Apex Five: Mech Elite novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: What's Left

Dane's white frame walked toward me across the broken Ring.

There was no Anchor box and no copied pulse, only a man with his hands on the controls and every eye in the city on him.

He was a good pilot by hand.

I had never seen it before, because I had never needed to.

He swung a fist at Old Nail's head, and I took it on the blade, and my knees nearly went.

"You don't have anything left," Dane said, panting on the open channel. "I can see your frame shaking from here."

"I know."

"Four cores and one girl. You've got nothing."

"Then come and take it."

He came.

I let him swing twice more.

I let him think it was working.

On the third swing I stepped inside the arm and put the blade through the white frame's elbow.

The arm came away in a spray of sparks.

His other fist hit my shoulder plate and tore it half off.

I did not feel it.

I cut the left knee.

The white frame dropped onto it with a crash.

I cut the right.

Dane screamed on the channel, and the sound went out through every speaker in the stadium.

He fell flat on his back on the broken concrete of the Ring.

Every floodlight in the stadium was on him, and his hatch glass stared up at me.

I stood over him.

He was alive.

He was locked in, as Gate law required, and his hands were beating on the glass.

"Wynne!" The voice was a child's now. "Wynne, stop, please, I'll tell them anything, I'll say it was me, I'll say it was all me!"

"You did say it was all you," I said. "You said it into a microphone."

"I love you!"

I looked at the face in the glass.

It was the same face I had kissed in the dark for three years, and it meant nothing at all.

"You told me to scrap all four of them," I said. "Then see what's left of me."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Apex Five: Mech Elite from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.