Loonatics Undressed by Kyell Gold (booksvooks TXT) 📕

“Stay on alert, Lexi,” Ace said. “In about a minute.”

“Sure thing, Ace,” she whispered back.

There turned out to be no need for Rev to carry her to the other location. Within a minute of the drone overhead, she was whispering excitedly to them. “Someone just said, ‘Hey Zeb, they’re after ya,’ and someone else said ‘I’ll get my stuff and get outta here, don’t want you in trouble.’ They’re up on the third floor in one of the rooms at the back.”

“That enough for ya, Rev?” Ace said.

“Got it Ace I’m on my way Lexi get ready with that brain blast see ya in approximately eleven seconds it’d be seven if I didn’t hafta wear this suit,” Rev said.

“Make sure and get him quick, Lexi,” Tech said. “He’s probably got some kind of guns on his person and if he has time to figure out what’s going on…”

“I’m on it, Tech.” She sounded annoyed.

Tech bit his tongue, wanting to say, I’m just trying to give everyone on the team the best chance of survival. That was true, but in the next ten seconds, as he watched Rev’s monitor intently, all of his thoughts were with the roadrunner, constructing scenario after scenario as everything seemed to move far too slowly.

One: Grimy concrete building. Even the graffiti on the door was faded and unfinished. Cracks in the stone.

The shooter had rigged the entrance to blow. Rev’s monitor would flash before filling with rubble.

Two: Filthy hallway, derelict sleeping on a decrepit wooden bench. Beside him, the door further in hung ajar, puce-colored paint peeling in long strips from it.

The shooter had an energy cannon pointed at the door and Rev’s monitor would flash bright white and then go black.

Three: Half-broken banister, staircase with one stair missing, stained wallpaper missing in gaping patches.

The shooter had rigged the stairs to fall. Tech would see sudden motion, wood fragments, abrupt slowing as Rev tried to climb out of the debris with a broken leg.

Four: Another derelict sleeping on the landing, a hallway whose torn carpeting exposed the wormy wood beneath. Three doors: two open, one closed, all marked and chipped.

The derelict was a friend of the shooter and had a concealed gun to take out Rev from behind, his monitor pitching forward onto the ratty carpet and remaining fixed there.

Five: A quick glimpse of a room. Two startled human faces looked up from a green-grey couch in front of a hideous black velvet painting. Another face, under a red and tan hunting cap with a wide brim, looked right at Tech, coolly. A gun lay across his lap and, incredibly, got halfway up to his shoulder.

The shooter had a shotgun loaded with incendiary pellets and Rev’s monitor would explode in fire.

Six: Blur of motion, shine of gun, clatter of it falling to the floor through Rev’s mike. Tan shirt and orange vest obscuring most of the monitor.

The shooter had somehow acquired super-tensile carbon fiber and set up a net trap, and Rev would be caught and quickly dispatched, his monitor coming to rest on a view of the ceiling that would travel slowly to a view of the sky.

Seven: Flickering light and dark. Footsteps on wood.

The shooter had found one of the helmets from the alien ice vikings they had defeated and had set up a sheen of ice in the hall that Rev wouldn’t see, his monitor skidding up to show the ceiling as he landed flat on his back, then quickly filming over with ice as the alien technology froze him where he lay.

Eight: More footsteps. Shadows shifting.

The shooter had a small handgun he was drawing even now and would fire.

Nine: Bright light around the fuzzy edges of the shadow.

Any second now, the shooter would fire. Any second now.

Ten: Flash.

Rev’s monitor stopped. The shadow fell away from it. It tipped backwards slowly, up to the clouds over the dirt-brown concrete, and remained still.

Connections

3

“Rev!” Tech yelled, standing before he knew what he was doing. He stared at the monitor, willing it to move, eyes still seeing the afterimage of the flash as a greenish haze over the blue sky. His paws clenched around the armrests on his chair.

“Sorry guys,” Lexi said over the intercom. “I kinda got ’em both.”

“No prob, Lexi,” Ace said. “You need help or can you get ’em on the bike?”

“I can handle it,” she said. “Rev hardly weighs anything.”

Tech collapsed in his chair, releasing the armrests. Ace was checking something on the monitor, but both Duck and Slam were staring at him.

Is this how it’s going to be every time? he wondered. Every time I’m sitting here while he’s out there in danger? Picturing all the things that could happen, agonizing because I can’t do anything about them?

“Hey, Tech,” Duck said. “Don’t worry about Rev. He’s pretty good at what he does.”

Because of the unfamiliar context, it took Tech a moment to recognize his expression as sympathy.

They strapped Zebediah Fudd in the holding cell back at the base, after Tech had divested him of anything metal and Ace had searched him for anything non-magnetic. Sedated, he looked much less dangerous, his oversized hunter’s hat askew on his brow and his orange vest grimy and torn on closer inspection. He had an impressive stock of weapons, though: three small pistols, a slingshot, and a pair of knives strapped to his ankles. In addition, Lexi told them he’d had a handgun out when she’d blasted him.

Rev had woken up halfway back to base, responding to Tech’s anxious queries with a quick, “Doing fine just got a bad bad headache.” To which Lexi apologized, and Rev told her it was okay. He met Tech’s eye a couple times after that but didn’t smile, and when they got back to base, he went to his room to lie down. The rest of the Loonatics gathered in the main room.

“Good work, Loonatics,” Zodavia said. “Excellent teamwork.”

“Thank you,” Duck said