by Eric Wood
"We said we didn't know if the Colony forces were friendly or hostile, right?" Marcus continued. "I've been cycling through the camera feeds again, looking for any potentially useful information. I've even been able to break through some simple encryption and bypass —"
"For God's sake, son," Roosevelt said. "Just tell us what you've got."
"Right," Marcus said with a quick nod. "Well, since we lost control of the citadel systems, we also lost access to the Lawbringer's half of the key to Warren Air Force Base. So, I checked the feeds from there, and... well, here is what they show."
He tapped his tablet, and the image flew up to the projector screen. The projector showed a small group pausing briefly at the outer gates of what must’ve been Warren Air Force Base while the automated defenses — two very large machines gun turrets and doubtlessly many other hidden systems — powered down. Apparently satisfied they were no longer in danger of dying by the Old World AI defenses, the group continued into the base's interior. The projector then switched to a new image, this one taken inside the base and better zoomed in so the group's individual members were easily identifiable. Most of the group were dressed in the gray-and-whites of the Colonies, but Sam could pick out at least four black Company jackets within the group. If there’d been any doubt that the Company was working on the Colonies' behalf, that image put it to rest.
This revelation wasn't what disturbed Sam about the video, however. What disturbed him were the two faces on the screen that he recognized. The first belonged to Elena; while Ki had told them Elena had betrayed them, seeing direct video evidence was still disheartening. The other familiar face belonged to Elder Jed, the chief Elder and leader of the Black Hills Survivor's Colony.
Sam's surprise at seeing his Colony flag had taken a backseat when Abigail arrived, injured and weaker than he had ever seen her. Now, though, his mind had been freed up to resume being confused and frightened by his home's appearance at Cheyenne's gates. What were they doing here, and why would Jed, who Sam couldn't remember even leaving his underground compound in their Colony's command center, come here in person?
"Well, that settles it," Roosevelt said. "Those Colony bastards aren't here to help. Please tell me they don't have your half of the key codes, Ki."
Ki didn't answer immediately.
"Unfortunately you were not the only one to be betrayed today, Lawbringer," she said. "You see my agent Elena Rostov up on the screen, no doubt. When she made her...defection, she took with her my half of the key. It is no exaggeration to say her betrayal was devastating to my operation. Now, knowing the Company and the Colonies have taken your half of the key, devastating is an understatement."
Roosevelt sighed heavily and rubbed the ends of his mustache. "So they have both halves of the key, and they're already at Warren," he said as he began to pace. "Then it's only a matter of time before they boot up all the old drones, and then we're finished. If we weren't already. How did it come to this?"
"I know that guy," Abigail whispered to Sam, pulling his attention away from Roosevelt's spiraling despair and his own profound confusion. "I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn't quite remember from where. Now I do."
Sam turned to face her. "Which guy?" he asked.
"Him." She pointed up at the screen. "The one in the middle. Solomon knew him, from way back. Before the Horsemen outbreak, I think. He brought me along one time when they met to discuss something; I don't remember what it was. But I remember how Solomon reacted to him."
"Wait, so your Reaper...boss, I guess, knew one of those people. One of the Company men?" It had to be. Company agents operated all over the Wilds, mostly on shadowy errands. He could definitely see them crossing paths with someone like Solomon.
"Solomon was a bad guy, but he wasn't an angry guy," Abigail said, continuing to look up at the projector. Her eyes were unfocused, like she was re-living the memory as she spoke. "Not usually. But he got angry then, and the other guy got angry right back. It was about five years ago. They nearly came to blows, which would have been something to see. It...has a strange sort of logic, him being here now." She sighed, one hand trailing up to toy with the faint bullet-blemish marking her neck. "Yet another Reaper with an army...we’re getting thick as flies, it seems."
Sam's eyes had drifted back to the projector and Jed, but his head snapped back to Abigail as she finished speaking. "A Reaper? One of the Company men is a Reaper?" At least one. He remembered how Cutter, the Company captain, had hurled that giant dumpster across the alley with one arm. A normal person could never have managed that, but a Reaper might’ve been able to. He hadn't had a chance to think about it till just now, but it made sense. Of course, Cutter wasn't in the video, which meant the Company had multiple Reapers in its employ. That thought was frightening enough, but Sam had begun to suspect the truth might be even worse.
Go on, kid, Vincente's voice urged. Ask her.
"Abigail," Sam said, his blood beginning to turn cold. "Which one of those people are you talking about, specifically? Which one is the Reaper?"
"The one in the middle," she said. "In the Colony gray and white. I wish I could remember his name, but he’s the one with the bushy brown beard and the creepy eyes. He's the Reaper."
Sam felt his head begin spinning counterclockwise. She was talking about Elder Jed.
Elder Jed was, and had always been, a Reaper.
48
"As you so eloquently stated, Roosevelt," Madame Ki said. "If the Colony army takes control of Warren's drone forces, we will have little chance of keeping them from taking the city."
The room took on a silence that to Roach felt a lot like defeat. She made her way over to stand beside Rend. He nodded at her and flashed a smile, apparently as immune as ever to the pessimism wafting through the air.
"Therefore," Ki continued, "we have but one course of action. We must attack the group at the air force base immediately, with everything we can throw at them. Lawbringer, if you were able to muster the remainder of your loyal troops, what kind of numbers would we be looking at?"
"I would have to...I don't truly know how many remain faithful," Roosevelt said, shaking his head. "It could be a few hundred, or it could only be a few dozen. Marcus, do you have any solid numbers for me? God, even if we could pull a respectable number we would just be abandoning the city to the traitors and their Company allies. We lose either way."
"I have already sent word to my outside sources for any assistance they might be able to provide," Ki said. "Unfortunately I have yet to hear back."
"Funny how that works," Roosevelt sneered. "Why don't you just tell us, once and for all, who your mysterious 'outside source' is? I've always wondered how you stay so well-informed about what goes on outside the city."
That detail is irrelevant. We are, for the time being, on our own," Ki retorted.
At that, the room again fell into a dejected silence.
Roach looked toward Sam and Abigail. Abigail, appearing no less weak and half-asleep than she had in the woods, was whispering something in Sam's ear. Meanwhile, Sam was staring at nothing like someone who’d just been told his parents had died. Neither looked like they had any answers. She looked to Ki, who stood with her arms crossed, dressed for battle but for once in her life seeming off-balance and hesitant. She looked at Lawbringer Roosevelt, who was staring at the floor, all of his former bluster and confidence evaporated, its void filled with hopelessness and impotence. None of them seemed to know the right thing to say, much less to do. Well, Roach thought, I guess it's gonna have to be me then.
She took a deep breath and stepped forward. "In all my years fighting in the Wilds, I —"
"I think I have a solution," Marcus said, looking up suddenly from his tablet.
Oh, thank god, Roach thought. She really didn't know where that speech was going.
"It's a long shot," Marcus continued, "and we'll only have one chance at it, but I think there might be a way to turn the Colony's plan against them without giving up th
e city. It will take a lot of coordination, and more than a little luck, but if it works, I think we can steal the drone army right out from underneath them. Even better, we'll be able to get our comms network back online in the process."
Roosevelt stopped pacing and turned to Marcus. "Just speak plain for once in your life," he said in an exhausted huff.
"Well. As you said, if we send everyone to the air force base, the Company and their agents will come out of the citadel and take the city for themselves. If we don't attack the air force base, the Colonies will eventually re-activate the Old World drones, and then they will take the city. But if we can re-take the citadel, I might be able to use Roosevelt's half of the key to gain a backdoor access to the base's network. If I can do that, we might — might — be able to utilize Madame Ki's half of the key to control the drone army ourselves."
"Intriguing," Ki said. She tapped her lips with a finger, working the plan out in her head. "But if the Company agents and the Colonists are already at Warren, wouldn't Roosevelt's key be with them as well?"
Marcus shook his head. "It can't be with them. A few years back we hard-coded it into the citadel's systems and destroyed the drive it had been stored on. There is no way to physically remove it from the citadel's hard drives, and no way to move the hard drives from the citadel. I headed that project myself, and I'm sure there is no way around it. That was part of the reason we weren't worried about Sam and Elena stealing that drive, interestingly enough."
Ki scowled at him. "I suppose, uh, that's not important at this...juncture, however," Marcus said, "so I'll just move on. The point I was trying to make is that I designed those systems, and I know them inside and out. If I can gain access to a terminal, I will be able to defeat anyone on their end who tries to stop me from taking control of the network. And once we have the network we also have Ki's uh...key, and then we have the drones."
"An elegant plan," Ki said. "So all we have to do is take control of Roosevelt's heavily occupied citadel, defeating the rogue faction of his forces and the Company agents within."
"Yes!" Roosevelt said, his energy and volume returning to him all at once. "We crush the traitors, and then we crush the invaders. Marcus, my boy, I knew you could do it!"
"Well, there is, uh, one more tiny thing," Marcus said. "We need someone to physically be at the air force base to ensure my code goes through. Otherwise, the Colonists can manually terminate the network connection and try again later, and we're back to where we started."
"So we need to assault both the citadel and Warren at the same time?" Roosevelt asked.
Marcus rubbed the back of his neck. "Theoretically, we only need one person to do the job at Warren, so the word 'assault' might not technically be accurate. Though in actuality...yes, that is what we have to do."
"I'll go," Sam said suddenly, stepping forward from where he had been crouching by Abigail. "I'll go to the base and do whatever needs to be done.”
"You will not, however, go alone," Ki said. "I think I speak for everyone when I say this plan is simultaneously our best, worst, and only option. Let's work out the details, and then make it happen."
49
Abigail watched the others gear up, getting more and more frustrated by the second.
"This is ridiculous," she spat, to no one in particular. Her shout brought on a fresh wave of dizziness. She gritted her teeth, inhaling slowly before continuing. "I won't be left behind like some sort of...damsel in a tower."
Sam, who had been in the process of strapping on a black bullet-proof vest, smiled and walked over to her. "Abigail, you are a lot of things, but damsel is definitely not one of them. That doesn't change the fact you can still barely stand up."
To prove him wrong, she pushed herself up from the table she had been leaning against. "Hmmm?" she said. She immediately began feeling wobbly and had to grab the edge of the table to keep from falling over, which somewhat undercut the point she was trying to make.
Sam took her lightly by the shoulders and helped her ease into a nearby chair. "It's okay, Abigail. Believe me, I would love to have you with me out there — hell, we'd all be better off if it was you heading out rather than me — but we will be okay, just this one time, without you. Really, I think by now you've earned a little rest."
"Rest?" she scoffed.
"A little rest. Trust me, Abigail. We can do this."
Abigail sighed and looked around the room, watching Rend, Roach, and even Marcus as they gathered arms and armor alongside Ki and Roosevelt's soldiers. Ki had stashed a small arsenal within the many rooms connected to this cold, stone safe house. She wondered how many places like this the crime boss had scattered around the rest of the city. In any case, it was more than enough to outfit everyone for battle. Abigail would have thought it interesting if she wasn't so incredibly frustrated. She hated that everyone was going off to fight and she was not.
She hated that Sam was going into that Old World military base with a damned Reaper waiting — a Colony Reaper, something she’d never expected to see — without her to watch his back. And she hated just how helpless she was; how useless she was. The last time she had felt like this she’d been a child, stumbling on short, uncoordinated legs after the long strides of a strange, cold man who was all that stood between her and a quick death in the Wilds. She felt even more helpless now, because instead of being unable to protect herself from the world's dangers, she couldn't protect those she cared about. Not Sam, not even the others, who (though she would never admit it) she had grown almost fond of.
Sam was right though. She would only be a drag on anyone she went out with; a burden instead of an asset. Not that Ki would allow her to leave anyway. She had been quite clear on that, and Abigail wasn't up to challenging even a small middle-aged woman at this point.
She took Sam's hand and locked eyes with him. "Fine. But just make sure you come back, Sam Brennan, or I will find you, and I will kill you."
Back behind them, someone was calling for the groups to form up in anticipation of moving out. Sam smiled; stepping forward, he placed his hand on the side of her head and kissed her.
"Of course I'll come back, Abigail," he said, stepping back with his hand lingering on her face. "How could I possibly stay away from you?" He grabbed his rifle from the table beside her, flashed one last smile, then turned and jogged away.
Abigail hoped this wasn't the last time she would see him.
After traveling through a long section of dark, grotesquely smelling sewers — hopefully for the last time, though she wasn't optimistic about that — a heavy door was thrown open, and Roach was greeted by the bright burnt orange light of the newly setting sun.
She stepped out onto an unfamiliar patch of street next to Rend, who like her was carrying a rifle and wearing a light brown tactical vest. Behind them, dressed similarly but armed with only a holstered pistol that Roach really hoped he would refrain from drawing, came Marcus. Marcus was continuously looking down at the tablet in his hands, and each time he did so, his poorly fitted combat helmet would slip forward over his eyes. Every time this happened Marcus would sort of growl in frustration and push the helmet back into position, only for the whole process to repeat again soon after. It was funny the first dozen times it happened, but by now it was starting to get on her nerves.
"Tighten up that helmet or just lose it altogether," Roach said. "You need to keep your eyes open once the bullets start to fly; by then I won't have time to babysit you anymore."
She nodded forward toward the rest of their small group. They had been dispatched near the north-most entrance to Roosevelt's district with a half-dozen of Ki's people, including the two Howlers from outside the safe house. They continued to jog down the abandoned streets toward their rally point. All around the city, groups like theirs were similarly taking up positions for the assault.
"Don't you think I want to fix this stupid thing?" Marcus replied. "I don't like — really don't like — the idea of going into a gunfight, but I like the idea
of going into one blind even less. Of course, I don't like the idea of being shot in the head much, either."
Roach shook her head. "Well Marcus, if you think that helmet is going to stop a rifle bullet, I've got some bad news for you."
Marcus's eyes went wide.
"Roach, come on," Rend said. "The kid is just scared." He put a reassuring hand on Marcus's shoulder. "Just stay with me, and everything will be fine."
Ahead of them, Ki’s troops came to a stop and took defensive positions. They were about a block away from the high fence enclosing Roosevelt's district.
Marcus took a series of deep breaths and nodded his head in a slow rhythm. "Okay," he said. "Okay. I will be okay. I feel like it will be less frightening once things actually start." He looked around, taking in their surroundings for seemingly the first time since they’d come to the surface. He drew in a quick gasp when he saw the armed guards at the border gate. "What do we do now?" he asked Rend.
Roach laughed. "Now," she said, "we wait."
Sam really hoped his driver could tell where they were going, because he certainly could not.
The vehicle sped through the network of abandoned mines and tunnels, the high-pitched whine of its engine filling Sam's ears, the cold cavern air whipping him in the face. Three nearly identical machines — Old World cars stripped down to the frame and rebuilt for maximum speed and maneuverability — followed close behind them. Darkness surrounded them, settling onto Sam with an almost palpable weight.
The vehicle took a hard right, and Sam was thrown to the left. His harness dug deeply into his shoulders. A few seconds later, they cut back to the left, and Sam was thrown right. This time he knocked his head against the vehicle's low frame, just hard enough to sting. Both turns felt like they’d been at least 90-degree changes of direction; both turns had been taken at full speed.