As more days passed, news of the attack on Willow Grove and the death of Commander Rocco reached him. The Suns needed to get back out there, but not before they were ready. Communication with the outside world became even more sparse as the Council ratcheted up their search for the Suns, correctly convinced that they were holed up somewhere in the greater Philadelphia area.
Time was of the essence.
Revolution made it a habit to check on Ward, who was making himself a very scarce commodity. Rachel and he would venture out into the mess hall occasionally at mealtime, but other than that, Ward kept to himself, locked away in his room. Revolution knew the withdrawals from the serenity serum were the reason.
After a week of this, Rachel pulled Revolution aside to tell him that lately, Ward had begun scheming ways to go back to Boston. She told Revolution he made all sorts of excuses for needing to make the dangerous trip—with the Council leaving no rock unturned searching for them—but she feared the real reason was he wanted to get his hands on more of the addictive serum.
Rachel’s fears made an impression.
Ward awoke with a shiver.
The room was dark. Still, his senses told him he was not alone. As his eyes adjusted he made out the shiny metal outline of the Revolution, stoic in the room’s shadows. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were stalking me, pal.”
The Revolution said nothing.
“You don’t have to keep coming here. I’m fine.”
“No. You’re not,” Revolution said flatly. “Why do you want to go back to Boston, Paul?”
“Hmm. Busted, huh? Look, it’s not what you think. I’ve got it under control. I just need to check on things. I run a building there, you know. I have investments, commitments—”
As Ward spoke Revolution strolled over to one of the chairs near the bed and sat. “I was on Air Force One,” Revolution said abruptly, cutting him off.
A shiver hit Ward so hard his teeth chattered.
He wasn’t sure if it was from the withdrawals racking his body or from what the Revolution had just told him. He stared back blankly at the man in the metal.
“Say again?” Ward blurted through chattering teeth.
“I was on Air Force One.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Air Force One?” Ward shivered again, and his eyes widened. “The Air Force One? The one that went down?”
“I was the only survivor.”
Ward had stopped shivering. “You lost your family too,” he said, realizing the grave irony of their most important shared sorrow. He was staring into the shielded eyes of his friend, realizing simultaneously that he was hearing something no one else knew and that the intense emotional gravity that his friend carried around with him was far greater than Ward had imagined.
“Wait,” Ward said, understanding washing over him. “You were on Air Force One...and your whole family went down with the plane...” Ward’s eyes were wide now, putting it all together. “That means—”
“It means I wanted to kill everyone that had wronged me. Starting with Thomas Sage. It was James Scott who showed me a better way. To focus my rage on the system. The ultimate revenge was to take from them everything they had gained from my losses.”
Ward thought of his little son, David, lying dead on the sidewalk. He thought of Lori, of Alison. He shivered again.
“Scott showed me that to truly beat them I needed to stay true to who I had been before. They had taken my whole country, not just my family.”
Ward shook his head dismissively. “So you were some hyper-patriot before all this started, but I wasn’t. Look, I see where you’re going with this, but I’m not sure it applies to me. I could never equate the loss of my family and the loss of my country as one and the same.”
“That’s not true,” Revolution said so flatly that it made Ward blink. “How did you respond? You invented a new way to fly, created a serum that allows you to stop violence without resorting to it, and then you put on a mask and went to work. You already sensed that the way to restore order to your world wasn’t just about you, it was about all of us.”
Ward shivered so hard he thought he might convulse. He’d never thought of it all this way.
Revolution placed a red armored hand on his shin. “Fight this, Paul. Fight it for them.”
Ward’s mind flashed back to David, smiling, laughing, crying. He missed the little guy so badly. Ached to hold him one more time. His eyes teared up.
“Fight it, defeat it. And then help us end this war once and for all.”
Just then, Revolution’s com lit up in his helmet, and Lantern’s animated voice broke through. “I’m sorry for interrupting, sir. But we need you in the Sit Room right now. And we need him too,” Lantern said, referring to Ward.
“What’s going on?” Revolution said.
“I’m afraid there’s no time to explain.”
CHAPTER 13
Leslie’s disembodied voice explained it all as her holographic image floated above the main console of the communications room. “The Europeans have launched a mini-drone swarm, and they need to download a set of instructions and homing targets into the user’s Neural Transmitter. The Council’s got eyes and ears everywhere, so the window for the download is closing fast,”
Lantern nodded at her words.
“They’re sending a swarm of drones to us? What the hell for?” Ward asked as another tremor rippled through him as he and Revolution stepped into the room. The Suns had all assembled there. He also recognized Dr. Cynthia Ballard, the facility’s head physician and the surgeon that had attached Drayger’s leg. He nodded to her.
Ward was hyper aware of the stares he got from everyone as he spoke. He ran a hand across his face and felt the four-day-old stubble. Other than Rachel, the others had never seen him like this. Rough, disheveled, withdrawn. Man, I’ve got to get my shit together.
“Only one drone,” Lantern clarified.
“The swarm is inside the drone,” Sophia said.
“Great. So, why do you need me?” Ward asked.
“Because you’re the user.” Revolution said, putting two and two together.
“I am?”
“You’re the natural target,” Leslie said.
“We need a physician who can figure out how to use the nanotechnology, and you’re the most qualified,” Sophia said.
“Nanotechnology?” Ward was thoroughly confused about what any of this would have to do with him. He was a chemist, a surgeon, a physician. Yes, he’d tinkered with mechanical engineering in building his bug suit, but none of that added up to him being an expert in nanotechnology. “If what you need is a physician, then Dr. Ballard is more than qualified—”
Cynthia Ballard smiled at him, like she’d done many times before since he’d gotten here—and he wondered if she was unmarried like most members of the Resistance. “Trust me,” she said, “you’re far more qualified, Dr. Ward.”
“The download is encrypted, but there’s a lot of data on it. We need you to receive it ASAP,” Lantern explained.
“It’s still a risk, no matter how fast they send it,” Revolution warned, directing his words toward Leslie’s image on the holocom. “It’s like sending up a flare.”
Lantern nodded in agreement.
Ward wondered if the Revolution and Leslie had argued over whatever this was.
Cynthia Ballard motioned for him to come sit, so he did and she began attaching electrodes to his scalp. It felt a bit like a massage.
“How does this work? Neural Transmitters are senders, not receivers,” Ward asked Cynthia.
“That is evidently what these initial nanobots that we’ve already received are for.” She smiled at him mischievously.
Ward swallowed.
“They will receive the download and allow your Transmitter to activate it,” she told him
“Weird,” Ward said, sounding very unsure. “I hope these little nanobots can’t be hacked or catch a virus.” Ward knew that Neural Transmitt
ers had been invented to be impervious to hacking. That was the main selling feature of the devices. They could send signals but never receive them. If he was about to take one for the team and make his brain vulnerable to computer hackers, he’d need a damn good reason.
But then Ward’s eyes widened as he got his first full look at what they were all talking about. On the main screen was a rundown of the drone’s payload.
“Holy shit!” Ward said as a wide grin spread across his boyish face. “The drones are carrying millions of microscopic robots used in the new field of concussive regenerative therapy. CRT for short,” he clarified. CRT was a term he was familiar with.
He was so excited he forgot he was the newcomer to this news. They hardly needed a lecture from the former professor.
They got one anyway.
Force of habit.
As he spoke, he continued reading the rundown of the program. “This is an exciting new therapy that uses an injection of nanobots into the brain to fully restore brain function and health, as well as repair many other internal organ injuries.” A big grin broke across his face. “It’s the nanobots that receive the download, and they can’t be hacked.” Ward sighed. “Thank Christ for that,” he said to himself. “The Council’s blocked its development in the U.S. because they don’t yet own the domestic patents on the technology.”
Sophia couldn’t tell if Ward was reading from the screen now or if he was just reciting the information for himself as a mini-refresher. “Uh, yeah. We know that,” she deadpanned.
“That’s what it says on the label.” Rachel winked at her.
“This is going to sting a bit,” Ward heard Cynthia say from behind him, and a needle poked into the base of his skull. “That’s just to numb the insertion site.” Ward felt his skin numb immediately. “Now, I’m injecting the nanobots.” She was finished in twenty seconds. Next, Cynthia inserted the uplink needle.
Ward felt his skin move and nothing more. On the monitor in front of him a scan of his brain had beamed to life, and he could see the small needle that would be used as the uplink into the Neural Transmitter make its connection. It might have freaked some people out to see a needle boring into their brain, but Ward was a surgeon.
Drayger had shuffled up next to Ward and was reading the screen. “You think it can help with my leg?” Drayger asked.
“I don’t know,” Ward admitted, glancing at Dryager. “It can help with a lot of things, though. I would bet—” Ward’s eyes went wide as he felt the room suddenly start to spin. “That’s trippy...”
“What?” asked Drayger.
Ward smiled. “I think the download just started.”
Lantern had his helmet on and nodded in agreement. He could see the digital frequency beaming into the room, interfacing with Ward’s brain. It all took only seconds. Cynthia removed the uplink needle and placed a small bandage on Ward’s neck.
“Lantern”—Ward spun to him—“do you have a console I can work at?”
Lantern pointed behind Ward to the far computer. “That one.”
Ward spun back toward the far computer and darted out of his chair toward it. As he reached the console and plopped down to work, he marveled at the fact that the shivers had stopped and that he wasn’t even thinking about the serenity serum.
There was plenty else to focus on, and in the coming days he would do just that. The drone arrived as planned. Ward went to work on learning how to use it. He was anxious to get up to speed.
Ward’s frequent migraine headaches, going all the way back to the Battle of Boston and the Man-O-War, were largely psychological. But if this CRT tech could repair the very real concussion damage he had sustained, not only would that bode well for his odds of not becoming convinced he was a potted plant from Peoria in his retirement years, it might also convince his inner psychological demons to chase the migraines away.
The actual CRT procedure turned out to be deceptively simple. With his brain hooked up to an MRI, a med tech with a scanner surveyed the damage. Using targeted electrical signals, the tech numbed the appropriate section of Ward’s neck. Then a needle was carefully inserted into a vein that injected the nanobots directly into Ward’s bloodstream, and the tiny robots swam with speed into Ward’s injured cranium.
The microscopic robots went to work immediately. The only side effect Ward noticed, ironically, was an aching head that came on about an hour after the procedure and lasted about half the day.
In the days that followed, Ward began to apply the technology to the others. First to Sophia, repairing not only her concussive damage but also her ribs and spine. And the nanobots didn’t just repair the fractured organic tissue, they strengthened it.
Ward marveled at the technology.
Once he had gotten a look at the actual tech he realized immediately why the Council had shown no interest in developing CRT in the States. The cost made it simply prohibitive. No one had been able to produce the materials needed for it in a profitable manner. He could only imagine how much this was costing the Europeans to grant it to them.
Leslie had told him that she suspected some of the EU leaders were having CRT help them with ailments at public expense, but if so, it was not something the public knew. Officially, it was designated for the EU military forces, but since the Europeans never really deployed their military anywhere, it wasn’t actually being used. As far as she knew, the Chinese, Japanese, Brazilians, Russians, or Indians had yet to develop it either.
If they could only afford to develop the number of nanobots needed, it would be possible, Ward realized, to bond them to every bone in the body, increasing human durability ten-fold. Titanium shielding making bone fractures virtually a thing of the past.
Leslie shared a thought with him about that as well. If they could figure out how to do it, the nanobots ought to be able to replicate themselves at little or no cost.
Real Isaac Asimov type of stuff.
As of yet, the programming for this had eluded the Europeans. But technically, it was possible.
The thought thrilled Ward.
And it set him to work. Part of the mystery was chemical. And organic chemistry was his thing. Somewhere in the middle of his tinkering with various nitrogenous organic compounds he failed to notice that the serenity serum hadn’t even entered his mind.
CHAPTER 14
LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA
Across the large open field, thousands camped below the star-filled night sky. Their small campfires dotted the expanse, mimicking the twinkling lights above. Campers constantly glanced up at the small stone “palace” the Fire Fly had built, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Fiona Fletcher, whose chartreuse glow was even more breathtaking at night.
Far above them, Fiona sat crossed-legged in the center of a circle of girls, all around her own age. She was in human form, dressed in jeans and a tank top. The girls around her were all tall like Fiona. All chosen for their beauty and dancing ability. More than thirty of them.
The torches flickering in the palace, mirrored in the calm reflecting pools, bounced amber light across the stone of the pillars and polished floor. The fire’s glow danced everywhere.
“Tonight we’re going to complete the first step to forming our troupe,” Fiona said.
The girls grinned excitedly.
“Arcadia and I will demonstrate what it is I’m looking for,” she said, nodding to the tall brunette girl whose real name was Diana, but whom Fiona had started referring to as Arcadia. To the evident glee of ‘Arcadia.’
“Get the poi,” Fiona said to Arcadia, who left briefly and returned with something in each hand. In Arcadia’s right hand she held a silk veil that was wrapped around and draped off of a tennis ball-sized sphere. The sphere was connected to a long chain. A black rubber handle was connected to the chain. In her left hand, she held a similar object, but there was no veil tied to the ball.
“This is called a veil poi, or voi,” Fiona told the girls, pointing to the object in Arcadia’s right hand. “T
he other is simply an old-fashioned poi. Traditionally, many performers set them on fire, like this.”
She strode over to one of the torches and lit the ball. Soaked in kerosene, it ignited with a woosh! Some of the girls jumped and shrieked. Fiona smirked.
Then she began to dance. The burning ball on the end of the chain made beautiful rings of fire in the darkened palace. Fiona moved fast, and the fire poi traced patterns in the air just like in the time-lapse photography often used to capture poi dancers.
At the crescendo of her spinning fire dance, she burst into Fire Fly form with a rush of power that caused many of the girls to again shriek.
Under the veil of her incredible glowing power, she smirked, taking note of who flinched and who did not.
Fiona stopped.
She motioned to Arcadia, who entered the circle with the voi. Arcadia took up the dance with the same grace as Fiona—minus the glowing, all-powerful part.
Fiona watched her with admiring eyes. Arcadia was a truly beautiful dancer. The brunette ended her dance with a bow, coiling the veil around her forearm and letting the voi dangle gently at her side.
The girls applauded.
“Let’s try it like this,” Fiona said as she picked up the voi ball in her glowing hand and burned an orb of bioluminescent energy around it. It glowed like a yellow-green moon. Fiona pointed her fingers, and the energy spread down the veil until the entire shroud of silk was burning with luminescence. Fiona nodded to Arcadia, and she grinned ear to ear—and began to dance again.
Spinning and spinning, dancing with the veil was now an entirely new experience. The power of the luminescent veil drawing her to it. Arcadia’s wondrous expression seemed to ask could she just fling the powerful voi and reach all across the world, or at least across the lake, its reach felt so immense.
The girls in the circle watched as the energy veil now stretched above their heads as the fabric elongated with power. A wider and wider arc of light spun over their heads as Arcadia reached the crescendo of her dance.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 10