“No way,” I said. “They’re screwing with us. This has to be a drill or something. …”
Another blast up on the surface shook the stone floor beneath our feet once again—more fiercely this time—and there was another volley of panicked screams and shouting. The map projected on the auditorium’s giant screen was suddenly replaced with eight live video feeds from cameras up on the surface, showing Crystal Palace’s dairy farm fa?ade from various angles around its outer perimeter. All of the buildings were in flames, and the sky overhead was filled with a swarm of dozens of Glaive Fighters. I could see their blade-shaped hulls flashing like mirrors in the morning sun as they rained lasers and plasma bombs down on the base.
The auditorium fell eerily silent for a moment as everyone stared up at the images on the screen. Then the screaming and the shouting continued, now at a much higher volume.
Up on the screen, a squadron of Glaive Fighters swooped down and carpet-bombed the armored doors over the docking bay entrance.
Another tremor rocked the auditorium, and silt began to rain down from cracks in the reinforced concrete ceiling. I wondered how much more abuse it could take before it collapsed.
“Remain calm, people!” the admiral ordered, shouting to be heard over the growing din of panic in the audience. “If you want to live, I need you to pull it together and follow orders!”
The fear in the admiral’s voice was almost as unsettling as the video on the screen behind him.
“Repeat—this installation is under attack,” the computerized female voice repeated over the PA. “All personnel report to your drone controller station immediately. Check your QComm for further instructions. All personnel report to your drone controller station immediately—”
Lex whipped out her QComm. Its display lit up with another GPS-style map of the base, showing a green path from where we were sitting at the back of the auditorium, down the steps to the nearest exit, then down a series of corridors to a circular room labeled Controller Hub 3. I checked my QComm and saw that I was assigned to Hub 5, which was along the same route, but slightly farther away from us.
“Let’s go!” Lex said, dropping my jacket in my lap as she squeezed past me. I didn’t rise from my seat. My eyes were still fixed on the chaos unfolding on the screen, but my brain was churning through everything I’d learned today—and how little sense any of it made. Something was wrong here. And I still didn’t know if my dad’s—
“Zack?”
I looked over and saw Lex staring back at me from the end of the row, her eyes burning with impatience. “Well? Are you just gonna sit here and let these things kill us?”
She was right. This wasn’t the EDA’s fault. It was the Europans’. Here, revealed at last, was my true enemy—the cause of all the loss and hardship that had plagued me since birth. These invaders from another world—they were the reason all of this was happening. By declaring war on us all those decades ago, the Europans had disrupted human history and robbed us of our future. And now they were here to rob us of everything else, too.
Suddenly, the only thing I cared about was making them pay. Every last one of them.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I said, jumping to my feet. I shoved the jacket back into my pack, then ran to catch up with Lex, who was already bounding down the tiered steps three and four at a time.
Lex and I squeezed through the bottleneck of people at the nearest exit. As soon we cleared it and burst into the corridor outside the auditorium, Lex took off running again, pushing past other less-eager recruits until she was out in front, leading the charge. I raced to keep up with her, following the machine-gun-like sound of her combat boots hitting the stone floor up ahead of me.
We heard another concussive explosion impact up on the surface, and the shock wave shook the floor. Dust and silt began to rain down from the tile seams in the corridor ceiling as the people around us continued to sprint in all directions, following maps on the glowing screens of their QComms.
I ignored mine and just focused on keeping up with Lex as she continued to run down a seemingly endless series of corridors, until finally she stopped outside a set of armored doors labeled controller hub 3.
“This is me,” she said, pointing down the corridor. “Hub Five is farther down.”
I nodded and opened my mouth to wish her good luck, but I’d only managed to get out “Goo—” when she turned and planted a kiss on my cheek. This may have caused a slight drop in the structural integrity of my knee joints, but I managed to stay upright.