“The Stalker!” Bill said, the shock of realization on his face. Luthor remembered the hacked conversations between two men Qwiz had described. One of which he referred to as the Stalker.
“Stalker?” said the man, “I like the sound of that. That makes you the mole.” He kicked him hard in the side again. “You made communication difficult.”
Qwiz wheezed defiantly.
“Do you think you’re some kind of hero then?” another kick. Qwiz curled up in the fetal position, moaning. With each blow, Vika turned an angrier shade of red. “You’ve covered your tracks well. Very convenient for you to reveal yourself to me now.”
The man—Stalker—casually removed Qwiz’s weapon from his pants and tossed it out the window. Luthor’s mind raced, searching for an escape, anything. But they were completely surrounded and they had no guns. The Sabers—Luthor assumed that’s who they were—wore gelvar and riot helmets. Pistols would have been all but useless on them anyway. If only Luthor had his MX-5 loaded with High-Impact rounds… they could slice through all but JDU compound armor plating.
But he didn’t have HI-rounds—or an assault rifle. Luthor mentally switched focus and began trying to analyze the enemy and, perhaps, find a weakness. The windows and ceiling hatch remained open, which provided a potential escape route, but they would have to wade through a fire hose of bullets to get there. The Saber-swat team showed no weakness whatsoever, with the possible exception of taking their cues from Stalker.
Vika fumed next to him like a stick of dynamite.
“His name isn’t Stalker,” she said, “it’s Franco Dimarin. The man who imprisoned me for five years.”
“It would have been life, if I had my way,” Stalker-Dimarin said.
“The bastard tried to rape me!”
“It’s what you deserved for refusing him.”
Vika threw her head back and yelled. She shrieked as if she thought she could kill Dimarin by tearing out her vocal chords and strangling him with them.
The armed men gripped their weapons tighter.
“Scream if you want,” Dimarin said, “but you’re trapped and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Tell your Sabers to put down their guns and we’ll see what happens,” Vika growled.
“No!” He punched her across the face. She collapsed next to the couch. “We’ll see what happens when I start asking questions.”
William raised his hands in surrender. “There has got to be some mistake. I have nothing to do with this.”
“There is no mistake,” Stalker said coldly. “I have been chasing these fugitives across two continents, do not think for a moment I have mistaken my quarry.”
“Then what do you want? I work for powerful people, they can double whatever you're making!”
“Does it look like I need money?” If Stalker needed anything, it most certainly was not money. Luthor couldn’t help but be impressed by the quality of their gear. The carbon it took to outfit his unit could have purchased a transatlantic flight with a fighter escort.
“I’ll tell you what he wants,” said Qwiz quietly. “He wants to steal all of the research on producing 126, to let the EU have a monopoly on free energy.”
To Luthor’s surprise Stalker laughed derisively, full of genuine mirth. “And I thought you were some sort of hyper-genius. Even after listening to my conversations you still don’t know anything,” he laughed again. “I told you, I don’t need money.” Luthor couldn’t think of what they had wrong. What other possible motivation could this man have, other than stealing the technology for himself? Unless…
“You forgot one thing, Qwiz,” Michael said. “In order for him to have a true monopoly, he has to kill everyone who knows how to make it. That means us.”
“At least you have that part correct. You will all be dead as soon as you give me the information I am looking for.”
“You son of bitch,” Bill spat. “We won’t tell you anything.”
“Very well,” said Stalker, the corner of his mouth curling in a sneer, “I am not above torture. Of course, I could be persuaded to forgo it…” he let the implication hang in the air. He won’t torture us if we tell him everything.
William threw up his hands. “Either way we are going to die, whether we resist or not. We might as well not die with all our fingernails pulled out and our lungs full of water.”
Stalker smiled. He knew he was in control. The trouble was, Luthor had no idea how to retake any semblance of it back from him. His only chance was to draw things out as long as possible and hope for an opening.
“Let’s start with an easy question. Who else have you told about 126?”
Michael stood up. “Suck my dick.” He spat on the floor. “We aren’t telling you shit.” The nearest guard hit him brutally with the butt of his gun in the back of the knees. Michael cried out and collapsed next to Vika, who hadn’t bothered to get up after Dimarin’s punch.
“Why are you so stupid?” William asked to the groaning, crumpled Michael. He turned to Stalker. “I will talk. Just answer one question first and I will spill my guts on 126.”
“Ask.”
“How did you find my producer?” he asked.
Damn it, William, you wasted it. She’s already dead. Luthor realized, even as he thought it, that William wouldn’t have his perspective. He’d never been in a situation where he’d had friends and team members killed. Her death was probably more traumatic for him then his own imminent death.
“She made a phone call yesterday that was recorded. She asked a USNN executive for permission to film here. We heard the call, tracked her to her home, shot her, and then waited for you here. Now, who have you told?”
William’s voice quavered. “I haven’t told anyone else. They said it would be too dangerous.”
“And they were right,” Dimarin said. “Luckily, I believe you. Now, give me the research data. I know you have it.”
William closed his eyes. After a pregnant moment, he opened them again and tossed Stalker the memory stick with Luthor’s research. He turned back to the rest of them, pain written all over his face. “At least we know someone has the technology.”
“No!” Luthor yelled. “Does this look like a man who’s going to do anything good with it? Don’t you see? He doesn’t want money, he wants war!”
It was blindingly obvious. Dimarin didn’t care about money. A man like him wanted power. Someone who organized military strikes would gain incalculably more power during a war with China. A war they would certainly win with the help of 126. Only hundreds of millions more innocent people would die in the process. It would be Antarctica all over again. It was all Luthor’s fault. If he’d never discovered the damn synthesis method, no one would ever know the properties of 126. He hadn’t avenged Jake and Martinez. He hadn’t atoned for Chaz’s life and Garcia’s leg. He’d betrayed them all.
Dimarin hefted the memory stick in his hand. “I don’t think these men here would be prone to follow orders if they knew it would lead to another war. Men like them tend to die in wars.”
Luthor heard one Saber next to him chuckle behind his helmet.
Inexplicably, Dimarin then dropped the memory stick on the ground and crushed it with his boot.
“What are you doing?”
“The same thing I will do to every other copy of your research. I’m destroying it.”
“What! Why?” Luthor shouted. “The world needs this. Don’t throw it away!”
“What the world needs is stability, Tenrel. Surely you of all people can understand that. The stability the Sabers provide would be threatened if the world were suddenly flooded with free energy.”
“That isn’t your decision to make.”
“I can make any decision I desire. I answer to no one; I am outside of the jurisdiction of any country.”
Vika looked up from the ground and glared at Dimarin. “Once the EU discovers this insanity, they will execute you.”
“I love that even after years w
ith us, you still believe that we work for Europe. If Jacques were still alive, I would give him a raise for managing to conceal our true nature so completely.”
“What? That you have agents stationed in America?”
“Why wouldn’t we? America is part of our Charter.”
“What Charter?”
“The CPI Charter. The Sabers were written right into the Paris 2 agreement. We are the ultimate enforcement arm of the Carbon Enforcement Coalition. Unlike the carbon police or conventional militaries, we were intentionally kept neutral to keep everyone in line. We’re the check to keep world powers from violating carbon protocols.”
“If the Sabers were so global, why were we always stationed in Europe?”
“Because that’s where carbon enforcement is headquartered and where the CPI databases are.”
“You’re lying,” Vika insisted, “I did not kill for the sake of carbon!”
Dimarin seemed to be enjoying himself. “Think about it, Veronika, why else would we only bomb energy sources? We destroy the ones that emit carbon.”
“Now I know you are lying. We bombed plenty of green energy too,” Vika said.
“We can’t have any one area becoming energy independent. That would be bad for carbon enforcement and erode our influence.”
“This is bullshit,” Vika said. Michael slapped her arm as if trying to get her to shut up.
Dimarin sneered, “we keep the world’s energy supply low because it keeps people docile and keeps us in power. Nothing threatens that more than you, Tenrel. If the EU or US applies your technology, it would eliminate the need for CPI, carbon regulation, and thus the Sabers, overnight. Why monitor carbon output, if everyone has unlimited carbon-free energy? It must be destroyed, along with everyone who knows about it.”
“At least give it to someone,” Luthor pleaded. “America, the EU, I don’t care!”
“But you were right about what that would do,” Dimarin replied. “If I give it to one of them it will start a war. China does not have a monopoly on greed. The Coalition is just as capable of trying to dominate the world. I do not want to send my men into another war. Eliminating 126 is my only choice.”
“So you are just going to kill everyone who’s even heard of 126, just to protect your power?” William said.
“Yes. A single loose end would ruin everything. I have Tenrel’s friend Garcia in custody already. Other Sabers are tracking down the Markless who helped you in New York. It is only a matter of time until the rest of you tell me who else knows about 126. Once we get you back to the compound, you won’t last long.”
“You’d be surprised how long I can last,” Bill said.
Dimarin took out a large pistol from a shoulder holster built into his body armor. “I look forward to finding out. But for now, a promise is a promise. No torture for you, reporter.” He pointed the weapon at William.
Images flashed in Luthor’s mind of everyone who had been killed in the war. His friends, his enemies, the Culling, all of it had been for the sake of man’s greed. Now William sat before a one-man firing range for the same reason. Luthor couldn’t stand it. He refused to let one more innocent person die for energy, or lack thereof. I will not let Antarctica happen here. This is where I draw the line!
Luthor threw himself at William, trying to get in between the gun and his head. Several gun shots discharged as he tumbled to the ground, William in his arms.
When he looked up, Stalker and his entire team had been thrown against the nearest walls.
They stuck there, struggling to escape. That’s when Luthor noticed a radical change in gravity, it no longer was down, it was up. He fell upward, William in tow, and slammed hard against the ceiling. Hands reached down through the ceiling hatch and pulled the two of them through it. Once on the roof, Luthor rolled away from the hole, panting. He weighed several times more than normal. Vika reached her wiry arm back inside. Bursts of gunfire greeted her. In a moment she withdrew her arm again; it bled freely, amorphous BOGs were clasped firmly in her fist. She separated them, and Luthor felt gravity return to normal. The rattle of automatic weapons echoed up from the inside.
“Luthor, give me all your 126!” Michael shouted.
Now weighing only 75 kilos instead of 200 he stood and did as was requested. “I hope you know what you’re doing!” Michael had 15 BOGs.
“Just get off this building.”
“Over here.” Vika held one of the ropes Stalker’s team had used to climb into the windows. The braided nylon was tethered firmly to a post on the edge of the roof. Tanya dropped off the side. Bill helped his wounded son.
Luthor sprinted to the edge, hoping not to feel the sting of bullets. Michael handed Luthor the rope, his eyes were wide with adrenaline. “Remember the gravity bomb? We’re going to try one. Now go!”
Luthor shoved down his fear of high places, refusing to let it control him. He gripped the rope firmly, shuddered in fear and backed to the edge.
“Now!” Vika yelled.
Michael braced himself against one of the rooftop air conditioning units and smashed his hands together. Even halfway across the roof, Luthor felt the violent shift in gravity. It was even more intense than when he had crashed the helicopter. Michael lobbed the makeshift grenade into the ceiling hatch just as Luthor jumped off the roof. The new gravity well was so massive that he was able to walk down the side of the wall 30 meters away barely needing the rope. The fringe benefit was that the wall felt like down, his brain told him it was down, and so the heights didn’t bother him.
Luthor stepped off the wall awkwardly onto the gravel. He fought against the 126 to get away from the building. Tanya grabbed one of the guns Stalker had thrown out of the window and handed another to Luthor. Vika landed lithely next to him.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in there, but we shouldn’t be here when it does,” Luthor said. They sprinted to the truck. William limped badly, and a full quarter of his fine shirt had been stained dark red. Luthor helped him into the truck-bed.
Luthor felt the gravity continually growing as the BOGs that had pinned Stalker’s team to the wall coalesced with Michael’s massive concentration of 126. An ear-splitting shriek rent the air and the building shuddered on its foundations. A huge chunk of the left wall crunched in on itself like a discarded aluminum can.
"Where is Michael? Did he get sucked in?” Luthor asked.
“He will make it,” Vika said quietly “…please make it.”
A second later, Michael leapt off the roof; he held no rope. He ran down the wall, even as it cracked underneath him, pieces of brick and mortar sucked inward toward the terrifying new gravity well at the center of the building. He strained like he was carrying a 200-kilogram pack. Three meters from the ground he leapt forward desperately, crumpling onto the concrete walkway.
“Run!” Vika shouted.
Michael struggled, his arms were riveted with road rash, and his legs pumped awkwardly against the competing gravity wells. But he ran. The building’s windows shattered behind him as the bomb sucked in the steel restraints.
He rolled ingloriously onto the bed of the truck. “Floor it!”
Two figures forced themselves out of broken bottom windows. One was unmistakably Stalker. Luthor emptied the entire magazine at him as he rolled out. Ripples in the black gelvar spread from several shots, but none found flesh.
The truck’s ancient batteries attempted to accelerate, but only managed a slow roll away from the implosion. Stalker managed to get to the street. He dropped to a knee and returned fire in 3-round bursts from his assault rifle. Luthor ducked, praying the frail frame of the truck bed would withstand the force of the gunshots. It didn’t. They ripped through the aluminum body like tissue paper. Luthor covered his head as holes popped up all around the rim of the bed. Images of huddling against a frozen wall against a Chinese assault flooded his mind.
William cried out in pain, as a projectile struck him square in the leg. Luthor shook his head violently, tryi
ng to rattle the memories loose from his conscious mind. With a grunt, Luthor forced them down to their prison and jolted back to the present. This was no time to shut down and get stuck in the past.
The shooting stopped. Luthor chanced a peak. The building groaned like a dying giant and crashed in on itself, resembling a reverse explosion in slow motion. The brick walls folded over the wreckage like paper mâché, creating a red-brown sphere with a ten-meter radius where the building had been. The only remnant of the structure were the steel I-beams, firmly secured into the foundation. They formed a rounded cage as they were slowly bent around the debris ball at the center. Stalker stood impassively next to the disturbing scene, oblivious of the gravitational phenomenon next to him. His goal seemed to be reloading as fast as humanly possible.
Less than a second after the initial volley, more bullets erupted from the gun, the muzzle flash appearing in the characteristic starburst pattern of an MX-5. Just as Luthor heard the plink of more bullet impacts, Bill wheeled the truck in a sharp turn onto a different street. Luthor heaved a sigh of relief.
No time for relief, William’s hit. For once, Luthor was glad for the memories that pounced him; they reminded him of how to care for a wounded man. Having no proper bandages, he stripped off his shirt, and tore long strips from the threadbare cotton fabric. Vika had already done the same, she was already tying them around the wound on his side. Luthor avoided staring at Vika’s lean torso and full breasts. Instead, he focused on the task at hand, stopping William’s bleeding. Michael failed to focus on anything other than Vika.
Luthor ripped the frayed pant leg to see the wound better. Blood gushed from the hole in his thigh. Luthor blotted it away with one of the strips to try to see if the bullet had lodged itself in the leg or not. It looked like it had gone clean through. Luthor hoped the round hadn’t severed the femoral artery, if it had, the kid would definitely lose the leg—if he survived at all.
Luthor didn’t like tying tourniquets, in Antarctica they had been a death sentence for whatever limb they were tied to. It wrenched his heart every time he’d seen a friend lose a limb. Garcia. Too bad he would never get to walk on his prosthetic again now that Dimarin had him.
Scarcity Page 38