“You think this might be about us? All of us, and not just Marshall?” Forbes asked.
“Right now we can’t rule anything out, and I’m not taking any chances.”
Jamie-Lyn nodded over towards where CJ was standing. The large green lizard alien was looking out across Marshall’s grave, his head hung low and radiating sorrow.
“You really think someone’s hunting him?” she enquired sceptically.
“Maybe it’s using the rest of us to get to him,” Forbes offered worryingly.
“Did you see the News Day piece?” Jamie-Lyn suddenly asked Jesus in order to see his reaction.
“Of course. Usual paranoid garbage.”
“It certainly seems to have caught people’s attention,” Forbes said.
“Tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings.” Jesus shrugged. “There’s always a market for wild conspiracy theories. People love crap like that: Elvis sightings, JFK rumours, alien abductions and the like.”
“Just as long as that’s all it is,” Jamie-Lyn replied slowly. “I don’t like the thought that we were manipulated, Jesus.”
“No one needed to be, not once SOUL started blowing people up,” he returned firmly. “Besides, this will all be forgotten soon enough, regardless of what Gerald Macintyre’s intentions are.”
“Macintyre?” Jamie-Lyn exclaimed.
“Who’s that?” Forbes asked.
“Gerald Macintyre is a journalist with a morning TV talk show called Mac Attack, and I use the term journalist loosely. What’s he got to do with this?” she asked Jesus.
“You didn’t see? He did a show on us this morning, the usual sort of ill-informed rubbish: no facts, no evidence – just a lot of shouting.”
“I didn’t realise that this had reached this level.” Jamie-Lyn breathed slowly.
“And what was his take?” Forbes asked
“Oh, about what you’d expect: government cover-ups, dirty back-room deals, a prime minister running roughshod over the laws of the land with the help of super-powered soldiers.”
“Knowing Mac, I’m guessing that more colourful language was used,” Jamie-Lyn said.
“Well, the term Nazi was thrown around a little,” Jesus admitted with a shake of his head. “But trust me, this is just a phase; they’ll all have moved onto something else by this time next week.”
“How’s he taking it?” Jamie-Lyn asked as she nodded towards CJ off in the distance.
“You know him. I’m not sure that he even had feelings, at least not like we do.”
“I think I should go and say hello,” Forbes said as she started to walk over.
The doctor left, and Jamie-Lyn waited until she was out of earshot before speaking.
“So why am I really here? I wasn’t a part of the Queen’s Guard, not officially on the actual team anyway.”
“You’re here for him,” Jesus said, indicating towards CJ. “I saw that look on your face at the studio. When he said he didn’t know what attacked Marshall, you didn’t believe him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. You read his face, and I read yours. This team was my father’s life’s work, and if someone’s coming for us, then I want to know who. When I took over from my father, I took over his responsibilities. Marshall became my man, and someone just ripped him to pieces on live TV. That shit Jamie-Lyn? Well, that shit just doesn’t fly.”
“You think it was SOUL?”
“Like I said, I’m not ruling anything out.”
“And what about her? What about Cynthia Arrow?”
“It’s been quiet on that front for some time now.”
“But you’re still looking for her, right?”
Jesus shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and uncharacteristically dropped his gaze
“Jesus?”
“Look, I’m afraid it’s not like the old days. Back when my father was running the Queen’s Guard, we had a major threat in SOUL – dare I say, a major confirmed terrorist threat. You were there. You saw the prime minister enact the Anti-Radical-Religion Bill to counteract SOUL”
“I also remember an awful lot of the innocent Christian community getting caught up in the net.”
“Casualties of war.” Jesus shrugged. “My father knew that. We all did, so spare me your liberal guilt. Besides, you saw what SOUL were capable of.”
“I also saw what we were capable of. Remember, I was there at Havencrest. I saw what happened there. Just because your father made the whole thing look like it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it didn’t.”
“I read the file. We were at war with crazy fanatics.”
“Hey, look, as far as I’m concerned, I’d have been happy to see Marshall put a bullet between that crazy bitch’s eyes and anyone who followed her twisted message, but I also know that a lot of innocent people got demonised along the way. Hell, wearing a cross used to put a target on your back not so long ago.”
“Well, like I said, we’re ruling nothing out, including a SOUL reemergence, and trust me, right now, tracking down Cynthia Arrow is a top priority.”
“About bloody time. So what do you expect me to do?”
“I want your help with CJ. He’s hiding something – something that might be putting the rest of the team in danger, and I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
“You’re all the same,” she said, shaking her head.
“Excuse me?”
“The lies, the secrets. His, yours, the government’s. You’re all the same. It’s why I left in the first place. I feel like I need a translator every bloody time I talk to any of you. That, and a bath afterwards.”
“We need your help, Jamie-Lyn, all of us do. Something is out there and it went through Six-Shooter like he was nothing. Think about that for a minute. Now I know he was getting up there in age, but I’d still have taken his eye and reflexes over any agent I currently have in the field. The man was the best soldier I ever saw, even before CJ gave him a turbo boost, yet this… thing… went through him like he was nothing. How exactly do you think the doc over there is going to fare against something like that? Or Bull? Or maybe even you?”
“Don’t try and play me, Jesus,” Jamie-Lyn said but feeling a pang of fear in spite of herself. “What about Bull?”
“He’s currently in a secure hospital, but I’m filing the paperwork to have him moved to one of our facilities.”
“I’m surprised that he isn’t already?”
“An oversight, I must admit.”
“And Crimson? Somewhere in South America I heard.”
“You heard correct. Our Crimson has been quite the busy bee putting his skills to use for the highest bidder. He started out as a merc for hire but soon saw himself a warlord instead of an employee. He’s been carving out a territory for himself, one that would put Pablo Escobar to shame.”
“Have you warned him?”
“I’ve sent word, but something tells me that Crimson isn’t going to take it too seriously, in spite of what happened to Six-Shooter.”
“Surely he will? I mean, I know the guy was always a dick, and he and Marshall didn’t get along, but he had to at least respect Marshall, right? Right?”
chapter 7
CRIMSON
The sound of roaring laughter echoed off the stone walls of the fortified mansion, making several well-trained and well-armed guards standing outside the reinforced door look nervously at each other.
The mansion sat across several hundreds of acres of Amazon rainforest that belonged to one man, or, as many of the locals had come to believe, one man who was part-god. They called him Rei Do Sangue, or The Blood King.
He was pushing 70 now, and while his hair was snowy white and his face crisscrossed with scars telling the tale of a lifetime of combat, his body was still lean and taut, and he moved with an athlete’s grace. But it was his eyes that still shone brightly with a young man’s burning intensity, one that could turn even the hottest blood to water.
Royce Langston had fi
rst come to South America as a mercenary, a sellsword as he liked to romantically think of himself.
The money had been good for a man of his talents and even better for a man with his lack of conscience.
Local drug dealers were always in need of muscle. Trigger men were easy to come by, the desperate young men who saw no other way out of their poverty than to serve as front-line soldiers in the various drug wars that blighted their countries.
The cannon fodder were bountiful and easily expendable, but for a man like Royce Langston, a man who had been born to kill, the carnage sang out to him like a siren’s song.
Initially, he had been brought in for a specific assassination. A Colombian Cartel boss by the name of Santiago Andrade had grown tired of sharing his business with his brother, Javier. Being a family dispute, Santiago couldn’t use any of his regular guys so word had been sent out on the dark web for a professional. Royce had answered the call.
Born into an unsympathetic working-class environment, he had grown up without much in the way of parental guidance. The streets had shown him all of the harsh life lessons that he’d needed to survive.
He’d always known that his sheer existence was a cliché. He’d never met his father without a glass prison partition between them up until the old man had been stabbed to death behind bars over a trivial debt of two cartons of cigarettes.
His mother had managed the only way she knew how, by depending on the kindness of strangers or – to be more accurate – strange men.
Royce had been born an undersized baby, and he’d never grown fully. He had been a slender child who’d grown into a skinny youth. His size and quiet nature had labelled him a target for every bully with a taste for easy meat in a two-mile radius.
He’d taken his regular beatings with a quietness that often infuriated his attackers, but he’d never been passive. Every punch, every kick, every swinging movement had been logged and seared into his brain for future reference.
His intelligence had been a well-guarded secret, one that he’d instinctively known to hide. His memory would one day become officially identified as eidetic or photographic in layman’s terms. All of this meant that by the age of thirteen, he was self-taught by every combat technique book he could lay his hands on, and he had every bully’s moves memorised. Combined with his own indomitable iron will, he soon ruled his neighbourhood, and the first time he beat an older child into the dirt, he felt reborn into his true purpose. He was a king. He just needed to build his empire.
By the age of 23, he had his kingdom, or at least one that filled his admittedly small version of the wider world.
He had slowly started to build his own drug corner of the city, street corner by street corner, until he had absorbed most of the competition.
His superior mind had kept him insulated from the authorities, building layer upon layer of his organisation to keep him from the limelight and off the police’s radar.
Everything had been perfect. He was a rich and powerful man with his own army, but he had never been satisfied. There had always been a nagging black hole deep inside of his soul that no amount of wealth or women could ever fill. At the age of 28, he had finally decided to go against every single natural instinct that radiated through his body, and he had broken the golden rule: he got personal.
Joe Manning had owned the hand that had slit his father’s throat in a prison shower block some twenty years previous. It had been Joe Manning’s name that had plagued the dark corners of his dreams, the name that he knew he should ignore, the name that was linked to his own if the police came sniffing.
He hadn’t cared much for his father. In truth, he hadn’t even known the man; he had just been a face behind glass on a monthly visiting schedule. But he had been his father – he had been blood, and it was a debt that had gone unpaid for a long, long time.
Finding Joe had been a simple enough chore. The man hadn’t moved out of the neighbourhood. Cockroaches rarely ventured far from home.
Royce had set up a meeting with the man who’d killed his father under the pretence of a job opening. He knew that the police had little more than whispers on the mere existence of Royce Langston.
Obviously, by now, they knew that there was a kingpin running the drug trade in their city; they just didn’t have a name or a face. That was until Royce forgot his own number one rule.
“You know what the secret to power is?” Royce asked Joe Manning as they strolled through one of the worst parts of the city.
“No?” Joe had answered, nervously looking around at the hungry peeking eyes from the shadows.
Royce was wearing a suit that had cost thousands, a beautiful handmade outfit complete with a watch that would feed the ravenous habits of the animals for a week. And yet no one made a move towards them despite the fact that Royce and Joe were alone on the street.
“The secret of power, Joe,” Royce continued as he walked with impunity, “isn’t money. It isn’t strength in numbers. It isn’t guns and the willingness to use them.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s information,” Royce said as they passed a group of youths on the corner hanging out under a streetlight.
The group turned towards them and the large leader smiled cruelly as he nudged his companions.
Joe looked at the group nervously and started to back away, but Royce placed a hand on his back and held him there.
“You fellas look lost,” the youth said as he swaggered up. “We could help you with directions, but it’s gonna cost.” He laughed, and his hyena pack, emboldened by their numbers, joined in.
“Information,” Royce said to Joe again, ignoring the youth who seemed immediately antagonised by the lack of fear.
“Information is the most powerful commodity,” Royce continued, with the small smile of a man who always had all the answers.
“For example, take our friend Mark here,” he said, pointing to the large grinning youth who suddenly stopped grinning.
“Now Mark – Mark Jacobs, to be exact –lives over on Bennett Avenue with his mother and two younger sisters. Now Mark’s father…”
“You shut your mouth!” Mark yelled in a high-pitched voice that belied his young age despite his best swagger.
“Mark’s father is not a nice guy, is he Mark?” Royce continued. “He used to beat his wife and kids, or should that be kid? Because his attentions were of a more… intimate nature to his daughters. Isn’t that right, Mark?”
“Who the hell are you?” Mark demanded.
“I’m the man with the information, Mark, or, more importantly, the answers.” Royce smiled back. “You stopped him, didn’t you, Mark? You stopped your father by dropping a small-screen TV into his bath when he wasn’t looking.”
“How…?”
“Because I know everything, and knowing everything is the only true test of power.”
“What if… what if I shank your ass right now?” Mark said without any real threat.
“Then your sisters, Debbie and AJ, and your mother, Martha, would all meet with unfortunate ends. Far more unfortunate, I can assure you, than your father was ever able to dish out.” Royce smiled. “But I can always use loyal men, Mark. Men like you and your boys here. Come by the Mantaray Club tomorrow night. C’mon by and I’ll put you to work.”
The group looked at each other before Mark nodded in an almost bowing motion before he left.
“And that, Joe, is how power works,” Royce finished as they were left alone.
“So what’s my job?” Joe asked eagerly. “How can I help you?”
“Your job is simple, Joe. There’s a hole I need to fill in my life and only you can fill it. Only you.”
“What…?”
The words were cut short as the blade emerged in Royce’s hand with the deftness of a magician’s touch, and in a flash of smooth movement, Joe’s throat was opened and the blood was spilling out onto the stone cobbled street with a crimson splash.
Royce watched the man die slowly,
his hands clasped to his torn throat and fear filling his eyes as death moved in and slowly took him. Royce shuddered with pleasure and closed his eyes as he savoured the moment, so much so that he didn’t even hear the pounding footsteps of the police as they broke from their cover.
As it would turn out, Joe Manning had been wearing a wire. Not to snare Royce, of course. Joe had been scheduled to buy some dope from a low-level dealer when Royce had commandeered the man’s evening, a fact that Royce would find himself ruminating on during a 30-year sentence in prison. He had broken the golden rule: he had made it personal. He had not proceeded with his usual due diligence, and he had paid the price.
He had rotted in a prison cell for more years than he cared to count. Of course, he’d built an empire of sorts inside the confining walls, but it was a pathetic excuse for a kingdom. He had assumed that his life was over. That was until God had come calling with an offer.
Everyone inside the prison had, of course, watched open-mouthed as a green lizard from outer space had landed on the planet.
Life inside had pretty much mirrored the outside world where opinions were divided between fear and fascination. There was a far-right community who tended to base their prejudices in a twisted view of Christianity.
The SOUL organisation had started to find willing recruits inside the prison. The far-right inmates gravitated towards the structure and purpose of their cause and, of course, the promise of violence and glory.
As for Royce himself, he had never believed in God until he met the man, of course, or at least the man who called himself God.
The offer had been an easy one to accept: join some kind of newly formed government task force called the Queen’s Guard, use his own set of skills for the benefit of the country, and in exchange he would get to feel the sun shine on his face beyond the prison walls. Of course, there had been no mention of who he’d be working with until he’d met the alien in person.
His plan had always been to play along until he could escape. He had a brilliant mind and an endless supply of patience. There would be an opportunity, however, far down the line, and he would take it. What he hadn’t been able to see coming was just how much he would take to the work and how much he would take from their green visitor.
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