Legacy (Alliance Book 3) by Inna Hardison Page B

on that sort of thing. Get the hell out of my sight, before I change my mind, kid. You remind me too much of somebody who took someone from me. I don’t ever want to see your face again,” he said tiredly, and the kid was gone after that.
    He walked over to Maxton and crouched in front of him, “Riley here wants to talk to you before we decide what to do with you. I trust you won’t make him any promises you can’t keep, because Riley.... He always keeps his.”

ALLIES
    Maxton, May 31, 2236, Reston
    S eventy-eight nights of the same dream. The code on his screen, urgent, time frame for deployment twelve hours. That was it. Drop the code in and disburse to the population. He had to find a method of disbursement, and he did, after just a few minutes of running through all the options. Air vents at night. Everyone would be asleep. The heat would be on, given the cold outside. Code label said vaccine on it. He assumed it was. They weren’t supposed to ask questions, and there wasn’t anyone to ask. This lab didn’t exist, and he was in charge of making sure any urgent orders were handled. He had Dyrig program the neuro net with 2300 start time, and the rest of his men dropped the disbursement capsules into the four processors that pumped heat to the city.
    He sent everyone to get some sleep, and was going over some old files when he saw movement on the screens, people coming out of the houses. It didn’t make sense for them to be doing that now. He glanced at the timestamp: 23:15. Far too late for anyone to be going anywhere, but there they were, tumbling out of their homes, not even dressed for what it was like outside, kids and all, spilling onto the street that led out of the city. He froze, watching the slowly moving procession, knowing that it had something to do with the neuros they just released. He switched the view to show the side of the city they were walking to and he could see a trickle of smoke rising in the air, seemingly from the woods, but nobody made fires there in the middle of the night. What he was watching was definitely a fire though, an entire wall of it on the edge of the field.
    He got Dyrig up and had him go through all the code snippets, but he couldn’t read anything in any of them. Encrypted. Dyrig looked pale as he watched the screens. The people didn’t even seem to be talking to each other. They looked like drones.
    “Please tell me there is a way to kill this bloody code or at least pause it.” The man just shook his head. He knew it. They all knew it. Once these things were live, they did what they were programmed to do, and that was that, only what they were programmed to do now looked insane. Suddenly Dyrig screamed next to him, pointing at one of the side views of the fire. People were walking right into it, women holding their kids, men holding women, walking right into the fire and staying there, and nobody was running in to save them, nobody was even trying to stop them.
    He was screaming now too, couldn’t help it, “Turn it off, Dyrig. Just turn it off.” And in the last few frames before the screen went black he saw a man who didn’t look like a drone, pulling on the blue shirt of a little kid, moving him away from the flames but the kid kept going right back in, and he picked him up then, but the kid squirmed out of his shirt and ran in. The man dropped to the ground, people shoving him as they moved past him, kicking him, but he still wouldn’t get up, wouldn’t move.
    He heard the door open and watched Riley and Ellis walk in, Ellis looking strange, embarrassed almost. Something must have happened between those two. He’d screwed up with Brandon, he knew. Shouldn’t have tried to protect him like that. They might have just let him go if he hadn’t. He hoped they would eventually, once they got whatever else they wanted out of him; once they finally ended it with him. He watched, surprised, as Ellis cut the ties at Brandon’s wrists, telling him they were