The minutes passed quickly. His CL beeped with an incoming call, and he saw that it was almost noon. More surprisingly, the call came from Cecilia. He communicated with other operatives through text messages sometimes, but never about anything pressing enough to warrant a phone call, and he and Cecilia weren’t exactly friends. He tapped to answer it but didn’t bother transferring the audio to his earpiece. “Hello?”
“Are you with Ryku?” Cecilia asked. Her voice sounded strained through heavy breathing, like she was running.
Jared glanced at the chairman, who looked up at the mention of his name and frowned. “Yes,” said Jared. “We’re in his office.
“Is he okay?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
Jared looked at Ryku again, but he shook his head. “What’s going on?” Jared asked.
Cecilia muttered a stream of profanities. “We couldn’t reach him on his CL, and we thought—” She paused to catch her breath. “Just wait. Almost there.”
The call ended, and Jared turned to Ryku. The chairman raised his arm and held down a button on his CyberLink. “I must have forgotten to turn alerts back on when I woke up this morning,” he said.
Just as he began scrolling through his missed messages, Cecilia burst through the office door. Her expression brightened in relief when she saw him. “Chairman Ryku—are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “What’s this about?”
“The other chairmen—they’re all dead.”
Jared’s mouth went dry. Dead? They couldn’t be. “I just saw them. They were fine.”
“What happened?” Ryku asked.
“They’re still trying to figure it out,” said Cecilia. “There’s no blood, no signs of injury, nothing to suggest a struggle. One of the guys in unit P was looking for Chairman Collin, and he found them all in that room, just lying there. People are saying it was some sort of nerve gas.”
Ryku stood slowly and turned to the window behind his desk. He clasped his hands together and didn’t say anything for a long time. As Jared watched him, something unsettling began to grow deep in the pit of his stomach, but he pushed it away. “Sir?” he said.
“I’m sure everyone is very worried,” said Ryku. He turned back around to face Cecilia. “Please let them know I’ll be out to speak with them all shortly.”
“Yes, Chairman,” she replied.
When she shut the door behind her, the silence seemed to fill up every corner of the room. Ryku closed an open file on his desk without a word, and Jared handed back the reports he’d been reviewing. He studied the chairman’s face. Ryku’s expression was flat, betraying no emotion whatsoever. Jared wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but the unsettling feeling became stronger, twisting itself around his core and insisting he acknowledge it.
He should have been in that room. If Ryku hadn’t called him to his office, perhaps he would be dead now, too. The chairman himself should have been there; he’d never missed a meeting before. Jared hadn’t given his excuses a second thought until now, but he couldn’t deny that it all seemed just a little too convenient for chance. Ryku had had disagreements with the other chairmen for a long time now, and on several occasions, he’d commented on how much easier his job would be if the others would just stay out of his way. But that was just frustration talking. He wouldn’t actually do anything to harm them. Would he?
Jared wasn’t sure if he wanted to know, but the question came out before he could stop it. “Did you do this?”
Ryku straightened the collar of his shirt and gave Jared a slight nod. “I did.”
Jared blinked a few times, taken aback by how freely the chairman had confessed to the murders. His whole body tensed, and he clenched a fist at his side. “Why? How?”
“I enlisted the help of one of the chemists in unit A. He provided me with the gas, which I released into the room once I knew you’d left.”
Jared almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He gaped at the chairman, unsure of how to respond.
“Don’t look so concerned,” said Ryku. “I took care of him. It’s unfortunate, but I can’t have anyone tracing this back to me. A necessary casualty. I made sure it was quick and painless, and I wrote a very convincing suicide note for him.”
“Why?” Jared asked again.
“This Project was established almost three decades ago. In that time, we’ve made little progress towards true peace. The riots in the North Pacific and other regions demonstrate that. We’ve left far too much freedom in the hands of people who don’t know what to do with it.”
“You could have told the others that.”
“I’ve tried,” Ryku said. “You’ve seen my attempts to reason with them. They didn’t want to listen. They allowed themselves to be manipulated by rules and petty human rights to the extent that they could hardly do their jobs anymore.”
“Petty human rights?”
Ryku gave him a small, indifferent shrug. “If you allow people to choose whether to embrace law, order, and safety, the majority might try, but their efforts will always fall short. The only way to achieve true peace and stability is to place power in the hands of those who are willing and able to do whatever is necessary to get there. For too long, we have sacrificed the comfort and safety of the good, honest people in this country because we’re overly concerned with the rights of criminals. For too long, we’ve failed to address the most basic needs of our citizens. It’s no wonder people have been rioting. The system is failing.”
“The other chairmen were trying to fix it,” said Jared. “You all were. Together.”
The lines in Ryku’s face became more pronounced as he frowned. “I know, but it wasn’t enough. I grew tired of sitting in that room with them week after week, learning of some new horror one human being had done to another. We should be trying to prevent these things from ever happening in the first place. The other chairmen were hindering our progress. They wasted time and energy running circles around temporary solutions without addressing the bigger problems. They lacked the strength to do what is necessary, and that inaction was beginning to threaten the stability of this entire country.”
He had some valid points. There had been times when unit P reached out to powerful gang leaders and drug lords, trying to negotiate a peaceful solution while ordinary people continued to suffer. Unit C wasted time filling out paperwork and documenting complaints about food distribution while the children of poor families starved for weeks or even months until everything got sorted out. Unit E-1 regularly failed to gather enough evidence to successfully prosecute criminals in court, allowing even the worst offenders to walks free. The only unit that seemed to value swift and effective action over meaningless rules and paperwork was unit E-2. That was the nature of their work, but much of their efficiency came from Ryku’s strong leadership.
The chairman walked around the desk and took a few steps towards Jared. “Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better if the Project was more united? Imagine all we can accomplish now that we don’t have one chairman arguing with another about the best course of action. We can be so much more efficient. This country can become the utopia we always wanted it to be for those who deserve it.”
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the country really would be better off if the five units of the Project were unified under a single leader. Ryku for now, but if he stayed on the right track, Jared himself could be that sole chairman in another decade or two.
The thought shouldn’t have come to him so readily, but now that it had, he could already imagine the possibilities—all the ways he could make a difference. It was an enticing proposition, but it wasn’t enough to justify killing four of the most powerful and respected people in the country.
“You shouldn’t have killed them,” he said, but it didn’t matter. It was done. “What are you going to tell everyone else?”
“That’s where I need your cooperation,” said Ryku. “I need their support, and if anyone f
inds out the truth about what happened, I’ll lose it. You can’t tell anyone else about this. The chemist was responsible for their deaths, and he felt so guilty about it that he took his own life afterwards. That’s all they need to know.”
“They’re not stupid. Some of them are going to figure it out.”
“They’ll be smart enough not to say anything.”
“And if they do?”
“Let me worry about that. I’m assuming I can count on your loyalty?”
Jared turned around, partly because he needed a moment to take everything in without the influence of Ryku’s penetrating gaze, and partly because he feared his own expression would betray him. Ryku had spoken of loyalty, something Jared had once prided himself on above all else. He couldn’t claim that loyalty now—not completely. He still believed he’d made the right decision in allowing Zira to live, but in doing so, he’d betrayed Ryku, the only person in his life he’d ever been able to consistently rely on. They’d had their differences, and Ryku had asked some hard things of Jared over the years. But all of that had molded him into a stronger man. Ryku had been his mentor and guide, the person who’d provided him with this life and the many opportunities he’d had to succeed. He’d never once abandoned him, even going so far as to personally rescue Jared from his captors in the Republic of Asia. After all of that, Jared owed him something—owed him everything.
How could he say no?
Renegades of PEACE is now available in paperback and eBook formats.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, a huge thank you to my number-one critique partner, Taylor, who read and believed in this story long before it was even worth believing in. Your enthusiasm for these characters has given me some much-needed motivation over the years, and it wouldn’t be where it is now without your valuable insights. Thank you for putting up with all my questions, walking me through various parts of this whole process, and being a great inspiration overall.
Thank you to Elissa, who read some of my stories before I even knew what I was doing. You’ve saved me and my manuscripts from several disastrous computer failures over the years, and your feedback on this story was indispensable.
Thank you to my other beta readers, Jared, Haley, Theresa, and Lindsey. Each of you offered some great suggestions and I appreciate you taking the time to read this.
I also want to thank my husband, Alex, for putting up with my crazy ideas, for picking me up on the days I feel like a failure, and for always pushing me to follow my dreams no matter what obstacles stand in my way. I don’t think I ever would have had the nerve to do this without you.
And last but not least, thank you, the reader, for taking a chance on a new author when you opened this book. You could have chosen any book, but you picked mine, and that means more to me than you could ever know.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. A. Hernandez grew up with her nose habitually stuck in a book and her mind constantly wandering to make-believe worlds full of magic and adventure. She began writing stories after reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings at age 10. Thankfully, her writing has improved significantly since then, though she will happily acknowledge that she has much more to learn and is looking forward to a long and exciting journey in her Quest to Tell Better Stories.
She is the proud mother of two girls and a college student working towards her degree in social work. She also enjoys drawing, reading, watching movies, riding her motorcycle, and making happy memories with her family and friends. Secrets of PEACE is her first novel.
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Find T. A. Hernandez on social media to stay up to date on the Secrets of PEACE series and other works:
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Your questions and comments about the story and characters are always welcome and appreciated.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Secrets of PEACE Page 23