War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

few floors below. I saw where my sister had smashed through a window. She was still in the hotel—maybe in a murderous frenzy or maybe not—I had to get to her and find out which.

Wheeling, I jumped over a corpse.

An armed figure filled the doorway dressed in full battle armor and wielding a Zeus 2. The tip sparked blue.

I triggered my own weapon and blue electricity erupted in the room and it was daylight. The soldier in the doorway shuddered back and fell to her knees, then slumped over.

“Come out with your hands up!” one of them yelled.

“You put your own goddamn hands up!” I yelled back. “Or come in and get me. You law or you Regios?”

Murmured words came from the hallway.

Ha. They were getting their story straight. I wasn’t going to give them the time.

I adjusted the Zeus 2 for an area attack.

A few eruptor grenades dangled from the harness on one of the soldiers Wren had pretzelled. The eruptors would send out an electric blast that would stun but not kill. I bent and scooped one up. Pulled the pin with my teeth and tossed it out.

“Grenade!”

Weapons and boots and a scurry as those soldiers tried to collect it up.

They weren’t fast enough and it went off in a sizzle of sparks and blue light.

I turned the corner to find four Regios on the ground, and two of the soldier girls still on their feet. I triggered my charge gun and drop them in a wide arc of Eterna battery goodness. My best friend Anju used to tease me about watching all them YouTube videos. Who was laughing now?

No time to wait for the elevator. I dashed down the hall and hit the stairs, going down. Troops were coming up, so I left the staircase at the next floor.

Civilians peered from doorways, faces pale, eyes wide. They looked like scared doves, except instead of feathers, they were swathed in the gray of New Morality dresses.

“Back in your rooms!” I yelled and arced blue lightning over doorways and into the ceiling to punctuate my words.

I sprinted down the hallway and to the other set of stairs. Hopefully, there’d be less traffic there.

Two floors down I burst into the hallway. One of the hotel room doors had been ripped out. Something big had smashed itself out of the room, taking half of the wall with it.

Screams of agony and terror filled the stairwell. Troops were coming up. Wren was going down. I sped over. The railings had been torn loose and twisted up.

As twisted as the bodies of the Regios the ARK had sent to collect my sister. More death and destruction... like nothing I’d ever seen.

My sister. A Gamma. A hog. My pretty, pretty sister might be gone forever.

I peered over the railing. A hulking, seething shape ran far below me, grunting and bellowing like a demon.

“Wren!” I yelled.

The shape didn’t pause.

I took the stairs two at a time, grateful for how strong I was, so fit, so full of adrenaline, fear, and anger.

At the very bottom of the steps, the metal fire door had been tossed like papier-mâché out into the street. The edges of the door, reinforced steel and two-by-fours, splintered outward. Too big to slip through, my sister bashed her way out.

I stepped into the alley.

The cold winter air bit my skin and my breath came out in a fog. Big chunky flakes of snow fluttered down from the cloud-cluttered sky; it felt like both the snow and the cold slickened my sweat into ice. Though it was daytime, it felt dark.

Something moved down by the dumpsters. Something big. A wicked bestial stink swamped the air.

It was a smell I knew.

I crept closer.

There, huddled next to the trash, crouched Alice.

She looked at me with wide eyes, a tear-streaked face, and meaty lips trembling.

“Your sissy gone coco, ’Tica. Me too. Both of us. Gone coco.”

“Where is she, Alice?” I asked. “Where’s Wren?”

Alice held up her hands, covered in blood. “I killed so many, so many. Popped ’em. I got lost. I went coco. Popped soldiers. Popped plain folks. Cause of the coco. And I feel it still.”

I thought about the jelly-filled donuts I’d eaten growing up in downtown Burlington. There was a donut shop. They were good. My belly dropped into nauseated unease. Then it got worse.

“Please, ’Tica. You promised. You do what you promised. Please. Before I go again. Before I pop open more people. You gotta put me down.”

Partially obscured by the tumbling snow, her eyes were losing their intelligence. I’d seen her slip down into her madness before, on the edge of Denver. I hadn’t killed her then. Instead, I’d tricked her. It had worked out then, but now?

What kind of life would she have out in the World? If they managed to somehow cage her, she’d be either studied or terminated. And of course Tiberius “Tibbs” Hoyt would do the terminating. She was proof of his genetic engineering gone awry and Hoyt had secrets to keep.

Better I did it than someone else.

I’d made her a promise after all. I wanted to tell her it was the worst timing ever. I wanted to plead with her to hang on until we could find some kind of solution for her. I wanted for it all to be different.

“Did you see where Wren went?” I asked.

Alice roared and shot to her feet. “Kill me!”

I would have to.

Before she killed me.

(iii)

The blue-fire engine of Kestrel 15.2s roared in the distance and I knew military gunships would only have one target in Hays, Kansas. Only one. My family.

Drenched in the gray fabric of a massive New Morality dress, Alice paced in front of me, eyes fixed and glaring at me. “You gonna do it, Sissy? You gonna? You gonna?”

I matched her glare and nodded. “Yeah, I will. I do what I say and say what I do. Get on your knees in front of me.”

I’d cut the leg off my sister. I’d killed and I’d stolen, and