Brock was locked up in an isolated suite of rooms. Not quite a jail cell, he had a wide array of facilities at his disposal – laboratory, recreation room, and a small bare kitchen that had been stripped of potential weapons. Plus a master bedroom with an en-suite. Nothing fancy, but sufficient for his basic needs and comfortable enough.
The difference was that he was all alone here. He didn’t remember anything before he’d left the Colonnade, but once he had been blindfolded everything had snapped vividly to back to life. He had panicked at first, and tried to run. Being blinded, he hadn’t got far. They tied him down after that. The next thing he knew, he was deposited into these living quarters where he now resided.
Brock wandered the rooms of his new home. He picked up a ball from the rec room and bounced it off the walls, humming to himself. Why should he do anything for these people who had taken him? He didn’t owe them a thing. He had a good job with the Confederacy. He was paid well, and the work was stimulating. Sure he hadn’t had a choice in the matter, and the pressure of constant deadlines was tough, but what job didn’t have its stressful phases?
He bounced the ball and caught it off the wall. Bounce, catch.
The last project he’d worked on... was for Simeon Warner. He couldn’t remember what the goal was though. All Brock had been able to think of was a burning desire to find... who? Someone. Dr. Prewett, his old colleague. That was it. Was it? He had been told Prewett had passed away peacefully surrounded by his family. Yet he had this strange feeling he should be looking for him. But that was crazy.
Bounce, catch. Bounce, catch.
Brock hadn’t seen a soul in weeks. Or was it months? Years? He’d heard them though. Voices in his head. Or were they? Perhaps there was a speaker system in his new home that he hadn’t found.
He’d come close to taking a screwdriver to his forehead. It was as if there had been a constant whisper tickling in the back of his mind. But when he had arrived here, wherever here was, the voices had been mercifully silenced.
It had only lasted for a week. One day a voice had boomed throughout his accommodation. Where was it coming from? It seemed to echo in his brain. It had asked him to recreate his program that interfaced with the bio-ID Prewett had made for General Withers.
Brock had groaned and just tried to ignore it. Was this his imagination playing some cruel trick on him? He’d spent the last six months trying to emulate Prewett’s bio-ID, now he was expected to make a new interface, and from what? He had nothing to work with except one lone desktop computer. Impossible.
The voice had said he would be released once he completed the interface.
Yeah, right, he thought.
Brock felt as though he had come full circle. He would just repeat past mistakes. So he wouldn’t do it. He refused the voices. They couldn’t make him do anything. They could not. Could not.
Bounce, catch. Bounce, catch. Bounce, catch.
The voices kept urging him to work. Ordered him. Bullied him.
Create the interface. Find Prewett. Which was right? What was real? The voices swirled around the room and inside his head.
Brock entered the rec room. He sank against the wall, the bouncing ball forgotten. He cradled himself and shook violently.
Then Dr. Prewett walked in.
This guy is a mess, thought Prewett. Perhaps avoiding contact had been a mistake. Time for a more direct approach.
‘Heyyy Brock.... How are you doing?’ Prewett approached him as though he was a dangerous animal. He avoided making any sudden moves, trying not to startle him further down into his deranged mindset. ‘Do you remember me? We worked on a few projects together back in the Colonnade labs. Oakman Systems? Bright Tech? Heh, remember that time Ian...’ Dr. Prewett trailed off, the laughter dying on his lips as Brock finally looked up at him.
Brock was visibly shaking and his glasses were fogged. ‘David? Is that you?’ he whimpered.
Prewett was taken aback. So he did remember him. And he’d used his first name. No one used his first name, how did Brock even know it? Only some of the High Council members knew...
‘Listen to me Brock, this is very important. I need you to make another interface for the General’s bio-ID. You were always the one who liked those stone-age desktop computers, well it turns out you were right. I think the iPCs have been hacked. Not all of them, not yet. But soon enough.’ Prewett gave up the gentle approach, taking Brock by the shoulders and shaking him. ‘Do you hear me?’
That finally got Brock’s attention. He seemed to focus on Prewett for the first time.
‘David, I...’ he shook his head. ‘How can that be? The iPCs would show visible signs if they were being controlled by a third party. That’s how they were originally designed... If an iPC has been hacked it turns red.’ His glasses were still fogged, and he avoided eye contact. He curled up into himself and roughly scratched the back of his head. ‘You look okay to me.’
‘I know,’ Prewett said, nodding. ‘The hacker is limited for now. Whoever he is, he can’t send it over a wireless signal. Hell I’m not even sure how anyone could even do it over a hard connection. It must be something else...’
‘Line of sight.’
Prewett sat back and regarded Brock with a keen eye. ‘You know more about this than you’re letting on.’
Bounce, catch. Brock didn’t answer. Bounce-
Prewett caught the ball. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You created an alternate bio-ID system.’
Brock began to lose his wits again at those words. He shook his head like a baby and rocked back and forth.
‘It doesn’t matter now. We’re dead. All of us.’ He stared into the middle distance as he said it, as if he could see the impending apocalypse. Prewett slapped him. This was getting out of hand. Soon Brock may never fully be here in the present.
‘Are you the hacker? Is it a virus? Who else did you use it on?’ Prewett’s voice broke in desperation. But Brock stopped shaking. He appeared to become more lucid for a moment. He was confused.
‘Who... who else? What do you mean...’ The truth finally dawned on Brock. He jumped to his feet, knocking Prewett onto his back in the process. Brock scrambled for the en-suite, knocking over furniture and tripping on the rug in his bedroom, heedless of the damage he left in his wake. Eventually Brock made it to the bathroom mirror, and yanked off his glasses. The eyes staring back at him were as red as the Devil himself. He had iPCs implanted in both eyes. They focussed in different directions, then snapped back too far as if cross-eyed. He had no control over them.
‘No! When did that happen... who?! Oh God, no!’
Tears flying, he beat a fist into the mirror, sending a crack snaking across the length of it. The broken monster that stared back at him held no pity in his eyes. That itchy spot on his head! He felt along the back of his skull, and felt the stitches. Brock tore at the back of his head in a rage. ‘Dammit, goddam it, no!’
Prewett peeled himself off the floor and appeared in the mirror. In Brock’s rage, all he could see were his own two red eyes, like fiery condemnations piercing his soul. He looked past himself, and saw Prewett’s reflection as a demon, wings spread wide to take him far away.
Brock tore out a shard of the mirror and spun around. The fragment lodged itself into Prewett’s temple before he could utter any final words. Prewett collapsed on the bathroom tiles, blood pooling around his head in a fatal halo.
The walls seemed to close in around Brock more than ever. Eyes were watching him from every corner.
Blood gushed from Dr. David Prewett, too much for the human body to be able to hold. He seemed to laugh and gurgle on the torrent of blood and bile. But that couldn’t be, he was dead.
The voices, that had been so wonderfully silent while speaking to Prewett, rose once again in a gleeful roar. Brock clamped his hands to his head like an obstinate child.
Far away at the top of the Tower in the Colonnade, Simeon whispered commands in Brock’s head. Unable to stop himself, Brock obeyed. He
ripped Prewett’s passkey hanging from his belt and ran to the one door he had never been able to use. He swiped the key at the terminal and burst out into the bright sunshine of Wake Island.
As Brock collapsed face down into the sand, Simeon watched it all, and laughed.
Chapter 27
Joshua hesitated outside the interrogation room and watched Meyrick through the one-way glass for a few moments. He was handcuffed to the table inside. The room looked brand new. This must have been one of the few times the Academy had had a prisoner worth working over.
Sarah paused with her hand on the door. She saw the reluctance written on Joshua’s face.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We’ll get him to sing. Just do the opposite of what I do.’
‘The thought had never crossed my mind,’ he said, thinking of Sarah’s blood-rage back in the Colonnade.
‘I won’t kill him,’ Sarah stressed. ‘But give me two minutes alone with him first.’
Joshua nodded, hardly taking his eyes off the monster in the next room. Had Meyrick been the one to take Lucia all those years ago? It seemed unlikely. Perhaps on his orders, but not by his own hand. Yet it was Meyrick’s office that had led straight down to the hidden cavern, where they’d discovered the secret armament of war drudges. Just one of those giants could probably level a city block in seconds, whereas the drones needed hours.
Then there had been the thousands of people trapped in the pit near the drudges. Joshua assumed they’d been rounded up to build the huge machines. It was the obvious conclusion, but Joshua didn’t expect it to be that simple. It never was with the Confederacy. The drudges had looked at least ninety percent complete, so why keep the thousands of labourers at all? There had been that laser poised above their heads too... was it there to kill them?
These were not the questions Sarah would try to squeeze out of Meyrick. She wanted to track down the High Council members. But Joshua wasn’t ready to give up on his sister yet. Sarah told him what he had seen was just a hallucination brought on by an overdose of the jumpsuit’s auto-meds. He needed better proof than that before he could let the matter drop.
He shook his head to clear it. It wouldn’t do to dwell on these thoughts. If Meyrick didn’t know where his sister was, one of his Confederate buddies would.
Joshua wasn’t leaving until he found out. He watched as Sarah sat down across the table from Meyrick.
Her back was to Joshua so he couldn’t see her face, but he could tell she was all business by the way she held herself. Meyrick was a sack of meat squeezing through the gaps in his chair. He sat still with hands clasped in front of him on the table. The attempt at an illusion of power was impressive, but the shackles on his wrists and ankles proved otherwise. His jowls began flapping, so Joshua flicked a switch on the wall to let in the sound from the next room. He caught Sarah mid-sentence.
‘...No due process here. You’re off the books, if there ever were any,’ she was saying.
Joshua guessed Meyrick had asked for a lawyer. He snorted. How ironic, he thought.
‘You brought this system upon yourself,’ Sarah continued. ‘There will be no trial, no jury of your peers, no representation. Why should you be the first in forty years? No, you’re looking at the judge, jury and executioner right in front of you.’ She spread her arms magnanimously. ‘If you want to waddle away from here, you’d better start with a plea... and it better not be insanity, because we knew that one already.’
She managed all that in one breath. Joshua couldn’t help but be impressed.
‘How can you make it worth my while to give up my colleagues?’ Meyrick asked, skipping straight to bargaining.
Joshua was surprised. Surely Meyrick knew he wasn’t ever getting out of here. Sarah wasn’t going to go down that road. She stood up.
‘Tell you what,’ she said emotionlessly, as she produced the photo of the Confederate High Council they had found in Meyrick’s office. ‘For each name and location you give me, that’s one finger or toe you can keep.’
She pushed the photo toward him and walked around the table dragging a knife that had appeared in her hand. The scratching noise was like nails on a chalkboard. Meyrick winced. He was losing this deal fast.
He’ll lose his digits even faster, thought Joshua. He burst into the room before Sarah did too much damage. He took the knife from her. Meyrick’s pinky finger bled everywhere, but it was still attached.
Joshua trundled Sarah out the door and sat down. They made a show of it, but they need not have bothered since Meyrick was blabbering like an infant.
‘I can’t keep her away from you for long,’ Joshua said. ‘Not until you give me something to work with. I promise once I have the information I need, I’ll move you to a more secure location.’
‘I... can’t go back home?’ Meyrick was a miserable mess. His mouth was still cut to shreds from Sarah’s previous assault on him. The drugs must have made him forget what had happened in the Colonnade.
‘No,’ Joshua said simply.
Meyrick whimpered.
‘Look Meyrick, you can’t go back to the Confederacy now, or ever. You’re tainted. They would never believe you hadn’t sold them out, and they’d kill you anyway.’
Meyrick’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
Sheesh just how naïve is this guy? Joshua thought. He almost pitied him, then he remembered Lucia.
‘Okay let’s start small,’ Joshua offered. ‘There is a girl, she was taken by the Confederacy six years ago. Yeh high, brown hair, freckles, a real wise-ass.’ Meyrick looked up between sobs. ‘She’ll be fifteen now, name of Lucia,’ Joshua finished.
Meyrick shook his head. ‘No one like that in my district. I only take adults.’
Joshua was shattered. So he hadn’t seen Lucia that day in the Colonnade. But Meyrick wasn’t finished.
‘The Fletchers have her.’
Sarah burst back into the room with a thunderous bang. Before Joshua could argue, she snatched back the knife and twisted it into the wound on Meyrick’s hand.
‘Okay! Please, stop!’ he yelped and twisted in the seat. The shackles kept him pinned however, and Sarah did not let up.
‘Where are the Fletchers?!’ she snarled, sending spittle in Meyrick’s face. ‘Where are they?!’
Joshua was in a daze. Lucia was alive. Meyrick had just confirmed it. She wasn’t in the Colonnade, but she was out there somewhere. Now he had a name to go on. The Fletchers.
Meyrick was defeated, but he wasn’t going to give any information to Sarah. He didn’t trust her to stop the torture and Joshua couldn’t blame him. He convinced Sarah to ease off Meyrick then bundled her back outside the room. In the apparent safety with Sarah gone, Meyrick finally broke.
‘The Fletchers are in Hawaii. I’ll give you the co-ordinates, just stop!’
Joshua left him there with the photo of his partners, a weeping broken shell of a man who knew he would not be seeing daylight for a very long time, but relieved to be alive for now.
Outside the interrogation room, Joshua regained his composure. ‘That was a bit extreme.’
Sarah shot him a hard look. ‘We just found out where your sister and the Fletchers’ base are. I’d call that a win.’
‘Seems like you’ve got quite a history with the Fletchers...’ Joshua began.
Sarah narrowed her eyes.
‘Look, I’m worried about you.’ Joshua stood awkwardly, unsure of what to do with his hands. ‘Aren’t you taking this a bit too far? I mean, I appreciate all you’ve done to help me, but...’
‘Yeah I know,’ Sarah sighed. ‘That was why I recruited you after all. I needed the reminder, so... thank you.’ She put a hand on Joshua’s shoulder. ‘Tell you what, when we go after the Fletchers, I’ll follow your lead. No killing, no blood. Promise. Okay?’
She smiled and Joshua’s chest thumped madly. Sarah really was beautiful when she wasn’t killing things.
‘Okay,’ he nodded. ‘So, the Fletchers have my sister? Who
are they? I’ve never heard of them before.’
‘No you wouldn’t have,’ Sarah said. ‘But Ryan was one of them. The Fletchers are a group of assassins created by the Confederacy with the sole purpose of finding the Academy. They were the ones who found our first base in Japan. They’re the best chance the Confederacy has of finding this place. The thing is, Meyrick knows this. So why would he give up their-’
An alarm wailed and a siren flashed warning lights overhead, cutting Sarah off. Everything dimmed as the power switched to an internal generator.
Casey’s voice blared out over an announcement system. ‘The Academy is in lock-down. All students return to yer lodgings immediately. This is not a drill.’
Chapter 28
The Academy was in a full-blown panic. Confused and scared students ran everywhere. Many grabbed weapons from the range and pointed them fearfully in every direction, as though someone might attack at any moment.
It was a poor choice of words from Casey, Joshua thought ruefully. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the commotion. ‘He should have given these kids more details!’
Sarah ran next to him, shoving people out of the way. ‘Maybe he doesn’t know any more himself!’
Joshua shook his head. ‘No excuse! At least give them something more useful to do than cower in their rooms!’
Sarah tugged on Joshua’s shoulder, stopping him. ‘Hey!’ She brought her head in close to speak without shouting. ‘Find Casey. Find out what’s going on. But we have to move against the Fletchers as soon as possible. Tell him. Get some real support on this one.’
Joshua nodded.
They made their way to the auditorium instead of going to their dorm rooms. A few brave stragglers noticed and fell in their wake. Joshua felt like he was leading a ragtag band of brothers. He didn’t even really know these kids, but they trusted him enough to lead them. He hoped he could live up to their expectations.
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