The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(58)

Still, we hadn’t really talked since the incident with Desmond. Apparently, forgiveness had been the easy part—I knew I cared about Owen too much to stay angry at him forever. I knew I would still fight beside him. But being comfortable next to each other again? Comfortable enough to laugh and joke as though everything were okay? The weight of what had happened was still too great. It held my words inside me, taking the levity out of me every time I saw him.

“Let’s go,” I said softly, and then I turned, heading toward the door, the basement my final destination. There was a lot to do, and not a lot of time to get it done.





20





Viggo





The view down the scope of my rifle wasn’t promising, but it wasn’t unexpected, either. The hip-high barricades formed three lines—the first one sat about eighty feet away from where the buildings started. It was wide and deep, where the second one was narrow and only formed a semi-circle across the road. The last one was flat, a line across the road where the city ended just as abruptly as the farmlands began. The parts of the city that they had blocked off were heavily populated and had little open space between buildings—which had made it easier for the Matrians to cut off most escape routes. Beyond the barricades, it was hard to see anything. Some places in the city seemed to be lit with streetlights, while many of the areas were dark, the buildings just silhouettes against the night sky. Even from this distance, I could see the flickering light of fires here and there. It didn’t look pretty.

There were twelve wardens milling around inside the barricades. I didn’t need the scope to see them. The massive lights that had been attached to the roofs of both adjacent buildings shone extra bright, lighting up the road on either side. I tracked one olive-clad woman as she headed toward the building Violet had identified as their base.

“We’re in position,” Ms. Dale reported over the main radio channel, her voice muted and soft, almost as though she were whispering. I didn’t blame her—I also felt like whispering, even though we were hundreds of feet away. Truth was, her target was the more difficult one to take, so I could understand. To compensate, she had more soldiers than I did, but I still didn’t envy the task.

Taking the guard post was the part of our mission plan I liked the least, but then again, it was the one I knew the most about in terms of defenses. It was too late to rethink anything now, anyway. I looked around at my team, all lying next to me in the thick, decomposing cornstalks of the field we were hidden in. A massive harvester loomed behind us, providing additional cover, as the rest of the area was barren, devoid of life and trees. I knew there had been some at some point, but it was clear the guards had been busy cutting down any tree impeding their view. While their focus might have been on keeping people in, they weren’t na?ve enough to think nobody could get them from behind.

Margot found my gaze and offered a tight, nervous smile before turning and sighting down the sniper rifle she had been given. Cad was lying beside her, his own rifle pointed toward the barricades, but his eyes were on Margot. I could tell he was worried. We all were, really. Cruz, Gregory, Harry… there were fifteen of us out there—a mix of refugees and Liberators—most of them men and women I had had a hand in training. The air around them ran from excitement to nervousness, but the commitment was there. For now, anyway. Regretting that there hadn’t been time to say just a few more words to them, I exhaled and turned back to the barricade, trying to clear my mind of all the apprehension.

“Roger,” I replied softly to Ms. Dale, pressing my gloved thumb and my forefinger together to transmit. “We’re ready.” I switched over to the team channel and pressed my fingers together again. “Get ready, guys.”

Because there were so many moving parts to our mission, we had to work on multiple channels. Violet, Henrik, Ms. Dale, Amber, Thomas, and I were all authorized to be on the main one, trading information and modifying plans as needed. However, Ms. Dale, Amber, and I would probably spend most of our time on the channel with our team members, while Violet, Henrik, and Thomas would switch between them, delivering updated orders and, more importantly, information through our two remaining drones.

“In position. Viggo, be aware that there are ten more guards in that building.” I pressed my eye back to the scope, angling the gun up slightly, as Violet spoke into my headset. Violet’s drone was hard to make out in the darkness above the street, but I caught a glimpse of it as she began lowering it into position.

A round cage jutted out from the bottom—one of the innovations Violet and Thomas had spent several days conceptualizing and putting together. The design was deceptively simple, just grenades that had long strings threaded through the pins, so that when the doors beneath them opened and they dropped, the pin would pull and the grenades would explode. Hopefully, it would work.

“Releasing in five, four, three, two, one.” As she counted down, I held up my hand and followed along in my head. Through the scope, I could see the guard I had been tracking stop short of the building entrance and look down. There was a pause, and then her head snapped back up, her mouth moving. I couldn’t tell what she said, but the look of panic on her face made it easy to read. She started to run. Three seconds later, the six grenades Violet had dropped from the cage went off, and I lost my mark in the flaming blast of the explosion.