Relapse (Breakers Book 7)

by Edward W. Robertson

  He worked to the point where Anson made fun of him—"Hey, do you think we should leave the grassy knoll there?"—but he didn't care. They were on the verge of everything. It wasn't the time to rest.

  On the day before the speech, Anson and a retinue of over thirty people took carriages to Santa Monica Pier and loaded into two boats. The trip over was quiet. In Avalon, the council members were all there to meet them, shaking hands with Anson and his people. The only ones who acknowledged Lowell were Nolan, who smiled slyly, and Raul, who watched him with naked contempt.

  While Anson was feted in the palace, Lowell took a walk around the town, absorbing the place. He settled at the pier where Anson was to give his speech at noon tomorrow. It was a little after noon at that moment, breezy, almost creepily warm. The window frames of the vacant houses were like empty sockets. They'd left a horse for him, and he rode it to the palace.

  "We need to push back the speech," Lowell said once he'd isolated Anson. "Make it two days from now. 9 AM."

  Anson sighed, tipping back his head. "Why are you so certain that something's going to happen?"

  "It's more that I'm not certain something won't happen. Two years from now, I'm less paranoid about rebels. But right now, it's only been a few weeks since Raina's ouster."

  "That makes sense. But if my security depends on letting wounds heal, how does it help to push things back by one day?"

  Lowell produced a drawing he'd made. The sketch resembled a baseball field. He pointed to home plate. "You're giving your speech here, at the docks. That puts your back to the northeast. At nine in the morning, everyone watching you—whether from here in the infield or out here in the bleachers—is going to be looking right into the sun."

  "You're talking about snipers."

  "I'm talking about snipers."

  "This is going to kill our turnout," Anson muttered. "I'll make the announcement."

  Two days later, Lowell was at the pier a few minutes after dawn. His team met him there: four members of the Sworn, who'd be operating out of uniform, carrying walkie talkies and concealed pistols. The batteries in the walkies were among the last good ones in the world. For all Anson's talk of rebuilding, he didn't have an answer to what they would do once the last Duracell ran dry.

  They walked through the streets at the pier, getting a feel for them, naming landmarks. By 8 AM, the first of the crowds were trickling in. By 9 AM, more than two hundred people had assembled around the stage they'd built on the pier. There, in a carefully orchestrated sharing of authority, Tina introduced Gates, who introduced Anson.

  Anson took the stage. There wasn't much applause.

  "Citizens of Catalina." His unaugmented voice rolled over the upturned faces. "What an honor to be here on this day. The day when two people become one. When we forge swords into plowshares together. When…"

  He went on in this way. Lowell watched the crowd, hunting for any expression that looked out of place: fear, wrath, anxiety. He got nothing. After thirty seconds, Anson quit mid-sentence. Lowell glanced at the stage. The tall blond man was gazing at his podium like he'd just woken up.

  "I'm sorry." He laughed awkwardly. "I've got this whole speech, but it…" He picked up his note cards and let the breeze steal them away. "It just feels so strange to be up here. Just a few months ago, we were fighting each other. Killing each other! Now, it almost feels like a dream, but I was there in San Pedro. I remember. I'm sure many of you do, too.

  "Me up here, promising we're now one big family, maybe that's nothing more than a dream, too. We'll see. For now, I want to put a lot of worries to rest. You'll keep your laws. You'll keep your leaders. I hope that, for the most part, becoming a part of the People of the Stars doesn't feel any different at all."

  Two hundred yards uphill, light flashed from the window of a house. Lowell raised his binoculars and put his walkie talkie to his mouth. "I've got glass. Izzy, get on it. Pink house, corner lot, straight up Catalina Ave."

  Izzy jogged from the crowds, making for the street. Lowell eased toward the stage.

  "But there is one thing I want to change," Anson went on. "The wounds left between our people. I don't know how fast a wound like that can heal—but I know they all do. And that they heal faster with the right medicine. That's why I'm introducing a new program. One meant to unite us—particularly those of us who matter most."

  The light flashed in the window a second time. Lowell said, "Izzy, what have you got?"

  "Not there yet, Cap," she panted through the walkie.

  Lowell strode toward the stage. Anson warned him away with a quick flick of the eye.

  "This will be an exchange," Anson said. "A chance to get to know each other. It'll be an opportunity in other ways as well."

  The glint was no longer flashing; now, it was a steady glare. Lowell sprinted forward and vaulted onto the stage. Anson whirled and stepped toward him, face popping with fury.

  "Geoff, you son of a—"

  Something whacked into the pier just beyond the spot Anson had vacated. He stared at it dumbly. The noise of the shot pealed across the town. Lowell grabbed Anson and shoved him across the stage. A second bullet cracked into the boards. People screamed, glancing about in panic.

  Down at the base of the stage, Lowell passed Anson to two of his people. "Get him out of here!"

  They covered him, shepherding him into the safety of the nearest shop. Lowell ran uphill, then veered toward a storefront where someone had left their bike. He hopped on and pedaled up Catalina Avenue.

  "Izzy, what's your status?" he said into his walkie.

  "He's rabbited," Izzy said. "Up and east. Headed for—"

  A pistol went off—three, four, five times. Lowell heard the first two shots through the walkie as well. Then the line went blank.

  "Finn," Lowell said into his unit. "Izzy's been shot. Give her a hand. I'm in pursuit."

  He cut left, flashing through the shops. Everyone was down at the pier and there was no one on the street to get in his way—or to ask where the shooter had gone.

  At the next block, he hung right, running parallel to Catalina Ave. Footsteps bounced from ahead. A man burst into the street, green jacket flapping behind him. Lowell braked hard, tires squeaking. The man glanced over his shoulder, saw his pursuit, and aimed a pistol across his body.

  Lowell swung off the seat and swept his gun from its holster. The shooter fired, gun bucking, his mid-stride shot flying helplessly wide. Lowell turned sideways and took aim. The man fired twice more. Lowell squeezed the trigger.

  The man crumpled, thudding into the pavement. He grunted in pain, the pistol skittering away from his hand.

  "Do not move!" Lowell sprinted toward the weapon.

  The man made a twitch for it, saw Lowell's gun trained on him, and slumped back to his side. Lowell had shot him in the left side of his back. Was a wonder the bullet hadn't knocked his heart right out the exit wound. He was bleeding heavily and was already having trouble breathing.

  Lowell reached the gun and picked it up. "You idiot. You think killing him was going to stop the takeover? Whoever replaced him would have crushed this town under martial law."

  Despite the pain it caused him, the man laughed, dripping pure scorn. "You think this is about this land? You think I care about this place? This isn't my home."

  Lowell crouched for a better look at the man. He was in his thirties, some musculature to him. "This is about San Pedro?"

  The man closed his eyes, paling visibly. Sweat broke out across his forehead. He willed his eyes open and fixed them on Lowell. "He took my kid. Just like that. You have any shred of a soul, you'll go back and do what I couldn't."

  "He took your kid?"

  "Did I stutter?"

  "When? What's his name?"

  "Bobby." The man gasped, coughed. His lips were bright red. Blood on his chin, too. "Weeks ago."

  "Where did he take Bobby?" Lowell said.

  "Don't know." The man coughed again, a racketing fit that blew blood down h
is shirt and seemed to steal away his remaining strength. His throat worked, but he couldn't speak. He reached for Lowell. His hand faltered and fell to his chest. A minute later, he quit breathing.

  The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the mess. Izzy was dead, gunshot to the forehead. They checked out the sniper's perch, but it was just an empty house. Gates threw around his weight as sheriff, which Lowell had no patience for, but ID'd the shooter as Richard Swift, displaced from San Pedro. He had a son, Bobby, but no one seemed to know where the boy was.

  Lowell assigned his people to help Gates follow up, then headed to the pier to meet Anson, who'd stuck around after the shooting to put on a brave face and reassure the locals he had no intention of making reprisals. Lowell had to wait another twenty minutes before Anson was done glad-handing.

  Anson wandered toward the pier and its makeshift stage. "So why'd he want to drop me? Pissed off about the annexation?"

  "He wouldn't talk," Lowell said. "Grinned at me until he died, if you can believe that."

  "What an asshole." Anson sighed and gazed across the empty space around the pier. "Well, what are we supposed to do? Reschedule the speech?"

  "Why bother? It's just a speech."

  "I'm not cutting the ribbon at a mall. I'm setting the tone for Catalina's future. I mean, son of a bitch. I didn't even get to the citizen exchange."

  "Citizen exchange?"

  "We've talked about this, haven't we?"

  "You were saving the details for the speech. You thought you were being clever with me."

  Anson frowned with his brows and smiled with his mouth. "I figured out how to assimilate them. You reach them before they've learned to hate. Show them that Catalina is only a small part of something much, much bigger. Something they would yearn to join."

  Lowell got out a piece of gum. "You're talking about kids?"

  "What tipped you off? The part where I said they needed to be too young to know how to hate?"

  "Then you better take them straight from the womb. This program, you started it up yet?"

  "On a trial basis. A lot of the parents are understandably hesitant to sign up. But we've worked out the kinks. Built in incentives. It'll be an apprenticeship program. Teach the kids the trades we're reviving in L.A."

  "Where have you been taking them?"

  "Wherever. The farms, the fishing crews, the smiths. We're even talking about setting up a Junior Sworn or some damn thing. It doesn't matter what they're doing, what matters is that they're doing it among us. You see?"

  "Free labor. Loyal citizens. And you get to keep Catalina small. Nice system."

  Anson made a gun with his hand and pointed it at Lowell, nodding once. As the man walked away, returning to his crowd, Lowell had to restrain the urge to shoot him in the back of the head.

  * * *

  On the mainland, times were quiet. In order to encourage the People to focus on their tasks and aspire to be elevated to the Heart, Anson had split them into any number of mini-tribes. Lowell invented reasons to tour between them all. Wasn't hard to find excuses. People always had squabbles to adjudicate, and when they didn't, he could simply say he'd gone to chase rumors of Raina.

  He never asked straight out whether the tribes had any exchange-kids from Catalina. Mostly, he simply kept his eyes open, asked them how they were doing on logistics, whether they were keeping to their budgets of foods and supplies. When kids were around, he offered them gum or other candy he got from the Dunemarket and asked them about themselves.

  Not once did he find one from Catalina.

  Anson had heard stirrings from San Diego. With no word back from the party he'd sent to smooth things over after the death of King Dashing—a party that included his body double—he ordered Lowell to head down and figure out what was going on. Lowell agreed, passing through the extinguished luster of the Beverly Hills hotels on his way to the 405. He hadn't started the trip until late morning and had to call it quits in San Pedro.

  The next day, he rode past Long Beach, then turned north and headed straight into the brown mountains north of Arcadia. He passed five days there, increasingly annoyed at the lost time. But he wasn't about to get anywhere near San Diego. Couldn't do anything to further Anson's position against the place. Not until he knew what was happening at home. He rode back to the Heart and informed Anson they had turned him away without explanation.

  December came. The city got rainy. Runoff sluiced down the hills and formed cataracts in the streets. Sodden brown fronds piled up around the base of the palms. It was good for the crops but hard to get much done. With nothing turning up in L.A., he sailed back to Catalina to glean what he could from their end. His first stop was Nolan's farm. The man was in and Lowell chatted with him about the rain and the island's well-being.

  "How's the kid doing?" Lowell said a few minutes into the small talk.

  "Randy?" Nolan said. "Just fine. You haven't seen him, then?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "I volunteered to send him to L.A. Enrolled him in the Pathway to the Sworn. He could use the discipline."

  Lowell wrapped up the conversation, returned to Avalon, sailed straight back to Santa Monica, and rode to the Heart. There, he went to Anson's and barged into his office overlooking the lake. Anson was doing paperwork and did nothing to disguise his annoyance toward it.

  "Randy MacDonald," Lowell said. "His dad is Nolan MacDonald, Catalina Council. Nolan told me we've got Randy here. Part of the citizen exchange. Where is he?"

  Anson didn't look up from his papers. "This is a kid? What do you need to see him for?"

  "He helped me find the alien rod. Need to talk to him about it."

  "What about it? This sounds serious."

  Lowell gritted his teeth. "Followup. Need to make sure he's okay. That he isn't talking. See whether he knows about any other alien artifacts on the island."

  Anson scribbled something, set down his pen, and blinked up at Lowell. "He's on a trip north. To make contact with the people in San Jose. It could be weeks before he's back."

  "San Jose? What are you trying to do with them?"

  "It's not a big deal. Diplomatic relations."

  "What's Randy doing involved in that?"

  "Well, he's the son of one of Catalina's most prominent politicians. Made sense to get him started in the family business." Anson smiled, gestured to the papers covering his desk like a white skin. "Anything else? Want me to let you know when he's back in town?"

  "Please."

  Lowell closed the door behind him. Outside, it was drizzling and miserable, but he walked around anyway. Right then, his body was nothing but a vessel for his brain, which was now certain it had all the pieces. He watched this process with detached but giddy delight, the way he might if he were to dump a puzzle on the floor only for it to begin to assemble itself, pieces clicking into place faster and faster until all those scattered bits were a whole and perfect picture.

  That giddiness died the moment the image was complete.

  It was no more than a hunch, but it was so solid it felt like he could pull it from the air and hold it in his hand. He got on his horse and rode to the beach where a tunnel led to the alien ship resting in the bay.

  22

  "I'm sorry, I think I misheard you." Mauser glanced across the sunny field. "Because what I thought you said was that we have to kill the person whose queenlihood you just backed."

  "This kingdom is fueled by suffering, Mauser. The men are forced into the fields while the women are forced into beds. They say this is a punishment for criminals, but I've been doing some asking around, and some of them did nothing more than steal food. The system wants offenders. The only escape is to join the knights or the aristocrats, who are allowed to act as vampires, sucking the lifeblood from their people."

  "Yeah, and?"

  "And it is an ongoing crime!"

  "Right. One that we're going to use to crush Anson, retake our lands, and restore harmony to the universe. Don't tell me you think you c
an save the world."

  "I have no such delusions," Raina said. "But I am here now, and may be able to save this small part of it."

  He covered his face with his hands, elbows jutting to the side. "I don't understand why we went through all these machinations to depose Lady Winslowe, only for you to turn on your replacement the instant you put her in power. You got everything you wanted. We're in position to strike Anson. Retake Catalina! Rocking the boat could drown us all."

  "You fear this choice could cause me to lose my people. But if I leave Cinder to rule this land, then I will lose my soul—and if I have lost my soul, then I have lost my people forever."

  "What's the idea, then? Throw Cinder out on her ass? Free the field hands and the slave girls? Hang all the knights from the highest tree?"

  "I'm not yet sure."

  He bit his lower lip, exposing his upper teeth in something that wasn't quite a grin. "Well, you'd better figure that out first. The problem is you're essentially trying to figure out how to reintegrate the Nazis."

  "Nazis?"

  "You can't honestly expect me to believe you don't know who the Nazis were. World War II? The Holocaust? The Hitlers?"

  "Ah yes," Raina said. "I know of the Hitler."

  "Here's the deal in a nutshell. During World War II, the Nazis were the worst monsters maybe ever. We're not talking about a few people—this was the entire German armed forces. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people participating in these crimes. Yet when the war was over, what were the victors supposed to do? Execute half a million soldiers?"

  "If they were that bad, then why not?"

  Mauser exhaled testily. "Because if you punish wrongdoers too harshly, you cross a line where you become one yourself. Besides, a lot of these guys weren't that bad. They were just regular soldiers. Tools being put to use by an evil leadership."