Anger flashed in the girl's eyes. “I think I need to be alone.” Her body blazed, and she flashed away.
“Honey—” Becky started, but she was already gone.
At that exact moment the doorbell rang. Becky jumped. She hurried to the door in case it was Fiona. Peering out the peephole she spied a smiling delivery man. “Delivery for Rebecca Collins,” he said through the door. Becky unlatched the door and swung it open.
The door flew out of her grasp and smashed into the side of her face. Two large men stormed in. Becky slammed to the ground. She sprawled on the floor. The delivery man leaned down, grabbed her by the shirt, and jammed the gun barrel into Becky's bleeding lip as he lifted her to her feet.
“Turns out we have really good surveillance equipment outside the Hall of Records. Do you know how badly we frown on former employees selling secrets?”
“I'm not going to.”
“No, you're not.” The delivery man forced her back onto the couch. She landed hard, bounced once, and slid down onto the cushions. “What you are going to do is be the victim of a home invasion. So tragic. Cut down in the prime of life.”
He placed the gun at Becky's head. His finger curled around the trigger. She closed her eyes. But the shot that would take her life didn’t come. Her eyes popped open. The two men were frozen in place.
Suddenly, they seemed to swoon. A bright light grew behind them.
Fiona's light.
The Fire Fly's arms emerged from their chests, glowing as she rose above them from behind. A dumb smile crossed the delivery man’s face. Then it hit. Agony. Every pore of their bodies bled light. Their skin split open as daylight came streaking through the cracks. They ripped apart. Consumed in the radiance.
Becky shielded her eyes from the intensity and the horror. Then there was nothing. No sign the men had ever been there at all.
The Fire Fly floated in the center of the room, basking in the glory of her own power. Tears streamed down Becky's cheeks. She'd never experienced anything like that, and the waterworks came before she could even think.
Fiona saw her tears. Even in her powerful form, the Fire Fly sank into Becky's lap, like a scared child. Fiona seemed to fear the very fact that Becky had seemed to be afraid of her for an instant.
Becky regained her composure and ran her fingers through the girl's pulsing hair. The feeling was one of plush velvet power. Fiona raised her hand to Becky's bleeding lip. Her finger blazed and brightened. Faint smoke trailed upward. It caught Becky off guard. She flinched, her eyelids bounced, but the bleeding soon stopped. Fiona had cauterized the wound. The Fire Fly rose to her feet, determined.
“Don't be afraid. You never have to be afraid.” Her forehead scrunched in anger. “No one will ever hurt you again.”
And then she was gone.
Becky sat bewildered. And more than a little worried. What did she mean by that? Fiona had just killed two men. To save her life, true. But the question remained: what more was she capable of?
CHAPTER 46
One second later...
The workday was just starting at the Freedom Council's local office in Sacramento. The main floor was open, large, and busy. Desks in rows, no cubicles.
Fiona materialized in the center of all the action.
She floated near the ceiling, gazing down at the room, seething with hatred. The entire office staff could see her. More importantly, they could feel her. Her power radiated out, hitting them like a wave. They just gaped in shock, unsure of what they were witnessing. She pushed her arms out to the sides and smirked. A concussive wave of light energy blasted outward.
The windows shattered.
Anyone near was thrown to the ground. A low rumble began to build from somewhere deep inside the bowels of the building. Those not on the main floor thought it was another California earthquake.
“Get out now or you'll die,” she said matter-of-factly.
People scattered. Word of mouth spread. The building emptied in a matter of moments. When she sensed it was empty, the Fire Fly began to concentrate. Light exploded out from her entire body and encircled everything in the room. The light snaked across every inch of the empty building. Down every hallway, across every floor. But it was not enough. She wanted more. Wanted it all. She screamed, her anger feeding the expanding light. Tears streaming from her eyes in large droplets of lava, her anger growing, the light swelled up and down, twenty-five stories. Every square millimeter, every dark crevice, until the entire massive structure was bathed in her light. And she could see it all. See with the light. It was an extension of her eyes, her hands...her anger.
The great building suddenly lifted and ripped from its foundation, trembled, shook—and burst apart into a million pieces. It simply burned away to nothing, just as the Guards had done in Becky's living room only minutes before. The brilliant light vanished as well. Nothing remained but Fiona floating in the air. Below her lay only a swath of barren earth.
Across the street stood the Hall of Records, which she and Becky had visited the night before. Fiona telescoped to the building's front steps. Office workers were already rushing out, panicked.
She raised her arms, and beams of light jetted out, blasted into the structure. A low rumble drifted out from inside the building. The remaining onlookers fled at that point, expecting more fireworks. Instead, the front of the building—the large windows and the concrete facade— exploded outwards and smashed onto the avenue, ripping great gaping holes into the street. The entire massive filing cabinet system ripped out of the walls, riding on rays of light. Fiona lifted it and held it high in the air. She dropped her arms to her sides, and the cabinets crashed into the street, sending explosions of paper into the air.
It rained down like confetti.
“The truth sees the light of day,” she said profoundly and disappeared.
BOSTON
TWELVE HOURS LATER
Revolution sat upright on the single stool in his holding cell, catching a few hours of shut-eye. Meanwhile, his onboard communications searched for a breach in the firewall to contact Lantern. All to no avail. His odd slumber was interrupted by a motion sensor alarm programmed to wake him automatically. As he opened his eyes he saw the door to the room closing, but the room was still empty. He shook the sleep out of his head, but the motion detector was still beeping at him...and the room was still empty.
Rachel materialized just outside the energized bars to his cage. “It's good to see you,” he said.
“That's what all the boys say.” She winked at him, strolled over to the kill switch for the electrified bars, and pressed it down. “Thanks for letting us know you two were still alive, by the way. Didn’t know we were broadcasting team status reports through Media Corp?” she teased. Revolution realized the Suns must have assumed he and Ward were dead. Without skipping a beat, she reached into her coat and pulled out a small, thin, flat piece of what looked like silly putty. She placed the putty into the cell's keyhole. Inside the keyhole, the putty molded itself to the shape of the locking device. She pulled it out, and Revolution could see it had formed into a key.
“I just need a second,” she told him. They watched as the mold turned solid. It took half a minute. She inserted it in the lock, and the cell door swung open. He nodded a thank you and exited in a hurry. His thoughts turned somber. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“I have to find Paul.”
Rachel smiled at him reassuringly. “Already did.”
Clay Arbor had waited all day. He was pissed that the deputy chief had taken so long to find out where in the city the Guard had taken the Revolution. He began to wonder if he'd picked the wrong man as his inside contact. But finally the deputy chief had sent him the info, and Arbor had suited up as Lithium and headed out from his country estate just outside the city.
Arbor used his celebrity status as Lithium to get into the building. Amazing how many lower-tiered Guardsmen would pull favors for him just to brag they'd done so later. Arbor had to sneak o
nto the prison wing, but he had done so before. Now he found himself marching down a long hallway, peering into each room as he passed by. Searching for the man in the cape. Behind him, the floor’s ranking officer stuck his head out a door, having caught the big man's image out the corner of his eye as he was passing by.
“Lithium! You don't have authorization to be up here.” Arbor didn't stop. So the officer followed.
“I know he's here. I wanna see him,” Arbor barked, never turning around or breaking stride.
“Sir, you're not authorized to see him.” The officer was trailing; his anger sounded in his voice. Technically, Arbor outranked him, but here…
Arbor stopped. Spun. Pointed his palm turrets at the officer. “You wanna be comatose for an hour or a life?” Arbor figured this would stop him in his tracks.
Instead, the officer drew his weapon. Drew it faster than Arbor had expected. The guy was good. And he was in the right, just doing his duty.
Arbor dropped his arms. Dropped the attitude, too. “Just wanna see if I can get him to talk. He's my charge, ya know?”
The officer lowered his weapon. He exhaled deep and rubbed the steel out of his neck. For a moment he peered around, probably checking to see if anyone else was seeing this. He seemed to be weighing options.
Arbor actually recognized his face but couldn’t place it with a name. It was the officer’s charge to watch this floor. He was probably conflicted. Arbor figured the guy knew a lot about the Clay Arbor/Lithium story, his secret identity being the Freedom Council’s worst-kept secret and all. He probably respected what Arbor had accomplished in his life. “You’re a living legend,” people would say.
The officer shook his head as he thought it over. Then, with what sounded like a resigned sigh, he said, “He's on the other wing. Room two-seventeen.” Arbor nodded in thanks and headed for his new destination.
At that very moment, one wing away on the other side of the large structure, Rachel aimed a small RDSD at the wall of room 217. A ray of light pulsed out and scanned a wide aqua-blue beam across the room. The wall seemed to become transparent, and the entire compound revealed itself in aqua-blue 3-D. At the other end of the compound, Ward's figure was strung up in his cell. He showed up in red—keyed to his DNA signature. One of Lantern’s favorite toys.
“I see him!” Revolution said. He spun for the door.
“Wait! Ladies first, remember?” She handed him the RDSD, pulled on the invisibility cloak, and disappeared. Had she thought to scan behind her she would have seen Clay Arbor coming up from the other prisoner wing.
Owl Face and Fox Face had been joined by two Junior Guards, young men still in training. Owl Face picked up a high-tech cattle-prod-looking device. He pressed a button, and the weapon began to buzz. Fox Face pressed a button on the wall, and Ward was spun around to face them. Owl Face waved the prod in his face. “You see how this says level one? It goes up to one hundred. I'll stop as soon as you tell me what I need to know.”
The guard pressed the prod's metal to Ward's chest. A loud zap echoed across the room. Ward screamed and convulsed. He twitched in agony. To Ward, the lights in the room seemed to glare with colors so bright he could not keep his eyes open, and he could hear the cold chains jingle in his ears. He couldn’t control the shaking. Of course, it was just a physiological stress reaction to the pain. Focus on what you know, he thought. Maybe he could detach himself. Experience it all from a medical perspective. Don't let them break you.
“Ewwww. That musta hurt,” laughed Fox Face.
“Let's try level two,” one of the Junior Guards blurted out. Owl Face smirked and turned the knob. Shoved the prod back in Ward's face. And then jammed it into his ribs.
ZAP! Ward spit up whatever was in his stomach and convulsed harder. Tears streamed down his face. The room began to spin, and sweat popped out all over his naked body.
“Another?” Owl Face spat. He turned the gauge to three, smiling as he approached his victim.
CHAPTER 47
Revolution snuck down the long hallway, guided by the device—and Rachel. She kept several yards ahead of him and sent a warning from her RDSD to his when someone was coming. Fortunately, the prison wing was surprisingly empty. At one point the RDSD vibrated, and he slipped into a room just before two Guards turned into the hallway. He could hear their banter about the Red Sox and Yankees and waited for it to fade down the corridor before he continued.
Rachel was watching Ward's ordeal through the walls. She could see it thanks to the special glasses Lantern had made for her. To others, the scan she was watching was invisible. She could relate to that. She kept the RDSD pointed ahead but focused on Ward at all times. She didn’t like what she was seeing, so she fell back.
“We need to hurry,” she whispered when Revolution came closer.
Arbor marched toward the holding cell. The numbers seemed to pass by exceedingly slowly. He'd waited a long time to see the star-spangled freak behind bars. It was like the two of them had always been playing this intricate chess match, and he finally had him in checkmate.
At last he approached the holding cell: room 217. Just before he opened the door, a voice called out to him. It was the ranking officer stalking up from behind.
“Lithium, wait!”
Arbor didn’t wait. He’d waited long enough, and now he was going to see his enemy right where he deserved to be.
The officer paused, thought it about for a moment, and yelled down the hallway, “Captain!”
Arbor stopped and turned, half out of pride for hearing his rank invoked for the first time in a very long time, and half in incredulity that someone would acknowledge that which was never supposed to be acknowledged. The Freedom Council’s worst-kept secret.
“When was the last time you commanded a mission, sir? A real mission?” the officer asked him.
Arbor spun back toward the door. He was torn. He eyed the door like a starving man would eye a juicy steak. But he turned again and strolled back to the officer. The answer was it had been a long time. A hell of a long time.
Clay Arbor had become a showman, a spokesman for the Council. He longed to get back to something that resembled real combat. Besides, the freak wasn’t going anywhere.
Ward's condition had deteriorated. The prod was turned up to fifteen. The shock was so strong it contorted Ward’s body in the chains. There was a loud snap and pop as blue bolts danced into his skin. His flesh blistered and split open, rupturing in a matter of seconds at the point of contact. He screamed a hoarse, guttural, soulless cry.
“He's pissed himself!” said Fox Face, laughing.
The big Guard stalked forward into Ward’s face and spit at him. He glared down at the pool beneath Ward’s feet. “Pathetic! What made you think you were good enough to put on that bug suit anyway?”
Ward’s mind was reeling; his spirit was breaking. He tried his best to hold on. He spoke the words he was trying convince himself of. “I'm a hero,” he whispered through shooting pain.
The guards hooted and sneered.
Ward began to cry. He had fought it off for as long as he could, but his entire body was burning. He was about to die, and they were going to kill him slowly and painfully, laughing as they did it.
“You're no hero. What you ever do? Chase away some bank robbers? Couldn't even catch your little boy's killer,” Owl Face said. They laughed harder at this and high-fived each other. Ward thought they were circling him for the kill. His last moments on Earth were upon him.
“Yeah, we know all about you, Bug Boy!” Fox Face chuckled.
“You let your son die right in front of you,” Owl Face said. “Let your wife commit suicide, and let the guy who done it get away. Ewwww, you're real scary!”
They had worked themselves into a frenzy. Ward tried to respond. He knew he needed to say something to stall them, stop them. Make them want to keep him alive. In the end, he just cried harder.
Owl Face was feeling the adrenaline rush of destroying Ward. He had a sadist
ic gleam in his eye as he leaned right into Ward’s face again. “Why don't you tell your boy you're sorry! Tell him what a sack o’ shit you are.”
Ward could do nothing but sob. His whole body shook. Snot and spit hung from his face. His eyes bugged. The veins on his neck and forehead bulged out, blue and swollen.
“Say it!” screamed Fox Face. “Tell your little boy you’re sorry. Say it!”
“I'm sorry, David. Daddy's sorry.”
“Sorry as hell,” Fox Face added.
Ward could no longer hear them. The blood pounded in his ears. The acrid smell of his own burning flesh made him retch, but nothing came up. They all watched him in disgust. After a few seconds, Owl Face surged forward. “The hell with this! You tell us what we need to know or I'm fryin' your ass!”
He stabbed the prod into Ward's neck.
“No!” screamed Fox Face. Their orders were to break him and get the information. Killing him would have severe consequences. “You'll kill him. For real.”
That broke the spell. Owl Face pulled the prod away regretfully, stunned at his own actions. He knew he’d lost control.
The change in tone snapped Ward back to reality. “Just do it! Go ahead!” Defiance or surrender? Even Ward didn’t know.
“Why don't you just tell us what we want to know?” Fox Face said.
Owl Face shook his head—and turned the dial to twenty and slung it into Ward’s ribs. The zap and sizzle was sickening. A loud pop followed, and Ward's body convulsed wildly. He vomited the fluid he could not muster only moments earlier. He just hung there in the chains, shaking, his eyes rolled back in his head. And then everything went black.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution Page 23