Chapter 47 – High Noon
Ten minutes earlier…
On the athletic complex, Ash and Kaz searched for Morgenstern while Geoff and Sky protested from the back seat.
"Drop down to the campground level," Ash said to Kaz. “There's someone we should pick up before this place goes to hell.”
Kaz laughed at the irony of the statement. He slipped past a couple roadblock vehicles, guarding a parking structure entrance, and waved to the orphans as the convertible sailed out over empty space.
He dropped the car in a gentle spin, dusting off on the lowest level, just seconds later. Far outside the crisis box, the cops didn't fire at him, he was harmless and the single car certainly couldn't escape this blockade.
Rather than pulling up to the garage, Kaz put the convertible down on an open picnic areas of the forested level.
The four of them climbed out. The lower levels were half the size of those above. It was just big enough to get lost, but not for more than twenty minutes.
From inside a maintenance corridor, Morgenstern saw the sports car pull out of the garage and drop to the lowest level of the complex. With his newly enhanced vision, he'd been able to make out Ashley in the passenger seat. He'd seen her drop the grenades onto the bridge as well. He'd been seeing too much of her for far too long now.
The black-eyed pathologist reached the campground a few minutes later. The elevator doors opened and he exited into the lush forest. Morgenstern carried a bright red fire-safety ax, holding it low, at his side.
Together, Ashley and Geoffrey climbed a nearby hill.
"What are we doing out here," Geoff asked.
"I told you, someone we have to find," his sister answered.
As they crested the hill, Geoff saw Morgenstern in the distance. Ashley saw him too, and he saw them.
"That guy?" Geoff asked, as Ash quickly pulled him back the way they'd come.
"No, not him," Ash answered, as they raced back down the hillside.
As they got back to the car, Ash checked her watch; it was a ten to noon. She keyed her radio. "All Zeros, Go Bravo! Go Bravo!”
Without waiting for any kind of response, she switched the radio off and dropped it in the backseat.
"What's going on?" Sky asked, with Kaz standing nearby.
Ashley just raised her finger to her lips, gesturing for quiet. "Get the guns and get ready," she whispered.
All across the district, the children heard the command and repeated it out loud, Go Bravo!
They stopped whatever they were doing, switched off the radios and abandoned their positions. Some orphans sprinted for the dorms. The teams with cars ran for the garage.
The cops, most of whom knew something about traps, weren't hasty to pursue.
Many kids were wounded. In the classrooms, in the bolt and the garages, anywhere they had fired from, several lay bleeding, many would die before nightfall.
Those surviving did their best to make the wounded comfortable. It would be some time before any medical attention could be provided.
On the campground level, Ash dug through her pack, the grenades were gone. The pack held a few ammo clips, but it was mostly filled with badges, dozens of them.
Kaz handed out a variety of guns from inside the car.
Morgenstern then appeared on the path, the heavy ax at his side.
Ashley found herself staring at the black orbs that had replaced his eyes. She raised her rifle, but Kaz beat her too it, firing from behind her.
Morgenstern broke for the nearby forest.
Ash looked over to Geoff and Sky and gestured to the car. "Get in and lock the doors."
Geoff and Sky looked blankly at the convertible; the top was down and locked doors wouldn’t help anyone.
Then Ash was gone, sprinting after Morgenstern and quickly out of sight in the overgrown forest.
Kaz had already taken off on the hoverboard. He had taken a light wound to the leg, and would have been hobbling without the board.
On it, however, he was moving too fast and had already lost the stealthy Morgenstern.
Ashley caught up with the murderer in a small area where the trail opened up into a little clearing. Here, they would be able to attack each other freely, not constrained by the underbrush.
Ashley stared at him.
He held the ax out to the side, suggesting that her use of firearms didn't constitute a fair fight.
Ash shrugged the assault rifle into the grass and drew her sword.
Hovering above, the invisible Captain Snow watched them begin the ancient ritual.
On the athletic complex, the garages were a flurry of activity as kids waited for the explosions to start.
Some fiddled with the car radios, torn between their own news story and the never-ending search for good music. They argued over what to listen to, an entertaining activity in-and-of itself.
On the old orphanage, its amalgamation of police officers, swat, state and National Guard troops, tried to come up with an operation they could all agree on.
At eleven fifty-five, Captain Grey switched off his phase cam and marched into their command center, where he confronted the commanders. He informed them of the demolitions set throughout the building and explained that the central gravity drive had been wired with pounds of munitions. He didn't recommend tampering with it, but suggested they vacate the building immediately.
The officers all recognized the black bar below his nametag, which read Kilo. They didn’t ask any questions.
Grey walked from the hall, turned a corner and vanished.
Several officers ran off to the gravity drives. They found the explosives and radioed back to their off-site commanders, who asked if they were joking.
Ash held her sword directly before her and advanced slowly.
Morgenstern remained perfectly still.
They were nearly within striking range of one another.
The giant's ax began to move in lazy circles at his side. Suddenly it arced toward her face but missed.
He changed direction and came at her in from the side, she evaded. He jabbed and hooked. She stepped out of range.
Morgenstern was overextended, trapped in a weak and especially vulnerable position.
The teen-aged girl smiled. This game she had played before. This game she knew well.
Ashley struck, moving in with the sword and slashing several times, the terillium-alloy blade easily separated the threads of Morgenstern’s jacket. The jacket itself, however, was also terillium-weave, and though Ashley had ruined his suit, what should have been fatal strikes, barely drew blood. She had to realign herself for a thrusting strike.
Morgenstern evaded the thrust and smiled.
Ashley caught him with a slash, taking the top part of the first knuckle on his left hand and slicing the side of his face open. She caught him straight down the cheekbone and took the top half of his right ear.
The powerful giant had moved, barely. If Ashley had been just a little faster, she might have clipped his carotid artery. As he jumped back he’d dipped a little, putting her aim off.
Morgenstern chopped an ax full of dirt into her eyes, almost obscuring the bits of finger and ear lying on the path.
It was noon.
The charges on the main bridges detonated, followed by the main struts. Then the supporting braces exploded. The district buildings, no longer locked into place with each other, began to drift apart.
Some bridges and supports hadn't fully separated, the metal screamed and cried as it bent and ripped apart.
District Thirteen, which had come into being almost two hundred years ago, despite its many iterations, had, for the first time, come asunder.
The plaintive cries of its metal struts and braces were heard throughout all of Angel City.
Orphans sprinted for their assigned vehicles as the district came apart.
From a distance, news crews watched the buildings push at the deactivated crisis box. For a moment, it arrested their movemen
t, then, stressed beyond its capacity, the magnetic-cable-locks snapped and unraveled. The cables fell away from the district like streamers from a cruise ship.
Previously held down by the other structures, the athletic complex and the administration building both gained altitude, rising into the sky. The admin building, like a punchball held under water, climbed over the athletic complex and the bolt.
The old orphanage, God's Hotel, and the school buildings, all dropped away from the athletic complex. The bolt seemed to sink below the athletic complex, but actually stayed level.
From inside their cars, anchored to the magnetic locks in the garage levels, the orphans watched the horizon tilt and shift as the units lost equilibrium. They watched the remaining police officers and National Guard troops evacuated, their vehicles streaming away from the tilting and tumbling structures.
Above them, the administration building suffered another series of explosions. It caught fire and quickly dropped from the sky, falling directly into the old orphanage. The extra weight began to sink both units.
Swat teams had rescued the surviving children from the upper floors of the old orphanage, but if the building were destroyed by the burning administration facility, all evidence of what happened there would be lost.
Grey had disarmed the charges that would have destroyed the Victorian-styled structure. Yet without the power coupling, it would still fall and crash. He approached, not looking forward to tackling the gravity controls himself but willing if necessary. He knew how to bypass the destroyed coupling, but first he had to clear the admin building, which was driving the old orphanage downward,
The admin building had come down against the orphanage, perching itself atop the second structure. From the direction of their descent, Grey couldn’t simply tip the orphanage over, he needed to spin them a hundred and eighty degrees first.
Grey shot for an open door on the ground level. Once he reached the control room, rerouting power and actually tilting the building was another matter entirely.
There were four drives set across the main floor of the building, Grey powered up number three and the southwest corner shifted toward the sky.
He adjusted his personal gravity controls to stay in front of the main panel, and powered up number two, raising the southeast corner of the facility. The building shifted again, and began to spin.
Then, with a shrill metallic scream, the massive structures slid away from each other. Both buildings dropped from the sky, but now heading out to sea on their own trajectories.
Captain Grey powered down the two drives and got off as quick as he could. The slowly fading charge of the drives, and the cushion generated by the buildings below, would prevent the structure from crashing into them like a cannon ball. Instead it would glide out, over the metropolis, away from the city lights, until finally settling into the shore break of the Pacific Ocean.