A young lady wearing an employee uniform approached. “Ma’am, can I help you find something?”
At the same moment, the window of the sedan across the street lowered and an arm waved. That’s it.
Liz offered a friendly smile. “Oh, no. Thank you. I’m just browsing.”
As soon as the girl walked away, Liz loudly coughed three times, telling the Grays that Kyle was on the air, and rushed out the door.
Liz’s heart pounded. She didn’t have a place to go yet, but as soon as the message was delivered, she would. Right now, she had to find a TV. She was supposed to wait in the store, but seeing Kyle deliver his message was something she couldn’t miss.
****
Javier lingered on a corner down the street from the Capitol Building, waiting for his signal. He feigned an interest in a nearby statue but frequently glanced at the traffic light.
They went out without a sound. Damien’s EMP worked.
The slamming brakes of a few cars and the swears of their drivers provided all the cover noise Javier needed. Or rather, all the cover Damien’s voice coming through the walkie needed. “Set.”
Breathless, Javier jogged towards the Capitol Building. Security personnel were unloading from SUVs parked in front of the steps. There wasn’t a street there. They’d stopped amid tourists—and a few hundred Seed members—wandering around the area. While some officers ran into the building, others corralled the spectators towards the street. Could he engage the second EMP without being detected? Could Sam engage hers on the other side of the building?
He ducked in the shade of a tree a hundred yards from the building. It wasn’t as close as he was supposed to get, but it would have to do. If he was caught and searched there would be no EMP. At least the security cameras were out. If they weren’t, someone would already be heading his way, no doubt.
Holding his breath, he pulled the device from his backpack and armed it, just like Damien had showed him. With the flick of a few switches, everything electronic in a quarter-mile radius would be fried.
Here goes. He triggered the device. It didn’t make any indication that anything happened, but a few tourists shaking their phones offered confirmation. Thank God for modern electronics. He held his walkie talkie to his mouth. “Set.” A minute later, Sam repeated her own confirmation.
Somewhere around the building, Charlie and Jonah were lighting the smoke bombs. Instead of heading for a warehouse, where he was supposed to join Robert and the waiting Seed residents, Javier swallowed and ran for the Capitol’s front steps. He had more to do to make sure their efforts had a lasting impact.
****
On the north side of the Capitol Building, Charlie lit the fuses of three smoke bombs and squeezed them into an exterior vent. They wouldn’t produce enough smoke to force anyone out like the fire had done back in Phoenix, but all they needed was to set off alarms. Making the sprinklers go off would be a nice touch but was unlikely. After lighting and distributing his remaining bombs, he sealed the vent with plastic wrap. It was the only way to keep the smoke from escaping back outside.
He didn’t know how much time they had before the security cameras came back online, but Damien had said it would take hours for everything to return to normal. A building less important than this one could take days to recover. Hours would be quick. He could only hope the government wasn’t more efficient than they all thought.
Crouching on the edge of the building and hiding behind convenient trees, Charlie moved towards the side entrance. From the buildings across the street and neighboring blocks, thousands of people were coming his way.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Charlie turned towards the voice. A young cop—likely just out of the academy—pointed a gun at him.
Great. “Is standing by a tree illegal now?” Charlie made a point of obviously sizing up the cop. “A capital offense?”
“We’re clearing the area. You need to move on.”
“Like they are?” Charlie tilted his head toward the crowd, which he could no longer see but he assumed had grown. “Will you get all of them to move with that little pea shooter?”
While the cop gaped at the mass of people, Charlie karate-chopped his shoulder and pried the gun from his hand. That was too easy. “They don’t train you guys so well anymore.”
“Drop the weapon!”
This time the command came from a woman cop flanked by four other guards.
Sighing, Charlie let the gun hit the ground and put up his hands while pointing across the street. “Okay, but you have bigger fish to fry."
****
Liz rushed down the street, peering into every window. A café four doors down from the grocery store had a TV on and tuned to a sports channel.
She pushed her way inside and located the channel button on the side of the set. Holding her breath, she pressed it repeatedly. Sports. Sports. Sports. Crime show. Commercial. Commercial. News. There!
Kyle sat in front of a tiled wall, eyes boring into the camera. He had already started delivering his message. “… for our country in the Eurasian war, which was a cover for LifeFarm to take over food production on those continents. I was gravely injured. They told my family I had died. I was taken to a facility in Missouri, where LifeFarm is training a secret army that they plan to use to take total control . . .”
“The hell is this?” An old man at a nearby table stood, staring at the screen. “Who’s this guy? And where did the game go?”
Muttering moved through the café. Patrons saying things like “Another conspiracy nut,” “Is this real or a show?” and “I knew LifeFarm was dirty” reached Liz, but she didn’t acknowledge any of it. Her eyes were glued to the screen, watching her husband start a revolution.
“The time to act is now,” Kyle said while leaning forward. “Thousands in the resistance are swarming Congress and LifeFarm. Join us. Fight. The elite have had absolute control for too long. If you’ve lost a loved one in their underfunded hospitals, fight. If you were forced to defend a cause that oppressed foreign citizens, fight. If your children were plucked from you, coerced by corrupt promises, fight.”
Every voice in the café had gone silent.
“Technological advances have been withheld from us. Healthcare has been made a privilege for the wealthy. Our time is now. They don’t have as much control as they want us to think. We’re in New York and D.C. rising up as I speak. Join us if you’re in the area. If not, find recordings of this message and play it in your communities. We’ve all been lied to for decades. We The People will take our country back, and we have to do it now. We may not—”
The screen flashed then went dark. A still shot appeared with a message about technical difficulties. Liz stared, her heart begging Kyle to come back.
“My son might be alive!” a woman yelled.
Liz looked behind her. The old woman had her elbows on the table and face in her hands, sobbing. “They told me he was dead. But that man wasn’t!” She pointed to the TV.
Sirens wailed on the street. Time to leave.
Liz ran out and joined the Grays crowding the sidewalk. Cop cars had stopped in front of the network building, and officers were rushing inside.
Kyle was in a different building but she didn’t know which one. Didn’t matter right now. Their job was to meet at LifeFarm.
****
A fire alarm blared as Javier crept into the building. He found a dark corner and waited. Tourists and employees crowded the hall. Some were anxious to evacuate while others stood frozen in place, eyeing the front door and then down the hall. A faint smoky smell filled the air. It wasn’t strong enough to cough, but it was plenty to force people out. Perfect.
Liz and the others in New York were supposed to be swarming LifeFarm right about now, but of course Javier had no way to verify if they were on schedule.
“We can’t go out there. Did you see the mob?” A man in his thirties and wearing a suit pointed at the door, pleading with an officer who wa
s directing people outside. Javier thought he recognized the man from TV interviews. A Congressman. What was his name . . . Willis? Warner?
The cop mirrored the Congressman’s pointing. “You can’t stay in here, sir. We have to find out where that smoke is coming from.”
“It’s an attack! Our electronics go and now this? And where did all those people come from?” The Congressman’s skin turned beet red, showing even through his thinning, blond hair. A vein in his neck protruded.
This guy had something to hide.
“Sir, you need to evacuate. Right now. I don’t think you want me forcing you out with all those people watching.”
“You’re threatening me?” The Congressman stretched up. “I can have your job!”
“Take it.” The officer pushed his way past the angry man, directing more compliant lingerers to the door.
Javier moved into the crowd, hiding in plain sight, as he made his way to the opposite side of the door, where the representative still hadn’t moved. He inched his way into earshot. “How old are you, Congressman?”
His attention snapped to Javier. “Excuse me?”
“I was just wondering how long LifeFarm has been buying you off with a mysterious white powder.”
The color drained from his face, and he took off down the hall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Javier smirked and caught up. “Willis, right?”
He scoffed. “Warner. Jeff Warner. If you’re pretending to know everything, maybe learn the names of your representatives.”
Javier ran in front of Warner, stopping him before he reached the stairs. “I thought you might like to know why you aren’t able to contact your bosses at LifeFarm. Oh, and I know how to combat the virus you guys are hiding.”
“Is that so?” Warner shoved Javier out of the way and stomped up the stairs. A guard passed them, but he seemed uninterested.
Javier followed. “Let’s see. The powder was discovered twenty-five years ago, so that would make you . . . sixty? Am I close?”
Warner didn’t look back. When he reached the third floor, he branched off.
Javier kept after him. “I’m curious. Have you passed any legislation you found immoral so LifeFarm would keep you young? Was it worth it?”
“Look, kid.” Warner stopped outside an office door. “You’ve obviously been reading too many conspiracy sites.” He pressed his thumb onto a glass plate next to the door, then slumped. “Right. No electronics.” He knocked, and a few seconds later a well-dressed woman opened the door.
Warner pushed his way inside, and Javier stuck his arm in the opening, stopping him from slamming the door. “People are dying. You need to look outside. Those people know what I know, and we’re about to tell the world. Which side do you want to be on when that happens?”
****
The crowd descended on the Capitol Building, and Charlie grinned. The cops who’d stopped him were no match for the Seeds. They gave up and ran around to the west side of the building again, where they would likely join their ilk and fight.
Let them.
Charlie joined the mass of people moving across the grounds, yelling the truths about LifeFarm. They staged a phony war. They caused a virus. They control Congress with a drug. Alone, they would have sounded crazy. In a group of thousands, they were a resistance.
Instead of shouting, Charlie listened, struggling to recall what he believed when he was on the other side, back when Mattson had tried to convince him of what these people had known for over two decades. If he hadn’t been shot and jailed by his own, he could possibly still think that way.
Mattson. Had he succeeded in taking down the news networks? Whatever gains they made here largely depended on how many in the general public could be persuaded to go against LifeFarm, and that meant hijacking the media. The revolution started today, but if they didn’t have enough support, it wouldn’t stick.
As the crowd headed to the west side of the building, shots rang out, echoing across the courtyard. A scream followed.
Before Charlie could process what happened, the movement of the entire group accelerated from front to back, rushing the guards on the stairs. Oh no. Charlie squeezed his eyes closed as several more shots cracked.
****
Pain shot through Javier’s jaw, followed by the door to the Congressman’s office slamming shut.
Great.
Javier rubbed the spot. Thankfully, the old man didn’t have much power to his punch. He walked to the window to see if the Seeds had arrived.
The sight made him freeze in place.
Two lay dead—or bleeding, at least—in the courtyard just shy of the steps. A few tended to them, but the others were rushing the door; a few were fighting the guards. Something had gone wrong.
Charlie, Sam, and Jonah were supposed to be in that crowd. Where were they?
Javier ran down the stairs.
People poured into the building, pinning guards to the wall. Others held professionally-dressed men and women by their arms, keeping them from going anywhere. The mass of humanity behind them made escape impossible.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
“What are you doing?” Javier yelled over the crowd.
One of the suited men dropped, and a civilian punched him repeatedly.
“Stop!” Javier couldn’t yell loudly enough. While a few looked up, most ignored him.
Javier grabbed the nearest thing he could find—fake flowers in a glass vase set on a thin table against the wall—and thrust it to the ground. It shattered, making several in the mob freeze. “I said stop! Now!”
The man beating the Congressman glared at Javier, incredulous. “They shot at us!”
“So?” Javier ran over. “We knew that might happen. This could ruin everything. You know that. Were you waiting in your Seed all this time to blow it?”
After staring at Javier for a second, the man released the Congressman. In the rest of the hall, chaos continued.
Javier climbed onto the table and cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling as loudly as he could. “Stop!”
With the exception of a few holdouts, the entire crowd looked at him. Those slow to respond followed suit shortly after.
“Let them go.” Javier pointed to the officials the Seed members had captured. “This isn’t why we’re here. Is this what you’ve been preparing for?”
“We have to protect ourselves,” a woman said.
“Yes, but this isn’t how to do that. How will we stop LifeFarm if they see us as combatants? All they’ll do is fight back. Then what? They would be stronger. Is that what you want?”
They stared at him. Those holding officials released them.
“People not affected by the EMPs have no doubt arrived, and they have cameras.” Javier pointed outside. “We have to be seen as the nonviolent force. LifeFarm staged phony wars to get their way. Violence is what they know. We have to be different if we’re going to make a difference. Now,” he hopped off the table and approached a Congresswoman, “I’m going to find one of those cameras, and you and your colleagues are going to tell the truth about LifeFarm for the first time.”
“What if we don’t?” she asked, looking down her nose at him.
“Then don’t. Between our message that aired in New York and your lies, people will know the truth either way. Your job depends on what you say in the next few minutes.”
She laughed. “So naïve.”
“Maybe.” Javier ran to the door and yelled out to the mass of humanity, “Does anyone here have a working camera?”
A few hands went up, and others ran to him. A middle-aged woman reached him first, thrusting her phone into his hand. “I heard that soldier on the TV. LifeFarm took my daughter from me. I’ll do whatever I can to take them down.”
Javier couldn’t help but smile. Kyle’s message had gone out. If all was going well there, they had the powder in hand.
He pushed through the crowd and went back inside, switche
d on the video camera, and focused it on the Congresswoman. “Ma’am, tell us everything you know about LifeFarm.”
****
“Liz!”
Nearly at the growing mass of Grays assembled across the street from LifeFarm, she stopped. Kyle! She ran to him, crashing against him and wrapping her arms around him. “You did it. Half the people from the café are here with us. They’ve all lost people.”
“Café?” Kyle leaned back. “What were you doing there?”
“I had to see your broadcast. Come on.” Taking his hand, she pulled him into the middle of the group, where any cops or unfriendly bystanders wouldn’t see him. “Where’s Mattson?”
“I told him to stay inside. He’s not doing well. The infection is getting worse.”
She stopped, surrounded by Kyle’s soldiers. “What infection?”
“From the gunshot.” He eyed the building and cleared his throat. “We need to finish this and get him treatment.” He let her go and pushed his way to the front of the group, apparently unconcerned about being recognized. Facing everyone, he scanned the group. “This is it, everyone. You know what to do. Remember why we’re here.” With an arm wave, he led them across the street while pulling something from his pocket.
Four armed guards had stationed themselves outside LifeFarm’s entrance. Without a word, Kyle, Kristen, and two others went straight for them and tased them to the ground, as if they’d trained for this exact scenario. The guards didn’t have a chance to fire a shot.
Pride welled in Liz’s chest. She hadn’t known what to expect from Kyle’s Grays, but it wasn’t this. The focus these people displayed was unlike anything she’d seen.
Kyle broke the doors open, and the mob crowded inside, filling the lobby. They branched off into hallways, each knowing the target—the drug. Deinix. The only reason LifeFarm had control of the government. It could be locked away, but the people around her had trained to deal with that circumstance.
Liz followed the group following Kyle. He beelined for a stairwell, as if he’d worked here. Had he studied blueprints?
She was panting by the time they reached the fourth floor. Three employees met them at the stairwell. One had a gun.
The Seventh Seed Page 20