Read Off The Grid: A War With No End Book 1 Page 4

  Chapter 4

  One would expect the rebel hideout to be a little more… discrete? I was expecting a tunnel or trapdoor entrance. Maybe a fortress if they wanted to make a point, but I was not expecting a house.

  The rebel hideout King Hamburger sent us to was a simple two story house. I could vaguely hear the sounds of two people arguing, but they didn’t really sound angry.

  “Lilly, are you sure this is the right place?” I asked.

  She nodded, and handed me the map. “Check for yourself if you want to. Let’s blow this place into the next world.”

  I shook my head. “No way! These are just normal people! We shouldn’t be doing this! Just listen to them speaking. How can you heartlessly kill them for no reason?”

  Lilly made eye contact with me, and for the first time, I noticed how cold her brown eyes were. A shiver went down my back, and I instinctively took a step backwards. “Are you intending to betray the Pisces Empire, Jinx?”

  I grimaced. “No, but…”

  She reached into her vest and pulled out a little gray ball. She rotated it around in her hands, and went to pull something off of it. I realized it was a grenade too late, and she hurled it at the house. The weapon smacked into the door and stuck there. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a dud.

  Lilly shrugged. “That was my only grenade.”

  “So can we go now? We can tell the King to go screw himself.”

  Lilly nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  We both turned around and headed away from the house. We were about halfway to the palace when Lilly suddenly stopped. I turned to her, frowning, and she held up a finger for me to wait. She reached into her coat and pulled out a little remote. I stared at it incomprehensively, and she pressed a button on it. A moment later, a mushroom cloud rose into the air behind us, and a wave of sound blasted me off my feet.

  She pulled two wax earplugs out, and tossed them on the ground. “There. The job is finished.”

  My ears were ringing, and my vision was flickering with black. She glanced at me, and rolled her eyes. “You got nailed in the back of the head with a piece of debris. Idiot.”

  I felt a flame rising in my chest. “You monster! You killed them! You killed them for no reason, and you lied to me!”

  She spat on the ground in front of me. “Come back when I care. War isn’t for babies, so don’t be a coward.”

  I wrapped my right hand around my pendant, and a warm thrum of power rushed through me. My eyes narrowed. In a swift movement, I lifted the pendant and threw it onto the ground. Flames erupted along my right arm, and I lunged forward. Lilly easily dodged my punch and kicked me in the back.

  I tumbled forward and fell face first into the ground. She planted her boot on my back and pressed my face into the ground. “The only reason I haven’t killed you yet is because the Pisces Empire needs someone to get an army, and you fit. Got that, worm?”

  The flames on my arm leaped upwards, and she yelped. She jumped off of me, and I got to my feet. I charged at her, swinging my flaming arm like a club. She leaned back to dodge it, and I slipped past her guard.

  I pulled my energy dagger from my pocket, and the blade shimmered to life. I jumped forward and pressed it to her neck, drawing a thin line of blood.

  “The only reason I haven’t killed you yet is because I’m not a murderer like you are,” I hissed, and shoved her in the back.

  She stumbled onto her injured leg and fell to the ground. I turned the dagger off and slipped it into my pocket. Lilly rolled over, and stared at me. “You’re an idealistic fool.”

  “You’re a murdering psychopath.”

  She grimaced, and pulled a bandage out of a pocket in her shirt and wrapped the wound. “The fire sealed the wound, so you don’t really need a bandage,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “How do you know about that? You said you don’t like fighting, yet you know about treating battle injuries. Besides, the bandage will help avoid infection.”

  I shrugged. “I’m fine with helping people, just not the causing them to need help part.”

  The steady thrum of running alerted me to another’s presence as a guard ran up to us. “How goes the termination of the rebels? The Lord King Hamburger saw the explosion and sent me to find out what was going on.”

  I smirked a little, but it was a bad attempt. “The rebels are dead. Bring us to Hamburger.”

  The guard nodded. “Can your partner move on her own?”

  Lilly nodded. “Just give me a stick.”

  The guard took his weapon off of his back and emptied it into the sky. He tossed her the used weapon. “Will that work?”

  Lilly nodded. “Yeah, this will be fine. Thank you.”

  My eyes narrowed, and I jumped behind the guard, turning my Energy Dagger on. I pressed it to his throat. “Tell them to come out.”

  “Wh-what? What are you talking about?” he stuttered.

  I kept silent, and he sighed. “Come out.”

  Several other guards came out of the bushes along the road. “How did you know?” he asked.

  “You were kind. The guards that the Hamburger King had were brutal. They would have told Lilly to walk on her own. Or they would have shot her to put her out of her pain. You’re rebels, aren’t you?”

  One of the rebels nodded. “Right you are. I assume you see our problem with ya? You just blew our base to hell and took two of our friends with it.”

  I turned off the dagger, and pushed the rebel away. “You guys have to leave now. Lilly will attack you the second she can pull her pistol.”

  Sure enough, Lilly was struggling with the weapon. “Run!” I snapped.

  They hesitated for a moment, and one went to pull his own weapon. I chucked a rock at him and it whizzed by his head. It smashed the sights on his gun, and he dropped it in surprise. I glared at them, and they all turned and ran.

  “Whew. I got lucky there. I guess those days of throwing paperweights at people helped out after all.”

  Lilly tossed me my pendant, and I slipped it back on. “You only threw a paperweight at someone one time.”

  I shrugged. “Let’s go get the darn troops from that fat cow and get out of here.”

  She nodded. “I can agree with you there.”

  She picked the empty weapon up from where she had dropped it when she had gone to draw her pistol, and leaned on it. Then we stumbled slowly towards the castle looming in the distance.