Read Online Masked by Janelle Stalder - Free Book Online

had life been like for her, growing up through her teenage years with only Roman and Ludwig to offer her guidance? Bridgette had so many questions when it came to her sister, but she wouldn’t have the chance to ask them if she didn’t complete her father’s plan. There was no doubt in her mind that Douglas Hatcher wouldn’t even blink if it came to killing his youngest daughter.
    She looked over at the duffle bag sitting in the corner of her room. Inside it was a bomb the size of a small electronic apparatus with enough power to destroy more than half the building. Her father had told her to either set it in the basement or up on the roof. Either choice would offer plenty of destruction. She was not to put it in the actual room, she was told. He was afraid they’d scan the room for any bugs before the meeting. Apparently the device would show up on such a scan.
    How anyone could get in to plant a device was beyond her – well, except she was going to do it. Her situation was slightly different though. If it wasn’t for the disguise of Weapon X, she’d never have gotten into this building. It had more soldiers securing it than she thought necessary, but it definitely made it hard for enemies to infiltrate it.
    With all this in mind, she decided she might as well get some work done if she couldn’t sleep. The clock said it was two in the morning. Hopefully she could wear off some energy to the point where she’d just crash without her mind going over that day’s horrible events.
    Donning her mask and black clothes, minus boots and the tape she wore to flatten her chest, she headed out of her room. There weren’t very many people walking the halls at this time of night, so she felt safe to venture out the way she was. No one would see her anyway, where she was going.
    It took a while to find them, but eventually Bridgette found the stairs that led up to the roof area. By the time she got there, she was out of breath. Climbing that many floors definitely left a burn in her thighs and calves. She wasn’t sure if the door would lock behind her, so just to be safe she placed a brick that happened to be near it in the opening.
    Walking to the edge of the building, she sucked in a breath at the view waiting for her. New Berlin – all of it. The city lay beneath her, as far as the eye could see. The high fences separating the upper section from the ghettos chopped the city into pieces, creating almost an octagon shape that surrounded the inner city where the buildings weren’t quite as run down, and the people weren’t as repressed. There was the eastern and western ghetto, but both areas curved, hugging that upper section around the outside, their areas dark and ugly looking in comparison.
    Electricity wasn’t as readily available in those areas, the old street posts no longer shining down on the shiny black surfaces of the wet pavement. Lights in open windows of houses still habitable flickered, not from bulbs, but from the candles they were forced to use in substitution. So many buildings were nothing but shadows, their walls crumbled and destroyed, no longer safe for people to live in.
    Her eyes moved away from the area that had been her home only last week, and looked to the western ghetto, only to see much of the same thing. She didn’t know much about that side of the city, but she knew they weren’t much better off.
    Both areas surrounded the jewel that was downtown New Berlin. She scanned her closer surroundings, admiring how the buildings had been re-built and repaired to look just as they had before the war. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought the horror of bombs and gunfire had never touched this area of the world. It was as though a protective shield had surrounded it, saving the buildings there from being destroyed to nothing but rubble.
    But she knew better. This area had taken just as big a hit. Ludwig Tennebris set about reconstructing it almost immediately. The results were