The Midnight Stand (The Elysia Saga Book 1)

by Affortunato, Louis A.

  She didn’t know what else to do so she went to Richard and begged him to do something. He was hesitant to do anything at first, afraid to compromise his standing with the Council, but Dana persuaded him to intervene on Harley’s part, mostly as a favor to her. No matter how much she disliked Harley, the social stigma of having a sister with a husband put away would have been even worse.

  Sara never knew how he did it, but Richard was able to appeal to certain members of the Council, members that Dana insured he had a personal relationship with, and get Harley’s charged wiped from the central database. As far as the computer was concerned, it never happened. As Dana so often pointed out to Sara, it was a huge favor to ask and Richard put his personal relationships on the line to help Harley. It would be his only get out of jail free card.

  When Harley found out what Richard did, he was furious and refused to see him or even thank him. Sara couldn’t understand why Harley acted the way he did or why he seemed so willing to accept his punishment. Something changed in their relationship after that. They didn’t talk to each other as much and Harley went off more and more on his own, coming home late and never bothering to say where he’d been. When she asked him he would just say he was at the yard again, collecting scrap metal.

  “And why after all this time would he suddenly suggest for you to visit me?” Dana said, interrupting Sara’s train of thought. “Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

  It was odd to Sara. Everything about that evening was odd. Everything from the way he rushed her out the door with Jasper to his nervous behavior. It was as if he was hiding something or he was going to do something and he didn’t want her there to see it.

  “I’m telling you,” Dana continued. “He’s up to something.” Her eyes suddenly got wide as she dropped her cup down. A devious smirk spread across her face. “Do you think he’s fooling around?”

  “No, Harley wouldn’t do that. It’s something else,” Sara said as she absently stirred her tea. Her eyes looked like they were a hundred miles away.

  Harley was never an open person. It felt like she had to pull teeth just to get him to talk about his day. She was able to put up with it when they were just married, but lately it’s been becoming more of an issue and has only gotten worse since Jasper was born. Even Jasper’s birth didn’t help change Harley. If anything it made him more guarded and secretive. He believed his whole life was on a platter for the Council and it could be taken away by them in a moment’s notice if they felt like it.

  He always talked about preserving their way of life and how, if worse came to worse, they would have to fight to protect it. It scared Sara when he spoke like that to the point where she told him to never talk like that around Jasper, who was getting older and picking up on things. She didn’t want him putting a lot of nonsense in Jasper’s head.

  There was something that gnawed at her about the whole situation and it had to do with the new AutoHomes going up in their sector in the recent months. The tract of land they were on was starting to see more upgrading. To Sara it was about time the trucks finally made it out to their sector, which was the most isolated and old world out of all of them. The sight of the trucks made Harley even more paranoid. He made it seem like they couldn’t get within fifty feet of their property without his say so. According to Harley, the house or they weren’t going anywhere.

  “Well, what do you think it is then?” Dana asked. “He had to have wanted you out of the house tonight for a reason.”

  “I don’t know, maybe I should call him.”

  “You mean he actually uses a phone?” Dana sarcastically quipped.

  Sara ignored her sister as she got up and went over to the wall touchscreen. She swiped through the contacts until she found her name and pressed it. The phone began ringing as Dana got up and put her cup into the washer. It rang and rang with no answer. On its eighth ring Sara hung up. “If he’s not home where could he be?” she asked.

  Dana stood against the counter and looked at Sara. For the first time the expression on her face resembled something close to concern for her sister. “Listen, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I mean it’s not like he has any friends. What could he be doing?”

  “Maybe I should go home and see what’s going on”

  “You’re over reacting. Look, I take back what I said before. He’s not two-timing and he’s not secretly planning to blow up the City Center. He’s probably just taking a shower or he’s in the yard working on one of his hobbies you said he’s always doing. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

  Sara let out a sigh. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “And besides,” Dana continued. “Why would you want to go back home when you can spend the night here? Where else are you going to experience sleeping in temperature controlled beds while wearing a rejuvenation mask? I swear, the thing takes five years off your face.”

  Sara smiled at that, but in her gut she didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be home, close to Harley.

  Another planet exploded from the other room and Jasper laughed over the crumbling debris. Jasper’s laugh always cheered her up and he seemed genuinely happy to be with his cousin. He rarely was able to get out and play with other kids close to his age and it warmed her to hear him excited.

  She decided if she was going to go back tonight, she would leave Jasper with Dana. No reason he should stop having fun tonight because of her.

  Chapter 8

  Brrrinnnnnggggg. Brrrrinnnngggggg.

  The muffled sound of ringing came from upstairs. Harley was in the basement with his head buried in a wood box when the phone rang. He knew it was Sara calling to check up on him. Maybe she felt something was up when he rushed her out of the house.

  The ringing stopped after what seemed like eight or ten rings. She would probably think he was in the bathroom. It would buy him some time, but not a lot. She will call again and he’ll have to pick up or it will really set off her nervous alarm.

  There had been some tension between them for the past few months. Jasper was getting to the age when he would be placed in the School of Human Growth and Learning, a place Harley didn’t want him to be a part of. Instead, Harley insisted on having Jasper home schooled. He wanted to teach Jasper how to take care of himself and survive on his own. He wanted to teach his son a trade such as carpentry or mechanics, like Ancil did for him. Sara fought him on the idea arguing it would hinder his development and socially stunt him by not being around other children. He would never find a place if he wasn’t accepted by others at an early age.

  They couldn’t resolve the issue and Jasper ended up missing the first year of classes. Sara didn’t speak to Harley for weeks after that. He apologized and promised to get him in for the next year, but this was just something he said to calm her down. He didn’t have any intention of putting Jasper in classes.

  Harley picked up the box and felt his lower back strain from the weight of it. The box must have been fifty pounds at least. It was filled with all types of discarded metal and scraps that he found through the years, along with more useful items like chargers and detonators.

  He carried the box up the stairs and dropped it the kitchen floor, breathing heavy. Harley could feel his heart pounding in his chest at a jack hammer pace. He had started to feel more and more out of breath and anxious since he got the final letter in the mail, almost like a man on death row who knew his final date was approaching. There were days when he woke up in a sweat with his heart racing and what felt like an iron knot in his stomach. Some days the feeling was so bad he would have to take a tranquilizer just to make it through the day. The last few days, however, Harley found himself having to take two or three.

  He quickly checked the phone ID and sure enough it was from Dana’s house. He could only imagine what the two of them were talking about. Dana no doubt was badmouthing him and telling Sara how she had ruined her life by marrying him.

  He always despised his wife’s sister, a Stepford Wife if he ever saw
one. She embodied everything he hated about the Project. She was vain, superficial and more interested in a new addition to her house than raising her only child, a duty which she has fully given over to the Council. Her husband was no better. A sycophant and a schemer were the kindest ways that Harley could describe him. He had no use for either of them, but he needed to get Sara and Jasper out of the house somehow and Dana was the easiest and most logical option.

  Sara questioned why he wanted her to visit Dana tonight in the first place. She knew how he felt about her and any reason had to be a believable one. Harley played it off that he felt bad that Sara couldn’t see her sister more often and that Jasper never had the chance to see his cousin. Once Jasper heard that he would be seeing Lucas he pleaded with Sara for them to go. Even despite any reservations Sara had, she couldn’t say no to Jasper.

  He packed them into his truck, one of the last models still to not have GPS auto drive, and drove them to Dana’s. When he said good bye to them Sara kissed him. It was a soft kiss on the lips. She held his face in both her hands and looked directly in his eyes, trying to search for something. She asked if anything was wrong. He assured her there wasn’t but he could tell from her expression that she didn’t believe him. That was three hours ago.

  He dragged the box into the living room and dumped it onto the floor. He then grabbed a wooden crate that was next to the couch and pulled that over. The crate had no cover on it and anyone who knew what they were looking at could plainly see the C4 explosives lined up inside. He had enough to blow up the entire block if he wanted to.

  Harley did think about doing that, taking out all the new AutoHomes in a five mile radius. He even drew up plans on how it could be done and delineated areas to place the explosive, but he thought of all those unknowing families that would die for no fault of their own other than participating in a system that destroyed their free will. On the other hand they freely chose to be a part of it. They held up their hands and surrendered their freedom at the feet of the Council. Besides, Harley had so much explosive that the blast would be so destructive they wouldn’t even know they were blown up. He shook these thoughts out of his head and tried to concentrate. All too often he found himself thinking these ideas and hours would pass as he pondered different scenarios. In the end it all led to precious time wasting.

  The C4 was tightly packed lengthwise side by side in rows of five by four. Harley took one block in his hand and felt the weight of it. He remembered the first time he used C4. He was a teenager and one of his friends stole a block from the warehouse that stored the explosive for the burgeoning resistance movement. They cut off a tiny piece and wired it under a large boulder in the woods. When they set off the charge the C4 exploded in a loud boom and left a hole the size of a bowling ball in the side of the boulder.

  It was his first lesson in explosives: if you think you have too little, it ends up being more than you need.

  He took out four blocks and lined them up on the floor. He figured that should be enough to serve his purpose. He then rummaged through the box and took out four blasting caps and detonators along with a spool of copper wire.

  The sight of all that in his living room turned his stomach and the realization of what he was going to do began to dawn on him. His legs became weak and he had to stagger to sit down before he collapsed. A panic attack suddenly overtook him. He clutched the armrest of the couch and tried to control his breathing, but it was no use.

  What was he doing? Was this really what he intended to do? Was this why he wanted to get his wife and son out of the house, so he could become some kind of political martyr?

  The implications of the plan were never factored into Harley’s thinking and what it would mean for Sara and Jasper. If he went through with it, Jasper would almost certainly grow up without a father. Even if Harley was able to survive the night, he’d be locked up in the Cube so deep no one would ever see him again. It was as good as being dead.

  The effect on Sara would be worse. How would she cope having to raise Jasper on her own? The Council wasn’t generally accepting of single mothers. They preferred parity in the household as they felt it provided for a better upbringing. Unless the mother could show that she was capable of raising the child on her own, the Council will step in and place the child in the special foster district. Exceptions were sometimes made for widows, but Harley believed that no special treatment would be made for Sara seeing how her husband would be branded a political terrorist.

  Harley ran to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. The cold water felt refreshing against his skin as he held his head under the faucet. He shut the water and held on to the sides of the white porcelain basin, taking long deep breaths, trying to calm his nerves and slow his heart rate.

  He lifted his head and looked at himself in the mirror. For a brief moment he saw the face of his grandfather looking back at him. He shared his grandfather’s jawline and steel blue eyes. Harley remembered how his grandfather looked the last time he saw him, lying on the living room floor, his eyes looking up at him as he spoke. It was the last thing he ever said.

  The memory of that day brought Harley back to ground and a wave of anger entered him. He remembered why this was important and why he had to go through with it, but could he?

  His continued to stare at himself in the mirror, his mind racing with thoughts when the clock chimed the half hour mark. It was 10:30 and time was running out. He knew he had to make a choice: honor his grandfather or save his own life.

  He was alone in this with no one to turn to for guidance. His only company being the tick-tock of the clock’s second hand as it inched closer to his fate.

  Chapter 9

  “Where’s my son!” Daniel Trager hollered as he stomped through the doors of the precinct. Ancil saw him from where he was sitting in his cell. Daniel was coming down the hall almost in a run before he was stopped by a police officer.

  The officer wanted to know who he was and what he wanted. Ancil could hear Daniel explain that he received a call from the police about what happened to his son and father-in-law. The officer had his hand up, trying to calm Daniel down. He brought him over to the main desk to explain the situation.

  Ancil sat in the cell along with everyone else from the meeting with the exception of Harley who, due to his age, was not taken into custody. He was waiting in Sheriff Bailey’s office, eating a chocolate chip ice cream sandwich. Ancil had been worried something might have happened to him, but to the policemen’s credit, they took good care of him as he waited for his father, and to Harley’s credit, he wasn’t scared at all.

  Someone called in their meeting to the county sheriff. Ancil didn’t know who it was for sure, but he had an idea. He had been trying for months to spread the word at his parish. He pulled a few people aside and spoke with them in private, two of whom were Earl and Allen.

  Not everyone shared his opinion though. One parishioner, David Kendrick, got right up in Ancil’s face and accused him of being a Godless anarchist and rabble rouser. David was a local board member who helped push Proposition 18 through the county legislature. Prop 18 called for the expansion to the eminent domain law allowing corporations or private organizations to claim a piece of land if they could prove it was of public interest and for the good of the community. Kendrick was its main proponent.

  David Kendrick was also a paid spokesman for the biotech firm CyberTronix. The firm was the largest developer of artificial intelligent robotics in the country and had large government contracts. It was rumored that one of the contracts they held was from the Pentagon for the development of a cellular chemical nanobot virus that could be programed to only attack a certain population at any given time. It would revolutionize strategic attacks by the military. Specific sections of a population or area can now be targeted, even down to a square foot. Wars could be fought without even having to put troops on the ground.

  Ancil had his run-ins with Kendrick in the past and was no stranger to the inside of a holding
cell either. He’d been arrested while protesting outside of CyberTronix on numerous occasions. The protests were over the closure of the metal works plant. CyberTronix had bought it out, fired the workers, and made all the manufacturing automated. Ancil knew seven of the men who were fired. They tried to take it up with the courts and block the move by putting an injunction on CyberTronix, but the case went nowhere. The judge threw it out without even hearing the arguments.

  With all the history between the two, Ancil didn’t put it past Kendrick to make a call to his good friend Sheriff Bailey and have the meeting ransacked. Kendrick was good at calling in favors, especially when the firm he represented paid for most of them.

  Ancil looked up and saw the officer approach the cell. He had a set of keys in his hand and a hard look on his face. He was a tall man, about 6’4’’, and had a crop top and handlebar mustache. He looked like he came from a long line of officers. Most were born into it. It was their legacy, something they had little choice in. The only thing that made them cops was who their father was.

  The officer, whose name tag said Anderson, unlocked the cell and opened it. “Jacobs, you’re free to go,” he said.

  “What about them?” Ancil asked, gesturing to Lee and the others. They all were huddled together in the corner of the cell. Lee and Ruth weren’t new to this, they had been with Ancil during the protests, but Earl, Theresa, Allen, and Charlotte were all experiencing the inside of a jail for the first time and they weren’t taking it well. Theresa hadn’t stopped crying from the moment the cops took them in. She was being held by Ruth, who was trying to comfort her by saying it was all going to be okay. The sight of Theresa sobbing in the corner didn’t fill Ancil with much hope that these people would be able to stand their ground when called upon. They just weren’t built for it.

  Anderson gave the others a sideways glance. “We can’t release them yet.”

  “I’m not leaving without them,” Ancil said.