by Brandt Legg
Less than three meters away, the man pointed a laser-trained pulse-enabled assault rifle at his target’s head. “What’s your name?” the man shouted, his cap blazoned with five-centimeter-high white reflective letters all TreeRunners had grown to fear, “AOI.”
The target raised his hands, hoping not to be shot. He didn’t immediately answer, his eyes darting in search of an escape he knew didn’t exist.
“What’s your name?” the AOI agent yelled again, this time with more urgency.
The target hesitated.
Two more agents arrived from the brush. “Take him, take him!” one screamed, about to fire his own weapon to punctuate his words. “It’s him. He’ll burn us.” The agents knew the stories: Grandyn always seemed to escape, disappearing like a ghost in the forest.
“My name is Grandyn Happerman,” the target said.
The agents didn’t take their eyes off him. “On your knees,” the first one commanded. “Slow-leee. Nice and slooow.”
Grandyn took a breath, measured the distance in his mind and did calculations. How long will it take for them to reach me, to gag me, to kill me? Do they have brain scan equipment? Can my friends get here in time? Was the assignment worth this?
“Knees!” the second one yelled, breaking him from his rapid thoughts.
Grandyn, in sluggish, stilted movements, slowly took a knee, a position that would still allow him to spring up into a roll, or an arching backflip landing in the thick foliage.
There’s an old dry creek bed back there that in less than four meters drops off to a sudden deep ravine. If I could only get there, he thought. I’ve come too far for it to end this way, for these three AOI grunges to be the ones to bring down Grandyn Happerman.
“Shoot him!” the second one barked. “He’s scheming something. He’s got backup.”
“Only if it’s necessary,” the third one responded.
“How about it, Happerman? Are there more of your tree running rebel trash on the way?”
Grandyn knew there were only seconds left to decide on a course of action. His thoughts were coming in split second flashes. If I spring back and don’t make the creek bed, will I still be able to bite the neuro-cap? Will I have time to make the ravine? Or, will their lasers tear apart every bit of cover before I make it?
He looked from man to man. The second one was the most likely to shoot first. It was amazing he hadn’t already taken a shot yet, but fortunately he was also in the worst position to stop his escape.
Grandyn prepared to jump. It would be almost impossible to make it, but he knew that those coming to help him would never get to him in time. I’m dead either way. The AOI would discover his secrets and then kill him quickly.
His muscles tensed, and he held eye contact with the second grunge, waiting for him to blink, or turn, or start to speak again, any distraction. And he did.
The second man turned to the first agent. “He’s going to bolt!”
Before the second man even finished the “e” in “he,” Grandyn was in motion. Pushing up with his bent leg, swinging his other knee until they aligned and he could push off in a springing backward flip. The shots came slicing through the air. He saw the colored lights of the lasers as the leaves shredded and the bark splintered around him. It was the last thing he saw.
The stinging lasers cut into his chest. It felt like being cooked from the inside, the agony increasing with each heartbeat. He tried to focus in those fractions of a second, but even in his final breath, he couldn’t be sure if he’d bit the neuro-cap in time.
The body of Grandyn Happerman hit the ground almost softly as whipping twigs and giant ferns broke his fall, cradling the TreeRunner one last time. The forest bid farewell to one of its own as the three AOI agents untangled him and roughly hauled his carcass into a clearing. They would have to drag and carry the traitor’s remains for more than three kilometers before they reached a pull-out zone. One of them knew enough to check his mouth and found the neuro-cap still intact. He smiled at his comrades as he held it up.
“Gentlemen, we all just got promoted.”
Chapter 45 - Book 2
Deuce and his crew were deep in the redwoods, still canvassing for Twain, when a fresh unit of BLAXERs finally tracked them down.
“Sir, Twain has been found,” one of them told Deuce.
“Is he okay?” Deuce asked.
“He’s alive, but barely,” the man said. “Sir, I don’t know much. He’s in some type of coma.”
“Who found him?”
“Nelson Wright and Munna. They’re still with him.”
“Let’s go.”
It took almost twenty minutes of hard, steady jogging until they reached the clearing where a Flo-wing was waiting. Once in the air, Deuce got on his INU and zoomed his wife. She had just made it to the hospital in Portland. She promised to zoom as soon as she saw Twain and talked with the doctors.
Deuce had more to worry about than just the health of his son. Word would have already reached the AOI that his son was in the Portland Hospital. They would know that his wife and Deuce would be there too. Then there was the Health Circle. What injections had they already given Twain? If the AOI knew, then Lance Miner would know. And what about Munna and Nelson Wright? The AOI or the P-Force would love to get them. Seventy-five years of building a revolution could crumble in the coming minutes.
His INU told him that the situation in the Amazon had escalated, and that tensions were ninety-eight-point-two percent likely to lead to open combat between the opposing forces within the next nine days. The next flash that appeared took his breath.
“Damn! Damn!” he said.
“What is it?” Logan, a top BLAXER who sat across from him, asked.
“Grandyn Happerman has been killed.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything with Grandyn, but the AOI has a positive ID.”
“Where was he?”
“Olympic Rainforest.”
“That could be right.”
“I know,” Deuce said, sliding VMs around until he got the one he was looking for and waited to see if Nelson would accept contact.
“I can’t talk now,” Nelson whispered from a voice-only mode. “Twain is still alive, but critical. Your wife is with him now. I waited until she came. Now I need to get out of the city.”
“A crazy risky thing you did for Twain. I’ll never forget it,” Deuce said.
“He’d have done the same for me . . . and I was able to hold off HC . . . out.”
The contact went dead, but Deuce was relieved. Nelson had somehow been able to stop the Health Circle from giving Twain injections. He hoped to learn how he’d managed that. He’d wanted to tell Nelson about Grandyn, but there hadn’t been time. Nelson was going to have a hard time getting out of the city.
“Logan, get everyone you can to Portland now. Find Nelson, help him get out of there. At the same time I want Twain and my wife evacuated in the next fifteen minutes.”
“To where?”
“I’ll let you know.” Deuce went to work getting a full medical staff and hospital set up on an island he had off the coast of Vancouver. After he had all the right people working on that, he tried to zoom Chelle, but before contact could be made he got a report that P-Force and AOI had teams moving into Portland. “Are you seeing this?” he asked Logan.
“We’re on it,” the BLAXER commander answered. “How far can we push this?”
“You start the torgon war in Portland if you have to. They are not taking Twain or my wife!” Deuce created more VMs and zoomed his commander in the Amazon. “I need some noise down there, some big distractions for AOI and P-Force. Grandyn’s dead, so it’ll take some doing to keep their attention down there right now.”
“Sir, am I understanding? You are authorizing engagement?”
“I’m authorizing anything and everything you need to do to get the attention of our adversaries.” Deuce signed off. There were other contingency plans to put into
play.
As the wealthiest man in the world, his ability to get things done was almost limitless except when up against an extreme superpower like the Aylantik and their vicious AOI. He’d always thought of them as a pre-Banoff mixture of the Nazi SS, the Soviet KGB, and the US NSA, CIA, and Special Forces all rolled into one. But now that they were going after his family, he considered them to be more like thug rapists, and he planned to stop them.
BLAXERs in plainclothes entered the hospital less than two minutes behind the six AOI agents sent to secure Twain’s room. More were on the way, but the massive deployment to the Olympic Rainforest, two-hundred-sixty kilometers to the north, had delayed a larger presence. The BLAXERs caught the AOI still in the lobby, and with the element of surprise took out the entire team while suffering only two injuries. The team went on to secure the floor where Twain and his mother were. Immediately, his bed and the attached monitors were wheeled to the Q-lift. P-Force units were six minutes away.
Portland suddenly erupted into a series of fires, break-ins, and accidents. Seventy-two hostages were taken in a building half a block down from the hospital. Outside the city, “rebels” attacked an AOI weapons depot. Within a forty-five-minute window, there were more emergencies and crime that the entire Pacyfik region normally saw in a decade. The AOI was overwhelmed. During the chaos, a Flo-wing landed on the rooftop pad of the hospital and picked up Twain, his mother, and the two injured BLAXERs.
The remaining mercenaries would keep the AOI and approaching P-Force soldiers busy at the hospital until Twain was a safe distance away. Then, they hoped to vanish into the confusion of the city. The Flo-wing carrying Deuce was still fourteen minutes away, and now that his family was safe, his flight plan would follow them to the island where doctors would be waiting.
The bulk of the diversions in and around Portland weren’t to aid Twain’s escape, but rather to give Munna and Nelson the necessary cover to get away. With Twain taken care of, Deuce zoomed Chelle.
“Have you heard?” he asked as soon as he saw her face.
“Just,” she said, looking exhausted. “Was it really Grandyn this time?”
“All their internal communications still say it was a positive ID, and I just found out he didn’t get his neuro-cap open.”
Chelle’s eyes filled, and she dug her top teeth into her bottom lip, hoping the pain would stop her emotions. Deuce recognized her efforts, but he still wasn’t sure about her, and couldn’t make up his mind if she was upset about Grandyn’s death or the fact that the TreeRunner had not destroyed his brain before dying.
“I’ve authorized action in the Amazon.”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly snapping back. “If Grandyn’s dead‒‒”
“That’s exactly why we need to act now. Without the threat of Grandyn being down there, P-Force and the AOI will pull their troops. The numbers are significant. We need them to stay down there if PAWN is going to have a chance to beat back the AOI in the southern California, Florida, and Michigan Areas.”
“How are you able to monitor us?” she asked, visibly upset that he knew their plans.
“Never mind. And you’re welcome for keeping them down in the Amazon,” Deuce answered, annoyed. “Try to trust me just a little bit, okay?”
“We’ll talk about that when this is all over.”
“Your brother saved my son.”
“Twain’s okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry. Nelson told me, and I tried to reach you. I should have asked about him, but I just got so distracted with the news of Grandyn.”
“I understand,” Deuce said, but he didn’t really. “I’m not sure where he and Munna are. They stayed in Portland a bit too long.”
“What? They went to Portland? That’s crazy!”
“They were afraid to leave Twain, and there was nowhere else to go. He’s barely hanging on.” Deuce’s voice broke. He turned away from the INU.
Chelle saw his back shaking.
“I’ll check back later.” Deuce choked out the words and then killed the connection. Logan looked over at his boss, and then moved to another seat, giving him privacy.
Deuce stared out the clear side of the Flo-wing and fought a losing battle with tears. “Please let him live… please, please, please don’t take my boy!”
Chapter 46 - Book 2
Nelson saw his INU light up but didn’t dare respond, as AOI agents were less than fifteen meters away. He and Munna were sitting in a LEV, and even if they were willing to risk going through a checkpoint, they had no way to start the vehicle.
At least the agents hadn’t seen them yet. They were busy patrolling a street opposite them. He assumed they were looking for him, until a gang of men ran from a building on the other end of the street. The agents pursued, but a few seconds into their chase an explosion obliterated all but one of them. The surviving AOI agent, in what would be his dying gesture, opened a VM and zoomed the details of the incident.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Nelson said to Munna. “A hundred AOI agents will probably be here any minute.”
She nodded, surprisingly calm. As they got out of the LEV, he scanned the area. Portland was a town he knew well. Memories had been seeping into his mind ever since they had left the hospital. But there was no time for reminiscing. All his concentration would be required to navigate the maze of KEL cameras and AOI agents who were systematically tracking him and hemming him in. Nelson was surprised they’d even made it out of the hospital, which were known to have one of the highest concentrations of KEL cameras.
Nelson had learned quite a bit about KEL since Deuce had sent him the first diagram detailing the camera locations in the library, three years earlier. During the time since then, he’d studied more with the help of PAWN experts and additional information from Deuce, and he’d taught new recruits techniques to avoid detection. But knowledge of the system also brought an awareness that unless you had every location, going completely undetected was nearly impossible, especially in a hospital.
“I’m afraid the AOI might have let us slip through just so they could follow us,” Nelson said to Munna, as they hurried across a small park.
“Where do you think they hope we’ll lead them to?” Munna asked in an amused tone. “There are only a few they want more than us. Grandyn, Chelle, a few others perhaps, but they would not pass up a chance to finally get me. No, Nelson, we are being helped.”
“I’m sure Deuce would normally be doing everything he could, but with Twain fighting for his life‒‒”
“I was thinking of another Lipton.”
“Cope?”
She smiled.
Nelson didn’t have time to think about that or debate her esoteric nature or the philosophical ramifications that a man he’d come to know as a mystic, and one he’d watched die, could help them right now. Nelson looked ahead and saw more AOI agents at the far end of the next intersection. Help or no, they needed to get off the streets.
After checking the time, he realized they could catch a Transit-LEV to the interstate in about seven minutes, if they could travel the three and a half blocks in that time. Munna was one hundred thirty-three, but it was his own lungs and stamina that worried him most.
As they moved along the sidewalks, Nelson reminded Munna to walk on the curb as much as possible since it was the only part of the sidewalk without sensors. He continued to dodge KEL locations, but knew they were being picked up on some of them. He’d found a baby blanket at the hospital, which Munna was now wearing as a scarf, in an effort to thwart the FRIDG system, but on the late June day, it might get flagged as suspicious. Fortunately the streets were crowded, which made blending in easier and made it harder for KEL to get good shots of them.
“Look over there,” Nelson said, pointing to several columns of thick, gray smoke rising from a row of buildings to the east that seemed to be constructed entirely of green and blue glass.
“And there,” Munna said, waving her arm to the we
st where the sky filled with black smoke behind the massive and well known silver “three rain drops” buildings, named for their interlocking tear-drop shaped design, with one structure supporting the other two, giving them the appearance of falling rain. Today, the engulfing dark haze made them seem to be a storm for giants.
Portland, normally one with very little noise pollution, was suddenly a blaring of sirens, alarms, bullhorns, and shouts. Nelson welcomed the confusion, and looked again at his aged companion. Perhaps we are getting help. But some of this must be from Deuce, he thought.
They made it two blocks before too many AOI vehicles and troops crowded into the roads ahead. Nelson didn’t know what to do, and then, as a flashing light of a low flying AOI Flo-wing caught his eye, he knew just where to go. They cut through an alley and there before him, with moments to spare before a squadron of AOI blocked their passage, was the beautiful Portland Library building. It stood as it had for two hundred years, looking like a guard, a messenger from another time among the gleaming modern city of solar roads, lights, and rotating composite and glass structures which constantly transformed the skyline.
“We can hide in there,” Nelson said, leading her to a back door. “If we’re lucky, they didn’t change the codes.” The building had remained vacant for three years. He tried the code, but nothing happened. “That’s okay, there’s a window around that side which I remember never latched properly.”
They found themselves in the basement with only a hint of light from the below-grade windows, which were dimmer than usual after three years of accumulated dirt.
“I could navigate this old place blindfolded,” Nelson said, leading her up to the main floor.
The building seemed a ghostly realm, a distorted copy of its former grandness. A lingering, stale, chemical odor permeated everything. Much of the main floor had been cleared, but then whatever plans the Aylantik had for the antique structure must have been interrupted. Perhaps resources were required for the Grandyn hunt, or maybe the Polis Drast arrest had something to do with it. In any case, it was a terrible scene.