Chapter Seventy-Four

The beeping alarm caused the sleeping woman to jerk awake as she rushed to the small screen, punching the keyboard a few times.

She tapped a quick-dial entry on her phone. “Something’s happening. The girl is leaving her house, with her parents, the other girl, her droid, and—they aren’t bringing, they aren’t; it looks like only their mobile security team is going with them, only one transport, about six guys,” the woman said in a rasping chant.

She punched some keys into her keyboard again, pulling out a green icon appearing on the screen and a beacon that indicated Viktoriya’s home.

“Follow them. Stay out of sight. Find out where they are going,” Azid demanded. His command was stern. This was their one chance of getting the girl. If they could grab her, study what exactly made her stop aging, then they had to do it now. “Don’t you lose her, you hear me?” he said, gritting his teeth.

Azid’s fixation on Viktoriya was engrained into his destiny, one that he could not escape even if he wanted to.

She first came into his orbit during the most significant endeavor he had ever taken, to take TITAN down. And now again, she held the keys to what he knew was eternal life, or at least unnaturally long life.

What in the world would Azid do without his Viktoriya?

“Yes, sir,” she responded. She pulled out a larger view of the map, analyzing the best location for where they might be heading. Rolling a red apple in one hand, she focused her gaze much too close to the screen as though straining to see. Then, as she trailed the road signs, she sat back and said, “It looks like they are headed out of the district, toward the old legacy train station.”

“Get a dropship with our guys. We are going to hit them. And hit them hard. No screw-ups this time. Is the Spectrum web still intact around her?” he asked the man he had sent to monitor their movements.

“Yes, it seems so.”

“Okay, well. Here’s the call. We still have to take the shot; we may not get another chance with her exposed with so little security. We’ll have to use her parents as leverage to keep her from doing anything crazy since she’ll likely still be Spectrum enabled.”

* * *

Viktoriya and her group arrived at the train station and saw it was still operational. She was happy and excited. The large vacant parking lot only had a few cars, mostly employees, and a few dozen visitors who still enjoyed the station’s history and old trains, or used the rail to travel the one-stop it made.

But then she paused for a moment.

She could almost sense that maybe something was off, or perhaps it was just her imagination playing tricks on her. But she had been the one who wanted to see the train again. So why did she get the feeling that they should leave?

Should the continual scorn of danger condemn her to live out the rest of her life under a rock, sitting in a corner? Or perhaps locked away somewhere safe? In a safe prison?

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No, she would see the train and even ride on it, if possible. She shut out the whispering in her head, exhaling as she stared into the frosty weather. She was leaving this behind on Earth and wanted one more memory.

As they exited their vehicles, her heart stopped. Twitching her gaze up into the sky, she saw the dropship rapidly descending on top of them.

Before she could scream, before she could give a warning, the dropship released a wedge cluster on the security detail transport, blowing the armored vehicle to its side. The constrained explosion knocked everyone else away like leaves in the wind, scattering them into the air in all directions, then crashing down again onto the pavement.

CLEFF remained rigid against the attack, thanks to the weight of his body. He swiftly activated protection mode, with only one directive: to protect Viktoriya.

He placed an emergency Sec-11 security distress call and rushed as fast as he could toward Viktoriya. But Argosys already had something in mind for him, dropping an XC class EMP in his path. At that moment, CLEFF knew they had planned this carefully. It was not just some haphazard attack.

As he raced toward her, the EMP discharged, shutting down his systems, but only for a moment, as his backup instantly reactivated.

CLEFF yelled, “Nice try, suckers.”

But again, the Argosys had come prepared. They had dealt with CLEFF before.

The EMP device discharged a delayed second wave, sending him tumbling to the ground as he fell, becoming nothing more than a fallen rag-doll.

Viktoriya could not breathe. It was all happening too fast. They were here, exposed to the heavy assault from Argosys.

She had somehow done it again. She had placed herself, and everyone she cared about, in danger. Her obsessiveness was going to be her undoing.

“Why do I keep doing this? I’m going to get everyone I love killed, and I can’t stop doing it.”

Her chest heaved. Her eyes fixed on the dropship that had now hovered in front of them.

Two men from the Argosys team rappelled to the transport, armored to the teeth.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”

She had led them here.

She had allowed those dark souls to pour out their terror on them all.

Her parents.

Choe.

Aura.

CLEFF.

She could not bring herself to move. She could not keep her legs from trembling as the men moved closer, searching for any of the security team who had survived the blast.

Dazed and panicked, Viktoriya’s people knew exactly what was going on and that they were under heavy assault by Argosys. They all knew Viktoriya was their target. Although they had tried to protect her, some civilians had fled with the only chance they had.

Azid and one other member rappelled to the car from the dropship. Rosa ran to his daughter and put himself between her and Azid. He had not ever been the dad of the year, but he would be damned before he allowed anything to harm his girl.

“Look, daddy. We aren’t here to hurt Vik,” Azid said. “Quite the opposite. We only want to study her DNA and understand how she has stopped aging. This is essential for all humankind. This is for the greater good,” he said from behind his mask, the device scrambling his voice.

Viktoriya stood there, finding it difficult to follow what was going on.

Her father.

Danger.

Gunmen.

Masks.

Her brain was having trouble comprehending what was happening in real-time.

“You are not coming anywhere near my daughter!” Rosa shouted.

Azid was not about to fail a second time in securing his prize. He pointed his weapon at Rosa and then nodded to the other member, pointing his gun directly at Viktoriya’s mother.

CLEFF’s system had issued a delayed reboot in case the EMP pulse had diminished. He was restarting and could now read the surrounding activity. He saw the men standing before Viktoriya with her father in front of her. He placed a second emergency level call to the authorities.

Confirming his guns were coming online, he calculated that he only had one chance, one opportunity to take the shot at bringing the enemy down. If he missed, he would put everyone in danger, not to mention, if they noticed he was active again, they would account for his strike.

Azid was not taking any chances, as he saw CLEFF taking slight motion despite his EMP attack. He did not come here to kill, but he knew that Viktoriya and CLEFF together would be a combination impossible to defeat.

In a split second, Azid made the call: Viktoriya’s father must die to prove they meant business, then threaten to kill the mother if she didn’t surrender.