“Oh, a little burnt toast and a little orange juice, is in order I think.”
Sinda chuckled, “you know that’s not real orange juice, right?”
Jon smiled, “given the awful taste, I had a bit of a hunch.”
“Sounds great.” She smiled.
They sat together at Jon’s little table between the kitchen and his bed. The last time Jon had guests at this table they were all wearing uniforms, and four of them had weapons at the ready in case he tried to do anything bold. He much preferred this type of company. A pretty, soft-spoken female, probably incapable of harming a small, woodland creature, let alone a human being.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“What do you mean?
“At some point we’re going to have to choose sides.” Her eyes went cold.
Jon stared at his burnt toast and took a sip of his pretend orange juice, “why can’t we just sit this one out?”
The light returned to her eye as she smiled once more, “I don’t know if that is an option.”
“I don’t think participating in mass genocide or anarchy are any better than just waiting for it all to play itself out. What do you think?”
Her interest was piqued with his statement, “Genocide or anarchy?”
Jon paused, expecting that she would understand what it meant. She didn’t. “Yeah, you know? Uh…” now he had to explain himself. Jon hated explaining himself. “The party will kill anybody that needs to be killed, and the dwellers or the rebels or the whatevers have no clue what they’re doing so they’ll just burn it all to the ground in order to destroy the party.”
“And what would you do?” there was almost no hesitation when she asked the question.
Jon was taken back. He’d never been asked that question. He shook his head before he found the words. “I would leave people alone,” he said. “Yeah, I would leave people alone.”
“That would be an interesting form of government,” she said as if to mock him a bit playfully.
He didn’t miss the tone, “Well, I’m not an expert in the functionality of government, I just know that people deserve to be left alone.”
“That is a piece of truth right there,” she smiled again. Then she looked up at the clock. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” Jon asked.
“I have to get to the party tower immediately. That’s where my new job is.”
“Can I walk you out to the station?”
She smiled and they threw on their coats and headed towards the long descent of stairs. On the long journey down the stairwell they chatted a bit more.
Jon said, “So if I may ask, what is it the party has you doing now?”
“Data processing,” she said with no enthusiasm. “And they tell me I’m lucky to be doing that. I just sit around all day and put information from one program into another.”
“Well that sounds delightful,” he mocked. Then a more serious question came to mind, “If you’re just doing processing work, how did you get that band on your arm?”
They stopped walking. Sinda’s mood visibly changed.
“Colonel Everett sent me. He said I got to choose between staying in the city, doing processing for the party, and infiltrating the underground or being shipped off to the capital where they could use another pretty girl for camera or anything else they would use a pretty girl for.” She was shaking when she said this.
“Well that doesn’t sound like a hard choice,” Jon said with a smile. “I got to choose between this or prison for the rest of my life. At least we both had a choice.”
She smiled and they headed back down the remainder of the stairwell. They didn’t say much else to each other as they came out into the alley and eventually to the public transportation station. They were careful to keep their affection for one another at bay out in the labyrinth where anybody could be watching. They waited for the next available transport.
“I don’t know where you live,” the transport arrived as Jon was finishing his thought, “so you’re going to have to drop by unannounced again sometime.”
Sinda smiled, “I think I can do that.” She boarded the transport, and she was off. It was painful to watch her go without being able to so much as give her a hug goodbye. As the shuttle went around the corner Jon moved his eyes back to the front of him, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw what was across the street.
Enforcement Personnel. Multiple vehicles, with the officers standing outside of them staring at Jon.
In his nervousness, he waved at them. Then he turned around and immediately started heading back to the ally.
“You idiot. Why did you wave?” he said to himself out loud. Then came the inevitable.
“Citizen!”
“Aaaahhhhhh!,” Jon let out a mild scream.
“Prepare for assistance!” Those officers came over to Jon in a hurry. They must have been watching Jon and Sinda come out of that building, waiting for their moment to either beat the life out of Jon or haul him back to their underground lair.
Jon immediately turned around and raised his arm. The officers scanned his data as they approached him. Before any one of them laid their hands on him, they all came to a full stop. Then came the unexpected.
“Our apologies, Specialist Ballard.”
Jon thought he was in the clear.
“Please hold, sir.” They demanded.
Oh great, what now? What was going to happen next? Jon wasn’t in the mood for more games. His adrenaline and euphoria had worn off and he was beginning to realize how completely and hopelessly exhausted he was.
“I’ve been given word that a convoy is in route to pick you up, sir.”
“Huh?” was Jon’s question.
“A military convoy is currently headed to our location to take you back to headquarters, sir.”
“Oh crap,” he exclaimed.
That convoy must have been right around the corner because they showed up almost immediately. Jon had never seen anything like it before. He had seen military vehicles, but not like this. They were all black with blacked out windows. They all operated on wheels and not on the mag lift system that all the other vehicles on the grid were subject to. They were unbound by the city system, and that made Jon nervous. Men, all dressed in black armor, got out of the vehicles and surrounded the officers and Jon. It was an entire unit of ghost soldiers. Jon could throw up and not care.
“We’ve got orders to take you to the General, Specialist,” stated one of the men.
Without thinking Jon quipped, “You know what? I’m pretty-tired. How about you let me get a few hours of sleep, and then you come and get me a bit later, mmmkay? Looks like you guys have your own vehicles anyway. It shouldn’t be a problem.” That was a mistake.
The soldier who told him they were taking Jon to see the General put his hand in the air and made one little motion. Then Jon was introduced to a fist in his gut and then another across his face. Then the soldiers dragged him to the closest vehicle as the Enforcement officers looked on.
“I’m going to take that as a no,” Jon said as they slammed the back door shut.
13
A REVOLUTION IS BORN
It was peaceably quiet. Because it was so peaceful is why he felt so nervous. No government building should be able to harbor feelings of such peace and quiet. Something sinister was going on here. There was no other explanation for it. Though, it was quiet enough for Jon to just close his eyes a bit. Maybe slowly begin to drift into sleep. What was the big deal? He had been sitting in this cozy chair for some time now. Nobody had entered the room. As far as he knew this was another form of punishment – sitting and waiting. So, he closed his eyes and let the late morning sunlight poor in through the dimmed windows and warmed his face.
He opened his eyes before completely nodding off and noticed a piece of paper sticking out of a folder on Greenwald’s desk. There was a distinct name printed in bold on the exposed corner.
“Colonel Everett – Operati
on Weed Removal,” it read.
This caught Jon’s interest. He looked around. He panicked but found himself leaning forward to see what was written underneath. Jon pulled the paper out, and it revealed dark information. Everett was running his own operation infiltrating the dwellers. A listed agent was Specialist Stims. Specialist Connor Stims. He was to Everett what Jon was to Greenwald. Jon panicked. Instead of putting the paper back he shoved it into his pocket.
Then he sat back and tried to play cool. It was still a while before Greenwald found his way into his office. Jon got lost in thought. Everything had just taken a turn. The man leading the revolution underground was the man that would have them all hanged in a very public square. The paper was the only proof of this. Hopefully Jon could expose him without anybody noticing the information had gone missing. Then Jon’s body remembered how exhausted, bloody and bruised he was. He couldn’t fight it. His body was going to sleep. Right here. In this chair. In Greenwald’s office.
BAM! Came a thud from the desk in front of him. Jon leapt out of his chair and fell onto the floor. He looked up to try and see what was happening.
It was Greenwald. Standing right over him. He had slammed a book on the desk to wake Jon up from his gentle slumber. It worked – very well.
“Am I disturbing you, Specialist? Perhaps I should come back in an hour?” the General asked.
“Uh…” Jon stumbled to his feet in panic and embarrassment. “Uh… no… sir. That won’t be necessary.”
“Infiltrating the city’s underground comes with its late nights doesn’t it, Specialist Ballard?”
Jon’s brain was not fully functioning at this point, “I think since we’ve met I have had three hours of sleep, sir.” He couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw the faintest smile show itself across the general’s face.
“That’s more than I’ve had in a year.”
And the room went silent.
Jon just stood there, as the general remained seated. He didn’t know where to look if he should look anywhere but his shoes. He tried not to stare at that folder that was staring back at him. He was grungy and unwashed. Above all he was ready to collapse right then and there – again. He was too tired for this forced spy stuff.
“You’ve been out all night, have you not?” Greenwald grabbed the folder on the desk.
“Uh, yes sir, I have,” Jon’s heart rate could have powered a jet engine.
“Then I hope you have something for me.” Greenwald put the folder into a drawer in his desk without opening it or noticing a page was missing.
Jon let all the air abruptly exit his lungs. He must have been in the clear, for now. Then he started digging for something, any kind of information to give to the General. Oh crap, he began to think to himself. Marcus had given him an address, but he didn’t know what he had done with it. He started to feel all of his pockets in a furry of desperation to retrieve it. Not in that pocket. Not in that pocket. Better double-check this pocket. Nope, that pocket had top secret information stashed away. He could feel the ominous presence of some impending doom if he could not find that address.
“Found it!” Jon exclaimed as if he had just delayed his inevitable destruction. He handed it to the General. The General looked at it and then immediately looked back to Jon.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
Jon’s excitement melted away, “It’s an address.”
“For what?”
“That’s where they took me last night, to that address. Connor, the leader of it all, and the whole gang were there. All of ‘em.”
The general scanned the card again. This time it caught his interest. He stood and excused himself from the room. Without specifying whether he’d be back or not of course.
Jon sat back down. He had no idea what to expect next. Then he stood back up. He didn’t want to find himself drifting off to dreamland again. He was amazed with all the mistakes he had made this last week that he was still walking around and talking. He needed to occupy his mind to distract it from how exhausted it had become. Jon walked over to that giant floor to ceiling window and looked out over the city.
Such an interesting thing. From up here it was all so peaceful. There was a quiet hum from the city below. The low, bellowing buzz of the labyrinth walls raising and lowering around the area. Jon looked up and right above his head was the mag lift train that ran through the sky, from sky-scraper to sky-scraper. It kept the party elites free from the pariahs down below in the gutters. Who knew what was up there on those floors? One could only imagine what kind of outlandish palaces and recreational halls existed up here above the citizens of the city. It was the perfect place for their masters to dwell, up here in the clouds where they could present themselves as gods to the people. Untouchable, and more-often-than-not, unseeable.
For a moment, Jon began to empathize with somebody in such a situation, being a high-ranking member of the party that is. This atmosphere was intoxicating. You could see the entire city but be subjected to none of its problems. From up here everything was operating as it should. At this height and being surrounded by adjacent towers was a seemingly true testament of power. Who could bring this crumbling down to the ground? From up here, for a moment, Jon felt untouchable.
Then the euphoria began to wear off, and he began to hate every thought he just had. These were the towers of the cowards. This is where the spineless worms came to dwell, to shield their faces from the masses of citizens that they imprison and kill on a daily-basis. They built temples skywards because they couldn’t face the simple truth of what was on the ground. The higher these buildings were, the farther away they were from the truth, the truth of their guilt, the truth of their conniving and sinister ambitions. This was where they all came to hide.
Jon watched the train sail by. His thoughts began to calm down as he once again remembered how exhausted he was. He changed from thinking of the great scheme of things to begging for some sort of normalcy. Anything he could do to get a decent night’s sleep. It’s been a week from his worst nightmares, he was sleep deprived and had been beaten repeatedly to boot.
Where was Greenwald? It felt like he had been standing in this room for some time. The general should have been back by now. Was he just supposed to sit and stay in this room? If he left the room would they let him leave the building, or would he just be shot? Did somebody see Jon take that piece of paper off of Greenwald’s desk? If anything, they would take him back to the underground torture chamber and rough him up for a bit – probably.
Jon noticed something strange far out toward the edge of the city. It was a plume of smoke reaching up to the sky. It was black smoke. He wondered what it could be. It didn’t look like a typical fire. The smoke was thick and fierce.
Edge of the city, edge of the city. Jon had just disclosed information to Greenwald, and he had not been back for some time. It was enough time to dispatch a unit of soldiers to the outskirts of the city and smoke-out any element of the underground that was lingering in that house.
Suddenly, Jon began to wake up. A new rush of adrenalin was in the works. Was that the house he was at the night before? If it was, did everybody get out? Was Marcus still there? Everything started to set in. Everything started to manifest itself as a new form of reality that Jon was not braced for. The party was out to kill. They were out to kill anybody that posed a threat to their established order, and Jon had found himself smack in the middle of it. There was no room for error. Jon had to navigate these waters with absolute certainty. The party wanted the underground rebels dead, and the underground rebels wanted the head of the party just as dead. It began to dawn on him just how unique his position in all of this was. Greenwald was relying on Jon for information about the rebels, and the rebels were relying on Jon for information about the party and its leader. Connor had sold himself as the strong leader of the underground all while being a pawn for Everett. The outcome of all this seemed to rest on the piece of paper now crumpled up in Jon’s pocket.
/> So tired.
Fatigued.
Where did Jon leave off when he was reading? Oh yeah, Johnny was heading back to confront the mayor and the sheriff. He was going to get his family and his life back. If only this decision was as easy as the words in that book. If only things were as simple here in Pinnacle City as they were way back in that small town.
Slam!
The door opened and closed abruptly. Jon’s heart could have come up through his throat, and he wouldn’t have noticed. He was on edge and without sleep. Reality had become a dull nightmare. It was Greenwald.
“You’re still here, specialist?” he asked.
“You never told me I could leave, sir.”
Greenwald seemed somewhat amused with that answer. Then he took notice of exactly what it was that had Jon standing at the window, staring. “Ah, yes. That’s what the beginning of a war looks like, Specialist.”
Jon focused intensely on the general.
“It starts with smoke, fire, riots and these labyrinth walls going up and down. These rebels want the head of the Premiere. If we don’t smoke them out now, they might just get it when he gets here.”
“If it’s so dangerous then why would he come?” Jon asked.
Greenwald looked at Jon, “You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do,” Jon demanded.
Greenwald turned his entire body to face Jon. “The Premiere would burn this city to the ground before allowing it to fall into rebel hands.” He placed his hands on the window and a digital prompt appeared on the glass of the building. The general spoke his name and began navigating through a menu.
A video started playing. It was a herd of people in the city protesting, but it wasn’t Pinnacle City. It must have been the capital. Jon had only seen photos of it. The people were in a near riot type frenzy. Then from every direction Atlas grade 4 vehicles surrounded the crowd. Military personnel exited the vehicles and could be seen in the balconies of the buildings surrounding the people.
Gunfire. Lots of it.
Jon had to turn his head. The people were butchered by their own government. Right there in the streets, in their own streets. He turned his head back to see if it was over. There were only a few survivors, waiving their hands in the air and begging for mercy. It was not given.
The Cowboy of Pinnacle City Page 17