Assured Destruction: The Complete Series

by Michael F Stewart

  “Don’t shoot him,” I say and Fenwick nods like he’s vindicated.

  “Give me one good reason why not,” the mayor replies.

  And here’s my plan: I give them what they want. The final piece in my recruitment. The chains.

  “Because I want to do it,” I say.

  “You?” the mayor asks.

  “I was going to call Peter—the spook—out on Darkslinger—it’s why he told everyone that I was with the cops.”

  There’s laughter, but I know it rings true.

  “Listen. Not long ago I held a gun to a man’s head. I didn’t pull the trigger. I should have. I want a second chance to finish a job.”

  This will give them the ultimate goods on me. I’ll be theirs for life. And it’ll buy Peter and maybe both of us an opening. A few still look unconvinced.

  One of the holdouts nods.

  “You sure you’re ready for this, Jan?” Williams asks. The concern on her face appears genuine. “It’s one thing to join, wholly another to pull a trigger.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  A black hat with a skull and chain lies on a side table.

  “All right,” the mayor says. As he closes the distance between us, he flips up the hat, and then puts it on my head himself.

  Who says I suck at speeches?

  “I’m comin’,” Ponytail says. He looks gray. “Wanna make sure this ain’t no trick.”

  Suddenly a tablet geek glances up from his screen.

  “Someone’s firebombed U Technical.”

  That’s when everyone looks back at me.

  Chapter 34

  Williams jerks me around. I shrug, but it’s not enough.

  “Get on your scanner,” the mayor tells Williams and then, turning to the other members, adds: “Figure out what the hell is happening.”

  The gangsters look at each other and silently determine who’s going to leave the warmth of the hearth. Three links follow Williams out. Suddenly I’m left alone with some forty others. I’m itching to view my Twitter feed, but don’t want to call attention to it, or to me. I force myself to sit in one of the vacated chairs.

  “Hiya,” I say to the woman beside me and then cringe away. When I last saw her, she was pointing a gun up at my chest. That was before I leapt on top of her. Her partner in crime, Fenwick, sits back down, his face eerie through the flames between us.

  “Glad you safe from Assured Destruction fire,” the woman says, but her expression doesn’t reveal any relief at all. It makes sense—she and Fenwick would be the ones to set it.

  I want to vomit and have no idea how I will escape, never mind that I’m the rescue squad for Peter.

  “We’ve fire and police at the Centretown address too,” a geek says. Fenwick’s expression darkens. I shake my head as if I have nothing to do with it.

  The mayor sighs. “Three more links.”

  Another trio departs, but it’s still not the exodus I’d hoped for.

  Members start talking about whether they are under attack, and a couple more head out to patrol the perimeter. This is less good. Jonny and Hannah are on the perimeter.

  “We’ve got reporters!” Someone calls from the foyer, and I have to work hard to make my face appear tense for the right reasons.

  “Celine! Celine! Je t’aime!” Come cries from outside.

  “Listen to this!” a geek pipes up. “I just bought a new house. Wait until I pretty it up! 42 Fifth Line, Gatineau, Quebec! #COMESEE!!!—that’s from Celine Dion’s Twitter account.”

  Harry’s done it. He’s on Celine’s account. Everyone is running for the windows and foyer. I have my chance. I duck into the kitchen and crouch beneath the level of the butcher block counters. On my hands and knees I crawl to a nearby door. It opens to the pantry. Not what I’m looking for.

  “Hungry?”

  I startle and look into Ponytail’s face. There’s worry there.

  “Yeah, but I have to watch my salt intake,” I say, signaling to the chips and pizza. “Gluten issues too.”

  He smiles.

  “Hector,” the gravelly voice of the mayor rumbles out, and Ponytail glances away.

  “Help yourself out,” Ponytail Hector says quietly to the wall above me. Then he exits.

  I’ve been warned. I don’t know why, but he just told me that I’d better leave. If the Shadownet clan has started my plan, I have to assume they’ll try to finish it, which means a pizza delivery car will soon be here. I want Peter in the back when it leaves.

  I take some short breaths and then stand. There’s another door around the corner. At the sound of footsteps I dart behind it. I’m in darkness and I run my hands along the wall for a switch.

  Pot lights run along the ceiling, leading the way down a set of stairs. The basement.

  With the clamoring of gangsters muted behind me, I descend into the depths.

  There’s a camera at the bottom staring up. With only one direction possible to go, I run to the bottom as fast I can and turn the corner. I’m in a room with three doors along the right hand wall and a double set of doors with an alarm pad on the left. I can guess that’s the room with all the servers. Pipes run along the ceiling and enter the wall into the NOC. They’ve been colored red, yellow, and blue, and I smirk because it’s another geek thing to have done: an homage to Google’s datacenter. I can understand why my dad liked Bitchain.

  The doors on my right have simple deadbolt locks. One has a heavy padlock. I slide the first open and discover it full of cleaning supplies.

  I move to the second, which lies directly across from the double doors. I snap over the bolt and throw back the door to stare down on Peter.

  His face is blackened and swollen and he lies on the floor in a fetal curl. The room is otherwise empty with white cinderblock walls and a polished concrete floor.

  “Peter.” I bend and shake him by the shoulder. His eyes slit open as much as the swelling allows. “What have they done to you?” What have I done? I have beat-Pete. “I’m sorry!”

  “Janus.” He grimaces and waves his hand for me to go away, but it’s way too late for that.

  “Can you walk? We really need to get out of here.”

  His breathing rattles.

  “We have to escape,” I say. “They’ll kill you.” His hand waves again. “And me. They’ll kill the both of us.” The thought had crossed my mind, but it’s different hearing it aloud.

  With his palms planted on the ground, he pushes himself into a sit. It’s slow and I worry he won’t be able to move fast enough to hide in the trunk of a car, let alone navigate the mansion’s halls and rooms. Heck, he’s so big I wonder if he’ll even fit in the trunk. But he takes my hand and as I lean back, he stands. Once on his feet, his right knee wobbles as if there’s not enough holding it together.

  “Come on,” I say. I haul on his arm, but he might as well be a concrete post.

  He’s staring through the doorway at the keypad for the NOC.

  “We have to hurry.” It won’t be long before the Celine Dion chasers and celebrity gawkers realize the tweets were hoaxes and leave. If they leave, we lose the cover for our escape. I’m hoping that if we can make it to the driveway in sight of all the media, then perhaps we’ll be able to hobble the rest of the way down the road without being openly shot.

  With my shoulder for support he staggers into the hallway, but releases me as we pass the alarm pad.

  “No sightseeing,” I say, but he mumbles, negatory.

  I get it. He wants to destroy the place. He thump-drags himself over to the cleaning closet and starts dumping anything with a flammable symbol on it so that it runs through the crack in the door. Most of it doesn’t. Most of it sloshes at our feet. Unfortunately this gang of hackers is environmentally friendly. The gree
n products are mostly non-toxic, let alone combustible.

  Peter then grabs a mop handle and slips one end through the lock in the next door. I watch as he tries to lever the hasp open.

  “Usually easier to take the whole lock off the door than break it,” he says, voice all nasal from the damage. At least he can speak though.

  “You go, Jan,” he says. “Get out of here.”

  I hesitate. Outside, my friends are doing everything they can to cause a distraction and reverse–Trojan horse the mansion. While in here, Peter has a vendetta to settle. Behind that door might be weapons, it might have whatever they used to make the firebomb they unleashed on Assured Destruction, or it could be a 24-hour gym.

  “They killed my father, Peter,” I say. “But I’ll let the courts strike the blow.” New and improved Janus is looking forward and not to the past.

  But Peter keeps working at the edges of the lock.

  “Here. It’s just sparkler powder, but maybe you can make a fuse or something.” I take out two of my three pop bottles with sparkler powder in them and one of the boxes of matches. “They’re all yours.”

  He’s grunting, so I set them on the ground. The mop handle bends into a C-shape.

  Saddened and torn, I climb the stairs without him and slip outside the door—only to have a hand clutch the back of my neck.

  I duck away, but before me towers the grizzly bear man.

  “Lay off, Jug,” Ponytail Hector says. “Janus, the washroom is around the corner.”

  I gape a little before saying: “Thanks, oh, yes, I really have to go—So bad.” I cross my legs and bend forward a bit for effect.

  Jug squints. I smile as I shuffle in the direction Hector had indicated. It’s also toward the front doors.

  The foyer and museum of geekdom is empty but both doors are thrown wide. As I stand beneath the Millennium Falcon, frigid air makes my eyes water. I blink at the scene. People line the fence three deep. Flashes strobe in the dark. Cars are everywhere and long poles for satellite feeds telescope up from news trucks. A couple dozen people have somehow managed to bypass the fence and they are being chased down by links on the backs of ATVs. With so many onlookers, now’s my opportunity to escape. They can’t shoot me with cameras rolling—can they? As I watch, a fire truck leaves. And I guess that the fire department at least has determined that our call was a prank. Another truck flips off its sirens.

  It’s decision time again.

  Chapter 35

  <> JanusFlyTrap tweets.

  I’m on Twitter, standing in the mansion’s foyer. I can’t go back to Peter if it’ll endanger my friends. I won’t make decisions for them. They put their trust in me.

  One by one, they all check in with the exception of Gumps. Peter.

  Karl says he’s A ZaZa’s newest pizza delivery boy, but he’s ten minutes out.

  My friends are okay.

  Police would be handy, I tweet. And don’t you dare deliver that pizza, Karl.

  Pretty sure it’s the U.S. Rangers who say, “Leave no man behind.” Well, it’s my new creed too. I’m going back.

  I’m coming out with @Pumpkineatr. I don’t stick around to learn more and pocket the phone.

  Unfortunately, I know of only one way to convince Peter to escape. I stride back through the hall and kitchen into the great room. A dozen members are in here, all abuzz about the news media and whether their faces were caught by the cameras or not. I spy the bolt cutters next to the chain. Peter needs them, but there’s no way I can snatch the tool without raising suspicions. Not without a distraction.

  When Hector spots me, his eyes widen and then his shoulders slouch. He’d wanted me gone. My course is set. Back in the kitchen, I strike a match and light the sparkler-bomb. Then I throw it in the pantry. Nonchalant, I wander back into the main room and inspect the Iron Man suit.

  “Fire!” someone yells a minute later. And as everyone rushes to investigate, I take up the bolt cutters, fold them under my heavy parka, and shut myself behind the door leading to the basement. I hear grunts from below. I shake my head at the thought of Peter still working away at the lock. I descend the steps and am about to say something when the grunts overlap. Peter’s not alone.

  I peek around the corner.

  This is a rematch. Fenwick has his arms out in a wrestler’s stance. Peter has his hands clenched in fists, up like a boxer. But he moves like he’s already gone ten rounds in the ring and Fenwick dances left and right. What can I do? If I hit Fenwick with the bolt cutters, I might distract him, but I’m not strong enough to knock him out.

  Peter takes an uppercut to the ribs and I wince, clutching my own gut. As he stumbles backward, Fenwick swaggers toward him.

  I back slowly up the stairs, thinking hard. By the time I reach the top, I have a plan. I switch on my phone’s voice recorder. Hit record. Wait a few seconds, and then speak into it, calling softly and then louder. I stop it. Then I shut off the lights.

  The darkness is near complete. Only a thin, yellow line shines beneath the door to the hallway. The exit. My throat constricts. I don’t want to go back down.

  There’s a cry from below, but then people are still shouting above too. Quick as I can, I climb down the stairs and shuffle along the side wall into the melee. I can feel the wind of flailing punches. I hear Peter’s wheezing. I set the phone in Peter’s former jail cell, and, shielding the glow, I hit play, relock the screen, and scramble to position myself next to the door.

  “Peter, Peter—” comes my voice from inside. “Peter!”

  The wheezing quiets and then there’s a rush of movement and a chuckle.

  “No, Jan—” Peter says.

  I feel the first body rush past. The steps are light and strong: Fenwick. I have to shove the second body out of the way as I slam the door and throw the bolt home.

  “Peter?” I ask the total darkness.

  Someone crashes against the door of the prison, and I cry out.

  “Janus?” Peter says beside me, his breath rattling.

  My hug is more of a tackle.

  “Wait here,” I say as I feel my way up the stairs and throw the switch, turning the lights back on.

  By the time I return, he’s discovered the bolt cutter and cut the lock. Shoulders hunched, he inspects the contents of the room. If I expected an arsenal, I am disappointed. There are guns, but no cases of C-4 explosive.

  “What have we got, what have got …” Peter says.

  Fenwick is screaming at the top of his lungs now and it’s difficult to think. Every once in a while he stops screaming and he smashes against the door again. It holds. He goes quiet and for some reason I see that as even more threatening.

  Peter inspects a timer—I’ve watched enough CSI to know what it is—but there are no explosives to time. There are handguns and hunting guns. Nothing as fancy as say a machine gun or a Bazooka, but certainly stuff that can do damage. Some guns are disassembled, there’s another shelf with ammo and a canister that looks to be full of gasoline. I pick out a Glock because I’ve held one before.

  Peter snatches it back.

  “No guns,” he says. “Most battles are won with superior firepower. If the two of us start a gunfight against thirty-odd enemy, we will lose.”

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  “Call the—” he begins, but his eyes flick toward Fenwick’s prison. My phone is in with him. I can hear him tapping in numbers, probably trying to figure out my pin. I wish I’d set a stronger pin than 4–3–2–1. With any luck the cavalry is on its way.

  “Okay,” he says, sloshing the gasoline can. “This will take care of the server room but we need a way to flood the interior.”

  I remember the cleaning fluid pooling at our feet rather than flowing under the
door. I dart away, tear a square of cardboard from the box of cleaning supplies, and stuff it in beneath the door to the NOC. Sometimes the best hacks are the simplest. Peter says nothing. The gasoline cap spins off and he slowly pours it on the inside of the cardboard. Sulphur reek curls my nose hair. Lots still spills outside but the majority of the glugs of gas are slipping under the door and into the server room. It’s the best we can do and seems to satisfy Peter.

  “Let’s see about that fuse,” he says.

  I feel better about setting a fire rather than a big blast of C-4. It means Fenwick will survive and then Fenwick can go to jail. And maybe one day I’ll get my phone back! Which I file under #leastofmyworries. I shake out a trail of sparkler dust from the door to the exit stairwell.

  “You ready?” I ask, pulling out the matches.

  He nods.

  “It’s your legacy,” I say, holding the matches to him. Not to mention that my hands are soaked in gasoline.

  Even with the swelling, he winks and takes the box. “It’s on my head, you mean.”

  Despite the battering to his face, his eyes and teeth gleam. This is a man in his element.

  He strikes the match and we both stand and watch mesmerized as the sparkler powder ignites and starts flaring its way toward the gas puddle.

  “We’d better go,” I say and that jolts him back alert and wipes the smile off his face. I grab his hand and start hauling him up the stairs. They’ve done something to his leg, though, and he’s having trouble bending one knee to climb each step. The burning of the sparkler fizzles in my ears. The slower we go, the quicker my heart thuds.

  “Faster,” I say.

  We need to be out of the basement when the gas ignites.

  “Go on,” he tells me, shaking his hand free from mine. His foot swings awkwardly to the next step.

  “No way,” I say. “My mom grounded me, and I need you to explain all of this to her. Now, hurry!”