the thing and display how much power and knowledge he was quickly gaining.
“Calm down!” Cin said evenly and smiled over at her. “I’m just so damn excited it’s hard to control. Don’t you love this? The freedom of it? We’re flying! No one other than the elite and their minions can do this, but look at us! Look around at how beautiful this world is to behold from this height.”
Loquan snorted in disgust. “You’re a soldier, you’ve been flying before, and I don’t see the big fucking deal. There have been pictures of this kind of thing on TV for years.”
Cin frowned at the memory of the times he’d flown before. “We were packed in like cattle with barely enough room for the gear we wore. The windows were covered so we couldn’t even see outside, and on the way back from a mission, the overlords would usually have the pilot pretend we were going to crash.”
“If you knew they were going to do it and it wasn’t real, what difference did it make? I don’t see the big deal or why you’d even bring it up.” Loquan shrugged it off.
“Mostly, the new kids reacted and were killed the moment we landed.” Cin tried to block the images from his mind and was grateful when his nanites helped him wall it off and release the pain from his soul.
“That makes no sense.” Loquan didn’t understand the logic behind it. “If you guys had just won a battle for them, why kill their best?”
“Because if anyone reacted to the stunt, it meant they had PTSD, and the elite’s believed they were no longer useful to them as soldiers.” For the first time, Cin was able to say that without the crushing emotions that went along with reliving it.
Cin wasn’t one of the casualties because of the banned practices he employed in secret. On every mission he’d ever been on to apprehend someone accused of sedition or insurrection, Cin had stolen any books he could get his hands on before they were destroyed.
The collection, hidden in the walls where Cin had put holes and built shelves, were all behind elaborate propaganda posters. He’d gotten his first book nearly two decades ago and had spent months secretly terrified the book would be found, and he’d be killed. That was before Cindrac had gotten to a point where he welcomed death.
Since that first book, on how and why people should meditate, his collection grew to more than a hundred. He’d read each one more times than he could count and hadn’t turned on his TV since then.
Some books were about science, mathematics, and philosophy, and Cin devoured each of them, learning everything that he could. Other tomes were fantastical stories of an earlier Earth where slavery was banned, and people were free. No matter the subject, each was treasured by Cin.
The slight warning in his mind directed Cin’s attention back to the task at hand. He landed on the roof of the next lab and turned to an eager Loquan.
“Same as before. You hit the computers in the labs on the east side of the building, and I’ll blow those on the west. We’ll meet back up here.” Cindrac studied Loquan’s face as he spoke.
“Got it!” Loquan jumped out of the vehicle, and Cin noticed the slight trembling in her legs.
Filing her fear of flying away in the back of his mind, Cin got out and rendered everyone unconscious inside the building, hoping it would deter Loquan from ruthlessly killing more people.
At this point, the only deaths Cin wanted to see were those of the overlords. They were the architects and rulers of this nightmare world of slavery and brutality and deserved the justice he was ready to mete out.
Once the elevator stopped at the lab floor, and Loquan was out of sight, Cin ran the rest of the way to the computers he wanted to access. An explosion rocked the other side of the building as Cindrac gained control of the first computer and pulled the system's information.
Half a dozen more explosions went off while Cin harvested the information from the private computer systems. Like the last, it wasn’t connected to the global network and could only be accessed in person.
When he finished, Cin destroyed it before causing the other computers on his side of the building to overheat and catch fire, making sure it ruined all the hard drives.
Cindrac was making his way back to the roof when he ran into Loquan.