The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “How could he have mentioned us by name? The letter was written before I was born, maybe before my father.” Grandyn heard a noise outside and checked his whistler. The little house had cameras hidden on the parameter. He checked and saw nothing.

  “Like I said, he knew things.”

  “Why didn’t he just put the prophecies in that letter?” Grandyn asked.

  “Because he didn’t have them all. I know about the ones he did have, but those have all happened already. They don’t do us much good. The ones in the books are about the future, and they’ll show us how to bring down Aylantik.”

  “If the prophecies are real and they show that we beat Aylantik, then we have nothing to worry about.”

  “Whatever definition of prophecies you’re working from, I assure you it does not apply to these,” Deuce said. “These prophecies constantly change until they actually happen.”

  “What?”

  “It sounds far-fetched, I know.”

  “It sounds impossible.” Grandyn quieted as he heard jetpacks. Typically AOI agents, the only ones authorized to fly jetpacks, flew only in heavily populated areas. But for weeks Grandyn had noticed the stepping up of patrols. He needed to get back to the woods.

  “Yet they exist,” Deuce said.

  “Do they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Inside the books from the Portland Library?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can they change if they are printed inside a book?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because they don’t,” Grandyn said, “and you want me to risk my life for a myth?”

  “Your father did, and your mother, although she probably didn’t know about the prophecies, she did believe in the cause they are rooted in, and she died for it.”

  “Then we’ve already given enough Happerman blood.”

  “Your family has certainly done more than their share. But Grandyn, you think this is just about ending the brutal reign of the AOI and knocking the Aylantik out of power, and this is about so much more than that.” Deuce looked off into the stars displayed above his head. “This is about changing the way we live . . . the technology that has made me rich, all its luster and convenience is but a distraction. We’ve been entertained for three hundred years while our birthright has been taken from us, hidden and obscured by cheap and easy things and imaginary fulfillment.

  “What is our birthright?”

  “To be as powerful as a star. To live free as an expression of love.”

  Grandyn thought Deuce was talking over his head. He didn’t want to be in the conversation any longer. “Let me think about it.”

  “How can I find you? We’re running out of time.”

  “You’re a TreeRunner. You’ll find a way.”

  “Grandyn, please. We have more in common than just being TreeRunners. They killed my father too.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Grandyn said sincerely. “They’ve killed a lot of fathers. More than anything, I want to stop them from killing more, but there are many ways to kill a snake. I’m already working on a few.”

  “There is only one way that will succeed. I need your answer.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  When the connection went dead, Deuce screened for the originating location of Grandyn’s call, but he wasn’t surprised, given the List Keepers involvement, that it proved impossible. There had not been much in Deuce’s privileged life that required patience, but he needed every patient breath he’d ever had for the greatest challenges he’d ever known: the revolution, the books, and Grandyn Happerman

  “Saying nothing, that’s enough for me,” he whispered into the starry sky as Bessie Smith sang “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”

  Chapter 20 - Book 2

  Zaverly had been a TreeRunner for almost twenty years. She’d joined at age five and wanted to spend her life in the woods. Although most members used the TreeRunners as a stepping-stone into the world of business or even AOI service, she was hoping to remain in the group and train future recruits. But then the AOI shut them down, killed everyone they could find, and continued hunting the survivors ever since. Even AOI agents who were known to have been former TreeRunners were quickly executed. The AOI Chief had been very clear, “once a TreeRunner, always a TreeRunner,” and Zaverly knew it was true.

  She’d blamed Grandyn for all the bad that had come the way of the once great organization. If he hadn’t recruited members to help steal books, the AOI might not have come down on them all. But at the same time she was in awe of him. Zaverly, lean and muscled and almost one point eight meters tall with long dark hair, had no shortage of male admirers in the remote jungles. But beyond that, the olive-skinned beauty was popular for another reason. Her ability to fight. She never, ever, gave up.

  He stared at her as she popped her knuckles one by one just by extending her fingers and bending them in a certain way. The noise unnerved him, but it was part of how she unwound. He’d seen the routine many times. The double-jointed gymnast bent and contorted in ways he didn’t think possible, in ways that shouldn’t be possible. He had to close his eyes when she bent a foot behind her neck while the other one remained on the floor before cart wheeling into the reverse position.

  Zaverly might have been the most determined person he’d ever known. How she got that way at such a young age was something she didn’t like to talk about. Something had made this twenty-three-year old a tempest. Her looks were a natural camouflage in the dark jungle, as if she’d been born there, but it was Zaverly’s earthy eyes that stopped people. They contained a fire, both literally and figuratively, as her irises exploded in yellow and brown flecks. A warrior had been his first impression, but that had been based on her physical appearance. Once he got to know Zaverly and experienced her fiery personality, he came to believe he’d never meet a tougher fighter. She seemingly didn’t know how to give up, couldn’t stand the word “no,” and didn’t tolerate anything less than giving everything.

  Zaverly saw those same traits in Grandyn, although in a softer, smoother form. His intensity drew her to him, and she hated him more for it. For a girl without weakness, Grandyn Happerman, the man she’d been assigned to protect, was as close to one as she got. Having to deal with him, a man she wanted to go away, a man she had to save, a man filled with mystery, was making her crazy. Added to that, her loss of control made her even angrier.

  Finally alone, Zaverly looked at the man she’d just saved again as she read the names of those who had been killed to make their escape possible.

  “Grandyn, you can’t keep going out there. I’m not coming for you next time. We’re all going to die!”

  “I don’t want you to keep coming after me.”

  “You’re so damned noble. Do you think that impresses me?”

  “I don’t care what impresses you.”

  “You should, you ungrateful torg. Do you know how many times I’ve saved your life? Do you know how many have died so that you could go on living, so that you could cost more lives, and more and more and more!?” She pushed him into a wall.

  “Umpf,” he said sinking to his knees.

  “Oh, damn, your ribs. I’m sorry, I forgot.”

  “Leave me alone,” he said, shaking off her attempts to help. “You think I’m a death magnet? Well, I don’t want any of this.”

  “Then why do you go out there?” she said, trying to help him up.

  He pushed her hand away. “I’m just following orders. If you don’t like it, why don’t you complain to the supervisor?”

  “I have . . . lots of times.”

  “Well then deal with it or quit.”

  “You know no one quits the TreeRunners.”

  “No. Not since the Doneharvest. Dying is the only way out.”

  “And you’ve been a big help in that department.”

  “Torg off, Zaverly.”

  She glared at him.

  “Four and twenty-six,” he said.


  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked spitefully.

  “You’ve saved my life four times . . . and twenty-six people have died to keep me alive.”

  Her eyes filled, and that was the exact moment she fell in love with him. “You know?”

  “I see every face.”

  “Why do they send you out?” she repeated, desperate for a rational answer that could begin to make sense of the deaths. “You must have asked them. I mean, you’re an amazing TreeRunner, but there are many others who are better. We need the twenty-six who have died protecting you more than we need you out there.”

  “True,” he said, “but the AOI declared war on the TreeRunners, and as soon as that happened we became allied with PAWN, the Creatives, the Rejectionists, and everyone else who wants to see Aylantik fall.”

  “I know that.”

  “Of course you do, so think about what it means. We’re at war. It may not have been declared yet, the general population may not know it yet, but sides have been chosen and people are dying.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “I took an oath and I follow orders. If our leadership and that of our allies says Grandyn Happerman is a symbol of the revolution or has some special purpose, then I’m not arguing. And if they deem it strategically important to keep sending me out into the jungle for whatever reason, then I’m going to do it, because those people are a whole lot smarter than me, and they see something you and I can’t when we’re buried beneath all these trees.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, her eyes glued to his.

  “While we only see the trees, they see the forest.”

  Grandyn sat by himself, something he did all too often, and wondered when it would end, all the deceit that had surrounded him since his father’s death. The trees offered lonely protection, but it was the TreeRunners who were paying with their lives. He’d asked Parker to provide a list of the next of kin for anyone who had died in the service of the “Grandyn Mission,” and he had quite a file. One day he hoped to be able to talk to the families, the spouses, the brothers and sisters, and in several cases the children of the people who had sacrificed themselves for him. Parker had told him repeatedly that it was for the cause, not for him, but her words, merely designed to make him feel better, meant nothing.

  After discovering Deuce was a TreeRunner and talking with him, Grandyn felt sure that the trillionaire had been the one who initiated the Grandyn Mission.

  Clearly, Parker has refused to tell Deuce where I am, he thought, although she’s rarely known herself, but he must have convinced her to make sure I was kept alive at any cost. It has to stop. Maybe if I go to Deuce’s island and try to figure out the books, all the dying in my name will end.

  But he knew there were other risks. Grandyn had had many missions of his own, and he’d been working with the inner strength and drive that comes from a single-minded dedication to revenge.

  Along with his personal vendetta, two other things pushed him. He owed his life to those responsible for saving him and keeping him hidden, the List Keepers. He didn’t know much about the highly secretive group, but he could feel their power as he survived and eluded the biggest manhunt in AOI history. Then there was his allegiance to the TreeRunners. Most of his peers, who had not been TreeRunners, were finished with college. But more than seventy percent of his TreeRunner friends from pre-Doneharvest days were now dead.

  Grandyn’s life had become more complicated than he could have ever imagined. He recalled the day he escaped AOI custody and Fye, the List Keeper who’d taken him in, had said, “Grandyn, you’re just like a cat. You have nine lives.”

  Yet here he was three years later and it seemed more like twenty-nine lives.

  He’d grown to love Fye, and she had to know it, but he was afraid to express it, or even to show it because everyone he’d ever loved was dead. When he was a little boy his parents used to tell him love was the most powerful force in the universe, yet all his love ever seemed to do was get people killed. He didn’t want to think about love, he didn’t want to think about anything other than revenge, and as he sat on the damp log, he shivered, somehow knowing that the real trouble still lay ahead.

  Chapter 21 - Book 2

  Lance Miner stood on the roof of his office building in Buenos Aires. He’d installed massive Whistlers – screening, mirrored panels – along with a host of electronics and nanotechnologies, that would make monitoring and eavesdropping impossible. Still, he whispered as he spoke to Blaise Cortez through a single-use, quantum-secured, infinite-encrypted INU. “In the era of total surveillance, complete monitoring, and anti-privacy, paranoia is no longer a disorder. It is an absolute necessity,” Miner had said to Sarlo when the rooftop protections had been added to all his buildings.

  Miner flipped his coin as they spoke. Blaise followed it with his eyes. “Oh, an old piece of money that is. One hundred and thirteen years ago, 1988, yes,” Blaise said. “The Philadelphia mint struck 5,004,646 of the coins while San Francisco made 557,370 for a total mintage of 5,562,016. They contain one ounce of .999 fine silver. The Americans were oddly the last place on earth to adopt the exceedingly superior metric system. I must say that’s a lovely coin. The obverse shows a design originally created by Adolph A. Weinman, while the reverse depicts a heraldic eagle. Those Americans with their symbols and patriotism. Too many of them wound up in the Aylantik government. Anyway, nice to see something from the days when money still had a physical form, even if it wasn’t backed by anything more than a dirty promise.”

  Miner, accustomed to Blaise’s expositive rants, ignored it. “You claimed three years ago to know where Munna was, and we got nothing,” Miner said. “How do I know that this time you’re really going to come through?”

  “Let me remind you that it was I who was the first to confirm Munna’s existence when the AOI and your own P-Force people were convinced she was just a myth. ‘It’s impossible a woman born before the Banoff can still be alive, and no way she’s over one hundred and thirty,’ you said to me. Ha! And here she is now, at one hundred and thirty-three, leading PAWN and about to embark on a war that will certainly cost you your precious peace and perhaps even take down your entire way of life.”

  “We still can’t find her.”

  “Then I should also remind you that I was more than willing to tell you her exact whereabouts three years ago when I knew. But Drast, who became a traitor you might recall, wouldn’t pay my price, and now I guess we know why, don’t we?”

  Miner didn’t need reminding. He’d been lucky to survive the Drast affair. Polis Drast had almost become World Premier. He was, by a long measure, the highest-placed official who’d ever been arrested by the AOI. The fact that he’d been groomed and backed by Miner had opened a long investigation into his affairs that continued even now. Miner was the most shocked of all at Drast’s duplicity, yet he missed Drast because he had been his best road into the inside world of the AOI. Miner still had plenty of low-level informants, but he needed much more than the limited access they could provide. Now he had to rely heavily on Blaise, a man he knew he couldn’t trust.

  “You’re a strong man Lance, I’ll give you that. Drast’s betrayal would have finished a weaker person. What did it feel like? Were you tempted to jump off a bridge? You’re talking to me from a roof right now, aren’t you?” Blaise asked. “Does all this talk of Drast screwing you over make you want to walk to the ledge and step off? Because if it does, I wouldn’t blame you. As I said, it would have killed someone weaker.”

  “Shut up, Blaise,” Miner said calmly, silently furious he had to deal with such a slippery rogue. At least the Imps were basically honest, but Blaise was an unclassifiable villain, at once Miner’s greatest asset and also a nearly invincible foe. “I need to know where Grandyn Happerman is.”

  “Everyone wants to know that.” The world currency had become secrets, and they were brokered in power trades by those who could discover where the leaks and cracks were
. The AOI knew “everything,” so the relatively few things that escaped their notice were of great value. The Doneharvest and the building revolution had only increased both the market, and the price for such information, and no one was better connected and equipped to profit from the current climate than Blaise. “I must admit, not even I have that golden nugget at the moment. But you can be assured that I have been working on it and I have a number of leads, one in particular that is extremely promising.”

  “You’ll no doubt be selling that information to the highest bidder?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Contact me first.”

  “Of course, of course,” Blaise said, smiling so that his voice sounded overly cheery, but then he switched to an urgent, admonishing tone. “You aren’t going to be able to stop this war Lance. It’s bigger than you or me, bigger even than Deuce.” He couldn’t resist the dig.

  A formation of five, mid-sized drones buzzed overhead.

  “You may be right. But even if I can’t stop it, I can make damn sure I win it.”

  “Do you think so? Have you run the simulations?”

  “I have.”

  “Then you’re using different inputs and variables, because everything I see says that if the Aylantik wins, then the world is nothing like the one we enjoy today. An AOI victory may be worse than a loss.”

  “What makes you think I’m talking about AOI winning?”

  “Ah, interesting,” Blaise said, sounding delighted. “Yes, you have your own army . . . the P-Force, and just as important, you have your own treasury, but you also have your own enemy. One with a larger private army and a much larger treasury. What is it you plan to do about Deuce Lipton and his BLAXERs?”

  “I’m sure you’d like to know my plans so that you could sell them to Deuce, but you need to be careful. If you’ve run enough simulations, then you should know that you don’t come out well in any single scenario.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Blaise said, laughing. “I’m not even real.”