was standing in front of the door, guarding it, and the sentry was on the ground burned to acrisp.
‘You okay? I heard bullets,’ I told her as I hopped on her back, holding the caseawkwardly.
She nodded. ‘Tall one was a badshot.’
I chuckled, relieved and prepared for her to take off. Just as she lowered her body to leap into the air, a shadow passed over top of me and I spun, looking up just in time to see a breeder jumping down from the roof of thebuilding.
Her body collided with mine, and with no warning I fell backward, hands up to protect my face and neck, which meant I landed right on my back from six feet high. As I smacked into the ground, the wind was knocked out of me and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. The female straddled me and pressed her thighs together, nearly breaking my ribcage.
“Ahhh!” I screamed in horrified pain and bucked her off by snapping my pelvis upward. She rocked a little, which gave me the leverage to twist underneath her and roll onto myside.
By the time she righted herself, I was able to tuck my legs up and then snap out with my foot, clipping her face with my boot. The female rocked backward, giving me enough time to fully scramble out from under her. The breeders wore no armor and didn’t seem to carry modern weapons. I wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t need them or just weren’t used to fighting. Orboth.
Dawn had turned around and was waiting for me, nervously watching the fight. There wasn’t much she could do. If she blew fire, then I would light up right along withit.
I was halfway to her when the pain rocked my skull, splitting through my head with such force, I fell to my kneespanting.
Bitch.
I took a deep breath and then thought about any time in my life when I’d ever felt pain. Like right then. I pulled all those feelings together and whipped around, turning on the female and shooting out with my power, slamming‘Pain’intoher.
She went rigid, panting in and out, and I took the time to take in her features. This one was different than the breeder I’d fought with earlier. She had a more angular face and wasn’tpregnant.
She closed her fist, and suddenly that creepy desperate feeling of panic came over me like before.‘Death, pain, destruction, kill, kill,kill.’
“No!” I shouted and without thinking, I thrust my arms out and pushed my mental power at her. It was raw and concentrated but without focus, like the one time I did it with Maxine when I chanted,‘Calm, calm, calm.’This was blind panic, andchaos.
As the breeder fell to her knees and grabbed her head, I saw a thin trail of blood trickle down from hernose.
Holyshit.
I didn’t wait for her backlash of retaliation. I just spun around, swooped up the plastic file folder holding my score, and leapt awkwardly onto Dawn’sback.
‘Fly!’ Ishouted.
