The Veritas Project

by C. F. E. Black

  “V, you need to get a grip,” someone says to me in my ear. I am hyperventilating, and I can’t stop.

  Julius presses my shoulders into the dumpster and stares at me. “Breathe. Just take a deep breath.” He shakes me. “Listen to me!” At his command, I try to breathe slower. “That’s better. We’re going to get through this.”

  “But!” I choke. “But so many people are dying!”

  “That’s just the way it is out here, sweetheart,” Dig chimes in. He has the most content, peaceful look on his face. It unnerves me even more, and I start to break up again.

  “There she goes. Gonna get us all killed.” Gab rolls her eyes, her machine gun hovering up near her face.

  “Quiet!” Tommy snarls at us. He motions with his hand that they’re coming out of the building on the other side of the dumpster.

  We’re all dead. I know it. Even if we come out blazing, they’ve got us pinned. What the heck were we thinking? Is all this my fault? What about Pru? Have they shot her, too?

  Dig is the first to wheel around the corner, firing into the fray. Gab peels out right behind him, shouting all kinds of obscenities that get lost in the gunfire. Oscar and his two friends start firing around the other end of the dumpster. Ty looks at me one last time, turns, and runs.

  “No!” But it’s too late. He’s rounding the corner, his face wild, his gun blazing.

  I can’t just sit here! Move! Mustering my strength and a full-bodied scream, I jump out from behind the container, gun raised. A few people are sprawled on the pavement, but I don’t look to see who. Ty is walking forward, firing at the stairwell of the building, where two guns we cannot see are unloading bullets at us.

  As I run, sluggishly, I notice Dig’s body, facedown, a bloody hole in his back. Not watching where I’m going, my tired feet catch on the pavement, and I fall. My knees slam against the blacktop and my left wrist crunches as it breaks my fall. Now I’m done for. An unmoving target.

  “Got her!” A voice shouts.

  Axe Johnson. He’s going to kill me.

  I start to scramble up, cradling my gun against my waist with one hand, ignoring the pain in my other. The barrel of Axe’s gun is trained on me, but he seems to be waiting for something. Then, I see him. The hulking frame of M steps out of a sleek, black sedan I only just now noticed. As he rises, a pistol emerges from his side, a black hole at the end of an outstretched arm. And, to my horror, my brain betrays me, and I start to feel a brain flash coming on.

  In the haze of semi-consciousness that washes over me, I hear the words “She’s mine, Johnson.” M is smiling as he pulls the trigger, and I freeze, unable to wrench my mind free from the flashing memories before me. From nearby something heavy hits me.

  My body falls. Still in the throes of the flash—memories of M’s stream flickering before my eyes—I can’t quite recall what made me fall this time. Staring up at the few scattered stars appearing, I wonder what all the noise is.

  One gunshot rocks me back to life. Then I’m screaming. My elbow and wrist are screaming too. When all the breath has left my lungs, I realize I’m still able to draw more. The brain flash now fully over, I remember with a jolt that M shot at me. He knows it was a two-way stream!

  I suck in air, becoming aware of the angry throbbing in my wrist, but aware, too, of a body beside me on the pavement. I am not shot. Rolling over onto my knees, reality strikes me in the chest.

  On the pavement next to me is the Director, a bloody stain spreading on his blue shirt just beneath the crisp point of the collar.

  “Valeria,” he mutters, his voice like seams ripping out one by one.

  Axe Johnson runs, gun raised, in the other direction. Tommy is kneeling beside the dumpster, firing. M is staring at us, gun still raised. His pistol moves a fraction of a degree, finding me and hiding his face. But before he can shoot again, his arm flies up, his legs crumpling under him—he’s been shot in the knee.

  Eyes back on the Director, I see the bloodstain has grown sickeningly large.

  “What happened?”

  But I know what happened. How could he do this? I ran from him. I hated him.

  The thought curdles and I try to spit it out, spluttering with the realization that I owe this man my life.

  “Why did you do it?” I ask, struggling to swallow, struggling to understand.

  He rattles out a few breaths, eyes closed. Finally he looks at me. “Because you are my daughter. I love you, Valeria,” he says, eyes spilling water.

  He reaches up toward me, his hand unable to cross the distance. Overcome with sudden sadness, I grasp his hand and press it against my cheek, letting his fingers feel my tears. Never could I have imagined this. Tears for the Director! The man I hated all these years! But all hatred inside me has left, flushed out by the sight of the seeping blood below me. Blood spilled because of me, for me. It should be my blood rushing onto the pavement.

  “Now you know the tru—” He squeezes my hand and then his entire arm goes limp.

  A bullet flies so close to my head that my hair moves. Screaming, both out of fear and rage, my body begins to act on its own. I lunge upward, pressing the weapon still in my hand into the air in front of me. Whatever is before me is my target. I let loose a pair of rounds and the kicks seem to fire sense back into me.

  “What am I doing?” I say aloud, wondering who or what I’m firing at.

  Around me, the scene has changed. M is on his feet again, or rather balancing mostly on one foot, still holding out his pistol, but there are three other guns pointed at him. Tommy, Gab, and a man whose name I never heard. Ty is walking this way from the direction of the building, one hand clamped over his upper left arm. Pru walks beside him, unharmed, her hand gently holding Ty’s left hand. A wave of relief passes through me as I see them in one piece. So many are dead. Too many.

  Dead.

  The word feels heavy. I can’t carry that word right now. I can’t look back at the Director. I can’t look at the dark shapes sprawled in the night under the pale streetlights. I don’t see Julius or many of the people who came with the Director.

  “V,” Pru says, walking up to me, tears on her cheeks. Ty releases her hand, his face hard.

  I throw my arms around Pru, grateful she is alive and unharmed, all previous enmity between us no longer important. In the pressure of her embrace, I feel the arms of a friend.

  “V, they said M was going to use you as the exchange!” She smears a tear off her face.

  “We know. Julius found out. We found out a lot of things, actually.”

  “Me too.” She sniffs. “Ty told me you streamed with M to get me back.” She looks like a different person than the girl I knew from the Center. I suppose she is. Just as I am a different person than Valeria V. “You didn’t have to do that.” Then she gasps as she sees the Director behind me, but there is no time to explain.

  Axe and a tall, slender man I recognize from a few news casts about crime rings are pointing their guns at Tommy and Gab. A web of invisible bullet paths freezes the entire company in a standstill that will end with either everyone’s death or everyone’s surrender.

  “We know what you are!” I shout at M, suddenly so angry.

  “I have everything I need now, thanks to you, my dear.” He speaks calmly, as if all the guns mean nothing and he is still in control. It is unnerving. His leg is bleeding, but he pretends it doesn’t bother him.

  “Do you consider murdering all of us a necessary step?” My hands are shaking with rage and fear and grief and pain.

  He chortles. “I hadn’t planned on killing anyone. Isn’t that right, Emmanuel?”

  “It is true.” The tall man’s voice is round and deep. He is wearing a red band on his upper arm, like Axe and the others who came with Pru. “We came for you,” he says, looking directly at me. “But when we found out the Director of the Center was here with you, thanks to M’s cameras, we thought he’d be a nice little trophy to add to our wall. That’s why we shot.”

 
Suddenly, I wonder where on earth Julius is and what happened to him. I never even asked if he was able to get our plan set up.

  M nods. “They came only to settle the score for the death round. But our clever gen-eng friends discovered it was my plan to send V home with the Reds.”

  “And to sell all the Center’s secrets to China!” I shout, hoping the whole city hears me, believes me. A far-fetched hope.

  Suddenly, I look to my right, where movement beside the dumpster catches my eye. I watch as a boy I know walks onto the illuminated stage that is this battlefield.

  The skinny, pale Marcus of the Fifth Order—the original Marcus V—walks out holding Julius at gun point.

  I gawk at the boy I thought to be brain-wiped. Then, snapping to my senses, I shout, “Julius, show him! Show M the truth!”

  Julius has his hands behind his back, but they look burdened by something, twisted in a strange fashion. “He says he knows us,” Julius says, a disarming smile tugging at one side of his face. Why is he always smiling?

  A breath escapes my lips carrying the words “he does” quietly into the night. I am unable to say more. Everything I know has shattered.

  “Thank you, Marcus,” M says. Marcus is with M! “Now, Julius, what is our V talking about? What do you have to show me?”

  “Many things, sir,” Marcus, not Julius, answers, his small voice just like I remember. “First, that I am not one of yours. I was hired by that man,” he points behind me at the Director’s fallen body, “almost a year ago when I was supposed to be wiped. He saved my life, like he saved V’s tonight, too.” He pauses, looking at the Director, mouth barely ajar. Snapping back to attention, he continues. “Secondly, that you are finished, M.” He swings his gun to M. “Show him now, Julius.”

  “What is this?” M shouts.

  Julius brings his arms around, revealing in one hand, his tablet.

  A cry of elation escapes my lips.

  On the screen of the tablet is the news anchor I recognize from the nightly broadcast, and from here I can just read the word “China” on the ticker scrolling under the man’s desk.

  “This,” Julius begins, his voice triumphant, “is streaming live to all the news screens in the city. You wanted to see inside her head, M. Didn’t think what would happen if we saw inside yours. Turns out those sensors came in handy, just when we needed them.”

  M’s eyelids flicker but there is no visible fall as this emperor watches his throne kicked out from under him. “I see,” he says, his gun at last inching downward like a falling flag.

  Axe drops his gun and runs. No one interferes.

  Julius lifts his tablet a little higher. “V, I did one more thing.” He cringes and says, “I’m also live-streaming this to the internet. From your feed.”

  My jaw loosens, a breath escapes. Genius.

  But before Julius’ last word stops reverberating in my mind, M’s gun aims again at me, and Ty knocks me to the pavement. In a flash, bullets start flying in all directions. Over it all comes the sound of helicopter rotors buzzing overhead.

  Soon the guns are silenced by the whooshing of the blades. I look up, seeing everyone standing but M, whose body lies flat on the concrete.

  “Dad!” Ty groans, slamming a fist into the blacktop. His knuckles come away bloody and gripping small pieces of grit.

  The helicopter hovers overhead, and a voice carries through the air. “Malachi Buck, you are under arrest.”

  “He’s dead!” Ty shouts into the sky.

  “Not dead,” Tommy calls from nearby. He walks toward M’s fallen body, which writhes on the ground. “Chest shot only hit his armor, knocked him down, that’s all.” He squats, placing a hand on M’s massive frame. “Not dead,” he repeats. “Just defeated.”

  Ty rocks forward, exhaling, and rests his forehead and elbows against the ground.

  Trembling, I stand, aware for what feels like the hundredth time that I am okay. Aching all over with sharp pains in my wrist and elbow, but unharmed. Unshot. I step cautiously out of the wind of the helicopter as it lands in the street. Julius hurries over to me, and I let him embrace me.

  “You did it,” I say into his chest, not uncomfortable with this closeness. After tonight, I understand better why humans need hugs.

  “No,” he pulls me to arms’ length. “You did it. It was genius. And sorry about the live feed. I thought we might need a safeguard tonight. Now the whole world knows what M is.”

  Pru stands hunched and blinking furiously in the wind. “V, thank you.”

  Behind us, M is being lifted onto a stretcher and cuffed to it. Emmanuel is being led by Tommy to a cop car that has arrived on the scene, lights blinding. Oscar and the rest of the scattered remains of this massacre are dispersing in cop cars or ambulances.

  Ty is beside his father, hands clasped behind his head in apparent misery.

  I look around for the man who saved me. The Marcus I used to know is kneeling beside him, gun abandoned on the pavement. The three of us walk over to where the Director lies.

  “He took the bullet for me,” I say as I lower to my knees.

  “He wanted this,” Marcus says. “It was always his plan.”

  I shake my head. “Not this, surely not this.”

  Marcus, in his clipped manner, jerks his long face at me. “Yes, Valeria, he did.” It’s strange to hear him say my old name like some phantom from the past. “As soon as you got out, he told me it’d come to this. He said M would have to be defeated before he felt you were safe. He knew M was trying to access the Center for the sensor technology, and Tommy and I were supposed to find out who the buyer was. But it wasn’t until M had you that his plan was ever conceptualized. It all happened much faster than we thought it would, but it ended much faster, too. Thanks to you.”

  “I did what I had to. I had to let the city know.” I glance at Julius. “Though live streaming wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” With a wink, I add, “And now they know that M is a spy.”

  Because not only did they see this scene unfold, they saw the brain flash I had. The brain flash that contained memories of M’s. Just as M had seen Pru’s memories flash in her mind’s eye that night at Boast’s party, the memories I have from M played across my mind as the world watched. The plan, somehow, worked.

  “Like I said, genius!” Julius chimes. His smile is absent now though as he looks down at the Director.

  The sensors I wanted removed—still want removed—saved us tonight. But they did not save him.

  A team of medics swoop in, scattering us, as they collect the Director’s body. Something in me thinks he, too, like M, must not really be dead. Only wounded. Protected by armor I can’t see. My body aches with the desire to see him open his eyes and look at me one more time. He must look at me! I reach out as the stretcher wheels him away to the helicopter. The blood has already darkened on the front of his shirt as still more seeps out. Not alive, but still bleeding. It is maddening. I start to cry and stumble after him, but I am restrained.

  “He’s gone,” Julius says, suddenly there, one strong arm gripping my waist. His touch offers consolation. When my resistance stops, he lets go, arm falling to his side.

  Tears dripping down his face, Ty watches as his father is loaded onto the helicopter. Something in him has changed; I am aware of it in the way his shoulders sag. I don’t suppose I blame him. His father was shot and captured and will surely never be free again.

  I feel alone even as I am surrounded by my fellow ex-Order members, Tommy, Ty, and the rest of the Director’s team. Together we watch the helicopter dip its nose and head off over the city, carrying the deposed zealot, Ty’s father, and the Director, my own father. A man I spent so much of my life hating—the man who not only gave me life but saved my life.

  Thirty-Three

  The Director’s grave sits just outside the National Heritage Tree Refuge, on a plot of land he’d bought from the Center years ago for a house he never got to build. The Center wanted his body, of course,
and wanted to inter it within the walls of the facility itself. I refused. And since the Director had left documentation listing me as his only surviving family, I got the final word.

  And the land.

  For the first time in my life, I own something. I own a piece of the earth. Three acres seem like a vast plain to me, after spending almost my entire life between the walls of one building. From where I sit today by the fresh grave, I can see the towering tops of the ancient trees in the Refuge.

  Two weeks have passed since his body took the bullet aimed at me.

  Ty stands, stretches, brushing grass off his jeans. His actions toward me in the past few days have been kind but distant, his tone more reserved. He holds out a hand for Pru, who takes it and pulls herself up. Julius, holding the leash of a golden dog, jogs toward me from where he’s been playing fetch.

  “You still planning on leaving town?” Ty asks Julius.

  Julius nods. “There’s a revival in the tech industry in California. I think I can find work there.” He bends down and yanks the saliva-covered ball out of the dog’s mouth. “He’s getting pretty good at this.” The dog starts licking me, and I take the leash from Julius’ outstretched hand.

  The late spring sun feels hot on my skin, but the grass beneath my feet, cool. “No,” I say in answer to Ty’s question as I stand. “I think I’ll stay here.”

  Julius is leaving so he won’t have to see Pru every day, and I don’t blame him. She signed up to work at the police station almost immediately after what happened that night. Though she doesn’t have nanobots to work on, she seems to have found new purpose. She fits in with those gun-slinging guys better than she ever did with the Fifth Order. She’s found her people. And Julius will find his.

  “There’s a lot that needs to happen here,” I say. “The Center needs some direction, and I think I’ll stick around for that. The Direc—Abel would have wanted that.” Calling the Director Daddy didn’t seem right after all the times I’d used that name in a hateful way. But I couldn’t keep calling him the Director, either.