Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  But the military forewarned could put up an overwhelming defense. General Stone’s conversations unfolded to reveal that there were already tanks stationed in the area, soldiers posted at all entrances, and unmanned drones circling the skies.

  It all would have been wonderful, too, if the Brotherhood cells didn’t have a Level 4 projector on their side.

  Only five minutes from Prom-B, a fireball lit up the night sky. Oliver gawked out his window as the massive flame ascended against the darkness. General Stone leaned over to catch a glimpse and then barked for his driver to step on the gas.

  Red and blue lights flashed in the windshield, signaling other cars to get out of the way.

  “We’re going into a fire-fight?” Oliver asked. “Are you kidding me?”

  “How else can we stop it?” General Stone whipped his phone out and snarled orders into it, commands for the drones to take out all enemy targets. His face contorted. “What do you mean, there are none? You can’t pick out one of those ragged little Brotherhood transports in the dark?”

  The person on the other end of the call insisted that there were no transports in the area. Two more fireballs burst from the horizon, followed quickly by a couple of loud booms. As the car turned down the private road that led to Prometheus-B, the rat-a-tat of gunfire punctured the night.

  Was this car armored? Oliver could only hope.

  They crashed through the school’s outer gates to complete and utter chaos. The overhead floodlights were on, but the smoke and haze of combat obscured the gruesome details of the scene. Soldiers fought against fellow soldiers. One tank was on its side in flames, destroyed by a direct hit from another tank, which had then turned its gun on Prom-B itself. The central building was on fire, half of its main aspect destroyed by artillery rounds.

  And suddenly, the human chaos froze. Flames licked the air, but all gunfire and infighting ceased, as though someone had pressed a pause button on everyone.

  This false calm lasted for ten agonizing seconds before the screaming began. Soldiers dropped their weapons and ran to their fallen comrades. Others climbed from the tank, dazed as they stared up at the burning building. One of them rushed with a fire extinguisher to the other tank.

  People poured from the exits of Prom-B: administrators, students, handlers, and staff. They looked as though they had encountered a pack of wild beasts. The projection’s intent was purely destructive. They had been in the process of tearing one another apart.

  Oliver gaped at the tumult through the darkened glass of his passenger-side window. Through it all, a certain distinctive presence receded.

  And with it, dread pierced his heart.

  Abel Ross didn’t need a whole slew of Brotherhood fighters on his side. He had Kennedy. As long as she cooperated, he would have access to as many troops as he wanted.

  The possibilities for destruction and carnage were endless, and only Oliver stood in their way. No wonder Abel had orchestrated to get the stronger null retrieved from Altair. No wonder he had come after him and Cedric when they left the Brotherhood base on foot.

  No wonder he had tried to kill him. That must have been his intent all along.

  “I should’ve aimed better,” Oliver muttered, his breath fogging up the glass. General Stone had already exited the vehicle, barking orders, and the driver, who had been left as a guard, was too caught up in the events around them to pay the null-projector any heed.

  Which was probably for the best. Oliver didn’t need a witness to his homicidal reflections.

  Chapter 18

  Crisis Management

  Monday, February 25, 9:34 PM PST, Prom-B

  The main building was a complete loss. By the time emergency services extinguished its flames, the smoke and water damage meant that salvaging the place would be as costly as rebuilding it from scratch. The dormitories and gymnasium had sustained minimal damage, mostly from debris and shrapnel. Students and administrators not in need of extensive medical treatment were remanded to their rooms, there to pass the long night.

  What would become of them the following day was anyone’s guess. The school could not continue classes in its current state. Likely, they would get transferred out to the three remaining Prometheus campuses. Or four, if Prom-E factored into the mix.

  General Stone wanted a full account of events, of the damage to the school, of the losses among the troops sent to guard it. After a tour of the area, he set up temporary headquarters in a rec room on the ground floor of the dorms. Oliver, mute and withdrawn as he had observed the destruction that lay around him, was not permitted to leave Stone’s side.

  Prom-B’s Principal Lee remained with the general as well, despite a scratched face and a torn dress shirt. His necktie had vanished. Oliver had only encountered the man a handful of times, but even under such harried circumstances he found it strange to see Principal Lee, previously always neat as a pin, in such careless appearance.

  The answer to this unspoken question came in whispered rumors from the administrators. During the course of Kennedy’s insidious projection, the principal’s administrative assistant, Michelle, had tried to strangle her boss with his tie. Her black eye testified the abuse she had received from him in return, and the way the pair avoided one another did doubly so.

  They were lucky not to be numbered among the casualties.

  Thirteen people had died in the chaos. Another fifty had required hospitalization. Many of them were in critical condition, from either gunshot wounds or blunt-force trauma.

  “We need to arrange for counseling for the students,” Principal Lee said when there was a lull in activity in the makeshift situation room.

  General Stone harrumphed. “How many counselors do you have with clearance to work here?”

  “Two,” said the principal, a scowl upon his brows. The number was grossly insufficient for the broad spectrum of need, but getting clearance to work on any Prometheus campus was a drawn-out process. Especially in this instance, when a projector was the source of the trauma, outsiders would not receive access to work with students or staff.

  “Can’t you draw the counselors from other campuses?” Principal Lee abruptly asked. “This is an emergency, not something our two can deal with on their own. Surely there are other resources—”

  “You will make do with what you have,” General Stone said. “At the moment, it would be unwise to bring others to the campus. You have nowhere to keep them.”

  “There are hotels in the area.”

  The general remained stalwart in his decision. “Have your staff assess the worst cases and start from there. Don’t question my orders,” he added when Principal Lee opened his mouth to protest.

  As far as Oliver knew, the two men were close to equals, both the principal administrators of a Prometheus Satellite campus. Whether General Stone’s slight advantage came from his military rank or something else was a mystery, though. Technically, within the Government-Civilian Alliance, the civilian authorities held as much clout as their government counterparts.

  Principal Lee briefly left to issue the counseling orders among his lesser staff. Something the general said stuck in Oliver’s mind, though. It would be unwise to bring others to the campus. Had he left open the possibility of Kennedy and Abel returning to complete the revenge they had started?

  Could they really be so foolish?

  For perhaps the fiftieth time that night, the general’s cell phone rang. “This is Stone,” he said into the receiver. He listened with growing fury on his face.

  “I want drones circling the area. Shoot to kill.” The person on the other end of the line must have protested, because the general’s fury ignited. “Do it! You have the girl’s picture! I want her dead before she has the whole city in flames!”

  He disconnected the call. “Doyle,” he called to his driver across the room. “We have another situation. Come on. You too, null,” he added to Oliver.

  The command caught Principal Lee’s attention. “Wait. You’re not ta
king Oliver with you, are you? We need him here.”

  “There’s a full-blown riot in the University District,” General Stone said, “and I’m the one who decides where a null is needed most. Don’t you forget it.”

  He swept from the room, back out into the chilly night. Oliver slinked out the door behind him, enlightened as to why Principal Lee had not left the general’s side all evening. The expression on Lee’s face as they left gave him away.

  He was terrified of a repeat projection, terrified of falling victim to it.

  Oliver, not for the first time in his life, silently thanked the stars that had made him immune to such invasive powers. He didn’t envy Kennedy, either. From what the general had said, Prom-E was no longer her future destination. She had become a liability, and liabilities were summarily destroyed.

  They didn’t make it the hour-plus drive to Seattle’s University District before General Stone received another report of chaos. The general cursed a blue streak. Seattle had a curfew in place, but under the influence of Kennedy’s projections, people were leaving their houses and apartments to riot. The facial-recognition software that was supposed to pinpoint her location, too, was drawing a blank.

  Oliver watched out of his car window as, in the distance, plumes of smoke rose against the night sky. He could only stop a projection if he was in range of the projector. He could do nothing if they didn’t know Kennedy’s whereabouts.

  “Find her,” General Stone demanded of the person on the other end of his phone call. “I want every drone within a five-mile radius looking for her.”

  It wouldn’t do any good, but Oliver wouldn’t waste his breath telling him that. The facial recognition software of a drone could be cheated with something as simple as a mask. With hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people on the streets in the middle of the night, and in the cold of winter, many of them were bound to have headwear—scarves, ski masks, hats, etc.—that could derail facial scanning on the city’s security feeds as well as the added drone surveillance.

  And sending police or military into the area in search of Kennedy or Abel would have the same effect it had produced at Prom-B: rampant damage and greater possibility of death. The common citizenry had been disarmed decades ago. The military had bullets, and in the grip of a projection, they would fire at will.

  The government sedan arrived at the University District to flames licking the sky. The riot had ended. The streets were cleared, except for emergency personnel attempting to put out the blazes.

  General Stone’s cell phone rang. He swore before he even answered the call. “What,” he said, in lieu of any other greeting.

  Another riot had started, this one across town.

  “Track it,” he said. “I want full intel on its progress. They’re playing cat-and-mouse. I want to know how they’re getting from place to place, how wide the area of destruction is, and how long the projection lasts. And I want to know all of this yesterday.

  “Get back in the car,” he snapped at Oliver, who had opened his door and stood to watch the firefighters work on a burning building across the street.

  Oliver dropped into the back seat again and pulled the door shut, his mouth a thin line. Exhaustion ate at his bones. He shouldn’t have opened his door, he knew, but he would probably never get another chance to see such a sight again. Glass shards, some as fine as confetti, littered the streets, glittering in the hazy light of flames that spewed from broken windows. This was destruction in its purest, rawest form. Oliver, not content with peering at it from within the car, had hazarded a better look.

  General Stone intended to keep him on an extremely short leash. “One false move from you, null, and you’ll dearly regret it.”

  Thus warned, Oliver settled back into his seat. His eyes slid shut, blocking out the chaos and its accompanying temptation from his sight. It would be better not to look at all than to have to squelch his curiosity.

  With his eyes closed, his mind drifted toward slumber. His thoughts gelled into an incoherent, incomprehensible mass. He could hear the general talking in the background, was aware of the driver in the car and of the emergency sirens and flashing lights on the streets beyond, but it was that subjective awareness of one who was slipping into dreams.

  Everything faded from his mind, until—

  “Hey!” A large hand roughly shook him. Oliver’s eyes snapped open to discover General Stone, irate, next to him. “You don’t sleep, null,” the general said, his eyes set in a piercing stare as though to drive home his point. “You don’t even breathe without my say-so.”

  Oliver failed to squash his fury at the rude awakening. “If I don’t breathe I’ll pass out, genius. So which is it, do I stay awake or do I hold my breath?”

  General Stone leaned in close, so close that his nose almost touched Oliver’s, so close that the teenager couldn’t even see the man’s full-blown scowl.

  Which was, perhaps, a mercy.

  “You will obey orders. You will not speak unless commanded to speak. Do you understand?”

  Oliver swallowed his bitterness and nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “Yes,” he replied, drawing out the final consonant.

  “Yes, sir,” General Stone corrected.

  “Yes, sir,” Oliver repeated.

  Stone, satisfied, sat back in his own space and resumed his phone calls.

  Oliver, meanwhile, seethed in his corner of the back seat. Is this what he had to look forward to under the general’s aegis? Kowtowing to this tyrant’s every whim?

  If he wasn’t absolutely certain General Stone would have him immediately shot, he would have bolted from the car right then and taken his chances on the streets of Seattle.

  In the general’s current mood, though, he would have him shot. Oliver had glimpsed enough drones patrolling the area to recognize that his chances of escape were non-existent.

  At the moment.

  If the opportunity arose in future, he would need to be ready for it.

  Chapter 19

  Easy Target

  Tuesday, February 26, 6:23 AM PST, Prom-B

  In the end, they returned to Prom-B. Oliver was locked inside a dorm room right next door to General Stone’s. A quick inspection of the space revealed three surveillance cameras, a window that was bolted shut, and zero access to the hall outside.

  In other words, if the dormitory caught fire, Oliver was as good as dead.

  By this point, he was too exhausted to care. He had enough presence of mind to kick off his shoes before he collapsed upon the bed. He was asleep almost the instant his head hit the pillow.

  He remained in that state for, perhaps, a luxurious two or three hours.

  “Don’t you have other nulls you can use,” he complained when Stone’s driver, Doyle, awoke him at the crack of dawn.

  “Not on site,” the soldier said. “Your breakfast is here. Eat it quick. I’ll be back for you.”

  Oliver drifted off to sleep again instead.

  Doyle returned ten minutes later and dragged him back among the living. Oliver carried his breakfast tray with him as he shuffled toward General Stone’s makeshift base of operations down the hall. Inwardly he battled a combination of bitterness and a most primal desire to sleep. They didn’t actually need him in the same room as anyone else. His null-projection blanketed the whole campus, as best he knew—so long as he was awake.

  Much as he wished they would leave him in his borrowed dorm room for the day, it was impossible. They couldn’t keep coming and waking him up.

  General Stone watched him trudge in. “Give the boy some coffee,” he said.

  Oliver received the drink with distaste clearly written on his face. Its bitter smell reminded him of refried beans.

  “Drink it,” Stone commanded.

  He obeyed, but he hated every swallow.

  As the caffeine worked its way through his system, his senses perked. A light buzzing sounded in his ears, but he was able to focus his thoughts, at least.

>   Someone had pinned a map to the opposite wall. It showed the greater Seattle area, with four different sections shaded in red to signify the four projections from the night before. Red string from each of these sections led to a notecard that described the specifics of each incident: its starting time, duration, extent, and ending time, as well as any injuries or casualties.

  General Stone had ordered a news blackout for all of the events. NPNN, on a screen mounted in one corner of the room, was reporting nothing that concerned riots or destruction in the State of Washington.

  Veronica Porcher did have a new story, though, according to her subtitles. There had been a kidnapping. The victim was a poor, defenseless fourteen-year-old by the name of Kennedy Ross.

  “False kidnapping reports haven’t gone over so well in the past,” Oliver said. No one acknowledged that he even spoke those words aloud. He didn’t bother repeating them. During his first encounter with General Stone, Altair had turned a false kidnapping story back to the government’s disadvantage. General Stone was not the type of man who would countenance having his nose rubbed in past failures.

  After the kidnapping story, Veronica reported on the Prom-F bombing again, complete with Oliver’s sullen portrait and a plea for citizens to report any sightings of the murderous youth. Oliver gnawed on his bagel with growing resentment.

  But he realized their intent. They wouldn’t report him caught until he was safely contained at Prom-E. General Stone had learned from his past mistakes in that respect, at least.

  The memorial for the Prom-F dead was set for tomorrow, Wednesday. Recovery crews were still working at the remnants of the school, still excavating from the mass of twisted metal and concrete, but a list of victims had been released. It ran along the sidebar during Veronica’s report.

  The name of Emily Brent jumped out at him.