Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2)

by Matthew R. Bell

  ‘He died there?’ Anna whispered.

  ‘No, he died while he was being airlifted to the city,’ I answered. ‘After that though more money was funnelled the town’s way; a full sized and up-to-date hospital was constructed, and a college too. It made the town more self-sufficient.’

  ‘I remember,’ Brian said. ‘both weren’t really finished until a couple years ago right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘3/4 of the hospital had been running for a while until the rest of the place could be finished, and the college was finished just before I was nineteen.’

  ‘At least something good came from Samuel’s death,’ Anna interjected.

  I nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ I smiled. ‘Well after that I wasn’t much fun to be around for a while. My Dad flipped for some reason.’

  ‘Flipped?’ Brian said.

  ‘Yeah, I don’t know wh-’ I started, but my mine nudged me. ‘Of course I know why. Dear old Dad was trying to keep me as complacent and safe as possible for his experiment, he probably thought having friends put it in jeopardy.’

  Brian nodded sadly and started to push the food around on his plate. Anna sensed the dark cloud and banished it with another smile.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘it’s gift time!’

  She got up and grabbed the shopping bag lying on the couch, then raced back over with the already wrapped gifts. She sat them in the middle of the table, and handed us tightly wrapped and heavily taped packages.

  ‘Jesus, Anna,’ Chris slurred, ‘d’ya expect me to break into this? This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, sweetheart.’

  Anna took the package from him and laughed. Chris narrowed his eyes and stared intently as Anna revealed his gift. It was a toy soldier, in army clothing. A big heart was painted on its chest, and a sweet smile separated its lips.

  ‘For the man with a plan, and a big heart,’ Anna smiled.

  Paul laughed maniacally, but tears came to Chris’s eyes and he smiled brightly, making the scars on his face far less menacing.

  ‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ Chris whispered and took the doll from her.

  ‘It’ll give you sumin to do in your spare time,’ Paul squealed.

  I laughed, and Anna frowned playfully. She handed Paul his, and he unwrapped it. The smile fell from his face, and as we all caught sight of his gift, we nearly fell off our chairs. In Paul’s hands was a large mug, a head with steam billowing out from the top plastered on its front. Words underneath dictated: ‘Chill out. Don’t panic. The world is not ending.’

  ‘Couldn’t have said it better myself!’ Brian smiled.

  The smile finally returned to Paul’s face, and he joined in on the laughter. Chris with slurred words poked fun back at him. Brian’s package was a toy laptop that beeped, and after pressing a few buttons, a robotic child’s voice echoed from the speaker.

  ‘You’re a star!’ it screamed.

  Brian beamed.

  I went to lift mine, but Anna covered my hand.

  ‘Not now, open yours later,’ she said, and the rest of the men at the table broke into cat calls and jokes.

  Anna laughed along with them and winked. We continued to polish off our plates, and when we were done, we sat there blissfully. Chris sang in a dull quiet voice, and his eyes were almost closing. A burp erupted from his mouth.

  ‘Go to bed, Chris,’ I said.

  ‘Zat is a good ideal, no, ideal, no,’ Chris’s forehead crunched in confusion, but he slouched off anyway. ‘Thanks for ze gift, Anna.’

  ‘No problem,’ Anna said, ‘sorry it’s not something spectacular.’

  ‘No, Anna,’ Brian said as Chris’s door clicked shut, ‘they’re perfect.’

  I helped Brian clear the table, and then moved it back to the wall on my own. Anna was smiling from the couch, watching me with drooped eyes. She looked tired. I grinned, my insides aglow with my feelings for her, well alcohol was a factor as well. It was all going brilliantly, until Paul’s voice shattered everything Anna had worked to create.

  ‘What the fuck are we doing!!?’ he screamed, making even me jump.

  His head rolled slowly around, and his speech slurred. The previous laughter and joy he had exuded had vanished, and his face turned a horrible shade of purple. Brian’s face fell, and he walked over and tried to lift his father up and move to their room, but Paul slipped out of his grasp.

  Paul himself shook, his teeth suddenly chattered and sweat slid down his face as if a bucket of water had been dumped over his head.

  ‘We brought you guys here to fucking stop all this shit,’ he spat, ‘and we’re all sitting here, pretending we have happy little 9-5 lives.’

  ‘Dad,’ Brian said.

  ‘Well we don’t!’ Paul bellowed and he lifted Anna’s mug and smashed it against the wall. ‘We don’t because of YOU! You and your fucking father.’

  ‘Dad!’ Brian shouted.

  Paul looked around at his son, his face maniacal. He finally grunted, pushed past Brian and slammed the door. Brian opened his mouth, but the apology died on his lips. He sighed and walked out after his father, leaving Anna and I open-mouthed and completely rattled.

  *

  ‘I shouldn’t have pushed it,’ Anna whispered.

  We’d changed and gotten ready for bed, reality finally taking over.

  ‘No, you were right,’ I assured her, ‘we needed something like this. Don’t be so hard on yourself over that arsehole. I honestly think there’s something wrong with him.’

  Anna’s face had hardened, her jaw clenched. I could see the internal struggle she was fighting. She wanted the comforts of a normal life, to balance them with what we had to do. She was losing.

  ‘No,’ Anna whispered. ‘I won’t be making this mistake again. Tomorrow we plan something. Tomorrow, we hunt your Dad down, we find my brother, and we put a stop to this, once and for all.’

  She turned and lay down, closing her eyes.

  It broke my heart.

  The Hunt

  When I woke the next morning, Anna was already up. Once I’d showered, brushed my teeth and changed, I headed out into the main room. Anna, Brian and Chris were bent over one of the screens of the many computers. Paul was nowhere to be seen, and the thought of his sudden outburst coupled with his new attitude for the most part, sent chills up my spine. Something was wrong with him, that much we could see, and the conversation I’d overhead was never far from my mind.

  I walked to the kitchen, poured some coffee, and joined the group. The screen they were staring at had some sort of outline on it. Small boxes and large boxes, names in the middle, and I finally realised they were building schematics.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said as a way of greeting.

  ‘I asked Brian to find out everything he could about the address he got,’ Anna answered, never taking her eyes from the screen. ‘The layout, security, what the building’s for.’

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  Brian swivelled in his chair, his eyes hooded and dark.

  ‘It’s an information centre kinda deal,’ he said. ‘People or businesses can hire one of the floors, and store information there.’

  ‘It’s a file room for the rich?’ I said.

  Chris nodded and sighed.

  ‘They offer different packages depending on how much the client needs memory wise. Since most things are done digitally now,’ Chris replied, but he wrinkled his forehead, and the gears in his mind looked to be whirring.

  ‘Can’t businesses and such not store their own information?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s less about capacity of storage, and more about security,’ Brian said. ‘High quality protection, guaranteed apparently.’

  I took a sip of the hot liquid in my hands, and stared at the screen. The building had around twenty-four floors, but the screen only showed one. That floor, being the twenty-fourth, didn’t have many rooms. From what I could see, the elevator stopped at a corridor, which led along to a large oval-shaped room. The schematic didn’t show wha
t the room contained though.

  ‘Why are you guys focused on this floor?’ I said, pointing my finger to the screen.

  Chris’s face tightened and he looked into my eyes.

  ‘Brian managed to pull this from the city’s database of buildings,’ Chris started, ‘although, we’re pretty sure your Dad isn’t here, but it’s definitely where the files came from, so he’s got a floor there. Brian tried hacking through each one.’

  ‘I was going to go through each floor’s file system,’ Brian continued, ‘see if any of them had files that matched what we took from the USB.’

  ‘And?’ I pushed.

  Brian exchanged a glance with Chris, and Anna just stared at the screen.

  ‘I couldn’t get in,’ Brian admitted and sighed. ‘I see why people use this place. It’s almost hack-proof.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain why you’re on this floor,’ I said.

  They both went silent, and Anna turned to face me. The fury on her face took me back. I had to fight the urge to take a few steps away, her fists clenched and unclenched, turning from bright red to white, until she crossed her arms.

  ‘What Brian did manage to find out, is who rents each floor,’ Anna whispered.

  ‘Who owns floor twenty-four?’ I asked hesitantly.

  ‘Apparently,’ Anna spat, ‘Anthony Gordon does.’

  She took a deep breath, quivered as she exhaled.

  ‘My brother,’ she finished, driving it home.

  *

  We sat for the next hour in thought, each of us unable to speak. It stunk, it all stunk, bad. Chris was sure we were being baited, that it wasn’t a coincidence. Anna was pumped though, her anger was palpable, her frustration and fear. They were taunting us with her brother, and the effect was terrifying.

  ‘We need whatever’s there,’ she spat into the silence.

  ‘Anna…’ Chris started, but a glare was fired his way, and he closed his mouth.

  ‘They want to taunt us? Fine!’ she blazed. ‘We’ll show them how fucking wrong they are to do it.’

  I knew what Chris wanted to say. I also knew how Anna felt, I knew exactly. I thought back to before we found out my father was an evil mastermind, to when I had fretted and worried over his whereabouts and safety. A good man had died to send me a message, a picture of my father, frail and near death. It had been a rouse though, an arrow that led us into a trap, a trap that resulted in me watching my mother leave this world, another trial for me to face.

  At that point, seeing that picture, I was taken over. Against everyone else’s better judgement, I had walked straight into my father’s trap.

  ‘We need a plan,’ Anna muttered as she paced back and forth in front of us.

  I sat on the couch with Chris, Brian behind Anna, swivelled every now and then in his chair.

  ‘Anna, I know that you don’t want to hear this, but,’ Chris sighed, ‘it’s a trap. It’s one big massive trap. They know we know that, and Lucas’s father is using your brother to bait you in anyway.’

  ‘Well it’s working,’ Anna replied, stopping. ‘If you think I’m going to pass this up, think again, Chris. Richard Bishop isn’t there, but there might be something in those files.’

  ‘If Brian can’t get in…’ Chris replied, but Brian coughed.

  ‘It’s not that I can’t get in,’ he said, ‘I just can’t get in from here. If someone can get into that room, connect me directly into it, I can get in.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘How did you manage to get a list of the people who own the floors?’

  Brian used his hands animatedly as he explained.

  ‘This isn’t the company’s only building,’ Brian said. ‘Digilock, the company, have two others in this city, and more elsewhere. Now, things like client names, and accounts, stuff like that are shared across one network with every building owned by the company. It saves time if someone who already has an account with them, and maybe wants to rent another floor of another building. The company can just open the client’s already existing files.’

  I nodded my understanding, and he continued.

  ‘To do that, the client’s account is shared over their wireless network, to make it easy to access from any building. I was able to snatch a copy out of cyberspace if you get me. Nothing is truly hidden there. The files on the floors on the other hand, are uploaded to a secure server by whoever rents them. By uploaded, I mean someone physically at the building. It isn’t connected to any Wi-Fi, the files don’t go anywhere. I tried to use Digilock’s network to access the files, but it just isn’t for happening. It’s completely separate, even the company doesn’t know what’s stored on their floors.’

  ‘Then we go in,’ Anna said.

  Chris sighed, he’d danced this dance with me, for all his skills, he wouldn’t come out on top. He stood up, and moved back to the screen.

  ‘Alright then,’ he grumbled, ‘we can’t just go in half-cocked.’

  Anna started up, but Chris shut her down.

  ‘No, Anna,’ he growled. ‘If we do this, we do this smart. We learn as much as we can no matter how long that takes.’

  I nodded and stood, walked over to Anna and took her hand. When I’d faced this type of problem, Anna had sided with me. I would return the favour. Not that I had even thought about giving the lead up.

  ‘You know I’m there,’ I told her. ‘I’m with you. No matter what, we go in.’

  Finally, she relented and took a shuddering breath. I squeezed her hand, and Chris got started.

  We talked until the sun had abandoned the sky. We would case the building and learn its security, its patrols. We would judge the best way to break in, and the quickest way to get out.

  We hadn’t come up with much, but we promised to start the next day. Chris begrudgingly agreed to take the car, and watch the building. All of us prepared for bed. Brian shut down his array of tech, and Anna informed me she was jumping in a quick shower. Chris left, and as Brian reached the door, I followed him out.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’

  Brian turned. His lips were pursed, and his forehead creased into worry. He knew why I’d secluded us, and he sighed, resigning himself to an explanation.

  ‘Where’s your Dad?’ I asked. ‘More importantly, what’s wrong with him?’

  Brian tugged at his collar.

  ‘He’s sick, Lucas,’ Brian gasped. ‘He’s sick.’

  ‘In what way?’ I said.

  ‘You remember the way he acted in Greystone?’ Brian started, crossing his arms, and then continuing once I’d nodded. ‘You remember it got worse? Really bad? And when you came back and the group had tied Jane up, and Chris asked my Dad if he’d been taking anything?’

  Jane McDonald had been the mother of the group, a strong, intelligent and compassionate woman that had sacrificed herself to send a message to our enemy, and also to help us escape. My heart sped up at the memory.

  ‘Well he had been,’ Brian sighed and his shoulders sagged with his confession.

  ‘Yeah, Grace had been drugging him, right?’ I said.

  ‘In a way,’ Brian replied. ‘It wasn’t without his knowledge, and eventually Grace stopped giving him it, that’s what sent him mad. He chose her side at the time because he wasn’t thinking clearly, he just wanted more.’

  ‘You mean he took it willingly?’ I said.

  Brian nodded, and took a second before he continued.

  ‘He’s addicted, Lucas. Really badly. You’ve seen him, one minute he’s fantastic, and the next he’s the man he was before,’ Brian said. ‘After we escaped it got to the worst it’s ever been. He went into withdrawal and had horrible nightmares. He never has handled Greystone well. Since we’ve been here, and I’ve been syphoning money from wherever I can, I’ve been using a contact of one the homeless guys to keep him stocked. But I can’t always get it and he’s getting worse. He’s beginning to need more and more, and I can barely get the stuff to begin with.’

  ‘What t
he hell is he taking?’ I whispered.

  Brian shifted and peered at me over his glasses.

  ‘Heroin,’ he said.

  I felt like I’d been slapped. Anger flared in my stomach, and I had to do a double take of what was just uttered. Heroin!? Paul was addicted to heroin!

  ‘You’re kidding me right?’ I spat. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’

  ‘Look at it from his point of view. It takes the edge of this for him, he’s not like us, no matter how he acts it,’ Brian said, coming into defence for his father.

  ‘No,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Don’t you dare try to rationalise this. As if we don’t have enough problems to deal with. Government bloody assassins and a secret science group, and now there are drugs involved?’

  ‘I can’t ask you to accept it,’ Brian pleaded, ‘but please try to understand. Please, don’t tell Anna and Chris. They just… Anna’s on a warpath, and Chris wouldn’t understand. Please, I’m begging you. There’s no time right now to get him the help he needs.’

  I stood there in complete shock. I didn’t know how to respond, what to think, what to do. On some level I truly did understand. For Paul, it was his escape from the reality that plagued us, but heroin!? In the end I nodded and promised him my silence. We had too much to contend with without adding drugs into the mix.

  ‘Just tell me if he gets too bad,’ I whispered, not too unkindly. ‘Even Paul’s a part of this family, but we can’t have that kind of liability right now.’

  Brian promised, and headed to bed. I pulled at my hair in frustration and slouched back through to the bedroom. Anna had showered, changed, and was now sleeping. I smiled and joined her, wrapping my arms around her. I kissed her forehead, and closed my eyes.

  Dad, what the hell are you up to?