Arch Enemy

by Leo J. Maloney

  “Are you sure this was the best time to go?”

  “They’d get suspicious if I didn’t show,” she said, picking at the fingernails on her left hand. “Believe me, it was the best thing I could do.”

  “Are you feeling better about the whole thing?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I was just a bit freaked. Once I had a little time to let things settle down, things seemed right again.”

  No sign of the lie in her tone. The kid is good, Morgan admitted to himself, a chill running down his spine. Was he responsible for this? Had he raised her to be someone who could tell a convincing lie at the drop of a hat?

  Had he raised her to be like him?

  “Happy to hear it,” said Simon. “I just got a message. He wants to meet with you.”

  “Just me?”

  “I met with him today already,” he said. “It was supposed to be the both of us, but—”

  “I get it,” said Alex. “Just give me a time and a place.”

  Chapter 90

  Morgan clutched the steering wheel of his Olds, white-knuckled, even though he was going under the speed limit for a change. He was in no hurry to arrive at their destination.

  Alex rode with him, just the two of them. It was a reasonable scenario, in case they were watching—a father giving his daughter a ride back to school, nothing more. Meanwhile, the Zeta tactical van was following a couple of miles behind.

  The whole ride was tense. Morgan gave her a tube of pepper spray that he kept in the glove compartment and a three-inch folding knife to replace the one she’d lost to Groener. He also took the opportunity to come up with more and more improbable pieces of last-minute advice.

  “If you’re shot at with a stun gun, remove the wires before they bring you down. And remember, if you find a bomb—”

  “Dad, stop. This isn’t helping anymore.”

  They rolled into campus. The weight in the pit of Morgan’s stomach doubling, then tripling. Gray clouds loomed in the sky, threatening a blizzard.

  Morgan brought the car to a halt and tasted bile.

  Alex placed the tiny communicator in her ear canal. Morgan picked up the headset that paired with it.

  “Testing,” he said. “How’s my voice coming in?”

  “I can hear you, Dad.”

  “Headquarters, do you copy?”

  “We’ve got you loud and clear,” said Bloch, through a remote connection.

  “Come in, tactical.”

  “Standing by,” said Bishop. Morgan spotted the van in the next lot over.

  He got out of the car and took Alex’s crutches from the backseat. He then opened the door for her and helped her out.

  “Okay,” Morgan said, holding onto her shoulders with both hands and looking her straight in the eye. “Your priority is to make it out of there alive. You hear me? If anything happens, screw the mission and save yourself.”

  “Is that what you would do?”

  Morgan grimaced, deflated.

  She walked away toward the entrance of the Gothic-style library. He had the urge to shout out that he loved her, but he didn’t want to share that with everyone listening in. Instead, he watched every one of her hobbled steps until she disappeared into the pointed arch doors.

  Morgan got back in the car, turned it on to keep the heat going, and took out a newspaper, pretending to read.

  “Alex,” he said. “Testing, do you copy?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Maintain contact,” Morgan said. “We need to make sure the communicator is still within range in the library stacks.”

  Flurries of snow blasted against the windshield.

  “In the elevator,” said Alex. Morgan tensed up. A ding as the car reached its floor. “All right, I’m going in.”

  Morgan listened hard for anything, but the communicator’s microphone was excellent at filtering out ambient noise. The line was silent until—

  “Hello, Alex.”

  Polemarch. The voice was calm, controlled, and somehow empty. Somehow, it was familiar, too. Maybe because it reminded Morgan of Praetorian.

  “I’d like to congratulate you on your work. It was key in making our operation possible.”

  “Glad I could be a part of it,” she said.

  “Are you really? What did you think of the master plan?”

  “I don’t like thinking about it,” she said. “But justice was served.”

  Good girl. She knew she couldn’t hide her emotions, so she worked with them. Offered up a false confession to conceal the truth.

  “You’re one of us now,” he said. “Not the Ekklesia anymore. The Legion of Erebus. Do you feel that commitment?”

  “I do,” she said. “I want to know what’s next.”

  “Hold your horses, eager beaver. First I’d like to talk about where you were today.”

  Alex let escape a nervous giggle. “I was visiting my family down in Andover,” she said, stammering.

  Damn it, Alex. Keep it together.

  “And you saw your father?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was concerned now. His tone was filled with menace. Morgan reached into the glove compartment and felt for the snub nose of his .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.

  “I’d like to send a message to your father,” he said. Morgan’s heart beat faster in his chest.

  “My father? You know my father?”

  Morgan checked his ammo. Yes, keep the plausible deniability going a little bit longer.

  “I’ve talked to him before.” Morgan almost groaned in frustration. Of course. Boston Common. The mysterious voice. “And I know he is listening to us now.”

  “Go!” said Morgan, pulling open the door handle. “Move in! Now!”

  “Copy that,” said Bishop.

  “Dan Morgan, we will kill you and your entire family.”

  Morgan kicked open the door and emerged outside, .38 revolver in hand.

  “Your people cannot save Alex.”

  He glanced at the Zeta tactical van, where a figure, swaddled up in winter clothing, tossed a messenger bag under its near side and took off running.

  “Bishop, get out of—”

  The bag exploded and Morgan winced against the light and heat. Windows shattered. A split second later, the van was on its side, in flames but in one piece.

  Car alarms blared in the wake of the explosion.

  Torn, Morgan ran toward the library. His daughter came first. “Tac team, come in!”

  “And you cannot save her, either.”

  Morgan’s eyes went wide.

  He didn’t hear the report of the sniper bullet that hit him.

  Chapter 91

  Alex was frozen, eyes fixed on Polemarch. She saw his face clearly now by the dim light that filtered in the lancet window. He was older than she had thought he was. Midthirties, at least, with curly hair and several days’ growth of beard on his face. His close-set eyes shone with raw menace.

  “You showed such promise. Plucky. Determined. My star pupil.”

  She held her hands up, palms out. “Look, I’ll cooperate, all right? I’m involved. I’m guilty, too.”

  He hovered over her. “It’s much too late for that.”

  “Dad!” she called out. “Dad, help!”

  “Your father can’t help you. He’s already dead.”

  It was a punch to her gut. Her father. And it was her fault. She threw up, despite herself. Polemarch drew back in disgust.

  Alex saw her opening.

  She took the pepper spray out of her pocket. He was too far away to stop her. She let loose a stream, straight into his eyes. He screamed in pain and stumbled back.

  “Bitch!”

  While he was incapacitated, Alex got up, bracing against her crutches, and moved among the darkened bookshelves. “Help!” she called out. No one answered.

  She had to hide. She looked at the elevator—too far. Polemarch would be coming for her. She’d never outrun him with her cast on.

  She retreated bet
ween two bookshelves, clicking off the automatic light as she did. She eased herself onto the ground. Only one thing could save her now. Only one way she could hope to move fast enough to evade him.

  She drew her father’s knife and flipped open the blade. She pulled her right pant leg over her cast, cutting where it caught. She inserted the blade between the fiberglass casing and the padding underneath. And she began cutting.

  The fiberglass of the cast was tough and resisted the blade, but in ten seconds she made a one-inch cut. She pushed it in farther.

  The knife slipped into her flesh. She muffled a cry. She gripped it harder and kept sawing away.

  She looked through the bookshelf, but couldn’t see Polemarch.

  Alex plunged the knife in deeper, slicing into her skin again. She gritted her teeth against the pain and pushed. The white inner padding of the cast grew stained with blood.

  “Come out, little rabbit.” Polemarch. Four rows of bookshelves away. She still had some time.

  She sliced, pushing faster now, every cut of the double-edged knife piercing her flesh. Past the knee. Push. Push. Push.

  Polemarch’s footsteps, close. No more time. She grabbed the two sides of the fiberglass casing and wrenched them apart. It broke with a series of cracks, setting her leg free for the first time in months.

  Polemarch heard. His footsteps made straight for her. Knife in hand, she braced against the bookshelf and stood. She tested the weight on her right leg. Unsteady. But it would have to do.

  Polemarch rounded the corner of her shelf and came face-to-face with her, eyes red and watering. She held out the bloodied knife. Still bracing against the shelf, brandishing a three-inch blade, she didn’t look like much of a threat.

  But he kept his distance.

  “You took your cast off,” he said, looking amused. “Very resourceful. I should have known better than to underestimate you. But tell me, Alex. Where are you going to run to now?”

  “You should take your own advice about underestimating me.” She pulled the bookshelf with all her weight. It creaked and tipped over, slamming into Polemarch, who was not ready for it, and then collided into its counterpart, which tipped over in turn, and Alex and Polemarch were wedged tight between the two. A chain reaction ensued in a terrible din of falling metal and books, receding as each new shelf came crashing down.

  Alex pushed the books out from between two shelves and squeezed through, emerging free on the other side. Polemarch, too bulky to do the same, was stuck, at least for a while.

  Alex ran. She stumbled, her weak leg buckling under the new strain, and fell forward, knocking her chin hard against the floor, teeth clamping down on the tip of her tongue. She tasted blood.

  Get ahold of yourself, Morgan. Life or death. Life or death.

  Alex stood. The elevator was in sight. Staggering, holding onto the wall, she moved forward with singular purpose, a tunnel vision taking her to her only hope of salvation.

  Close. She held onto the bookshelf as the distance between her and the elevator grew shorter, shorter.... She pushed her way inside and collapsed against the wall, pushing the button for the lobby. The doors slid together, closing the gap tighter and tighter—

  A hand pushed through, and the doors obliged, opening. Polemarch. Battered, gasping, but in the harsh light of the elevator, packed with muscle. In tight quarters, she had no hope of overpowering him. Her knife was gone, along with her pepper spray. There was no escape.

  He drew a garrote between his hands.

  “Did you really think you could get away from me?” he growled. “Did you think you could stop me?”

  “No,” came a voice from behind him. “But I can.”

  Alex’s father bodychecked Polemarch, pushing him against the elevator wall and knocking the wind out of him. He reached around him, pulling the garrote back, tight around his neck, cutting off his air. The younger man thrashed, but Morgan had his knee against Polemarch’s back and held on tight.

  Alex didn’t know how long it was—somehow, time seemed both to stop and to run fast-forward at the same time—but Polemarch’s eyes rolled up under their lids and he slumped to the ground.

  “Dad!” Alex embraced her father. “I thought you were gone.”

  “Not yet,” he said, panting. “Sniper tore my arm real good, but I can still move it, which is a good sign.” He grabbed at his right bicep. Alex now saw that his jacket was shredded a few inches below the shoulder, and blood was oozing out, staining the lining and forming droplets on the waterproof exterior.

  “Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her and pressing the elevator button. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 92

  Alex heard about the bomb under the van from her father on the way to the hospital. Being reinforced, the chassis absorbed most of the damage, but the people in the van—Alex had learned their code names: Bishop, Diesel, Tango, and the incredible Spartan—had suffered a couple of serious fractures each, a few busted eardrums, and assorted bruises and lacerations. They were alive, but out of the game, stuck in bed, under aliases in different hospitals.

  Alex had her leg sutured and dressed by a doctor who kept shooting her dirty looks, and then she had an X-ray done. Once they were satisfied that she wasn’t at significant risk of refracturing her leg, they let her go with her father, although they insisted on taking her to the car in a wheelchair.

  She watched the snowflakes rush the windshield from the darkness as her father drove her back to Zeta. They didn’t speak, but in that drive, when it was just the two of them, no mission, she felt a closeness with him that she hadn’t felt in months. She watched him, the stubble growing in around his mustache and goatee, healing scratches on his skin, the bandages on his arms disappearing under his sleeves, and the tireless, determined expression on his face.

  She had her father back.

  Morgan pulled into the garage and they descended together into Zeta headquarters. The whole place was quiet and empty, lit only by the dim LEDs that ran along the walls, which were never off. It was also still pervaded by suffocating heat.

  Her father showed her to the barracks, with its row of bunks. She lay down her aching muscles, springs creaking. He was snoring within thirty seconds of hitting his bunk, but Alex, feeling restless, tossed and turned until she gave up on sleeping and went exploring.

  Mostly, this was an excuse to test out her leg. It felt strange. Shaky. Even in winter, when no part of her got much sun, the now-mended limb was paler than the other, and the skin was doughy. It was weak and thin, lacking any kind of muscle definition.

  But it worked. By God, it worked. It was a marvel, walking. She ran down the hall, whooping at the sheer joy of it. Her leg felt stronger by the minute.

  She poked around the facility—the gym; the War Room; Bloch’s office, locked; a series of offices off in a side hall, several unoccupied, but one—light under the door and voices, whispering. Alex slowed to a creep as she drew nearer, trying to make out what they were saying.

  If she had been a little more alert, she would have stopped there.

  Instead, she pushed the door open and saw Lincoln Shepard and Karen O’Neal in a state of undress that made her blood rush to her cheeks. They turned and looked at her in shock.

  “Uh. Hi.”

  “Hey,” said Shepard. “You won’t, uh, tell anyone, right?”

  She mimed a zipper sealing her lips and closed the door. Embarrassed, she made for her bunk and lay in the darkness. But one thing still stuck to her mind as she tried to force herself to sleep.

  Simon.

  The situation had gotten to his head, but he wasn’t this insane person. She couldn’t believe he would be okay with what happened. But now he was there, in deep with the people who had almost killed her. And there were only two things that could happen. Either he would keep going until he ran off the deep end, or he would come to his senses and be killed by the Ekklesia—by the Legion.

  Guilt welled up in her. She had used him. S
he had pushed him into this. Whatever happened to him was on her conscience.

  Alex crept out of bed and went down the hall to one of the empty offices. She booted up the computer, which whirred in the darkness, and logged on to the deep web, the way Simon had taught her.

  On their secret messaging client, she wrote.

  Simon, I am here and I am safe. They tried to kill me. I can get you out of this. Please talk to me. Let me help you.

  Chapter 93

  Morgan huddled around the War Room table with the broken remains of Zeta Division—Diana Bloch, Paul Kirby, Lincoln Shepard, Karen O’Neal, Lily Randall, and Peter Conley, with Smith standing at the head. General Strickland sat at a remove from the table, watching from a chair in the corner.

  “An investigation of Polemarch yielded no results,” Smith said. “All records of his existence have been scrubbed clean. We’ve run his photograph through facial recognition software and compared it against the major criminal databases, with no luck. We distributed his photograph to local police departments, but I’m not hopeful that it will give us anything useful.”

  “So that’s it?” said Morgan. “That’s all we got?”

  “Except for one thing,” said Smith, nodding at Lily.

  She cleared her throat. “Polemarch is the man who killed Roger Baxter—who almost killed me. Whoever he was, he was an important operator inside the Legion.”

  “Which still doesn’t give us anything to go on,” piped in Shepard.

  “Meanwhile,” said Conley, “they still have their all-access pass to the world’s electronic communications.”

  “I’m afraid the situation is even more dire,” said Smith. “I yield to General Strickland.”

  Smith retreated into the background as the general stood and approached the table. Stormy weather showed on his face.

  “There is more to the Praetorian escape than what it seemed. The CIA intercepted a message from the Legion last night—one that, we believe, was meant for us.” Shepard moved to speak up, but Strickland preempted him. “Untraceable. Better minds than yours have made sure of that.” Shepard scowled, sore at the comment.