by Susan Grant
The Voice made a tsk-tsk sound. “Ye of little faith . . .”
Her voice attracted the attention of one of the military guards who had brought her dinner. “Shush!” she whispered.
The blond-haired guard stopped outside the bars to stare. How was she going to explain the talking? She threaded her fingers together so he’d miss how badly her hands were shaking.
The sergeant checked his six, looked right, looked left. Extreme wariness and curiosity rolled off him in waves. “So, here she is,” he said. “They say you can catch bullets with your teeth and can make yourself invisible.”
Had he been drinking? She turned her hands up. “I guess the invisibility potion didn’t work too well.”
“You’ve escaped capture so many times, it was the only way anyone could explain it.”
“Yeah. I’m a legend now, huh?” She glanced around the stark cell. Some legend. Yet that was her duty, her role in all this, wasn’t it? To be a force for change. To be the legend. To make them all believe.
“And the legend’s growing.” The guard checked his six again before continuing, his voice hushed. “Your name alone is all they need to unite volunteers in every Central town. Sheep, we call them. Sheep easily scattered if we shoot the shepherd.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “You mean me.”
“Yeah.” The guard’s gaze was intense. Although he stayed on the other side of the bars, his surly attitude made her a little nervous; not only because she had the Shadow Voice on the line, but because as the days went on, she’d seen fewer guards. If this one wanted to try something unpleasant, he could very well get away with it. “They found you guilty. High treason.”
“For what? For loving my country? For wanting liberty?” She stood straighter. “For being willing to die for freedom?”
“It’s a capital offense. They’re going to execute you for your crimes.”
Heat consumed her face. She’d long assumed death would be her sentence. Knowing it proved more difficult than suspecting it, though. “I’m not afraid.”
“You ought to be.”
“Don’t be afraid of death,” she said in a quiet voice. “Be afraid of the unlived life. My great-grandmother Michiko used to tell me that. She was four-foot-eleven, but she put the fear of God in every man in my family—all of them over six feet tall. She would have gone off to fight in World War Two if they’d let her. Instead she spent the war in a Japanese internment camp, even though she was born and raised in Omaha. It’s 2176—1776 was the year the thirteen colonies declared their independence. Now I’m here, a hundred and seventy years after I should have died in a missile attack. Coincidence? Maybe. I believe fate brought me here for a reason, and a lot of other people do also. I matter in a bigger way than anyone in the UCE chain of command ever wanted to admit, or they wouldn’t be trying so hard to kill me.”
Uncertainty flickered in the guard’s eyes then, a hairline crack in his armor that she hadn’t expected.
Her chin lifted. “I’m not afraid of dying for the country my great-grandmother loved, because its existence was synonymous with freedom. I want it back, that promise of freedom. And I think the people in the UCE do, too.”
The sergeant regarded her, his lips pressed together tightly. It surprised her that he didn’t argue. Was he not fully committed to doing the UCE’s dirty work? Had she given him cause for second thoughts? Bree wasn’t sure. If she wasn’t sure, then the guard might not be, either.
The guard turned away from the cell, took a few steps, and stopped. He turned once more to ponder her before disappearing where the corridor cut a sharp corner.
A shuddering breath escaped her. Bree let her eyes close for a moment, her hands shaking. Even if it all ended badly, which it looked as if it might, she could then die knowing she’d made some impact on a single soldier, however small. Pebbles hit ponds and made ripples that spread out in ever-expanding circles. One changed man like this guard could change others. Now all she had to do was hold tight to that thought when things got really scary.
She returned to the center of the cell. “You still there?” she asked the Voice in a hoarse whisper.
“Well done, the way you used the situation to our advantage.”
She bristled. “I meant what I told him. It wasn’t propaganda.”
“And that is what separates you and me from those who would like to see our efforts fail.”
“You seem to know a lot about me, yet I know nothing about you. Are you a woman? A man? Are you inside the UCE, or out?” Silence. She sighed. “When this is over, can I at least meet you?”
She could almost feel the person behind the Voice smile. “You already have.”
Her eyes opened wide. A hundred faces riffled through her mind like cards in a shuffled deck. She’d met the person behind the Voice? When? Where?
“What do I do in the meantime?” she almost whispered. “It hasn’t exactly been a vacation in here.”
“Stay strong. Know that the colonists support you.”
“I need to do more than stay strong. I need to do something concrete.”
“Look above when things grow darkest. Get as high as you can. Look to the sky, and you’ll know. I can’t tell you more.”
“Look to the sky. Got it.” Then an idea hit her. “Are you able to transmit my voice to the public? If I can somehow motivate them from inside prison, then maybe I can shift the political climate in favor of sparing me.”
“The climate already favors you. The entire Interweb was taken down after and because of your address to the public the other morning. Opinion is running so heavily in your favor that the government fears spontaneous combustion. General Armstrong ordered the UCE guard into New Washington and all the metropolitan areas. Civil disobedience, you see, and all because of you.” The Shadow Voice chuckled. She’d never heard the person laugh before. “Ah, it was beautiful, just beautiful.”
“What are you talking about? What address?”
“At your sentencing. You don’t remember being there?”
They found you guilty. High treason. So that was what the guard meant.
The flashback of a dream hit her: wall-sized monitors showing a turbulent crowd; Bree facing down General Armstrong by quoting Nathan Hale.
“I thought it was a dream. . . .” Part of it was a dream, thank God. “I hallucinated that I had a rope around my neck, that I was hanged.” She rubbed her throat and tried to work saliva into a suddenly dry mouth. “The guard just now said they gave me a death sentence. I assume an execution. Is there a timetable for the grand event?”
She wasn’t sure if what she heard coming from her collar was static or throat clearing. “Your execution is scheduled for nine tomorrow morning.”
Tomorrow? It felt as if the floor dropped away from under her feet. “What time is it now?”
“Nineteen hundred.”
Seven p.m. Fourteen hours to go—and counting.
Standing in shock next to her bed, she stared down at the tray of cold food. It looked like her surprise dinner had just turned into a last supper.
The minutes ticked relentlessly toward Bree’s execution. If only there were more time.
A somber drizzle fell as Ty Armstrong hurried through downtown New Washington on foot. The streets were filled with people. It seemed the entire civilian population was outside. If not for the national state of emergency and a brutally enforced curfew, the rest of Central would be here, too. Without an Interweb, news traveled the old way, via word of mouth. Ty had learned that UCE police had used chemical irritants to disperse the crowd from outside the Supreme Court Building, where they’d virtually camped out since Bree’s sentencing had taken place. Now they were flowing away from the capital—and Fort Powell, his destination. Time was of the essence, and he had to fight his way through a never-ending stream of anti-UCE protesters.
Avoid the UCE troopers at all cost, he thought. If he was arrested, his chances at saving Bree fell to nil. Clad in allblack riot gea
r, the police were tasked to defend the capital. He hadn’t yet heard that they’d shot at the protesters, but the atmosphere grew tenser by the second. It was only a matter of time before one of the troopers cracked, regardless of orders received, and fired into the crowd. When that happened, Ty hoped he was far from the action. Nothing must slow him down before he fulfilled his objective: getting to Bree before his father did.
She understands the choice she made, Tyler . . . and now she must face the consequences of that decision.
His father’s words haunted him. Something in the man’s eyes had left Ty cold. Now he knew why. Ty had watched a recording of the sentencing so many times that he’d all but memorized it. It was easy to understand why Bree’s appearance had roused such a furor. She’d looked worn out, drugged, though they’d been careful to erase any visible signs of torture. And the way she seemed to drift in and out of the proceedings, spent and dazed, hadn’t broken only Ty’s heart, but those of millions of colonists.
Murder would come easily to him, Ty decided, should he ever cross paths with those who’d made her suffer.
He wondered whose idea it was to televise the sentencing when they could have easily chosen to have closed proceedings. Perhaps it was a last-ditch effort on the part of the president to soothe the angry colonists.
How beautifully it had backfired.
Beauchamp, Ty had never cared for. Even as a boy he’d felt uncomfortable in the president’s company. The politician had a way of sucking all the air out of a room. Yet he’d commanded higher approval ratings than his father for all the years they’d worked together. Ty knew it was because his father made no excuses for what he was; he didn’t try to soften his edges or play politics. He simply did his job, brutal as it often was. Beauchamp, on the other hand, was as changeable as spring weather in Montana. Ty was pleased to see the president make such a spectacular public-relations blunder. Only, why did it have to be with Bree?
Bree . . . hang tight. I’m coming.
Ty checked his wrist computer. In less than five hours Bree would be executed in front of a firing squad—unless he did something about it. Soon they’d be coming to get her, to prepare her for the event. Then the guests would arrive to watch the happening—guests that Ty was certain included his father. Ty needed to be out long before that.
Other than the blade he wore on the inside of his wrist and the laser-guided semiautomatic he hid inside his trench coat, he had his hands to do his work—and those of a childhood friend and few wartime buddies.
He’d saved his share of lives while serving in the navy. It wasn’t anything he’d set out to do; in the course of battle, things happened. “I owe you, man,” many a grateful soldier had told him. “If you ever need anything, anything at all, just say when and where.” What he’d started with Ahmed, he’d continued here on his home shore, calling on those debts one by one. No one had turned him down.
Ty hunched his shoulders against the dampness and kept up his punishing pace toward the fort. A group of teenagers waving American flags collided with him. They spun away, but not before he glimpsed the unease in their faces. He knew what he must look like by now, after a couple of days living on the streets, but it must be worse than he thought. Better to disguise him from his father’s henchmen, he thought.
After leaving his parents’ home the night he’d learned of his father’s plans to execute Bree, and wanting to avoid the lonely familiarity of his small flat in the city, he’d slipped between the cracks and disappeared. He was good at it, disappearing. As a SEAL specializing in covert ops, he had the skills needed to assimilate into a culture, any culture, especially his own.
Ty took a side street he knew led to the fort’s rear gate. Rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw, he paused to ascertain the best place to await his contact. When he was on active duty, he could pass in and out of the gates with ease. However, a man in his situation—and with his intentions—didn’t dare enter in the usual way: submitting to a DNA scan that would set off alarms from here to his father’s office. Luckily, he had help.
Ty didn’t wait for more than a few minutes before he heard someone approach from behind.
“Yo.”
Ty turned slowly. A hulking man whose family hailed from the colony of Northern Mexico stood in the shadows. He wore the uniform of a UCE major. “Chico,” Ty murmured back.
They grasped each other’s hand. Neither said a word, but Ty was certain gratitude was written all over his face. He hadn’t known when he’d contacted him if Chico would support him or his father, and would have respected his decision either way. But Chico had seemed almost relieved. “It’s time to choose sides. For the sake of my wife and kids, I want to make sure I’m on the right one.”
“Then get me inside. You run the place.”
“I can get you in,” Chico had said. “But I can’t promise you’ll get out.”
Ty didn’t care what happened to him. It was Bree he wanted out safely. That was where the other blood debts came in. As a backup to his and Chico’s high-risk plan, Ty had called on one debt that would ensure Bree’s swift transport in a private magcar straight to the collection of another debt: a safe house in the form of a cattle ranch in the deserts of southwest Central, the Arizona region, with an ex-SEAL and his family. If the revolution came, Bree would be safe. If it didn’t, she’d be safe, too. Where Ty factored in after tonight didn’t matter.
And that was the way he needed it to be.
“Your father’s coming for the execution,” Chico said. “By heli-jet. He’s going to land on the roof. I’ve got to meet him or he’ll know something’s up. It’s bad enough as it is, most of my guards calling in sick. I’ve got a skeleton day shift reporting to work in a couple of hours, if that. But Armstrong will bring his own people. No matter what, stay away from the roof.”
Ty nodded gravely. The last thing he wanted was a runin with his old man in the midst of stealing away his prize prisoner.
The men walked to a late-model magcar parked in the street outside the prison gates. A folded uniform sat in the center of the backseat next to a chewed-on stuffed bunny. Chico’s private car. If the car was ever searched, DNA evidence obtained would confirm that Ty had been there, solidifying Chico’s guilt. Chico didn’t have to take such a personal stake in this. Leaving a uniform somewhere Ty could find it would have been good enough. But he’d done more, so much more.
“Viva Mexico,” Chico murmured in response to Ty’s thankful gaze.
Now it was clearer why Chico was willing to put so much on the line. If the UCE unraveled, other colonies besides Central would have a chance at freedom. Chico wanted his birth colony to be free.
Ty changed clothes in the backseat of the car, cloaked by the dark, wet night. When he climbed back out, he stood for Chico’s intense inspection. Chico checked for the presence of a transponder embedded in the uniform. The transponder would get him through the gates. What happened once they were inside the prison would depend on how much of what Chico had promised actually materialized.
It had better, Ty thought. Options were few, and time was short.
“You need a shave,” his friend told him, a trace of a smile playing around his lips. “What happened to the picture-perfect SEAL I knew?
“He found some buried treasure.” Ty stroked his chin. “Do I need to clean up?”
“Don’t sweat it.” The prison chief reached into the car and retrieved two helmets, one for each of them. With a dark face shield capable of night imaging, it would hide his features. Ty could see his own dark and sinister reflection reflected in Chico’s mask.
“Ready, man?”
Ty replied with a curt nod. They were going in.
Bree jackknifed up in bed, blinking in the darkness until her vision was as clear as it was going to get. Her heart pounded as if she’d just finished a 10K race. Impending death had a way of getting the blood going.
What was she doing sleeping with so little time left?
The drugs . . .
They’d given her something strong after dinner, and it had put her out cold. She hadn’t wanted to waste what could be her last hours sleeping; she’d begged the hated guard she called the commandant not to knock her out, but the cold woman had. How long had she slept? What time was it?
Why was it so quiet?
Bree concentrated, listening. The hall was as hushed as her cell. No one else was imprisoned in this section, but usually she could hear the guards—talking, coughing, laughing, and generally making a racket, even at night. Now there was no sound at all except for the faint hiss of air. Where was everyone?
“Hey,” she whispered to her collar. “You with me?”
The Voice didn’t reply.
“Hello?”
Nothing. She jammed a hand through her lank hair. How could she justify waiting any longer for the Voice of Freedom to get back to her when her life was on the line?
She pushed off the bed and went to the door, clinging to the bars. It was quiet. Too quiet. Then she heard a thumping noise coming from the section of the hallway she couldn’t see. It grew louder. A guard. Damn it. And he was running full speed, by the sound of it.
The guard turned the corner and lumbered to a stop outside her cell. One look at the shock of salt-and-pepper hair and breasts the size of watermelons told Bree who it was: her nemesis the commandant, the terrifying guard who had so efficiently assisted in the mechanics of her torture.
“You must come, come now,” the guard grumbled. It was the same greeting she always used when coming to fetch her for the interrogations. Surely they weren’t going to try to fit in a torture session this close to her execution. Unless the guard had come to escort her to the execution.
Like hell would she go easily. Bree stepped back from the bars. This revolution, like any other, was going to have its share of martyrs. Given a choice, Bree would rather not be one of them. If she had to be killed, she wanted it to be in action. She wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.
Bree took a couple of steadying breaths, pumping her arms to get the blood flowing to them.