Ex Officio (#3 EX TRILOGY)

Chapter 21

Felix blinked several times as he stared at the error report on the screen and wondered what monster he had created in his quest to terrorize and sell the state for money. If not for the necessity of staying dead to the world and pulling strings from the shadows, he would have barged into the open long ago to put Ender right, but he felt insulted to perceive that despite having Ender locked under his own spell and being the master puppeteer, there were things she was merely doing on her own due to what he felt were malfunctions in her reprogramming that he had never anticipated. He had lost Ender for six years and getting her back required forcing her into his own agenda, even requiring a degree of dehumanization. He was not prepared to lose her to his own plan - not under his watch.

He sent a command via his comm device to an Ex Vivo entourage to get a helicopter ready to transport him quickly to the Jubilee House and left his cave for the elevator outside. Until he arrived at the helipad, the guards were to stand down.

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Meanwhile, Pee had successfully evaded the military drones for hours and had finally arrived within about a 70-yard radius of the Ex Vivo HQ. As he hid in the shadows of the trees, he finally sealed the circuit compartment of the military drone he had succeeded in tearing down using an EMP device given him by Dufie for his primary mission to the Jubilee House. After reprogramming the drone to infiltrate the building and drop a load, he fixed a time bomb into it and rebooted the system. The drone hummed to life and hovered over Pee's head. When it spotted him, the sensors did not detect him as hostile. It span around and flew from his hiding place towards the building.

The guards spotted the drone and scanned it. They ignored it when they realized it was one of theirs and remained in their posts. But as soon as it flew past the first line of defence, it activated its machine guns and opened fire on them. As soon as the second and final lines of defence reacted, the drone switched to laser and merely swung the beam through them, and the Boo guards crumbled to the ground. The drone cut a disk through the glass doors and flew through without setting the alarms because the security systems could not detect it as hostile. Pee was careful not to tamper with the machine's ID and sensors when he reprogrammed it. The drone scanned the hallway and the rest of the floors and located the building's power system.

Outside the building, Pee viewed the drone's progress on a tablet while looking out for any returning drones that could spot him and endanger his life. He called Ida's line in an attempt to reach Dufie but received no answer. He grimaced and bowed his head, fearing his partner was probably dead by then.

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Minutes later, most of the nation experienced another major power failure after the brief return of the lights for the telecast of the Parliament House massacre. This had never occurred in the history of Ghana, and no coup was expected to ever occur anytime in that future. Most of them were under the impression that their President was either bewitched or perhaps a doppelganger as the conspiracy video had told them. All hope was lost.

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The President twitched in his seat when he felt a strong surge of power in the Dictator Neural Machine. He frowned and wondered what had caused it, but before he could think of anything else, he felt his body tremble slightly as his appearance slowly reverted to Ender. Something was wrong. She had not intended to reveal her true appearance anytime soon. An error report read that the DNA analyzer that was used to create the template for shape-shifting using the blood samples of her victims was fried. Suddenly, she felt as though something was pulling her brain out of her head and gripped the edge of the desk with her hands. The real Poku stepped into the office and stopped in his tracks when he saw this. He frowned and folded his arms across his chest. Without hesitation, Ender contacted Felix through the machine for the first time since the government takeover.