Chapter 94 The Smashed Cage

Chapter 94 The Smashed Cage
Marcus

The ship screamed as it tilted into a dead fall. Wind roared through the massive hole in the floorboards, tearing at my clothes and making it impossible to breathe. Sirens wailed in a frantic rhythm, flashing blood-red light across the cabin walls.

"Julian!" I yelled, reaching down through the smoke.

His silver hand was locked onto my leg like an iron vice. Half of his face was completely gone, showing the raw chrome skull beneath his synthetic skin. Sparks danced across his chest plates where the concrete had crushed his internal battery. He looked like a nightmare, but he was my brother. He had crawled out of hell to find me.

On the other side of the cabin, Grand Marshall Vane didn't even blink. She stood perfectly still as the ship dropped, her boots magnetically locked to the metal floor.

"Unit Seven, clear the trash," she commanded coldly.

The massive gray robot lunged forward, its heavy iron foot coming down straight toward Julian’s exposed metal skull.

"No!" I shrieked.

I kicked out with my free leg, slamming my boot into the side of the robot’s knee joint. My foot throbbed with a sickening pain, but the distraction worked. The gray machine missed Julian’s head, its foot smashing into the edge of the floor hole instead. The metal ripped open further, and the sudden shift in balance threw me forward.

Julian didn't pull me down into the sky. With a massive, grinding roar of his gears, he used his remaining strength to lift himself into the ship. He scrambled onto the shaking deck, his single blue eye burning with a wild, desperate light.

"Marcus, the drive," Julian rasped, his voice sounding like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. He pointed a trembling, silver finger at Grand Marshall Vane. "She has the master loop. If she connects it to the core, the lower sectors will stop breathing in ten minutes."

The truth hit me like a physical punch. This wasn't about a simple database or a list of corporate names anymore. This woman had a kill switch for my entire home. Everyone I grew up with, everyone who had ever tried to fight back, was about to be wiped out like a glitch in a computer program.

"I won't let her," I whispered, the rage inside me turning completely cold. I didn't feel the pain in my knuckles anymore. I didn't feel the fear. I just wanted to destroy her.

Sarah

The wind tore at my hair as the automated winch dragged us up through the shattered glass dome of the conservatory. Jax was holding the cable with one arm, his other hand wrapped tightly around my waist. Lily was squeezed between us, her face buried deep into my chest to block out the terrifying height.

Below us, the stage was a sea of orange fire and thick black smoke. I could see the tiny shapes of Mason’s soldiers running around the auditorium, firing their rifles up at us, but the bullets clicked uselessly against the metal support beams below our feet.

"We're almost at the roof!" Jax shouted over the roar of the wind.

We slammed onto the wet concrete of the conservatory roof, tumbling over each other in a messy heap. I groaned, my broken ribs throbbing with a sharp, blinding agony, but I forced myself to sit up.

"Look!" Lily cried, pointing into the dark sky.

A black transport ship was spinning out of control just a few hundred yards away, trailing thick gray smoke and purple sparks. It was dropping fast, heading straight toward the massive neon plaza of the corporate sector.

"Marcus is inside that thing," I breathed, my heart stopping.

"Not for long," Jax said, his voice dropping into a hard, flat tone. He pointed toward the edge of the roof.

A sleek, silver security vehicle was parked near the maintenance elevator, its engine humming quietly. The corporate guards had abandoned it when the EMP hit the lower grid.

Jax scrambled over to the driver's side, smashing the window with his iron wrench. He reached inside, pulling a handful of wires from under the dash. "Get in, Sarah! If that ship hits the ground, we need to be there before the clean-up crews arrive."

Marcus

The gray robot swung its massive arm, catching Julian square in his ruined chest. The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil. Julian flew backward, his metal body crashing through the ship's control console in a shower of sparks and broken glass.

"Your brother was an excellent prototype, Marcus," Grand Marshall Vane said, stepping toward me as the ship stabilized slightly. "But he is obsolete. Just like your father's sentimentality."

She reached into her coat, pulling out a small, sleek silver pistol. She didn't aim it at my head. She aimed it straight at my chest, right where the main blue data line branched across my heart.

"You don't need to be alive for the sequence to work," she said softly. "The blood just needs to be warm."

I didn't back away. I looked past her, seeing Julian’s silver hand slowly moving among the broken wires of the control console. He was sticking his fingers directly into the ship's main battery lines. The blue light in his eye turned into a blinding, white-hot glare.

"Marcus! Drop!" Julian roared.

A massive surge of pure electricity erupted from the console, traveling through Julian’s body and shooting across the metal floor like a web of lightning.

I threw myself sideways just as the current hit Grand Marshall Vane. The electrical shock rattled through her magnetic boots, bypassing her armor and lighting up her skin with a terrifying purple glow. She screamed, her body stiffening as the silver pistol flew from her hand.

The gray robot froze, its internal systems overloading from the massive surge.

But the explosion of energy was too much for the damaged ship. The entire nose of the transport blew outward in a wall of fire, and the cabin split completely in half.

The wind caught me, lifting my body off the floorboards and throwing me out into the empty, cold air of the upper city. I was falling, the bright neon lights of the plaza spinning wildly below me, and above me, the two halves of the ship were burning in the dark.

Marcus is falling from the sky with no parachute! As the cold air rushes past his face, who will catch him before he hits the concrete below?