Cascade

8 - Addition

8 - Addition

Claire had just assured the destruction of two of the most deadly, versatile, and expensive craft in the Nexus arsenal. Dragonflies were capable of sighting in a target from fifteen kilometers away, weaving through an urban city as easily as bowling with bumpers, and achieving interplanetary transport. Claire had destroyed two with a chopper and some well placed trains. But back up was sure to be on its way.

Claire had no doubt that her helicopter was being tracked, and such an insane survival stunt would not succeed twice. She had two minutes, max, to find Melissa and high tail it out of The Network with the rest of the heavy traffic.

“Now if I only knew where I was.” She thought. She pulled the chopper out of the densely packed buildings and hovered above a warehouse to give her some breathing room.

She focused as hard as she could, backtracking all of her movements to determine her location. Perfectly recalling every change of yaw, pitch, and roll, Claire pinned her position some three clicks from the rendezvous. She swung the chopper about and plowed forward. If she timed everything right, she should arrive just after Melissa did.

The rendezvous roof came into view and a person was visible standing near the doorway leading to the outside. Claire tensed. It wasn’t Melissa. As she came closer, she recognized the intern they had bound in the cold storage vault.

How could she be so stupid? She had told Melissa the rendezvous location and time right in front of the thin little sap tied up next to them. Claire supposed that in the rush of the moment she hadn’t realized she was giving away valuable information, and even if she had time to think about it, she didn’t expect the young man to try and head them off all by himself. Not that it mattered at this point. He posed no threat. It was true he could alert the authorities, but the break in to biohazard zones, the hijacking of a helicopter, and the destruction of two dragonflies had done a pretty good job of that already.

Claire touched down and got out of the chopper. The intern ran up to her holding an armful of small, glass items.

“What are you doing here?” Claire bellowed over the noise of the helicopter.

“I brought you these!” He said, displaying the items in his arms. Claire recognized them as medication vials.

“You got some radiation treatment drugs, and a couple cures to wide spread diseases, but you need more.” He began.

“Why are you even here?” Claire asked again.

“Because I can help!” He pleaded. “In refugee environments, sanitation becomes a nightmare. Dysentery, scurvy, pneumonia, and a whole myriad of others crop up in dense and underprivileged populations. You need antibiotics, blood clotting agents, vitamins, electrolyte enhancements, metabolic stabilizers, and a whole mess of water purifying agents.”

“But…..” Claire was dumbstruck. “We broke in to your hospital, held you captive, and stole from your high security vault. Why would you help us?”

“In a matter of a couple days, you destroyed three planets and a moon, eliminated a vast communication network across an entire solar system, and brought the most powerful government the human race has ever known to its knees. In that time, Nexus never discovered who was responsible, never sent out enough supplies and personnel to deal with the influx of refugees, and never told the public what was really going on. Nexus doesn’t have the capability to fix this. You do.” He replied.

“Fair enough.” Claire said. She opened up the side of the chopper and grabbed a medical satchel from the inner wall. “Put all those in here.”