Chapter 8

Director Vane’s face turned into a mask of pure, icy rage. The gentle, parental warmth in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by the ruthless tyrant who had ruled Oakhaven for decades.

"Then you are as foolish as your mother," Vane said coldly.

He didn't hesitate. He pressed a red button on his desk console.

Instantly, two heavy steel blast doors slammed shut over the elevator exit, trapping us inside the observation room. From the hidden panels in the ceiling, four automated security droids descended on mechanical arms, their red optical sensors locking onto us with buzzing lethal lasers.

"Take the boy down!" Vane commanded. "Leave the girl alive, but break her limbs if you must!"

"Maya, duck!" Leo screamed.

He raised his pulse stunner and fired a bright blue energy beam at the nearest droid, blowing its sensor array into sparks. But the other three droids immediately opened fire with high-velocity shock darts.

My vision flashed white. Before the darts even left the barrels, I saw the exact trajectory of every projectile.

"Leo! Dive left!" I yelled.

Leo reacted instantly, throwing himself across the plush carpet just as a volley of heavy shock darts slammed into the wall where he had been standing a second before.

I scrambled behind a heavy stone display table as a stream of laser fire scorched the air above my head. The heat was intense, singing the edges of my black jacket.

"We can't destroy them all with one stunner!" Leo called out, firing another shot from behind a fallen chair. His beam bounced harmlessly off a droid’s reinforced front shield.

"Focus on their power joints!" I shouted back, my head throbbing as I forced my mind to see three seconds into the future. "The droid on the right—its left knee joint is going to exposed when it turns to aim at you! Shoot it NOW!"

Leo didn't question me. He leaned out from cover and fired. The blue beam struck the exact hinge joint of the droid's leg just as it turned. Sparks erupted from the casing, and the massive mechanical unit collapsed onto the floor, smoking heavily.

"Two left!" Leo called out.

Vane watched the fight from behind his reinforced glass desk, his hands resting calmly on the control panel. He reached down and pulled a heavy black plasma pistol from a hidden drawer.

"Impressive," Vane said, his voice amplified through the room's speakers. "Your predictive reflex speed is far higher than I calculated. But prediction is useless if you cannot physically react fast enough to save what you love."

Before I could process his words, a dark vision hit my brain like a physical punch.

I saw Vane raising his plasma pistol. I saw him aiming not at me, but at the floor beneath Leo’s feet. I saw him triggering the high-voltage electrical conduit running under the carpet, incapacitating Leo with thousands of volts of current.

"Leo! Get away from the central rug!" I screamed.

But it was too late. Vane pulled the trigger.

A bright bolt of red plasma struck the floor near Leo. A blinding wave of blue electricity surged through the metallic carpet threads. Leo let out a strangled cry as the voltage slammed through his body, dropping him to his knees. His pulse stunner flew from his hand and skittered across the floor, stopping near Vane’s boots.

"Leo!" I cried out, rushing forward from behind my cover.

The remaining security droid immediately pivoted, its heavy mechanical arm extending to grab me by the throat. Metal fingers clamped around my windpipe with terrifying force, lifting me off my feet. I clawed frantically at the cold steel, my air completely cut off, my vision spotting with dark colors.

Vane walked slowly around his desk, stepping over the smoking debris of the destroyed droids. He picked up Leo's dropped weapon and tossed it aside, then stood over Leo’s trembling form. Vane pressed the glowing barrel of his plasma pistol directly against the back of Leo’s head.

"Drop her," Vane ordered the droid.

The droid released its grip, and I collapsed onto the floor, gasping frantically for air, clutching my sore throat.

"You have lost, Maya," Vane said, his voice flat and merciless. "You have five seconds to step over here and link your neural path to the city grid. If you refuse, I put a plasma bolt through your friend’s skull."

"Maya... don't..." Leo rasped from the floor, his muscles twitching from the electrical shock. "Don't do it..."

"Shut up!" Vane snapped, pressing the gun harder against Leo's head. "Five seconds, Maya. Five... four..."

Tears of frustration and pain filled my eyes. My brain was screaming, overwhelmed by the strain of the power. I closed my eyes and searched the future, searching frantically for a way out.

Every path I saw ended in tragedy. If I moved toward Vane, he would shoot Leo anyway once he had me locked into the machine. If I attacked the droid, Vane would pull the trigger instantly.

*There has to be another way,* I pleaded in my mind. *Show me!*

And then, I saw it. A tiny, hidden detail I had missed before.

Beneath Vane’s desk lay the main fiber-optic conduit supplying power to the observation room's glass windows. The glass wasn't ordinary window glass—it was high-density smart-glass, held in place by an intense magnetic field. If the power conduit suffered a sudden voltage spike, the magnetic field would collapse, causing the massive glass panes to implode outward into the low-pressure atmosphere outside the tower.

And right next to my left hand was the damaged power joint of the fallen droid, still leaking high-voltage energy.

"Three... two..." Vane counted, his finger tightening on the trigger.

"I yield!" I shouted, holding up my trembling hands and slowly standing up. "I'll do it! Just don't hurt him!"

Vane offered a triumphant, cold smile. "A wise decision, my daughter."

I took a slow, deliberate step forward, pretending to stagger in weakness. I dragged my foot across the floor, positioning myself right beside the exposed, sparking leg of the ruined droid.

"Connect your interface," Vane commanded, gesturing toward the console.

"I am," I whispered.

I didn't reach for the console. I reached down, grabbed the loose, high-voltage wire sticking out from the destroyed droid, and slammed it directly into the open floor junction box beneath Vane's desk.

*BOOM!*

A blinding flash of blue and orange light erupted across the floor. A massive power surge raced straight into the smart-glass control system.

The gigantic glass wall behind Vane shattered with a deafening roar. Thousands of sharp glass fragments exploded outward into the sky, creating a massive, howling wind tunnel inside the room. The sudden shift in air pressure yanked everything toward the gaping opening—papers, chairs, holographic screens, and the remaining security droid, which was tossed out into the empty air sixty floors above the ground.

Vane shrieked in shock as the powerful wind knocked him off his feet, sending his plasma gun sliding out into the abyss. He scrambled frantically, grabbing onto the edge of his bolted obsidian desk to keep from being blown out the broken window.

"Leo! Now!" I screamed over the deafening roar of the wind.

Leo, recovering from the shock, lunged forward across the carpet, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the heavy emergency stairwell door on the opposite side of the room. I grabbed a heavy metal fire extinguisher from the wall and slammed it into the door's emergency override switch.

The heavy steel door popped open. We threw ourselves inside the concrete stairwell and slammed the thick door shut behind us, cutting off the roaring wind instantly.

We collapsed against the concrete wall, panting, covered in dust, but alive.

"Are you okay?" Leo gasped, grabbing my shoulders, his eyes searching my face.

"I am," I panted, offering him a fierce, determined smile. "Now let's go tear down the rest of his world."