OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

Battle of One

"What happened to our drones?" Gayle asked, her eyes crazed.

Four of her sister Sirens were dead, struck down by Arturo's group. They had found Olivia knocked out cold in an Architect's office just in time, which barely brought their numbers up.

After their hostages escaped, they fled the shipping bay by the skin of their teeth. Unfortunately, precious hours had to be wasted to seal off as much of negative-seventeen as possible. Now that Gayle was able to reach Coeuss the bots could do most of the work, but that didn't make up for lost time.

They were huddled together in the control room with a projected hologram of Arc City Two in the middle. Gayle flicked her wrist to spin the three-D image like a carousel. Any area flashing red indicated that it had been sealed off while Coeuss worked to repair the damage done. It looked like the bottom half of Arc City Two had been dipped in glowing blood.

"We lost connection with them, just as Coeuss predicted." Lauren smiled, looking up from her tablet. "Which means the Seafarers came to meet their ship, and they have made it back to Arc City One. They are probably conferring with the Quorum as we speak."

"On schedule." Gayle nodded, willing herself not to celebrate just yet. "How's Olivia recovering?"

"She has a mild concussion," Bethany told her, poking her head around the projection to make eye contact with Gayle. "She's being held by bots in the medical bay until you're ready to talk to her."

"Should we watch the footage of Olivia's last minutes alone with the prisoner?" Lauren suggested. "I can have Coeuss bring that up now."

"Coeuss will evaluate the situation." Gayle cut her off to remind Lauren of their place in this operation. "He will give us his judgment when he is ready."

The others did their best to keep their eyes from wandering too far from Gayle's as they did not want to be associated with having their own opinions about this new pecking order. Technically, Coeuss had passed judgment on the men (and women) on the Arc City already, and the Sirens had been fine with that assessment.

However, this was the first time one of Coeuss' decisions was directed at one of their own, and that was hard to swallow.

'But if it will make all of you feel better, I will go and talk to her now." Gayle told them, taking the temperature of the room. "You stay here and monitor Coeuss' progress."

Gayle stalked out of the room, her boots clomping through the fresh trail of blood she'd tracked along the way. She wasn't happy about having to coddle her fellow Sirens. Couldn't Coeuss have prepared them better for the spoils of war? She thought to herself.

The medical bay on negative-six was small and smeared with body matter from the previous outbreak of violence. There on a low table that doubled as a bed, sat Olivia holding an ice pack on her head. Even bruised, she was a breathtaking woman.

"Am I going to be held like some sort of criminal for handing you your win?" Olivia sniffed as soon as their eyes met.

"That depends," Gayle responded, sizing her up.

"On?" Olivia pressed.

"On you," Gayle told her as a vile smile folded her features. "You seem to forget you're also the reason we lost our hostages in the first place."

"What does it matter?" Olivia questioned. "You were just going to kill them as soon as you got the override code."

"It matters because you triggered a different scenario." Gayle snapped, her patience wearing thin. "Coeuss told us that if we get Arturo here and killed him, we would have our victory. Now, thanks to you, we're taking on water and Coeuss is running probabilities on new scenarios."