“His son?”
“Yeah, Greg,” Becca nodded. “We’re kinda friends…my father keeps trying to set me up with him. You know how well that will work…” I could not help but chuckle. “Tell you what, I’ll send him a text and meet him for coffee tomorrow. Maybe I can get an idea of how he feels and we can arrange for you to meet him and discuss a deal.”
“Could you do that for me?” I said, relieved.
“Of course,” Becca said, a smile in her voice. “Can you meet me tomorrow? Maybe at the cinema on Lincoln?”
“Sure, what time?”
* *** *
Becca ran up to me and Mark excitedly as we waited outside the theater. I still had a scarf on and a hat that was supposed to hide my face, but it was getting warmer. The weather had reported there would be a cold snap starting Sunday, but I had to pretend that day that I was not dying of heat under my layers.
Becca looked like she had good news.
She told us that Greg was willing to meet us the following day in the industrial area close to their manufacturing warehouse. She assured me she would be there, too, and had told Greg that we were just suppliers for the revolution, not the main branch, and we were looking for ammunition. She had told him that we did not have any in order to make it sound like we were peaceful and that we had never fired a gun at anyone during our protest.
I thanked her and agreed to meet her the following day. Even though Mark had his eyes covered with sunglasses, I could see the tension through his entire body as he watched us plan the meeting.
Our designated meeting place was extremely close to one of the two exits from the fort. For the sake of safety, and to be sure that we were not going to be followed, Mark wanted to take a small group of people.
He was extremely ill at ease for the rest of the night.
The following morning Mark was so on edge that I was beginning to feel my heart pounding in my chest hard enough to make it difficult to breathe. The entire group of five was nervous, feeding off the tense energy of the leader of the Eight Group. All of us were looking around the old, dry sewer pipe, scanning for danger, even though we knew we were safely hidden. I blamed the sudden cold snap for the foreboding feeling.
I spotted the metal engraving near the next ladder that said “14th Street” and told Mark we had arrived. He hesitated, looking at the ladder as though contemplating whether or not to go. I could not understand why he was so nervous. I turned to Josh, who was standing in front of Paula and Dan, also looking anxiously at the ladder.
“Why are you two so nervous?” I hissed at Josh before turning to Mark, trying to hide my own anxiety.
“A feeling…” Josh muttered. “Do you have your gun?”
I tapped the holster under my jacket. Josh reached for his own gun and pulled it out, checking the clip and the number of bullets he had. Seeing this, everyone did the same. While it was a smart idea to check our weapons regardless, it made me even more nervous.
“Do you think we should have brought more people?” I whispered.
“No.” Paula shook her head. “We don’t want to scare him off. It’s just…with everything that’s been going on…it’s good to be cautious.”
I knew what she meant. Griffin and Tori wanted to be the ones who accompanied Mark, Josh, and me to the meeting with Greg Sterling, but I wanted our two most powerful experiments to stay safely hidden, just in case we were followed back. I also wanted Mark to stay behind, but since it would be his money we were using to pay for the bullets, I did not feel right telling him not to join us.
Mark replaced his gun and started up the ladder, climbing to the top while the rest of us remained behind, watching him reach the cover and force it open. He pushed it to the side and scanned the surroundings. When he climbed out, I knew it was safe.
Josh went up first and I followed, Paula and Dan directly behind me. We came up in an alleyway full of dumpsters near the industrial edge of town. There was the sound of the nearby freeway and large trucks around the immense buildings, the backing sirens sounding as the drivers worked on the loading docks. This was not an area I was used to. The unfamiliar territory frightened me a little.
There were no windows on the walls that faced the alleyway, which eased my mind that no one had seen us appear from the old sewer line.
Replacing the cover, Mark looked around again. All of us were scanning our surroundings, wondering which way we were supposed to go, trying to find any indication of the Sterling Firearms building.
Mark began walking further into the alleyway, away from the road, and we fell into position behind him, quiet, our eyes sharp, looking for danger.
Mark moved closer to the building on the southern end of the alley and pressed his back to the wall. Worried he had seen or heard something, we ducked to a similar position, waiting for him to signal an order, tense and acting on reflex. Mark was still for a few moments before he motioned us to wait. I watched nervously as he inched along the wall to the corner, my breath caught in my throat, feeling more anxious than I thought necessary for the situation. I tried to chalk the anxiety up to the memory of what happened in the failed raid earlier in the week.
Mark reached a hand into his jacket and kept it on his gun before he peered around the corner.
“Mark?” a voice called. I felt myself relax. Becca was there.
Mark stepped out and his hand dropped from his gun. I started to move closer, but Josh caught my arm. I glanced at him, confused and a little annoyed at the paranoia. Josh did not seem worried, but he was waiting for Mark to signal us closer.
“Where is everyone else?” Becca asked. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?” She sounded worried. Mark shook his head and then nodded his head in Becca’s direction. “Oh, this is Greg Sterling, Kirk Sterling’s son.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mark,” Greg’s unfamiliar voice sounded around the corner. “I heard that you can’t speak, so I’m wondering why you came here alone…”
Mark was still for a moment, and then turned to us, dropping his head once in a nod. Josh released my arm and I stepped forward, walking around the side of the building and glancing at the people in the alley. Becca was standing next to a man in his late twenties, dressed in a suit though his tie was missing. No one else was there.
Becca smiled when she saw me.
“Lily, you scared me. I thought something had happened.”
“No, I’m fine.” I was still nervous. I told myself that if I was not wary, considering my situation, I was an idiot. I still glanced around behind her, noting that there were two windows on the buildings behind Becca and Greg, but they were dark and the door next to the windows was padlocked from the outside. There were two corners where people could be hiding out of our field of vision, but I chose not to consider the possibility.
Josh walked to Mark’s side, both standing just slightly in front of me and to each side, shielding me. Becca looked at them and watched as Paula and Dan took their spots behind me. She let out a broken chuckle.
“Wow, quite the security detail you have…” she noted, looking at me skeptically.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “We just have to be careful.”
“She’s right,” Greg agreed. “With everything that happened earlier in the week, it makes sense that they’re traveling in groups.” He turned to me. “Lily, right? I am Greg Sterling from Sterling Firearms. I heard that you were inquiring about some ammunition for your revolution leaders.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “But before we talk about anything like that, I want to know why you would even want to sell us ammunition.”
“Simple,” Greg said. “I am pissed that the Commission of the People has been taking people and making them into weapons.” He looked at the four people around me. “All of these people have been taken into the Commission and tortured. The Commission assured us that everything they did with the people they obtained was humane and fair, but seeing the parade in January made me realize that they had been lying this w
hole time. We’re going back to the days of Washington, and I hate it.”
“And as for what happened earlier in the week?”
“Well, the Commission did a good job of pointing out that their building was not hit. I realized that if they had been attacked, it’s likely we would have seen some of the other evidence of their testing surface. But they weren’t attacked. If they were making weapons, of course they would also be able to have someone with wings. They probably ordered the attack to frame you.”
I listened to him speak, trying to gauge if he was serious. I knew Becca would bring us someone interested in helping us, but I knew I had to be careful. With the failure of the raid, I felt compelled to be extremely vigilant.
And there was something about this man that was bothering me…
After he finished speaking, I was quiet. He started to look nervous. Something was wrong.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dan hissed, also sensing something amiss.
“Not yet,” Josh snapped quietly over his shoulder.
“Lily, what’s wrong?” Becca asked.
Suddenly, I realized the problem. They had made no moves to approach us. We were speaking to one another as if we were in a standoff, over four meters apart. Even Becca, who had more or less earned the trust of Mark, was staying where she was, not going through her normal greeting of hugging me.
“Did you bring anyone else with you?” Paula called.
“No.” Becca shook her head. She let out a nervous laugh. “Come on, guys, what’s going on? Why are you so on edge?”
Mark reached for his gun, Josh as well, and Becca gasped, turning and running down the alley, Greg in tow.
“Where are they?” Paula hissed, grabbing her gun. My hand slipped into my jacket and rested on the handle of the gun, looking for what had spooked Mark.
“Shit! Go!”
Three men darted out from around a corner, but I did not get a good look at them, thrown off-balance by Mark shoving me backward, into Dan, who yanked me behind the wall in the direction we had come from, Paula following.
Disoriented, I did not notice who fired the first shot, but a few shots after that, I saw one of the men fall to the ground. I did not get a good look at him before I was pushed against the wall, listening to the commands of the people who had been lying in wait.
“Don’t move!”
“Shit! They’re getting away!”
“Fuck!”
There was pain in my arm, hot and sharp. I cringed, my hand going to my shoulder. A bullet had grazed me. I pressed my palm to the wound and took a deep breath, trying not to let the others know I was hurt, which was not difficult, since Paula and Dan were watching Josh and Mark.
Josh was pressed against the corner of the same wall I was against, peering around the corner and rapidly firing shots in short bursts before ducking back. Mark was across the intersecting alley, also pressed against the corner of a building for protection.
“We have to go!” Paula gasped. She ran to the iron cover with Dan and both of them tried to lift it, though it would not budge, even with their combined strength.
I heard a shout of pain after Mark fired one shot and dared to inch closer to Josh, who was glancing around the corner, holding his gun ready, ducking back when a few bullets flew in his direction.
Josh cursed in his own language, opening the clip and replacing the empty one with a new one. There were a few shots as Josh replaced the clip, to which Mark retaliated. I looked over Josh’s serious expression. He was breathing hard through his nose, trying to concentrate.
“Josh, how many?”
“Six,” he answered. “One dead, two down,” he elaborated. He took a deep breath and glanced at Mark. Making a quick motion with his hand, Mark motioned for Josh to cover him as he went across the alley. Josh nodded and spared a quick glance around the corner. Gunshots sounded and the wall chipped away. One shot came from Mark and then he ran across the alley as Josh stepped out from his corner and shot three times, firing his third bullet as Mark reached us. Josh did not move from his position after he stopped firing, which told me the other three were dead.
Mark stepped behind Josh and glanced over his shoulder at the people in the alley. I resisted the urge to go forward and see them for myself. I watched with Paula and Dan as Josh started to lower his gun.
“Okay,” he said, turning, “let’s—”
Josh’s body jolted as several rounds of gunshots echoed through the alley. My heart stopped and my mind went white.
Mark stepped out from behind Josh and shot one bullet into the alleyway before grabbing Josh’s shoulder and pulling him behind the wall. I started toward Josh with Dan and Paula to assess the damage.
Mark’s eyes were quick over his friend before he shook his head and pointed at the cover Paula and Dan had tried to lift.
“We can’t lift it.”
Mark darted to the drain cover and lifted it as I looked over Josh. The other experiment had slid down the wall, one hand around his stomach and the other hand still gripping loosely at his gun as he breathed heavily through his clenched teeth, his body shuddering. I glanced down, seeing that his right thigh had a bleeding wound and there was blood pouring through his fingers as he gripped his stomach. There was another bullet lodged in his left shoulder, but with the way he was grabbing at the wounds in his stomach, I knew those were the ones to worry about.
Mark’s hand was suddenly on my shoulder, pulling me upright and pointing to the drain.
“Lily, go!” Dan said, following as I ran toward the ladder. I glanced briefly back at Josh before I started down into the dark tunnel.
“Wait right at the bottom,” Dan instructed.
I hurried down the iron rungs, my hands shaking with fear and my brain blank except for one frightened thought.
Is it fatal?
I reached the bottom and glanced up to see Dan close behind, but he had stopped on the ladder, looking up at Paula, who was also positioned just above him. At the top, Mark was carefully lowering Josh. Paula hooked an arm around his chest and under his shoulders, guiding his feet to Dan, who used one hand to wrap around the experiment and guide him the final way down the ladder.
My hands hooked under Josh’s arms, finally getting his feet to touch the cement, though he let out a shout of pain before his teeth clenched and the labored breathing began pulsing out of him again.
Carefully guiding him backward, I helped Josh sit, holding the back of his head as I set him down. He let out another shout of pain that echoed through the tunnel hauntingly, though it was covered by the sound of Mark replacing the cover as he quickly descended the ladder. Dan and Paula crouched next to Josh with me. Paula removed Josh’s glasses, which allowed us to see the agonized expression on his face. His breath rushed through his teeth, his eyes tightly closed. Dan wrapped his fingers gingerly around the hand Josh was pressing to his stomach. As Dan pulled the hand away, Josh let out another cry of pain and his body convulsed.
Blood was pumping out of two holes, staining the white shirt.
Mark crouched by Josh’s side and looked at the wounds, unbuttoning Josh’s jacket.
That was when I saw the third bullet hole, lower and further to the side. He had been hit five times—three times in the stomach.
Mark started to unbutton the shirt, but when he pulled the fabric, grazing it over the wounds, Josh let out another startled yelp and his body jerked, his other hand starting to reach for the wound. I caught the second hand, holding it tightly as his fingers enclosed around my hand, tightening in a punishing grip.
“We have to get him back to the fort,” Paula whispered.
“It’s a forty minute walk…” Dan hissed.
Mark, who had also removed his glasses, looked at us with a purposeful gaze and nodded, taking Josh’s hand from Dan and leaning forward, pulling the arm around the back of his neck before picking up Josh as gingerly as he could. The other experiment still let out a pained cry, turning his head toward Mark and pushing
is face into the jacket, trying to hide his cries of pain as Mark stood slowly.
“We need something to press to those wounds in his stomach,” Paula said.
Frightened that Josh was dying, I pulled off my jacket and handed it to her. She shook her head.
“Not absorbent.”
I pulled my shirt over my head, balling it in my hands and walking to Mark and Josh. I wrapped my fingers around the hand that Josh, once again, had against his wounds. He muttered something, pained and pleading, before he let out a quieter shout of pain that quickly escalated into a louder cry as I pressed the fabric of my shirt to his abdomen, placing his hand over it.
“Hold this there,” I said. “Hold it tight.”
His fingers curled into the fabric and I backed away, taking my jacket from Paula, slipping it on over my shoulders, the cold, slick fabric causing me to shiver. I did not realize everyone was staring at me.
“What?”
“You’re hurt…” Dan blinked.
“I’m fine.” I had truly forgotten about my wound. “It’s just a graze. Let’s go.”
Mark turned as soon as I said I was fine. I fell into step behind Mark, Paula and Dan covering our backs with their guns out.
I should have been thinking about how Becca had betrayed us. I should have wondered why she had done so when she had been so willing to help before. And I should have been wondering why there were so few people there to capture us, but all I could focus on was the labored breaths that were pushing past Josh’s grinding teeth. I felt my heart skip a beat at the breaths that would shudder out of him with a whimper of pain that was only audible because I was so focused on him. I watched his hand grip at Mark’s shoulder, fisting the fabric tightly as Mark walked as carefully as he could, trying not to jar Josh.
I had never felt so helpless.
There were tears in my eyes that I forced away, hating hearing the intense pain Josh was in and the way it made him breathe so irregularly. I continuously thought about the way Josh’s body had moved when the bullets tore into him. Like all the experiments, Josh’s tolerance for the pain was exceptionally high. Yet, there he was, in such immense pain he could not move other than to grip pitifully at Mark’s shoulder.
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