OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

Bravado

Flames licked at the sides of the furnace, blazing out of control from the heat generated from the bodies fueling it. Sandra watched the fire's hypnotic dance from behind plated glass, staring into the tendrils of hell as if she could read the devil's mind. If she could, she would not have been able to remain so calm.

Bots were feeding corpses onto the oven's conveyor belt one after the other, and they drifted along until swallowed up into the sealed cavity's all-consuming inferno. The deadweight of the bodies rolling along the belt shredded Sandra's confidence, but she couldn't let Lauren see.

"One more sector to clear," Lauren announced quietly, her own mind racing with the horror of the past twenty-four hours. "Coeuss estimates that it will be another hour at least."

She watched with a grim fascination as the crumpled body of one of Arc City Two's most prominent women, Sonya Kubrick inched along the motorized plank. As one of the heads of the Quorum, she had blazed an illustrious path for other women, like Lauren. Now, she lay slain alongside the people she'd sworn to keep safe.

"Good," Sandra answered, turning away from the gore. "I've identified the code to access Coeuss for this attack."

"Who?" Lauren breathed, her hands involuntarily clutching her neck in fear.

"Caitlyn Ramirez." Sandra spat the name with obvious disgust. Caitlyn had been one of their own, confirming that this attack was much wider spread than Sandra was hoping for.

"But...how? Lauren stuttered, flummoxed.

"That's what I need to figure out." Sandra snapped, irritated that she had to point out the obvious.

"One of the Legionnaires we captured!" Lauren's eyes brightened at some sort of realization. "She was Caitlyn's partner, I'm pretty sure."

"Pretty sure?" Sandra questioned, wheeling around to face Lauren down.

"I've seen pictures of them together on Caitlyn's workstation tablet." Lauren fumbled through her answer "Her name is Gayle, I think. I've never met her, but Caitlyn mentioned once that they were together for a while."

"Interesting," Sandra replied with a brief nod. "I'm headed to the medical bay, please see to the completion and bring me a full report when you're done."

Sandra glided down the echoing hallways, the silence almost too much for her to tolerate. The usually calming wood grain of the paneled walls seemed to taunt her.

She'd been in the kitchen when the first explosion of screams ripped her into action. Sandra took the only weapon she could find, a sharp knife from the counter where she'd sliced an orange earlier, and crept out into a scene of sheer terror.

The fighting had spilled out into the hallway, and her fellow Architects seemed to fight against the Legionnaires. Sandra had thrust the meager knife through a Legionnaire's shoulder and he cried out in confused pain. When he wrenched around to grab her, Sandra managed to slam the cubed bot he'd been holding into the Legionnaire's skull. The muscled body dropped with a wet thud at Sandra's feet, but there wasn't any time to ask what had happened. Another soldier had flown in her direction and held her knife, readying herself for the fight.

Sandra's injuries from the fight to take back control were not extensive, and she'd certainly fared better than most of her colleagues. Architects simply weren't trained to fight, and the brawl had incapacitated many of her most important staff. And of those colleagues, she didn't know who was to be trusted. Eventually, she'd get her wounds seen to, but for now, the false coordinates she'd given Lauren were as vital to her survival as her attitude.