Unwilling to Back Down (Survival of the Fittest Book 2)

by Shawn Keys

  “Uhh, sure, guess they might have thought of that.”

  Dirk frowned, then raised his pistol and shot the operative in the face. Useless. He paused, then regretted the action almost immediately. It had felt good to dispose of a stupid tool, but the other operatives around him would be concerned they were expendable. They were expendable, but Dirk had to remember they didn’t see themselves that way, and he needed to keep it that way. Scowling with the need to goad them back into action, he said, “We’re going to lose the helicopter support because of him! He’s wasted their time and we can’t get another one up here for another hour! All of us are dead if information about the Dawn gets out. You all understand that, right? Stop fucking around, and hunt these people down.”

  Settling into place behind his driver, he smacked him on the back a little harder than might be necessary. “Go!”

  He hadn’t exactly inspired them, but every operative there knew the penalty for even seeming to be less than 100% engaged.

  Chapter 13

  Kyle stood next to Chloe, Dazz and Rebecca as they watched the blocky, remote-broadcasting van kicking up dust as it roared down the country lane toward them. “Megan figures they’re going to run out of room within the next hour. They’ve played a few games that Laura learned from her father to throw them off and slow them down, but it hasn’t bought them any more time.”

  Chloe shivered. “Let’s hope it’s enough.”

  Kyle glanced at her. “If it comes to it, and this doesn’t work, I’ll call Lark. I don’t know if he’ll bite, but I’ll offer him my head. I’m the start of it all. I won’t promise to keep quiet, but maybe he’ll take my life for the others.”

  Dazz growled, “Don’t be an idiot. He’ll back-stab you for sure.”

  “Yeah, but he can’t bargain if the others are dead. If I can buy them a stay of execution, even for just a couple hours, we might be able to figure something out.”

  Chloe shook her head. “It’s not going to come to that. We’re going to rip them a new butthole right here and now.”

  Kyle looked over his shoulder. “Soo-Yun setting up what she needs?”

  Chloe nodded. “In the basement, where the bullets won’t penetrate quite as easy.”

  “Where’s Jackie?” he wondered.

  Dazz smirked. “Going over the script of what you intend to say, making sure nothing in it is a lie. Might get us all lynched, but at least we’ll go down spouting off the heaven-sent truth.”

  He nodded again, then waited.

  In front of him, the truck finished the run in from the main road, then pulled to a stop outside the ranch house on almost the same spot as Doug had in his truck before driving off earlier.

  The door opened, and a mountain of a man ambled out. He was the lion’s share toward being seven feet tall, with quite a bit of bulk hanging on him. It wasn’t that he was fat; he had a bit of a gut, but nothing beyond what a lot of guys got from a sedentary life without enough exercise. But his hulking limbs had the opposite problem to someone like Dazz, who couldn’t see to put on any weight no matter what she ate. He looked like he put on muscle just thinking about it. He moved like a guy whose bones were dense, giving him even more weight to sling around. He’d probably sink like a stone in water, but he might go right through a wall if he got it into his mind to charge at it like a bull.

  Or a Musk Ox.

  Rebecca let out an impressed whistle. “Holy fuck.”

  Dazz grinned. “Yeah. He’s a big teddy bear, alright.”

  The hacker stomped over to the foot of the porch, eyes nearly level with those of the quartet standing there waiting for him. “Hola, amigos!” His dark hair and leathery skin might have suggested latin roots somewhere in his genes, but he was a hacker, through and through. Any color he otherwise would have had was now a little sallow after thousands of hours in front of a computer screen.

  Dazz went to the stop of the steps, greeting him with, “S’up, fucker?”

  Kyle could have laughed. That was down-right hospitable on Dazz’s scale of friendliness.

  Musk_Ox grinned back, “Hey, Dazzle. See no-one’s taken you over their knee and spanked you like they ought.”

  Kyle gave a thoughtful, “Huh. That’s what’s called for, huh?”

  Dazz glared at him. “Don’t get any ideas, lover boy.”

  “Too late. Spanking your ass red might be too much fun.” Kyle grinned even wider.

  Once again, there was the briefest flicker of something other than Dazz’s typical fire in her eyes. He had been seeing that more and more since Seattle, especially since she had left him alone with Chloe and Soo-Yun. But whatever it was, it vanished just as quickly. “Come at me. See what happens.” With a last, defiant smirk, she looked back to Musk_Ox. She made no effort to use his real name. “Done stirring up trouble?”

  He laughed, giving the others a wave of greeting. “Yeah, don’t get yer knickers in a knot, Dazzle. I come bearing gifts.” He walked over to the side of the panel van, pulling it aside to reveal the glowing screen and button-heavy control panels that made up the mobile broadcasting studio. “Aquí tienes, mis fujitivos. All you need to get on the air.” He pointed at a button glowing almost angrily red in the middle of the central console. “Hit that, and the feed will dump to your location. Better hurry, though. Won’t be long before they’ll be trying to get it back. Not sure when they’ll call the police, but they might have already done it.”

  From behind them, Jackie had just appeared, hobbling on her one good leg. “Why? What’d you do?”

  Musk_Ox’s jaw went slack as he looked up at the boldly beautiful agent. To get at her leg injury, Soo-Yun had cut away almost all of her black cargo pants. For balance, Jackie had cut the other leg away, leaving her in ragged shorts cut extremely high, hinting at the top of her hips and letting the curve of her athletic ass show itself when seeing her from behind. Her black t-shirt was still a little slick from the sweat of handling the pain, which meant it clung rather nicely to her strong, lean figure. “Uhh, oh, umm… heya, Ma’am…”

  Dazz smirked. “You sound like Kyle did last year.”

  “Hey!” Kyle jabbed her in the arm for that one.

  Before they could get into a friendly wrestling match, Jackie asked again, “Out with it. I need to know what other trouble you’ve stirred up as part of all this.” She wasn’t letting up, but her eyes opened a little wider at the sight of him. Her voice was still demanding but lost some of its edge as she pushed for answers.

  Fighting past the shock of seeing her, Musk_Ox managed to rumble out, “Left Clip_Snip and Vroomin behind to lock down the station. It was near to the end of the normal day, and the night team hadn’t shown up yet for the evening broadcast. We cut the external alarm feed so the fire department wouldn’t hear anything, then pulled the fire handles and got everyone running out. Then we chained the outer doors, I jumped in the truck, and came this way as fast as I could. You said minutes might mean life or death, so I think I broke every speeding law in the book and then some. Fortunately, didn’t run across any cop along the way who looked more than twice at me. Almost like they had some bigger fish to fry. The other two kept going. They locked every door, then chained them. Locked every platform on remote, then scrambled and broke everything they could. No idea how long it will take them to undo the mess we made and cut our feed. But it won’t be as easy as pulling some plug somewhere. I got this puppy streaming right to the satellite for re-broadcast. Even if they kill their feed, as long as some affiliate picks it up, it could be redirected and spread from there. It’s on ‘auto-accept’ to let any other network pick it up. Of course, they’ll have to want to do it. That’s up to you.” He shrugged. “Still, don’t think you have more than an hour, especially if they get the cops and fire teams in there with a pair of bolt cutters to get through all the doors in the way.”

  Kyle gave him a thankful nod. “That’s more than we could have asked for, Musk_Ox. Want to take our truck and get the hell out of here?”
<
br />   “You kicking me out?”

  Kyle shook his head. “If you want to hang around and get shot at, you’re more than welcome. Up to you. But if you stay, Dazzle here…” He took great delight in using her hacker name instead. “… is going to need to burn out your implant. If they manage to find and question your friends, they’ll know where to look for you. Then, they’ll find us a lot faster.”

  Musk_Ox chuckled. “Sure. Damned thing hasn’t given me a lick of help my whole life. Just a lot of trouble since I scanned fertile.”

  Kyle’s eyes opened wide. “You’re Persterim negative?” He looked the half-giant up and down, figuring that made a bit more sense than Kyle getting lucky. It drove home what they had been talking about earlier: with his size and power and obvious intelligence, Musk_Ox could probably qualify for a ‘superior’ rating under the Dawn’s hierarchy, but he hadn’t immediately turned into some psychotic elitist just because of it.

  “Fat load of good it’s done.” The big man shook his head. “Come on. Let’s go inside, Dazzle. You can take this chain off my neck and we can get this show on the road.”

  Jackie watched him as he stepped by, making the patio boards creak from his weight alone. He vanished inside, with Chloe and Rebecca following as well. Rebecca paused to say, “You want us to head out in about five minutes?”

  Kyle nodded. “Not that soon. If you are willing, I’d rather have you be in the first part of the broadcast. You were in there with them. They tried to destroy your life as much as Dazz’s or mine. Might lend a little credibility.”

  Rebecca smiled. “Alright. I’ll be part of the first section, then get ready.” That settled, she followed the others in.

  Kyle turned to look at Jackie, smiling. “You know Musk_Ox from somewhere?”

  “What? Oh, no. Not at all.”

  Kyle chuckled. “Fair enough. What’s his real name? He should be showing on your phone receiver for available males, right?”

  Jackie glanced down. “Franco Mendez.” She huffed, then shook her head. “Can’t believe it…”

  “Got a thing for tall men, huh?”

  She glowered at him darkly.

  Stopping his teasing, Kyle asked instead, “What do you think about what we’re going to say?”

  Latching onto the distraction, Jackie was clearly split. “I still think this is reckless. All of its untested, and some of it is paper-thin. But I don’t think any of it is wrong. Not after what we’ve seen.”

  “That’s all that matters. People will hear the truth in it. After everything that’s come out of the news, with everyone being careful to sculpt and craft and shape every message, polishing every turd until it sounds exactly like what they want, I got a feeling this is going to be a breath of fresh air.”

  Jackie warned him, “It isn’t, Kyle. I know what you mean, but this isn’t anything as mild as that. You’re going to set off a damned hurricane. It’ll be fresh alright, but it’ll break things along the way. That’s why I’m not condoning this by going on the air with you. I’m just not going to stand in the way.”

  Kyle clenched his jaw. “I respect you a lot, Jackie. But to be honest, I wouldn’t let you stop me. The Dawn is inside the FDPC, CDC and wherever else they’ve burrowed. They’re counting on us wanting to keep everything calm and stable and sane. They are set up to handle that sort of thing. We need to bring in a little chaos. Maybe what we end up breaking needs to be broken. Ever think about that?”

  She closed her eyes, wishing she didn’t. “Yes.”

  “Then let’s do it. Otherwise… Megan… Yvette… Danielle… Lily… Claire… Laura…” He said their names, one after the other, driving home how important they were to him. “They’re going to run out of time. I’m not letting that happen.”

  * * *

  George Vasquez leaned in from the outer office at the Seattle FDPC’s OPC HQ. “Umm, Sir, I think you need to see this.”

  Andrew Lark looked up from his desk and the paperwork he was trying to focus on, even when his mind was on so many other things. His attention was constantly being drawn back to the two manhunts going on: one covert and one overt. The two couldn’t be fully linked, since they were operating under two different rules of engagement. If Hutchings was found by any honest law enforcement, the operation would shift into an effort to keep him from being interrogated and then have him quietly killed in custody or ‘while trying to escape’. If he was found by a team belong to the Dawn, he could be executed immediately and save all that trouble. No matter how much he wanted to be fully invested in those efforts, he had no choice but to spend a couple hours rifling through the normal administration generated by his public office.

  Welcoming the break, he pushed away from the various reports and approval requests, stepping out into the main bullpen. He assessed who was there: George was one of the Dawn himself. So were Maria and Sylvia. Unfortunately, both Miles and Jennifer were in the office today, and both were straight FDPC. He hadn’t yet found a reason to rotate them out of the department and replace them with someone loyal.

  He shifted to the partition in his mind that governed his public persona, using only the knowledge and information that an FDPC manager would know. “What’s going on?”

  Not saying anything, George pointed up at the television they were watching.

  Andrew looked up… and saw Kyle Hutchings on the screen. Somehow, his voice came out calmly. “Turn it up.”

  Jennifer found the remote and dialed it up.

  The scene was strange. It wasn’t in a professional studio. It was possible this was coming from a movie set, but whatever it was, it looked like a living room at a country ranch house. They had moved the furniture around to allow two people to be comfortably framed by the camera they were using. A table was positioned between them. That was being used to hold up a computer that was positioned to display visual aids where normal news programs would use virtual boxes.

  Hutchings was in the middle of speaking. “… that will be difficult to hear, and almost impossible to believe. I can’t convince everyone. I wish I could. What I can do is give you all the information I have, and let you make up your mind. We were going to do this through proper channels, but they said it would take months. In that time, more people are going to die. If I didn’t act now, my friends were going to die. I couldn’t allow that. Whenever I can, I won’t make you listen to my boring voice. I’d much rather show you.”

  He gestured to the woman sitting in the other seat, who Andrew recognized from somewhere that he couldn’t immediately place. He didn’t need to. The woman introduced herself almost immediately. “My name is Rebecca Bruice. This isn’t theoretical to me. I was personally pressured to join a eugenics organization by some of the people most dear to me. I was forced to acquire certain skills. I was evaluated for suitability. Then, I was brought to a camp to be indoctrinated, which in reality equated to a final stage of brainwashing. Don’t believe it? I might not have, either. Fortunately, we have video. We have plenty more information to give you, but we decided to start here. We wanted you all to see it first-hand.” She turned and hit the ‘play’ button.

  It was Dazz’s laptop that was displaying the videos from the security cameras they had captured. With a 21-inch screen, it was the best they could do for showcasing images they wanted to talk about. For the moment, since they wanted the focus to be solely on the video, they made use of the connection Dazz had jammed into the back. The video took over the camera’s output, becoming the only thing the television audience could see.

  The videos ran through a montage that Dazz had cobbled together, focusing on the clips which caught audio snippets of instructors demanding the trainees realize they were better than ‘normal’ people. Telling them that they were about to take their place in the ranks of the Dawn, which were a law unto themselves. Not beholden to other laws. Calling them superior. Calling them elite.

  In the dead moments, Rebecca said, “What you are seeing here is a paramilitary training academy totall
y separate from any other government institutions. After they finish here, these ‘Soldiers of Dawn’ as they call themselves are parceled out into other sectors of the government and private sector. Together, they are slowly consolidating power.

  The videos cut out, and instead a piece of paper flashed up on the screen. Then another. Each of the pages was given about five seconds on screen. Not enough time to read, but long enough to see the face in the box in the upper-right corner, and to realize it was all written in a strange language. Kyle spoke in the background, “I’m aware almost no-one seeing this can read these papers. They are written in a very old language known as Aeolic Greek. This group uses that language to hide what they are doing, even if papers like this escape their control. Record these images. Anyone who has the means, translate them. You’ll see we aren’t lying. These are all former students of the camp. Some of you might even recognize them.”

  Andrew’s face hardened into stone as a piece of paper with Maria’s face came and went in the parade.

  Next to him, Jennifer gasped, whispering, “What the hell?”

  Kyle came back on the screen. “By far, the majority of these trained agents end up within the ranks of the FDPC. I want to say right now: the FDPC is not fully guilty of doing what these people have done. But we are convinced they have infiltrated that organization so totally that it is impossible to approach one without probably giving yourself up to the other. For instance, here in Seattle, the Head of the Office of Professional Accountability Andrew Lark is one of these people. When the man responsible for controlling the behavior of FDPC agents is already corrupt, they can do anything and never be held to account.”

  In spite of all his self-control, Andrew’s jaw clicked open a tick, hanging there in mild shock. He named me. Openly. No games. No innuendo. Does he have that much proof? Of course, he does. He accessed Reigns’ email and he’s in league with Claire Erinson, who reported to me only hours before I sent assassins to kill her.