Motherland

by Russ Linton

  "And you!" I round on Polybius, tearing against Cyrus' grip. I see only Polybius' freakish attempt at humanity and not the ally who stood by my bedside or helped convince me that the person currently in his arms wasn't my enemy. Choking back tears of rage, my voice cracks. "All your bullshit about understanding and saving Augments. You're worse than he is."

  The words have the intended effect. Sorrow floods Polybius' face. He shifts to hold Mom's still unconscious form closer. "Sean was my friend. I've known him since you were an infant. None of this needed to happen. If he'd only been able to back down, for once."

  "Don't you dare blame this on him!" I yell. Cyrus isn't letting go. Hound and Danger have him in their sights again.

  Polybius hangs his head. "I didn't mean to sound that way. You must try to understand, Spencer. Shortwave's plan offers a place for us. For me. I'll no longer be a government experiment, a weapon. Every part of what I am can be celebrated."

  The sob story only makes me struggle more. I don't know if I'm a hostage or if Cyrus is keeping me from the gun which continues to demand my attention. Somebody has to pay for this bullshit.

  My struggles draw more attention from Hound and Danger. They're sizing up the scene. They’re subtly closing the distance and Cyrus has started to backpedal.

  "Let 'em go, Cyrus. Polybius, her too." Hound says the last name through gritted teeth.

  Hound's former friend shrugs and Mom stirs. If she wakes up, this may cease being a stalemate. Then again, we've all forgotten about the glowing girl who's barely there.

  "This stops now," Aurora says, steady and calm. From her hushed, oddly warbled voice it's a statement of fact more certain than the fire consuming the building or the sun rising to fill the glass doors. "Our mission, Sean's mission, will succeed."

  She levitates, and the normal swim of her aura begins to race. Hairs raise on the back of my neck. A kaleidoscope of color smears the smoke. The single source of light, an ornate chandelier large enough to bathe the broad lobby, flickers then erupts, showering us with glowing sparks. Polybius staggers and catches himself on one knee before toppling to his side and doing his best not to crush Mom. Beyond the lobby, the harrowing cry of the miners ceases.

  "What the hell, 'Rora?" Hound calls. The field surrounding her only glows brighter.

  Through the glass doors, it flashes outward in a bubble, expanding until it encompasses the buildings across the street and covers the very sky. Street lamps flicker then die. Lights and sirens warble to a stop. I squirm, and Cyrus finally lets go.

  "She's bringing it down. All of it," I say. "Nobody wins today. Nobody!"

  I have no idea how far she can project her technology crushing powers. Eric had called her one of a kind. With his crazy Pokémon system, she was an ultrarare, a walking holo-card.

  The only way to really stop Shortwave's plan now. Yet, I don't know if she understands just how hard of a reset this is going to be. I'm fully on board, though. Blast everything into the Stone Age.

  "Aurora, you can't do this!" Cyrus might as well be shouting at a solar flare.

  Smoke thickens. We're in an electromagnetic fog I feel pulsing through my bones. Polybius seizes on the floor, trying to call out but unable to do more than grunt. Hound is transfixed but Danger, he finally turns his attention to the theater where the smoke has become greasy and dense.

  "It's time," he shouts.

  I rush to scoop up Mom. Trembling, Polybius' hand finds mine. He’s not asking for help, he’s asking for absolution. I stare, lips clenched, debating longer than I should before Hound appears and hefts him off the ground.

  "Let's go, kid!"

  "What about..." I can't finish the thought. But Danger's already dragging Dad toward the front doors. Our arms full, Hound and I hustle after him. I give one last look.

  Aurora burns inside a nebula of smoke and ash. She's the formation of a galaxy, a universe, a deadly grace set to topple the world. This world, a world she was forced to leave behind, one she can no longer connect with, seems to have finally lost its meaning. She's accomplishing her mission, the one given to her by her former Commanding Officer, the only way she knows how.

  Her eyes find mine, and I know this isn't only for him. We share his loss. Before Whispering Pines, she'd been alone. The fleeting moment in the parking lot where we all held hands suddenly makes sense.

  A dark shape traverses her orbit. Cyrus. Bathed in the subtle glow of his healing powers, he's withstanding the smoke and heat for a purpose. His lungs rebuilding on the cellular level even as he cooks them, he reaches out with a glowing hand toward the psychedelic dervish.

  Mom stirs, and a weak cough trickles from her mouth. I'm hustling out the doors as Cyrus' hands flare with a brilliant flash, briefly washing out the color. Then she's gone. Aurora winks out of existence and the greenish sphere which had devoured the horizon collapses.

  I try to scream and can only wheeze. I watch as Cyrus, grim, determined, steps deeper into the howling flames.

  Mom breaks into a coughing fit. The shock of fresh air has finally woken her. She thrashes in my arms as the coughing wracks her body. Both sides of the street are cordoned off with emergency vehicles, dead in Aurora's wake. A SWAT team bears down on us shouting commands that don't overcome the blare and burn of the theater. Already surrendered, Hound and Danger kneel beside Polybius and Dad, their hands behind their heads, guns on the street.

  I refuse to let go of Mom and keep shuffling down the sidewalk. Distance. Got to run. A sharp pain jabs behind my eyes. The rattle in my chest becomes a gagging wheeze. The street hits hard as my legs give out. Mom sprawls out and catches herself on unsteady palms.

  Everything goes gray. Then black. Mom's leaning over me. Black again. Once more and she's being dragged to her feet by the cops. I'm probably next.

  "Mom," I groan. "Don't kill them."

  Chapter 45

  THREE MONTHS LATER...

  Been a while since I've seen this room. So much has changed, I'm not even sure it's the same place. More like the halls now, everything is white and clean and not an empty black void. None of the furniture is the same. My guess, that was incinerated somewhere along with the patch of flooring where Beetle bled out. Melted, cleaned, disinfected—dumped in a desert five hundred miles away.

  Then there's the alcove. I wonder. If I look closely, I can almost see a seam...

  "Quite the bill, my friend," says Xamse. He's at his desk in his high-backed chair going over a stack of papers. "Lawyers. Who else charges for the paperclip, eh? So many things I learn."

  He's partial to a more natural style than the former occupant. A desk of dark grained wood with an almost tan heart, it's the opposite of what I think it should be. His office chair looks comfortable, if ungodly ugly what with the baby poop yellow leather pin cushioned with buttons. My chair? Well, he's taken a page from the former occupant's playbook. It's a fancy hunk of bare wood made to look sleek yet sit like a hemorrhoid.

  Keep your guests uncomfortable. Maintain the edge.

  But at least Xamse has tried to decorate. Colorful tapestries and rugs, along with an assortment of weapons and masks, adorn the walls. Then there's the giant wicker sculpture in the middle. Floor to ceiling, could be an inverted tornado.

  That alcove though. Bare. Unobstructed.

  "Arson. A serious crime in the United States, no? More serious now with the riots." It's too hard for me to make eye contact. I just grunt and make sure I'm not seen staring across the room. He follows my gaze as I feign appreciation of the wicker thing. "It reminds me of home. My home really. A small hut in a village that isn't anymore. All of this does in fact," he adds, spinning to take in the office.

  "Guess I'm lucky you didn't move."

  "That you are!" He smiles, teeth white as the walls. "I can visit my former home anytime I wish. I will take you someday, yes?"

  I press my lips together to hold off any response, straightforward or wiseass. Xamse returns to the papers, casually flipping through them and a
rranging them neatly in a pile one sheet at a time. He's enjoying this.

  "Ember and Vulkan are wanted for questioning I see." His face hardens. He leans on the desk, the fanned-out legalese dipping. "I too lose my father. Taken by war. We are brothers in this. We share an experience too many suffer." He fixes on me until I surrender and meet his gaze. Satisfied, he shifts again and starts once more. "Strange," he says, sounding completely unsurprised. "Another body? Burned beyond recognition. Tragic. Their families will want to know."

  "You got me out of the arson charge. If I'm not guilty of that, they can't hold me responsible for anyone who died inside the fire."

  His lawyer was slick, not to mention it had been ludicrously easy to pin arson on the two pyromaniacs. The body in question, Sergei, was assumed to be a vagrant. A bunch of Augments tearing up the town without a thought to collateral damage. Happens too much after Killcreek. Nobody dug any deeper and Hound, Danger—they didn’t exactly cooperate with the authorities. At first.

  I could tell Hound struggled with keeping quiet. The guy is a regular boy scout at heart, but he wasn't exactly ready to do time for a dead "commie." Danger, on the other hand, didn't say a word unless the attorney cleared it. They were tough on him. Unnecessarily tough.

  Then the government showed up for their weapons. Courts in chaos and the system teetering on all-out collapse, it’s surprising they found them at all. But they were property of the U.S. Government and I watched, helpless, as they were reclaimed.

  Funny, I thought Danger had been a turncoat and didn't care how he was treated at first. The drama of his leaving Whispering Pines that day hadn't been real. And the only reason he'd agreed to come along on my planned mission was he’d spotted an opportunity. He and Hound had planned the double agent surprise for Shortwave even before they knew Chroma had compromised our base. Our two bungled operations was all it took for the former platoon mates to begin sniffing for trouble. Daddy's boy mucking up the chain of command and Eric acting stranger than normal, I can't blame them.

  Still, Danger gave up his powers for the in, when he couldn't have known it was a temporary deal. Hell, he gave me up. Either he didn't care what happened to me, or he sensed our ride back was offline and Vulkan and Time Slip headed right for us. If I ever see him again, I'll have to ask.

  "No, that is true, Spencer. The authorities shouldn't hold you responsible for deaths from a crime for which you were not guilty." He reaches down and slides a drawer open. A sharp rustling followed by a hollow thump, and he places a sealed plastic bag marked "evidence" on the desk. There's a charred, wilted hunk of metal sealed inside. He pushes it my way and stands.

  I don't touch, only look. A gun. Probably the same one I used to off Shortwave. Hard to be certain but how else would he know? Burned and pitted, I can see places where blood has baked into the gaps.

  "Forensic sciences are quite advanced." He places his hands behind him. "Fingerprints can often be found on the most unlikely things. Then again, without evidence, it could be your compatriot, Danger, is blamed. Your country has quite a fascination with jailing those of dark skin, eh?"

  "What do you want."

  I knew the legal assist wouldn't come without strings. In the aftermath of the disruption of society as I knew it, those strings were unfathomably long. Anyone else and I might have rotted in that cell, lost in a once digital world returned to paper and a daily influx of more and more prisoners spawned from the lawlessness gripping the streets.

  Emily could've been my first call, but I refused to involve her. I couldn't tell her one more person she'd cared about was dead. And with Mom grieving? Going to his ex-lover for help was not an option.

  "Life is strange, how we travel in circles." He wanders to my side of the desk and sits on the edge, hands folded in his lap. "How often our friendship intersects with such specificity," he says, nodding toward the gun.

  "I get the irony."

  I decide I can be a dick to this guy. What do I have to lose? Hound and Danger are locked away in some government black site. Mom is already out. I'd been given no explanation how that happened aside from stumbling across a newspaper article about a prison guard who threw away his forty-year career to inexplicably open the gates and drive her to a bus stop. She was forced to run before the government got its shit together and she ended up like Danger and Hound.

  Of course, nobody had their shit together. Aurora's final act had seen to that. Nobody except maybe this guy.

  "We are in a unique situation here at Nanomech, Incorporated." Xamse's finally getting to the part where he tells me to bend over. "Our early detection of the Collective Virus has gained us many allies. We protected much of the critical systems of our government contracts. Of course, that was before the magnetic storm." That's what they called Aurora's trick. Her last gasp before disappearing at Cyrus's touch. A massive EMP which wiped out most of North America's electronics. Huge swathes of the country had been shunted into the mid-twentieth century. "The United States has been forced to confront the errors of involving themselves in world conflicts. Their war machines have been brought home to defend the homeland while the ones exposed to the blast could be repaired. Her enemies are generous. For now."

  Generous, maybe. In the sudden power vacuum, conflicts have sprung up across the globe. That's what was currently keeping "her enemies" busy. And Shortwave's plan remained in full swing. A virtual New World Order had indeed launched. Under new management. Mighty hacker on high, Eric.

  He contacted me. Ten minutes after I got a new phone using an alias I never told anyone. Threw it away. But I couldn't help reading the message.

  Spence,

  No way ever, ever did I mean for anything like that to go down. Fire Department was supposed to show early from a prank call. Make the op a no-go. Why'd he rush the schedule? Why all the scorched earth shit? Not even enough time for me and Chroma to convince Shortwave to call off his goons. I mean I get why, now, I wasn't thinking. SWAT was busy, you guys were supposed to see civilians with hoses and call it off. A few minutes, seconds, that's all I needed.

  Tell me what you want, anything, I can make that shit happen, for real. Shortwave was a crazy fucker. I'm glad the dude's dead. He kept going on about money. The real shit is the data. That’s the currency of this new world. All of this was gonna happen sooner or later. Too much critical infrastructure placed in too few hands had to collapse. Distributed everything. That’s the future.

  Chroma and I, we're going to make this right. Build something and make sure Crimson didn't die for nothing. I always got your back, bro.

  No call-sign. No obvious way to trace. Not even his typical chatter, this was an attempt at a sympathy card. But it was him, I know it, and his message is burned into my brain. Does nothing for my mood sitting across from this asshat.

  "Get to your point," I grumble.

  "A country always needs weapons, Spencer."

  "They had them. Now they're running loose. On a leash or free range, they're a fucking problem."

  "Precisely. Your father was a brave man to try and provide some direction for the Augment problem. Such a difficult and thankless job." Xamse bores into me. "We've both known great men who tried."

  He presses his hand to the desktop. An electric outline traces his palm, superimposed on the natural wood. The panel concealing the alcove slips noiselessly into the ceiling.

  No blood-red overhead lighting. No dramatic spill of sun through the open launch tube in the roof. It's just the battle armor. In all its insectoid glory.

  Until the alcove slipped open, I couldn't gauge how much I was waiting for this moment. Wondering if it was still there. The sheer power at my fingertips—a flight across open deserts and craggy mountains, a battle at a top-secret base. That suit I'd left, broken, sacrificed to the greater good.

  I'm on my feet, halfway to the armor before I can speak. "Another prototype?"

  "The latest," he says. I full stop and arch an eyebrow for an explanation. "I don't fly, but I do build. On
e must have hobbies."

  A few more steps and I'm within reach of the towering suit. I touch the smooth metal and run a hand down the gauntlet. "I thought you weren't into the whole intervening thing. You needed distance. Plausible deniability."

  "I'm not. And I do." He's slipped across the room to stand beside me. "I'm a businessman, no longer a warrior. I drew my blood in the past, even in this very room." He instantly finds the same tile I'd been examining minutes earlier. "But times change. Business opportunities, they come."

  Staring at this magnificent piece of hardware, it becomes clear I don't need to know the details. All I need is the ability to withstand a hurled glob of magma. Weapons that'll shatter a stone shield and crush the guy turtled inside.

  My free hand wanders to my back pocket. The multitool is there carefully wrapped in a crimson shroud.

  It would be easy to say this is all about vengeance. Before Shortwave died though, he spoke some serious truth. The Crimson Mask was always hurtling toward death and destruction. He'd dealt plenty himself. Fought for country or cause until his luck ran out. Like it or not, I'm on that same path. Nothing can be normal ever again. As long as that's true, I'd better increase my odds.

  It's that simple. I don't want to die.

  "I'm in."

  Continue with Spencer’s adventures in Crimson Son 3: Ashes!

  CRIMSON SON 3: ASHES PREVIEW

  A GREEN CURTAIN OF energy filled Eric's rearview mirror. He stared, wide-eyed as it bore down on him from the graying skyline of Detroit. It had begun as a tight globe and now filled the horizon. A tsunami of energy, the glow was unmistakable. Aurora.

  "Do you see that?" he exclaimed.

  "Turn my camera!" Chroma whined.

  "Gotta get moving." Eric buried the pedal. He was not taking his hands off the goddamn wheel.

  He slapped the laptop closed before Chroma could fill the screen with angry emojis. He made a grab for the backseat and swerved into another lane earning a prolonged blast of a horn. Traffic on all sides had done one of two things—accelerated to maddening speeds, like him, or pulled over to watch. In both cases, more people were staring at phones than either the road or the anomaly.