by Gary Sapp
people—marched on and dumped ton after ton of our toxin into the water and food supplies across North America. There it sat dormant until our people felt necessary to call it into action.”
“Cut do the chase, Joseph, you aren’t a scientist. Where does your piece fit into this jigsaw puzzle?”
“I had people in the Houston Field Office of the FBI who share my hatred for them. They are a talented group of scientist. They designed the delivery system necessary to make our weapon operational at a moment’s notice.”
Angel considered the possibilities.
“You used an airborne triggering mechanism.” She said after some time and thought. “You had gained access to the heating ducts inside Ernestine Johnson’s home and the hotel where President Sweet was supposedly shot.”
Champion’s brows rose to the cabin’s ceiling, impressed that she’d put it together so quickly—and apparently correctly as well. Yet, Angel felt her own eyebrows rising with her next thought:
“If what you said is true that we all have been affected by your poisoning of the food and water supplies. Why haven’t more people—“
“The toxin is engineered to aggressively attack the higher percentage of melon compositions that exist within a certain population group in North America. In English, Doctor, the darker a person’s skin tone the more likely they are to fall victim to our toxin’s bite.”
“You’re insane, Joseph,” Angel said to man who she thought she once knew. “And what you were doing was contemplating the eradication of an entire race of human beings from this planet. The sane of us would name that genocide, Joseph.”
“You are wrong on both accounts.” He replied in a quiet voice. “The insane don’t feel, Angel. Even after all that I’ve done I still have enough of the rage brewing inside of me to know that I am far from crazy. And what you call genocide, Angel, I would call liberation from an inferior race of savages...the Whirlwind as I’ve chosen to call it. I am saving us from them.”
“Did Raymond Rice know?”
Champion nodded once.
“He suspected. That was the reason that he wanted me off the streets at all cost. He planted the notion that I was a mole so that agents of both the FBI and Pandora wouldn’t go digging for anything else that could be motivating my real intentions. Rice was only concerned with neutralizing Xavier Prince and a House in Chains. He was a fool. The witch, better known to all of us as Serena Tennyson, was wrapped up in her own distorted world of dirt piles, hallucinations and dragons. Don’t get me wrong, she was a powerful force in her own right, but Oracle would be standing by myside right now if she had blessed with a broader vision and scope—if she had seen the bigger picture for what it is and not what she wanted to believe it was. Eventually, I had disappeared off of the grid. Rice got desperate. He even tried to talk Serena into standing down as a last act of desperation to protect the truth from getting out to the masses, but Danielle Rohm killed him protecting her Oracle.”
“So your wife’s murder to the lowest dominator of a man—one black man is worth the lives of millions of people of color. And you call Serena’s beliefs of her Dragon distorted?”
Angel dared to walk close enough to hear Joseph Champion’s breathing.
“There is something I don’t get about all of this, Joseph. You’ve had this weapon of mass destruction at your disposal for months now. If you’ve have the means of ending your pain and destroying countless lives at your whim why haven’t you done so already?”
He pushed Angel back a foot with the barrel of his bun. Yet, she saw a new point of fury in his eyes that replaced the one that had dwelled there only minutes before.
“Raymond Rice and Serena Tennyson aren’t the only ones in this world who are shortsighted.” And when Angel failed to comment on that he continued. “The scientist who developed the contaminant got cold feet and dipped on us shortly after the Peacekeepers began their murderous crusade against former and underground agents of Pandora during Scar.”
“Or perhaps he had a change of heart, Joseph,” She said, her voice nearly a whisper. He’s purposely not giving up this man’s name. He knows the FBI is listening. “Or perhaps he couldn’t wrap his mind around being a major player in the unconditional eradication of a people from this planet.”
“It makes no matter. People loyal to me—loyal to my belief of peace in our time have been searching for him since the night of his disappearance. We’re close—“
“Any diabolical mind that could conjure up something as destructive as a weapon that attacks it’s victim’s melon composition won’t be found, Joseph. If you were off the grid then a man like this one was never on it. He’s gone.” She said and couldn’t help but smile a little.
“Perhaps,” He picked up the dagger from behind it and examined it as if he’d seen it for the first time. “That’s why I came I risked everything I had left to find you, Angel.”
“What does that supposed to mean?”
“It means that once again you are right and I’m unlikely to fulfil my wildest aspirations of the Whirlwind in its full glory— but I will have to settle for a race war instead.” Champion ran two fingers the length of the blade. “I’ve often been told that information is power, Angel. And right now everything that I’ve told you,” He looked at the ceiling here and there. “Everything that I’ve told them—your friends in the FBI, will be repeated in a court of law…and soon,”
“Joseph, I—“
“Save it, Angel,” He screamed at her. And this his lip quivered as he said, “I know that they are coming to kill me. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I have grown tired of running from them. I am tired of running after him. What matters now is that you and everyone listening know the truth. And you aren’t the only ones—I’ve taken the time and effort to send this classified data to two other parties who would be interested in answering the third question that every American has asked: What is the Whirlwind? Thomas Pepper and the new leader of a House in Chains Christopher Prince will possess the answer to that question just as you will. There will be no earthly way to keep the truth from our adoring public. Thousands died in the streets in this country during the final nights of Scar and Serena’s Whirlwind, Angel. How many tens of thousands will parish when this truth is revealed in the weeks to come?”
Angel could hear something rattling just outside the front door and the sliding window behind her.
“So your people have a choice, Angel,” He said “They either tell the truth about the knowledge they possess or they become a part of a larger conspiracy. And remember, Angel, the larger the conspiracy bubbles, the more vicious the pop is when the truth finally burst from the cover-up.”
Joseph Champion looked like a king ever relaxed in his kingdom even with the knowledge that the FBI would be coming within seconds to prematurely end his reign.
Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree decided that she couldn’t even that long.
She squeezed his hand causing his own index finger to engage the firing mechanism of his gun firing a non-lethal but painful round into his left foot.
She got steadily more lethal from there however.
With Champion still screaming and trying to recover from his wound, Angel wrestled the knife from her would be assailant, grabbed it herself and stabbed her former lover through his neck with it like a deadly kiss—
The FBI, led by Agent Tabitha Blue, broke through the front entrance of the cabin with their weapons hot and finished the job she’d started by firing countless rounds into Joseph Champion until he was filled with bloody hole after hole…until his dead carcass struck the floor at Angel’s feet.
Two more agents dashed past them into the bedroom where hopefully her husband Seth hadn’t joined Champion in eternity. Angel heard first responder units climbing the mountain from all sides. The FBI had dispatched a helicopter to patrol the skies against any countermeasures against their people.
Angel lost all of her cohesion…and fell to the floor on her ass. Agent Blue ran over to her secured the
knot on her housecoat while she barked out instructions to the remaining agents in the room.
After handing her a glass of water Blue asked: “How did you know, Doctor? How did you tie all of the bits of information Champion was feeding you, about the President, about everything so quickly?”
“It’s been a theory of mine,” Angel said between baited breaths. She rested her head on her knees. She watched the paramedics wheel her bloody husband out of the cabin without even a glance in their direction. Seth didn’t look good.”
Blue wasn’t blind to her husband’s condition.
“Dr. Hicks Dupree, about what Champion said before. He had a sick, deranged mind but we won’t let him win.”
“But your people—“
“My people will keep silent—at least long enough for us to find this doctor from the Houston branch of the Center for Disease Control. This is exactly the kind of thing that Sheridan tasked me with when he assigned me this title. Give me a chance to do my job. I’ll have whoever this scientist is either in custody or in a casket soon enough. You have my word on that.”
Angel nodded her head, appreciating the younger woman’s fierce determination and drive. Although that won’t likely be enough to save us, Angel was more than willing to sacrifice herself—willing to risk her freedom for not stating everything that she knew in front of a Grand Jury. Yet, she was far