Toys

addressed the expectant, bloodthirsty crowd.

Lucy and I quickly threaded our way through the outskirts of the Elite throng. Jacklin was flanked by soldiers and other top government officials, just as he had been for his inauguration. But clearly this was an even bigger day for him, and for the Elites.

“As the sun rises on this glorious morning, so dawns a new era,” Hughes Jacklin orated, sweeping his hand toward the brightening eastern horizon. “The human strain, this menace that has hovered over the earth for millennia, is about to end. They will be extinct, relegated to the same fate as Neanderthals and other evolutionary missteps that came before them. This is a good thing, a very good thing.”

The crowd erupted with sickening cheers. Some of them might have heard rumors, but the president’s words, in this solemn and important speech, meant that the holocaust was actually happening-extinction was happening. The shouts and applause grew louder, and the historic significance of the day was lost on no one.

Jacklin stood there, basking in Elite approval and adulation. For me, he brought to mind several important historical figures-Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Idi Amin. Clearly, Elites weren’t proving to be much better students of history than humans had ever been.

But then he paused, squinting up at a thick, dark cloud of human transports, old-fashioned warplanes approaching from the west. They had become visible as the night sky paled into daylight-and now were encroaching over the city limits. Another historic scene flashed into my mind-the Battle of Britain.

The crowd kept applauding louder and louder. Apparently they thought this was some kind of air show to celebrate the supreme might of the Elite empire and this special day. They couldn’t imagine that humans might actually be, dare I say it, fighting back.

But Jacklin was rattled. He cried out, “What the hell is going on? I didn’t order this!”

It was everything the resistance had-all in this one push. We had managed the element of surprise, but if Jacklin got away and reconnected with his military command…

The surpise clearly wasn’t complete. Elite jets, faster and better armed, were already streaking in from nearby bases, blasting away at their human-piloted targets. But we had the numbers, and soon the Elite planes started to go down.

Next, the air blackened with thousands of parachutes as resistance troops-humans-descended to take back the city. Suddenly, Elites in the crowd started to disperse, stampeding out from the lawn. This was clearly not on the program.

“Kill the head!” Lucy leaned in close. “Focus, Hays!”

With an earsplitting screeeeee! a fireball flew over the president’s head, twisting and slashing like a giant whirling knife. It exploded into the mansion’s elegant facade, bursting the front windows into splinters and bringing down an entire wall.

“Didn’t order that either, did you-you sonofabitch!” Lucy yelled at Hughes Jacklin as she continued to rush the stage. But there were still plenty of Elite soldiers surrounding him and the other VIPs up on the dais. The bodyguards gathered around their twisted leaders, herding them to safety.

“Dead or alive,” Lucy screamed, “we have to do our part! We can’t let him out of here!”

Chapter 109

I unslung my rifle, perhaps for the last time, and took off running, stooping low to the ground and circling behind the stage where Jacklin had been spewing his incredible filth and hatred. I knew the layout of the presidential compound like the inside of my own apartment: the ceremonial dais looked rock solid, but it was actually a shell with an area for housing high-tech equipment underneath.

The entrance was heavily guarded by Elite commandos, but their attention was focused on the airplane wreckage plummeting from the sky. Lucy and I came in blazing.

The secret-service men unleashed a blistering return attack. I raced like a berserk paratrooper, bouncing and flipping from side to side and somehow avoiding the hail of defensive gunfire.

I quickly spotted what I was looking for-the under-stage service entrance. But the massive steel door was sliding closed! Nothing short of an armored truck full of explosives could blast through it. That, or possibly the thermal grenade I’d strapped onto my armored vest an hour ago. I hurled it into the dead center of the dwindling opening.

Lucy yelled, “And you thought baseball was a dumb sport!”

“Don’t forget boring!” I called back.

Phooom! A blinding flash tore through the interior, turning sensitive equipment into melted debris and jamming the door.

The gap was no wider than my shoulder, but I lunged at it, wriggling through even as acrid smoke billowed across my face. Lucy was a half second behind, with only half the wriggle necessary to follow me in.

I skidded on the floor inside, spinning with my rifle raised, ready to take on more Elite guards-whatever it took to get to Jacklin and his cabinet.

But there weren’t any guards.

Instead, I heard a hoarse, familiar laugh up ahead.

Tazh Khan walked forward, his face blackened with soot. “Next time you warn me you throw grenade. OK?” he cheerfully scolded.

Chapter 110

“This way!” he pointed. “Termite soldier scum!”

The staccato crack! crack! of weapon fire was ringing in the air as I burst up through a trapdoor and onto the next level. I had my rifle ready, expecting the president’s guards to be there.

The first thing I saw was one of the Elite militia men. He caught a bullet and his head exploded like a sledgehammered watermelon-except it was filled with silvery microchips instead of black seeds.

“Kill the head! Like I said, Hays.”

Lucy had come through like the warrior she was! She had met up with her team, and they had used their old- fashioned rifles with stunning accuracy to clear a path to Hughes Jacklin and the other leaders.

And then-there he was! The president spun around and stared at me like I was, well, some kind of human scum.

He stabbed a forefinger in my direction. “Kill him!” he commanded his guards, who were led by a guy I could have sworn I’d just killed-Devlin. Could they all have been clones?

The outsize bodyguard made a quick study of the expression on my face.

“Hello again, Hays,” he said, stepping forward and waving the president and the other VIPs back toward a door, which led off of the dais. “You didn’t possibly think I’d have been hanging out in the parking lot with my clones while my president was unveiling the dawn of our new free society?”

“Funny how one doesn’t usually hear termite colonies described as ‘free societies,’ ” said Lucy, edging forward with me and Tazh Khan as Devlin leveled his guns at us and his remaining thick-necked brethren formed a defensive wedge behind him.

There was no turning back-and there was no delaying. We couldn’t let the president escape. We had to kill the head before it reconnected with the larger body of Elite muscle beyond that door.

Chapter 111