Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4)

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  “And you’re dumber. I’d say you were an idiot, but that’d be an insult to the idiot community as a whole.”

  Bowen looked like he might strike Samantha. Then he stepped back and one of the other resistance fighters muttered something to him that Samantha couldn’t fully make out.

  “It’s not polite to whisper in front of others!” she shouted.

  Bowen turned to her and Samantha said, “I wanna know what happened to my mom.”

  Bowen barked a nasty laugh. “Stay tuned.”

  He exited the room and the two remaining resistance fighters stared at Samantha as if she was an exhibit at the zoo. Samantha shrugged her shoulders violently, as if to lunge at them, and the fighters flinched. Smiling to herself, satisfied that they were scared of her, Samantha began cataloguing all the objects in the room: a table, a few metal chairs, a push broom. The walls were shingled with warning signs and instructions from the old days when the base was fully functioning. There wasn’t much to work with, but then she spotted a paper bag next to one of the men. She watched the man open the bag and pull out what looked like an MRE and a packet of pureed fruit (the kind made for babies), along with a handful of misshapen cookies.

  The man set the cookies on the ground between his legs. Samantha had breezed past a kitchen on the other side of the silo, she knew its inhabitants had taken to baking and preparing their own food. She’d eaten the cookies a time or two before and, although they sucked big time, they were laden with sugar. A voice, whose voice? Hadrian’s? Whispered that everything she needed was in front of her. All she had to do was free her hands and flip the primal switch that he (or it) had revealed to her, the one that would teach her guards a terrible lesson. Easing back, Samantha started giggling which made the guards tense as they peered at her, wondering what the hell she thought was so funny.

  Ten minutes later, Samantha had barely moved an inch. She’d unsuccessfully tried to

  CONJURE up whatever mystical powers she had locked inside, and had been reduced to counting the lines on a faraway wall made of cinderblocks. Several resistance fighters had circulated in and out of the room, keeping watch over her. She was presently being watched over by a broad-shouldered male fighter with prominent features and a mop of auburn hair who looked to be only four or five years older than she was. The guy had propped his weapon, an old pump shotgun, against a wall and plopped down in a chair that faced a plasma TV screen on a glass and metal stand. The screen was synched by a cable to a phone which played the kinds of videos Samantha had always hated, home movies of people acting like jackasses, stuff that had been uploaded to one of the various Youtube ripoff channels before the invasion.

  The fighter turned and Samantha admired the angle of his chin, and the starkness of his blue eyes, almost like ice. She hadn’t thought about boys very much, but there was something different about this one. Unlike the other fighters, for instance, he was staring at the videos of the jackasses yet wasn’t braying like some barnyard animal. In fact, he seemed disgusted by the whole thing. Samantha admired that a lot.

  “So … what’s your name, soldier?” she asked.

  “I’m not a soldier,” the guy replied without turning from the screen.

  “You’ve got a gun don’t you?”

  The young fighter shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I’m a soldier.”

  The fighter looked back at Samantha.

  “I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’m supposed to tell you that it’s not going to be like this.”

  “Like what?” Samantha asked.

  “You saying things and me answering—”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s called conversation.”

  The fighter turned back to the TV.

  “Okay. Cool. So what’s your name?” she asked.

  No response from the fighter.

  “I mean it’s just common courtesy to give a name when you’re holding someone against their will,” Samantha said.

  “If I tell you that, will you be quiet?”

  “There’s a strong possibility,” she answered.

  “Daniel,” the fighter said. “Just … Dan.”

  “Oh, Jeez, I’m so sorry.”

  Dan looked back.

  “Why?”

  “It’s nothing … your name … it’s just … studies have shown that Daniel is a name associated with the least trustworthy people in society.”

  Dan’s right eyebrow twitched up. “Says who?”

  “The people who conduct such studies.”

  He stared at her for several seconds. “Y’know what I think? I think you’ve just got a serious case of Danimosity.”

  Samantha smirked. “Do not.”

  “You totally do,” Dan replied. “You’re a raving Dan-ti-semetic.”

  Samantha nodded. “Good one.” She smiled, realizing she’d been right about this guy. Not only was he cute, but he was completely different than the other schlubs who’d been guarding her. The moment passed and Dan turned back to the TV.

  “So what did you do?” Dan asked, eyes still locked on the TV. “I mean nobody told me, but there’s got to be a reason why you’re down here.”

  “Oh, it was no biggie at all. I was just accosted by this supernatural being who showed me the end of the world and then taught me how to trigger the stored energy in inanimate objects.”

  Dan nodded, evidently not believing a word of this. “Oh, is that all.”

  “Exactly,” Samantha replied. “I mean, who hasn’t experienced that.”

  A few seconds of silence stretched between them.

  “How old are you, Samantha?”

  “I thought we weren’t conversing.”

  He smiled. She lied and said, “Almost sixteen. You?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Coolness, she thought. An older guy.

  “So where are you from?” she asked.

  “Originally from Delaware,” Dan said.

  “What’s in Delaware?” she asked.

  “A bridge and … there didn’t used to be any sales tax.”

  Samantha nodded. “What’s the opposite of a bucket list?”

  Dan shook his head. “Dunno. Why?”

  “Because based on what you just said, I’m putting Delaware on that.”

  Dan smiled.

  “You got any family there?” Samantha asked.

  Dan pointed to his shotgun. “Nope. Don’t have any at all other than Mary Beth here.”

  Samantha nodded. “Happiness is a warm gun.”

  Dan looked at her, the levity vanishing from his face.

  “I can’t let you go by the way,” he said. “I know your mom was like, a Marine and whatnot, but I can’t help you out if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “How come?”

  “I’ve been given orders.”

  “Strict ones?”

  Dan quirked an eyebrow. “They didn’t mention whether they were strict.”

  “So there you go,” Samantha said, flashing the widest smile possible. “Orders aren’t meant to be followed unless they’re super strict.”

  Dan shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Samantha was sorry too. She spotted the lone cookie left on the floor by one of her previous guards, and she was sorry about what might happen to Dan and all the others if she ever freed her hands. But her hands weren’t free, which meant that she was righteously screwed.

  Her mind wandered to something she’d read in a resistance hideout in the weeks after the invasion. An article in a magazine about athletes who were able to control their immune response and autonomous nervous system primarily via a series of breathing exercises. The idea was through repeated deep, rhythmic inhales and exhales, followed by breath holding, a person could increase oxygen saturation in the muscles and body, thereby helping to focus their mind’s eye. The whole thing sounded a little loopy, but she figured she’d give it a whirl. She had time.

  Leaning back, Samantha commenced inhaling and exhaling. She made sure to do it quietly, so as not t
o attract Dan’s attention. Then she held her breath and released it and repeated the exercise. She did this over and over and on the fifth try, something happened. It was as if she’d been rubbing two sticks together and suddenly she had a spark. Not only did her body become warmer, but a sensation welled up inside her that she’d only ever been aware of in the presence of Hadrian.

  The feeling was profound and raw and somehow uncontrollable. For a moment she felt as if she had such a deep understanding of the universe that it might stretch her mind past what her body could tolerate. She’d heard of people who tripped on various drugs, and she assumed what she was experiencing had to be similar. She could see sounds with her eyes shut and hear smells and knew then that the moment of her purpose had arrived.

  The ground, the room, even Dan fell away and Samantha found herself raptured up, suspended in the air, staring into a roiling void that was blacker than the bottom of a well at midnight. Her hands were still bound, but merely by focusing her thoughts was she able to birth a disturbance in the form of waves that fanned out, undulating out over the void and through the vast expanses of space and time, like a million dollops of creamer dropped in the galaxy’s biggest pot of coffee. And the power, whatever force was inside her, allowed her to influence the physical without physical interaction. She was a weapon, a human IED, an ambulatory trigger.

  As her body grew warmer she found herself back in the room and her eyes hopped from the walls to Dan, to the cookie that began to thrum. Reacting to the sound of the cookie, Dan turned and time froze like a snapshot.

  “GET DOWN!” Samantha screamed.

  Dan did, covering his head as the cookie disintegrated with a cacophonous BOOM!

  THE SHOCKWAVE from the explosion caused by Samantha corkscrewed down through the silo’s tight corridors, setting off alarms, swatting people down to the ground, and tearing doors from their hinges.

  The blast door in the sleeping quarters rocked on its hinges, knocking Renner and Quinn to the ground. Quinn looked up, everything hazy and unfocused. She’d heard the detonation and immediately thought that a small bomb or a large grenade had gone off.

  “The door!” somebody shouted from behind.

  Quinn looked up to see that the blast door was dangling from one hinge. Quinn saw Hayden leap over her, then Milo, Hawkins, and Eli. They grabbed the upper edge of the door and put their weight against it, trying to rip it completely free.

  Two hands grabbed her and she looked up to see Cody, smiling.

  “This is our chance,” he said.

  She nodded. “I need to find Samantha first. Then I’ll deal with the others.”

  “GET BACK!” Milo shouted.

  Cody pulled Quinn back as Hayden shrieked and pulled at the door. For several minutes the Marines rocked the door, eventually tearing it from its hinges. With an ear-shattering BLAM! the cement-infused door hit the floor. Renner rose, broken knife still in hand. He held it over his head at the ready, peering out through the open door, ready for anything. More sirens began wailing and smoke and motes of dust filled the air, obscuring visibility.

  Footfalls echoed.

  People screamed.

  Still clad in her underwear, Quinn watched Renner grab the first person he saw. A female fighter with eyes as wide as hubcaps, who held a pistol in a quivering hand. Renner locked his arms around the terrified woman and flung her back at the others. Quinn stripped the pistol from the woman.

  “If you want to live, shut your mouth and play along,” Quinn said.

  The female resistance fighter nodded and then Quinn grabbed and turned the woman around. She maneuvered her out through the doorway and past Renner. She hid behind the woman, pistol in her hand, shoving the woman down the hallway. More resistance fighters appeared and Quinn pushed the female fighter forward into them.

  They shimmied down a number of corridors for several minutes and then Quinn spotted forms toiling in the darkness up ahead. It was a pod of resistance fighters, including the long-haired fighter who’d kicked and punched her in the stomach earlier. Before they could react, Quinn had lifted the woman, her human shield, up and shoved her into the fighters.

  Without hesitation, she attacked the fighters. Long-hair shouted and rushed her, throwing a haymaker. Quinn dropped low under the man’s punch. She grabbed his wrist and drove a knee up into his stomach. He folded up like a card table and Quinn pistol-whipped him for good measure. Two more fighters reached for their guns and Quinn brought her pistol around and aimed at them.

  “DON’T EVEN FUCKING THINK ABOUT IT!” she screamed.

  They didn’t move. Renner and Milo grabbed the weapons from the fighters. Half-naked, partially armed, and supremely pissed, the motley mishmash of Marines and their allies, the resistance fighters who had been imprisoned with them, moved as one down the hallway, picking up speed, running past pods of befuddled resistance fighters in the murkiness, headed in the direction of the explosion.

  SAMANTHA STOOD in the afterglow of the explosion, studying the door she’d blown apart. Sections of it lay at her feet along with Dan, who’d been knocked unconscious. Kneeling, Samantha rolled him over and pressed an ear to his chest, just to make sure he was still breathing. He was, thank God, she thought. She was sorry that he’d been injured, but she hadn’t had a choice.

  She ran a finger down his cheek and looked over to see that his shotgun had been destroyed in the blast. If she was going out into the hallway, she’d have to do so without any weapons. But then she realized she was the weapon. She felt a warm current course through her, a full-body bliss, the after-effects of what she’d done. It was like some wonderful drug was pumping through her veins and she hoped that it would never go away.

  In her mind she saw herself leaving the room. Marching boldly down the hallway and confronting Xan and all the others who’d orchestrated the coup and then she’d set things right. They would fall before her and beg for forgiveness and reveal the details of what had happened to her mother and the others. They would do this or she’d bring the hammer down on them. Peering down a final time, she noticed that her arms were no longer splotched red. Moreover, the string that Eli had given her, the single loop, had been ripped from her wrist. It lay on the ground at her feet. A woman screamed in the distance and Samantha startled. Then she sucked in a few mouthfuls of air, steeling herself before leaping through the open door into the hallway.

  That’s when she saw her.

  Xan.

  She was so shocked to see Xan so close to her, that for a moment she didn’t look real. Samantha thought she heard Xan hiss, “You did this, didn’t you?”

  Samantha remained silent, causing Xan to hesitate … until she stepped forward, pulled back, and punched Samantha hard in the face.

  Just like that.

  Samantha saw stars in her eyes. She stutter-stepped and felt herself falling back as darkness devoured everything.

  6

  Q uinn moved like a force of nature, speeding down through the silo’s narrow arteries and foot-paths, the others, now armed, following behind her. The group ran blindly through several of the darkened interior arteries for five or six minutes, doing their best to avoid the main contingency of resistance fighters.

  “SAMANTHA!” Quinn called out, hoping to hear a response, which was not forthcoming.

  Somebody grabbed her from behind, urging her to keep quiet, but she was too far down in her zone. She was on a mission now. Search and find Samantha and then deal with Xan and burn the whole place to the ground if that’s what it took. The bastards had turned on the Marines and broken the deal and that was an unforgivable sin in Quinn’s book.

  Quinn turned a corner and there was Comerford in a gallery, orbited by several resistance fighters. Quinn entered the gallery like a whirlwind and Comerford seemed to jump a few inches in the air, absolutely astonished to see her and the others. She could tell that Comerford wanted to say something, likely wanted to profess ignorance about the coup and their imprisonment, and how he’d turned on
them. His mouth gaped open, she could see him trying to come up with an alibi, an excuse, but the words collapsed in his throat. Instead, he threw up his hands.

  Milo, Hayden, and the others fanned out and took the weapons from the other resistance fighters.

  “I’m sorry,” Comerford said.

  “I know you are,” Quinn replied. “Now you’re coming with us.”

  “To do what?”

  “You’re going to show me where my daughter is. And then we’re gonna get some clothes and gear, and then you’re gonna get us out of here. If you try to fuck with us again, I’ll put a bullet in your ear. You copy that?”

  Comerford nodded as Quinn grabbed a handful of his shirt.

  “Move your ass and show me where she is,” Quinn snarled.

  The air smelled somehow of smog and smoke from backfiring generators as the group shuffled down through the silo.

  “There were others who were coming this way,” Giovanni told Comerford. “Luke, Calee … headed up from Vegas.”

  Comerford grunted and nodded.

  “What happened to them?” Giovanni asked.

  “We locked them up.”

  “Where?” Giovanni asked.

  Comerford lifted a hand and pointed toward the end of the long corridor.

  LUKE’S EARS were still ringing from the explosion as he sat in the storage room. His eyes ratcheted over to Calee who was standing near the entrance door.

  “You think the aliens are attacking?” he asked.

  She peered back. “You’ve seen them in action. You think we’d still be here if it was them?”

  He shook his head and stood and pressed an ear against the door. Shouts and thumps echoed outside and he wondered whether Giovanni was somehow involved in whatever was going on. He’d seen Giovanni in action before, he knew what he was capable of.

  The answer to his question came a few minutes later when a voice called, “If anyone’s in there, stand back!”

  “Gio?” Luke said, standing in excitement. He knew that smooth voice anywhere.