The Price of Freedom

by Chris Kennedy

  I proceeded toward it like I didn’t know any better, then just prior to reaching it, I locked up the brakes and threw the steering wheel over so the driver’s side door ended up alongside it. Before the man could do anything other than gape at the maneuver, I boosted. In a flash, I was out of the car and had his door open, then I hauled him out and dropped him to the ground.

  “What the hell, man?” he asked.

  “I just saved your life,” I said. “Now I don’t have to kill you. You got a problem with that?”

  He gaped up at me for a second longer until he realized I was waiting for an answer. “Naw, man.”

  “Good.” I pointed to my car. “You can drive that home tonight and bring it in to headquarters tomorrow. If you do, I’ll have a job for you. If you don’t, you better hope I never see you again. Got it?”

  “Yeah, man. But I don’t get it. What’s going on?”

  I smiled. “Regime change.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “You’ll see tomorrow.” I shut the door, put it in gear, and started across the bridge.

  I had just started down the other side of the bridge when the radio came to life. “Johnson, what the hell are you doing?” a voice asked. “It’s not shift change yet!”

  To warn them or not to warn them? I wondered. Screw it.

  I picked up the handset. “Move the vehicles or lose them,” I transmitted. “This is the only warning you’ll get.”

  I shifted and stomped on the accelerator. “Hey, who’s this?” the voice squawked. “Where’s Johnson?”

  I didn’t reply; I just bore down on the two cars. Unfortunately, the people operating the barricade weren’t mentally agile enough to move the cars in time, so I jumped on the breaks at the last minute, slowing to about 30 miles an hour as I steered for the small gap between them. Sure, it looks cool in the videos when a truck smashes through a car or two, but it’s still a car crash for the truck driver, and I’d been in enough of them to know I didn’t want to hit the cars going 70. Yes my body would heal, but it would hurt.

  I had a flash of the two men’s faces—both were sitting in the car to the left with eyes as big as saucers and their mouths in Os, then the blade hit the cars with enough force to flip both of them onto their roofs and send them spinning away. I kept going.

  Not much had changed in the short time I’d been gone—Slidell was still a mess. For once, I decided discretion might be the better part of valor, so I stashed the truck several blocks away—out of earshot—and proceeded on foot, doing my best to stay out of sight.

  I reached the headquarters building and frowned. I didn’t know whether the people at the bridge had radioed ahead or if Chamberlain had raised security after my last visit, but there was an increased presence of enforcers guarding the door. I decided it was the latter after a couple of minutes of watching them—the men at the door didn’t seem particularly alert for people expecting an attack.

  Still, they would provide a buffer. If I hit them, there was no doubt an alarm would go out, and it would give Chamberlain time to get additional troops in place. I thought about waiting to hit him when he went home for the night, but by then, word of my return would certainly have reached him, and I doubted he would leave the building to make himself an easier target.

  I wouldn’t have, and I had the same training.

  For that matter, I doubted he left the building at all, except for when his presence was required or his particular skill set was needed to solve a problem. I might have been able to draw him out if I hadn’t hit the crew at the bridge. I had, though, and now he’d be on alert once word filtered back. I had to act now.

  I surveyed the building a little longer. The headquarters building was a giant, two-story warehouse with a ten-story tower on the front where the administrative offices were. The main lobby faced west, and access to the stairs and the elevators for the tower were in it. The lobby opened on the east end into the facility that held the labs, shooting ranges, and armory, among other things. The main building also had an entrance on the north side that bypassed the main lobby, which could sometimes get stacked up at shift change.

  The longer I looked at it, the more I realized Chamberlain hadn’t done the original security planning for the building; he had obviously foisted it off on someone else. While I’m sure he looked at it and approved it once it was complete, that wasn’t the same as doing it himself. Yes, there was security at both the front and side doors on the west and north sides, and it looked more than adequate. I’m sure there were also additional layers of security inside that could be called upon to seal a breach and contain or destroy anyone that made it into the building. That was all well and good.

  Unfortunately—for Chamberlain—whoever had done the security planning had only looked at defending the building from an assault by normal humans—and Agents and Specialists were far from normal. I was moving before I could have a second thought, looping back around to approach it from the south side of the east end. There wasn’t a door on that side—there weren’t even any windows—so they didn’t have people watching it; instead, they relied on a couple of cameras that covered the corners. It was adequate against normal attack—I couldn’t sneak up and blow in the back of the structure.

  But, I didn’t want to.

  If I did, I would have had to fight through the entire main building. By the time I made it to the tower section, every security person they had would be between me and “the Caretaker.”

  The building had been built in a section of town with some old, huge trees. I quickly climbed one of the ones close to the building, then leaped across the 30-foot gap. The second story roof I landed on was flat, and I raced across it, staying in the middle so I couldn’t be seen by anyone from the ground. There were some windows on the tower that faced in my direction, but that was a chance I had to take.

  I saved my boost—if anyone was looking out the window and saw me, there was nothing I could do about it; I knew I would need the boost later and didn’t want to waste it. I didn’t hear an alarm as I crossed the roof, nor did I see anyone in the windows, and I made it to the tower section without incident.

  Once again, the building had been designed with normal people in mind—the third and fourth floors didn’t have windows, making access to the tower impossible without a ladder. Or a nanite-enhanced body.

  As I approached the tower, I ran harder the last few steps, and raced up the wall. When I felt gravity begin to pull me back, I pushed off and jumped as hard as I could. I easily made it up to the ledge outside a window on the fifth floor. I put my elbows against the sides of the window casing to catch my balance as I looked in the window. The office was empty—perfect.

  The only thing that would have been better was if the window had been unlocked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, and I had to punch in a section. Nothing could hide the sound of the shattering glass, although there was carpet below the window which deadened the sound as the glass hit the ground.

  I quickly unlocked the window, opened it, and slid inside as the door opened. The man saw me and opened his mouth, but I raced across the room, grabbed him, and yanked him inside. I pulled him toward me and slapped a hand across his mouth as I shut the door gently. He struggled mightily, but there was no way he was getting away. I held him until he realized the futility of it and quit fighting.

  “Okay,” I said, “I want to ask you a couple of questions, so I’m going to let you go. If you yell or try to run, I will kill you. Nod if you understand.”

  He nodded, so I let him go. He turned to me, and his eyes widened. “You…you—”

  “Yes, me. I take it the Caretaker has put out pictures and everyone is watching for me?”

  He nodded, terror in his eyes, and I wondered what Chamberlain had said about me. It wasn’t like I was going to dispute it; anything he said was probably true—I’d done some awful things for the company. But then again, so had he. And he’d liked doing them.

  “I know he’s made me o
ut to be a bad man,” I said, causing the man to nod again—vehemently this time—and look like he wanted to flee, “but on my worst day, he is a far worse person.”

  That caused the man to jerk back in shock, and I smiled involuntarily—his stories about me must have been good, if people had that reaction to the idea that there could be something worse than me. “Trust me,” I added, “he is far worse. He may not have shown it yet, but he is a sociopath.”

  “Well, he’s done a couple things…but he said that was only to regain control and rid the area of anarchy. We can’t regrow civilization until we put down the people who would take advantage of the situation to grab all the power they can.”

  I chuckled. “I see you’ve been drinking his kool-aid. I don’t suppose you noticed that’s exactly what he’s doing?”

  “Well…but…”

  “No, that is exactly what he’s doing. He may say it’s for the ‘greater good’ or ‘needs of civilization,’ but at the end of the day, it’s all part of his need to be in charge. Trust me; I know him.”

  “Trust you?” the man asked. “If only half of what he’s said is true, you are just as bad.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a shades of gray thing, I guess. Nobody in this world is going to be a saint; you can’t be and still get this world back on track.” I shrugged again. “But enough about me. I have a couple of questions I want you to answer, please.”

  He nodded tentatively, so I continued, “Is the Caretaker in his office?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “What are you supposed to do if you see me?”

  “Report your presence to security.”

  “Are there other people on this floor who will see me as I go to the stairwell?”

  He had to think about this question a moment, but finally nodded. “Two, I think.”

  “Is this your office?”

  He nodded.

  “Is anyone going to miss you if they don’t hear from you for a bit?”

  He started to think about that, but I could see his mind wander off as he tried to figure out why I would ask that question. His mouth opened, and he took a deep breath, but then I yanked him toward me again, spinning him so his back was against my chest. I wrapped an arm around his throat and placed a hand over his mouth, then held him while he struggled. I didn’t kill him, although I suspected he’d have a nice bruise around his throat tomorrow.

  I gently put him on the floor then eased the door open a crack. The floor was an open workspace, with a bunch of desks spread throughout. The man had been wrong, I saw; there were actually three people—a man and two women—between me and the stairwell. Well, shit. I wouldn’t be able to get past all of them without being seen, and trying to take them one at a time wouldn’t work, either.

  I got down and low-crawled so they wouldn’t be able to see me, then sprang up from the floor when I was close with a pistol in each hand. “Hands up!” I ordered. “Nobody talks or I start shooting! Stand up!”

  All three were complacent and stood. Perhaps this new world was selective of people who did what they were told. The penalties for being a free thinker these days were a lot more severe. Judging by the terrified looks on their faces, though, at least two of them recognized me from whatever photos had gone around.

  I herded the people into the office I’d come out of, and one of the women screamed when she saw the body on the floor. I stepped forward and tapped her on the temple with the handle of one of my pistols, and she collapsed to the floor.

  The other woman pointed at the man on the floor. “Is he…”

  “No, he isn’t dead,” I said. “He’s just sleeping.” I pursed my lips as I looked at the two people as if deciding what to do with them. Which, of course, I was. “Okay, here’s the thing,” I said finally. “I need to go see the Caretaker, and I don’t want him to know I’m coming.” I crossed the room and ripped the computer and phone lines out of the wall. “You can either agree to sit here and wait it out, or I can help you sleep through it like him.” I motioned to the guy on the floor. “What’s it going to be?”

  “I can sit right here and wait out whatever you need me to, sir,” the man said. “I can be very patient when needed.”

  “Me too,” the woman said, taking her lead from the man. “There’s no need for anyone else to get injured.”

  I smiled. “Just one, actually—the Caretaker—but I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Despite what he’s told you about me, he is actually the bad man, and I am going to rid the world of him. After that, you’ll all be free to go, and the company, here, will be open again tomorrow under new management.”

  “So we just stay here?” the man asked. I nodded. “How long?”

  “Until the shooting stops,” I said. “But I would give it a little longer than that. If you leave this room before that, odds are, you will be shot. There will be a lot of security people running around with itchy trigger fingers, and you might very well get shot accidentally. I wouldn’t call them, either—if you do, it will only lead to unnecessary loss of life. Just stay here, be patient, then leave in about 15 minutes. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. “We certainly can.”

  Some people can make the right choices in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty

  I raced up the stairs and opened the door onto the tenth floor a crack.

  Someone was sitting at the desk across the lobby, with someone on the close side talking to them. While the person who was standing blocked the sitting person’s view of the stairwell door, there was no way to get past them and down the the hall to Chamberlain’s office without being seen by at least one of them.

  I eased the door open a little further to look down the hallway—the door to Chamberlain’s office was open. Maybe I was in a good mood—I don’t know—but I didn’t feel like killing the two at the desk to stop them from sounding the alarm. I could make it to Chamberlain’s office before any reaction force could get there, and once we were engaged, it would be hard for anyone to do anything about it.

  Unless he had other Specialists in his employ. I frowned. If he did, it would be messy. All I could do was hope they didn’t respond in time and decided to accept the management change.

  I took a couple of quick breaths, then charged across the atrium.

  “Hey—” is all the receptionist got out before I was past her and down the hall.

  As I was halfway to the office, the door began to close. It was far too slow, however, and I raced through it, then turned and locked it as it snapped shut. The guy who had been talking to the receptionist was about a quarter of the way down the hall; he had fast reflexes, but not Specialist caliber. Not that one couldn’t get here quickly from anywhere in the building.

  “I wondered if you’d return,” Chamberlain said from his desk. I looked over and found him pointing a pistol at me. “Although, I have to say, I kind of figured you’d try to shoot me in the back.”

  I smiled, having contemplated that action, then shrugged. “I might have considered it. When’s the last time you left this building?”

  He smiled back. “The last time you were here.”

  “Didn’t want to give me the opportunity?”

  “Nope.” He shrugged. “So, why are you here? If you wanted to take the job I offered, you could have talked to the folks downstairs.”

  “They didn’t look like they were in a talking mood.”

  “So you killed them, and now I’ll need new guards?”

  “Nope. Didn’t kill a single person on the way in. Just call me the wind; I blew right through.”

  “Sounds like I need to review and update my security procedures.”

  “If you’re still around to do so.”

  “So that’s how it’s going to be?” he asked. “You’re going to make me shoot you?”

  I smiled. “Do you honestly think you can?”

  “Let’s find out,” he said.

  As soon as I saw his f
inger start to pull the trigger, I boosted, and pulled both of my pistols. He fired his pistol, and I felt a pull on my shirt as the bullet just missed me as I dove. It’s hard to shoot someone who’s boosted—they can see where you’re aiming while the trigger is being pulled and move to the side. His mistake was boosting after he pulled the trigger, or he might have had me.

  He fired again—a clean miss—and then my pistols were out. I fired one at the spot he’d been sitting in and one to the right of him. He, of course, dove to the left, but that established his momentum. I fired again before I hit the floor, again bracketing where he might go, and winged him with one of my shots. Then I hit the floor, and he was on the other side of the desk.

  I jumped up at the same time he did, firing to both sides of him. He aimed at me, and I was forced to dive again. I winged him again with one of my next rounds, then he was in motion again, making my next rounds go astray. We traded the rest of our magazines like that, diving and dodging around the desk until we were both empty. I got him a couple of times, and he hit me once.

  “That was anticlimactic,” I said as we both stood up to assess each other. There was a pounding on the door after a couple of seconds; apparently, they hadn’t wanted to walk in while the bullets were flying. I couldn’t blame them—the office was a mess. I had shot out all the windows behind Chamberlain, and I’m sure the shelving behind me was similarly shattered. Not that I was going to take my eyes off Chamberlain to check.

  “You’ve gotten faster,” he noted. “Go away!” he yelled over my shoulder as the pounding continued. In our boosted states, it was a slow rhythmic beat that was annoying to both of us. I doubted the man would understand Chamberlain.

  “You want to give up now?” I asked, taking a step toward the desk. “Looks like I got you twice to your once. I think you’re past your prime. If you step aside, I won’t kill you.”

  “You’re definitely having delusions of grandeur if you think you can.”