Ashley Fox - Ninja Orphan
Chapter 42 – Join or Die
In the district command center, off duty soldiers and guards began to filter into the HQ from their sleeping quarters. Because of the virus Ashley had used to shut down the comm. system, they had no idea of the damage she'd caused or the number of their friends she'd killed.
The Majors who had fled earlier, now returned, wearing their masks, and took stock of the situation. The floor was covered with dead soldiers. Avoiding the blood puddles was difficult.
The lack of response from any of the communication channels and the discovery of the missing router forced them to confront the truth of their predicament. There would be no municipal reinforcements, at least not in time. Their Monday arrival had just become far-too-far away.
Once they discovered the massacred soldiers on the patio, the remaining young citizens began to panic.
Helpless, they watched the monitors, trying to make sense of what had gone wrong and what would happen next.
It was clear the facility was up for grabs. Without the ability to control the electric locks, surviving till Monday would be a miracle. Without centralized command, riots could engulf them in an hour.
The young citizens scanned the monitors for any traces of organized orphan activity, while others scanned the footage of Ashley's smoke filled attack on the room they currently occupied.
Down on the athletic fields, Ashley cursed Grey. In her parent's basement, he'd told her he didn't have any idea how to run the stadium camera rigs.
"The kids broadcast the fights. How hard can it be? Find someone knows how to do it. That's the easy part.”
Ashley wasn't a hacker, she had no idea how to patch a feed in and turn on the monitors by remote. Riding her hoverboard, she dropped down onto the third level of the athletic complex, in search of her brother and any orphans with technical expertise.
Ashley really didn't know the district very well. She'd spent as much time on death row as she had as a free orphan. She wasn't sure where she was or where to find Geoff and her friends. Sooner or later she'd have to ask someone for directions.
Tonight the place seemed virtually abandoned; there were no soldiers or orphans to be seen.
A few hundred yards from the edge of the level, she saw an entry hatch set into the side of a berm.
A few orphans were clustered nearby, smoking cigarettes. This was a post usually manned by soldiers.
Ash stopped the board in front of the zeros. They stared at her, shocked.
Ashley was strapped with weapons, a sword, a rifle, two handguns and her pack full of grenades.
"Are you a ghost?" one of the kids asked.
"No. I'm not a ghost," she answered.
"You're alive?"
"I'm alive.”
They stared at her a bit more.
"I'm Miguel. We tried to break you out of jail a couple days ago, but they killed you. They put it on the stream.”
"Yeah. But they didn't kill me," Ashley said.
"We saw it," the second kid said. "Are you sure you're not a ghost?”
"That's Mark," Miguel said, gesturing to the boy. "That's Hiro," he pointed to the quiet orphan standing nearby.
Mark smiled. Hiro nodded.
"How come you're wearing a guard's uniform?" Mark asked.
"I'm looking for my brother," Ashley said. "Do you know him?”
"What does he look like?" Miguel asked.
"His name is Geoff. Geoffrey Fox," she said. "He looks like he's my brother. He's eleven.”
"I don't know him," Miguel said.
"You're really her?" Mark asked.
Ashley smiled, "I really am.”
"Nice board?" Mark said.
"Thanks.”
"How did you get that rifle?" Miguel asked.
Mark elbowed him, but he just grinned.
"Did you kill them?" Miguel asked. "Cause you know, they're not using rubber bullets anymore. They killed a bunch of kids today, over at the elevator banks.”
Ashley ejected the rifle's magazine. The top round certainly wasn't made of rubber. She looked at it, shocked.
"You didn't know?" Miguel asked.
"I just got back," she answered, looking up.
"Back from the dead?" Mark laughed.
Miguel smiled. "We'll help you look for him. Come with us.”
The three young lookouts led her away, carelessly abandoning their post. Ash drifted along as the boys bounced over the field. The zeros occasionally threw her sideways glances followed by nods and grins.
Twenty minutes later, Ashley entered the rec room where Sky and Geoff sat watching a kung fu movie with the rest of the convalescing members of the Fist. It was late, but they were still awake.
Kaz stood with the others in shock.
Geoffrey ran to his sister and jumped into her arms.
She could sense the Micronix. He had it in his pocket.
Drifting away from the lights of the coast, sailing above the black water of the pacific, the combat engineers hung from the backside of the laboratory wing. They moved at fifty knots, a steady clip for mid-size building. The soldiers leaned back into a seated position.
They had been traveling for the better part of an hour and would continue for a couple more, curving to the southwest. They would sail out past Long Beach harbor and over the Channel Islands.
By dawn they would be far out into international waters, well past the continental shelf, a three-hour gut churning and turbulent ride.
Corporal Sorpresa only threw up once.
Keller and Morgenstern returned to the district with Dunkirk's head, only to discover that it had been locked down. The crisis box refused the sedan entry into the district.
They attempted to contact Cedric and found the frequencies jammed or killed. It was strange to come across a locked, yet otherwise silent location. Usually siege procedures were accompanied by blockades of anchored police forces, emergency units and a heavy coast guard presence, not to mention reporters. Yet, the district was still wrapped in deep slumber.
They circled to the north and discovered the 7982 bio-mech wing had been cut from the facility.
"Sappers," Morgenstern said.
Somewhere, a legislative hearing hadn't gone their way and the district had been slated for termination.
Keller piloted the small craft away from the district.
An hour after finding Geoff, Ashley and friends had sorted out the router and taken control of the internal broadcast network. Every monitor in the district powered up, displaying her half-washed, blood-smeared face.
The girl stood alone, on an empty stage along a center field sideline.
"Is it working?" she asked someone off camera.
"It's working," someone answered.
Ash looked into the camera. "Hey everyone, wake up. Come on. Get up! I need you to listen to me. We need to talk…”
“Tell them you’re not dead,” young Mark blurted.
“No, I’m not dead,” Ashley smiled. “But not for lack of trying. They tried to kill me, but the psychos who run this place, they suck. We can take them. Lethal and Mo, they were tough. They were Angel City Orphans. But the administrators here, the adults, picking on children… How weak is that? They are punks. We can whip them easy.
“You know who they are; the psycho governor, her warden and a couple other crazy fuckers running this place. They tried to torture me and kill me. They even kidnapped a cop. Now I have his gun.” Ashley held up Cole's gun for the camera.
All over the district, children cheered.
Ashley held up her hands, “Now, now… I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to show them, right? They don’t run this place. We do!”
The cheers and roaring applause echoed across the district.
Ashley held up Cole’s weapon and continued. "This is a cop's gun and it recorded everything. I don’t know why they haven’t tracked it and come to arrest me. Either this cop doesn’t trust his department and hacked his gear, or the department has a l
ive feed and likes what I’ve been up to. Either way, I’m doing something right, because no one has killed me yet.”
The cheers, whistles and floor stomping could be heard, even over the camera, recording the infamous teen.
“But now hold on, first let me explain a little bit. They're going to try and kill us. All of us.”
She gave a hand signal to her crew and the cameras panned and zoomed out into the night sky.
“Where, I don’t see it,” a cameraman said.
“I think it’s over there…”
Ashley pointed, “Those flashing lights, right out there…”
The monitors displayed a flashing intersection of magnetic cables, the knot pulsing faintly. The residents had seen enough cop shows to recognize a lock-box for what it was.
"That is a crisis box," Ashley said from off screen. "District Thirteen has been locked down and they're going to sink us.” The camera feed came back to her, “This whole district is going to be flushed down the gravity well. To survive, we have to work together.”
She held a wired black box up to the camera. "As long as I've got this router, no one is making any calls.
“So listen up citizens, this part applies to you. There is nowhere for you to hide. If you run, or fight, you're only going to make it harder on yourselves. We are taking your IDs and your car keys. If you don't want a beating, get up to the second level, center stadium. And I mean right now. Get dressed and get up here, because I promise you, if you don't, you will be sorry. If you make us come looking, you’re going to pay for it. You had better do what you’re told, or whatever happens to you, it will be your own damn fault.”
Ashley winked, “Kids, doesn’t all that sound just a little too familiar?
“They call us Lucky Rabbits, Zeros and Mitsubishi. I heard them call us that. They think they are insulting us, reminding us that we are orphans.
“But way back, when the US fought Japan, the kamikaze pilots who flew the Mitsubishi Zeros were legendary and fearless. They sacrificed themselves to cripple their enemies’ warships. That is Samurai.
“These guards aren’t samurai. They wear armor and use guns on kids. They have no honor. They have all the resources, all the money, all the power and they still beat on us for fun.
“But we have our honor. And we have nothing to lose. And if you fight them with me, by the time the sun sets tomorrow, we will be free.
“Or Dead “ someone yelled, laughing.
“Or dead, of course.” Ashley smiled.
“But if I die, I swear, I’m taking a whole bunch of them with me.”
The children’s cheers could be heard all over the district.
"Okay, serious though. Get up, get dressed, and get up here. You guys living in the double zero, the Old Orphanage, bring whatever you want to keep, because that building is being evacuated.”
Ashley sent Miguel, Mark and Hiro with a bunch of other orphans to her parent's car after the surplus gear. Using her father's expense account, Ash had bought their entire stock of cheap machetes, a hundred butane torches and two-dozen huge spools of terillium camouflage silk, great for reinforcing and concealing field positions.
She corralled a group of orphans and had them split the spools of netting into two piles. She gave half the kids machetes and told them how to cut the netting into squares and then cut neck holes, making bullet-resistant ponchos for everyone. The guys at the shop explained that the netting was both stronger and cheaper than sandbags Grey had suggested.
The second group assigned to the garages, hung the netting over the open spaces to protect and conceal them from anyone with a high-powered rifle, posted outside the crisis box.
Within an hour, squads of recently drafted infantry, outfitted with makeshift armor and weapons, stalked the hallways and walkways where citizen soldiers had patrolled the day before.
Gangs of armed kids cleared the orphanage of adults, one room at a time. Dozens of citizens had tried to get to their cars. Orphans armed with assault rifles intercepted them.
Several adults put up a fight, but no one escaped.
On more that one level, entire groups of orphans went mad with blood lust and moved through the district, killing any adults they encountered.