Rise: Luthecker, #2

by Keith Domingue

  “We don’t have time for this, Winn. Now go,” Alex said, with a bit more force in his voice.

  Winn stepped back from Alex and looked away.

  “There’s never enough time,” Winn said, to no one in particular, barely above a whisper. He looked out over the horizon and saw a dust cloud in the distance, getting closer. He would have to say his piece in full, now, and hope that it would be enough. He turned back to Alex.

  “The ramifications of the lives whose freedom you enable are the last thing you must accept; the last thing that you cannot hide from.”

  “If you don’t leave now, you’re all going to die.” There was the beginning of panic in Alex’s voice. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He raised the rifle, ever so slightly.

  Nikki, Chris, Yaw, and Masha collectively held their breaths.

  Winn didn’t waver. “Whether those ramifications lead to a greater good,” Winn continued, nodding in Nikki’s direction, “or whether they lead to adjudication of crimes committed, is not up to you to decide. That is the domain of Karma, that of both the individual and the universe as a whole. The last that I will ask of you is to remember this: As long as the motivation behind your choices is in the service of others, balance will be found. If the motivation is in service of your needs alone, you risk becoming just like Lucas Parks.”

  “You all have to leave. Now.” Alex gripped the rifle harder.

  Yaw stood and watched the standoff between his mentor and his friend. It was clear that, despite Winn’s words, Alex was too affected by his mind’s eye, his uncanny abilities, and was not going to back down. It was then that Yaw’s last conversation with Camilla came to mind, and he realized what he must do. Yaw broke from the others, and stepped next to Alex. “You have to come home,” Yaw said.

  Alex turned to Yaw. “No. This is my burden. My fault.”

  “Man, it’s no one’s fault. It just is. That’s life. And Winn is right. You need to come with us. We need you. She needs you,” Yaw said, as he nodded toward Nikki. “And together, we’re gonna continue. We’re gonna do what needs to be done.”

  “No. He will not take the fall for me.”

  “Come on, brother,” Yaw continued. “You heard what the man said—it ain’t about you. This is his choice. And it’s the right one. The honorable one. So let him have it. Let him have his honor.”

  Alex looked away from them all. It was several seconds before he slowly turned back and handed over the rifle to his martial arts instructor. Tears were streaming down Alex’s cheeks. He looked at Winn. “I didn’t see this. I didn’t see your end. Not like this. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop it.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not,” Winn answered, as he took the AK-47 from Alex. “You’re going to change the world.”

  “Guys…” Chris said as he pointed down the long dirt road that led to warehouse row.

  Fast approaching were two more Humvees and a Maybach.

  “The Barbarian…” Masha said. “It is too late. We must go now.”

  “And who says it’s my end?” Winn said, with a wry smile. “Now GO.”

  The Humvee that Semyon arrived in roared to life, with Masha behind the wheel.

  No one said a word as they piled into the Humvee. Masha kicked the oversized military vehicle in gear and tore out in the opposite direction.

  Winn watched the Humvee disappear in a cloud of dust. He smiled before he turned back and raised the rifle to his shoulder. He took careful aim at the oncoming Humvees and Maybach…

  Masha had already driven the Humvee three blocks away when they heard the gunshots. It started with three quick pops, followed by three more. Then, several seconds later, they heard the faint trace echo of a barrage of gunfire.

  “Your papers are no good,” the border patrol agent told Masha. “You have been put on a watch list. I’ll have to call security.”

  They had driven nonstop through the night to make it to the Chisinau Airport before Ivan Barbolin could catch them.

  “Excuse me,” Chris said.

  The border patrol agent turned to him. “I’m sorry, but I will have to take her into custody.”

  “My friend would like a word with you,” Chris said.

  Alex stepped forward and locked his eyes on the man.

  36

  Home

  Chris awoke with as start, instinctively shielding his eyes from the early-morning sunlight before searching beside him on the bed with his hand. There was no one there. He looked up and saw Masha’s figure, naked, perfect, silhouetted by the morning sun streaming through the bedroom window. He watched her a moment, her back to him as she looked over the city of Los Angeles, her new home. He studied the tattoos that covered her back, an intricate array of dragons and Cyrillic lettering, a beautiful story etched in ink on her skin. He looked forward to asking her about the story.

  He pushed the covers aside, silently padded his way across the bedroom, and wrapped his arms around her, his gaze joining hers as they looked out over Los Angeles. She turned back and nuzzled his neck a moment before kissing him, and they both stood there in silence. Chris buried his face in her hair breathing in her scent, a smell reminiscent of flowers. He whispered in her ear. “We have to get ready.”

  Yaw sat with his daughter Kylie cradled in his arms, mesmerized by both her perfect features and the slow rhythm of the chair he rocked her in. He had stared at her sleeping figure for over half an hour, unable to comprehend how beautiful she was to him.

  “Your turn,” Camilla said as she emerged from the bathroom. Yaw looked up at Camilla. She was dressed conservatively in a form-fitting black dress. She approached Yaw, and he gently handed off Kylie to her. “Mrs. Chen will be here in twenty minutes to look after Kylie,” Camilla continued. “You better hurry.”

  Nikki and Alex lay in silence.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Nikki finally said, her head on Alex’s chest as the two lie in bed. Alex, on his back, stared at the ceiling, lost in thought.

  She lifted her head off his chest and propped herself on an elbow. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking that he left some big shoes to fill.”

  Nikki laid her head back down on Alex’s chest. “You don’t need to fill his shoes. You need to follow your own path. And everyone will follow you. I think that’s what he wanted.”

  Alex pushed aside the covers. “It’s almost time. We need to get ready.”

  The actual ceremony began several hours before the mourner’s arrived. At dawn, three Buddhist monks had held vigil at the small shrine erected in Winn’s honor. A simple figure of the Buddha, carved from stone, was the centerpiece, not unlike many others in this place crafted of stone and sand. The monks had chanted for three hours at the memorial site of the enclosed monastery in order to provide harmonious passage for Winn from this life to the next, this phase of the ritual completed before the mourners arrived.

  Next, Alex, Nikki, Yaw, Camilla, Chris, and Masha all arrived simultaneously for a private moment to remember their instructor and friend before others were allowed.

  After joining the monks in a brief prayer, the small group stood in silence for several minutes before Alex spoke.

  “Do you have them?” he asked Yaw.

  Yaw nodded and handed Alex Winn’s Kali sticks, the handcrafted aluminum pieces used to save them all, half way across the world, only days earlier.

  Alex took the sticks, and placed them next to several burning candles at the base of the Buddha that rested just above a small headstone. There were words etched into the marble:

  “Everything that is, is because of other things that are. Even you.”

  It was less an epitaph and more a final instruction to all, something the martial arts master would have wanted, a reminder of how all things and all people are connected. They were words chosen by Alex.

  “Let the others in,” he said.

  Word had traveled fast throughout Los Angeles, and in all, there were over th
ree hundred visitors who packed both the monastery and the streets surrounding it to pay their respects. Alex recognized many of them, several dozen refugees whose lives had been forever altered for the better by their passage through Safe Block. There were others too, hard looking men in their fifties with faded tattoos and bandanas covering balding heads, somber men whose essence spoke of a different time, men from Winn’s past who felt duty bound to pay their final honor. One by one, all the former refugees, all the former street colleagues made a point to acknowledge Alex, a show of living respect, an unspoken passing of the torch that was recognized by all. The energy focused in Alex’s direction caused him to pull Nikki close.

  As the ceremony concluded, there was a chaos to the voices and patterns that Alex saw among them all, different lives, different paths, different destinies, but through the unorganized array there was an alignment caused by the moment of mourning, love, and reverence. It was something that Alex couldn’t quite quantify, a peaceful orientation of emotional patterns that created a pathway directly to the momentum; it was gone the instant Alex felt its presence.

  It made him smile.

  Alex felt it before he saw it, a disturbance in the harmony, and he looked to the entrance of the memorial site to see several police officers in full-dress blues approaching. Whispers and tension rippled throughout the attending crowd as Officer Dino Rodriguez approached Alex.

  “Sorry for your loss,” Rodriguez said as he stuck out his hand. “We’re here to pay our respects to the man.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said, before he shook Rodriguez’s hand.

  Upon witnessing Alex’s approval of the officer’s presence, the tension within the crowd of mourners eased.

  “I was wondering if I could speak with you a moment,” Rodriguez said.

  “If you speak with one of us, you speak to all of us,” Alex replied, his voice gentle and disarming.

  Rodriguez looked at Nikki, Yaw, Camilla, Chris, and Masha, who stood at Alex’s side.

  “Winn and I had an agreement. About the future of Safe Block.”

  “For it to continue?”

  “Correct.”

  “And that you had others whom you wished for us to take care of.”

  “Yes. Did he tell you?”

  “He didn’t have to. Your agreement will be honored.”

  “Long Beach. The LBC. I got it situated. We’re good to go,” Camilla chimed in.

  “See? It’s taken care of,” Alex added.

  “Good. Thank you.” Rodriguez nodded.

  “But I do have one favor to ask of you,” Alex said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I need soldiers. Good men such as yourself.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “To train.”

  Rodriguez looked over the crowd of the rescued, before his eyes settled back on Alex and his small group of friends. Each one of them had the same look of determination on their faces, and the officer found it unsettling.“Train for what?”

  Alex put his hand on Rodriguez’s shoulder and looked in the young officer’s eyes.

  “The revolution.”

  EPILOGUE

  “She’s more dangerous than he is,” Glen Turner said as he rattled his fingers on the boardroom table. “You know she was the one who took down the SR-73.” He pointed a finger at Collin Smith as the other board members of Coalition Properties looked on.

  “We can’t prove that,” Smith replied.

  “I have a team of people in Bluffdale, Utah working on being able to do just that. Did you know that all of Lucas Parks’ financial assets have disappeared? Poof, billions of underground dollars gone, just like that, and we can’t do a damn thing about it. And now, all of a sudden, the Cambodian Children’s Fund has a mysterious new benefactor. Along with about four hundred other useless fucking charities.”

  “Your Bluffdale team will eventually contain her. He is still the key.”

  “Key to what? He’s been nothing but a problem for us. Why don’t we just rendition his ass and get whatever it is you think we need—then kill him, like we’ve done countless times before.”

  “No. I’ve had conversations with the one man who truly understands him. And there’s a better answer.”

  Nikki stretched her hamstrings on the concrete seat of the picnic table. Her body was happy with the sweat of her first run since recovering from her ankle injuries, and she watched as other joggers and sightseers moved past her along Ocean Park, all enjoying the sun and view of the Pacific Ocean. It was a short run, only a mile, but her ankles had held up, which made her happy. It had been three weeks since their return from Trans Dniester, and next week she would move the distance to two miles.

  “Excuse me, are you Nikki Ellis?”

  Nikki turned to the source of the question. A thin, fidgety man stood behind her.

  He stuck out his hand. “My name is Mark Kirby. I’m a scientist. I’m the one who sent you the email about Alex Luthecker.”

  Nikki immediately took a step back and scanned the crowds for threats. She could make out none. The Coalition had kept their distance since their return, and Yaw and Chris had swept the area only minutes previous, just in case. They would be back to join her any moment, but right now, she was alone.

  “Don’t worry. I’m by myself,” Kirby said in reaction to her movements. “And I hate the Coalition just as much as you do. When I saw on television what you and he did in Los Angeles over a year ago, I knew it had to be him.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I knew Alex’s birth parents because I was the doctor who worked with them through their fertility issues. I know why Alex is the way he is. And I can help him.”

  Nikki held her breath. “He doesn’t need your help. We just want to be left alone.”

  “I understand that. I truly do. But the Coalition will keep coming after you. They won’t stop. And you know it. I can keep them away from you. And the headaches that he’s experienced? Those are just the beginning of his problems. But I can fix it. Alex is the way he is due to an unexpected result of genetic sequencing. His abilities are like a blank canvass in the field of science; with him as a template, we could tie the past, present, and future together as one. He is the next step in human evolution. He could help bring about necessary change.”

  “I’m going to tell you one more time. Leave us alone.”

  Kirby held up his hands and took a step back. “If that’s what you want, I’ll leave you alone, I promise. But I mean you no harm, I swear. And Alex’s health is just going to get worse. Let me meet him. Let me share with you both my work.” Kirby took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed a bit of sweat from his forehead. He smiled at Nikki. He hoped that she and Alex would listen. “Please,” he continued. “Just give me a chance. I just want to show you what Alex Luthecker is truly capable of. I just want to show you what’s in store for the future of the world.”

  Acknowledgments

  To my sister Deborah for her notes, faith, and constant source of encouragement. This book wouldn’t be anywhere without you.

  To my parents for, well, being my parents. And the countless sacrifices they made for me along the way.

  To my crew: Win, JC, Mel, and a special shout out to Claudia Schumacher who, for some inexplicable reason, likes to cook for all of us.

  And a special thanks to Bobbie Metevier for editing the manuscript and Christiana Miller for inspiring me to get this whole thing started.

  About the Author

  Keith Domingue is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He has written scripts for MGM, Dimension Films, Sony Pictures, and Village Roadshow Pictures. Also a fitness coach and avid martial artist, he splits his time between the computer screen and the gym.

  You can visit the author on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/KeithDomingueAuthor

  Or on Twitter at: @AlexLuthecker

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  Excerpt from Luthecker: Revolution

  by Keith Domingue

  Alex Luthecker was sitting quietly on the couch in his cell when the lights went out. It was pitch black for several seconds before the room illuminated again, but the darkness wasn’t what caught Luthecker’s attention.

  What caught his attention was a sound—the blunt thud of the electronic latch that kept the door to his cell locked being released.

  To Alex, it didn’t just mean he was free—it meant that PHOEBE was here roaming the Coalition’s digital hallways. And that meant Nikki was roaming the physical ones. In other words, his family was here.

  Alex got to his feet and pushed against the thick metal door, and it moved. He slowly opened it all the way and peered outside. The halls were quiet. There were no guards, no attendants. Alex understood why.

  The Coalition CEO and cyber-security team would know that PHOEBE had infiltrated their systems and was wreaking havoc on every form of digital communication. It would create confusion and chaos, causing all security personnel to focus on the problem.

  If Turner still believed that Alex was a non-factor, he wouldn’t think that for much longer. The next steps would be critical. Alex hustled down the hallway. He knew that because of PHOEBE, Nikki would be the primary target. He had to find her, before Glen Turner or his Coalition Assurance assassins discovered her first.

  He stopped when he saw Mark Kirby at the end of the hall.

  Kirby quickly approached.

  “It’s complete fucking chaos,” Kirby started. “Just like you said it would be. Turner’s in over his head, and he doesn’t know what to do. And you were right—he doesn’t want to talk to you.”