THE WORLD IS DYING.
Global warming, lack of resources, and the collapse of authority across all seven continents has caused worldwide strife. People are willing to do anything to survive.
The solution? Project ERAA, humanity's last effort to...
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the Thermal Lake one click from the Refuge 10:05 AM
━━━━
"NO! PLEASE don't!" Amelia reached out her hands like she could grab Tina away from Ichabod and the three marines who flanked his sides. Her spear and crutch clattered to the ground.
The familiar burning of tears in her eyes started up again. Her joints were locked and her heart was pounding and her lungs had no air to let her think or feel beyond Please, Ichabod, please!
His face was coated with sweat, his mouth twisted in a snarl. The pistol - a real, proper pistol that no disabling device could stop - glinted malevolently against Tina's temple.
The girl was limp against Ichabod's side, her eyes half-closed. From the smoke curling from her clothes, she'd been shot with a volt-gun. Amelia felt her heart tighten. I'll kill you, she snarled in her fever-stricken mind. It was tough to swallow, and they all faced off. Ichabod was outnumbered, but he had a gun. A proper gun.
I'll kill you, Ichabod.
"Now there's a proposition," Ichabod sneered. He rolled his neck, and Amelia could hear the cracks. Beyond that, in the vegetation behind her, she heard chirping.
The battle had stilled; the marines under the waterfall were watching, and the rebels alongside her were holding tightly onto their weapons. Out of the corner of her eye, Amelia spied Lale running his thumb over the shaft of his spear. His grey eyes were hard.
"Let her go, Ichabod." She didn't know how Lale could sound so calm - it infuriated her. I've lost my family, she stared at Tina, then at the gun, calculating the odds. With her infected leg, she probably wouldn't make it anyway. If she could distract Ichabod and save 2039 ... Daryl ... then that was fine by her. Zoey ... Lale ...
She glanced at him again. "You've lost." Lale carried on. He was still rubbing the spear's edge. "Your marines have no weapons."
"So bold of you to assume," Ichabod retorted, but Amelia could hear his uncertainty. We've won. He just won't accept it. The flush of her sickness grew deeper with her anger. "This war has only just begun!"
Amelia couldn't throw herself towards him fast enough. She watched his finger move in slow-motion, pressing down on the trigger. Her heart skipped a beat as she plunged forward, seeing Lale throw the spear in her blurred peripheral vision.
She couldn't breathe or think or even cry as she stumbled to her knees, her skin shredding and ankle twisting with pain, but then Amelia realized she hadn't heard the gun go off.
