by Ric Beard
“One-hundred-fourteen years, give or take.”
Sean hugged Jenna, Marie—whatever.
“What in the unholy name of fuck’s sake are you crazy-ass people talking about?” Reagan asked.
Sean laughed, but he didn’t let go of Jenna. She was warm, and somehow she still smelled like a woman after days on the road and without a shower.
Introductions were made. When it was Scruff’s turn, they turned to find him smiling.
“So, you knew?” Sean asked.
“Of course he knew. I don’t keep secrets from the big guy.”
Scruff’s smile grew wider.
Jenna walked over and grabbed the knot in his beard and kissed his fuzzy chin.
“I can’t believe you’re alive, Lucian,” Sean said. “I have so many memories of you, all those years ago, with Miranda. It’s like seeing a ghost.”
Something washed across Lucian’s face and his eyes dropped. Sean couldn’t quite read it. Grief? He wasn’t sure.
“Outside of that machine, I haven’t had anyone call me that in years.” He pointed at the Black Cat vehicle.
“What do you go by?”
“Lucian is fine. Miles was a cover name. I won’t need it anymore.”
“A cover name?”
“William—I’m sorry, do you like Sean or William?”
“Sean. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Sean, we have about 120 years of catching up to do, but I need you to trust me.”
“Trust you how?”
“That force over the hill from where you were is just the tail end of a nightmare bearing down on Triangle City.” He pointed at The Beast. “When Marie radioed ahead and told me what you were driving, well, I knew what had to happen. It’s the only thing that keeps me from taking you right now and going far from Triangle City.”
“To where?”
“Again, you’re going to have to trust me,” Lucian said. “You have to get that truck to Triangle City. It could be the one thing that saves their asses from The Chain.”
“I see. Can I get around them?”
“Absolutely. I’ve already laid out a path. Follow it and you’ll get there ahead of them. But you can’t dilly dally. You have to move.”
“You’re not much for reunions,” Sean said with a smile.
Lucian looked at him for a long moment. His eyes danced from one of Sean’s to the other, then back again.
“Brother, you don’t know how badly I wish you could stay. But when your business is done, Marie and I are going to be waiting for you. I’ll mark a spot where you can get out of the city without passing through the gate. Finish your job, get out of there before the attack starts, and meet me at that spot.”
Sean looked at Jenna and asked, “You’ll be there, too?”
“We haven’t decided,” Jenna said. She stepped forward and embraced him again. “But I will see you again. If not immediately, then when we get you home.”
“Home?”
“That’s part of a surprise 114 years in the making,” she said.
“I have to know, guys,” Sean said.
Lucian and Jenna remained silent.
“Did Miranda—”
“She was in D.C. when the riots started,” Lucian said. “I’ll tell you the rest outside the wall. The truck is too important, Sean. You have to go.”
Sean lowered his head and thought about his red-haired little sister, tapping away at her iPad in the back of their parent’s car the last time they’d seen them alive. He saw an older Miranda sitting in a courtroom behind him as he was sentenced to prison. Though he couldn’t paint the picture of her face in her mind anymore because of the crossing of so many years, he could feel her spirit, and it renewed an old hole in his chest. When he’d figured out who Jenna and Lucian were, he’d had a moment of hope. But if the odds had been low that the three of them would meet again, they’d be even lower that there could be four.
It was too much to ask. Rejoice in what you’ve found.
“Before we leave…”
They all turned to see Reagan’s smaller frame standing behind Sean with a hand on her hip. She looked at Lucian.
“Got a smoke?” She asked.
Lucian shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Shit. Why doesn’t anyone smoke anymore?”
They pulled The Beast onto an old dirt road that had been cleared by the inhabitants of the former township of Asheville, according to Lucian. It would wrap around the township and put them on a track skirting Statesville to the north. Sean would have to stop The Beast for a recharge soon, but after a final charge, it should get them all the way to their destination.
Marie and Lucian are alive. Lexi is dead.
The thoughts dancing through his head were constant and relentless, and he’d had to put the truck’s system on autopilot because he couldn’t focus. Maybe they hadn’t been close all those years ago, but he knew them. He felt giddy and desperately sad at the same time. It was exhausting.
“So, you’re how old?” Reagan asked.
“One hundred thirty-one, I think.”
“Yeah, I guess it would be hard to keep track.”
“You stop thinking about it.”
“Why do you look twenty-five?”
“It’s a long story.”
Reagan gestured out the windshield at the rocky road canopied by trees on both side and then at the charge meter.
“We seem to have time.”
Part Seventeen
Triangle City
Chapter Seventy-Four
Tiny Man
Day 8
Tuesday, Mar 26, 2137
Triangle City
“If you don’t open that door and let me see my employee,” Mikael Jensen barked at the jailhouse guard, “you’re going to be the first unemployed cop when I take over the mayor’s office!”
“No one gets in to see Shaw,” the man said, disinterest in his tone, eyes leering at the wall behind Mikael and his lawyer.
Mikael felt his blood pressure rise.
Contemptuous ass.
“Sir,” Mikael’s lawyer interjected. “Please read me the charges for which Miss Shaw has been indicted.”
“Aren’t you fancy? We got a couple guys back there in holding would probably like to meet a sweet mouth like that.” He tapped the computer screen resting on the desk in front of him. “Assault with intent to kill. Assault on a city official. Resisting arrest.”
“Is that it?” Mikael’s lawyer asked.
Mikael looked at the desk sergeant, back at his lawyer, and then back again. He noted the man’s wrinkled uniform and wondered if he ever left this dungeon. People like this would be the first gone under his administration.
“That’s it.”
“No violation regarding state secrets?”
“No.”
“Treason?”
“No.”
“Does it say anything in there about anarchy? Inciting riots?” his lawyer asked in the same, even tone.
“Nope, nothing like that. Any of that.”
“And would you agree that we came during visiting hours? The lawyer tapped his SmartGlasses. “It’s 8 A.M., right? Visiting hours have started?”
“Doesn’t matter. No one sees Shaw. She’s on lockdown.”
“And would you agree that the accused has a right to counsel, seeing that the city has actually indicted her for crimes?”
“Look, guys. I open that door and I’m fired long before you take office. You want to see Shaw, maybe you come back then. The mayor says no one gets in, so no one gets in.”
“Oh, so it’s under the order of the mayor that no one is allowed to see Shaw,” the lawyer confirmed.
“Yep,” the sergeant said, a smile on his face.
“Without any charges of espionage or anarchy, sergeant, that is a crime.”
“Sounds like it’s time for a citizen’s arrest,” Mikael said.
“Try and arrest me.”
“Oh, not an arrest of yo
u, my friend,” Mikael quipped. “Of the mayor.” He tapped the side of his SmartGlasses. “And since I have a recording of you indicting the mayor, I won’t even have to sell it.” He turned away from the desk and said, over his shoulder, “Counselor.”
The lawyer fell in behind him, and they walked to the door where they waited for a buzz indicating it was unlocked. They looked back at the sergeant when the buzz didn’t come.
He was pale, sweating, the previous confidence in his expression so completely erased that he looked like a different person.
“Sergeant?” Mikael decided to extend the bluff. “Open the door, or I will have you arrested for false imprisonment.”
The door buzzed. But it wasn’t the door in front of Mikael; it was the one on the other side of the dingy tile floor. The door that led to the holding cells.
One side of her face was a bruised blotch of swollen purple flesh that shone beneath the light recessed into the ceiling. Blood was caked on her nose, but the best Mikael could tell, there were no cuts or swelling indicating it was broken. He clutched his fists, feeling his fingernails dig into the flesh of his palms when he saw the dark trail inside the legs of her uniform that explained the urine smell in the cell he’d previously attributed to the toilet. He didn’t need to understand the pain caused by her pride at his seeing her like this to know her expressionless face indicated that Lexi Shaw’s usual free spirit was gone. She stared at the opposite wall blankly as she rested on her side, as if she didn’t know who was in the room with her.
“I’m going to kill him, you know,” Lexi said.
Mikael jerked slightly at the sound of her voice. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder, but she jerked it away.
“It’s me, child,” Mikael said. “It’s just me.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she pushed her lips together so tightly they turned white.
“Who did this to you?”
“No,” Lexi said without raising her eyes to his. “I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to rip out his god-damned heart and I’m going to feed it to Vaughn and his stooge. I’m going to break his kneecaps, twist his legs backwards, and make him run through fire.”
Mikael stood up.
“It was Stevens,” a voice said from behind.
Mikael looked up and saw a thin man wearing a well-groomed uniform, holding out a shock stick in a plastic bag.
“I didn’t know he was gonna do that.” Reading the change in expression on Mikael’s face, he added, “I swear, I didn’t know.”
Mikael took two long steps across the floor, grabbed the guard by the lapels, and dragged him into the cell. Slamming him hard against the wall, he ground his teeth and sneered. The shock on the young man’s face illustrated surprise at the older man’s strength. The bag with the shock stick rattled to the floor.
“Did you help him?” Mikael shouted in the man’s face.
“Mister Jensen!” His lawyer yelled, thrusting his arm between Mikael and the officer. “Stop this! They’ll charge you with assault on an officer! Your campaign!”
Mikael turned his head toward the lawyer as he raised his forearm to the officer’s throat and pushed upward. The officer grabbed the arm and tried to push it away from his windpipe as his face began to turn red.
“Do I look like I give a fuck about my campaign?” Mikael said, his voice becoming a tympani of hatred and disgust. “Step away from me, and do it now.”
Then the lawyer was forgotten, and Mikael bore down on the officer’s throat, his chin rising into the air. The officer tried to speak, but he couldn’t get any air. He slapped at Mikael’s arm in a fruitless effort to spare himself.
“Did you help him, you tiny man?” Mikael growled. “How does it feel, having someone stronger than yourself pull the life from you, tiny man?”
He felt the rushing surge of adrenaline coursing through him like it hadn’t in fifty years. The Mikael he’d worked so hard to leave behind him was back in an instant. The murderer who thought nothing of taking a life to protect his interests as a young man in Russia. The thug who’d fought his way out of poverty on the debris-littered streets. He would kill this man, and then he would find this Stevens and kill him. Then, Vaughn. He felt joy as he watched the tiny man’s face morph from red to purple as he squeezed the last of his life from him.
Die, tiny fucker. DIE.
“I’m so sick and god-damned tired of tiny men like you who try to drive the world back to what it once was with your corruption and your greed. I’m so sick and fucking fed up with the complacency you inspire in the citizens of this city. I’ve tried it the honorable way, tiny man. Now it’s time to raise my sword to meet swords. Die, tiny man. Fucking die!”
Gentle arms slid slowly around Mikael, one under his armpit, the other around his neck, gently tugging him, urging him to step back. Though he tried to resist, he felt the hatred seeping away as he looked down and saw the royal blue used in the city jail uniforms. He felt her chest pressed gently into his back as she urged him away. And though her pull was gentle, he could feel her knee finding purchase behind his own, weakening his stance in just the right way to release his tension, force him backward toward her, and away from the ruination of his life.
“Come away, Mikael. We will get them together, but come away.”
Mikael released the man’s neck, but Lexi didn’t release Mikael. She tightened her grip instead, and Mikael squeezed her arms as she pressed her head against the back of his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Mikael said.
“This wasn’t you, Mikael,” she whispered. “This was Vaughn. You were completely right about him. And he will pay. Believe me when I tell you, he will pay.”
Mikael tightened his grip on Lexi’s arms, turned to face her, and pulled her close.
“No, Lexi. You believe me when I tell you they will all pay.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
Finished with Your Insolence
Morgan had the son of a bitch if he wanted him. Long nails clicking in succession on his desk, he scrolled through a selection of images sequenced chronologically from the time the subject left his apartment, disappeared into an old world sector, was reacquired outside the walls in the safe zone, where he accessed a metal grate covered with a wooden door and pulled a duffle bag from inside.
He was continually tracked to the location where an oil tanker was attacked three days before on March 22nd. Up until that point, Morgan would’ve had nothing on him. But his subject had made the mistake of pulling the hat off and tucking the bill down the back of his pants when he’d set up the sniper rig on a ridge overlooking the road where the truck exploded.
Though the safe zone cameras didn’t have facial recognition built into them—why would they when they were there to watch for intruders from The Chain—Morgan could have fed them into the city system and gotten a match easily enough. He didn’t need the facial recognition system, though. He’d seen this very man, on multiple occasions, begging the occupant of the office next door to send out a search party for his fellow soldier who was kidnapped by the chain two years ago—the mayor’s daughter, Reagan.
Morgan had Kade Reynolds dead to rights.
A thunderclap directly over the building caused Morgan to jump in his chair.
He covered his forehead with the palm of his hand and rubbed it slowly down his face while muttering, “God dammit.”
The rain had begun the previous day and not relented since. Tomorrow, it would be snow. As his heart recovered, Morgan pondered his options.
If Kade Reynolds, the retiree of the Expeditionary Forces and road crew was truly CorpKill62, then Morgan was sitting on a real game changer for the mayor. But he wasn’t about to run into Vaughn's office without first thinking it through. Sure, he could turn Reynolds over to the mayor; Vaughn would almost certainly make an example of him, expelling him from the city. Especially considering the language he’d used with the mayor when his request had been denied.
“You cowardly fucking cocks
ucker!” Kade Reynolds had barked in the mayor’s office that day. “You weak, sorry son of a bitch! She’s your own daughter and you’re too much of a politician—” he’d spit on the mayor with the “p” “—to do the right thing.” Then Reynolds had called the mayor a cunt and Morgan had called security to have him removed. Of course, he’d enjoyed the display. He’d wished the mayor would’ve struck the military man so he could’ve seen him get a beating he so richly deserved for being the coward Reynolds had claimed he was.
But you can’t have everything, can you?
But turning in Reynolds with proof he was CorpKill62 also rendered the accusation that Lexi Shaw was the one using that handle on the DarkWeb and blowing up trucks as invalid.
Morgan could go the way of the wind. Mikael Jensen was becoming popular, protestors were taking to the streets in increasing numbers, and if the mayor didn’t put a stop to the unrest CorpKill and Labyrinth were helping to incite, he’d be on the outside looking in when the election was over. Arresting a real member of The Underground could turn the tide.
Morgan had been the lone vessel supplying information to the mayor until recently, but change was slowly creeping into the office in the form of that Jack Stevens asshole, providing direct Security Services reports and Underground updates to Vaughn, himself. Morgan took this new development to mean the murder of Jon Abel was sending waves through this office, and since Morgan had suggested the mayor handle Copeland via Abel’s violent hand, maybe he was losing the mayor’s trust. Things had certainly been tense.
Morgan dictated the mayor’s schedule. He determined how his energy was best spent and what the mayor needed to know. But this new, direct line of communication with Stevens made him question whether or not the mayor was in the dark as Morgan tried to keep him.
Perhaps I could leverage this information. How could Kade Reynolds serve me? Could I use a direct connection to The Underground to my advantage? Win back the mayor’s trust by winning him an election on the backs of major arrests of Underground traitors? Or might there really only be a handful? If so, would arresting them be enough for the mayor to win?