Amid the Shadows

by Michael C. Grumley

  Tran expected the reprogramming to take only hours, which meant also reprogramming the system’s manual safeguards. But when it was done, it would do the unthinkable…it would then simulate a nuclear launch against China from both Russia and the United States, and the Chinese Command and Control system would no longer be able to tell the difference.

  In the end, China’s systems would believe it was under attack, and automatically launch its entire nuclear arsenal against its attackers.

  The United States’ original Stuxnet worm was the first to leap the barrier from the virtual world to the real world. Stux2 would use that leap to launch a full-scale, global, nuclear war.

  Tran stared at his screen for a long time. The world had become so terribly dirty and corrupted. He regretted having to do it, but he had realized long ago this was the only way to cleanse the system, all of the systems. Mankind had to start over.

  He looked at his screen again and pressed the Enter key, which sent the command for the attack to begin in six

  hours. By then he would be on a plane and far over the Pacific Ocean.

  51

  Robert Correia wanted revenge. He wasn’t supposed to, but he did.

  Born and raised in the Bronx, he’d spent almost as many hours in church as he had in school. It was because of his mother, a devout Catholic. She was a believer through and through and would often tell her children when their actions went against God’s will, so it was no surprise her four children grew up as close to the church as she had. They were true to their faith, and none of them had married outside the church. As far as his mother was concerned, their hearts and souls were pureblood.

  But Correia stared through the bars with a pain like he had never felt. His Pope was gone, murdered in broad daylight. And worse, his mother was also dead. So distraught by the news, his elderly mother had fainted and collapsed. Two hours later, she was dead.

  Correia was seething. His mother, his life, and his faith were all shattered because of the man lying on the floor on the other side of those bars. Correia was a deputy sheriff at Rikers Island, and at 2 a.m., he was standing silently before the cell of the man who destroyed it all.

  He watched the dark shape on the floor and could hear a faint gurgling sound as the man tried desperately to breathe. The world was simply not meant for men this evil. He didn’t deserve to be here. Correia gripped the metal baseball bat in his hand, looking left and right down the dark corridor. Everyone was asleep, and the two other deputies had conveniently decided to go downstairs in search of something.

  Correia had already unlocked the door from a distance and now reached out and grabbed one of the thick bars, pulling the door outward. He looked up and down the corridor again and quietly stepped forward into the dark cell. The man at his feet had been beaten as close to death as anyone he had ever seen. In fact, no one could believe he was still alive, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise if he unexpectedly died during the night.

  The hate welled up inside Correia as he raised the bat up over his head. There would be no turning of this cheek.

  “Don’t you dare,” came a voice from behind him. It was followed by the sound of the safety being released on a semi-automatic hand gun.

  Correia froze.

  “Put it down.”

  The deputy slowly lowered the bat down over his head, quickly trying to think of an explanation. “I…uh,” he stammered. “I was just…angry. I wasn’t really going to do anything.”

  “Lay it down and back up out of the cell.”

  Correia complied. As he exited the cell, he was thrown forcefully against the bars without warning and felt his nose break. “AHHH!” He groaned and stepped back but was slammed into the bars a second time, even harder.

  The face of Bazes appeared from a shadow behind him, followed by the older chaplain. Bazes whispered into the deputy’s ear. “If I see you move one inch, I’ll make sure you never walk again.”

  “I can’t believe he’s still alive,” the chaplain said as they eased Rand down onto a table in the infirmary.

  Bazes simply nodded his head. He’d never seen anything like it. He reached up and turned down the brightness of the overhead lamp.

  Below them, Rand managed to open one eye. “Who are you?” he whispered through swollen lips.

  “That’s a long story,” Bazes smiled. “But we’re here to help.” The chaplain nodded from over his shoulder.

  Rand slowly rolled his eye back and forth. “Where am I?”

  “You’re at Rikers Island,” Bazes answered. He looked down at Rand’s arms and noticed they were still shaking. Bazes put his hands on one arm trying to calm him but realized the tremors ran throughout his body. “I think you’re having a prolonged seizure.”

  “It’s not a seizure,” Rand said quietly. “What time is it?”

  The chaplain looked at his wristwatch. “It’s two twenty-five a.m.”

  “What day?”

  The chaplain looked curiously at Bazes. “It’s Monday, the 8th.”

  Bazes looked into Rand’s eyes. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I have some idea. And I think you and I are looking for the same person.”

  “What happened in here?” Rand grimaced in pain when he tried to move.

  Bazes looked at the chaplain. “They think you killed the Pope.”

  Rand let his head fall back onto the table and stared straight up at the ceiling. “The Pope is dead?”

  “Yes, and I think the man we’re both after is the one who did it,” Bazes said. “And I don’t think he’s finished.”

  Rand’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I think he’s planning something else, something worse. But I don’t know exactly what.”

  Rand closed his eye. The trembling was getting stronger. There wasn’t much time. He opened both eyes and looked back at Bazes. “Where’s Avery?”

  Avery was also lying motionless on his cell floor, but he was in worse shape. Due to his age, they hadn’t beaten him as badly, but no longer having the ability to heal like Rand, his injuries were terminal.

  Bazes and Wilcox helped Rand down onto his knee beside him. He couldn’t hear Avery’s breathing, and when he checked his pulse he could barely feel it. He was slipping fast. Rand put his shaking hand gently on the back of Avery’s head. Then he ran it over the top and down over his eyelids.

  “Go home,” Rand said softly, squeezing his shoulder. “You’ve earned it.”

  As he tried to stand up, Avery’s hand suddenly moved and reached out for him. Rand quickly grabbed it. His lips were moving and Rand knelt down, trying to hear.

  Avery whispered something, but it was still too faint. His strength was gone, but Bazes and Wilcox helped Rand down even further, so his ear was just inches from Avery’s mouth.

  “Tell Sarah,” Avery whispered, “to be strong.”

  With that, Avery let out his last breath, his body relaxed and rolled back onto the cold floor.

  Rand stared at him for a long time. Avery had given him so much, trained him, taught him and prepared him. Rand’s jaw tightened as he took a deep breath and pushed himself up. With his teeth clenched tightly, he rose enough to get a shaking leg under his weight. Both Bazes and the chaplain reached out, but Rand stopped them.

  “No!” he growled, rising up into a kneeling position and then sliding his second leg beneath him. Finally, with everything he had, he pushed himself up and onto his feet.

  He turned and looked at the two men. “Can you get me out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need a plane, and I could use some help.”

  Bazes looked at the chaplain, then back at Rand. “I have resources.”

  52

  “Well, if you’re not going to speak, I suppose we’ll need to help incentivize you.”

  Christine glared at him as Zahn walked to a nearby table and picked up an old style phone. She could still see Sarah crying on the monitor.

  Zahn lifted the handset and pushed a s
ingle button. Kia Sarat’s voice answered on the other end. “Our guest has decided she doesn’t want to talk,” Zahn explained. “Why don’t you pay the little girl a visit. And feel free to be…creative.”

  Zahn hung up and watched with a smile as Christine’s eyes grew larger upon seeing Sarat enter Sarah’s room on the monitor. He retrieved a small blindfold from his pocket when Christine blurted out, “Okay Okay! I’ll tell you! Just don’t hurt her.”

  Zahn rolled his eyes and picked the phone back up. God, they were all so predictable. He rang the extension again, and Sarat stopped short of putting the blindfold over Sarah’s eyes. He put it back in his pocket and left the room to pick up the call.

  “Wait a minute,” Zahn told him. “Someone’s had a change of heart.” He hung up the phone again and turned to Christine. “You were saying?”

  “She can see things,” Christine said reluctantly.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Souls. She can see people’s souls.”

  Zahn wasn’t just surprised; he was stunned. His mouth dropped open and he turned and stared at the monitor again, as if seeing Sarah for the first time. His expression was quickly replaced by one of fascination. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  That was how she did it. That’s how she saw him! Never in his wildest dreams. He stared at the monitor for a long time and eventually began to chuckle. His chuckle then turned into a laugh. “My god, that’s what this is about!” He kept laughing. “Why did I not think of that? I never-” He stopped and turned back around. “Oh, Ms. Rose, you are quite the idiot. You don’t even know enough to realize you’ve given me the greatest gift of all.”

  Now it was Christine’s turn to be surprised.

  “You haven’t the slightest clue what’s happening here,” Zahn said, regaining his composure. “I knew you had help protecting her, but I never thought it was this. This is truly the icing on the cake.” His dark grin grew wider. “He doesn’t know, does he?” Zahn cried with excitement in his eyes. “He doesn’t know who I am! He’s after one of his own, and he has no idea!”

  Christine was stunned. One of his own? He was like Rand? But how could he be so old? It was impossible to live that long. Her mind raced, trying to put the pieces together. Rand said there would be a point where he must be there for Sarah. That was his mission. But what happened if he wasn’t?

  Christine gasped. “Oh my god, you failed!” she shouted at him. “You failed your mission!”

  Zahn was taken aback, and his eyes quickly flared.

  That was it! Sarah had seen him somewhere. She’d spotted him. And if he failed his mission way back then…then he never earned his soul. Which meant that if Sarah saw him, he would have looked like Rand, SOULLESS!

  In a single moment, everything became clear to Christine. Sarah spotted Zahn, and he knew it, he just didn’t know how! He simply couldn’t figure out how she did it, until Christine actually told him. And that meant she was right; he was afraid of her!

  Christine flashed back to her decision sitting in the back of the Charger, that she would fight to protect Sarah with every breath she had. And she realized her fight for Sarah wasn’t then; it was now.

  This time, it was she who smiled. Zahn stared at her curiously.

  “You are afraid of her, aren’t you?” Christine accused him. Her smile grew. “You’ve been afraid of her the whole time.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  Christine continued to press. “That’s why you always sent someone else to do your dirty work. If you’re truly like Rand, or even stronger as you say, you could have simply come yourself and been done with it. But you didn’t.” She sneered at him. “You were afraid of her. You were afraid of a child.”

  “Shut up!” Zahn snapped. “I had other responsibilities. You can’t imagine what it took to make this happen. Do you think it happened overnight? Can you even fathom how many people I had to involve, most of whom never even knew. You have no idea!”

  Christine glared back shaking her head. “How in the world does someone like you become so sick?!”

  “HE ABANDONED ME!’ Zahn suddenly flew into a rage. He stood over Christine with his nostrils flaring and eyes that were now black. “I tried to be everything I thought he wanted from me! I followed the path. I protected others. I even saved others, but he didn’t care. He never cared!” Zahn caught himself. He tried to calm down and looked at a different picture on the wall. This time it was an old photo of a group of soldiers. “I even went to war for him. One of your wars. But I still fought for him.” Zahn’s focus drifted off again. “I’d stolen a British identity so I could fight on the front lines, and once there, I could switch identities with no effort at all. Just grab another card from a dead soldier. It let me use my skills without being noticed. And that’s when it happened.”

  Zahn’s gaze seemed to push deeper into the old photo. “That’s when everything changed.”

  While he stared into the picture, Christine silently traced the ropes with her hands down and around the bottom of her chair. But she could not find how they were tied.

  “That’s when the killing began,” Zahn said. His voice slowed. “I did it for the good of god, for the side of the righteous. It was my chance to fight for him again, to prove myself again. So I killed the enemy, over and over and over, relentlessly. And I was good at it. After all, fighting is what I was made for, what all of us were made for. But instead of proving my faith, something else happened.” He stopped briefly again, still staring at the wall. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to kill hundreds of people, thousands? It’s almost indescribable: sick, twisted, dark…but powerful!” Zahn closed his eyes. “Immensely so. There is something incredible that happens when you watch the life fade and disappear from another person’s eyes.” He opened his own eyes again. “Ironic isn’t it? For years I fought for him, and in the end, it not only drove me to kill, it taught me to love it.”

  His voice grew cold. Christine wasn’t sure if he was still talking to her. “I didn’t realize it then, but after all those lifeless bodies, after I’d finally lost count, something broke. The world gradually became darker and darker, and I eventually began to understand the truth. And the truth is that he doesn’t really care about any of us. We’re just pawns to him, in a giant game, to use as he pleases and to throw away when he’s done.”

  Christine kept her eyes on him and quietly tried to trace the ropes again.

  “And when I realized that, when I realized he’d already lost interest in me decades ago, I finally felt it. I felt the freedom of truth, freedom from the belief we Lochem are born with, that he loves and fights for us all.” Zahn shook his head. “It’s not true, any of it. It is the ultimate lie. The ultimate lie about who we are and why we are here. You want to know what our purpose is? To be sheep, just sheep, all helplessly controlled until he is done with us.” His gaze remained locked onto the wall, almost in a trance. “But he made a mistake. He left someone here who refused to be one of his sheep, who refused to live and die by his whim. He abandoned the wrong person, a person who knows nothing except how to fight.”

  “And one day I saw the light. It was as if, after all those years, my destiny had finally found me. As the life left yet another person I had killed, and he slowly fell from my grasp, my revelation crystalized. With that kill, and every kill before it, I was doing what I should have done all along, rejecting him. I was sending his precious children back to him. The ultimate insult, and the ultimate power.”

  Christine froze when Zahn suddenly turned to her with a strange, twisted look on his face. “It was then my destiny became perfectly clear. Send them all home. SEND THEM ALL!”

  53

  Sarah sat shivering in the cold metal chair. Her tiny face was covered with glistening lines, tracks left by countless tears. She was so scared. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened to everyone. When she woke up, there was no one to help her and no one to protect her. The only person s
he’d seen was the red man who would come into her room and stare at her for long periods of time.

  The empty, grey room was completely featureless, except for the small camera and tripod at the far end. A single light bulb overhead was the only other item in the room with her. She tried to twist around to see the door but couldn’t. She was so hungry.

  Sarah didn’t know she was being watched from a distance. She quietly squirmed in her chair trying to relieve some of the pain in her legs. She thought of Christine and felt the tears begin to fill her eyes again.

  It was then that something stirred inside of her. She felt it in the deepest recesses of her little heart, something warm and comforting. She could feel the tears slow and some of the fear subside as the feeling grew stronger and stronger. Rand was coming.

  54

  Even in the evening, Bogota Colombia was hot and humid, much more than Ron Tran was expecting when he exited the plane. China had humidity, but not like this. The sweat began almost immediately as he walked across the tarmac toward the terminal.

  All of his belongings fit into four large suitcases and a backpack which bounced lightly against his back. The computer in his bag looked like any other, and frankly any agent that asked him to boot it up would never have known what he was looking at anyway. Nevertheless, Tran never let it out of his sight.

  He breathed a sigh of relief to find the terminal building air-conditioned, and he stopped to catch his breath. Looking around, he could instantly see the difference in security that a third world country had to offer. He spotted just two security agents, both eating dinner and engrossed in a conversation with each other. The rest of the travelers walked by them without attracting a second glance. Drug trafficking was the number one concern in Colombia, but not when it came to arriving flights. After all, who would bother bringing drugs into the country?