Kill Switch: Chapter 42
And The Clock Keeps Ticking
The monitor on the ground vibrates. Pew, pew, pew.
Cosmo is yelling in my earbud. “Vonn, what’s all the ruckus? The molly guard is down. I repeat, the dead man’s switch has been pulled. What are you seeing? Over.”
I glance down at the monitor. Bunnfield’s gaze is all jostled and grainy. A few laser beams dart through the static. His body cam shows a flash of wall, a floor, a ceiling. Yells erupt through the speakers. Button pushers run every which way. Another series of laser pulses hiss out of the monitor.
“What’s that?” the guard asks, bending down at my feet, and just then, the dome collapses, the bots stop in their tracks, the train halts its progress.
“Huh?” The guard grunts, turning his head toward headquarters.
I kick his chin. His neck cracks. He drops the handcuffs on the ground.
I reach for his taser.
Pew, pew, pew.
“Ahh!!!!”
An electrical burn sears my thigh, and I fall down, clutching at my leg. Blood coats the fabric of my robe.
Yide plows into the guard who took our guns, and the two fall over X, stirring him back to consciousness. Blasters clutter the ground. I reach for one, turn off the safety, and start firing at the three other guards, hitting two of them. The third returns fire, but before he can land a shot, X barrels into his knees, sending them both to the ground.
Now Yide is wrestling with one guard, and X is wrestling with the other, and I’m just kind of sitting there, watching, too nervous to take a shot at either of the guards because I’m just as likely to hit my colleagues.
“Vonn,” Yide hisses, grabbing the guard’s wrist. “Quick, the taser.”
“But I might hit you!”
“I don’t give a fuck! Do it!”
I grab the taser and aim it at the guard. His broad back is about five yards away. Yide’s legs are wrapped around his hips. I scootch forward and shoot. The probes zap out and arc just above Yide’s knees. They land with a buzz that makes my teeth chatter.
The guard lets out a squeal, his head pops back, and his body heaves forward. Yide tosses him off her and stands.
“Well,” she says, nodding toward X. “What are you waiting for?”
I retract the probes and aim the taser at the final guard. I pull the trigger, and right as I do so, X kicks the guard’s stomach, sending him reeling out of harm’s way, opening up a perfect passage for the probes to strike X right on the forehead. His eyes roll to the back of his head as his arms dart out, and he falls back, unable to move for the second time in less than a minute. The final guard runs toward me, and he’s just about to tackle me to the ground when Yide sticks out her leg and trips him. His head smacks concussively on a rock. Yide takes a pair of handcuffs off his belt and snaps them on his wrist. I follow her lead, handcuffing the other two guards who are still alive.
Then I walk over to X and stir him back to consciousness.
“Yo, simul,” I say, “you alright?”
His eyes open dimly. “Nice shot, buddy”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I help him up, and when I do, a scorching pain shoots down my leg.
I look down. My robe is charred all to hell. The fabric is melted into my skin.
“Good Efficiency,” Yide says. “You alright?”
She kneels down to examine the wound. “This needs some serious balm. It’s going to get infected.” She looks around, eyes darting frantically, as if some malWard is out here, in the middle of The Without, just waiting to take in an injured Inbetweener.
I brush her hand off my leg. “It’s alright,” I say. “I can walk. It’s just gonna have to hurt a little.”
“Some Ope-A-Dope would be nice now,” X says, squinting into the sun.
Yide swings toward him. “Why the hell would you say that, X??!!?!?”
X, shocked at her reaction, throws his hands in the air. “For Efficiency’s sake, I was just making casual conversation.”
Which reminds me that I never answered Cosmo. I push the earbud into my ear. “Cosmo,” I say. “Can you hear me? Over.” No answer, no sound at all. “Cosmo,” I say again. “We got attacked by a few guards, but we’ve neutralized them.” I glance toward headquarters. The dome is still down. “The Kill Switch Protocol worked. We’re about to move to Phase 2. What is Bunnfield’s status? Over.” Again, no sound, no nothing.
Yide takes the bud out of my ear and taps on it. Then she turns it around. “Here’s your problem,” she says, showing me the backside of the bud. “This thing got smashed all to inefficiency.”
I look at the exposed wires. “Probably happened during the scuffle.”
Yide nods, her lips pursing sardonically. “Probably a fair assumption.”
I take back the bud and toss it in the bushes. “Well, let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
“Wait,” Yide says, pointing at the bodies. “What do we do with them?”
I take count of the situation. Two guards are dead. The other three are incapacitated, at least for now, and handcuffed.
“That’s a good point,” I say. “When these three wake up, they might be a problem.”
“I have an idea,” Yide says. “First, let’s handcuff all of them together, in a circle, making it practically impossible for them to move, especially with so much dead weight, and then let’s take off their clothes.”
X nods. “Kinky. I like it. But do you think this is the best time for an orgy? We don’t even have sex suits.”
Yide rolls her eyes. “Not like that, idiot.” She moves over to one of the guards and picks up his legs. “Here, Vonn, help me move him.”
I walk over and grab the guard’s shoulders, my heart pounding, knowing that every second is precious, that we have no time to lose, that the dome could rise at any moment.
We heave up the body and throw it down on the ground.
And meanwhile, the clock in my head goes tick, tock, tick, tock.
“Alright,” Yide says, after we handcuff the guards together. “Strip ‘em.”
“Um, why are we taking off their clothes?” I ask.
“So that we can wear them,” Yide says. “Duh.”
“Ah…To blend in.” I slap my forehead. “That probably should have been the plan all along.”
“It’s been a rush job,” Yide says. “We can forgive ourselves for not thinking of everything.”
We dress in silence. I catch X kind of sneaking a peek at Yide, but she doesn’t say anything, so I don’t say anything either.
After we get dressed and holster our weapons, we make our way down the hill, toward headquarters. I squint into the blinding sun.
And the clock keeps ticking.