“It looks as if they were here.”
“I just spoke to the Company Leader twenty minutes ago. They were just here.” Michelle wracked her brain trying to figure where they would have gone and why.
“They must have left in a hurry, ma’am. They left a whole case of weapons.”
The three dozen monarchs had gotten out of the trucks and were milling about as they worked the kinks out of their stiff legs after a long day of travel.
Michelle had just pulled her phone from her pocket and pressed the redial button when she heard the last slave’s comment on the case.
He was moving in impossibly slow motion as he leaned over, flipped the case’s latches open and began to lift the solid lid.
“Noooo!” she held out her left hand and screamed, her mouth still pressed into the forgotten phone.
Her stomach dropped to her knees in the fraction of a second it took to trigger the explosive.
Time hung in the air.
Everybody had turned toward Michelle as she yelled. Instinctively she’d flung herself to the ground, but she wasn’t fast enough. She saw the blinding burst of light against the flesh of the monarch who had taken the bait and opened the case. The upper half of the man’s body exploded from the lower half. Monarchs flew into the moonless night, spinning and tumbling in an aerial dance of death before crashing in heaps.
The IED’s concussive blast was immense. Its effect devastating.
Michelle gingerly pulled herself up on her elbows. Her ears were sources of screaming, stabbing pain. Blood trickled from her lobes. She looked around trying to assess damages, but couldn’t see through the dust and debris. She thought of yelling to her team, but decided to save her breath. They wouldn’t be able to hear any better than she could.
She felt around for her phone, but it was gone, blown from her hand by the blast wave. She forced herself to her feet. Her long, dark hair torn loose from its clips, stuck to the bloody scratches on the exposed skin of her neck and face. Her equilibrium affected by her blown eardrums, she stumbled back to where she believed the trucks were.
The screaming silence and pounding heartbeat in her head made it hard to think, but she knew she had to warn Arkdone.
Never had she been on the receiving end of destruction.
Meg will pay for this, Michelle seethed. She knew full well Meg Winter was the reason she was counting bodies on the ground—digging through their pockets looking for a working cell phone.
By the time she found one, eleven Monarchs had surfaced alive and were as fight-ready as she was. Five more were alive, but too injured to be useful in battle. The rest were maggot food in the making.
None of them could hear past their torn eardrums, so Michelle scrounged up a pencil and paper to write her orders.
The Winter Clan set this trap. Assume metahumans of 17th Company are enemies now. Gather what you can off the bodies and load up the two working trucks. Be careful! Don’t touch anything you don’t have to. More traps could be set and we cannot afford to lose any more people. We leave in five minutes.
The note was passed hand to hand until all eleven had read it. They stood alert, waiting for her to dismiss them. Absently, she waved her hand, motioning for them to get moving. Though bloody and battered themselves, every slave obeyed without question.
Michelle made her way to the first working truck and climbed inside. She knew she would be severely punished for her failure. She just wished the Senator would allow her the chance to kill Meg Winter before her penance.
Grasping the cell phone with both hands, she managed to steady her trembling fingers just enough. Choosing her words carefully, she began dictating the text message to her Master.
56 Half
An hour later, the remaining metamonarchs had relocated to the east of the Winter Ranch. They chose the location so the sunrise would be to their backs obstructing visibility to anyone in the west.
By the time Arkdone arrived, the new site had been scouted and secured. The central command base tent was erected and communications were in place. Each Monarch was set up with a radio and throat mic, but using them was still tricky. Everybody who experienced the blast was regaining their hearing slowly.
Arkdone had been yelling from the moment he leaped out of his Jeep having come directly from the airport—though his yelling had far less to do with being sensitive to everybody’s ability to hear than his fury over the turn of events.
“How many metamonarchs are left, Andrews?” he hissed.
“Half, sir. Our numbers were cut in two.” Michelle stared at her master with absolute obedience clearly etched in her expression.