The Weapon (The Hourglass Series Book 2)

by Donaldson, Casey

“Uh, yeah,” said Sarah, feeling like that was a weird statement. “That’s my name.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  Sarah paused. The woman’s eyes were intense.

  “Why?”

  “Tell me.”

  Sarah paused but her curiosity got the better of her.

  “Underhill.”

  “Sarah Underhill,” the woman whispered. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, looking directly at Sarah. “I know your father.”

  “What?” Sarah said it a little too loudly. She reared back, nearly falling over, but she recovered quickly. She turned back to face the others. Thankfully the Captain had forgone his scrutiny of the woman for that moment to ladle himself a second serving. No-one had seemed to hear her yell out.

  “What are you talking about?” hissed Sarah, this time leaning in.

  The woman smiled, a genuine, quite lovely smile. “I work with him,” she said. “He’s one of us, Sarah. And he misses you, oh, sweetie, he misses you so much.”

  “I don’t know my father,” replied Sarah bluntly. “He left me, he-”

  A sudden crash reverberated around the room and Sarah got to her feet quickly, glancing around. A metal can had been thrown through one of the windows. It was letting out a stream of smoke. It was quickly followed by another can, and then another. Most of the cans had gone through the windows closest to the fire, twenty metres from Sarah and the woman. But even from that distance Sarah could feel her eyes start to sting and water over. The smoke irritated her throat and she started coughing. She couldn’t imagine how it must be for the others, so close to the source of the gas. The others were yelling, trying to cover their faces with their clothes and running away from the cans, but they kept on stumbling over objects their streaming eyes couldn’t see in the smoke. A man came crashing through the front door. He wore a mask and had a weapon raised. He was followed in by three others. They were all completely dressed in black, their faces hidden behind their masks. The first three converged on the others while the fourth headed straight towards Sarah and the woman. The fourth invader raised her weapon. She pointed it at Sarah’s chest.

  “No!” yelled the captive. “Don’t shoot her!”

  The invader wavered for a moment and then the weapon lowered. The gunman rushed over to the woman and started cutting through her bonds. Sarah just stood there and stared, not sure what else to do. It wasn’t until the woman was free and the masked intruder was helping her escape out the back of the building that Sarah finally came to her senses. She spared a glance back towards the others, but couldn’t see a thing in the smoke, which had now risen to around six feet. She turned back to see the woman and the intruder slip through a door. She didn’t wait any longer, and ran after them. There was a twisting corridor on the other end of the door, with many doorways leading off it. Sarah guessed that they were the offices the bank managers used to see special clients. The two people were nowhere in sight. Sarah ran forward, anxiously checking each door as she did so. Finally she found one that seemed to open into a small kitchen. A door on the opposite side of the room was ajar, swinging lazily on its hinges. She burst out of the door and then stopped. She was in a wide back alley. Time and disuse had made it grimier than usual, and a rusted though water tank had allowed mould to spill all over one of the walls. At the far end, near the road, a truck stood, engine running. The masked intruder was helping the woman into the back of the truck. A man was also there, pulling the woman from the inside of the truck. Sarah took a few steps forward and the man looked up. Their eyes locked and Sarah stopped, her heart caught in her mouth.

  She knew him. She could hardly remember her father but as soon as she looked at the man she knew. That was him. Aged, yes, but him all the same. It was the man from her visions. The woman hadn’t lied. He was here.

  The truck took off, which seemed to break the spell that had hung between them. Sarah saw her father bang on the side of the truck wall, yelling for the driver to stop. After a moment the truck trundled to a halt. Sarah ran after the truck, which was now three buildings over. She stopped ten metres behind it.

  “Sarah,” said the man, his eyes taking her in longingly. “My angel.”

  Sarah felt the tears spring up in her own eyes.

  “Dad?”

  “Oh, honey,” he said.

  “Mike, we don’t have time,” urged another man, also sitting in the back of the truck.

  “Sarah, sweetie, get in,” urged her father. “Come with us.”

  “No.” The word blurted out of Sarah like she had no control over it. It surprised her, but she didn’t change it to a yes.

  “What?” Her father blinked, surprised. “Honey, I-”

  “You burnt me,” said Sarah, her voice coming out ragged. “You burnt the damn symbol of your group onto me.” She stressed the words, trying to make him see how wrong it was.

  Her father’s face fell. “Oh, Sarah, it wasn’t like that, I swear. It was the only way, the only way we could find each other again. When I did it we talked about it, sweetie, you wanted me to do it. Honey, we don’t have time. We can talk about it more, I swear we will, but right now we have to go.”

  He held out his hands again, encouraging her to take them so that he could pull her into the truck.

  Sarah wavered on the spot, unsure what to do, who to trust. Then she saw her father’s expression change as he spotted something behind her. She whirled around.

  Coming out of the alley, tendrils of smoke still wrapping around his clothes, and with one of his ears bloodied and ragged, the Captain stood staring at her, but Sarah’s eyes weren’t on him. They were on Finn, who was held in front of the Captain, a gun to his temple.

  “Don’t even think about it, Sarah,” yelled the Captain, “or I blow his brains out.”

  Sarah swallowed and looked behind them. Where was Boulder? Where were Lieutenant Wong and Clara?

  “Sarah, go!” yelled Finn, his voice choked by the headlock the Captain held him in. The Captain squeezed his arm in tighter and Finn made a gurgling noise as his windpipe closed over.

  “No!” yelled Sarah, her arms up in surrender.

  “Sarah,” came her father’s voice from behind her, urging her, “come with us. The boy will be fine.”

  “Go,” she told him, “just go.”

  “No, I-”

  “I can’t leave them.”

  “Mike, the girl’s right,” said the other man in the back of the truck. “We don’t have any more time.” He banged on the wall of the truck again and it started moving forward.

  “No!” yelled her father, tugging back the man’s arm.

  “She’s made her choice,” said the man, pulling his arm back.

  “No, Sarah, come with us!” yelled her father again, leaning out of the truck, as if he could lean over and just pluck her in, but the truck was moving now and he was far out of reach.

  “Come find me Sarah!” he yelled back at her. “I’ll be waiting for you. I love you, honey!”

  Sarah watched him go and then started the slow walk back to the Captain and Finn. She didn’t know what to feel. She just felt empty.

  “Good girl,” said the Captain as she came forward. He released Finn with a shove. Finn stumbled a few steps but straightened himself and came straight for Sarah. Before she knew what was happening he had her wrapped in a bear hug.

  “You should have gone,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

  “Never.”

  He kissed her forehead again. “You’re an idiot,” he said tenderly.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Captain broke them up with a wave of his gun and corralled them back into the building. The smoke had mostly cleared by now. Lieutenant Wong, his face and right hand puffed out and swollen from a stinger attack, was crouched over the body of one of the attackers. A thin trickle of blood had oozed down the man’s forehead. His eyes were open and fixed. Even Sarah could see that he was dead. His discarded gas mask lay a metre away. It was cr
acked right down the middle. A bullet hole had shattered one of the eye panes. Sarah glanced around but she couldn’t see any more of the intruders. The other two intruders must have gotten away. Boulder was lying near the base of one of the pillars, his eyes red and puffy from the gas. A thin stream of drool pooled onto the floor around his mouth. For a second Sarah was worried that he too was dead, but then she saw his chest rise and fall. He was just unconscious. Finn crouched down next to him. He looked up at Sarah.

  “I think he was shocked,” he pointed to a scorched area of skin below Boulder’s ear. “Looks like he got hit by a stunner.”

  Clara was sitting in the corner of the room, her eyes wide and her chest heaving as she took deep breaths. She looked like she was ready to stab anyone who came near her.

  Sarah sat down on the ground, that hollow feeling spreading though her again.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why do you need me so bad? You know where they are now. Just track the damn truck. I can’t help you anymore!” Her voice rose as she talked, letting the anger build.

  To her surprise the Captain laughed. “Are you kidding me?” he asked. “It turns out that not only were you once affiliated with the group, which I thought you were, but you are actually the daughter of the group’s leader.” He laughed like Christmas had come. Surprisingly chipper for a man who had just got his ass kicked by a group of scientists.

  So, Sarah thought, her dad was the leader. Great.

  “So now what?”

  “So now I dangle you like a juicy, crunchy carrot in front of a donkey and wait until your father comes to rescue you. Then I grab him. It’s better than having the damn weapon. I’ll have the scientist who made it.” His eyes gleamed.

  “So that’s it?” asked Sarah, anger boiling up within her. “My life is just going to consist of you continuously threatening me to keep my father working for you? Well I have news for you, buddy, the guy burned an icon into my back and left me alone for ten years. Not exactly father of the year material.”

  The Captain just smirked, unfazed. “He’s more like you than you think,” said the Captain enigmatically. “I mean, it was child’s play using these two to control you, and they’re only friends. Think of what it’ll be like with family.” He smirked again.

  Sarah couldn’t stand to look at him any longer. She shifted her gaze to the two boys, and then Clara. She stopped. Clara was no longer glancing frenetically around the room in shock like she was when Sarah returned. She had stilled completely. And she was focused on the Captain. It was not hard to read her expression. The loathing she was emitting towards the Captain was palpable. Sarah glanced back at the Captain. He hadn’t noticed Clara’s attention. Slowly, Clara got to her feet, her gaze unwavering.

  “You.” Her voice was croaky. It barely rose above a whisper but the word seemed to drip with venom.

  The Captain either didn’t hear her or thought she was talking to someone else because he still didn’t look her way.

  “You,” she repeated, louder. This time her anger seemed to make the word reverberate around the room and the Captain finally jerked his head up to look at her. He saw her expression and for once seemed to be at a loss for words. He frowned at her, bewildered as to why she was angry.

  “You abandoned me in there.” She spat the words at him.

  The Captain rolled his eyes.

  “Oh please, look at you, you ended up fine.”

  “There were people, with guns. People died!” She screamed. “I’m your niece, and you left me!”

  Sarah and Finn exchanged a glance. So she was his niece. It explained quite a bit.

  “I have done so much for you,” continued Clara, “and you haven’t even noticed me. Do you know what I had to give up to come and bail you out of that bombed city? Everything! I had a good life!” She was teary now, but the anger still predominated. “But I helped because you were family. And this whole time you treated me like staff. Not a single word of thanks. And then you leave me,” she repeated, “in the middle of a bloody gunfight to save your own bloody ass.”

  Her hand tightened on the frypan she was holding and then suddenly she was in front of him, hitting him with the frypan. The Captain was too surprised to do more than raise his arm in self-defence. The frypan landed against his upraised arm. Sarah heard a crack. The Captain roared with pain and held the broken arm close to his chest. Clara hardly seemed to notice. She raised the frypan again but the Captain was quicker.

  Clara paused, the frypan still raised as she blinked at the gun aimed between her eyes. She raised her eyes to his.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  The Captain sneered at her.

  “You were always a disappointment to the family.”

  A single shot reverberated throughout the room.

  For a moment everything seemed frozen in time. Then the Captain collapsed to the floor. He was dead. There was a hole through his head. For a second nobody moved, the impossibility of it enveloping them, and then a noise from behind them made them spin around. A strange man stepped out from behind a pillar in shadows, a gun held casually against his side. Next to him appeared a second man, this one familiar.

  Sarah blinked at him.

  “You came back.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sarah, Finn, Boulder, her father and a few of the other scientists sat around the fire. They had found out from one of the scientists currently trying to make hot drinks that when her father had leapt from the car to return to get her the sniper had jumped straight out too. The others didn’t hesitate for much longer. The man with the gun was their best marksmen. It turns out that even hunted scientists on the run have hobbies. He won their department marksmen contest yearly. After the other scientists had heard the shot they had stormed the room. They had taken the Captain’s body somewhere, as well as Lieutenant Wong, who they had quickly subdued. The body of their friend they had carried reverently out of sight, to mourn later. Clara was being looked after by a lady with a kind face. Despite what she had said to the Captain and the fact that he had tried to kill her, she was still taking his death pretty hard.

  Boulder had grown an egg-sized lump behind his ear and was occasionally twitching spasmodically as a side-effect from the stunner, but was otherwise ok.

  “So,” said Finn, breaking the silence that had grown in the last few minutes. “You’re Sarah’s father?”

  “Yes,” said her father, “but I haven’t been much of one, I’m afraid.”

  Sarah looked up but didn’t say anything. What does someone even say to a father who abandoned both her and her mum when…

  “Did mum know?” she asked suddenly, “that this is where you went?”

  Her dad nodded slowly. “She did. She wasn’t happy, but she understood. She understood the need.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. Logic, she told herself. Be logical. It was the only way she was going to get through this without crying or hitting him in the face. Most likely both.

  “The machine,” she said, “the one that will win the war.”

  “Yes,” he said, answering the statement.

  Sarah looked directly into his eyes. They were the same shape as hers.

  “How?”

  Her father looked at her, hesitating. “I’m afraid the answer to that is going to involve a bit of a company history lesion. We don’t have to go through it now if you don’t want to. We have time, Sarah, we can-”

  “No,” said Sarah, cutting him off. “I need to know why you did this. To me, to mum, hell, even Finn and Boulder’s last few months are because of you.”

  Her father sighed, conceding the point.

  “When the Hourglass Group started manufacturing weapons for the war effort, hundreds of years ago, you understand, a small faction of the designers built in a failsafe mechanism without anyone else knowing. They were worried, you see, that the war would be prolonged, and clearly they were right to be worried.”

  “So why didn’t they just hit the kill switch five years
in?” interrupted Boulder.

  “They couldn’t. The failsafe wasn’t something they had the technology to trigger at the time, but they predicted that future technology should be able to work it out, to find the answer.”

  “Well that was stupid,” said Boulder, unimpressed.

  “Actually, it was smart. It meant that nobody else outside the faction would realise what it actually was. It was such a minor thing, but still integral to practically every weapon manufactured by the Hourglass Group, from then to now. The problem was, it was forgotten about. We believe that the surviving faction who knew about it years later were killed off when a bomb hit one of the facilities, and the secret died with them before they could pass it on. At least, it was until we stumbled across it.”

  “Can you imagine what it was like?” said another scientist who was listening in and now pouring the drinks. “You’re working in an industry that is killing thousands and eating your soul, and the solution to wipe out nearly every weapon in use with practically no bloodshed, effectively forcing an end to the war, falls into your lap? It was like deliverance. It was our chance to make things right.”

  “All we had to do,” said Sarah’s dad, “was to work out how to trigger the failsafe. Unfortunately word got out that we were working on something big and we had to split from the Group before either side, or the company, investigated and found out. Can you imagine what would happen if they knew? They would destroy all our data, then us, and then they would change the weapons. Our only chance would be destroyed. The war would never end.”

  “So can you do it?” asked Sara. “Do you know how to trigger the failsafe?”

  Her father nodded, proud. “We’ve spent the last month making and planting trigger devices near storage and battle areas. We have so much more to do, but we’re so, so close. It’s vital, you see, that we trigger them all at once. We can’t let one side have the advantage.”

  “What about non-Hourglass weapons?” asked Finn.

  “Yes, well, turns out we were really good at our old jobs too, apparently. We estimate that only 0.4% of weapons in current uses are non-Hourglass.”