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

Yeah, I figured they might take my guns, but I had my hands and fingers, and I figured I’d use ’em to dig Hoyt’s heart out of his chest and shove it down his goddamn throat.

(iv)

Couldn’t tell if the soldiers were Regios or if they were American soldier girls. In the end, it prolly didn’t matter. They dumped me in some back office of the Marriott. A calendar showing a green valley in India hung on one wall over a filing cabinet overflowing with old papers.

A gunmetal desk took up a good chunk of the room. Next to it were cleaning supplies stacked by a tree of mops and brooms.

I was forced into a folding chair by hands like hammers on my shoulders.

Across from me sat Tibbs Hoyt, in his fancy suit, arms crossed over his belly. He looked upon me with mild blue eyes, just this side of cornflower. Though they shared the exact same DNA, Micaiah’s eyes were a slight shade darker. In them, when he was on his meds, a fierce desire to understand and to feel.

The eyes appraising me didn’t want to understand me. He seemed to find me slightly amusing but not a serious threat. There was a smug smile in those eyes, connected to the expensive silk suit, floating around in a sea of expensive cologne, subtle even surrounded by the smell of the industrial cleaner.

He was handsome and fat in that particular way rich and powerful men can get. He got fat off the world even as he conquered it. He could pay for the handsome.

The helmeted soldiers stayed at attention behind me. Regios, for sure. If they were cops or American soldiers, they might have an opinion, or ask for clarification. But instead, these things just waited for another order.

Tibbs opened his mouth.

I jerked forward to put my fist through his teeth.

Strong arms ripped me away and slammed me into the chair.

Dang, didn’t get my chance. I’d have to wait.

Tibbs nodded and smiled an infuriatingly patient smile. “So even though we have stripped you of your weapons, even though my son made a deal with you to let you walk away, and even though I have offered you every kind of mercy, you still want to hurt me. It’s an estrogen imbalance, most likely. I’m sure the Weller genetics are far from perfect.”

Let him say what he wanted about my DNA. I had my own doubts about that. “Why’d you kill Alice, you bastard?”

“We have exhaustively studied the Gulo Gamma test subjects. Now, your sister Irene, she would be interesting since she was given the Gulo Delta. But she has fled the city, or so my sources say.” More smiles. “And that is how I have dealt with you and your family... through my sources. The Juniper truly is a dark place and not just for lack of electric lighting. Even information has trouble escaping. And so you have slipped through my fingers time and time again. But that is over.”

“Ain’t over,” I said. “You killed Alice. You’ll pay for that.”

“You were going to kill her anyway,” he said quietly.

I changed subjects ’cause my throat would close up if I had to think about that too much. “You have the cure to the Sterility Epidemic. Folks need to know.”

“Why do they need to know?” he asked.

Question caught me off guard. “They just do.”

“Would the world be better if knowledge of the cure were common?”

Now I knew where Micaiah got his love for questions. “You’d lose money, you goddamn monster.”

“Where have your New Morality manners gone?” he asked. “You must’ve learned some at the Sally Brown Burke Academy for the Moral and Literate. But I guess the Juniper is also hard on ethics as well.” He moved around the desk and pulled over an office chair and sat down in front of me.

I went for him again. Got my arm cocked back to paste him a good one, but I wasn’t fast enough. Regios pounded me back into the chair. This time the hands didn’t let go of my shoulders. They pinched and ground me down.

Hoyt leaned forward. “I have enough money. I have more than enough power. And yet my vision of a better world will not let me stop. I am going to transform this troubled place, this fallen Eden—this cracked glass globe of suffering—into a new paradise. And I am going to change it by manipulating the very building blocks of our existence.”

Sweat dripped from my nose. And I was sure he could smell me. The running, the fear, the fighting, had put a stink on me. And Alice. Poor Alice. Dead.

And there he sat, mild, blue-eyed, not a drop of sweat on him, and smelling like a Saturday night.

I growled at him. “You gonna make the world a better place by killing innocent people like Alice, like my friends, well, the media is bound to catch up with you. The truth will come out.”

“Killing?” Hoyt shook his head. “No, I’ve learned that trying to kill you and your sisters is a loser’s game. And now that Irene has become a Gamma, it will be all the harder. No, our little war is over, and I have come to draw up terms.”

“What terms?” I asked. “And don’t think for a second we’ll ever stop or surrender. Not after what you did here tonight. I want everyone on Earth to know how much of a liar and a murderer and a maniac you are.” I was huffing, and I wanted to use better words, but I couldn’t think of any.

“Here is what is going to happen.” Hoyt took a Hayao slate on the desk and opened a web browser. He turned it around, so I could see. It was a simple web site, pretty much only a counter and a timestamp and single rectangle. “I am going to keep you in the World, Cavatica Weller,