“My network connections say Cyrus and his group are staying in that building.”
“Simon?”
“No sign of him.”
Second surveyed the multi-story building that curved around the upper end of a large outdoor area set up to stage public events. She worried that Cyrus had fled to a place that had been used to dismantle weapons after The Great Religion Wars. Could intact weapons still exist in the large, unused hangars?
“The network has intercepted digital traffic indicating there’s going to be a huge rally tonight here. Everybody is excited that The Prophet will actually be in Killeen and speak to them. He’ll be out in the open, on that platform.” Tan pointed to the long, flat stage near the building. “We can take him there.”
Second frowned. “A lot of innocents will be in harm’s way.”
“That’s the best part.” Tan’s dark eyes glinted in the sunlight. “The network has put together a little surprise for the believers. After Cyrus starts his speech, they’ve got things rigged to interrupt with a holo-vid that will beam right onto the stage. It reveals what their hoarding is doing to the rest of the world, children starving and people dying without their medication. Even better, it shows The Natural Order goons using weapons to take over distribution centers and shooting women and old people who are trying to snatch boxes of pro-chow from the supply trucks.”
“That’s brilliant.” Second regretted again that Tan had repeatedly refused a command position with The Guard. She preferred to scout and scavenge for resources. “We’ll go in with a small attack force when the confusion peaks and bring in the rest only if we meet overwhelming force. I don’t want a slaughter of innocents on my hands. I just want Cyrus…and that bastard Simon if he shows.”
❖
“I got what you need. I think that’s a personal facility there, on the right.” Laine slipped the palm-sized package into Kyle’s hand and pushed her toward the indicated door. “Hurry. We need to join your father.” She turned to the man assigned to keep watch over them. “That time of the month. She’ll be right out.”
The man turned away. Men never wanted to know about women’s menstrual problems.
It was easy enough to hide the tools Kyle needed in the wrapper of a sanitary pad.
Cyrus had been wary after they’d been revealed to him on the rooftop in Matamoros, but the god-complex of his madness left him vulnerable to the idea of a repentant wife and the prodigal child who had stepped in to save her father’s life. He seemed intrigued by the idea of having his own personal pyro to fight pyros, but he still had ordered protective gloves to be locked on Kyle’s hands at all times until he was satisfied of her loyalty.
Laine was shocked at the depth of his madness. She’d had no idea how delusional he’d become. When she looked at him, she saw the younger man she’d loved. When he spoke, she saw a stranger. That was beginning to change in the short week they’d been together.
She’d insisted on preparing his meals and waiting on him personally so she’d have opportunity to slip the medication in his food. Each day, a little of the man she knew was returning. Last night, he’d asked her to come to his bedroom, instead of the room she’d been sharing with Kyle, and they’d made love like the husband and wife they’d once been.
She’d taken advantage of their closeness to beg him to remove Kyle’s gloves, but he’d withdrawn again. They would come off after he had his whole family safe in the City of Light, he said.
“Where is this city? Is Maya there?”
“On a mountain.” He laughed, and the madness creeping back into his voice chilled her. “A desert, a burning bush, but no golden calf and no game of chance. Maya is coming here to go with us. Maya will bind Kylie to us, and our Natural Order will be complete.”
He was gone when she woke that morning, leaving only a note and her guard outside the door. The note said he’d be preparing all day and would meet her and Kyle just before the event that evening. Before she left, she’d spied the tools. She knew they were Kyle’s because she’d given them to her when Kyle was at the university, and Cyrus had confiscated them from Kyle’s things when they’d been discovered. She couldn’t walk out with the entire set because Cyrus would notice, so she took only the small tool Kyle would need to unlock her gloves.
Kyle reappeared from the latrine, smiling.
“All set?”
“Yes,” Kyle said. “Much better. Thanks, Mom.”
Laine wrapped an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. When did Kyle get so tall? “It’s nice to still be needed, even when you’re all grown up.”
“So, where are we going?”
“Your father will be busy today, so I thought we’d go help in the kitchens with the other women.”
Kyle groaned. “I was hoping to have a day to look around Killeen.”
Laine ignored Kyle’s pointed look. “Nope. A woman’s work is never done.”
❖
“Prophet, Prophet, Prophet.”
Nearly four thousand believers chanted as Cyrus walked onto the long platform and waved at them. His holo-image ten times his height was projected behind him so everyone could see. Kyle shuffled onto one end of the platform behind her mother, where they stood and waited for their cue in the performance.
She hated this. She’d like to burn the entire platform to the ground and end this ridiculous circus. It had taken every ounce of her control to leave the gloves in place once she’d disengaged the locks with the electromagnetic tool Laine had slipped her. Covering a pyro’s hands to smother their fire was like covering another person’s mouth and nose so they couldn’t breathe, and Kyle had felt as though she would go insane if she didn’t get them off soon.
The news that Maya would be joining them in Killeen, however, had strengthened her resolve. She glanced at the guard assigned to her and Laine. She could hold on a little longer. She knew her mother held out hope that the medication she’d been slipping into Cyrus’s food would bring him around so they could be a whole family again, but too much had changed. She could never look at him and see the father of her childhood. She saw only his mental illness. She could never trust him. Cyrus had done too much damage.
Sun and stars, she hoped she hadn’t destroyed her bond with Tan. As soon as Maya showed up, Kyle planned to take her and find Tan to make things right. She missed Tan every second of the day. Thinking of her was the only thing that kept Kyle from dwelling on the misery of her gloved hands. If Laine wanted to stick around and try to save Cyrus, that was her choice. But Kyle refused to let her put Maya at risk. Cyrus wouldn’t force her into a marriage like he had tried to force Kyle.
“The One is with us, my friends, because we see and obey The Natural Order as it was intended.” Cyrus’s voice boomed from the enhanced amplifiers with which his IC networked.
The answering cheers were so deafening Kyle wanted to put her hands over her ears, but she sat with them folded in her lap, ready to snatch the gloves off.
She sucked in a quick breath. She could feel the stirring. Tan was near. Well, Phyrrhos, at least. The bond she’d felt from the dragon horse’s young was stronger than ever. Had Phyrrhos already foaled? Were Jael and the army here? Kyle’s modest blouse, fashionable calf-length skirt and knee-high boots concealed the silver battleskin she wore underneath. Second had supplied it for protection if Kyle found herself in battle, she’d said. There was no dragon-horse insignia on the chest. Only bonded warriors had that honor. Still, it buoyed Kyle’s sagging spirit.
“We are on the cusp of great change, my believers.” The crowd quieted to hear Cyrus’s words. “Our numbers have grown exponentially. We have retaken control of nearly half of the world’s resources so we can build healthy families and communities.” Cyrus brought his hands to his chest. “I was compelled on this journey by the loss of my only son.” He looked out over the faces, now silent. “My pride cost me the most precious thing in my life, but it took losing Thomas to make me turn to The One and shake my angry fist and ask ‘why?�
��” He finished the sentence with a raised fist. “Because you have strayed from The Natural Order, The One said. I have been patient, but it is time. You will lead my people back, or I will finish the destruction I have begun and start this world anew.”
A restlessness rippled through the crowd, along with quiet murmurs of “No, brother” and “We hear and obey.”
Kyle closed her eyes and listened intently. Was her imagination playing tricks? In the few seconds of silence she would swear she heard the flutter of dragon wings in the dark, just beyond the spotlights.
“The Natural Order will make our families whole again. Women will serve as loving wives and mothers as they are intended. Men will be faithful providers, husbands, and fathers. Families are the cornerstone of The Natural Order.”
The stage lights made it difficult, but Kyle opened her eyes and scanned the faces in the crowd. Most sat in folding chairs on the grassed field, but the people on the perimeter stood and were constantly shifting for better position. Her heart rate doubled when her eyes settled on a familiar pair working their way around the crowd toward her end of the stage. Nicole looked up, and their gazes locked for a long moment. Nicole smiled and said something into the ear of her escort. Toni glanced up at Kyle and gave her a thumbs-up signal, and then they resumed their trek in her direction.
Oblivious, Cyrus turned to Laine and Kyle. “The mudslide that destroyed my hometown and took my boy from me also separated me from the rest of my family.” He motioned to them, and Laine rose to her feet. “I’m proud to make a special announcement tonight.” Their guard prodded Kyle in the ribs and she stood, too. “I was joyfully reunited with my wife, Laine, and oldest daughter, Kylie, in Matamoros.”
He turned back to the audience to accept their reverent responses of “as it should be” and “The One rewards the faithful.” Cyrus strode over to Laine and raised her hand to his lips to kiss it, his eyes shining. “And now, I have a surprise for them, too.”
Cyrus pointed to the other end of the forty-meter-long platform as a young man helped Maya up the steps. “My youngest daughter has just arrived. Our family is finally together again.” Maya rushed forward and flung herself into Laine’s arms, then into Kyle’s.
The believers were on their feet, their cheering deafening as the images of the women’s joyful reunion, then Cyrus hugging and kissing his wife towered over the stage.
Kyle held her younger sister tight and whispered in her ear. “Maya, when things start to happen, I want you to do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand? You and Mom are in danger if you don’t.”
Maya nodded, and Kyle released her. They both wiped tears from their cheeks. “I was afraid I’d never see you again,” Maya said. “I had visions of you, but not of us together so I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. I’m here. Mom’s here.” Kyle kept her voice low. “I have friends here, too.”
The hologram narrowed to Cyrus again. “This can be your families, too, when The Natural Order is restored to our society. Men are meant to lead, women to nurture, and children to learn from the roles fulfilled by their parents. ”
The hologram flickered, then distorted. “Men…responsibility…up…began—” Luke frowned and waved frantically to technicians at the side of the stage as the amplification of Cyrus’s message began to break up and his projected image faltered. It blinked out.
A new hologram was projected behind Cyrus. Shocked murmurs rippled through the believers as they watched a holo-vid of the first clash between The Prophet and the dragon-horse army.
Cyrus was standing on top of a train, holding a gun to the head of an Advocate. The stunningly magnificent First Warrior Jael and her dragon horse Specter challenged and pronounced sentence. Cyrus wounded, then executed the unarmed Advocate before fleeing. Burly guards fired guns at both the dragon-horse warriors and unarmed villagers alike.
While the hologram held the audience spellbound, Luke yelled at the group of digital techs trying to regain control of the holo system. Nicole and Toni skirted the stage and stood at the end. Kyle glanced their way and signaled a quick thumbs-up while the guard was watching Cyrus.
The holo images dissolved to a hospital ward of dying children and a doctor explaining that The Natural Order was withholding medicines they needed because their parents would not renounce The Collective. The next image showed guards shooting starving, unarmed people as they desperately swarmed a transport carrying boxes of food.
The hologram blinked a few times, then went dark. Almost at once, fifty spheres of flame ignited, illuminating the periphery of the gathered believers. Kyle slipped her gloves off. Twenty-five warriors ringed the crowd, holding aloft a fireball in each hand while astride a dragon horse standing with wings spread and fire shooting from their nostrils. The crowd shrank in on itself with a collective gasp.
A buckskin dragon horse landed lightly on the stage, and a blond warrior with a stern expression dismounted before the beast screamed and plunged skyward again. The warrior addressed Cyrus. “I am Danielle, Second Warrior of The Collective’s Guard. You have been found guilty of violating the directives of The Collective, hoarding for your own cause at the cost of the life and health of your fellow humans. You also have been found guilty of heresy and conspiracy to spread heresy.” She raised her hand and ignited a blue-white fireball. “I am here to carry out your sentence of immediate death and restitution in your next life.”
Luke raised his weapon but hesitated when Laine threw herself in front of Cyrus. “No, I refuse to believe The Collective Council would execute a soul suffering from mental illness. I demand appeal.”
Kyle grabbed Maya’s hand and had taken a few steps toward the left end of the stage when she felt the guard’s gun press into her ribs.
“I wouldn’t go anywhere if I were you,” the guard said.
Cyrus seemed bewildered. “Laine? Did I really kill that Advocate?” His moment of lucidity couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.
“I’ve been medicating his food,” Laine said. “After only a week, he’s having moments of lucidity. He’s not a bad man, only ill.”
“Explain that to the boy whose hand he cut off.” Tan emerged from the opposite end of the stage, sans Phyrrhos but fierce in red war paint and newly trimmed Mohawk. She raised her hand, igniting a churning fireball. “If the Second Warrior won’t carry out the sentence, I will.”
Kyle’s heart surged at the sight of her lover. She had no time to register the intent of Tan’s words, because she was focused on the three armed believers who crept onto the stage behind Tan. She grabbed the gun poking her ribs, superheating the metal so her guard was forced to drop it, and ran forward.
Tan flung her swirling, blue-white ball of death at the same instant Kyle shot a column of blue flame at three gunmen targeting Tan and Luke squeezed the trigger of the repeating weapon he aimed at Second.
Kyle’s flame hit home, incinerating the lead gunman who was about to spray Tan’s back with bullets.
Tan’s fireball was a split second too late but also hit home. Second Warrior Danielle crumpled to the stage as Luke, rather than Cyrus, was engulfed in Tan’s flame. His burning figure staggered and fell off the platform.
A pandemonium of gunfire, flame, and screams erupted as many of the men in the audience of believers rose from their seats to draw weapons and the warriors responded defensively, only melting bullets and an occasional gun, because of the women and children huddled between the seating or attempting to flee.
The two remaining gunmen spun toward Kyle, too startled by the heap of stinking, burning flesh that had been their comrade to fire their own guns. They retreated to a dark-haired man, who apparently was directing them, and they backed hurriedly off the long platform’s right exit, never taking their eyes or weapon sights off Kyle and Tan.
❖
Maya was unsure what to do as the guard cursed and held his burned hand against his stomach after Kyle sprinted away. She edged toward the steps of the platform. Perhaps
if she could hide among the crowd until she saw how things would sort out. Stars, where was her foresight when she needed it?
She was almost at the platform’s left exit when the guard noticed. He ran over and grabbed her roughly by the arm to jerk her away from the steps.
“Where do you think you’re going?” His fingers hurt where they dug into arm. “I’m going to be in enough trouble because of your stupid sister. I’m not about to lose you, too.”
“Let me go,” she said. “You’re hurting me.”
He gave her a shake. “Cyrus needs to teach his women discipline.”
“Let me go.” She might not be the athlete Kyle was, but she wasn’t a pushover. She bit his hand as hard as she could.
“Son of a dung eater.” He let go but backhanded her so hard she fell to the platform.
Maya sprawled on the rough boards, her head spinning from the blow. The screams and gunfire of the mayhem erupting around her pounded her brain. A shadow shielded her from the glaring stage lights.
“Hey, didn’t anybody ever teach you not to hit girls?”
Soft hands touched Maya’s cheek, and she squinted up into a boyish face and concerned eyes. She’d seen this face before.
“Get away from her.” The guard stepped toward them, but her rescuer put up a hand and something stopped him.
“Hey, that burn looks pretty bad. I’ve got a spray in my medkit that will numb it until you can get to a clinic for real treatment.”
Maya’s head was clearing, and she managed to sit up to find the source of the new voice. A tall, pretty woman, flashes of an earlier vision. It was just beyond her grasp.
The woman dug around in a small pack and held up a spray canister. The guard frowned and hesitated, then put his hand forward and the woman began to spray it with medication.
Tracker and the Spy Page 27