We madw it to the end of the tunnel. I frown, looking back and forth up the tracks.

"Buck?" I ask, looking over my shoulder, "where's the trains?"

"I believe they have abandoned them. Since they want to evacuate the city. Nothing is running."

"Well ain't that convenient." Aris added.

"Alright gather 'round." Bucky barks and we all step closer.

Each of us was given a paper map of the Last City. The city forms an almost perfect square. Lines divide the map into smaller squares, with letters along the top and numbers down the side to form a grid. Bucky was given a handheld contraption called a Holo that produces images like the big hologram map Vince had. He can zoom into any area of the grid and see what pods await. The Holo's an independent unit, a glorified map but it's far superior to my paper version.

We gathered around Bucky to examine the Holo projection of the adea. Right now it looks clear until we get above ground into the streets above.

"Okay, into the tunnels and we go light quiet and quick."

It didn't take usong to get down the train tunnel. But decided to was fast to go as far down the tunnel as possible, now that there were no active trains. We climbed up the ladder to the maintenance tunnel. Bucky peeked out the crack in the door. He slowly opened it. We all had our guns out, and ready.

We gathered around Bucky and the Holo again. The WICKED faculty was only a few blocks from here. If I looked up I could see the top floors of the glass building.

"Okay, so our distraction," Bucky zoomwd in on a spot, "is over here. And we are here." He zoomed in to another spot on the other side of the building." He checked his watch. "They'll start the full scale attack in about 2 minutes. And then we do our best to get past these pods and into the building."

"Sounds easy enough."

"Don't jinx it Gally." I muttered.

"We're all gonna die and this mission is a bust. Better?" He asked raising a eyebrow.

"Yes actually. Thank you." I nodded in satisfaction.

Just as I did there was a distance boom.

"It's started. We'll give it a minute."

We all nod. I turn to Tessa, she's already turning to me as well. We pause as we make eye contact. I reach for the back of her head as she holds mine and we pull each other close, I rested my forehead on hers. I close my eyes for a second and take a deep breath.

"Sisters?" I whispered.

"Sisters." She whispers back. And then adds so quietly it's hardly a whisper. "Which makes me an auntie."

I pulled away, my eyes going wide. She just gives me a small smile. My heart slammed into my chest. I don't say anything because the guys are around, but she says nothing else. Turning to follow Bucky and the guys. I clamp my jaw shut and shack my head. This baby pup was getting harder to hide. Though so far Tessa was the only one smart enough to figure it out. Jorge and Brenda and Hans had the cheat sheet of my medical records.

The gunfire pod is positioned about a third of the way down, just above an apartment awning. We should be able to trigger it with bullets. We all take cover as Aris raises his gun and triggers the pod. It takes about a minute as the bullets spray back and forth all over the street, smashing windows and ripping holes in doors and pavement. I.ce the bullets stop the pod on the Holo flashes out. There must be some kind of sensor that connects them.

We slowly proceed down the hazy street. We all have our guns raised, forming a tight circle. We slowly move as one down the middle of the street. We made it to the next intersection when something behind us explodes. We all dive for cover. I tuck my body and roll, glad Nana's protective suit has a bit more padding around the waist, it's meant to help protect from knife wounds and bullets, but it also aids in keeping baby safe.

I come up on my knees next to Gally. I see Tessa, Aris and Bucky on the other side of the street. Bucky is yelling something, but I can't hear, my ears are ringing. I blink and shake my head, trying to get the ringing in my ears to stop. Gally grabbed my arm and gesturing to the end of the block where we entered. Black, oily matter spouts like a geyser from the middle of the street, billowing between the buildings, creating an impenetrable wall of darkness. It seems to be neither liquid nor gas, mechanical nor natural. But surely it's lethal. There's no heading back the way we came.

Deafening gunfire as Bucky and Aris begin to blast a path across the stones toward the far end of the block. I don't know what they're doing until another bomb, ten yards away, detonates, opening a hole in the street. Then I realize this is a rudimentary attempt at minesweeping. I'd love to stop ans find a differenr way out of this, but the blackness is rising above the buildings, swelling, rolling at us like a wave. Any other time I'd be all for running head long into this madness. But with baby and my desperate need to find Minho and kill Janson, this is all we have.

I gag on the smell of the blackness, thick, tarlike. The wave has crested and begun to fall. I'm trying really hard not to crumple and throw up. We're sprinting down the street.

"We need to go up!"

Gally veers off to the side and throws his body into a door, slamming if open. Without stopping to think we all follow, he races through the hall and up the stairs inside the apartment. He smashes another door to someone's apartment, we race through someone's pink and white velvet living room, down a hallway hung with family photos, onto the marble floor of a kitchen, where we collapse on the second floor of the apartment building. I can hear the windows groan, and shatter on the first floor. I spun around, making sure everyone is here.

"Bucky?" I scream.

He's there, running down the hall and slamming the door shut behind him, choking out one word. "Fumes!" Aris and Gally grab towels, blankets anything they can grab to stuff in the cracks as Bucky retches into the sink.

We all sink to the ground for a moment, our breathing is ragged and shallow. I can feel the bile coming up. I scrambl to my feet and let my body get ride of everything. I'm glad Bucky threw up, so it looks like it's the fumes that are maktme throw up, and maybe it is the fumes making me sick. I pray silently that the fumes won't harm baby. Once I'm done I furn the tap on and drink some of the water straight from the tap. Once I'm done I slid back down.

"We need to get out of here. Now. We just set off a streetful of pods. You can bet they've got us on surveillance tapes." Teresa said.

"Count on it," agreed Bucky. "All the streets are covered by surveillance cameras. I bet they set off the black wave manually when they saw us.

"So much for the element of surprise." I said weakly, my stomach still feeling unsettled.

"That black goo just destroyed most of their own cameras. So...we can still get there. We just need to wait for that stuff to set." Bucky explained.

"Okay...so masks and we go out the way we came in." I suggest.

Teresa cocks her head, and pulls her eyebrows together in concentration. "If the wave was that powerful, then it may have triggered and absorbed other pods in our path."

"Exactly."

Bucky props one of his boots on the counter and examines the splatter of black on the toe. Scrapes it with a kitchen knife from a block on the counter. "It's not corrosive. I think it was meant to either suffocate or poison us."

"Probably our best shot," Gally agrees.

"Alright." Aris nods in agreement.

Bucky opens the door and gingerly tests it with the toe of his boot. It has the consistency of a gel. I try it out, and I lift my foot and after stretching slightly, it springs back into place. I take three steps into the gel and look back. No footprints.

"Well, this is good luck." Gally mumbles.

The gel becomes slightly thicker the closer we get to the main floor hallway. Bucky ease open the front door, expecting gallons of the stuff to pour in, but it holds its form. The block seems to have been dipped in glossy black paint and set out to dry. Paving stones, buildings, even the rooftops are coated in the gel.

We pull guns out and we form our circle and as one we make our way down the block. Our feet making a squishy squelching noise, but we leave no footsteps and no traces of us being here.

The wave must have been enormous, with tremendous power behind it, as it's affected several blocks that lie ahead. And though we tread with care, I think my instinct was right about its triggering other pods. One block is sprinkled with the silver and red shiny bodies of Bettle Blades. They must have been set free only to succumb to the fumes, making the mechanical bodies malfunction. A little farther along, an entire apartment building has collapsed and lies in a mound under the gel.

Bucky sprint across the intersections, holding up a hand for us to wait while he looks for trouble, but the wave seems to have dismantled the pods far better than any squad of rebels and sharpshooters could.

On the fifth block, I can tell that we've reached the point where the wave began to peter out. The gels only an inch deep, and I can see baby blue rooftops peeking out across the next intersection.

We only have about a block and a half to go before we reach the WICKED complex. But gathers us into the doorway of a building and pulls the Holo out. Bucky pulls his mask off. I can hear gun shots and explosions in the distance.

"We need to hurry." I whisper urgently as I pulled my own mask off.

"I know Jelly Bean, but we can't run head long in there."

"You think there would be pods this close?" Aris asked.

Bucky turned the pod on. He zoomed in. "Just because there isn't anything glowing, doesn't mean anything. We just had a black goo geyser." 

"Okay, point taken." Aris huffed.

He put the Holo away and pulled his gun out. The rest of us doing the same. We slowly crept down the street. The closer we got to the building the more anxious I got. I knew Janson wasn't going to let us get in that easily. But again I wasn't sure of much anymore. Janson didn't make sense anymore. He was irrational and sadistic. Bucky paused at the last intersection and sweeped his gun back and forth. It was clear.

With the adding light and all of us dressed in black we blended into the shadows. I pulled my hood up. I felt like I was transported back into my Assassin wolf days. I saw the others doing the same. We flitted across the intersection like shadows and melted into the next ones beside the big shiny WICKED building.

The explosions and gunfire was getting louder. I could hear the sounds of screaming and sirens now. It was all getting closer.

"We need to move." Bucky whispered. 

I nodded in agreement. I knew the Right Arm was planning to blow the building. And as of right now, the new munnie kids should have been escorted out by Brenda, Ryan, Newt, Thomas, Jason, Sonya and Fry. It was now up to us to get in kill Janson, Ava, Get Minho and kill Ang other WICKED workers.

We followed the building, crouched in the shadows to the back of the building. There were no guards, no Soilders. It was deserted. It felt strange. We made it to the parking garage. There were a few guards milling about at the back door. We all slid silent on the shadows closer. The four of us Wolves didn't need to speak to work together. Teresa stepped out.

"Good evening gentlemen."

They all turned towards her. Bucky, Aris and I sprung from behind and they were dead before they hit the ground, throats cut.

"Shit. Don't piss you guys off!" Gally muttered.

"I thought you knew that." I frowned at him.

He gestured to the dead armed men on the ground at my feet, "this confirms it. Again."

I snorted in ammusment. We stepped over them and up to the door. Bucky pulled one guards hand up to the sensor and it buzzed open. We were inside WICKED now.

"Stair wells have no security camera." I indicated up the many flights of stairs. It was dizzying looking straight up seeing the stairs spiral higher and higher.

"We need to get to sub level three." Bucky nodded looking up.

"That's a lot of stairs." Aris grumbled.

Half way I started to pant as bad as Gally. He was clutching his chest and I was sucking air.

"Your...bad lung...my tortured self. We make a great team." I managed to gasp.

"We need Newt and his bad leg. Make a great team." He wheezed back.

The others had to slow down for us, which made me grind my teeth. I hated being the inconvenience. I was doing well on my recovery, but then I find out I have a parasite sucking all my energy and iron and everything else...makes trying to regain strength a d endurance harder. We finally made it. I had to lean against the wall for a second. Teresa pulled my water out for me. Aris doing the same for Gally.

I nodded in thanks, still too winded to form words. Bucky gave us a minute to catch our breath.

"The second we open this door we'll have Soilders on our asses. So we need to find Minho in here as fast as we can and then get out. Shoot anything that moves."

"Unless it's Minho."

Bucky rolled his eyes at me. We all took a breath, checked weapons and made sure we were ready. Bucky had his hand on the door and looked over his shoulder at us. We all nodded.

I was ready to get my Minho back.

•×•
× shorter chapter ×
× Mocking Jay style. I thought of killing Bucky like Boggs in the book...
but I couldn't. I'm becoming soft! ×