The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)

I frowned. “Thomas, how do you know that?”


“I’m still flying my drone,” he replied. “Ms. Dale and the other groups don’t need it at the moment. I’ve gotten all the intel I could for them, so she had me come over to help you with…” He paused, and I waited, keeping an eye on the thick, roiling clouds blanketing the street.

He probably had gone to the other channel. I would’ve joined him, but now that my drone was down and I was in the field, I only needed to be in there if there was an emergency decision to be made. And even then, I trusted them to handle it. If I got on, it would only distract people from the can of worms they were about to open, if things were going according to schedule.

“It’s finally lightening up,” breathed Morgan, her spine relaxing a little as she continued to move the car carefully forward.

“Violet! Look out, there’s an enhanced human right in front of you!” Thomas’ line held enough alarm that I was already shouting for Morgan to stop, even before his warning was fully finished.

She slammed the brakes, and I jerked forward a little in my seat as we stopped, expecting at any moment to see a figure with a gun emerge. The haze in front of us shifted and swam. “Back up,” I whispered, slipping the gun out my pocket.

“Violet, you can’t shoot through the…” Owen trailed off as a bearded man lumbered into view, the mist parting and allowing us to see him face to face.

His clothes were ripped and dirty, and blood dripped down half his face, making it glisten in the headlights. He was definitely older—maybe mid-twenties—which meant he would be more unstable than the younger boys we’d faced in the past. Stumbling, he slammed into the car, and then screamed, spittle flying in large wads from his lips. He drew his hands together, lifting them high over his head, and then brought them back down.

“Reverse reverse reverse!” I repeated as my whole body clenched, going stiff in preparation for the oncoming blow.

Morgan clutched the gear shift and revved the engine, propelling the car backward just in time. The man stumbled forward as his target moved away from him, his fists landing on empty air. Morgan whipped the car around, and the man looked up and began to charge.

“Go go go!” shouted Lynne, and Morgan went, her foot slamming on the gas as she cut the wheel hard. The man dove for the rear window, and I clicked the safety off of my gun and pointed it through the window at him in case he could break the bulletproof glass. Morgan pulled away too fast, and the man fell and rolled across the pavement.

“Look at the map,” Morgan shouted, and Lynne rummaged in her bag, pulling out our map of the city. She spread it open as Morgan hit a hard left, and I found myself reaching for the handle, even though I was twisted around in the seat, watching the smoky fog. The car bucked as Morgan hit something, and Owen’s side of the car erupted in red as embers sprayed out across the window next to him.

The fog suddenly cleared, and then we were speeding away from a thick gray cloud. “Is he back there?” Lynne asked shakily.

I scanned the receding line, and started to shake my head, when the man darted out, leaping over an overturned car and landing on the other side. His face immediately moved toward us, like he was a dog who’d caught our scent, and he roared, cutting a path straight for us.

“He’s catching up!” I shouted. “Why are we moving so slowly?”

“There’s stuff in the road!” Morgan barked back as she yanked the wheel to avoid yet another obstacle.

The man drew closer, and I felt my heartbeat increase. As much as I didn’t want to hurt one of the boys, the inevitability of it was a looming shadow in my heart. Suddenly the gun felt heavy, and I wanted to drop it on the seat.

I looked over at Owen as Morgan swerved around something in front of us, the gravity in the car shifting, sliding me into his shoulder. “We need to slow him down,” I shouted. “Look for something—anything—we can throw from the back of the car.”

Owen looked at me from where he was pensively staring out the window, and then doubled over the backseat, opening a panel on the flat, felt-like shelf behind us. The panel was a long cutout, and as he lifted it, I squeezed my fingers under the crack to pick it up, the car bouncing under our knees.

We slid it forward, propping it against the backseat, and I looked up in time to see the man running a few feet behind and to the side of us, snarling and snapping his teeth. He pulled back an arm to strike at my window, and Owen pulled me back from his location, forcing his body between us.

“Watch out!” Lynne screamed, and Morgan jerked the wheel hard. I turned as the end spun out of control, trying to see what we’d almost hit, and suddenly we were bouncing back the other way. I landed hard against Owen as Morgan slammed on the brakes, sinking down a few inches into the gap between the seats as we came to a lurching stop.

“It’s Solomon,” Lynne breathed shakily, and I sat upright, rudely grabbing on to Owen and hoisting myself up from off my back. I moved back to the window as Morgan gunned the engine, and confirmed that, yes, it was Solomon.

By the time I had found where to look in our turned-around car, he had the other man by the throat, his mouth bared in a silent snarl. The red fire behind him caught the definition of his broad muscles flexing as he lifted the wild man up by the throat. The man’s legs kicked out, catching Solomon in the jaw, and he stumbled back, dropping his prize. The man pressed his advantage, his fists slamming into the side of Solomon’s face once, and then Solomon reached out and grabbed the other man’s fist, stilling it, his head snapping back to look at him.

“He’s… protecting us,” I whispered as I watched him force the struggling man over, step by step, to the wall and begin smashing his head into the brick.

“Good,” said Morgan. “We have a mission to complete.”

She hit the gas and we sped off, leaving Solomon and the other man behind as they rapidly faded from view. Morgan hooked the next left, and I saw more fire, and people running around, fighting on the streets. A man picked up a rock and threw it at us, but it missed, sailing to one side and onto the street as we sped by.

I clicked over to the main channel, knowing I needed to give everyone a report. “We encountered an enhanced human—male, in his early or mid-twenties, dark black beard,” I announced quietly over the line. “I think Elena brought the boys in.”

“Yeah, Thomas told us, Vi,” said Amber. “But to what end? The place is a catastrophe. She’d lose more of the boys than she’d keep, in all likelihood.”

“She could be sweeping in behind us,” replied Logan. “Using these enhanced humans to pin us between a rock and a hard place.”