Nailed it, he thought.
He was vaguely aware of a pinch and a needle being placed in his left arm.
He heard himself whimper again as his leg screamed in pain as they removed the makeshift wrapping Ward had dressed the wound with on the battlefield.
“Now, Mr. Drayger, we are going to have to reopen the wound. This may sting a bit.”
With the first touch of the blade, Drayger’s world collapsed under a solid wall of ruby-colored fire. As his teeth ripped into the plastic mouthpiece, he finally heard himself actually scream.
WASHINGTON, DC.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Seated at the Resolute Desk, waiting for the camera’s red light to flash on, President Robert Mitchell prepared to make a rare Oval Office address to the nation. One of only a few he had made in his ten years as president. Thanks to Media Corp, he would command all public access stations on TV, web, or satellite radio. Nearly everyone would see him, whether they were on a computer, cell phone, or glancing up at a digital billboard. If Media Corp wanted you to see something, chances were, you would.
The red light flashed.
The president’s handsome but weathered face looked unusually solemn. He spoke slowly, deliberately.
“Good evening. I must report to the American people and to the world that the vigilante known as the Revolution died tonight in Philadelphia. I regret that we could not find a way to resolve this crisis peacefully without the kind of violence we have seen this night. My heart goes out to the families of all the brave Council Guard that lost their lives in this tragedy. They are the true heroes. They were only doing their duty, protecting their country. They rose to the call despite the danger, and thanks to them, hostilities have now ceased. Life will return to normal in the City of Brotherly Love and, indeed, in this great nation. The Chairman has assured me that the situation is now under control and no further disruptions will be occurring—”
At that very moment, in homes and pubs, on billboards and cell phones, the screens all went black. All across the Eastern seaboard the screens went black. One third of the nation lost all broadcasts of the president’s words. Media Corp’s eastern communication hub failed. Television, internet, satellite radio…none of it was working. It would stay down for hours.
An unprecedented technical failure, the likes of which the media giant had never experienced.
At Media Corp, panic set in. The same could be said for overnight investors in Asia and Europe, as Media Corp saw its already depressed stock plummet further in those exchanges.
As a funding source, the New York Stock Exchange was not as important to the Council corporations as it used to be. While the other major firms in the United States trusted their fates to the whims of the stock market, the Council had long ago secured an arrangement through which the vast majority of their funding came from highly favorable international long-term loans. The International Banking Consortium (IBC), located in London, was the financier of those loans.
Thomas Sage had worked out an international agreement with the European Union ten years ago to create it. And though it was highly controversial in Europe to do business with an anti-democratic entity like the Council, it also pumped billions of dollars into the European Union.
As part of that original agreement, the IBC routinely raised the Council’s interest rates as its stock prices fell and lowered the rates if they rose.
So, as Chairman Howke watched the stock prices fall for the Council corporations, the IBC immediately raised the interest rates they charged the Council’s member companies. This further spooked Council investors, and the stocks fell further.
Catch-22. Vicious circle.
Soon, all Council companies were losing value. All but one.
General Defense.
Bannister Tarleton’s company.
Within the next few minutes, as the news spread, people spilled out onto the streets in every major city to mourn the loss of the Revolution. In Boston, the mayor and police commissioner joined the mourners, as did several members of Boston’s finest, a sight that surprised many and would have warmed the Revolution’s heart had he been there to see it. Outpouring of grief for the hero overshadowed that for the rest of Philadelphia’s fallen.
Back at Freedom Rise, Tarleton knew his time had now come. Howke had failed. Lithium had failed. The Velvet Glove had failed. The investors knew it. That’s why his stock price rose while all the others fell. The market was always right, he knew. He would be Chairman soon.
And he would make the rivers run red with the blood of the Resistance.
CHAPTER 4
NORRISTOWN, PA.
Paul Ward’s mind was rocked by one undeniably shocking fact.
I’m not dead!
Why the hell wasn’t he dead already? In fact, he wasn’t even dying. His strength even seemed to be returning. Was Lantern doing this somehow? Or Rachel? Where were those two anyway?
With all his might, he pushed himself up on all fours. The armor had no power—now just dead weight thanks to Scarlett’s deactivation of it. With a heroic burst of will power, he rose to his feet. Shaky, unsteady, but damn it, he was standing!
He took a moment, got his bearings. The stench of burning grass and freshly churned-up dirt filled his nostrils. Behind him, he saw Sophia was stirring but seemed in worse shape than he. But at least she, too, was alive. Across the charred and smoking lawn, the Minutemen who had fired the grenade launchers were also rising slowly. Rage hadn’t killed any of them. She’d only shut down all their weapons. Maybe Rage was hurt or was getting sloppy. Why would she leave them all alive?
Ward stumbled over to Sophia and knelt, his aching joints screaming at him as he did so.
Her head rolled toward him and her eyes narrowed. “Go stop those mother fuckers!” she hissed.
Ward rose and stumbled toward the doors. But he was walking like a drunk on Bourbon Street. His balance was way off, his now useless armor weighing him down, his vision swimming, and as he got to the bombed-out front doors, he tripped on the doorframe and clattered into the hallway on his ass. He tried to rise but half-fell into the wall and decided that was a good thing. He used the wall to hold himself up as the room continued to spin. The hallway was deserted. The staff had scrambled for cover when the attack had begun, and by now everyone was hunkered down somewhere.
Everyone except Lantern.
As Ward approached the large, open emergency room, he saw that Lantern had made his way back in somehow and was standing between the villainous duo, who had their backs to Ward, and the prone body of the Revolution—as if to protect his corpse from further desecration.
“You’re not getting him. You’ve done enough already!” Lantern shouted a half-sob at them. He was as angry and as sad as Ward had ever seen him.
Scarlett turned to the android. “We don’t have time for this.”
Spectral’s head swiveled to Lantern, and in one split second, he fired an optic blast at Lantern that struck him full in the chest, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the medical console behind him. Lantern fell to the floor and didn’t move.
“No!” Ward screamed and did his best to advance, leaving the safety of the wall, stumbling out into the room, but his heavy armor sabotaged his futile attempt and he clanged to the floor, just as he saw Scarlett Rage stride forward and lean over the prone body of the Revolution.
“No...” Ward whimpered. But he knew there was nothing he could do. He reached out in a fruitless attempt to stop her, but in his heart he knew he had lost.
Scarlett raised her arms above Revolution and glanced over at his flatlined EKG, which was still whining its sorrowful song into the room, when a noise from behind him caught Ward’s attention.
Sophia.
“Get the hell away from him!” she shouted. But Ward could see her blasters were still out, still deactivated.
Scarlett didn’t even bother to look at her. “You’re no threat to me.”
One second later, Scarlett
stiffened, reacted to something. She tried to reach behind her but couldn’t attain whatever it was she was after. And then, out of thin air, it appeared. A MagCharge clipped firmly to the fabric of her long flowing shawl, right at the center of her back.
“But I am,” came Rachel’s threatening voice. And she appeared across from Scarlett holding a detonator for the MagCharge.
Rachel peered around at the three of them, Lantern, Sophia, and finally meeting Ward’s eyes. Sorrow filled her face, and she said, “I’m sorry.”
She pressed the button.
This close, in this confined space, Ward knew that a MagCharge would blow them all to kingdom come. Ward closed his eyes and waited for the end.
Click.
No explosion.
Ward opened his eyes, and he saw Scarlett smirking at Rachel. “Please,” she scoffed dismissively. She gave a side glance to the android, nodded toward Rachel, and sighed. “Spectral.” In the next moment the android fired another optic beam that slammed Rachel to the ground.
Scarlett returned her attention to Revolution, concentrating hard, her hands stretched out over his prone body, the veins in her neck straining against her signature blue choker. Suddenly, her eyes went wide. “I’m out of time!” she shouted.
Hearing that, Spectral fired another beam right at Ward and a second into Sophia in rapid succession, and both of them, still lying on the floor, were jolted and sent skidding back into the hallway. Evidently a preemptive strike to keep the two of them from trying anything.
The world was again spinning, but Ward rolled back on his side and peered over to see what horrible thing the Rage woman was going to do now, and to his absolute shock...
The Revolution’s EKG beeped back to life.
The flatline jumped, and a regular heart beat echoed across the walls of the room.
Ward rose to his knees. So did Sophia behind him. They grabbed on to each other and helped one another to their feet. Still not sure what they were seeing.
“You just brought him back,” Sophia said, the shock hanging on her every word.
“Yes,” Scarlett said, still staring down at the Revolution, “and if you’d delayed us even a second more, I wouldn’t have been able to. He was merely in stasis.”
Ward felt like he was in the Twilight Zone. “Okay, lady,” he grunted through his pain, “am I missing something here?” Ward’s world was spinning. He was looking at two Scarlett Rages, and he wasn’t sure which one was the real one and which was her double in his blurred vision.
Across the room, Ward saw Lantern slowly rising to his feet, a similarly bewildered expression mapped over the visible lower half of his face.
Scarlett ignored the question. Instead, she stared down at Revolution. “Are you awake?” she asked him.
“Yes,” came a weak, tight response from the man in the metal, and Ward heard sighs of relief from all across the room, even, most perplexingly, from Rage herself.
“General,” Scarlett said, “Spectral and I were Bailey’s secret weapon at the Hall of Chambers. We disabled the Spores. And we faked your death to throw the Council off your track. We were following Bailey’s instructions. We request asylum.”
Ward fell back on his ass. “I’ll be damned!”
CHAPTER 5
Sophia wasn’t buying it.
“How do we know this isn’t a trick?” Sophia asked, grimacing.
“We played the role we were asked to play,” Scarlett said. “Your general is back. You’ve got the element of surprise.”
“So what? We’re all beat to hell, thanks to you!” Rachel shot back.
Revolution lifted his torso until he was in a seated position on the gurney.
The android spoke with his usual eerie detachment.
Scarlett explained that Spectral had located a major power hub for Media Corp’s entire communication system. Before the duo left Philly to come there, she had scrambled the digital signal and thus cut the power to a major transmission line, disabling its capacitor, a piece of equipment designed to regulate voltage. It was like cutting off a major artery to Media Corp’s entire broadcast system. The damage quickly spread, causing a cascading power outage across the East Coast, taking Media Corp off the air, creating a full-blown financial panic among their investors.
“It’s left them completely preoccupied and distracted. Saratoga wanted us to give you the element of surprise. And now we have,” she said. “They think you’re dead,” she said, pointing to the Revolution, “and soon they’ll assume the same thing about us when we don’t report back. The last any of them knew, Spectral and I were under attack by one of the Spores.”
Spectral added.
“I’m not buying this. What about that representative from Texas?” Sophia accused. “Leslie said you murdered him in cold blood. That you enjoyed it.”
“I didn’t kill Congressman Lewis,” Scarlett assured her.
“Wait a minute,” Leslie blurted out from the video monitor. In all the confusion, Sophia had forgotten she was still connected to them over the Holocom. “I saw you kill him right in front of me. You reveled in it. I don’t know what you two are playing at, but I’m not going to trust you unless you can bring him back from the dead as well!”
“Funny you should say that,” Scarlett smirked and turned to the big android. “Spectral?”
The great robot’s eyes glowed white, and the Suns all took a step back.
On screen, Leslie motioned for someone they couldn’t see to go check on it. In Norristown they waited in awkward silence. After a few moments, the supposedly dead congressman appeared at Leslie’s doorway. On screen, they could see Leslie gasp.
“We removed him from the Hall before Tarleton or the Legion could see him come out of stasis,” Scarlett said.
Revolution finally spoke. Staring up into the video monitor, his words were short and clipped. “Leslie, where are you?”
Leslie still looked a bit stunned, but her mood had turned chipper. “Good to have you back, old friend. We had to take the Chesapeake Canal. We’re at the Maryland HQ.”
“Baltimore,” he said, nodding his head.
That made sense to Sophia. The HQ in Baltimore was well equipped and big enough to house the members of COR. But she still wasn’t ready to let the “death duo” off the hook just yet. “Well, if you came here to make friends, why did you attack us out front?”
“Your people attacked us first,” Scarlett insisted. “We were on a short timeline and got in here the fastest way we could. You wouldn’t have believed us anyway. I just saved his life,” she said, pointing to Revolution, “and you still don’t believe us.”
Sophia turned toward the big android. “What about all those Minutemen I saw you attack back at the Hall? I guess that was playacting as well?” she accused.
“A couple of them might not walk again!” Ward shot back.
Sophia thought about Drayger. He was one of them that might not walk again. He’d been wheeled into surgery as soon as they’d arrived, and in the commotion that these two had caused, no one had gone to check on him.
“They’ll be thrilled about that!” Sophia scoffed.
“This still doesn't address the fundamental question. Why would you be Bailey's secret weapon? Why would you help him at all, let alone us?" Leslie asked pointedly from the digital monitor. Sophia smiled. Leslie wasn’t going to let this go. And neither was she. Not until she got some answers that made sense.
Scarlett crossed her arms over her chest, and a somber expression spread across her face. “Three me
n helped me break the grip my father had on me. My brother, John Bailey, and James Scott.”
Revolution’s head turned toward her when he heard Scott’s name. The man who had invented Revolution’s armor, the man who had invented bioluminescence. Sophia knew Scarlett had worked for both men in the past, but she had assumed it had been under duress, owing to the government’s policy of making her pay for her crimes of terrorism with service to the CIA’s assassination squads. It was no secret she had hated her time in the Agency. Hardly a recipe for loyalty.
“My father is responsible for the death of my brother. But the Council killed Bailey and Scott. Anyway you look at it, if there was no Council, neither of them would have died.”
“So you want revenge?” Rachel asked.
Sophia shot Rachel a smirk. That would be something they all had in common.
“Not revenge. I just wanted to help finish what they started. When Bailey sent us the encrypted message, we knew we had to help. And we have helped. In exactly the way he asked and how he would have done it. Undercover, as a double agent.”
Scarlett was right about that. He’d lived that way for more than a decade. Sophia had to admit, the Rage woman was starting to make some sense.
That did sound like him. They stood in silence for a moment, thinking of their friend John “Saratoga” Bailey.
“My god,” Sophia said finally, her eyes widening with realization. “But you were standing right next to Tarleton. Why didn’t you just kill him then?”
The question seemed to fly all over Scarlett. Her eyes became daggers. The tone of her voice was pure venom. “I don’t just kill...” She stopped herself. Took a deep breath, let it out. “That wasn’t the plan, Helius,” she said more calmly.
Sophia noticed the big android gently placing his hand on her bicep. Scarlett leaned into him and relaxed her gaze. Why had that question set her off? She was “the woman who can kill with a thought,” after all.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 3