I interrupted her. “I die. I know. And I promise I’ll come back, if you promise me you’ll take your Sixfirix doses to complete your cancer treatment. Besides, you should be resting,”

  “Don’t worry about me. I will.”

  Right then Eliza came to us and said virtually the same words my mom was telling me seconds before. I didn’t understand why they felt the need to reiterate the fact that I would die from radiation if I didn’t leave The Tower on time. I knew this already, but maybe I appeared the hyper-achiever type who would do anything to fulfill my mission. After I promised for the second time that I’d be safe, I hugged them both and saw them later leave to the facility.

  As I saw them walking away to meet the others inside, Blake surprised me from the back, saying, “Ready?”

  “Yes. But before we go, I have a question,” I said with a mischievous smile. “Do I present myself like a crazy person who would remain in radiation to finish the mission?” When he looked back at me, he was really trying to contain his laughter. He didn’t have to answer for me to know he thought the same as my best friend and my mother.

  “So, what? Are you going to miss me now?” I said with my best kittenish tone. “I thought you didn’t want to know anything about me anymore.” I knew he had forgiven me already. We hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything, with all the events of the past few days, but I could see it in his eyes and in the way he talked that he forgave me.

  He looked right at me with his bright green eyes and his cheerful smile and said, “We’ll see about that. Don’t get too excited.” He started walking backwards to go to his flycar, continuing to smile at me.

  “Oh, come on, Blake,” I yelled. “Finally accept that you forgave me!” Rather than a giving me a response, he winked at me. He turned around and kept walking to his flycar where Melissa was waiting for him. I then walked to the other flycar where Taylor was.

  The plan was easy. We would separate into two flycars to minimize the chances of being caught. Blake and Melissa would enter the building through the roof, while Taylor and I would access it through street level. As soon as they entered, they would cut the hydrogen cell power, leaving the tower without electricity and giving us chance to get Cora and Katharina. Meanwhile, they would get Marcus and the other Space Force members to safety. To defend ourselves and apprehend Cora, we brought X-ray weapons. These guns soundlessly immobilize their target for hours, but it’s painless and has no long-lasting effect on the victim.

  Our plan sounded solid in our heads; however, it started to go sideways the minute we flew into Los Angeles. It was already a dark night when we entered, the only lights in the city coming from The Tower, which could barely be seen from far away as the building was partially blocked by other structures. Both our flycars had the lights off, to be sure we wouldn’t be seen coming. We were using the self-flying mode since we could barely see anything in front of us.

  Just when we entered the delimitation of downtown los Angeles, I saw plenty of red flashing lights flashing on top of various high-rises. They seemed to be the buildings surrounding the Tower. “What are those?” Taylor asked me.

  “Nothing good,” I said while grabbing the encrypted radio to talk to Blake. “Blake, I think Cora installed motion detectors. They’ll know we’re here. Stick to this encrypted channel and follow the plan.” This encrypted channel would let us talk without anyone hearing. Gabriela made sure to program it in a way so that anyone who listened would just hear an unintelligible murmur.

  “Yes, Melissa just spotted them,” Blake said over the radio. “But don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” Moments later we flew through the line of red flashing motion detectors, when something unexpected happened; the lights of The Tower turned off a few seconds later, as if the motion detectors were synchronized with the hydrogen power cells. Then the flycar’s holocom turned off completely, and the vehicle started losing altitude.

  “Nothing electronic is working,” Melissa said from the encrypted radio. She was right; all the electronic command systems were failing, including the self-driving setting we both were using because of the darkness of the city.

  I quickly grabbed the wheel and switched to manual steering to maneuver the car myself. “Blake, change to manual, everything electronic is fried,” I said. “Lift up in the sky to get through the rooftop. I’ll go low through the streets to access the lower levels.” I lowered my car as close to the ground as I could, but I didn’t get any response from Blake. I was frightened, because the city with only the lights of the stars and moon was incredibly hard to maneuver.

  After a few seconds of anxiety and my lungs not able to breathe, I heard Melissa on the radio saying, “Copy that. It’s done. See you in The Tower.” After her comment I took a deep breath and continued to travel through the old streets of Los Angeles at a slow speed.

  “Is this like your old regular days in Space Force?” Taylor said, terrified. “I don’t think I could do this. I don’t know why I volunteered. I don’t even race flycars like Blake.”

  “It’s okay to be afraid, but focus on the road, Taylor, focus,” I said. “I don’t want to crash into a building.” I had to be tough on him because otherwise we would die. He was genuinely afraid, and he was only there because Blake had volunteered him as one of the few in our group who was immune to radioactivity. However, my prodding him to focus helped us get to The Tower without colliding with any other structure.

  We parked on the street level of The Tower, and the first thing I looked at was my smart watch. If the electronics of the flycar weren’t functioning, there was a chance none of the electronics were working. And sure enough, as soon as I lifted my hand, I noticed the watch wasn’t working. This meant we wouldn’t be able to estimate the radiation levels, nor the time the non-immune had in case the bacteria was released into the air. Luckily for us, hydrogen powered flycars didn’t need electronics to function in manual mode. Radios would also work since they are analog systems.

  “The watches don’t work either, nothing electronic works. Cora must’ve used an electronic inhibitor,” Blake said over the radio. “We just landed on the rooftop. Let’s get them quickly. And please, Taylor, promise me you’ll force Mia out of The Tower as soon as you see symptoms of radiation sickness.”

  “I promise, Blake,” Taylor replied.

  “Don’t you both know I’m right here and can hear you?” I said.

  Our part of the plan was to get Cora and Katharina, immobilize them, and then send them to Mars. However, with The Tower not having electricity, it would be extremely challenging to run up and down a hundred floors, thus I had to start improvising. Taylor was not too excited about changing our plan, but he had no other option than to follow. Voting was appropriate for important decisions, but this was a military mission and I was the commander again for a few hours. I took us into the air with the flycar and went up in the sky parallel to The Tower. The reason we hadn’t done this in the original plans was because they would be able to see us through the window and realize we were there. Unfortunately, Cora was well prepared and had set us up. She knew we were already there, so hiding was no longer a priority. Finding them was.

  I raised the flycar up to the 88th floor to look for her in the leadership office, but it was empty. Then I flew up a few levels to check the leadership suite. Taylor and I stepped in through the window and it also seemed empty. But there I noticed something I hadn’t on the lower floor. Air was flowing through the vents of the air conditioning system. The entire electrical system was down on purpose to blind us in The Tower, but the ventilation had been left on, which only meant one thing.

  “We have less time than we thought,” I said to Taylor. “They must be using the ventilation system to flow the bacteria into the whole Tower.” He was immune but Melissa, Marcus, me, and the rest of Project SURVIVE were not, and we didn’t know how much time we had left. Just then I realized how much we had underestimated Cora. She was not a trained military war strategist; we were. We thought we had this situation under control, but we were just playing her game all along.

  I was about to leave with Taylor back to the flycar when I heard a noise behind us. I quickly turned around but didn’t see anyone. I used my lamp to check all the corners of the apartment, and then I saw Victoria hiding behind a chair. She was holding an electric gun in her hand and looked extremely frightened. I was sure she didn’t even know how to use that gun. As I started approaching her, I heard Blake mumbling over the encrypted radio, “Don’t say where you are. They have us surrounded on the roof.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  BLAKE: JAIL

  As soon as I landed on the roof of The Tower, we were surrounded by Katharina and Cora’s bodyguards, Vince and Chris. They had been warned by the motion detectors and were waiting for us on the roof. We walked out of the flycar, Melissa holding her X-ray weapon to defend us. Luckily, we could still use our weapons since they were analog, mechanical guns, not electronic.

  “Hey, princess, tell your bodyguards to lower your weapons and bring me to Marcus,” Melissa said, threatening Katharina with the gun. The bodyguards immediately raised their electric guns and pointed them out at us. There was no ambivalence in Katharina’s expression; she was there to take us, and they would not lower their weapons.

  “Boys, take them down,” Katharina instructed them. Melissa immediately shot Chris with the X-ray gun, leaving him motionless on the floor. He was not hurt, nor in pain; he just couldn’t move for a while. As Melissa was turning to Vince to shoot him, she was hit by Vince’s electric gun. Immediately after her, I was shot too. The electricity of the gun would immobilize us for a few seconds. In contrast to the X-ray weapon, the electric gun was very painful. This gave them enough time to put us electromagnetic hand and leg cuffs, just like those Marcus had. Unfortunately, those kept working since these were analog electric systems.

  Meanwhile, Katharina grabbed the encrypted radio and said, “Hi, Mia. I know you’re close too. We’ve got your boyfriend and the girlfriend of your ex-boyfriend in electroshock on the floor. You have two options—either you leave and never come back, or I’ll let everyone from Project SURVIVE, including yourself, die. The radioactive bacteria are already circulating through the ducts in The Tower. Radiation will kill them within hours. If you leave, I might give them the radiation shot and send them your way. And remember, if you don’t leave, we’ll know.”

  By the time she finished her speech, the electricity had already stopped shaking my bones and flesh. My body was extremely tired, so I slowly closed my eyes and fainted. The next time I opened my eyes, I was sitting on a couch in an apartment somewhere in The Tower. It was still dark, and I could feel the ventilation system working. This meant Katharina was probably saying the truth; they were using the ventilation system to launch the bacteria.

  Melissa was on the couch in front of me, sitting next to Marcus. It seemed Marcus was easy to forgive, since she was hugging him. Marcus didn’t have the headband anymore. Melissa was probably able to take it off, even with the handcuffs she was wearing that would shock her when moving. And that didn’t surprise me; she would do anything for him.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I asked them.

  “About half an hour. How are you feeling?” Melissa asked.

  “Like a truck hit me. Marcus, we were supposed to save you and now we’re all tied up in the same room. I’m sorry. Where’s the rest of Project SURVIVE?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said. “I’ve been here for several days, but I haven’t seen them.”

  As he was finishing his sentence, the light turned back on in the room. “Do you think this means Mia left as Katharina instructed her?” Melissa asked us.

  Marcus and I responded together, “Mia would never leave.” We paused in silence to overcome the awkwardness of our simultaneous comment. The silence didn’t last, though, since a moment later an unintelligible conversation was heard in the hallway. We then heard something heavy hit the floor right in front of the door. Immediately after that, Victoria entered the room holding an electric weapon, followed by Taylor moments later. Vince was on the floor behind her. I was not expecting her to be the person who rescued us. Victoria was a sweet person, not the warrior type.

  “Victoria? Taylor?” I asked confusedly, while Taylor grabbed the keys for the cuffs from Vince’s pocket.

  He started taking off our cuffs as he explained. “. Cora’s been telling people that Mia and you cut off the electricity in an attempt to take over The Tower by force. She gave X-ray guns to most of the residents a few days ago. We found Victoria in Katharina’s room while she was looking for Katharina’s holotablet. We told her the truth, she believed us, and now she’s helped us get to you.”

  “I…I just knew something was wrong,” Victoria said, frightened. “I knew Blake wouldn’t kill Harry. Everyone’s at the terrace now, except the people from Project SURVIVE. Cora said they’d partnered up with you and were in hiding somewhere in Los Angeles to attack us.”

  “This is quite a conspiracy, but we won’t be able to do anything about it if we all die from radiation,” Melissa said. “Where’s Mia? We don’t know how much time we have. We need to leave.”

  Victoria and Taylor stood wordlessly, so I asked the question again on Melissa’s behalf. “Where is she?”

  “I’m sorry, Blake,” Taylor said. “She left by herself to the terrace. She didn’t want me to go. She wanted to make sure you got out safely.” I was worried he was going to say something like that. She was going to confront Cora in front of the people of The Tower, who now hate us because of a lie Cora created.

  Then I heard Melissa screaming. When I turned around towards her, I saw Melissa looking at Marcus, terrified. He was bleeding from his nose, his skin was very red, and he had started coughing. “I’m okay,” he said unconvincingly. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Melissa, take him to San Clemente to get an immunity shot from Robert,” I said. “Take the flycar on the roof. I’ll look for Mia and the rest of the non-immune, and get them out of here.”

  Marcus wanted us to believe he was healthy, but that was far from the truth. He was displaying the initial symptoms of radiation sickness, and the decline after this point was exponential and he knew this. He probably had thirty minutes left, which meant Mia didn’t have much time before dying of radiation either.

  Melissa didn’t think twice before running to the elevator core to leave the building and save Marcus. As soon as she left, I asked an important question. “Where could the rest of Project SURVIVE be? Cora must have them locked in the building somewhere. She doesn’t have the manpower to move them out of here. Besides, she’s wicked. She would want them dead from the radiation like the rest of us.”

  “There’s electricity, but we can’t use anything electronic yet,” Taylor said, trying unsuccessfully to turn on his holotablet. “The signal is still inhibited.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Let’s get the encrypted radio. Vince must have it. Let’s see if Gabriela can fix this.”

  CHAPTER XX

  MIA: TERRACE LEVEL

  As soon as Victoria told us where Cora and Katharina were, I instructed her and Taylor to rescue Melissa and Marcus; they probably had less safe time remaining than me in The Tower. I also couldn’t risk more lives. Taylor and Victoria weren’t soldiers and I couldn’t let them fight against the master of evil. If anyone was going to apprehend Cora, it was going to be me alone.

  I took the flycar a couple of floors below the terrace level, since appearing through the window in front of the entire population of The Tower would cause disorder. If I were to do that, they really would believe all the lies Cora had been telling them. I was going to enter in peace through the main entry of the terrace hall.

  As soon as I parked the flycar, I took the emergency stairs up so quickly that I forgot the encrypted radio. While I was running up, the electricity came back on. When I got to terrace level, the doors were closed but I could hear Cora saying, “We were able to turn all our electricity back on that these Space Force people took from us. We cannot let them take The Tower just as they took Victoria Muller…”

  She kept babbling while I took a deep breath before opening those doors. When I was ready, I did. Everyone was there sitting while Cora was on her stage preaching lies. Katharina was next to her, supporting the atrocities of her mother. In the crowd, I couldn’t spot anyone from Project SURVIVE. Victoria was right about that too. I raised my hands in the air to show The Tower inhabitants I was not a threat to them. They already seemed terrified by Cora’s words and seeing me in there only exacerbated that fear.

  “I come in peace,” I said. “I don’t have any weapon and I don’t want to hurt anyone. Cora and Katharina are the only ones at fault here, and they should pay for their crimes.”

  “Ha! We told you she’d say this. Pure lies,” Katharina said while aiming her electric gun at me.

  Despite the danger, I didn’t move to grab mine, and I said, “Katharina, you tried to kill me, just as your mother killed Blake’s mom. And this isn’t even the worst thing your family has done.”

  “You killed my husband, Mia,” Cora said. “You should be in jail, but I gave you the option of not coming back and being free. But you chose to come back anyways.”

  She said this so calmly that I almost lost my temper, but I took another deep breath and said, “Harry isn’t dead, and I have proof of this and everything else I’m saying. But Cora made sure to fry all the electronics so I couldn’t show you any holograms.”

  Cora started talking lies again when I heard the door behind me opening. It was Blake. I was happy to see him free, but I didn’t want him there. Before I could tell him anything, all the electronics in the room started sounding as if they were turning on. “We were able to turn all the electronics back on that you blocked,” Blake said.

 

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