From the Ashes (Conquest Book 1)

by Jeff Taylor

  For the first time since he’d known him, Strinnger thought he saw uncertainty in Treyklor’s expression. The chief was a seasoned war veteran with several tours of combat experience, but he’d never had to oversee a murder investigation before. His doubt on what to do next was clearly evident and Strinnger let no time pass waiting for an order.

  “Sir,” he offered, “there is a murderer in this stadium and we need to lock it down, now; no one in or out. We should shut down the exits while we find the waitress who suddenly disappeared from the executive suite.”

  The suggestion awoke Treyklor from his stupor. He shook his head decisively. “No. we’ll only incite panic if we close off the stadium.”

  Strinnger was beside himself. “Sir, if we don’t close off the stadium we may never find who did this! We have enough security guards to search and verify the identity of everyone here before they leave, but we have to do it now. At least give me that.”

  Treyklor thought his proposal over. “All right. Do it. You’re the only one on my team with any homicide experience so I’ll trust your instincts. I’ll shut down the access ports to the station as well while you investigate your leads. We’ll say that there was some microbe contamination. As afraid as everyone is of that it should get their cooperation.”

  “Wait,” Strinnger hesitated, “my leads? Isn’t this something the local police should be doing?”

  Treyklor looked at him incredulously. “There is no law here and especially no police force able to handle something like this. Now, get to work and let me know what you find.”

  Without any further delay, Treyklor escorted the stretcher carrying Vim to the sidelines. Strinnger barked his orders to the head of security for the stadium then raced up to the luxury box. On his way there, he heard the public-address announcer declare that because of the health scare of Director Vim and the announcement of President Kratin, the final quarter of the game will be postponed until tomorrow night. Everyone was to remain in their seats and be prepared to show identification before they could leave. By their disgruntled murmurings, the stadium patrons were not pleased with that last part.

  Strinnger found Tom in the box interrogating the other service workers about their missing companion. The executives, namely Ahkman and a very agitated Brill, were shouting at the two guards impeding their exit from the booth. Strinnger ignored their pleas for his intervention and went straight toward Tom. The large black man met Strinnger’s inquisitive face with one of equaled frustration.

  “Nobody knew who she was,” he said, exasperated. “She just showed up today. Said it was her first day on the job. None of these people can remember if her name was Dawn or Donna, or this guy thinks it was Debbie. Either way, they’ve been no help. And apparently, the feeds for the security cameras went dead this morning. A maintenance guy was supposed to be up here to fix it before the game but he never showed up to work and no one can find him.” Tom perceived his friend’s disappointment. “Sorry, man. I got nothing.”

  “She used the name Donna?” Strinnger fumed. He shook his head. This was no accident. Just like the Diana Club. No one had seen or heard anything there either. He looked around the room for any sign of a clue. If only he had stayed in the box with Nathaniel instead of securing the sideline before the game, he might have seen who was there. “Did you at least get a look at the girl?” he asked.

  Tom shook his head. “All I remember is the red hair. I was too busy keeping Mr. Brill over there from jumping through the window.”

  Strinnger cast a glance over at Brill who was continuing his protests, using his rosewood cane as emphasis for his displeasure. The guards handling his complaints reached out to restrain the enraged Brill. Strinnger was about to intervene when an unknown voice chimed in his ear.

  “Mr. Strinnger! Mr. Strinnger, sir!” came the voice of a panicked male.

  “This is Strinnger. What is it?”

  “Sir, we have a situation here at the gate. People are objecting to our requests for identification and many of them are pushing their way through. Do we have permission to use deadly force?”

  “What!” Strinnger shouted. He can’t be serious! “No! Keep them in line but don’t kill them!”

  “We’re trying, sir, but there are too many. Nobody’s stopping when we ask them too. Oh no!” the man paused. “Sir, they’re rioting! One guard’s down!”

  The voice cut off amid the din of shouts and curses echoing in the background. Strinnger slammed his fist into the wall near the door to the suite. Bunch of second rate cop wannabes! He turned to the other guards in the suite. “Get the name and ID number of everyone in here then get to the main gate,” he ordered then sprinted from the box.

  The mass of people slowly migrating toward the exits like oblivious cattle blocked his progress despite his repeated shouts for them to clear a path. He was nearly to the first flight of stairs when his comm badge chimed again. He pushed his way past an overly amorous couple then said, “Strinnger here. I’m on my way.”

  The woman’s voice he heard in reply was not what he expected.

  “Oh, I seriously doubt that.”

  Strinnger froze in place. “You,” he whispered. “You’re the redhead aren’t you?”

  The woman was obviously pleased at being recognized. “You remembered! I’m flattered.”

  After several people bumped into him and shouted for Strinnger to get out of the road, he sought a safe place to continue his conversation. At the end of the catwalk leading to the stairway, he saw a luxury box, like the one he’d just left. He pressed his way against the crowd then shut the door behind him.

  “You just tried to kill Vim, didn’t you? Just like you did Schulaz,” he insisted, scanning the controls on the security gauntlet attached to his mag suit for any feature that would help him track his caller. The forearm device did not respond to his attempts to turn itself on.

  The woman chuckled. “Very good, detective. I must say I am impressed. It’s not often someone makes me miss my mark. Oh, and by the way, you needn’t worry about turning on your gauntlet. I disabled it when I passed you on the catwalk just now.”

  Strinnger threw the door open and rushed back out into the throng. Clutching the handrail of the catwalk, his eyes searched the crowd both nearby and the level below, desperately seeking anyone with red hair.

  “You needn’t bother looking for me, detective,” she said. “I’m long gone. I just wanted to say congratulations on saving Mr. Vim’s life, at least for now.”

  She’s watching me! He slid back to the empty suite and looked out over the field then turned back to the retreating herd of spectators.

  “You know, I don’t take congratulations too well over the phone. Why don’t you come up here and join me? I would love to hear your compliments in person.”

  “Oh, that wouldn’t do, detective,” she mockingly chided. “That would take all the fun out of the chase. No, I think I’ll leave our rendezvous for another day. But for now, keep in touch and take care of your little chicks.”

  The signal went dead and Strinnger cursed. She had been in the stadium but his inept security force couldn’t keep her there! He walked up to the window and stared at the spot where he had saved Vim’s life. The lights in the arena were dimming and few people roamed the depleting rows of seats. Now what? he wondered. Hopefully Treyklor was having better luck securing the entry port than he was the stadium. But even if he did, how would they find this one woman among nearly fifty thousand? Search every barrack? Invade every lab demanding to know who was making Endoxin? I guess those would be ways to start. He tried to ponder his next move but one recurring thought kept gnawing at him. Why had she called him? Was it merely to gloat about her near success? Was she putting him on notice that Vim’s life was still in danger? Or was there something else she wanted him to know? The whole call didn’t make sense. She could have vanished without a trace but instead she gave him a way to track her. She had been right next to him! All he had to do was get the security feeds fr
om the video cameras positioned on the buildings across the street and he would have her. There had to be something more to her call.

  He jumped toward the suite’s kitchenette, emptying drawers until he found a stack of cloth napkins and a pen. Scribbling her words furiously on the napkin, he replayed their conversation in as much detail as possible, writing it word for word as he remembered it.

  That would take all the fun out of the chase … I think I’ll leave our rendezvous for another day … keep in touch.

  Strinnger looked over his scrawls. It almost sounded like she wanted him to find her. Then he remembered something else she’d said and quickly wrote it down: take care of your little chicks.

  The reference to chickens puzzled him and then the answer became blindingly clear. The call signs for the Kratin women were Hen-1, 2 and 3. He rushed out of the suite once more. He bulldozed his way toward the underground locker rooms then cried into his comm badge.

  “Arla! Get the Kratin’s out of here! They’re the next targets!”

  CHAPTER 25

  DECISION

  The tip of the short, blackened ninjato sword ground a fine powder in the ashen, granite ledge as she rotated the blade in her hand. The lights of the nearby buildings and the kaleidoscope of colors dancing on the domed ceiling above played a fanciful collage on the fourteen-inch blade. Eve’s gaze held firm on the weapon while it spun, yet remained distant and unfocused. A rush of noise from the streets just below the ledge broke her trance. She looked on indifferently as the streaming horde of spectators overpowered the guards and emergency personnel at the stadium gate.

  The view atop the Quincy Hotel had been the sole reason she’d chosen to stay in the station’s oldest building, though the fact that it was three miles from Nelsonn’s lodgings was an added bonus. Standing in the center of Old Town the hotel afforded a perfect three hundred-sixty-degree panoramic view of the city, with every major building within her line of sight. The greatest advantage, however, was that the location gave her an optimum view of the public Forum amphitheater to the south, the Lunar Administration Building, or LAB, to the east, and the Moonball stadium to the north. From this vantage point Eve could observe the comings and goings of all the important people in Selene City.

  She watched indifferently as the fruits of her handiwork played out on the street below. The human response to a perceived threat to liberty had always intrigued her. How quickly emotion overran reason. The unexpected caught people unprepared, made them more vulnerable to their own fears, more violent and prone to attack, like cornered dogs fighting to survive.

  On the ledge next to her was a small radio receiver she’d borrowed from the hotel concierge. She listened as a bewildered news anchor repeated ‘unconfirmed’ reports of possible gun fire inside the stadium, snipers attacking the leadership of the stations, and a hostile takeover of the station itself by the forces of power-mad Chief Treyklor. Administrator Vim was confirmed dead; CEO Kratin had been whisked away to the Olympian locker room by his security team; Volkor Con was unaccounted for; rioting on the stadium concourse had led to looting and brawling that was spilling into the streets. The absurdity of the false reports made Eve shake her head.

  Normally such a result would have made her proud, but there was no joy in what she’d done tonight. The plan had been to incite panic by killing the city’s hero. When that failed, she raised the specter of an aggressive police force trying to infringe on the people’s rights by overstating her protests at the gate. As a result, the people took up her cry. For now, they would distrust the security forces there to protect them. Even with the change in plan, she felt the objective was met. She even had time to change clothes and taunt the police detective for his failed efforts to catch her. Nelsonn would still be able to accomplish his plan on schedule. Though she did not care if he did.

  Since her first murder, remorse was something she had left buried in the recesses of her hardened heart. She refused to let it taint her actions and keep her from her goal. But with that life, her sensitivity to humanity eroded, so much so that eventually she took pride and a peculiar joy in her work. She grew to feel some satisfaction after every successful, undetected escape, as well as for each corpse found under “mysterious circumstances”. Tonight, however, she felt none of that. For the first time in a long time, she loathed herself. The internal disgust didn’t come so much from the failure to end Jonu Vim’s life, but for trying to erase the image of Nathaniel Kratin, standing before thousands of people, giving them hope for a better life as the repeated chants of ‘Freedom!’ reverberated from the sky. Their passion and the fervor with which they greeted Kratin’s news stirred something within her she hadn’t expected; doubt. Doubt about herself, the path she had chosen, and the choices she had made. But most of all, doubt about the woman she had become.

  For five years, everything she did was for Nelsonn. Nothing else, no one else, mattered. When she awoke each morning, she believed she was one day closer to seeing him again. But what she hadn’t realized in all those years was even with that singular purpose, she was still free to do as she pleased. Free to live how she wanted, where she wanted. After she built her reputation she only took on jobs to make ends meet, but there was no one to report to, no one to tell her when and where to go, no one to distrust her. She was free to live her life how she chose. She now wondered if the sacrifice of her morals on the altar of personal freedom had been worth it. Sitting atop the carved stone roof of the Quincy Hotel, she knew it had not. All those years taking lives to secure her own, stealing precious time from perfect strangers so she might have the time she craved with her imprisoned lover, had made her a monster.

  In her heart, she knew she had been living in a fantasy world. She had refused to accept the reality that she and Nelsonn’s personalities would never allow them to become the happy couple she envisioned. Nelsonn was too anti-establishment to confine himself to a structured employment with a hierarchy of supervisors, managers, presidents, board members, and CEOs. She was too restless. Her lifestyle the last several years had forced her to move extensively from place to place, never more than a few months to a year at a time in one spot. And what did she know about being a mother anyway? Wiping drool and changing diapers were a far cry from putting a bullet between the eyes of some drug lord’s competition.

  The blade stopped twirling in her hand. She gazed at it a while longer and then put it down on the ledge. “No more,” she resolved. It was time to move on with her new life. She was done with the old one. She was done playing pretend.

  The roof access door opened behind her. Instinctively, she reached for the sword and brought it up to her chest, poised to strike. Her grip did not loosen even when the familiar voice trumpeted behind her.

  “You did it, my dear!” Nelsonn gloated.

  Eve did not turn to look at him, but let her eyes wander back down to the dispersing crowd below. “I didn’t kill Vim,” she said grimly.

  “It doesn’t matter. Look at them,” he beamed. “You did very well, mí amor!”

  Her face felt numb. Before she was banished from the Apollo Prison he had insisted on calling her “his love.” Whenever they had spoken by video conference those sweet words had enlivened her heart and reinvigorated her to her cause. Tonight, however, they only gave her pain. Instead, she chose not to look at him, electing to look at the bright emergency vehicle lights approaching the stadium. In her periphery, she saw Nelsonn’s expression change from exuberance to feigned concern. She knew he didn’t care that she was upset and when she finally met his confounded stare, she was devoid of any feeling. When she spoke, it seemed to be with someone else’s voice.

  “Don’t call me that. I’m done, Tyrus,” she said flatly, removing his large hands from her shoulders. Sheathing her sword into her backpack and collapsing the grips into the hilt, she slid off the building ledge and headed for the exit.

  Nelsonn’s eyebrows furrowed, obviously confused. “What?” he asked half amused.

  “Th
is is over,” she said.

  Her husband took a bewildered step toward her. “But the job’s only half done. We’ve built the fear now we need to use it.”

  Eve’s cold silence was all the answer she could give him. Her new fire-engine-red heels clicked on the stone roof as they continued toward the door.

  “Our mission isn’t complete yet. We still need you.”

  She halted mid-stride. “Our mission?” she asked sternly, keeping her focus on the door.

  Nelsonn’s tone softened, “Yes. Our mission: to convince humanity of the illusions of control and order. We, the guardians of nature, have the responsibility to make people realize there is no control and teach them to accept and adapt to the chaos of the universe. We have the chance to do what all revolutionaries like us have dreamed of doing, stopping a government before it can exist.”

  “Was it even real to you?” she questioned, whirling around at last to face him. “Was this ever a marriage, a relationship? Or was I just another asset to exploit, another means to an end?”

  A genuine look of astonishment came over his face. “How can you say that? Didn’t those months aboard our yacht prove that I sincerely care for you?”

  “Then prove it,” Eve interjected in a much more desperate tone than she’d intended. “Forget what we said before. Come with me. Leave all of this. Let’s make a life for ourselves, free from causes and murder. Let me be your cause.”

  His jaw set and a consternated frown returned her plea. Firmly, his hands returned to her shoulders.

  “I can’t do that, and you know it. What I do is so much bigger than us. We have the chance, the responsibility to right mankind’s wrongs. It’s is my calling. I can’t abandon it now.”

  “At the sacrifice of our marriage, after the promises we made to each other?”

  He stood silent. This was her ultimatum. His answer was expected but still stung her more than anything she could’ve imagined. His eyes glazed over and took on an icy lifelessness. “Yes,” he said, firmly with a hint of feigned regret.