He wasn’t the same frightened kid he’d been the last time he’d walked into this shithole. And he was going to get Fela back.
Grumbling voices carried through the door, along with the subtler sound of broken glass being swept across a wooden floor.
He pushed open the door, and an amused smile spread over his face at the overturned furniture and the clearly disgruntled denizens. “I’ll be damned,” he mumbled.
He’d heard stories about arcanists—their alleged existence happened to be one of Pryce’s favorite topics—but he’d never taken them for more than that. They were stories, legends. The scene before him didn’t prove anything mystical was at work, but it was certainly interesting.
Every eye in the room turned his way as he stepped through the doorway. He wasn’t surprised to see half the men’s weapons follow a second later.
“Gentlemen.” He nodded amicably to the room at large, doing his best to ignore the guns and keep the grin on his face wide and easy. “I’m looking for a friend of mine. I hear he’s a hot topic here tonight.” His gaze fell on the big guy sitting at the bar in a cheap, worn-out suit. Distant, unpleasant memories scratched at the edges of his mind. “It’s Tom, right? Care to help a brother out?”
Big Tom had been the only one in the pub who hadn’t turned to look when he walked in, but the glare he shot Jarek now more than made up for the initial neglect.
“You,” he said, clearly taking his own walk down memory lane. “Jarek Fucking Slater.”
At the sound of his name, several men tensed and eyed him with renewed wariness, their weapons shifting from his general direction to his chest and head.
He couldn’t help but smile at the reaction. “Long time, big guy. Care to help an old pal find Michael Carver?”
“Right, then.” Tom looked around the room. “Tie the fucker up, lads.”
3
Jarek was no stranger to tight spaces. Having spent most of his teenage and adult life in a full-body exosuit, he might even be considered the world’s leading expert. Somehow, that expertise didn’t make riding between the two beefy thugs in the back seat of a cramped SUV any more comfortable. It didn’t help that his hands were tied behind his back—or that both men stank, but he probably wasn’t in a place to point fingers at the moment.
Luckily, they didn’t have far to go, and after a brief holdup at the gate, they were permitted into the Red Fortress.
Beefy Thug Number One slid out of the SUV to the left. Jarek waited for Tom to turn his beady-eyed gaze into the back seat and tell him to move. No reason to waste energy riling up this crew when it would probably buy him nothing but a sucker punch or a nice little backhand. Tom and his gang would likely turn him over to the Reds inside, and then it would be time to start the head games.
He slid out of the SUV and stood waiting as Tom and the rest of his goons piled out and moved into formation around him.
“Right,” Tom said. “Stick with us, then, and keep those hands where we can see ’em.”
Jarek clenched his jaw and bit down on his wiseass reply. Apparently, his amusement still bled through to his expression.
Tom frowned. His eyes flicked down to Jarek’s bound hands, then back up to his face.
“Smart-ass prick.” He let loose with a backhand.
Jarek leaned back just enough that the blow whooshed past. Beefy Thugs One and Two grabbed him by the arms and shoulders and held him still as a frustrated Tom gathered himself and clocked him right between the eyes.
His vision exploded in a kaleidoscope of whites and reds, coalescing and fading into black spots as concussive disorientation began to resolve into deep, throbbing pain along his nose. He shook his head, knowing it would do little to clear his vision, and allowed a small grin to spread over his mouth. So much for avoiding the backhand and the sucker punch.
“Called it,” he said quietly.
“What?” Tom said, half-raising his fist again.
“I said good hit.” He stared pointedly past his throbbing nose to the enormous building beyond, hoping the gorilla would remember why they were here and drop it.
Tom gave a satisfied nod and waved his thugs on. In the pre-Catastrophe era, the Red Fortress must have been a massive factory of some sort, but it had since been heavily added to and fortified until it loomed over Newark, threatening and formidable from across the Passaic River.
They were admitted through the heavy front doors without too much of a fuss, then shuttled promptly down a sprawling network of drab, harshly lit concrete hallways.
No wonder the Reds were such a gloomy bunch. And a well-armed gloomy bunch at that. It had been years since he’d seen so much modern firepower in one place. When the smokeless powder had started getting scarce, most of the thugs like the ones at The Rath had fallen back to black powder and manual action firearms. Of course, the scarcity of the good stuff was largely thanks to the hoarding efforts of groups like the Reds, so where Tom’s thugs carried shotguns and old revolvers, most of the Reds they passed were armed to the teeth with automatic weapons.
The mundane halls didn’t offer much in the way of landmarks, but that was okay. Keeping track of turns and distances was easy enough, and it wasn’t like he was planning on trying to make any hasty getaways through the front entrance anyway.
Five or six minutes into their doomy-gloomy march, they came to the brig. It wasn’t enormous: twenty steel-barred cells in total, arranged in four clusters of four at the front and middle of the room and a pair of doubles toward the back. A central path divided the room into left and right clusters, which were further divided by two paths that ran perpendicular to the central one.
The cells all seemed to be empty, aside from one in the middle-left cluster. A short, bald guy stood in front of the cell, talking to a prisoner Jarek couldn’t see.
A pang of excitement coursed through his chest. This could be it. He’d gotten himself into a pretty significant pickle just for the chance to see what Michael Carver knew about his suit. If that was Carver up ahead, he’d better be freaking ready to capitalize on the opportunity.
“See ya soon, sweetheart,” the bald guy was saying as they drew up to him. “Be thinking about ya.”
Baldy turned to face them with light brown eyes that weren’t quite right. It was a look Jarek had seen too many times before, the look of the kind of person who’d swung cats by their tails and picked the wings off of flies as a kid. The cold smile Baldy turned on him was the final push that set off the internal alarm.
This guy liked hurting people.
The Reds escorted the group to the next cell down. Baldy watched Jarek like a hungry hyena.
“Got a fresh one for you, ya sick bastard,” said one of the escorts.
Jarek paid them little mind. Behind Baldy, in the dirty cell, Michael Carver huddled against the concrete wall like a beaten dog.
Jarek had only interacted with Huxley’s protégé in passing, but it wasn’t hard to see that he looked like hell. The big dude was curled into an impressively tight ball, and when he looked up, his dark face was ashen and bruised, his lips visibly cracked and caked with bits of dried blood. His eyes were a little wild and disoriented, but they seemed lucid enough as they locked onto him in sudden recognition.
“Yo, Mikey!” Jarek said. “Fancy seeing you here, man. Long time.”
Michael ran a hand over his short, bushy crop of dark hair, his movements cautious and twitchy, which wasn’t so surprising given the way Baldy was staring at him.
“Yeah, man, been a little tied up.”
“Ha!” Jarek turned a wide smile on Baldy. “Tied up . . . See what he did there?”
Baldy stared at him as if he were questioning Jarek’s mental stability. Which was probably kind of rich, coming from him. Finally, he shook his head. “Someone lock this idiot up.”
“Oh, oh!” Jarek shuffled in place and jutted his head toward the cell opposite Michael’s. “Can I have that one?”
Tom let out an irritated growl and s
tepped toward Jarek, but he froze as a voice called from the brig’s entrance, calm and authoritative.
“Calm yourself, Tom.”
An athletic-looking guy with a buzzed head and cold eyes strode confidently toward them. In a base full of armed, armored men, his cargo pants and form-fitting T-shirt stood out. Jarek pegged him as Seth Mosen, the Overlord’s right-hand man (or at least the closest thing to one who wasn’t a raknoth). He’d never had the displeasure of meeting Mosen, but he’d heard a few stories—the kind that elicited dubious frowns and sent chills up spines.
“Jarek Slater,” Mosen said, eyeing him with a keener version of Baldy’s creepy stare. If the things he’d heard about Mosen were half true, it was more than sadism that was off behind those pale eyes. “The Soldier of Charity himself,” he added, splaying his hands in mock awe. “They didn’t tell me we had a celebrity on our hands.”
“Oh don’t sell yourself short, Mosen,” Jarek said. “You’ve got quite the reputation yourself.” In a mutter that was still audible, he added, “As a creepy psychopath.”
Tom inched closer to Mosen with the air of a dog looking for a treat. “I thought I best let you lot decide how to handle him, what with him being the second one tonight and all.”
“And the second-best-looking one at that, from what I’ve heard,” Jarek said, wiggling his eyebrows. “How many of your asses did that little blond girl kick, again?”
Muscles tensed on Tom’s neck and jaws, but he bowed his head deferentially as Mosen opened his mouth to speak.
“Normally, I’d say you should use a gag with world-class wiseasses like Slater here, but he raises a fair point. The girl. What happened?”
Tom proceeded to sputter out a story about a young blond woman bursting into The Rath, waving around some kind of pre-Catastrophe tech that let her stop bullets and throw full-grown men around like rag dolls. It sure sounded like the explanation of a baffled guy who’d seen some mind-boggling shit and either knew nothing about arcanists or firmly disbelieved they existed. Pryce was going to do backflips if this panned out.
Jarek didn’t miss the way Michael’s eyes widened at Tom’s story. It stood to reason he might know the chick who was willing to kick an entire bar’s ass to track him down, but the fact that she’d decided to even hit The Rath for that information (not to mention the worried recognition in Michael’s expression) . . . Something didn’t quite add up.
But now wasn’t the time to worry about it. Right now, he needed to find a way to talk to Michael before these a-holes pulled one or both of them off for a nice, private torture session.
Mosen’s expression was unreadable as Tom concluded his tale.
“Crazy shit, huh?” Jarek sidled up closer to Mosen and leaned into his personal space with a conspiratorial air. “You wanna know what I think, man?”
Mosen looked at him as if he were a particularly stubborn clump of scum caught at the bottom of a drain. “No.”
“Because I’ll tell you what I think. I’d say that Tommy-boy here—”
Mosen pivoted and drove an open palm into Jarek’s chest. The attack was viciously fast and strong, and in the split second leading up to it, Jarek could have sworn Mosen’s eyes flashed light red.
Jarek crashed back into the bars of Michael’s cell. He managed to keep his chin tucked tightly enough to avoid slamming the back of his head into the bars, but there wasn’t much else to be done. He slumped to the floor, back against the bars, as a wave of pain enveloped him, resolving into specific areas across his back and bound arms.
The worst of it was the elbow that had caught a bar full on. “Argh! Why do they call them funny bones? How is this funny?”
“You’re an annoying little shit, you know that?” Mosen said. “Without that damn suit, that’s all you are.”
“Speaking of which,” Jarek said, “you haven’t seen a stolen exo lying around somewhere, have you?”
For a second, Jarek thought he’d poked too hard and that Mosen might kill him then and there.
Mosen turned on his heel. “Tom. Cutter. A word.”
“Ah, come on, guy!” Jarek called after him.
Mosen stopped Tom and Baldy by the next cluster of cells and began speaking in a low tone. Tom’s three beefy thugs and the two Reds who’d escorted them to the brig were talking among themselves and trying to eavesdrop on the bosses.
Now or never.
“Yo, Mikey.” Jarek spoke quietly over his shoulder without turning around. “How ya holdin’ up?”
“Fantastic, obviously,” came Michael’s voice, equally quiet. “You still in one piece?”
“Got ’em right where I want ’em.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’m looking for my suit. Heard you might know something.”
“Wait, did you—”
Shuffling from inside the cell.
“Did you get captured on purpose to ask me about your exosuit, dude?” Michael’s voice was closer now.
“Let’s just say it’s gonna be an embarrassing story if you don’t know anything.”
Silence. Then, “I might know something.”
He froze, pain forgotten. “Tell me.”
“Get me out of here.”
One of the Reds looked over from the thug huddle. Jarek shot the guy his iciest grin, and the guard turned back to the huddle, uninterested.
“Tell me where to find Fela, and I’ll bring back the artillery,” he said quietly.
“No, now,” Michael said, a hint of frantic desperation in his tone. “Get us out now, or no deal. You’re going to need me with you anyways.”
Jarek clenched his jaw. The fact that he would have done the same thing in Michael’s position didn’t make the demand any less infuriating. “Prove you’re not fucking with me, and we can move on to how the shit you propose I do that.”
“Huxley hid your suit in his safe with the rest of our score. I don’t know where it is, but I know how to find it.”
Jarek turned that over, watching Tom waving his hands as if deflecting blame. It wasn’t exactly hard proof, but it might have to do. Besides, if he could trust anyone in the room (or in the Resistance), it was probably Michael Carver. From what little he’d seen and heard, the kid was a boy scout through and through.
“Fine. I get us out, you take me to Fela. Deal?”
“Just like that? You’re going to trust me?”
“Hell no. Trust is for sissies. But we don’t have time—and if you’re lying to me, I can always kick your ass later. Win-win.”
“Uh, okay then. What’s the plan?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? He’d always been a let’s-see-what-happens kind of guy. He’d played out a few scenarios and escape routes in his head earlier, but those were more fluid possibilities than actual plans, and they sure as shit hadn’t involved springing a buddy.
“Well . . .”
“You don’t have a plan, do you?”
“Please. What kind of guy walks into an enemy base without a plan?”
A heavy, whooshing sigh from the cell.
The sound of his name drew Jarek’s attention to Mosen’s private huddle.
“He was asking about Carver, sir,” Tom was saying.
Shit. The big idiot.
“What?” Mosen snapped, glancing back toward Michael and Jarek. “And you didn’t think to tell me that before you brought him straight to Carver? You!” He pointed at the two Reds standing with Tom’s men. “Bring Slater here.” He shot Baldy a meaningful look. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this right now.”
Double shit. Jarek’s stomach tightened. Looked like their time was up.
The one upside of having his hands bound behind his back was that he was supremely prepared to shoot Michael a discreet thumbs-up as he said quietly, “Operation Save the Boy Scout commencing. Phase One.”
Now all he had to do was figure out what the hell that operation entailed. No big deal.
4
Rachel leaned back fr
om the concrete barrier at the outer edge of the freeway to consider everything she’d observed of the so-called Red Fortress in the past hour.
The place hadn’t been hard to find. Between the ten-foot perimeter wall and the small armada of armed men making the rounds within, it was pretty clear the complex was hosting a serious operation. Of course, it wasn’t like there was a sign hanging out front. It was still possible she’d stumbled upon the wrong hive of armed goons, but she didn’t see any other super-bases in the area.
Had the situation been different, she would have taken her time and done due diligence before engaging in this kind of madness. Actually, scratch that. She would have passed on sticking her neck onto the chopping block and gone home instead, back to Unity, the closest thing to safe one could hope to find these days.
But if Michael was truly in there, that wasn’t an option. At least, not until she had him by her side. Once that happened, they would return to Unity even if she had to drag her brother there by his spongy locks.
She tried his comm for what had to be the millionth time in the past week. The call went straight to voice mail like it had every other time. She ended the call with a curse.
How much could she really trust the word of that big gorilla-man Tom? Enough to try slinking into a heavily guarded fortress in the hopes that Michael was really in there? Maybe she could snag one of the patrolmen and pick his brain before she was past the point of no return. Of course, that would introduce a whole new set of risks.
The thought of descending from her perch, of standing and willingly moving into that den of danger, made her want nothing more than to be home, to be in her own bed, safe and secure and content under a pile of blankets. As proud (and surprised) as she was that she’d kept it together back at the pub, this shit was not her cup of tea—not even close. Sure, she’d dealt with her fair share of ornery and sometimes violent assholes during her years helping keep the peace in Unity. She’d trained to handle herself. She’d helped scare off marauders with flashes of light and fire on occasion. But going it alone, surrounded by a roomful of hard men looking to hurt her as she had been back at The Rath . . .
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 3