We changed our route to avoid him, our steps silent as he fiddled with some sort of device in his hands. I didn’t stop to see what it was. Instead, we continued deeper and deeper. Not a single scrape of a shoe or hurried breath echoed around us. These women had prepared for this for a very long time and they were more than ready.
We passed one guard and then another, each of them bored and far too distracted. Some were reading a tablet while others were taking apart and polishing their guns. None of them were particularly observant.
But then we approached a hall connecting to the room where the airborne suppressant technology was housed. I knew from experience that there were three entrances and that all three would be guarded. And I was correct.
At the entryway were two large guards. I had no doubt that the other entry points would prove to be the same. We doubled back and entered an abandoned storage room, full of wooden crates of excess suppressant. Should the city ever experience a shortage, there would be more than enough stock here and in other rooms no doubt for many years.
Nikki and I had studied the blueprints together and in this particular room was an entry point to the air cooling and filtration system. It would be a tight fit, but we were built small. We had to move a few boxes to get to it, but once we did, we revealed a heavy-looking grate secured by only four simple screws.
It took no time at all for the women to work together and unscrew the grate. Moving it to the side was simple and we crawled in, one by one between the walls and toward the aerosolizer. It felt like a square metal cave and I had to ensure calm, steady movements in order to move along it without making any noise. We had to climb up and down at various points, but we worked as a unit to move as quickly and silently as possible.
Eventually we made it a forked area and took a right turn, leading us above the room that the aerosolizer was housed in. The closer we got to it, the more I could hear its quiet hum of the pump, pushing in and out and saturating the very air we were breathing with suppressant drug.
Once, I had thought it to be an elegant system, but I wasn’t sure about that anymore. The city had wronged me and my fellow omegas and now we were going to fix it.
Nikki paused over a ceiling grate, peering down below to assess whether or not this room was guarded too. As far as I could tell, there were a few walking around. Nikki gestured for the others to spread out within the vent system. We knew from the blueprints that the venting system was shaped like a grid over top of this room, so there were other grates for the omegas to jump down from. We waited several minutes for the women to get into place. After a short while, I heard quiet knocks on the metal indicating that they were. Nikki tensed and when the guard moved beneath the grate, she kicked her feet down hard, forcing the grate open and she fell down on top of his shoulders.
The other women did the same, dropping down in unison and taking down guards themselves. I kept my eyes on Nikki.
Her movements were precise and lethal. She wrapped her legs around his throat, reached back to her belt and tore her knife free. Quickly, she leaned backwards, throwing the guard off balance so that he fell back to the floor. As he was falling, she wrenched the knife across his throat before he could even make a sound. She limberly jumped to the floor and caught his shoulders, carefully slowing his downward fall to the floor so that he dropped without a noise.
The others took down the rest of the guards without a sound. The quiet hum of the machine covered the entire ordeal.
When it was over, Nikki gestured to me, indicating that I should follow.
Biting my lip, I jumped down and Nikki caught me before I crashed down to the floor. Once again, we worked together to assist the others in making it to the floor with us. Once we had all made it out of the air vent, Nikki and I approached the machine, while the others found hiding places for all of the bodies.
The aerosolizer looked like a massive wheel with eight spokes, each one complete with a pump that sucked in air and pushed it out, saturated with tiny little vesicles full of suppressant. Each spoke connected to a central cartridge. There was a computer that controlled its functions and I rushed up to it, touched the surface of the screen and I was momentarily relieved when the blackness lit up, asking for a username and password.
Hurriedly, I logged into the system with my credentials, hoping that no one had thought to shut off my access just yet. When the screen lit up, I knew that I could still get in. I sighed with relief. I had to perform a manual override and initiate a change of the concentrated drug cartridge for one the Omegaborn had designed. It was a simple process under normal conditions, but tonight it was entirely more stressful.
My mind raced as I entered the commands necessary, terminating and vaporizing what was left of the suppressant cartridge. Next, I initiated the codes for a robotic arm to come down from the ceiling and remove the used cartridge. We all watched as the cartridge was carried away by the robotic arm. Last, I entered codes for manual install of the counter drug cylinder and took a deep breath, listening as the gentle hum went quiet.
I took one cartridge from one of the omegas and climbed into the center of the aerosolizer. Carefully, I pushed it into place and turned it, ensuring it was a sealed and airtight fit. Once I was satisfied, I exited the machine and returned to the command center. After entering a few more codes, the hum resumed, and the pumps began to function once more.
It was working. The Omegaborn’s anti-suppressant was now pumping into the city air. Now the clock was ticking. It was time to move.
Quickly, we replaced the nearby suppressant cartridges with our own, ensuring that there were no more suppressant drugs within close proximity to the machine. Even after we moved the leftover suppressant containers, I loosened each of the dials so that they’d slowly empty out. Whenever the city realized that something was wrong with the airborne system itself, they’d likely just change the cartridge, and when they did, I wanted to make sure they loaded more Omegaborn anti-suppressant instead of the drug that stopped us from being our natural selves.
Our job now complete, Nikki sprinted toward the door, where there were two guards outside in the hall. The rest of us followed, and when the door burst open, the ladies quickly moved forward and took them down. We moved the bodies into the abandoned storage room and then it was time to escape.
I took the lead, running through the path we had already taken, twisting and turning through hallways we already knew were unguarded and returned to the emergency evacuation stairway. We didn’t stop to rest, we just moved, down one flight of stairs and then another. If we were discovered now, all would be lost.
I ignored the frantic beat of my heart and the building achy soreness in my muscles. Right now, it didn’t matter. Should they find me here, leading a group of omegas into the city’s most prized asset, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be either banished or executed. Trying to ignore my thoughts, I rushed down the stairs with the rest of the group and before I knew it, we had reached the ground floor.
We made our way out the way we came. I took in a deep hopeful breath, feeling the throb of my bond urging me along.
I could feel my alphas.
I could sense their pride, their need to hold me in their arms once more and I yearned for it. The closer our small pack of women got to the omega sanctuary, the more I could sense my alphas’ presence. Wherever they were, they were close, and I kept running.
I’d make it back to them soon. I prayed to the gods that I’d find them before the sun rose and they could escape into the wilds with me and the rest of the omegas.
I needed them.