Chapter 18

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The next morning I wake up really early, and can't go back to sleep. I look beside me and find Neil already awake, staring at the ceiling. "What are you thinking about?" I ask.

"I decided I'm gonna do it."

"What?"

"Blow up the planets. Or at least Mars' capitol." He says matter-of-factly. "How else will all this fighting end?" I shrug. As much as I'm against him blowing people up, he's right.

"How will you do it? Do you have the technology down here? Will you like, reroute the air bombs we have to go directly to mars?"

"No. You see and hear air bombs coming. You have time to send your own missiles up to meet them and blow them up before they hit the ground." He says. " If I can, I'll blow them up internally. I'll somehow rig a bomb in the core of the planet. I think I could do it, what with the planets' magnetics in the core. The only problem is that the scientists have messed with it over the years, so that all the planets' magnetics are connected. It might be hard to blow up one planet without blowing up the others too." He trails off, lost in thought.

I decide to help him. So for the rest of the day while everyone's out fighting the Mars men, we scavenge up supplies he can use, machines he can repurpose, to help him plan the bombing. We build up our lair in one of the Metal Heads. We clear out all the supplies in it and move them to the next building. Then Neil sets up all the electronics and gadgets and gets to work.

"How do you know so much about all this? How do you know how to rig a bomb on Mars? I don't know what half these objects do, or how on Earth they could help us." I ask him after a while.

He's silent for quite some time, and then he says, "Before your family took me in, my dad worked for Earth's nuclear weapon industry. I never mentioned it because we were supposed to keep it a secret. The other planets didn't even know Earth had weapons. They were only a precaution though, and most were never used."

"But my father was a genius." He continues. "He knew everything about everything when it came to technology. And he knew everything about bombs, and about different kinds of explosions and how to resist them. He taught me a bit, and although I was never as good at it as him, I learned a lot. I never thought I would have a chance to use that skill, but here we are."

I never knew any of this. It occurs to me that although I've known Neil literally my entire life, there's still so much I don't know about him.

He works all day, only stopping when I offer him a snack or some water. We go down below again for dinner, and one of the Rebel Leaders makes an announcement. "We have some grave news." He says through the bullhorn. "We have just received word that Mars was under the impression that we fled to Saturn. And because of that...they bombed the neutral planet and killed thousands." A murmur breaks out across the room. "Although they believed they've killed us, which means we now have the element of surprise on our side. We can launch a counterattack before they realize we're still here."

Everyone starts talking all at once, and Neil leaves the room, heading up the stairs and through the trap door. I hurry to follow him out before people realize we left. "Neil!" I call after him. I jog to catch up. He runs into our Metal Head and pounds his fist onto one of the machines. "Stop!" I yell.

"Cecily, that was an entire planet of innocent, neutral lives. Lives that I could've saved! With all this-" He sweeps his arm out, gesturing to the gadgets around him. "I could've saved them! I could've hacked into Mars' system or something...stopped the bombing. I could have done something." His voice drops, "But now that entire planet is dead." He stops for a moment, lost in thought, but speaks up again, angry. "And what's more, Saturn was our last hope! Now Jupiter has no chance of aid coming from anywhere. It's about 150 of us, against thousands of Mars men who are dropping humanity's numbers faster than we can count. We have no chance. It's a suicide mission."

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