Page 65 of Avenging Jessie
It was up to her to stop it.
Jessie bolted from cover, crossing the open floor under a hail of SMG fire from Brewer. Pain lanced through her shoulder—hot, sharp, and deep—but she didn’t slow.
She hit the control room door, threw herself inside, and slammed the lock. “Finish it,” she ground out, pressing her hand over the wound.
Spence’s jaw was set, eyes locked on the progress bar crawling toward completion. “Almost there.”
Brewer’s voice came muffled through the door. “You think you can stop me, Stirling? You’re just handing me proof you’re the only one who can control them. And I’ll take that from you the same way I take everything else.”
Jessie drew her sidearm, moved to the glass. Pointed at him.“Try it.”
The bar hit one hundred percent. Spence hit ENTER. The drone dropped like a stone.
But Brewer’s smile through the glass told her this wasn’t over. Jessie froze when he held up a phone, the screen tilted just enough for her to see the shaky, bird’s-eye feed of Langley’s sprawling campus. The image swayed as the drone whose feed she watched banked, the sun flashing off its wing.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. Tommy. Tessa.God, please…
“Destruction’s already a certainty,” Brewer said, voice slick with satisfaction. “No matter what you do, you won’t stop them all.”
“Not all,” Spence muttered beside her. His jaw was locked, eyes on his screen. “But I can knock some out of the sky.”
A sharp tone chirped from his system. A third of the feed cut to static.
Brewer’s head snapped toward the monitors, fury tightening his mouth. “Cute trick.” His gaze slid to Jessie, and the anger melted into a mocking smile.
“You disappoint me, Jess.” His voice dropped into that intimate, snake-oil tone that had once convinced her to follow him into hell. “I had big plans for you. You could’ve been standing here beside me when the world watched the CIA burn. Instead, you’re running errands for the people who betrayed you.”
Her grip on her gun tightened. “Better than rotting in your shadow.”
Brewer chuckled, but the sound didn’t reach his eyes. “Where’s your brother, Jess? Safe at home? Or about to be a smear on the pavement when the first payload hits?”
She refused to give him the satisfaction of flinching. “You can’t manipulate me anymore.”
On the screen in his hand, the drone’s live feed flickered. Rows of Cyclones tumbled out of formation, spiraling toward the ground like metallic hail. “It’s working,” she muttered to Spence. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.”
Brewer narrowed his eyes, not seeing the show.
She tipped her head, letting a slow smile curl on her face. “Looks like you’re losing this one, Brewer.”
Brewer’s smile froze. He narrowed his eyes. The live feed on his phone jolted, the frame stuttering before the horizon tilted wildly. More rows of matte-black drones tumbled from the sky like dead birds, slamming into rooftops and asphalt in puffs of dust and debris. The one streaming the feed juddered midair, then went black.
She pointed at the screen. “Look.”
His gaze snapped to the phone, and for a heartbeat, she thought she saw the truth under his polished mask. Not rage or disappointment. Humiliation.
“You,” he hissed, voice cutting through the partition as if it could carve her open. “Always ruining what you don’t understand.” His hand curled so tightly around the phone she half expected the screen to crack.
Jessie didn’t take her eyes off of him, even as Spence hissed and groaned. This was a victory…what was wrong? She didn’t dare take her eyes off Brewer, though. “I understand you better than you think.”
His eyes flared, cold and bright, and the mask snapped back into place. It was stretched too tight now, trembling around the edges. “This changes nothing,” he snarled. “Langley will still burn. And when it does, you’ll wish you’d taken what I offered you.”
Twenty-Six
Spence
The upload barwas at seventy-eight percent when every monitor in the control room blinked once, then died.
Black screens.
