Mindless

Chapter Four - 0009

 "Sir, what is your advised plan of action?"

I stand for a minute, reaching out with my mind, beckoning my abilities forward. They come at me with a sudden rush, and I know exactly what to do. Which is why I am a lieutenant. Always one step ahead of the enemy.

"Have some men go up to the ventilation fan in Sector 13, check it for defects. Then search the purple wing. If you find nothing, rondevu at the shuttle bay. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" The soldier immediately pulls out his long distance comm device, sending messages to other soldiers. I set myself at a brisk pace and head towards the weapons room. My weapon of choice in this matter is a small electrogun, lethal at a close range. I can sense the mind, the one that is in the shuttle bay. It is a defective mind.

I take the elevator down to the center of the base, where the shuttle bay is. The sense of the mind gets stronger. I slowly restrain my ability until it fades away. At a close range, I can read people's thoughts. When in physical contact, I can control them. But whatever they feel, I feel. So I can't simply make these types of people terminate themselves, because I can feel it as well. So I seal my ability off from myself as I get closer to the bay.

But nothing in training could ever prepare me for this. And, confident as I am, I wish I had brought more soldiers with me.

I am facing every single armed shuttle in this room, all hovering a good distance from the ground, ready and loaded guns, and none of them piloted. Instead, a hooded figure stands in the control room, two stories up and behind a wall of titanium glass. The figure, who I now realize is a girl, lifts her head up and looks in my direction. A small half smile lights her face, the part of it not covered by her hair, at least, and she raises one eyebrow high. I can see the question written all over her face. Do you really want to do this?

I grin back at her in a you're-about-to-get-terminated kind of way. Her eyebrow goes down but that little half smile remains. She types something into the control panel.

One of the ships fires at my knee. Another, my shoulder. I dodge the beams of deadly energy, wondering if the girl miscalculated her trajectories. But as the third one goes for my foot, I realize she's not shooting to kill, just to stop me. And so when the ships start firing at other non-lethal targets on me, I dodge under, over, and around energy beams, finally ending up on top of one of the shuttles. I jump off of it and take off running in irregular patterns, until I reach the door to the stairwell that leads to the control room. Every single door shuts, but I have an taser on me. What can I say? I come prepared.

So each and every door slides open for me until I end up at the top of the stairs. And I'm staring the same weapon I have holstered to my belt in the face.

"Hello, Lieutenant."

Holding the gun is a girl with gleaming silver eyes. I stop moving in shock. Because those aren't just any silver eyes, those are my silver eyes.

The girl takes advantage of this and presses forward with the gun. "I know you don't want to get terminated, and I really don't want to terminate you. So I recommend you leave."

Not a chance. "Not happening," I say, and move to disarm the girl. But she's already halfway across the room. I move towards her, pulling my own gun out of it's holster and pointing it at her. But she moves in with a roundhouse kick aimed low, at my ankles. I retaliate by jumping up and grabbing her wrist, twisting it, but I don't get very far as she breaks free right away and delivers a swift punch to my jaw, which I block with my forearm.

I then go after her, aiming my knee at her stomach, but she's jumped away and done the same to me. I aim a kick at her knees, and do successfully knock her down but she's back up again before I can blink. I aim my gun once again and she kicks it out of my hands, leaving me defenseless. I aim to block her hit from the left, but she fakes and goes right at the last minute. But I have her wrist again, this time the one with the gun in it. I grab her other wrist while she focuses on freeing the first one, and then I have both of her hands in one of mine and her own gun pointed at her head. I reposition myself, so that she can't twist free.

"You can tell me who's coming now. They're in for quite a surprise, anyway."

"Never."

"I'll shoot you," I threaten. Most people would turn to mush, surrender, admit themselves to purple. Not this girl. "Not a chance," she replies. I can hear the smirk in her voice, even if it doesn't show in her face. "You won't know what the system failure is, otherwise. And maybe one day, some new person will take my place and finish what I started. Can't have that, now, can we?"

For the first time, which actually is just astonishing that I've only heard this right now, my ears pick up on the fact that her voice doesn't sound feminine. Or masculine. Or... anything. It sounds like a tangi screen, but jumping from high to low pitches and sometimes doubling. It's not a human voice.

And in the moment it takes for me to process that, she slips out of my hold and punches me right in the face. I feel hot blood dripping down my cheek. I feign left and go right with a counter attack but she's already one step ahead. I go to kick her, my foot inches away from her ankles, when she jumps into a backflip and then stays there. On the ceiling. She gets in another good punch before I shake off my shock and realize she's got magnetic boots.

I grab her by the hair and yank her down, not a move she was expecting. She counters with a kick and I grab at her foot, instead getting a knee in my arm. I stumble backwards and the gun flies out of my hand.

And then the doors to the bay slide open. She runs to the control panel and disarms the shuttles, making all of the doors slide open at once. I silently pick up my gun, the rest of the world fading into oblivion. I turn it low, just enough to hurt her, to disable her from escaping.

I creep up being her and slam the gun into her back, pulling the trigger all the way backwards and holding it there tightly. Bright red shocks of electricity run directly underneath her skin, moving like hundreds of tight red wires. She screams and arches her back, falling to her knees. I continue to hold dorn the trigger, well aware that the gun is meant to be fired once and stun someone into passing out and that I put both of us at risk by using it still.

She continues to scream. Just a little longer, I think. Just lose consciousness already...

And then a hard shock of electricity starts right at my heart and races down my spine. I scream and drop the gun, falling to my knees just as the girl had. My vision grows darker and fuzzier, and I fall from my knees to all the way on my back. The last thing I see is a bruised, haggard looking yellow and a gray in training, helping the other girl up and leading her away. I struggle to get back iup, to fix the blurs in my vision.

The girl turns back at me and smiles a half smile, one eyebrow raised. blood drips from underneath her gleaming silver eye.