Apex Five: Mech Elite novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Answered

Dane's white frame fired.

A hammer of red light left its chest and hit every silver frame in the wedge at once.

The Anchor boxes screamed, all five together, and a wall of copied pulse came down on my head.

I went to my knees in Old Nail's cockpit.

My ears rang.

My nose was bleeding into my mouth.

On the big screens, sixty thousand people watched Old Nail stagger sideways, the blade guttering in its hand.

"Wynne!" Ronan shouted, over the private line. "Get out of the link!"

"I can't."

"Wynne, he's stacking five recordings of you. It'll kill you."

"It's not me."

"What?"

"It's not me." My voice shook. "It's a copy. A copy of me from four years ago, and I know that girl. She was tired. She was scared."

I put my burned hand flat on the blade casing.

"She never knew what she was doing," I said. "I do."

I stopped fighting the noise.

I let it come all the way in.

I took the copies of me, all five, the tired girl and the scared girl and the girl who said yes to Dane in the dark.

I did not push them out.

I took each one by the hand and told her to stop.

The four cores in the blade went from red to white.

Then I felt them, and I knew they were not alone.

The scout was in them.

The heavy gunner was in them.

Mira's frame was in them, and so was every dead Apex frame I had ever carried, four years of me, soaked into the metal.

They did not belong to Pryce.

They never had.

They answered me.

"Down," I said.

Across the Ring, the red lights on the Anchor boxes went out.

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