Marked
Chapter 40

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat."

The world went pitch black for a moment before the light of the pale moon outlined the extinguished buildings.

Instead of structures they now resembled misshapen mountains except that these were perfect in every way but one: they needed electricity to keep going.

The crowd surged forward, pushing Rachel out of her thoughts and into action, with no other choice than to move towards the patrolling officers. Their unsuspecting backs facing her, she almost felt sorry for them.

Their shocked exclamations were short lived and quickly cut off as they were shot through with bullets. Their bodies landed on the ground, eyes staring up into the sky, still open in surprise.

It was over in an instant—it had taken her longer to breathe than it had taken for them to conquer the capital’s entrance. But of course she knew the rest would not be so easy.

The purring of engines drifted down from the skies, causing a few heads to turn upwards. Three white aircraft moved through the air, quick and fast as bullets, swift and docile, like doves, yet menacing in their actions. A swell of relief rushed through her and made her a little more confident in their plan.

The first of the bombs hit the floor, sending tongues of fire licking into the deadened sky.

“Move forward!” Yalina shouted.

Hundreds of boots thundered against the paved streets, eager to oblige. The closer they drew to the buildings, the more foreign the world seemed to become.

The sidewalks were belted runways. With no electricity to feed them, the cane to a gyrating halt. Sleek, metal cars whose shape was like oblong bubbles lined the sidewalks, their windows transparent, giving a clear view of the techy operating panels within. A breeze blew between the buildings but it smelled sour and metallic, nothing at all like the pure mountain air she was used to.

Another round of bombs punished the earth with deafening booms. Fire lit up the darkness, enough that Rachel was able to follow the others towards the heart of the city—towards CN headquarters—without tripping over her own feet much in the process. She kept her gun poised, each flutter and each movement making her jerk with panic.

There were no people—only very faint, distant screams and the sounds of the bombs crashing against the earth. Other than that, the city was a ghost town, no definitive signs that life dwelled within.

Forlorn and lonely streets stretched out before them. Thousands of gadgets filled the window shops to her left as if they had entered some sort of shopping district. The giant screens she’d seen before stood like guarding sentinels, waiting to report to their leaders, though with no power they were as still and useless as tombstones.

Each assigned officer led their group forward watchfully. It was clear that the bunker people knew what they were doing. They’d learned the art of war back in their underground prison. Little had they known that those skills had been intended to serve the capital whose plan had now been foiled and whos eagerness to build soldiers would likely be their downfall.

She wondered if they felt as much pleasure at making fools out of the capital as she did.

Rachel tried to draw from the calm and poise of the soldiers around her, tried to mimick their cunning eyes and smooth movements.

Where is everyone, she thought. Surely someone has heard the bombs by now.

That’s when she heard them, as though she had called to them with her thoughts, the first of the poachers. They came barreling from the tops of the buildings, their bodies suspended by metal ropes that allowed them to skid and walk across the glass as if they were on the ground itself.

They shot their guns, forcing the hundreds of bunker soldiers to scatter wildly in search of cover. All hell broke loose. Rachel scrambled after Yalina who ducked behind the corner of a building. Sweat clung to Rachel’s neck, made her hands slick with water.

“Cover my back!” Yalina ordered. Rachel whipped around in time to see a poacher descending quickly from a rooftop, his boots slamming hard against the slanted glass. He positioned his gun on them but his decent made him unstable and his bullets flew wild, missing.

One of them rushed by Rachel’s arm and she mentally slapped herself, jerking the safety off her gun and fixing it on the poacher. He wove back and forth in a zigzag, her gun struggling to keep up as she pressed down on the trigger relentlessly.

A round of bullets erupted from her weapon like pellets of furious hail, shattering the glass the poacher walked on, enough to make him stumbled and lose his traction against the building’s side. There was another one coming now, running at her between two buildings, his gray uniform a distracting dot among the darkness.

Rachel focused on the descending poacher again and shot him in the shoulder, sending him crashing into a broken window. He was swallowed up by the darkness within and she didn’t waste a single second searching for him, as the other poacher was fast approaching.

With adrenaline pumping fast and hot in her veins, she unleashed the full force of her weapon on the ground near his feet in the hopes that it would be enough to stop him. She saw his face, the twisted grin that pulled his mouth up at the corner at the sight of her mercy. Lifting his gun, he trained it on Yalina’s head as he laughed at Rachel, his voice devoid of even an ounce of human kindness.

With her back to him, there was no way Yalina could defend herself. Rachel gritted her teeth and, abandoning her qualms of hurting others, she let her weapon rip through a few rounds. The poacher’s face looked stunned as his entire frame shuddered from the force of her bullets. He fell face-first, his mouth dripping blood at the corners. But Rachel could still see his blue eyes.

Her stomach turned and she tipped forward, letting its contents spill onto the ground, her entire body shaking with spasms at what she had just done. Yalina turned to spare her a glance, placing a firm hand on her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

Rachel gulped down mouthfuls of air, her hands shaking against her knees. “I--I’m fine. He was going to kill you..I-I had to do it.”

“No one is judging you. You did what you had to do.” Yalina said earnestly. She spun back to peer around the corner. Gunfire ricocheted off the building walls, forming a twisted crescendo of hysteria. The bunker people with their black hunting gear blended well into the darkness, their faces determined. They were bringers of death, bringers of justice.

“We need to move. We stick to the plan. Get to CN headquarters and take their leaders out. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

Rachel swiped at her mouth, her hands still shaking slightly and nodded. “The rollercoaster is going down. No way to stop it now.” She glanced back at the dead poacher, dead by her own hands. She saw the rise and fall of Yalina’s chest and decided it was better that she was breathing than him.

She’d deal with the guilt later.

“I can do this.” Rachel said firmly. Yalina nodded and motioned with her fingers for them to move forward. They ducked through the darkened streets, using cars as cover. Other bunker soldiers swarmed the streets. The sounds of war raged around them, the thuds of bullets hitting flesh, the shouts of group leaders urging their people on.

Michael was leading the forefront towards the heart of the city. Poachers rained down from the sky but the bunker people easily picked them off, their stable position on the ground to their advantage.

A few yards down a group of ten poachers flitted from behind one building to the next in perfect formation. Rachel expected them to shoot but instead of shooting, they chucked cylindrical objects towards their feet. Immediately, the air became dense, engulfing the world in a green fog. Rachel slammed her forearm over her mouth and nose.

“Run!” She yelled as she shoved Yalina further down the street, both of them nearly tripping over one another in the process. The cloud of fog followed after them, as though tracking their every step, forcing them to weave between the hundreds of other bodies struggling to escape the smoke as well.

The buildings seem to narrow, the green smoke was everywhere, herding them forward. Gun fire crackled through the air, the sound of shell casings pitter pattering against the ground like rain. She was aware of the bombs again as the ground shook and rumbled. She lost her footing and Yalina forced her up by the arm.

“They’re cornering us! Damn it, how did they know we were coming!?” She shouted.

Rachel shook her head, unable to come up with a reply. Groans and shouts filled the night, the bunker people scattering like wild animals without a shepherd. She spotted Michael a few lines down, shouting something furiously into his radio.

Damn it, the radio. She stared at the thing, wondering if it was possible for the capital to tap into them. Nothing else made sense. Unless they were this ridiculously prepared for anything, Rachel suspected something had alerted them to the approaching assault. Shaking her head in frustration, she looked around, trying to find something that could save them.

Smoke from the bombs intermingled with the green fog. The people nearest the fog were collapsing, coughing and gasping until they passed out which only made the rest of them more panicked and eager to get away. There was a break coming up between the buildings. She could still hear the aircrafts droning high above but she couldn’t see them

It wasn’t until they reached the end of the next cluster of buildings that the city seemed to open up like a gaping mouth, an entire circle surrounded by buildings, depositing the hundreds of bunker people into the center.

A few hundred feet down and up a massive set of cement stairs lay a building that was much different in structure and color than the rest. It was a white building, with a triangular roof, and four neat, white columns stretching into the sky. Windows faced them like staring eyes but it wasn’t the otherworldly appearance of the building that made it frightening but rather the hundreds of poacher soldiers, all perfectly lined up along the steps, their guns focused on the groups of people scrambling to get away from the fog.

Rachel’s weapon shook in her hands, the impossibility of their predicament threatening to make her pass out. An aircraft flew overhead, one of theirs. One moment it was a soaring metal bird intent on raining punishment on the capital and the next it was bursting outward, all pieces of shrapnel and fire.

“Juan,” She whispered. “Juan, no.” She reached forward as if that would be enough to save him but there was no saving him now, there was no saving any of them. Her chest rose and fell quickly, her head dashing madly around the crowd, as if lost in a slow moving nightmare.

Fire and pieces of the aircraft rained down hauntingly. Elbows and bodies shoved at Rachel and amidst the chaos she had lost sight of Yalina.

She felt bare as if she were standing naked out in the open. The clusters of poachers gathered near the massive white building flipped their weapons up in unison. Their gray uniforms appeared to be ghosts in the middle of the darkened city.

A screeching sound filled the air. The bunker people came to a halt, the fog behind them melting to nothingness at their feet. Their years of training had them drawing their weapons in tune to the poachers.

She felt disoriented. She felt lost. What was she doing there? She wasn’t even a soldier. Pretending to be, she lifted her gun and pointed it across the expanse of asphalt towards the poachers who trained their own guns on her.

They were at a stalemate.

A perfect, horrible, stalemate.

A/N Any thoughts on how they’re going to make it out of this one? Leave them below in the comments and if you think this chapter deserves it, hit the heart! <3

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