Then came the sounds of the jets.
At last.
The soldiers breathed a sigh of relief. The general told his ground troops to back off. He told the tanks to stand down as well. They needed a safe strike zone. There were still a hundred yards between the soldiers and the Revolution, and Cleeson knew that would be enough.
Revolution stopped in his tracks.
The jets locked on. The pilots armed their missiles. They were state-of-the-art Viper 700 attack jets. Top of the line. A dozen of them.
Inside his armor, Revolution read their missile lock. The display in his visors read Lantern One: Ready to Deploy.
He raised his arms and aimed them at the oncoming Vipers. An invisible beam shot out from his hands, hitting the jets at the speed of light, riding the missile-lock radar signal back up to the source. It bounced a signal to all twelve jets and then rode back down to Revolution, all in the space of one second.
The heat signature from Revolution's armor, dressed up against the cool black of the Earth below them, gave the pilots a clear target. It was all they needed.
Then it disappeared.
Revolution's helmet display read System Coolant Activated. He was now invisible to heat-seeking devices.
But he was too late. The pilots jammed their buttons down, launching the sidewinders at the signal's coordinates...
Except nothing happened.
The missile ignitions didn't fire. The holding mechanisms didn't give way. They nervously jammed their triggers again. Still nothing.
Then the signal riding their missile lock altered slightly. A blip of data beamed across the sky.
It detonated the one hundred-pound annular rod-blast fragmentation sidewinder bombs the fighters carried in their missile bays.
The jets exploded in fiery starbursts against the black sky. The field was bathed in light. In another second they were falling comets of hell crashing directly onto the panicked soldiers below them. A roaring debris field of fire spread out as the destroyed jets plummeted.
Revolution winced as the men were engulfed. Flames roared out of the tanks.
A few were left alive. But they fled. Revolution let them. He just turned and walked away.
So much pain, so much death. No one would ever know how many went missing during those years. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe more than a million. Whatever the true number, the toll it took was more than anyone could bear.
Even those that gave the orders or pulled the triggers.
No one could say why it ended after that day, but as the man in the cape marched from the roaring flames, the fire of retribution burned away as well.
It would take a few more days, but the Purge was over.
CHAPTER 2
LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA
EIGHT YEARS LATER
Shiny, new, white tennis shoes crunched damp gravel. Becky Collins jogged up a mountain trail. She smiled in the steam of her breath. Athletic, thirty-seven, she sweated in the brisk air. Her blonde hair was darkened by her perspiration and the dew. It was morning. Summertime. But up here, that still meant jacket weather.
Clouds covered the sky, cooling the air below. The California sun had yet to burn them off. They would be gone by afternoon. She knew these woods, these trails well. This was home. This was her paradise.
Suddenly she stopped, gravel spitting up from under her shoes. She nearly lost her balance and tumbled, but caught herself. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the ground. She knelt, and her eyes narrowed.
It was the strangest thing she had ever seen. A single droplet of yellow-green, glowing... lava. It looked hot, like it could melt steel, but it was just sitting there on the rocks.
She reached out gingerly, put her hand just over it, hovering. No heat at all, but an unmistakable sense of pure, raw energy. She had been mildly electrocuted once when she was twelve. She had touched a wet electrical box after a summer rain. She remembered the odd feeling of power that had danced over her skin just before the bolt of electricity surged through her body. The droplet gave off a similar sensation.
She snapped her hand back.
Becky peered up. More lava droplets dotted the trail in front of her. Eyes wide, she crept forward. She avoided them at all costs, but she was mesmerized.
The droplets veered off the road into the grass and up into a clearing.
What they hell are these?
She had to know. She waded into the light brush. She'd done this many times. The forest around this section of the lake was sparse, easy to traverse. Still, she shivered and gasped. She had no idea why she was reacting this way.
Maybe she should give this up, just go back, call the authorities. Then again, who would she call?
Something about the droplets beckoned her. She couldn’t define it.
She had to follow them.
She tracked the lava around a bend in the low brush. That's when she heard it.
She stopped. At first, she wasn't sure.
Another sound.
Becky focused, concentrated. This time the sound came clearly. Faint sobs spilled from the forest. A woman.
No need to freak out here, just stay calm. No one else was likely to be around for miles. If someone was hurt, Becky was her only hope.
She tracked the crying into a dense section of the brush, fighting to make progress against the branches that now tore at her sweats and jacket. Finally she rounded a bush, and the sobs grew louder. And there she was. A young girl, crouched. A teenager.
Naked.
Curled up against herself. Her long, blonde hair draped over her face and lithe frame.
“Oh my God,” Becky whispered to herself.
The girl was at once both beautiful and strangely terrifying. She was tall and thin, with naturally dark skin. Her blonde hair was wavy and thick. She had one of the most beautiful, symmetrical faces Becky had ever seen on a person in real life, not a magazine. Yet she was terrifying because the implications of finding a naked, crying teenager in the middle of these dense, isolated woods were not lost on Becky.
In fact, they dashed through her mind like a downhill runner.
She spun around, searching for others. Pictures of Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer in that black hood, Son of Sam—whatever his name was—and every other crazed lunatic she could think of zipped past her brain.
The girl had not even noticed her, too distraught with whatever cruelty had befallen her. Her whole body quaked from the sobs.
Nothing about the situation was normal. The girl was petite, dainty, frail even. Yet in the heart of this brush she hadn't a scratch on her. No mud, no dirt. She was pristine. And not a stitch of clothing was anywhere around her.
“Miss...are you okay?”
The girl didn't move.
Becky eased closer.
Even in the solitude of these isolated woods the girl was careful to cover herself. What horror had she been through? Becky could only imagine. Her heart bled for the girl. Men could be so cruel. Snuff out a young life for some sick, perverted fantasy. California had seen more than its share of these kinds of depraved, twisted crimes.
The girl's apparent good physical condition wasn't fooling Becky. She was sure she was going to need immediate medical attention. Keep your cool, though, she thought, you have no idea what happened here.
“Hey, miss? Are you hurt?”
Nothing. The girl didn't seem to hear her. Becky wondered how out of it you have to be to not hear the crunch of the leaves, the cracking pine needles, and someone speaking to you. Chills trailed down Becky’s spine; the hair on the back of her neck rose. Still, she inched closer. Had the girl been stabbed, shot? Was she in shock?
Becky reached out. “Honey?”
Suddenly the girl jerked away. She scrambled back in panic. Her arm crossed her breasts, and her palm flew between her legs. There was no question now that she had been raped. But then again, there was no blood, no scrapes on the girl, no obvious signs of struggle or injury. What was this?
&nb
sp; “Don't touch me!”
Then it happened.
One moment you are living your life according to rules that make sense to you; the next, something occurs that throws all the old assumptions out the window. This was one of those moments.
The girl's entire body suddenly glowed—the strange color of the droplets. Her nakedness was now concealed by the enveloping glow. Still, she kept herself covered.
She glared upward, her pupils blazing yellow-green. Only the whites of her eyes and the pink of her lips, which bloomed like cherry blossoms next to the odd glow, were unaffected.
Tears of liquid lava flowed down the girl's cheeks. They sprinkled on the ground.
Lava droplets.
Becky’s breath caught in her throat. “What happened?” was all she could manage. The girl just glared at her. The power surged off her in waves. The chills again crawled down Becky’s spine.
“They did this to me! They did it!”
“Who?” Becky scanned the area. “Who did this to you?”
The teenager just cried.
Even sobbing, she was intimidating. Pure, raw energy pulsed from her. The throbbing power from the droplet on the trail was magnified a hundred times as it surged off this young woman. There was no question this girl could harm her, possibly even kill her. Yet Becky had to help her. The girl was alone. Completely alone.
She reached out her hand...
She was, after all, just a girl, a child, Becky reasoned. Scared, lonely, and a victim of something, though as of yet, no way to know what.
The girl is probably radioactive. Or poisonous. She’d be frothing at the mouth and writhing on the forest grass in minutes. Becky was sure of it. It took all the courage she had not to flee.
The girl watched Becky's hand coming closer to touch her. “No! Don't!”
Becky was dead. She knew it. Yet, she couldn’t stop herself. Something was pulling her toward the girl. She closed her eyes as she reached for the girl's blazing skin.
The child, inside this field of energy, looked just as afraid. “You'll hurt”—Becky's hand touched her—“me.”
The touch did not hurt. Either of them, apparently. The girl's blazing eyes locked onto Becky's hand like it was the first time anyone had ever touched her in her whole life. She followed it. She seemed surprised the woman's touch wasn't sending waves of excruciating pain shooting through her body. Her eyes darted about like a scared animal’s. The intensity of the energy burning off her pupils was like a spotlight. It was hard for Becky to look away from the girl’s eyes. Where she gently touched, the glow of the girl’s pulsating skin faded.
The teenager moaned, as if every care and pain were draining from her body with each touch.
“See, it's okay.” Becky tried to smile.
The girl drank in the pleasure. It had been so long since she’d felt anything but pain. She thought of what she had been through, what she had seen, what she had done...and shivered. The pain receded. The glow of her body faded. Her young arms fell to her sides. Too tired to be modest now. For the first time in months, her body relaxed.
“There now. Just calm down. You're okay now.”
But Becky's face betrayed her worry. Who is they, and more importantly, where are they? Becky slipped off her jacket, draped it over the girl's petite shoulders. They gazed into each other's eyes. In that moment a bond formed. A bond neither had expected or could understand...
“What's your name, honey?”
“Fiona. Fiona Fletcher.”
“What happened to you?”
“I was a member”—Fiona glared with piercing eyes; they blazed with power again—“of the Resistance.”
Resistance. There was the image in Becky’s mind again. The same image the propaganda folks in the resistance had wanted her to see every time she heard the word:
A caped figure, decked out in red, white, and blue, silhouetted in the full moon. He ripped out the new flag of the post-Depression era—the Freedom Flag, they called it. A flag that hearkened back to the original Colonial flag. Stars in a circle, fifty instead of the original thirteen, outlined in red—all of them set against a blue background. But with one large star at the center. Supposedly the big star represented the unity of all Americans in getting through the Second Great Depression. But everyone knew what it really stood for: the Freedom Council.
And the figure in her mind certainly knew. His action was always the same. He tossed the Freedom Flag aside and jammed in Old Glory: the flag the Freedom Council wanted her to associate with the Depression. With the old system. With failure. The figure in her head wanted her to associate it with one thing and one thing only: a revolution. A revolution to bring back the past.
Becky longed for the past. Most people did. She knew what the Freedom Council was about. Knew better than most. Knew how utterly full of shit they really were.
The twenty-five largest corporations in America calling all the shots. A final arbiter of anything and everything the government did. This was the answer to our problems? Hardly, Becky thought.
But what of that caped figure? Was he any better?
Doubtful.
He fancied himself a folk hero. But nothing was pure anymore. Nothing sacred. Everything had a price or a cost to it. Even truth. Even heroes. The Freedom Council was a fraud, she knew this firsthand, but at least they stopped things from getting any worse when they took over. Better incompetent, money-hungry fools running things than some secretive, dark messiah.
Becky reached out and took Fiona by the hand.
CHAPTER 3
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
SIX MONTHS EARLIER
A soldering iron smoldered on the drafting table of a crowded, messy workshop plopped unceremoniously into the center of a large living room. The abode of an obvious bachelor. Pieces of hard, dark plastic lay about, covering what was otherwise a neat and tidy living space. Drawings and pieces of strange mechanical orange wings were scattered across the “debris field.” Around a corner wall, the nightly news blared from a webtelevision in a large den.
Paul Ward, thirty-nine, dark hair, clean cut, boyishly handsome with a kind face, lounged in a large chair watching the program. A talking head reporter narrated over the images of street protest.
“For the second night in a row illegal protests are blocking the streets of Boston's working-class Heights. Tensions remain high, and authorities have warned the protesters that their patience is running out.”
Ward sipped a beer and punched his TV's remote. A video blinked to life.
A black screen filled his set. Footsteps echoed beneath a low, gentle yet firm voice:
“In darkness they came. Democracy died while we weren't looking. While we were distracted by false threats and empty promises. They taught us to fear ourselves. They taught us to fear our government. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was the only thing that held them at bay. But slowly, from their luxury suites and corporate jets, they stole it. And when the government fell, they completed their revolution. But there is another Revolution. I am the Revolution.”
The screen faded to:
A rooftop at night. A dark figure covered in shadow. A cloak billowed behind it, eerily silhouetted in the full moon. Next to an American flag. Fifty stars in a circle, one large star at the center: the Freedom Flag. The figure ripped the standard out and tossed it away dramatically. From behind him somewhere the dark figure hauled out another pennant. Old Glory. Jammed it into the holder. The American flag waved proudly, illuminated against the light of the moon.
Ward was watching the iconic “commercial” for the insurgency. He chuckled and flicked off the video.
But in his mind’s eye, the Revolution was still on-screen, still looking at him. Looking into his soul. Ward thought about that for a moment. Thought about what it meant.
The figure in the video, the Revolution, was mysterious, brutal, controversial. To some he was a modern-day Robin Hood, fighting against the power grab of the wealt
hy in the name of the poor. To others, a guardian of the Constitution and democracy. A sworn enemy of the Freedom Council. To still others he was a fascist, a fraud, and the most dangerous man in America, who would send the country spiraling back into chaos at his first chance.
But Ward knew what the Revolution really was. He was a hero. Plain and simple. Millions of other Americans agreed. People were desperate for something to believe in again, and he was the one thing they could put their faith in.
The Revolution had come along just at the right time. He’d shown Ward a new path, one that he would never have considered before the Revolution. He had made the impossible possible again. The Dark Patriot, as the media sometimes dubbed him, gave everyone an example to follow. And hundreds, maybe thousands, had started putting on costumes themselves, trying to make a difference.
The Hero Movement. Just average folks pitching in, all because of the Revolution. Not that anybody paid them much mind.
Yet, ironically, the revolutionary aspect of the Dark Patriot’s mission was clearly misguided. Ward got up and ambled over to a window that looked out onto the dreary streets of his city.
Why try to take down the Council? Why spawn that kind of animosity against himself? Not when there was plenty of good, old street crime to go around. Revolution had to know that. So, why?
Not that the Freedom Council didn’t suck—they did. In fact, the Council probably used gangbangers and the mob to get what they wanted—the very criminals Paul Ward had vowed to stop.
In today's USA, criminals were guys that got stuff done. It just made sense that the Council would privatize some services, farm them out to organized crime. An uneasy partnership of convenience. That was the rumor you heard on the street anyway, and it was hard to find more motivated foot soldiers than gangbangers. The penalty for slacking off on the job was usually death.
An unholy alliance between those who stole democracy and those who just stole.
The gangs far outgunned the police. Ward had read whole books on how this had come to pass. After the Depression, as incomes plummeted and taxes dried up, the Council cut essential services. Even law enforcement saw their budgets slashed. Crimes went unsolved. Weapons fell into disrepair. Whole parts of major cities were lawless. Black markets flourished.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution Page 2