by Gary Sapp
will tell you this: If you continue along this path of behavior you and whoever follows you are headed for destruction. I personally guarantee that yow will be dead before sunrise and your cause will be dead soon after that.”
Serena could almost feel Quincy Morgan smiling through the speaker.
“Damn, Serena, you sure not to recruit them. I another time or another circumstance I would have loved to have someone with that type of fire working for me. You just have to love her spirit.” And then his tone turned serious, almost as if someone else was speaking. “But you are right about one thing, Shooter: By the morning I will be dead. Just remember that Pandora’s arrogance have given me my own Whirlwind, my victory. I’m not too proud to thank you, Serena. I couldn’t have pulled it off without you. Goodbye, Serena, I hope you burn in Hell.”
The next thing they both heard was a dial tone.
In the next minute or so, Serena turned her attention to Rohm who still had her back to her.
“Are you surprised?”
“I’m disappointed, Serena.” Rohm turned around. “You had something of a strategic importance to gain here, as well as the long term political ramifications after this skirmish between us…and them is over.” The younger woman leaned against the piano’s frame. It was black on black, almost transparent to the naked eye. “I can think of several scenarios. Trusting Quincy Morgan to have Xavier Prince killed for you was a risky but logical move. You also knew that James Carter wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to get at the newest leader of a House in Chains after Xavier Prince survived his onslaught all of those years ago. You have preached it over and over again to me and our other comrades the need to disassociate ourselves from the old guard, the old image of organizations like Pandora. We are preaching patriotism and not hate. We are pushing for a better tomorrow for all Americans but maintaining the racial status quo in this country.”
Serena nodded.
“Pandora will stand victorious tonight, tomorrow, or the next day but it is important to me that we do not have to deal a House in Chains a crippling, fatal blow.”
Rohm stepped into Serena’s personal space.
“Is there more, Serena?” She asked. “You mentioned that you were going to test my faith in our cause, in you?”
Serena only began to play her song once again. She slowed the melody to a near crawl so her voice could be heard over her playing.
“As you’ve said, Danielle, the murder of James Carter was a necessary evil.” Serena stopped playing. “But what do you feel about the maiming of his wife?”
“Oh my, God,” Rohm said. “Are you telling me that a House in Chains wasn’t responsible for shooting Carter’s wife? It wasn’t an errant shot as so many people have theorized all of this time? You ordered a hit on this civilian?”
“No,” Serena said as a matter of fact. “You witnessed it when I defied Pilot’s orders to cease our operations. You saw how difficult the decision that I made to press on was for me. You saw that the terrible price that both Raymond Rice and I paid for that decision. It was as tough a decision that I’ve ever made since I was recruited to this organization by Isaac Prince so long ago. James Carter was a dangerous man. I needed something that would push him over the edge from a mental and emotional stand point. Killing his wife would enrage him but after a period of grief that all humans share—he would have regained his focus. Yet, having his wife maimed, having him have to see her like that—well it did enrage him, but also kept him off balanced. He made mistakes.” Serena said and after a moment of pause. “So I trusted no one, not even the Shooter to do this task. I took the precision shot myself.”
“She was a civilian, Serena.” Rohm could hold her fury back no longer. “She was an innocent civilian.”
“She is. She is also no different than Thomas Pepper’s housekeeper that you murdered in cold blood and no different than those boys being held at the compound by Louis Keaton—a known pedophile.”
Rohm rounded her small hand into a fist.
“You promised me integrity, Serena. You gave your word that some lines would not be crossed. You agreed with me that we were doing God’s work.”
“Yes, I did. I also gave my word to Isaac Prince, before he truly died, that Pandora would end this conflict with as few civilian casualties as possible. Everything that I’ve done so far has been consistent with that philosophy. There is an element out there, Danielle that is contemplating genocide against people of color…a Whirlwind. I don’t know who. I don’t know how. I do know that such an action cannot stand. I won’t have it on my conscious or legacy.”
Rohm whipped around and stormed out of her leader’s hotel room without closing the door behind her—leaving Serena alone with her conscious and her legacy.
Seth
James Carter’s severed head:
Dr. Seth Dupree couldn’t help but glare at it as much as he tried to look away. Maggots and scores of other pest were already working their way through open any open passageway on the way down his neck; and all along his lifeless eyes continued to glare up past Seth into the smoky Atlanta night.
Seth would never forget what had transpired over the past half hour. He would never forget when Carter’s heavily armed militia surrounded Quincy Morgan and his Peacekeepers. He would never forget how the banter of threat and counter threats volleyed from one camp to the other. He would never forget the name calling and the insults and the near exchange of gunfire that would have surely left him for dead.
He would always remember when Carter himself offered him a way out of this. The last woman who Quincy had allowed to live took him up on his offer without hesitation and spit at the spot where the sergeant at arms had been standing. Seth almost accepted his conditions. He almost had.
And yet he had refused temptation. I stayed with you, Quincy, because you were the devil that I already knew.
And so he had prepared himself to die then. There looked to be no other alternative but to perish alongside with Quincy and his Peacekeepers. Seth felt his brain cells at a tug of war with his gut.
He remembered seeing the images of his friends who’d died during and since the boating accident that ultimately had set him off on this path to who he was and where he was tonight.
He saw Denise Prince take her leap of faith out of the window, while he was helpless and impotent to stop her.
And he visualized Angel, his wife, all alone at the mercy or Roxanne Sanchez.
But he was alive.
He was still alive.
He’d chosen wisely.
After Quincy Morgan and this woman…Serena, finished their phone conversation over the speaker for all to hear, Seth would always remember James Carter turn four shades of white—
All of this while his entourage simply turned away.
And in over two decades of performing surgery, the Gray Man had in his collective experience seen as battered and beaten a body as he did the mutilated carcass of one James Carter.
Seth knew it to be true until Carter’s men turned over the woman who had wrongly thought that she’d seen the last of Quincy Morgan.
In the minutes since, Seth had gone from angry to bewilder to thankful to angry again.
He was damned angry right now.
He jacked Quincy Morgan up by his collar until both of them were up against a nearby Volvo.
“I want you to listen to me,” He yelled into the other man’s face. Quincy turned away. “Don’t turn your back on me you son of a bitch.”
Quincy held him off with ease with his forearm, barely breathing hard or working up a sweat. Percy took two steps towards the combatants but Seth saw Quincy flash him a muted, confident look that he would handle this. Seth was little more than a nagging mosquito flying around to be swatted down this Atlanta night.
Quincy moved with a speed that defied explanation that defied the laws of gravity. He spent Seth around until the Gray Man was pinned on the car and maneuvered through a combo with lighting speed and accuracy.
Seth found
himself the victim of a half dozen or more punches and kicks to what seemed to affect every inch of his torso down, while he rolled around on the asphalt again struggling for breath.
After a moment, Seth squatted down closer to Seth, looking like Johnny Bench.
“Our time together has been…educational, for both you and me, Doctor, but alas, that time has come to an end. Just before James Carter made his long awaited appearance, Percy here reminded me that we have more pressing business elsewhere in metro Atlanta. If you will excuse me, I intend to see to it.”
He’s just one man, the voice inside of him, the Gray Man whispered in his ear. If you can kill him, you may save more lives than you ever have on that surgical table.
Seth knew that he had survived this long for a reason. He’d chosen willingly to stay behind with the Peacekeepers when common sense and a healthy fear of dying told him otherwise.
It was time for him to put the last minutes of his life to good use.
He back handed Quincy—but once again, as if this scene were on a repeat cycle, the other man retaliated with yet another lethal combination of jabs and kicks that put Seth’s ass on the asphalt quickly and viscously.
Quincy hopped on top of Seth where he’d fallen and raised his hand and arm in a jackhammer like motion—as if he were going to swing through for a killing blow.
“Do it,” Seth shouted at him with his last ounce of strength and will. And in an instance it was all gone; the strength and the will. “What are