They were greeted in the tunnel by a couple of Allegiance members dressed in their trademark dark brown body suits and carrying HEL fusions came to the electric gates of the cell. They took one look at the large red bot standing next to Charlie and let out a low whistle.
“Big Red,” one muttered.
Charlie glanced at Angelo, but there wasn’t time to ask questions.
“Trekon will see you,” the first guard said.
“Who’s Trekon?” Charlie asked Zeke as he was ushered down a tunnel that lead between the different premises of the Lowsmiths.
The rebel behind him pushed Charlie in the back with the butt of his weapon. “He’s in charge around here, and I suggest you treat him with a little respect.”
He wasn’t about to do anything else. There was nowhere to go even if he did escape. The only place he wanted to go was back to the DarkM’attr machine and get the hell out of this crazy place. Then he could figure out what he could do in the past to stop this horrible future from happening.
When Charlie saw Trekon, he thought he would’ve treated him with respect even if he hadn’t gotten hit in the back with a blunt object. Charlie frowned at the gray-haired man as he walked up. The man looked almost kindly.
But he was perfunctory. “Maverick, have you tested them?”
A short round man stepped forward from the shadows of the cavern. He had thick glasses and different contraptions and digital devices strapped to various parts of his body. He looked like he been rushing to get there and had only just stepped into the room. He wiped the sweat off his top lip as he stepped forward, pulling a device off of his upper left arm and aiming it directly at Charlie’s face.
Charlie ducked immediately. “What the hell?”
“Identity device,” Maverick said, looking fondly at the tool in his hand. “You can relax, it’s not gonna hurt. You know we are not barbaric like they are in Crowley. There they put all those numbers on people but there are so many better ways to identify people and-”
“Stand up for identification,” one of the guards said, yanking at Charlie’s arm.
Trekon raised a hand towards the guard to get him to stand down. “He has been in Crowley, he may not be used to our ways here. The identification device tests the neuron map of your brain to create identification for you.”
Charlie looked warily at the machine. “I don’t get it. Like fingerprinting?”
Maverick laughed. “Fingerprinting only works when you have a library of fingerprints to compare it to. No, no, no, this is much more advanced technology and it has to do with your real experiences. Fingerprints must be mapped to a library, much like serial numbers.”
“We invest everything we have in technology,” Trekon said. “And we have worked to bring some of the greatest minds of our times into the Human Allegiance.”
“That’s what they call themselves,” Angelo leaned over and whispered to Charlie.
“The beam from this device is going to go through your eyes and do a quick neural map of your brain. All the information will be fed through the device and into the machine.” He pointed to a screen glowing pale green that Charlie hadn’t noticed in the time he’d been in the room.
“Using the map, it will reconstruct your life and tell us exactly who you are. This uses your cellular information to tell us when and where you were born and everything that has happened to you from birth up until this moment. This can access memories you don’t even know you have and deliver to us a complete physical and psychological profile of your existence.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Charlie said. And suddenly he wished he’d done some more exciting things in his life because he was suddenly terrified that what was going to come up on the screen was him sitting at the bar drinking beer.
“I don’t want to do it. I told you, I’m Charlie Richards, and-”
A snicker went up through the room, but it was mainly from the guards. Maverick and Trekon simply looked at Charlie.
“We shall see,” Trekon said. “Run the test.”
“Hold his head,” Maverick said.
Charlie warily eyed the guards who grabbed his shoulders, each one placing a hand on either side of his head.
“I thought you said this wasn’t going to hurt,” he said to Maverick.
“It doesn’t, but sometimes the memories it draws out have an impact on you and can cause you to jerk a little bit. Now, they’re also going to need to hold your eyes open. Just one.” He nodded towards the guards as both reached towards his eyes.
“The right one, let’s just have the right one.”
Charlie immediately realized resisting the invasion of his brain was going to be futile, but he struggled anyway, whipping his head right and left, until he heard the cool tones of Trekon fill the cavern.
“Charlie, we’re going to do this regardless of whether you want us to or not. The device works whether you are awake or in a coma, whether you are alive or-” he paused to make sure everybody in the room was listening, “-dead.”
“You should’ve killed him before you got on the transport,” one of the guards said to Zeke.
“Shut up,” Zeke grumbled.
“We do not waste human life if we feel we can win them over,” Trekon said from the front of the room. “The more allegiance we have, the better. We are particularly interested in you because you say you are Charlie Richards. If you, by some bizarre chance, do happen to be Charlie Richards, this is the way we are going to discover the truth.”
“I just got a public award!” Charlie exclaimed. “I’m an Order of the Apothecary!”
“Accolade,” Angelo corrected.
“Right,” Charlie said.
“Just because Blake Crowley says you are Charlie Richards and holds some big pompous ceremony proclaiming such, well, it doesn’t mean it’s true,” Trekon said. “If you do not submit to this test then we will assume you are not interested in becoming an Allegiant, and then we will have no further use for you. Is my meaning clear?”
Shit, Charlie thought, no wonder this guy leads the rebels. His tone was so mesmerizing that Charlie had relaxed and just stood there like an idiot, listening. But Trekon had made his point perfectly clear: submit or die.
“What about him?” Charlie deflected the attention towards Angelo. “Why don’t you run it on him? You should be able to tap into his neural brain and access the same type of information.”
Everyone in the room looked at Angelo for a minute and a slow smile slid across Trekon’s face.
“There is not a human, hybrid, or bot this side of the Dervish who doesn’t know who Angelo is.”
Charlie frowned and for a moment, it looked like Angelo actually swelled with a little bit of pride.
“You’re famous?” Charlie asked.
“He’s the only one like him,” Maverick said, his eyes almost gleaming with anticipation and excitement. “I’m going to have so much fun studying him.”
“But not before we study you a bit,” Trekon brought his hand forward to let Maverick know it was time to take care of business.
Judging by the facts, Angelo was disempowered and they were outnumbered and at the center of the rebel stronghold in the middle of nowhere with no other city but Crowley within a 3,000-mile radius, Charlie weighed his options and decided to stand still and open his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, the damn thing would work, they would find out he really was Charlie Richards, and it would buy him some level of appreciation that up until now, they didn’t seem to have. He was just hoping the screen didn’t show too much about the pathetic life he had been leading back in the 21st century.
Chapter 29
Ten-year-old Charlie Richards of Topeka, Kansas sat in the sunroom of his childhood home. He was only vaguely aware he was in a memory, that he was currently Past Charlie. Present Charlie existed but he wasn't concerned with him at the moment. What he was concerned about was the project that lay before him.
His Nintendo (NES) sat with its top off as he carefu
lly installed a Zotac motherboard and RAM card.
“Is this an early computer box?” came a deep voice above Charlie.
Charlie looked up to see a futuristic man he didn't know was named Trekon. If ten-year-old Charlie was surprised he didn't show it. He simply returned to his work. “It's a Nintendo,” Charlie said. “Everyone knows Nintendo. It's Nintendo.”
“Eh,” Trekon shrugged. “Some of the guys are into this retro stuff, not me. This doesn't prove you are who you are. Maybe you're into that stuff too.”
“Yeah, well do you have Mountain Dew?” Charlie took a big swig of Dew from his cup.
“What are you doing, anyway?”
“My Nintendo just plays Nintendo games,” Charlie said as he inserted the motherboard. “My Atari just plays Atari games. My Sega just plays Sega games. My Nintendo just plays Nintendo games. Inconceivable. But a Linux-based emulator should solve that problem.”
“So, you were always quite the fanster?”
Charlie looked at him blankly. “What's a fanster?”
“A boffing,” Trekon said to no response. “Geek?”
“Ah!” Charlie said in recognition. “If wanting to play Sonic the Hedgehog on my Nintendo is geeky, then I guess I am.”
Trekon blinked at that.
The air rippled and the scene changed. Charlie was now a mid-30's Charlie in a waiting room of a doctor's office with his sister, Tabitha, and her kids Alexa and Alex. Tabitha was on the phone yelling at some poor soul. Alexa punched away on her phone. And Alex sat alone on the other side of the room. Charlie crossed over and took a seat next to him.
“Tell me about your robot.”
Alex just stared down at the floor, worrying away on his bottom lip. Finally, he mumbled out, “Taborlin.”
“Yes, Taborlin. I knew that.”
Alex was quiet a long time.
Trekon entered the vision of the memory and took a seat across from them.
Alex fidgeted and at last went on. “I'm going to have him try Mount Doom.”
“Wow!” Charlie said with honest excitement. This memory was from a few months ago, at least in the 21st century. A few months before he met a woman at a bar who dragged him into a futuristic mess.
“Is grandpa going to be okay?” Alex asked softly without looking up.
Charlie didn't answer. The air rippled, and the memory dissipated away, back to the future.
“Are you all right Charlie?” Angelo leaned over and lifted Charlie off the ground.
A groan escaped Charlie’s lips, his head was ringing with pain. He couldn’t believe, as he stared around the curious faces looking at him. It had just been a memory. It was so deep and so real and so visceral, like everything he had ever experienced was still there in his brain, and if he could just access it he could touch it and taste it and feel it. It wasn’t a memory that had slipped away and been lost in time, it was there, but in the normal scheme of his daily life, he had no access to it. But now it was raw and present and burning against his skin.
And he had just fainted in a room full of bad-ass rebel allegiants.
Shit.
They were all staring at him.
Trekon’s voice, curious and soothing, filled the cavern. “So, you really are Charlie Richards.”
Charlie’s eyes glanced at the screen. And blazing there for everybody in the cavern to see, more pictures of his mother, of his nephew, of his sister, of his friends, of the pub, smiles and laughter and moments captured in a million tiny fragments, pulled out of his brain and plastered in 3-D up on the wall.
Charlie had never felt so exposed in his entire life.
“Remarkable,” Maverick ran his fingers along the edge of his glasses rapidly, as if it would help him compute the reality that Charlie had stepped out of the pages of history and now stood in front of them. “And… And incredibly dangerous. I mean… You do realize don’t you–” His wide eyes magnified by the thick glasses moved from Charlie to Trekon.
“What the hell did you do to the hybrids?” Tallahassee stepped in front of Charlie and punched him in the gut with a resounding force that knocked the already sterile wind out of Charlie.
Angelo caught Charlie as he slumped forward. “Nothing,” Charlie gasped.
“Stop,” Trekon said.
“He’s a god damn liar,” Tallahassee pulled back his arm to blast Charlie again. “I was there. I saw them die. All of them.” He let fly his arm, but Gunk caught it, stopping Tallahassee from landing the punch that might have just knocked Charlie out.
“I was there, too,” Zeke growled.
Trekon’s voice came down from the podium. “We lost twenty good men and women today. Punching Charlie Richards isn’t going to solve anything.”
“The hybrids turned on us,” Tallahassee said to the room. “Exactly like we’ve feared all along they would or could.”
“All of them?” Charlie asked.
“No,” Gunk said. “It was the Deltas. The ones with the delta insignia on their necks.”
“The dumbasses,” muttered Tallahassee.
“They’re not dumbasses,” Charlie said.
“I’m going to kill them all,” Tallahassee said, spitting on the ground for effect.
“No,” Charlie pulled himself upright and glared at Tallahassee. “No, you’re not. These people are some of the finest around. They just haven’t been as lucky as you to be healthy and intact, so they’ve elongated their lives with hardware and software.”
“They are machines,” Tallahassee said. “I saw it in their eyes.”
Zeke nodded in agreement. “He’s right. Something came over them.”
“They are not machines. They’re people with software in them,” Charlie insisted. “They have feelings.”
“They didn’t have too many feelings when they were gunning us down.” Tallahassee stepped forward and glared into Charlie’s eyes. “What did you do to them?”
Charlie stepped back, focusing on Trekon. “I didn’t do anything. But someone did.”
“You’re trying to tell me it’s some coincidence Crowley drags your ass out of the dark ages and brings you here, and all of a sudden all the hybrids go from dying to killing machines?” Tallahassee asked.
“It does seem like the two incidences would be connected,” Trekon nodded.
“They are!” Charlie exclaimed as Tallahassee bristled. “But I didn’t write that code! They were updated with two batches of code. One that I did and one that someone else did. The code I did cured them of the disease. The other code turned them into controlled killers!”
“He’s lying!” Tallahassee yelled as Gunk restrained him.
“Silence,” Trekon’s voice was low but all eyes of the Lowsmiths in the room swung from Charlie to Trekon. “We can validate this truth, but so far he has not lied.”
“Damn convenient if you ask me,” Tallahassee said.
“They needed me to fix the hybrids,” Charlie said. “That’s all.”
“You realize there’s no way they would let you live,” Trekon said, and then, as if he could see into Charlie’s heart and understand his deepest desires, he added, “Or let you return to your own time.”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I was trying to get out of there when your people were killed. I had no idea that was going to happen.”
Monfils glanced over his shoulder. Warren and Dustin were analyzing Delta movements. He had to figure out what was wrong with Jade’s tracking device. He had tried to switch it off remotely but it wouldn’t work. Something was jammed.
Damn their new code.
And where the hell was Blake? Monfils wondered. Okay, so his wife was a crazy Delta, that was no reason to just abandon the rest of them. Was he just going to let Warren get away with whatever he wanted to do? Was he going to lose Crowley? Monfils’ stomached buckled. How could this be happening? How could he have lost the Deltas? And to an asshole like Dustin, too.
Monfils slammed his fingers into the CodeSwarm spinning in front of him.
He didn’t need much effort to find Jade’s tracking code, he had it memorized. Had had it memorized for years. At first, he’d pretended it was all about knowing where the prime player on his team was, but this idea only lasted so long. After hours, he would sit and look at her numbers just to see if she was at her parents or in her apartment. That’s when he realized he needed to try his luck with her. It hadn’t been hard to arrange some time alone, he’d invited her to the shooting range. She’d seemed to like that, especially because she could beat him hands down. From there he’d enticed her to grab a bite to eat and, a couple of weeks later, he’d managed to get her into his bed.
But it had always felt like she was doing him a favor.
Which, frankly, really pissed him off. He was Monfils. Any woman, hybrid or not, would be happy with his attentions. Jade, well, she was a bit different. She was dynamic and sexy and happy enough to be in his bed, but she definitely wasn’t falling for him in any meaningful way. They laughed together. Did target practice together. Had sex together. But then, well, she was done and she’d take off. They weren’t really together.
But he couldn’t get her out of his head. She made him crazy. To pressure her, though, or to let him know how obsessed he was with her, there’d be no chance.
When she’d called it off, whatever ‘it’ was, he’d gone insane. His staring at her numbers tracking her had felt like it was something a lot more stalkerish than it should be. Totally more stalkerish.
But now, at Command Central, he was going to turn that capability off completely and irrevocably. In fact, maybe that was just what he should have done a long time ago for his own sake.
He closed his eyes. All he needed to do was pull the code. His heart wrenched. He’d never know where she was again. Not unless she told him, which, based on the fact that she was currently insane, might never happen.
“Where the hell is Jade, anyway?” Warren asked Dustin.
Monfils’ eyes opened wide. With a quick glance towards them he turned resolutely to the CodeSwarm and ripped out the contents of Jade’s tracker. He might not know where she was at any given time, but neither would those assholes.
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