by Ric Beard
“After all,” Mikael Jensen continued, “whose courageous idea was it to bring home our road crews and route the majority of our Expeditionary Forces to the south, where there is no Chain presence, instead of to the north, where our townships reside, or the west, where we could be clearing road and could’ve kept The Chain out of Nashville?”
Shaw was matching her step for step.
“That’s all the time we have for today, gentlemen,” the moderator said from the seats below.
“No, I will respond to that, if you don’t mind,” the mayor said.
“You will have to respond off the air, Mister Mayor.”
Reagan saw the blush of anger rise in her father’s face and smiled just a little.
“Then I will respond for the good people in this hall,” the mayor said.
A number of people started turning to walk out of City Hall, but their lack of interest didn’t keep him from responding.
Reagan fell in with the crowd and saw the redhead fall in behind her. She was snagged. She might make it outside, but they were going to question and perhaps even search her, and that just wouldn’t do.
She pushed forward, angled her way past body after body, and exited out onto the front stairs of City Hall as light white flakes meandered down to the concrete surface. She looked up and saw a camera on the corner of one of the giant stone columns, and she yanked off her hat, tapped her glasses twice to reveal her eyes, and looked directly into the camera.
Then, just as she expected Shaw would put a hand on her shoulder and ask her to come with her, sirens blared throughout the city.
Is that for me?
The response was a little more than she’d expected.
She spun around and looked up the street toward the gate with the rest of the spectators. A glance back over her shoulder revealed the red-haired woman looking in the same direction. Shaw turned and looked at Reagan, then sped back into the building.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Keep It Quiet
Vaughn saw the face captured on the camera outside City Hall and looked up at Stevens, who held the Tab in front of him.
“How can this be?” he asked the empty chamber. “How is she possibly alive? How did she get here, and why didn’t I know it? Get her up here!” He clinched his fists. “Use the side entrance. Keep it quiet.”
“What about Shaw?” Stevens asked, watching as the tall woman scuttled Jensen out of the hall.
“We know where they’re going! Those are raid sirens! Deal with her after you get my daughter!”
Chapter Eighty-Four
Unforgivable
“The mayor is waiting inside,” Stevens said as the doors swung open. “I’ll show you in.”
“Don’t bother.” Reagan shot past him, though the automatic doors and into Vaughn's office.
Stevens shrugged and headed for the elevator.
Vaughn was seated at his desk where a three-dimensional map displayed red dots over green topographical data on the compression glass screen. A new red dot popped up, and the mayor frowned. When he saw Reagan, he looked up.
“Reagan!”
“Hello, Father.”
He stood and walked around the desk with his arms wide.
“Don’t even think about touching me!” Reagan sneered.
The mayor stopped short, arms still extended. After a moment’s consideration, he dropped them.
“I’m so happy to see you.” His tone conveyed otherwise. “How did you survive? What did they do to you?”
“The question is, what did you do to me?” His facial muscles slackened as he turned the color of dough. Regan bored her eyes into his for a moment. “Why didn’t you send anyone, Dad?”
“Where would I have started?” Vaughn asked. “You were taken in the night. Your unit had no idea which direction those animals had taken you.”
“Oh, is that why you pulled back the Expeditionary Forces and stopped sending them west?”
“That had nothing to do with—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t waste your breath. I know the truth. I know what you’ve been doing.”
“I don’t know what you think I’ve been doing, but clearly you’re upset. I think maybe it’s affecting your judgment.”
“Don’t treat me like a little girl. Of course it’s affecting my judgment!” She walked to her right, around his desk, looking at the holographic map. “They’re almost on top of us, I see.”
“A lot of them,” He reached out to take her arm. “But I can keep you safe. I was just about to go to the Command Center. Come with m—”
She flung his arm away and took a step back, fury in her eyes.
“You should’ve kept me safe when you had the chance!”
“How was I supposed to keep you safe out in the wilds?”
“You know what I meant!”
Silence passed between them, and Reagan watched as his eyes ticked between her and the map.
“I had a daughter.” She blurted the words without considering them.
Vaughn's chin dropped.
“A daughter? How? When? Who was the fa—” He cut himself off and realization dawned on his face.
“Why didn’t you send anyone after me?”
“Who says I didn’t try?”
“Kade Reynolds says you didn’t.”
“Kade Reynolds is a terrorist. The only reason he isn’t rotting in prison is because I haven’t had time to deal with him.”
“I see you haven’t changed. Shift the blame on those who give account of your weaknesses.”
“Reynolds is a terrorist,” he repeated.
“At least he tried to come find me. You let me rot in that hellhole. A day where I wasn’t raped was a good day. I might have had five good days during the first few months.” She jerked up a hand. “They broke my fingers when I tried to escape. I had to reset the bones myself. If I didn’t have the triage skills Kade taught me, my hands would be unusable. See the scars around my wrists? That’s from being constantly restrained with copper wire until I learned my place. Would you like to see the ones on my back, where they whipped me?” She glared at her father. The rage bit at her words as she felt the heat rise in her face and she clinched her teeth. “I’d rather throw my lot in with the terrorist who wanted to spare me that.”
The mayor lowered his head and shook it gently back and forth.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Sure, Dad, but when did you start thinking that? A month after I was gone? A week?”
“What choice did I have?” the mayor asked, hands thrown out at shoulder level, palms up. “How would it look when these sniveling media types learned I risked a Special Forces unit in such a self-serving way? Daughter or not, I’m the mayor of this city, and I’m required to make unemotional decisions.” His voice elevated. “I had no way of knowing where they took you, Reagan!”
She rolled her tongue in her mouth and mulled over his words.
“It’s apparent enough you’d rather be the mayor than my father.”
“Unfair.”
“Well, now my daughter is dead. Dead by a fusion rifle that disintegrated her in front of my eyes.”
“I am sorry for your daughter, and I am sorry for you, Reagan. But if you search your heart, you’ll know that I couldn’t have acted differently.” He took a step forward but didn’t reach for her. “If it’s any consolation, I am so glad that you, my last vestige of family, are alive.”
“But because of the weapons you’ve been supplying to the badlander nation, my daughter is not alive.”
His head jerked back. “I’ve done no such thing!” Blood rushed to his face, and his jaw began to quiver. He pointed a finger wrapped in a metal splint at her. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
Reagan’s chin dropped as she stared at the finger. She grabbed it.
“Reagan!” He raised his hand as if he would strike her to protect the digit, but she stood tall, refusing to cower.
She spoked thro
ugh clinched teeth. “I am talking to a traitor! A traitor who has been arming the enemy! A traitor who allowed his own daughter to be beaten, raped, and nearly killed for two years!”
Vaughn's expression changed. His lips became a white line. His whole head was shaking.
“They’ve turned on you, Dad,” she said, stepping into his personal space, but releasing the finger. Pointing at the map she said, “They’ve brought the weapons you supplied them,” she pushed a finger into his chest and tapped with each word. “Your days as mayor are over.”
She reached into her bomber jacket and pulled out a two-piece plastic device with a groove running from end to end on top. At the end closest to Reagan’s hand, a cylindrical piece of plastic with a sharp tip sat in the groove, a band held back only by a piece of plastic similar to a hook wrapped around the back of the projectile. She held the weapon under his chin and stared into his eyes. She would pull the trigger, the hook would pop up, and the band would send the dart up, through her father’s chin, through the roof of his mouth, and into his brain.
But it wasn’t the weapon he seemed concerned about.
“What kind of weapons?” he asked, his eyes bobbing down to look at the plastic gun and back at her.
She jerked her head back slightly.
“Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“If you’re going to execute me, at least answer the question.”
She stepped back and squinted, the weapon wavering in her hand as his eyes bore down on her.
“Pulse weapons. With JenCorp logos. New ones.”
She could see it in his eyes, in his expression. He was phasing out of the conversation and regressing into data collection mode. Judging by his blank stare, something was wrong here. Was he manipulating her? No, he might be a politician, but she had known him all her life. Morgan was the one who made him mayor. Her father wasn’t skilled enough by himself. Everyone knew it, except maybe the father, Vaughn.
“Where did you see these weapons?”
“In the neighborhood where the badlanders held me.” The erosion of her confidence as he continued to sell his confusion had Reagan searching out scenarios in which her father hadn’t aided the enemy in exchange for security. “I saw them come and go for two years. While I was in captivity, I had always just assumed they were the product of raids, road attacks. When I heard you’d recalled the road crews and how you’d rerouted the Expeditionary Forces, it all clicked into place.”
“It makes total sense, actually,” the mayor said, surprising Reagan further with his agreement. “I control the contracts with JenCorp, Durham FusionTech, and the contractors with other companies. I control the movement of the Expeditionary Forces and the movement of supplies. It’s a natural conclusion that I’m consorting with the enemy.”
“But you weren’t?”
He looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was in the room, and his tone changed to that of a parent berating a belligerent child.
“I might be protecting my own interests by stopping the expansion, but I wouldn’t provide resources to those animals! I only left you out there because I thought they’d have killed you quickly. They’re beasts!”
The mayor, her father, didn’t understand The Chain, at all. It was like she’d told Moss in the Badlands, they were human beings. If one started to think of them that way, they’d see the many truths in their actions beneath their biases. He’d spent his whole life inside these walls. Reagan had seen them in their element. Though they were horrible to her, they were family to each other. Where they lacked educations, they made up for it in cunning.
Then who is trading weapons to Horace? Who is the smuggler?
“The Jensens?” she muttered.
“I don’t believe that, as much as I would love for it to be true. They’re pro-expansion. Supporting The Chain when expansion threatens their very way of life makes no sense.”
“Then who?”
Reagan watched the mayor raise his injured finger and look at the splint that held the joint in place. His expression changed to something like incredulity. His eyes locked with hers and then widened.
“Morgan!” they said simultaneously.
“I gave him my codes. That traitor could sign for anything I could. That sneaky bastard! Of course! But why? I’ll haul his ass in so we can get some answers. First, I need to go to the command center and do my job.”
“He’s already got you,” Reagan said. “If the city survives the attack—” she glanced at the screen again, “—and it might not, he’ll say he learned of your conspiracy with the badlanders when it was too late. That, or he’ll vanish. You should focus on doing your job while you can.”
But what about her job? She’d come in here with the intention of ending her father and, by proxy, herself.
But if she were dead…
A face popped into her mind and she realized it belonged to the reason she chose to survive two years within the grasp of the brutal badlanders in that cul-de-sac. It wasn’t the daughter she was forced to carry and nurture. Lucy had been a constant reminder of how she was made, not that Reagan had needed a reminder while undergoing daily abuse. Through her depression following the girl’s birth, her depression at her constant beatings and rapes, through the numbness she felt in the wake of both, she’d chosen to survive instead of taking her own life. Now she knew why.
Kade.
She looked over at her father, who seemed to be having a revelation of his own.
“I don’t know how this is going to end for you, but your end won’t come at my hands. Maybe you didn’t arm the badlanders, but you also didn’t come for me. That’s unforgivable.”
“Reagan,” Vaughn said, coming out of his daze. He stepped toward her and met with a hard slap, deployed with all the strength she could muster. She clutched her wrist in the other hand as the shock rushing through scarred bones shot pain into her forearm, the nerves alive with pain. Vaughn fell back against his desk, grabbed his red face and stared at her.
“If you ever come near me again, I will kill you.”
Chapter Eighty-Five
A Pity
The woman standing inside the room was a walking miracle. Morgan would wager she knew it, too. She was holding something under the mayor’s chin, her posture unmistakable. Oh well, one less problem for Morgan to deal with.
Using the sirens as cover to come and get his things, Morgan had been thankful to find the lobby of the mayor’s office empty. Perhaps Stevens had gone to prepare for the mayor’s arrival in the bunker or the command center. Why no one was here didn’t really matter, only that his luck was holding did. Soon he would have Stone’s blood samples, and then, hopefully, his path to immortality would be established.
Putting the computer back to sleep blacked out the image of the two people in the mayor’s office as he grabbed a few of his things, knowing he would never be here again. After packing a bag, he thrust it over his shoulder and slipped back into the lobby. Because he couldn’t help himself, he stopped short of the open doors to the mayor’s office and stood outside, listening.
A pity she hadn’t pulled the trigger.
As much as he would’ve loved to eavesdrop on this little reunion a little longer, Morgan needed to get out of City Hall and over to the labs to ensure everything was in order and the samples had arrived. He took the long way around the back wall behind the lobby’s reception desk, musing that he hadn’t realized before how much the sterile thing looked like the desk used in the holding cells downstairs.
Funny how accents in a room could dress up the gaudiest things.
He opted for the stairs instead of the elevator, lest he run into someone whom the mayor might have put on his trail. After dislocating the man’s finger, he was surprised that his jig wasn’t up already. Six flights down, he emerged onto the veranda and halted. Stevens was at the desk, talking to the guard parked behind it. Morgan stepped back into the stairwell and watched through a sliver of glass cut into the door as the man wagged his fi
nger at the guard.
Stevens turned from the desk and jogged to the elevator. After he stepped in, Morgan rushed through the door and walked across the lobby, following the wall to the front, keeping himself away from the guard, just as when he’d come into the building. He glanced over at the elevator before he pushed open the doors to the street. The lit numbers above the elevator indicated that Stevens had gone down instead of back to the mayor’s office.
The bunker then, Morgan thought.
He pushed back out into the afternoon light.
Chapter Eighty-Six
You Dropped It
Lexi had a hand on Mikael’s bicep and the other on Kara’s as she guided them off the elevator and into the basement of Town Hall. She led them up the hall and around the corner as the two large men in black suits trailed her off the elevator. Pointing at an illuminated panel on the wall, she nodded.
“Your palm print, please,” she said to Mikael.
He set his palm on the panel, and the large steel door slid into the recessed wall. Lexi followed him in and signaled for the other guards to stay outside and man the door.
She was surprised to have gotten Mikael here without conflict, in light of the mayor’s renewed interest in her. Lexi was Underground, and he had plans for her that involved a trip outside the wall, or worse. As luck would have it, she was headed that way on her own.
During the debate, Lexi glanced at the Security Service cops eyeballing her, though they couldn’t tell she was onto them because of her tinted SmartGlasses and the way she continually swiveled her head on her neck as if scanning the crowd. The prominently displayed pulse pistol and the JenCorp 850S pulse rifle slung over her back were probably added to their calculations. It was her final day on the Jensen for Mayor detail, and the event had gone off without a hitch—right up until the damn sirens started blaring.