“What’s that?” Jamie-Lyn asked a little nervously.
“Which of us is going to ride with Crimson?”
His voice was serious but his eyes twinkled, and Jamie-Lyn couldn’t help but smile a little at the joke.
Link held out a clenched fist before banging it down slowly into his other open palm.
“One, two, three,” he said, slapping the closed fist down before opening it; the others followed.
They showed their rock, paper, scissor hands.
“Dammit!” Jesus cried out as Jamie-Lyn and Link giggled and Crimson scowled.
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chapter 32
ICE FISHING
It had been such a long time since she had used her real name that at times she wondered if she’d ever really had one.
The woman known as Number One, Cynthia Arrow’s daughter, Mrs Fontaine, and a whole host of other aliases down the years, stared out of her penthouse apartment window at the world waking up below.
The ants were beginning their day of toil and struggle amidst a failing country and a failed ideology. The thought of her mother sitting on the throne with her perversion of religion was as distasteful to her as an alien from the stars dictating national policy.
While she didn’t share her mother’s rabid obsession with a fanatical god, she could at least see the woman’s motivations. The alien sat behind the scenes pulling who knew what strings from the dark.
As far as she was concerned, what the country needed was a fresh start, a cleansing of fire in order to raise something up from the ashes, something stronger, something better, something new. Of course, the new world would need a new leader, and she could think of no one better than herself to assume the role.
There was a bottle of vodka calling her name from the freezer but she resisted, not without a whole lot of effort. The day had barely begun and those tricky little hands of addiction were already running up her spine.
She knew for a fact that her alcoholism had always weakened her in her mother’s eyes, mainly because the woman had told her that on multiple occasions.
It was a disease that had been handed down to her from her father, Krueger Stone, the once owner of Havencrest before he’d been seduced and usurped by Cynthia.
It was also a disease that had apparently affected her grandfather according to her mother in one of the very rare times that she had let anything slip about her own father.
The insanity, and that was the only thing that she had come to think of it as, that had infected her mother thankfully hadn’t been hereditary, and now the daughter would surpass the mother and perhaps finally receive the respect she deserved, right before the dagger was thrust through her heart.
She had baptised and named herself Savannah Greene, a name of poetic elegance, as far as she was concerned, and one that perfectly suited the woman that stared back at her in the mirror.
She knew that other people might well consider her as crazy as her mother. She had, of course, seduced then murdered Wilson Fontaine along with multiple others down the years, but there was method behind her actions. She was not driven by a fanaticism like her mother; she did not believe herself to be on a mission from God, and she certainly did not hear voices to guide her actions. She was in her heart a patriot, someone who believed that her country was, and always had been, on the wrong path and she had the power to set it right.
She had to give Cynthia her credit: the woman had shaped a war campaign unlike any before her and now sat on the precipice of total victory. With her enemies disgraced and soon to be destroyed, Cynthia would ride into power, first behind the scenes and then she would sink Simon Clermont before making her move to take the throne. But that was something that Savannah would not – could not – allow.
The time for waiting was almost over. She had sat in the shadows following her mother’s orders like a good little girl until the time had come to stop.
She had confronted her mother with just enough defiance to spook the woman, just enough of a prod to catch her off-guard in order to set her mind to work and wonder just what she might have missed.
She had told Cynthia that no one on earth knew her better than her own daughter, and that was 100% right. She knew that her mother’s mind was a steel trap, a multitasking computer capable of executing simultaneous complex tasks, but right now, there was a nagging worm of doubt that was burrowing its way in. In order to strike at her mother from the left, she had to first make sure that the woman was looking to the right.
Right now, she had Fontaine’s huge media network at her own personal disposal. She would continue to run what her mother wanted, the slamming of the Queen’s Guard and the promotion of SOUL, but that wouldn’t last forever.
There were already plans in place to sow further seeds of chaos, to wait until the Queen’s Guard were finished before adding her mother’s collection of lunatics into the fire. With both sides of the faction in pieces, there would be a power vacuum, one she intended to fill.
With Summer Sloan as the face of the current media campaign now also in her pocket – a dead colleague buried somewhere only Savannah knew about, with plenty of the news anchor’s DNA on the body had ensured that loyalty – she had the face and the outlets to push her own agenda.
The final piece had been to take Dennison into the fold. The personal aide to the prime minister was now hers to control, a weasel of a man who would do anything she told him in order to save his own skin. She now had the perfect access to the current government to add to her arsenal.
Her fingers tapped the balcony rail, the one where she’d flung her husband to his death, and she wondered, given everything that she’d achieved thus far, perhaps she did deserve a little drink after all.
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The snowmobile ride out to the old research station took the better part of half an hour through the thick snow.
Jamie-Lyn rode behind Link with first her hands gripping the machine’s rear rails before eventually switching them to wrap around the man’s waist. It felt a little too intimate, but in truth, she was glad of the human contact. Despite the fact that they were all in this together, they weren’t exactly a tightknit bunch – not anymore, at least.
Eventually he came up over a ridge, and down below was the base, one that according to Link was still owned by Olaf Gustafson.
Crimson had flown on ahead with Jesus hanging on behind him for grim death as the assassin powered through the drifts like a bat out of hell racing towards answers.
By the time that Link pulled up, Crimson had left the scene and only Jesus was standing there waiting for them.
“Where’s he gone?” Jamie-Lyn asked as she climbed off.
“Checking the place out,” Jesus answered as he stretched his aching legs.
“On his own?” Link asked, looking around.
“He likes it better that way, always did,” Jamie-Lyn responded. “Any sign of CJ?” she asked Jesus.
“Haven’t seen him. I think…”
Jesus’ words were cut short as the air around them suddenly crackled with purple electricity and CJ phased into view.
“My apologies if I startled you,” CJ said with a curt nod as he viewed their shocked faces.
“Any trouble getting here?” Jamie-Lyn asked him.
“A little. It is somewhat difficult to jump from spot to spot when everything looks the same in the snow. I must admit to getting lost once or twice and now my energy is a little lower than I would have liked.”
“How do you recharge?” Link asked with genuine interest.
“Merely time replenishes,” CJ replied as he looked around. “I take it that Crimson is off doing his own thing?”
“Same as usual.” Jamie-Lyn nodded.
“Well I’m sure that it is for the best. We cannot be too careful, but perhaps we should move inside just the same? You all look rather cold.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Crimson first?” Link asked. “I mean, I’m not too sure about what we’re g
oing to find here, or even what we’re looking for, but I don’t like the thought of going in blind.”
“I second that,” Jesus added.
“I believe that you all know my views on the subject,” CJ announced.
“Is he still banging on about the bloody Torvanians?” Crimson asked from behind, making them all jump as even in the thick snow, they hadn’t heard his approach.
“Between the two of you, it’s a miracle I never had a heart attack!” Jamie-Lyn exclaimed.
“Place is empty,” Crimson mused as he looked back at the building. “No sign that anyone’s been here for a while.”
“I hate to say I told you so,” CJ replied, “but I did. This whole thing is rather a waste of our time, time that we cannot afford at this point.”
“Well we’re here now, so let’s at least get out of the cold,” Jesus declared as he started to march off towards the base.
The air around CJ crackled and then he was gone. Through one of the large windows in the side of the base wall, Jamie-Lyn spotted a flash of purple light.
“He seems a little grumpy,” Link said as they walked together towards the main doors.
“I guess so,” she replied with a shrug.
“Is that normal?”
“How should I know?”
“I thought you two were close?”
“It’s been a long time since we were anything,” she said a little sadly. “It’s been a long time since I knew him at all.”
“He still seems fixated on this whole space miner thing, the Torvanians; if he’s so sure, shouldn’t we be?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. The whole bloody world seems upside down at the minute and I don’t know if we’ll ever get it right again.”
The words caught in her throat and fell heavily on her shoulders. It was one of those rare moments where her guard slipped and the crashing reality threatened to seize her again and probably crush her in the process.
She felt Link’s hand on her arm, and even through the thick clothing, she felt his gentle squeeze.
“I wish I could tell you that it’ll all be alright,” he said quietly as they walked. “I wish I could believe that there was a happy ending at the finish line, but I just can’t see it. To be honest, right now I’d settle for staying alive and out of jail.”
They reached the main doors and stepped inside the building out of the biting winds and frozen earth.
The entrance was dark, but it suddenly burst into bright light as someone found the power and the lights came flooding on with a gentle hum.
“Well this doesn’t look positive,” Jamie-Lyn said as they moved further into the building.
The whole place had a stale odour to it as though it had stood empty for some time. There were thick lines of dust across most surfaces and nothing had been cleaned for an age.
Moving through the entrance area, they stepped into a large open space that was lined with lab equipment, but almost all of it was draped in long, transparent plastic sheeting.
“No one’s been here in some time,” Jesus confirmed as he joined them. “There’s a kitchen back there, but nothing’s still in date. The cupboards are empty – no tins, cans, nothing in the larder.”
“No clothing in the bedroom either,” Crimson said as he joined them too. “There’s a garage out back but like everything else it’s empty. This place is deserted.”
“Well…, shit…,” Link said, mirroring the mood. “We were supposed to find answers here, but there’s nothing.”
“I thought that you said that it was still active?” Jesus said to Link.
“Hey, man, what can I say? You wanted to find this guy and I found him. This place is still under his name. This equipment might be unused, but it doesn’t look that old to me. Might still function… anyone spot a computer?”
“Here,” Jamie-Lyn called out from across the room as she pulled a sheet off a desk, exposing an older-looking clunky computer tower and monitor.
Link pulled up a chair and had to wait for a few minutes while the unit powered up.
“Encrypted. To be expected. This may take some time,” he announced as his fingers started to type.
Jamie-Lyn crossed the lab towards CJ who was looking out of the window at the white landscape that seemed to fill the world beyond.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything out there,” he replied.
“Not that. I mean what’s up with you? You’ve been in a funky mood for a while now.”
“Funky?”
“Agitated, irritable. Now I know that irritable for you is nothing more than the odd glance, but I’ve noticed it, and so have the others.”
CJ continued to stare out of the window but she could feel him thinking about his next words and so waited him out.
“I just think that this is a waste of time,” he finally said, quietly enough for only her to hear him. “I don’t understand why no one will believe that I know what’s out there. Have I done something to lose your faith?”
“It’s not that simple. Look, I know that you were always used to being the smartest person in the room… you know things that none of us could ever understand, I get that, we get that. Honestly, we do.”
“But you won’t believe me on this.”
“It’s not a case of not believing you, CJ.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Because… because it’s a lead, however tenuous, and we have to do something. If we don’t, well, if we don’t, then I think we might all lose our collective minds. No one wants to face what’s happened to us, what’s happening. We’ve all had the world pulled out from underneath us and that’s just the ones that are still standing.”
“But… isn’t there a part, albeit a small part, that is…, happy to be back?” he asked.
“Happy?” she exclaimed incredulously. “You can’t be serious?”
“Perhaps happy is not the correct term, but is there not a part of you that missed this? Missed us? The life? The excitement? Having a cause to fight?”
“CJ, no; how can you say that?”
“We were the good guys once, Jamie-Lyn. We were… heroes.”
“And look where that got us!” she snorted bitterly. “Take a look around at the country today, CJ. Do you see many people who remember what you guys did back in the day? Do you see much gratitude floating around?”
“They will remember,” he stressed. “The lives we saved, fighting the bad guys, they will remember; they have to.”
“People moved on, CJ. They forgot about you, about all of you, and they just moved on. Have Link show you some social media taken from the past few days, have him show you the mood of your country, your people. 20 years is a long time, CJ, a lifetime in fact. The voices shouting the loudest now are those who were either just babes back then or maybe not even born.”
“But it is our history. Their history.”
“The youth of today do not trust authority figures. They don’t trust the government or the mainstream media; hell, maybe kids never do, maybe that’s their job. Bottom line, CJ, is that everything we did, everything that you did, is long gone and forgotten. Cynthia Arrow managed to swing the mood of an entire country in only a few weeks. She’s had them do a full 180… that’s your country, CJ. That’s your people.”
“They can come back around. If they turned one way, then they can be turned back.”
“They have so little trust in anything these days, CJ, that I honestly don’t think it’s possible, and you know what? I’m starting to think why bother.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I? These people turned on us at the drop of a hat. I’m starting to think that they can all go to hell!” she spat bitterly.
“They are just confused. We can show them the way again. We can bring them back, all of them. We can be the heroes that this country needs, now more than ever.”
“Maybe, but maybe they don’t deserve us either.”
“We can bring them back, Jamie-Lyn; we can bring them all back. You just need a little faith.”
“Well trust is a two-way street, CJ, and frankly, I don’t trust the people or the authorities to do the right thing anymore. Right now, I just want to clear my name… that’ll do for me.”
“But you don’t trust me either, do you!” he stated rather than asked.
“Hey now, no one ever said that!” she exclaimed back, suddenly shocked by the bitterness in his voice and the faintest whiff of anger, something that she had never heard emanate from him before.
“That’s just not true, CJ,” she insisted.
“I heard you. I heard you all,” he replied sadly in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Heard us? When? What are you talking about?”
“Back at the cabins. You guys were in the restaurant talking about me. I heard you… all of you,” he added pointedly.
Jamie-Lyn opened her mouth to try and explain, but there was no explanation.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could offer.
“All these years, Jamie-Lyn; all the years I spent just trying to help, to keep people safe, to use some of my knowledge for the good of your people, your planet… all these years and I’m still just an outsider, aren’t I? Just a freak, an alien, an abomination like that woman always says.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not fair. No one here looks at you like she does.”
“That is not exactly a ringing endorsement.”
“I don’t know what to say.” She shrugged helplessly. “All of this shit has gotten to us, to me. I don’t know what to think anymore, and it’s getting harder and harder to even think straight. About two weeks ago, I was just living my life, worrying about meaningless crap, hating a twenty-something girl whose only crime was to be twenty-something. Now… Jesus Christ, now I’m in the middle of nowhere, a frozen sodding nowhere, with every one of my worst nightmares coming true or, more accurately, coming back to life.”
“And you blame me.”
“I don’t blame anyone,” she said quickly. “Well, that’s not strictly true. I blame that goddamn bitch and her crazy-ass minions for wrecking all of our lives. You’re totally right, CJ. You only ever tried to help us, and she’s the bloody nutcase who couldn’t see that; she’s the one I blame.”
Capes Page 46